Rhyton in the context of "Campanian vase painting"

The Minoan civilization produced a wide variety of richly decorated Minoan pottery. Its restless sequence of quirky maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, in Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans.

The pottery includes vases, figurines, models of buildings, and burial urns called larnakes. Several pottery shapes, especially the rhyton cup, were also produced in soft stones such as steatite, but there was almost no overlap with metal vessels. The finest achievements came in the Middle Minoan period, with the palace pottery called Kamares ware, and the Late Minoan all-over patterned "Marine Style" and "Floral Style". These were widely exported around the Aegean civilizations and sometimes beyond, and are the high points of the Minoan pottery tradition.

Eirene (/aɪˈriːniː/; Ancient Greek: Εἰρήνη, Eirḗnē, [ei̯ˈrɛːnɛː], lit. "Peace"), more commonly known in English as Peace, is one of the Horae, the personification and goddess of peace in Greek mythology and ancient religion. She was depicted in art as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, sceptre, and a torch or rhyton. She is usually said to be the daughter of Zeus and Themis and thus sister of Dike and Eunomia. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Pax.

A drinking horn is the horn of a bovid used as a cup. Drinking horns are known from Classical Antiquity, especially the Balkans. They remained in use for ceremonial purposes throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period in some parts of Europe, notably in Germanic Europe, and in the Caucasus. Drinking horns remain an important accessory in the culture of ritual toasting in Georgia in particular, where they are known by the local name of kantsi.

Cups made from glass, metal, pottery, and in the shape of drinking horns are also known since antiquity. The ancient Greek term for a drinking horn was simply keras (plural kerata, "horn"). To be distinguished from the drinking-horn proper is the rhyton (plural rhyta), a drinking-vessel made very loosely in the shape of a horn, sometimes with an outlet at the pointed end.

The Thracians (Bulgarian: Траки, Ancient Greek: Θρᾷκες, Latin: Thraci) were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting a large area in Central and Southeastern Europe, centred in modern Bulgaria. They were bordered by the Scythians to the north, the Celts and the Illyrians to the west, the Greeks to the south, and the Black Sea to the east.

The Thracians were skillful craftsmen. They made beautifully ornate golden and silver objects such as various kinds of vessels, rhytons, facial masks, pectorals, jewelry, weapons, etc. These show strong, and increasing, influence from the neighbouring cultures, especially the Greeks. They used to bury rich hoards of precious objects both to hide them in times of enemy invasions and unrest as well as for ritual purposes. To date, more than 80 Thracian treasures have been excavated in Bulgaria, the cradle of the Thracian civilization. Refer to the map which explicitly shows the territory of present-day Bulgaria.

The Harvester Vase is a Late Bronze Age stone rhyton, dating to about 1550 to 1500 BC, found at Hagia Triada, an ancient "palace" of the Minoan civilization in Crete. It is now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, and is an important example of Minoan art from the Neopalatial Period.

The vase was made in three parts, of which the lowest is missing and has been replaced in modern times with undecorated plaster. A band of relief running around the widest part of the vase depicts marching men, and has variously been interpreted as a harvest celebration, a religious procession, or a military scene.