Ancient Egyptian pottery
Ancient Egyptian pottery includes all objects of fired clay from ancient Egypt. First and foremost, ceramics served as household wares for the storage, preparation, transport, and consumption of food, drink, and raw materials. Such items include beer and wine mugs and water jugs, but also bread moulds, fire pits, lamps, and stands for holding round vessels, which were all commonly used in the Egyptian household. Other types of pottery served ritual purposes. Ceramics are often found as grave goods.
Specialists in ancient Egyptian pottery draw a fundamental distinction between ceramics made of Nile clay and those made of marl clay, based on chemical and mineralogical composition and ceramic properties. Nile clay is the result of eroded material in the Ethiopian mountains, which was transported into Egypt by the Nile. This clay has deposited on the banks of the Nile in Egypt since the Late Pleistocene by the flooding of the Nile. Marl clay is a yellow-white stone which occurs in limestone deposits. These deposits were created in the Pleistocene, when the primordial waters of the Nile and its tributaries brought sediment into Egypt and deposited in on what was then the desert edge.
Our understanding of the nature and organisation of ancient Egyptian pottery manufacture is based on tomb paintings, models, and archaeological remains of pottery workshops. A characteristic of the development of Egyptian ceramics is that the new methods of production which were developed over time never entirely replaced older methods, but expanded the repertoire instead, so that eventually, each group of objects had its own manufacturing technique. Egyptian potters employed a wide variety of decoration techniques and motifs, most of which are associated with specific periods of time, such as the creation of unusual shapes, decoration with incisions, various different firing processes, and painting techniques.
An important classification system for Egyptian pottery is the Vienna system, which was developed by Dorothea Arnold, Manfred Bietak, Janine Bourriau, Helen and Jean Jacquet, and Hans-Åke Nordström at a meeting in Vienna in 1980.
Seriation of Egyptian pottery has proven useful for the relative chronology of ancient Egypt. This method was invented by Flinders Petrie in 1899. It is based on the changes of vessel types and the proliferation and decline of different types over time.
Material
Understanding of the raw material is essential for understanding the development, production, and typology of Egyptian ceramics. In Egyptian archaeology the distinction between Nile clay and marl clay is fundamental. Mixtures of the two types of clay can be seen as a third group.Nile clay
Nile clay is the result of eroded material in the Ethiopian mountains, which was transported into Egypt by the Nile. This clay was deposited on the banks of the Nile in Egypt since the Late Pleistocene by the cyclic Nile floods. As a result, deposits can be found far from the modern floodplain as well as within the level covered by the flood in modern times. Chemically, the clay is characterised by high silicon content and a high level of iron oxide. Mineralogically, it is micacaeous, illite-rich sediment clay, containing many different sand and stone particles brought from the various contexts through which the Nile flows. The clay turns a red or brown colour when it is fired in an oxygen-rich oven. When unfired, it varies in colour from grey to nearly black.Marl clay
The marl clay is found along the Nile valley, from Esna to Cairo, in the oases and at the edges of the Nile Delta. It is a yellow-white stone, which is found in limestone deposits. The deposits were created in the Pleistocene, when the original Nile river and its tributaries deposited this clay in what had previously been desert. Marl clay includes a range of kinds of clay based on their base substance. In general, they have a lower percentage of silica and significantly higher calcium content. The most important sub-types of marl clay are:- Qena clay: secondary deposits like that at Wadi Qena. This clay comes from sediments which were washed down the wadi and mixed with local slate and limestone.
- Marl clay from slate and limestone which is found along the Nile between Esna and Cairo.
Production
Selection of material
The selection of material was based on local conditions and the function of the object being manufactured. Nile clay was principally used for household crockery and containers, as well as ceramics for ritual use. Marl clay was principally used for storage and prestige objects like figural vessels.Gathering the clay
There is little precise information on how and where Egyptian potters got their raw material, how clay pits were run, how it was transported and how it was assigned to individual potters. In general, it seems that the clay came from three different places: the shore of the Nile or irrigation canals, the desert near the fields, and the hills of the desert itself. A depiction in the tomb of Rekhmire shows workers in the process of building up pile of Nile mud with hoes in order to make mudbricks. Clay for pottery production might have been gathered in a similar way. The scene also shows that Nile clay did not absolutely have to be taken from the fields. Piles of Nile clay were built up in the process of digging irrigation canals - as still happens today.Preparation of the clay
Egyptian tomb paintings often show the preparation of the clay. There are also models which provide some other details. Clear archaeological remains of pottery workshops, however, are rare. It is possible that they were very ephemeral structures.Clay which is exposed to air, dries very quickly. As a result, clay often reached the potter as dry, stony clumps which first had to be cleaned and mixed with water in order to make it possible to shape it. The raw clay was also dried and crushed in order to remove any large impurities, like stones, by passing it through a sieve. Another possibility was the elutriation of the clay by repeatedly immersing hard clay pellets in water and skimming the fine clay off the top. There is no evidence for such a process in the pottery workshop in Ayn Asil, but there is some possible evidence at Hieraconpolis. This elutriation would have to have been carried out in one or more pits or watering holes. Even before these finds, the depictions of potters in the tomb of had been interpreted as depicting elutriation in a watering hole. At least for the clay used in Meidum-ware in the Old Kingdom and the remarkably homogeneous Nile clay used from the beginning of the 18th dynasty, some kind of refining technology must have been used.
Standard images show one or two men involved in preparing the clay, once they had softened it, by treading it with their feet in order to turn it into a malleable mass. At this stage, the clay might be supplemented with temper, if it was decided that it did not already contain sufficient fine impurities, like sand. It was important that these not be too big or sharp, "excessively large temper can make the walls of pottery vessels unstable, since the clay will not be able to mesh together properly. Sharp particles, like stones, could hurt the potter when kneading the clay and forming the vessels and prevent the creation of a smooth surface." Through the addition of balanced temper, the clay could be made "more malleable and stable during production, and also more porous, which made it easier to dry, bake, and use the finished vessel."
After the clay had been mixed with water it would be full of air bubbles. To prevent cracking during the firing process, the clay had to be kneaded. In this process, two halves of a lump of clay were beaten against one another with significant force. In the tomb paintings, a worker in a bent position is shown working the clay with his hands before handing the kneaded balls directly over to the potter.
Shaping
There were five different techniques for shaping clay in ancient Egypt:- by hand
- using a rotatable pilaster
- using a potter's wheel operated by one of the potter's hands
- using a mould
- on a rapidly spinning potter's wheel, operated by an assistant or the potter's foot.
Hand-shaping
There were several different techniques for making pottery by hand: stacking a number of coils on a flat clay base, weaving, and free modelling. These three techniques were used from the predynastic period until at least the Old Kingdom.Free modelling by kneading and pulling at the clay with the hands is the oldest and most enduring technique for shaping clay. It was employed for all vessels in the Faiyum A culture, in the Merimde culture, and probably also in the Badari culture. In the Old Kingdom, it was used for the most important types and it was used for figures and models in all periods. The resulting product had thick walls. The technique is recognisable by pressure marks where individual bits of clay have been pressed together.
In the weaving technique, flat rectangular pieces of clay were woven together. The technique can be recognised by the fact that the broken vessels tend to form rectangular sherds. The technique seems to have come into widespread use in early Egypt, from the time when larger pottery vessels began to be made at the latest. Throughout the whole Pharaonic period and down to Roman times, large basins and tubs were made using this technique.
In the clay coil method, a series of coils of clay were stacked one on top of the other to form the walls of a pot. This technique is seen in late predynastic pottery from Heliopolis.