Description

Cinerary urn from the second century BCE, with three handles decorated with a red- figure technique, the surface is decorated with a combat scene between two Centaurs. The neck is decorated with floral designs.

Hadra vases

The name Hadra belongs to a group of Hydria vases which were frequent in Hadra and other cemeteries of Alexandria; some were made locally, but analysis of the clay has demonstrated that many were imported from Crete. These vases included the ashes of the Macedonian soldiers that came to Egypt with Alexander the Great and Ptolemy I, and some of the Greeks who began to migrate to Egypt in great numbers during the Ptolemaic period. This type of hydria was produced from about 280 BCE to 180 BCE. Many Hadra vases have also been found in traditionally Greek territories, particularly Crete and Cyprus . The increasing quantity of fragments of Hadra vases found in Crete affirms that the Island must have been the center of production.

Generally, two techniques were applied in painting the decorations on pottery, black figure in which the decoration appears as a black silhouette on a red background. This technique flourished until it was replaced by the more advanced red figure technique in 530 BCE, in which the background is filled with black paint and the decorations are red. The Hadra were usually decorated with geometrical and floral designs, and  mythological scenes.

• R. M. Cook, Greek Painted Pottery (London: Methuen, 1960).
• Sue D'Auria et al., Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts, 1988).
• Peter Levi, Atlas of the Greek World (New York, NY: Facts on File, 1991).