Wavy Handled Jar

Place of OriginEgypt, presumably Balabish necropolis

DatePredynastic Period (4500-3100 BCE)

Dimensions9 1/2 × 5 3/4 in. (24.1 × 14.6 cm)

Mediumearthenware

ClassificationCeramics

Credit LineGift of the Egypt Exploration Fund

Object number

1915.75

Not on View

Label TextThis tall jar with distinctive wavy handles belongs to Egypt’s Predynastic Period (c. 3800–3300 BCE), a time before the unification of the Nile Valley. Wavy-handled jars were a hallmark of Naqada II pottery and are among the earliest examples of large-scale ceramic production in the Nile Valley. They were likely used for storing liquids and sometimes imitated foreign shapes from the Levant. Though typically attributed to Balabish, the excavation number “U 17” does not match Balabish tomb records, and the cemetery was not in use during the Predynastic era. The jar could have been excavated during an earlier Egypt Exploration Fund campaign at a different site, such as Abydos.Published ReferencesLuckner, Kurt T., "The Art of Egypt, Part 1," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, new series, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 1971, p. 6, repr. fig. 5.

Comparative ReferencesSee also Raphael, Max, Prehistoric Pottery and Civilization in Egypt, New York, Pantheon Books, The Bollingen Series VIII, 1947, pl. XI, no. 11.

cf. Hayes, William C., The Scepter of Egypt, New York, Harper and Bros. with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1953, p. 22, fig. 13.