Two-Handled Jar of Panathenaic Shape

Introduction

An ancient Greek two-handled vase used as a container for liquids and fruit, and sometimes as an urn for holding ashes of the dead or for prize awards. The most important are the Black Figure vases (600-480 BC) of black-painted red earthenware, depicting mythological scenes. Other undecorated types, sometimes tapering to a pointed base, were in general use for transporting oil and wine until Roman times (Stone, pp. 934 - 935).

Discussion and Analysis

The amphorae used for storing wine, oil, grapes, cereals, fish and other foods. Also, the market was used as a transport container. In ancient Greece and Rome and was used as an official measure of liquid capacity. In the Iliad mentioned use as urns, but also from excavations in Greece and the Greek colonies, that the customary funerary use. During the Geometric period of vases placed very large, with horizontal handles on graves as markers, while in the later period were placed geometrically smaller jars with vertical handles, which, like the neck or shoulder, often decorated with carved snakes. According to Herodotus (1.15) and the amphora was used as a meter, "measure fluid", which was able to fit "on chaos".

The first of these vessels was a scholar, in 1872, Heinrich Dressel, with Father Louis Bruzza. Studying the shards found on the Roman hill Testaccio, an old dump these containers, she began to cattalo and date the Roman amphorae.

As for Roman amphorae types currently in use are very numerous, and their name may derive from the name of a locality, a scholar (eg Keay VI), an inventory / context excavation (eg Agora M273).

Historical Perspectives and Cultural Overview

The word amphora (from the Greek amphorèus) is also used for a form of Greek pottery decorated, featuring a tapered lower body, with narrow neck and two handles set on the neck and shoulder. Unlike the above-described transport containers, which had one foot pointed to facilitate the storage on ships, the amphorae had a flat bottom that allowed them to sustain themselves. They were intended to hold liquids or grains.

Already known in Roman Mycenaean, in Greek they are two main types, depending on whether the profile between the shoulder and neck followed by a continuous curve, which presents a sharp cut (Roisman, pp 45).

Among the former are distinguished a type "B", the oldest (widespread in the first half of the sixth century BC) with cylindrical handles and foot "to echinus reversed, "a type" A ", later (around the middle of the century), with loops and square foot two-step, and a type "C", which has a rounded profile rim instead of trapezoid, more rare, but the use of which extends between 580 and 470 BC.

Among the amphorae with a distinct neck variant is represented by '"Panathenaic amphora", strongly tapered towards the foot, created at the time of Pisistratus , and offered as prizes in competitions of the Panathenaic festival in Athens : it has a typical painted decoration, always with black figures (the goddess Athena on one ...