Base of a perirrhanterion (water basin) located in 1885 in a fill inside the Parthenon.

It has the shape of a small column without flutes that has a base and a plain capital, both carved on the same block of poros limestone. The upper surface has a socket to receive the marble perirrhanterion while around its perimeter an inscription reads: ΣΜΙΚΥΘΗ ΠΛΥΝΤΡΙΑ ΔΕΚΑΤΗΝ ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕΝ, meaning “the washer Smikythe dedicated (the perirrhanterion) as a tithe”.

Although Athenian women of the 6th and 5th cent. BC, lived confined in their house, those from poorer social strata, as well as most of the metics' wives, had to work outside of their homes in areas such as production, commerce and other manual labours. Regarding washers, women that is, that undertook to wash other people’s clothes for money, there are not mentioned in ancient literary sources. However, based on iconographical evidence we understand that they conducted the washing either in the client’s house, or their own.

The inclusion of Smikythe’s profession in the dedication inscription is a testimony to the social change and confidence that artisans and labourers started to develop from the end of the 6th cent. BC, during that is the time of the newly founded democracy.