Bronze strigil
Strigils are tools, mainly in hammered bronze, that were essential to the care of the skin in Ancient Greece and Rome: they were used to scrape dirt and perspiration from the body after an application of perfumed olive oil. These skin care procedures are commonly represented on vases and grave steles, showing soldiers, athletes following the routine after bathing or exercising, equipped with a strigil, an aryballos (flask for perfumed oil) and a sponge. Some examples have the handle decorated, often cast as a young-athlete; others are in glass or silver. Although they were everyday objects, they are also found in burials. In this example, the long and concave tapering blade has a sharp curve in a claw-like shape. The plain handle has round turns, narrows along the verso and is attached to the end of the blade.
Object number: 11.107, 127.023.
Date: 500 B.C.
Parallels: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 11.107, 14.105.2; Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum 54.1926; London, British Museum 1894,1101.506; Providence, Rhode Island School of Design 15.142; Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum 34.699, 34.1212; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 01.7478; London, Science Museum A63017, A79611, A621906, A656596; Canberra, Australian National University, Classics Museum 1968.09; Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts 73.7.A; Sydney, Macquarie University History Museum MU4201.
References: Walters, H. B., Catalogue of the Bronzes in the British Museum. Greek, Roman & Etruscan, BMP, London, 1899; Dohan, E. H., and Hoenigswald, H. M., “Three Inscriptions in the University Museum, Philadelphia”, American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 46, no. 4, 1942, pp. 532–37; Coghlan, H. H., “A bronze strigil from Greece examined.”, Historical Metallurgy, vol. 11.2, 1977; Green, J.R., Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, Canberra: A.N.U., 1981, p. 100; Kakish, R., "A strigil from Roman Jordan: Evidence for personal care", Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 15(2), pp. 63-70; Chun Pu Chu, E. and YL Wong, A., “Exploring scraping therapy: Contemporary views on an ancient healing – A review”, Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 10(8), pp. 2757-2762, 2021.
Photo by Steve Morton