Predynastic Research Articles

The Cultures of Prehistoric Egypt. By Elise J. Baumgartel.

<i>The Cultures of Prehistoric Egypt</i>. By Elise J. Baumgartel.

The Goddesses of the Egyptian Tree Cult

NEITHER in prehistoric Egypt nor at any time since has the practice of forestry been conducted in the Nile Valley, and there has always been a lack of wood for the building of houses, ships, and the like. With regard to garden culture, however, the situation was quite different, for the Egyptians exercised remarkable talent in arranging their houses, temples, and tombs in the midst of gardens. This impression is clearly gained from pictures on the walls of tombs where, for example, one sees representations of gardens around the Pharaoh's palace2 or estates of wealthy nobles with their groves of trees and their lakes or pools teeming with fish and gay with lotus blossoms.3 Investigation of the Egyptian attitude toward sacred trees reveals the fact that, in contrast to the animal cults, tree cults in the historical period began with purely local cults which at an early time became connected with nonlocal deities as their forms or attributes. Most plants other than trees played an important part only in magic, medicine, and folklore.

Robert Mond Bequest to the British Museum

A FURTHER instalment of descriptive notes on outstanding objects in the collection of antiquities bequeathed to the British Museum by the late Sir Robert Mond (Brit. Mus. Quarterly,14, 1; 1940) deals with funerary portraits of the Roman period from the Fayyum, an example of a theriomorphic vase possibly of the middle predynastic period in the form of a frog and two small granite heads, of which the smaller presents the remarkable and unusual feature that the eyes are shut, so that the effect is that of the portrait of a dead person, while the contour of the main features resembles that of a skeleton. It seems to be without parallel, and no opinion can be expressed as to its age without the greatest reserve. Much interest is attached to a small hollow cylinder of black and white porphyritic rock, which belongs to a class of objects of which the use has not yet been determined satisfactorily. At one time they were thought to be mace heads, though secure hafting seems an impossibility; but recent discoveries at Wadi Haifa, in which they were found in association with other weapons and in some burials with two fingers of the right hand, have led to the suggestion that they were archers' looses, and in their use resembled the Mongolian ring. All datable examples are from sites occupied by the people to whom archseologists apply the term the X-group, who occupied Upper and Lower Nubia from the third to the sixth centuries A.D., variously identified with the Blemmyer of the Eastern Desert, the Noubades, a mixed race of negroid and Meroitic elements, and the Nobatae, who are alleged by Procopius to have formed a buffer State between the Roman frontier at the First Cataract and the southern barbarian tribes.

Research Items

Rock Art in North Africa. M. RAYMOND VAUFREY has now added to his previous reports on the results of his researches on the rock art sites of southern Oran and their bearing on the origin, affinities and chronology of the north African neolithic, further details of tho sites, comparative studies, and full illustration (Arch, de l'Instit. de Pal. Humaine, Mém. 20; 1939). On four groups of sites, in the mountains of Figuig, Ksour, Géryville and Jebel Amour, the association of a stone industry with these rock-engravings of animal and human figures, an association previously undetected, made it possible to assign this art to a neolithic with Capsian traditions, which is shown to extend to northern Oran and beyond, linking up with the neolithic of the Sahara and a neolithic pluvial period, to which a date is assigned ranging from the middle of the sixth to the middle of the second millennium before our era. In order to test the application of this dating to the North African neolithic with Capsian tradition and the associated rock art of Oran, the comparison, obvious on both geographical and cultural grounds, is made with proto-historie and pre-dynastic Egypt. Here it is found that certain cultural elements in the North African neolithic are to be assigned to the various cultural stages or ‘civilizations’ now distinguished—Tasian, Badarian, Amratian, Gerzean —dating from at most 6000 B.C. to about 2000 B.C. But whereas these cultural elements or traits appear at various stages in Egypt according to the ‘civilization’ to which they belong, in North Africa they appear together—a fact which is explicable only on the ground that the North African is ‘colonial’ in character in relation to Egypt. A possible affinity of certain rock engravings showing a chariot with galloping horses fixes the latest dating at the opening of the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1580 B.C. As regards its racial character, tho culture in Oran is linked with the race of Mechta el-Arbi, which has been shown to have Cro-Magnon affinities.

Of the Warp-weighted Loom

The ancient world had three chief types of loom, the horizontal ground loom, the vertical loom with upper and lower beams, and the vertical loom with warp weights. The third is the subject of this study, but for a clear understanding of it the character of the other two looms must be understood, and diagrams of all three types are therefore included.The horizontal ground loom is the older of the looms of Ancient Egypt. It is known to us already from a painting on a dish of the Predynastic period, but our chief knowledge of it comes from Tomb scenes and models of the twelfth dynasty.

Excavations at Armant, 1935–36

IMPORTANT discoveries are announced in the report of the expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society to Armant, which has been at work in Upper Egypt since last autumn under the direction of Mr. Oliver Myers. The expenses of the expedition were borne entirely by Sir Robert Mond. It had three objectives. Of these the first was unsuccessful. A fortnight's search failed to find graves containing the Saharan pottery, of which sherds are found scattered on the low desert. The settlements and graves of these people seem to have weathered away; but it is probable that they visited Egypt before the known Pre-dynastic periods. The second object was to investigate the origins of the combed burnished pottery closely resembling Badarian. This proved to belong to an intrusive people of the Proto-dynastic period. More than a hundred graves were opened, and although the top of the cemetery had been removed and the contents disturbed, so that no object of intrinsic value was retrieved, what remained was of the greatest interest. The people were small, and may have been of two distinct races. Possibly they practised bull-worship, for the more important members of the tribe were buried with their cattle. The oxen were crouched in pear-shaped graves facing the main burial. The pottery had the incised chevron pattern around the rim; and some showed the incised white decoration found on the Nubian pots of the Middle Kingdom. Agate lunates hafted to form arrows resemble those from the tomb of the wazir of Den of slightly later date.

The Guilloche

Any child provided with his first pair of compasses essays a row of tangential circles: if he adds a second row touching the first and maybe a third row, he has constructed the geometric basis of the classical Guilloche. The term is sometimes used to cover not only circular bands but crossing ones as well, and interlaced ornament generally.While the engravers of La Madeleine were working on their bones, and the women sewing skins together with their bone needles, in Egypt and Western Asia the decorative arts were being perfected. Fig. I is a sketch of a motive on the gold-foil covering of a flint knife from a grave of the predynastic period. In Elam this can be matched on a seal with a pair of lions, ‘sejant rampant regardant’, their tails intertwined (fig. 2). A non-representational treatment is seen on an early Sumerian votive plaque (fig. 3). Disregarding its symbolic content, the strictly geometric construction may be noted. This ‘twist’, as a single row of circular bands is termed here, occurs in Cretan art of the 16th century B.C., and later, in Assyrian art. It may be surmised that, with other motives, as the rosette, lotus and palmette (but not the fret), the twist was handed on to the Greeks from the East. It reached Scandinavia, where it is found on hanging bowls, and is seen inlaid in coral at the base of the Gaulish flagon in the British Museum. The lip of that vessel bears a very rare variety of the twist, an angular one.

An Egyptian Axe Head of Great Antiquity

IN NATURE of April 18, 1931, I described the investigation of an Egyptian axe head of date 1800 B.C., supplied to mo by Mr. Guy Brunton, and showed how it was possible to reproduce it by the ordinary laboratory methods of to-day. Recently, at his request, I have examined an axe head which is many years older. It was found by Mr. Brunton last winter during his excavations at El Matmar south of Assiut in middle Egypt. Ho informs me that it can be well dated to what is known as the middle Pre-Dynastic period and early in that; that is, roughly about 4000 B.C. He adds : “I know of no other copper implements anything like as early as this with the exception of small pins and such like; consequently it has a very considerable importance.”

Research Items

Hippopotamus Figures from Ancient Egypt.—Mr. W. M. Crompton describes two hitherto unpublished hippopotamus glazed figures in Ancient Egypt, 1931, pt. 1. The first was found by the expedition of the School of Archæology in Egypt to the Fayum in 1913–14, in a shaft-grave of the twelfth dynasty near Haregeh. The figure lies with the head turned to the right in a natural pose. It was originally covered with blue glaze, and decorated with designs in black outline, representing the fauna and flora of the marshes frequented by the animal, which was seldom seen except in glimpses through such a foreground. Recently Dr. L. Keimer has published a study of thirty-six decorated hippopotami. On twenty-six examples, including that from Haregeh, decorative motives appear as follows: the flowers of Nymphaea sp. appear in all but one, which is entirely decorated with pondweed. The leaves and buds almost invariably appear. Shining pondweed (Potamogeton lucens Linn.) appears on five. The papyrus is shown three times only. Rosettes are usual, but not invariable. Birds appear six times; butterflies three, or possibly four times; and a bee once. In one instance there is a frog half emerging from a lotus flower. Decorative bands are found four times and a network once. The representation on an animal figure of objects with which it was supposed to be surrounded was not, until recently, known to occur before the Middle Kingdom. It has now been carried back to the Middle Predynastic period; for Mr. Brunton has found at Badari a fragment of a pottery hippopotamus on which is the design of a ship and men with harpoons, evidently meant as surrounding the animal with intent to destroy it.

Research Items

Chronology and Archæology.—In Antiquity for June, Dr. G. A. Reisner examines the method of dating by means of objects from Egypt with special reference to stone vessels found in Crete and Mesopotamia, and incidentally lays down certain principles for its employment. (1) Conclusions have often been reached on the dating of single objects found in Egypt and little attention has been paid to its range. It is, therefore, necessary to know the whole range of time during which the object occurs in Egypt and the variations in form which it assumes in that time. (2) An Egyptian object found abroad must be identical in form, material, and technique with a type of known range in Egypt. It must be remembered also that most objects in Egypt pass through two stages of development, an earlier stage of practical use and a second in which more or less degenerate"examples are made for burial purposes only. Taking the history of stone vessels in Egypt, it would appear that the period during which we might expect an export is that from the.time of Zer (third king of Dynasty I.) to the end of Dynasty III.; but the export as gifts, especially royal gifts, might have taken place down to the end of Dynasty V. or even VI. Examining the evidence from the royal site at Knossos, it would appear that there is no object which can be dated with safety to the predynastic period or even Dynasties I.-II. Sir Arthur Evans's correlation of Early Minoan III., Middle and Late Minoan, with the Egyptian periods is correct in all essentials, but some modification is required for the correlation of the Cretan Neolithic and Early Minoan I. and II., as the history of Egyptian stone vessels has progressed considerably since the studies upon which he relied. Taking the material from Ur, so far as published, while the technique has some similarity to the most usual form of Egyptian technique—the boring with a stone—none of the vessels reported from Ur is of Egyptian origin, and they serve no useful purpose in the correlation of the early Sumerian and Egyptian periods.

Funerary Designs of Predynastic Jars

Funerary Designs of Predynastic Jars

34. Prehistoric Egypt and North Africa

34. Prehistoric Egypt and North Africa

Research Items

NEOLITHIC FAYUM POTTERY.-In Ancient Egypt, 1928, pt. 3, Miss G. Caton-Thompson has released in advance an account of the neolithic pottery of the Fayum, pending adequate publication of the material collected in the three seasons' investigations, of 1924-1925, 1925-26, and 1927-28. The bulk of the material is from a larger midden settlement, Kom W, of more than 600 ft. by 400 ft. and about 5 ft. deep. It belongs almost entirely to the earlier Neolithic or Fayum A period. Other and better-preserved vessels came from straw-lined granaries. Some were found singly in other parts of the desert. All the pottery is handmade in coarse clay with straw as a degraissant. Unequal and insufficient firing has produced a grey mottling on red pots, the core in nearly all cases being black and soft. Owing to the combination of organic matter from the midden and the salt of the desert, the texture has suffered and few pots retain their original surface. Many of the pots were rough-faced and devoid of slip and burnish. Some may originally have had a slip. A polished ferruginous wash and a burnished black finish were frequently used. One class (class 5) is associated with a thin ferruginous slip, polished and of a purple-red colour similar to the old Nile Valley pre-dynastic wares. Black polish is rare. A few sherds were hand smoothed. The forms are grouped into five classes: (1) Small bowls and cups; (2) cooking bowls or pots-these two classes being of the type common to all primitive ceramic development; (3) pedestal cups, an important class suggesting the prototype of rare and early Nile Valley pre-dynastic vases-this form occurs in the Middle Neolithic stratum at Knossos; (4) cups, with legged bases-poorly represented; (5) rectangular dishes with ' peaked ' rims-a type which appears to have no parallel in the pre-dynastic period.

The Sulcus Preauricularis as a Criterion of Sex in the Predynastic and Dynastic Egyptians.

The Sulcus Preauricularis as a Criterion of Sex in the Predynastic and Dynastic Egyptians.

Some Prehistoric Vases in the British Museum and Remarks on Egyptian Prehistory

Some Prehistoric Vases in the British Museum and Remarks on Egyptian Prehistory

Some Prehistoric Vases in the British Museum and Remarks on Egyptian Prehistory

Some Prehistoric Vases in the British Museum and Remarks on Egyptian Prehistory

The “Ship-designs” on Prehistoric Egyptian Vases

THE interpretation of the ship-like designs painted on the light-brown vases of prehistoric Egypt, such as those figured by Sir Flinders Petrie on plates xix.–xxii. of his “Prehistoric Egypt,” has given rise to considerable discussion. These designs, which have been considered to be “stockaded forts,” “barbaric designs of boats,” or “sea-going galleys,” present a more or less curved structure from which a long series of tall columns or “fringe-like lines” (Budge) depend from its under margin at about equal distances apart. Those who adopt the boat interpretation consider these fringe-like lines or columns to be oars. Others interpret them as sand-ripples. Upon this curved structure stand two erections designated “cabins” by some writers; by others as “two blockhouses forming a pylon entrance. ” They stand on each side over above a gap in the pendent series of fringe-like lines. The majority opinion supports the view that these pictures are ship-designs; but many find it difficult to convince themselves of the reality of this interpretation for several reasons.

Correction: The Art of the Predynastic Period

Correction: The Art of the Predynastic Period

The Art of the Predynastic Period

The Art of the Predynastic Period

The Art of the Predynastic Period

The Art of the Predynastic Period