Dish in the Form of a Fish

The fairly large dish forming the Nile tilapia fish (Tilapia nilotica), known in Arabic as the Bulti fish, is richly decorated on both sides, with the scales, long dorsal fin, tail, and head of the fish clearly marked. The inner side of the dish forms a shallow and wide-open bowl, which is adorned with a zigzag pattern indicating water. Some fish-shaped dishes may also have had a lid.

The hard stone object has many parallels, its predecessors being the completely flat, zoomorphic cosmetic palettes of the Predynastic Period, among which the fish shape was the earliest to appear. These were common grave goods of the period, regardless of gender or social standing. In the New Kingdom, especially in the Eighteenth Dynasty, when tilapia was frequently used in tomb scenes, a shallow, dish-shaped successor of the palette became popular, used for mixing and direct application of long-lasting cosmetic substances – eye paints, ointments, oils – both in everyday life and symbolically in the afterlife, and temple context. Similar dishes date from the period between Thothmes III and Amenhotep II.

The fish mature early and have a high reproductive rate. The animal’s pronounced mouth was particularly important in this respect, as the tilapia belong to the mouth-brooding species and can produce hundreds of offsprings by keeping them in their mouths for a long period. It was thus an important symbol of fertility and maternal care for the ancient Egyptians. As for the substances stored in the dish, in the mundane world, eye paint served as protection against the sun’s strong rays and against eye infections. Tilapia also appeared as an ingredient in ointments in some magical papyri. Both the eye paint and the ointment were important in the context of rebirth. The deceased could only enter the Hall of Two Truths, which is of critical importance in the afterlife, as depicted in the iconic scene of the Weighing of the Heart in the Book of the Dead, wearing clean, festive dress, eyepaint, and unguents. In temples, more qualitative dishes may have been used while applying unguents and oils to the temple cult statues.