1. Predynastic Egyptian Pottery
Image courtesy of the Petrie Museum, UCL
Predynastic Egyptian Pottery
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2. What is Predynastic Egypt?
Essentially, it is Egypt before the time of the pyramids
It was a collection of different cultures and provinces
One culture would eventually dominate, helping Egypt to unify
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3. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
“The Father of Egyptology”
Worked in Predynastic cemeteries at Naqada
Flinders Petrie established sequence dating
He arranged pots in a relative chronological order (“classes”) based on the resemblances of the types. Each was assigned a number between 30 and 80. He started at 30 because he presumed that older pots would be found in the future.
System still used by archaeologists today
Image from GoogleMaps
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4. Petrie’s Pottery Classes
White Cross‐lined (C)
Black Top (B)
Wavy Handled (W)
Red Polished (P)
Fancy (F)
Black Incised (N)
Decorated (D)
Rough (R)
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5. Petrie & Me Look carefully at the following pictures
Try to match each picture with one of Petrie’s ‘classes’
Explain why you think it is that class
Try and put them in the right order of time/when they were made
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14. Why is pottery important in the Predynastic Period?
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15. What does pottery tell us about Predynastic Egyptian Society?
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