Minoan Egyptianising amphora
Π1636
Clay
Incomplete, mended and restored
Height: 29 cm. Rim diameter: 6.2 cm. Base diameter: 14.4 cm.
Phaistos
Palace - Cult area 10
Late Bronze Age, Neopalatial period. Late Minoan Ι period:
1600-1450 BC:
Gallery:
VCase:
50Exhibition thematic unit:
Late Bronze Age - Neopalatial period (1700-1450 BC). The New Palaces. The zenith of Minoan civilisationTrade and foreign contacts. Minoan Thalassocracy. International commerce and cultural influences
Description
This vessel, the product of a Cretan workshop, is a type of amphora strongly influenced by Egyptian prototypes. It has a slender piriform body, a tall neck, two vertical arched handles on the shoulder and a tall conical foot. There are relief rings at the points where the neck joins the body and the body joins the foot. There is a hole in the narrowest part of the juncture between body and foot, indicating that the vessel was used as a rhyton, probably in the context of ceremonial practices. These Egyptianising vessels, presenting typological and structural similarities to imported stone Egyptian vases, are mainly found in the Mesara, although they also appear at Knossos and Malia. They are evidence of the stylistic borrowings of the two civilisations, in the wider context of the commercial and cultural relations between Minoan Crete and Egypt during the period of the New Palaces.Bibliography:
Pernier, L. "Scavi della missiona italiana a Phaestos 1900-1901: Rapporto preliminare". Monumenti Antichi 12 (1902), 43, 107. Pernier, L. and L. Banti. Il palazzo minoico di Festos, II: Il secondo palazzo. Roma, 1951, 112-3, fig. 60b, 61. Phillips, J.S. The impact and implications of the Egyptian and "Egyptianizing" material found in Bronze Age Crete, ca. 3000-1100 BC. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of Toronto, 1991, 65-6, 719-20, no 334, fig. 1133. Karetsou, A. and M. Andreadaki-Vlazaki. Crete-Egypt. Three thousand years of cultural links. Catalogue. Herakleion-Cairo, 2001, 229, no 226a.Author:
I. N.Photographs' metadata