Vase

High quality, workable stone was a rare commodity in Mesopotamia, therefore the majority of the stones used to manufacture vessels, cylinder seals, and weights had to be imported. Stone vessels were valued and highly prized and often used as dedications to temples or deposited as grave offerings. This vessel with its triangular lugs, carved of the mineral calcite, known as "Egyptian alabaster", is of a form imitated in pottery in late Predynastic Egypt. The carved cross-hatching around the rim, however, is a purely Near Eastern motif.