Although Decorated Ware can take many forms, it is usually a “piriform” (pear-shaped) jar with two or more horizontally pierced lugs attached to its shoulder. Instead of river clay, the jars were made from sandy, marl clay from the desert. Although marl clay must be fired at a higher temperature, it produces a better quality, less porous pot. The material, shape, and the presence of lugs, are all reminiscent of the four-lugged jars from Uruk, but the Egyptian jars were decorated in a style quite foreign to Mesopotamia or Elam. The designs were produced with red paint made from iron oxide pigments. Although many of the jars display purely geometric designs; animals and people are also depicted, usually in the context of a boating scene on the Nile. The boats may be quite large (the jar pictured below displays a boat with seventy oars per side). They are equipped with two cabins and fly feathered standards, one attached to the cabin and the other to the bow. The boats are shown passing through a wilderness inhabited by ostriches, gazelles, and elephants. The triangles probably represent mountains while the zigzag lines may represent water, sandbars, or the riverbank.

The Dancing Goddess

The most curious feature of Decorated Ware pottery are the schematic depictions of a woman with her “arms” raised above her head. He body is reduced to a simple triangular peg. She is riding in the boat, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by other figures, who are also depicted in a very schematic fashion.

A figurine with this identical form has been found in a tomb at el-Ma’mariya, approximately one mile north of Hierakonpolis. It belongs to a well known type of goddess figurine, characterized by a bird-like face and a peg-shaped body. These have been found across a broad swath of the Ancient Near East. It is quite probable, therefore, that the female figure depicted on the pots was a goddess.