By Dr Hilary Cool
Dr Hilary Cool is a specialist working mainly with small finds and vessel glass of the Roman period. She has published widely and has recently completed a long-running project exploring Roman glass bottles.
This is the story of a find excavated in 1983–4 at 24–30 Tanner Row which casts surprising light on late second-century York.
When I first saw it over three decades ago, I thought it was simply a misshapen Roman glass conical unguent bottle (fig. 1). Last summer, while looking through my unpublished archives, I realised it was probably a kohl bottle. By chance, I had spent the previous year working on a project on Roman glass in Sudan, so I had become very familiar with them. Kohl bottles were an Egyptian form that rarely travelled beyond that country.
Unguent Bottles and Kohl
When blown glass vessels started to become common in the early first century AD, small flasks used for perfumes and oils were made in large numbers. This reflected the high demand for the contents which were used in dining, religious rites and funerals as well as the care of the body. Kohl is a black eye make-up that had been used in Egypt and Sudan for millennia, so the glass industries in Egypt started making flasks to act as kohl containers as well.
Most unguent bottles have expanded reservoirs for the contents, and the inner wall mirrors the outer wall. Kohl bottles had cylindrical reservoirs as it was stored in a solid form and extracted using a rigid kohl stick which was used to both prepare the make-up and apply it.
The Tanner Row bottle came from a context dated to the late second to early third centuries. Most unguent bottles in York at that time had the normal expanded reservoirs. The drawing shows the contrast between those and the Tanner Row bottle with its cylindrical reservoir. It is the latter that allows the argument for it being a kohl bottle. (fig. 2)
It is likely to have arrived as a personal possession rather than a traded item. The person who brought it with them may have been part of the army. The Tanner Row deposits include military material, probably rubbish dumped from the fortress across the river.
People from Across the Empire in York
At that time, the population of York included many people from distant places. Claudius Hieronymianus, the commanding officer of the legion in the AD 190s who dedicated a temple to Serapis, has an eastern name. There were also the legionary potters of the early third century making north African style pottery. They would have been of Tunisian extraction. Then there was the court with the Emperor Septimius Severus present between AD 209-211. An Egyptian in York then would not have been exceptional.
In Egypt both men and women wore kohl eyeliner. The rubbish dumps outside forts there often have many discarded bottles, showing that soldiers did as well. The York example may well suggest that, on its streets at that time, you might have encountered a soldier with kohl-rimmed eyes like this early third century man from Hawara (fig. 3). An unexpected conclusion from what started as a serendipitous inspection of my archive!
Hilary Cool
3rd March 2026
