Marsh Bowl

A blue faience bowl with black painted design. The decorated interior represents a marsh with open lotus flowers, lotus buds and papyrus flowers. At the centre is a marguerite blossom and around this swim four tilapia fish, carrying lotus buds in their mouths. Around the edges on the inside thickness is a water-like pattern. The fish and plant life are motifs that symbolise the themes of fertility, rebirth, and regeneration. The rim is painted black and is chipped in some places and there is discolouration of the glaze in the centre of the bowl. The underside is decorated as a flower with petals. The bowl was found with a large group of vessels in an undisturbed vaulted-chamber tomb from the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty containing eight burials (chamber 949 in Tomb Group 941-949 A’09). CONDITION NOTE 1998: Chipped rim, discolouration in centre of bowl, worn on base, surface dirt. Compare with Egypt’s Golden Age: The Art of Living in the New Kingdom 1558-1085 BC. Boston (1982) pp. 141-145.