These four vessels represent some of the earliest achievements of Egyptian artisans. Each is laboriously carved from very hard stone using simple stone tools. Such vessels appear in great numbers but in a limited variety of shapes, indicating that they were made in specialized workshops. As functional containers they reflect a huge investment in labor—from sourcing the different varieties of stone to the many hours spent in their manufacture—an expense that is especially significant considering that a vessel can much more readily be made from clay than of stone. Their small size and the choice of stone mark them as luxury items produced for elite consumers. Most have been recovered from tombs, but the exact provenance of these four examples is unknown.1

The examples shown here are small in scale with small mouths that helped prevent evaporation of the contents. They were probably used for perfumes or unguents. However, many excavated examples have been discovered empty, indicating that they were valued not only for their functionality, but as beautiful objets d’art.2

The small, pierced lug handles on these four examples are a feature of many other Predynastic vessels. It has been suggested that the lugs allowed the vessel to be suspended; they could also have made it possible to secure a flat lid over its mouth by a cord that passed between the lugs.3

What is especially striking about these containers is the range and choice of stones that were used: mottled stone (breccias and granites), colored stone (basalt, limestone, porphyry, schist), and stone with banding (travertine, also called Egyptian alabaster or calcite). Most of these stones are very hard.^[1] They were obtained from mines in the remote mountains of the Eastern and Western Deserts, another reflection of the investment in their manufacture. The state maintained a monopoly over some of the mines, suggesting that the stone-vessel workshops were under government control.^[2] Obtaining the materials and the skill to make these objects was beyond the range of household workshops; surely, they were made by specialized craftsmen.4

The heyday of the manufacture of stone vessels was the middle Predynastic Period into the early Old Kingdom (about 4000–2500 BCE), although stone vessels continued to be created throughout the rest of Egypt’s history (see cats. 55, 57–58, 60). Many of the earliest examples, dated to Naqada I (about 4000–3800 BCE), are made of hard, black basalt, a material that must have been an extreme challenge to work. Even at that time, these vessels were more ornamental than utilitarian. Some types from that period have a small, conical base that was purely decorative.5

Stone vessels became increasingly common in tombs dating to Naqada II (about 3800–3300 BCE). By Naqada III (about 3100 BCE), such vessels made up about twenty percent of the furnishings of elite tombs.^[3] The prestige they reflected upon their owners is documented by the enormous cache—approximately forty thousand examples of granite, calcite, slate, diorite, and limestone vessels, some of them bearing the names of earlier kings—that was discovered in passages under the Step Pyramid of King Djoser (reigned about 2645 BCE) at Saqqara.6

Stone vessels may imitate the forms of contemporaneous pottery vessels, reflecting owners’ desire to have and ability to afford better and more expensive versions of what was owned by the non-elite, much like the message that designer handbags (as opposed to cheap knockoffs) communicate today. An extreme example of this occurs in Naqada III (about 3200 BCE), when following the rise of the mass production of simple pottery beer jars, very finely made imitations were crafted of beautifully veined multicolored stone. In a similar manner, extremely fine and complex stone vessels were made to replicate cheap and expendable baskets.^[4]7

The techniques employed to make these vessels can be reconstructed from the marks made by the tools, from examples of the tools themselves, and from scenes in tombs that show workshops. One such scene on a tomb relief (fig. 1) shows different stages of carving and finishing bowls, jars, and cylindrical vessels. At the left and right, men stand using wobbly drills (also called twist-reverse-twist drills). The drill’s shaft was a piece of wood with an offset handle. A collar toward the bottom allowed for the attachment of a bit made of a hollow tube of copper alloy. Modern experiments with these drills prove that the actual cutting was achieved by the abrasive quartz sand that was poured around the bit. Two weights (probably stones) that hung from the handle created centrifugal force and downward pressure. Other men in this scene are shown using a stone to polish the interior and exterior of vessels.8

Unfinished vessels show that the production process started with a block of stone that was first roughly fashioned into the desired shape. Then, using a tubular drill bit, one or multiple cores were drilled out of the interior to create the cavity. By Dynasty 1, the figure-eight stone drill bit was introduced. Hafted to a split stick, the drill bit was rotated to remove the stone from the interior of the vessel.^[5] This was a quicker, more efficient method, and although the quality of the vessels may not have been as good, as demand for these objects increased, it allowed a greater number of people to own these prestigious and desirable items.^[6] Experiments using copies of ancient tools have shown that a modern craftsman took 22.5 hours to carve a limestone vessel 10.7 cm tall and 10 cm in diameter.^[7] Limestone was among the softer stones used, so the examples in basalt and breccia reflect a much greater commitment of time.9

The jars shown here show different levels of skill, or perhaps different levels of investment in their manufacture. The exterior form of the two barrel-shaped, flat-topped, rimmed jars with lug handles (cats. 48–49) is essentially the same. However, the interior of cat. 48 follows the shape of the exterior of the vessel, resulting in very thin walls, while the interior of cat. 49 is a single, rough cylinder drilled from the core, leaving very thick walls. The interior of cat. 48 has been left slightly rough and the marks of the rotary tool are visible; a large chip mars its flat-topped rim. The tiny, globular vessel with a flat, sharp-edged rim and lug handles made of beautiful, mottled, black-and-tan breccia (cat. 46) shows tremendous skill. The shape of the interior carefully follows the exterior, and the lower half of the interior is polished, which must have been a very difficult operation on such a small vessel. The low bowl with lug handles and a flat-topped rim (now chipped) (cat. 47) reflects great care with the undercutting of the area under the shoulders in the interior, again a very difficult task considering the scale of the jar and the nature of the stone tools that were used.10

The millennia of experience on the part of highly skilled craftsmen who carved stone vessels resulted in a refined technical ability and a well-developed tradition that they were able to transfer to executing the relief work that covered the sandstone and limestone walls of Old Kingdom tombs and temples.^[8]11

Provenance

46.
Reverend Chauncey Murch (1859–1907), Luxor, Egypt; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1894.12

47.
Émile Brugsch (1842–1930), Bulaq Museum and Egyptian Antiquities Service, Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1892.13

48.
The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired in 1894.14

49.
The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired in 1910.15

Publication History

46.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 90. 16

47.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 90 (ill.).17

48.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 90. 18

49.
Art Institute of Chicago, Thirty-Second Annual Report: June 1, 1910–June 1, 1911 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1911), 19, 62.19

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 90.
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