Note 2 — Chapter II · A Far-travelled Invention

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.2 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.