Early Cypriote Pottery (British Museum).
1, 2, “Base-ring” Black Ware; 3, 4, 7, Incised Red and Black Wares; 5, 6, “White-slip” Wares.
Among the rarer varieties of unpainted wares Mr. Myres includes white base-ring ware (plates and bowls), imitations of straw-plait or wicker-work, and plain wheel-made wares with red or black slip, of peculiar form.[[833]]
Among the Painted Pottery by far the most widely-spread local fabric is that styled by Mr. Myres the white-slip ware, which appears in the tombs of the later Bronze Age, and is more than any other associated with Mycenaean vases. In cemeteries such as Enkomi, Curium, and Maroni[[834]] it has been found in large quantities in almost every tomb, and its range is not limited to Cyprus. The characteristics of this ware are a black gritty clay, worked very thin, and a thick white creamy slip with which it is covered both inside and out; it is exceedingly brittle, and perfect specimens are comparatively uncommon. The ornament is laid on in a black pigment, often turning to red by the action of fire; the most common form is that of a hemispherical bowl with a flat triangular handle, notched at the apex. Almost the only other forms are a long-necked flask or bottle of the lekythos type and a large jug with cylindrical body (like an olpe) and a flat thumb-piece above the handle.
Mr. Myres[[835]] points out that the scheme of decoration seems intended to imitate the binding and seams of a leather bowl; it usually consists of a band of various patterns (lattice-work, zigzags, lozenges, or lines of dots) round the rim, from which similar bands descend vertically, but do not meet at the bottom. Similarly the handle seems intended to represent two pieces of flexible wood bound together. In the case of the jugs the patterns follow a similar principle, giving the effect of a decoration in panels to the upper part. Specimens of this ware are given in Plate [XI]., Nos. 5, 6.
Beyond the confines of Cyprus isolated specimens of this ware have been found at Athens, Hissarlik, Thera, Lachish in Palestine, and at Saqqara and Tell-el-Amarna in Egypt, in the last-named instance along with Mycenaean vases.[[836]] The resemblance of some white-slip wares to the Dipylon vases is not a little curious.[[837]] But it can hardly be thought that the one influenced the other.
The other local painted wares are by no means so common. They are, in fact, almost limited to specimens of an unpolished white ware, with fine cream-coloured clay, on which patterns such as groups of straight or wavy lines, chevrons, chequers, and triangles filled with hatched lines are painted with a pigment varying from dull black to dull red. The commonest forms are one-handled bowls and small bottles, either globular or sausage-shaped. The latter are distinguished by often having long tube-like spouts attached and by the numerous perforated projections for the attachment of strings, handles being generally absent at first, but when they are introduced the projections remain as an ornamental survival. In a few isolated specimens the surface is covered with a polished slip. Others again are covered with a black glaze,[[838]] on which are painted in dull red groups of short parallel lines, which (as Mr. Myres points out) seem to have been executed at a single stroke with a cluster of brushes.
The Mycenaean pottery which has been found on not a few sites in Cyprus, and of late years in such surprising quantities at Enkomi and in the neighbourhood of Larnaka and Limassol (Maroni, Curium, etc.), belongs properly to another section of this chapter, and would not call for discussion in this connection, but for the fact that in Cyprus it presents certain features which seem to be almost exclusively local. At all events it is advisable to consider how far Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus differs from that found in Rhodes, Crete, or Mycenae.