Non-precious (calcite/alabaster, chlorite)Of the non-precious stones, calcite and its finer, veined variant commonly called
alabaster, and chlorite or steatite, one of a number of softstones (‘soapstone’), were
by far the most important. Both were used for vessels and, on analogy with what we
know from the later Greco-Roman era, both were probably employed to hold fatty
unguents, aromatics, perfumes and similar substances.
Limestone is not particularly rare in the Near East but there were relatively few
centres of vessel production. Leaving Egypt aside, the most important area was prob-
ably eastern Iran and the Indo-Iranian borderlands (Casanova 1991 ). Excavations at
Shahr-i Sokhta in Iranian Seistan have revealed evidence of calcite vessel manufacture
and the shapes produced there occur in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in the Barbar
temple on Bahrain, at Tell Abraq in the United Arab Emirates and at sites elsewhere
in Iran (e.g. Shahdad) and Afghanistan (e.g. Mundigak).
Chlorite, on the other hand, came principally from two regions, south-eastern Iran
and south-eastern Arabia. Excavations at Tepe Yahya in Kerman province, Iran,
between 1967 and 1975 revealed clear evidence of chlorite vessel production (Kohl
2001 ). Raw lumps of chlorite, semi-worked pieces showing clear chisel marks,
thousands of small flakes or off-cuts (débitage) and finished objects, all attest to a
thriving industry in the late third millennium BC. In addition, archaeologists from
Harvard University were able to locate several chlorite outcrops where the stone had,
in fact, been quarried. The second area where chlorite vessels were produced in large
quantities is south-eastern Arabia (Potts 1993 ). Besides being rich in copper, the
mountains of Oman contained an abundance of chlorite (and other varieties of softstone).
From c. 2300 BCuntil the Hellenistic period a prodigious, local industry turned out
thousands of vessels in a wide variety of shapes, many of them decorated with a dotted
double-circle, sometimes combined with bands of horizontal lines in diagonal patterns
(David 1996 ).
The most well-known chlorite vessels in Babylonia appear in temples around the
middle of the third millennium BC. These are normally quite large, with deeply
carved animals (humped bulls (Bos indicus), felines, snakes, scorpions) or patterns (mat-
weave, imbricate, guilloche). While all of the known decorations found on Mesopo-
tamian sites can be found in the repertoire at Tepe Yahya, a large quantity of similar
material has long been known from the small island of Tarut on the Persian Gulf
coast of Saudi Arabia (Zarins 1978 ). Recently, dozens of similar vessels have been
found by clandestine excavations near Jiroft in south-eastern Iran (Majidzadeh 2003 ).
It seems highly probable that the Mesopotamian and Arabian examples (a few more
pieces have turned up on sites in the United Arab Emirates) all emanated from south-
eastern Iran and that this was the area known in cuneiform sources as Marhashi. As
noted above (n. 4 ), one fragment, inscribed by the Akkadian king Rimush as ‘booty
of Marhashi’ (or in Sumerian, Barakhshum), is identical to the material known from
Tepe Yahya and Jiroft. This is a strong indication that Marhashi should be located
in what is today eastern Kerman.
Later in the third and early second millennia, the simpler bowls with dotted-circle
decoration produced in the Oman peninsula appear in Mesopotamia in small numbers,
e.g. at Ur (Reade and Searight 2001 ).
The function of such vessels is, unfortunately, unclear. If the vessels were used to
hold fatty substances (aromatics, perfumes, resins mixed with oil or a soluble liquid),
— D. T. Potts —