• latw-36-1
    Watercolor reconstruction of a stemmed dish from Sardis showing Potnia Theron, interior. (Watercolor by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.)
  • latw-36-2
    Watercolor reconstruction of a stemmed dish from Sardis showing Potnia Theron, exterior. (Watercolor by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.)

Stemmed Dish with Orientalizing Decoration: Potnia Theron

Date
600-570 BC, Lydian
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
P66.006
Material
Ceramic
Object Type
Pottery
Pottery Shape
Stemmed Dish
Pottery Ware
Lydian Painted - Orientalizing
Pottery Attribution
Site
Sardis
Sector
HoB
Trench
HoB
B-Grid Coordinates
W2 / S87 *98.5
Description
Stem and foot missing. Clay pink-orange-brown, soft, micaceous, friable. Inside and outside, cream-buff slip over which a decoration in matte grey-sepia and shiny orange-brown slip. Inside, figural composition of which female (?) face, wings, hands and arms, and snakes (?) survive. Outside, pendant and ascendent rosettes and free-field swastikas. Estimated diameter ca. 0.34 m.
Comments
The fragments were recovered from an extramural occupation quarter of Sardis (Expedition sector HoB), scattered over a zone ca. 30 m x 23 m. The interior composition evidently shows a potnia theron (goddess of wild creatures, a Homeric term borrowed in modern scholarship to designate a female figure, often winged, flanked by creatures, often of identical kinds, that she grasps or otherwise dominates) grasping snakes (?).
See Also
Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”.
Bibliography
Greenewalt 1970, 68-70, 84-85.
Author
CHG