Both cups are of a type made in Athens around 450 BCE and widely
exported. They are shallow drinking cups with low, ring-shaped feet
and an offset inner rim painted with a floral design.
The views here are after a recent de-restoration, in the course of
which all gold foil pieces were removed whose exact original location
had not been recorded. There are numerous (at least 16) additional
gold pieces which unquestionably belong to these cups. The gold foil
additions were made at Kleinaspergle or in the vicinity of the
Hohenasperg. (Böhr 1988, 176 ff.;
Schaaf 1988, 191-195).
The cups were both broken and mended in antiquity. The repairs
are also thought to have been made by the Asperg Celts.
Schaaf suggests that the handles were broken
off during an inept game of kottabos, a common motif in Greek
and South Italian red-figure vase painting (1988, 191) . The
symposiast, still reclining, swings his kylix about by one handle in
order to fling the dregs of his wine at a target. We have no way of
knowing whether the Celts knew about this custom, nor whether they
would have correctly interpreted vase paintings with such depictions.
Schaaf's scenario of clumsy barbarians trying to imitate
sophisticated Mediterranean drinking habits is predicated on the
assumption that the Celts imported Greek ideas and customs along with
the objects, out of a desire to emulate the Greeks. The otherwise
very Celtic funerary context in which these cups were found suggests
that, on the contrary, the cups were integrated into local usages and
customs.
The remarkable gold foil pieces were applied without regard for
the Greek ornament. On both cups, they overlap portions of the
painted florals on the interior rims; in the case of the Amphitrite
painter's kylix, even the tondo painting is not spared. The foils
are emphatically Celtic, early La Tène in style. They suggest
a Celtization of the cups rather than a Hellenization of the Asperg
Celts.
Attic red-figure kylix by the Amphitrite
Painter.
5.1 cm H; 15.5 cm Dia (22.2 cm Dia with handles)
Interior rim: ivy. Tondo: Woman with torch at altar.
Black glaze Kylix, probably from the same Attic
workshop.
5.1 cm H; 15.4 cm Dia (21.9 cm Dia with handles)
after Mohen 1987, 257-8, figs
355-359 (some reversed)
Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum.
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