CULTURE / REGION OF ORIGIN: Eastern Mediterranean, probably Levantine. Said to have been found in Jordan.
DATE:  13th Century BCE (Bronze Age, period).
DIMENSIONS:  11.2 cm (4.4 in.) tall.

DESCRIPTION: Intact. A Near Eastern pilgrim flask, derivative of Mycenaean types, with flattened bottom, fully globular body, narrow columnar neck and outward splayed mouth, with two handles, round in section, extending outward from the middle of the neck to the lower shoulder of the vessel. The vessel is decorated with narrow dark brown to black bands, three of them encircling the upper body, one around the neck just below the mouth, and a single thicker band just inside the mouth. The fabric is a heavy medium grain, beige in color, with patches of light pink-orange due to somewhat uneven firing. Much of the surface is covered with a layer of fine grained encrustation, especially on the shoulder, handles and neck and inside the vessel’s mouth.

PROVENANCE: Formerly in the private English collection of Mr. Peter Negus, the collection formed between the 1920s and 2007 from various sources in the UK and abroad. .

PUBLISHED: Bonham’s auction catalogue, ANTIQUITIES, 26 October, 2007, London, page 140, illustrated in color.

COMPARISONS: For a good example of the original Mycenaean lentoid form of pilgrim flask on which this is based, see Emily T. Vermeule, Toumba Tou Skourou, The Mound of Darkness, A Bronze Age Town on Morphou Bay in Cyprus, Harvard University – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cyprus Expedition, 1974, Fig. 66. For a locally made example of a pilgrim flask in faience from Ugarit (Ras Shamra) in Syria, see Harvey Weiss, Editor, Ebla to Damascus, Art and Archaeology of Ancient Syria, Smithsonian Institution, 1985, #143.