New Year’s flasks from Tell Tebilla

Abstract

The joint mission from Mansoura University and the Daqahlia inspectorate (Supreme Council of Antiquities) began its work at the Tell Tebilla site near Mendes in the Delta in November 2018. During the excavation, several mastaba tombs were discovered. One of these, the so -called “Burnt Tomb” (Mastaba no. 4/M4), dates to the early Ptolemaic Period, and revealed a corpus of various objects made of pottery, stone, bronze, faience, and clay. Among the objects found are also eight New Year’s flasks, which are the focus of the current paper. It is our intention to present the flasks, and discuss their function, inscriptions, contents, and ownership.

Keywords

• new year flasks
• tell tebilla
• pottery
• festivals
• gods
• religion