chalice
- Museum number
- AshmLoan.602
- Description
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Body sherd of Chian black-figured Komast pottery chalice; white slip (partly worn); interior: glazed streaky black with two added white bands; exterior: black-figure dancing komast (legs remaining) to right; below in handle zone, group of short vertical strokes and part of double saw-edged metope pattern between dilute bands.
- Production date
- 560BC-550BC (circa)
- Dimensions
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Height: 5 centimetres
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Thickness: 0.30 centimetres
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Width: 3 centimetres
- Curator's comments
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Object owned and held by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. This record is included in the British Museum database as part of the Museum’s Naukratis Project, a research collaboration that aims to virtually re-unite finds from the ancient port city of Naukratis, now distributed over 80 museums worldwide.
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Lemos places this sherd in Group E of the Black Figure Komast chalices. The chalices in this group do not contain any filling ornament, details of the komasts are rendered very simply and inner decoration is basic.
Williams argues that the images portrayed on the komast chalices were perhaps representations of komos activities that took place in Chios. The buttock pads exaggerated the dancers’ bottoms. The sakkos worn by many of these komasts as well as the earrings suggest the dancers, who were male, were practicing a form of transvestism. If so, these Chians dancers were precursors of the magodoi or performers who wore women’s clothing, made lewd gestures and performed as female and drunk characters. The gestures of the dancers on the chalices are limited and consist of holding pomegranates, tambourines (or wreaths) and snapping fingers.
Such dances may also have been connected to religious festivals and performed after religious feasts.
Williams, 1983, 162-3
- Location
- Not on display
- Department
- External
- Registration number
- AshmLoan.602
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: AN1896-1908-G.114.36 (Accession Number)