EB II-III AEGYPTIACA EAST OF THE JORDAN: A REEVALUATION OF TRADE AND CULTURAL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN EGYPT AND THE TRANSJORDANIAN URBAN CENTRES

Abstract

Trade and cultural interconnections between pre-dynastic Egypt and the Southern Levant are established early, and most intensely since the end of the 4th millennium BC, to continue in renewed forms during the 3rd millennium BC between the Pharaonic state and the earliest urban centres of the Levant, both west and east of the Jordan. The increasing number of Egyptian, and Egyptian-style items, identified in the first Jordanian cities of Early Bronze II-III, provides an opportunity for a reconsideration on the movement of Egyptian objects beyond the Jordan, up to the edge of the Syro-Arabian desert; on the evolution of the relations between Pharaonic Egypt and the urban centers of southern Levant in the 3rd millennium BC; and, eventually, on the role these commercial and cultural interactions played in the early urban societies of the region.