Aryballos

Aryballos in the form of three cockle shells, 6th century BC (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

An aryballos (Greek: ἀρύβαλλος; plural aryballoi) was a small spherical or globular flask with a narrow neck used in Ancient Greece. It was used to contain perfume or oil, and is often depicted in vase paintings being used by athletes during bathing. In these depictions, the vessel is at times attached by a strap to the athlete's wrist, or hung by a strap from a peg on the wall.

The shape of the aryballos originally came from the oinochoe of the Geometric period of the 9th century BCE, a globe-shaped wine jar. By the Proto-Corinthian period of the following century, it had attained its definitive shape, going from spherical to ovoid to conical, and finally back to spherical. This definitive form has a wide, flat mouth, and a single small handle. Some later variations have bell-shaped mouths, a second handle, and/or a flat base. Potters also created inventive shapes for aryballoi. The Austrian commission of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum is investigating the material properties of these vessels using computed tomography and optical 3D acquisition techniques.

Gallery

• 
  Cypriotic geometric white painted ware, 850–750 BC
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  Owl-shaped, Proto-Corinthian, 630 BC
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  575–550 BC (Louvre)
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  Greco-Egyptian faience hedgehog, 6th century BC
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  Janiform with kalos inscription, 520 BC
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  Foot-shaped, c. 500 BC
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  Hand-shaped, Hunt Museum
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  Two ephebes wrestling, 490–480 BC
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  Ancient Etruscan "aryballoi" terracotta vessels unearthed in the 1860s at Bolzhaya Bliznitsa tumulus near Phanagoria, South Russia (then part of the Bosporan Kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus); on exhibit at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

See also

• Ancient Greek vase painting
• Pottery of ancient Greece
• Unguentarium

External links

Media related to Aryballoi at Wikimedia Commons

• Advanced documentation methods in studying Corinthian black-figure vase painting on YouTube showing a Computed Tomography scan and rollout of the aryballos No. G26, archaeological collection, Graz University. The video was rendered using the GigaMesh Software Framework, cf. doi:10.11588/heidok.00025189.