Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 5, presents 93 black- and red-figure white ground lekythoi housed in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum dating from the late Archaic period to around 400 BC. Lekythoi, especially those decorated in the white ground technique, are best known from funerary contexts as offerings filled with oil and placed into graves or left on the steps of grave monuments during visits to the tomb. The scenes on the black-figure oil flasks represent lively scenes of myth. The red-figure or outline or red-figure lekythoi, some decorated by the Achilles Painter who produced some of the finest examples known, show myth, episodes in the lives of Athenian women, and – increasingly in the course of the 5th century funerary scenes such as Charon, the ferryman of the dead, the brothers Sleep and Death depositing a warrior at his grave, and poignant visits to the tomb.
