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Storage Jar

Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art

On View: Egyptian Orientation Gallery, 3rd Floor
Pottery Manufacture

Available materials, construction technique, and even social status all played a role in the manufacture of pottery.


Most ancient Egyptian towns had at least one skilled potter who served the entire community. Palaces, estates, and temples employed dozens of craftsmen to fashion luxury and ritual wares.

Potters used two principal materials: alluvial silt (soil deposited by the floodwaters of the Nile) and soft desert shale called marl. Silt contains iron oxides and fires red; marl, rich in calcium carbonate, fires to a buff color. To make both clays more workable, potters added straw, crushed stone, or pulverized pottery.

Potters constructed vessels by hand or on a wheel. Hand building involved shaping the clay manually and with simple tools. To create vessels on a wheel, artisans rotated the clay rapidly on a low, flat turntable and let centrifugal force pull it into shape. Spiral marks, evident on several examples in this case, indicate wheel manufacture.
MEDIUM Clay, pigment
  • Place Made: Egypt
  • DATES ca. 1426–1390 B.C.E.
    DYNASTY Dynasty 18
    PERIOD New Kingdom
    DIMENSIONS 16 15/16 × Diam. 9 1/4 in. (43 × 23.5 cm)  (show scale)
    ACCESSION NUMBER 37.347E
    CREDIT LINE Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
    CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Tall pottery cordiform jar with rounded rim, tall neck, and pointed base. The neck and upper part of the body are decorated with painted geometric and floral motifs. The colors used are red and deep red. The pot is of a red-orange ware with a buff slip (?). Condition: Line of oval-shaped depressions running around body which appear to have been made with a cord but after the pot was completed. The paint and slip are chipping off and most of the lower part of the body is red where the slip is gone. Most of the pot is dirty and there are cracks in the bottom in which there are the remains of glue; otherwise good.
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is on view in Egyptian Orientation Gallery, 3rd Floor
    CAPTION Storage Jar, ca. 1426–1390 B.C.E. Clay, pigment, 16 15/16 × Diam. 9 1/4 in. (43 × 23.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.347E. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.37.347E_erg456.jpg)
    IMAGE overall, CUR.37.347E_erg456.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 9/5/2007
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    RIGHTS STATEMENT Creative Commons-BY
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