In many countries the connection of women with hand-made and of men with wheel-made pottery obtains even in our day. The following statement by two American scholars, who have produced a short but authoritative paper on the potter’s art, is the result of a close investigation [[17]]of evidence collected over a wide area, and carefully digested and summarized:[4]
“The potter’s wheel is the creation of man, and therefore is an independent act of invention which was not evolved from any contrivance utilized during the period of hand-made ceramic ware. The two processes have grown out of two radically distinct spheres of human activity. The wheel, so speak, came from another world. It had no point of contact with any tool that existed in the old industry, but was brought in from an outside quarter as a novel affair when man appropriated to himself the work hitherto cultivated by woman. The development was one from outside, not from within. All efforts, accordingly, which view the subject solely from the technological angle, and try to derive the wheel from previous devices of the female potter, are futile and misleading. It is as erroneous as tracing the plough back to the hoe or digging-stick, whereas, in fact, the two are in no historical interrelation and belong to fundamentally different culture strata and periods—the hoe to the gardening activity of woman, the plough to the agricultural activity of man. Both in India and China the division of ceramic labour sets apart the thrower or wheel-potter, and distinctly separates him from the moulder. The potters in India, who work on the wheel, do not intermarry with those who use a mould or make images. They form a caste by themselves.”[5]
The oldest wheel-made pottery is found in Egypt. There can be no doubt that the potter’s wheel was invented in that country. It was imported into Crete, [[18]]which had trading relations with the merchants of the ancient Pharaohs, as far back as about 3000 B.C. Before the wheel was adopted the Cretans made stone vessels, following Egyptian patterns, but using soft stone instead of hard. Their hand-made pottery degenerated, as did the Egyptian. “Pottery came again to its own in both countries”, writes Mr. H. R. Hall, “with the invention of the potter’s wheel and the baking-furnace.”[6]
The potter’s wheel must have found a ready market in the old days. It was adopted, in time, in western Europe; it was quickly “taken up” in Babylonia and in Iran, and was ultimately introduced into India and China. But only the high Asiatic civilizations were capable of constructing it, and consequently wheel-made pottery is not found everywhere. Among the “aboriginal Americans” the wheel was never employed. It is an interesting fact that the mind of man, which is alleged to “work” on the same lines everywhere, never “evolved” a potter’s wheel in Mexico or Peru.[7] Major Gordon tells that in Assam[8] “the women fashion the pots by hand; they do not use the potter’s wheel”. Similar evidence is obtainable in various other countries. In China there are wheel-potters and moulders, and a distinction is drawn between them by ancient writers. “This clear distinction is accentuated by Chu Yen in his treatise on pottery.[9] He justly observes also that the articles made by the wheel-potters were all intended for cooking, with the exception of the vessel yu, which was designed for measuring; while the output of the moulders, who made the ceremonial vessels kuei and tou by availing themselves of the plumb-line, was [[19]]intended for sacrificial use. Also here, in like manner as in ancient Rome, India, and Japan, the idea may have prevailed that a wheel-made jar is of a less sacred character than one made by hand.”[10] Here then we touch on another point which must be borne in mind by those who draw conclusions regarding ancient cultures by means of pottery. In Britain, for instance, a rather coarse pottery is found in graves. It is possible that a better pottery was made for everyday use. The conservatism of burial customs may have caused coarser pottery to be put into graves than the early folks were capable of producing during the period at which the burial took place.
The wheel-pottery was as sacred to some cults as the hand-made was to others. Even the potter’s wheel was sacred. In Egypt the Ptah cult adopted it, as has been stated; in India it was a symbol of the Creator; in China (as in ancient Egypt) the idea originally prevailed that the Creator was a potter who turned on his wheel the sun and the moon, man and woman, although in time this myth became a philosophical abstraction. The symbolism of Jeremiah has similarly a history:
“O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”—[Chapter XVIII, 6].
St. Paul, too, refers to the potter:
“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” ([Romans, ix, 20–21.])
Chinese emperors were compared to potters. They [[20]]were credited with the power to control a nation as the potter controlled his wheel. The ancient peoples who adopted the Egyptian potter’s wheel evidently learned that it was of divine origin. They adopted the Egyptian beliefs and myths associated with it. Withal, the wheel was associated with the agricultural mode of life, having originated in a country of agriculturists. Ptah, the divine potter, was, like all the other prominent gods of Egypt, fused with Osiris—the god who was, among other things, the “culture hero”. The Chinese “culture hero”, Shun, who became emperor, is said to have “practised husbandry, fishing, and making pottery jars”. He manufactured clay vessels without flaw on the river bank.[11]
The Chinese culture hero, Shen-ming (“Divine Husbandman”) “was regarded as the father of agriculture and the discoverer of the healing property of plants”. In ancient Chinese lore “we meet a close association of agriculture with pottery, and an illustration of the fact that husbandman and potter were one and the same person during the primeval period”.[12]