English: Hadra vases are named for a cemetery in Hellenistic Alexandria, where such vessels held the ashes of the dead. Though shaped like an Athenian "hydria," or water jug, its sparse decoration suggests inspiration from Macedonia, where metal "hydriae" draped with gold wreaths were deposited in royal tombs. The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt after Alexander the Great's conquest were themselves Macedonians and may have inspired this custom.