Geometric Neck-Handled Amphora (Storage Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners, Chariots (c. 720–700 BCE): Art, History and Details

Geometric Neck-Handled Amphora (Storage Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners, Chariots (c. 720–700 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Workshop of Athens 894 (Greek, Attic, Late Geometric llb).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This neck-amphora bears multiple forms of decoration related to funerary ritual. On the neck panels, mourners beat their heads or tear out their hair. Some surround a bier, a platform where the body of the deceased lies beneath a checkered cloth. Further down, a procession of two-horse chariots moves around the vase, whether headed to the cemetery or the battlefield. The snakes applied to the handles, neck, and rim may all allude to the underworld.

Object facts

• Title: Geometric Neck-Handled Amphora (Storage Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners, Chariots
• Date: c. 720–700 BCE
• Creator attribution: Workshop of Athens 894 (Greek, Attic, Late Geometric llb)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 60 cm (23 5/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1927.6

A detail from the museum

The better-preserved side of this vase is actually its reverse.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• The Brummer Gallery Records. Cloisters (Museum), n.d.
• R. H. "Two Greek Vases." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 14, no. 6 (1927): 99-101.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.