This handsome Hellenistic bowl represents a popular class of glass drinking vessel widely distributed throughout the Graeco-Roman world. Glassware before the 1st century was usually manufactured by a casting procedure similar to the method of casting bronze. The body is deep and slightly rectangular, enabling it to stand alone on a flat surface. The rich blue shade of the glass is rendered by the addition of cobalt to the silica-based glass mixture, but also suggests the precious lapis lazuli imported from Asia Minor. The horizontal grooves around the rim and the incision on the lower part of the body are typical of the linear decoration found on similar bowls known to have been manufactured in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean during the second half of the 2nd century B. C.

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