Trading stirrup jars

The Mycenaeans were no strangers to overseas trade and diplomacy to maintain both commercial and political connections with the wider Mediterranean, Near Eastern regions and beyond. In fact, the Late Bronze Age has been characterized as a cosmopolitan and highly communicative period.For more information about the political connections and trade in the Late Bronze Age, see Tartaron 2013, Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World, Cambridge, 29-35; Bachhuber 2020, ‘Shipwrecks’, 1095. For more information on the trade of stirrup jars in this period, see Haskell et al. 2011, ‘Transport Stirrup Jars of the Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean’. The remains of stirrup jars give interesting insights into this.

Based on administration from the Mycenaean archival tablets, it becomes clear that the palaces throughout the Greek mainland were important economic centers from ca. 1600 to 1300 BCE. Even if direct palatial control may not have been the case for all production or export, it is clear that in some cases the state (indirectly) supervised the production of goods.It is therefore likely that the state also organized trade with the wider Mediterranean region and the Near East. The palatial complexes and their political-economic centers traded in local products, among which (olive) oil, pottery, sheep’s wool, wine and perfumes, which are all mentioned in the administrative tablets.

Stirrup jars were mostly manufactured in large quantities on Crete and were subsequently shipped to the Greek mainland, containing either oil or wine, but they also played a role in royal gift exchange. See Haskell et al. 2011, ‘Transport Stirrup Jars of the Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean’, 127-128. Kelder 2009, ‘Royal Gift Exchange between Mycenae and Egypt’, 339-352, focuses specifically on the bilateral relations between Mycenae and ancient Egypt. Sherds of stirrup jars have especially been found across sites in Egypt in graves and royal capitals. Mycenaean stirrup jars also found their way to Amarna, the capital of the pharaoh Akhenaten, and they are thought to have held olive oil to be presented to the pharaoh’s court as part of a diplomatic mission. Shards were also found in the worker’s town of Deir-el-Medina, where the artists and laborers working on the nearby royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. In this town, numerous pieces of smaller types of pottery were unearthed which likely contained perfumed oil. Perfumed oil had many uses, and not only for humans. Stirrup jar pieces have been uncovered in a pharaoh’s stables, revealing that even the royal horses might have been spoiled with scented oils!See Mynárová, Onderka and Pavúk 2018, The Deir el-Medina and Jaroslav Černý collections. 2, Pottery, 178. For more information about perfumed oil in clay vessels, see also idem, 174.

Palatially organized trade ceased with the destruction of the major citadels and economic centers at the end of the thirteenth century in the face of political unrest and natural disasters. Yet trade itself did not stop, which seems to confirm that independent merchants had already been active even when the palaces still stood. This is also the period that saw the emergence of the highly-decorated stirrup jars characterized by large octopuses on the back and front, such as this one.