Bowl with Rooster and Fish

Unknown artist

10th century

Buff-colored earthenware painted with luster (silver and copper) over white lead alkali glaze opacified with tin

Arthur M. Sackler Museum

A circular earthenware bowl decorated with a stylized rooster and fish motif. The design features intricate patterns and a scalloped edge. Repaired from about twenty fragments, but with only small losses, this bowl is decorated with two startled-looking animals— a rooster, and, in its beak, a fish. Their wide-eyed energy is sustained by other sharply angled elements of the design: fins and tail feathers, coxcomb, and fluttering scarf. These creatures have long carried positive associations: the rooster, as the harbinger of dawn, symbolizes hope, while the fish suggests bounty. In religious contexts, the rooster also developed more specifically auspicious connotations: according to a popular epigram attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, he crows when he sees an angel; in