Amphora-Handles from Antiparos

Extract

Mr. Bent has brought from Antiparos, and the British Museum has acquired, several of those stamped handles of diotae which have been the subject of numerous papers by various savants, and of a special work by M. Dumont (Inscriptions Céramiques).

To record the find-spots of the several classes of these handles is a matter of some importance, because they furnish us with archæological evidence in a matter of great complexity, where archæological evidence is rare and desirable—in the matter of ancient Greek commerce, its marts and its course. The stamped handles which bear the names of Rhodian magistrates and potters are, as is well known, found in all parts of the Levant from Kertsch to Egypt and Sicily; those which derive from Cnidus are also found in many places; Thasian handles are found chiefly on the shores of the Euxine sea, but at Athens and elsewhere also. Why Rhodes, Cnidus, and Thasos should in Hellenistic times have almost monopolized the trade in wine, or why these states should have monopolized the custom of using stamps for handles of wine-jars, we do not know. But the latter statement at all events must be true: there are but very few other known sources of stamped handles.