The Craft of the Non-mechanically Reproducible: Targeting Centres of Faience Figurine Production in 1800–1650 BC Egypt

This paper discusses a group of fourteen faience figurines that entered the collection of the British Museum in 1891. Although the figurines were purchased through the antiquities market, they formed a homogenous group that can be typologically and stylistically dated to the late Middle Kingdom (1800–1650 B.C.). Similarities in manufacturing techniques, shape, decoration, raw materials, and other aspects of the technologies employed to create them indicate a common provenance, and by extension, place of production. The site of Lahun is tentatively proposed here as that place of production, based on the date the pieces were purchased as well as the comparative studies. The second part of the article takes a more theoretical and methodological approach to establish the degree to which faience figurine production was centralised and/or dispersed to local centres during the Middle Kingdom, taking four key variables. The dissonant evidence provided by the study of these four different variables, which yielded some conflicting information, demonstrated that faience production was an ‘ambiguous’ process using a medium that could not be fully controlled during all the steps of production. The only degree of control that could be exercised was related to the individual craftsmanship of the artisans. Since faience figurines of the late Middle Kingdom were not produced in moulds, and were therefore not mechanically reproducible, only skilled makers with access to the necessary knowledge about the chemical processes involved could have generated such artefacts.