Who's the goddess of pottery?

This wonderful carved stone form is 35000 years old, just announced in AP last week as the oldest human figure found. Guess the goddess culture is affirmed...though of course there are lots of folks saying it's just a fertility figure. Sure, and a lot more.

I've been thinking, a woman once took a blob of clay, formed it into some shape or another, and left it in the coals of her cooking fire...perhaps she dropped it. And later found it had fired into stone hardness.

Well, it probably took lots of experiments, and of course it must have been either given great hoopla for someone doing something experimental...or perhaps the culture booed it and she had to do it in secret. Who knows. And who cares.

But making pottery was certainly one of the major efforts that helped us become a civilization (if that's what we call it). Storage and cooking jars...ability to keep water, wine, beer, etc.

And at some wonderful point, the pottery wheel was invented.

OK, we sure don't know whether a woman or a man did any of this. I imagine our cave woman was making a coil or a pinch pot, and turning it round and round, and a watching young man (or woman) got the idea to put a plate together with a stick which became a wheel where the pot turned. Which interestingly also happened in the Americas by the indigenous peoples, who never turned the pottery wheel on its side to create transportation on wheels, like the cultures which evolved from the Middle East did.

At any rate...if goddesses (and gods, little "G") are best known for the wonders of the natural world, and some of those which were man or woman made...it stands to my reasoning that a goddess of pottery should exist.

So I'll look through some of my mythology and goddess books, which encompass many of the cultures which had a diety who was given credit for, or at least was in charge of, special skills. Bridget, for instance, is known for smithcraft, poetry and healing.

Now I do know where goddesses do exist today with potters. There are few wood or gas kilns fired without little creatures bedecking the tops that are kiln gods and goddesses, put there for successful firings. These little dieties are asked to watch over the process of earth turning into stone in intentional shapes...and I'm not sure how many of the little goddesses and gods ever get fired themselves. They probably do, because older kilns often have a dozen of them perched on top. Well, that was once the case. I don't know this is a fact, because I've only seen about a dozen kilns in my limited travels. How about you? Do you know?

I'll let you know who may be the pottery goddess later this week. I just finished forming Bridget, and have Inana waiting to be made. She needs to definitely have some Cuneiform writing around her skirt, since her name comes to us thanks to writing in clay!