Lekythos
The Lekythos ( Greek Λήκυθος , plural Lekythoi, Lekythen) is a Greek vessel for storing olive oil of different sizes and shapes with a narrow mouth and a handle.
Lekyths were generally used as small vessels for oil in the secular area, such as abdominal lycoths as toilet vessels for women or lekyths for oil for cleaning in the palaestra of men.
In particular, however, Attic vessels from the 6th and 5th centuries BC are used as lekyths. Chr., Which contained donations of scented oil and served as grave gifts. Lekyths were often painted, initially black-figure (approx. 590 BC to 480 BC), then red-figure (from around 530 BC) and above all with a white background ; the white-ground lekyths were made exclusively for use in graves. The lekyths increased in size in the course of the 5th century, in order to save oil, they received savings stakes. Shortly before 400 BC Very large lekyths were made out of clay ( e.g. the group of the Huge Lekythoi ), which were probably placed on the graves, in the 4th century massive marble lekyths are common as grave monuments in the necropolises of Athens, and grave reliefs with depictions of lekyths now also appear.
Types
The lekyths can be divided into several types according to the shape:
- Deianeira-Lekythen (since the early 6th century BC)
- Shoulder Lekyths (since the middle of the 6th century BC)
- Standard leytha: cylindrical with a flat shoulder (since the last third of the 6th century BC, dominant in the 5th century BC)
- Abdominal Lekythen ( Squat lekythoi ) (since the late 5th century BC)
- Eichellekythen ( Acorn lekythoi )
Black-Figure Lekythos, Athens, National Museum 1124
Red-figure lekythos, Prague, National Museum HM 10 767
White-ground lekythos, London, British Museum D56
Marmorlekythos, Berlin, antique collection
Bellylekythos, red figure, 4th-3rd cent. Century, southern Italy, woman with ear of wheat, private collection
literature
- Hans Nachod : Lekythos. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplement volume V, Stuttgart 1931, Col. 546-548.
- Emilie Haspels : Attic black-figured lekythoi (= École française d'Athènes. Travaux et Mémoires. Vol. 4). Boccard, Paris 1936.
- Bernhard Schmaltz : Investigations on the Attic marble leyths. Gebrüder Mann Verlag, Berlin 1970, ISBN 3-7861-2156-7 .
- Donna C. Kurtz : Athenian White Lekythoi . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1975.
- Ingeborg Scheibler : Lekythos 1. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 , column 37 f.
- John H. Oakley : Picturing Death in Classical Athens. The Evidence of the White Lekythoi . Cambridge University Press, New York a. a. 2004, ISBN 0-521-82016-2 .
Web links
- Lekythos at the Beazley Archives