CORPUS OF ATTIC VASE INSCRIPTIONS

Pottery is a critical tool in our understanding of the society, art, and language of ancient Greece. Most vase painters who worked in Attica—the area of Greece surrounding Athens—were active during the sixth to fourth centuries BC. Their work was often inscribed either directly into the clay or by painting the surface. Henry Immerwahr's Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions is an attempt to catalog these inscribed vases. It contains 8,173 entries and is the result of more than sixty years of research. Each entry is given a local identifier and indicates which collection the vase belongs to (and the inventory number where possible). The entries then have four parts:

• Section A documents the type of vase, place of discovery if known, painter or potter or both, date, and bibliography;
• Section B contains a short description of the paintings;
• Section C contains the inscriptions; and
• Section D offers free commentary.

A significant number of the entries contain additional footnotes. No illustrations are provided. To learn more about the history of the corpus, read Immerwahr’s description of it. The material gathered in the corpus is the basis for an on-going project by Rudolf Wachter.

Home | History of the Corpus

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