SAMIAN AMPHORAS - The American School of Classical Studies at ...

SAMIAN AMPHORAS 83
served amphora the device in tthe impression is not very clear. This stamp type is one
of a series using the same device, the prow of a galley, with some 24 (as now known)
different names. A few of the types are circular but most are squarish rectangles
like those on Plate 15, with the name along two (occasionally three) sides, and the
prow often tilting upward as here, as though riding a choppy sea. The prow in this
series does not markedly resemble that in the Haviaras stamps (P1. 12, 17-24) or
that in coins of Samos (see Barron, p. 6). However there seems to be no other
state so closely identified with a prow as Samos; the prow of the satmaina was as
Samian as the owl was Athenian, according to Plutarch's story of the branding of
captives."9 So with all due reserve I suggest jars of this class as the keramia Scamia
and/or the hemikadia Samia of the shipment of 259 B.C. The shape is entirely new to
the Samian series as above proposed, a series which throughout its various modifica-
tions has usually born some relation to the current Athenian shape (save in the late
5th-early 4th century). With its thick rolled rim set close above long (and rather thick)
handles, the new shape resembles that of some Pontic amphoras.80 Plate 15, 15 shows
the only example bearing one of these prow stamps of which more than a piece of
handle and rim is preserved. It seems likely that if it is Samian, and of the period of
the shipment, this jar is a hemikadion rather than a keramion, in which case the
angular drawn-in body may once more be an adjustment of capacity, and the unit
jar may have had a much fuller, more rounded, body. Unfortunately on our pre-
served stamped jar we again lack the toe. For the clay of the stamped handles:
it is red, reddish or brown, sometimes fired reddish at the core; it is coarser than that
of the earlier Samian (?) jars above identified, and contains numerous white bits as
well as mica in varying quantities. So far as can be told by the naked eye, I think
this could be a fortified version of the clay of the earlier jars. The foreign distribu-
tion of the known fragments is not unlike that of the 6th century amphoras, that is,
largely in Egypt and in the Black Sea area; but only a single stamped handle of the
prow class, so far as I know, has been found in Samos itself.8" It must be stated that
79 Life of Perikles, 26. The suggestion that the prow stamps may have been Samian was made
to me 20 or more years ago in the museum of the American Numismatic Society in New York,
I think by the late Sydney P. Noe. There is actually another state whose coinage commonly bore
the prow of a galley, and that is Phaselis on the east cost of Lycia. Its geographical position
would make natural the import to Egypt of products of Phaselis; but stamped handles found in the
Black Sea area would seem more likely to be from Samos than from eastern Lycia. Reference to
the prow types of Phaselis were passed on to me in 1955 by Mr. Lucas Benaki.
For previous published mention of tihe prow class of stamps, Grace 1960, p. 475, with references
in note 5. The Haviaras amphora is mentioned.
80 Cf. M. Ebert, Praehist. Zeitschrift, V, 1913, pp. 30-31, fig. 34, no. 1 Qa. This object is
stamped on the neck. Its producing center was perhaps Herakleia Pontica.
81 J 933, from the Heraion, exact provenance not known; the name has not been read. On
inventory numbers in I, see above, note 25.
Of a total of 150 known examples, 51 have been found in Alexandria; 29 more in Egypt (in
Naukratis chiefly and in Tell Fara'in in the Delta, or, of unknown but presumably Egyptian proven-