Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder: Griffin Cauldrons in the Preclassical Mediterranean 9781477323625

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bronze monsters and the cultures of wonder

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Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder G R IFFIN C AUL D R ON S IN THE PR ECL A S S I C A L MED ITER R A NE A N

na ssos papale x androu

u ni v er si t y of t e x a s pr e s s

aus t in

Publication of this book was made possible in part by funds from the Center for the Study of Ancient Italy (CSAI), Department of Art and Art History, College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at Austin. Copyright © 2021 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2021 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713–7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48– 1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Papalexandrou, Athanasios Christou, 1965– author. Title: Bronze monsters and the cultures of wonder : griffin cauldrons in the preclassical Mediterranean / Nassos Papalexandrou. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2021007056 isbn 978-1-4773-2361-8 (cloth) isbn 978-1-4773-2362-5 (library ebook) isbn 978-1-4773-2363-2 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Kettles—Mediterranean Region. | Griffins in art. | Pots— Mediterranean Region. | Bronze bowls— Mediterranean Region. | Art, Ancient— Mediterranean Region—Oriental influences. | Material culture—Mediterranean Region. | Mediterranean Region—Antiquities. Classification: lcc de61.i48 p36 2022 | ddc 937/.01—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov /2021007056 doi:10.7560/323618

For Amy and Christina

I regard wonder as the first of all passions. —descartes

contents

ix xiii xv

lis t of illus tr ations preface acknowled gment s

1

introduc tion part i. griffin c auldrons in conte x t s of life and de ath

17

chap ter one The Eastern Mediterranean, Ionia, and the Aegean

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chap ter t wo Mainland Greece

96

chap ter three Italy and France part ii. sources for the lives of griffin c auldrons

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chap ter four Kolaios’s Monster Cauldron at the Heraion of Samos (Herodotus 4.152)

160

chap ter five Monsters in Images: Pictorial Representations of Griffin Cauldrons part iii. resp onses to the unc anny

234 260 277

notes references inde x

189

chap ter six Vision of Wonders

224

conclusion

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illustrations

xx

fig. 0 .1. Distribution map of griffin cauldrons around the Mediterranean.

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fig. 1.11. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM A 00756.

2

fig. 0 . 2 . Delphi, Sanctuary of Apollo: Hammered-bronze griffin protome. Inv. DM 30933.

35

fig. 1.12 . Samos, Heraion: Hekatompedos I drawn reconstructed as a Wunderkammer.

16

fig. 1.1. Spatiotemporal graph.

36

19

fig. 1. 2 . Cyprus, Salamis, Royal Cemetery, T 79: Cauldron. Inv. CM 202. 37

fig. 1.13 . Griffin cauldron drawn reconstructed on rod-tripod stand. fig. 1.14 . Griffin cauldron drawn reconstructed with Heraion protome B 7.

26

fig. 1.3 . Rhodes, Kameiros: Bronze griffin protome. Rhodes AM 14714.

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fig. 1. 4 . Samos, Heraion: Bronze human-headed bird cauldron attachment. Vathy, AM A 01177.

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fig. 1.15 . Miletos, Sanctuary of Athena: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Istanbul, AM 6330.

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fig. 1.5 . Samos, Heraion: Hammeredbronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM A 01220.

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fig. 1.16. Ephesos, Sanctuary of Artemis: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Ephesos Museum 11/61/87.

29

fig. 1.6. Samos, Heraion: Hammeredbronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM A 01215.

56

fig. 2 .1. Spatiotemporal graph.

58

fig. 2 . 2 . Perachora, Sanctuary of Hera Akraia: Hammered-bronze griffin protome. Corinth, AM P 272.

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fig. 2 .3 . Dodona, Sanctuary of Zeus, Prytaneion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Ioannina, AM 7494.

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fig. 2 . 4 . Ioannina, Dourouti: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Ioannina, AM 5967.

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fig. 2 .5 . Argolid, Sanctuary of Hera: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Athens, NM 16563.

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fig. 1.7. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM A 00728.

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fig. 1. 8 . Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM DAI B 1473.

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fig. 1.9 . Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM A 00723.

31

fig. 1.10 . Samos, Heraion: Castbronze griffin protome. Vathy, AM A 00709.

lis t of illus tr ations

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fig. 2 .6. Athens, Akropolis: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Athens, NM 6634.

71

72

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fig. 2 .7. Athens, Akropolis: Cast-bronze griffin head of composite protome. Athens, NM 6635.

fig. 3 .3 . Praeneste, Bernardini Tomb: Bronze griffin cauldron on conical stand. Rome, Villa Giulia Museum, inv. 16128.

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fig. 2 . 8 . Athens, Akropolis: Castbronze griffin protome. Athens, NM 6633 (Acropolis Museum since 2009).

fig. 3 . 4 . Monterozzi necropolis, Tarquinia: Bronze griffin protomes. Tarquinia, AM CB 262.

113

fig. 3 .5 . Trestina, hoard: Bronze griffin protome. Florence, AM 84484.

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fig. 2 .9 . Delphi, Sanctuary of Apollo, Alos: Cast-bronze human-headed bird cauldron attachments. DM 7726, 7725.

115

fig. 3 .6. Vetulonia, Circolo dei Lebeti: Bronze lion cauldron. Florence, AM 9619.

78

fig. 2 .10 . Delphi, Temenos of Athena Pronaia(?): Cast-bronze human-headed bird cauldron attachment. DM 8398.

115

fig. 3 .7. Vetulonia, Circolo dei Lebeti: Bronze griffin cauldron, drawn reconstructed. Florence, AM 9618.

81

fig. 2 .11. Delphi, Sanctuary of Apollo: Cast-bronze head of composite protome. DM 23846.

116

fig. 3 . 8 . Vetulonia, Circolo dei Lebeti: Bronze griffin protome, drawn reconstructed.

84

fig. 2 .12 . Olympia, Sanctuary of Zeus: Bronze griffin-and-lion cauldron OM B 4224.

117

fig. 3 .9 . Sainte-Gemmes-surLoire: Bronze griffin protome. Angers Museum MA 5 R 444.

86

fig. 2 .13 . Olympia, Sanctuary of Zeus: 118 Bronze bull cauldron B 5240 (cauldron), B 4422 (bull protome).

fig. 3 .10 . Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine, La Garenne: Bronze griffin cauldron on stand.

88

fig. 2 .14 . Olympia: Bronze humanheaded bird cauldron attachment. OM B 5090.

122

fig. 3 .11. Brolio di Valdichiana, hoard: Bronze griffin protome. Florence, AM 575.

92

fig. 2 .15 . Olympia: Hammeredbronze griffin protome. OM Br 3177.

125

fig. 3 .12 . Chiusi: Bronze fitting. London, BM 1873, 0820.163.

93

fig. 2 .16. Olympia: Cast-bronze griffin protome. OM Br 2250 Athens, NM 6160.

128

fig. 3 .13 . Latium Vetus, Ficana: Olla on stand, drawn reconstructed. Ostia, Ostia Museum 38252.

97

fig. 3 .1. Spatiotemporal graph.

130

100

fig. 3 . 2 . Praeneste, Barberini Tomb: Bronze griffin cauldron on conical stand. Rome, Villa Giulia Museum, inv. 13177, 13178.

fig. 3 .14 . Ager Faliscus, Narce, Pizzo Piede, Tomb 19, XLI: Olla. Rome, Villa Giulia Museum 4374.

134

fig. 3 .15 . Marsiliana d’Albegna necropolis (Grosseto), Tomba degli Avori (Tomb of the Ivories): Ivory comb. Florence, AM 93437.

x

lis t of illus tr ations

142

fig. 4 .1. Kolaios’s griffin cauldron, drawn reconstructed.

161

fig. 5 .1. Fragment of an early Protocorinthian conical terracotta 176 lekythos-oinochoë. New York, MET 1923 (23.160.18).

173

fig. 5 .6. Athens, Peiraios Street. Graphic drawing of ceramic krater. Athens, NM 810. fig. 5 .7. Protoattic ceramic stand, ca. 650. Berlin, Antikensammlung SM 31573 A 41.

162

fig. 5 . 2 . As in fig. 5.1: side b.

178

165

fig. 5 .3 . Early Protocorinthian aryballos. Berlin, Antikensammlung 3409.

fig. 5 . 8 . Protoattic amphora, Eleusis, ca. 660. Eleusis, Eleusis Museum 2630.

179

fig. 5 .9 . As in fig. 5.8: Detail of Gorgon’s head.

207

fig. 6.1. Taxidermy hunting trophy.

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fig. 6. 2 . Taxidermy lion.

166

171

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fig. 5 . 4 . Olympia: Hammered-bronze sheet with griffin cauldron, crab, bird, snake. OM BE I ie. fig. 5 .5 . Samos, Heraion: Figurative frieze on a Protocorinthian krateriskos, drawn rolled out. Vathy, AM A 01432 (K 02263).

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preface

this book has been in the making for a long time, mainly because I have tried to study at close quarters as many of the artifacts discussed in the following chapters as I could. From the very beginning, I decided to focus on materials from excavated contexts, leaving aside unprovenanced holdings in various museums and collections or casting a questioning eye on dealers’ purported proveniences. In antiquity, griffin cauldrons, the wondrous bronze monsters of the book’s title, were distributed in a wide swath of the Mediterranean stretching from Egypt and Cyprus to northern France (Burgundy and the Loire Valley). The same holds true today. However, the fascinating histories of discovery or cultural treatment of their remnants have resulted in even more dispersal in several countries and museums of the contemporary world. For example, finds from the Samian Heraion are in Samos, Berlin, and Athens. Finds from Olympia are at Olympia and Athens. Finds from the Athenian Akropolis are divided between the National Museum at Athens and the Akropolis Museum. This state of fragmentation and wide dispersal speaks volumes about the tendency of our contemporary world to re-create the relics of antiquity in its own bizarre terms even as it complicates attempts for synthesis and comprehensive understanding of the phenomena entangled in the social lives of these objects.

My interest in the Mediterranean of the seventh century was sparked in a series of seminars by Professor William A. P. Childs at Princeton University in the early 1990s CE. Griffin cauldrons from the Samian Heraion and Olympia had been treated in magisterial studies by Ulf Jantzen (1955 CE) and HansVolkmar Herrmann (1966, 1979) that answered as many questions as they generated. More recently, important studies by Winfried Held (2000), Ulrich Gehrig (2004), Andreas Scholl (2006), Gudrun KlebinderGauss (2007), and Hélène Aurigny (2019) have made available data that enable new approaches within a wider Mediterranean paradigm exceeding the default boundaries of regional or ethnocentric approaches. Each one of them adds a piece in the puzzle of panMediterranean phenomena of connectivity and mobility that only recently scholars have started to untangle. Without these indispensable studies, to which this book owes a great intellectual debt, my attempt at a panoptic view and interpretation would have been impossible. I also owe a great debt to the magisterial restorations of cauldrons from the Barberini and Bernardini tombs, whose marvelous assemblages have been put on display in an exemplary way at Villa Poniatoswki (Museo Etrusco Nazionale di Villa Giulia, Rome). Equally magisterial are the recent restorations of the griffin and lion cauldrons from the Cir-

preface

colo dei Lebeti in Vetulonia (Rafanelli 2015; Cianferoni and Venturini 2016). These important museological developments enable valuable insights in the materiality and visuality of seventh-century cauldrons, themes I have pursued in depth in the pages of this book. This book expands on ideas that have already appeared in numerous scholarly publications (Papalexandrou 2003–2004, 2010, 2011, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017). In the last ten years I presented aspects of my research to various academic audiences in Greece, Italy, and the United States whose formative feedback informed my ideas, method, and approach. Most fruitfully influential has been my participation in the wonderful workshop “Material Entanglements in the Ancient Mediterranean

xiv

and Beyond,” organized by Marian Feldman (The Johns Hopkins University) and Antigone Zournatzi (National Hellenic Research Foundation) under the auspices of the Connecting Art Histories initiative of the Getty Foundation (2018–2019 CE). The manuscript was revised in the difficult months of spring and summer 2020, when I had minimal or no access to library resources. Two important publications, Aurigny 2019 and Walter, Clemente, and Niemeier 2019, reached me very late in the process; as a result I have not been able to engage with them as much as I would have under normal circumstances. All dates in this book are BCE unless otherwise indicated.

acknowledgments

research and tr avel for this study were generously facilitated by a series of Faculty Research Assignments granted by the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin throughout the last decade. This study would have dragged on for many more years had not Provost Maurie Mckinnis entrusted me with a Provost’s Authors Fellowship (2019–2020 CE). Chapter 6 was written in the productive atmosphere of the National Gallery’s Center of Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, DC, during a Visiting Fellowship in fall 2015. Chapters 1 to 3 were slowly drafted during late nights at the hospitable Blegen Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in the spring of 2017 CE. The University of Texas at Austin has proven incomparably ideal for the pursuit of interests in Mediterranean archaeology. My research in Italy would have been impossible without the rich resources that my colleague Professor (emerita) Ingrid Edlund-Berry built over several years here at the libraries of the university. From the very beginning, she embraced the project and stirred me into the wonderful world of Italian archaeology with humor and wise expertise. John Clarke, Penelope Davies, and Nayla Muntasser, my colleagues and fellows at the Center for the Study of Ancient Italy (CSAI) here at the University of Texas at Austin, provided exempla of scholarship, inspiration, and moral support when this was most needed. My

project has been under the generous aegis of CSAI throughout. I owe a great debt to Joanna Hitchcock, former director of the University of Texas Press, for her interest and kind invitation to submit this project to the university press of my academic home. My editor, Jim Burr, showed unmitigated patience for many years and took the project under his capable wing. My colleague Professor (Emerita) Denise Schmandt-Besserat embraced it with equal interest at the early stages of development. Sheila Winchester, humanities bibliographer at the University of Texas at Austin, provided her expertise, insights, and valuable help for many years. Sydney Kilgore and Mark Doroba, of the Visual Resources Collection of my department, put to work great skills and their genuine interest in my project. Paul Psoinos’s copyediting skills improved the manuscript considerably and I thank him for this. I also acknowledge the manifold support of numerous colleagues and friends in several countries and institutions: Hélène Aurigny, Giorgos Bourogiannis, Panagiotis Chatzidakis, Kalliopi Christophi, Fabio Colivicchi, Braden Cordivari, Lindy Crewe, Einav Dembin, Sophie Descamps, Martine Dewailly, Marian Feldman, Lucio Fiorini, Norbert Franken, Juliette de la Genière, Sarah Graff, Leah Hansard, Eleni Hasaki, Joachim Heiden, Linda Henderson, John Huehnergard, Amalia Kakissis,

acknowled gment s

Andromachi Karanika, Thanasis Katsaras, Michael Kerschner, Gudrun Klebinder-Gauss, Stamatia Ladikou, Joan Mertens, Michael Padgett, Lenka Paleologou, Arto Penttinen, Platon Petridis, Emily Petrowski, Jessica Powers, Susan Rather, Leticia Rodriguez, Brian Rose, Vanessa Rousseau, Agnes Schwarzmaier, Michael Seymour, Sania Shifferd, Ioulia Tzonou, Andreas Vlachopoulos, Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, Louis Waldman, Christopher Wood, and Antigone Zournatzi. I express a great thanks to my fellow Provost’s Authors, who provided inspiration, ideas, and moral support in the last fifteen

xvi

months of research and writing, especially during the adverse months of spring and summer 2020, when my manuscript was revised: Syed Akbar Hyder, Tracie Matysik, Eric McDaniel, Louisa Nardini, and Domino Perez. Last but not least, I owe enormous gratitude to my wife, Amy, and daughter, Christina, for their patience and willingness, as they put it, to “chase griffins and be chased by them” with me from Cyprus to Burgundy. Their love, support, and humor have sustained me throughout, and it is to them that this book is duly dedicated.

bronze monsters and the cultures of wonder

fig. 0.1. Distribution map of griffin cauldrons discovered around the Mediterranean. Map by Matilde Grimaldi.

Introduction

n the years around 700 the temenos of Apollo at Delphi came to possess an incomparable object of extraordinary technical complexity, value, and beauty. This artifact was in the shape of a large cauldron made of bronze and measuring at least one meter in height. It belonged, that is, to a type of material culture rarely associated today with any standards, however loosely conceived, of value or beauty. Visitors to the archaeological museum of Delphi usually bypass the only surviving component of this originally impressive cauldron. It is displayed just steps away from the entrance, at the beginning of a presentational scheme that obeys strict rules of temporal sequence. Hung high up in an unimaginatively composed vitrine of paratactically displayed similar artifacts, this fragment is now a miserable rem-

I

nant of a disembodied monster. A good part of the head survives, along with a stretch of the muscled neck of a griffin, a hybrid monster of Near Eastern origin comprising the body of a lion and the head of an eagle (fig. 0.2).¹ Its unwelcoming otherness is still evident in the scaly texture of its skin, which still preserves a corded volute hanging down from the top of its head. Forty-two centimeters high, this artifact beckons viewers as intensely as it did around 700. We do not know, however, what its viewers could have known about it. In the Bronze Age, ferocious griffins accompanied divine beings. Later in the seventh century, Aristeas of Prokonnesos described them as guardians of gold perpetually at war with the one-eyed Arimaspoi somewhere east of Skythia. Hesiod is also reported to have been the first to weave marvelous tales about them.²

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fig. 0.2. Delphi, Sanctuary of Apollo: Hammeredbronze griffin protome. Photo: Philippe Collet. Delphi Museum, 30933. EFA neg. N41-001. © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Phokis, Delphi Archaeological Museum.

The archaeological jargon for this type of mimetic work has been bequeathed to us from antiquity: scholars refer to it as a “protome” (προτομή), translated in the ninth edition of H. G. Liddell and R. Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1940) as a “front part cut off.” This mode of representation has been common since classical antiquity, but in Greece at least it was unprecedented when our cauldron made its way to Apollo’s temenos. Upon its appearance, it was as innovative as the so-called

2

bronze sirens, or human-headed birds, pairs of which sometimes faced each other on the rims of cauldrons similar to our Delphic example (figs. 2.9, 2.10, 2.12, 2.14).³ No less radically novel was the three-dimensional representational mode of the griffins: users and viewers were expected to make visual contact with and react to seemingly fully fleshed beings whose posture and attitude were unprecedently lifelike. Our cauldron was equipped with four to six outward-directed griffin protomes, all of equal size and form, which were riveted at equal intervals all around it just below its rim. A physical encounter with it entailed an intense sensory negotiation of the physical nature of these threatening monsters and the materiality of the artifact to which they were attached. No matter how we define and interpret their effect today, it must have been very strong, if not alluring. Provided that they would have been allowed to interact with or use this cauldron, a few visitors would have understood it as a daidalon: an intricately crafted functional artifact, often jointed together from several parts, whose technical, formal, and sensory qualities (sheen, resonance, color, size, shape, figurative content, ornaments) were viewed as divine in quality and perhaps origin.⁴ By their nature, daidala were unexceptionally wondrous artifacts that bedazzled the mind. Sometimes endowed with animation and autonomous inner life, they were seen as dangerously seductive or even deceptive.⁵ Griffin cauldrons represent the most prolific industry of metals in the seventh century.⁶ Its output is archaeologically documented in a vast area stretching from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus to Burgundy and the Loire Valley in France (fig. 0.1). In the eastern Mediterranean, griffin caul-

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drons have been documented in a very small number of elite tombs (Cyprus, SW Turkey) that exhibit imported ideas (Salamis, Cyprus, Tomb 79) or actual artifacts (Elmalı) from the Aegean.⁷ On very few locations, the griffin protomes coexisted not only with human-headed birds but also with inward-looking roaring lions that prominently display their sharp incisors as if poised to devour flesh from the interior of the cauldron (figs. 2.12, 3.6).⁸ Griffin cauldrons have been documented in contexts that have also yielded cauldrons equipped with attachments or protomes in the form of bulls’ heads positioned around the rim in a manner similar to the positioning of griffin protomes (fig. 2.13). Delphi is no exception, but it remains unclear whether our cauldron functioned side by side with bull cauldrons or not.⁹ An impressive number of intricate artifacts like our Delphic cauldron dominated the material record of Greek sanctuaries throughout the seventh century. This study focuses on this evidence, especially on the numerous remnants of cauldrons retrieved at Olympia, Delphi, and the Heraion of Samos, a major production center of griffin cauldrons throughout the seventh century.¹⁰ Much smaller numbers of griffin cauldrons made their way to regional or local sanctuaries as well. Qualitatively outstanding specimens also made their way to the most affluent assemblages of material wealth in the Italic Peninsula (Praeneste, Vetulonia) and France (Vix), where the relevant evidence is predominantly funereal in character.¹¹ It was probably in the meeting arenas of great sanctuaries, such as Delphi or Olympia, that Italian elites encountered griffin protomes and the interactive practices associated with them. The funereal assemblages of Praeneste and Vetulonia bear witness to how lavishly Italian elites embraced the material-

3

ity and visuality of the griffin cauldron. The strong impact of this type and the practices it stood for in Italy is made manifest by its replication, often awkward and uncertain but always imaginative, in other materials as well.¹² A few skeuomorphic attempts, no less tentative than the Italic specimens, have also been documented in certain areas of Greece and the Aegean (Crete, Attika).¹³ No less than in Italy, they mirror partially informed but confidently motivated responses to the sumptuous metallic prototypes that inspired them. What is the reason for this Mediterranean success of the griffin cauldron? What exactly made these objects desirable? How and by whom were they used? What was their religious significance? How did they circulate in the wider Mediterranean networks of longand short-distance interaction? And how did their viewers and users interact with them? To grapple with these questions, this study focuses on the seventh century—the main chronological framework of this study—as a time of wonder and radical innovations in the material and visual cultures of the Mediterranean.¹⁴ Historians of the ancient world often resort to the metaphor of the orientalizing Mediterranean as a cauldron in order to communicate aspects of life and human interaction around the Mediterranean Sea.¹⁵ This may be fanciful, but it is apt for translating the unfathomable physical and conceptual scale of the great sea into a graspable and familiar category. Cauldrons have always been good to think with. They possess enclosed spaces, they are precious, and they bring people together. Their rims are tantalizing thresholds to thrilling delights, yet like the Mediterranean shores they may be populated with mystique, promise, and danger. It is certainly not by accident that Odysseus conjures up a boiling caul-

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dron to speak of ghastly Charybdis.¹⁶ His description of the horrible Skylla has correspondences with and seems to have been consciously or unconsciously inspired by the multiheaded griffin cauldrons that are the focus of this book.¹⁷ The Early Classical iconography of Herakles traversing the Mediterranean inside the golden cauldron (dinos or lebe¯s) of Helios clearly echoes the pan-Mediterranean dimension of cauldrons.¹⁸ A primary aim of this study is to delineate a Mediterranean history of the griffin cauldron as the par-excellence symptomatic phenomenon of the new material and visual culture of the seventh-century or orientalizing Mediterranean. This is a period of expanding horizons brought about by the circulation of people, objects, and ideas, a great many of which originated in the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the aggressive expansion of the Assyrian empire in the late eighth century.¹⁹ Although the term “orientalizing” has been subject to scholarly criticism in the last two decades, I retain it as a descriptor of the griffin cauldrons in order to acknowledge the origin of the ideas embodied in them.²⁰ However, its use in this study does not imply that the makers of the griffin cauldrons or their users were necessarily conscious of orientalizing as some scholars have understood it. Ian Morris and Thomas Brisart, for example, have seen orientalizing as a material connection to the East, ideologically fraught and politically motivated. ²¹ Rather, orientalizing in this study is the ambient cultural field of ideas and practices that informed the invention and ritual use of the griffin cauldron. It was as multifaceted and nuanced as its manifestations in space and time. The intensity of this phenomenon was so strong, long lasting, and irreversibly impact-

4

ful that scholars have resorted to describing it as a veritable revolution.²² This revolution is manifest in the adoption, elaboration, and dissemination of new types of material culture (e.g., engraved Tridacna shells, so-called Cypro-Phoenician bowls, exquisitely carved ivories, artifacts made of faience), as well as social practices like the banquet or technologies of communication such as alphabetic writing and figurative narrative.²³ These are obvious and well-discussed examples, forming a variegated backdrop against which the novelty of the griffin cauldron can be assessed. However, in an important way griffin cauldrons were exceptional. I argue that these intricate artifacts played a pivotal role in the introduction of lifelike illusionism in the material and visual culture of the time. The modes of response to lifelike illusionism—understood here as techniques for its active and meaningful negotiation—are a central thematic focus of this study. A fundamental premise of my investigation is that the illusionism of griffin cauldrons necessitated the creation of new modes of interaction with material and visual culture. These modes of response, however, were physically and cognitively accessible only to a very narrow circle of users, either visitors to sanctuaries in Greece or the high elites of Cyprus, western Asia Minor, Italy, and France. The former had exclusive access to the cauldrons and the interactive experiences afforded by them through mechanisms strictly regulated by sanctuary authorities. The latter embraced the interactive character of the cauldrons in order to envelop themselves in an otherworldly mystique that emanated from their concomitant claims to rare experiences. According to this interpretation, our Delphic cauldron may have been grand and visually ebullient but its social function cannot be illuminated unless we deter-

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mine its interactive role in the actuality of the sanctuary’s life. Likewise, one may easily label the griffin cauldron from Sainte-Colombe-surSeine, near Vix (locality La Garenne), found in a lavishly furnished tomb of the late sixth century, as a status-enhancing item that asserted the prestige and perhaps claims to power of its owners. However, this label does not explain why this particular type of object was desirable. Neither does it illuminate the interactive life afforded by its materiality and visuality. What work, physical and conceptual, did this alien object perform for its owners and users? And how did they respond to its affective properties? The formulation of these questions is possible within the framework of a nowfundamental theoretical tenet in the archaeological and art-historical study of the past: all items of material and visual culture are no less objects of human experience than they are decisive and active shapers of social life. Alfred Gell has emphasized that artifacts exercise their own active agency not only toward viewers or users but throughout their surrounding environments.²⁴ That is, they shape their perceptual environments no less than they do the responses that they make possible by means of their physical attributes. The exploration of the meaning of artifacts in social life entails careful attention to the dialectic action, the physical and conceptual interchange between artifact and user or viewer. Or, to think in terms of the useful notion of entanglement, one may theorize this dialectic action within a complex web of interactions framed by a certain environment within which artifacts shape other artifacts and are shaped by them.²⁵ This interactive engagement is conditioned by the prevalent cultural norms about the nature of beings and the relationships that

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they make possible. These norms usually survive only in traces that the analyst has to tease out from a plethora of items of evidence, always bearing in mind that the artifacts themselves contribute to the formation, negotiation, and establishment of these cultural norms. The active roles of artifacts—their capacity to act as persons or impersonations—are often programmed into their physical characteristics. Materials and their sensory qualities (aptic, visual, tactile, olfactory, aural) encode myriad effects that are projected out to the ambient environment of an artifact. By “ambient environment” I mean the space that determines the performativity of an artifact. My analysis presumes that artifacts are agents of action or performers themselves within a wellordained scenic stage or setting that I term here a “performance arena,” an ambient space within which what the artifact sends forth and what in response a viewer or user sends back meet each other in order to generate meaning. In The Visual Poetics of Power (Papalexandrou 2005), I borrowed this notion from the late John Miles Foley’s work on ethnopoetics to describe an essential characteristic of the agency and functions of tripod cauldrons: “tripod cauldrons defined a material and symbolic space around them which is to be understood as a performance arena . . . the physical focus or epicenter of performative events that actualized the meanings and messages embedded in them.”²⁶ In that case, a rich body of evidence made possible the association of the tripod cauldron with the performance of oral events like poetry. In this book, I will follow a similar path to conceptualize the griffin cauldron as an interactive epicenter within an arena of performative events that were primarily perceptual and noetic. I will be arguing that visual contact with the griffin cauldrons consti-

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tuted a form of performance that established an inextricable link between viewers or users and griffin cauldrons. In sanctuaries this link was a quintessential element of religious experience. In funerary contexts it had to do with induction into special orders of experience: for example, the elite banqueting event involving ritualized wine drinking. Everywhere, I argue, griffin cauldrons functioned as sites of wonder and rare experiences. This is primarily because as integral artifacts, the griffin cauldrons were perceived as animate monstrous beings that inhabited a sphere of existence well beyond the bounds of the ordinary. Indeed, the combination of a large container and “front parts cut off ” of monstrous animals was, and still is, out of the ordinary in many ways. In technical terms, it entailed the mechanical attachment of the heavy protome to the shoulder of the vessel by means of rivets minuscule enough to remain unnoticed or at least largely unobtrusive to the observer’s field of vision. Hammered-griffin protomes were particularly heavy, as the weight of the metal was severely compounded by the filling material concealed in the interior of the protome— in the case of our Delphic cauldron this filling was densely packed asphalt or bitumen enveloped by the dexterously hammered sheet that formed the thin but very richly textured skin of the protome.²⁷ This characteristic of protomes did not change when early in the seventh-century workshops in Greece started producing cast protomes using the lost-wax technique. The two modes coexisted for more than one generation. This technical change enabled the makers of protomes to engage in a sophisticated and far-reaching exploration of the monstrous physiognomy of griffins. Specimens found in the great sanctuaries of Samos, Olympia, and Delphi attest the artisans’ con-

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stant efforts to endow these objects with intensely affective properties akin to those of living creatures in the natural world. A few of these attained truly monumental dimensions by combining a long, hammered neck and a solid-cast head (fig. 2.7). These have been documented only in the great sanctuaries of Greece, but none survives today in its entirety. In the middle of the fifth century, Herodotus witnessed an impressively monumental specimen in the form of an old, revered relic treasured inside the great Temple of Hera at Samos (fig. 4.1). His account is our only surviving testimony, and therefore extremely useful in this study, for this still enigmatic group of artifacts (Hdt. 4.152).²⁸ The use of the qualifier “enigmatic” is justified as much by the paucity of information about griffin cauldrons as by their categorical hybridity. The paucity of information is striking when one compares the abundance of textual or figurative testimonies about the tripod cauldron, a technically complex artifact closely related to the griffin cauldron.²⁹ Tripod cauldrons are significant objects in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and they remain so until the end of antiquity.³⁰ The griffin cauldron, by contrast, has a low discursive profi le, and one wonders why. The contrast with the abundance of archaeological evidence and its wide distribution is puzzling and argues against the established understanding of griffin cauldrons as status-enhancing dedications in Greece. The categorical hybridity, on the other hand, is manifest when one turns to the primary physical component parts of the griffin cauldron. The hammered cauldron, often portable and independent of its bearing support, is primarily a costly and capacious container of liquids or solids. References in Homer are explicit that cauldrons (sg. λέβης, pl. λέβητες) enjoyed the

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status of a measure of value (along with tripod cauldrons) in the heroic systems of valorization and exchange.³¹ It may be that the addition of protomes and attachments was motivated by the need to figuratively label this currency. However, if this was the original motivation, it was a most costly and the least practical one. Perhaps the concept of intentional hybrids may at least point to the motivations underlying the creation of the type. These “shock, change, challenge, revitalize or disrupt through deliberate, intended fusions” and in so doing they “create . . . a double consciousness.”³² The generations of pilgrims and users in Greece and Italy who encountered the first griffin cauldrons would have had to reconcile their shocking novelty with their established ideas about bronze vessels of this type. Who was the author of this innovation, and what or whose interests did it serve? The first question cannot be answered with precision. It is a fact that no griffin cauldrons have been documented in the Near East.³³ The type seems to have been invented in the Aegean, but this does not necessarily mean that ascription of authorship can be determined or credited in ethnic terms.³⁴ There is consensus that the visual apparatus of the first generation of griffin cauldrons has close stylistic or technical affinities with the Early Iron Age visual and material culture of North Syria.³⁵ Scholars have long been willing to entertain the idea that migrant or itinerant craftsmen from this area invented the griffin cauldron and introduced it into the Aegean world and farther west.³⁶ As I discuss in detail below, seeking determinative labels like “Greek” or “Near Eastern” is devoid of meaning and is a hermeneutic dead end. Regarding the second question, I argue against the prevailing view that griffin caul-

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drons were status-enhancing dedicatory objects mediating between elite donors and divine beings.³⁷ Even if this seems to be indicated by the textually attested case of Kolaios’s exceptionally lavish dedication at the Samian Heraion (Hdt. 4.152), the model that it suggests may apply for but a very small percentage of the surviving record of griffin cauldrons. Rather, in Greece at least it is preferable to explain the adoption of the orientalizing materiality and visuality through the systematic efforts of sanctuary authorities to adjust to or even control the realities and challenges of the new era.³⁸ Within a framework of religious practices, sanctuaries made possible rare and extraordinary experiences for select visitors who enhanced their cognitive and sensory symbolic capital through physical and cognitive interaction with griffin cauldrons. In the last generation, many analysts of the material and visual culture of the eighth and the seventh century argued for the social function of significant objects. This proposition has yielded many insights regarding the role of material culture in the formation and negotiation of social identities within the evolving fabric of the city-state. However, these insights have been reached at the expense of attention to the materiality (or visuality) of these significant objects as well as to their sensory qualities and the responses that they instigated. I offer this study both as a corrective to this neglect and as a plea for the need to ask new questions about the properties of the numerous categories of artifacts that comprise the rich material register of the seventh century. More than any other type of orientalizing artifact, the griffin cauldron seems to call attention to its monstrous appendages. The “front part cut off ” of griffins, otherworldly creatures of the margins and worlds beyond,

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may be only partial quotations of the entire beast, but the bodiless heads came alive as never before. Their eyes were always endowed with the capacity to see and be seen, but the ravages of time have deprived the cauldrons’ remnants of this quintessential characteristic of their animated nature. The intricately rendered amphibian eyes of hammered griffins like those of our griffin cauldron or the inset, humanlike eyes of cast protomes darted their powerful gaze away from the cauldron’s interior even as their wide-open beaks broadcast deafening shrieks all around. Since the nineteenth century CE these effects have been viewed as apotropaic (prophylactic or guardian) in nature.³⁹ Scholars, however, have never offered suggestions as to the nature of danger or threat these monsters supposedly guarded against. In a critical moment of the Iliad, we learn that theft of a sanctuary’s valuable possessions was always possible in the world being depicted.⁴⁰ Yet is one seriously to consider that the bronze griffins were perceived to keep harm away from the cauldron or its interior? It is possible that at a basic level, appendages like griffin protomes (lion protomes have also been retrieved at Olympia, Praeneste, and Vetulonia) functioned as scarecrows—but one would still have to explain why so much technical virtuosity was expended on the lifelike visual apparatus of griffin cauldrons. Tripod cauldrons were equally costly and prestigious artifacts (daidala) that were produced concurrently with griffin cauldrons throughout the seventh century. They were no less worthy of the designation agalmata (objects of delight; ornaments) than were griffin cauldrons. There is no indication, however, that they were ever equipped with apotropaic attachments, and one wonders why. Their explanation as apotropaic does not go far enough to explain the affective prop-

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erties of the griffin cauldron. Neither is this function compellingly suggested by the few pictorial sources representing griffin cauldrons (chapter 5). This book explores the effect of griffin cauldrons on their viewers and users. Instead of treating the cauldrons and their components as items exemplifying an evolutionary stage grafted into a wider, overarching narrative (e.g., that of Greek art), I seek to unravel the nature of contact (visual, psychological, sensory) elicited by these objects. This step will provide insights as to why all of a sudden they became desirable and remained so for at least a hundred years after their appearance in Greece and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. These questions have not been addressed in scholarship, mainly because for a long time the archaeological enterprise has been preoccupied with basic archaeological problems such as defining dates and styles as well as techniques and places of manufacture. These concerns have been dealt with in an admirable fashion in a series of studies that contain the final publication of large numbers of cauldrons from a number of Greek sanctuaries.⁴¹ In this study, I draw from these studies even as I contend that it is time for scholarship to take the understanding of the griffin cauldron even further by formulating new questions and putting aside old scholarly preoccupations. For example, much ink and energy have been spent on unraveling the origin of the griffin cauldron. Since the nineteenth century CE, ethnocentrically inspired archaeologies have debated whether the invention of this intricate type can be ascribed to the creative energies of the purported Greek genius during its most formative period (e.g., Jantzen 1955) or whether they were products of the Near Eastern realm (Maxwell-Hyslop 1956, 155–156;

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Rathje 1979, 165; Rolley et al. 2004–2005). The stakes behind this question were high because of the quality and quantity of the evidence and the technical or artistic innovations it implied. Labels matter. If they were Greek products, they could be counted on to substantiate an old evolutionary schema of progress premised on Greece improving on ideas originating in the Near East by breathing new and creative life into them. If not, this foundational schema could severely threaten claims about European cultural superiority. Well into the twenty-first century CE these binary conundrums have had no value or led to roadblocks. Recent studies have argued very convincingly that retrojected labels (Greek; Near Eastern) have no substantive value or overlap only very partially with considerations prevalent in the use period of these intricate artifacts.⁴² In this book I subscribe to the idea that culture and its products are fluid and the cauldron’s vital contexts in their very nature (e.g., their physical and conceptual frameworks as objects of experience) were sites in which the idea of ethnic culture and concomitant boundaries either fell apart or was of limited concern or relevance. In this era of emphasis on networks operating on a very widely expanded Mediterranean canvas, griffin cauldrons may be shown to have functioned as special nodes in a web of symbolically transcultural subjectivities. It is therefore imperative that I make it clear that although the majority of the evidence for my exploration comes from Greece and the Aegean as well as Italy, the phenomena I try to address have to do with an area stretching from Lake Van (eastern Turkey) to the Guadalquivir of southwestern Iberia. My aim is to ask how radically novel objects like the orientalizing cauldron actively shaped new

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categories of encounters with material and visual culture. Possible answers to this question are to be found in the physicality of the cauldrons themselves and especially in what it suggests about the modes of viewer or user response that these artifacts made possible. These questions have not been addressed before, mainly because of the prevalent epistemic constraints framing the production of knowledge about the cauldrons. To put it simply, for a long time we have been missing the forest (viz. the cauldrons as integral entities) for the trees (viz. their dispersed individual components). Owing to the physical nature of the cauldrons, archaeology has usually retrieved the individual components of cauldrons, attachments in the shape of griffins, human-headed birds, and lions. Cauldrons retrieved entire from archaeological contexts (e.g., the Barberini or Bernardini Tomb; Salamis, Tomb 79; Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine, near Vix) are exceptionally rare, but close attention to their materiality and visuality offers insights as to how the now-disiecta membra of disintegrated cauldrons from Olympia, Samos, Delphi, and other sanctuaries were constitutive of originally rare and complex experiences. However, modes of archaeological publication and their inherent foci and intellectual agendas have reified these dispersed parts. One may even argue that in this treatment griffin protomes, human-headed birds, and lion protomes have acquired a new ontological status. Indeed, they have been viewed as individual art objects, in part because this is how they have survived and in part because this is largely how these items have been acquired and valorized by Western museums and collections. It is significant, for example, that the series of human-headed birds (sirens) from Olympia has been published separately from

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the griffin protomes, a separation reflected in the museological treatment of these artifacts as well.⁴³ In this book I try to redress this case of perhaps necessary but ultimately misleading scholarly treatment. I say “misleading” because the modes of archaeological publication have produced faulty assumptions as to how these objects were experienced in antiquity. Archaeological publications make things wonderfully and admirably accessible in physical and cognitive terms, but this does not mean that this artificial accessibility has anything to do with what prevailed in antiquity. Following the paradigm set forth in my monograph on tripod cauldrons, this study programmatically sets out to rehabilitate the integrity of the griffin cauldron as an assemblage of multiple component parts created to work in tandem with and not in isolation from one another. Asking who had access to these intricate objects (or for that matter to anything artifactual unearthed by archaeology) and how, how often, and under what circumstances is an imperative desideratum of archaeological inquiry. Equally important is the question of the nature of physical and cognitive contact with griffin cauldrons. The focus of my analysis is therefore to place the cauldrons at the epicenter of experiential entanglements in their intended functional contexts. This necessitates as much attention to the physicality of the cauldrons’ actual remains as to an imaginative—and always tentative—reconstruction of their original visuality and materiality. The origins of this study are to be traced in my long-standing preoccupation with the tripod cauldron, the most prestigious type of votive object in Greece during the Early Iron Age and long afterward.⁴⁴ It is still a common perception that from the late eighth century onward tripod cauldrons were replaced by orien-

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talizing cauldrons, mainly because scholars assume that the elites, traditional or newly formed, would have been quick to embrace the thrillingly novel products of the new, orientalizing era. This perception is wrong. Tripod cauldrons never fell out of use after production of the technically and visually consummate series archaeologically documented in the great Panhellenic sanctuaries came to its end around 700.⁴⁵ Moreover, the broad range of their semantic values established during the Early Iron Age kept evolving for centuries.⁴⁶ The griffin cauldron, on the other hand, never came to be invested with the symbolism and the long-lasting resonance of the Greek tripod cauldron. The end of the standard series around the last quarter of the seventh century still remains unexplained. A plethora of evidence, however, from the Aegean, the Greek mainland, and Italy shows that, unlike the tripod cauldron, the griffin cauldron witnessed a vibrant career both inside and outside Greece. In this book I try to account for this phenomenon by turning to the objects themselves as well as their contexts of consumption and what these indicate about the griffin cauldrons’ role as harbingers of radical novel modes of seeing and being seen.

a c h a p t er-b y- c h a p t er i t iner a r y This book is organized into three parts. Part I, entitled “Griffin Cauldrons in Contexts of Life and Death,” is divided into three chapters (1 to 3) that discuss the existing evidence for griffin cauldrons in terms of the contextual circumstances of their discovery or use. The organization of the material is topographical. This is arbitrary but enables a detailed survey and synthesis of the existing evidence in terms of

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both synchronic and diachronic circumstances of their specific functional environments. It goes without saying that discussion of griffin cauldrons in context depends on the availability of the relevant data and whether these have been published in sufficient detail to allow inferences regarding significant moments in the life of griffin cauldrons. Chapter 1 comprises evidence from Egypt, Cyprus, southwestern Asia Minor, Ionia, and the Aegean islands. All these areas were intricately interconnected in the seventh century. Here the nature of the evidence allows an extensive focus on the Samian Heraion, a major center of production, use, and exportation of griffin cauldrons to other areas of the Aegean, mainland Greece, and Italy throughout the seventh century. It is possible that the Heraion witnessed the invention and institutionalization of the specific performative nature of griffin cauldrons that I argue for: I reconstruct the vital space of griffin cauldrons as a Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) framing the experience of cauldrons as animate objects of wonder and rare experiences. Chapter 2 focuses on mainland Greece, where attention is lavished as much on the evidence from Olympia and Delphi, which have yielded numerous remnants of griffin cauldrons, as on the striking contrast this material presents with that in many sanctuaries in which this type was scarce. In several of the latter, griffin cauldrons appeared with delay, and when they did appear they seem to have been imported from Samos. The material record at Olympia and Delphi necessitates that one take into consideration manifold types of archaeological evidence pertaining to various types or subtypes of griffin or other seventh- century cauldrons. It is possible that among the earliest series, there were cauldrons decorated

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only with antithetical pairs of human-headed birds (sirens), a type attested at Gordion, where two cauldrons with four human-head bird attachments were discovered inside the funeral chamber of Tumulus MM. Likewise, our understanding of the griffin cauldrons has to take into consideration their coexistence and mutual interaction or symbiosis with cauldrons decorated only with bull’s-head protomes, a prevalent type in many regions of the Near East. These are attested at Gordion and in Cyprus, but well-documented examples have been discovered at Olympia, Delphi, Samos, and a few other sanctuaries. The cumulative assessment of the role of all these artifacts as dynamic constituents of sanctuary environments leads to the corroboration of the Wunderkammer model proposed in chapter 1. Indeed, in the seventh century many sanctuaries were permeated by an aesthetic of wonder, astonishment, and rare experiences. Chapter 3 focuses on the manifold lives of griffin cauldrons in Italy and France. They are altogether absent in Sicily and very scarce in the colonial world of southern Italy. Farther north, one cauldron seems to have been part of the material equipment of the so-called santuario greco at Gravisca, the port of Tarquinia. Elsewhere, griffin cauldrons were sought after by the princely elites who aggressively espoused the materiality and visuality of the orientalizing phenomenon in Latium and Etruria. The material assemblages of deposition, such as the Barberini and Bernardini tombs at Praeneste, suggest functions staged in performative environments akin in material character to the Wunderkammer model proposed in chapter 1 for sanctuaries like the Samian Heraion, Delphi, and Olympia. Indeed, the concerted effect of sumptuous material remains in these contexts substantiates

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the now-lost sensory dynamics of many early sanctuaries. An important dimension of the Italic life of the griffin cauldron is its emulation in materials and contexts of a lower social rank. Chapter 3 follows this phenomenon in detail as well. The available evidence is fascinating in that it throws light on local understandings of the griffin cauldron and its constituent parts. These understandings involve the active co-option of the griffin-protome motif, whose Italic career involved its transformation into a visual signifier in a variety of materials and functions. Part I makes possible a panoptic overview of griffin cauldrons even as it highlights the variability of their occurrences in space and time. The organization of the material allows macroscopic and microscopic perspectives on uses, associations, and valorizations of the griffin cauldron across the Mediterranean. Part II, entitled “Sources for the Lives of Griffin Cauldrons” (chapters 4 and 5), switches the focus of attention to two categories of evidence: texts and pictorial representations of griffin cauldrons. Chapter 4 is a thorough analysis of Herodotus’s unique testimony about the dedication of a monumental griffin cauldron by the Samian entrepreneur Kolaios at the Sanctuary of Hera at Samos (Hdt. 4.152). Herodotus wrote about two centuries after the event; his testimony is therefore by default fraught with difficulties. There is value, however, in it about Kolaios’s option to symbolically signal his lucrative venture by setting up a griffin cauldron. His monument, I argue, epitomizes a quasi-epic narrative conceived to place the Sanctuary of Hera and Kolaios’s venture right at the very center of a cosmic frame of heroic proportions. In Herodotus’s time the monument was treasured inside the Temple of Hera at Samos, a won-

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drous relic attesting no less the naval supremacy of Samos than the active commemorative role of monuments like it. Chapter 5 focuses on pictorial representations of griffin cauldrons. Surviving mostly on fine wares of the seventh century, these figurative media have been used in scholarship mainly for reconstructing the physical appearance of griffin cauldrons. I argue, however, that these are valuable sources as they allow insights into contemporary understandings, responses, and views on griffin cauldrons. I analyze them primarily as discursive enunciations on the physical and visual qualities of griffin cauldrons. In this corpus they are invariably portrayed as animated monsters in active dialogue with their physical environments. An immediate outcome of the analysis in chapters 1 through 5 is a surprising realization. The evidence for griffin cauldrons (mostly griffin protomes) suggests the popularity of the type in Greece and Italy for a good part of the seventh century. By contrast, as a category of material culture, griffin cauldrons seem to have been characterized by a very low degree of physical and cognitive accessibility. Low physical accessibility means that the use of and physical contact with griffin cauldrons were restricted to a very small number of people. Low cognitive accessibility implies that very few people were in command of the savoir faire in the vicinity of griffin cauldrons—understood here as the concerted series of mental and bodily movements that govern interaction with visual and material culture. Part III, entitled “Responses to the Uncanny,” which includes chapter 6, attempts to explain this phenomenon by situating the griffin cauldron in the ambient visuality (culture of seeing and being seen) of the seventh century. Assuming, as scholarship has

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done so far, that the new modes of orientalizing were established without rupture, resistance, or negotiation is naïve and ultimately results in wrong understandings. Early Greek textual sources make it clear that in the wake of the long tradition of the Geometric figurative mode, the introduction of lifelike representation was met by its viewers and users with unease, caution, suspicion, and outright fear. What happens when new media require new perceptual modes? What is at stake when viewers are unprepared to process new stimuli (styles, figurative modes, affective properties of visual culture) or when their existing modes of response are short-circuited and break down? A detailed analysis of the phenomenological dimensions of the challenge griffin cauldrons presented to their viewers discloses that their visual and physical nature necessitated a new set of cognitive operational instructions, a radically novel interactive software of sorts. New media theory and especially theoretical reflection on audiences’ responses to early film in the late nineteenth century CE offer insights regarding the complex emotions and attendant behaviors of vision generated by cauldrons perceived as monsters in the actuality of ritual practice. Both media challenged viewers to confront and negotiate the seemingly threatening illusionism of their visual effects: the aggressive thrust of griffin protomes into the actual space of the beholder is qualitatively akin to the assaulting motion of a train in film

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that threatens to violate the spectator’s physical space. In the latter case, the powerful effect of the moving image is predicated on what film critic Tom Gunning has dubbed “the aesthetic of attraction”: the moving image assaulted the senses of unprepared spectators who surrendered to fear and surprise even as they realized the artificiality of the new medium and became conscious of their role as engaged viewers. The aesthetic of attraction of early film allows insights into the formal, sensory, and affective properties of griffin cauldrons. The usual designation of griffin protomes as apotropaic devices, discussed above in this introduction, has occluded attention to their electrifying effect and to their programmatically designed ability to enchant and captivate the mind and the senses. Vacillating between fear and sensory attraction to the cauldrons, viewers would have gradually become conscious of their seeing as visual scrutiny disclosing the numerous material, technical, and formal qualities of the cauldrons and their attachments. A stupefied, wondrous response to these living artifacts morphed into curiosity and scopic delight generated by the viewer’s aesthetic discovery of the frightful object. Exclusive to the elites of both Italy and Greece, these novel modes of sensory interaction with affective objects were constitutive of a new visuality as well as of new narratives, subjectivities, and social distinctions.

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chap ter one

The Eastern Mediterranean, Ionia, and the Aegean he study of the dense relational web that made griffin cauldrons meaningful necessitates close attention to the various contexts of their use in antiquity.¹ To begin with, a basic differentiation between what Michael Schiffer has termed “systemic” and “archaeological” contexts turns out to be useful for what I undertake to do in this chapter. On the one hand, Schiffer defines systemic context as pertaining to artifacts “when they are participating in a behavioral system.”² By this definition he seeks an understanding of the cultural use of an artifact interactively embedded in human life. Artifacts may have functional and symbolic uses as they fulfi ll a wide spectrum of intentions, needs, and roles. Regarding griffin cauldrons, a very basic differentiation be-

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tween a religious (Greece) and a funereal (Italy) use is possible given the present state of evidence. However, this distinction does not explain precisely how the griffin cauldrons participated in the respective religious or funereal contexts in which they have been found. An initial step, therefore, is to turn to the archaeological context, defined by Schiffer as the natural environment with which they interacted upon retrieval from the ground during archaeological excavations.³ In Greece the archaeological context of these artifacts is valuable, but it has limited potential for illuminating the behavioral system in which the griffin cauldrons belonged. A reason for this is that very often there is a large gap between an artifact’s cultural use and the circumstances surrounding it upon retrieval.

griffin c auldr ons in conte x t s of life and de ath

Another problem compounding the difficulties in applying a contextual approach to the study of griffin cauldrons or their parts is that the assemblages or groups of their discovery have never been published in detail. These artifacts have largely been published in isolation from the environment that constituted their last significant context. In general, only very selectively have scholars turned to the context of griffin cauldrons, mainly for addressing important issues of chronology and stylistic change. However, the archaeological context yields valuable information for reconstructing aspects of the life of artifacts even when these exceed their systemic functions. A good example is one cauldron from Olympia, B 4224 (fig. 2.12). This cauldron was recovered from a layer of the late fifth century that contained items destined for recycling of their materials. The curation and overall management of the material assets of sanctuaries is definitely part of a behavioral system even when it overlaps only very partially with the original intended function of various types of artifacts. Likewise, in Italy the funereal context of the griffin cauldrons is ascertained but lacks detail, given that most cauldrons are products of unsystematic excavations. Moreover, although the funereal context is ascertained in Italy (Praeneste, Vetulonia), the available evidence enables only partial insights into the behavioral system around the cauldrons. We learn about their last use, which is significant, of course; but still one wonders about the predepositional interactive life of these objects. Before their deposition in a funerary assemblage, griffin cauldrons may have belonged to a variety of behavioral systems that indirectly informed their selection, along with other artifacts, as funerary apparatus. It is equally possi-

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ble that even after their placement in a burial, griffin cauldrons continued to exercise agency as objects remembered, discussed, talked about, or even translated in a variety of media (for example, the images discussed below in chapter 5 or imitations of cauldrons in clay). The available evidence does not enable even the most preliminary sketching of the cultural biography of any single surviving cauldron. The evidence discussed in this book, however, makes possible the delineation of the cultural phenomena in which griffin cauldrons participated. As it turns out, although it does not answer all questions arising from these enigmatic objects, close attention to their archaeological or systemic context produces understandings that shed light on various aspects of the lives of griffin cauldrons in antiquity. This having been said, I want to stress that attention to context is not methodologically unproblematic as an analytical process.⁴ This is not only the result of the problematic nature of the deposits from which these artifacts have been retrieved. In Greece all cauldrons have been fragmented, either by chance or intentionally; as a result, almost always archaeology provides the context of individual parts (mostly protomes) and not of entire cauldrons. In order to reconstruct the systemic context of the cauldrons, one has to extrapolate understandings from other sources that preserve evidence for understanding the lives of these objects in the seventh century. This chapter and the two that follow it unfold as a survey of contextual information for cauldrons or parts of cauldrons (mostly protomes) that have been retrieved in controlled excavations. The discussion proceeds directionally from east to west, starting from the easternmost documented appearance of griffin cauldrons in the Mediterranean. Then my

the e a s tern mediterr ane an, ionia , and the aege an

analysis turns northward along the eastern Aegean before moving west in order to take into account the instantiations of griffin cauldrons in mainland Greece, Italy, and France. This procedure is merely an arbitrary way for organizing and presenting the evidence. Although the griffin cauldron has to do with ideas originating in the Near East and its earliest attestations have to do with the eastern Aegean (Samos), there is evidence that in reality the production, circulation, and consumption of this type of material culture were involved in intricate networks of communication that defy scholarly emphasis on only one direction.

idiosyncratic griffin cauldron in the entire corpus of this book. There is scholarly consensus that it was produced in Cyprus.⁹ Nothing like this had been discovered in Cyprus or the Near East before, and to this day this extraordinary find remains unparalleled in this area. Instead, the type is amply attested only in areas west of Cyprus. The Salamis cauldron was used around 700 for the elaborate funeral of a royal, perhaps an early king of Salamis who found inspiration for staging his funeral in pompous ceremonial practices paralleled elsewhere in the orientalizing Mediterranean of his time.¹⁰ Although the funereal chamber had been looted

egy p t : nor t h s aq qa r a In 1970 CE a badly preserved cast-griffin protome was discovered along with a minuscule situla in a cache just to the east of the main temple, in the area of the sacred animal necropolis.⁵ This find is important, as the griffin protome is unparalleled in Egypt or the Levant. It could have belonged to a cauldron imported to Egypt centuries before its burial in the third or fourth century.⁶ An alternative hypothesis is that the protome arrived alone, perhaps as scrap metal. The rigid form of the neck approximates it to Ulrich Gehrig’s earliest category of cast protomes found at the Heraion of Samos.⁷

c y prus: s a l a mis, t omb 79 In 1966 CE, excavations at the Royal Cemetery of ancient Salamis brought to light an impressive bronze cauldron equipped with eight griffin protomes and four bifacial human-headed birds (fig. 1.2).⁸ This artifact is by far the most

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fig. 1.2. Cyprus, Salamis, Royal Cemetery, T 79: Cauldron no. 202 (Cyprus Museum). Photo: Bruce White. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum, New York City.

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in antiquity, the cauldron and the finds associated with it (chariots, carts, spits, ivory furniture, pottery) form a well-excavated and welldocumented assemblage that allows insights on the last use of this intricate item and perhaps also on its predepositional career as a uniquely sumptuous artifact. The griffin cauldron was used in the first of two burials that excavator Vassos Karageorghis was able to distinguish stratigraphically in the dromos (walkway) of Tomb 79. When discovered, it stood on an intricate iron stand (fig. 1.2) against the north wall of the propylaion, the transitory recessed area immediately in front of the entrance to the tomb. It was not alone, as next to it the excavation brought to light a smaller cauldron with diametrically set inward-looking bull’s-head attachments (in groups of three) over plaques with frontal Hathoric heads topped with winged sun disks.¹¹ It is unknown whether the two cauldrons had been deposited in this location immediately after the conclusion of the first burial. Karageorghis has solid grounds for claiming that the second burial took place not long after the first. He reports throughout that the dromos and its contents belonging to the first burial had been largely disturbed or rearranged on the occasion of the ceremony for the second burial. The griffin cauldron was found containing a large number of ceramic vases belonging just to a few types—these are remnants of the funereal feast that took place during the first burial.¹² According to Karageorghis, “these were placed inside at the second burial.”¹³ Despite the disturbances caused by the second burial, there is no doubt that the unique griffin cauldron was used to contain foodstuffs or liquids during the funereal feast of the first burial. Associated with this feast is an impressively large number of clay vessels

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from the dromos, such as amphoras for storage or tableware. The quantity of this utilitarian pottery suggests that the funeral was a grand event, perhaps communal in character.¹⁴ During this event the extraordinary material and visual assemblage from the dromos of Tomb 79 was used to create a memorable, multisensory spectacle without precedent on the island of Cyprus. As a container and source of shared foodstuffs or beverages, the griffin cauldron was a performative focus, an interactive arena that made manifest the ruling dynasty’s capacity to master and control vital resources for the survival of the community as well as materials, technologies, styles, and, not least, the arcane symbolic language of its abstruse iconography. In many respects the Salamis cauldron had no precedents in Cyprus, and to this day it seems to have had no following on the island either. In recent years, scholars have pointed out the role of the exquisite material assemblage of Tomb 79 as a powerful ideological tool.¹⁵ However, much less attention has been lavished on the individual instruments of this symphonic ensemble. Their frequencies and tunes are still inscribed in their materiality, the close analysis of which discloses no less about the strategies and intentionality underlying them than it does about the status of the visual and the material in their immediate social context. Marian Feldman, for example, has convincingly shown that the pieces of ivory furniture retrieved from Tomb 79 are technically and stylistically disparate and therefore assembled from recycled parts.¹⁶ She suggests that this was the case because the Salaminian ruling elites “resided on the margins of the Assyrian Empire, but they were not incorporated to the extent that they would receive loyalty rewards [from the Assyrian kings], as provincial officials at places like

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Arslan Tash did.”¹⁷ Likewise, Feldman holds that the Salamis cauldron was an assemblage of disparate component parts, with the cauldron and the hammered human-headed birds forming a coherent original unit to which the griffin protomes were added at a later stage as an experimental afterthought. There are two main reasons for disagreement with this view. First, the composition of the alloy used for the hollow-cast griffin protomes is identical with that used for the cast crests of the humanheaded bird attachments. There is no technical indication that these crests were inserted at a later stage.¹⁸ Second, the cast-griffin protomes are riveted onto the wings of the humanheaded birds, indeed creating the impression that they were not part of an original coherent design. The wings have carefully rendered embossed and incised feathers, which, however, do not continue underneath the protomes, where a circular area is reserved for them. It is therefore clear that the wings were finished leaving the area of the protomes’ attachment free of decoration.¹⁹ There is no doubt that the wings were manufactured with griffin protomes in mind and that the cauldron, as we have it, was the result of an integral design and manufacture process. Compared with the stereotypical forms of human-headed birds and griffin protomes found elsewhere in the contemporary Mediterranean, this cauldron seems today awkwardly out of the ordinary.²⁰ Its globular body is uniquely composed of two hammered sheets of bronze, one inside the other. These were joined by six groups of technically elaborate rivets and a capping band of cast bronze soldered on top of the rim. As the conservation team in Mainz remarked, this feature required remarkable technical skills in the process of casting the sheets, hammering them into a

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globular form, and fastening them together.²¹ The emphasis on mechanical strength may be explained in part by the need to reinforce its structure for the accommodation of its heavy figurative apparatus of no less than four birds and eight cast-griffin protomes (the cauldron had no handles). Four human-headed birds of similar type appear on two technically exquisite cauldrons deposited in the funerary chamber under the great Tumulus MM at Gordion (now dated ca. 740).²² These are solid-cast and face only inward. Although the dimensions of the Gordion cauldrons are only slightly smaller than those of the Salamis cauldron, the latter’s human-headed birds are hammered on a strikingly larger scale that emphasizes threedimensional volume.²³ Their dimensions are never found among the solid-cast humanheaded birds (sirens) attached to bronze cauldrons found in Anatolia, Greece, or Italy. Moreover, the motif of the human-headed bird departs dramatically from the iconographically standardized one in orientalizing cauldrons or their remnants from eastern Turkey, Gordion, Greece, and Italy (figs 2.9, 2.12, 2.14, 3.6, 3.7).²⁴ These usually combine the bust, head, and arms of a human figure, male or female, sporting shoulder-length hair, with a bird’s outspread wings (arms resting on top of the upper surface of the wings) and tail. Moreover, in most cases the design of their back side involves the semicircle of the Near Eastern winged solar motif. The Salamis creatures are birds in all but their bifacial heads—this trait is paralleled in one cauldron at Delphi, one at Olympia, and one in Vetulonia (fig. 3.7). And their wings are impressively spread out to cover a much larger area than what is covered by the human-headed birds (sirens) of cauldrons outside Cyprus.

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Equally out of the ordinary are the griffin protomes, all eight of which are hollowcast and riveted onto the wings of the human-headed birds (one on each side). This positioning is clearly homologous to that of protomes in the standard Aegean series of griffin cauldrons. With an average height of 19.5 centimeters, these are considerably smaller than the human-headed birds, thus inverting the standard ratio of griffin protomes to human-headed birds in the Aegean group of griffin cauldrons. Their number is not extraordinary, as cauldrons with eight griffins are attested in Olympia.²⁵ Their constituent elements are definitely inspired by Aegean models, but here the interpretation has deprived these monsters of the characteristic ferocity of specimens found in Greece and Italy. The lack of ferocity is particularly evident in their flat eyes, which have been unimaginatively delineated through incision, so that they are deprived of sight.²⁶ Moreover, the unparalleled rendering of the bulging or sack of the neck as a flat collar ending in flat ears and the flaccid rendering of the tubular neck of the creature suggest that their master has visualized the Aegean model as a caricature. In the Aegean, the sack is always a fleshy and muscular fold under the head, whereas the neck almost always imparts a darting energy to the creature. All these departures from the Aegean prototypes are striking. The Salamis cauldron is a very unorthodox rendition of a radically innovative type that was increasingly popular in the Aegean and Italy from about 700 onward. Its technical virtuosity is evident in the rendering of the cauldron’s body as well as in the use of the hollow-cast technique for the protomes and the masterful handling of the hammered technique for the human-headed birds. On the other hand, its figurative elements seem idio-

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syncratic or simply misunderstood when compared with the standard series elsewhere. This is in part the result of purposeful experimentation, but scholars have dealt with this idiosyncrasy by labeling the artifact as provincial or second-rate.²⁷ I argue that its technical sophistication points to a more complex set of circumstances around its conception and creation. The cauldron’s eccentricity was either deliberate or the result of a poorly informed Cypriot interpretatio. If deliberate, it was meant to shock and impress those in the patron’s close circle who would have been familiar, either by hearsay or as witnesses, with the series current in the Aegean. This type of motivation would explain the expansionist aesthetic at work in the Salamis cauldron, namely its exaggeration of scale, of the number of griffins, and of the size of the human-headed birds. This expansionist aesthetic seems to pervade all aspects of the surviving material assemblage of Tomb 79. I am more inclined to think, however, that the nouveau riche owner of Salamis Tomb 79 relied on unusually highly skilled craftsmen who had not themselves, however, witnessed at close quarters the model they tried to reproduce. Since the Late Bronze Age, the availability of copper on Cyprus had gone hand in hand with high technological expertise.²⁸ Command over these resources was highly flaunted in the use and display of highly complex and demanding artifacts such as the griffin cauldron and the rest of the metallic apparatus from Tomb 79. On the other hand, it is a fact that no Aegean griffin cauldron was imported to Cyprus in the eighth or the seventh century. This suggests that around 700 the Salaminian and other Cypriot elites remained outside the networks of circulation, exchange, and transfer that would have secured

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access to prestigious griffin cauldrons from the Aegean. The materiality of the cauldron itself also precludes that a traveling artisan would have lent his expertise on this Salaminian project. In the face of this lack of accessibility, the Salaminian patron of this cauldron decided to master local resources (for example, a local master or workshop) in order to create at home what he could not procure for himself otherwise. The fame of the new type of cauldron would have reached Cyprus through hearsay, or it may be that the patron himself would have had the exclusive privilege of a rare sensory experience of an impressive orientalizing cauldron and the dro¯mena around it somewhere in the Aegean, perhaps at Olympia or Samos. However this may have been, I suggest that the commission was based on an oral description of an impressive model by an individual, perhaps the owner of the tomb himself, a member of his family, or a visitor from the Aegean. Oral transmission would explain the discrepancy between this unique cauldron and the models that inspired it.²⁹ In support of this suggestion, I submit the following two considerations. First, from the late eighth century on, orientalizing cauldrons with griffin protomes (sometimes also with lion protomes and human-headed birds) became popular in the Aegean because of the radical novelty of their affective qualities such as their lifelikeness and the capacity to visually capture the aggressiveness of griffins and lions. My presumption is that a skillful artisan would have capitalized precisely on these qualities, even if these had been orally passed on to him. However, it seems that the peculiar effect of the Aegean cauldrons was of no interest in this particular case. This may be explained in view of the overall tenor of how Cyprus received and

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reproduced prestigious materials and forms in this period. As Sarah Janes has remarked in her synthetic analysis of materials from the Royal Cemetery in Salamis, verisimilitude in emulation was never really a goal in Cyprus. It is worth quoting here her conclusions in full: “The Cypriot imitation found in the burials at Salamis . . . merely took inspiration from these foreign forms; they were not exact copies. The ivories and inlaid furniture, for example, were often decorated with non-sensical hieroglyphics; their value lay in the associations inspired by the object, not in the faithful representation of an original form and meaning.”³⁰ Janes’s understanding also holds true for the Salamis cauldron, which seems to advertise connections with fascinating developments west of Cyprus. Second, as chapter 2 of this book makes clear, there is growing evidence that in the Aegean, griffin cauldrons were exclusive only to certain networks of circulation and specific environments of consumption. For example, they are unattested on Crete, an island embedded in a complex web of manifold east–west or north–south interactions during the eighth and seventh centuries.³¹ There is archaeological evidence, however, that on Crete the category was known, desired, and reproduced in clay for settings approximating its uses in Cyprus and Italy. Funereal assemblages in Afrati (ancient Arkades), for example, have yielded ceramic renditions of the type.³² These significantly depart from the metallic prototypes in ways similar to those examined above about the Salamis cauldron. For example, the griffin in a well-known example from Arkades is rendered as a bird with outspread wings, whereas the head features a rather tame quasiaquiline beak that, unlike those of the expressive Aegean bronze protomes, seems mute.³³

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For this reason, I suggest that the Cretan recreations were based on indirect transmission of information about the looks and effect of the bronze originals. In this case, the problem of desire and acquisition of an inaccessible type of artifact was dealt with through recourse to skeuomorphism. As in the case of the Salaminian cauldron, the motivation for this seemingly awkward phenomenon may have to do with material signaling of social status. As Georgia Nakou has put it, “the formal and sensuous characteristics of a more expensive or restricted material may be imitated in more accessible materials by groups aspiring to their hierarchical symbolism. . . . In hierarchically organized societies, skeuomorphic imitations of high-status objects may be seen as the expression of social mobility, or at least aspiration.”³⁴ Since the reign of Sargon II, the kingdoms of Cyprus had been paying tribute to the Assyrian empire.³⁵ Recent scholarship, however, has stressed that Assyrian control on the island was nominal, leaving the island’s elites free to enjoy some autonomy in economic policy, interconnections, and trade.³⁶ The potentates of Salamis, perhaps a newly reinvigorated dynasty eager to assert itself both on and outside the island, employed material culture in order to exalt their prestige while showing off their political ties and claims to legitimacy. Their strategy of legitimation involved their use of models of high-elite behavior within the Assyrian empire—it surely worked well, even if certain items of material culture included, as Marian Feldman argues, recycled luxuries such as the ivory furniture from the first burial of Tomb 79. At the same time, it seems that the owners of Tomb 79 were also looking west in order to signal to Assyria or its Levantine dominions the merits of their position and the importance of the island.³⁷ The 24

commission of a most extraordinary westward-looking artifact such as the griffin cauldron may point to the willingness of the ruling elites of Salamis to claim their connectedness within an expanded arena of interaction, one that definitely included the Aegean and the worlds beyond. The cauldron explicitly advertises easy access to resources (e.g., copper), techniques, and the new ideas of a dynamically expanding world. That the type had no following in Cyprus may be the result of local resistance to it and what it stood for. Local resistance may be the result of its esoteric iconography, the primary source of the mystique and power of this artifact. Or it may be that in the seventh century Cyprus remained outside networks of circulation and transfer that secured physical and cognitive access to griffin cauldrons.

t he in t er fac e be t w een lyc i a a nd phr ygi a : b ay ın dır a t el m a l ı pl a in, t u m u lus c (ne a r l o c a l i t y g ök pına r) In the seventh century, griffin cauldrons were known in important Greek sanctuaries of the western coast of Asia Minor, such as Miletos and Ephesos, the evidence from which is discussed below. Farther south and east there is only one documented specimen from the northern region of the upland plain of Elmalı (perhaps ancient Milyas), near the village of Bayındır. As the excavations in the mid-1980s CE proved, this area lay within the southernmost reaches of Phrygian cultural expansion. This is evident in a group of five low-lying tumuli consisting of round heaps of rubble, the most important of which are Tumuli C and D.³⁸ The Phrygian affinities are evident in the type of architecture and burials within these

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tumuli (e.g., wooden burial chambers) and in the nature of the exquisite portable furnishings. Tumulus C yielded numerous vessels made of silver and bronze, and among these sumptuous finds, three hammered-griffin protomes stand out. They belonged to one cauldron, an import from the eastern Aegean that was destroyed during the cremation that concluded the funereal ceremony before the construction of the tumulus. The finds from Tumulus C are still unpublished, but preliminary reports mention the other sumptuous items recovered from the same context. In a shallow trench near the cremated body there were two iron rod–tripod stands, forty-six arrow points, two spear points, a dagger with golden studs on the handle, remnants of a horse harness, omphalos bowls of Phrygian type, two standards with numerous phallic protrusions, a few pieces of gold and silver jewelry, and 218 grams of melted precious metals (gold, silver, electrum).³⁹ In this context, the griffin cauldron was an extraordinary artifact because of its uniqueness, its provenience, and its alien figural apparatus. It is the only attested specimen retrieved from a non-Greek context in Asia Minor. The protomes are very badly preserved, but enough has survived to ascertain the type and early date. The griffins parallel specimens of the hammered category retrieved at Olympia, Samos, and even Praeneste.⁴⁰ They date very early in the seventh century (700–690). It is therefore remarkable that this cauldron ended up in the highlands north of Lycia, an area distant from the welltrafficked western Anatolian coast. Its acquisition must have been the result of very unusual circumstances, perhaps its owner’s activity on the west coast or a special commission. It may have ended up in Bayındır as a gift, but its context of exquisite Phrygian luxus shows rather that the owner was eager to catch up with the 25

newest and most extravagant material culture available. No less than that of Tumulus D, the assemblage of C bespeaks the eagerness of the elite family associated with Tumulus C to be ahead in the elite race for conspicuous acquisition and display of extraordinary objects. The bronze griffin cauldron would have been prized for its distant origin—indeed, knowledge of its provenience would have added to its symbolic value. No less important in this area of sparse visuality were the unparalleled affective properties of the griffins, the largest objects and those most lifelike in appearance up to this time in Bayındır. This quest for the shockingly new is matched by the equally sumptuous tomb burials at Praeneste, Vetulonia, and Cyprus. The excavation of the burial underneath Tumulus C yielded remains, mostly carbonized, of a feast that preceded the final conflagration. These included burnt animal bones and carbonized figs, grapes, and almonds. It is very possible that the griffin cauldron, iron stand, and omphalos bowls were used in the funereal feast. Perhaps these objects had been used in the same way during the lifetime of the illustrious deceased individual under Tumulus C.

r hode s: l ind os A very small number of orientalizing cauldrons have been documented so far in Rhodes. The Sanctuary of Athena at Lindos yielded four hammered griffins, but their publication leaves unclear whether they come from the same cauldron or not.⁴¹ No photographs have been published, and the findspot and other contextual circumstances are unspecified. Christian Blinkenberg describes them as very corroded and fragmentary. His descrip-

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fig. 1.3. Rhodes, Kameiros: Bronze griffin protome. Rhodes Archaeological Museum, inv. 14714. Photo: Bruce White. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum, New York. With permission of the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Dodecanese.

tion would approximate them to those found at Elmalı-Bayındır or the Tomb Barberini at Praeneste.⁴² The same sanctuary yielded one uncanonical human-headed attachment (siren), but it is unknown whether it originally belonged to a siren-only cauldron or to a one equipped with griffins.⁴³

r hode s: k a meiros At Kameiros, two griffin protomes belonging to two different cauldrons were retrieved from an extensive unstratified deposit in the vicinity of Temple A.⁴⁴ The contents of this deposit

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were published together with finds from other findspots as “stipe votiva” (votive deposit), but Jacopi did not enter the specific location of these discoveries since the deposit was disturbed.⁴⁵ The smaller one (H. 12.8 cm) is not very well preserved. The larger one (Rhodes Arch. Museum inv. 14714, H. 28 cm) is a very finely finished hollow-cast specimen with a snakelike, S-shaped neck and (now-lost) composite inset eyes (fig. 1.3). These were crafted with extra care and attention to detail. They were almond shaped and large, with thin, welldrafted lids. Their shallow sockets preserve a deep cavity for the pupil of the eye of the creature. The griffins of this cauldron must have had a particularly animated, penetrating gaze. There is no specimen in the entire corpus that preserves anything that would help visualize it. In addition to the size of this sumptuous cauldron (approximately 60–70 cm tall), the forceful attitude of the griffins must have imparted to this cauldron an extraordinary aura. Gehrig holds that this and its simpler companion were products of a Rhodian workshop and approximates the larger one on technical and stylistic grounds to one protome in Olympia.⁴⁶ A qualitatively similar if not even finer cast protome in the British Museum (inv. 1870.3–15.16), once in the Biliotti Collection, is sometimes reported to be from Kameiros, but this artifact is essentially unprovenienced.⁴⁷ The same holds true for a minuscule cast protome (9.5 cm) in the British Museum since 1856 CE, a gift by Lord Stratcliffe de Redford (inv. 1856.8–26.503), reportedly from Kalymnos.⁴⁸ In the last two hundred years the Dodecanese have been ravaged by unsystematic or illegal excavations; it is therefore possible that remnants of cauldrons from this area left Rhodes and the other islands unre-

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corded. However, even if this is true, it seems that griffin cauldrons were rare in this area. One wishes there were more information on the hammered fragments from Lindos. If they are indeed specimens of Gehrig’s Barberini workshop, as Blinkenberg’s description suggests, their presence in Lindos may have been the result of the same processes of distribution that brought a cauldron of this type to ElmalıBayındır, in the nearby highlands of northern Lycia across the water. The two cauldrons from Kameiros may have been produced locally, as Gehrig suggests. I am inclined to view them as ritual equipment rather than dedicatory objects; otherwise one would have to explain why this sumptuous type did not catch on in wealthy Rhodes.⁴⁹ They would have been among the earliest artifacts of monumental and outstanding character in the developing sanctuary. At any rate, unless the accidental survival has completely distorted the original picture, the Dodecanese seem to have been unaffected by their relative proximity to Samos, a prolific center of manufacture and exportation of griffin cauldrons in the seventh century. It is possible that Samos was discriminating as to how and where the griffin cauldrons produced there were exported. Or it is equally possible that the local mechanisms in charge of acquiring materials for the sanctuary were equally discriminating as well. It is interesting that the same sparsity of griffincauldron imports is documented in Chios (discussion below), whereas remnants of griffin cauldrons have yet to be discovered in Lesbos, an island as famous as Chios and Samos for the wealth of its oligarchs during the seventh century. This is in contrast with the situation documented across the water, where griffin cauldrons are well documented in Ephesos and Miletos. Outside these vibrant centers,

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however, griffin cauldrons have been documented only at Klaros.

s a mos, her a ion: a se v en t hc en t u r y w u nder k a mmer In 2004 Ulrich Gehrig’s publication of Samos volume 9, Die Greifenprotomen aus dem Heraion von Samos, demonstrated in unprecedented amplitude and exactness the leading role Samos played in the production and distribution of griffin cauldrons in Anatolia, Greece, and the western Mediterranean.⁵⁰ The German excavations at the Heraion discovered 295 protomes from (more or less) 295 different cauldrons that according to Gehrig range in date from roughly 700–690 to 620. Gehrig’s dating is based on the stratigraphic associations (“Fundgruppe”) of a good number of protomes, on his assumptions about the probable lifetime of their parent cauldrons inside the sanctuary, and, not least, on his understanding of the technical and stylistic evolution of specific workshops or hands.⁵¹ Paying equal emphasis to technical and stylistic elements, Gehrig has clearly shown that Samos was home to several workshops that catered to the needs of the sanctuary but also at times exported dynamically to other areas of Greece, Anatolia, and Italy. One may take issue with Gehrig’s conception of the methodological term “workshop” as well as with the premises underlying his designation of workshops, his attributions, and the implications of his classificatory scheme for understanding production and dissemination of artworks. Nevertheless, it is clear that throughout the seventh century Samos was a central node in a complex network of interactions that involved the griffin cauldrons’ makers and circulation. Samos, its de-

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pository practices at the Heraion, and its products decisively contributed to the reorientation of the visual culture of Early Archaic Greece and Early Archaic Italy. The Heraion may not have enjoyed the prestige of the great Panhellenic sanctuaries like Olympia, Delphi, or Delos. Its radiance, however, was comparable in many respects, not least in terms of its pan-Mediterranean interconnections as well as the quantity and quality of wealth deposited during the seventh century.⁵² Here too orientalizing cauldrons took pride of place, no matter whether we interpret them as dedicatory objects or not. It is therefore surprising that the artifactual record of cauldrons at Samos does not precisely match that of Olympia or Delphi, both rival sanctuaries with evidence for large numbers of orientalizing cauldrons.⁵³ The German excavations at Samos retrieved only minimal evidence pertaining to the important category of cauldrons equipped with either bull protomes or bull attachments, which are amply documented in both Olympia and Delphi.⁵⁴ Moreover, there is only one lion protome.⁵⁵ If this survival is not accidental, cauldrons with lion protomes must have been a rarity at Samos. This is surprising, given that lion protomes have been documented at Olympia, Praeneste, and Vetulonia, where they were used in the company of griffin protomes attributed to Samian workshops. Equally puzzling is the absence of humanheaded bird (siren) attachments, also documented at Olympia, Delphi, Athens (Akropolis), Ptoion, Delos, and Lindos. There is only one striking exception. Two identical attachments reproduce the type (fig. 1.4).⁵⁶ However, their iconographic and stylistic deviation from the canonical corpus compels serious consideration of two alternative explanations:

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either their maker was completely unfamiliar with the standard type, or he was familiar but unwilling to reproduce it. I am inclined toward the former possibility for three main reasons. First, although the figures are indeed conceived as human-headed bird attachments, they are so rendered that they would sit awkwardly on the rim of their parent vessel. That is, the outspread wings would have been placed well below the rim of the vessel. This contrasts sharply with all variants of the canonical corpus, as in all of them the upper edge of the outspread wings is flush with the rim of the cauldron (e.g., fig. 2.12).⁵⁷ Second, both figures lack the plastic rendering of human arms sitting on top of the wings. They also lack the standard loop for the suspension of a round handle, an indispensable element of the human-headed bird attachments. Third, the figures of this pair manifest striking stylistic similarities with certain aspects of seventh-century relief pithoi, such as those found at Xobourgo, on Tenos. The goggly round eyes,

fig. 1.4. Samos, Heraion: Bronze human-headed bird cauldron attachment. Vathy, Archaeological Museum A 01177 (DAI excavations, inv. B 1341). Photo: Gösta Hellner (D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-5824). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

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have stood out as alien in a sanctuary environment committed almost exclusively to the griffin- only type of cauldron for most of the seventh century. I am tempted to explain them as a consciously archaistic attempt to reproduce or at least approximate the effect of cauldrons with siren attachments long after these had gone out of use. If this was the case, the effect would have resonated only with viewers familiar with cauldrons equipped with siren attachments such as B 4224 at Olympia or the cauldron whose siren attachments ended up inside the favissa of Delphic Alos. The Heraion has yielded a small number of hammered protomes in states of preservation ranging from fully preserved to fragments of heads or necks, or individual components such as ears or head knobs.⁵⁹ The majority of these belonged to small presumably portable caul-

fig. 1.5. Samos, Heraion: Hammered-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum A 01220 (DAI excavations, inv. B 2520). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

the emphasis on the vertical accent of the face, and the avoidance of three-dimensionality suggest that the wax model for these solid-cast pieces was made by an artisan rooted in formal conventions very close to the relief decoration of the relief pithoi of the Cycladic-Boiotian group.⁵⁸ These observations suggest that this pair was an idiosyncratic experiment undertaken by a maker familiar with the canonical type perhaps only on the basis of hearsay. Whether they were mounted on a siren-only cauldron or on a griffin cauldron, they would

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fig. 1.6. Samos, Heraion: Hammered-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum A 01215 (DAI excavations, inv. B 1158). Photo: G. FittschenBadura (D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-1996-2670). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

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fig. 1.7. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum, A 00728 (DAI excavations, inv. B 2088). Photo: Elmar Gehnen (D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-1995-1051). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

fig. 1.8. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum, DAI excavations, inv. B 1473. Photo: Elmar Gehnen (D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-1995-1878). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

drons (figs. 1.5, 1.6), but by the second quarter of the seventh century hammered protomes of monumental dimensions adorned impressively large vessels.⁶⁰ For a while cauldrons with hammered protomes would have coexisted with griffin cauldrons that were equal in size (or even larger) and equipped with hollowcast protomes.⁶¹ Gehrig has good reasons to suggest that cauldrons with hollow-cast protomes started being produced more or less simultaneously with cauldrons equipped with hammered protomes—the former are clearly experimental in nature (fig. 1.7).⁶² Then early in the second quarter of the seventh century the latter gradually stopped being produced in

favor of the hollow-cast specimens (figs. 1.8, 1.9). The cast specimens kept being produced until the end of the series, dated by Gehrig to the beginning of the last quarter of the seventh century (figs. 1.10, 1.11). In sharp contrast to Delphi, Olympia, and Ptoion, the Samos excavations have not yielded any remains of walls or rims of cauldrons. The reasons for this are manifold. The original disposal of deaccessioned cauldrons may not have favored their preservation, and neither was the waterlogged environment of the Heraion conducive to the preservation of cauldron remnants. It also is possible that fragmentary cauldrons were recycled for their ma-

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fig. 1.9. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum A 00723 (DAI excavations, inv. B 440). Photo: Elmar Gehnen (D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-1995-0818). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

fig. 1.10. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum, A 00709 (DAI excavations, B 7). Photo: Elmar Gehnen (D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-1995-1057). © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria.

terial. We know that recycling of metal was a standard practice in antiquity.⁶³ (In chapter 2, I discuss straightforward evidence from Olympia about this practice.) Almost every surviving griffin protome retrieved at the Heraion, a sanctuary extensively excavated since 1910 CE, represents one cauldron.⁶⁴ Estimating that every cauldron was originally equipped with on average six protomes, we reckon that the surviving protomes represent only a small percentage of the number originally produced at Samos.⁶⁵ One cannot avoid the conclusion that numerous protomes retrieved during systematic excavations have survived not by accident but as a result of selective preservation, a

practice also documented at Olympia and Delphi.⁶⁶ What does seem to be largely accidental is the wide dispersal of the retrieved protomes in the excavated area of the sanctuary, undoubtedly a by-product of the intense building history of the sanctuary from the seventh century on. When documented, the contextual circumstances of discovery seem to have nothing or very little to do with the original setup of the griffin cauldrons inside the sacred space of the Heraion. The relevant information for approximately a third of protomes—that is, those discovered during the first expedition (1910–1914 CE), led by Theodore Wiegand— has perished. The documentation is much bet-

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zons such as destruction layers or wells and bothroi alongside datable materials (e.g., Corinthian pottery) that on a few occasions provide useful termini ante for the use or even the production of the protomes.⁶⁸ Within this pattern of accidental dispersal, one may very tentatively discern a few cases of deliberate deposition or patterns disclosing aspects of the life of protomes/cauldrons, a thorough analysis of which cannot be undertaken here. I mention, for example, the retrieval of protomes from layers underneath important structures within the sanctuary.⁶⁹ Likewise, the famous Altar of Hera (and its surrounding area) seems to have been an important landmark whose gravitational force attracted a remarkable concentration of discarded protomes.⁷⁰ Is this an indication that a number of griffin cauldrons were involved in the impressive sacrificial rituals at the Heraion? Griffin cauldrons at the Heraion and elsewhere are usually discussed as dedicatory objects (Weihgeschenke), a term that usually occludes the reasonable hypothesis of a multiplicity of practical functions (e.g., as containers of liquids or sacrificial meat) that would have coexisted with their more concepfig. 1.11. Samos, Heraion: Cast-bronze griffin tual capacities. The surviving protomes index protome. Vathy, Archaeological Museum, A 00756 (DAI excavations, B 1157). Photo: Elmar Gehnen a variegation of scales and qualities of caul(D-DAI-ATH-SAMOS-1995-0902). © Hellenic drons that may not necessarily correspond to Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate of the variable aspirations or status of dedicants. Antiquities of Samos and Ikaria. However this may be, the paucity of evidence available for reconstructing the interactive lives of the wondrous griffin cauldrons at ter regarding protomes retrieved during the the Heraion necessitates a multipronged anrecurrent excavation campaigns from 1925 to alytical process. First, it is imperative to dis1999 CE. Although the detailed stratigraphy of cuss the ambient space, the physical and mathe sanctuary has yet to be published in full, a terial environment in which the cauldrons picture emerges of widespread dispersal in al- existed during their floruit in the seventh cenmost every section of the excavated area.⁶⁷ Pro- tury. This step is important because sumptomes or fragments of protomes have been tuous artifacts always exist in a web of relaretrieved from a variety of stratigraphic horitionships that largely condition how they are

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experienced. Second, a concomitant strand of meaning inheres in those parts of the material environment that constitute its ambient visuality, the surrounding figurative or not figurative universe of shapes, figures, motifs, patterns, texture, colors, or other sensory elements with which artifacts are in conversation. It is precisely this context that determines their value in relation to each and every physical and material object constituting a backdrop for gauging their rarity, attractiveness, understandability, and visibility. Third, it is important to take into account the perceptual strategies of those visiting, using, and temporarily inhabiting the sanctuary space. By “perceptual strategies,” I define an apparatus, a sort of savoir faire, that comprises the learned interactive techniques of an observer, user, viewer, or handler of an artifact.⁷¹ Fourth, even if we can reconstitute artifacts and their properties in space and time along with the perceptual strategies of users and viewers, we also have to reflect on issues of cognitive and physical accessibility to the sanctuary or in areas inside the sanctuary: Who was allowed to make physical and visual contact with the wondrous cauldrons, how often, and under what circumstances? The catchall designation of them as “dedications” is based on only one testimony (Hdt. 4.152) about an extraordinary gesture that may well have been at variance with the customary practices involving cauldrons within the Samian sanctuary. In the following chapters, I explore in detail the problematic nature of explaining all the cauldrons as dedicatory objects, both at the Samian Heraion and elsewhere, while I also explore alternative interpretations. With the above considerations in mind, below I proceed to a tentative reconstruction of the sanctuary space during the Heraion’s seventh-century heyday. Readers should be

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warned that this is a heuristic exercise, which I undertake fully conscious of the fact that the evidence we have at hand is a fraction of the sanctuary’s seventh-century realities.

Space A twenty-first-century CE observer cognizant of the building history of the Heraion during the sixth century would have had a hard time appreciating the spatial effect (both internally and externally) of the Hekatompedos (hundred-foot-long, ca. 33-m) naos, one of the largest public buildings in the Aegean in the seventh century.⁷² The characterization “monumental” is usually reserved for the structurally problematic behemoths of the sixth century (the so-called Rhoikos temple of ca. 570 and the Temple of Hera built in the latter half of the sixth century, the so-called Polykrates temple). However, by seventh-century standards, the Hekatompedos was also monumental in size, effect, and aspirations. Archaeological evidence allows it to be reconstructed as a splendid, stone-built edifice for a powerful goddess whose cult became increasingly popular in the years after 700.⁷³ In both its reincarnations it featured a cella of about 33m × 5.5m (interior), originally with an axial colonnade of wooden posts (Hekatompedos I, 680–620s) that partly obstructed the view of the cult image. In Hekatompedos II (built 630/620) this colonnade was removed to create a unified oblong space framed by stone-built walls punctuated by rectangular pilasters. These arrangements would have invited visitors to linger and appreciate the interior and its contents.⁷⁴ To the east of it, the Altar of Hera, a centuries-old revered landmark in the sacred topography of the Heraion, was at a slight angle to the axis of

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the temple, presumably to accommodate the holy tree (lugos) of Hera.⁷⁵ This complex would have been an impressive performative focus surrounded by small rectangular edifices (naiskoi), either treasuries or, as Winfried Held has suggested, Kultbildschreine (shrines for cult images) for secondary divinities.⁷⁶ By the middle of the seventh century, Hera’s sanctuary had gradually accumulated a veritable treasure of variegated sumptuous materials, among which the griffin cauldrons took pride of place. For the first half of the seventh century Samos volume 9 documents the remains (mostly protomes) of approximately seventy cauldrons, which according to Ulrich Gehrig started appearing around 690, yet it is possible that the series had started even earlier (fig. 1.1).⁷⁷ This is an impressive number of cauldrons, even if we take into account that the number of active cauldrons would have fluctuated for various reasons, including destructions (for example, the inundation that destroyed the western part of the Hekatompedos at some point during the seventh century). As a result, the question arises as to where active cauldrons were stored. Where did these valuable artifacts live, and how? It is not unreasonable to assume that a few of them may have stood out in the open air or in rudimentary sheds that have left behind minimal traces, or none.⁷⁸ However, throughout antiquity the sumptuous possessions of divinities tended to congregate as close as possible to the divinity. No matter what labels we put to them today, they were meant to be valuable agalmata either offered by individuals wishing to establish reciprocal ties with a divine person (e.g., the dedications of the Lydian kings at Delphi) or collected by sanctuary authorities on behalf of the divinity.⁷⁹ At the Heraion, the goddess’s famed material splendor must have been un-

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der her constant surveillance inside her abode (naos), entangled in a relationship of reciprocal empowerment: under the radiant gaze of coweyed Hera, her riches were endowed with extraordinary power, with actual and symbolic value that could not be calculated in human terms. But the inverse was also an effect of the symbiosis between Hera and her constantly accumulated treasures inside her Hekatompedos. Hera’s might was inextricable from and depended on her valuable possessions. Emanating from her divine being, her sacredness spilled over and merged with them. It would not be an exaggeration to state that each artifact deposited at the sanctuary came to possess a significant dimension of Hera’s divine personality. It also is useful to think of her griffin cauldrons as Hera’s palpable net worth. Like a typical Near Eastern potentate, the Samian goddess hoarded her wealth also in the form of these valuable vessels. As elsewhere in Greece and in Italy, in the ancient Near East of the first half of the first millennium bronze cauldrons were highly esteemed because of the value of their material, the costliness of their manufacture, and their functions in ceremonial or ritual settings. Potentates hoarded them in large numbers along with other valuable materials. A hoard of metal vessels found in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, Room AB, included twelve bronze cauldrons.⁸⁰ Cauldrons feature prominently among the items of tribute Assurnasirpal II received from the nobles of Zamani when he campaigned to suppress a revolt.⁸¹ Likewise, cauldrons are listed among other items of tribute sent to the same emperor upon his subjugation of cities at Nairi.⁸² A characteristic example of their value is the documentation, both visual and epigraphic, of the sack and pillaging of Musasir in Urartu by

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fig. 1.12. Samos, Heraion: Tentative graphic reconstruction of Hekatompedos I as a Wunderkammer. Drawing: Yannis Nakas.

the forces of the Assyrian emperor Sargon II.⁸³ Two large cauldrons on stands are featured prominently in front of the façade of the pillaged Temple of Haldi in the now-lost relief that depicted the sack not so much as an exercise in violence but as outright looting. They were essential cultic equipment whose function and value would have been known to contemporary viewers of this relief. Large numbers of bronze vessels of all sizes are listed in Sargon’s detailed account of the wealth pillaged from the temple. This boastful document, addressed to Ashur himself, specially singles out “one large cauldron the capacity of which is eighty measures of water . . . used by the kings of Urartu who filled it up with li-

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bation wine in order to make sacrifices for Haldi.”⁸⁴ An impressive number of Hera’s griffin cauldrons would have been set up in the heavily packed space of the oblong temple, each and every one of them vying for the worshipper’s attention and scrutiny (fig. 1.12). Perhaps they would have been arranged in calculated patterns of ascendance of scale and visual effect that would have punctuated one’s procession toward the goddess whose statue base was found in place at the west end, partly in the axis of the central colonnade of the first phase (Hekatompedos I).⁸⁵ Either the griffin cauldrons must have stood in the space of the intercolumniations of the axial colon-

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nade (Hekatompedos I), or else they crowded the middle, at any rate in an unevenly lit space that received natural light only from the eastern entrance of the temple, an opening with two or three wooden posts.⁸⁶ The goddess stood in the darkest corner of the temple, in a space artificially lit only on certain occasions (fig. 1.12). Otherwise, we have to imagine some light reaching the statue only early in the morning hours. On a few days every year the space would have been set ablaze by the rising sun and the multiplier effect of its rays infinitely reflected on the shiny surfaces of the cauldrons and other valuable artifacts made of other metals.⁸⁷ These cauldrons would have been stacked one inside another, but there were numerous exceptions. The excavations have produced evidence for supports made of stone or, most important, in the form of rodtripod stands, which survive in extremely fragmentary condition but are sufficiently understood in archaeological terms.⁸⁸ These technically and visually complex rodtripod stands—a few of them as much as two meters tall—were quintessential components of the staging of cauldrons, not simply showy pieces of a utilitarian nature. Their figurative apparatus quotes the monstrous as redundantly as the cauldrons that stood on them, and to the same effect: for those allowed to enter the private material universe of the goddess, the figured stand blended with the cauldron on top of it, creating the impression of a multiheaded bronze monster like the Skylla in the Odyssey or the sinewy Gorgons on the famous amphora at Eleusis (figs. 1.13, 1.14).⁸⁹ The monster has naturalistically rendered lion feet, full of the propulsive energy of a predator ready to jump on its prey—in the seventh century the visual metaphor would have been viscerally felt by viewers unaccustomed to both

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wild cats and their three-dimensional representations.⁹⁰ No less unsettling was the structural and visual apparatus above the lion feet. Above them the rods of the tripod stand, inverted bows between thin vertical supports made of iron until about 650, featured numerous minuscule griffin protomes of the same format and attitude as the protomes of cauldrons.⁹¹ Gehrig has shown that these minuscule protomes were products of the same workshops that manufactured the cauldron protomes.⁹² The excavations have also brought to light minuscule snake protomes that at least on some stands would have kept company with the minuscule griffin protomes.⁹³ The monster’s body (or head?) was the cauldron itself,

fig. 1.13. Graphic reconstruction of griffin cauldron on rod-tripod stand. (Furtwängler 1890: pl. 49c.)

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to visual scrutiny and ultimately to extreme wonderment and delight. Their overall effect was premised on the concrescence of the monstrous experienced in the contiguous presence of divinity.

Visuality: Relational Nexus The interior space of the temple was an otherworldly piece of heaven on earth, the result of the careful and deliberate curatorship of the cumulative accretion of marvelous objects and effects. By “otherworldly piece of heaven on earth” I think of a sacred space constituted on a principle of total inversion of every thing pertaining to the life of the mortal devotees of the goddess. All spatial aspects of Hera’s Hekatompedos naos were materialized on the premise of rendering the goddess’s dwelling overwhelmingly amazing. The epic formula thauma idesthai (a wonder to behold) conveys well the sentiments of those privileged enough fig. 1.14. Graphic reconstruction of griffin cauldron to experience at close quarters the overwith Heraion protome B 7 (fig. 1.10). Drawing: whelming assemblage both inside and outValerie Woelfel. side the Hekatompedos. I argue below that for the great majority of pilgrims this space was the familiar shape and format of a vessel renlargely inaccessible as well.⁹⁵ dered unfamiliar–or, rather, uncanny—by the In the preceding section my analysis aimed addition of griffin protomes (six or eight of at placing Hera’s griffin cauldrons inside the them) evenly spaced all around the shoulder. cella of her temple, but their sensory effect was From the very beginning the fundamental for- not only a result of the relationships that these mative principle underlying the visual aspect artifacts constituted among themselves. In adof these griffins was a lifelike affect aimed dition to these relationships, one has to reckon at those who came into contact with them.⁹⁴ with a higher order of entanglement, the mulScholars have repeatedly understood the untiplier effect of the infinity of artifacts housed mediated impact of the cauldron with its grifinside the naos. In this sensory orchestration fin protomes as apotropaic in nature and efof artifactual polyphony, the griffin cauldrons fect. What this study proposes is that these enjoyed primacy of place because their matebizarre objects were meant to elicit a spectrum riality and its figurative tropes exalted the priof responses ranging from discomfort or fear macy of visual action as psychosensory com-

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griffin c auldr ons in conte x t s of life and de ath

portment in the presence of the divinity. In other words, we have to imagine numerous cauldrons (the multiheaded monsters) with their griffins darting out their glances not only to numerous other cauldrons but also to visitors and to each and every wondrous item in the interior of the Hekatompedos (fig. 1.12). As I discuss in detail in chapter 6, this emphasis on ocular action is inherent in the materiality and visuality of the griffin cauldron, the full effect of which cannot be appreciated today because almost always griffin protomes survive detached from the bodies of cauldrons. Since the very beginning (the period of the early hammered protomes), these objects were formally endowed with unprecedented ocular agency. Not only did they demand to be seen as sumptuously intricate artifacts, but they did so precisely because their affective qualities compelled reciprocal visual action: they could indeed ensnare the viewer’s eyes, body, and mind like the Sirens and the Skylla in the Odyssey. (See chapter 4.) These affective qualities were the sum total of all aspects of the protome, but the quintessence of their force was centered on their eyes, the most humanlike components of these mythical beasts. In chapter 6 below, I explore these qualities under the analytical lens of a taxidermic aesthetic. Regardless of size, scale, or quality of execution, a griffin cauldron is always endowed with rotational panopticism. In itself an epicenter of gravity, it deploys its protomes (usually six or eight) radially. A viewer or user may rotate all around it, but the griffins are always there; they are inescapable. A concomitant trait of this bizarre positioning is its prescriptive or directional character: implicit in the griffins’ rotational arrangement is their capacity to redirect the viewer’s gaze to all directions.⁹⁶ One may be entrapped in an exchange of glances

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between himself and a protome, but the other protomes are always there, calling attention not only to the universe that surrounds them but also to whatever happens within the space of this universe. Their centrifugal manner also directs attention away from the axis of the cauldron—What was inside the gleaming cauldrons? There is no evidence for answering this question, and perhaps we may have to reckon with variable contents, including edibles or potables (e.g., wine) to be consumed in special events. To be sure, inside the Hekatompedos we have to reconstruct a universe of marvels or, speaking more precisely, the universe reconstituted as a collection of marvelous objects deriving from one end of the world to the other. As Jane Carter has suggested to me, some precious agalmata may have been stored inside the cauldrons, perishable goods from far away or perhaps extraordinary items made of silver, wood, ivory, gold, or some other rare and valuable material.⁹⁷ To recapitulate, I have tried so far to think of griffin cauldrons in the interior of the Hekatompedos residing close to the divinity and enjoying primacy of place if only on the basis of their size, number, value, and affective qualities. The materiality and visuality of the cauldrons were sources of a rich web of relationships that involved the totality of marvelous objects seen and unseen, stored close to the divinity. An immediate overarching effect of the cohabitation of divinity and wonders was the constitution of the interior of the Hekatompedos as an otherworldly space, a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. In this context, only Hera could be felt to be truly at home, whereas her devotees and pilgrims could only have sensed her presence as intruders to an alien space-time of imperishable splendor and divine wealth. How did one negotiate all this?

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The cabinets of curiosities of the Early Modern era offer an excellent framework for analyzing the intricate dynamics of space originally inhabited by the orientalizing cauldrons, not only in the Samian Heraion but also in other great sanctuaries. The Wunderkammer phenomenon is symptomatic of historical periods characterized by conquest, exploration of new spatial frontiers, and expanding cognitive horizons.⁹⁸ Good examples are the Hellenistic world in the wake of Alexander’s conquests and Europe in the aftermath of Columbus’s discoveries. The former produced phenomena like the Museum in Alexandria and the great collections in cultural centers like Pergamon, Antioch, and Rome.⁹⁹ The latter made possible the well-documented but now-vanished cabinets of curiosities, a widespread phenomenon throughout Europe.¹⁰⁰ John Onians aptly points out that these periods usually manifest what he characterizes as an “excess of novelty,” a qualification that nicely epitomizes the radical reorientation of the Greek and wider Mediterranean world in the seventh and sixth centuries.¹⁰¹ Periods of excessive novelty often are politically, economically, socially, and culturally destabilizing. Intensive travel, circulation of new ideas, opening of trade routes, and exploitation of new resources generate new wealth as well as the impulse to redraw physical and conceptual maps of the known universe. Established paradigms of thought are upset under the onslaught of the radically new, and the recalibration of the kosmos becomes inevitable. A concomitant trait of such processes is the intensive pursuit, collection, and systematic study of marvelous objects, natural or unnatural. These assemblages are often new and exciting species of bizarre animals, monsters, exotic plants, fossils, shells, and raw materials, or exquisitely crafted arti-

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facts that open up infinite possibilities for new forms, sensations, experiences, and, most important, knowledge. In the context of the Wunderkammer, these objects literally came to epitomize the world. As Paula Findlen has aptly put it, the cabinets of curiosities became “a repository of the collective imagination of their society.”¹⁰² In the last few decades there has been a growing realization among scholars that the seventh century is a veritable epoch of radical reorientation throughout the Mediterranean, a phenomenon usually studied under the rubric of the orientalizing phenomenon. Leitmotifs of the period are expansive frontiers and interconnectedness, both of which are intricately woven in a variegated canvas of sea and land routes.¹⁰³ As the excavations at the Heraion have shown, Samos was one of its most seminal nodes, an international port of call for variegated commodities, ideas, and people. The documented material record still awaits a synthesis, but whatever has so far seen the light of publication offers much to argue that in the seventh century the assemblage of wealth amassed in the Samian Heraion had a character akin to that of the well-documented cabinets of curiosities of the Early Modern Period of Europe. Other sanctuaries, most notably Olympia and Delphi, could be accommodated in this model as well. In all three sanctuaries, excavations have documented the assemblage of valuable materials as a result either of intentional gestures of piety or of intentional systematic collecting of tangible (e.g., griffin cauldrons) or intangible goods. With the passage of time their physical and conceptual spaces were constituted as veritable heterotopias.¹⁰⁴ In their contexts one could witness a complete reversal of reality, a suspension of the known and the familiar, and an otherworldly am-

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bience that only with great difficulty can be teased out of archaeological artifacts or ancient texts. In the seventh century the wealth of the Samian Heraion may have been on a par with that of Delphi and Olympia, but its unique circumstances have been conducive to the unparalleled preservation of perishable materials as well (e.g., wood). During a period of aggressive cosmopolitanism and unprecedented openness to the world, the Heraion received sumptuous dedications in metal (bronze, gold, silver, electrum) and exotic materials (e.g., ivory, faience, amber, Tridacna shells, coral, stalactites) from a wide swath of the world. The Near East, Arabia, Urartu, Anatolia, the Caucasus, Egypt, Italy, Iberia, and various areas of the Greek world (Crete, Cyprus) are all areas of provenience of a varied corpus of anathe¯mata (votive offerings), each and every one of which spoke of Hera’s radiance and relevance in an ever-expanding network of interactions.¹⁰⁵ At the Heraion one could even see exotic animals or their wondrous remains, most notably the skull of a crocodile and remains of two African antelopes, explained by Helmut Kyrieleis as “trophies of the chase.”¹⁰⁶ Adrienne Mayor, who was the first to talk of the Heraion as a Wunderkammer, has called our attention to the amplitude of fossils and numerous osteological remains from the Heraion.¹⁰⁷ Moreover, the high quality of wooden artifacts from the Heraion prompts us to reckon with perishable materials, such as lavish textiles and furniture or furnishings, all of which are now irreversibly lost. The Heraion’s assemblage also included an actual ship, a dedication that would have surely dominated the physical ambience of the sanctuary no less than it signaled the Heraion’s maritime aspirations and range. It was to this extraordinary setting that Kolaios came to add one of the most lavish ded-

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ications ever deposited at this sanctuary, no less a token of piety than one of pride in his entrepreneurship and adventure along the dangerous edges of the known world (Hdt. 4.152; chapter 4).¹⁰⁸ Kolaios’s cauldron, in and of itself a wondrous artifact, epitomized many things, but perhaps most important was its capacity to elicit the cosmic dimensions of the quasi-epic story of Kolaios’s maritime venture to the Far West. Are we to posit that each and every cauldron deposited at the Heraion somehow entailed a story of similar success across the Mediterranean? And that the sanctuary also was an assemblage of stories and routes, a veritable database of navigational or prospecting information not only for locals but also for many others who came here to network, make deals, and trade under the tutelage of the tycoon goddess? However this may have been, the quantity of remnants of griffin cauldrons points to the fact that for most of the seventh century and well into the sixth numerous cauldrons were treasured at Hera’s sanctuary. These artifacts cohabited with all other marvelous objects that constituted Hera’s wealth and joy, but we would be amiss to think of them simply as hoarded wealth, as things stored for their value. Even if the original display schemes and the precise etiquette of interaction with these artifacts eludes us today, we can be sure that the griffin cauldrons were carefully embedded in a dense web of physical and conceptual relationships not only among themselves but also with all the other mirabilia deposited at the Heraion.¹⁰⁹ The material eff usiveness of the griffin cauldrons infinitely reflected the splendor and preciousness of all the other artifacts, each and every one of which was enveloped in the myriad auras emanating from every griffin cauldron, all agalmata under the

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endlessly scanning gaze of Hera. Today the total effect and affect of Hera’s assemblage cannot be graphically emulated or discursively reconstructed without significant omissions or distortions. We may simply posit a deliberately saturating environment predicated on sensory overload and astonishment. The manipulation of these affective contexts entailed the unrelenting elevation of the thresholds of sensory saturation, a phenomenon accurately indexed by the Samian craftsmen’s well-documented efforts to enhance the verisimilitude of the Samian griffin protomes during the course of the seventh century. In the latter part of the century, when epic nudged the cultural imagination of the Greeks and others to the distant extremes of the land of the Arimaspoi (see chapter 4), some pilgrims at the Heraion could have thought of the griffin protomes as apotropaic, as guardian figures of the cauldrons and Hera’s immense wealth. However, the wholesale espousal of the apotropaic, a predominant interpretive paradigm in the study of griffin cauldrons, distracts from the fact that in and of themselves the protomes were programmatically meant to be wondrous objects, or, to be more accurate, the protomes-cum-cauldron ensemble was meant to cause intense wonder, puzzlement, even delight and scrutiny for a select few. A discussion, therefore, of how one would have negotiated visual encounters with the field of the wondrous is in order.

Perceptual Strategies Addressing the perceptual strategies of viewers in Hera’s sanctuary or any other sanctuary is tantamount to exploring the mutual backand-forth between objects and human actors. Is there such a thing as sacred vision? Do sa-

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cred spaces demand ways of seeing that barely overlap with a culture’s overall visuality? To what extent did visitors at the Heraion activate the interactive strategies of the visualities (cultures of seeing and being seen) in which they were reared? If vision is cultural and learned, should we imagine that everything inside the Heraion was configured to match the visual/ perceptual competencies of visitors? Or that Hera’s luxurious hodgepodge demanded the actualization of a new way of seeing? As a veritable Wunderkammer of its age, the Heraion capitalized on collecting and exhibiting things that challenged its visitors’ perceptual abilities. The sanctuary, in other words, was a place for encounters with the unfamiliar, the strange, or even the incomprehensible in a framework of accumulated excessive wealth. In this context viewers’ responses would have depended on the degree and quality of their acculturation to similar environments. For the uninitiated the challenges involved were both cognitive and sensory. A good example is Telemachos’s response to the luxurious interior of Menelaos’s palace during a lavish banquet (Od. 4.71–75). The young prince shares with his companion the overwhelming effect that the gleaming bronze, gold, electrum, silver, and ivory have on him. The intensity of his experience is of a synesthetic nature as Telemachos comments on the sterope¯ (gleaming, flashing) of all these materials inside the resonant (e¯che¯enta) hall. That is, the visible stimuli (sterope¯) inside this space intermesh with invisible (audible) elements that Telemachos experiences in a moment of supersensory exultation. He whispers to Peisistratos, “As I look carefully [εἰσορόωντα], I am possessed by σέβας [awe]” (Od. 4.71–75) and comments that he imagines the abode of Olympian Zeus (Ze¯nos . . . Olympiou . . . aule¯, Od. 4.74) to be similarly

griffin c auldr ons in conte x t s of life and de ath

furnished with numberless (ἄσπετα) riches.¹¹⁰ The calculated use of ἄσπετα in Telemachos’s words expresses the cognitive challenge that the young prince is faced with during his introduction to the materialities and visualities of a genuinely heroic, quasi-divine milieu. He has never experienced anything comparable before; nothing has prepared him for the magnitude of the splendor that he has to negotiate as he engages in heroic behavior in the company of Menelaos and Helen. The term σέβας, on the other hand, conveys the combination of reverence and wonder that Telemachos experiences as an immediate response to an environment belonging to an order of existence standing higher than what Telemachos is used to. He is clearly bedazzled, self-conscious about the demands of this blindly radiant environment on him. He does not state it explicitly, but Homer’s audiences would have understood that Telemachos wonders, How on earth am I supposed to react to all this? Nevertheless, this mental state does not prevent him from carefully scrutinizing (εἰσορόωντα) Menelaos’s wealth. This vignette is of course a fleeting moment in the unfolding narrative of Telemachos’s coming of age. He is an exceptional character, and his response models for us an artful combination of two possible responses to ineffable, stunning wealth: either one surrenders to stupefaction, the numbing of the mind caused by a confrontation with the marvelous, or else one manages to engage in an active or exploratory viewing relationship with the wondrous environment. I explore these responses in detail in chapter 6, in the context of discussing the range of reactions to griffin cauldrons as marvelous objects with incomparable affective qualities.¹¹¹ For the time being, I hypothesize that both models were at work in the preclassical Mediterranean, where re-

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ligious or social authorities manipulated and controlled the physical and cognitive accessibility of experiences, things, and knowledge.

Physical and Cognitive Accessibility Viewers’ responses to the marvelous ambience of the Sanctuary of Hera at Samos would have depended on how accessible, physically or cognitively, spaces and objects within the sanctuary were. Accessibility was as important as the ambient circumstances that conditioned the nature of physical interaction with the cauldrons. Textual or archaeological evidence attests a plethora of ancient practices regulating who had access to spaces of special importance inside Greek sanctuaries and shrines when and under what circumstances.¹¹² Regulatory prohibitions or prescriptions also controlled what was visible or knowable, by whom, and for how long. A wealth of ethnographic comparanda also points to a wide range of hierarchies of physical and cognitive accessibility within the limits of sacred space.¹¹³ Religious establishments are often opaque, secretive, and strict in controlling information or sensory contact with aureate or sacred objects. These practices often aim at setting up physical or conceptual boundaries that create material or psychological distance between the locus of sanctity and visitors or worshippers inside a sanctuary. This is not simply a matter of avoiding profanation or enhancing the mystique or power of the holy place. Control of physical or cognitive accessibility to spaces and things creates variegated subjectivities calibrated on the degree of one’s allowable contiguity to the sacred. The excavations at the Heraion have not produced any evidence regarding material con-

the e a s tern mediterr ane an, ionia , and the aege an

figurations or regulations controlling the physical and cognitive accessibility of spaces and things inside the sanctuary. However, the low discursive profile of griffin cauldrons in antiquity (only one textual source) and the very small number of figurative representations suggest that despite the plethora of archaeologically retrieved specimens, griffin cauldrons were not widely known—at least not until the time of Kolaios’s superb dedication of a supersized cauldron (Hdt. 4.152). Or, if something about them was known, this was not because a large number of pilgrims or visitors had physical contact with them. A tentative solution to the conundrum of reconciling what archaeologically appears to have been regular or even commonplace and the low discursive profile of the griffin cauldrons is the hypothesis that access to the cauldrons was reserved for a very select number of visitors to the Sanctuary of Hera. I propose that the authorities of the sanctuary controlled who was allowed to physically interact with the griffin cauldrons. They also controlled the circumstances (where, when, frequency, proximity, etc.) and the nature of this interaction. (It matters whether one viewed the cauldrons as functional objects, for example as containers, or as valuable possessions testifying to the goddess’s might and wealth.) In chapter 6, I explore further and in detail the hypothesis that the griffin cauldrons at the Heraion were the material epicenters of rare and wondrous interactive experiences.

chios: emp or io a nd k a t o ph a na Despite its close proximity to Samos, Chios, a prosperous island in the Archaic Period, has yielded remnants of only three caul-

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drons. The rich deposit at the harbor of Emporio contained a fragment of an ear of a griffin protome. If this piece did not make it to the deposit as scrap by accident, it points to at least one griffin cauldron at this site.¹¹⁴ Two more were found at the affluent Sanctuary of Apollo Phanaios, the seventh-century deposits of which seem to have been comparable in wealth to those documented in the town and harbor of Emporio. Once again, the reasons for this scarcity remain unknown. Did the island resist the importation of griffin cauldrons from Samos, its rival neighbor? Were these artifacts incompatible with the depository ethos of Chians? Did Samos’s exporting mechanisms exercise control as to where its products ended up? Phana yielded an entirely preserved griffin protome and the head of one more.¹¹⁵ The former was not found in controlled excavations, but the excavator, Konstantinos Kourouniotis, was able to ascertain its findspot in the sanctuary area. The latter was found in an unstratified deposit. These protomes are hollowcast and belong to the latest series of Samian production. One wonders about the reasons behind this later appearance of the type in Chios. They belonged to cauldrons whose scale was considerably smaller than that of those produced up to the middle of the century (H.