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Cat. 45 Ceramic Jar with Painted Decoration, Predynastic Period Cats. 46–49 Hard Stone Vessels, Predynastic Period Cats. 50–54 Travertine Vessels, Predynastic Period–Old Kingdom Cat. 55 Anhydrite Ointment Jar with Lid, Middle Kingdom Cat. 56 Travertine Kohl Jar with Lid, Middle Kingdom–early New Kingdom Cats. 57–58 Travertine Ointment Vessels, New Kingdom Cat. 59 Glass Kohl Container in the Shape of a Palm Column, New Kingdom Cat. 60 Travertine Alabastron with Inscription, Late Period

Cat. 60

Alabastron with Inscription


Late Period, Dynasty 26–27 (664–404 BCE)

Ancient Egyptian

Probably Naukratis, Egypt

Travertine (Egyptian alabaster); 27.6 × 30.5 × 30.5 cm (10 7/8 × 12 × 12 in.)

The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Purchase Fund, 1911.105

This large, heavy alabastron (vessel) of creamy, banded travertine has a wide, slightly rounded bottom tapering toward the disk-shaped lip. It has two vertical, unpierced lug handles. The artisan took full advantage of the quality and color of the stone, ensuring that the distinctive banding was perfectly horizontal.1

The name “Dioskoron” is incised across the middle of the vessel in Greek letters. It should be translated “[This is the vessel of] the Dioskouroi” (the twin gods Castor and Pollux), suggesting that the vessel was dedicated in honor of those gods in a temple.[1] Castor and Pollux, who in archaic times were worshipped in Sparta and the Peloponnese but who were later attached to an important sanctuary on the island of Samothrace, became the patron saints of sailors.[2]2

Because of its material, it seems very likely that this jar was made in Egypt. However, it diverges in shape from the classic Egyptian alabastra, and the dedication written in Greek to two Greek gods suggests that it was made for a Greek client by either a Greek or Egyptian craftsman working in Egypt. Because of the association of Castor and Pollux with seafaring, and the date of the vessel (about fifth century BCE or earlier), it seems likely that the vessel originated in Naukratis, a center of Greek traders in Egypt founded in the late seventh century BCE.[3] The Dioskouroi sanctuary at Naukratis was one of the earliest and most important in Egypt, so a large, impressive alabastron such as the Chicago example would have been an appropriate offering there.[4] Naukratis was also a center for the manufacture and trade of travertine alabastra, another piece of evidence that the jar is from that site.[5]3

The jar is similar to other contemporaneous large, inscribed vessels that also evoke foreign connections. For example, there are four alabastra that are about the same height as the Chicago example: one inscribed for the Persian king Darius I (reigned 522–486 BCE), and three for his successor Xerxes I (reigned 486–465 BCE).[6] One is inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, the others with Egyptian and cuneiform scripts. All four are thought to have been made in Egypt and exported to Persia to commemorate some sort of annual event in celebration of the Persian king.[7] An alabastron in Philadelphia is very similar in shape to the one in Chicago, having the same wide base but a taller neck.[8]4

Another example, slightly larger and more elongated than the Chicago example, and with an Egyptian inscription, may give a clue about the original contents of cat. 60. The text records that it held “Special ointment of the Manager of the Red-Crown Enclaves and Chief Physician,” suggesting that the contents may have been valuable medicinal ointments and, by extension, that these jars were appropriate dedications to temples and gifts to kings.[9] An example at Yale University has a Demotic (the late form of the Egyptian script) notation of its capacity, an indication that it was possibly related to transfers of perfume or ointment whose accurate volume, and hence value, was important.[10]5

Egyptian Alabastra

The classic Egyptian alabastron has a more tapered, slender form, with unpierced lug handles and a disk-shaped lip, usually on a slightly taller neck. There is considerable discussion about the date when alabastra first appeared in Egypt. Generally, they are considered to be of the Late Period (about 664 BCE).[11] However, a group of four travertine and one serpentine alabastra that were excavated in Western Thebes from the tomb of Queen Mentuhotep can perhaps be dated as early as the late Second Intermediate Period (about 1560 BCE).[12] The form appears more frequently in the Kushite and Late Periods (Dynasties 25–30), and it was used into the Roman era. Alabastra are usually made of travertine, although stone, glass, and pottery were also employed.6

Provenance

Maurice Nahman (1868–1948), Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1911.7

Publication History

Art Institute of Chicago, Thirty-Second Annual Report: June 1, 1910–June 1, 1911 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1911), 64.8

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 97.9

Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, with contributions by Mary C. Greuel et al., exh. cat. (New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 2014), 91, cat. 21.
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Notes

  1. According to Christopher Faraone in personal communication with the author, 2018. “Διοσκορον is most probably a pre-fourth-century-BC spelling of the later and more familiar genitive plural Διοσκούρων, which should be translated ‘[this is the property of] the Dioskouroi,’ rather than the personal name Dioskouros in the accusative, as has previously been suggested. Until the fourth century BC, several archaic Greek scripts used the letter omicron to render three different sounds: the short o (literally the o-micron); the long ô (literally the o-mega) and a third, related sound that is later rendered by the omicron-upsilon diphthong (ou). In the fourth century BC, Athens and most of the Greeks in the East adopted the Ionic alphabet that used the letter omega and the omicron-upsilon diphthong to render these longer o sounds. This suggests that the name was inscribed before the fourth century BC.” I thank Christopher Faraone for this information about the reading, dating, and further interpretation of the text.
  2. Christopher Faraone, personal communication with author, 2018.
  3. The connection between the jar and the Naukratis temple was suggested by Christopher Faraone, personal communication with the author, 2018. For the date of the establishment of Naukratis, see Franck Goddio and Aurélia Masson-Berghoff, eds., Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds, exh. cat. (London: British Museum, 2016), 42. For the date of the jar on the basis of the dedication text, see above n. 1.
  4. The sanctuary at Naukratis is thought to have been founded as early as 620 BCE. See Goddio and Masson-Berghoff, Sunken Cities, 41. By the Roman Period, many more shrines to the Dioskouroi were established in Egypt, many of them by private individuals. See David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 161n71.
  5. Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sara E. Cole, eds., Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018), 80; Goddio and Masson-Berghoff, Sunken Cities, 56.
  6. Alabastron inscribed for Darius I (Geneva, Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, EG-356; published in Robert S. Bianchi, Ancient Egypt: Art and Magic; Treasures from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, exh. cat. [Saint Petersburg, FL: Museum of Fine Arts, 2011], 146–47); alabastron for Xerxes I inscribed with hieroglyphs, a Demotic notation, and texts in Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian (New Haven, CT, Yale University, Yale 2123; published in Gerry D. Scott, Ancient Egyptian Art at Yale [New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1986], 145; Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, with contributions by Mary C. Greuel et al., exh. cat. [New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 2014], 33); alabastron for Xerxes I (Thalassic Collection; published in Peter Lacovara, Betsy Teasley Trope, and Sue D’Auria, eds., The Collector’s Eye: Masterpieces of Egyptian Art from the Thalassic Collection, Ltd., exh. cat. [Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 2001], 94–95); alabastron for Xerxes I (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, B10; published in A. T. Clay, “A Vase of Xerxes,” Museum Journal [University of Pennsylvania] 1, no. 1 [June 1910]: 6–7).
  7. Bianchi, Ancient Egypt: Art and Magic, 147.
  8. See n. 6.
  9. Ointment jar (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 42.2.2 [47 cm tall]; published in James P. Allen, The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, exh. cat. [New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005], 65).
  10. For the Yale University example, see n. 6. Robert K. Ritner notes that the Demotic text reads “12 kpd-units” (kpd is a word of Persian origin for a unit of volume for liquids or solids. He also suggests that the vessel likely held perfume or ointment). Robert K. Ritner, “The Earliest Attestation of the kpd-Measure,” in Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, ed. Peter Der Manuelian and Rita Freed (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1996), 2:685–88.
  11. Barbara Greene Aston dates alabastra from Dynasty 26 into the Roman Period. Barbara Greene Aston, Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels: Materials and Forms (Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 1994), 89, 166, nos. 227–29. However, Aston dates “ovoid or bag-shaped jars” with handles (which she does not specifically call “alabastra”) to the Third Intermediate Period. Ibid., 162–63.
  12. Christine Lilyquist, Egyptian Stone Vessels: Khian through Tuthmosis IV (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 59–60, fig. 147.

How to Cite

Emily Teeter, “Cat. 60 Travertine Alabastron with Inscription,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/67.

© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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