Archaeological evidence shows that these early settlements had already developed distinctive features of later Egyptian civilization before 4000 BC. By that date burials in Upper Egypt were already being made with the body on its side facing west, the home of the setting sun, with provisions, food offerings, and hunting equipment being left for the afterlife. Emmer wheat, barley, and flax, the staples of Egyptian farmers, were being cultivated. During the second half of the fourth millennium, the four to five hundred years before the first recorded unification of Egypt, the scattered agricultural communities of the valley grew larger. The expansion of settlements such as Naqada and Hieraconpolis may reflect their position on the trading routes to the gold mines of the eastern desert but this was also a region of agricultural diversity. Hieraconpolis, a site that has now been excavated over a hundred years, grew dramatically between 3800 and 3400 and may have been home to five to ten thousand inhabitants. At Naqada north of Hieraconpolis there was a walled town as early as 3600 BC and a major cemetery with 3,000 tombs. Naqada has given its name to the culture that persisted between 3800 and 3000 Bc, one that spread throughout Upper Egypt. The rise of these cities coincides with more sophisticated craftsmanship. Graves are becoming richer, with goods now made in gold, copper, and a variety of stones. Pottery from Hieraconpolis is beautifully made and its standard style suggests a select group of elite craftsmen working to common models. Among the luxury items are decorated maceheads, always a symbol of power in Egypt and often found buried in the more opulent tombs in the cemetery at Hieraconpolis.
The need for finer raw materials acted as the catalyst to open Egypt to a wider world. The Nile valley provided clay for pottery and mudbricks but little wood. Flint was the only immediately accessible stone (and was fashioned into fine ceremonial knives). Anything else, the fine white limestone from the rocks which lined the valley, the hard stones, granite and diorite, gold, copper, or semi-precious stones, had to be quarried or mined from the surrounding desert or traded from further afield. This required an ordered society able to organize expeditions across the inhospitable desert. By the end of the fourth millennium contact had been made as far as Mesopotamia. Cylinder seals have been found in Egypt that echo those of Sumer, and designs from them or from actual buildings may have inspired the form of the fa9ades of Egyptian mudbrick tombs. Palaces adopt from Mesopotamia the same pattern of alternating recesses and buttresses for their fa9ades that were used for temples there. The concept of writing, first found in Egypt on a set of inscribed labels in a royal tomb in Abydos dating from about 3100 Bc, may have evolved parallel with but possibly earlier than in Sumer. Both Sumerian cuneiform (see above, p. 24) and Egyptian hieroglyphs (see below) used the same convention of combining signs to represent the sound of a word with others to represent its meaning.
Hieroglyphs, ‘sacred carved letters, were derived from pictures found on much earlier Egyptian pottery. At first writing appears to have been confined to the court, used to record the state’s economic activities, the name of the king (in a format known as the serekh), and in formal commemorative art such as the Narmer Palette (below). However, the emergence of writing marks a crucial moment as it offered a further means of royal control that could be sustained through fostering a formal class of scribes.
As the early Egyptian settlements on the Nile grew, so did tensions between them. They were probably exacerbated by a period of increasing aridity after 3300 BC which intensified settlement in the Nile valley and led to competition between rulers over luxury resources, copper, gold, and hard stone. It is reflected in the art of the period. A painted tomb at Hieraconpolis (Tomb 100) shows a man struggling with two lions and a ruler figure holding a mace over three captives while other palettes (the so-called Hunters’ and Battlefield palettes) show contrasting scenes of conflict and harmony among animals. (The palettes were flat stones used originally as grinding surfaces for cosmetics but they later acquired ritual significance.) Rulers were often personified as animals, bulls, or lions in this period, as if they had to differentiate themselves for ordinary mortals through symbols of energy and power. The story of Horus and Seth may well represent an actual struggle between Hieraconpolis, a cult centre for Horus, and Naqada, whose cult god was Seth.
There was probably no one moment of unification but in later tradition it was from this disorder that a king named Narmer finally achieved some kind of dominance over Egypt just before 3000 BC. The archaeological evidence does not yet give unequivocal support for a conquest as some sites show undisturbed occupation. Some scholars see a lengthier process in which an earlier king, Scorpion, played a significant part in achieving an ordered state. At some point, perhaps soon after unification, Narmer’s successors established their capital at Memphis, strategically
Placed at the junction between the Delta and the valley. Their new conquest, the Delta, also had its important settlements although none is yet known to have reached the size of those of Upper Egypt. At Tell el-Farkha in the north-eastern Delta, a wonderful collection of bone figures shows that here too a sophisticated culture had developed. Frustratingly, one of the most important settlements of Lower Egypt, Maadi, has been almost totally obliterated by the spread of modern Cairo. Earlier excavations showed that its culture was completely distinct from that further south and had especially strong links with the Near East.
The Narmer palette is a remarkable survival and now enjoys pride of place at the entrance to the Cairo Museum. It was found carefully preserved in a temple deposit at Hieraconpolis by English archaeologists in the winter of 1897-8. The king was unknown but the reconstruction of two hieroglyphs, a catfish (nar) and a chisel (mer), gave us the name for which there was then no other record. The palette portrays Narmer, on one side of the palette wearing the crown of Upper Egypt and on the other that of Lower Egypt. The king is apparently shown as a southerner conquering the north, the Delta, though his enemies may well have included neighbouring peoples such as the Libyans. The king is shown on one side subduing his enemies, some of whom lie decapitated before him, their heads between their feet. It is disputed as to whether this depicts an actual battle or simply represents a symbol of royal power. Quite apart from its historical importance, the palette shows that many conventions of Egyptian art are now in place. Status is represented by the comparative size of the figures. Narmer is the largest figure throughout. In one scene an official is shown as smaller than Narmer but still much larger than the accompanying standard-bearers. The artist is not concerned so much with providing a proper representation as with passing on detail, even if this means distorting normal perspectives. The face of the king, for instance, is shown in profile but his eye is shown in full and the shoulders are viewed from the front. Both hands and feet are shown in full.
Horus continued throughout Egyptian history as the special protector of the kings. He was always portrayed as a falcon. On a magnificent statue of Khafra (often known by the Greek version of his name, Chephren), one of the pyramidbuilding kings of the Old Kingdom, now in the Cairo Museum, he is shown perching on the king’s back, his wings around the king’s shoulders. Each king took a ‘Horus name’ in addition to his birth-name and other titles. It was this name that was stamped as a cipher on all goods entering or leaving the royal treasury. It was often a reflection of how he saw his political ambitions—‘He who breathes life into the heart of the Two Lands’ or ‘Bringer of Harmony’, for instance.
Kingship is now established as the enduring form of Egyptian government. From this moment Egyptian history is divided into dynasties of the ruling families. In the past, historians have adopted a list of thirty of these dynasties compiled by an Egyptian priest, Manetho, on the orders of king Ptolemy II about 280 Bc. They stretch from Narmer to the overthrow of Persian rule by Alexander in 332 BC. (A Thirty-First ‘Persian’ Dynasty was added later to Manetho’s text.) Manetho’s list still defines the broad chronology of ancient Egypt and the sequence of rulers but it leaves much
Unresolved. It makes Narmer’s unification appear much more sudden than archaeological evidence suggests and obscures gaps in order to portray Egyptian history as an unbroken series of kings. At times of breakdown, when dynasties may have ruled alongside each other, Manetho puts them one after another, providing a source of much confusion to historians. Some of Manetho’s dynasties, such as the Seventh, have remained obscure; others such as the Ninth and Tenth may represent only one ruling family, not two.
So as a background for dating, historians have used other methods, radiocarbon, stratigraphy (which has produced sequences of pottery styles which have been dated, for instance), astronomical records, and, of course, other written sources. They have received extra help from the Egyptians themselves. An Egyptian calendar was developed based on the rise of the ‘Dog Star, Sirius. Sirius remains below the horizon in Egypt for some seventy days, reappearing at sunrise around 19 July. By chance this coincided with the beginning of the Nile floods and so for the Egyptians marked the beginning of a new year. This ‘solar’ calendar had a full cycle of 365 days and 6 hours, in other words, every four years an extra day would have to be added to the year to keep it synchronized with the sun. Another calendar was based on the night sky. It was possible to plot how the stars seen on the horizon as the night passed into day moved in relation to the horizon in a regular pattern. The stars were divided into thirty-six groups, each of which rose above the horizon for ten days before being supplanted by another group. This led to a year of 360 days, and five extra days, birthdays of the gods, were added to make up 365, but this, of course, did not include the extra six hours. It has been calculated that both calendars, solar and lunar, set off together about 2773 Bc. However, as the years passed it must have become clear that the lunar calendar was falling behind the solar calendar at the rate of one day every four years. By this time the system was so embedded that the two calendars were never reconciled and it took 1,460 years (i. e. four times 365) for them to coincide again.
This discrepancy has proved the Egyptologists’ asset. A Roman historian happened to record that in ad 139 there was a coincidence between the rising of Sirius and the start of a civil year. By going back in jumps of 1,460 years other coincidences have been calculated for 1322, 2782, and 4242 BC. On a few occasions written sources have recorded the discrepancy between the rising of Sirius and the civil year. One document from the reign of king Sesostris III, for instance, mentions that Sirius will rise on the sixteenth day of the eighth month of the seventh year of the king’s reign (dated here on the lunar calendar), and from this the year, 1866 Bc, can be calculated. Other reigns can be dated from this, and a partial chronology of Egyptian history reconstructed.
This still leaves discrepancies, periods, and reigns of individual pharaohs where the chronology is debatable. There are so-called ‘high’, ‘middle, and ‘low’ chronologies. In order to avoid confusion the chronology used here is that of the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, 2nd edition, Oxford, 2003, as described in chapter 1 of the History by Ian Shaw, ‘Chronologies and Cultural Change in Egypt’.
World History
