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The Amasis Painter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

John Boardman
John Boardman
Affiliation:
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
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Extract

In JHS lxviii (1948), p. 148, Mr. R. M. Cook drew attention to a problem concerning the name of the potter or painter Amasis and the chronology of Attic black-figure vase painting. So far as I know it has remained unanswered and discreetly ignored. Mme. Karouzou's fine study of the Amasis Painter prompts a further discussion of the problem which seems a very real one. It may be briefly restated as follows. Amasis, potter or painter, was named after the philhellene Egyptian king Amasis (A-ahmes) whose reign began in 569–568 B.C. As a citizen of Athens he would have received his name at his birth, which cannot therefore be earlier than 569–568. Cook thought it could hardly be before 565, and certainly the nationalist A-ahmes would not have made much of a mark as a philhellene early in his reign, as he had to seize the throne from Apries who was supported by Greek mercenaries. Yet by the current chronology of Attic black-figure the Amasis Painter had begun to work by about 555. If the signature Αμασιςμεποιεσεν means that Amasis was the potter, not the painter, we have to face the fact that his work too may go back at least as early because he made vases for the painter Lydos. If it means that he was the pottery-owner, the terminus is given by the earliest vase bearing his signature, and this is still around 550. The last explanation is the least satisfactory both for the interpretation of the signature and for the fact that it is easier to believe in a child artist than in a child industrialist. Unless Amasis was a prodigy, something is wrong somewhere in the argument. The fault must lie either in the accepted chronology for Attic black-figure or in the arguments about the name Amasis.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 78 , November 1958 , pp. 1 - 3
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1958

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References

1 Karouzou, S., The Amasis Painter (1956).Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 25, ‘shortly after 560’. Professor Beazley tells me that he is prepared to believe that no vase by the Amasis Painter is earlier than 550.

3 See now Beazley, , Development 57Google Scholar, ABV 109 Lydos, Nos. 24, 29.

4 On this see also Cook, R. M., CVA British Museum viii. 60.Google Scholar The figures on the Ephesos column bases cannot be dated closely simply from Herodotus' remark that many columns were dedicated by Croesus; see Lippold, , Griechische Plastik, 60.Google Scholar

4a See below, pp. 26–29 (Ed.).

5 Ranke, , Die ägyptischen Personennamen, i. 12Google Scholar, No. 19. Bothmer, D. von, in Gnomon xxix. 540Google Scholar, expresses doubt whether the Greek form of the name, Amasis, was current in the sixth century, which should be dispelled by the Abu-Simbel inscriptions (REG Ixx. 5 ff.).

6 Cf. Züchner, , Festschrift Schweitzer, 108.Google Scholar

7 On the cup Vatican 369a (Ure, A. D., JHS xlii. 193Google Scholar, fig. 1 and 196 f.; Karouzou, pl. 39.1), and the oinochoe Agora P24673 (Hesp. xxv. pl. 20; Karouzou 41, ii).

8 AM lxii. pl. 59.2 (Beazley, , ABV 39Google Scholar, No. 11). The ‘chalice’ by the Anagyrus Painter in the Vlasto Collection (Ibid., 21, No. 2; Hesp. xiii. pl. 4) is more Collection (ibid., 21, No. 2; Hesp. xiii. pl. 4) is more like a lekane with a high rim, or a descendant of the geometric bowls or Steilrandschale like Kerameikos v. 1, pll. 118–21 (Cf. the footed examples pll. 121–7). Other ‘chalice’ fragments mentioned by Beazley, , ABV 22 and 107Google Scholar, are from vases of the same type, and not like Sophilos' chalice which is unique. I am indebted to Mrs. C. W. J. Eliot for notes on these fragments.

9 Griechische Vasen in Würzburg, 51.

10 Beazley, , ABV 109Google Scholar Lydos, Nos. 24, 29; 158 (Cf. Karouzou, op. cit., 38).

11 Technau, , Exekias, pl. 23bGoogle Scholar (‘Amasos’), 26a; Cf. Dugas, in Métianges Glotz, i. 235 ff.Google Scholar