Vladimir Yu. Koval

Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russia
E-mail: kovaloka@mail.ru

Keywords: Byzantium, Novgorod, the Mediterranean, pottery, siphon, clepsydra.

During excavations in Novgorod, fragments of an unusual Byzantine vessel with a hollow handle were found. On the territory of Rus, similar vessels are known only in Novogrudok (Navahrudak, Republic of Belarus), and outside Rus, they have been found in Bulgaria, Greece, Asia Minor, i.e. in the Byzantine territories. Most of the finds are dated to the 12th century. There are various opinions regarding their purpose, including the use of these vessels for distillation of alcohol. However, such use is not possible for purely technological reasons. Ethnographic data (such vessels survived in everyday life on the islands of Naxos and Paros until the 20th century) show that they served to extract wine from narrow-necked amphorae and pithoi by sucking up liquid through a tube. In Greece, the word for such vessels, siphons, has been preserved; however, it is possible that in ancient times they could be called clepsydra, literally, ‘water thief’. A siphon from Novgorod could be brought there by the famous church leader and artist Olissey Grechin from his trip to Byzantium in the 1160s.

DOI: 10.31857/S086960630007223-4