AN EGYPTIAN GRANODIORITE JAR PREDYNASTIC PERIOD, NAQADA III, CIRCA 3200-3000 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN GRANODIORITE JAR, PREDYNASTIC PERIOD, NAQADA III, CIRCA 3200-3000 B.C. Of squat globular form, the low rounded body rising to a sharply defined collared rim with broad flat top and a circular interior recess, flanked by two pierced lug handles set horizontally at the shoulder. The vessel is worked from a dense conglomerate stone of deep purplish-brown ground veined throughout with creamy white and pale ochre calcite inclusions, the surface ground and polished to reveal the full chromatic range of the matrix. The walls are evenly thinned and the profile carried smoothly from rim to underside, the lug perforations drilled cleanly through from the outer faces. The form belongs to the well-established repertoire of late Predynastic hardstone vessels, in which a low globular body, a pronounced disc-rim, and paired pierced lugs together define a recognised type. The lugs are functional as well as formal, intended for the passage of a cord by which the vessel could be suspended or secured, and they articulate the otherwise unbroken curve of the shoulder. The flat collared rim, ground to a precise horizontal plane, would have received a stopper or a covering tied down through the lugs. The choice of stone is itself a statement of resources and intent. Hard, igneous and metamorphic stones of this kind were quarried in the Eastern Desert and in the region of the First Cataract, and their working required abrasive grinding with sand and copper tools over extended periods, a labour-intensive process reserved for high-status production. The brecciated and veined varieties were particularly prized, the natural patterning of the stone treated as the principal decorative element. Vessels of this material are found in elite tomb contexts at Hierakonpolis, Abydos, and Naqada, where they accompanied the burials of the emergent ruling class in the centuries immediately preceding unification. Naqada III is the period in which the foundations of pharaonic material culture were laid, and the hardstone vessel tradition is among its most consequential legacies. The mastery of grinding and hollowing dense stones into thin-walled containers, achieved without the wheel and without metal cutting tools of any hardness, was sustained into the Early Dynastic period and produced the great corpus of stone vessels recovered from the subterranean galleries beneath the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. This jar exemplifies the late Predynastic hardstone vessel at the moment of its technical maturity, when the selection of a strongly figured stone, the disciplined reduction of the form to a low globe with collared rim, and the integration of paired lugs together produced an object whose authority lies in material and proportion rather than in applied ornament. Diameter: 14cm Height: 7.5cm

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