The Orientalizing period in Greece refers to a roughly 100-year period in which Greek art was greatly influenced by eastern, and specifically Near Eastern and Egyptian, ideas, myths, and decorative styles.听
The Orientalizing Period lasted from about the mid-8th until the mid-7th centuries B.C.E. "Orientalizing" is a complex term that was coined in reference to the spread of Near Eastern and Egyptian ideas, motifs, and other cultural elements to Greece and the rest of the Mediterranean world. The term does not refer to the modern and derogatory use of the term . Importantly for the study of Greek vases, the term refers to the听adoption of Near Eastern and Egyptian themes into Greek art. Artistic elements, such as floral and animal motifs, spread with the movement of people, particularly with Greek and Phoenician traders (1). Greek vase decoration provides the most prolific examples in the archaeological record of the active assimilation of distinctive artistic elements from the east (2). Orientalizing decorative styles, however, were not spread primarily through Near Eastern听pottery; rather, scholars turn to artifacts like , north Syrian relief sculptures,听 and textiles, and Phoenician ivories and bronzes to determine the artistic relationship between Greece and its neighbors to the east (3).听
Greek artisans appropriated floral, faunal, mythical, and mythological听motifs from Near Eastern artistic media, which they selectively incorporated into their own crafts. Appropriated floral elements included rosettes, as well as palmettes and lotuses, which are represented , the earliest Greek vase painter known to have signed his work. These elements are important because they represent themes that were indigenous to the Near East but听uncommon in Greek art before this time. The , sometimes called the Tree of Life, is adopted on many Greek vases, although, arguably, in the Greek听context it is used decoratively, without its eastern religious significance (4).听
Representations of and the Greeks borrowed elements of animal imagery, as well.听Appropriated faunal elements included听lions, goats, water fowl, and panthers, , as well as bovines, boars, dogs, hens, and roosters. The animals were depicted in very stylized forms and the specific stylizations can often be traced to separate cultural regions of the Near East. Lions, for example, were depicted differently in Neo-Hittite and Assyrian cultures. The styles used to depict animals in Orientalizing Greek art, then, can sometimes hint at which specific Near Eastern civilizations the Greeks were in contact with.听
Mythical creatures, including griffins, sirens, and sphinxes, are examples of Eastern hybridization of multiple beasts, often including elements of the human form. After the importation of these Near Eastern creatures, a new genre of beasts emerged as a popular form in Greek art. These hybrid creatures were incorporated into various aspects of Greek art: sirens and harpies, for example, could become attachments to tripod cauldrons.听
Jeffrey Hurwit suggested that "Orientalizing art is Oriental on the surface but still recognizably Greek below" (5). What does this mean? Although it may seem from the above discussion听that the Greeks indiscriminately absorbed all aspects of Near Eastern artistic culture at this time, this is decidedly not the case. As William A. Childs points out, "On the orthostats of Neo-Hittite sites, the Chimaera had no narrative context and served only to ward off evil, but in Greek myth the beast was to be conquered by a hero" (6). , for example, shows Bellerophon riding on Pegasus, his winged horse, as they conquer the Chimaera, which has the head and body of a lion, the head of a goat on its back, and, often, a tail that ended in the head of a serpent. Greeks were fond of expressing narrative in their vase painting and they appropriated Near Eastern creatures like the Chimaera and the siren and altered their basic function by making them a part of a larger story.听
This essay was written to accompany a听collection of Greek artifacts at the CU Art Museum.听
Footnotes
- John Boardman,听Early Greek Vase Painting听(London: Thames and Hudson, 1998): 83.
- John Boardman,听The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies and Trade听(New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999): 77-78.
- Boardman, The Greeks Overseas:听55-56. See also J. L. Benson,听Horse, Bird, and Man: The Origins of Greek Painting听(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970): 112, in which Benson argues that "In regard to Oriental influences we are obliged to depend often on the specificity of forms and motifs and do without exact coincidence in medium, technique, use, or connotation."
- Boardman argues that "The eastern forms are for the most part reinterpreted and we can never be sure that any in Greek guise are merely decorative" (Boardman,听Early Greek Vase Painting: 84).
- Jeffrey M. Hurwit,听The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 BCE听(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985): 133.
- William A. P. Childs, "The Human Animal: The Near East and Greece," in ed. J. Michael Padgett,听The Centaur's Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art听(Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum, 2004): 63.