Project Research

In the world of ancient Egyptian craftspeople, the clay manufacturer remains particularly unseen. One of the core materials for material production in ancient Egypt, however, was clay. This natural soil material literally dominated daily life: the vast majority of houses and architectural features were constructed in clay, the most common vessels and containers were made in clay, as was a wide spectrum of other functional and decorative objects such as weights, lids, model offerings and figurines. While clay has been studied extensively in the context of pottery manufacturing, other clay objects have been largely neglected. Clay artefacts, as well as the people that manufactured them, have thus remained particularly invisible entities within ancient Egyptian material culture and society. Hand-made clay figurines, representing (parts of) human figures and a wide range of animals, are particularly suited for studying material culture and society. Found in funerary, cultic and settlement contexts, these small models serve as vehicles of the ideas, visions and customs of a society. Especially that part of society which remained more invisible to our eyes: artisans, craftsmen, workmen, farmers, etc., constituting the economic engine of ancient Egypt. Their small size and plasticity also gave them the capacity of preserving direct and indirect traces of their makers; formed under the pressure of fingertips, they reflect technical gestures, shaping techniques and sequences, and even preserve fingerprints that allow us further glimpses into the identities of their makers. Clay figurines encapsulate, like Walter Bejamin’s "aura", flashes of ancient lives, leaving evident traces of their makers. PIPE aims to construct a first social and technological profile for the clay artisans from the Nile Valley, through the stories embedded in clay figurines, which show the traces of the lives of the non-wealthy (or non-dominant) people, who are too often ignored by the writing of our history.