The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2,650 BC: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, C. 10,000 to 2,650 BC (Cambridge World Archaeology) [Illustrated] 0521543746, 9780521543743

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The Archaeology of Early Egypt In this fresh, authoritative and compelling survey of the archaeology of early Egypt, David Wengrow offers a new interpretation of the emergence of farming economies and the dynastic state, c.10,000 to 2650 BC. Exploring key themes such as the nature of state power, kingship and the inception of writing, Wengrow illuminates prehistoric social development along the Nile through comparison with neighbouring regions. Detailed analysis of the archaeological record reveals the interplay between large-scale processes of economic and political change and intimate material practices through which social identities were transformed, focusing upon ritual treatments of the dead. Employing rich empirical data and engaging critically with anthropological theory and the history of archaeological thought, Wengrow’s work challenges the current theoretical isolation of Egyptian prehistory and breaches the methodological boundaries that separate prehistory from Egyptology. It is essential reading for anybody with an interest in ancient Egyptian civilisation or early state formation. D A V I D W E N G R O W is a Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where he has established a new programme of study comparing ancient societies of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.

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Series editor N O R M A N Y O F FE E , University of Michigan Editorial board S U S A N A L C O C K , University of Michigan T O M D I L L E H A Y , University of Kentucky S T EP H EN S H E N N A N , University College London C A R L A SI N O P O L I , University of Michigan The Cambridge World Archaeology series is addressed to students and professional archaeologists, and to academics in related disciplines. Most volumes in the series present a survey of the archaeology of a region of the world, providing an up-to-date account of research and integrating recent findings with new concerns of interpretation. While the focus is on a specific region, broader cultural trends are discussed and the implications of regional findings for cross-cultural interpretations are considered. The authors also bring anthropological and historical expertise to bear on archaeological problems and show how both new data and changing intellectual trends in archaeology shape inferences about the past. More recently, the series has expanded to include thematic volumes.

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The Archaeology of Early Egypt

The

CAMBRIDGE WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY EGYPT SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN NORTH-EAST AFRICA, 10,000 TO 2650 BC DAVID WENGROW Institute of Archaeology University College London

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521543743 # David Wengrow 2006 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2006 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN-13 ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-10

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For RINAT

CONTENTS

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements

page x xviii xix

Introduction: the idea of prehistory in the Middle East and North-East Africa

1

PART I TRANSFORMATIONS IN PREHISTORY 1 Egypt and the outside world I, c.10,000–3300 BC

13

2 Neolithic economy and society

41

3 Domestication and embodiment in the Nile valley

63

4 The urbanisation of the dead: Naqada I–II

72

5 Image, ritual and the construction of identity in late prehistory

99

PART II THE MAKING OF KINGSHIP 6 Opening considerations: la me´moire monarchique

127

7 Egypt and the outside world II, c.3300–2500 BC

135

8 The evolution of simplicity: Naqada III

151

9 Extraordinary bodies and binding truths: early writing in context

176

10 Theatres of sacrifice: dynastic constructions of death

218

11 Conclusion: subterranean histories of power

259

Appendix: Chronological note and tables References Index

270 277 326

FIGURES

Abbreviations used in image credits, copyright and museum numbers which accompany the illustrations. BM DAI EES HE IAA ML MMA Penn. Petrie

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, New York Deutsches Archa¨ologisches Institut The Egypt Exploration Society, London The Hierakonpolis Expedition The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority Muse´e du Louvre, De´partement des antiquite´s e´gyptiennes The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Pennsylvania-Yale-Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Expedition to Abydos The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London

Map of Egypt, showing prehistoric and early dynastic sites page Map: Distribution of raw materials between the Nile valley and the Fertile Crescent Rim sherd from a Mesolithic vessel, Khartoum (Petrie UC13976; courtesy Petrie) Bone harpoon, Khartoum, Mesolithic (Petrie UC13940; courtesy Petrie) Map: The spread of primary farming, c.7000–5000 BC Map: Patterns of interaction and innovation, c.5000–4000 BC Naqada II industries: copper dagger-blade, pressure-flaked flint knife, ground limestone vessel

xxii 15 20 21 24 28

List of figures (after Payne 1993, figs. 59.1215, 67.1427, 54.1089; Ashmolean 1895.968, 1935.189, 1895.176; courtesy Ashmolean) 1.7 Figurine of a laden donkey, Azor, S. Israel, Early Bronze Age (courtesy IAA) 2.1 The Narmer Palette, reverse side, from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis (after Quibell 1898) 2.2 The Narmer Palette, obverse side (after Quibell 1898) 2.3 The Narmer Mace-head, from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis (Ashmolean E.3631; courtesy Ashmolean) 2.4 The Gebel el-Araq Knife (Louvre E11517; courtesy ML) 2.5 Ivory comb, inscribed with the name of Djet, Abydos, First Dynasty (after Petrie 1925, pl. 12.5; courtesy EES) 2.6 Neolithic objects from burials in the el-Badari region, Middle Egypt (after Brunton and Caton-Thompson 1928, pls. 22.2, 24.2, 24.14, 24.18; Brunton 1937, pl. 24.14, 24.21, 24.23, 24.33) 2.7 Badarian ceramic vessel (Petrie UC9011; courtesy Petrie) 2.8 Formation of a Neolithic burial deposit, Site R12, N. Sudan (after Salvatori and Usai 2002, fig. 2; courtesy D. Usai and S. Salvatori) 3.1 The gazelle as a social resource in the Natufian Levant; ornamented sickle from Kebara, N. Israel (sickle after Noy 1991, fig. 6.4) 4.1 Map: Hierakonpolis (courtesy R. Friedman, HE) 4.2 Ceremonial enclosure HK29A, Naqada II, Hierakonpolis (courtesy R. Friedman, HE) 4.3 Stone-built architecture at Maadi, N. Egypt (after Hartung et al. 2003, figs. 4, 3; courtesy U. Hartung, DAI Cairo) 4.4 Coarse wares from late fourth- and early third-millennium strata at Tell el-Iswid, Nile delta (after van den Brink 1989, figs. 9.1, 9.8, 13.2, 13.4; courtesy E. C. M. van den Brink) 4.5 Naqada I fine ware: black-topped (‘B-Ware’; Petrie UC5688; courtesy Petrie)

xi

35 37 42 43

44 45

46

52 53

58

67 74 81

85

88 91

xii

List of figures 4.6

Naqada II decorated marl ware (‘D-Ware’; Ashmolean 1891.25, 1895.571, 1933.1415; courtesy Ashmolean) 93 4.7 Scene of baking and brewing in the tomb of Ti, Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty (after Epron et al. 1939, pl. 66) 96 5.1 Bone and ivory personal articles with animal ornament, Naqada I–II (Ashmolean 1895.940–3; 1895.934; 1895.912; courtesy Ashmolean) 100 5.2 White Cross-Lined (‘C-Ware’) bowl with model hippopotami, el-Mahasna, Naqada I (Copyright: The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester) 103 5.3 Clay figurines from el-Ma‘amariya and ornamented vessel from Abydos, Naqada I (after Ucko 1968, figs. 47, 48; Dreyer et al. 1998, fig. 12.4; courtesy P. Ucko; G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo) 105 5.4 Serpentine vessel, ivory pendant, stone maces and figured palettes, Naqada II (after Payne 1993, figs. 57.1201, 72.1693, 75.1825, 75.1839; Ashmolean 1948.18, 1895.908, 1892.1020, 1890.155; courtesy Ashmolean; maces after de Morgan 1896, figs. 316–20) 106 5.5 White Cross-Lined (‘C-Ware’) bowl, Naqada I (courtesy Princeton University Art Museum, gift of W. C. Hayes, Class of 1925, y1930–494) 108 5.6 Selected human figures and section of wall painting from tomb 100, Hierakonpolis, Naqada IIC (after Quibell and Green 1902, pls. 76, 79) 110 5.7 White Cross-Lined (‘C-Ware’) bowl from Abydos, and rock carvings in Wadi Menih and Wadi Abu Wasil (after Payne 1993, fig. 29.411; Ashmolean 1909.1026; courtesy Ashmolean; rock carvings after Resch 1967, pl. 10.c; Winkler 1938, pl. 12.26) 113 5.8 Naqada II burials from el-Amra, Upper Egypt (redrawn by the author with revised lettering, after Randall-MacIver and Mace 1902, pls. 5.2, 5.6) 117 6.1 Year-labels of the First Dynasty (after Petrie 1900, pl. 15.6; 1901a, fig. 10.2; Smith 1949, fig. 38) 129 6.2 Section of wall relief showing Seti I and Prince Rameses before the ‘Table of Kings’, Gallery of Lists, West Wall, Temple of Seti I, Abydos, Nineteenth Dynasty (reproduced with permission of the Griffith Institute, Oxford) 130

List of figures 6.3

7.1 7.2

7.3

7.4 7.5

7.6

7.7

8.1

8.2

8.3

8.4

Reconstructed cylinder-seal designs listing early royal names, Abydos, Umm el-Qaab (after Dreyer 1987, fig. 3; Dreyer et al. 1996, fig. 26; courtesy G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo) Map: Economic and social reconfiguration, c.4000–3000 BC Liquid containers from tomb U-j, Abydos, c.3300 BC (after Hartung 2001, figs. 11.h, 11.e, 11.g, 11.a; courtesy U. Hartung, DAI Cairo) Scenes from figured silver vessels, Maikop (Caucasus), Early Bronze Age (after Sherratt 1997a, fig. 18.3; courtesy A. Sherratt) Map: The inter-regional context of state formation, c.3000–2500 BC Agricultural scenes in the tomb chapel of Imeri, Giza (West Field), Fifth Dynasty (after Lepsius 1849–56, vol. II, fig. 204) Bowl with model figures of yoked oxen, Tel el-Farah (North), N. Israel, Early Bronze Age (courtesy IAA) Copper vessels and Levantine imports from elite burials at Saqqara, First Dynasty (from Emery 1958, fig. 70.a; courtesy EES) Naqada III ceramic types, el-Kab, Upper Egypt (after Hendrickx 1994, figs. 7.H97, 8.H859, 9.M393, 10.388, 11.H887, 13.M179, 18.M134, 19.M347, 20. M16, 21.M335; courtesy S. Hendrickx) Mud-brick architecture at Tell el-Farkha, Nile delta, Naqada II (from Ciałowicz 2001, ph. 4; photography by R. Słabon˜ski; courtesy K. M. Ciałowicz) Flint sickle-blades from Tell el-Farkha, Nile delta (above) and Tel Erani, S. Israel (below); (Tell el-Farkha: after Chłodnicki and Ciałowicz 2002, fig. 15, drawings by Y. Kabacinski; courtesy M. Chłodnicki and K. M. Ciałowicz; Tel Erani: after Rosen 1988, fig. 6; courtesy S. Rosen) Seal impressions showing scenes of ceremonial threshing, from Arslantepe, S. E.Turkey (above) and Uruk, S. Iraq (below), late fourth millennium BC (after Frangipane 1997, fig. 16.1; courtesy M. Frangipane)

xiii

132 136

139

141 143

144

145

149

157

161

162

164

xiv

List of figures 8.5

8.6

8.7

8.8

9.1

9.2

9.3

9.4

9.5

Copper finial and spearhead, decorated incense burner and painted pottery from Qustul, Cemetery L, Lower Nubia, Late/Final A-Group (after Williams 1986, figs. 5.a, 5.d, pls. 34, 64.a, 64.b; courtesy: The Oriental Institute Museum, The University of Chicago, Chicago) Gold casing of mace-handle with embossed ornament, Sayala, Lower Nubia, Middle–Late A-Group (after Firth 1927, pl. 18, formerly in Egyptian Museum, Cairo) Tomb (1450) with mud-brick lining, Minshat Abu Omar, Nile delta, Naqada IIIA (after Kroeper 1992, fig. 3; courtesy K. Kroeper) Towards state formation: model illustrating the cultural economy of power in early Naqada III Egypt and Lower Nubia as the interaction of multiple conical structures, such that the local development of hierarchies is at the same time their alliance on a supra-local level (adapted from Friedman and Rowlands 1977, fig. 4) The Brooklyn Knife, found at Abu Zaidan in Upper Egypt, Naqada III (excavations of H. de Morgan, 1907–8; after Needler 1984, fig. 34, drawings by C. S. Churcher; courtesy BM) The Gebel el-Tarif Knife, carved ivory plaque from Hierakonpolis (Main Deposit) and the Davis Comb, Naqada III (comb after Hayes 1953, fig. 20; courtesy MMA; knife after de Morgan 1896, fig. 136; plaque after Quibell 1900, pl. 16.4) The Two Dog Palette (left: grinding side, right: non-grinding side), from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis, Naqada III (Ashmolean E.3924; drawing by Marion Cox, courtesy Ashmolean) Ivory spoon with animal ornament, Ballas, Naqada III (Ashmolean 1895.902; courtesy Ashmolean) Ivory knife-handle and figurine of a bound captive from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis, late Naqada II–Naqada III; ivory knife-handle with relief carving from Abydos, Naqada IID (Abydos: after Dreyer et al. 1998, fig. 7; courtesy G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo; Hierakonpolis: Ashmolean E.187, E.4975;

168

170

172

174

177

179

180

182

List of figures

9.6 9.7

9.8

9.9

9.10

9.11

9.12

9.13

9.14 9.15

after Whitehouse 2002, figs. 1, 6; courtesy H. Whitehouse, Ashmolean) The Hunters’ Palette (after Smith 1949, fig. 25) a, b, d: cylinder-seal impressions from Cemetery U, Abydos, late Naqada II–early Naqada III; c: stone palette with relief carving, el-Gerza; e: seal impression from Tarkhan, early Naqada III (Abydos: after Hartung 1998, figs. 8.22, 8.23, 10; courtesy U. Hartung, DAI Cairo; el-Gerza: after Petrie et al. 1912, pl. 6.7; Tarkhan: after Petrie et al. 1913, pl. 2.4) Cylinder-seal impressions from Uruk, S. Iraq, late fourth millennium BC (after Boehmer 1999, figs. 17.a, 52.a–c, 58.a, 64.a–d, 107.a, 121.a, pl. 41.13; courtesy DAI, Orient-Abteilung, Berlin) Silstone vessel forming the hieroglyphs ‘ankh’ and ‘ka’, probably First Dynasty (from Fischer 1972, fig. 1; courtesy MMA) Colossal stone statues from Coptos, c.3300 BC, and detail of relief carving (Ashmolean 1894.105e; courtesy Ashmolean; Cairo JdE 30770, after Kemp 2000, figs. 3, 7; courtesy A. D. Boyce and B. J. Kemp) Tomb U-j at Abydos, with neighbouring mudbrick tombs for comparison, Naqada IIIA (after Dreyer et al. 1993, fig. 4; courtesy G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo) Vessels with painted signs and inscribed tags from tomb U-j, Abydos, c.3300 BC (after Dreyer 1998, pls. 14.e, 16.a, figs. 79.112, 80.142, 75.24, 78.89, 80.127, 76.46, 78.103, 76.59; courtesy G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo) Ivory label of Narmer from Abydos and handle with relief carving from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis (after Dreyer et al. 1998, fig. 29; courtesy G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo; Ashmolean E.4975; after Whitehouse 2002, fig. 4; courtesy H. Whitehouse, Ashmolean) The Cities Palette, cities side (after de Morgan 1897, pl. 3) Wine jar with incised serekh of Narmer and cylindrical vessel inscribed with the name of Ka

xv 183 186

189

192

194

196

199

201

205 209

xvi

List of figures and contents, Dynasty 0 (Petrie UC16083, UC16072; courtesy Petrie) 9.16 The Scorpion Mace-head, from the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis (Ashmolean E.3632l; courtesy Ashmolean) 10.1 Private funerary monuments from Helwan and Saqqara, First Dynasty (after Saad 1957, pl. 26; Emery 1958, pl. 39; courtesy EES) 10.2 Carved relief panel below the Step Pyramid of Djoser, Saqqara, Third Dynasty (after Friedman 1995, fig. 14, from a drawing by Yvonne Markowitz) 10.3 East fac¸ade of tomb 3357 at Saqqara with Step Pyramid of Djoser in background; idealised reconstruction of a First Dynasty mastaba tomb (from Emery 1939, pl. 4; 1954, pl. 39; courtesy EES) 10.4 Substructure of tomb 3500 at Saqqara, showing stepped entrance and portcullis (from Emery 1958, pl. 119.b; courtesy EES) 10.5 Stepped funerary structure within tomb 3038, Saqqara, reign of Anejib (from Emery 1949, pl. 35. a; courtesy EES) 10.6 Furniture fragments from tomb 3504, Saqqara (from Emery 1954, pl. 26; courtesy EES) 10.7 Vase inscriptions of (a) Anejib (from Saqqara, beneath the Step Pyramid) and (b) Khasekhem (from Hierakonpolis), and cylinder-seal impressions of the reign of Den from Abydos (left) and Saqqara (right); (after Lacau and Lauer 1959, pl. 3.6; Quibell 1900, pl. 38; Petrie 1900, pls. 21.29, 25.56; 1901a, pl.18.139; Emery 1958, pls. 79.14, 79.16, 80.23; courtesy EES) 10.8 Vessels with painted inscriptions giving the owner’s name and indicating a commodity, from tomb 3507, Saqqara (courtesy EES) 10.9 Reconstructed section of painted fac¸ade, tomb 3505, Saqqara (from Emery 1958, pl. 7; courtesy EES) 10.10 Clay heads with cattle-horns surrounding tomb 3504, Saqqara (from Emery 1954, pl. 7.a; courtesy EES)

210

214

222

230

233

234

235 236

237

238

241

241

List of figures 10.11

10.12

10.13

10.14 10.15 10.16

10.17

Granaries (above) and stone tools (below): tomb 3038, Saqqara (former from Emery 1949, pls. 29.b; courtesy EES) The Abydos North Cemetery: early dynastic enclosures and boat graves (courtesy D. O’Connor, Penn.) Boat burials with enclosure of Khasekhemui (Shunet el-Zebib) in background (courtesy D. O’Connor, Penn.) Limestone funerary stela of Djet, from Abydos, Umm el-Qaab (Louvre E11007; courtesy ML) Private stelae from subsidiary burials, Abydos, Umm el-Qaab (after de Morgan 1897, figs. 800–9) Plan of Umm el-Qaab and Cemetery B, Abydos; burial complex of Den (adapted from Spencer 1993, fig. 53; from Dreyer et al. 1998, pl. 9.a; courtesy G. Dreyer, DAI Cairo) Bracelet comprising gold and turquoise serekh plaques, Abydos, reign of Djer (Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 35054; courtesy EES)

xvii

242

246

247 253 254

256

257

TABLES

1 2 3 4 5

Relative chronologies compared (courtesy of S. Hendrickx) Major cultural sequences of the fourth–early third millennium BC: Nubia, Egypt and the Levant Regional chronology of Egypt and Sudan, c.10,000–2000 BC Chronology of Mesopotamia and neighbouring regions, c.11,000–3000 BC Rulers of the earliest dynasties (adapted and revised from Baines 1995)

page 272 273 274 275 276

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

At the time of this book’s conception I had been planning a quite different kind of study, more historiography than archaeology. When Norman Yoffee suggested writing something on Egypt for this series, I saw an opportunity to combine these two interests. The result is more archaeology than history of ideas, and I am grateful to him, and to the reviewers of my original proposal, for keeping my pretensions in check. I would also like to thank Norman and Simon Whitmore of CUP for their enthusiasm and guidance throughout the book’s preparation. The text was written during my time as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University, which provided an ideal working environment, stimulating company and freedom to pursue my research. I am also grateful to the Warburg Institute for my brief but rewarding stay there as Frankfort Fellow, which left a lasting impression. Completion of the manuscript took place at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, whose staff and students I thank for making me welcome. I am indebted to the Institute for helping with the cost of illustrations, to Stuart Laidlaw for his patient assistance in preparing them for publication, and to all the excavators, museum staff and archivists who provided material. Full credits are given in the list of figure captions, and I would like to further acknowledge the generosity of Gu¨nter Dreyer, Rene´e Friedman, Stan Hendrickx, Donatella Usai, Baruch Brandl, Chris Naunton, Stephen Quirke, Christina Riggs and especially Helen Whitehouse. David O’Connor kindly made available as yet unpublished images and information relating to his work at Abydos. Many of the ideas presented here took form during the completion of my doctoral thesis under the supervision of Roger Moorey. His unexpected death, and that of Jeremy Black in the same year, brings home to me how fortunate I was in my academic surroundings at Oxford University. Their presence, and that of Andrew and Sue Sherratt, provided as rich a set of influences and diverse a range of criticism as any student could have hoped for. My particular thanks are due to John Baines for his painstaking and invaluable comments on the manuscript of this book, which improved it enormously, and for his unflagging inspiration over the last few years. I am grateful to the examiners of my doctoral thesis, Chris Gosden and Ian Hodder, for suggesting improvements and clarifications; Chris also provided

xx

Acknowledgements

numerous opportunities to present my work to a wider audience, from which I benefited greatly. The North-East Africa seminar in Oxford, run by Wendy James and Douglas Johnson, was another valued source of feedback and ideas. Individual discussions with Paul Treherne, Jeremy Coote, Lynn Meskell, Mukulika Banerjee, Maurice Bloch and Mike Rowlands sharpened my understanding of many issues. I have Dorian Fuller to thank for the opportunity to conduct fieldwork at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile, which informed several aspects of this study. No less essential were the resources of the Sackler, Balfour and Tylor libraries in Oxford, and the library of the Institute of Archaeology in London: my special gratitude to Diane Bergman, Mark Dickerson, Mike Morris and Robert Kirby for their expert assistance. In writing this book I appreciated again Holly Pittman’s kindness in inviting me, as a graduate student, to a conference on the origins of writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Ucko, as well as being a constant source of motivation, gave me the opportunity to participate in the ‘Encounters with Ancient Egypt’ conference at UCL, which opened up new perspectives. Several of the following chapters draw upon my earlier research articles, including contributions to that conference, and chapter 5 is reworked from a paper co-written with John Baines (Wengrow and Baines 2004). My final thanks go to my ever-growing family for their love and support.

Map of Egypt, showing prehistoric and early dynastic sites

INTRODUCTION: THE IDEA OF PREHISTORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH-EAST AFRICA

Evidence is only evidence when someone contemplates it historically. Otherwise, it is merely perceived fact, historically dumb. The Idea of History, R. G. Collingwood Unlike Egyptologists, prehistorians of Egypt do not now and never have possessed a conscious unity of purpose. Egypt before the Pharaohs, M. A. Hoffman

Echoing Gandhi’s famous judgement on European civilisation, we might begin by observing that the prehistory of Egypt ‘would be a good idea’. This may seem a very odd statement. The past century has seen virtually continuous field research into the cultures that preceded kingship in the valley and delta of the Nile. Syntheses have been written, site reports published, chronologies refined, museum collections established and expanded, analytical bibliographies compiled and websites created. In Michael Hoffman’s (1991) Egypt before the Pharaohs we even have an engaging, if now slightly dated, history of research. So I will try to explain what I mean. In western Europe a continuous development can be traced from the antiquarianism of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, often pursued within the field of jurisprudence, to the emergence of prehistoric archaeology. A direct line of thought and emotion links the literary resurrection of ancient Gaul and the ‘republic of the Druids’ to the reconstitution of prehistoric monuments as archives of national identity and social memory, and this recourse to a remote past echoes still earlier developments in Mediterranean humanism. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when archaeologists began to provide an independent account of their tribal origins, the vision of a time before kingship and written records—a time of freedom, equality and community—had already been woven into the political constitutions and historical imaginations of many European societies (Pocock 1957; Schnapp 1996). By contrast, archaeological research was introduced to the Middle East and North-East Africa on the coat-tails of imperial conquest. At much the same time that the antiquaries of northern Europe were piecing together local evidence for the Three Age system of human prehistory (Stone, Bronze, Iron; Daniel 1950), the birth of Egyptology and Assyriology was heralded by the

2

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY EGYPT

decipherment of royal proclamations such as the Rosetta Stone, found by French military engineers in 1799 and subsequently surrendered to the British (Pope 1975). Growing acceptance during the early and mid-nineteenth century of a long, secular chronology for human history initially made little impact upon the development of archaeology in these regions, fuelled as it was by an overriding sense that ‘archaeologists were hunting for the very beginnings of human history, as perceived in the light of sacred writings’ (Larsen 1996: xii). The primary concerns were to reveal, appropriate and study the cultural remnants of ancient and exotic forms of sacred kingship, and the civilisations where they first rose and fell, as described in biblical and Graeco-Roman sources. Nobody, in those early days of exploration, was looking for or thinking about a prehistory of the Middle East or North-East Africa. When the visible, ancient remains of the Oriental landscape did inspire Europeans to contemplate the past on a broader philosophical canvas, it tended to be as a series of cycles rather than a linear development. Among the most influential and widely translated of these meditations was the Comte de Volney’s Les ruines, ou, Me´ditation sur les re´volutions des empires (‘The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires’), published in 1791, in the wake of the French Revolution. The wreckage of the ancient Orient—its ‘extravagant tombs, mausoleums, and pyramids’, built ‘for vain skeletons’ under ‘the cloak of religion’—appears there as an allegory for the fall of European monarchy. Less than a decade later, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had read and been inspired by Volney’s works, stood triumphant before the people of Alexandria. In his victory speech he appealed, not to a pharaonic legacy, but to an idealised Islamic past of flourishing cities and trade, free from the yoke of Mameluke rule. And it was with French citizens, rather than the people of Egypt, in mind that Napoleon’s savants were set to the task of documenting and removing the ancient monuments (Said 1995: 81–3; Bret 1999). By the early twentieth century ancient Egypt served as a familiar topos (in Frances Yates’s sense of a real or imaginary space in which memory can be anchored) where the discontents of Judeo-Christian, democratic, capitalist society could be explored. Then, as today, these discontents and contradictions extend far beyond the sphere of political experience. Among them we find the repressed desire to abdicate responsibility for life to a higher authority, which satisfies both spiritual and physical needs; the desire for material rather than simply spiritual continuity after death; and the closely related desire to root the life of living institutions in some form of direct commerce with the dead (cf. Baudrillard 1993). This modern need for ancient Egypt as symbol and metaphor has accorded it a privileged place in western cultural memory, but has hardly been conducive to seeing it as a product of historical development. When significant quantities of prehistoric remains were eventually excavated in the Nile valley, at the close of the nineteenth century, it was more by accident than design, and at first the finds were not unanimously recognised as

Introduction

3

dating to a time before kingship. It was with a polite dismissal that W. M. F. Petrie, who subsequently went on to demonstrate almost single-handedly the existence of a ‘predynastic’ cultural sequence in Egypt, responded to the first volume of J. de Morgan’s Recherches sur les origines de l’Egypte, published in 1896 (see Drower 1985: 225). It is a further irony that a number of Petrie’s own early Egyptian discoveries, including the famous colossal statues found at Coptos (fig. 9.10), were subsequently rejected by the British Museum on grounds that they were ‘unhistoric rather than prehistoric’, a fit of pique for which Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and University College London—where Petrie, by way of retaliation, sent much of his predynastic material—have been grateful ever since (Petrie 1931: 153–7). For some early twentieth-century scholars, notably the founding father of Sudanese anthropology C. G. Seligman, investigating ancient Egypt’s prehistoric foundations was less a matter of excavating downwards than travelling southwards, beyond the perceived boundaries of the Oriental landscape. ‘Africa’, went the imperial slogan, ‘begins at Malakal’, in today’s Southern Sudan. During the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956), Malakal also marked the point at which archaeological activity, focused upon the visible monuments of ancient kingdoms and empires to the north, came to an end, and ethnographic fieldwork—often oriented as much towards the past as the present—began in earnest (Wengrow 2003b). Seligman was particularly interested in the pastoral tribes of the Upper Nile Province, in whom he perceived a racially corrupted remnant of prehistoric Caucasian immigrants, whose arrival on the African continent—in his view, and that of some others—had precipitated the rise of dynastic civilisation in ancient Egypt (Seligman 1913; 1934).1 By the late twentieth century such views had been rightly dismissed as malign fantasies (Sanders 1969). Nevertheless, the geographical division of labour between archaeology and anthropology that sustained them has persisted, and still delineates real boundaries and profound discrepancies in the depth of historical knowledge along the Nile. These boundaries have continued to influence the pattern of scholarship in North-East Africa to the present day. I discuss these issues further in chapters 3 and 5. Prior to becoming a historical idea, Egypt ‘before the pharaohs’ therefore existed both as a largely unordered assemblage of prehistoric objects and unloved human remains excavated within Egypt itself, and in the ethnographic imagination of a wider African present. By ‘a historical idea’ I mean something more than just a subject of study for professional archaeologists or another gap filled along the chronological spectrum of human development. I mean something which, although rooted in the knowable past, resonates with the present, and is understood to have been a formative, or at least distinctly meaningful, episode in the making of the contemporary world. 1

MacGaffey (1966) places Seligman’s ideas within the wider setting of contemporary racial theory.

4

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY EGYPT

A recent survey of textbooks used to teach American college courses on Western Civilisation provides a useful indication of how far the prehistory of the Middle East and North-East Africa still is from becoming an idea, in that sense (Segal 2000). Daniel Segal, who conducted the survey, suggests that the ‘Near East’, including both ancient Iraq (Mesopotamia) and Egypt, still tends to be represented not so much as a place (or series of places), but as a stage of global history. Specifically, it is made to stand for ‘early civilisation’: a transitional phase between the simple life of Stone Age peoples and modern civilisation in its western, secular form. During that phase, so the story goes, human societies achieved some important technological advances (e.g. the invention of writing and monumental architecture), but at the expense of submission to exploitative, religiously motivated and economically dysfunctional regimes. The prehistories of Egypt and Iraq are not presented as histories of what happened to societies there before the appearance of kingship, cities and writing systems. Rather, they are absorbed into a generic prehistory of all humankind, during which ‘people’ achieved the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to early farming societies. The Neolithic, in particular, is conceived as a crucial episode of economic development, which of course it was, but like all human transformations it was many other things as well, and these tend to be excluded. In this established narrative, a change in economic conditions precipitates a change in political relations, such that the overall transformation of coherent life-worlds (always simultaneously economic, political and ideological) is obscured from view, and a genuine long-term history of social power in the Middle East and North-East Africa is rendered inconceivable.2 The conclusion seems, on the face of it, to be a depressing one. Instead of a prehistory rooted in temporal development, and encompassing multiple trajectories of social and cultural change, students and the public at large are still, for the most part, being offered a pastiche: a symbolic prehistory of humankind, which also acts as a repository—or rather graveyard—for aspects of the present deemed ‘pre-modern’. In the present climate, with ‘civilisation’ firmly back on the political and intellectual agenda of the West, the retention of this topography of values has particularly strong implications for the regions concerned, which hardly need to be spelt out in detail. On a more positive note, accepting the reality of this status quo may provide archaeologists working in those regions with something approaching a ‘conscious unity of purpose’; the purpose being to change or at least question it. The idea of prehistory in the Middle East and North-East Africa remains, in more senses than one, a subversive and ‘disorienting’ one.

2

For a more wide-ranging critique of ‘periodisation by stereotype’ in archaeological and evolutionary thought, see Sherratt 1995.

Introduction

5

Aims, scope and method of this book Most scholars today would probably accept that hierarchy is a socially constructed, rather than a natural, feature of the Middle East’s historical landscape (although views to the contrary can still be found in some surprisingly prominent places). There is, however, a considerable difference between accepting a viewpoint on political or philosophical grounds and demonstrating its validity through the available evidence. In this book I will be aiming towards the latter goal by providing a sustained interpretation of social and cultural change in Egypt and neighbouring parts of Africa and Asia, spanning a period of more than seven millennia between the onset of the Holocene and the early centuries of dynastic rule that preceded the Old Kingdom (c.10,000–2650 BC). In writing it I have repeatedly asked myself what contribution a ‘world archaeology’ perspective should make to the study of early Egypt. World archaeology of course means different things to different people. To me it implies an approach that is comparative in scope, although not to the exclusion of inter-regional relationships and historical contingency. It also implies a commitment to address questions of general anthropological significance, including the variety of ways in which human groups and societies have engaged with what Abner Cohen (1974: 60) termed ‘perennial problems of human existence’, such as ‘the meaning of life and death, fortune and misfortune, good and evil, growth and decay’. In contrast to some other recent studies (notably, Trigger 2003), I do not attempt an initial definition of ancient Egypt as an example of some wider phenomenon, for instance: ‘early civilisation’, ‘the archaic state’ or ‘complex society’. Categories of this kind impose constraints and assumptions upon the analysis of social change that are unwarranted in a study like the present one, where we have the luxury of ‘thick description’. Some of these conventions, and in particular the use of ‘complexity’ as a metaphor for processes of early state formation, will be unpacked and questioned in the chapters that follow. What, then, of method? Here I define only some broad historical issues and parameters of investigation, which are expanded upon in individual chapters. During the early twentieth century the archaeological record of early Egypt, with its well-preserved cemeteries, was the envy of excavators working in other parts of the Old World. Rich assemblages of objects recovered from burials were well suited to the intellectual concerns of the day: seriation, typology, chronology, culture-groups, and the diffusion of peoples and traits (see Trigger 1989: 148–206). All was to change during the mid-twentieth century. While older theories of social evolution, such as those of Lewis Henry Morgan (1877), had placed considerable explanatory emphasis upon mobility and migration, the work of V. Gordon Childe during the 1930s and 1940s recast the ‘birth of civilisation’ in the mould of an ‘urban revolution’—an epiphany of the settled form of life, giving priority to those aspects of prehistoric development

6

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY EGYPT

associated with the establishment and growth of sedentary villages (e.g. Childe 1936). Robert Braidwood’s expedition to the ‘hilly flanks’ of the Iraqi Zagros during the 1950s demonstrated the possibility of substantiating this account with empirical data derived from habitation zones, including animal and plant remains that shed light on the beginnings of Neolithic food production (Braidwood and Howe 1960). In Egypt, where agrarian life was mainly restricted to the Nile alluvium, much of the raw material for what had become a conventional study of social evolution (habitation sites, regional settlement patterns, faunal and plant assemblages) now suddenly appeared beyond reach, owing to the modern reuse of land and the buildup of fluvial silts over ancient living sites. As will become clear in the chapters that follow, and as has been apparent now for some time, this initial prognosis was over-pessimistic. It nevertheless remains the case that, for the periods covered in this book (and much of the dynastic period that follows), Egyptian cemeteries, rather than settlements, provide the bulk of information concerning material culture, patterns of trade, practices of production and consumption and, of course, the ritual structuring of the human lifecycle. As Bruce Trigger (1979) has perceived, the prominence of sacred kingship in studies of early Egypt may have further contributed to its isolation from the social sciences during the late twentieth century. Once a cornerstone of social evolutionary thought, in the tradition developed by James Frazer (1911–15) and Arthur Hocart (1927), the institution of kingship was marginalized from much neo-evolutionary theory, which chose instead to ponder the transitions from ‘tribe’ to ‘chiefdom’ and from ‘chiefdom’ to ‘archaic state’. Forms of status as diverse as ‘warrior chief’ and ‘ritual leader’ were subsumed within a single category; a common criticism of the ‘chiefdom’ has since been that it spans too broad a range of social variation and types of power (Yoffee 1993; Kristiansen 1998). At around the same time, the anthropology of sacred kingship took a semiological turn, inspired by Georges Dume´zil’s analyses of Indo-European mythology and the structural anthropology of Claude Le´vi-Strauss (both ultimately grounded in comparative linguistics), and exemplified in Luc de Heusch’s studies of Bantu myth and sacrifice, and Marshall Sahlins’s work on perceptions of time and sacred power in Oceania.3 There is no inherent reason why the study of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia should have been excluded from this theoretical enterprise, and many of its central concerns were anticipated by Henri Frankfort (1948a), who attempted to discern consistent patterns of mythical thought and symbolic practice underlying the different forms of kingship in these two regions. More recent work (e.g. Hodder 1990; Rowlands 2003) suggests a belated, but nonetheless worthwhile engagement with aspects of structuralist thought in the archaeology of the Middle 3

E.g. Dume´zil 1968–73; Le´vi-Strauss 1963; de Heusch 1982; Sahlins 1985.

Introduction

7

East and North-East Africa; an engagement to which the present study also aspires. One of the criticisms sometimes levelled at structuralism (although not all studies are equally culpable) has been that of logocentrism: an over-reliance on language as a model for understanding social organisation and cultural transmission. Many studies have emphasised the importance for human relations and their development of practices that are not language-like (e.g. Bourdieu 1977; Bloch 1998). Particular attention has been drawn to types of social knowledge that are pre-discursive, infiltrating the person directly via what Marcel Mauss (1979 [1935]) called techniques du corps and rarely, if ever, articulated as formal, linguistic propositions. As Alfred Gell (1993: 3) observed, the salience of Mauss’s notion of ‘body techniques’ often ‘stems from the fact that it is through the body, the way in which the body is deployed, displayed, and modified, that socially appropriate self-understandings are formed and reproduced’. Such knowledge may range from routines of comportment, personal presentation, work and consumption to prescribed modes of ritual and ceremonial activity. Practice-centred approaches to the analysis of social change enforce no rigid dichotomy between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ experience (or, for that matter, between ‘art’ and ‘technology’), both of which are equally rooted in the socially educated bodies of individuals and their repertoires of behaviour and emotional response: part universal, part culturally learned. ‘Gods’, writes Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000: 78), ‘are as real as ideology is—that is to say, they are embedded in practices.’ A notion of material practice as constituting and actively transforming the parameters of social experience is integral to the interpretative approach followed in this book. Archaeological data are studied, not through predetermined categories such as ‘technology’, ‘art’, ‘administration’ and ‘cult’, but as mutually constitutive elements within total, developing forms of social life. For early Egypt, as I have indicated, the most fertile ground for such an approach lies in funerary practices, which offer a continuous record of structured human activity, implicating both bodies and artefacts in the transformation of social experience. Instead of seeing this patterning of the record as a bias to be corrected or minimised, I intend to turn it to my advantage by placing activities surrounding death and the body at the core of my interpretation of long-term change. This does not mean treating funerary remains as if they were snapshots of mundane life, rather than the outcome of purposeful ritual transformations. Nor does it imply a denial of their distinctive qualities as formalised expressions of loss, or a reduction of sentient human beings to automata, playing out well-formulated ideological strategies in a fantasy world free of emotion and contingency. What I would assert is that relationships between the living and the dead— sustained, negotiated and altered through ritual activity—were deeply interwoven, albeit in complex and indirect ways, with the material conditions of

8

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY EGYPT

existence and production: sufficiently interwoven to provide meaningful insights into the political and economic developments covered in this book. Of these, two episodes of change stand out. They are, respectively, associated with the adoption of domesticated animals and plants during the fifth millennium BC and the establishment, a millennium and a half later, of a unified territorial state under the centralised rule of a sacred monarch. Over the longterm, as I seek to show, both episodes involved fundamental transformations in economy, ritual practice and the articulation of social power. I further argue, notably in chapters 1 and 7, that neither development can be adequately comprehended without considering Egypt’s changing place within networks of communication and trade that spanned large areas of the western Old World, linking developments in North-East Africa to wider patterns of social and technological change in South-West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. In its totality, a record of ritual practices formed over thousands of years constitutes a distinct kind of historical reality, which—however fragmentary and disturbed—offers particular challenges and possibilities for interpretation. It is a reality that cannot always be reduced to the conscious intentions of particular actors. Neither, however, can it be attributed to forces beyond their control, or consigned to a realm outside the strategic interests of predatory groups within society. Social life leaves a material trace of its own development that is not random, and yet can often be grasped only at a remove from the rhythms of ordinary existence and decision-making: a pattern created in time and space by the manifold, momentary actions of individual agents, which is only partly perceptible to them as they contribute to its making, but no less human, social or—with the benefit of distance—recognisable for that. As I hope to demonstrate, there may be particularly good empirical reasons for approaching the relationship between changes in ritual practice and in the politico-economic sphere on an archaeological time-scale: in the perspective of millennia and centuries, rather than decades and years. Here it is instructive to compare the methodological conclusions of Maurice Bloch’s anthropological study of Merina circumcision rituals in Madagascar: First, we have seen some change occur in the ritual, however slow it may be. This is change brought about by the functional changes the ritual has undergone. These are not to be understood as direct responses to circumstances; they often appear as ad hoc abbreviations or expansions. These changes are, moreover, not as insignificant as they might appear at first sight. They do alter what is done in a way that in the long run, must lead cumulatively to major changes. This, however, would be over a long time, a longer time than the two hundred years of this study. (Bloch 1986: 193)

One of the principal arguments that will emerge from this study is that Neolithic social forms in North-East Africa and South-West Asia were more diverse, distinctive and robust than previously thought, and exerted a lasting influence upon the political development of those regions. There is a temporal

Introduction

9

continuity, an inertia, between Neolithic modes of engagement with the social and material worlds, and the modes of self-presentation adopted by dynastic elites. Such continuities, persisting within change, are not adequately accounted for either by evolutionary models which stress the progressive growth of technological and organisational complexity, or by evoking the internal structural and symbolic coherence of ‘high cultures’ and ‘great traditions’. Despite the characteristic appeals of dynastic elites to what Bloch (1987: 272) describes as ‘an order which transcends mere human experience’, their establishment and survival depended, to a significant degree, upon successful cooption and transfiguration of clearly defined domains of knowledge, rooted in the everyday lives and habits of their Neolithic antecedents. That process of co-option was not simple, rapid or total. Rather, it involved a succession of cultural strategies for appropriating and restricting access to mobile resources, land and sacred power. The material residues of those strategies, and their analysis, constitute a guiding strand in the archaeology of early Egypt.

PART I

TRANSFORMATIONS IN PREHISTORY

INDEX

A-Group Early 34, 75 Late/Final 140, 166, 173 Middle 38, 93, 122, 166 see also Khartoum Neolithic, Lower Nubia, Qustul Ab‘adiya 75, 82, 105, 111 Abka 112 Abu Ballas 20 Abu Hamed 17 Abu Matar 86 Abu Rawash 156, 171, 210, 228, 244 Abu Zaidan 75, 176 Abusir el-Melek 83, 107 Abydos 38, 82, 95, 114, 172, 184, 185, 190, 210, 245–58 Cemetery B 200, 204 Cemetery U 104, 118, 122, 184–5, 188, 198 funerary enclosures 211, 245–8, 249 relationship to North Saqqara 256–8 subsidiary burials 243, 246–7, 249, 252, 255 tomb-ownership 251 Umm el-Qaab 131, 172, 227–8, 229, 235, 239, 250–8 see also boat (burials), kingship, Osiris, royal, sacrifice, stelae, tomb U-j el-Adaima 79, 82, 109, 119, 122 el-Adam, see Nabta Playa Adams, B. 184 added value, see craft specialisation administration, see bureaucracy, seals and sealing practices adzes 29, 39, 170, 202, 243, 249

Aegyptiaca, see Manetho aesthetic experience and social power 133, 140, 152–4, 174 labour 174 Afghanistan 14 Africa, colonial perceptions of 3, 111 Africanus 128 agriculture, see farming Aha, king 200, 228, 232, 240, 246, 251, 255 ‘Ain Mallaha 22, 68 ‘Ain es-Sultan 22 alabaster (travertine) 14, 27, 255 alcohol consumption 98 see also beer, brewing installations, wine Alma´sy, L. 111 ‘Amarna tablets 13, 150 amazonite 27, 29, 57 Ame´lineau, E. 252 Amenhotep I 114 el-Amra 39, 75, 114, 116 Amratian culture, see Naqada I Amri-Kirbekan region 50 Amselle, J.-L. 213 amulets, see pendants Amuq 140 Anatolia (Turkey) Chalcolithic 31, 32, 33, 135 Neolithic 23, 25 Anderson, P. 163 Anejib, king 229, 232, 255 animal butchery 80 domestication, see domestication dung 78, 79 enclosures 49, 79

327

Index images and ornament 55–6, 67–8, 103–4, 105, 107, 170, 176–82, 186–7, 189–98, 200, 208, 215 skins 51, 57, 70 wealth 23, 173, 250, 264 see also landscape, pastoralism, primary pastoral community, rock art animal burials 56–9, 116, 120 relationship to domestication process 69, 70 see also cattle, dog, donkey, gazelle animals in archaeological interpretation 62 ankh 194, 212 Ankhka, official 235 Annales school of history 260 annals, see royal anthropology, history of 3, 6, 261–2 antiquarianism 1, see also constitutional antiquarianism antiquities market 100 ‘apsidal’ house 86 archaeology, history of 1–4, 5–6 archives 187–8 Arens, W. 259 Arkell, A. J. 19, 20, 49 Arkinian industry 18 Armant 33, 36–7, 38, 75 arrowheads 27, 47 Arslantepe 37, 142, 164, 188 art dynastic 100, 101, 102, 115 predynastic 55–6, 73, 99–123 transmission of motifs 115, 141–2 use of base-line and registers 115, 207, 222 see also aesthetic, animal, images, rock art ash-jars 123 ash-mounds of the Deccan plain 79 Ashmolean Museum 3, 181, 196 Aspatharia, see shells Assmann, J. 128 Assyriology 1 Aswan 17, 33, 255 Atbara River 17 aurochs, see cattle awls 34, 67

axes 39, 57, 249 Azor 171 B-Ware, see pottery Bab el-Dhra 138 baboons 92 Badakhshan 14 el-Badari 46, 49, 55, 56, 75 Badarian period 26, 46 cemeteries 27, 50–4 habitation 27–9, 49 imagery 55–6 material culture 51–3, 53–4, 54–5 Baines, J. 133, 147, 152, 212, 213, 215 Ballas 75, 95, 181, 187 Bani Suwaif 17 basalt 14, 34 Bashendi, see Dakhla Oasis basketry 26, 29, 47, 67, 102 Bat 190 Battaglia, S. 122 Battlefield Palette 211, 213 Baud, M. 128 Baudrillard, J. 259 Baumgartel, E. 101 beads bone 20 manufacture 80 marine shell 20, 51, 57 metal 169 ostrich egg-shell 20 stone 27, 51, 169 bears 150 bedja, see bread moulds beer 31, 39, 89, 94, 135, 138, 145, 158, 163, 173, 202, 231 importance in funerary rites 98, 122 see also brewing installations, fermentation Beersheba valley 32, 86 Bender, B. 59 Bes 193 bevelled-rim bowls 94, 97, 151, 152 biblical sources, see Old Testament binding, images of 182, 185, 191–5, 212 biography, see tomb biography Bir Kiseiba 48 Bir es-Safadi 86 Birket Qarun 18, 47 see also Fayum depression

328

Index

Bloch, M. 8, 9, 127 board-games 221, 223 Boas, F. 104 boat burials 149, 226, 244, 249–50 ceremonial functions 128 depictions 33, 102, 104, 109, 112, 114, 200, 249 technology 33 transport 137, 139, 149 body as basis of social morphology and classification 69–71, 102, 121, 185–7, 264, 265 as symbolic container 165 -centred habitus 70 cosmetic treatment of 41–2, 70, 158, 175, 181, 185 dismemberment 116–20, 121–2, 123, 134, 165, 166, 265 display 27, 34, 101, 102, 107, 152–4, 169, 175, 265 elite/courtly 219–23 ornamentation 20, 27, 51–3, 69, 70, 99, 122, 169 preservation 119, 123, 165 wrapping 51, 122, 166, 225 see also cemeteries, elite culture, funerary image, human remains, images, mummification, royal, social (power) ‘body politic’ 227–8, 258, 259–60, 263, 268–9 ‘body techniques’, see techniques du corps Bonaparte, Napoleon 2 bone, cultural uses of 51, 67, 99, 122, 155, 204, 206, see also body Book of the Dead 2 Boyer, P. 192 bracelets 27, 51, 57, 155, 255 Braidwood, R. 6 Braun, E. 86 bread 31, 39, 89, 94, 135, 138, 145, 163, 202, 239 role in funerary rites 98, 122, 221, 239 bread moulds 95, 158, 160, 173, 231 brewing installations 95, 160, 163, see also fermentation bricolage 191

British Museum 3 bronze 14 Brooklyn Knife 176, 178–81, 202 Brunton, G. 79 bucrania 57–9, 202, 241, 245 Buhen 146–7 Bull Palette 178, 208, 213 bullae 188 bureaucracy development in early Egypt 83, 204, 218, 238, 239, 267–9 development in Mesopotamia 82, 135, 136, 188, 207 theoretical approaches to 77, 260, 264, 267–9 see also seals and sealing practices, writing systems burial practices multiple 56, 68, 155 secondary 68, 119 territorial aspects 70, 89, 121 see also body, cemeteries, infant burials, mortuary (cult), mummification, ritual, tombs burins, see microliths Burton, J. 69 Butana 17 Buto, see Tell el-Fara‘in-Buto Butzer, K. 215 Byblos 150 kingship at 148 relations with Egypt 148 see also maritime trade and transport, timber C-Ware, see pottery Cairo Museum 196 calciform vessels 55 Calvino, I. 72 camels, dromedary 147 Canaanean blades 160–1 Canaanite jars 140 Caneva, I. 28 Capart, J. 101–2 capital investment, role in state formation 142–6, 159, 173 capitalism 59–60, 61, 263, 268 caprids, see goat, sheep caravan routes, see donkey Carnavon Knife 178, 202

Index cartouche 194 C ¸ atalho¨yu¨k 61 cataracts, see Nile River catfish (Clarias), see fish Caton-Thompson, G. 29, 63, 78 cattle burials 56, 57–9, 70, 120 census of 128 domestication 18, 23, 46–9 economic roles 18, 70, 250 mitochondrial DNA 48 shorthorn 163 special status in studies of symbolism 61 see also bucrania, plough agriculture Cauvin, J. 62 cedar, see timber ceiling stelae, see stelae (private) cemeteries interpretation of 5, 6, 7–8, 76, 89–90 plundering of 75, 94, 116, 119, 224 see also Badarian period, burial practices, First Dynasty, Khartoum Neolithic, Maadi-Buto phase, mortuary (cult), Naqada I, Naqada II, Naqada III, royal, tombs ceramics, see pottery cereals domestication of 22, 23 early evidence in Egypt 23, 47, 84 free-threshing wheat 23 processing and consumption of 90, 163 storage of 47, 244 see also beer, bread, fermentation, granaries ceremonial objects 41–3, 140, 141, 176–87, 190, 193, 202, 206, 208, 213, 248, 266, see also individual entries for named objects Chad 17, 29 Chakrabarty, D. 7 charismatic authority 268 Charva´t, P. 187 Chazan, M. 95 cheese, see dairy products chiefdom 6, 89 Childe, V. G. 5, 59, 263 China 77

329 chisels 243 chronology 94, 127, and see Appendix churns 32, 36 cities, see urbanisation Cities Palette 200, 208 city-states 72, 142, 145, 148 role in Mesopotamian cosmology 133 civilisation, concepts of 4, 5, 59–60, 260 Clastres, P. 262–3 clay 22, 99, see also figurines, mud-brick, pottery climate change 16–17, 21, 22 coffins 232, 252 Cohen, A. 5 Collingwood, R. G. 1 colonies, see Levant, Uruk expansion combs 41, 51, 56, 59, 70, 101, 122, 176, 185, 223, 249, 264, 265 complexity, see social complexity cones, see wall-pegs constitutional antiquarianism 1, 127 copper artefacts 34, 38–9, 84, 169, 170, 171, 243, 249, 255 distribution 14, 26, 36, 138 metallurgy 32, 36, 38–9, 147 Copper Age, European 30–1 Coptos Colossi 3, 195–8, 200 cornelian 14, 27, 57, 80, 119, 172 cosmetic implements, ornamentation of 99 palettes 27, 51, 57–9, 70, 101, 105, 116, 119, 140, 155, 176, 185, 190, 264, 265 substances 51, 70, 181 see also ceremonial objects cowrie shells, see shells craft specialisation 34, 76, 77, 80, 97–8, 140, 142, 163, 175, 216, 255, 265 Cribb, R. 64 crocodiles 80 Crouwel, J. H. 164 crowns, see Red Crown, White Crown cult objects 193, 195 cultural unification of Egypt 31, 38, 72, 83, 89, 215 cuneiform script, see writing systems custom, idea of in historical thought 127

330

Index

cylinder seals, see seals and sealing practices Cyprus 23, 61 Cyrenaica 147 D-Ware, see pottery ad-Dabbah 17 dairy products 32, 97, 135, 144, 145, 163 Dakhla Oasis 54 Dakka 75 Daniel, G. 60 dates 31 dating, see chronology Davis, W. 119 Davis Comb 178, 181, 202 death, social and emotional responses to 7–8, 69, 120–1, 223–4, 266–7 ceremonial treatment of 165–6, 269 see also body, cemeteries, dynastic, funerary image, human remains, images, mummification, tombs decipherment 1 Deg˘irmentepe 32, 33 delta, see Nile delta democracy 260–1 Den, king 228, 232, 235, 246, 247, 249, 255, 256 Dentalium, see shells desert ecology 14, 16, 48 dietary practices 89, 94–5, 137, 138, 173 diorite 14, 27, 34, 80 Diospolis Parva, see Ab‘adiya, Hu ‘disenchantment of the world’ 61, 268 divine cult 128 divine kingship, see kingship Djer, king 228, 246, 249, 252, 255 Djet, king 147, 246, 249, 255 Djoser, king, see Netjerikhet dog burials 56, 68 domestication of 22 dom palm 47 domestication adoption of domesticates in Egypt 23–5, 26, 44–7, 48 animal 23, 47–9 as a mode of engagement 62 as metaphor 59, 71 as social/symbolic process 59–62 history of concept 4, 59–62

plant 22, 23 regional variation in patterns of 62 and trade 23 see also animal burials, cattle, farming, Neolithic Dongola Reach 27, 50, 55, 57 donkey burials 226 use as pack animal 36, 39, 76, 89, 147, 160 Dreyer, G. 198, 203, 206, 257 dualism, in royal symbolism 207, 212, see also Red Crown, Two Ladies, Two Lands, White Crown Dume´zil, G. 6 Dumont, L. 259, 260 Durkheim, E. 261, 262 dynastic art, see art constructions of death 223–4, 258, 266–7 see also elite culture, kingship, royal Dynasty 0, definition of 128, 133, 198, 203, 211, see also Coptos Colossi, Naqada III, tomb U-j early dynastic period, see Naqada III, First Dynasty, Second Dynasty, Third Dynasty Early Khartoum, see Khartoum Mesolithic Eastern Desert 111–12 dynastic exploitation of 146, 147, 211, 255 Mesolithic 19 natural resources 14, 34, 51, 54, 80 Neolithic (Badarian) presence 27, 54 see also rock art Ebla 148, 150 ebony 34 Eckholm Friedman, K. 263 economy of sacrifice 175, 264 Edwards, D. 173 egalitarianism 262 Egypt, ancient boundaries, cultural and historical definition of 16, 146–8, 215–16, 229, 265–6 ecology 6, 14 in modern education 4

Index modern representations of 2, 4 natural resources 14 nature of the archaeological record 6, 7, 9 Egyptology 1 Elam 142 Elephantine 146, 184, 231 elephants 92 Eliade, M. 66 Elias, N. 60 elite culture 9, 13–14, 137, 140–2, 146, 148, 150, 153, 164, 167, 171, 178, 186, 191, 213–17, 218–26, 265, see also ceremonial objects emblematic personification 212 embodiment as a form of sacred power 133 as an idiom of social transformation 71, 265, 268 Emery, W. 227, 235 ‘En Besor 160 En Shadud 87 enclosures, see Abydos, animal Engelmayer, R. 113 English Patient, The 111 equids, see donkey Eridu 33 Eritrea 147 estates establishment of 159, 160, 173, 175, 203, 210, 266 organisation of 142–5, 266 relation to funerary and mortuary practices 203, 210, 231, 238, 249, 266 see also capital investment, ‘internal colonisation’, mastaba tombs, mortuary (cult), plough agriculture, viticulture Ethiopia 147 ethnographic analogy, see pastoralism, ritual Eusebius 128 evolution, see social evolution exotic commodities, see prestige goods eye paint 101 faience 172, 184, 255 Fairservis, W. 250 ‘false door’ 225

331 Faltings, D. 158 farming alluvial 17–18, 24–5 dry 17–18 in social evolutionary thought 59–60 irrigation 26, 32, 135, 159, 213 specialisation of 32 spread of practices 23–5, 26, 44–7 see also Neolithic, plough agriculture, primary farming, secondary products Fayum depression 17, 18, 29, 34, 83 A culture 47 Kom K 47 Mesolithic 18 Neolithic 25, 29–30 feasting 97, 123 feathers 57 female creativity 187 fermentation 31, 94, 97, 135, 145, 158, see also beer, brewing installations Fertile Crescent 21 festivals, see royal Fifth Dynasty 130, 132 figs 31 figurines 22, 23, 36, 55, 56, 100, 101, 104, 105, 116, 184, 185 Finkelstein, I. 64 First Dynasty 128, 131, 140, 146, 178, 184, 185, 194, 204, 211, 212, 215, 218–58 definition of 128 location of royal cemetery 227–8 fish and fishing 18–19, 25, 46, 49, 80, 84 in burials 56 trading of 39 flax 23, 47 flint 47, 67, 80, 90, 101, 116 floods, see Nile River foreigners, representation of 215–16 Fort Cemetery, see Hierakonpolis Foucault, M. 153–4 Frankenstein, S. 75 Frankfort, H. 6, 41, 102, 193, 239, 259 Frazer, J. G. 6, 60, 261 French Revolution 2, 261 Friedman, R. 79, 90, 94 Fuchs, G. 114

332

Index

Fulani 64 funerary enclosures, see Abydos funerary image, of the person 117–23 funerary rites, see ritual furniture, as an elite product 140, 144, 169, 175, 182, 184, 202, 211, 221–3, 234, 243, 255 Fustel de Coulanges, N. D. 261, 264

Graeco-Roman period 123, 128, 146, 195, 267 texts 2, 128 see also Manetho granaries 160, 243, 244, 249 granite 14, 248, 255, 257 graves, see cemeteries Green, F. W. 109 grinding stones 19, 59, 78, 163

galena 27, 51 Gardiner, A. 207 gazelle as social resources 66 burials 20, 57, 68 Gebel el-Araq Knife 41, 114, 115, 178, 191 Gebel Nabta 54 Gebel Ramlah 54 Gebel Sheikh Suleiman 147 Gebel el-Tarif Knife 178, 181 Gebel Zeit 147 Gebelein 109 el-Geili 50 Gell, A. 7, 153–4 gender 187, 221 Gerf Hussain 75 el-Gerza 83, 118, 190 Gerzean culture, see Naqada II gezira (‘turtle-back’) 21, 87 el-Ghaba 50, 59 Ghassulian, see Levant Gisr el-Mudir 251 Giza 218, 228, 255 glyptic, see seals and sealing practices goat 23 burials 56, 57 see also domestication, pastoralism, primary pastoral community Gobineau, A. de 261 goddess, see Mother Goddess Godin Tepe 138 gods representation of 190, 193, 194, 195, 203, 207 role in mortuary cult 224 see also royal (offerings to gods), temples (to deities) gold 14, 26, 34, 38, 54, 119, 140, 147, 148, 159, 170, 172, 175, 232, 255

habitus 70 Habuba Kabira 89, 135 Hacinebi 36 Hahn, E. 60 hair 70, 107 Halaf culture, see Mesopotamia (Neolithic) Hamitic hypothesis 3, 111, 264 Hammamiya 49, 63, 78 Haraga 83 harpoons 18, 20 Hartog, F. 63 Hartung, U. 86 Hassan, F. 79 Hassuna culture, see Mesopotamia (Neolithic) Hathor 190 Hayonim 68 hearths 19, 22, 50, 54, 78, 87, 123 Heliopolis 36, 83, 128 Helwan 20, 29, 220–3, 231, 242, 244 Hemaka, official 235, 249 Hendrickx, S. 158 Herodotus 228 Herzfeld, M. 267–8 Hetepheres I, queen 91 Hetepsekhemui, king 250 Heusch, L. de 6, 176 Hierakonpolis 33, 38, 73–5, 76, 77–8, 80–2, 89–90, 104, 105, 109, 119, 120, 171, 172, 202, 212 craft production at 38–9, 80, 92, 95, 138 Fort cemetery 89 Fort enclosure 248, 250 Kom el-Ahmar 104 Kom el-Gemuwiya 239–40, 243 Locality HK6 92, 169, 171, 172 Locality HK29A enclosure 80 Locality HK43 120, 123

333

Index Main Deposit 182–4, 185, 190, 200, 204, 211, 383 rock art and inscriptions 114 Temple of Horus 73, 182 tomb 100 (Painted Tomb) 109–11, 114–15, 165 see also Wadi Abu Suffian, Wadi Khamsini hierarchy 134, 142–6, 159, 165, 167, 173, 175, 215, 216, 218, 260, 262, 265 hieroglyphic script, see writing systems Hocart, A. 6 Hodder, I. 71 Hoffman, M. 1 Hole, F. 64 Holmes, D. 79, 90 Homo hierarchicus 173, 259 Hornung, E. 193 horticulture 31–2, 138, 159, see also olive, viticulture Horus 17, 134, 211, 257 bird 255 ‘followers of’ 133 name 211, 225, 236, 252 Temple, see Hierakonpolis house construction 22, 30, 68, 78 organisation 26 social and symbolic aspects 23, 30, 68, 69, 71, 133, 264 Hu 75 human remains identification of 73, 116 see also body, bone, cemeteries Huni, king 231 hunter-gatherers 4, 18–20, 62 Hunters’ Palette 178, 185, 200, 207 hunting 47 representations of 185 see also animal (images and ornament), ceremonial objects, Hunters’ Palette, rock art images as cultural landscapes 99, 122, 165, 178–82, 265 as extensions of the body 107 cognitive properties of 191–5, 240, 245

on perishable media 109 restriction of access to 140, 152–4, 174, 206, 211, 215 ritual deposition of 115, 234–6 transfer between media 104–7, 182 see also aesthetic, art, binding, funerary image, monsters imperialism, modern 1 import substitution 139, 204 incense burner 167 incense trade 147 Indus valley 142 infant burials 30, 50, 155 Ingold, T. 62 interaction spheres, predynastic 90 ‘internal colonisation’ 145, 159, see also estates Iran, see Elam, Khuzistan Iranian plateau 32 Iraq, see Mesopotamia Irihor 211 iron 147 irrigation, see farming Iry-Hor, see Irihor Isnan industry 18 Israel, see Levant ivory 41, 51, 56, 57, 99, 155, 180, 184, 200, 202, 204, 223 James, W. 218 jasper 14, 27 Jebel Aruda 135 Jeffreys, D. 231 Jemdet Nasr 136 al-Jerar, see Nabta Playa Jericho 22 jewellery 144, 223 jmjt-pr 231 Jones, A. 99 Josephus 128 ka 194 Ka, king, see Sekhen/Ka el-Kab 18, 154–8 Kadero 46, 50 Kadruka 50, 51, 57 Kafr Hassan Dawud 159, 160 Kahl, J. 206, 213, 235, 238, 239 el-Kanayis 114 Kansa, E. 215

334

Index

Kantor, H. 102 Kebara 67, 68 Kemp, B. 184, 197, 198, 243, 257 Kfar Monash hoard 39 Kharga Oasis 54 Khartoum 17 Khartoum Mesolithic 18, 28 Khartoum Neolithic 26 cemeteries 50–4 habitation 49–50 material culture 51–3, 53–4 relationship to Badarian 64 Khartoum Variant 18 Khasekhemui (Khasekhem), king 184, 235, 247, 248, 251 el-Khattara 79 Khentiamentiu 131 Khoikhoi 64 Khor Bahan 75 Khuzistan 37 kilns, see pottery (manufacture) king-lists 128–33, 198, 203 kingship African 6, 217, 260 comparative study of 6, 217, 259–61 cosmological role of 217, 259–61 Egyptian 127–34, 137 European 127, 227, 259–61 ‘involution of’ 263 Mesopotamian 133 origins of 128–34, 133 sacred 6, 217, 259–61, 263 structuralist interpretations of 6, 217 and time 127–34, 239 and wild animals 208, 215, 245 see also Horus, royal kinship networks, breakdown of 98, 142, 150, 152, 166, 174 knife-handles, decorated 182, 184, 185, 190, see also individual entries, and ceremonial objects knots, see binding Ko¨hler, C. 163 Kom el-Ahmar, see Hierakonpolis Kom el-Gemuwiya, see Hierakonpolis Kom K, see Fayum depression el-Kubaniya 75 Ku¨chler, S. 99, 193, 269 Kufur Nigm 159 Kus, S. 151

L-Ware, see pottery labour, centralised recruitment of 135, 138, 145, 173, 174 Lake Aateibe´ 22 Lake Chad 19 Lake Kinneret 148 Lake Moeris, see Birket Qarun Lake Nasser 167 land ownership, relationship to mortuary cult 231, 239, 244, see also burial practices, estates, property landscape, cultural construction of 16, 22, 99, 122, 165, 173, 174, 178–82, 191, 229, 231, 250, 258 language, as model of cultural analysis 7 lapis lazuli 14, 33, 40, 119, 172, 255 lapwings and bows, symbolism of 213 Laqeita oasis 19 Lates, see fish Lauer, J.-P. 228 leather 51–3 Lebanon, see Byblos Lehner, M. 95 Levant Chalcolithic (Ghassulian) 31–2, 86, 138 Early Bronze Age 34–6, 38–9, 86, 87, 138 Egyptian colonisation of 89, 138–40, 145, 159 Pottery Neolithic 25 Pre-Pottery Neolithic A 22 Pre-Pottery Neolithic B 22–3, 69 trade relations with Egypt 137–8, 147, 159, 171, 204, 215, 222, 255 see also Byblos, pottery Levantine Corridor 22, 23, 25 Le´vi-Strauss, C. 6, 65, 99, 120, 134, 191 Levy, T. 215 Libya 147, 212, 249 Libyan Palette, see Cities Palette Lienhardt, G. 61 life, giving and receiving of 212, 216, 218, 229, 245 see also ankh, sacrifice limestone 34, 196, 257 linen 109, 145, 252, 255

Index lion burials 252 imagery, see kingship (and wild animals) lithics Mesolithic 18 Naqada I–II 38, 90, 116 Naqada III 160, 163 Neolithic 29 see also arrowheads, Canaanean blades, flint, microliths, pressure-flaked knives, sickles Littauer, M. 164 long-distance trade, see trade Loos, A. 151, 153 Louvre 261 Lower Egypt, see Fayum depression, Nile delta Lower Nubia centralisation of society 166–71, 173 cultural divergence from Egypt in Naqada II 166 domination by Egypt 146, 266 Mesolithic 18 natural resources 14, 34, 111, 173 trade with Egypt 34, 38, 166, 169, 215 see also A-Group, Qustul, rock art Maadi 35, 83, 84–6 Maadi-Buto phase 35, 83, 159 cemeteries 36, 83 el-Ma‘amariya 75, 104 Mace, A. C. 116 mace-heads 52, 59, 107, 116, 140, 155, 170, 176, 184, 185, 264, see also Narmer Mace-head, Scorpion Mace-head Machiavelli, N. 127 Madagascar 8 el-Mahasna 75, 95 Mahgar Dendera 2, 47, 49 Maikop 142 Makhadma 18 malachite 14, 51, 59, 119, 158 male creativity 187 Manetho 127, 128 Marfoe, L. 148 maritime trade and transport 17, 23, 36, 89, 140, 146, 147–50, 159, see also timber, trade

335 marl 38, 94, 156, 160, 169, 267 el-Masa‘id 75, 107 mastaba tombs 173, 211, 228, 231–45, 249, 251, 255 as ceremonial representation of estate 244–5 identification of ownership 234–6 painting on 240, 243, 245 subsidiary burials 240, 243 visual impact 239–43 see also Abu Rawash, Giza, Naqada, sacrifice, Saqqara, Tarkhan master of animals motif 115, 191 Matmar 49, 75 Mauss, M. 7, 187 Medjedka, official 235 Megiddo 138 me´moire monarchique 128, 134 memory 76, 83, 108, 121, 122, 133, 134, 151, 174, 186–7, 216, 232, 245 political economy of 123, 245 see also me´moire monarchique Memphis 172, 210, 228, 249, 251 Menes (Meni) 127, 130, 228 Merika, official 225, 227, 240 Merimda Beni Salama 30, 55 Merina, circumcision rituals 8 Merneith, queen 131, 246 Mesenka, official 235 Mesolithic, see regional entries Mesopotamia ecology 14 immigrants influence on Egypt 97, 141, 142, 187–8, 191, 239 modern representations of 4 natural resources 14 Neolithic 26, 187, 264 see also bureaucracy, kingship, secondary products, temples, Ubaid period, urbanisation, Uruk expansion, writing systems metals distribution 14, 137 production 32, 38–9, 138 sheet metal 34, 39, 140, 159, 167, 169, 170, 222, 234 see also copper, gold, iron, mining, silver Metropolitan Museum 208, 211

336

Index

microliths 18, 47 Midant-Reynes, B. 63 middens 49–50, 63, 78, 79, 87 migration 54, 88, 137 milking 18, 24, 49 Min 197, 198 miniature models 223, 230, 244, 255 mining 146, 147 Minshat Abu Omar 84, 89, 160, 169, 171 Minshat Ezzat 185 mobility as an aspect of social form 5, 27–9, 30–1, 80, 99, 107, 121, 166, 229, 250, 256, 264 restriction to elites 142, 146–50, 250, 266 monsters, images of 181, 191–5, 208–9, 215 Moorey, P. R. S. 187, 239 Morgan, H. de 176 Morgan, J. de 3, 227 Morgan, L. H. 5 Morphy, H. 104 mortuary cult 22, 120–1, 130–1, 223–31, 238, 250, 257, 266–7 meal 220–3 texts 134 see also body, death, mummification, statue Mostagedda 49, 55, 56, 75, 79 Mother Goddess 60, 62 Mount Hermon 148 mud-brick 22, 33, 38, 109, 122, 137, 160, 163, 173, 249, see also tombs mummification dynastic 123, 225–6, 252, 255, 267 predynastic antecedents 120, 123 mythology, see Osiris Nabta Playa 19, 25, 48–9, 54, 57 Naga el-Deir 75, 104, 187 Nahal Mishmar 32 Naqada 32, 38, 75, 82, 110, 114, 118, 187 Cemetery T 110, 119, 165 mastaba tomb 227, 228, 232, 239, 251 North Town 82 South Town 82

Naqada I 33–6 cemeteries 75, 83 settlement patterns 73–5, 77–80 Naqada II 33–6, 38–40 cemeteries 75, 83–4, 89–90, 114–20 settlement patterns 72, 73–5, 77–80, 80–2 Naqada III cemeteries 154–75 settlement patterns 159–60 see also ceremonial objects, Coptos Colossi, Dynasty 0, First Dynasty, Second Dynasty, Third Dynasty Narmer, king 131, 138, 147, 198, 200, 204, 207–8, 211, 212, 213, 251 Narmer Mace-head 41, 164, 184, 211, 213 Narmer Palette 41–3, 178, 182, 191, 197, 204, 207–8, 213, 215, 218, 231 Natufian culture 22, 66–8, 71 nebty, see Two Ladies Negev Desert 21 Neith 190 Neith-hotep 227 Nekhbet 211 Nekhen, see Hierakonpolis Neolithic coastal (Mediterranean) pattern 25 diversity of forms 62, 264 European 23, 30 Nile delta 29–30 Nile valley 26–9, 264 spread of Neolithic economies, see farming see also domestication, Levant, Mesopotamia Neolithic paradox 65 Netjerikhet, king 229–31, 235, 257 niched architecture, see palace fac¸ade Nile delta ecology 14, 17, 21, 29–30 restructuring of economy in Naqada III 159–65 transformation of in Naqada II 83–9, 215 see also cultural unification of Egypt, Maadi-Buto phase,

337

Index Merimda Beni Salama, Naqada II, Naqada III, Neolithic Nile River dams 17 Early Holocene 16–17, 18–20 flooding regime 17–18, 19, 25, 132 geography 16–18 navigation 17, 76 sources 17 Nile valley ecology 14, 28, 33–4, 64 see also A-Group, Badarian period, Khartoum Neolithic, Naqada I, Naqada II, Naqada III, Neolithic Ninetjer, king 250 nswt-bity 212 Nubia, see A-Group, Lower Nubia Nuer 64 numerical notation 200 obsidian artefacts 137, 172, 202 distribution 14 trade 22, 23, 26, 80, 147 ochre 51, 57, 93, 158 O’Connor, D. 245, 250 offering lists 222 officials, see Ankhka, Hemaka, Medjedka, Merika, Mesenka oil appearance in early inscriptions 204, 210, 236, 249, 251, 255 deposition in elite tombs 221, 234, 251 see also olive Old Kingdom, see royal (annals), tomb scenes Old Testament 2, 60, 65 olive cultivation 31 distribution 14, 31 oil, trade in 39, 94, 137, 148 el-Omari 84 ‘Opening the Mouth’ 225 oral recitation 130 organic solidarity 262 orientalising 191 ornament, see body

Osiris 131 myth 118, 134 Temple 182, 184 ostrich egg-shell, see beads P-Ware, see pottery p‘t 225 Pacific ethnography 101 Painted Tomb, see Hierakonpolis (tomb 100) palace fac¸ade architecture 211, 225, 239–40, 245, 247–8, 249 motif 225, 232, 252, see also serekh Palermo Stone 132, 133, 149 Palestine, see Levant palettes, see cosmetic papyrus 131, 206 pastoralism biblical notions of 65 ethnoarchaeological approaches to 64–5, 264 modern pastoral societies 65 perception of as historically marginal 64–5, 264 prehistoric 23, 26, 63–4, 65, 70, 79, 84 see also primary pastoral community Peet, T. E. 118 pendants 107 penis sheaths 104, 114, 209 Pepi II 132 Peribsen, king 247, 248, 251 Persian Gulf 31, 142 personal adornment, see body Peru 77 Petrie, W. M. F. 3, 75, 94, 101, 102, 110, 118, 119, 184, 195, 197, 247 Petrie Museum 3 Pfaffenberger, B. 66 Philip, G. 138, 159 Pitt Rivers Knife 178, 202 Pittman, H. 192 plough agriculture 32, 135, 142, 145, 159, 162, 163, 266 Pocock, J. G. A. 127 points, see arrowheads polis 261 porphyry 190, 202, 255 postholes 49, 78–82, 84, 86, 87, 172, 240 potlatch 269

338

Index

pottery A-Group, eggshell ware 167 B-Ware 90, 91 Badarian 51, 53–4, 73 C-Ware 91, 92–3, 102–4, 107 coarse wares, development of 39, 87, 90, 94–5, 98, 116, 156–8, 158, 173, 202 comparisons with rock art, see rock art cylindrical jars, Naqada III 156, 158, 169, 209, 222, 236 D-Ware 38, 92–3, 102–4, 109, 116, 200 Fayum 29 fine wares, predynastic 90–2 functions of, Naqada III 158–9 impressed 19 inscriptions on 200, 202, 206, 209–11, 235, 236, 239, 251 Khartoum Neolithic 51, 53–4 L-Ware 156, 158 Levantine 22, 36, 39, 202, 222, 255 Maadi-Buto 36 manufacture 53–4, 90–4, 151–2, 156–8 Mesolithic 19 Mesopotamian Chalcolithic-Uruk 33, 94, 97, 151 Mesopotamian Neolithic 26, 61, 102, 151 metallic ware 255 non-figural decoration on 103 P-Ware 92 painting of 92–3, 99, 100, 141, 156, 167, 181, 200, 265 plastic ornamentation on 104 social and symbolic roles in Naqada I–II 92, 94, 104–7, 165–6 use in burials 39, 90–2, 94, 95, 119, 122, 156, 202, 243 use in trade 39, 86, 94, 138, 140, 148, 150, 171 use of temper 267 W-Ware 94, 138, 156, 204 wheel-made 36, 158 see further entries for individual forms, and dietary practices Pottery Neolithic, see Levant power, see social (power)

practice, theories of 7 Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), see Levant Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), see Levant predynastic, use of term 72, see also Naqada I, Naqada II prehistoric art, see art prehistory, development of in Egypt and neighbouring regions 1–4, 127 in Europe 1, 127 preservative treatments, see body pressure-flaked knives 38, 171 prestige goods 75, 97, 122, 140, 166, 173, 175, 187 primary farming 24–5 primary horticultural community 30 primary pastoral community 31, 44, 264 projectile points 47 property 23, 26, 31, 59 Proto-Elamite script 141 Ptolemy II 128 Puabi, queen 14 Punt 147 pyramids 132 Step Pyramid complex, see Saqqara see also step pyramids Pyramid Texts 101 Qa’a, king 131, 228, 240, 255, 257 Qadan industry 18 Qarunian industry 18, 29 Qazvin Plain 32 Quibell, J. E. 109, 118 Qustul, Cemetery L 147, 167–9, 171 R12, site 50, 57 racial theory 3, 111 Rameses II, king 130 Randall-MacIver, D. 116 Raneb, king 250 Ras Samadi 54 rebus principle 203, 207 Red Crown 133, 207, 212 Red Sea 14, 22, 25, 27, 51, 70, 111 reed architecture 38, 92 regicide 263 regimes of value 23

Index Reinold, J. 69 relief carving 140, 180–1, 182, 190, 229, 248 religion evolutionary approaches to 60–2 relationship to domestication 60–2 republicanism 260–1, see also constitutional antiquarianism resin 137, 148, 255 ‘ripple ware’, see pottery (Badarian) rites de passage, see ritual ritual as creative process 118, 121 deposition 115, 122–3, 232, 245 economy 76, 83, 89–90, 98, 115, 269 elite co-option of practices 165, 174, 185, 211, 215, 216, 229, 265 ethnographic study of 8, 261–2 funerary 7–8, 27, 30, 50–1, 69, 108, 117–23 interpretation of 7–8, 73, 76, 121–3, 261–2 killing 123, 242, 243, 263 long-term study of 7–8, 261–2, 267–9 relationship to social evolution 7–8, 165, 166, 265, 267–9 spatial dimension of 122–3, 250 temporal dimension of 122–3 variability of practices 118 see also body, burial practices, cemeteries, death, mortuary, royal, sacrifice Robertson Smith, W. 60 rock art 111–14, 147 comparison with decorated pottery 112–14 dating of 54, 111, 112 destruction of 112 distribution 111–12 royal inscriptions 114, 147, 211 see also Eastern Desert Rosetta Stone 2 Roth, A. M. 257 routinisation of charisma 268 Rowlands, M. 75 royal ancestors 130, 229, 244 annals 132–3, 204, see also king-lists, year-labels, year-names

339 body, as container for sacred power 213, 216–17 body, circumscription of 213 cemeteries 131, 137, 172, 227–8, 245–58, 269 ceremony 128, 132–3, 146, 229–31, 238, 239, 248, 251, 269 diplomacy 90, 146 festivals 128 iconography 41, 167, 195, 208, 245 lifecycle 133, 204, 206, 239 marriages 95 names 133, 138, 147, 150, 190, 194, 200, 203, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 227, 234–6, 236–9, 251 offerings to gods 131, 224 ritual 128, 132, 146, 224, 239, 250 symbolism 127 titulary 130, 194, 211–12, 219, 238 see also ceremonial objects, dualism, First Dynasty, kingship, mortuary (cult), Second Dynasty Royal Museum of Brussels 101 Sabarl 122 sacred kingship, see kingship sacrifice animal 123, 171, 242 human 123, 218–19, 224, 243, 245, 246–7, 249, 252, 269 relationship to bureaucracy 268–9 see also animal burials, economy of sacrifice, ritual Sahlins, M. 6, 260 Sahure, king 149 sail technology 33 sandals 109, 208 Saqqara funerary enclosures 250 North Cemetery 210, 225, 227–45, 246, 257 pyramid complex of Pepi II 132 relationship to Abydos 256–8 royal tombs at 250 Step Pyramid complex 82, 229–31, 257 see also mastaba tombs sarcophagi 132 Sayala 113, 169 Schild, R. 47

340

Index

Scorpion Mace-head 184, 213 sculpture 3, 182, 184, 206, see also ceremonial objects, relief carving seals and sealing practices 26, 32, 33, 36–7, 40, 131, 137, 138, 141, 187–90, 200, 202, 204, 207, 208, 213, 221, 231, 235, 236, 238, 239, 244, 249, 251, 266 see also bureaucracy, writing systems seasonality 27, 49, 68, 78 Second Dynasty 147, 184, 204, 219, 220–3, 235, 245, 247, 248, 250–1 royal tombs at Saqqara 250 secondary burial, see burial practices secondary products 24, 31, 135, 137, 159, 162, 164 adoption of in Egypt 142–6, 159, 163, 266 sed-festival 184, 211, 229, 248 sedentism 6, 19, 22, 27–9, 63, 66, 77 Segal, D. 4 Seidlmayer, S. J. 215, 231 Sekhen/Ka, king 200, 211, 251 Seleim Basin 50 Seligman, C. G. 3 Semaina 82 Semerkhet, king 228, 229, 255 serekh 190, 191, 200, 207, 208–11, 212, 225, 240, 248, 252, 255 Seth 248 Seti I, king 130 settlement patterns Egypt 18–20, 27–9, 31, 33–4, 38, 63, 89 Levant 22–3, 25 Mesopotamia 26 Sudan 27–9, 64 see also mobility, Nile delta, Nile valley, sedentism, site shabti figurines 225 Shaheinab 46, 49, 50 Shamarkian industry 18 sheep 23, see also domestication, pastoralism, primary pastoral community Shellal 75 shells distribution and exchange 19, 20, 22, 23, 27, 54

images of 198 use as ornaments 20, 27, 51, 57 Sherratt, A. G. 24, 30, 31, 97 Shoshone art 104 Shunet el-Zebib 247, see also Abydos (funerary enclosures) sickles 67, 160, 243 silver 14, 148, 172 simplicity, evolution of 151–4, 266 Sinai peninsula 14, 21, 25, 39, 76 dynastic exploitation of 147 Sinuhe, see Tale of Sinuhe site formation processes 49–50, 63, 64, 70, 78, 79 preservation 19, 27, 63, 72, 77–8, 83 skeletons, see body, human remains skeuomorphism 26, 34, 53 skin, as symbolic medium 70, 101, 122, 166, 185, 213, see also body skulls cattle, see bucrania rituals involving human 22, 69, 118–19, 121 Smith, A. 64 smiting scenes 41 Sneferu, king 149 social complexity 5, 151 evolution 5–6, 59–60, 134, 260, 261, 262–3, 265 identity 69 knowledge 7, 9, 265 morphology 69 power 6, 122, 123, 134, 165, 173, 220 Sodmein Cave 25 sorghum 19, 47 spatulae 51, 57 spearheads 169, 171 spindle-whorls 82, 86 spoons 56, 101, 155, 181 Stadelmann, R. 257 standardisation, of material culture 151–3, see also simplicity state formation statistical approaches 72 theories of 72, 151–4, 176, 218, 261, 262–3, 263–4, 265, 267–9 see also hierarchy, social (evolution), social (power), trade

Index statue, cult 128, 131, 224, 225–6, 227, 230, 240, 257, 267 Steiner, F. 60 stelae private 221–3, 252 royal 252 step pyramids 147, 231 Step Pyramid complex, see Saqqara stone architecture 85, 229 sources 14, 19, 137 see also alabaster, beads, granite, limestone stone vessels 34, 38, 94, 107, 116, 140, 150, 155, 156, 158, 167, 169, 194, 213, 229, 255, 257 inscriptions on 150, 213, 229, 235, 236, 239, 257 storage pits 29, 47, 49, 79, 84, 85, 87 structuralism, 6–7, see also kingship subsidiary burials, see Abydos, mastaba tombs Sudan Anglo-Egyptian Condominium 3 archaeology in 3 ethnography 3 geography 17 Upper Nile region 264 see also A-Group, Khartoum Mesolithic, Khartoum Neolithic, Lower Nubia Sumerian king-list 133 survey, archaeological 50, 82 Susa 191 Tabqa region 135 tags, inscribed 200–2, 204–6, 212, 235, 236, 239, 248, 251, see also tomb U-j, year-labels Tale of Sinuhe 219–20, 223 Tarkhan 169, 172, 190, 210, 228, 251 Tasian culture 55 tattooing 101, 153 Taurus Mountains 22 Taweret 193 taxation 132, 236 techniques du corps 7, 265 technology anthropological approaches to 66 role in social evolution 59–60, 151

341 Tel Erani 160 Tel el-Farah (North) Tell Brak 37 Tell el-Fara‘in-Buto 87, 140, 156, 159, 163, 212 Tell el-Farkha 87, 156, 159, 160, 163 Tell Ibrahim Awad 87, 159, 184 Tell el-Iswid 87, 159 Tell Sabi Abyad 187 Tell es-Sawwan 26 tells 22, 30 temples 140, 144, 176–7, 184, 195, 224, 248 debate over early development 177–8 Mesopotamian 133, 152, 239 mortuary 131, 149 to deities 41, 73, 128 Tepe Gawra 33, 37, 188 textiles 135, 140, 145, 148, 197 Third Dynasty 147, 220–3, 229–31 Three Age system 1 threshing sledge 163, 164–5 Tibesti Mountains 29 Tigris River 26 timber, trade 14, 82, 137, 148, 149, 202, 226 titulary 223, 224–5, see also officials, royal Tjehenu, see Libya Tjemhu, see Libya tomb 100, see Hierakonpolis tomb biography 224 tomb scenes, Old Kingdom 95, 140, 142–4, 158, 174, 226 tomb U-j 198–207, 209, 236, 251 contents of 137, 198–207 early writing in 137, 190, 198–207 imported pottery from 138, 202, 204 see also Abydos, tags, viticulture, writing systems tombs, construction of 155 as setting for ritual performance 165, 167, 171–5, 221, 232 use of mud-brick 38, 109, 122, 137, 165, 171, 173, 198, 221, 226, 232–4, 240, 251, 255 use of perishable materials 90, 172, 198, 226, 232, 240, 245, 247, 255 use of stone 155, 221, 226, 229 use of wood 226, 251

342

Index

tombs, construction of (cont.) visibility of 226, 232–4, 239–43, 252 see also cemeteries, ritual totemism, see religion Towns Palette, see Cities Palette trade 8, 15, 19, 23, 34–6, 39–40 long-distance 16, 75–6, 77, 80, 89, 142, 137, 204, 255, 266 role in state formation 16, 75–6, 140–2, 147–50, 175, 265 see also Levant, maritime trade and transport, prestige goods, timber traditional authority 134, 152, 174 tree-crops, see horticulture, olive, viticulture tribute 148, 211 Trigger, B. G. 6, 77, 264 tripartite house 33, 135 Tuareg 64 tumulus burials 54, 57 Tura 172, 210 Turin Canon 131, 133, see also king-lists, royal (annals) Turner, V. 262 turquoise 14, 147, 172, 255 turtles 80 Two Dog Palette 180–1, 182, 185, 209, 215 Two Ladies 211 Two Lands 89, 146, 195, 207, 212 Ubaid period 32–3 pottery 33 Umm Direiwa 46, 50 Umm Melyekta 50 Umm el-Qaab, see Abydos unification of Egypt, see cultural unification of Egypt, Two Lands Unio, see shells University College London 3 urbanisation comparative study of 76–7, 265 in Early Bronze Age Levant 138 in evolutionary thought 5, 265 Mesopotamian 37–8, 40, 82 Naqada I–II 72, 82–3, 265 of the dead 83 Uruk, see Warka Uruk expansion 40, 76, 88, 135–7, 138, 188

van den Brink, E. 210 Varna 31 village life 152 bureaucracy in 26, 32–3 establishment of 66–8 layout and use of space 26, 32–3 see also sedentism villages as images of social permanence 69 misidentification of, in Nile valley Neolithic 63, 264 violence, symbolic containment of 175, 181, 185, 245 viticulture 14, 31, 39, 97, 140, 142, 144, 159, 239, 266 Volney, Comte de 2, 264 Vounous 61 vultures, in royal representation 211, 212, 213 W-Ware, see pottery Wadi Abbad 147 Wadi Abu Suffian 75, 78, 89, 92 Wadi el-Allaqi 170 Wadi Atulla 54, 55 Wadi Barramiya 113 Wadi Digla 36, 83 Wadi Elei 54 Wadi Feinan 32 Wadi Halfa 111 Wadi Hammamat 54, 111, 147 Wadi Helal 154 Wadi Hof 29, 84 Wadi Howar 17 Wadi Khamsini 75, 109, 120 Wadi Menih 112 Wadi Milk 17 Wadi Qash 147 Wadjet 211 wall-pegs 97 Warka (Uruk) 135, 191 wavy ledge-handles, see W-Ware Weber, M. 61, 134, 267, 268 Weigall, A. E. P. 111 Wendorf, F. 47 Western Desert 19, 48–9, 54, 56, 246 wheat, see cereals, domestication, farming wheeled transport 137, see also secondary products

343

Index White Crown 207, 212, 213 Whitehouse, H. 181, 184 ‘wild Nile’ 17, 21 Williams, B. B. 198 wine 144, 158, 202, 204, 210, 221, 222, 251 jars 209, 222, 238 production, see viticulture trade 137, 148, 202 Winkler, H. A. 111 wood, see timber wool production 24, 32, 135, 145, 148 world archaeology 5 world system 14, 36 world systems theory 14 writing systems 15, 37 administrative origins of 203–6, 238 cursive 202 early development of in Egypt 137, 182, 190–1, 200–7, 213–17, 227, 251, 266 hieratic 131 hieroglyphic 178, 203, 207

in evolutionary thought 262 interplay of media 213–17, 236 proto-cuneiform 135, 136, 152, 188 relationship to language 182, 203 relationship to pictorial representation 182 see also emblematic personification, tags, tomb U-j, year-labels Yarmukian culture, see Levant (Pottery Neolithic) Yates, F. 2 year-labels 128–30, 204–6, 239, 248 year-names 128–30, 204–6, 239, 248, see also royal (annals) Yellow Nile 17 Yolngu art 104 Younger Dryas 22 Zagros Mountains 6, 22, 23, 32 el-Zakiab 50 zema-tawy 195 zeriba, see animal (enclosures)