While working in the basement storage of the Egyptian Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I came across this beautiful, black-topped ceramic ritual or hes vase. It had lost its spout, however in cleaning up and trying to organize storage, I later came across a black spout which looked like it might belong to it. When I checked, it did indeed fit and it was re-attached by the Museum’s Conservation Lab. What is particularly important about this vessel is that it came from W. M. F. Petrie’s excavations at Abydos in the Osiris-Khentyamentyu Temple. The temple dated back to the Archaic Period and early Old Kingdom, but black-topped pottery had largely stopped being produced in Egypt by then. Could this carefully crafted vessel been a deliberate attempt at archaism?