If It's Greek To You...

If you'd like more help understanding ancient Grecian pottery? Such as this, the famous and controversial Middle Corinthian aryballos of Pyrrhias, excavated by Mary C. Roebuck from Temple Hill in 1954. (The aryballos is controversial as neither the painted scene nor the inscription mentions Apollo, but rather depicts a dancing competition.)

According to researchers Alexandra Pappas (University of Arkansas) and Robin Osborne (Cambridge University) the writing on pottery from ancient Athens, Corinth and Boeotia is performative in nature.

"The writing does more than produce a relationship between word and image which is intellectually satisfying," Pappas and Osborne wrote. "This is a vessel to be used in the very context of gymnastic performance that it illustrates, a vessel whose use involves exactly the turning up and turning back that is performed and encouraged by the text. The cleverness of the text, and with it the prowess of Pyrwias himself, is put on display in particular when the aryballos is put into use."

Pappas and Osborne are co-authors of "Writing on Archaic Greek Pottery," a chapter in Inscribing Images, Illustrating Texts: Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World, edited by Zahra Newby and Ruth Leader-Newby and published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.

No word on what the dirty text on nude pottery works was like. *wink*

For more, see Writing Was Performance Art on Archaic Greek Pottery.