Bowl

Bowls of this shape were manufactured in clay, glass and silver. They were used to serve condiments such as olives and nuts at meals. The intact condition of the bowl indicates its origin from a grave, where it remained unscathed despite its fragility. The quality of the glass points to the Eastern Mediterranean as its region of origin. The grave must have contained other goods, probably including a drinking vessel.

Like the other objects in the display case on the right, this piece also comes from the illegally excavated collection of Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904), who was first a professional military officer, then a diplomat and amateur archaeologist, and from 1879 the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. These glasses were purchased at an auction in Paris in 1873 by Friedrich Imhoof-Blumer, the great Swiss numismatist, and were later bequeathed to the Münzkabinett Winterthur.

As with most of the antique objects in the extensive collection of Cesnola, which mainly went to the Metropolitan Museum, we know neither the exact excavation site of the pieces nor the context in which they were found. By tearing apart the finds from a site, important information for dating the graves, the gender of the deceased, but also about their social position, their habits, their access to imported goods and their ideas about the afterlife are lost to scholarship. – APG