Memnon Painter

In the stories of the Trojan War, Memnon was the king of the Ethiopians, a son of Eos, goddess of the dawn, who came to fight for Troy and was killed by Achilles. A krater in Berlin, one of the big bowls the Greeks used for mixing wine with water, shows the two heroes in combat, and modern scholars named its unknown painter after that scene. He signed none of his pots. The name simply marks a hand that specialists recognise on a small group of kraters.

He worked in Corinth in the first half of the 6th century BC, the phase archaeologists call Middle Corinthian, when Corinthian black-figure pottery was shipped all over the Mediterranean. In 2002 another of his kraters was found in a tomb at Monte Sannace, an ancient settlement in Apulia in southern Italy. On that one Memnon has already fallen, and the two heroes' mothers, Eos and the sea goddess Thetis, are arriving in their chariots.