File:Cups with Decoration in the Egyptian Style (49345337936).jpg

A precious "set" of vessels made of obsidian, eah one made from a single block of stone an inlaid with gold, coral, and semiprecious stones (malachite, lapis lazuli, yellow jasper) was found in the Villa di San Marco in Stabiae in May 1954. Restoration made it possible to reconstruct two skyphoi (cylindrical cups with ring shaped handles) decorated with motifs inspired by the Egypt of the Pharaohs, a third onevdecorated with plant motifs in the Hellenistic style, and a fragment of a cup decorated with a Nilotic scene. The two almost identical cups present scenes in wihch a royal couple make offerings of ritual objects to scared animals inside aediculae with an architecture that belnds Egyptian and Hellenistic Greek elements. The third cup, which is slightly smaller, presents a colourful plant motif with open lotus flowers, beside another long-stemmed lotus flower on which a bird rests. The shape of the cups is typical of the production of the Augustan age, but the materials, the artistry of stone carving, and of the inlay technique evoke the workshops of Alexandria specialised in the priduction of luxury objects. Successive restorations and analyses have enables us to reconstruct the decorations more precisely to identify a second cup, and to determine their place of origin as Ethiopia, where, according to Pliny, the stone was discovered by a certain Opsius or Obsidius from Campania, hence the name of the stone.