Stone vessels of ancient Egypt.

Stone vessels of ancient Egypt. Over 10,000 pieces of vases, bowls, plates etc. have been found in the mastabas around the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, some intact and others broken. This lavish amount of artifacts clearly indicates that it was not one craftsman or workshop making them, but an entire industry. The items show the unmistakable tool marks of a lathe. These bowls and stone dishes/platters are some of the finest ancient ones ever found. They are made from a variety of materials - from soft, such as alabaster, all the way up the hardness scale to very hard, such as granite. Some delicate vases are made of very brittle stone such as schist (like a flint) and yet are finished, turned and polished to a flawless paper thin edge - an extraordinary feat of craftsmanship. Perfectly balance bowls with a bottom that is not bigger than the top of a hen's egg show that the entire bowl has a symmetrical wall thickness without any substantial error. The other pieces turned out of granite, porphory or basalt are fully hollowed with narrow undercut flared openings, and some even have long necks. For us to reproduce such pieces it is safe to say that the techniques or machinery they employed to produce these bowls has yet to be replicated. The mastabas of Saqqara are among the oldest ruins in ancient Egypt. Very extensive, made of dry bricks, they were once the tombs of the kings of the first dynasties. Researchers currently agree that they predate 2575 BC, but could date back to 3050 BC, which means that the jars they contained are between 4000 and 5000 years old. Stoneware such as this has not been found from any later era in Egyptian history - it seems that the skills necessary were lost.