storic Egyptians were not
Kabyles or Libyans, but Nilotes, and the peculiar decoration of their
pottery, which seems so strangely barbaric, is in reality merely the
most ancient handiwork of the Egyptian painter, and marks the first
stage in the development of pictorial art on the banks of the Nile (2).
Other types of pottery (3), in colour chiefly buff or brown, were also
in use at this period; the most noticeable form is a cylindrical vase
with a wavy or rope band round it just below the lip, which developed
out of a necked vase with a wavy handle on either side. This cylindrical
type outlived the red and black and the red and buff decorated styles
(which are purely Neolithic and predynastic) and continued in use in the
early dynastic period, well into the Copper age. The other unglazed
pottery of the first three dynasties is not very remarkable for beauty
of form or colour, and is indeed of the roughest description (4), but
under the IVth Dynasty we find beautiful wheel-made bowls, vases and
vase-stands of a fine red polished ware (4). This fine ware continued in
use at least as late as the XVIIIth Dynasty, though the forms of course
differed from age to age. Under the XIIth Dynasty, and during the Middle
Kingdom generally, either this or a coarser unpolished red ware was in
use. The forms of this period are very characteristic (5); the vases are
usually footless, and have a peculiar globular or drop-like shape--some
small ones seem almost spherical. At this period the foreign "Pan-Grave"
black and red pottery was also in use (see above).

The art of making a pottery consisting of a siliceous sandy body coated
with a vitreous copper glaze seems to have been known unexpectedly
early, possibly even as early as the period immediately preceding the
Ist Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Under the XIIth Dynasty pottery made of this
characteristic Egyptian faience seems to have come into general use, and
it continued in use down to the days of the Romans, and is the ancestor
of the glazed wares of the Arabs and their modern successors (6). The
oldest Egyptian glazed ware is found usually in the shape of beads,
plaques, &c.--rarely in the form of pottery vessels. The colour is
usually a light blue, which may turn either white or green; but beads of
the grey-black manganese colour are found, and on the light blue vases
of King Aha (who is probably one of the historical originals of the
legendary "Mena" or Menes) in the British Museum (No.