The chamberpot that the Blooms keep under their bed for nighttime emergencies, and which Molly uses under just such conditions at the end of the novel, is described as "orangekeyed." This cryptic adjective probably refers to the labyrinthine design sometimes called a Greek key, and various details suggest that Joyce means it to evoke Homeric times. Readers also learn in Calypso that the bedroom contains a "broken commode," which Ithaca describes more exactly as "A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne cutting, apple design." This is a wooden chair, beautified by a fabric covering and concealing a ceramic pot beneath its seat—a much more commodious appliance for doing one's business. The commode long ago broke when Molly was sitting on it, so the Blooms use the chamberpot, purchased as one part of a matching set of ceramic items.

In Circe Bloom refers to "That antiquated commode. It wasn’t her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle." In Penelope Molly too recalls breaking the commode. The realization that her period is starting sends her looking for the pot: "wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you...O patience above its pouring out of me like the sea...I dont want to ruin the clean sheets the clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn it...wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its breaking under me after that old commode." Ithaca notes that the pot is one part of a set: "Orangekeyed ware, bought of Henry Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer, 21, 22, 23 Moore street, disposed irregularly on the washstand and floor and consisting of basin, soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher and night article (on the floor, separate)."

In his critical study Ulysses, Hugh Kenner argues that "orangekeyed" must refer to an orange border in the kind of continuous pattern called a key pattern, key meander, Greek fret, or Greek key, implying multiple links to Homeric Greece. The OED's first documented use of "key" as a kind of graphic pattern "is dated 1876, in the first decade of Homeric archaeology." The figure "characterised much Greek pottery of the Geometric Period, the ninth to seventh centuries BC: pottery of the lifetime (if he lived) of Homer" (144). Joyce emphasizes the connection by coining his word in "the way Homer formed many epithets, of which the most celebrated is rhododaktylos, 'rosyfingered,' by joining an attribute of colour or brightness with a name." (Other such epithets include "wine-dark," "bronzed-armored," "grey-eyed" or "shining-eyed," "white-armed," "red-haired," "flaming-haired," and "silver-footed.") Finally, although Kenner does not mention it, much ancient Greek pottery was thrown from iron-rich Attic clay and fired in oxygen-rich environments that turned any unpainted surfaces intensely orange. The 5th century cup shown here combines orange color, a key pattern, and a woman using a chamberpot.

If this humble pot serving the Blooms' baser bodily needs is meant to recall the Homeric age, the ironic audacity of the connection would not have escaped Joyce's notice. In Telemachus Mulligan says to Stephen, "The mockery of it!... Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!" But Stephen's name is far from meaningless: both words contain ancient Greek meanings that figure in the novel's symbolic structures. Soon Mulligan, who is well schooled in Greek, is hearing Homeric echoes in his own name: "My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens." In these two instances, the word "absurd" performs a kind of feint, suggesting that any hunt for significance is illogical or inappropriate. When Bloom speaks of "that absurd orangekeyed utensil" in Circe, the adjective performs the same trick once more. Linking a chamberpot to a great heroic era may seem discordant and irrelevant, a mere mockery. In fact it is a small arresting reminder that in human experience some things stay eternally the same.

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