A RARE EGYPTIAN FOUR HANDLED RIBBED ALABASTER JAR, OLD KINGDOM, 2686-2125 B.C.

拍品描述

A RARE EGYPTIAN FOUR-HANDLED RIBBED ALABASTER JAR, OLD KINGDOM, 2686-2125 B.C. Of ovoid form, rising from a small flat base through gently swelling shoulders to a short cylindrical neck with everted lip. The body is carved with vertical ribs running the full height of the vessel, terminating just below the shoulder. Four small pierced lug handles project symmetrically from the shoulder, each drilled through for suspension. The stone is a warm honey-gold calcite, translucent in the thinner passages and traversed by natural white banding that crosses the body in irregular horizontal veins. Traces of iron-red mineral inclusion are visible around the lugs and along the base. The interior has been hollowed through the narrow mouth, a demanding technical operation on a stone of this hardness. The ribbed profile imitates the fluted or gadrooned form of certain metal and pottery prototypes of the Old Kingdom, and the four pierced lugs indicate that the vessel was designed to be suspended or secured by cord, most probably as a container for precious oils, unguents, or cosmetic preparations. Such small stone jars were used both in life and in funerary provisioning, deposited in tombs to supply the deceased with the substances required for ritual purification and offering. The material identifies the object as much as the form. What Egyptologists conventionally call alabaster is in fact travertine calcite, quarried principally at Hatnub in Middle Egypt and at quarries in the Wadi Gerrawi, sites under direct royal control from the Early Dynastic period onward. The stone was reserved for high-status production: temple vessels, royal offering equipment, canopic containers, and the burial goods of the elite. Its translucency, prized for the way lamplight and daylight passed through the vessel wall, carried associations with purity and with the luminous flesh of the gods. A jar of this stone was not an ordinary container but a marker of rank and of ritual seriousness. The Old Kingdom saw stone vessel production reach a level of technical mastery seldom equalled in later periods. Craftsmen working with copper tools, abrasive sand, and hand-turned drills produced hollowed vessels of astonishing precision, and the ribbed body seen here required patient exterior carving after the interior had been reduced. Vessels of comparable form appear among the assemblages recovered from Old Kingdom mastaba tombs at Saqqara and Giza, and the four-lug type belongs to a wider Old Kingdom repertoire of small suspension jars in calcite and related stones. This jar exemplifies the disciplined lapidary tradition of the Old Kingdom, where a demanding stone was worked into a form whose apparent simplicity conceals considerable technical labour. The combination of ribbed body, four suspension lugs, and translucent honey calcite places it within the small class of Old Kingdom personal and ritual containers made for elite use. Dimensions: Height: 7.3cm

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