page_title: Ancient Egyptian pottery
section_title: Nile clay D
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Egyptian pottery / Classification and analysis / The Vienna system / Nile clay D
caption_attribution_description: English: Nile d clay, according to the classification of ancient egyptian pottery
context_page_description: Ancient Egyptian pottery includes all objects of fired clay from ancient Egypt. First and foremost, ceramics served as household wares for the storage, preparation, transport, and consumption of food, drink, and raw materials. Such items include beer and wine mugs and water jugs, but also bread molds, fire pits, lamps, and stands for holding round vessels, which were all commonly used in the Egyptian household. Other types of pottery served ritual purposes. Ceramics are often found as grave goods.
  Specialists in ancient Egyptian pottery draw a fundamental distinction between ceramics made of Nile clay and those made of marl clay, based on chemical and mineralogical composition and ceramic properties. Nile clay is the result of eroded material in the Ethiopian mountains, which was transported into Egypt by the Nile. This clay has deposited on the banks of the Nile in Egypt since the Late Pleistocene by the inundation. Marl clay is a yellow-white stone which occurs in limestone deposits. These deposits were created in the Pleistocene, when the primordial waters of the Nile and its tributaries brought sediment into Egypt and deposited in on what was then the desert edge.
context_section_description: The main sign of Nile clay D is the conspicuous quantity of limestone, which might be either a natural component or a tempering additive. Without this visible limestone component, this type of clay would be classified differently, as Nile clay A (at Tell el-Dab'a), lightly fired Nile clay B (at Dahshur), or as Nile clay B2 - C (at Memphis).
caption: Nile clay D
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