The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

kind, most likely pictures, and not actual animals. In light of this evidence, the same
meaning can be applied to Herodotus’ zw|~a; the fact, however that these zw|~a were
applied on clothes raises the question of the employment of a particular technique.
Barber cautions that e0ggra&fein offers no particular clue as far as a particular
technique is concerned, but on the basis of material evidence, she suggests that the term
may be connected with resist-dyeing. 378 Her discussion of archaeological parallels
focuses on two examples of clothes that were found in Classical tombs at the site of
Kertch (ancient Pantikapaion) in the Black Sea area—the western boundary of the
Caucasus Mountains. The first example, which belongs to a tomb dating from the fifth
century B.C., is “a plain-woven cloth of wool that had been painted or resist-dyed in tan,
dark red, and black with waves, meanders, squares, dotted rosettes, braids, and
checkers.” 379 The second example is remnants of a woolen cloth that functioned as a pall
for a wooden sarcophagus that was found in a tomb dated to the early fourth century (c.
400 B.C.) Regarding the provenience, construction and decoration of this cloth, Barber
notes that it “was locally made,...sewn together from eleven long strips and ‘painted’ with
frieze after frieze of figures from Greek mythology.” 380 Michael Vickers remarks that
these figures were set against a dark background. 381 In some cases, Barber continues,
several letters of names inscribed above these figures have been preserved and allow their
reading as Jocasta, Phaidra, Eilemene, Mopsos, Hippomedon, and Iolaus. The decoration
of the cloth consists also of horses and chariots and its entire arrangement has been
378
Barber, Prehistoric Textiles 226.
379
Barber, Prehistoric Textiles 206.
380
Barber, Prehistoric Textiles 206, and 380, where she states that the cloth was “not new when laid into
the tomb, [as] suggested by the careful mend that it contain[ed].”
381
M. Vickers, Images on Textiles. The Weave of Fifth-Century Athenian Art and Society (Xenia 42;
Konstanz, 1999) 21.
232