Vase fragment depicting Berenike II

Ptolemaic oinochoai (wine-jugs) with portraits of the queens were libation vessels associated with the royal cult, and surely also emphasized the identification of Ptolemaic queens with the Egyptian goddess Isis. There are over 250 attested by fragments, 90 percent of them from Alexandria, the remainder from other sites in Egypt and distributed about the Mediterranean, especially those sites connected with the Ptolemies. The complete oinochoai (wine-jugs) were vessels about 30 cm in height. The vessels might have been distributed or purchased for use at festivals connected with the royal family, and also had domestic and funerary uses since a number of examples were found in domestic areas and cemeteries of Alexandria. Adoption of faience as the material for this Ptolemaic ritual vessel is an acknowledgement of its symbolic stature in Egyptian culture.

Queen Berenike II (246-221 B.C.) is almost certainly represented on this fragment. Her relatively long reign accounts for the different styles that have been attributed to her early, middle, and mature reign. This fragment depicts the queen in what has been termed the mature style, wearing the stephane that the Ptolemaic queens adopted from Greek goddesses. The fine lines of the portrait of the mature woman survive unblurred, the fleshy neck is delicately treated. The hair retains traces of an applied dark blue cobalt glaze that pooled in the carved interstices to create a contrasting lighter covering on heights and darker in valleys. The queen holds the cornucopia adopted by Ptolemies as their insignia, its contents consisting of sheaves of wheat, rather indistinct cakes, and a bunch of grapes that spilled from the mouth of the horn to which only a break edge testifies.