Collection online

cup

• Object type

  • cup

• Museum number

  1888,0601.496.a-c

• Description

  Two pairs of joining sherds joined with plaster (including 1924,1201.178) of a Chian Wild Goat Style pottery phallus cup; most of back missing; white slip; interior: glazed streaky black save for glans and lower shaft; exterior, from top: two dilute lines; modelled vulva, with brown dots, flanked by frieze of goats to right (rump of one to right, most of one to left); rising and corner triangles, swastika and dot rosette as filling ornament; underneath pudenda, ridge running down length of phallus, decorated with broken maeander and short horizontal strokes; below goat frieze, alternating black and white tongues, then key maeander between pairs of lines; glans in added red with eye on either side and dot band around periphery.

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• Producer name

  • Attributed to: Painter of the Aphrodite Bowl

• School/style

  • Wild Goat Style

• Culture/period

  • East Greek
  • Archaic Greek

• Date

  • 625BC-600BC

• Production place

  • Made in: Chios
  • (Europe,Greece,Chios)

• Findspot

  • Excavated/Findspot: Naukratis
  • (Africa,Egypt,Lower Egypt,Nile Delta,Naukratis)

• Materials

  • pottery

• Technique

  • slipped
  • painted
  • hand-modelled

• Dimensions

  • Height: 14.6 centimetres
  • Width: 6.8 centimetres
  • Thickness: 0.4 centimetres

• Curator's comments

  Lemos describes the sherd as part of the Group of the Aphrodite Bowl, rather than as by the painter of the bowl, because the sherd displays a greater amount of variety in the filling ornaments, albeit similar to those on the Aphrodite Bowl (Lemos 1991, 74-5). The later addition of British Museum 1924,1201.178 to the rest of the phallus cup led Williams to describe the vessel as belonging to one of the mature works of the Painter of the Aphrodite Bowl (Williams 2006a, 128).

  The sherd 496c joins British Museum 1924,1201.178.

  The shape of the vessel suggests that the cup was probably a dedication to Aphrodite.

  For a discussion of the shape, see Williams, 2006a, pp. 127-8.

  The sherd is also published in Bergeron, M. forthcoming, ‘Pots and People: Greek trade and votive rituals at Naukratis’, in L. Hulin (ed.), Heracleion in Context: The Maritime Economy of the Egyptian Late Period, Oxford.

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• Bibliography

  • Villing et al 2013-2015 GD.1932 (phase 2)
  • Johnston 1978 no. 78
  • Williams 2006a p.127 fig.1, No.17, p.128, p. 132 note 17
  • Lemos 1991 p.24-5, fig.12, p.75, p.250, pl.53 no.365

• Location

  Not on display

• Subjects

  • mammal

• Acquisition name

  • Donated by: Egypt Exploration Fund
  • Excavated by: Egypt Exploration Fund

• Acquisition date

  1888

• Acquisition notes

  Excavated 1885-1886.

• Department

  Greek & Roman Antiquities

• Registration number

  1888,0601.496.a-c

• Joined objects

  • cup (1924,1201.178)