Animal Sacrifice On A Greek Amphora: Art Talk With Archaeologist Sarah Eisen

The Harvard Art Museums acknowledge that Harvard University is situated on the traditional and ancestral territory of the Massachusett people, and we strive to honor this relationship. Hello, everyone. My name is Sarah Eisen. I am a PhD candidate in classical archaeology at Harvard University and a curatorial intern at the Harvard Art Museums. I specialize in ancient Greek art and religion. And today, I am very excited to discuss an interesting vessel in Harvard Art Museums' collection with you. This vessel is not currently on display because it requires conservation before it can be safely displayed. So today, you'll get an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at what is, in my opinion, one of the coolest vessels in our collection. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that while we think of Greek vases today as objects of art, and they're often found in art museums and fine arts museums around the world, in ancient Greece, these objects were really everyday crafts and functional at their core. And for this reason, when moving forward today, I will address the object as a vessel, a pot, or by its technical shape, an amphora, rather than the more commonly heard phrase of Greek vase. So this vessel was bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum, now the Harvard Art Museums, by archaeologist David M. Robinson in 1960. And this is an amphora, a pot with two vertical handles that was used to store liquids like oil, water, and wine. And this particular amphora was made in Attica, an area of Greece surrounding the city of Athens. You can see Greece in its larger context in the southern Mediterranean on the map. And if we zoom in closer on the country of Greece, you can see the area of Attica highlighted in red on the slide. And Attica, and in particular, the city of Athens, was the largest center for ceramic vessel production in the fifth century BCE. This particular amphora is decorated in the red figure technique. So you can see that the bodies of the figures are reddish-orange color silhouetted against a black background. The red color comes from the iron-rich clay that's found in Attica. And the black color is made from a slip that's essentially diluted clay and takes on a black color during the vessel's firing process. Artistic detail is painted on the vessel with a brush. And based on the style in which these figures are drawn, we can attribute the artist of the vessel to a group of craftsmen working in Athens around 420 BCE. So now let's take a closer look at the imagery on the vessel. The scene centers around the rituals of animal sacrifice and libation. And you can see two male figures. The male on the left is Beardless, a cultural convention to indicate his youth. He belongs to a category of Athenian citizens called the Ephebes, which consisted of a group of Athenian male youths right on the cusp of adulthood. And it was common for artists to depict Ephebes performing actions that were valued by society. And so here, the boy demonstrates his devotion to Athens by partaking in important religious rites hosted by the city during the festival. His torso is there and displayed to the viewer, indicating that he is healthy and strong and desirable. And he wears a mantle, basically a type of garment knotted on his hip in a pretty typical fashion for youths during a religious ritual. It's quite faint, but if you look closely, you may be able to see the remaining traces of paint surrounding his head, showing that he wears a wreath. And we'll zoom in so you can get a better look there. And the wreath indicates that he is in a festive setting, separate from everyday life. In his right hand, the youth holds a wine-pouring vessel often used during libation ritual, while he moves his left hand to reach over the low altar on the scene. The older bearded man on the right is likely acting in the role of the priest. He too has a wreath on his head, and he's wearing an elaborately decorated frock. Both he and the youth are holding balls of grains in their extended hands. So here's the youth, and here is the priest. And they are likely about to throw these balls of grain onto the fire burning on the altar in order to boost the flames. And make the fire bigger. Priests in ancient Greece fulfilled several roles, including offering prayer and overseeing the economic management of a temple and cult. Priests could either inherit their positions, or the city could even elect them to the role. However, unlike modern conceptions of priestly roles, the ancient Greek priest did not offer any sort of moral or theological guidance. But ancient Greek priests filled a very important ritual role, and that is to oversee animal or blood sacrifices. While only male priests could perform animal sacrifices, there were several female priestess roles for many major cults, and they oversaw other important religious duties. The ritual of libation, or making liquid offerings to the god, usually either wine, or milk, or honey, or some combination of liquids, is, in fact, often performed by women. Here, however, it is the priest performing the libation, and he tips a wine vessel over the altar so the liquid pours out. And if you look closely, you can see that the artist has even painted the liquid tipping out of the vessel and pouring onto the altar to underscore this action. And this is a low-lying altar that is burning with the remains of animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifice was considered to be the most important religious ritual in ancient Greece, and the most common type of sacrifice performed is called a thousia sacrifice. The name thousia comes from the ancient Greek verb of thuo, whose linguistic roots mean to burn or to make smoke, but eventually this verb became so synonymous with animal sacrifice, the verb came to mean to perform animal sacrifice, and so that's where we get the type of sacrifice from. It was believed that sacrifice, which you can see on this jug in Harbert's collection, was a way to open a pathway of communication with the gods. By slaughtering and roasting an animal while praying to the gods, and then having a communal feast with the gods, you could win their good favor, which the gods could either reward or ignore at their leisure. And this idea of favor and goodwill reciprocity is known in Greece as charis, and this concept is fundamental to understanding Greek religion. Many ancient Greek literary sources explain how to correctly perform sacrifice, so we actually know a great deal about the ritual. The earliest example is Hesiod's late eighth century BCE poem, the Theogony, which famously gives a myth explaining the cause and origin of the ritual. Hesiod recounts that Prometheus, who was a titan, tricked the god Zeus during the first sacrifice ever performed. The story goes that Prometheus, who was hailed as a savior and a lover of humankind, slaughtered an ox, and he wrapped all the inedible parts of the animal, including the bones, underneath the animal's fat in order to disguise what was underneath. Meanwhile, he wrapped all the edible parts, like the meat of the animal, in the stomach, and so he was making it look on the outside unappealing. And then he asked Zeus to pick his share. Which package did the god want to receive on behalf of all of the gods forever? And Zeus picks the fat-wrapped bones, and so in all forthcoming sacrifices, those were the parts of animal that were given to the gods while the humans got to eat the meat of the animal. And the Greeks sacrificed a variety of animals to the gods, but the most common were the sheep, or on this case, on this vessel, a ram, the pig, and the bull as well. On another vessel in Harvard's collection, you can see actually two youths leading a bull to the altar. Just as the human participants during religious ritual would dress up and adorn themselves, the animal is also beautified as well. So if you look closely, and you can follow my cursor here, you can see a string of dots falling from the horns of this bull, and this is indicating that the bull is wearing a wreath or maybe a flower garland over his horns, making it beautiful and perfect for the gods. And the motif of leading an animal to the altar is pretty common on vessels, but it's also shown in three-dimensional art, such as figurines and sculptural examples. And these sculptural votives were often found in Greek sanctuaries. This geometric bronze votive shows a man leading a ram by its large curling horns here, presumably to an altar. These objects were dedicated in sanctuaries likely to commemorate a real-life animal sacrifice, and the votive's presence would symbolically and metaphorically repeat both the act of leading the animal to the altar and the act of sacrifice in perpetuity. So it's establishing basically a permanent connection of the person who dedicates the object with the god. But let's come back to the emperor we started with and some of the imagery here. The low mound between the feet of the two men is, in fact, the altar upon which the portions of the animal given to the gods were burned. This altar is a little bit different from the higher, more rectangular altars often shown on other vessels. So for example, we can see on another cup in Harvard's collection, a woman offering a libation, and there's a high stone altar here. And if we zoom in a little bit to get a better look, you can see painted vertical slashes on the altar here. And this is actually a bloodstain from past animal sacrifices. And the blood on the altar is emphasizing the religious significance and weight of the altar. The lower altar that we see on this emperor is different in shape, and of course, closer to the ground, perhaps composed from an accumulation of ashes from past sacrifices rather than from sculpted marble. While it is unusual to perform sacrifice to the Olympian gods on a low altar, we may see this here because the vase was made in Athens and probably shows an Athenian religious festival. Athenians built and maintained an ideology of their citizens being autonomous or springing up directly from the ground. And the connection between earth, land, and citizen is uniquely important in Athens. And so this low-lying altar, which has a more intimate connection with the ground than a high stone altar, maybe underscores his ideology. While this altar does not have any bloodstains, you can probably see that there's a long, curved, almost snake-like object resting on top of the altar. And we'll zoom in to get a better look. So this is not actually a snake, but it's more likely the tailbone of the animal victim. So since after Prometheus' trick, the gods received the bones of the sacrificial animal, it was common for artists to show these bones burning on the altar. The extreme heat of the fire makes the bones contract and curl up in shape. And it was even considered a good omen for these bones to curl and pop in the fire, indicating that the god was pleased with the sacrifice. And the obvious curve on the tailbone on this vessel shows that this sacrifice is auspicious. The very large size of this tailbone may be an indicator of the animal sacrificed here, a bull. So you may be wondering what type of festivals occurred in Athens, and if we can tell if this specific image shows a specific celebration. And the shape of the vessel actually may give us a clue. As I said earlier, this vessel is an amphora. However, its form imitates a very specific subcategory of amphora, a group of vessels that we call Panathenaic amphorae. And these are characterized by the broad and bulging body, especially at the top, and a narrow neck with a narrow foot. And these traits make this vessel shape very distinctive and easily recognizable, both in antiquity and to the modern connoisseur. The Panathenaic vessel was named after and made for a festival, which you may have guessed it was called the Panathenaia. And this festival occurred in Athens every year in late July or early August, and honored and celebrated the goddess Athena, the patron goddess of the city of Athens. While the original reason for the Panathenaic festival is not clear to us today, the festival nevertheless became a source of great civic pride and celebration. And the festival included numerous religious events, including a great procession that would start at the city limits and make its way through all the important civic and political centers in the city, and then finally culminate on the Acropolis of the city. And on the Athenian Acropolis is where the Temple of Athena stands. And the procession would end in a hekaton, or a very elaborate and expensive sacrifice of 100 bolts, which is where we get the name hekaton from. If we are correct in attributing the large curling tailbone on the vessel's altar as a bull sacrifice, the image may also allude to the hekaton of bulls performed during this festival. In addition to the great sacrifice, there were also competitions of tragedy and comedy and musical contests, and there were athletic games of wrestling and foot racing and chariot races. Great honor would be bestowed upon the victors and winners of these games, and they would receive, among other things, a prize of a Panathenaic vessel, and the amphora would be filled with up to 45 liters of olive oil. And Athens was very famous for the quality of its oil, and it was very precious and expensive. And so winning a game, and therefore a Panathenaic vessel, would be a great economic boon to the winner in addition to gaining social prestige and fame. The Panathenaic prize amphorae often had words painted on them, informing us that they were, in fact, prizes for these games. These official inscriptions actually exist on another Panathenaic vessel in Harvard's collection. This vessel shows Athena, the goddess Athena, armed for battle with her crescent helmet and spear and shield raised in an attacking position. This vessel includes the phrase, the official phrase, Tonathenaethon Athlon, meaning I am from the games of Athens, running along the sides of the columns on the front. So if you look to the far left and the far right, you may be able to see these columns, and right next to these columns, it's very faint, but there are letters running down which hold these inscriptions. And the back of this vessel shows boxers preparing for a fight, likely referencing the athletic games that were part of the festival. However, since there is no official inscription on the first vessel we saw, it's also decorated in a different technique and of a very different size, as you can see on the screen, we can determine that the first vessel we saw is actually an imitation vessel or a so-called pseudopanathenaic amphora. It's not a modern forgery, but an ancient imitation. And it was likely intended to recall the festival, both in the shape and the imagery without actually being officially associated with the games, prizes, or religious rituals. The practice of making and selling pseudopanathenaic vessels was very common in antiquity and presumably the shape of the vessel imbued it with cultural capital and made it a desirable object for consumers in Athens, but also in the larger Mediterranean world as well. So I hope you have enjoyed exploring the pseudopanathenaic amphora with me today, as well as the ritual of ancient Greek animal sacrifice. You can continue exploring Harvard Art Museum's Greek collection at the URL listed on the slide. Thank you very much.