The Dipylon krater Geometric period Vase Ancient Greek Pottery Museum Copy

Name: The Dipylon krater Geometric period Vase Ancient Greek Pottery Museum Copy
SKU: 254115195166
Price: 248.90 USD
Availability: InStock

$248,90

Our vase is a copy (in a smaller scale ) of the famous krater known as «The dipylon Krater» which is exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Dipylon kraters are Geometric Period Greek terracotta funerary vases found at the Dipylon cemetery, near the Dipylon Gate, in Kerameikos, the ancient potters quarter on the northwest side of the ancient city of Athens.

1 in stock (can be backordered)

SKU: 254115195166 Categories: Greek Pottery, Museum Copies, On Sale Tag: Vase

Description of the Dipylon krater in New York

The monumental vase is hollow, with a hole at the bottom, indicating that it was not used as a mixing bowl like regular kraters. At the Dipylon Cemetery, where it was found, kraters marked the graves of men. Decorations occupy the entire vase, separated into registers containing abstract motifs or figural designs in a dark-on-light style.

A key-patterned meander fills the top registers, while funerary iconography sits below. The figural scenes describe two of the three parts of a proper burial: a prothesis and an ekphora. A prothesis is the laying out of a body for mourning, and an ekphora is the transportation of the body to the grave. The third step in a burial would be the actual burial of the body or its ashes.

The prothesis scene on the Met’s Dipylon Krater features standing women with triangular torsos surrounding a prostrate body underneath a checkered burial shroud. The women raise their arms to their head, tearing out their hair as a sign of mourning for the deceased. Abstract geometric motifs and animals fill space in between the figures in a dense style characteristic of the Late Geometric Period. Underneath, the ekphora scene displays warriors with chariots and hourglass-shaped shields transporting the body in a funeral procession.

The horses overlap each other without clear distinctions, in a stiff profile featured across the vase. The elaborate procession, complete with soldiers and horses indicates the importance this family placed on a proper burial, a value also featured in canonical Greek texts like the Iliad. The similarity of this vase’s iconography to that of the Dipylon Amphora, attributed to the same artist, reveals that the rituals displayed were not isolated but were part of a larger tradition of Greek funerary rites in Geometric Period Athens.

MADE IN GREECE – HANDMADE – HAND PAINTED

Dimensions (approximately):

Height: 32 cm (12.6 in)

Width: 27 cm (10.6 in)

Net Weight: 2,2 Kg (4.8 lb)

Material: Clay – Genuine Ceramic