Attic White-Ground Lekythos

In ancient Greek society, as in many Greek villages today, women were responsible for the maintenance and care of the family graves. In the mid-400s B.C. part of this responsibility involved visiting the grave regularly and bringing offerings to the dead. This Athenian white-ground lekythos depicts a woman performing these tasks. The rounded object behind the woman is the tymbos or grave mound. An exaleiptron, a vessel designed to hold perfumed oil, sits atop the tymbos, which has been decorated with offerings of fillets or ribbons, spears, and leafy branches. The woman busies herself with adding another fillet to the tall loutrophoros at the right. The loutrophoros, shown here as being decorated in the black-figure technique, was the vessel used to hold water for the ritual wedding bath in Greek culture. Thus, this type of vase was frequently placed on the graves of those who died before marriage. The funerary imagery on this lekythos illustrates its function. White-ground lekythoi, such as this one, were left as offerings at the grave on family visits just like the one depicted here.