Following up on Ancient Egyptian Jewelry: Adornment & the Afterlife, this week we’ll discuss ancient Egyptian pottery and stoneware, which were originally made for functional reasons rather than for decorative purposes.

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Ancient Egyptian art served an essentially functional purpose that was bound with religion and ideology. To render a subject in art was to give it permanence. Much of the surviving Egyptian art comes from tombs and monuments.

There were Canopic Jars, the four stone jars that contained the interior parts of the body which were removed before embalming and deposited with the mummies these were the stomach, heart, lungs and liver.

Netjerikhet's (Djoser) Step Pyramid, the oldest pyramid-like monument built in Egypt, has gotten its modern-day name from the fact that it is not a true geometrical pyramid, but consists of 6 rectangular steps, each step smaller than the one beneath.

Djoser (c. 2670 B.C.) was the first king of the Third Dynasty of Egypt and the first to build in stone. Prior to Djoser's reign, mastaba tombs were the customary form for graves: rectangular monuments made of dried clay brick which covered underground passages where the deceased was entombed.

Egyptian pottery can be divided into two broad categories dependent on the type of clay that was used. By far the most common is pottery made with Nile clay, and known as Nile silt ware. After being fired, it has a red-brown color. This type of pottery was used for utilitarian purposes, though at times it might have been decorated or painted.

The other major type of pottery was made from 'marl clay', best known from material found around Qena in Upper Egypt. This type of pottery was usually thought superior to the Nile mud pottery, and so it was often used for decorative and other functions. This type of pottery was often burnished, leaving a shiny surface similar to a glaze.

Early pottery from Egypt was handcrafted with hands and simple tools. Egyptian potters used the coiling technique. This technique involves taking a small amount of clay, and then rolling it out on a flat surface until it forms a rope-like shape, called a coil. The coils are used as a way of building the 'walls' of the piece by being placed on top of each other, one layer at a time, forming a pot.

Egyptian ceramicists started using the pottery wheel between 2600 B.C. and 2500 B.C. The time period is considered the “golden age” of the Old Kingdom. The potter wheel allowed for smoother and more uniform finishes leading the way to mass production. Egyptian potters started with primitive kilns like everyone else in the ancient world.

Numerous symbols or hieroglyphics found carved or painted on pieces emphasize life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the past.

The builders in ancient Egypt shaped many kinds of stone with mastery. They were adept with the use of a variety of tools for manufacturing housewares, building stone and statuary; tube drills, straight saws, circular saws, lathes, and polishers. The marks left in the stone by these tools are the only available reliable source of information about these tools and how they were used.

Working with soft stone such as alabaster is relatively simple, compared to granite. Alabaster can be worked with primitive tools and abrasives. The elegant workings in granite are a different matter and indicate not only a consummate level of skill, but a different and perhaps more advanced technology.

The symbols, in the form of people, animals, or objects, were part of the formal writing system that consisted of a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements. There are over 700 symbols, and Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest literate societies. One of the most well-known symbols found on ancient Egyptian pottery and other art is still being used today, the Ankh.

As long as 5,000 years ago, the Nile was believed to be a gift from the gods. It was believed that Khnum, one of the earliest-known Egyptian deities, created man. In art, Khnum was usually depicted as a ram-headed man at a potter's wheel, with recently created children's bodies standing on the wheel. He was also shown holding a jar from which flowed a stream of water.

The Cataracts of the Nile are shallow lengths of the Nile River, between Khartoum and Aswan, where the surface of the water is broken by many small boulders and stones jutting out of the river bed, as well as many rocky islets.

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