Unguent Bottle

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Unguent Bottle

Place of OriginSyro-Cypriot or Egypt

DateMid-fourteenth to late thirteenth century BCE

DimensionsH: 3 7/8 in. (9.8 cm); Rim Diam: 5/8 in. (1.6 cm); Diam: 2 5/8 in. (6.7 cm); Base Diam: 7/8 in. (2.3 cm)

MediumCore-formed; applied handle and pad-base; applied marvered threads.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1977.28

Not on View

DescriptionOne-handled jug. Probably a dark blue ground, with opaque white, opaque yellow, and opaque turquoise-blue decoration. Vestiges of tall cylindrical neck; obtuse-angled junction with rounded shoulder; bulbous body with convex sides; convex bottom; circular solid pad-base, flat but slightly uneven on its underside; vestiges of a vertical strap handle extending from the shoulder to a point high on the neck. Opaque white, yellow, and turquoise-blue threads, all marvered, begun on the neck and wound spirally in a close-set zigzag pattern to the bottom of the neck; another marvered opaque yellow (?) thread begun on the shoulder and wound horizontally once around the body; below this, other marvered opaque yellow, opaque turquoise-blue, and opaque white (?) threads attached and tooled into a widely spaced feather pattern extending to the lower body, where there is another marvered opaque yellow (?) thread wound horizontally once around the body. A marvered opaque yellow or white thread wound twice around the underside of the pad-base.

Published ReferencesNolte, Birgit, Die Glasgefasse im alten Aegypten, Munchner Aegyptologische Studien, no. 14, Berlin, 1968, pp. 111-112 and 118, no. 36, pl. 19 (incorrectly cited as TMA acc. no. 1923.611).

Harden, Donald B., Catalogue of Greek and Roman Glass in the British Museum, vol. 1, London, 1981, p. 34.

Grose, David F., Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50, New York, Hudson Hills Press in association with the Toledo Museum of Art, 1989, cat. no. 23, p. 64, repr. (col.) p. 43.