[MSN] Hundreds of museum goers said a last-day farewell Sunday to the most famous wine artifact in the vast Metropolitan Museum of Art - and perhaps America.

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Ancient wine artefact returns to Rome
January 14, 2008


 Howard G Goldberg in New York

Hundreds of museum goers said a last-day farewell Sunday to the most famous
wine artifact in the vast Metropolitan Museum of Art - and perhaps America.

For more than three decades, the large 2,500-year-old vessel, the Euphronios
krater, has been displayed at the museum, on New York City's Fifth Avenue. 

The large 26-inch-wide terracotta krater, bought for $1m in 1972, was used
by ancient Greeks to mix wine and water. Paintings on it are attributed to
Euphronios, a Greek artisan. 

The krater is going to Italy to be displayed temporarily in the Quirinale,
the presidential palace in Rome, along with other looted artworks that have
been repatriated. 

Italy maintained for years that the krater had been smuggled from a tomb in
Cervetri, close to Rome. Etruscan-era Cervetri possesses the largest ancient
necropolis in the Mediterranean region. 

In 2006, the Met struck a deal under which it would hand over to Italy 21
reportedly stolen objects; in exchange, the Italian government is lending
the Met a number of rare ceramic antiquities. 

Grapes and wine were important to the Greek diet. The Oxford Companion to
Wine, relates that in ancient Greece 'wine was almost always drunk diluted
with water: the ratio varied, normally ranging between 2:3 and 1:3, which
would give a range in alcoholic strength of about 3-6% and generally at the
lower end of this range.' 

It adds: 'Weaker mixtures are disparaged in comedy...but 1:1 was considered
by some dangerous to the health, and the regular drinking of unmixed wine, a
habit confined to barbarians, was believed by some Spartans to have caused
the insanity and death of their King Cleomenes.'

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