page_title: Pottery of ancient Greece
section_title: Inscriptions
hierarchical_section_title: Pottery of ancient Greece / Inscriptions
caption_attribution_description: English: So-called “Memnon pieta”: Eos lifting up the body of her son Memnon. Kalos inscription. Interior from an Attic red-figure cup, ca. 490–480 BC. From Capua, Italy. Français&#160;: Éos soulevant le corps de son fils Memnon. Inscription kalos. Intérieur d'une coupe attique à figures rouges, vers 490-480 av. J.-C. Provenance&#160;: Capoue.
context_page_description: Ancient Greek pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it, it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. The shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide available to understand the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks. There were several vessels produced locally for everyday and kitchen use, yet finer pottery from regions such as Attica was imported by other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans in Italy. There were various specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery.
  Throughout these places, various types and shapes of vases were used. Not all were purely utilitarian; large Geometric amphorae were used as grave markers, kraters in Apulia served as tomb offerings and Panathenaic Amphorae seem to have been looked on partly as objets d’art, as were later terracotta figurines.
context_section_description: Inscriptions on Greek pottery are of two kinds; the incised (the earliest of which are contemporary with the beginnings of the Greek alphabet in the 8th century BC), and the painted, which only begin to appear a century later. Both forms are relatively common on painted vases until the Hellenistic period when the practice of inscribing pots seems to die out. They are by far most frequently found on Attic pottery.
  A number of sub-classes of inscription can be distinguished. Potters and painters occasionally signed their works with epoiesen and egraphsen respectively. Trademarks are found from the start of the 6th century on Corinthian pieces; these may have belonged to an exporting merchant rather than the pottery workfield and this remains a matter of conjecture.) Patrons' names are also sometimes recorded, as are the names of characters and objects depicted. At times we may find a snatch of dialogue to accompany a scene, as in ‘Dysniketos’s horse has won’, announces a herald on a Panathenaic amphora (BM, B 144). More puzzling, however, are the kalos and kalee inscriptions, which might have formed part of courtship ritual in Athenian high society, yet are found on a wide variety of vases not necessarily associated with a social setting. Finally there are abecedaria and nonsense inscriptions, though these are largely confined to black-figure pots.
caption: The so-called "Memnon pieta", Ancient Greek Attic red-figure cup, c. 490 – 480 BC, from Capua. Inscriptions on the left: (ΕΕΝΕΜΕΚΝΕRINE (meaning unclear), HERMOΓΕΝΕS KALOS ("Hermogenes kalos" – "Hermogenes is beautiful"). Inscriptions on the right: HEOS ("Eos"), ΔΟRIS EΓRAΦSEN ("Doris Egraphsen" – Do(u)ris painted it). Inscription on the right: MEMNON ("Memnon"), KALIAΔES EΠOIESEN ("Kaliades epoiesen" – Kaliades made it). Musée du Louvre, G 155.
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