Tile Stamps depicting a Frog on the Roof Tiles of Selinus (Sicily)

The Selinuntine roof tiles of the Classical period bear a remarkable variety of stamps testifying to the activity of the different workshops. The only Selinuntine tile stamp bearing an animal depicts a frog. In the Greek world the frog became a symbolic image of the fertility of the earth, the fecundity of the human race, the regeneration of nature, the perpetuation of time. But the frog is also, more simply and more immediately, linked to water: it lives in ponds, it comes out when it is damp, its croaking announces rain. So there is an obvious connection between the roof and the water. And if the image of the frog on the tile stamps establishes a link with one of the gods, it may be more strongly linked to the nymphs of the places where there are springs and lakes, the divinities of the rivers, or the Chthonic goddesses Demeter and Kore who protected the springs that welled up from the bowels of the earth.