or shelves; or, in the case of flat cups and plaques, suspended on the
wall. Many of the later Greek and Italian painted vases are very
carelessly decorated on the one side, which was obviously not intended
to be seen.

We come now to the use of vases for religious purposes, dedicatory,
sacrificial or funerary. Of all these uses, especially the last, there
is ample evidence. That vases were often placed in temples or shrines
as votive offerings is clear from the frequent mention in literature
of the dedication of metal vases, and it can hardly be doubted that
painted pottery served the same purpose for those who could only
afford the humbler material. Of late years much light has been thrown
upon this subject by excavations, notably on the Acropolis of Athens,
at Corinth, and at Naucratis in the Egyptian delta, where numerous
fragments have been found bearing inscriptions which attest their use
for such purposes. It was a well-known Greek custom to clear out the
temples from time to time and form rubbish-heaps (_favissae_) of the
disused vases and statuettes, which were broken in pieces as useless,
but it is to this very fact that we owe their preservation. At
Naucratis many of the fragments bear incised inscriptions, such as
[Greek: Apollonos eimi], "I am Apollo's" (possibly a memorandum of the
priest's, to mark consecrated property), or [Greek: ho deina anetheke
te Aphrodite], "So-and-so dedicated me to Aphrodite." Fig. 14 gives
another example with a dedication to Apollo. At Penteskouphia, near
Corinth, a large series of painted tablets ([Greek: pinakes]), dating
from 600 to 550 B.C., with representations of Poseidon and dedicatory
inscriptions to that deity, were found in 1879. Votive offerings in
this latter form were common at all periods, and tablets painted with
figures and hung on trees or walls are often depicted on the vases,
usually in connexion with scenes representing sacrifices or offerings.

There is no doubt that vases (though not necessarily painted ones)
must have played a considerable part in the religious ceremonies of
the Greeks. We read of them in connexion with the Athenian festival of
the Anthesteria, and that of the gardens of Adonis. They were also
used in sacrifices, as shown on an early black-figured cup in the
British Museum and on a vase at Naples with a sacrifice to Dionysus.
In scenes of libation the use of the jug