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Wananga landing Wananga landing

Athenian white-ground lekythos

20 November 2023

Attributed to the Manner of the Haimon Painter, ca 470 BCE
On loan from Otago Museum
H 19.7cm, Dm 5.4cm
Otago Museum E39.70 (JLMC D8.55)

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Grave gifts like this funerary lekythos had a symbolic connection with the Dionysiac mysteries and the journey to the Underworld. Many vases showing similar scenes have been found in ancient graves in Athens.

A goddess, possibly Dionysus’ mother Semele or his consort Ariadne, mounts a chariot. Behind the chariot is a female kithara player, perhaps a maenad. In front of the group sits a youth in a chair, who is probably the deceased: in the Dionysiac cult, the deceased initiate was escorted by a procession on the journey to Hades and, thus, was assured of a blessed afterlife.


Athenian white-ground lekythos
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