Mold-Made Relief Bowls from the Hellenistic Period Unearthed at the Myra Theater

Abstract

This study examines thirty-five mold-made relief bowl fragments found during the 2011 excavations in the theater, one of the magnificent structures of Myra. These bowls were examined in six different groups as bowls with imbricate leaves, vegetal decorations, flower/rosette decorations, long petals, pine-cone imitation, and other samples. Myra mold-made relief bowls were dated to the second half of the IInd century BC and the first half of the Ist century BC. The bowls have quite different types of decorations such as ionic kymation, guilloche, flower/rosette, braid?, acanthus leaf, pine-cone, different types of leaves (long petals, ferns, etc.), strings of pearls, strings of dots, and wave patterns. It is thought that the bowls found in the Myra theater were produced in Western Anatolian workshops in Ephesos, which influenced the Attica and Delos type. The clay and slip properties of these bowls are similar to those of the Ephesian samples. Apart from this similarity, on the medallion part of one of the bowls found in Myra, the signature of the Philon workshop operating in Ephesos proves that the origin of the Myra samples is Ephesus.