Vatican Museums

The figurative decoration is arranged on three levels, in which narrative subjects (bearded warrior with lance and shield, two nude dancers or acrobats, a bearded man with raised arms retreating before a horse) and variously arranged animal figures (panther, horse, wild boar, lion, sphinx, gryphon, fish, birds of prey in flight). The handles end with horse heads (?).
It recalls the shape of Corinthian ceramics, produced locally in Etruria both in clay and in bucchero. The decoration also echoes the pictorial repertoire of antique Corinthian ceramics, with the persistence of the Etruscan-Phoenician stylistic current in the case of the lion figures.
The Etruscan inscription mi ramuthas kansinaia (= “I belong to Ramtha Kansinai”), according to the speaking-object mode, implies that the vessel was owned by a high-ranking female personage, identified with both personal and family name. Possibly completed with a lid, it was produced in the same city of Vulci and destined, in funeral ritual, to contain ointments or symbolic and precious objects.