Attic Late Geometric Amphora with a Chariot Procession

This amphora was made in Athens in the last quarter of the 8th century BC, in the decades when, many scholars believe, the Iliad was taking shape. In the poem Achilles holds funeral games for his dead friend Patroclus, and the first contest is a chariot race. Athenian painters of the time put chariots on pot after pot, and archaeologists still debate what they stand for: races held in honour of the dead, a display of the family's rank, or the heroes of an epic past.

Here six chariots follow one another around the body. Each driver wears a crested helmet and holds the whip and the reins, and birds stand in the spaces below. The neck keeps to pure Geometric pattern, five bands of dotted lozenges, hatched meanders and zigzags, and clay snakes are laid along the rim, the handles and the shoulder.

The Louvre bought the vase in 1921. It has come down whole, with a few chips and the brown paint flaking in places.