Curious Objects : Predynastic Egyptian drinking vessels

Curious Objects

<p style='text-align: justify;'>These pots are the oldest objects in the Library. They were given by Flinders Petrie to Sir Herbert Thompson in 1895, who donated them with his collection of ostraca (fragments of pottery with writing on them). Petrie is credited with developing a chronology of Ancient Egypt using everyday objects, and his painstaking recording of pottery styles established a new methodology for determining the chronology of an archaeological site. These distinctive black-topped vessels are one of several types cited by him in his new standard of sequence dating. Petrie also had an interest in eugenics and sent skeletal remains back to London for biometrical research. A label inside the complete pot describes it as a product of a ‘new race’ of foreign invaders into Predynastic Egypt, a theory which he later revised.</p>