Reproduction of a Coptic terracotta bread stamp on a marble base (6th or 11th century) with representation of the tree of life. Stamping loaves, a Greco-Roman custom still observed today, was originally associated with the bread offered in pagan sanctuaries and later, in Christian times with that used in the Orthodox Mass. The tree of life, a motif common to the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, is here rendered as a schematic pine tree with cones.