Day 15 - Cosmetics jar with petal design





January 31, 2018

Gallery 114 contains several large painted coffins and many small objects of alabaster, stone, metal, and other materials from the museum's excavations of Late Middle Kingdom (1800-1650 B.C. or so) sites near Thebes.  One mummy-shaped coffin is decorated with the painted image of a dog (I think it's a dog rather than a jackal) lying on a little house. right up under the decedent's breastplate. Was this a favorite pet of the deceased man, I wonder, or did it have another kind of symbolic significance? 

 Today's object is a little round container, maybe four inches in diameter - a cosmetics jar, I suspect, made of what I think is ivory but might be alabaster.  Its lid swivels around to expose the contents.  But what strikes me is the decoration on the lid. Around the circumference is a narrow zigzag band. In the circular interior of the space is a flower with 12 petals drawn with a fine pen. But what really strikes me is that the petals are composed of intersecting semicircles, and I think I know how the artist made his design. He first marked 12 equally-spaced dots around the circumference. Then, using something like a compass, he (or she?) put one leg of the compass at each of these points and with a fine brush attached to the other leg of the compass drew arcs that have as their midpoint the center of the lid, while each arc ends at the perimeter of the circle. 

 I recognize this because it, or something similar, is what we did in school! And the ancient Egyptians knew how make these designs, too. Do schoolkids today still fool around with compasses?

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