NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, 1550-1307 B.C.

Gravidenflaschen or “pregnant jars," alabaster vessels in the form of nude female figures with hands resting atop their distended bellies are customarily dated to the 18th Dynasty, more specifically from the end of the reign of Thutmose III to the early years of Amenhotep III. Only about a dozen are known which have been studied by E. Brunner-Traut in “Gravidenflasche: Das Salben des Mutterleibes,” in A. Kuschke and E. Kutsch, eds., Archäologie und altes Testament: Festricht fur Kurt Galling," who argues that their iconography is hybrid: while her head is that of a human female, her torso and swollen limbs recall the iconography of the goddess Taweret, the protector of pregnant women and infants, who is characteristically depicted as a pregnant hippopotamus. As A. Capel and G. Markoe explain (in Mistress of the House: Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt, eds., p. 63), these vessels are an evocative example of the Egyptian ability to merge form and function. It is thought that gravidenflaschen would have held “an unknown substance, that when mixed with behen oil from the moringa tree produced a soothing ointment used to relieve a pregnant woman’s discomfort as she approached delivery".