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“Ephesian Ware” stemmed dish from Ephesus. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul) -
“Ephesian Ware” stemmed dish from Ephesus. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)
“Ephesian Ware” stemmed dish fragment from Ephesus
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 115
- Date
- Last quarter of the 7th c BC, deposited around 610 BC, Lydian
- Museum
- Selcuk, Ephesus Museum, 37/43/94
- Museum Inventory No.
- 37/43/94
- Material
- Ceramic
- Object Type
- Pottery
- Pottery Shape
- Stemmed Dish
- Pottery Ware
- Ephesian Ware
- Pottery Attribution
- Site
- Ephesus
- Description
- Slightly curved body fragment of a stemmed dish (Ephesus excavation inventory ART 94 K 142.1). Bichrome decoration precisely painted in dark chocolate brown and reddish brown on a thick, creamy white slip of extraordinary smoothness, reminding one of the quality of porcelain. On the interior (from center out): animal frieze with a dog coursing to the right and the hind leg of a wild goat or a deer in front of him; filling ornaments include a segmented lozenge, a pendent semicircle framed with small arcs and a pendant triangle partitioned into four small triangles, one of them filled, the others cross-hatched; two narrow lines framing a series of spaced squares filled alternately with criss-crosses and dots or cross hatching; bichrome solid rays. On the exterior (from center out): a small remnant of a ray; two narrow lines framing a series of spaced squares filled alternately with butterfly motifs or cross hatching; a high lotus flower-and-bud chain in geometric stylization, the individual subdivisions of which are filled with solid paint, fine dots and hatching in both colors. Maximum preserved height 3.6 cm, maximum preserved width 7.2 cm, thickness of wall 0.6 cm.
- Comments
- Found near the east wall of the sekos of the Archaic marble dipteros of Artemis of Ephesus, albeit in a deeper and earlier layer antedating the construction of Croesus’ temple. The fragment belongs to a partly excavated sacrificial deposit of the last third of the seventh century BC filled into a dried-out river bed, which was occasionally flooded. The sterile fine sand washed in by the overflowing river separated five successive layers of remains of cultic meals, consisting mostly of pottery (mainly drinking vessels) and animal bones, but it also contained votives such as a group of four golden fibulae with lion heads (Pülz 2009, 224–225 cat. no. 38–41, colorpl. 6), a female figurine of solid gold, 5.14 cm high (Pülz 2009, 216, cat. no. 6, pl. 3, colorpl. 3), as well as objects of bronze, ivory, rock crystal and faience. The stemmed dish No. 115, representing the highest quality grade of “Ephesian Ware,” was the finest piece of pottery in the assemblage. It was therefore probably dedicated as a prestigious votive, rather than used as a dining vessel. The electrum coin No. 23 was found nearby.
- See Also
- Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”.
- Bibliography
- Kerschner 1997, 132–135, 219–223, cat. no. 48a–b, fig. 22–25, pl. VII,48; Kerschner 2007, 235–236, pl. 33:5b; Kerschner 2008, 228–229, 233, fig. 197a–b; M. Kerschner in Seipel 2008, 234–235, cat. no. 288. On the deposit: Kerschner 1997, 95, 181, fig. 2, 3, 12. For comparable pieces: Greenewalt 1973, 95, 102, cat. no. 8, 18, pl. 1, 3, 9.
- Author
- MK