Cista Ficoroni : A Fine View of a Rear-End (or two)

Some time ago I was  re-examining a large volume I have about the Etruscans. 'Etruscan Culture : Land and People'. It was written 'with the collaboration of' King Gustav Adolph who, like many royals - seeking legitimacy ? - had an interest for archaeology (but couldn't hold a pen)..
It is two kilos of wordy consideration of the landscape and archaeology of Tuscany, published in 1962.  Example HERE.

Cista Ficoroni

 I had not looked closely enough at a photographic plate in the back before. Sipping my tea and browsing slowly, I suddenly realised that this corroded relic was the 'Villa Giulia' bronze urn! This urn is a key piece in the jigsaw of reconstructing the Three. The full-page black and white photograph did not look promising at first sight but when I looked closely, the quality of reproduction was so good that the Argo leaped out at me from the corroded bronze urn's side.



 Technology has moved on a bit since this was printed, but the quality of this production, no doubt due to its royal connections meant the reproduction was really good. The volume is hand-bound in embossed and gilded marbled paper and has a cloth-bound slip-case. So I thought I'd bring a bit of technology to bear and scan the photo. I have other versions of the image  in books and one can find versions online but a) this one was my own unexpected find and b) maybe could offer something unexpected.

First it took a bit of a struggle to get the massive book onto the scanner so that the spine was not stressed, the page was not damaged and the image was flat on the glass. Even without three hands I just managed it. I scanned at 300dpi grey-tone just to see what happened.

The Ficoroni Cista is a bronze urn decorated with engraved scenes on the sides and lid. It was made by one Novius Plautius for a rich lady, Dindia Macolnia, who gave it to her daughter some time around 340BC.  Here is the whole panorama from somewhere or other on the web.

Although sometimes labelled as urns for ashes, these items are also identified as womens toilet boxes.
Attempts to interpret the individual scenes have not been completely successful. Attempts to interpret the whole panorama founder even sooner and recourse is made to 'lost works' of Sophocles and so on. If this is based on the Etruscan mythos then we have no written evidence left and a bastardised Etruscan version of the Greek myths will surely never be open to us to read.


The National Museum in Copenhagen has a well-preserved example from Præneste, dating to c.250BC.

but it does have some nice heroic combats. The handle on the lid was usually made as two or three figures. Here it was Atalanta and Peleus having a domestic. The closest to a marine motif were the dolphins on the lid.

Why !? you ask, ( if you got this far ) is this interesting? It is interesting because among the various backsides on view on the Ficoroni Cista  is the backside of a ship. The scene is from the Argonauts' epic and here we see the Argo with her stern drawn onto a coast. The crew is off doing various things or lounging on board.
The great thing about the artist - who was a meticulous craftsman and observer - and the technique, which is precise and clear - is that we get a structurally accurate image of a Three.

Spot the differences...

What is more interesting about the Cista Ficoroni is that it has been part of the Three debate for many years but a lot of the discussion has been based around incomplete drawings of the scene with the Argo. Amazingly, even 'The Athenian Trireme' has a poor reproduction on page 35. This is taken from J.H. Middleston's IlluminatedManuscripts in Classical and Medieval Times' of 1892.

It has also led to the ship being elsewhere described as a 'cataphract pentekonter or liburnina '.

Anyway, my old book turned in some nice scans which it was then possible to examine for the ship's structure and here is the result.  A corroded mess but...Take a minute to look closely.

The scanned photo flipped to negative

With bits marked in colour

Light blue : oar ports
Green: oars
Red :deck edge
Yellow: deck supports
Brown: keel
Grey : steering oar - pedalion

The detail is beautiful, from the basket and bag ( Gladstone bag ?!) of the sailor descending the apobathra to the planking on the stern rising up to the aphlaston. The men lounging on deck are a common feature on representations of ships not fighting. The epibatai had to lie or sit for long periods so they did not affect the ship's stability. Here the are overnighting on the beached ship ?

The original reveals TWO rows of oarports in the hull. Added to the thranite position with oars worked over the gunwale thi smeans the ship illustrated is a THREE. 

The  stern of another Argo is depicted clearly on this 'Talos painter' 's urn. Another key piece of the trieres jigsaw assembled by Morrison and Coates. Cross-check it with the Ficoroni image.

The thalamian oarport here seems to be equipped with an askomaton - theleather sleeve which stopped water entering the port if the ship heeled under way or if waves became to high.

Again, here one can see the pedalion - steering oar - in 'standby' and the apobathra in use. The deck supports and aphlaston are nicely shown.

Of course, later I found the illustration that Casson used for 'Ships and Seamanship..' (106) was completely perfect and he had it taped. The old Seadog!  I was still chuffed with my excursion, though. The detail that comes through the unpromising chaos of grey shades is wonderful. Maybe Casson's photo was taken with chalk lining the graving lines ?

Wierd Etruscans Again

Further to my ramblings about odd Etruscan ships (and HERE) I have located another analogue of the 'galley versus freighter' scene from the' Aristothonos Vase' depicted by on Periklis Deligiannis' blog HERE.

This time it is a smaller version. On a little jug (oenochoe) by a painter known for using a palm tree motif - 'The Palm Tree Painter'. He worked in Etruria in 700-675BC.

Palm Tree Painter's oenochoe with ships: 700-675BC

The juxtaposition of a slim galley with a more massive freighter is here. Neither ship has crew nor oars. The limited space compared with the large area on the Aristothnos vase could explain this.

The 'freighter' has a wierd massive prow which is not identical to that of the Aristothonos  ship but is is strongly reminiscent. The painter meant to show something here but was maybe uncertain what exactly it was (a common feature of Italians depicting ships ?!).

In connection with trying to work out exactly what the uncertainty was, I found a comment in a paper about early Etruscan ships by Marco Bonino (SARDINIAN, VILLANOVIAN AND ETRUSCAN CRAFTS BETWEEN THE X AND THE Vlll CENTURIES BC FROM BRONZE AND CLAY MODELS in TropisIII, 1995) that supports my first impression that it is not a ram as such but a depiction of a cutwater - a building-out of the prow to make the ship sail better in waves.

Aristothonos prow and analogues from Bonino's paper.

Again, we have a case where the artist is not giving us a replica but an interpretation of a real ship. There are many small potttery ships, for example, from early historical times but to try and build ships from them would be a crazy idea.

Cutwater/forefoot : cutting water

A longship's cutwater or 'forefoot' will be a downward pointing curve because the ship's bow is lower on a lighter. slimmer ship designed to be powered by oars.

USS Constitution : A round hull like an ancient freighter with high cut-water

Whereas a round ship or freighter will be equipped with one that follows the bow up to split the waves. Building a downward curve would involve a complete rebuilding of the bow which, on a deep-hulled sailing ship for carrying a large load of cargo will be high and broad.

Wierd Wave-Riders : Etruscan (?) Ships

The odd ship on the' Aristonothos krater' is worth following-up. Let us dig a bit deeper into what is going on with this peculier vessel.

 

 In the previous post I suggested that, for my money, the hooked beak prow of the right-hand ship drawn by Aristonothos was a misinterpretation or, rather, a failed interpretation of what a real ship may have looked like. I have dragged a few additional pieces of evidence to gether to see if more light can be shed on the matter.

WHEN DID RAMS FIRST APPEAR ?
The Aristonothos depiction dates from the first quarters of the seventh century B.C..

Tanum, Bohuslan 1500bc?

We have rock art from Bronze-Age Scandinavia which resemble the Hjørtspring boat from 300b.c. that have structures which are really cut-waters.

A reconstruction of the Hjortsrping boat : prow not ram

The very first ram-like structures depicted in Mediterranean art are from ceramic fragments from the proto-Greek  or 'Helladic' culture circa 1600B.C. We have no evidence as to their intended function.

Iolkos fragments 1600b.c.

The shape of the prow is, however, very reminiscent of a later ram.

Later depictions of what may be a ram we have are from the mid-to-late eightth century B.C. These are fragments of greek 'Geometric style pattery which are not precisely dateable.

Late eighth century rams?

The pointed prow of the ships may be a cutwater to aid navigability or may already have become a weapon but we do not know. Homeric texts speak of ships but do not mention a ram.

The shape of the prow does differ from the Iolkos fragments.

The very first dateable depiction we have of a ship armed with a ram is on the relief slabs from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh which date to after 701B.C. because they show the flight from Tyre in 701B.C..

Pointed ram

It is interesting to note that the ram is not what we come to know and love as a bronze hull-opener in the Classical Age. These rams are pointed cut-waters with a (metal?) sheath.

Fastening collar seen to left.

The next depictions are contemporary with  or later than  the Aristonothos picture and show ship's prows modelled as boar's heads. No remains have revealed a structure anything like this. Maybe it is a symbolic representation of the mode of attack ? A charging boar.

Nicosthenes vase c.525b.c.

The  first written description of ramming in naval warfare is  the Battle of the 'Sardinian Sea' in c.540b.c from Herodotos where a Phocaean fleet defeated a combined Carthaginian-Etruscan fleet which outnumbered them two-to-one.

?
The point of this short survey is to show that there was not a single structure we can identify as a typical ram before the Second Persian War or even the Second. We can identify several structures which resemble the later rams we have definite knowlege of.

: They are located at the foot of the bow
:They project forward to a point
:They are fitted to galley, longships, not round ships


Back to Aristonothos

There is some evidence to identify the round ship on the krater as Etruscan. This is on the basis of crab and cross motifs on the shields of the warriors on the round ship. The only problem I see with this is that why would Aristothonos have Etruscan symbols accurately depicted on his vase when he was a colonial Greek. ? Also, crab symbols turn up on coins from Sicily and Italy alike. More likely would the explanation be that the whole item is Etruscan but the potter's name agues against this.

Is there anything we can find to explain the bow structure of the round ship ?

First, the right-hand ship is probably the one the potter identifies with. The right-hand ship has a boar's-head ram and is comfortably identified as an attacking warship. This is not two ships out for a sail in consort. Few would argue that an item decorated with a scene of aggression would most likely be ´made, commissioned, owned by the aggressor's faction. People under the Blitz did not hang photos of Heinkel 111s on their living room walls.

Next, the target ship is therefore foreign. This would make more understandable any misinterpretation of the exotic ship type by the Greek potter.

Second, there are some odd ships depicted in non-Etruscan contexts.

On a Spartan cloak brooch from 8th century b.c..

This scene seems to be a direct analog of the Aristonothos krater. So the orignal composition is Spartan, not 'Tyrhennian' and the antagonists need not necessarily include Etruscans. In addition, we can see here that the right hand ship is not a 'round ship' but a galley - there are rowers under the catwalk deck. It may be a 'kourkoros' which is is a galley-freighter but it is not a sailing ship as on the krater.

Detailed drawing of scene

Note that the bow structures on both sides have a serrated appearance. Both left and right ships.

Closer examination of the krater reveals this detail there, too.

On this drawing it looks like wales are extended out in front of the stempost. As they are on later warships also.




This serrated edge, again on a manned warship - with a waterline ram - is also shown another brooch which is also Greek from the eighth century b.c..

We have now shown that BOTH details originate in a Greek, not Etruscan context.

Tunisia 3rd cen A.D.

Is there any more we can discover about the 'hook' structure? Well, there are some freighters from Roman contexts which have unusual looking bows.

But these do not mimic the Aristonothos ship completely.

Grafito, Veii 650b.c.Etruscan

There are 'round ships' with upturned hulls that have a ram/cutwater depicted. The ship at left is definitely from an Etruscan context - Veii in the early seventh century B.C.
This means thatEtruscan  artists could draw a round ship - equipped with mast and sails, upturned prow and a waterline ram. ..and this is only a graffito..This depiction is not so different in age from the Aristonothos krater but a ram has been added convincingly, at the waterline as a warship would have it.



Then we have some ship profiles which a) are Etruscan and b) have a similar form to our subject.

The convex bow which ends in a point followd by the stem post is here as on the krater. The ships have has sails, mast and rigging to identify them as round ships. Everything is here except the ram. Oh. yes, and the catwalk deck and the warriors.

Here may be the answer so long sought.



The warriors indicate a fighting ship. The deck for them to parade on indicates a fighting ship. These features together, when transposed to our Etruscan sailing ship produce a foreign/Etruscan ship to a potter. Oh, yes and there should be a ram to make them warships. Add one to taste.

The left-hand ship from the Aristonothos krater contains accurate details from seventh century b.c. warships. However, in an effort to depict a Greek ship attacking an Etruscan one, the 'Observer's Book of Etruscan Ships' not being to hand, the artist produced a mash-up. Nothing too ludicrous but one which showed the difference between 'us' - left ship and 'them' - right ship.

A nautical expert might have told him that a ram needed to be at the waterline to stave-off attacking warships. Much later, some ship's rams were mounted to attack the enemy hull just  above the waterline but here we are at a time when ram warfare was at its infancy.

An impact on the hooked ram would place crazy stresses on the freighter's bow oblique to its structural grain - the longitudinal planking of the ship and the keel. Rams were designed to essentially keep stresses in the plane and direction of the keel where the ship was strongest so a blow could be safely dealt.

Freighter bows = continental margin plus accretionary wedge : Warship's ram =  Oceanic plate

Having discussed one Etruscan topic, I have another in mind. 'Fancy Dress for Roman Marines' or 'Does your skipper go naked on watch ?' Coming next.

RECREATIONAL ILLUSTRATION

There is much call for illustration these days. In the age of the self-observed and self-obsessed and when we all have cameras that can take video and stills to a quality unsuspected even 10 years ago any publication, web or print, is boring if it is not adorned with colour illustrations.



If the subject is no longer extant then other physical evidences can be assembled to synthesise a version of what may have been.
In many cases this hypothesis is accepted on the basis of activity, colour and composition before any determination of how accurately the illustration matches the evidence materials or reality.

The oldest illustration I  own is a coloured print of    depicting a battle in the Bronze Age. The costume is based on finds but rather conservative and the action is rather staid.

Bronze Age battle 1891

 

The next oldest illustration I own is from 1925 and shows the Nydam ship - an Iron Age longboat - along with other finds from the Danish Mosefunde (bog-finds). It is pretty good. Nothing looks distorted from original ideas on how the items were used and they are presented at the correct scale. The mail shirts are a little too 'knitted' in appearance but this 1925 synthesis of the disparate finds still largely holds today even if the level of action is still rather subdued.

1928 - Cover only, rest bw text

Look and Learn 1967 colour inside!

The First Golden Age of Illustration was from the late 60s to the 70's when colour offset became  commonplace for weekly magazines. Look and Learn, Eagle and their ilk created technicolour explosions in the minds of young people to contrast  with the black and white of most textbooks and newspapers.


 It was at these publications that the Embletons and Angus Mcbride, among others got their careers started.

Assyrians in action

  
Don Lawrence is my personal favourite because of the Trigan
Empire as well as his historical illustrations.

 

 

Peter Connolly was the doyen of these illustrators who followed archaeological prototypes immaculately.

Digital art self-published by Kostas Nikellis

The Second Golden Age of Illustration has come in the nineties and noughties when publishers such as Osprey took advantage of digital technology and every man and his dog has the chance to create

and publish thier own efforts.If not for cash then artists can make thier work available to large audiences free on personal blogs, fora or even fbook.



Of course, the essential criterion is the possession of draughtsman's and painter's skills which I am well aware  I have only in very modest quantity. No one gets published by a business without jumping some severe critical hurdles. Any artist getting his work out has achieved something and any comments I make here take nothing away from that. My target here is the message, not the messenger. Sometimes, of course,  the messenger is also the author, in which case there is no escape from the spotlight.

The 'message' here is the recreation of some past scene or artefact. The final demise of the Spartans at Thermoplylæ or the Kolossos at Rhodos, for example.

Ooh the humanity..!

Here on this blog the main subject is ancient galley warfare. There is not a great deal of evidence surviving under this heading compared to, for example, Roman Legionary's equipment - and so the demand for reconstructive illustration is therefore greater. It is not enough to show the Lenormant relief again, we want a cut-way isometric projection in full technicolour for gods'sake.

The tricky bit with ships comes when an illustration should show a functional galley. Ship illustration
is not easy. Napoleonic ships give me nightmares just thinking of being forced to produce a drawing of one. Ancient galleys have loads of oars, loads of crewmen, rigging and the whole lot crammed into a carefully crafted wooden structure, on the sea, A tall order.

However.

Certain basic factors should be considered in approaching a reconstructive illustration.

Is the material I am using to create my hypothesis reliable?
Can it be taken literally, at face value?
Does the reconstruction include essential aspects we have contemporary evidence for, never mind the uncertainties of ancient material?
Does the reconstruction follow basic laws of persepctive and draughting ?
Does the scene illustrated accord with what we know of physics and natural history ?

Check some of your favourite reconstructions and see how they measure up.

Now we come to the item which sparked this blogpost and it concerns one of my favourite ancient artefacts.

The Aristonathos krater is a ceramic wine vessel. Used to mix wine with water before serving. It was found at Cervetri in Etruria and was probably made in the Western Greek colonies. The vase shows two ships approaching each other. One is shown with oarsmen, one without. One has a mast and yard, one has not. One has a 'boar face ram', the other has a wierd 'hook-beaked' prow.

 

Exactly how to interpret the scene on the vase and the individual ships is not so straightforward.

Drawing of complete ornament of the krater

Angel D. Pinto is an illustrator who works for many popular publishers such as Medieval Warfare and HAt. He has illustrated Josh Brouwers' book Henchemen of Ares with a version of the Aristonathos krater scene HERE.

Pereklis Deligiannis writes a blog I follow on Ancient History and Military matters.Let's see what Pereklis  thinks about  a reconstruction of the Aritothonos scene by Angel HERE. 

Periklis summary of the scene is that the left-hand ship is a triakonter (a thirty-oared ship), the right-hand a merchantman, the warriors wear three types of helmet and that arrows and javelins are flying. He identifies the combatants as Greeks versus Etruscans and the location even - is narrowed down to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The problems I see here are that Periklis is already preferring the reconstruction to the original archaeological evidence before he has even finished the piece. I think this is a failing. We should always prefer the original to any modern interpretation/hypothesis.


Examining the vase there are no traces of arrows or javelins , nor bows, and the the warriors seem to have the same type of helmets all. The left -hand ship is equipped with a ram and therfore probably mean to be contrasted with the 'round ship' or freighter with its rigging and lack of oarsmen - seen at the right. There is nothing to distinguish the left-hand ship from a monokrotic pentekonter, a triakonter or a stylised anything-ship.

The problem with the illustration here is that it is already fanciful and not faithful to the original source.

The biggest hurdle for an illustrator seeking to reconstruct the scene on this vase is the round ship's prow. WTF is that ?  A quick websearch for 'wooden ship bows' or such will show you a variety of forms but none match this monstrosity.

The truth may lie in the work and experience of the krater's decorater. Had he seen a ship like the one he drew? Had he a ship in his mind's eye which did not quite match reality. Did he make an erro rin draughting and had to follow it through. It is unlikely vase decorators - often slaves who did not venture far from the workshop - would have a good grasp of a ship's form and structure enough to depict them accurately on a pot. We can see this is true from the depiction of the ram-equipped ship. The bows are given an animalistic appearance. Two things argue for the fact that the round ship on the krater was not an accurate representation.
First, there exists other representations showing complex prows which could be misinterpreted or simply drawn kack-handedly.

Louvre pyxis D.150

1) another vase with a similar scene where the round
         ship's prow is a monstrous head with a mouth and tongue.

 

Freighter 2-3 cenAD, Ostia

 2) The famous Isis Geminiana fresco

Fifth century BC Etruscan tomb

 3) The Tombe Della Nave at Tarquinia

Secondly, if one tries to draught the curves of the ship's prow on a curved vase surface, the result can be confusion. Try it for yourself. The prow of a freighter drawn more accurately to illustrate a similar scene on a later vase shows the contrasting curves which could have led the decorator astray.

 In any event we must accept that a vase painter was not a naval architect draughtsman.

What this shows is the dangers of taking the source material too literally. The result can be seen in Pinto's picture. The bows of the round ship are just incredible. The wooden construction to produce that shape is wholly unconvincing and the consequences of sailing with a bow of that shape would be disasterous in anything but the lightest of breezes. In addition, the projecting rails or wales of the krater or wholly absent form the reconstruction - a compounding departure from the evidence.

Let's now examine the attacking warship, the left-hand ship. Pinto's picture is praised by Deligiannis but I cannot concur.

A most basic error is apparent when one looks at the 'oarsman' at the lower centre of the picture. He is not even rowing. He is paddling. According to the bow-wave of the ship he is facing the wrong way if he is rowing. The original vase decorator did not make this mistake. In addition, that bow-wave seems to precede the ship ! If one looks over the bow of a ship the bow-wave breaks onto the bow and parts to give the wave on each side. It does not precede the ship.

The structure of the bow area - the focsle - is totally absent from the krater but added here in what appears to be a miniature form.

Next, the oarsmen (paddlers!) are armed. On the vase they are not. It was unusual that oarsmen also fought.

As mentioned above, the warriors are variously armed instead of being uniform as on the krater and the crest form of the krater is not seen in the picture.

Lastly the catwalk deck is strangely low and does not appear to meet the focsle.

It could be that the advancing ship is a combination of both from the vase ? In which case...?

The sum effect of these defects means that the reconstruction violates physics, natural history and rules of draughtsmanship.

"No, Dougalos, the warrior on the catwalk deck is closer, the warrior in the crows nest is far away"

This unfortunate picture is an example which shows errors typical on many reconstruction pictures which appear more convincing at first sight. Try applying the criteria suggested before you even examine the faithfulness to the source material and you will be surprised how many reconstructional reincarnations of history show themselves rather as recreational illustrations.

Can that gangplank function where it is drawn ? What is the thickness of that beam or oar ? How high is that ship compared to the original ?

Do not blindly accept an uncontrolled fantasy. Rivet or stud counters do not let a lorica errata slip through in a picture of Roman legionaries. Why should a bleeding great ship of foolishness escape critique?