Early Arts and Crafts: D-Ware Vessels

The blog post for this week is written by Linda Kimmel, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States. When she retired from full-time work as a data research manager in late 2020, she began studying about the ancient world, and serving as a docent at the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Linda had never heard of the Egypt Centre before the pandemic but has taken every course offered since she first noticed a tweet about the Centre in the fall of 2020 and has been taking online courses there ever since. She hopes to visit the Egypt Centre in 2024, provided the trains are running!

In our final session of The First Pharaohs: Early Dynastic Egypt course, Ken Griffin covered the Arts and Crafts of the period. While I have taken a number of classes on Egyptian art, I know virtually nothing about Predynastic and Early Dynastic Period arts and crafts. I have led a lot of tours at the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology as a docent, focusing on some of the Museum’s Egyptian collection. However, I have consistently avoided one case that contains artifacts from Pre- and Early-Dynastic Egypt, including a number of ceramic and stone vessels. I did not feel I knew enough about the materials—or the time period—to feel confident in my ability to answer any questions that might arise (fig. 1). Fortunately, that has now changed, thanks to the Egypt Centre!

Fig. 1: Pre- and Early-Dynastic case from the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (photo by Linda Kimmel)

In our last class, we covered many different materials: palettes, pottery, knife handles, ivory labels, tomb paintings, stone, the Scorpion Macehead, metalworking, faience, textiles, woodworking, and hieroglyphs! I learned a lot but can easily imagine a full course devoted to the arts and crafts of the period. While I enjoyed learning about all of the different types of materials, I decided to focus my blog post on one specific type of pottery, Decorated Ware, or D-Ware. Yvonne Buskens-Frenken touched briefly on D-Ware in her fantastic blog post about the first class in this course, but I decided to take a deeper look at D-Ware.

Two types of clay were available for the production of ceramic vessels in Egypt: Nile silt clay and marl clay. D-ware was normally made from marl clay, which was found on the edge of the desert and under cultivation near the desert (Hope 1987). Marl clay is a mix of Nile silt and limestone and fires (under oxidation) to colors generally ranging from pale yellow to buff. The Egypt Centre’s website has a great description of D-Ware, and notes that it was shaped by coiling and smoothing. The decorations were applied before firing, with the paint made from iron oxides.

Fig. 2: W1046 from the Egypt Centre

D-Ware is found during the Naqada II (or Gerzean) Period in Egypt and is distinguishable from previous and later pottery. The vessels feature red paintings on typically cream or buff-colored clay (Smith 1998). The paintings on D-Ware pottery can range from simple geometric or almost abstract designs to intricate designs featuring aspects of the Egyptian landscape such as water and mountains as well as animals, human figures, and boats.

Fig. 3: Kelsey Museum “Pot with Lug Handles,” KM88814 (photo by Linda Kimmel) 

W1046 in the Egypt Centre collection primarily seems to have more abstract or geometric markings (fig. 2). According to the Egypt Centre’s database, it was excavated by Garstang in 1905 from the fort cemetery at Hierakonpolis (grave 137) and was purchased by Wellcome in 1922 at an auction. The Kelsey Museum has a similar pot featuring swirled designs listed as being purchased from the Tano dealership in Cairo (fig. 3). I will be adding this pot to future tours I conduct featuring Egyptian artifacts. A second pot at the Egypt Centre features even fewer markings, with large expanses of unpainted clay (fig. 4).

Fig. 4: W1304 from the Egypt Centre

What I find especially fascinating are the pots with fairly intricate designs, featuring animals, boats, and at times humans, such as W5308 in the Egypt Centre collection (fig. 5). This vessel seems to have a two-cabined boat on either side and was purchased by Wellcome at auction in 1922 from the MacGregor collection. The wavy lines seem to represent the river, but what else is going on here? What does this all mean?

Fig. 5: W5308 from the Egypt Centre

A D-ware vessel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art dates from the Late Naqada II Period and depicts boats and a number of animals (fig. 6). The museum’s website notes that while we cannot know the exact significance of the designs, it seems to “represent important social or religious events”. We can see that there are two males and two females on a boat, and there seem to be two cabins. But what does this mean? Are they involved in a religious ritual? Are they meant to represent gods or goddesses? Are they kings and queens? On another side of the vessel, we can see a host of animals, but are left to wonder what they represent.

Fig. 6: Decorated ware jar depicting ungulates and boats with human figures (MMA 20.2.10) 

Finally, the Kelsey Museum also has a D-Ware pot with a boat with what seems to be two cabins (fig. 7). Near the top of this pot, we find a number of birds identified as ostriches in the Museum’s label. Why are the birds above the boat? Does this have some significance? This is another artifact I will be adding to my tours of the Egyptian collection; it should result in some great discussions about what the designs might mean.

Fig. 7: Kelsey Museum, “Painted Jar with Boats and Ostriches,” MCCM1921.22. (Lent by the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University)

When Ken introduced pottery during the class, he noted that much of the pottery during this period was more highly decorated than that produced in later Egyptian history. I find this puzzling. Did the Egyptians come to view pottery as more utilitarian and not something that was worth decorating?

I am left with a lot of questions about D-Ware pottery and intend to dig deeper into research about this form of pottery. However, thanks to this latest Egypt Centre course, I now feel confident to include the Predynastic gallery in my tours at the Kelsey Museum, in particular, the lovely example of D-Ware pottery. As I puzzle about the meaning of the scenes on the D-Ware pottery, I’m also equipped with many open-ended questions to ask the people on my tours.

While I am sad this course has ended, I look forward to future Egypt Centre courses. As usual, each week Ken provided us with additional readings to learn more about the topic. I have plenty of reading to do until the next class begins, hopefully in May.

 

References:

Hope, Colin. 1987. Egyptian Pottery. Princes Risborough: Shire Publications.

Smith, W. Stevenson. 1998. The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt. New Haven: Yale University Press.