Egyptian faience is a type of heated
quartz
ceramic displaying surface
vitrification which
creates a bright lustre of various
colours, with
blue-green being the most common.
Although
faience should not be considered as a
category
of pottery, as it doesn’t contain any
clay and
instead contains the major elemental
components of glass (silica, or
silicon dioxide, or
quartz, the primary constituents of
sand), faience
is frequently discussed in studies
relative to
ancient pottery. Notably, faience is
though
considerably more porous than glass
and can
thus be cast in molds to create
vessels or
objects.
Egyptian faience was widely used for
objects of
smaller dimensions from beads to
figurines and
statuettes and faience artefacts have
been
unearthed in both elite classes and
lower classes
urban and funerary contexts. It was
the most
common material for the creation of
scarabs and
other forms of amulets, including
ushabti figures,
cosmetic articles, bowls and drinking
cups and it
was frequently employed in the
production of
ancient Egyptian jewellery, as the
glaze made it
smooth against the skin.
Egyptian faience was both exported
widely in the
ancient world and produced in a number
of local
workshops in numerous locations, and
exported
faience articles have been retrieved
in
Mesopotamia, in numerous localities
around the
Mediterranean basin but also in
northern Europe
as far away as Scotland.
The Late Period of ancient Egypt
refers to the
last flowering of native Egyptian
rulers after from
the 26th Saite Dynasty into the
Achaemenid
Persian conquests and ended with the
conquest
of Egypt by Alexander the Great and
the
establishment of the Ptolemaic
Kingdom. This
last period lasted from 664 BC until
332 BC.
Libyans and Persians alternated rule
with native
Egyptians, but the arts continued to
flourish
within traditional conventions.
With the Egyptian territories being
conquered by
the Macedonian army in the latter half
of the 4th
century, starts the last glorious era
for Egypt, the
Hellenistic period.
- (PH.0161)
|
