Geometrical Patterns in Pottery

Dubai museum was a big disappointment to me although Thamba asked me not expect anything. Well… my expectations weren’t that big - Islamic astronomical artifacts and paintings. Dubai hosts some of the tallest architectural buildings but the museum was a small fort. All I found were a boat, some knives and swords, a canon, mannequins depicting lifestyles, preserved falcons. The small room opposite to the gift shop has the most valuable items of the museum – items collected from Jumeirah archeological site. One interesting things that I noticed is in the ancient burial site men were buried facing the sea as in work and women facing the land as in home - clearly marking the gender roles. A humble request and suggestion – these archeological notes have to be updated properly – they still have old notations of BC/AD instead of BCE/CE. It strikes the eye of an amateur…

Anyway… my intention is not to write a review on Dubai Museum but on the geometrical patterns that I found on the pottery. Pottery dating back to 2nd and 3rd Millennium BCE had some interesting geometrical patterns. Mostly made of concentric circles and triangles, they were fascinating because we can spot some of these patterns even now. The ones between 9th to 12th century CE is more sophisticated – among them I spotted a curious pattern like those of Tamil kolams. I should research more on this. This is what I noted on the Starbucks tissue paper while Thamba was waiting outside…