AN EGYPTIAN POTTERY JAR PREDYNASTIC PERIOD, NAQADA II, CIRCA 3400-3300 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN POTTERY JAR, PREDYNASTIC PERIOD, NAQADA II, CIRCA 3400-3300 B.C. Of squat globular form, the body rising from a rounded base to a pronounced carinated shoulder, surmounted by a short, sharply everted neck with a thickened, flattened rim. Set at the shoulder on opposing sides are two small pierced lug handles, applied as horizontal projections and bored through for the passage of a cord. The fabric is a buff to pale red earthenware, the surface bearing traces of a light slip and showing the warm orange and cream tonalities characteristic of Nile-valley wares. Areas of accretion, root marking, and minor abrasion are consistent with long burial. Fine surface cracks are visible across the body and shoulder. The vessel belongs to the broad class of utilitarian and funerary jars produced in Upper Egypt during the Naqada II phase, when the pottery industries of sites such as Naqada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos reached a level of standardisation that would underpin the ceramic conventions of the early dynastic state. The form, with its low centre of gravity, sharp shoulder, and string-hole lugs, is functional: such jars were designed to be suspended or secured with cord, used for the storage and transport of oils, unguents, or grain. Examples of this type are recovered both from settlement contexts and from the cemeteries that yielded the bulk of surviving Predynastic material, where they were deposited as grave goods alongside cosmetic palettes, flint blades, and figurines. The Nile-valley silts and marls from which such vessels were thrown or hand-built carried meaning beyond their availability. The pale, iron-poor clays of Upper Egypt and the redder ferruginous clays of the alluvium were already, by the Naqada II period, being deliberately selected and combined to produce specific colour effects, and the contrast between red-polished and buff-surfaced wares would crystallise in the same period into the celebrated Red-Polished and White Cross-Lined traditions. The present jar, undecorated and reliant on form alone, belongs to the quieter utilitarian end of this industry, where the potter's concern was structural balance and the practical fitting of lug, shoulder, and rim. The Naqada II phase, sometimes designated Gerzean, is the period during which the cultural and material conditions of pharaonic Egypt took recognisable shape. Standardised ceramic types, the emergence of regional elites, the spread of long-distance trade in lapis and obsidian, and the first monumental tomb architecture all belong to these centuries. Pottery of this kind is among the most numerous surviving witnesses to that transformation, and its forms were carried, with modification, into the protodynastic horizon. This jar exemplifies the practical, lug-handled storage vessel of the Naqada II repertoire, a form whose disciplined silhouette and integrated suspension lugs mark the moment at which Egyptian potters had resolved their utilitarian shapes into the stable types that would persist into the early dynastic period. Its interest lies less in surface decoration than in the clarity of its profile and the survival of its functional details intact. Width: 19cm Height: 11cm

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