-
Hellenistic black-glaze amphora. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul) -
Hellenistic black-glaze amphora. Detail of figural handle. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul) -
Hellenistic amphora in use with water pouring from waterspouts. (Photograph by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.)
Hellenistic black-glaze amphora
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 217
- Date
- Late Hellenistic, Hellenistic
- Museum
- Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 2197
- Museum Inventory No.
- 2197
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- P59.414
- Material
- Ceramic
- Object Type
- Pottery
- Pottery Shape
- Amphora
- Pottery Ware
- Hellenistic Tableware
- Pottery Attribution
- Site
- Sardis
- Sector
- PC
- Trench
- PC
- Locus
- PC Tomb of the Lintel
- Description
- Pottery, broken, mended, partly restored. Handles in the form of standing ithyphallic satyrs (facing outward, i.e. away from the vase). On the lower body, below each handle, a spout in the form of a mask or lion head. On exterior and interior of neck, black slip. On neck and body, registers either of flutes or of simple decoration in white, orange, and red slip. Height (to top of handle) 0.392 m, maximum diameter 0.201 m.
- Comments
- Most of the amphora recovered from the same tomb (“Tomb of the Lintel,” in excavation sector PC) as No. 216. “Probably local” (Rotroff and Oliver 2003, 55). The unusual spouts on the lower body are paralleled on the Hellenistic silver and silver-gilt amphora from Chertomlyk in south Russia (Minns 1913, 159-162, 288-289). Because of strainers in the neck and behind the spouts of the Chertomlyk amphora and the relief scenes of horse training on its shoulder, Minns suggested that it might have been used for kumys (the fermented mare’s milk favored by nomadic peoples of central Asia; see also Gavriljuk 1991, 94-95). There is no evidence for the drinking of fermented milk in Hellenistic Lydia, although it might – a long shot! – have been introduced by Scythians in the sixth century BC, or Cimmerians in the seventh.
- See Also
- Greenewalt, “Introduction”.
- Bibliography
- Rotroff and Oliver 2003, 54-55, no. 174, pl. 25.
- Author
- CHG