Bowl

Forty-six flutes radiate from a rosette on the bottom of this Greek silver bowl. A band of ornament set off by beading runs around the shoulder, and more beading below a plain band encircles the bowl's widest point. Scholars call this shape, with its distinct shoulder, long neck, and flaring rim, an Achaemenid bowl, after the shape's origins in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. By the 300s B.C., however, the shape was popular in Greece, especially in ancient Macedonia, where archaeologists have excavated several similar silver examples. Other areas of Greece imitated the shape in pottery. Although scholars call this shape a bowl, it functioned as a drinking vessel or cup.