Lenticular Canteen
Unknown · Iron Age (undated in museum record)
A flat, lens-shaped flask with two small handles, this terracotta canteen was made to be carried on a cord or strap. Its rounded sides are covered with incised decoration, scratched into the clay before firing, and it is only thirteen centimetres across, the size of a large pocket flask. The two handles sit at the shoulders so the vessel hangs upright.
The canteen is said to come from Luristan, the mountainous region of western Iran whose herders and horse breeders left the famous bronzes displayed around you. Pottery from the same graves is less spectacular but tells the same story of a mobile way of life. A flask like this would have held water or another drink for travel. The museum bought it in nineteen thirty two, at the height of the market for Luristan finds, and no precise date is recorded for it. Its shape, called lenticular after the lens it resembles, was common across the Near East over many centuries.
Did You Know? Pilgrim flasks of this lens shape were still being made across the Middle East thousands of years later.
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