Post by @artemiscollective

The Oldest Depiction of the Trojan Horse 🏺 | The oldest unambiguous image of the Trojan Horse was not found in a manuscript. It was moulded onto a four-and-a-half-foot-tall storage jar discovered on Mykonos in 1961, packed with human bones after being reused as a coffin. Dating to around 675 BC, the Mykonos Vase shows a wheeled wooden horse with armed Greek warriors looking out through seven small windows. But the horse is only the beginning. Below it are three rows of scenes showing the sack of Troy. There are no Trojan warriors among the victims. Only women and children. One panel appears to show Astyanax, the infant son of Hector, being held by the ankle before his death. The artist could have shown heroes, battle, and glory. Instead, he showed what happened after the Greeks won. Sources: Ervin, Miriam. "A Relief Pithos from Mykonos." Archaiologikon Deltion 18 (1963): 37–75. Caskey, Miriam Ervin. "Notes on Relief Pithoi of the Tenian-Boiotian Group." American Journal of Archaeology 80, no. 1 (1976): 19–41. Snodgrass, Anthony. Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Burgess, Jonathan S. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. #ancienthistory #ancientgreece #greekmythology #trojanwar #historytok