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Predynastic Egypt
The Predynastic Period (c.5000–c.3100 BC) ended
when King Menes founded Dynasty 1 and dynastic Egypt. Following
climatic changes, the Neolithic communities of the Predynastic
Period became established in the Delta and Nile Valley. They
initiated many political, social, religious, and artistic
developments that came to form the basis of civilization in later
times. As communities, they were distinguished by certain common
features: social aims; replacement of hunting with agriculture and
farming; production of pottery, tools, weapons, and domestic
utensils; and religious beliefs and customs that emphasized
reverence for the dead and perhaps a belief in life after death.
Knowledge about many aspects of their societies remains speculative
because of a lack of written evidence and the absence of artifacts
from domestic sites.
Later Literary Sources
According to Manetho, before Menes’ reign Egypt was ruled by a line of gods, followed by demigods. The Turin Canon identified those rulers who preceded Menes as the “Followers of Horus” (perhaps the kings of the predynastic northern and southern kingdoms centered at Buto [Pe] and Hieraconpolis [Nekhen]). In dynastic times the Egyptians were evidently ignorant of their historical origins, and the period was obscured in mythology. No firm evidence exists to provide a chronology for lengths of individual reigns or cultural subperiods. .
Archaeological Discoveries
Little was known of Egypt’s history before the Old Kingdom apart from references to Menes as the first king of a unified country until excavations undertaken at several sites at the end of the nineteenth century revealed the existence of predynastic cultures. In 1894–95 W. M. Flinders Petrie and J. E. Quibell excavated near the modern village of Nagada (southern Egypt), where they discovered cemeteries that represented the last two cultures of predynastic times. Because the remains did not appear to be Egyptian in origin, the excavators at first wrongly identified them as evidence of a “new race” that had arrived in the First IntermediatePeriod (c.2200 BC). Similar burials discovered at other sites, however, persuaded Petrie to recognize all of them as evidence of predynastic cultures, and he subsequently pioneered studies in this field. Current excavations at Hieraconpolis are revealing new evidence about the predynastic period. Major finds have included the discovery of the skeletal remains of different social groups and possibly Egypt’s first funerary enclosure. Attempts to clarify the meaning and significance of other structural remains are providing archaeologists with the opportunity to investigate the predynastic household and settlement patterns at the site, and for the first time, it has been possible to clearly define the stratification and phases of a house structure in the desert at Hieraconpolis. These excavations are of particular significance because they have indicated that mummification goes back some 5,600 years in Egypt and was not first introduced in the early Old Kingdom, as previously believed. .
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Sequence Dating and the
Predynastic Cultures Sequence dating, one of Petrie’s greatest contributions to Egyptology, is a method of dating a site’s excavated material relative to its pottery, whose approximate age has been established by comparing it to other types of pottery from several sites and putting them in sequential order. This system has some problems, but it is still widely used today since there is no absolute dating method for this period. Petrie divided these predynastic cultures into three groups Amratian, Gerzean, and Semainian (names derived from local modern villages near his excavations). The term used today for the earliest identified predynastic culture is Badarian (named after the modern village el- Badari, where Winifred Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson undertook important excavations). The terms Nagada I and Nagada II have replaced Petrie’s Amratian and Gerzean periods, respectively (objects from both periods have been found at Nagada). Semainian is now a term used only for the earliest dynasties. Many problems exist with regard to the Predynastic Period, and the pattern of cultural progress at the various sites remains unclear. At some sites, Badarian, Nagada I, and Nagada II cultures have been found in stratified layers, but elsewhere not all these stages are present. The various settlements were perhaps part of an overall culture, or they may represent distinct local variations. It is unclear if northerners and southerners had different racial origins, which group developed first in Egypt, and if there was a marked difference between their cultures. The communities obviously coexisted sufficiently well to enable them to develop without a constant threat of warfare, and they shared many important features. Cultural evolution occurred from one period to the next, with no well-defined break between Badarian and Nagada I. There were major innovations, however, at the start of Nagada II (c.3400 BC), which Petrie explained by the arrival of new people (his “Dynastic Race”). .
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Badarian and
Nagada I Periods Archaeological evidence from settlement sites is scanty, but it is assumed that most people lived in villages in dwellings built of perishable materials. Graves were generally situated away from the habitations. Grave goods, including implements, personal adornments, and food, were presumably intended for use in the afterlife. Most graves were shallow, oval depressions in the sand, situated on the desert’s edge, and each contained a single burial. The body, contracted and placed on its left side with the head to the south so that it faced west, was often encased in coarse matting, a basket woven of twigs, or an animal skin. The heat and dryness of the burial environment desiccated and preserved the bodies, creating “natural mummies.” A small pile of sand or stones probably marked each grave. Grave goods included several distinctive types of pottery, stone vases, ivory figurines, amulets, and slate palettes. These continued to be present into Nagada I, when styles and materials show an increased foreign influence, perhaps due to increased trade. Animal cemeteries were located near human graves and included burials of dogs or jackals, sheep, and cows wrapped in linen or matting covers. These, together with animal statuettes placed in human graves, suggest that animal worship was already well established. .
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Nagada II Period
Little is known of the political and social organization of this period, but it appears that communities gradually grew together into larger units, each with its own area capital, chieftain, and major deity. Larger geographical groups (probably representing the administrative districts called “nomes” in later times) were then formed from these units. Eventually, there evolved two independent kingdoms, the Red Land in the north and the White Land in the south. Communities gradually came together to provide greater protection against attack and to fulfill a common need to irrigate the land and improve agriculture. Ultimately, at the close of Nagada II, King Menes united the two kingdoms (c.3100 BC) and established dynastic Egypt. Important innovations occurred during this period. By Nagada II, the rulers and the ruled had distinctive burials, whereas there had previously been little difference between them. The masses continued to be buried in shallow graves, but the leaders now had monumental brick tombs in which the aboveground superstructure was bench shaped (Egyptologists use the term mastaba for these tombs, derived from the Arabic word meaning “a bench” or “bench shaped”). In the underground substructure, there was a complex of chambers where the body and the tomb goods were housed. At one time, many Egyptologists held the opinion that the bodies in these tombs and the later royal and noble burials showed physical differences from the masses interred in the pit graves, and suggested that the apparently rapid change in burial customs in c.3400 BC lent some support to Petrie’s theory that a new people (the Dynastic Race) had entered Egypt and brought new ideas and customs with them. Petrie’s theory is now largely discredited, although some links with Mesopotamia the the possible homeland suggested for the Dynastic Race appear to have indeed existed. Cylinder seals and maceheads occur in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the composite animals carved on predynastic Egyptian slate palettes, which are not found anywhere else in Egyptian art, may owe something to the influence of Mesopotamian artistic motifs. Monumental brick architecture appears in Egypt in c.3400 BC and is decorated with recessed paneling on the facade, and this same type of architecture occurs earlier in Mesopotamia than in Egypt; however, whereas in Mesopotamia it was used for temples, in Egypt it is only employed for tombs. Also, the earliest stages of hieroglyphic writing occur in Egypt c.3400 BC but are predated by examples of cuneiform writing (also derived from pictographs, or picture writing) in Mesopotamia. This may be explained, however, by the fact that there is a difference in the durability of the two types of writing materials that were used; cuneiform was inscribed on clay tablets, whereas hieroglyphs were written on wood or papyrus. Furthermore, there appears to be some evidence of armed conflict between two groups of people, as depicted in the carvings on the ivory handle of the Gebel el-Arak knife. An older theory proposed that this scene was a sea battle between ships that were tentatively identified as Egyptian and Mesopotamian in origin, and claimed that it represented an attempted invasion of Egypt by foreign fighters. Current scholarship claims that there is no evidence to support the theory of a mass invasion or a Dynastic Race, however. The innovations that occur in Egypt at the beginning of the Nagada II are now explained in terms of advances made by the indigenous population. Although the arrival of small groups of people from other areas (as perhaps represented on the Gebel el-Arak knife) cannot be ruled out, there is no direct evidence to indicate that any type of mass invasion occurred. Current excavations at Hieraconpolis continue to throw new light on the political, architectural, and archaeological history of southern Egypt in the Nagada I and II periods, and they are beginning to reveal some of the formative factors that led to the development of Egypt’s civilization. In particular, the site’s cemeteries hold skeletal material of both elite and ordinary people that will serve for future biomedical and other studies.
The Two Kingdoms
Between c.3400 BC and c.3100 BC two independent kingdoms were established in Egypt. The Red Land was based in the Delta and extended south along the Nile Valley perhaps as far as Atfih. Its Delta capital was at Pe (near ancient Dep, later known as Buto). Today the site of Pe and Dep is known as Tell el-Fara‘in (the Mound of the Pharaohs). Edjo (sometimes written as Wadjet) was the chief deity of the kingdom; a cobra goddess, she protected the king and was worshiped at Buto. Each kingdom had its own ruler; the king of the Red Land lived in a palace at Pe and wore the Red Crown. The southern kingdom, the White Land, stretched along the Nile Valley from Atfih to Gebel es-Silsila. Its capital at Nekhen (later known as Hieraconpolis) lay near the modern city of Edfu. Situated on the west bank of the Nile, it was excavated by J. E. Quibell, F. W. Green, and S. Clarke in AD 1897–99. A great cache of votive offerings (the “Main Deposit”) was discovered in the Nekhen temple; these mostly dated to the earliest dynasties. On the east bank opposite Nekhen, the town of Nekheb (el-Kab) was the cult center of the kingdom’s patron goddess, the vulture Nekhbet. When Quibell excavated Nekhen and Nekheb, he proved that the southern capital and the predynastic kingdoms were historical realities. The evidence also indicated that it was a real historical person, Menes (Egyptologists previously wrongly identified him with Narmer) who had ultimately united these kingdoms. Even after the unification the existence of the two kingdoms was never forgotten: Egypt continued to be called the “Two Lands,” the king now wore both the White and Red Crowns either separately or combined as the “Double Crown,” and the symbols of the south (the sedge) and the north (the bee and papyrus plant) continued in art and architectural forms. Edjo and Nekhbet (known as the “Two Ladies”) united in their roles as patrons and protectors of the king. .
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Predynastic Egypt
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