Egyptian faience is a sintered-quartz ceramic material from Ancient Egypt. The sintering process covered the material with a true vitreous coating as the quartz underwent vitrification, creating a bright lustre of various colours usually in a transparent blue or green isotropic glass. Its name in the Ancient Egyptian language was ,See for hieroglyphic representations. literally "the gleaming" or "the dazzling", and modern archeological terms for it include sintered quartz, glazed frit, and glazed composition. is distinct from the crystalline pigment Egyptian blue, for which it has sometimes incorrectly been used as a synonym.
It is not faience in the usual sense of tin-glazed pottery, and is different from the enormous range of clay-based Ancient Egyptian pottery, from which utilitarian vessels were made. It is similar to later Islamic stonepaste (or "fritware") from the Middle East, although that generally includes more clay.
Egyptian faience is considerably more porous than glass proper. It can be cast in molds to create small vessels, jewelry and decorative objects. Although it contains the major constituents of glass (silica, lime) and no clay until late periods, Egyptian faience is frequently discussed in surveys of ancient pottery, as in stylistic and art-historical terms, objects made of it are closer to pottery styles than ancient Egyptian glass.
Egyptian faience was very widely used for small objects, from beads to small statues, and is found in both elite and popular contexts. It was the most common material for scarabs and other forms of amulet and ushabti figures, and it was used in most forms of ancient Egyptian jewellery, as the glaze made it smooth against the skin. Larger applications included dishware, such as cups and bowls, and wall tiles, which were mostly used for temples. The well-known blue hippopotamus figurines, placed in the tombs of officials, can be up to long,Louvre: Hippopotamus figurine, Department of Egyptian Antiquities: From the late prehistoric period to the late Middle Kingdom (circa 3800 - 1710 BC) approaching the maximum practical size for Egyptian faience, though the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a sceptre, dated 1427–1400 BC.
Scope of the term
It is called "Egyptian faience" to distinguish it from faience, the tin-glazed pottery whose name came from Faenza in northern Italy,Nicholson, P.T. and Peltenburg, E. (2000). Egyptian faience. In Nicholson, P.T. and Shaw, I. (eds.) Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 177-194. a center of maiolica (one type of faience) production in the late Middle Ages. Egyptian faience was both exported widely in the ancient world and made locally in many places, and is found in Mesopotamia, around the Mediterranean and in northern Europe as far away as Scotland. The term is used for the material wherever it was made and modern scientific analyses are often the only way of establishing the provenance of simple objects such as the very common beads.
The term is therefore unsatisfactory in several respects, although clear in an Ancient Egyptian context, and is increasingly rejected in museum and archaeological usage. The British Museum now calls this material "glazed composition", with the following note in their online collection database: The term is used for objects with a body made of finely powdered quartz grains fused together with small amounts of alkali and/or lime through partial heating. The bodies are usually colourless but natural impurities give them a brown or greyish tint. Colourants can also be added to give it an artificial colour. It can be modelled by hand, thrown or moulded, and hardens with firing. This material is used in the context of Islamic ceramics where it is described as stonepaste (or fritware). Glazed composition is related to glass, but glass is formed by completely fusing the ingredients in a liquid melted at high temperature. This material is also popularly called faience in the contexts of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Near East. However, this is a misnomer as these objects have no relationship to the glazed pottery vessels made in Faenza, from which the faience term derives. Other authors use the terms sintered quartz, glazed frit, frit, composition, Egyptian Blue, paste or (in the 19th century) even porcelain, although the last two terms are very inappropriate as they also describe imitation gems and a type of ceramic. Frit is technically a flux.
Glazes
From the inception of faience in the archaeological record of Ancient Egypt, the elected colors of the glazes varied within an array of blue-green hues. Glazed in these colours, faience was perceived as substitute for blue-green materials such as turquoise, found in the Sinai Peninsula, and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. According to the archaeologist David Frederick Grose, the quest to imitate precious stones "explains why most all early glasses are opaque and brilliantly colored" and that the deepest blue color imitating lapis lazuli was likely the most sought after. As early as the Predynastic graves at Naqada, Badar, el-Amrah, Matmar, Harageh, Avadiyedh and El-Gerzeh, glazed steatite and faience beads are found associated with these semi-precious stones.Nicholson 1998. Nicholson, P.T.1993. Egyptian faience and glass. Aylesbury: Shire- Egyptology.137–142. The association of faience with turquoise and lapis lazuli becomes even more conspicuous in Quennou's funerary papyrus, giving his title as the director of overseer of faience-making, using the word which strictly means lapis lazuli, which by the New Kingdom had also come to refer to the 'substitute', faience. The symbolism embedded in blue glazing could recall both the Nile, the waters of heaven and the home of the gods, whereas green could possibly evoke images of regeneration, rebirth and vegetation.Friedman, F.D. (ed.). 1998. Gifts of the Nile-ancient Egyptian faience. London: Thames and Hudson. 177-194.137–142.
Relationship with Egyptian copper industry
The discovery of faience glazing has tentatively been associated with the copper industry: bronze scale and corrosion products of leaded copper objects are found in the manufacture of faience pigments.Kaczamrcyz, A. and Hedges. R.E.M. 1983. Ancient Egyptian Faience. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.137–142. However, although the likelihood of glazed quartz pebbles developing accidentally in traces in copper smelting furnaces from the copper and wood ash is high, the regions in which these processes originate do not coincide.Petrie, W. M. F.1909. Memphis I, London: British School of Archeology in Egypt.137–142.
Relationship with Egyptian glass industry Although it appears that no glass was intentionally produced in Egypt before the Eighteenth Dynasty (as the establishment of glass manufacture is generally attributed to the reign of Thutmose III), it is likely that faience, frit and glass were all made in close proximity or in the same workshop complex, since developments in one industry are reflected in others. Such close relationship is reflected in the prominent similarity of the formulations of faience glaze and contemporary glass compositions. Despite the differences in the pyrotechnology of glass and faience, faience being worked cold, archaeological evidence suggests that New Kingdom glass and faience production was undertaken in the same workshops.
Production
Typical composition and access to raw materials Faience has been defined as the first high technology ceramic, to emphasize its status as an artificial medium, rendering it effectively a precious stone.Vandiver, P.B.F.1983. Egyptian faience technology, Appendix A. In: A. Kaczmarczyk and R.E.M. Hedges, Editors, Ancient Egyptian Faience, Warminster: Aris and Phillips, A1–A14 Egyptian faience is a non-clay based ceramic composed of crushed quartz or sand, with small amounts of calcite lime and a mixture of alkalis, displaying surface vitrification due to the soda lime silica glaze often containing copper pigments to create a bright blue-green luster. While in most instances domestic ores seem to have provided the bulk of the mineral pigments, evidence suggests that during periods of prosperity, raw materials not available locally, such as lead and copper, were imported. Plant ash, from "halophyte" (salt-tolerant) plants typical of dry and sea areas, was the major source of alkali until the Ptolemaic Period, when natron-based alkalis almost completely replaced the previous source. Although the chemical composition of faience materials varies over time and according to the status of the workshop, also as a cause of change of accessibility of raw materials, the material constitution of the glaze is at all times consistent with the generally accepted version of faience glazing.
Faience working technology Typical faience mixture is thixotropic, that is thick at first and then soft and flowing as it begins to be formed.Kiefer, C. and Allibert, A. 2007. Pharanoic Blue Ceramics: the Process of Self-glazing. Archeology 24, 107–117 This property, together with the angularity of silica particles, accounts for the gritty slumps formed when the material is wetted, rendering faience a difficult material to hold a shape.Noble, J. V. 1969. The technique of Egyptian faience. American Journal of Archaeology 73, 435–439 If pressed too vigorously, this material will resist flow until it yields and cracks, due to its limited plastic deformation and low yield strength.
Body binding technology A number of possible binding agents, amongst Arabic gum, clay, lime, egg white and resin, have been suggested to help in the binding process. Although traces of clay have been found in most Pharaonic faience, reconstruction experiments showed that clay, organic gums or lime while successfully improving the wet working performance, failed to improve the fired strength of the faience, or proved the gum was too sticky for the removal of objects from their molds. The use of alkalis as binders, in the form of natron or plant ash, produced suitable results in experiments. Pulverized glass or sintered material of similar composition could also enhance the fired strength of faience bodies: the compositions of such glasses is in fact comparable to the published compositions of New Kingdom glass.Kühne, K. 1974 "Frühgeschichtliche Werkstoffe auf Silikatischer Basis", Das Altertum 20, 67–80
Body working technology Three methods have been hypothesized to shape the body of faience objects: modeling, moulding and abrasion, the last being used in conjunction with the first two. Modeling, scraping and grinding are the techniques most widely believed to have been used in earlier times, as represented in the material qualities of Predynastic and Protodynastic faience objects. Predynastic bead manufacture was essentially a cold technology, more akin to stone working than glass with a general form being modeled from faience material, possibly free formed by hand, which would have holes drilled to create beads.
During the Middle Kingdom, common techniques used for faience bead making were molding and forming on a core. This period also marked the emergence of marleized faience, which was created from working different colored faience materials together in a way that produced a uniformed final substance with striated color layers. Towards the end of the Middle Kingdom, incising, inlaying and resisting techniques came into use and would become progressively more popular towards the beginning of the New Kingdom.