Meaningful Mingling: Classicizing Imagery and Islamicizing Script in a Byzantine Bowl

Abstract

Greco-Roman themes are a defining feature of middle Byzantine secular art, but scholars note frequent slippage between medieval representations and their classical models. A well-known glass vessel further complicates Byzantium's relation to ancient precedents by combining classicizing iconography with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions. Reconsideration of middle Byzantine attitudes toward Greco-Roman and Islamic traditions suggests magic, specifically divination, as a point of intersection among these cultural groups, with the vessel drawing from distinct iconographic and inscriptional sources to enhance its divinatory function. The object's aesthetic eclecticism is best understood as a meaningful mingling and creative reinterpretation of its models.