Art: Writing Was Performance Art on Ancient Greek Pottery

Whatever the purpose of an inscription, when writing appeared on ancient Greek pottery, it became performance art.

A "communication explosion" in the early days of the Greek alphabet brought both writing and figure scenes onto pottery in the eighth century B.C.E. Whatever the purpose of an inscription, when writing appeared on ancient Greek pottery, it became performance art.

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Alexandra Pappas, assistant professor, classics,University of Arkansas

Research by Alexandra Pappas of the University of Arkansas and Robin Osborne of Cambridge University revealed not only the great variety of writing on pottery from ancient Athens, Corinth and Boeotia but also its performative nature. They are co-authors of "Writing on Archaic Greek Pottery," a chapter in Inscribing Images, Illustrating Texts: Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World, edited by Zahra Newby and Ruth Leader-Newby and published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.

At times, writing provided an alternative form of geometric decoration to the lines and zigzags used on early Greek pottery. When figures were painted on a pot, inscriptions often played a complementary role in communicating a story.

For example, a Corinthian aryballos – a small, narrow-necked vase used as an oil bottle by athletes – shows horses with two figures, named “horse walker” and “horse turner.” The shape of the names on the pot “reflects and reinforces their meaning.” The name “horse walker” runs vertically behind the figure and leads to the ground, “planted there like the feet of the figure.” In contrast, the name “horse turner” curves down from the head to waist of the rider, suggesting the forward motion of the horse.

“What is important about all the names is that they do not bring the viewer additional information from ‘outside’ the picture, but draw attention to features of the picture itself,” Pappas and Osborne wrote.

Simply putting the words on a pot was more engaging than inscribing a stone tablet.

“Writing does things on a pot, it engages with the viewer as the viewer uses the pot,” the scholars wrote. “The appearance of the writing was always important, and the effect of the writing on the user of the pot calculated.”

As an example, the scholars cited an aryballos from the temple of Apollo at Corinth with a painted scene combining the names of the figures and a poetic dedication.

The main figure is a pipe-player, Polyterpos, who plays for a line of leaping dancers. A stream of letters pouring out of his pipe snakes along the vase, separating the dancers from each other. The letters frame the lead dancer, Pyrwias, and the verse proclaims he is the winner of the vase for his skill in dancing. As an athlete, he probably would have also carried the aryballos to the gymnasium where he would tip it to pour oil into his palms, thereby advertising his victory to those around him.

“The writing does more than produce a relationship between word and image which is intellectually satisfying,” Pappas and Osborne wrote. “This is a vessel to be used in the very context of gymnastic performance that it illustrates, a vessel whose use involves exactly the turning up and turning back that is performed and encouraged by the text. The cleverness of the text, and with it the prowess of Pyrwias himself, is put on display in particular when the aryballos is put into use.”

Pappas and Osborne note that their collaboration came about “by happy accident.” While Osborne was researching the book chapter, he discovered that Pappas was working on the same material as part of her doctoral thesis, and the final chapter incorporates the work of both scholars. Pappas is an assistant professor of classics in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

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