Nabataea, India, Gaul, and Carthage: Reflections on Hellenistic and Roman Gold Vessels and Red-Gloss Pottery

Abstract

The Nabataeans were as famous in antiquity for their gold as they are today for their pottery. Their gold vessels have disappeared, but their red-on-red painted pottery survives in profusion. Both the forms and decoration of much of this pottery have analogies in extant Parthian silverware. Nabataean gold vessels may lie behind the pottery (which should no longer be called "luxury" ware). The same picture emerges from an examination of the sources relating to India: gold vessels were imported in quantity from the Roman world, but only red-gloss pottery survives to suggest what the range of imported and local goldware might have been. Judging from the evidence relating to Gaul and Carthage, the same model may have applied to Gaulish sigillata and African Red Slip ware, and by extension to red-gloss ceramics throughout the Mediterranean.