News about a greek vase used to transport and conserve honey

Abstract

Honey, with its different traits and uses, was a commercialized good, on par with other important foodstuffs. The first evidence of containers to transport honey date to the Bronze Age, as is recorded on Egyptian frescos of the fifteenth dynasty (middle of the second millennium BC) and on some Mycenae Linear B tablets (second half of the 2nd millennium BC). Other types of containers used to transport honey are referenced in papyrus of the Ptolemaic era1. The containers recovered by archaeology are of roman and Byzantine time. Identifying them is possible due to the inscriptions (sgrafitto and tituli picti), mostly present on amphorae forms used to transport wine.