- Museum number
- 1864,1007.82
- Description
-
Pottery: red-figured neck-amphora.
(a) Phineus and a Harpy. On the right Phineus, a bearded blind man, in a long sleeved chiton and mantle, is seated en face on a diphros, his feet resting on a square base, holding upright in his left hand a sceptre or staff (?), mostly broken away, but of which the top is partly preserved. He turns his head to left and extends his right hand over a table (trapeza), on which are meat and flowers; this hand is broken away. His lips are parted, as if he were speaking. On the left a Harpy flies away, looking back at Phineus, and carrying in each hand a loaf or cake and a piece of meat. She has long hair, and a chitoniscos apparently of thick material, decorated with regular rows of dots and thin brown lines within the folds. The ends only of her long bushy hair and of her fillet are preserved. Beside Phineus, ΚΑΛΟΣ, καλός.
(b) A Harpy as in flying to left with a cake and a piece of meat in each hand; the objects in her right hand are extended in front of her. She wears a fillet, and a short chiton decorated with a large zigzag pattern and dots, confined with a broad dotted girdle. Her long hair falls loose on her shoulders. On right, ΚΑΛΟΣ, καλός.
Late stage of strong style. Purple meat, flowers, and inscriptions. Brown inner markings and marks on diphros and cakes, and dress in b. Eye of Harpies archaic, with inner angle open. The blind eye of Phineus is drawn as a curved line; his hair, indicated only in outline, has a rolled edge all round. Below, a continuous band of maeander.
- Production date
- 470BC-450BC
- Dimensions
-
Height: 33.02 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
-
BM Cat. Vases
Arch. Zeit. 1880, pl. 12, 2 (a and b), p. 138.
For the form of the food on side a, cf. BM Vase Ε66 a.
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Attributed to Fikellura grave 247, based on evidence from Biliotti's Kamiros diary, Kamiros tomb list, British Museum register, departmental Kamiros index card. Description in Biliotti's Kamiros diary: Bacchic amphora red figures winged male with the word [KALOS] written near him. Do seated female. Reverse winged male. (1 broken). No marking of grave number visible on the object itself.
Attributions to find-spots are based on (1) Alfred Biliotti’s diary kept during excavations at Kamiros between November 1863 and June 1864, which records the contents of two votive deposits and over 300 graves; (2) entries in the Museum Register, often stipulating the find-spots of individual objects excavated by Biliotti; (3) the Kamiros tomb list, produced around the same time as his entries in the Museum Register. It lists the contents of each grave and votive deposit, along with their corresponding registration numbers; (4) the Kamiros index cards, written by Donald Bailey in the 1960’s. These mainly record the contents of graves from the Fikellura cemetery and are organised according to tomb group. All archives are kept in the Department of Greece and Rome. In addition, Reynold Higgins’ Catalogue of the Terracottas in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1954) has been checked for attributions to the Fikellura cemetery.
- Location
- On display (G20a/dc46)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited: 2018-2019, 5 Oct-10 Feb, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Medea in Love and the Quest for the Golden Fleece
- Condition
- Broken: missing right hand and left shoulder of Phineus, back of head of Harpy in a, and right leg in b. Otherwise in good condition.
- Acquisition date
- 1864
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1864,1007.82
