Nubian Style Pottery from the New Kingdom Town of Sai Island

Abstract The pottery corpus from the city on Sai Island, one of the characteristic colonial towns in New Kingdom Nubia, comprises a majority of Egyptian style vessels and Nubian style ceramics as well as ‘hybrid’ pieces. This paper presents the Eighteenth Dynasty Nubian pottery from Sai city, focussing primarily on quantities, shapes, wares and parallels from various sites in context, and discusses its social and cultural implications. A key concern is how much Sai represents an elite urban phenomenon that differs from rural contexts in the hinterland of the city. The Nubian style pottery as an integral part of the corpus of Sai attests to social practices of a local group with a specific cultural identity. The community practices reflected in the pottery show that the legacy of the Kerma empire was never completely abandoned but adapted in relation to the new political, social and religious circumstances in a colonial context.