Coiled Basketry Through Time in Ancient Egypt – Function
Basketry, and coiled baskets specifically, span a wide range of functions. The early uses of basketry include rough-coiled buried grain silos in the Fayum pertaining to the Fayum A culture (5500 BC) (Wendrich, 2000; 256). The use of coiled basketry, while used as actual baskets, was also used as subterranean grain silos, a use which continued throughout Egypt into the Badarian culture (Wendrich, 2000; 256). Into the Naqada I period (5000-4500 BC), possible coiled grain silos were discovered at the site of Marimda (Wendrich, 2000; 257). Shallow baskets, hampers, models and small containers, both finely made and roughly constructed were used throughout the history of ancient Egypt. For the most part, the functions of these baskets were to hold household goods or groceries. There were some exceptions to this observation, such as a coiled hamper from Deir el-Medina dating from the Eighteenth Dynasty. This hamper was discovered containing the body of an infant, though it could have been used as a household object before it was made into a coffin (Egypt’s Golden Age, 1982; 134-5).
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