Early Attic Black Figure Vases in Egypt

Abstract

Attica, which first produced black-figured vases in the last quarter of the seventh century B.C., by the mid-sixth was the leading exporter of painted pottery in the Greek world. Fragments of Attic black-figured vases excavated in Egypt indicate that Egypt played an early and perhaps significant role in the expansion of the pottery industry of Attica; for Egypt, specifically the Greek commercial center of Naukratis, is the earliest major overseas market for Attic workshops. During the last years of the seventh century and the opening decades of the sixth, when the Greek city-state of Corinth dominated overseas trade in painted pottery, Attic vases are found outside mainland Greece with greater frequency in Egypt than in all other overseas sites combined.