Palaeolithic Vessels of Egypt, or the Earliest Handiwork of Man

Abstract

IN this pamphlet of some twenty-two pages and thirteen plates, Mr. de Rustafjaell advances a new theory as to the origin of pottery. He directs attention to certain flint nodules with hollow cavities which he found in the Western Desert of Egypt, and suggests that they were used by primitive man as water-holders, that these hollow flint “nodules were copied during the Palæolithic age in limestone, from which again evolved other stone, and finally the clay vessels of the predynastic period”(p. 21). This is a theory which will have few, if any, adherents, and the author seems to be unaware that the lines on the earliest examples of pottery abundantly show its evolution from basket-work (by way of a burnt clay lining), and not from any form of rigid material. The forms of early stone vessels clearly show that they were copied from pottery types.