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Would the base of our stirrup jar have been perched on the wooden deck of a ship? Or did it stand on the dirt of a grave?

Quite some (Post-Palatial) Mycenaean octopus jars have been found in burial sites near the coast. Filled with oil,and not fish sauce, see Cavanagh 2008, ‘Death and the Mycenaeans’ 338-340 the jar would be deposited in a tomb to accompany the deceased in their afterlife (Fig. 24). Such maritime-styled octopus jars could have been used as a way to show the deceased’s high standing in life and their involvement with maritime trade.Doi 2006, The octopus style: A study of octopus-painted Aegean pottery of 12th-11th centuries B.C.E., its regional styles, development and social significance (Doctoral thesis, University College London), 242 Yet another explanation to situate the jar in a tomb is the symbolic meaning of octopuses as a sign of death and rebirth. Many coffins and ash-chests portray marine life, including octopuses (Fig. 26). With the sea being linked to both life and death, and with the octopus’s specific ability to regrow its limbs as a symbol of regeneration, or life after death, the argument has been made that such funerary art is a reference to a belief in regeneration, or life after death, and perhaps the journey across the sea to the Underworld.See Berg 2013, ‘The Potter’s Wheel in Mycenaean Greece: A Reassessment’, in: Giampaolo Graziadio et al. (eds.), Φιλική Συναυλία Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology for Mario Benzi , Oxford, 15. Literary sources from later periods in antiquity also make clear the association of sea creatures with death. Homer, on multiple occasions, links fish to death. This is described most vividly when they feast on the dead: ‘[Achilles] left the corpse… in shallow water, where the eels and fish were already at work, nibbling the kidneys and devouring the fat’, see Hom. Il. 21.200..

At funerals everybody, including family and friends of the deceased and people from the community, would probably see this jar. Women must have mourned the one they lost and washed the body with oil and dressed it with care (Fig. 25). Ritual dances were held and all the gifts that would find a place in the tomb of the deceased were displayed during this period of mourning and remembering.

Our jar might have been a container for the trade of fish sauce or might have been one of the gifts that showed off the status of a deceased, or a message that helped the deceased to travel to the afterlife. What do you think? One thing we do know: the jar was granted a second life. After excavation it now proudly stands on display in the Met Gallery in New York. When you walk around the vase and look into the octopuses’ eyes, you know it has an interesting story to tell.

Oh, and before you are off to another object from the Mycenaean world, we have some more octopuses for you in the longread below.