Prehistoric Egypt Before 4000 BC: The Foundations of Civilization
The period between the beginning of the Neolithic period (i.e. the Neolithic period) and the emergence of dynasties in Egypt, which is close to two thousand years, is sometimes called the Copper Chalcolithic Period, and we are concerned with what was in Egypt before 4000 BC. AD
We can say that both the Delta and Upper Egyptian civilizations had special features. In the Delta, the civilization was influenced by what was in eastern and western Egypt due to its contact with the people of Palestine, Syria and the Mediterranean islands on the one hand and North Africa on the other.
In Upper Egypt, civilization was influenced by what was in eastern and western Egypt due to its contact with the people of Palestine, Syria, and the Mediterranean islands on the one hand, and northern Africa on the other.
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Hermann Junker found out this civilization in 1928. This area is the remains of a Neolithic village on the edge of the western delta, no more than 600 x 400 meters in size, whose inhabitants built their mud-built huts on both sides of a straight main road.
It has been proven that Merimde's inhabitants knew agriculture and were cooperative with each other and stored their crops in silos shared by all of them, and had herds of cattle, pigs, and a few goats and sheep.
They used a straight tool made of wood with a flint edge to cut wheat stalks that they stored in their wicker silos, which they placed in deep pits below ground level. The Merimde people knew the battle axe, knew how to use arrows, and had war clubs and flint knives.
The Merimde people wore spun linen, and their women were adorned with necklaces of oysters or wild boar's teeth, rings of bone and earrings of ivory.
Each woman had a slate slab on which she grinded green berries to lubricate her eyes in order to beautify them and protect them from the sun's rays. Their pottery is black and coarse, and its shape is in the form of a water bottle, including some types with bases, and small pots in the form of cups with legs, and sometimes two of them are connected to each other.
They had long-necked pots and also made small trays of pottery. The Merimde people did not decorate their vessels and did not make handles on the sides, but made holes in the sides to hang them.
Hermann Junker found in the houses of this village that there are columns in some houses to carry the roof. They erected them in the center of the room.
He also found in the corner of one of the rooms a large seahorse bone that was fixed to be used as a ladder to climb to the roof. They buried their dead under the floor of their huts, as did many inhabitants of the ancient East, without putting utensils or weapons with them
Examination of the skeletal remains of these people proved that they were a branch of the Mediterranean race with elongated heads and broad foreheads, a branch of a civilization that spread on the northern coast of Africa and reached Europe around 3000 BC.
The Merimde civilization did not have direct contact with Badarian culture or have a significant impact on it but continued in the Delta.
The inhabitants of Upper Egypt at that time did not settle in large, fixed cities or villages, but lived in small mobile shops or villages, but they chose places to bury their dead, namely the cemeteries.
We do not know of any place north of Assiut governorate that was affected by this civilization, but it was spread to the south, and we see it in Nubia as well, and even further.
The weather in that era was rainy and warmer than it is now, and the population lived on the heights that overlook the vast areas of forests and marshes filled with various plants, especially the papyrus plant.
Little remains of the village or villages in which they lived, and most of the information we have about their people comes from the excavation of the many cemeteries.
The people of El-Badari were shorter than tall, averaging no more than 160 centimeters in height. They were slim, with fine facial features, wavy black hair and, in a few cases, chestnut-colored hair.
Men wore their hair over their shoulders, while women's hair was shorter than men's, and no woman's hair was more than 20 centimeters long, which they braided in braids, and El-Badari men took care of their appearance, shaving their beards and wearing a hat on their heads.
The people of El-Badari knew linen clothes, they wore them for men, women and children, and when the cold was severe, they wore leather and wool inside, and they also knew how to tan leather.
They decorated their necks and arms with necklaces and bracelets, often made of glazed beads, and decorated their hair by placing feathers in them, and sometimes by wearing long ivory combs whose heads were decorated with animal figures, and some wore brightly colored bands with shells of the Red Sea around their hair.
Among the most important things found in their tombs were some beads of hammered copper, and they also used beads of turquoise, agate, quartz, and beads made of ostrich eggshells in their jewelry.
Some women had their noses pierced with a small button, fixing a small protrusion at one end in a hole inside the nose, and women knew how to use kohl for the eyes.
As for their dwellings, they were simple and primitive, in which they placed simple furniture, including low-height wooden beds, and they also used leather or linen pillows stuffed with hay. Among their tools, archery sticks, fishing nets, spears and arrows were found, as well as models of boats.
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They placed their dead in their graves, sometimes on top of beds, or wrapped in mats, and the burial was not limited to humans, but some buried deer and cats with them, and they placed the heads of the dead on pillows, and made sure that they were facing the sunrise, regardless of the location or direction of the grave in the cemetery.
El-Badari pottery is characterized by its mastery, the beauty of its decorations, the hardness of its material, and the thin walls of pots, and there is no doubt that the people of El-Badari believed in the resurrection, and they put a few statues of animals with them in their graves, especially the hippo, and there are other statues of women and birds, but this does not mean that they must have worshipped those animals.
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Now that we know something about Merimde and Badarian culture, both dating back to around 4400 BC. We can summarize the life of the ancient Egyptians at that time as having known agriculture and the use of copper metal, albeit on a small scale, and having begun a somewhat civilized life.
They had to cooperate with each other, as they had to build canals to bring the Nile water to places far from the river, they had to drain some swamps and clear them of trees, and they had to cooperate to protect themselves, their villages, and their crops from the dangers of the Nile floods.
All these actions required the cooperation of a large number of people, as well as the presence of a leader whose orders were respected by all and whose punishment was feared if necessary. The nature of Egypt's terrain dictated that a large number of people gathered in villages close to each other in places where the valley widened, and it was not long before regional units were formed, each of which had a leader who had authority over those around him.
The same thing happened in the Delta as well, and the main factor in defining its different regions was the course of rivers or some other geographical features, and it ended up dividing both the Delta and Upper Egypt into specific regions, each of which had a name, but the boundaries of this division were not always fixed, but the boundaries of this division were not always fixed.
From time to time, a strong leader would emerge in one of the regions and annex some of the neighboring regions, and finally the delta regions came together under one ruler and the same thing happened in Upper Egypt, and there were two kings, one for the north wearing a red crown, and the other wearing a white crown.
At some point, perhaps around 3400 BC, the Delta overcame Upper Egypt and Egypt was united under the rule of the North, but this first union did not last, and both the North and the South returned to their independence.
Around 3200 BC. Around 3200 BC, the king of Upper Egypt attacked, subdued the Delta, unified the country, and established the Egyptian First Dynasty.
But there is another opinion that the First Federation lasted until just before the emergence of the First Dynasty and that the people of Upper Egypt revolted and wanted independence in their region, so they fought and won and eliminated the authority of the northerners and became the masters of the whole country and formed the Second Federation.
The few centuries prior to the First Dynasty were the period in which Egypt laid the foundations of its civilization, which lasted for thousands of years, laid the foundations of its religions, laid the foundations of its local systems, established royal traditions, and interacted with different cultures. Egypt's geographical isolation did not prevent it from contacting other nations of the ancient East, especially Mesopotamia.
There is no doubt that these influences arrived through trade in the Red Sea and came to Upper Egypt through the valley of Hammamet, and that is why we find its impact clear there, and the Upper Egyptian tombs have provided us with most of our information about that era from the thousands of graves revealed by excavations in the governorates of Qena and Jarja.
Because these graves were in tombs, the ancients were careful in choosing their places and made them on the edge of the desert on a higher level than the flood waters reach, and they chose their places far from cultivated lands so that moisture does not reach them.
The dryness of the atmosphere and the scarcity of rainfall helped it to remain intact until now, and the dry sand was the reason for its protection during thousands of years.
As for the monuments of that era in the cities of the Delta, which are undoubtedly no less important than the monuments of Upper Egypt, they have long been covered with silt and are now below the level of agriculture, except on the edge of the delta or in high places in its center, which is why moisture has affected them and we no longer have much hope of finding something in good condition under the cultivated lands unless it is pottery or some types of stone that are not affected much by moisture, or gold metal.
The researchers found hundreds of thousands of different small vessels and relics, most of them in the graves of the cemeteries and a few of them in the houses of some villages, such as the village of Al-Omari, which was close to Helwan and Maadi, which are all simple houses closer to huts, some of which are round or oval, and their walls are made of sticks of some plants after joining them together and fixing them and then painting them with clay, and the roof was also made of dry plant sticks and covered with straw.
Around 3400 BC, the Egyptian civilization had reached a fairly advanced degree, in the manufacture of decorative pottery vessels with multiple shapes that appeared before that time, as well as the presence of some human statues, especially women, and some decorative tools, the most important of which are hair combs made of ivory, the upper part of which is made in the form of various animals.
It is believed that the Delta at that distant time was more advanced than Upper Egypt, and that Egypt had reached the formation of two groups of regions, one in the north, which had a king, and another in the south, which was also under the rule of another king.
The king of the Delta had his own crown of red color and may have been braided from some plants, and the king of Upper Egypt had a different, almost funnel-shaped crown and may have been leather or felt. The center of worship of the god Horus (the falcon) was initially in the western Delta, and there was another god in the eastern Delta, the god Andjety, but Horus soon overcame him and became the god of the entire Delta when it was unified.
In Upper Egypt, Set was the god whose influence overcame all other gods, and the center of his worship was in the city of : Nubat, in the current Qena governorate north of Naqadah.
At one point the Delta overcame Upper Egypt and formed a single kingdom, and the god Horus became more important than Set, and the city of Hierakonpolis became a major center for his worship. It was called Nakhn (north of Edfu) as the main center of his worship in the era we call the late pre-dynastic or pre-dynastic era.
The issue of the first union in Egypt is no longer an assumption as it was before, but has now become an established fact after studying the Palermo Stone, especially one of its pieces now in the Cairo Museum, and other monuments of that era. We do not have any certain information about the location of the capital of this unified kingdom, although Heliopolis, near present-day Cairo, is the city that scholars almost unanimously agree was the capital of this kingdom.
But before that union, the city of Putu in the western Delta (and its place is now Tell al-Fara'in), was the capital of the Delta Kingdom, and its goddess was called Wadjet, symbolized by a cobra snake, and its king wore a red crown, which was originally a symbol of the goddess Neith, the goddess of the city of Sais-Sa Stone), and his emblem took the papyrus plant, and his king included the Delta and a small part of the entrance to Upper Egypt, while the king of Upper Egypt had his capital in Kab). Nekhen - Hierakonpolis, which was previously the seat of the goddess's worship: Nekhbet, whose king wore a white crown and took as his emblem another plant, the lotus, and the borders of this kingdom reached as far south as the waterfall.
The god Horus became the main god in both kingdoms, but the king in each of them became the representative of Horus on earth during his life, and they used to give the king another name besides his original name when he assumed the throne, and this new name was called Hor and was written in a rectangle above the god Horus, and he used both names or one of them.
The traces of this period are not limited to the things we knew before, such as pottery and ornamental tools, but we see a clear development, as the upper parts of the ivory combs are no longer in the form of animals, but have become decorated on their faces with different drawings of various animals drawing rows under each other, we know Among them are the African elephant, swan, giraffe, lion, hyena, gazelle, African bull and wild boar. We also see knife handles that were also made of ivory or gold sheets and decorated with animal motifs that refer to certain events, especially those related to victory over enemies.
As for the slate boards used for the kohl plate, they also evolved, and the boards made for kings became decorated with various animal motifs, some in rows and others representing them during hunting, and the kings' boards became larger in size and in the form of a war shield.
We also found quite a few battle canteens, which are decorated with scenes representing the letters in which the owners were victorious over their enemies, and the king appears in the form of a bull eliminating his enemies or as a lion devouring their bodies. We often see captives in shackles, or we see the forts they captured with their names written inside. There are also statues and household items, some of which are ivory, and clay or ivory models of some boats or houses
If we take a closer look at these various monuments, we see that the Egyptians began to settle in that distant era to settle on their own artistic conditions in painting and statues, and we see great progress in all aspects.
There is also no doubt that this renaissance came as a result of the progress in agriculture and people's interest in digging canals and canals, as we rarely find a royal monument without seeing on it the image of the king carrying out the well-known tradition of holding the axe and hitting the ground with it to mark the start of such work, and we also see on some knife hands drawings representing palaces or high houses with at least two floors.
In this era, Egypt reached an important invention that brought about a great development in its civilization, which is the invention of writing and its use on some monuments. The fact that the country of Sumer had also reached this invention.
Egypt reached writing in a period before the dynastic era, and its use led to our knowledge of some events that took place before the first dynasty. We have already mentioned the breakup of the first union and the independence of the Delta and Upper Egypt from each other, but their contact with each other was not affected much by this, as the Nile facilitated trade between the countries, and trade in turn helped spread culture, but we do not have documents dating back to that era that enable us to determine these links or determine the impact of this exchange.
It is futile to say that the union that took place at the emergence of the First Dynasty was the thought or work of one king, but it is very likely that others preceded him, as evidenced by the many war scenes on the monuments of that era.
We do not know the exact names of these warrior kings, but one of them, the Scorpion King: - He may have been the last king before King (Narmer- Menes), the founder of the first dynasty - he left us some of his monuments in Hierakonpolis, found in 1898. We see this king painted on his fighting funnel while holding an axe and hitting the ground with it, either during a religious ceremony for an agricultural festival or to record the construction of a canal.
At the top of the funnel, we see flags with the symbols of some of the Upper Egyptian provinces, some with plovers hanging from them, and others with bows, an expression of his victory over the people of the Delta and the desert nomads.
Another relic of this king, a limestone vase, was found in Hierakonpolis, and traces of his name were also found in Abydos, and his name was found written on part of a pottery vessel in the Tura area near Cairo.
This king played a role in the subjugation of the delta, as he was able to subjugate part of the delta before Narmer - Menes, the Scorpion King triumphed over part of the delta only and may have also triumphed over some Bedouin tribes in the desert.
The complete victory came at the hands of Narmer, whom Egyptian texts later called Menes, who was also considered by ancient Egyptian sources as the founder of the first Egyptian dynasty, which begins the Egyptian dynastic era or its historical era, as some archaeologists call it.
Because Egypt had known writing and began to record its various events on its monuments, and our greatest reliance since that time has been on what the Egyptians themselves left recorded on their monuments.
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| A collage of predynastic artifacts from ancient Egypt |
Merimde Culture: Agriculture and Community in the Western Delta
Hermann Junker found out this civilization in 1928. This area is the remains of a Neolithic village on the edge of the western delta, no more than 600 x 400 meters in size, whose inhabitants built their mud-built huts on both sides of a straight main road.
It has been proven that Merimde's inhabitants knew agriculture and were cooperative with each other and stored their crops in silos shared by all of them, and had herds of cattle, pigs, and a few goats and sheep.
Life in Merimde: Tools, Weapons, and Clothing
They used a straight tool made of wood with a flint edge to cut wheat stalks that they stored in their wicker silos, which they placed in deep pits below ground level. The Merimde people knew the battle axe, knew how to use arrows, and had war clubs and flint knives.
The Merimde people wore spun linen, and their women were adorned with necklaces of oysters or wild boar's teeth, rings of bone and earrings of ivory.
Each woman had a slate slab on which she grinded green berries to lubricate her eyes in order to beautify them and protect them from the sun's rays. Their pottery is black and coarse, and its shape is in the form of a water bottle, including some types with bases, and small pots in the form of cups with legs, and sometimes two of them are connected to each other.
They had long-necked pots and also made small trays of pottery. The Merimde people did not decorate their vessels and did not make handles on the sides, but made holes in the sides to hang them.
Hermann Junker found in the houses of this village that there are columns in some houses to carry the roof. They erected them in the center of the room.
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| Grain from Merimde, MET- Hand ax, Neolithic Period, Buto–Merimde–Maadi, c. 4500–4000 BC |
Burial Practices in Merimde: A Glimpse into Prehistoric Beliefs
He also found in the corner of one of the rooms a large seahorse bone that was fixed to be used as a ladder to climb to the roof. They buried their dead under the floor of their huts, as did many inhabitants of the ancient East, without putting utensils or weapons with them
Examination of the skeletal remains of these people proved that they were a branch of the Mediterranean race with elongated heads and broad foreheads, a branch of a civilization that spread on the northern coast of Africa and reached Europe around 3000 BC.
The Merimde civilization did not have direct contact with Badarian culture or have a significant impact on it but continued in the Delta.
Badarian Culture: Daily Life in Pre-Dynastic Upper Egypt
The inhabitants of Upper Egypt at that time did not settle in large, fixed cities or villages, but lived in small mobile shops or villages, but they chose places to bury their dead, namely the cemeteries.
We do not know of any place north of Assiut governorate that was affected by this civilization, but it was spread to the south, and we see it in Nubia as well, and even further.
The weather in that era was rainy and warmer than it is now, and the population lived on the heights that overlook the vast areas of forests and marshes filled with various plants, especially the papyrus plant.
Little remains of the village or villages in which they lived, and most of the information we have about their people comes from the excavation of the many cemeteries.
Clothing and Beauty in Badarian Egypt
The people of El-Badari were shorter than tall, averaging no more than 160 centimeters in height. They were slim, with fine facial features, wavy black hair and, in a few cases, chestnut-colored hair.
Men wore their hair over their shoulders, while women's hair was shorter than men's, and no woman's hair was more than 20 centimeters long, which they braided in braids, and El-Badari men took care of their appearance, shaving their beards and wearing a hat on their heads.
The people of El-Badari knew linen clothes, they wore them for men, women and children, and when the cold was severe, they wore leather and wool inside, and they also knew how to tan leather.
They decorated their necks and arms with necklaces and bracelets, often made of glazed beads, and decorated their hair by placing feathers in them, and sometimes by wearing long ivory combs whose heads were decorated with animal figures, and some wore brightly colored bands with shells of the Red Sea around their hair.
Among the most important things found in their tombs were some beads of hammered copper, and they also used beads of turquoise, agate, quartz, and beads made of ostrich eggshells in their jewelry.
Some women had their noses pierced with a small button, fixing a small protrusion at one end in a hole inside the nose, and women knew how to use kohl for the eyes.
As for their dwellings, they were simple and primitive, in which they placed simple furniture, including low-height wooden beds, and they also used leather or linen pillows stuffed with hay. Among their tools, archery sticks, fishing nets, spears and arrows were found, as well as models of boats.
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| Anklet - String of beads from the Badari culture |
Burial Customs and Religious Symbols in Badarian Tombs
They placed their dead in their graves, sometimes on top of beds, or wrapped in mats, and the burial was not limited to humans, but some buried deer and cats with them, and they placed the heads of the dead on pillows, and made sure that they were facing the sunrise, regardless of the location or direction of the grave in the cemetery.
El-Badari pottery is characterized by its mastery, the beauty of its decorations, the hardness of its material, and the thin walls of pots, and there is no doubt that the people of El-Badari believed in the resurrection, and they put a few statues of animals with them in their graves, especially the hippo, and there are other statues of women and birds, but this does not mean that they must have worshipped those animals.
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| El-Badari pottery |
Early Societal Organization in Prehistoric Egypt
Now that we know something about Merimde and Badarian culture, both dating back to around 4400 BC. We can summarize the life of the ancient Egyptians at that time as having known agriculture and the use of copper metal, albeit on a small scale, and having begun a somewhat civilized life.
They had to cooperate with each other, as they had to build canals to bring the Nile water to places far from the river, they had to drain some swamps and clear them of trees, and they had to cooperate to protect themselves, their villages, and their crops from the dangers of the Nile floods.
All these actions required the cooperation of a large number of people, as well as the presence of a leader whose orders were respected by all and whose punishment was feared if necessary. The nature of Egypt's terrain dictated that a large number of people gathered in villages close to each other in places where the valley widened, and it was not long before regional units were formed, each of which had a leader who had authority over those around him.
The same thing happened in the Delta as well, and the main factor in defining its different regions was the course of rivers or some other geographical features, and it ended up dividing both the Delta and Upper Egypt into specific regions, each of which had a name, but the boundaries of this division were not always fixed, but the boundaries of this division were not always fixed.
Formation of Regional Kingdoms and Political Leadership
From time to time, a strong leader would emerge in one of the regions and annex some of the neighboring regions, and finally the delta regions came together under one ruler and the same thing happened in Upper Egypt, and there were two kings, one for the north wearing a red crown, and the other wearing a white crown.
The First Unification of Egypt: Myths and Realities
At some point, perhaps around 3400 BC, the Delta overcame Upper Egypt and Egypt was united under the rule of the North, but this first union did not last, and both the North and the South returned to their independence.
Around 3200 BC. Around 3200 BC, the king of Upper Egypt attacked, subdued the Delta, unified the country, and established the Egyptian First Dynasty.
But there is another opinion that the First Federation lasted until just before the emergence of the First Dynasty and that the people of Upper Egypt revolted and wanted independence in their region, so they fought and won and eliminated the authority of the northerners and became the masters of the whole country and formed the Second Federation.
The few centuries prior to the First Dynasty were the period in which Egypt laid the foundations of its civilization, which lasted for thousands of years, laid the foundations of its religions, laid the foundations of its local systems, established royal traditions, and interacted with different cultures. Egypt's geographical isolation did not prevent it from contacting other nations of the ancient East, especially Mesopotamia.
There is no doubt that these influences arrived through trade in the Red Sea and came to Upper Egypt through the valley of Hammamet, and that is why we find its impact clear there, and the Upper Egyptian tombs have provided us with most of our information about that era from the thousands of graves revealed by excavations in the governorates of Qena and Jarja.
Because these graves were in tombs, the ancients were careful in choosing their places and made them on the edge of the desert on a higher level than the flood waters reach, and they chose their places far from cultivated lands so that moisture does not reach them.
The dryness of the atmosphere and the scarcity of rainfall helped it to remain intact until now, and the dry sand was the reason for its protection during thousands of years.
As for the monuments of that era in the cities of the Delta, which are undoubtedly no less important than the monuments of Upper Egypt, they have long been covered with silt and are now below the level of agriculture, except on the edge of the delta or in high places in its center, which is why moisture has affected them and we no longer have much hope of finding something in good condition under the cultivated lands unless it is pottery or some types of stone that are not affected much by moisture, or gold metal.
The researchers found hundreds of thousands of different small vessels and relics, most of them in the graves of the cemeteries and a few of them in the houses of some villages, such as the village of Al-Omari, which was close to Helwan and Maadi, which are all simple houses closer to huts, some of which are round or oval, and their walls are made of sticks of some plants after joining them together and fixing them and then painting them with clay, and the roof was also made of dry plant sticks and covered with straw.
Pre-dynastic era
Around 3400 BC, the Egyptian civilization had reached a fairly advanced degree, in the manufacture of decorative pottery vessels with multiple shapes that appeared before that time, as well as the presence of some human statues, especially women, and some decorative tools, the most important of which are hair combs made of ivory, the upper part of which is made in the form of various animals.
It is believed that the Delta at that distant time was more advanced than Upper Egypt, and that Egypt had reached the formation of two groups of regions, one in the north, which had a king, and another in the south, which was also under the rule of another king.
Horus, Set, and the Rise of Early Egyptian Religion
The king of the Delta had his own crown of red color and may have been braided from some plants, and the king of Upper Egypt had a different, almost funnel-shaped crown and may have been leather or felt. The center of worship of the god Horus (the falcon) was initially in the western Delta, and there was another god in the eastern Delta, the god Andjety, but Horus soon overcame him and became the god of the entire Delta when it was unified.
In Upper Egypt, Set was the god whose influence overcame all other gods, and the center of his worship was in the city of : Nubat, in the current Qena governorate north of Naqadah.
At one point the Delta overcame Upper Egypt and formed a single kingdom, and the god Horus became more important than Set, and the city of Hierakonpolis became a major center for his worship. It was called Nakhn (north of Edfu) as the main center of his worship in the era we call the late pre-dynastic or pre-dynastic era.
The issue of the first union in Egypt is no longer an assumption as it was before, but has now become an established fact after studying the Palermo Stone, especially one of its pieces now in the Cairo Museum, and other monuments of that era. We do not have any certain information about the location of the capital of this unified kingdom, although Heliopolis, near present-day Cairo, is the city that scholars almost unanimously agree was the capital of this kingdom.
But before that union, the city of Putu in the western Delta (and its place is now Tell al-Fara'in), was the capital of the Delta Kingdom, and its goddess was called Wadjet, symbolized by a cobra snake, and its king wore a red crown, which was originally a symbol of the goddess Neith, the goddess of the city of Sais-Sa Stone), and his emblem took the papyrus plant, and his king included the Delta and a small part of the entrance to Upper Egypt, while the king of Upper Egypt had his capital in Kab). Nekhen - Hierakonpolis, which was previously the seat of the goddess's worship: Nekhbet, whose king wore a white crown and took as his emblem another plant, the lotus, and the borders of this kingdom reached as far south as the waterfall.
The god Horus became the main god in both kingdoms, but the king in each of them became the representative of Horus on earth during his life, and they used to give the king another name besides his original name when he assumed the throne, and this new name was called Hor and was written in a rectangle above the god Horus, and he used both names or one of them.
Art and Symbolism in Pre-Dynastic Egypt
The traces of this period are not limited to the things we knew before, such as pottery and ornamental tools, but we see a clear development, as the upper parts of the ivory combs are no longer in the form of animals, but have become decorated on their faces with different drawings of various animals drawing rows under each other, we know Among them are the African elephant, swan, giraffe, lion, hyena, gazelle, African bull and wild boar. We also see knife handles that were also made of ivory or gold sheets and decorated with animal motifs that refer to certain events, especially those related to victory over enemies.
As for the slate boards used for the kohl plate, they also evolved, and the boards made for kings became decorated with various animal motifs, some in rows and others representing them during hunting, and the kings' boards became larger in size and in the form of a war shield.
We also found quite a few battle canteens, which are decorated with scenes representing the letters in which the owners were victorious over their enemies, and the king appears in the form of a bull eliminating his enemies or as a lion devouring their bodies. We often see captives in shackles, or we see the forts they captured with their names written inside. There are also statues and household items, some of which are ivory, and clay or ivory models of some boats or houses
If we take a closer look at these various monuments, we see that the Egyptians began to settle in that distant era to settle on their own artistic conditions in painting and statues, and we see great progress in all aspects.
There is also no doubt that this renaissance came as a result of the progress in agriculture and people's interest in digging canals and canals, as we rarely find a royal monument without seeing on it the image of the king carrying out the well-known tradition of holding the axe and hitting the ground with it to mark the start of such work, and we also see on some knife hands drawings representing palaces or high houses with at least two floors.
Writing in Ancient Egypt: The Birth of History
In this era, Egypt reached an important invention that brought about a great development in its civilization, which is the invention of writing and its use on some monuments. The fact that the country of Sumer had also reached this invention.
Egypt reached writing in a period before the dynastic era, and its use led to our knowledge of some events that took place before the first dynasty. We have already mentioned the breakup of the first union and the independence of the Delta and Upper Egypt from each other, but their contact with each other was not affected much by this, as the Nile facilitated trade between the countries, and trade in turn helped spread culture, but we do not have documents dating back to that era that enable us to determine these links or determine the impact of this exchange.
It is futile to say that the union that took place at the emergence of the First Dynasty was the thought or work of one king, but it is very likely that others preceded him, as evidenced by the many war scenes on the monuments of that era.
The Scorpion King: Egypt’s Forgotten Unifier
We do not know the exact names of these warrior kings, but one of them, the Scorpion King: - He may have been the last king before King (Narmer- Menes), the founder of the first dynasty - he left us some of his monuments in Hierakonpolis, found in 1898. We see this king painted on his fighting funnel while holding an axe and hitting the ground with it, either during a religious ceremony for an agricultural festival or to record the construction of a canal.
At the top of the funnel, we see flags with the symbols of some of the Upper Egyptian provinces, some with plovers hanging from them, and others with bows, an expression of his victory over the people of the Delta and the desert nomads.
Another relic of this king, a limestone vase, was found in Hierakonpolis, and traces of his name were also found in Abydos, and his name was found written on part of a pottery vessel in the Tura area near Cairo.
This king played a role in the subjugation of the delta, as he was able to subjugate part of the delta before Narmer - Menes, the Scorpion King triumphed over part of the delta only and may have also triumphed over some Bedouin tribes in the desert.
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| King scorpion |
Narmer (Menes): The Founding Pharaoh of Dynastic Egypt
The complete victory came at the hands of Narmer, whom Egyptian texts later called Menes, who was also considered by ancient Egyptian sources as the founder of the first Egyptian dynasty, which begins the Egyptian dynastic era or its historical era, as some archaeologists call it.
Because Egypt had known writing and began to record its various events on its monuments, and our greatest reliance since that time has been on what the Egyptians themselves left recorded on their monuments.
Written by H. Moses
All rights reserved ©Mythology and History
All rights reserved ©Mythology and History
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