The Goddess on the Vezirhan Stele

The stele from Vezirhan (Istanbul Archaeological Museum, inv. 6219+71.27) is best known for its Old Phrygian and Greek inscriptions (B-05). However, its reliefs also pose an interesting challenge. They include a boar hunt, a ritual banquet scene, and a human figure, commonly identified as a goddess, with lions, birds, and a palmette-like motif “sprouting” from her head. The stele is dated to the late 5th–early 4th century BC. The hunt and banquet scenes clearly belong to this time (and find many parallels on votive and funerary reliefs and seals of Hellespontine Phrygia). The image of the goddess, however, continues a different tradition, one that possibly stems from an earlier period. The Vezirhan goddess doesn’t have a singular prototype, but displays connections to a wide variety of iconographical schemes and details. Most are found in the 7th–6th centuries BC arts of Anatolia and the Aegean. By examining this corpus, with special focus on the Potnia theron iconographic type, we understand that the Vezirhan goddess is related to other deities attested in Anatolia (in fact, her name might have been a variation of Artemis, according to line 3 of the Phrygian inscription). Yet, she cannot be identified with any of them directly. For all matches, there are also differences. A certain creative effort was made to distinguish the goddess from her peers, possibly to reflect her local cult. In my talk, I would like to unfold this synthetic image, examine its components, and try to put them back together – and hopefully gain some insight into how the Vezirhan goddess’ iconographic scheme came to be.

An Imported Attic Kylix from the Sanctuary at Poggio Colla

This study focuses on an Attic red-figure kylix excavated in a North Etruscan ritual context at a major sanctuary site in the Mugello region at Poggio Colla. Attributed to the Painter of the Paris Gigantomachy (490–460 B. C. E.), the kylix depicts youths boxing. Careful excavation of the site over 20 years allows detailed presentation here of the votive context for the kylix and thus supports a plausible hypothesis for how it was integrated into rituals marking the transition from the first monumental stone temple to its successor at the site, sometime in the late fifth-early fourth century. Placing the kylix in the oeuvre of the painter, his workshop output, and its appearance in Etruria demonstrates that the shape and subject matter were well known to Etruscan audiences; discussion of the relationship of the Attic boxers to imagery in Etruscan tomb painting, black-figure silhouette style pottery, and funerary reliefs reveals links to and differences from Etruscan renderings of similar subject matter. Conclusions confirm the role of the Attic kylix in Etruscan ritual and establish the familiarity of the iconography of the kylix to Etruscan audiences. Although one of the tinas cliniiar, Etruscan Pultuce and Greek Pollux, is identified in fourth-century Etruscan art as an outstanding boxer, this study reveals no obvious link between the imagery on the kylix and the major deity honored at the site, very likely the goddess Uni.

Representations of Children in Ancient Greece

Children’s representations appear early in the Greek visual material culture: first they appear in the large funerary vases of the geometric period, while in the archaic period they appear in funerary reliefs and vases. To the representations in vase painting, those in terracotta statuettes can be added in the fifth century, but it is in the fourth century bc that children become a noteworthy subject of representation, appearing both in small- and large-scale objects in different media. This chapter considers the relationship between changing imagery of children in ancient Greece and social and religious developments from the geometric period, through the Hellenistic period and into the Roman period in Greece.

An Anatolian-Persian tomb relief from Gökçeler in Lydia

The relief block at the centre of this study was found in 2004 in a ploughed field in the northern region of Lydia near the village of Gökçeler in the district of Akhisar, in what is today the Manisa province. A standing male figure is depicted on the block, which probably belonged to a chamber tomb. Holding a cock and a bud in his hands, stylistically the figure points to a date between the late sixth century BC and the early fifth century BC. He has short, spiral curls and wears a long-sleeved, tight-fitting garment that appears to be influenced by the Persian style. Within the scope of Anatolian-Persian funerary reliefs, this example is particularly significant due to its typological and iconographical elements. Specifically, following comparisons with other works of the Persian period, it is possible to suggest that the figure on the Gökçeler relief is an African who is offering a gift to the tomb owner; the latter may have been Persian or have served a Persian. Thus, this relief has particular significance since it is the only known work of Anatolian-Persian sculpture which indicates that individuals of African origin lived in the Anatolian region under Persian rule.