Relief Amphora from Halicarnassus
Unknown (Rhodes?) · Sixth century BC
A storage jar over a metre high, with four pierced, half-circle handles at the shoulder, is decorated not with paint but with patterns pressed into the clay. On the neck two registers separated by raised bands hold framed panels of ornament, and below them a band of double concentric circles; a further register of pattern runs around the top of the belly. The back is plain, since the vessel would have stood against a wall. Part of the mouth has been restored in plaster. The beige-pink clay and the crisp stamped motifs give the jar a sober, architectural look.
Large jars with stamped relief decoration were made in the eastern Aegean in the sixth century BC, and the museum suggests this one was produced on Rhodes, perhaps at Ialysos. It was found at Bodrum in south-western Turkey, the ancient Halicarnassus, birthplace of the historian Herodotus. Such vessels stored grain, oil or wine in houses and sanctuaries, and their relief ornament repeated the patterns of woven textiles and architecture. The Louvre bought the amphora in 1911, and it stands here as a counterpart to the much earlier relief pithos with Perseus.
Did You Know? The jar's back was left undecorated because it was meant to stand against a wall, out of sight.
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