Black-on-Red Two-Handled Bowl with Raised Flaring Rim

Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE · Black-on-Red ware · Wheel-made

A wide, shallow-bodied bowl with a rounded lower wall that turns at a firm shoulder into a tall rim, splaying outward to a plain lip. Two small horizontal roll handles sit at the widest point, tilted upward. The bright orange-red slip keeps much of its sheen. The black paint is spare: fine bands on the outer lip and inner edge of the rim, a pair of bands at the shoulder, and on the lower body small concentric-circle bull's-eyes; a pair is visible between the handles on the photographed side.

The surface is in good order. There is light pitting, a few dark spots, and a grey film over part of the rim. The base is not visible in the photographs.

Commentary

The bowl belongs to the raised-rim class of Cypriot Black-on-Red ware. It has a lustrous red slip with matt black paint [1]. Gjerstad placed bowls with a raised rim, straight or splayed, and a pronounced shoulder in his second stage, Black-on-Red II (IV), as types 18a–c. He remarked that in these shapes "the metal prototypes are conspicuous" [1]. The sharp transition from body to rim and the small handles at the carination follow the profile of hammered bronze bowls, and skeuomorphism of this kind recurs throughout the ware [3].

The closest excavated parallel is Kourion-Kaloriziki K 695 (Tomb 24), now in the Penn Museum (282500). It is a Black-on-Red II bowl of Cypro-Archaic I date, 7.4 cm high and 13.7 cm across. It has a small ring base, a convex wall, a flaring plain rim and raised horizontal roll handles at the widest part [2]. A bowl in the British Museum (1876,0909.61), with a straight neck, two small upward-sloping side handles and concentric circles, is dated 760–600 BCE. A two-handled bowl in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (177675), catalogued as Cypro-Archaic I, shows the same arrangement of small circle groups on the body.

These parallels support a Cypro-Archaic I date, c. 750–600 BCE. The raised-rim form is not a secure chronological marker on its own, however. Schreiber showed that "the bowl with a carinated body" appears in the earliest firm Black-on-Red contexts on the Levantine mainland, so it was not confined to a late stage [3]. Radiocarbon from Megiddo places those first exports around 900 BCE [4]. For this bowl, the sparse decoration of small bull's-eyes favours the Cypro-Archaic I dating of the Kaloriziki and British Museum pieces, but an earlier date cannot be excluded.

Bowls of this size were used for drinking and serving at table and were placed in tombs as part of the same sets. The Kaloriziki example has three concentric circles painted on its interior floor. The inside of this bowl has not yet been recorded, and it may carry a similar central motif.