Ancient Greek funerary vases

Last updated August 26, 2023

Ancient Greek funerary vases are decorative grave markers made in ancient Greece that were designed to resemble liquid-holding vessels. These decorated vases were placed on grave sites as a mark of elite status. There are many types of funerary vases, such as amphorae, kraters, oinochoe, and kylix cups, among others. One famous example is the Dipylon amphora. Every-day vases were often not painted, but wealthy Greeks could afford luxuriously painted ones. Funerary vases on male graves might have themes of military prowess, or athletics. However, allusions to death in Greek tragedies was a popular motif. Famous centers of vase styles include Corinth, Lakonia, Ionia, South Italy, and Athens.^[1]

Uses

One major type of funerary vase was the krater, a mixing bowl for wine and water used by elite Greek males at symposiums. Symposiums were an eastern influence^[2] in which the aristocracy would lie down and drink; many Greek painters referenced this lifestyle in their art. The krater was so symbolic of elite status that large, richly decorated kraters would be placed upon grave sites. Although in the shape of drinking vessels, some funerary kraters were made just to be a grave marker, as indicated by a hole in the bottom of the vessel. This hole would allow libations to drain through.^[3]

The display of highly decorated funeral vase markers, along with costly grave goods, and elaborate processions, helped to display the status of wealthy families. This act is called conspicuous consumption, and would let the whole community know who held power in the region.^[4]

Types

The amphora was a tall, slender pot that often held oil, wine, milk, or grain.^[1] These could be as tall as an adult, and were both practical for transporting goods, and artistic in their funerary usage. Amphorae filled with oil were awarded to victorious athletes during Panathenaic games, with the winner painted on it.^[2] These might be placed on the grave of the athlete.

The lekythos was another style of funerary vase that usually held ritual oil. It had a slender body with a single handle. One famous artist of lekythoi was the Achilles Painter. Funeral lekythoi were often painted in the white ground technique.

The kylix, popular at symposiums, was a stout drinking cup with a very wide bowl. A well known potter of kylikes was Exekias. After being formed separately on the potter's wheel, the bowl and stem would be left to dry. The cup would then be placed upside down to attach the handles. The handles would dry in this upside down position, giving the handles a unique upturned curve when the kylix was upright.^[5]

An oenochoe was a stout wine jug with a distinct pouring lip, and a large handle. The name comes from oinos (wine), and cheo (to pour).^[6] Some of these have relief sculpture under the bowl. There are two other variations of oinochoe that differ in size and style, called olpe and chous. Archived 2017-04-23 at the Wayback Machine

The hydria was a water-containing vessel with three handles; two for carrying, and another for pouring. These could also be made out of bronze. A well preserved example is the Regina Vasorum from Southern Italy.^[7] The Regina Vasorum has black lacquer with gilding. Demeter, Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Dionysus can all be seen on this hydria.^[7]

Iconography

Geometric patterns adorn many vases between 900–700 B.C.^[8] These patterns include meanders, right-angles, and swastikas. Most vases from this period were found in cemeteries, thus becoming our primary source of knowledge during the Geometric period.^[9] In the 600s B.C., Athens moved away from abstract geometric patterns, and toward more natural art, influenced by the Near East.^[10]

Images from vases can provide information about religion, beliefs, and how people lived, including burial rites. Burial customs included washing and dressing the body in ointments before wrapping the body in a shroud and outer cloth. The body would then be laid upon a bier, or funeral bed, which gives form to the Greeks' association between sleep and death.^[11]

Dipylon amphora, mid-700's B.C. detail of laying out the body (prothesis).

Thanatos, the god of gentle death, can be seen on Greek funerary vases taking away the body of the deceased to the underworld. The act of laying out the body for mourners to see, called prothesis, is painted on the Dipylon amphora. The next step was the ekphora; the moving of the body to a cemetery in a procession. If cremation was practiced, the ashes of the deceased would be placed inside the funeral vase, and buried.

Social connections

Kylikes, used at symposiums, would often be painted with large eyes on them. When drinking from these eye-cups, they would act as a mask, like actors would wear in a play. These eyes would stare at the other guests, with the handles resembling ears. The Greek word for handle is "ous", meaning ear.^[2] The altered state of mind that comes from drinking alcohol is analogous to putting on the mask of someone else. This connection between wine, masks, and stories told at symposiums were all embodied in the god Dionysus, the god of wine and theater.^[2]

Tragedy on vases

Greek tragedies were a popular motif on funeral vases which often contained the death of someone close to the main character within the play. An example of this is the suicide of Ajax vase. Greeks would see these pictures of Greek tragedies on vases, which would remind them of the suffering that heroes of old had to endure. They believed that If great heroes were able to survive life's sufferings, then so could they.^[12] In this way, they could view tragedy as something comforting, thus giving people the strength to persevere.^[12] Through visual depictions of tragedies, the Greeks could relate to the deceased. Pots that depict funerary scenes were usually designed for tombs. However, vases with comical motifs have also been found in graves.

Related Research Articles

A vase is an open container. It can be made from a number of materials, such as ceramics, glass, non-rusting metals, such as aluminium, brass, bronze, or stainless steel. Even wood has been used to make vases, either by using tree species that naturally resist rot, such as teak, or by applying a protective coating to conventional wood or plastic. Vases are often decorated, and they are often used to hold cut flowers. Vases come in different sizes to support whatever flower it is holding or keeping in place.

In the pottery of ancient Greece, a kylix is the most common type of cup in the period, usually associated with the drinking of wine. The cup often consists of a rounded base and a thin stem under a basin. The cup is accompanied by two handles on opposite sides.

In Ancient Greece, the symposium was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Greek and Etruscan art that shows similar scenes.

Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it, it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. The shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide available to understand the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks. There were several vessels produced locally for everyday and kitchen use, yet finer pottery from regions such as Attica was imported by other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans in Italy. There were a multitude of specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery.

Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic, is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, although there are specimens dating as late as the 2nd century BCE. Stylistically it can be distinguished from the preceding orientalizing period and the subsequent red-figure pottery style.

Exekias was an ancient Greek vase painter and potter who was active in Athens between roughly 545 BC and 530 BC. Exekias worked mainly in the black-figure technique, which involved the painting of scenes using a clay slip that fired to black, with details created through incision. Exekias is regarded by art historians as an artistic visionary whose masterful use of incision and psychologically sensitive compositions mark him as one of the greatest of all Attic vase painters. The Andokides painter and the Lysippides Painter are thought to have been students of Exekias.

A krater or crater was a large two-handled shape of vase in Ancient Greek pottery and metalwork, mostly used for the mixing of wine with water.

An oenochoe, also spelled oinochoe, is a wine jug and a key form of ancient Greek pottery.

A lekythos is a type of ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil, especially olive oil. It has a narrow body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel, and is thus a narrow type of jug, with no pouring lip; the oinochoe is more like a modern jug. In the "shoulder" and "cylindrical" types which became the most common, especially the latter, the sides of the body are usually vertical by the shoulder, and there is then a sharp change of direction as the neck curves in; the base and lip are normally prominent and flared. However, there are a number of varieties, and the word seems to have been used even more widely in ancient times than by modern archeologists. They are normally in pottery, but there are also carved stone examples.

Lydos was an Attic vase painter in the black-figure style. Active between about 560 and 540 BC, he was the main representative of the '’’Lydos Group’’’. His signature, ό Λυδός, ho Lydos ", inscribed on two vases, is informative regarding the cultural background of the artist. Either he immigrated to Athens from the Lydian empire of King Kroisos, or he was born in Athens as the son of Lydian parents. In any case, he learned his trade in Athens.

White-ground technique is a style of white ancient Greek pottery and the painting in which figures appear on a white background. It developed in the region of Attica, dated to about 500 BC. It was especially associated with vases made for ritual and funerary use, if only because the painted surface was more fragile than in the other main techniques of black-figure and red-figure vase painting. Nevertheless, a wide range of subjects are depicted.

Geometric art is a phase of Greek art, characterized largely by geometric motifs in vase painting, that flourished towards the end of the Greek Dark Ages, c. 900–700 BC. Its center was in Athens, and from there the style spread among the trading cities of the Aegean. The Greek Dark Ages lasted from c. 1100 to 750 BC and include two periods, the Protogeometric period and the Geometric period, in reference to the characteristic pottery style. The vases had various uses or purposes within Greek society, including, but not limited to, funerary vases and symposium vases.

The pottery of ancient Greece has a long history and the form of Greek vase shapes has had a continuous evolution from Minoan pottery down to the Hellenistic period. As Gisela Richter puts it, the forms of these vases find their "happiest expression" in the 5th and 6th centuries BC, yet it has been possible to date vases thanks to the variation in a form’s shape over time, a fact particularly useful when dating unpainted or plain black-gloss ware.

Hermonax was a Greek vase painter working in the red-figure style. He painted between c. 470 and 440 BC in Athens. Ten vases signed with the phrase "Hermonax has painted it" survive, mainly stamnoi and lekythoi. He is generally a painter of large pots, though some cups survive.

The Pan Painter was an ancient Greek vase-painter of the Attic red-figure style, probably active c. 480 to 450 BC. John Beazley attributed over 150 vases to his hand in 1912:

Cunning composition; rapid motion; quick deft draughtsmanship; strong and peculiar stylisation; a deliberate archaism, retaining old forms, but refining, refreshing, and galvanizing them; nothing noble or majestic, but grace, humour, vivacity, originality, and dramatic force: these are the qualities which mark the Boston krater, and which characterize the anonymous artist who, for the sake of convenience, may be called the 'master of the Boston Pan-vase', or, more briefly, 'the Pan-master'.

The Archaeological Museum of Eretria is a museum in Eretria, in the Euboea regional unit of Central Greece.

The theme of death within ancient Greek art has continued from the Early Bronze Age all the way through to the Hellenistic period. The Greeks used architecture, pottery, and funerary objects as different mediums through which to portray death. These depictions include mythical deaths, deaths of historical figures, and commemorations of those who died in war. This page includes various examples of the different types of mediums in which death is presented in Greek art.

Dipylon kraters are Geometric Period Greek terracotta funerary vases found at the Dipylon cemetery; near the Dipylon Gate, in Kerameikos. Kerameikos is known as the ancient potters quarter on the northwest side of the ancient city of Athens and translates to "the city of clay." A krater is a large Ancient Greek painted vase used to mix wine and water, but the large kraters at the Dipylon cemetery served as grave markers.

The Euphiletos Painter Panathenaic Amphora is a black-figure terracotta amphora from the Archaic Period depicting a running race, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was painted by the Euphiletos Painter as a victory prize for the Panathenaic Games in Athens in 530 BC.

The Dipylon Amphora is a large Ancient Greek painted vase, made around 760-750 BC, and is now held by the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Discovered at the Dipylon cemetery, this stylistic vessel belonging to the Geometric period is credited to an unknown artist: the Dipylon Master. The amphora is covered entirely in ornamental and geometric patterns, as well as human figures and animal-filled motifs. It is also structurally precise, being that it is as tall as it is wide. These decorations use up every inch of space, and are painted on using the black-figure technique to create the silhouetted shapes. Inspiration for the Greek vase derived not only from its intended purpose as a funerary vessel, but also from artistic remnants of Mycenaean civilization prior to its collapse around 1100 BC. The Dipylon Amphora signifies the passing of an aristocratic woman, who is illustrated along with the procession of her funeral consisting of mourning family and friends situated along the belly of the vase. The woman's nobility and status is further emphasized by the plethora of detail and characterized animals, all which remain in bands circling the neck and belly of the amphora.

References

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