Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (42.2001)

features characteristic for this workshop. A signature is usually joined with a
bust of goddess in corona muralis placed centrally on the bottom. Bowls are
hemispherical, with a rim slightly outurned. A high relief, clearly standing out
from the backdrop is also characteristic, as well as multitude of floral, figural
and purely decorative motifs, which fili out the surface. The hue of both clay
and glaze as well as the dish's form and decoration, in accord with the rules of
decorating dishes from this workshop, indicate that the Warsaw object should
also be included in this group. We can datę the bowl for the 2nd century B.C.,
at the present moment morę precise dating is not possible.

For over a hundred years scholars tackled the problem of location of the
discussed workshop. Vasiliy Latyshey was the first to address the issue, coming
to conclusion that KIPBEI was active in one of Greek cities on the Northern
coast of the Black Sea.42 This hypothesis was valid for several decades.43 In the
second half of the 20th century some scholars started to place the workshop in
Asia Minor.44 It is worth mentioning that many analogies to the workshop's
products can be found among the bowls from Cumae, both from the point of
view of decoration and composition.45 In the 1980s Sergey Kovalenko tackled
the problem of provenance of the bowls with KIPBEI inscription, at the same
time presenting the results of earlier research. According to his theory, the
workshop wherein the dishes were produced functioned in Smyrna but is
thriving period dates back to the time after 129 B.C. when still keeping the
status of the free city, Smyrna was incorporated into the Roman Province of
Asia.46

5. Inv. no. 237048 (former inv. no. 32013, ill. 5)

Height 5.8 cm, diameter 10.4 cm, rim diameter 10 cm, bottom diameter
4.5 cm. Fine-grained dark-grey clay, visible smali pits left by the grains of
inclusions. The surface partly covered with a grey layer, slightly lighter than
the clay. State of preservation: the bowl preserved in whole; a missing
fragment of the rim replaced with grey-brown clay.

42 W Latyshev, “K voprosu ob antichnoy posude s shtempelem ‘KIPBEI’”, Izwiestiya imperatorskoy
arkheologicheskoy komissii, 4, 1902, p.141.

43 Zahn, op. cit., p. 49. Courby, op. cit., p. 411; VA. Gorodcov, “O rezultatakh arkheologicheskikh
issledovaniy Elizavetskogo gorodishcha i mogilnika v 1934 g.”, Sovetskaya etnografia, 1935,
no. 3, p. 74.

44 N.M. Loseva, “Ob importe i mestnom proizvodstve ‘Megarskikh’ chash na Bospore”, Materiały
i issledovaniya po arkheologii, 103, 1962, p. 202; Jentel, op. cit., p. 117; VS. Zabelina,
“Importnye ‘megarskie’ chashy iz Pantikapeya”, Soobsbcheniya Gosudarstnennogo Muzeya
Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv im. A.S. Pushkina, 1984, 7, p. 169; O.N. Usacheva, “Relyefnaya
keramika iz Kep”, Kratkie Soobszczenia IA AN SSSR, 1978, 156, p. 101; T.L. Samoylova,
“Relyefnaya keramika ellinisticheskogo vremieni iz raskopok Tiry”, in Severnoe Prichernomore,
Kiev 1984, p. 123.

45 J. Bouzek, L. Jansova, “Megarian Bowls (Kyme I)”, Acta Unwersitatis Carolinae, (Prague) 1974;
Kovalenko, op. cit., p. 75.

46 Kovalenko, op. cit., pp. 70-80; Vnukov, Kovalenko, op. cit., p. 71.

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