Panathenaic-Type Amphora with Athena and Boxers

Every four years, in high summer, Athens held the Great Panathenaia, the festival of its patron goddess Athena, and the winners of its contests took home amphoras filled with oil from her sacred olive trees. Those prize jars always followed one design. On one side Athena strides forward with her spear between two columns, on the other is the sport that was won, and an inscription calls the jar a prize from the games at Athens.

This amphora, painted between 530 and 510 BC, borrows that design. Athena advances between columns topped by cockerels, and on the back two bearded boxers with wrapped hands fight while a companion waits and a cloaked judge holds his staff. It only imitates a prize, though. It is smaller, the neck is wider, and the inscription is missing. For its owner the likeness was enough, a reference to the famous Athenian trophies and a mark of standing. It was buried at Vulci, in the Etruscan tomb now called the Tomb of the Warrior, alongside the weapons, a chariot and the bronze and painted tableware of a man of high rank.