Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)

Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)

Nikias

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Obverse, Athena, with this inscription: one of the prizes from Athens. Nikias made me Reverse, footrace, with this inscription: stadion race of men From the second quarter of the sixth century B.C. on, victors in the contests of the Panathenaic festival in Athens were awarded a standardized amphora containing one metretes (about forty-two quarts) of olive oil from sacred groves in Attica. The official decoration on the front was a picture of a statue of Athena, fully armed. The scene on the back showed the event for which the prize was awarded. This is the earliest Panathenaic amphora in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is also one of the earliest of those dated between 566 and 550 B.C., a period of some experimentation. The canonic ornaments for the neck and shoulder and even the placement of the official prize inscription did not become established until the last quarter of the sixth century; in the early group, no two amphorae are alike in these details. The stadion, identified here as the competition for which the prize was won, was a race of nearly two hundred yards.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora (jar)

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.