Hittite Vessel with Four Scenes Molded and Carved in Relief (1400–1200 BCE): Art, History and Details

Hittite Vessel with Four Scenes Molded and Carved in Relief (1400–1200 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Hittites were a powerful people who vied with the Egyptians for control of the Near East. At times, however, alliances in the form of royal marriages were forged between the two rivals. The scene on the front of this vase shows a seated god or king holding a drinking vase in the form of a stag. Near him is a large-handled vessel in a ring stand, which illustrates how large jars such as this one were used. The standing figure is a priest pouring a liquid offering. The scene on the back of this vase shows a bow hunter using a doe with a tether as a decoy to attract a stag. Some of the hunter's arrows have already pierced the stag's hide.

Object facts

• Title: Hittite Vessel with Four Scenes Molded and Carved in Relief
• Date: 1400–1200 BCE
• Culture: Eastern Turkey, Hittite
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: burnished earthenware
• Dimensions: Diameter: 51 cm (20 1/16 in.); Overall: 61 cm (24 in.)
• Collection: Near Eastern Art
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1985.70

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Muscarella, Oscar White. The Lie Became Great, The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. Groningen: STYX Publications, 2000. Pp. 143–144, 454.
• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (February 1986): 26–71.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991.

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.