Miniature Bottle

Miniature Bottle

A Fatimid miniature bottle in very fine pale yellow glass. The lip flares slightly but is not rolled. The neck tapers slightly inwards and then our again towards the base. The profile of the bottle is irregular. The transition from neck to body is smooth, with the widest part of the body sitting a the vase of the bottle. The shoulder is not defined and the underside is concave. There is no pontil mark. The surface is covered with darker brown accretions.

The bottle should be dated to the Fatimid period, probably the 11th century on the basis of the pale yellow colouring which is more common at this time. The shape is consistent with a number of small Fatimid glass bottles known from Fustat. Two such bottles, in an earlier blue green glass, are held by the Corning Museum of Glass, New York (67.1.36 and 39). Another example of the very fine glass of the Fatimid period was excavated at Fustat in 1964.

The bottle is from Ali Bey Bahgat's early operations at Fustat (Old Cairo). It was acquired from the Museum of Arab Art in Cairo, where Bahgat was curator, by Comte Corporal Gontran Louis Henri Marie Philippe de Tournouër in 1915 or 1916. De Tournouer acquired six other early Islamic antiquities from Bahgat and all are said to come from a house excavated at Fustat at a depth of 50 feet. These excavations, started in 1912, were little more than recovery operations until Baghat secured funding to excavate more formally in 1918. The precise archaeological context for the discovery of the bottle is therefore unknown and the sale of duplicate artefacts from the Museum collections was a common practice at the time. De Tournouer donated his collection to the Queensland Museum in 1917 after being invalided home from the First World War.

AD 1000 - AD 1100

Height: 40 mm

Width: 25 mm

Depth: 25 mm

C.008.004

QM E922

© Queensland Museum, Peter Waddington.

Recovered from a House at Fustat, Cairo, Egypt, c. 1912-1915.
Part of the Museum of Arab Art Collection, Cairo, Egypt, until c. 1915-1916.
Transferred by Ali Bey Baghat, Curator, Museum of Arab Art, Cairo, Egypt, to Comte Cpl. Gontran de Tournouer, c. 1915-1916.
Donated by Comte Cpl. Gontran de Tournouer, Brisbane, to the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, 1922.

Queensland Museum, Brisbane

Reid, D. M. (2019). Contesting antiquity in Egypt : archaeologies, museums & the struggle for identities from World War I to Nasser. American University in Cairo Press

Scanlon, G. (1965). Preliminary Report: Excavations at Fustat, 1964. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 4, 6-30. Pl. 15, no. 41. doi:10.2307/40000997

Kolbas, J. (1983). A Color Chronology of Islamic Glass. Journal of Glass Studies, 25, 95-100. www.jstor.org/stable/24190739

Bottle. (800-899). [Bottle. Almost colorless, with greenish tinge.]. Corning Museum of Glass, Corning. 67.1.36

Bottle. (800-899). [Bottle. Hemispherical body with cylindrical neck and the start of an outsplayed rim.]. Corning Museum of Glass, Corning. 67.1.39

Queensland Museum Donor Schedule #17/159 (1917).

Queensland Museum Outward Correspondence #00138 (1917).

Queensland Museum Inwards Correspondence #00509 (1917)

P.008

Mr James Donaldson