Cup of the Ptolemies understanding, also referred to as "un-naming", seems to have been a way for pagan artifacts to be reused for Christian purposes. The cup was probably made in Alexandria, Egypt. It was once thought to date back to the Hellenistic period, c. 250 BC, but is now regarded as dating to the 1st century AD. Its supposed connection with the Ptolemies dates back to 1644, when the historian Jean Tristan de Saint-Amant argued that the vase was made for the funeral processions of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 285 until 246 BC. Later, the scholar
Cup of the Ptolemies E. Babelon proposed the more general idea that the cup had been carved during "the time of the Ptolemies"a wide range stretching from 305 to 30 BC. However, there is no particular evidence for this, and other scholars, such as John Henry Middleton or Martin Conway, suggest that the cup was carved later, during the first or second centuries AD by Romans. Determining the exact date of the cup has been problematic largely because similar pieces are rare, making any possible comparison difficult. The exact history of the cup is largely unknown, although Conway suggests that the cup probably belonged