Red pottery bowl with a design in white paint and modelled hippopotamuses around the rim. From El Mahasna pre-dynastic period, before 3100 BC. Manchester Museum.

There are a number of different types of pottery which have been found in the earliest graves. The hippopotamus bowl from El Mahasna is particularly interesting. In its design, it is unique, and the use of this particular animal is probably of religious significance. In the later historical periods, the hippopotamus was worshipped through Egypt as the embodiment of Tauert, goddess of fertility and childbirth. Although it is not certain that the animals on this  bowl represent Tauert, there was already an important cult of a mother goddess. The ideas of birth and death were closely linked, for the Egyptians believed that individuals would be re-born after death.

It is evident that from earliest times the Egyptians expected life to continue after death. In the graves, they provided the dead with many articles of daily use which could bring some comfort in the next world. It is unclear where they believed this afterlife would be spent, but it is possible that the grave was regarded as an entrance to an underworld where they passed eternity.