The Potter’s Wheel—An Egyptian Invention—The Wheel in Theology—Clay Pots and Stone Vessels—Skilled Artisans produce Poor Pottery—The Yakut Evidence—Female Potters—Pot Symbol of Mother-goddess—Potter’s Wheel worked by Men—Egyptian “Wheel” adopted in Crete, Babylonia, Iran, India, and China—No “Wheel” in America—Secular and Religious Pottery in China, Japan, India, and Rome—Coarse Grave-Pottery—Potter’s Wheel as Symbol of Creator—Chinese Emperors as Potters—Culture Heroes—Association of Agriculture with Pottery—Egyptian Ideas in Far East.
What bearing, it may be asked, have the discoveries made in Egypt on the early history of China? Is there evidence to show that these widely-separated countries were brought into contact in remote times? Did the primitive Chinese receive and adopt Egyptian inventions, and if so, how were such inventions conveyed across the wide and difficult country lying between the Mediterranean coast and the Yellow Sea? Is there any proof that trade routes extended in ancient times right across Asia? Did prospecting and trading ancient mariners cross the Indian Ocean and coast round to Chinese waters?
Interesting evidence regarding cultural contact is afforded by the potter’s wheel. This wonderful machine was invented in Egypt some time before the Fourth Dynasty (about 3000 B.C.), and in its area of origin it exercised an influence not only on ceramic craftsmanship but on religious ideas. It was regarded as a gift of the gods, as in ancient Scotland bronze weapons, implements, [[14]]musical instruments, &c., were regarded as gifts from the fairies. Apparently the invention was first introduced in Memphis, the ancient capital, the chief god of which was Ptah, the supreme deity “of all handicraftsmen and of all workers in metal and stone”. Ptah was already regarded as the creator of the primeval egg from which the universe was hatched, and of the “sun egg” and the “moon egg”. He was evidently a deity whose life-history goes back to primitive times when the mother-goddess was symbolized as the goose that laid the primeval egg. The problem of whether the egg or the bird came first was solved by the priests of the Ptah cult of Memphis, who regarded their deity as the creator of the “egg”. After the potter’s wheel came into use, they depicted Ptah turning the “egg” upon it. The manufacture of wheel-made pottery thus came to have religious associations. It was closely connected with the culture of Egypt which had its basis in the agricultural mode of life. The arts and crafts were all stimulated by religious ideas; they were cultivated by the priestly class in temple workshops, and were essentially an expression of Egyptian beliefs and conceptions.
Before the potter’s wheel came into use, the potter’s art had degenerated. Vases, bowls, jars, platters, and other vessels were made of such costly stones as diorite, alabaster, and porphyry; these were drilled out with copper implements. Copper vessels were also made. The discovery of how to work copper had caused the craftsmen to neglect the potter’s art, and to work with enthusiasm in the hardest stone until they achieved a high degree of skill. The coarse pottery of the pre-wheel period is therefore no indication that the civilization had reached a stage of decadence. This fact should be a warning to those archæologists who are prone to conclude that if the pottery taken from a stratum in some particular [[15]]area is “coarse”, the people who produced it at the period it represents were necessarily in a backward condition. The evidence afforded by Yakut products is of special interest in this connection. The Yakuts are usually referred to as “the most intelligent and progressive people in Siberia”. They are, however, poor potters. They never glaze their vessels or use the potter’s wheel. At the great Russian market of Yakutsk they refuse to purchase wheel-made crockery, and purchase instead the raw clay with which to make their own hand-made vessels, which are almost as coarse as those of the Stone Age. But although the technique displayed in their pottery is crude, they are famous for their excellent wood-carving and iron forged-work.[1] A people cannot, therefore, be judged by their pottery alone. It may be that those ancient peoples who are found to have been poor potters were skilled and progressive in other spheres of activity. The Hebrews were poor artisans and never invented anything, but they have given the world a great religious literature.
After the potter’s wheel was introduced in Memphis, a new era in the history of pottery was inaugurated. The enclosed baking-furnace came into use at the same time, and the potter’s art and technique speedily attained a wonderfully high degree of excellence. But the old crude, hand-made pottery was still being produced. It was consistently produced until Egypt ceased to be a great and independent kingdom. Indeed, it is being manufactured even in our own day.
The reason why good and bad pottery are produced in a single country—and Egypt is no exception to this rule—is that the manufacture of hand-made vessels was in ancient times essentially a woman’s avocation. The [[16]]potter’s wheel was invented by man, and credited to a god, and has from the beginning been worked by men only. There was apparently a religious significance in the connection of the sexes with the different processes. The clay pot was, in ancient Egypt, a symbol of the mother-goddess.[2] Pots used in connection with the worship of the Great Mother were apparently produced by her priestesses. As women played their part in agricultural ceremonies, so did they play their part—evidently a prominent one—in producing the goddess’s pot symbols. The coarse jars in which were stored wines and oils and food-stuffs were gifts of the Great Mother, the giver of all; she was the inexhaustible sacred Pot—the womb of Nature. Domestic pottery used by women was, very properly, the ancient folks appear to have argued, produced by women.
POTTER’S WHEEL, SIMLA, INDIA
From a sketch by J. Lockwood Kipling in the Victoria and Albert Museum
“It will be noted”, writes O. T. Mason in this connection, “that the feminine gender is used throughout in speaking of aboriginal potters. This is because every piece of such ware is the work of woman’s hands. She quarried the clay, and, like the patient beast of burden, bore it home on her back. She washed it and kneaded it and rolled it into fillets. These she wound carefully and symmetrically until the vessel was built up. She further decorated and burned it, and wore it out in household drudgery. The art at first was woman’s.”[3]