Demeter and Dionysos

Abstract

In JHS LXIX, 18–24, Mrs. A. D. Ure discusses some interesting vases supposedly of Mykalessian make. I am quite incompetent to criticise her remarks concerning their provenance and date, and wish merely to point out that her interpretation of one of them as alluding to Boiotian ritual is highly doubtful.The vase in question is described on pp. 19–20. It is a pyxis, decorated with a human or divine figure shown wearing what looks like a fawn-skin and holding in the right hand something which may well be a while in the left there is, according to Mrs. Ure, who of course has examined the object itself, a faint but discernible fork; I cannot find it on her reproduction. The figure sits on a small elevation which the artist has covered withround spots, quite possibly intending it for a heap of threshed corn. This is flanked, on the spectator's left, by a basket of fruit, on his right by a small pig. The figure's head is adorned with horns, apparently those of a goat and growing from, not merely attached to the crown.