Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:05:54.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Palace Wares from Nimrud Technical Observations on Selected Examples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

P. S. Rawson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A delicate vessel, not uncommon in levels of the seventh century B.C. is the small thrown goblet (e.g. ND.1839, Plate XLI No. 1), generally some 8–10 cm. in height, with a fairly high-shouldered belly, and a wide neck of almost cylindrical form, splaying slightly out towards the everted lip. The neck accounts for between one third and one half of the total height of the vessels. The bases of these goblets show that they were commonly pinched off a clay matrix, though a fragment of fine drab ware (T.W. 53, Room 18) found in the lowest sub-level of 4, which probably belonged to a pot of this kind, exhibits a small ring-foot thrown from excess clay at the base. This pot must have been inverted and re-centred on the wheel—no easy task with this sort of fabric; its date is probably a few decades before Assur-bani-pal.

A particularly interesting feature of some of the more delicate goblets is the pattern of rows of fingertip indentations round the outside of the belly of the pot. The original reason for the development of this ornament, with its particular spacing, was clearly an inescapable practical fact. For a pinched-off pot has to be caught in the potter's free hand as it is finally separated from the clay matrix; and the makers of these goblets used to catch them with their fingertips, which indented the fine, slimy body of which they were made. The potters then added further indentations to make a pattern. The original set of finger impressions can be identified on complete pots by fitting them to one's own finger-grip.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1954 , pp. 168 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1954

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 169 note 1 It has not yet proved possible to carry out kiln tests and chemical analyses of the wares, so that much of the following discussion is speculative.

page 169 note 2 Other vessels, e.g. cylindrical cups 8–9 cm. high, were also made of this coarser clay (e.g. ND. 3082, now in the Metropolitan Museum).

page 169 note 3 See Rawson, P.S., “Surface Treatment of Early Indian Pottery” in Man, 06 1952Google Scholar.

page 169 note 4 Period IV, eighth century B.C. We are indebted to Dr. K. M. Kenyon for this parallel, e.g. from tomb 207. There appears also to be evidence for a similar ware at Megiddo in the ninth century and at Qasile in the eighth century B.C. See also Ingholt, H., Rapport Préliminaire sur Sept Campagnes de Fouilles à Hama, p. 93 and Pl. XXX, XXXIGoogle Scholar, for burnished red ware of the eighth century B.C. associated with ivories.

page 170 note 1 It is not possible to specify temperatures without analysis.

page 170 note 2 This process involves the thrown pot being recentred on the wheel, in an inverted position, so that the foot can be thrown out of spare clay left on the base.

page 171 note 1 e.g. by controlling the access of air at the firemouth of the kiln to ensure a smoky flame; by enclosing the ware in saggars with pieces of vegetable matter to exhaust the oxygen and provide the free carbon.

page 172 note 1 Wu, G. D., Prehistoric Pottery in China, pp. 36–7Google Scholar.