AN EGYPTIAN VEINED RED LIMESTONE BOWL PREDYNASTIC-EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD, NAQADA III-3RD DYNASTY, CIR

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AN EGYPTIAN VEINED RED LIMESTONE BOWL, PREDYNASTIC-EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD, NAQADA III-3RD DYNASTY, CIRCA 3200-2600 B.C. Of compressed globular form, the wide shoulder tapering to a short splayed foot below and rising above to a tall cylindrical neck with everted, flattened rim. The vessel is hollowed from a single block of red limestone, the stone heavily veined with creamy white and ochreous deposits running in irregular bands across the body. The surface retains a soft polish, with the lustre concentrated along the rim and shoulder where handling and burnishing have worked the stone. The foot is finished with a recessed underside and a low ring base. The form belongs to a class of stone vessels produced in Egypt from the late Predynastic period into the early Old Kingdom, in which the carver's primary aesthetic statement is the figure of the stone itself rather than applied decoration. The choice of a strongly veined red limestone, and the deliberate exposure of its banding across the swelling shoulder, indicates that the block was selected and oriented to display the natural pattern to greatest effect. The undecorated surface is not a sign of austerity but of confidence in the material. Stone vessels of this kind were produced in considerable numbers in the Naqada III phase and through the first three dynasties, and represent one of the defining technical achievements of early Egyptian craft. The hollowing of a hard or semi-hard stone from a narrow neck, using copper tubular drills and abrasive sand, was a slow and demanding process, and such vessels were accordingly objects of status. They are recovered in large quantities from elite tombs at Abydos, Saqqara and Helwan, where they accompanied the burials of kings and high officials, and from temple deposits of the Early Dynastic period. The use of coloured and figured stones, including breccia, diorite, travertine and the harder limestones, reflects an early Egyptian preoccupation with the symbolic and visual properties of stone that would persist throughout the pharaonic period. Red stones in particular carried associations with the desert, with solar imagery and with regenerative power, and were favoured for both funerary and ritual vessels. This bowl exemplifies the early Egyptian stoneworker's command of pure form and figured material, in which the swelling profile and everted rim are calculated to display the banded grain of the limestone without competition from carved ornament. It belongs to the foundational tradition from which the long sequence of Egyptian hardstone vessels descends. Diameter: 9.5cm Height: 7cm

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