Terracotta stemmed cup with murex decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

By the Late Helladic III period, methods of firing improved on the Greek mainland, making possible this type of long-stemmed cup known as a kylix. The shape becomes the standard form of drinking cup throughout most of the Mycenaean world from the fourteenth century BCE onward. On this particular kylix, the high, striped stem supports a flaring body decorated with marine life, sea anemones and murex shells that attest to the sea as an important source of food and wealth for Mycenaean civilization. The murex, a type of mollusk, was prized throughout antiquity as a source of purple dye.

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