Thinking About Thera: A Re-interpretation of the Wall Painting in Xeste 3 (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
in A.G. Vlachopoulos (ed.), ΧΡΩΣΤΗΡΕΣ / PAINTBRUSHES. Wall-painting and Vase-painting of the Second Millennium BC in Dialogue. University of Ioannina / Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports - Archaeological Receipts Fund: Athens 2018, pp. 205-221
I had examined the relationship between pottery and wall-painting for the first time in 1997, at the conference organized on the Thera wall-paintings, in my paper entitled “The Attraction of the Pictorial: Observations on the Relationship of Theran Pottery and Theran Fresco Iconography”, which was published in the conference proceedings. In that paper I had argued that local Theran pattern-painted pottery (both Cycladic and Minoanizing shapes) comprises the richest corpus of pictorial motifs in the Aegean at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. I also suggested that the representations on certain Late Cycladic I ceramic vessels were influenced by those of wall-paintings and, conversely, that the swallow motif crossed over from pottery to Theran frescoes at the beginning of the LC I period. Over the years since that paper, there has been no essential change in the general picture regarding pictorial pottery and mural painting from the last habitation phase on Thera. Nonetheless, certain new evidence from excavations conducted at both Akrotiri and the recently discovered site at Raos, is the stimulus for a reconsideration of the topic, or at least some of its aspects. In addition, I would like to put the two arts under discussion in a broader context, emphasizing that in prosperous Thera just prior to its volcanic destruction, conditions were ideal for the flourishing of all the Aegean visual arts…
do-ra pe-re: The Ritual Processions of the Aegean 2 nd Millennium B.C. Re-visited
In: Gunkel-Maschek et al. (eds.), Gesture, Stance and Movement.Communicating Bodies in the Aegean Bronze Age (Heidelberg 2024), 307-313., 2024
One of the most important practices (apart from libations and communal feasting, animal sacrifice included) of the official cult in the Aegean during the 2 nd millennium BC is ritual processions. Since the rulers expressed their authority not through political or warrior imagery, but through the manipulation and control of ritual, Aegean Late Bronze Age two-dimensional iconography, especially wall paintings, provides rich documentation while additional evidence is offered by related representations on other media such as on golden signet-rings, seal-stones and clay sealings, painted sarcophagi, and stone and clay vessels. Due to space limitations, this paper focuses on the participants in ritual processions and the pictorial formula that enables the viewers to identify them. Prompted by selected examples, two of which I have recently reexamined , I discuss the messages conveyed on the one hand by the bodies of the worshippers in line (female, male, or even supernatural creatures, as the so-called Minoan 'genii') carrying cult equipment and offerings in their outstretched hands (i.e. do-ra pe-re in Mycenaean Greek, transcribed as δῶρα φέρει in ancient Greek) for a supposed deity (or her impersonator), and on the other hand by the clothing they wear.