Anyone who has ever worked on or visited archaeological sites in the Mediterranean will have come across ancient ceramic fragments - crunching underfoot during site visits, pot washing on hot afternoons, dusty boxes of shards in store rooms in the back of local museums. They are the virtually indestructible remains of ancient Greece. Ceramic vessels known as Attic vases are particularly iconic.

Made from an iron-rich clay, these distinctive vases turned a fiery orange and a deep black in the kiln. A complex firing process at temperatures of more than 800 degrees made them highly durable and was essential to the crafting of their graphic narrative decoration. Although several of the artists and workshops behind this flourishing, pan-Mediterranean ceramic industry have been identified, none are more renowned than the potter and painter Exekias (550-525 BCE). Twelve of his vases have survived, two signed with Exekias egrapse kapoiese me ("Exekias made me and decorated me") and 10 with Exekias epoiesen ("Ezekias made me"), and several unsigned examples have been attributed to his hand as well.

This amphora is one of Exekias' most exquisite examples, presenting a highly charged moment of love and death during the Trojan War. The scene involves Achilles, the Greek warrior and hero, and Penthesileia, the Amazon queen and daughter of Ares, the god of war. The Amazons were a legendary group of women who lived beyond the borders of the Greek world, spurned the company of men, and trained as warriors. Their name was believed to derive from a-mazos, meaning "no breast", as they were rumoured to have cut off one of their breasts to improve their deadly accuracy as archers. In every way, they contradicted idealised notions of women in the ancient world. And yet the ancient Greeks were also profoundly fascinated by these female warriors, and we find the Amazons explored as both monsters and titillating subjects throughout Greek art and literature.

Unique among this tradition, however, was Penthesileia, who was always treated with respect and sympathy. The story of her tragic death became a popular subject in Greek art and this vase presents one of its most famous renditions.

On one side, the Greek warrior Achilles looms threateningly in full armour over Penthesileia. He plunges a spear into her throat as she kneels before him. The scene freezes on this moment: a warrior defeating an adversary, one subjugating the other. Yet something else is taking place, conveyed simply through the positioning of the eyes, which are meeting, wide with shock and recognition.

According to the mythical tradition, Achilles and Penthesileia fell in love precisely at the moment of this death blow, one killing the other but both stricken with love. Their contrasting colours and poses underscore the tense paradox of this scene.

This vase is so famous for its depiction of this violent, doomed love that the scene on the other side of the vessel is often overlooked. Here we find Dionysos holding a kantharos (a drinking cup) and surrounded by vine leaves, standing next to his son Oinopion. As the god of wine, Dionysos often featured on vessels like this amphora, reminding us of their wine-bearing purpose. He was also associated with fertility and the afterlife, which are appropriate for the pot's likely discovery in a tomb. This vase came from the site of Vulci in southern Italy, one of the most important archaeological sites for the discovery of Attic vases. It is estimated that about 3000 vases were discovered here in the 19th century. However, the exact archaeological context for this vessel is unknown, and its provenance traced only as far as the British Museum's 1836 purchase when it was acquired through a posthumous sale of works owned by diplomat and collector Edmé Antoine Durand.

This stunningly unsettling vase is exhibited alongside an array of other black and red figure vases from the British Museum's collections in Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes, which closes on Sunday, May 1.