White Painted III-IV Juglet with Cut-away Neck

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

A small handmade juglet with a near-spherical body on a rounded base. The neck is tall and tapering and leans forward, away from the handle, ending in a spout cut away obliquely into a pointed beak. A narrow strap handle runs from the lower neck to the shoulder. The pale buff surface is decorated in dark brown to black matt paint, now heavily worn: a ring of hatched triangles hangs from a line at the base of the neck, a double encircling band marks the widest point of the body, and a zone of hatched triangles or lozenges fills the lower body. Faint traces of lines survive on the neck. The neck surface is rough and pitted, and the handle is orange-brown, warmer in colour than the rest of the vessel.

Commentary

The shape is the cut-away-neck juglet, one of the defining closed forms of Middle Cypriot White Painted pottery [1]. The obliquely cut, beaked spout was inherited from the Red Polished jugs of the Early Bronze Age, and White Painted potters kept it through the whole Middle Cypriot sequence [2]. The juglet is handmade, like all Cypriot pottery of the period.

Its place within that sequence depends on the paint and the layout. The earliest White Painted cut-away jugs, such as the two large White Painted II examples of Middle Cypriot I in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (cat. nos 40–41), are decorated in dark red glossy paint and carry plastic string-hole projections on the neck [3]. Here the paint is dark and matt and the ornament is arranged in simple horizontal zones of hatched triangles divided by encircling bands, with no plastic additions. That combination belongs to Åström's White Painted III and IV [4], whose boundaries are inconsistently applied from one catalogue to the next, so the range White Painted III–IV is used here. A date of Middle Cypriot II–III, c. 1850–1650 BCE, follows [5].

The closest parallel we know of is a White Painted III juglet in the British Museum (1982,0721.62), a globular vessel with rounded base, tubular neck and cutaway mouth, with a handle from mid-neck to shoulder and lattice panels between horizontal encircling lines, dated Middle Cypriot II–III and 12.8 cm high [6]. The Cesnola beaked jug in New York (Metropolitan Museum 74.51.1036) is of the same family, and a larger jug of the class with lattice bands is in Stockholm (Medelhavsmuseet MM Acc 0871), dated Middle Cypriot III.

Juglets of this size held small quantities of liquid for pouring. Most known examples come from chamber tombs, especially on the north coast at Lapithos and Vounous, where they were placed with bowls and amphorae among the grave goods. The find-spot of this juglet is not recorded.

The handle needs examination in hand. Its orange-brown colour and surface differ from the pale, worn body and neck, and it may be a restoration or a re-attached original. No painted decoration is visible on it, where transverse strokes would be usual.