In Upper Egypt, between Asyūṭ and Luxor (Al-Uqṣur), have been found the Tasian culture (named for Dayr Tāsā) and the Badarian culture (named for Al-Badārī); these date from the late 5th millennium bce. Most of the evidence for them comes from cemeteries, where the burials included fine black-topped red pottery, ornaments, some copper objects, and glazed steatite beads. The most characteristic predynastic luxury objects, slate palettes for grinding cosmetics, occur for the first time in this period. The burials show little differentiation of wealth and status and seem to belong to a peasant culture without central political organization.
Probably contemporary with both predynastic and dynastic times are thousands of rock drawings of a wide range of motifs, including boats, found throughout the Eastern Desert, in Lower Nubia, and as far west as Mount ʾUwaynāt, which stands near modern Egypt’s borders with Libya and Sudan in the southwest. The drawings show that nomads were common throughout the desert, probably to the late 3rd millennium bce, but they cannot be dated precisely; they may all have been produced by nomads, or inhabitants of the Nile valley may often have penetrated the desert and made drawings.
Naqādah I, named for the major site of Naqādah but also called Amratian for Al-ʿĀmirah, is a distinct phase that succeeded the Badarian. It has been found as far south as Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar (Hierakonpolis; ancient Egyptian Nekhen), near the sandstone barrier of Mount Silsilah, which was the cultural boundary of Egypt in predynastic times. Naqādah I differs from its Badarian predecessor in its density of settlement and the typology of its material culture but hardly at all in the social organization implied by the archaeological finds. Burials were in shallow pits in which the bodies were placed facing to the west, like those of later Egyptians. Notable types of material found in graves are fine pottery decorated with representational designs in white on red, figurines of men and women, and hard stone mace-heads that are the precursors of important late predynastic objects.
Naqādah II, also known as Gerzean for Girza (Jirza), is the most important predynastic culture. The heartland of its development was the same as that of Naqādah I, but it spread gradually throughout the country. South of Mount Silsilah, sites of the culturally similar Nubian A Group are found as far as the Second Cataract of the Nile and beyond; these have a long span, continuing as late as the Egyptian Early Dynastic period. During Naqādah II, large sites developed at Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, Naqādah, and Abydos (Abīdūs), showing by their size the concentration of settlement, as well as exhibiting increasing differentiation in wealth and status. Few sites have been identified between Asyūṭ and Al-Fayyūm, and this region may have been sparsely settled, perhaps supporting a pastoral rather than agricultural population. Near present-day Cairo—at Al-ʿUmāri, Al-Maʿādi, and Wādī Dijlah and stretching as far south as the latitude of Al-Fayyūm—are sites of a separate, contemporary culture. Al-Maʿādi was an extensive settlement that traded with the Middle East and probably acted as an intermediary for transmitting goods to the south. In this period, imports of lapis lazuli provide evidence that trade networks extended as far afield as Afghanistan.
The material culture of Naqādah II included increasing numbers of prestige objects. The characteristic mortuary pottery is made of buff desert clay, principally from around Qinā, and is decorated in red with pictures of uncertain meaning showing boats, animals, and scenes with human figures. Stone vases, many made of hard stones that come from remote areas of the Eastern Desert, are common and of remarkable quality, and cosmetic palettes display elaborate designs, with outlines in the form of animals, birds, or fish. Flint was worked with extraordinary skill to produce large ceremonial knives of a type that continued in use during dynastic times.
Egyptian clay vesselPainted clay vessel with flamingos and ibexes, Gerzean culture, Egypt, c. 3400–c. 3100 bce; in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim, Germany.Holle Bildarchiv, Baden-Baden
Sites of late Naqādah II (sometimes termed Naqādah III) are found throughout Egypt, including the Memphite area and the delta region, and appear to have replaced the local Lower Egyptian cultures. Links with the Middle East intensified, and some distinctively Mesopotamian motifs and objects were briefly in fashion in Egypt. The cultural unification of the country probably accompanied a political unification, but this must have proceeded in stages and cannot be reconstructed in detail. In an intermediate stage, local states may have formed at Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, Naqādah, and Abydos and in the delta at such sites as Buto (modern Kawm al-Farāʿīn) and Sais (Ṣā al-Ḥajar). Ultimately, Abydos became preeminent; its late predynastic cemetery of Umm al-Qaʿāb was extended to form the burial place of the kings of the 1st dynasty. In the latest predynastic period, objects bearing written symbols of royalty were deposited throughout the country, and primitive writing also appeared in marks on pottery. Because the basic symbol for the king, a falcon on a decorated palace facade, hardly varies, these objects are thought to have belonged to a single line of kings or a single state, not to a set of small states. This symbol became the royal Horus name, the first element in a king’s titulary, which presented the reigning king as the manifestation of an aspect of the god Horus, the leading god of the country. Over the next few centuries several further definitions of the king’s presence were added to this one.
Thus, at this time Egypt seems to have been a state unified under kings who introduced writing and the first bureaucratic administration. These kings, who could have ruled for more than a century, may correspond with a set of names preserved on the Palermo Stone, but no direct identification can be made between them. The latest was probably Narmer, whose name has been found near Memphis, at Abydos, on a ceremonial palette and mace-head from Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, and at the Palestinian sites of Tall Gat and ʿArad. The relief scenes on the palette show him wearing the two chief crowns of Egypt and defeating northern enemies, but these probably are stereotyped symbols of the king’s power and role and not records of specific events of his reign. They demonstrate that the position of the king in society and its presentation in mixed pictorial and written form had been elaborated by the early 3rd millennium bce.
During this time Egyptian artistic style and conventions were formulated, together with writing. The process led to a complete and remarkably rapid transformation of material culture, so that many dynastic Egyptian prestige objects hardly resembled their forerunners.
The Early Dynastic period (c. 2925–c. 2575 bce)
The 1st dynasty (c. 2925–c. 2775 bce)
The beginning of the historical period is characterized by the introduction of written records in the form of regnal year names—the records that later were collected in documents such as the Palermo Stone. The first king of Egyptian history, Menes, is therefore a creation of the later record, not the actual unifier of the country; he is known from Egyptian king lists and from classical sources and is credited with irrigation works and with founding the capital, Memphis. On small objects from this time, one of them dated to the important king Narmer but certainly mentioning a different person, there are two possible mentions of a “Men” who may be the king Menes. If these do name Menes, he was probably the same person as Aha, Narmer’s probable successor, who was then the founder of the 1st dynasty. Changes in the naming patterns of kings reinforce the assumption that a new dynasty began with his reign. Aha’s tomb at Abydos is altogether more grandiose than previously built tombs, while the first of a series of massive tombs at Ṣaqqārah, next to Memphis, supports the tradition that the city was founded then as a new capital. This shift from Abydos is the culmination of intensified settlement in the crucial area between the Nile River valley and the delta, but Memphis did not yet overcome the traditional pull of its predecessor: the large tombs at Ṣaqqārah appear to belong to high officials, while the kings were buried at Abydos in tombs whose walled complexes have long since disappeared. Their mortuary cults may have been conducted in designated areas nearer the cultivation.