Pithoi at Knossos.

Greek pithos from Crete.

Pithos (plural pithoi) is the ancient Greek word (πίθος, πίθοι) for a large storage jar of a characteristic shape. Originally used by western classical archaeologists to mean the jars uncovered by excavation in Crete and Greece, it has now been taken into the English language as a general word for a storage jar from any cutural horizon^[1]. Image File history File links Cnosso98. ... Image File history File links Cnosso98. ... A portion of Arthur Evans reconstruction of the Minoan palace at Knossos. ... Crete (Greek: Κρήτη Kríti; Turkish: Girit) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ... Crete (Greek: Κρήτη Kríti; Turkish: Girit) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ...

Although the word is Greek, many of the pithoi if the ancient Mediterranean were not manufactured by persons speaking some form of Greek; for example, they are known from Crete and the Levant in non-Hellenic contexts. Many pithoi were excavated in the Palace of Knossos and the ancient shipwreck of Uluburun. The Ancient Iberian culture of El Argar also used pithoi for burials in its B phase (1500-1300 BCE). The Levant Levant is an imprecise geographical term historically referring to a large area in the Middle East south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and by the northern Arabian Desert and Upper Mesopotamia to the east. ... Hellenic may refer to: the Hellenic Republic (the modern Greek state) the Hellenes, itself a term for either ancient or modern Greeks anything related to Greece in general or Ancient Greece in particular. ... Knossos Knossos (alternative spellings Knossus, Cnossus, Gnossus, Greek Κνωσσός) is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete, probably the ceremonial and political center of the Minoan culture. ... The Uluburun Shipwreck is a well-documented ancient shipwreck of the Late Bronze Age period, discovered off the coastline near the city of Kaş, Turkey in the early 1980s. ... Iberia can mean: The Iberian peninsula of southwest Europe; That part of it inhabited by the Iberians, speaking the Iberian language. ... El Argar is the name given to an ancient civilization that flourished from the town of Antas, Almeria, in the south of Spain between 1700 BCE and 1400 BCE. The El Argar civilization was characterized by its early adoption of bronze, which briefly allowed this tribe local dominance over other...

According to Gerhard Koebler following Julius Pokorny, pithos is from Indo-European *bheidh-, "pot", better known in its Latin form as the fiscus where the funds are stored.^[2] Anything could be placed in a pithos; however, they were used primarily for grains, seeds, wine, and oil. They were commonly associated with administrative and trade centers, which shipped, kept or received large quantities. Julius Pokorny (1887–1970) was born in Prague and studied at Vienna university. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

Pithoi were almost universally of ceramic, an ideal material that kept out water, dirt, insects and rodents. Most were as tall as or taller than an ancient human being. The base was flat so that they could be placed in rows in a storage magazine or lined up along any convenient hallway or walkway, or even on the stairs. Lugs or more rarely the more breakable handles were located on the upper sides for ease in handling. Some pithoi were set into holes in the floor. They were handled with ropes. Some vases display raised decorative ropes. Fixed Partial Denture, or Bridge The word ceramic is derived from the Greek word κεραμικος (keramikos, potters earth, or pottery). The term covers inorganic non-metallic materials whose formation is due to the action of heat. ...

The utility of a pithos for storage unfortunately was all too easily turned to the advantage of an enemy, who had only to knock over a pithos full of oil and touch a torch to it to produce a major conflagration. Most of the palaces of the Bronze Age Aegean were burned at one time or another in just this way. The Bronze Age is a period in a civilizations development when the most advanced metalworking has developed the techniques of smelting copper from natural outcroppings and alloys it to cast bronze. ... Greece and the Aegean Sea The Aegean sea in Greece as seen from the island of Greek: Αιγαίον Πέλαγος, Aigaion Pelagos; Turkish: Ege denizi) is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, located between the Greek peninsula and Anatolia...

On a more positive note, the extensive surface area of a pithos was a tempting field for decoration. The best decor was reserved for table and service ware, but most pithoi have some kind of pattern or scene, most often raised and arrayed in bands around the jar.

Like the ceramic bathtubs of some periods, the size of a pithos made it a most convenient coffin, especially where wood was in short supply. There is evidence of Middle Helladic burials in Mycenae and Crete where the bones of the interred have been placed in pithoi. The early history of Greece is commonly divided into three periods: Early Helladic (c. ... A clay tablet with writing in Linear B from Mycenae. ... Crete (Greek: Κρήτη Kríti; Turkish: Girit) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ...

Notes

1. ^ The word is to be found in Webster's Third International Dictionary
2. ^ But not everyone accepts this derivation. For example, if the qe-to of Linear B is pithos, then the origin is probably not from the root stated (Ventris and Chadwick note this problem in the second edition of Documents in Mycenaean Greek; look in the index under Pithos).