Marl Clay Pottery Fabrics of the New Kingdom from Memphis, Saqqara and Amarna

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This paper attempts to introduce a research tool essential for the study of production and trade and the way they were organized in ancient Egypt by examining marl clay pottery fabrics from the New Kingdom. Marl clay was the preferred raw material for the containers used in the transport of food within the Nile Valley and beyond. Sample sherds from Memphis, Saqqara and Amarna are described and illustrated macroscopically (20 x magnification) and microscopically (from thin sections). The results are used to create a concordance between the fabric classifications used at these sites, and with that used at Qantir and with the Vienna System. The data given will allow other archaeologists to link their own material to that described and so have access to the evidence this pottery provides on chronology and commodity exchange. THE purpose of this paper is not simply to provide a description of the raw materials from which pottery was made, but to introduce a research tool essential for the study of production and trade and the way they were organized in ancient Egypt.Egyptologists have long taken account of the documentary evidence relating to production, trade and administration, but the physical composition of the traded objects and their containers has received less attention. This study sets out to describe the marl clays of the New Kingdom, important for their use as the raw material of amphorae and other specialized containers. This can then be used both to refine the dating of New Kingdom pottery (and hence the sites on which it occurs) and to improve our knowledge of regional contacts. Sources of production can sometimes be suggested even if the location of individual workshops cannot yet be identified.The Egypt Exploration Society is currently excavating three major New Kingdom sites: Memphis (Kom Rabi' a, site RAT), Saqqara (New Kingdom necropolis) and Amarna. Pottery is the most plentiful class of material collected from all three and a considerable part of the excavations' resources is devoted to the thorough recording of it. We thus have an unparalleled opportunity to integrate the information derived from the ceramics from all three sites, desirable because the sites themselves are complementary and information from each should help explain the data from the others. For the New Kingdom Kom Rabila provides a statigraphic sequence from relatively modest houses from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Third Intermediate Period; Saqqara has closely datable high status and minor burials of the late Eighteenth to Nineteenth Dynasties; Amarna provides a variety of sites: Workmen's Village; chapels; pottery workshops; villas; and administrative, temple and royal buildin...

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“…At Only tiny fractions of the rims of the amphoras and the meat jar were preserved. All these vessels were made of the Vienna System fabric Marl D [90]. According to Janine Bourriau and Paul T. Nicholson, the deposits for this clay could be in the Memphite region or in the Nile Delta [91], since the distribution of vessels made of this fabric is mainly in the north of Egypt.…”

“…All these vessels were made of the Vienna System fabric Marl D [90]. According to Janine Bourriau and Paul T. Nicholson, the deposits for this clay could be in the Memphite region or in the Nile Delta [91], since the distribution of vessels made of this fabric is mainly in the north of Egypt. It seems that this fabric appears first during the reign of Thutmosis III [92] in the eastern Nile delta and was used during the later 18 th and in the 19 th Dynasties mainly for closed vessels.…”

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