Red Polished Spouted Jug with Relief Bands and a Snake

Early Cypriot III to Middle Cypriot I, c. 2100–1850 BCE · Red Polished ware · Handmade

A spouted jug with a squat globular body on a rounded base and a tall, slightly flaring cylindrical neck. The rim opens wide on one side; on the other, a narrow tongue-shaped projection rises well above it. A short tubular spout, angled upward, projects from the shoulder on the same side, and a small pierced lug sits at the base of the neck opposite.

The decoration is modelled in relief. Three raised, finely notched bands ring the shoulder, three more ring the neck, and a row of small impressed dots marks the junction of neck and body. Near the top of the neck a doubled chevron is laid on in relief. On the body below the spout a single vertical zigzag of applied clay reads as a snake. The orange-red burnished slip is well preserved on the body but worn on the neck, with scattered lime spots throughout.

Commentary

The vessel is Red Polished ware and belongs to the relief-decorated branch of the tradition, in which ornament was built up in applied clay on the surface. Raised horizontal bands combined with wavy relief lines and a pierced lug at the neck base appear on a Red Polished jug in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge [3], and Morris illustrates several Red Polished jugs with relief bands on neck and body [2]. Relief snakes are a recurrent motif on Red Polished jugs: a jug from Vounous Tomb 87A/2 carries a stylised snake along its neck [4], and Brown and Catling note relief snakes among the characteristic ornament of the period [1]. Webb describes emphatic relief work and pierced lugs as hallmarks of the north-western workshops at Deneia, which shared a regional sphere with Lapithos [5]. The style fits that broad northern milieu, though relief snakes also occur on south-coast Red Polished, and without a find-spot no specific source can be named.

The form combines two features of the more elaborate Red Polished jugs: a tall neck with a raised lip and a separate shoulder spout. Morris publishes a jug with a cutaway beak and side-spout of this general kind [2]. A side-spout is usually explained as a way of separating filling from pouring, though this remains an inference from the shape. The round base and the decorative grammar place the jug in Early Cypriot III to Middle Cypriot I, c. 2100–1850 BCE, within the frameworks set by Stewart [6].

The structure of the upper part is the open question. The available view shows no handle. The tall tongue on the rim may be a cutaway beak lip, but its squared, channelled end and its position directly above the shoulder spout also allow it to be read as the upper stump of a lost handle. In that case the projection on the shoulder, together with the small lump beneath it, could be the lower handle attachment rather than a spout. Examination of the reverse, and of whether the shoulder projection is pierced through into the body, is needed before the vessel can be classified with confidence.