ANCIENT EGYPT

PREDYNASTIC PERIOD - "WAVY-HANDLED" JARS

PREDYNASTIC "WAVY-HANDLED" JAR. (26K) Earthenware, 27.5 cm. high. Naqada III Period, circa 3100 BC.

This "wavy-handled" jar represents a particular style in the pottery being produced just before the unification of Egypt, circa 3100 BC. Its distinct form, color, and decoration places the jar in the culture phase called Naqada III, during the late or terminal Predynastic Period of the Chalcolithic Period, circa 3200 BC It is one type among the many varieties of pottery produced by the Naqadan culture.

NAQADAN CULTURE

The earliest Naqadan culture, or Naqada I, emerged around 4000 BC, followed by Naqada II and then Naqada III, which lasted into the Early Dynastic Period. The name "Naqada" comes from the area in which the culture developed. It was one of the most important Predynastic sites in Egypt, located north of Thebes in Upper Egypt.

MAP OF EGYPT. (48K) Deir el-Ballas and Naqada are highlighted.

However, the culture was widespread, as evidenced by more than 50 sites with cemeteries numbering some 15,000 graves. By the time this jar was being produced, Egypt had developed from a land of small hunting-gathering communities, connected to each other by family and social relationships, to an agricultural society of settled villages.

ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION

The origins of the "wavy-handles" on the jar can be traced through changes in body shapes and the later addition of painted crossed decorations. The eminent Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie was first to trace these changes and thereby develop a chronology for these "wavy-handled" jars, following his excavations at the predynastic centers at Naqada and at Deir el-Ballas in 1894-1895.

EVOLUTION OF THE "WAVY-HANDLED" JAR. (90K) See text, below.

The earliest forms, dating to about 4000 BC, are undecorated and show a more pronounced horizontal, ledge-like undulating handle, or lug, on either side of the upper plain body. These projections probably functioned as finger grips. Over time, changes occurred and the "wavy-handles" became shallower and the bodies were produced in several shapes. A gradual slimming down took place, from rotund to the cylindrical or tubular body shape. Petrie proposed dates for the "wavy-handled" jars by comparing the earlier bulbous body forms to the later cylindrical body forms. Petrie also noted that the crossed-lines decoration on the cylindrical jars was a later addition, a design possibly derived from the knotted cord slings that formed a net to hold vessels for carrying or for hanging.

HOW THE JAR WAS MADE

A POTTER SHAPES A JAR. (54K) Old Kingdom, Dynasty V.

The clay was kneaded and sand temper was added. Then the jar was built up by the coil method and hand-shaped, probably by turning on a flat stone. The potter's wheel was unknown until the Old Kingdom, circa 2780 BC The surface of the jar was polished to make it less porous, and the jar was then air-dried to a leathery consistency, decorated in paint with a net pattern, and baked. The "wavy-handle" design on the upper body was produced by pinching the wet clay with the fingers.

SOURCE

The McClung Museum's jar comes from an unknown Naqada grave site. Used in everyday life, such jars were sometimes placed with other types of pottery vessels in the grave of the deceased.

PREDYNASTIC GRAVE. (26K) Wavy-handled jar is at upper right.

These graves were of the open pit type, dug out of the lower desert with stone and wooden tools. The vessels were believed to magically hold food and drink essential in maintaining an uninterrupted life of the body necessary to eternal life after death.

Elaine A. Evans
Curator/Adjunct Assistant Professor
McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
16 April 1997

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