As mentioned previously, the largest cemetery in the Cyclades was found at Chalandriani on Syros, where approximately 600 tombs were excavated. Most of the tombs were excavated by the pioneer Greek archaeologist, Christos Tsountas, from 1898 to 1899. One of the curious type of object recovered from the tombs was a clay vessel shaped like a frying pan. They could not have actually served as frying pans since there is no evidence that they were ever placed in a fire. However, their shallow raised rim suggests they may have been used as a dish.¹Coleman 1985, 202 ff. Tsountas suggested they may have functioned as ancient mirrors since the shallow pan filled with water or olive oil would have produced a highly reflective surface. It is noteworthy in this regards that a bronze mirror was found at Susa shaped like a Cycladic “frying pan” although without a lip. It dates to approximately the same time period as our “frying pans.”

Tsountas

ARC / Louvre

ARC / British Museum

Before the introduction of polished bronze mirrors, people had only a vague impression of their appearance from looking at their reflection on water or in the glassy surface of obsidian. The Greek word for mirror (“looking down”) preserves the ancient idea of looking at ones reflection in a pool.²Papathanassoglou and Georgouli 2008, 660

Narcissus

In Ovid’s telling of the story of Narcissus and Echo, the youth, Narcissus spurns the love of the nymph, Echo, and falls in love with his own reflection in a dark pool instead.

Heartsick with unrequited love, Narcissus withered away next to that deceptive pool until nothing remained except little yellow and white daffodils (Latin. narcissus) to mark the spot where he lay.

Jan Roos

The mirror displays the “shade” of a man says Ovid. The same term may be used to refer to a person’s spirit or ghost. Perhaps this is why bronze mirrors were so often placed in tombs. A custom which may be traced back to ancient Egypt; mirrors are commonly found in Greek and Etruscan tombs. If the Cycladic “frying pans” were indeed used as mirrors then they may be included in the same tradition.

Religious Symbolism

The religious imagery displayed on the “frying pans” has been summarized by Colin Renfrew as “sex, sun, and sea.”³Renfrew 2011 Among the symbols commonly displayed is an eight-pointed “star” interpreted by Renfrew as the sun. Alternatively, it may be compared to the eight-pointed “dingir” sign used by Mesopotamian scribes to denote “divinity” in general, and the goddess, Inanna, more specifically.⁴Black 2011, 169-170 An eight-pointed star was also famously represented on a fresco at Teleilat el-Ghassul. Its appearance on Cycladic frying pans likely bears some relation to these other instances despite the great distances separating them.

The Longboat

A most interesting aspect of these Cycladic “frying pans” are the depictions of long boats found on them. Ten in total have been discovered so far. These represent the earliest known depictions of boats in the Aegean. Since none of the islands are separated by more than 25 miles, the islanders did not need deep hulled sea going vessels to get around. However, it is not clear whether they were paddled like a canoe, with the paddler facing forward, or if they were equipped with oars, with the oarsman facing backward. If oars are intended then the boats must be ancestors of the Greek triaconter (“thirty-oared”) of the Archaic period (9th-6th centuries BC). All things considered, they are remarkably similar to the triaconters and penteconters of a later age.

Coleman thinks it more likely that the raised end of the boat should be identified as the prow and the opposite end with the projecting spike should be its stern.⁵Coleman 1985, 198 The situation is not clear-cut since there are instances of similarly shaped boats, such as the one depicted in Tomb 1000 at Hierakonpolis, which have the steering ore on the raised end. In this instance the raised end must be the stern.

At least ten “frying pans” have been found with boats depicted on them. They are always shown with a large fish attached to their raised ends. Coleman interprets the fish to be a totem—the emblem of a clan or tribe—mounted to the prow of the boat. In this case the raised end can only be interpreted as the prow since it wouldn’t make sense for the fish to be attached to the stern, facing in the direction opposite the boats travel. This is one of the primary reasons Coleman interprets the raised end as the prow.

However, it may be wondered if the fish emblem was actually attached to the prow of the boat. The fish is very large in relation to the boat and appears only to be attached by a single line. Such a configuration hardly seems possible if the fish is physical object mounted to the boat. Perhaps we are looking instead at something from Cycladic mythology rather than a physical representation. (Of course, both may be true.)

There is a striking parallel between the Cycladic “frying pans” and copper razors which have been recovered from Nordic tombs in Denmark (c. 900-700 BC).⁶Sorenson and Appleby 2018, 194 In this case, it has been possible to piece together a solar connection between the boat and the fish, although the details of the myth cannot be precisely worked out. According to one interpretation, at sunrise the fish hauls the sun up from the night boat and places it on the day boat so that it may continue to journey across the sky. This is not very different from an Egyptian solar myth. Perhaps the boat and fish depicted on Cycladic “frying pans” likewise has a solar connection.

“Frying Pans” at Alachahoyuk

Approximately two hundred frying pans have been found in the Aegean region, thirty-two of which were found in tombs on Chalandriani.⁷Coleman 1985, 193 Curiously, several bronze “frying pans” have also been recovered from the royal tombs of Alacahoyuk, in central Anatolia (more on these later). The “frying-pans” are otherwise unknown in Anatolia.