Table Of ContentThe Eighteenth Dynasty Pottery Corpus from Amarna
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The Eighteenth Dynasty Pottery
Corpus from Amarna
by Pamela J. Rose
Eighty-third Excavation Memoir edited by Janine Bourriau
Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews London WCIN 2PG
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LONDON
Sold at the offices of
The Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews London WC1N 2PG
www.ees.ac.uk
Also sold through
Oxbow Books 10 Hythe Bridge Street Oxford OX1 2EW
www.oxbowbooks.com
© Egypt Exploration Society, 2007
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-85698-179-1
Designed and typeset by Boris A. Trivan
Printed by Short Run Press, 25 Bittern Road, Sowton Industrial Estate, Exeter, Devon, EX2 7LW
www.shortrunpress.co.uk
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Introduction 5
Chapter 2 Fabrics 11
Chapter 3 Surface Treatment 17
Chapter 4 The Typology 33
Chapter 5 Pottery Recording from the older EES Excavations 169
Corpus Illustrations 185
References 297
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Since the current excavations began at Amarna, many people have been involved in the study, recording and
drawing of the pottery from the site. Those whose work has contributed to this volume, and whom the author
would like to express her thanks, are: Amanda Dunsmore, Gillian Pyke, Paul Nicholson, Ann Cornwell and Irene
Mitchell, and, particularly, Andrew Boyce, who as well as drawing many of the vessels in the field also prepared
the final inked versions. Numerous other members of the Amarna team have also shared their knowledge and
expertise in the course of the work on this volume: to name but three, grateful thanks are due to Margaret Serpico
for discussing resin residues and Canaanite vessels, Catherine Powell for advice on pottery technology, and Jane
Faiers for all-round pottery debates. Professor Dietrich Wildung kindly provided access to the collections of pottery
from the German excavations now in Berlin. Janine Bourriau has been a constant source of support and advice,
particularly regarding the fabrics used at Amarna, and also willingly shared (then) unpublished manuscripts of her
work on contemporary ceramics from Memphis and Saqqara. Colin Hope devised the initial recording system
and fabric classification, which were in place when I first arrived at Amarna, and from which seed the current
recording system developed. Especial thanks are due to Boris Trivan who, with outstanding patience in the face
of too many unanswered emails, undertook the page setting and plate layout, and also redrew vessels from the
City of Akhenaten corpora. And, of course, Barry Kemp, for his unwavering support and his enthusiasm for the
pottery, despite its taking over of every available storage area in the expedition house.
This is the first of two volumes. The second will cover the quantitative sherd date and distribution analyses from
all the parts of the site where excavation has taken place.
This volume is dedicated to the memory of my father.
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The background to pottery studies at Amarna
Excavations at the site of Amarna began in 1891, when Petrie worked over a six-month period in a number
of the more prominent buildings, and investigated the so-called Mycenaean sherd dumps (Petrie 1894). Twenty
years later, a mission from the Deutches Orient-Gesellschaft (henceforth DOG) under Ludwig Borchardt took up
excavation at the site, and cleared a wide area of domestic housing principally in the southern part of the Main
City (Borchardt and Ricke 1980). Their work lasted until 1913, after which the First World War put an end to
further activity. The Egypt Exploration Society (henceforth EES) gained the concession to excavate at the site in
1921, and sent expeditions out almost every year thereafter until 1937, and in that time undertook excavations in
all areas of the city. In 1977, the EES took up the concession again, and excavations continue on the site to this day.
Given the many years of work at Amarna, and the vast quantities of ceramics produced by the excavations there,
our knowledge of the pottery from the site is less extensive or detailed than could be expected. Petrie chose
to publish only the imported Mycenaean and Cypriot sherds that he discovered, although the Petrie Museum’s
collections in University College, London, attest to the quantity of ceramics which he brought back to Britain.
Pottery from the DOG excavations is as yet unpublished. The earlier EES excavations gave rise to the corpora
published in the City of Akhenaten volumes, and the current work has seen the publication of groups of pottery
from various excavated areas, and a surface survey examining the surface distribution of types across the city
(AR 1, 133–153; AR3, 99–117; AR4, 115–143; AR5, 82–114; AR6, 137–147). Hope has published a corpus of
blue-painted pottery from the site, although some doubt must remain about the provenance of a few of the
vessels included in it (Hope 1991). There is, however, no single corpus of pottery available for the late Eighteenth
dynasty ceramics from what must be considered the definitive type site of that period, Amarna.
The intention of this volume is to draw together as much as possible of the late Eighteenth dynasty pottery
which is certainly from Amarna into a single type series. This is primarily derived from the EES expeditions,
supplemented by vessels from the DOG excavations that have secure provenances and represent new types. The
typology includes the complete or substantially complete vessels from the current excavations, much of the
pottery corpora originally published in the COA volumes, and some unpublished vessels from those excavations.
The timely rediscovery in 2002 of some of the vessels published in COA1, and also of unpublished vessels from the
1921 to 1924 seasons, has allowed us to record them anew, and the new drawings and descriptions are substituted
for the COA versions where possible. A few surface sherds from the site are also included in the corpus, where their
types are not represented from excavated contexts. They are only included where fabric and surface finish make a
late Eighteenth dynasty date practically certain.
The resulting corpus is intended to be of use both to those who work on ceramics in the field and to those
working with material and records from the older excavations. To this end, I have included a brief discussion of
the previous EES typologies and numbering systems employed at Amarna, their shortcomings and the difficulties
arising from their use. It demonstrates the change in the attitude towards pottery studies that has come about in
recent years, and highlights the more rigorous approach to both recording and documentation that is appropriate
to such an abundant and informative class of archaeological material.
This volume does not incorporate the vast amount of quantified sherd data amassed during the current excavations;
these data, their analysis, and a discussion of vessel function based on both the archaeological evidence and that
from the jar labels will be presented in a separate volume.
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The Eighteenth Dynasty Pottery Corpus from Amarna
Scope of the corpus
The corpus is restricted to the pottery associated with the Eighteenth dynasty occupation of Amarna found up to
and including 2004. For pottery vessels discovered more recently in the cemeteries, see www.amarnaproject.com.
Material from later occupation levels in the River Temple, Maru Aten, the Late Roman cemeteries in the northern
part of the site, and occasional late burials at the Workmen’s Village, are omitted (for the Late Roman material,
see Faiers 2005). Not all the River Temple pottery has been removed, however, despite claims that almost all of the
pottery from it, whether found elsewhere at Amarna or not, is datable to the Third Intermediate Period (Aston
1996, 43). The River Temple site produced structural remains of the Amarna period (COA1, 127–8), including
pottery, and it cannot be concluded with certainty that types restricted only to that site are, by definition, later in
date. Furthermore, there are citations of examples of types found first at the River Temple from elsewhere in the
city, in apparently Eighteenth dynasty contexts. Whilst this in itself is not a guarantee that the types in question
are late Eighteenth dynasty in date, since Pendlebury, from whose work the citations usually come, used the
pottery corpus somewhat sloppily (vessels such as his types XIX.1 and XIX.2, examples of which were apparently
found in the excavations in the Central City, are certainly post-Amarna period in date), they are given the benefit
of the doubt and are included here. These are types I/86 (SA2.7, no. 15), VI/259 (SE1.3, no. 249), VII/83 (SD7.14,
no. 186), V/103 (SD7.10, no. 109), V/85 (SD7.9, no. 177), XXV/88 (SH5.1, no. 387), and LXV/107 (SI1.3, no. 494).
The same considerations apply to the ceramics from Maru Aten.
A further category of material omitted from the corpus is that of ‘vessels’ which are in fact parts of larger pots.
These include COA1 types I/1019F, XVII/1044, and XVII/1044A, for which the unpublished catalogue entries
either state explicitly, or give sufficient clues to deduce, that the ‘rim’ is the ground-off edge of a broken vessel.
Neither have all the incomplete vessels been incorporated below. Only where they provide evidence of variant
forms, or add to our knowledge of a recognised type, have they been kept. These include COA2 types XIII.6 and
XIV.6. Finally, V/261 (COA1, pl. XLVII) has been left out, on the grounds that, on its rediscovery in 2002, it was
found to have no preserved surface. It is most unlikely that the surface was present on discovery in 1922, so that
its stance, wall thickness and precise form are impossible to gauge.
Imported pottery from the eastern Mediterranean is omitted, with the exception of some of the Levantine wares.
Mycenaean vessels were excluded from the pottery corpus from the beginning of the EES excavations in 1921,
at which time they were recorded as small finds, a distinction in classification that continues in the current work.
After 1922, imported vessels of Cypriot and recognised Levantine origin were treated similarly. These bodies of
material have been discussed by specialists elsewhere (see Merrillees 1968, 78–88 for a discussion of Cypriot pottery
from Amarna; and Hankey 1973, 1993, 1995, and Mommsen et al. 1992 for aspects of the Mycenean pottery from
the site). Exceptions are the inclusion of ‘Canaanite jars’ and one-handled bottles in the COA corpora, probably
because their foreign origin was not recognised at that time. These types are retained in this corpus (Series NB),
mainly because they are far more common at Amarna than other imported types, and form a recognisable and
significant part of the ceramic assemblage in any area where excavation takes place.
Finally, where there are many examples of a type (particularly bowls, SD1.5), some of those published in COA1 are
omitted if better drawings are available from recently-excavated material.
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