Room 03 of 07 · Middle Cypriot
The Middle Bronze Age
After six centuries of cutting patterns into red clay, Cypriot potters take up the brush again.
The Middle Cypriot period, c. 1900–1650 BC, is defined by a pot. Archaeologists mark its start by the spread of White Painted ware, which carries its patterns in dark paint on a pale ground where Red Polished had them cut into the clay. White Painted was never common, typically one or two pots in a hundred, and Red Polished stayed the everyday ware. The sequence of its painted styles is how the period is divided and dated.
Its villages were built of houses much alike. Its tombs were less equal. At Vounous and Lapithos the pots and copper buried with the dead rose steeply over time, and so did the differences in wealth between graves. Priscilla Keswani reads this as kin groups competing for prestige; the villages show no ruling class to match. Village life in the period.
Fourteen pieces hang here: painted tableware, plain red-slipped pots for pouring and dipping, three spindle whorls and a string of faience beads.
From cutting to painting
The numbered classes of White Painted ware, I to VI, look like a ladder of dates. They are rougher than that. The same bowl from a Lapithos tomb is White Painted III in its excavation report and White Painted IV in the Stockholm catalogue, so the numbers work best as broad stages of style.
Most of the pieces here are in the north-coast manner, with lattice, hatched triangles and wavy lines stacked in bands, and their closest parallels come from the tombs of Lapithos and Vounous. The earliest, a White Painted II jug with a beaked, cut-away neck and small modelled knobs, is painted orange-red on buff; the later pieces use duller, matt paint, red-brown to near black. None has a recorded find-spot, so the regional labels rest on decoration alone. More on White Painted.
In focus
White Painted III-IV Amphora with Lozenge Chains and Hatched Triangles
Middle Cypriot II–III, c. 1850–1650 BC
A squat amphora with two pierced lug handles, painted with chains of lozenges and hatched triangles. A vertical ladder of lines runs down the front and cuts across the horizontal zones. Its closest parallels are two amphorae from Lapithos tombs in the Medelhavsmuseet, Stockholm; a Cesnola amphora in the Metropolitan Museum has the same shape.
Lattice, triangles and a double bowl
The double bowl is two small globular bowls joined at the side under one tall handle with a forked tip. A published parallel in the Severis Collection has lost its handle; here it survives. What went into the two bowls is unknown. The deep bowl is painted underneath as well as round the sides: bands of straight and wavy lines quarter the base, with a small ring in each quarter.
Quick lookWhite Painted II Jug with Cut-away Neck and Lattice Panelsc. 2000–1800 BC
Quick lookWhite Painted III-IV Juglet with Cut-away Neckc. 1850–1650 BC
Quick lookWhite Painted III-IV Bowl with Rising Handle and Hatched Trianglesc. 1850–1650 BC
Quick lookWhite Painted Double Bowl with Tall Loop Handlec. 1850–1650 BC
Pots for pouring and dipping
Beside the painted tableware ran plainer wares of the Red Polished family, slipped all over in red, brown or black; Red Slip and Black Slip are the main ones. Worn and crusted from burial, they are hard to tell apart, and for most of the five pieces here the ware can only be settled in the hand, by looking for burnish under the crust and at the colour of the clay where it is chipped.
These were working pots. The dipper, a small bowl on a long loop handle, drew liquid from a larger jar. Complete pots like these come almost entirely from tombs, so even the most ordinary vessels reached us through burials.
Red, black and plain
Once catalogued as a painted juglet of the Iron Age, the flaring-necked jug has no trace of paint. Its patchy grey-black coat, flaking to pinkish clay, points to Black Slip of the Middle Bronze Age, and its closest matches come from Swedish Cyprus Expedition tombs at Lapithos and Ayios Iakovos. The small beaked jug is almost hidden under lime crust. One of its parallels from Ayios Iakovos, now in Stockholm, has lost nearly all its slip in the same way.
Quick lookRed-Slipped Juglet with Cutaway Spoutc. 1900–1650 BC
Quick lookRed PolishedSmall Red-Slipped Jug with Beaked Mouthc. 1850–1650 BC
Quick lookRed PolishedPlain Handmade Bronze Age Jugletc. 2100–1650 BC
Quick lookRed PolishedDipper with High Loop Handlec. 2000–1650 BC
Quick lookJug with Flaring Neck, probably Black Slip Warec. 1850–1600 BC
Thread and beads
Cloth was made at home. The spinner mounted a clay whorl low on the spindle, broad face upward, to keep the shaft turning; a copper spindle in the Zintilis Collection still has its whorl corroded in place. Terracotta whorls arrived with the Philia culture around 2500 BC, and their decoration is the incised repertoire of Red Polished pottery shrunk onto a small dome.
Whorls are often called women's grave goods. Some were buried with women, but others lie with a probable man or next to copper weapons, and not every woman was given one. The faience beads raise a different question: where they were made. Beads of this kind have long been taken for imports from Egypt or the Levant; local manufacture has been argued, but no workshop has been found on Cyprus.
Three whorls
The lattice whorl matches, almost word for word, the excavators' description of the commonest whorl pattern at Sotira-Kaminoudhia. The herringbone whorl may be burnished clay or a speckled stone; the question is open. The plain whorl is probably the latest of the three, since plain whorls tend to follow decorated ones. Spinning and weaving.
In focus
Necklace of Globular Faience Beads
Middle Cypriot type, c. 2000–1650 BC
About two dozen globular faience beads, turquoise to blue-green, several of them lumpy, as if shaped by hand, now strung on a modern chain. Their mix of sizes is close to a string of twenty-two beads from Lapithos Tomb 806A, now in Philadelphia. Most excavated beads of this type have weathered to white or grey, and why these kept their colour is an open question. The necklace has an article of its own.
