Pottery

I am Khnum, your creator, My arms are around you, to steady your body, to
safeguard your limbs.
The need to store things led to the development of containers, first among them
bags of fibre or leather, woven baskets and pottery. But clay lends itself to many
other purposes: bricks, tableware, statuettes, funerary offerings, jewellery, toys and
games etc. Pottery, the moulding of form out of a formless mass and its becoming
imperishable through firing, is the most miraculous kind of creation. Thus Khnum,
the great potter, created man.
Egyptians lived with clay and not the expensive alternatives found in royal tombs.
They lived in it, drank from it, cooked in it, ate from it, carried liquids in it, played
with it, and when they died, the only offerings of any permanence most could afford
were made from it.

Material and working techniques

Most of the pottery manufactured in Egypt was made of reddish brown clay, and
is called Nile silt ware. It served everyday purposes and was often left undecorated.
The red colour of the fired product was the result of iron compounds oxidizing. The
whitish marl on the other hand, a mixture of clay and lime, was found only in a few
locations in Upper Egypt, such as at Qena . It required higher firing temperatures
under better controlled conditions than other clays. For decorative purposes it was
preferred to the common Nile silt.
The oldest pottery technique consisted in hollowing out a lump of clay by hand
and pinching it to give it the final form. Later a flat tool was used to press the clay
against the other hand. This simple procedure brought forth the elegant and
astonishingly thin-walled vessels of the Naqada II period [9] (2nd half of the 4th
millennium BCE).

Since the Early Dynastic Period (ca.3000 to 2600 BCE) cores were used to
produce bowls, plates, platters and similar completely convex pottery. A sheet of
clay was spread over a core of wood or the like, trimmed and let to dry, when the
core could be removed. This resulted in an efficient production of crockery; a
drawback was that bottles and jugs could not be produced this way. The related
technique of using a mould was adopted only during the Second Intermediate Period
(18th to 16th century BCE).
The potter's wheel, which came into use during the Old Kingdom (27th to 22nd
century BCE) was rotated by hand, and it was not until two millennia later that the

kick wheel was introduced which at last freed both hands. In the beginning potters
found turntables convenient to get easier access to all sides of the work piece, still
using old methods, such as pinching or coiling. In the end it changed their working
techniques: the throwing of pots was mastered, the clay was prepared more carefully
achieving better consistency, and the kilns were improved. As a result crockery
could be made faster and was more symmetrical.
The ancient Egyptians used a number of techniques to improve the look of their
pottery:

Decorations were incised, painted or stuck on.

Black colouring was the result of exposing the vessels to smoke.

Slip, an often pigmented mixture of water and clay of the consistency of

cream, was applied to smoothen the surface and colour the earthenware.

Wash, a mixture of pigment, such as red ochre, and water changed or

intensified the colour of the pottery.

Glazing of steatite and clay pottery began during the 4th millennium BCE.
Egyptian faience, mostly blue or greenish mezzomaiolica, was made of a core
consisting of quartzite particles and alkaline or occasionally, towards the
demise of pharaonic Egypt, lead based glazing. In Roman times true tinbased faience began to appear.

Form and decoration

Line-drawings with an asterisk in the left bottom corner are swapped with colour
images on mouse-over

Crockery
The red wares were made without a potter's wheel like all pre-dynastic pottery.
After giving them their form, which was sometimes unconventional (3), they were
dried in the sun, sometimes covered with red ochre, and burnished with a stone.
Thus a smooth shiny surface was achieved, which showed off better the native
reddish colour of the clay. They were fired either in open fires or very simple kilns.
The black decorative upper rim and inside of the black-topped pottery possibly
stem from smouldering chaff or other organic materials the pots were placed in
upside down before or after firing [7].
During the Badarian and Amratian periods (3800-3400 BCE) they were often left
without further decoration. Later on (Naqada II, ca 3300-3000 BCE) line drawings
were sometimes scratched into the polished surface (2). These were mostly

geometric patterns or hunting scenes.

The marl ceramics of the Naqada II period, given the name D-ware by Petrie,
were decorated with reddish-brown drawings which developed from the early simple
geometric forms to less abstract images. Among these stand out depictions of manyoared boats (1)(2) transporting what has been interpreted by some as deities. There
are also constructions reminiscent of the royal standards seen for instance on the
Narmer palette.
Other popular decorations are geometric forms or include people and animals (3) ibexes and flamingoes and the like. Decorations similar to these were found on the
walls of a tomb at Hierakonpolis.
These vases have sometimes small pierced handles, the holes possibly made for
the insertion of string. The rim is often quite wide and flat.
Naqada pottery was attractive enough to be valued by foreigners. At Seyala in
Nubia Egyptian artefacts were found in royal graves, probably brought there as gifts
from one ruler to another.

While the form of the red-burnished bowl on the left is ordinary and its whitish
geometrical decorations common-place, the addition of modelled figures, in this case
four crocodiles, is rare. They are distributed all around the bowl and separated by
painted chevron patterned bands. The interior is also decorated with simple
geometric designs.

Bread and beer were the daily food and drink of the Old Kingdom Egyptian.
Bread was sometimes baked in moulds, crudely made and thick walled (1) [9]. Beer
vessels (2) for every day use were often primitive and
generally undecorated [2].

Flinders Petrie describes

some Middle Kingdom pottery
found at Kahun thus:
(1) is a type of vase which is
not uncommon here;
(4) is a smooth brown pot,
lipless, with a black circle
joining a black base and black
side lines, on either side, and
two red lines down by the
handle. It is quite un-Egyptian.
All of the above were found in
the XIIth dynasty rubbish
heaps, and have therefore a
strong certificate of age.
Lastly there is the black pottery (2,3,5) the latter piece being whitened by
concretions. This pottery is common at Kahun, many pieces having been found last
year. It was found also by M. Naville along with scarabs of the XIIth & XIIIth
dynasty at Khataneh, deep down in burials which could not have been later
disturbed. Its age therefore seems well assured and it closely resembles in colour,
form, and decoration the earliest Italian black pottery
W.M.F.Petrie 1891 Illahun, Kahun and Gurob [3]

Ceramics from many places around the eastern Mediterranean reached Middle
Kingdom Egypt, from Crete, the Greek mainland and islands, Asia Minor, Syria, and
Canaan.
The pots and vases often had very small or rounded bases and had to be placed in
pits dug into the floor or on pottery stands. Moreover unglazed pottery is somewhat
porous, which is at times exploited for keeping beverages cool through evaporation
of some of the water content. The stands also caught any surplus water oozing out
and prevented dirt from sticking to the moist outer surface of the
pot. [3]

Contact with the many peoples of the Levant was even closer during the New
Kingdom, and the influence of foreign cultures on Egypt became more pronounced.
Petrie defined some of his finds at Gurob as Egyptian type pottery (1,2,5), false
necked Aegean vase (3), Syrian type pottery (4), blue glazed pottery (6,7), pilgrim
bottle with winged Bes (8) [3].
Predynastic pottery was ornamented before firing. The iron oxides used resulted
in purplish-black or brown decorations. During the New Kingdom pottery was often
decorated after firing. The main colours were blue (Egyptian blue frit), red (red
ochre) and black (carbon or black iron oxide with manganese oxide).

Idols, funerary offerings, temple deposits

Pre-dynastic inhabitants of the Delta made burnt clay heads of their gods which
could be carried in their processions and rituals. This somewhat abstract head is
painted and holes were made for attaching hair of the head and a beard.