A Roman enamelled glass bowl with Nilotic scene
Circa AD 20-70
Free-blown in emerald-green glass with cut-off rim, the sides and base decorated with a figural scene in polychrome enamel of three figures, one holding an amphora (C), one running away with a stick (D), the last pulling up water (A), a small hut in the field (B), the underside of the base with a rosette with alternate yellow and brick-red petals, with a central yellow dot, within a laurel garland of light green, 7.3cm high, 10.5cm diam
Footnotes:
Provenance:
The Khalil Homsi Collection, acquired in Syria or Lebanon before 1975.
L. Grenacs Collection, from the late 1980s.
Acquired as a gift from the above by the present owner.

Published:
M-D Nenna; Un bol en verre peint du Ier siècle après J.-C. à représentation nilotique, in the Journal of Glass Studies, 2008, vol.50, pp.15-29.

This bowl is an extraordinary survival of Roman enamelled glass from the Early Roman Empire and especially during the Tiberian to the beginning of the Flavian period. It belongs to a small group of bowls and a couple of amphoriskoi blown mostly in dark coloured glass and decorated in polychrome enamel with birds in vines, animals in vegetation, ducks, fish, hunting scenes, sporting scenes including chariot racing, and even a fight between pygmies and cranes. On some examples guidelines were incised on the vessel walls before the decoration was painted on, while on others the decoration appears to have been painted freehand.

The underside of the bases were frequently decorated with a bird, star, or rosette as on this example. Around 80 examples (both intact and fragmentary) have been identified from findspots across the Roman Empire including the south of France, Switzerland and Italy, but although their place of manufacture has not been identified, a northern Italian or Egyptian source have been suggested. A full study of this bowl was undertaken by Dr Marie-Dominique Nenna in 2008 in which she identified the scene as containing several Nilotic elements: a person turning an Archimedes screw, a reed cabin in yellow, and an ithyphallic dwarf bearing a pole who is running away to the right from a grotesque individual offering him some wine from an amphora.

The closest parallel to this cup, which also shows Egyptian influence, is another made in green glass from Nîmes that is painted with pgymies and cranes fighting (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.no.S.2473, cf. Morin-Jean, La verrerie en Gaule sous l'empire romain, Paris, 1913, colour frontispiece, p.125, fig.157 and Beat Rütti, 'Early enamelled glass' in M. Newby and K. Painter (eds), Roman Glass. Two Centuries of Art and Invention, Society of Antiquaries of London, London, 1999, pp.128-9, pl.XXXV, fig 24, p.131, fig.26b, (which also includes a general discussion). Fragments of another green glass cylindrical cup with the remnants of painted garlands/vegetation in yellow, white and ochre red, without traces of incised preparatory decoration, were found in the Maison au Vivier, Saint-Romain-en-Gal (now in the Musée archéologique de Saint-Tomain-en-Gal, Vienne, inv.no.SRG IV-12-14-273; D. Foy and M-D Nenna, Tout feu, Tout sable. Mille ans de verre antique dans le Midi de la France, exhibition catalogue, Musée d'Histoire de Marseille, Marseille, p.91, no.109).
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