Amphora Iron Ages amphorae spread around the ancient Mediterranean world, being used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as the principal means for transporting and storing grapes, olive oil, wine, oil, olives, grain, fish, and other commodities. They were produced on an industrial scale until approximately the 7th century AD. Wooden and skin containers seem to have supplanted amphorae thereafter. They influenced Chinese ceramics and other East Asian ceramic cultures, especially as a fancy shape for high-quality decorative ceramics, and continued to be produced there long after they had ceased to be used further west. Besides coarse amphorae used for storage
Balanos oil Balanos oil Balanos oil is a semidrying oil pressed from the seeds of "Balanites aegyptiaca"; it was used in ancient Egypt as the base for perfumes. "The fact that perfumes are absorbed and retained by oils and fats was known in Egypt at an early date, and later to the Greeks and Romans; it was the basis of perfume-making in the ancient world, and it is still the principle of one of the modern methods employed when dealing with certain delicate flower-perfumes. Balanos oil, which is obtained from the seeds of "Balanitesa egyptiaca", a tree that at one time grew