Leseprobe

36 Pelike. Wedding scene Apulian, 340/330 BCE, Egnazia Group Clay; height 44.1 cm, Ø 28 cm Purchased from the antiquarian Salomon, Dresden, in 1891 Inv. no. Dr. 526 Known as a pelike , this squat vessel is adorned on both flanks with wedding scenes. However, they do not illustrate any specific proceedings from the cere- mony, which lasted several days. Instead, they show individual images and attrib- utes that relate to what would have been the single most important day in a woman’s life. We see attractive young people, richly adorned in jewellery and bearing all manner of courtship accoutrements: mirrors, garlands, armbands, staffs, doves, a strigil, and an iynx -wheel. The last item is the small white object held in the right hand of the standing woman: a small, whirring wheel used in ancient Greece for casting love spells. Uttering such incantations as ‘magic wheel, draw the man I love to this house’, a woman would seek to summon her beloved. Further underlining the all-encompassing theme of love is Eros, god of love, whose image adorns both sides of the vessel. Sadly, it is impossible to say whether the red-figure vessel from Apulia served a wedding-related purpose or was instead intended for a funerary context. In the latter case, it might have been for a young woman who died before being able to marry and was thus cheated of what in ancient Greece would have been her life’s greatest goal.  |  sw