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Corinthian Aryballos, from Sardis, mid-6th C. BC, No. 100 [Manisa 6428] (Photograph by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.) -
Middle Corinthian Round Aryballos, drawing. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College) -
Middle Corinthian Round Aryballos, drawing of decoration (unrolled). (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)
Middle Corinthian Round Aryballos
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 100
- Date
- Ca. 590-550 BC (Middle Corinthian or later), Lydian
- Museum
- Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 6428
- Museum Inventory No.
- 6428
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- P85.021
- Material
- Ceramic
- Object Type
- Pottery
- Pottery Shape
- Aryballos
- Pottery Ware
- Middle Corinthian
- Pottery Attribution
- Site
- Sardis
- Sector
- MMS
- Trench
- MMS-I 85.1
- Locus
- MMS-I 84.1 Locus 34
- B-Grid Coordinates
- E144.5 / S69 *100.25
- Description
- Round Corinthian aryballos with quatrefoil decoration. Globular body with slightly flattened bottom. Very low neck, wide horizontal everted lip with narrow mouth. Carefully drawn rosette around mouth. Rim crosshatched. Handle decorated with wavy line framed by three vertical bands. Quatrefoil lotus on body, with crosshatched calyxes, large leaves with added red between lotuses; fringed? upper lotus and larger lower lotus both with added red. Intact, heavily burned. H 0.057 m, diameter 0.063 m.
- Comments
- Such aryballoi were used to hold perfumed oil, a specialty of Corinth, where the vessel was made, as it was of Sardis; unlike Lydian perfume vessels, however, Corinthian aryballoi (and the oil they carried) were traded widely throughout the Mediterranean. From a Lydian house destroyed in the mid-sixth century (Area 1, with Nos. 16, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 75, 81, 87, 88, 96, 97, 102, 103, 137, 138), found with a fragment of an apparently identical aryballos (shown in the illustration), other unguent vessels including the two lydions Nos. 96, 97, earring No. 137, hawk No. 138, and other objects (Cluster 2). Like the Attic black-figured cups Nos. 102 and 103, found in the same house, this relatively closely datable aryballos, imported from Corinth, is very good evidence for the date and historical context of the destruction of the Lydian houses and adjacent fortification.
- See Also
- Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”; Greenewalt, “Cosmetics”; Cahill, “City of Sardis”. See also: M10 Cat. Cor 123
- Bibliography
- Greenewalt et al. 1988, 68, n. 14, figs. 10, 13-15; Ramage 1986, 422, fig. 2; Schaeffer et al. 1997, 52, Cor. 123; Cahill and Kroll 2005, 600, no. 9, fig. 16c.
- Author
- NDC