A Mycenaean Chalice and a Vase Painter

Abstract

The vase which is discussed below was brought to the British Museum for identification by the late Mrs. Maitland Sikes in 1951, together with other vases of Cypriote manufacture, and eventually it has been placed on loan in the Museum. Its provenance is unknown, but its Cypriote companions and the nature of its form and decoration, as it will be discussed below, speak in favour of Cyprus.(Plate 8a.) Fabric: buff-pinkish clay, good quality ‘Mycenaean’. Surface covered with a smooth buff-pinkish slip; decoration in brown to dark brown lustrous paint.Shape: deep bowl, slightly concave sides, carinated profile; long cylindrical stem, disk-shaped foot with deep depression at bottom. Almost half of the cup and part of the foot are missing and have been restored in plaster.Diam.: 10·2 cm.; height: 24·5 cm.The inside of the cup is left blank except for a painted horizontal band just below the rim. The outside surface is decorated with horizontal bands encircling the cup, stem, and foot; thin horizontal lines encircle the lower half of the cup. The upper half is decorated with a frieze of identically repeated bull protomes, looking right. Three protomes survive and the horns of a fourth, but originally there must have been six. The space between them is filled with dotted circles.