Stone palettes, also called toilet trays, are round trays commonly found in the areas of Bactria

Bactria

Bactria and also appears in the Zend Avesta as Bukhdi. It is the ancient name of a historical region located between south of the Amu Darya and west of the Indus River...

 and Gandhara

Gandhara

Gandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...

, which usually represent Greek mythological

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 scenes. Some of them are attributed to the Indo-Greek period in the 2nd and 1st century BCE (a few were retrieved from the Indo-Greek stratum No.5 at Sirkap

Sirkap

Sirkap is the name of an archaeological site on the bank opposite to the city of Taxila, Punjab, Pakistan.The city of Sirkap was built by the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius after he invaded ancient India around 180 BC. Demetrius founded in the northern and northwestern Indian subcontinent an...

.) Many are considered to be of later production, around the 1st century CE

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

 during the time of the Indo-Parthians. They practically disappeared after the 1st century. Many have been found at the archaeological site of Sirkap

Sirkap

Sirkap is the name of an archaeological site on the bank opposite to the city of Taxila, Punjab, Pakistan.The city of Sirkap was built by the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius after he invaded ancient India around 180 BC. Demetrius founded in the northern and northwestern Indian subcontinent an...

, in today's Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

.

Function

Scholars have suggested that these trays were used to mix cosmetic products (cf. ancient Egyptian cosmetic palette

Cosmetic palette

The cosmetic palettes of middle to late predynastic Egypt are archaeological artifacts, originally used to grind and apply ingredients for facial or body cosmetics. The decorative palettes of the late 4th millennium BCE appear to have lost this function and became commemorative, ornamental, and...

s). The Ancient Orient Museum

Ancient Orient Museum

The is a small private museum in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in artifacts of the ancient Near East and Central Asia. It has a collection of Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, and several pieces pertaining to the art of Palmyra and Persia....

 was able to analyse the remains of substances adhering to a number of stone palettes, which turned out to be colored cosmetic powders akin to blush. A frieze

Frieze

thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...

 discovered in Butkara shows a woman using a mirror

Mirror

A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...

 as she puts her fingers into one of these stone palettes.

These stone palettes provide an interesting instance of Hellenistic art in the northwestern Indian subcontinent. They are disconnected from the Buddhist narrative to which works are usually associated in the Greco-Buddhist art

Greco-Buddhist art

Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between the Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 1000 years in Central Asia, between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, and the Islamic...

 of Gandhara

Gandhara

Gandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...

.

Few of the palettes contain representations of the Buddha

Buddha

In Buddhism, buddhahood is the state of perfect enlightenment attained by a buddha .In Buddhism, the term buddha usually refers to one who has become enlightened...

.