Predynastic Research Articles

Images and Motifs on Painted Ceramics Type C and D in Predynastic Egypt

The image of the Great Mother, whose cult can be traced back to the time of the Badari culture and the early phases of the Nagada culture, was carried by historical memory through the millennia of the existence of ancient Egyptian culture. Painted vessels of type C and D and the images on them represent the image of the Great Mother and her semantically identical symbols in compositions that reveal a number of motifs associated with the maternal aspect, sacred marriage with a social leader, and funeral rites. In the dynamics of the development of religious and mythological ideas, this image was embodied in the images of goddesses with a maternal aspect, primarily the heavenly goddess Nut, who preserved in the hieroglyphic spelling of her name the oldest image of a round vessel nw, which in predynastic times, along with water, served as a semantic identity of the image of the Great Mother in her functions of birth, protection, feeding, care. The iconography of the image of the cow goddess, who became the Heavenly Cow Nut, who raised the solar god Ra, has also been preserved. In Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, she appears as the Sacred Eye of Ra, which gives birth to the solar Ra every morning. The image of the Sacred Eye is involved in the water and fire elements of the cosmic top, like her distant ancestor the Great Mother, who created an integral, diverse world, all the elements of which, be it heavenly bodies, ground and underground objects, natural and social, are her children, her creations.

From Shamans to Priests of Sekhmet: A Review of the Literature in Search for the Origins of Doctors in Ancient Egypt.

This review suggests that shamans were in charge of the healing process in pre-dynastic Egypt. After the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt by Narmer in 3100 BC, shamans evolved into the Sem priests, who were responsible for the king's health. With the change in Egyptian religion in the fourth dynasty (2613-2494 BC), Ra, the sun god, was revered as the supreme power, replacing the king. The emergence of mass festivities to celebrate Ra led to the priests of Sekhmet in the fifth dynasty (2494-2345 BC) checking the sanitation of bull meat that was provided to the populace in an attempt to avoid infectious epidemics. This seems to be the first recognition that disease might be transmitted from animals to humans. They used medical folklore, incantations, spells, and charms available at the House of Life, previously used by the lector priest. By 2487 BC, the first medical curative procedure was performed by Ni-Ankh-Sekhmet who cured the bleeding of a king's nose.

A Pack of Hounds and its Master? A Bi-Species Burial from the Necropolis of Deir El-Banat (Fayum)

Dog burials are known from Egypt from the Predynastic period from c. 3500 BC onward and continue into the Roman era. Different burials have been interpreted in a variety of ways: companion/pet/working animals, associated with divinities, and as guardians. This paper presents a unique interment of a single human and a group of dogs found in the cemetery of Deir el-Banat in the Fayum (Egypt), which can be interpreted as either a religio-magical protective deposit for the cemetery, or a religio-medical one, involving the sacrifice of several animals.

The social role of women in prehistoric Egypt: an analysis of female figurines and iconography

Female figurines from most periods of ancient Egyptian history occur in a variety of contexts. These images were often fashioned from clay, faience, ivory, stone, and wood. Of these, female figurines discovered in funerary contexts are highly interesting: Did they represent family members of the deceased, or was it a sort of ritual that entailed placing a feminine model with deceased males to serve them in the afterlife? In this paper, I will primarily analyze the social role of women in prehistoric Egypt. Additionally, I will also assess artistic renditions and the overall iconography of feminine figurines from that period. The following questions will help to unravel the aspects: Why were female figurines placed in tombs? What are the artistic features specific to female figurines? What can we learn from the positions in which female figurines were placed? This paper will study examples of female figurine their artistic and social styles and draw comparisons to understand their development. As for the Feminine iconography in this period, we will show the depiction of woman on the antiquities since the age of Badari, with a discussing of the development of the feminine iconography, until the early dynastic era. Through these depictions, we will be able to-functional and social role through the depicted scenes on pottery vessels, mace heads, and tombs. The presence of feminine figurines and iconography in this early stage of the development of ancient Egyptian culture is indicative of the prominent role women essayed in daily life - as mothers, wives, and servants- an aspect the deceased wished to carry forward into the next world.

Ancestral funerary knives: why did flint knives enter the funerary realm?

The tradition of using stone tools as grave goods is believed to have originated in the Paleolithic period. However, due to limited evidence of earlier burials, this practice becomes more apparent primarily from the Neolithic period onwards. During this time, various types of stone tools began transitioning from domestic to non-domestic contexts. Among these, flint knives stand out as a distinct class, with their presence in funerary context emerging as early as the Neolithic in Egypt, predating the luxurious forms characteristic to the Predynastic period. This paper explores the earliest stages in the transition of flint knives from domestic to non-domestic contexts, analyzing the ancestral types found in both contexts and investigating the early processes that imbued these tools with symbolic significance.

War and Peace in Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt

The process of formation of the first state in ancient Egypt was very long. From chiefdoms to regional, and then all-Egyptian kings, the entire predynastic period took place, from the 4th millennium B.C., when the Nagada culture developed in Southern Egypt. The largest were local territories in Hierakonpolis, Nagada and Abydos. Already in the Nagada I phase, there were social elites under a leader — in chiefdoms, and in the Nagada II phase, institutions of regional kings arose in social property societies. In protodynastic times, during the Nagada III phase, significant changes occurred. The leaders of Hierakonpolis, Nagada and Abydos became the collectors of all Egyptian lands, assimilating the Lower Nile. For a long time in Egyptology, it was believed that already in early times there were two kingdoms in Egypt: The Northern in Lower Egypt and the Southern in the Nile Valley. The Palermo Stone depicts the red-crowned kings of Lower Egypt. And in a fragment from the Cairo Museum, they are already wearing a double crown: the white crown of Southern Egypt is inserted into the red crown of the Lower. And this is evidence of the unification of Egypt into a single kingdom. But who were these first Egyptian kings? Modern archaeological excavations in combination with long-known artifacts allow us to reinterpret these dark pages of the creation of the first dual state. It is believed that the Lower Egypt was annexed to Upper Egypt in protodynastic times. In this article, the author hypothesizes that from late predynastic times, the Northern Kingdom was headed by elites who were appointed by the king of a united Egypt.

A Predynastic Egyptian Fish–Antelope Composite Figure

This article describes and analyses a zoomorphic siltstone palette housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA 10.176.84). The palette is first situated within the wider corpus of zoomorphic palettes from the Naqada II Period. Considerations of form and design accompanying the development of palettes during Naqada I/II, and comparisons with visually similar forms attested on knife handles and other palettes, suggest that MMA 10.176.84 may represent a fish–antelope composite figure, ‘antelope’ here being broadly defined as a non-domesticated, horned quadruped of the Bovidae family. It is the first example of a palette modelled as such. The social functions of palettes in Predynastic southern Egypt are then outlined in order to consider the significance of modelling a palette in this way, as well as to explore implications of the palette’s form for understandings of cultural developments in the late Predynastic Period.

Eye Painting Ritual, Bull Sacrifice and the Myth of the Eye of Horus in Ancient Egypt

In the predynastic period, the funeral rite included the main rituals: supplying water to the deceased, food in the form of a bull’s front leg and staining the eyelids with green paint. In the protodynastic and early dynastic periods, the idea of ​​a luminous beginning was embodied in the image of a bull. On the ceremonial palettes, the bull and calf act as a sacrificial animal. This gives grounds to analyze the materials on the origins of the convergence and even intersection of the ritual of painting the eyes and the sacrifice of the bull in the written period in the context of their involvement in the myth of the Eye of Horus. The ritualized form of the myth was reflected in the images and motives inherent in a society that was at the stage of state formation − in the scenes of confrontation and battle between the supporters of the supreme ruler — the people of God Horus with enemies. Later, in written sources, this idea, clothed in mythical imagery, was preserved as the core in of the myth about the Eye of deity Horus.

What do the Figurines of ”Bird Ladies” in Predynastic Egypt represent?

My wonder was piqued when I read the Brooklyn Museum’s description regarding Figures 1a and 1b:” The bird-like faces on two of these figurines probably represent human noses, the source of the breath of life [1].” Immediately I would describe the head as “inhuman” and “flamingolike”, so why did specialists in the field interpret it so differently.

Göbekli Tepe’s Pillars and Architecture Reveal the Foundation of Religion, Metaphysics, and Science

Once the Luwian hieroglyphics for God “” and Gate “” were discovered at Göbekli Tepe, this author was able to directly link the site’s carved pillars and pillar enclosures to the Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God”, . Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind’s best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to believe that the site he spent years excavating at Göbekli Tepe might be the legendary “Pillars of Enoch”, carved by the first Biblical holy man and scribe. To make this connection, the author first had to decipher Judaism’s Razah D’Oraytah (Secret of Knowledge) from the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation). The Book of Creation is the only text to explain the Secret of Knowledge, and the only text attributed to the prophet Abraham within the rabbinical community. The Zohar, Judaism’s most accessible Kabbalistic text, admits that it lacks knowledge of “deep and hidden things which issue from God’s thought and are taken up by the Voice [of God] which are not disclosed till the Word [] reveals them”. Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God” encrypts the mathematics of sound that emanates from God’s “Voice” in terms of ancient string theory. Just as modern string theory defines a Theory of Everything (ToE) within theoretical physics, so too does this ancient string theory define the Theory of Everything that Abraham named the “Living God”. The author’s previous paper ties Jewish sources to Göbekli Tepe, while the current paper applies this sonic “God Table” to the textual exegesis and hermeneutics structuring all religious creation allegories, including the writings of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, Vedic India, pre-Dynastic Egypt, Ugarit, and Israel. This paper will apply Göbekli Tepe’s structural template to archaeology’s oldest legible cuneiform tablets, including the Kesh Temple Hymn, Sumerian King List, and the Akkadian Ark Tablet. It will also be demonstrated that Göbekli Tepe holds the key to the Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest text, and defines the essence of Plato’s metaphysics.

Reisner and Mace’s Excavations of Naga ed-Deir Cemeteries N500–N900, N1500, N3000 and N3500 Reconsideredإعادة النَّظر في أعمال التنقيب التي قام بها رايزنر وميس في مجموعات مقابر نجع الدير N500-N900 ،N1500 ،N3000 ،N3500

Naga ed-Deir is located on the east side of the Nile, opposite Reqaqna, Beit Khallaf, and el‑Mahasna, and about 20 kilometres north of Abydos. In 1901-1904 the Phoebe A. Hearst Egyptian Expedition, led by George A. Reisner, carried out extensive excavations in several cemeteries across the site, leading to the discovery of tombs from the Predynastic period up to the early Coptic period. Amongst these were cemeteries N500–N900, N1500, N3000 and N3500, for which Reisner and Arthur C. Mace identified the typo-chronological tomb development between the 1st and 4th Dynasty. A combined study of the tombs, burial customs and material culture, especially the pottery, found in these cemeteries, however, suggests that Reisner and Mace’s dating and hence some of their conclusions are in need of revision, highlighting the need for a complete re-analysis of extant site data and museum objects.

Unpublished Black-topped Pottery from the Eton-Myers Collection (ECM 844, ECM 1210, ECM 1211, ECM 1225, and ECM 1226)

Abstract Representing the choices of Egyptologists like Brugsch and Newberry in addition to Major Myers, the Eton-Myers collection is stunningly sophisticated for the time of its assembling. It includes 14 pots and sherds of black-topped ware, a hallmark of the early Predynastic Period in Egypt. Despite their attractive shapes and decorative effects, the pots of this type belonging to the collection remain unstudied. Like most black-topped pots in museum collections today, they lack provenience or any other information about their precise dating. Therefore, this paper studied five black-topped vessels from the Eton-Myers collection by analyzing their attributes. The paper identified their forms and dating based on Petrie and later revisions by Kaiser and Hendrickx. The vessels that have the numbers ECM 844, 1226, 1211, 1210, and 1225 were dated to Naqada Ib, NIb, NIc-IIa, NIIb-c, NIIb-d1 respectively. Since the main aim of attribute analysis is to reconstruct the cultural context in which pottery was made, this study described the conditions of the periods the pots were dated to. Additionally, this study was able to show the conditions of the periods that were reflected in the features of the black-topped pots part of the Eton-Myers collection. For instance, a general tendency towards replacing open forms with restricted shapes could be explained by the rise of trade. Hence, pottery attributes can be used to date and reconstruct the general context of unprovenienced black-topped pottery from the Eton-Myers collection. A pot’s function, on the other hand, may be confirmed by its form and residue-analysis. This paper calls for the application of the latter archaeometrical approach, which represents the most recent phase of the development of pottery studies, to further enhance our understanding of the contents traded in black-topped pottery between Egypt and its neighbors towards the end of its prehistory.

The Grammar of Ornamentation: An Egyptian Predynastic Decorative Continuum

Tags made of mudstone are predominantly found in ancient Egyptian Predynastic cemetery contexts. This study examines the symbolism and significance of mudstone tags with the recurved horns of hartebeests and crescent-shaped mudstone tags. The use of syncretic imagery on these tags provides evidence for the fluidity of artistic perceptions in Predynastic Egypt. Available data suggests that individuals buried with mudstone hartebeest and crescent tags were almost exclusively female. Evidence for use wear and the find locations of the tags in burials indicates these artefacts were likely associated with rituals performed by female individuals.

Usrub (lead) and its compounds used in Unani Medicine: Overview

Metals and minerals are integral parts of Indian Systems of Medicine including Unani Medicine. Usrub (lead) is one of the seven metals of antiquity used in prehistoric times. The medicinal use of lead preparation is reported in pre-Dynastic Egypt and by the ancient Indian civilisations from 3200 to 2800 BC. Lead in various forms i.e. Usrub (lead) and Aabar (burnt lead/ashes of lead), Isfidaj (white lead), Suranj (red oxide of lead), Murdar sang (litharge/lead monoxide) and Ithmid (lead sulfide) are used in Unani Medicine. Usrub (Lead) naturally occurs as galena (lead sulfide) from which it is obtained by roasting. The compounds of lead for medicinal uses are generally prepared by a particular method. Most of the lead compounds are used as external applications for the healing of wounds. For oral use, calx form is recommended. The lead is absorbed into the human body from the gastrointestinal and respiratory tract. It is least absorbed through intact skin. Approximately 80 to 90 percent of absorbed lead is excreted through urine, feces and sweat. When blood level in adults crosses the limit of 10 µg/dl and in children 3.5 µg/dl the signs of poisoning may appear. The present review will be helpful for students, researcher for a better understanding of lead’s medicinal use and for further studies.

Iconography and Attributes of Predynastic and Early Dynastic Kings as a Socio-Cultural Phenomenon

Established in Hierakonpolis, as well as in other strong politarchies: in Nagada and Abydos of the predynastic time, headed by a leader, vested with sacred and military functions, in a historical perspective, formed the basis of the institution of royal power and the state structure of the Egyptian territorial state. The structuring of the physical space of the historically established local territories corresponded to the centric socio-political structure of society headed by a leader, later a regional king, and in the dynastic era, the king of Egypt. Knowledge of the model of the world, its origin and the place of man in it occupied a central place in the mythology of predynastic Egypt. The ritual was the most important evidence of the role of cosmologic principles in their earthly incarnation. It played a primary role in the mythopoetic model of the world. At the same time, the main figure during the ritual, the holiday was the leader of society as a participant in the cosmological action - the creation of the universe. Hence the belief in the divinity of the sacred king, for he was considered the bearer of order, fighting chaos. Ritual items associated with the cult of the king, found in sanctuaries and royal tombs, provide important information about the iconography, attributes and insignia of power. The image-symbolic language of visual texts allows us to interpret the functions of the supreme power.

On a "dead end" in the Egyptian predynastic studies, and on a possible direction of the way out

Studies of the Predynastic Egypt, devoid of reliance on written sources, may enter into a dead end; to overcome it, methods and data of natural sciences are called including the reconstruction of changeable natural conditions of the emergence of ancient Egyptian state. These include: aridization of the North Africa climate in the 4th millennium BC, which favoured the transformation of the Sahara into a desert and the migration of part of its population to the Main Nile; the formation starting from about the 6th millennium BC of fertile silty soils in the Nile floodplain which made it suitable for farming and became the main natural prerequisite for the mass influx of people to the Egyptian Nile and for the local Neolithic revolution; a sharp decrease in the last quarter of the 4th millennium BC of the annual Nile flow to a volume comparable to the current one, with two major consequences for ecosystem and society: the cessation of catastrophic flooding by the river waters of Middle Egypt, where in the 7th–4th millennium BC there may have been a huge lake that separated Upper from Lower Egypt preventing their ethno-cultural merging, which started not earlier than in the second half of the 4th millennium BC; the appearance of the 1st Nile cataract, which determined the southern border of the early pharaonic state. For studies of this kind, a special scientific discipline “geoegyptology” has been proposed; these tasks, however, are met by the long-standing school of the socio-natural history.

From the Delta to the Delta: Natural Conditions and Settlers on the Main Nile in the Fifth Millennium BC. Part I (Introductory)

The 5th millennium BC is marked by the transition to agriculture in the Egyptian Nile valley, rather late for the Fertile Crescent. This was preceded by the Quaternary epic of discovery of the Nile banks by hominids, from the Olduvian Pithecanthropus of the lower Palaeolithic to the Neolithic settlers of the Predynastic period, who laid the socio-economic foundation of the Pharaonic civilization. In the Pleistocene geological epoch, the Main Nile underwent a complex evolutionary transformation from palaeo-rivers with such powerful watercourses as the Prenile to the much inferior in volume Neonile on which, at the 2nd marine isotope stage (27.8–14.7 ka) when the Sahara was a hyperarid desert, comparatively frequent Paleolithic sites of gatherers, fishermen and hunters arose in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia (the archaeological cultures Halfa, Fakhuri, Qadan, Ballana, Silsila, Afia, Makhadma et al.). Warming and humidification of the climate with the onset of the 1st marine isotope stage was accompanied by an “abrupt return” of the summer monsoon rains to East Africa and an episode of the “Wild Nile” with the incision of the River, which probably made its Egyptian valley unsuitable for settlement by the beginning of the Holocene (11700 ± 99 ka); thus, the Epipalaeolithic is represented here by rare industries of Elkab in Upper Egypt and Karun in the Fayum oasis. At the same time, from the 9th millennium BC there was an increase in the population of the Sahara, where during the African humid period of the early Holocene grassy and woody savannahs were spreading. The Nile Delta with its “historical” network of branches had not yet formed and represented a barren sandy plain which (as well as the Valley) was unsuitable for life and the establishment of the food-producing economy. Simultaneously in Sudan, in the Gezira region at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile, an inner delta was formed, which may have been the cause of the later Neolithization of the lower reaches of the Main Nile.

A forgotten chapter in Egyptology: Sir John Gardner Wilkinson's investigations into a dynamic Nile

Recent landscape archaeology projects have assumed that previous generations of Egyptologists eschewed research into environmental change, with the exception of one mid nineteenth century pioneer, Joseph Hekekyan. This article shows that this narrative is mainly a historiographical artefact with little basis in reality: scholars and travellers in Egypt were interested in environmental change, mainly in relation to the River Nile, as far back as the early eighteenth century. Debate about the extent to which Egypt's present-day topography had been shaped by ongoing geomorphological processes on the one hand, and ancient catastrophic events on the other was particularly lively in the early years of the nineteenth century, as was linking such geographical research to historical problems. This article concentrates primarily on the work of one English Egyptologist, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797–1875), in relation to the ancient extent of the Nile Delta, and of the agricultural lands of the Nile valley, at Thebes. Wilkinson followed leading catastrophist geologists, notably Georges Cuvier and Déodat Dolomieu, and investigated alluvial deposition in relation to ancient sites, including the Isle of Pharos, Alexandria, and the Colossi of Memnon, Thebes, in order to reconstruct the ancient landscape, and answer questions relating to Egyptian prehistory and political economy. Although Wilkinson's work may have fallen short of modern standards, it nevertheless demonstrates that early nineteenth century scholars appreciated that Egypt's landscape was dynamic rather than static, and that they used this knowledge to further their understanding of ancient Egyptian history.

Символический язык додинастического Египта: образы и мотивы

Symbolic or figurative-symbolic language was the main means of communication in the mythopoetic collective consciousness of predynastic Egypt. It raised all the phenomena of earthly life to the acts of the mythical creation of the world in primordial times as a sacred model reproduced in rituals. It was the rituals that were supposed to restore the world order, lead to the victory of the cosmos — the main value of culture over chaos. The main sources for studying the socio-cultural life of the preliterate period of Egypt are pictorial and archaeological sources that play the role of symbolic texts. The aim of the article is to interpret a sample of material objects in the context of the cultural and historical development of the predynastic time, which served as the basis for the further development of Egypt during the time of the pharaohs.

Tiger Nuts


 
 
 The importance of archaeobotany has been widely recognized in recent years, and more research is being conducted to study botanical remains. Only a very few of the cultivated vegetables grown in fields and in gardens were indigenous to Egypt, but one was the tiger nut (Cyperus esculentus L.) which was known and consumed since the Predynastic Period. Remains of dry tiger nuts tubers were found in large quantities in tombs from Neolithic times onwards. Some were found inside the stomachs of bodies as early as the Predynastic Period.
 Tiger nuts are attested in funerary offering lists, festival offerings, in medicine and in diet. This paper sheds light on the importance of tiger nuts and its different uses. It also urges their use in modern Egypt.