من آثار الفدين | اناء طبخ | المفرق

Cooking pot

• Title/name : Cooking pot
• Production place : Al-Fudayn (al-Mafraq), Jordan
• Date / period : Seventh – eighth century
• Materials and techniques : Carved stone, engraved decoration
• Dimensions : H. 15 cm ; D. 29 cm
• Conservation town : Amman
• Conservation place : Jordan Archaeological Museum
• Inventory number : J 19308
• Inscription : “for Nawwar ?”

This cooking pot is one of ten pieces, which were among the treasure of artifacts discovered in the Umayyad palace of Al-Fudayn.

The large body, nearly cylindrical, has two simple broad handles. The surface is totally covered with geometric designs such as horizontal or perpendicular bands, which contained crossed lines in the shape of an X or net decoration. On the handle is a zigzag decoration, above which there are short perpendicular strokes. In the interior of the pot there is an inscription in kufic reading the word li-nawwar (reading uncertain) “for Nawwar (?)”. It is not clear whether the phrase implies the owner or the manufacturer of the pot. However it seems that the same craftsman made this group of pots (note the unified decoration). Two similar pots of dark gray steatite have been found in a storage connected with the palace, one of them decorated with rectangular bands containing concentric circles with dots.

A similar pot was found in one of the palaces of Umm al-Walid (diameter: 25 cm) ; other ones have been discovered in Iran, during excavations of Susa. 

A censer from Amman had similar decoration to that of Al-Fudayn, but with concentric circles with dots in addition.

The use of cooking pots made of steatite was common in the Umayyad period. Such pots without decoration and with broad handles were uncovered in a number of Umayyad sites: Umm al-Walid, Fahl, Amman, Siyagha and Ayla (Aqaba) in Jordan, El-Ezariyyah (Bethany) in Palestine. Pots, incense-burners, lamps made of stone, mostly steatite, were found in Susa and Nishapur (Iran).
These pots may have been made locally, with or without decoration, for use in palaces and houses of the elite. The people viewed steatite, coming essentially from Arabia, as a precious material. An example shows signs of mending using iron rivets or white paste. Many of the pots had traces of fire on the base or body, thus, confirming their function for cooking. The body of such cooking pots has at the base a slight curve making a sharp angle with the straight body in order to distribute fire on the body surface uniformly.

REFERENCE BIBLIOGRAPHY