The ancient potters of the Athens region in Greece were noted for the manufacture of fine pottery covered with a fine, black slip or glaze, rouletted decoration and stamped palmettes. So popular was this high quality pottery that it was exported widely, to Asia Minor, Syria and the Levant, and Egypt. Small quantities even reached such distant areas as Iran, Mesopotamia, and eastern Arabia. In the Emirates, examples of Attic black-glazed pottery fragments have been found at Mileiha. The presence of this luxury ware in the Emirates does not necessarily mean that Greeks ever travelled to the region, or that direct trade between the Mediterranean and the UAE occurred in the third century BC Rather, it is far more likely that the examples of black-glazed pottery found at Mileiha came via numerous intermediaries in Syria, north Arabia or Mesopotamia. Whether it came overland or, down the Arabian Gulf, by sea, we cannot say.