White Painted II Jug with Cut-away Neck and Lattice Panels

Middle Cypriot I to early II, c. 2000–1800 BCE · White Painted II ware · Handmade

An egg-shaped jug on a small rounded base, flattened just enough for it to stand. The narrow tubular neck ends in a spout cut away obliquely into a long beak. A short loop handle runs from mid-neck to the shoulder and carries a knob at its upper curve. Small modelled knobs sit in a pair on the neck below the spout and at the neck base, and a pierced or knobbed lug projects from the shoulder.

The decoration is in orange-red paint on a pale buff surface. Vertical lines divide the body into panels of fine cross-hatched lattice, with oblique hatched bands between them, and thin horizontal lines ring the neck. The painter's lattice is quick and slightly uneven, the lines crossing at varying angles. Much of the paint on the upper body has worn away, leaving the lattice in patches; in places it has fired darker brown.

Commentary

White Painted is the fine painted ware of the Middle Cypriot period, handmade in a pale fabric and decorated in linear geometric designs [2]. This jug belongs to its early stage. The combination of a buff ground with bright red to orange paint is characteristic of what Gjerstad and Åström called White Painted II, which Åström placed in Middle Cypriot I; later White Painted tends toward duller surfaces and brown or black matt paint [1]. The numbered White Painted classes overlap between authorities, so the label here indicates a stage and a style and does not fix a date.

The shape is inherited from Red Polished. The oblique cut-away neck, the rounded base and the handle springing from the neck all repeat Red Polished III jugs of the late Early Cypriot period, now painted instead of polished. The obliquely cut, beaked spout makes this a cut-away-neck jug in Frankel's glossary of White Painted shapes, a separate class from the narrow-necked bottles with a string-hole lug or small handle [2]. The small knobs on neck, handle and shoulder are a habit of early White Painted potters, who added string-hole projections and plastic knobs freely to closed vessels [6].

The closest parallel for shape and decoration is a jug in the Louvre from Tomb 69 at Bellapais Vounous, dated Middle Cypriot I, with a piriform body, round base, oblique half-gutter spout and vertical lattice panels with obliquely hatched bands [3]. A lattice-covered cut-away jug in the Pitt Rivers Museum is similar in scheme [5]. Two much larger White Painted II jugs in Athens, painted in dark red glossy paint and fitted with string-hole projections on the neck, show the same features at a grander scale [4]. Panelled lattice of this kind belongs to the north-coast manner of Lapithos and Vounous, where the type is best documented in chamber tombs. This jug has no recorded find-spot.

Absolute dates follow the radiocarbon chronology now used for Cyprus, which places Middle Cypriot I at about 2000–1850 BCE [7]. The early paint colour and the Red Polished shape point to that phase, with a margin into early Middle Cypriot II.

Jugs of this type held liquids and were poured through the beaked spout. Most known examples come from tombs, where they were laid with other vessels; whether this one was made for burial or used first at home cannot be told.