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Lekythos, its etymology

The Greek word lekythos had a broader meaning than the modern, archaeological term “lekythos.”¹ It was a generic term for an oil or perfume jug.² Evidence can be found in the literature: in Aristophanes’ Ploutos, a lekythos is used as a vessel for oil;³ in his play Birds, a slave of Pisthetaerus exclaims that “there is no oil in the lekythos.”⁴ In fact, the earliest use of the term occurs in Homer’s Odyssey, where Nausicaa is given olive oil in a golden lekythos by her mother to anoint herself.⁵ Besides the literary evidence, an inscription found on a vase that archaeologists now call an aryballos (a small, rounded oil bottle used by ancient athletes) says that it is a lekythos owned by Asopodoros.⁶ The alabastron, in addition to the aryballos, was also called a lekythos.⁷ To sum up, the term lekythos, rather than pinpointing certain shapes in ancient Greece, denoted the function of certain pots: a flask for carrying oil, perfume, or unguents.

Lekythos, archaeologically speaking

In the modern, archaeological sense, lekythos refers to a variety of shapes that share certain features distinguishing them from, say, the aryballos or the alabastron: a single handle, a narrow neck, and a deep mouth.⁸ Archaeologists identify and distinguish between three main types of Attic lekythos that were developed starting from the sixth century.⁹ Type One has a body that curves continuously and gently from neck to base, which makes it look as though it has no neck at all.¹⁰ Type One, or the Deianeira lekythos, appeared in the early sixth century B.C. as an essentially black-figure shape (most examples use the black-figure technique).¹¹ It continued to be used until the third quarter of the century.¹²

Type Two, the shoulder lekythos, aptly gets its name from its distinct shoulder. It was introduced around 570–560 B.C.¹³ and continued to be made until the end of the fifth century. Around 530 B.C., this type achieved its standard cylindrical form: unlike earlier shoulder lekythoi, whose bodies turn sharply toward the base, the cylindrical lekythoi have a body that does not turn at all.¹⁴ In fact, the development of the shape of Type Two was decisively affected by the introduction of the new red-figure style (also invented around 530 B.C.).¹⁵ The cylindrical form could therefore accommodate both the black-figure and the red-figure techniques, as well as the white-ground technique, as we will see later. It is the most common type among surviving lekythoi.¹⁶

Type Three is the squat type, which is broad at the base and has no distinct shoulder. It became popular in the second half of the fifth century. Some think that this form remained popular during the fourth century,¹⁷ but others think that it was phased out a decade after it replaced the cylindrical form at the end of the fifth century. Given its period of circulation, Type Three is essentially a red-figure shape.¹⁸

Besides the three major Attic lekythos shapes that were popular during the Archaic and the Classical periods, archaeologists also use the term lekythos to refer to Sub-Mycenaean and Protogeometric vessels with a bulbous body, a thin neck, a strap handle, and a flaring foot.¹⁹

A Lekythos in the Chazen Museum

The vase I chose is of cylindrical shape, like every other lekythos exhibited in the museum except for one squat example. Its inventory number is Chazen 70.2.

The subject of the vase painting is two women on their way somewhere, each carrying a basket. The baskets they have prepared hold lekythoi and some ribbons or sashes. The black dress of one woman is a mourning cloak, and its color matches the basket carried by the other woman; conversely, the woman in the white dress matches the color of the other basket. Between their eyes there is an inscription spelling “kalos,” which means “beautiful.” I am not sure whether the inscription is trying to tell us about the beauty of the two women. The meaning of such an inscription in a funeral scene is also unclear.

From the second quarter of the fifth century, around the time when this vase was made (ca. 460 B.C.), lekythoi painted with the white-ground technique are almost exclusively funerary. The scenes painted on them, like this one, illustrate Athenian rites of death and burial.²⁰ White lekythoi were often made specially for funerals: because oil was believed to be important to the dead as well as to the living, they were made as offerings to the dead. White slips are also less stable and thus impractical for daily use, but they are perfectly suitable as funeral gifts.²¹ The dimensions of this vase are 15 7/8 by 5 1/4 inches, which is relatively large compared with other lekythoi. Since it was made for funeral use, its size was not limited by considerations of handiness.²²

To sum up, the size of this vase, the technique used, and the subject matter all point to its function, and were determined by it.

The Function of Lekythos

As discussed above in the etymology section, lekythos in the broader sense refers to a container of oil (or of unguents, which are also “oily,” or of perfume, which is made from oil). The main function of the three types of vase discussed above, all of which fall under what we now call lekythos, is therefore to hold oil, presumably for storing and dispensing it. However, the same is true of what we now call the aryballos and the alabastron. I think the reason they are all suitable for storing and pouring oil is that they share a narrow neck, a feature that distinguishes them from, say, water jugs. The narrow neck was designed so that the flow of oil was limited to a thin stream or to drops.²³ Nonetheless, such a generalization unavoidably calls for finer distinctions. Specifically, if all of them held oil, why did the Greeks need and devise different shapes for the same use? In other words, do the differences in shape and size correspond to slightly different uses? And were they used in different places or contexts?

One way to approach these questions is to connect the variety of uses of oil (and its derivatives) in ancient Greece to the variety of shapes that could hold oil. Oil was very popular then and could be used as an offering or dedication for the dead, as a prize for victorious athletes,²⁴ as a scented perfume,²⁵ for consumption, and in bathing.

The aryballos, a shape smaller on average than the lekythos and the alabastron (7 or 8 cm)²⁶ and often rounded, has a small handle (or ear) used for attaching a strap to the user’s wrist. Its small size, its attachability, and its rounded body, which is easy to grip, all contribute to its portability and its usability in bathing. Aryballoi were therefore used by athletes or youths at the bath.²⁷ Evidence for this attribution can be found in multiple vase paintings, which show the aryballos suspended from an athlete’s wrist, hung on a wall, or in use during bathing.²⁸ Statistically, using the Beazley Archive, I found that out of 655 vases decorated with an aryballos, 574 include “Draped” as a decoration Termword, and many of these depict women bathing. 368 (over half) of the 655 vases include youth(s) as the subject; I randomly sampled several of them, and all show youths bathing. The same can be said of the 166 vases with athletes as subjects. Another good piece of statistical evidence is that 304 of them include sponges, which means that these very likely all depict bathing scenes; the inclusion of a sponge is probably a sufficient but not a necessary condition for a bathing scene. Furthermore, non-bathing paintings that include an aryballos often depict a youth or athlete walking or doing something with the aryballos attached to his wrist, which shows its portability: it is hard to imagine that a shape like the lekythos could be carried this way or used in bathing.

The alabastron has an elongated body, usually with a rounded bottom that might need a stand for support²⁹ (though flat-bottomed variations exist³⁰). It either has no handle or has small lugs or handles for attaching strings.³¹ However, it is not entirely clear to me how the shape of an alabastron connects to its function as a perfume bottle,³² at least not as clear as in the case of the aryballos.³³ So again, I turn to the representations of the alabastron in vase paintings. One major type of scene that includes an alabastron is “domestic” (308 out of 560), and some “seated” scenes that are not categorized as “domestic” (another 95) are also quite domestic in my opinion.³⁴ “Domestic” scenes are therefore the dominant type. The inclusion of objects such as mirrors (131), chairs (98), and stools (75) also contributes to the “domesticity” of the scenes, which would make the vase attractive to the target buyers of perfume, women, because it reflects the ideal life or the needs of contemporary women. For example, the inclusion of mirrors might reflect women’s awareness of themselves and of their beauty.³⁵

The second and relatively minor type of scene is the “funerary” type (85 occurrences out of 560). Objects usually present at a funeral also appear: sashes (60), fillets (51), stelai (42), and lekythoi (41; the funerary use of the lekythos is discussed below). The subject common to both types of scene is women: women took part in domestic affairs and in funerals alike.

Lekythos in the Narrow Sense

Having described the shapes and uses of its two “close” brothers, let us turn to the lekythos.

Funeral Uses

Besides being a generic term for an oil or perfume jug, lekythos in Greek literature is also associated with something buried or burnt with the dead, that is, with funerary use. In Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae, three such associations are made: Blepyrus describes the way Praxagora left him as the way “the dead are left, bar the chaplets and perfumes (in lekythos)”;³⁶ the young man refers to “the most gifted of painters” as someone “who paints the lekythoi on coffins”;³⁷ and the young man commands the first old woman to prepare things for a funeral, a preparation that involves “spreading out a layer of origanum upon four pieces of wood; binding fillets round your head, bringing lekythoi of scent and placing a bowl filled with lustral water before your door.”³⁸

In addition to literary evidence, we can find in Beazley’s archive that out of the 128³⁹ vases that include a lekythos in the scene depicted, 69 (over half) depict a funeral. Moreover, funeral scenes usually involve at least one woman (42 out of 69). In fact, if a scene includes (at least) a woman and (at least) a lekythos, then it is guaranteed to be a funeral scene. Among the objects depicted in a funeral scene that also includes a lekythos, the stele, a wooden or stone slab that served as a grave marker, appears most frequently (43 out of 69). Baskets (33 occurrences), sashes (20), and fillets (16), along with the stele, are “companions” of the lekythos, since they might be used together in an Athenian funeral. These statistics, except those for the stele, confirm the literary evidence mentioned above and the funeral scene depicted on the Chazen lekythos 70.2, giving us some sense of what went on in Athenian funerals. Another striking piece of evidence for the use of lekythoi in funerals is that most funeral scenes containing lekythoi are painted on lekythoi (53 out of 69), whereas non-funeral scenes containing lekythoi are painted on a variety of other shapes, with only a relatively small proportion painted on lekythoi (22 out of 61). This evidence shows that lekythoi were not only illustrated as part of a funeral (they are painted so) but actually used in funerals (they are painted on lekythoi that presumably would later be used in funerals). As for the painting techniques used in funeral scenes that include lekythoi, these scenes are painted predominantly in the white-ground technique (47 out of 69). Connecting this to the previous observation,⁴⁰ all of them are, incidentally, painted on lekythoi. As a result, the primary function of white lekythoi (lekythoi painted in the white-ground technique) was funerary.⁴¹

We have now established the connection between funerals and white lekythoi. But why does such a connection exist in the first place? What uses did lekythoi have during a funeral besides being buried with the dead so that the dead could enjoy the same life as the living? The white background was desired because it went well with the marble grave monument and the bones.⁴² Moreover, white lekythoi used the same material as contemporary wall- and panel-paintings, and were desired because they reminded people of those paintings.⁴³ Shape-wise, most white lekythoi are cylindrical and straight-sided. I think the cylindrical shape provided the painter with a wall-like canvas, and painters might have painted, or buyers might have wanted, paintings in the wall-painting style because of its monumentality.⁴⁴ Late in the fifth century, some massive examples called the “Huge Lekythoi” were produced (up to 1 m tall), serving perhaps as equivalents for stone grave-markers.⁴⁵ I think the ability to achieve such a scale is due in part to the secure foot that the alabastron lacks. Another use in the funeral setting was enabled by an innovation in shape: around 470 B.C., a small interior vessel began to be made inside the lekythos.⁴⁶

The interior vessel was added, as some scholars believe, to accommodate the lekythos’ use in libation: it made pouring oil easier, and libation does not require much oil.⁴⁷

White lekythoi, however, are only a subset of all lekythoi, even though they are represented more often than other types because of their use in funerals. Another group of scenes besides the funerary is the domestic. The objects that appear predominantly with alabastra, such as mirrors (21 occurrences out of 128), chairs (18), and stools (16), together with states such as “seated” (54) and “domestic” (37), suggest a usage, or at least a marketing target, similar to that of the alabastron. It is therefore not strange that lekythoi were mainly used by women as containers for oil and perfumed oil.⁴⁸

Summary

In this essay I have attempted to analyze the shape(s) and function(s) of the lekythos. We began by asking how the Greeks used the term lekythos, and found that the term defines function rather than shape. From there we got a first taste of the function of the lekythos. Then we explored how archaeological convention defines the term and the subgroups it embraces; this time the focus was on shape instead.⁴⁹ We then visited a lekythos in the Chazen and discussed the shape and function of that particular instance, in the hope that it would lead to a more general discussion later. After that, we focused on the differences in shape and function between the aryballos, the alabastron, and the lekythos. We analyzed the function of a given shape by looking at its representations, working out the major functions by counting the frequency of certain objects and states. Furthermore, it has been shown that function is influenced by shape, and that certain shapes were developed to accommodate new functions.

Bibliography

• Kurtz, Donna Carol. Athenian White Lekythoi: Patterns and Painters. Oxford University Press, 1975.
• Cook, R. M. Greek Painted Pottery. Routledge, 1997.
• Oakley, John H. Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Richter, Gisela M. A., and Marjorie J. Milne. Shapes and Names of Athenian Vases. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1935.
• Clark, Andrew J., Maya Elston, and Mary Louise Hart. Understanding Greek Vases. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2002.
• Kanowski, M. G. Containers of Classical Greece: A Handbook of Shapes. University of Queensland Press, 1984.