POLYCHROME CHOUS IN THE FORM OF ZEUS-AMMON #
Blockchain
Name
POLYCHROME CHOUS IN THE FORM OF ZEUS-AMMON
Contract Address
Token ID
1
Token Standard
ERC-1155
Description
The plastic vase in the shape of a small jug, a chous, has a single handle attached to the trefoil mouth. As a particular form of a squat wine-pitcher, the red-figure chous was especially favored in the 5th century B.C. Athens and frequently used during the Anthesteria, a three-day religious festival to honor the god of wine, Dionysus, and to celebrate the new wine. On the second day of the festival, a drinking contest took place, and a standard amount of wine for it was measured by such vessels. The shape continued to be popular on its own later, together with the plastic vases shaped as human heads (female and male), modeled almost as sculpture in the round and rendered naturalistically. The Attic tradition has influenced the production in the Greek West, in the Southern Italy in particular, where this chous received an elaborate plastic design and a polychrome decoration (red-brown, red, pink, and blue over the white slip).
The base and neck of the vessel were wheel-turned, the body molded in two parts, and the attached handle was hand-modeled. The black-glaze covers the mouth, handle, back of the vase, and its circular base. The entire body was masterly formed as three-dimensional head and neck of the bearded man with large curving ram’s horns, which reveals the iconography of the syncretic, Graeco-Egyptian god Zeus-Ammon. The god is represented with wavy strands of hair above his forehead, long beard (painted in brown-red); his face once colored with pink is attractive in its classical appearance, having regular features, and impresses by their individual rendering – a quality which almost transform this small representation into a portrait of a mature man, with somewhat small eyes deeply set under the frowning brows framing his impressive bulging forehead, and, as it seems, with a penetrating gaze ( the indicated iris and pupil can be traced). His divine attributes symbolizing god’s life-giving potency and fertility, the horns around the ears (Amun was represented in the form of a human body with ram’s head in Egyptian art) are faithfully reproduced, the radiating irregular grooves correspond to the curved ridges built by the horn’s growth, and they were accentuated by the blue color.
The Egyptian cult of Amun (known in the Old Kingdom as the patron of Thebes which acquired the national significance throughout the New Kingdom) was also practiced in Greece, and it became especially important by its assimilation with the cult of Zeus already in the 5th century B. C. The earliest image of the god with the ram’s horns appears on the coinage of Cyrene, the Greek colony in North Arica, in the 5th century B. C., which some scholars associate with the sculpture by Phidias and his school. Pausanias reported that the poet Pindar dedicated a statue of Ammon made by another famous sculptor, Calamis, to his temple in Thebes in Boeotia (Description of Greece 9.16.1), probably around 460 B. C. Several marble herms of the Roman period preserved stylistic features of the Greek Classical sculptures. In 331 B.C., Alexander the Great made his pilgrimage across the Lybian desert to visit the famous sanctuary of Zeus-Ammon situated in the oasis of Siwa. The oracle proclaimed him son of the powerful god and answered his question (whether the god grants him the rule of the world) favorably. The image of Alexander with horns referring to Ammon was mint on the coins of his successors as a political dynastic symbol. It is also considered that the monumental Hellenistic sculpture of Zeus Ammon (of which a good Roman replica is in the Brooklyn Museum), was created around the time of Alexander’s historical visit. This sculpture incorporates the iconography of the supreme Greek god, the attributes of Ammon, and, interestingly, some of the features of Alexander’s portraits such as the bulging forehead and the famous anastole, the upsweep of his centrally parted hair.
The Greek plastic vases, both Attic and South Italian, shaped as human heads are numerous, however, this one representing the head of Zeus-Ammon is quite unique regarding the rarity of the image. Its style reflects the transition between the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic: if the long, and almost straight, strands of the beard tend to be still of Classical fashion, the plasticity of the facial shapes would indicate a more naturalistic approach in rendering the human forms in the Hellenistic period. As the form of the Dionysiac vessel presents, an association between Dionysus and Zeus Ammon would not be missing by the viewer, perhaps the story transmitted by several ancient authors: Dionysus, the king of Egypt, once suffering the mortal thirst in the Lybian desert, had a miraculous appearance of a ram, who conducted him from the sands to the source of water, and Dionysus consecrated the ram a sanctuary at this place, or the myth (and its moralistic meaning) narrated by Diodorus Siculus, 3. 68-73: Dionysos, son of Zeus Ammon, the Lybian king, founded a temple in his honor after his victory over the Titans and established there the oracle; after inquiring it, Dionysus “received from his father the reply that, if he showed himself a benefactor of mankind, he would receive the reward of immortality”.
CONDITION
Firing cracks on bottom; white slip and polychromy partly worn off.
PROVENANCE
Ex- Acanthus, New York, acquired in 1999.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), vol. 1, Zurich, Munich, 1981, s.v. Ammon, pp. 666-689. TRUMPF-LYRITZAKI M., Griechische Figurenvasen des reichen Stils und der Späten Klassik, Bonn, 1969, pp. 65- 70.
0 transfers found
Txn Hash
From
To
Age