Terracotta lamp in the form of an elephant's head

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The campaigns of Alexander the Great brought Greece into contact with animals from India and the East that the Greeks had not known of previously. The elephant became a popular representation on Hellenistic coins. With the Carthaginian influence on Sicily during the Punic Wars of the third century B.C., elephants, usually depicted as war animals, also became common in Sicilian art. Traces of the original black glaze can be seen on the surface of this lamp.

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