A FAR-TRAVELLED INVENTION
The Potter’s Wheel—An Egyptian Invention—The Wheel in Theology—Clay
Pots and Stone Vessels—Skilled Artisans produce Poor Pottery—The
Yakut Evidence—Female Potters—Pot Symbol of Mother-goddess—Potter’s
Wheel worked by Men—Egyptian “Wheel” adopted in Crete, Babylonia,
Iran, India, and China—No “Wheel” in America—Secular and Religious
Pottery in China, Japan, India, and Rome—Coarse
Grave-Pottery—Potter’s Wheel as Symbol of Creator—Chinese Emperors
as Potters—Culture Heroes—Association of Agriculture with
Pottery—Egyptian Ideas in Far East.
What bearing, it may be asked, have the discoveries made in Egypt on
the early history of China? Is there evidence to show that these
widely-separated countries were brought into contact in remote times?
Did the primitive Chinese receive and adopt Egyptian inventions, and if
so, how were such inventions conveyed across the wide and difficult
country lying between the Mediterranean coast and the Yellow Sea? Is
there any proof that trade routes extended in ancient times right
across Asia? Did prospecting and trading ancient mariners cross the
Indian Ocean and coast round to Chinese waters?
Interesting evidence regarding cultural contact is afforded by the
potter’s wheel. This wonderful machine was invented in Egypt some time
before the Fourth Dynasty (about 3000 B.C.), and in its area of origin
it exercised an influence not only on ceramic craftsmanship but on
religious ideas. It was regarded as a gift of the gods, as in ancient
Scotland bronze weapons, implements, musical instruments, &c., were
regarded as gifts from the fairies. Apparently the invention was first
introduced in Memphis, the ancient capital, the chief god of which was
Ptah, the supreme deity “of all handicraftsmen and of all workers in
metal and stone”. Ptah was already regarded as the creator of the
primeval egg from which the universe was hatched, and of the “sun egg”
and the “moon egg”. He was evidently a deity whose life-history goes
back to primitive times when the mother-goddess was symbolized as the
goose that laid the primeval egg. The problem of whether the egg or the
bird came first was solved by the priests of the Ptah cult of Memphis,
who regarded their deity as the creator of the “egg”. After the
potter’s wheel came into use, they depicted Ptah turning the “egg” upon
it. The manufacture of wheel-made pottery thus came to have religious
associations. It was closely connected with the culture of Egypt which
had its basis in the agricultural mode of life. The arts and crafts
were all stimulated by religious ideas; they were cultivated by the
priestly class in temple workshops, and were essentially an expression
of Egyptian beliefs and conceptions.
Before the potter’s wheel came into use, the potter’s art had
degenerated. Vases, bowls, jars, platters, and other vessels were made
of such costly stones as diorite, alabaster, and porphyry; these were
drilled out with copper implements. Copper vessels were also made. The
discovery of how to work copper had caused the craftsmen to neglect the
potter’s art, and to work with enthusiasm in the hardest stone until
they achieved a high degree of skill. The coarse pottery of the
pre-wheel period is therefore no indication that the civilization had
reached a stage of decadence. This fact should be a warning to those
archæologists who are prone to conclude that if the pottery taken from
a stratum in some particular area is “coarse”, the people who produced
it at the period it represents were necessarily in a backward
condition. The evidence afforded by Yakut products is of special
interest in this connection. The Yakuts are usually referred to as “the
most intelligent and progressive people in Siberia”. They are, however,
poor potters. They never glaze their vessels or use the potter’s wheel.
At the great Russian market of Yakutsk they refuse to purchase
wheel-made crockery, and purchase instead the raw clay with which to
make their own hand-made vessels, which are almost as coarse as those
of the Stone Age. But although the technique displayed in their pottery
is crude, they are famous for their excellent wood-carving and iron
forged-work. [13] A people cannot, therefore, be judged by their
pottery alone. It may be that those ancient peoples who are found to
have been poor potters were skilled and progressive in other spheres of
activity. The Hebrews were poor artisans and never invented anything,
but they have given the world a great religious literature.
After the potter’s wheel was introduced in Memphis, a new era in the
history of pottery was inaugurated. The enclosed baking-furnace came
into use at the same time, and the potter’s art and technique speedily
attained a wonderfully high degree of excellence. But the old crude,
hand-made pottery was still being produced. It was consistently
produced until Egypt ceased to be a great and independent kingdom.
Indeed, it is being manufactured even in our own day.
The reason why good and bad pottery are produced in a single
country—and Egypt is no exception to this rule—is that the manufacture
of hand-made vessels was in ancient times essentially a woman’s
avocation. The potter’s wheel was invented by man, and credited to a
god, and has from the beginning been worked by men only. There was
apparently a religious significance in the connection of the sexes with
the different processes. The clay pot was, in ancient Egypt, a symbol
of the mother-goddess. [14] Pots used in connection with the worship of
the Great Mother were apparently produced by her priestesses. As women
played their part in agricultural ceremonies, so did they play their
part—evidently a prominent one—in producing the goddess’s pot symbols.
The coarse jars in which were stored wines and oils and food-stuffs
were gifts of the Great Mother, the giver of all; she was the
inexhaustible sacred Pot—the womb of Nature. Domestic pottery used by
women was, very properly, the ancient folks appear to have argued,
produced by women.
“It will be noted”, writes O. T. Mason in this connection, “that the
feminine gender is used throughout in speaking of aboriginal potters.
This is because every piece of such ware is the work of woman’s hands.
She quarried the clay, and, like the patient beast of burden, bore it
home on her back. She washed it and kneaded it and rolled it into
fillets. These she wound carefully and symmetrically until the vessel
was built up. She further decorated and burned it, and wore it out in
household drudgery. The art at first was woman’s.” [15]
In many countries the connection of women with hand-made and of men
with wheel-made pottery obtains even in our day. The following
statement by two American scholars, who have produced a short but
authoritative paper on the potter’s art, is the result of a close
investigation of evidence collected over a wide area, and carefully
digested and summarized: [16]
“The potter’s wheel is the creation of man, and therefore is an
independent act of invention which was not evolved from any contrivance
utilized during the period of hand-made ceramic ware. The two processes
have grown out of two radically distinct spheres of human activity. The
wheel, so speak, came from another world. It had no point of contact
with any tool that existed in the old industry, but was brought in from
an outside quarter as a novel affair when man appropriated to himself
the work hitherto cultivated by woman. The development was one from
outside, not from within. All efforts, accordingly, which view the
subject solely from the technological angle, and try to derive the
wheel from previous devices of the female potter, are futile and
misleading. It is as erroneous as tracing the plough back to the hoe or
digging-stick, whereas, in fact, the two are in no historical
interrelation and belong to fundamentally different culture strata and
periods—the hoe to the gardening activity of woman, the plough to the
agricultural activity of man. Both in India and China the division of
ceramic labour sets apart the thrower or wheel-potter, and distinctly
separates him from the moulder. The potters in India, who work on the
wheel, do not intermarry with those who use a mould or make images.
They form a caste by themselves.” [17]
The oldest wheel-made pottery is found in Egypt. There can be no doubt
that the potter’s wheel was invented in that country. It was imported
into Crete, which had trading relations with the merchants of the
ancient Pharaohs, as far back as about 3000 B.C. Before the wheel was
adopted the Cretans made stone vessels, following Egyptian patterns,
but using soft stone instead of hard. Their hand-made pottery
degenerated, as did the Egyptian. “Pottery came again to its own in
both countries”, writes Mr. H. R. Hall, “with the invention of the
potter’s wheel and the baking-furnace.” [18]
The potter’s wheel must have found a ready market in the old days. It
was adopted, in time, in western Europe; it was quickly “taken up” in
Babylonia and in Iran, and was ultimately introduced into India and
China. But only the high Asiatic civilizations were capable of
constructing it, and consequently wheel-made pottery is not found
everywhere. Among the “aboriginal Americans” the wheel was never
employed. It is an interesting fact that the mind of man, which is
alleged to “work” on the same lines everywhere, never “evolved” a
potter’s wheel in Mexico or Peru. [19] Major Gordon tells that in Assam
[20] “the women fashion the pots by hand; they do not use the potter’s
wheel”. Similar evidence is obtainable in various other countries. In
China there are wheel-potters and moulders, and a distinction is drawn
between them by ancient writers. “This clear distinction is accentuated
by Chu Yen in his treatise on pottery. [21] He justly observes also
that the articles made by the wheel-potters were all intended for
cooking, with the exception of the vessel yu, which was designed for
measuring; while the output of the moulders, who made the ceremonial
vessels kuei and tou by availing themselves of the plumb-line, was
intended for sacrificial use. Also here, in like manner as in ancient
Rome, India, and Japan, the idea may have prevailed that a wheel-made
jar is of a less sacred character than one made by hand.” [22] Here
then we touch on another point which must be borne in mind by those who
draw conclusions regarding ancient cultures by means of pottery. In
Britain, for instance, a rather coarse pottery is found in graves. It
is possible that a better pottery was made for everyday use. The
conservatism of burial customs may have caused coarser pottery to be
put into graves than the early folks were capable of producing during
the period at which the burial took place.
The wheel-pottery was as sacred to some cults as the hand-made was to
others. Even the potter’s wheel was sacred. In Egypt the Ptah cult
adopted it, as has been stated; in India it was a symbol of the
Creator; in China (as in ancient Egypt) the idea originally prevailed
that the Creator was a potter who turned on his wheel the sun and the
moon, man and woman, although in time this myth became a philosophical
abstraction. The symbolism of Jeremiah has similarly a history:
“O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the
Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in
mine hand, O house of Israel.”—Chapter XVIII, 6.
St. Paul, too, refers to the potter:
“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the
thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make
one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” (Romans, ix,
20–21.)
Chinese emperors were compared to potters. They were credited with the
power to control a nation as the potter controlled his wheel. The
ancient peoples who adopted the Egyptian potter’s wheel evidently
learned that it was of divine origin. They adopted the Egyptian beliefs
and myths associated with it. Withal, the wheel was associated with the
agricultural mode of life, having originated in a country of
agriculturists. Ptah, the divine potter, was, like all the other
prominent gods of Egypt, fused with Osiris—the god who was, among other
things, the “culture hero”. The Chinese “culture hero”, Shun, who
became emperor, is said to have “practised husbandry, fishing, and
making pottery jars”. He manufactured clay vessels without flaw on the
river bank. [23]
The Chinese culture hero, Shen-ming (“Divine Husbandman”) “was regarded
as the father of agriculture and the discoverer of the healing property
of plants”. In ancient Chinese lore “we meet a close association of
agriculture with pottery, and an illustration of the fact that
husbandman and potter were one and the same person during the primeval
period”. [24]
Memories of Ptah-Osiris clung to the potter’s wheel. The trade routes
must have hummed with stories about the god who had gifted this
wonderful contrivance to mankind. These stories were localized in
various countries, and they took on the colour of the period during
which the wheel was imported. In Japan, the Ptah legend has been given
a Buddhistic significance. The potter’s wheel is reputed there to be
the invention of the famous Korean monk, Gyõgi (A.D. 670–749). No doubt
the first potter’s wheel reached Japan from Korea, whence came the
conquerors of the Ainus. But there is evidence that it was in use long
before Buddhism “drifted” along the sea route from the mainland in the
sixth century, to become curiously mixed up with Shintoism two
centuries later. The priests of Buddhism, who transformed the Shinto
gods into “avatars” of Buddha, no doubt also identified the far-carried
Ptah-Osiris with their monk—the Japanese “culture hero”.
The earliest pottery in Japan was manufactured by the Ainus and was
“hand-shaped” by the women. A similar pottery was produced in Korea.
The wheel-made variety made its appearance when Chinese culture spread
through Korea during the Silla kingdom period, which began about the
time (A.D. 59) when the earliest Japanese, according to their own
traditions, migrated to the islands that bear their name. No doubt the
traders were active on sea and land long before the Japanese conquered
the islands of the Ainus and the Chinese overran Korea. Great
migrations and conquests in ancient times were indirectly stimulated by
trade. A new culture was introduced into backward communities by the
early prospectors and trading colonists, and these communities in time
acquired weapons, reared the domesticated horse, and took to the sea
after having learned how to build and navigate ships similar to those
introduced by the traders.
When the potter’s wheel was introduced into Korea, the clay vessels
were shaped in imitation of Chinese pottery. There can remain no doubt,
therefore, as to whence the wheel came. China was the chief centre of
early civilization in the Far East, and its influence spread far and
wide. There are some who think that Burma was during its early period
in closer touch with China than with India; but more evidence than is
yet available is required to establish this theory. The earliest
civilization in southern China of which we have knowledge was of Indian
origin. The sea traders who had crossed the Indian Ocean reached the
Burmese coast several centuries before the Christian era, as the
archaic character of Burmese river boats suggests. It may be, however,
that the potter’s wheel was carried along the mid-Asian trade routes
long before the shippers coasted round to Chinese waters. There can be
no doubt that the potter’s wheel was introduced into China at a very
remote period. Investigators are unable to discover any native legends
regarding its origin. Nor are there any traditions regarding female
potters. The culture heroes of China who made the first pots appear to
have used the wheel, and the Chinese potter’s wheel is identical with
the Egyptian.
When the wheel was introduced into Japan, hand-made pottery was in use
for religious purposes, and for long afterwards the vessels used at
Shinto shrines were not turned on the wheel. In India, hand-made
pottery was similarly reserved for religious worship after the
wheel-made variety came into use. [25] The wheel did not reach southern
India until its Iron Age. [26] When the southern India Iron Age began
is uncertain. It was not, of course, an “Age” in the real sense, but a
cultural “stage”. Iron was known and apparently in use during the
Aryo-Indian Vedic period in the north. [27]
The potter’s wheel was introduced into Babylonia at a very remote
period. From Babylonia it was carried into Persia. The Avestan word for
kiln is tanura, which is believed, according to Laufer, to be a loan
word from Semitic tanur.
There are, of course, no records regarding the introduction of the
potter’s wheel into Babylonia, India, or China. All that we know
definitely is that it first came into use in Egypt, and that it was
afterwards adopted in the various ancient centres of civilization from
which cultural influences “flowed” to various areas. With the wheel
went certain religious ideas and customs. These are not found in the
areas unreached by the potter’s wheel.
China appears to have been influenced at the dawn of its history by the
culture represented by the Egyptian wheel.