Ptolemaic perfume vases from newly discovered cemeteries in Alexandria, Egypt

Perfume vases, or unguentaria, are the most common pottery vessels found in cemeteries in Alexandria, probably because perfume was used in funerary rites, or perhaps the deceased used these vessels during his daily life and then they were buried with him. Two cemeteries were discovered recently by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities: the cemetery of El-Haddad and the cemetery of El-Abd. The cemetery of El-Haddad dates back to between the 2nd half of the 3rd century and the late 2nd/early 1st century BCE. However, the newly discovered areas of the cemetery of El-Abd (excavation seasons from the year 2017 to 2019) date back to the 2nd half/late 2nd century BCE to the 3rd century CE. Large numbers of these vessels of different types were found in loculi and in the fill of the cemeteries; a reasonable number of them were found in specific archaeological layers, or in three phases: two phases from the cemetery of El-Haddad dating to the 2nd half of the 3rd to mid-2nd century BCE and the 2nd half of the 2nd to early 1st century BCE, in addition to a later phase from the cemetery of El-Abd dating to the late 2nd to the end of the 1st century BCE. The majority of these vessels, recorded from the two cemeteries, were in local Alexandrian marl fabrics, and they were mainly influenced by the prevalent models in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods. This paper aims to trace the shape evolution of these vessels and compare the numbers of each type with its other counterparts from those three phases.¹