Greek Potters at Al Mina?

Abstract

The subject of this paper is a small group of cups found by Sir Leonard Woolley in his excavations at Al Mina (now in the Turkish Hatay). It has been hitherto ignored because, with some reason, the vases were believed neither to be Greek imports nor the products of Cypriot or North Syrian potters. I hope to demonstrate that they could be the work of Greek potters established at Al Mina towards the end of the 8th century B.C. by discussing their apparent relationship to contemporary Greek, Cypriot and North Syrian work. Most of the cups and fragments are in Oxford, and there are fragments in the London Institute of Archaeology and the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge which I have seen. Nos.1–23in Fig. 1 and Plates XXIV–XXV illustrate the shapes and all the types of decoration met in the group.All are two-handled cups, the Greek geometricskyphos. The shape, with decoration of this type, is most common in Euboeo-Cycladic vases of the second half of the 8th century, and a considerable number of theseskyphoiwere carried to Al Mina by the Greeks. It was rarely imitated in Cyprus, as we shall see, and is not at home further east.