White Painted III-IV Bowl with Rising Handle and Hatched Triangles

Middle Cypriot II–III, c. 1850–1650 BCE · White Painted III–IV ware · Handmade

A deep hemispherical bowl with a round base and a plain rim. A single solid rod handle springs from the rim and rises steeply outward, marked with short transverse strokes. The fabric is pale and the surface a warm cream-buff.

The paint runs from red to red-brown on the upper body and fires to grey-brown toward the base. Around the outside, groups of parallel oblique lines form a frieze of large opposed hatched triangles above an encircling band. The underside is quartered: a horizontal band of straight and wavy lines is crossed by a vertical pair of wavy lines, and each quadrant holds a small painted ring. The bowl has been reassembled from several fragments, with cracks across body and base and chips along the rim.

Commentary

This is a White Painted bowl of a type well known from the Middle Cypriot tombs of Lapithos on the north coast. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition described the form as a shallow bowl with round base and a horizontal handle at the rim, and several examples from Lapithos Tomb 315 carry decoration close to this piece. One is described as having "hatched triangles around rim; crossed, wavy lines and dots on base; transverse lines on handle" [1]. The match in decorative syntax, down to the painted base, places this bowl in the same north-coast tradition. No find-spot is recorded for it.

The closest motif parallel is a British Museum bowl from Phoenikiais, catalogued as White Painted IV, whose interior is painted with parallel lines crossing at right angles with "eyes" in each quadrant, while its outside carries hatched triangles, parallel lines and wavy lines [2]. On the present bowl the quartered scheme with rings is painted on the outside of the base instead. Two bowls in the Medelhavsmuseet, Stockholm, from Lapithos Tombs 315 and 316 show the same shape and rising handle [3][4].

The class number is given as a range because authorities disagree. The same Lapithos bowl, Tomb 315 B–C no. 49, appears as White Painted III in the excavation report and as White Painted IV in the Stockholm catalogue [1][3]. Åström's classification treats these numbers as broad stages and names decorative styles across them [5], and Frankel's analysis of the decoration shows how much motifs overlap between classes [6]. The Lapithos parallels come from tombs dated Middle Cypriot I–II and II, and the fairly bright red of the upper paint favours the earlier part of the range, around 1850–1700 BCE.

Bowls of this kind are found in tombs with jugs, amphorae, bronze knives and pins, and in life were probably used for drinking or serving. The rising handle is a convenient grip for dipping and lifting. The interior is plain near the rim; many comparable bowls are painted on the inside floor.