Narrator: Today, we keep ancient Greek pottery in museum cases. These things are over two thousand years old, and incredibly rare and precious!  But originally, they were household objects in regular use.

The big amphora to the right was used to mix wine and water, which the ancient Greeks preferred. It’s decorated with a scene of warriors fighting. On this vase, the artist painted the figures in black, leaving the red clay unpainted as background. Thin lines were incised, or carved out, to indicate details such as clothing.

Down to the left of the case is a smaller vessel decorated with the opposite color scheme. Black glaze becomes the background, and the figures are the red of the clay, with details added very delicately.  The vessel was used to hold water. And it was probably made by a famous Athenian artist. Here’s curator Renee Dreyfus:

Dreyfus: Apollo is seated on the left-hand side - and his sister is pouring wine for him, and his sister is Artemis. So we're looking at a domestic scene in Olympus where the Gods lived. And what's delightful here, is between the two of them, you see a deer. A deer is sacred to the goddess Artemis, and he looks up kind of thirstily for a drop of wine to perhaps miss the drinking vessel that Apollo is holding and perhaps even fall conveniently into its mouth.