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ARKAMANI Sudan Electronic Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology |
10th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR MEROITIC STUDIES - PARIS, SEPTEMBER 2004
THE MEROITIC WARES OF LOWER NUBIA IN RETROSPECT
By William Y. Adams
Review
of the wares and styles
The ordinary wheel-made wares
(Family N, Ware Group N.I)
The hand-made wares (Family D;
Ware Group D.1)
The Aswan wares (Family A, Ware
Group A.I)
Unsolved problems
Almost a century has passed since the great Meroitic decorated wares first came to the world’s attention, through the work of the Pennsylvania Expedition at Areika (1) and Karanog (2). In hindsight, it seems as though they should have caused an artistic sensation — they were so wholly unexpected, and both artistically and technically so far beyond anything of which the indigenous Kushites were then thought capable. They were in fact the first expression of Kushite culture which could not be dismissed simply as a pale reflection of Egyptian culture. Yet it may have been for that very reason that they received rather limited attention, within a scholarly discipline so wholly dominated by Egyptologists. The Pennsylvania excavators offered a few pages of descriptive text, but with no conspicuous expression of surprise or admiration (3), while Griffith published his extensive Faras collection with no real commentary at all (4). The Meroitic wares were an anomaly; an unprecedented development that simply could not be fitted into the rather understated scheme of Nubian cultural development that was then in fashion.
What was true a hundred years ago is still to some extent true today. The decorated wares remain an anomaly; they have neither discoverable antecedents nor, with very minor exception, successors. Yet they were not the innovation of newcomers to the Nile Valley; they were made and used by the selfsame villagers who a little earlier had been making very different and much simpler pottery, and who did so again a few centuries later. This and other enduring mysteries surrounding the Meroitic decorated wares will occupy me further toward the end of my paper.
We have to be grateful to the Pennsylvania scholars for their very thorough publication of the Karanog finds. Although they offered relatively little discussion, their numerous plates (5) still remain the basic corpus on which most studies of Meroitic decorated pottery rely. In subsequent years, a great deal of additional material was uncovered, especially by Griffith at Faras (6), yet his finds did not greatly enlarge the repertory either of vassel forms or of decorative motifs already illustrated in the Pennsylvania publications. Griffith for unknown reasons published only a small portion of his vast Meroitic pottery collection.
A limitation of both the Karanog and the Faras excavations however was that they were very largely confined to graves, where the decorated wares were disproportionately represented. It was not until the extensive excavation of village sites in the 1960s — especially our own work in the Sudan Antiquities Service survey (7) — that a variety of pottery wares began to appear that were very rarely found in graves. As a result, the corpus of known Meroitic vessel forms and styles is even more extensive than was earlier thought. It encompasses in fact far more vessel forms and more artistic variability than does the pottery from any other Nubian period.
I attempted to encompass all of that variability, or at least as much as I could understand, in the pages of Ceramic Industries of Medieval Nubia (8). This was my second attempt at a classification of Meroitic pottery, and yet it still has evident shortcomings. In my original classification (9) I had “split” too much (that is, made too many non-significant distinctions), while in Ceramic Industries I have “lumped” too much, including too much variability under a single heading. The plain truth is that the incredibly rich diversity of Meroitic pottery defies easy classification.
The discussion that follows is nevertheless based on the categories I have designated in Ceramic Industries (10), for I have not yet found a way to improve on them. I’m hoping that my successors may in time find a way to do so.
Review
of the wares and styles
The fine wares (Family M) (11)
These are of course the now-famous eggshell wares, so often illustrated that many people have come to think of them as the quintessential Meroitic pottery. Our work in habitation sites has in fact demonstrated that they comprise no more than one or two percent of the sherds found in those sites, though they are considerably more prevalent in graves. I once thought that their production was largely if not entirely confined to Lower Nubia, for so few specimens were illustrated in the early publications from Meroe and from Musawwarat. More recent work in the central Sudan however has shown that this was clearly an error. The fine wares exhibit a sufficient variety of fabrics as to suggest that there were several different centers of manufacture.
The fine wares exhibit two quite different traditions of decoration. By far the bulk of vessels have a cream, buff, or tan background with elaborate painted decoration in the richly varied Classic Meroitic Style (Ware W26; Style N.IA) (12). Some also have elaborate punctate decoration. A much smaller number of vessels—mostly cups and bowls—have a plain red slip on the outside and a white slip on the inside (Ware R25) (13). These latter vessels have received very little attention because they are rarely illustrated; possibly they were not often included in graves.
The making of finewares continued very briefly into the Ballaña period, though only in a few vessel forms and with no other decoration than plain stripes.
The ordinary wheel-made wares
(Family N, Ware Group N.I)
These wares comprised typically fifty to sixty percent of the sherds found in habitation sites, and were common in graves as well. They have many points in common with the fine wares, but were made from ordinary Nile mud rather than fine residual clays, and they appear mostly in larger vessel forms—an enormous variety of them, in fact. Best known are the cream or buff wares that exhibit the same Classic Meroitic decorative style as to the fine wares (Ware W25) (14).
There also appear to be three separate Meroitic redware traditions. The best known is Ware R32, which appears so often in the form of large bottles and jars found in graves. These are most commonly undecorated, but occasionally have designs in black and white in the Classic Meroitic style (15). However, the ware includes also a considerable variety of small cups and food bowls that have turned up in habitation sites, but almost never in graves. Many of the forms are imitative of contemporary Late Roman forms. These vessels never have painted designs. Their exterior has a plain red slip, while the interior is often either white or un-slipped. The abundance of these vessels suggests that they were made in many places.
A second redware tradition comprises vessels made in imitation of contemporary Aswan pottery (Ware R34) (16). The paste is somewhat finer and lighter in color than is that in the other ordinary wares, while the rather limited range of amphora and jar forms are all derived from the Aswan wares. These vessels usually have a pink rather than a deep red surface, and they are decorated in a highly distinctive style (Style N.IC) which combines traditional Meroitic faunal and floral designs with a seemingly endless variety of stylized vine wreaths, the latter being once again derived from the Aswan tradition (17). The depiction both of animals and of birds is notably more dynamic than in the classic Meroitic style. The scarcity as well as the uniformity of these vessels suggests the probability that they all came from a single factory, surely somewhere in Lower Nubia. Wenig identified many of the vessels as the work of a single individual whom he called the “Antelope Painter” (18).
A third very uncommon redware tradition consists of vessels having a hard paste, a deep red slip, and decoration exclusively in fine black and white stripes (Ware R33) (19). They occur only in the form of rather long-necked jars, most of which are unique to this ware. The original source of these vessels is unknown; they have not been found in abundance anywhere.
The hand-made wares (Family D;
Ware Group D.1) (20)
The hand-made pottery of Nubia represents a continuing tradition since Neolithic times, and the most purely African component in the cultural repertoire. I have always assumed, on the basis of ethnographic analogy, that these wares were made and also largely used by women, although this can not be verified archaeologically. The relatively soft paste suggests that the vessels were fired in pits rather than in updraught kilns, and a few of these have in fact been found archaeologically. Because of the soft paste the vessels would not have traveled well, and for that reason I have assumed that they were locally made in many places rather than widely traded. Hand-made vessels are rare in graves, but typically comprise about five percent of the pottery found in habitation sites.
By far the most common of the hand-made wares, at least in habitation sites, is the unslipped and undecorated tan ware H1 (21), which occurs mostly in the form of bag-shaped jars. However, these vessels were rarely if ever included in graves, and they do not appear in published collections. A rare variant, found by us only at one site, has small bands of painted decoration adjoining the rim only (Ware H12) (22).
The burnished black Ware H11, with incised decorations filled with white chalk, looks for all the world like a continuation of the C-Group ceramic tradition, although no actual connection has been traced (23). These vessels seem to have turned up more commonly in graves than in habitation sites, though they are not abundant in either case. By contrast, the burnished but undecorated red Ware H9 has been found more often in habitation sites than in graves.
The Aswan wares (Family A, Ware
Group A.I)
The very hard pink pottery wares made at or near Aswan were imported into Nubia in considerable quantities from the late Meroitic to the end of the Christian period. They were always preferred for some purposes because of their superior durability.
By far the most common Aswan ware of Meroitic times was the unslipped pink Ware R30, which comprised about thirty percent of the sherds found in habitation sites (24). However, probably ninety percent of these are wine amphorae of the single Form Z5. In addition to these, Ware R30 occurs in a prodigious variety of other forms, many of them clearly imitative of late Roman North African wares. These vessels served as the inspiration for certain Meroitic wares, but even more for the Ballaña wares that followed. The great majority of vessels are both unslipped and undecorated; a few have stylized vine wreaths and a few other painted designs. Notwithstanding their abundance in habitation sites these wares were not often included in graves, perhaps because they were considered too utilitarian.
In habitation sites, a very few fragments of a highly polished red Ware R37 and a cream Ware W24 have been found (25). Both occur almost entirely in the form of rather wide bowls and plates, the latter regularly decorated with vine wreath designs around the rim. These wares are not illustrated in any cemetery collection.
Somewhat tentatively identified by me as an Aswan ware is the pink Ware R31, used exclusively for lekythoi and oil bottles (26). The paste in these vessels is similar in color to that in other Aswan wares, but is considerably softer, and it has a marked propensity to flake off the outsides of the vessels. The vessels are further unique in that they are decorated entirely with scored or punctate rather than with painted designs. Pamela Rose believes that Ware R31 was made somewhere in Lower Nubia rather than at Aswan.
Although a variety of foreign wares, and especially of amphora wares, is found in both pre-Meroitic and post-Meroitic sites in Lower Nubia, the only such ware attributable to the late Meroitic period is the heavy brown amphora Ware U4 (27). It is however considerably less common than in either Ballaña or Early Christian times, comprising only about 1.5% of the sherds found in habitation sites. So far as I know, no amphorae of this ware have been found in Meroitic graves.
Unsolved problems
Perhaps the most intractable mystery surrounding the Meroitic pottery wares concerns their dating. It is not merely an art-historical issue, for it is connected with the much larger problem of dating the Meroitic occupation, or reoccupation, of Lower Nubia. Since I will deal at some length with this issue in a paper tomorrow afternoon, I will confine myself here to the observation that none of the sites exhibiting the pottery I have just described can be securely dated before the first century A.D. On the contrary, the handful of sites that can be dated earlier have all yielded markedly different pottery. In sum, then, the whole elaborate complex of classic Meroitic pottery belongs to the last four centuries of the Kushite era. This was, of course, the time when Kush was bordered on the north by the territories of Rome, yet not much in the Meroitic pottery inventory can be attributed to Roman influence.
Artistic antecedents
The exuberant combination of Pharaonic, Hellenistic, naturalistic, and geometric motifs in Meroitic ceramic art has no precedent in either Egypt or in Nubia, and it remains to this day the single most uniquely imaginative expression in the whole history of Nubian art. The decorated pottery of the immediately preceding period, to the limited extent that it has come to light at Qasr Ibrim (28), Site 6-G-9 (29), Emir Abdallah (30), and Kerma (31), consisted almost entirely of vessels decorated in a simple style combining geometric friezes with a few highly stylized vegetal forms (elsewhere designated by me as Style R—see Adams n.d.: 40-42). Moreover, virtually all of the decorated vessels are large and heavy-walled.
The antecedents of the Meroitic vessels forms are as mysterious as is their artistic inspiration. The variety especially of small forms is far greater than in any preceding period, so far as I now know, or in any subsequent period. A few of the small red vessels are clearly derivable from late Roman models, and some handled amphorae and jugs have a distinctly Hellenistic look, but most of the forms do not have any obvious predecessors.
Technological antecedents
The technology of the Meroitic eggshell wares appears to be equally unprecedented. No other pottery made either in Egypt or in Nubia utilized exclusively the super-fine lacustrine clays that made possible the thin walls in these vessels. It is a mystery not only how this tradition got started, but also why it did not persist beyond the very early Ballaña period. I can only guess that the vessels were so expensive that the rather impoverished folk of Ballaña times could no longer afford them.
A good deal remains to be learned about the manufacturing technology of the wheel-made wares, for only one small remnant of a kiln could be definitely identified anywhere in Lower Nubia. It appeared to be the base of a double-chamber updraught kiln, of the same general type used in all later periods. Unlike the Ballaña and Christian kilns however it was built entirely above ground rather than partially dug out (32).
Places of manufacture
Both the abundance and the variety of Meroitic pottery points clearly to multiple centers of production, but except for the single kiln mentioned above, and the recent finds at Musawwarat, no place of production has yet been identified archaeologically. The evidence from Ballaña and Christian times suggests that kiln sites should not necessarily be looked for in the major centers; they were located where there were good resources of clay or silt and of fuelwood.
The hand-made wares
As always, at least since C-Group times, the Meroitic hand-made wares have been so overshadowed artistically by the wheel-made wares they that have received less attention than they deserve. The black Ware H11, with its obvious resemblances to C-Group pottery, remains especially intriguing. A comprehensive, comparative study of all the Nubian hand-made wares from Neolithic to modern times would make a significant addition to our cultural understanding, for these are the most distinctly and purely African component in the Nubian cultural repertoire.
Classification
I have to repeat that my classification of the Meroitic wares, in Ceramic Industries, is a good deal less than satisfactory. It is possible that some basic categorical distinctions should be made that I have not considered; these might include micro-differences in fabric as well as in forms and decoration. At any rate I hope that the on-going excavations in more southerly regions will yield the necessary additional material so that my work can be extended and corrected.
L’envoi
Given the various mysteries that I have discussed, it seems to me that we are fully justified in speaking of the miracle of Meroitic pottery. The wonder to me is simply that it has taken so long to be recognized as such.
(1) Randall MacIver and Woolley 1909
(3) Ibid.: 51-58.
(4) Griffith 1924: ***
(5) Ibid., Vol. IV, pls. 41-106.
(6) Griffith 1924, pl. XV-XXXIII.
(7) See Adams and Nordström 1963: 24-28; Adams 1965: 151-3
(8) Adams 1986.
(9) Adams 1962.
(10) Especially Adams 1986: 239-40, 270-90. ***
(11) Ibid.: ***
(12) Ibid.: 239-40, 270-90.
(13) Ibid.: ***
(14) Ibid.: ***
(15) Ibid.: ***
(16) Ibid.: ***
(17) Ibid.: 287-9.
(18) Wenig 1978: 279.
(19) Adams 1986: ***.
(20) Ibid., ***
(21) Ibid., ***
(22) Ibid., ***
(23) Ibid., ***
(24) Ibid., ***
(25) Ibid., ***
(26) Ibid., ***
(27) Ibid., ***
(28) Adams n.d.
(29) Reported herein, pp. ***
(30) Fernandez ***
(31) Bonnet ***
(32) Site 5-0-19; see Adams and Nordström 1963: 28.