Gift to the Chief: A Roman Amphora with the Sestius Stamp from the Pushkin SMFA

Abstract

The amphorae collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) stores the rarest for the Black Sea region sample of Roman amphora of the first half of the 1st century BC with the Latin stamp SES “anchor”. Judging by the presence of traces of marine mollusks on the outer surface, the vessel comes from the sea. Under the act of transfer the amphora was received in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts from the Kremlin Museums in 1965. The stamp makes it possible to confidently define the vessels origin from the workshops of the Roman colony Cosa (modern Tuscany territory), which belonged to the famous plebeian Sestius family, who Cicero corresponded with. Additionally, it has been suggested that the amphora may originate from the famous Grand Congloue shipwreck near Marseille, explored in the post-war period by J.I. Cousteau.