Amphora - Etymology

Etymology

Amphora is a Greco-Roman word developing in ancient Greek during the Bronze Age. The Romans acquired it during the Hellenization that occurred in the Roman Republic. Cato is the first known literary personage to use it. The Romans turned the Greek form into a standard -a declension noun, amphora, pl. amphorae. Undoubtedly, the word and the vase were introduced to Italy through the Greek settlements there, which traded extensively in Greek pottery. Remarkable is that, even though the Etruscans imported, manufactured, and exported amphorae extensively in their wine industry, and even though other Greek vase names were Etruscanized, no Etruscan form of the word exists. There was, perhaps, an as yet unidentified native Etruscan word for the vase, which pre-empted the adoption of amphora.

The Latin word derived from the Greek amphoreus (ἀμφορεύς), an abbreviation of amphiphoreus (ἀμφιφορεύς), a compound word combining amphi- ("on both sides", "twain") plus phoreus ("carrier"), from pherein ("to carry"), referring to the vessel's two carrying handles on opposite sides. The amphora appears as a-pi-po-re-we in the Bronze Age records of Knossos, a-po-re-we at Mycenae, and the fragmentary ]-re-we at Pylos, designated by Ideogram 209, Bennett's AMPHORA, which has a number of scribal variants. The two spellings are transcriptions of amphiphorēwes (plural) and amphorēwe (dual) in Mycenaean Greek, from which it can be seen that the short form prevailed on the mainland. Homer uses the long form for metrical reasons while Herodotus has the short form. Ventris and Chadwick's translation is "carried on both sides."