Terracotta biconical spindle-whorl with flat top

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The whorl is chipped at one end. Two horizontal grooves at the carination divide the body into two registers. Engraved decoration, filled with lime; around the upper and lower registers of the body are groups of three oblique lines crossing one another, with three strokes in the intervals. On the chronology of this long-lived spindle-whorl type, see inv. no. 74.51.942. This example could be Early Cypriot I in date. (VK)

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art