Waterbottle Filter

Waterbottle Filter

Two joining neck fragments of a Fatimid buff-white ware water vessel with incised filter. The fabric is characteristically buff with a white/cream slip over the surface. The broken neck flares outwards towards the top and is well preserved on only one side of the profile. The filter is broken through the middle with a fragment missing from the center, but is formed of an incised and pierced six pointed star with a diamond-shaped lattice work between the spokes of the start and a circular band of pierced decoration on the outside. Very little of the vessel's body is preserved below the filter.

Finely decorated filters for Fatimid water vessels are well-known finds from Fustat and numerous designs are known. Examples in the British Museum with similar fabric and geometric designs are all dated to the 10th - 12th centuries AD. Examples in buff-white ware with similar designs were recovered by Scanlon's American Research Centre in Egypt excavations at Fustat from contexts that were broadly dated to the 11th century AD.

The filter 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 filter 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: 100 mm

Width: 90 mm

Depth: 70 mm

C.008.005

QM E924

© 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. Figs, 2b, 3d. doi:10.2307/40000997

Scanlon, G. (1974). Fustat Expedition: Preliminary Report 1968: Part I. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 11, 81-91. Fig. 9. doi:10.2307/40000777

Scanlon, G. (1982). Fustat Expedition: Preliminary Report, 1972 Part II. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 19, 119-129. Figs. 4, 9. doi:10.2307/40000438

Wodzinska, A. (2010). A Manual of Egyptian Pottery Volume 4: Ptolemaic through Modern Period. Ancient Egypt Research Associates. Medieval Types 34-5.

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

Queensland Museum Outward Correspondence #00138 (1917).

Queensland Museum Inwards Correspondence #00509 (1917)

Olmer, P., Catalogue Général du Musée Arabe du Caire: Les Filtres de Gargoulettes, Cairo, 1932.

P.008

Mr James Donaldson