Schliemann was intrigued by a peculiar type of vessel which he found in the lowest levels of the city (Troy II-V). Their beaked nose, wing-like handles, and overall shape reminded him of an owl. He thought the vessels might have some association with the goddess Athena, noting that Homer used the title glaukopis (“grey-eyed” or “owl-eyed”) with reference to the goddess and the close association between Athena and the owl in Classical Greek art. Furthermore, a temple to “Illian Athena” (Illios being the Greek name for Troy) had been constructed at Troy by Greek colonists, perhaps as early as the 7th century BC, which suggested to Schliemann a special connection between Athena and Troy.¹Schliemann 1875, 35-37

ARC / Neues Museum

This theory is generally dismissed today by scholars who classify these vessels as anthropomorphic face jars rather than owl vases.²A view that was already propounded by Pitt-Rivers in 1901: “this figure does not represent an owl but a human face.” (Pitt-Rivers 1901. See here) Thus Henri Frankfort declares emphatically, “we cannot share Schliemann’s conviction that a mere impression of owl-likeness is in any way relevant to the significance of these faces.”³Frankfort 1949, 194

One can agree with Frankfort that some of the vessels found at Troy seem to have human facial features that do not bear any relation to owls, but others have beaks and wings that are uncannily owl-like.⁴Yilmaz 2016, 364-375 Moreover, as Schliemann observed long ago, owls have a long association with the goddess in the ancient world. There are, in fact, vases in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest which are unmistakably owl-like. This is not to say that they represent Athena, but perhaps they stand in the background of this goddess.

ARC / Hungarian National Museum

Beyond the Dardanelles

The owl vase appear to be a subset of the face jar, which is found widely distributed throughout west and central Anatolia and central Europe. Although face jars assume many different forms, they share certain characteristics.

• abstract facial features applied to the neck of the jar
• globular body
• flat vertical ledge for ears, sometimes pierced
• winged handles or arms on the body
• a navel
• two small knobs for breasts

In the 1960’s, the Hungarian archaeologist, Nándor Kalicz, suggested that the face jars which they were discovering at sites in Central Europe belonging to the Baden culture, could have been introduced to the region from Western Anatolia. Kalicz’s hypothesis seems reasonable enough since the face jars from the two regions bear a close resemblance and, at the time of writing, the Baden Culture was thought to have been roughly contemporary with the early bronze strata of Troy (Troy I-III). The Hungarian face jars were therefore dated from the mid-to-late 3rd millennium BC, approximately between 2400 and 2000 BC.⁵Eszter Bánffy “Dating Methods” in Visy 2003, 43

However, with the adoption of C14 dating in the late 1960’s, the Baden culture was redated approximately a millennium higher, placing it squarely in the Chalcolithic period. The connection between Troy and central Europe suggested by Kalicz was “fundamentally refuted.”⁶Krauß provides the following helpful summary of the problem: “In 1963, Nándor Kalicz attempted to create a direct relationship between the two areas [Troy and Central Europe]. A short time after, calibrated radiocarbon dates revealed that Baden Culture could not possibly be dated later than the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean but should be dated significantly earlier. The thesis that the Baden phenomenon emerged from the migration of populations from northwestern Anatolia was thus fundamentally refuted.” See: Krauß 2014, 261 The similarities observed between the face jars from the two regions had therefore to be coincidental, the product of “converging appearances.”⁷Krauß 2014, 271 A better explanation, in my opinion, is that the C14 dates are too high. The synchronisms discerned by Nándor Kalicz are real and ought to be given priority over C14 data.