The overwhelming majority of the locally-made Delian figurines— regardless of the presence of Egyptianizing or non-Egyptianizing iconography—are untempered328 . This avoidance of tempering resembles Athenian practice much more closely than Egyptian, as more than 40% of the Group A Cairo figurines contained temper. Additionally, two of the tempering materials that do appear have parallels in Athens, but not Cairo329. Three figurines (one Egyptianizing, two non-Egyptianizing) have possible sand temper. One Egyptianizing figurine of Cycladic fabric features a possible dung admixture, paralleled in the probable use of dung temper at the Athenian Agora330 . Sand temper, too, has parallels in 17.2% of the figurines from the Agora, but is not attested in the figurines from Cairo
The overall picture of Delian tempering practices is much closer to the data from the Athenian Agora. Most of the tempering materials used in Delian figurines have parallels in Athens, whereas the two major tempering substances that Egyptian coroplasts used for the Cairo corpus—straw/chaff and admixtures of calcareous clay—are absent from the Delian figurines. Table 12 summarizes these comparisons. 331
World History
