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
Religions of the ancient Near East from the Apsu—the fresh water abyss encircling and flowing underneath the earth—in which all the dead were gathered and where they led a miserable existence of inactivity, amid gloom and dust. Occasionally a favoured individual was permitted to escape from this general fate and placed in a pleasant island. It would appear also that the rulers were always singled out for divine grace, and in the earlier periods of the history, owing to the prevailing view that the rulers stood nearer to the Gods than other mortals, the kings were deified after death, and in some instances divine honours were