Egyptian Nile clay

Finally, as chemists and archaeologists, it is interesting for us to be able to demonstrate, with a variety of analytical techniques, that while the early Egyptians of Hierakonpolis were transforming their society into the world s first politically centralized nation-state, they were also recognizing the utility of natural materials to aid them in transforming humble Nile clays into new forms of economically, artistically, and symbolically important ceramics. 

The needed Egyptian data were obtained from as yet unpublished work on Egyptian clays, Nile muds, and ceramics carried out at Brook-haven by Sami Tobia. Since the results compared favorably with published material (9), further Egyptian studies were not carried out. 

Examination of the Egyptian material led to a further discovery. The general Nile pattern, produced by Nile muds and the ceramics made from it, is on first glance very close to that of the Palestinian red field clay. When the plots of three clays and six sherds were matched by the scandium—iron points, cobalt, chromium, and europium also matched exactly. Thus in the Nile samples, concentrations of the five elements are highly mutually correlated. This observation then allowed detection of subtle differences between Palestinian and Egyptian materials. The... 

---