• latw-83-1
    Stemmed dish with graffito of “snake.” (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)

    Stemmed dish with graffito of “snake”

    Date
    Ca. mid-6th c BC, Lydian
    Museum
    Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 7364
    Museum Inventory No.
    7364
    Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
    P87.020
    Material
    Ceramic
    Object Type
    Pottery, Graffito
    Pottery Shape
    Stemmed Dish
    Pottery Ware
    Lydian Painted - Black on Red - Banded
    Pottery Attribution
    Site
    Sardis
    Sector
    MMS
    Trench
    MMS-I 86.1
    Locus
    MMS-I 86.1 Locus 124
    B-Grid Coordinates
    E148.6 - E149.4 / S063.6 - S064.4 *99.4
    Description
    Ceramic stemmed dish with flaring foot, plain stem, relatively flat plate with upturned lip. Thick slip on interior, orange on one side, fired or burned differently on other side to a streaky orange-brown. Four sets of black spirals on the interior of plate. Graffito on interior resembling a snake, with loop on right and wiggly body. Complete, mended from 10 fragments. Height 0.089 m, diameter of rim 0.218 m.
    Comments
    From kitchen of a Lydian house (Area 3, with Nos. 61, 63, 78, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86), in a pile of 23 almost identical stemmed dishes, including Nos. 82, 84, and 85. This graffito is found on two other dishes from this group, No. 84 and another (Manisa 7382, illustrated in Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”). Although similar, the graffiti are in different “handwritings,” suggesting that they were incised by different people. Compare the three graffiti on the stemmed dish from Gordion, No. 107.
    See Also
    Greenewalt, “Lydian Pottery”; Cahill, “City of Sardis”; Cahill, “Persian Sack”.
    Bibliography
    Greenewalt et al. 1990, 149, n. 18, fig. 11; Greenewalt 1991, 15, n. 25, fig. 21; Cahill 2000.
    Author
    NDC