Stamp Impressions on Egyptian Amphorae of the Hellenistic Period (332-30 BCE)

Extensive research has been generated over the past fifty years concerning the creation, distribution, and consumption of Aegean transport amphoras throughout the broader Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period, with special attention paid to stamped amphoras. Most scholars agree that amphora production was intimately related to the production of the wine these vessels were created to contain. In the Ptolemaic period, a boom in the consumption of wine was stimulated by the arrival of Greek and Macedonian kleruchs to the newly-created Hellenistic kingdom of Egypt. Confronted with this massive demand, the Ptolemies invested in the production of wine through the creation of wine estates throughout the Fayyum. Subsequently, this boom in wine production necessitated the production of vessels to hold this commodity: amphoras. As a result, a corpus of distinctly Egyptian-made amphoras emerged that assimilated the stylistic features of Aegean amphoras, including stamps. So far, studies of amphora stamps have only been conducted on types manufactured at Aegean sites. Thus, this paper aims to expand the study of stamped Hellenistic amphoras to those manufactured in Egypt in order to examine the role of stamps in the production, consumption and distribution of locally-made Egyptian amphoras throughout Ptolemaic Egypt.