This powder flask, made out of a stags horn is carved in relief with a representation of the Old Testament story of Heliodorus attempting to raid Solomon's temple (II Maccabees 3), a prefiguration of the scene of Christ driving the traders from the temple.
Heliodorus entered the temple in Jerusalem in order to steal its treasure but he was turned back in three forms of God. Powder flasks or horns are portable containers of wood, horn, metal, leather or ceramic used to hold the priming powder or gunpowder for firearms. They normally terminated in a metal nozzle which also served as a powder measure, closed by a plug or spring cap, and are often highly decorated.
Gunpowder began to be transported in pouches or more rigid containers at about the same date as the introduction of hand-held firearms in the fifteenth century. Such flask might have a military purpose, or be used for hunting. The very decorative pieces were above all a singn of rank, and at the same time aesthetic objects in their own right, and probably never actually functioned as containers for gunpowder.