Bowl

Bowl

A carinated bowl with a rounded base, probably late Roman in date. The surface of the vessel is a red-rown colour with small limestone inclusions. The rim is rounded over the neck. The vessel has been roughly finished with incised horizonal lines above the carination but is otherwise undecorated.

The fabric and shape are not consistent with the Islamic period finds at Fustat, suggesting the vessel is of Egyptian Red Slip ware and dates to the late Roman period, c. 5th - 7th Centuries AD.

The vessel 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 vessel 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 400 - AD 700

Height: 53 mm

Width: 83 mm

Depth: 83 mm

C.008.006

QM H4855

© 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

Wodzinska, A. (2010). A Manual of Egyptian Pottery Volume 4: Ptolemaic through Modern Period. Ancient Egypt Research Associates. p. 223, Late Roman Period Type 107 or p. 64, Ptolemaic Type 92.

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

Queensland Museum Outward Correspondence #00138 (1917).

Queensland Museum Inwards Correspondence #00509 (1917)

P.008

Mr James Donaldson