The face of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, gazes from the central medallion of this garnet and glass-studded gold hairnet from Hellenistic Alexandria. Its original owner is unknown, as is the context of its discovery, but it probably belonged to a wealthy—or royal—woman living in Alexandria in the second or third century B.C., the height of the Ptolemaic period in Egypt. The Greek Ptolemies ruled Egypt from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C. The goddess Aphrodite was seen as the divine counterpart to the queens of the […]
