Jar with Tubular Handles
1 of 5
Object Label
Masterpieces of Stone Carving
During the Predynastic Period, Egyptians mastered the working of even the hardest stone.
They especially favored attractively colored stones, like the porphyry, breccia, and obsidian shown here. To create the mace head (war club) and jar in this case, an artisan laboriously ground and polished the stones with increasingly fine abrasives. A method called flaking—carefully applying pressure with another stone—produced the serrated obsidian object.
Caption
Jar with Tubular Handles, ca. 3500–3100 B.C.E.. Breccia, 5 1/2 x greatest diam. 7 5/16 in. (14 x 18.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 35.1314. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 35.1314_view1_PS6.jpg)
Title
Jar with Tubular Handles
Date
ca. 3500–3100 B.C.E.
Period
Predynastic Period, Naqada II to Naqada III Period
Geography
Place made: Egypt
Medium
Breccia
Classification
Dimensions
5 1/2 x greatest diam. 7 5/16 in. (14 x 18.5 cm)
Credit Line
Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Accession Number
35.1314
Rights
Creative Commons-BY
You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Frequent Art Questions
Can you help me understand how this was made?
Carving stone was a very slow and laborious process that involved using sand as an abrasive to wear down the stone. To carve out the interior of this vessel, a hole would first be drilled and then more of stone rubbed away with abrasives.
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