Image Details

PUBLIC DOMAIN / THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, THE CESNOLA COLLECTION

MAKER’S MARK. This beautiful red-slipped strainer jug is illustrative of the Roman-era fine ware that archaeologists call Cypriot Sigillata A. This type of pottery originated in Cyprus and was heavily exported to the southern Levant in the centuries around the turn of the era. Its producers or merchants were possibly Jewish, which would also explain why both its production and its export to Judea and Nabatea dwindled after the First Jewish Revolt (66–74 CE) and then tanked in the mid-second century, following the Diaspora Revolt.