This Egyptian Onyx perfume container is one of the best examples found in Roman Britain. Comparable examples have been found in Pompeii from mid-1st century BC to mid-1st century AD contexts so this vessel may well have been old when it was deposited, potentially curated as an heirloom.

Examples of the use of Egyptian Onyx, or calcite-alabaster, are extremely rare in the Roman province, with just a handful of documented examples. Comparable slender, cylindrical bottles with rounded (sometimes footed) bottoms, narrow necks, and wide lips for scented or plain oil from Hellenistic and Roman sites in south-east Italy are called alabastron, named because their form originated from Egypt, where they were made from Egyptian calcite-alabaster. This vessel has a sloping angle to the shoulder; such vessels were probably called ampullae. The surviving dimensions of this ampulla indicate that when complete it would have been larger than many of the bottles known from Italy. The bottle’s narrow mouth would allow for careful pouring of liquids such as perfumed oil, a commodity that was a valued luxury.

A small but growing body of petrological evidence demonstrates that Egyptian stone-types were exported to Britain specifically for use in funerary libation vessels and urns. These may have formed part of an initiation or purification process associated with religious activity and may provide a further body of evidence for the veneration of Eastern cults in the provincial capital and adjoining areas. The presence of an alabastron or ampulla does not mean that this is direct evidence for the worship at Rayleigh of that cult, but it is possible that the object in question may originally, when it first arrived in the province, have had an association with it.