Small Red-Slipped Jug with Beaked Mouth

Middle Cypriot, probably MC II–III, c. 1850–1650 BCE · Red Polished family, probably Red Slip · Handmade

A small jug with a full, almost spherical body resting on a rounded base, so that it needs a stand to sit upright. From a narrow shoulder the neck rises tall and slender, tapering to a small mouth that is drawn forward into a short beak on the side away from the handle. A flat loop handle leaves the back of the rim and arcs down to the shoulder, its top level with the lip.

The surface is pale buff to pinkish, clouded by a heavy crust of lime deposit and pitted over much of the body. Only faint warm patches of red survive where a slip once covered the pot. The profile is slightly uneven, as it is on most handmade vessels of the period.

Commentary

The shape places the jug among the small handmade pouring vessels of the Middle Cypriot period: round base, beaked mouth, and a handle running from the rim to the shoulder. In Cyprus these features belong to the late Red Polished tradition and to the wares that grew out of it in the Middle Bronze Age, Black Slip, Red Slip and the painted Red-on-Black and Red-on-Red wares of the east [2][4].

The ware cannot be fixed from the present surface, because the slip is almost entirely gone. The pale body with traces of red suits Red Slip, which Paul Åström defined at Kalopsidha as "a red variant of Black Slip III Ware", with buff clay and a matt red slip; on the same page he describes Middle Cypriot jug fragments with tapering necks and everted rims [1]. Two Middle Cypriot III jugs from Ayios Iakovos in Stockholm offer close parallels for the silhouette: a Red Slip jug from Tomb 4A, complete and worn, and a Red-on-Black jug from Tomb 8 whose slip is "almost entirely worn off", which shows how far such surfaces can be lost in a tomb [6]. The Red Slip jugs of the Middle Cypriot II–III period in the State Historical Museum in Moscow give the broader family [5].

A date in the Middle Cypriot period, c. 1900–1650 BCE, is well supported by the shape; MC II–III, c. 1850–1650 BCE, is the likeliest range for this slender-necked, plain form. The Red Polished numerals used in older catalogues do not work as a chronological ladder, so the date rests on the shape [3].

Complete jugs of this kind come almost entirely from chamber tombs, where they were placed with the dead after use as ordinary household pourers. What this one held is unknown.

The jug's ware remains the open question. Examination in hand, looking for burnish under the crust, the colour of the fabric at a chip and any trace of painted lines, would decide between Red Slip, Black Slip and a worn painted ware. Similar round-based jugs with high handles were also made in the southern Levant and western Anatolia in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, so a Cypriot origin, though the most probable reading, is not proven by the shape alone.