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Gilt faience fragment of an oinochoe (jug)

2nd century BCE
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 171
in high relief, woman with a cornucopia

Faience oinochoai depicting Ptolemaic queens were made in Alexandria, Egypt and served as ritual and commemorative vessels in ruler cults in cities throughout the Ptolemaic kingdom. The Athenian provenance of this fragment suggests that these jugs were also exported to places in the Mediterranean basin where the Ptolemies would have wished to assert their cultural position through the imagery on them, which functioned as visual disseminators of the Ptolemaic ideology.
Complete examples of these vases allow us to place this fragment in context. It is likely that the entire relief depicted the queen with her back to a pillar pouring a libation with a phiale in her outstrectched right hand, towards an altar. A cornucopia is a feature of all known examples of these oinochoai and alludes to the abundant richness of the Ptolemaic kingdom.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Gilt faience fragment of an oinochoe (jug)
  • Period: Hellenistic
  • Date: 2nd century BCE
  • Culture: Greek, Ptolemaic
  • Medium: Faience
  • Dimensions: h. 4 in. (10.2 cm)
  • Classification: Miscellaneous-Faience
  • Credit Line: Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917
  • Object Number: 17.194.1697
  • Curatorial Department: Greek and Roman Art

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