Marsh Bowl

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This faience bowl is one of the larger examples of its type, which is sometimes referred to as the marsh bowl or the nun-bowl. The outside is decorated with the radiating petals and sepals of the Egyptian blue lotus. The sepals of this flower have purple dots on the exterior, which the artist has indicated by dashes. The center of the interior is decorated with an elaborate square filled with alternate checked, solid, and reserved bands surrounded by a plaited pattern, which represents a pond. All around the pond and extending up to the rim of the bowl is a continuous design of lotus blossoms, some fully opened with erect stems and some partially opened buds with drooping heads. Lotus buds also fill the empty spaces around the stems. This beautifully preserved bowl was found with a scarab in the coffin of a woman named Teti, which contained the mummies of two adults and a child. The coffin (12.181.302a, b), the scarab (26.7.432) and the bowl are all on display in gallery 114.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art