State Formation and Unification

From the Naqada II phase onwards, highly differentiated burials are found in cemeteries in Upper Egypt (but not in Lower Egypt). Elite burials in these cemeteries contained large quantities of grave goods, sometimes made from exotic materials such as gold and lapis lazuli. These burials are symbolic of an increasingly hierarchical society, probably representing the earliest processes of competition and the aggrandizement of local polities in Upper Egypt, as economic

Interaction and long-distance trade developed. Control of the distribution of exotic raw materials and the production of prestigious craft goods would have reinforced the power of chiefs in Predynastic centres, and such goods were important status symbols. Despite a lack of archaeological evidence, it seems likely that the larger Predynastic towns in Upper Egypt were becoming centres of craft production. Some of these centres also became walled settlements, like the South Town at Naqada, documented by Petrie.

The core area of the Naqada culture was in Upper Egypt, but, in the Naqada II phase, sites of the Naqada culture began to be established in northern Egypt for the first time. Petrie excavated a Naqada II cemetery at el-Gerza in the Faiyum region, from which he derived the term Gerzean (Naqada II) for his middle Predynastic phase. Somewhat later, Naqada culture burials are found much further north, at the Delta site of Minshat Abu Omar. Such evidence suggests the gradual northward movement of peoples from Upper Egypt in Naqada II times.

Since the major Upper Egyptian sites were located near the Eastern Desert, from which gold and various kinds of stone used for beads, carved vessels, and craft goods were obtained, they were much richer in natural resources than Lower Egyptian sites; the ancient name of Naqada is Nubt ('[city] of gold’) and it is no coincidence that the largest Predynastic cemetery is located there. As cereal agriculture was practised with increasing success on the floodplain of Upper Egypt, surpluses accrued and could be exchanged for craft goods, the production of which was becoming increasingly specialized. Possibly the first southerners to go north were traders, and as the economic interaction increased they may have been followed by colonists. There is no archaeological evidence to demonstrate the northward movement of people (as opposed to artefacts), but if such migration occurred it seems more likely to have been a peaceful expansion rather than a military invasion, at least in the early stages.

A motivating factor for the expansion of the Naqada culture into northern Egypt might have been the desire to gain direct control over the lucrative trade with other regions in the eastern Mediterranean, which had developed earlier in the fourth millennium BC. But the development of the technology to construct large boats was also the key to control and communication on the Nile and large-scale exchange. Timber (cedar) for the construction of such boats did not grow in Egypt, but came from the area of the Levant now occupied by Lebanon.

As the discussion of the Maadian culture in Chapter 3 indicates, Lower Egypt was not a cultural vacuum in the fourth millennium bc, and eventually Naqada expansion would probably have met with some resistance. The archaeological evidence in the north, however, demonstrates only the eventual replacement of the Maadian culture. At Maadi itself, occupation came to an end in the Naqada Ilc/d phase, while stratigraphic evidence at sites in the northern Delta, such as Buto, Tell Ibrahim Awad, Tell el-Rub'a, and Tell el-Farkha, demonstrates that there were earlier strata containing only Maadian and local wares, but above these were strata comprising only ceramics of the Naqada III culture and the later forms of the ist Dynasty. At Tell el-Farkha a transitional layer of aeolian sand between such strata suggests the abandonment of the settlement by the local population for unknown reasons (intimidation?) and the later reoccupation of the site in Dynasty o by people of the Naqada culture, which by then had spread throughout Egypt.

By the end of the Naqada II phase (c.3200 BC) or early Naqada III, the indigenous material culture of Lower Egypt had disappeared and was replaced by artefacts (especially pottery wares) deriving from Upper Egypt and the Naqada culture. This archaeological evidence has sometimes been interpreted as an indication of the political unification of Egypt by this time, but the material evidence does not necessarily imply (unified) political organization and a number of alternative socio-economic factors might be proposed to explain this change. Given that the evidence from the elite burials in three major Predynastic centres in Upper Egypt (Naqada, Abydos, Hierakonpolis) suggests separate (and possibly competing) centres or polities during the Naqada II phase, the first unification of Upper Egyptian polities probably took place in early Naqada III times, either as a result of a series of alliances or through warfare (or perhaps through a combination of both), followed by the political unification of the north and south and the emergence of Dynasty o towards the end of Naqada III.

Naqada III burials in the largest Predynastic cemetery at Naqada and the elite Cemetery T are impoverished compared to the earlier Naqada 11 burials at this site. More than 6 km. south of these cemeteries, two large niched mud-brick tombs and a cemetery with Early Dynastic graves were excavated at the end of the nineteenth century by Jacques de Morgan. The location of this cemetery and the sudden appearance of a new style of ‘royal’ burial at the end of Naqada 111, together with the more impoverished (earlier) burials in the cemeteries far to the north, all suggest a break with the polity centred at

South Town (located only 150 m. north-east of the large Predynastic cemetery), probably coinciding with the absorption of the Naqada polity into a larger one.

In contrast, in the Umm el-Qa'ab region of Abydos the graves in one area (Cemeteries U and B and the ‘royal cemetery’) evolved from fairly undifferentiated burials in early Naqada times, to an elite cemetery in late Naqada II, and finally to the burial place of the kings of Dynasty o and the ist Dynasty. One Naqada III tomb, U-j, dating to C.3150 BC, consisted of twelve rooms covering an overall area of 66.4 sq. m. Although robbed, it contained many artefacts in bone and ivory, a great deal of Egyptian pottery, and about 400 imported jars from Palestine that may possibly have contained wine. The 150 small labels found in this tomb are inscribed with what appear to be the earliest known hieroglyphs. According to the excavator, Gunter Dreyer, traces of a wooden shrine in the burial chamber and an ivory model sceptre demonstrate that this was the tomb of a ruler, possibly King Scorpion, whose estates may be listed on a number of labels. This ruler, however, probably reigned in the thirty-first century bc.

Excavations at ‘Locality 6’ in Hierakonpolis, 2.5 km. up the Great Wadi, revealed several large tombs, each measuring up to 22.75 in floor area and containing Naqada III ware. Tomb ii, although looted, still contained beads in camelian, garnet, turquoise, faience, gold and silver, fragments of artefacts in lapis lazuli and ivory, obsidian, and crystal blades, and a wooden bed with carved bulls’ feet. Such a rich burial suggests that elite individuals of considerable means were being buried at Hierakonpolis, but that they were still not of the same class as the rulers at Abydos.

Whereas Naqada was politically insignificant in the Early Dynastic Period, Abydos was the most important centre for the cult of the dead king, and Hierakonpolis remained an important cult centre associated with the god Homs, symbolic of the living king. In a late Predynastic power stmggle in Upper Egypt, it is possible that the Naqada polity was vanquished, whereas rulers whose power base was originally at Abydos went on to control the entire country, perhaps in alliance with less powerful elite groups (the so-called Followers of Horus) at Hierakonpolis, who were none the less in a strategic position because of valued raw materials coming from the south.

The final unification of Upper and Lower Egypt may have been achieved through one or more military conquests in the north, but there is not much evidence for this apart from scenes with symbolically military content carved on a number of ceremonial palettes Dated stylistically to the late Predynastic (Naqada III/Dynasty o), such as the fragmented Tjehenu (Libyan), Battlefield, and Bull palettes. The interpretation of such scenes is problematic, because these artefacts are without known provenances and the fragmented scenes are symbolic of conflict without specifying real historical events.

Fortunately, three important artefacts with carved scenes relevant to this period were excavated at Hierakonpolis: the Macehead of King Scorpion, and the Palette and Macehead of King Narmer. All three of these ceremonial objects were found in or near the area described as the ‘main deposit’ by f. E. Quibell and F. W. Green when they excavated the temple of Homs at Hierakonpolis. They were possibly royal donations to the temple and suggest that Hierakonpolis was still an important centre at the end of the Naqada III phase. While the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt is too specific an interpretation for the scenes on the Narmer Palette, the scenes illustrate dead enemies and vanquished peoples and/or settlements. Scenes and signs on the Narmer Macehead represent war captives and booty, and conquered peoples are also represented on the Scorpion Macehead. Such scenes suggest that warfare played a role at some point in the forging of the early state in Egypt. Even if there is no evidence of destmction layers of Naqada III date at settlement sites in the Delta, warfare could still have implemented the consolidation of this early state and its expansion into Lower Nubia and southern Palestine, which occurred in the early ist Dynasty.

From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that, despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the ist Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign ‘race’. Since the 1970s, however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt. While there is certainly evidence of foreign contact in the fourth millennium bc, this was not in the form of a military invasion.

Ceramics from excavated strata at sites in northern Egypt and southern Palestine now make it possible to coordinate specific cultural periods in the two regions, and demonstrate continuing contact as the Maadi culture in the north was replaced by the Naqada culture. While the Naqada Ilb phase corresponds to the Early Bronze Age (EBA) la phase in Palestine, Naqada II c-d and Naqada III/Dynasty o were evidently contemporaneous with the EBA Ib culture. Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine at this time was overland, as evidence in the northern Sinai demonstrates. Between Qantar and Raphia, about 250 early settlements have been located by the North Sinai Expedition of Ben Gurion University, with 80 per cent of the ceramics of Egyptian wares dating to Naqada II-III and Dynasty o. The settlement pattern consists of a few larger core sites interspersed with seasonal encampments and way stations.

Israeli archaeologists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA la, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine in EBA II. Naomi Porat’s technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in the northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian population was in residence.

The importance of the Delta for Egyptian contact with south-west Asia is also suggested by enigmatic evidence from Buto. In strata of the Lower Egyptian Predynastic culture at this site, two unexpected types of ceramic were found by Thomas von der Way in the late 1980s: clay ‘nails’ and a so-called Grubenkopjhagel (a tapering cone with a concave burnished end) that resemble artefacts used in the Mesopotamian Uruk culture to decorate temple facades. Von der Way suggests that contact with the Uruk culture network may have taken place via northern Syria, as the earliest Predynastic stratum at Buto was found to contain sherds decorated with whitish stripes characteristic of the Syrian 'Amuq F ware. The clay nails and the Grubenkopjhagel are not associated with any (mud-brick) architecture in the Predynastic levels, which might be expected if von der Way’s interpretation were correct, but the ongoing excavations at Buto may yet provide more data on connections between the Delta and south-west Asia in the fourth millennium BC.

Both imported and Egyptian-made cylinder seals, an artefact type unquestionably invented in Mesopotamia, are found in a few elite graves of the Naqada II and III phases. Beads and small artefacts in lapis lazuli, which could only have come from Afghanistan, are first found in Upper Egyptian Predynastic graves. Mesopotamian motifs also appear in Upper Egypt (and Lower Nubia), including the motif of The hews dompteur (a victorious human figure between two lions/ beasts), painted on the wall of Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis, which dates to Naqada II. Other typically Mesopotamian motifs, such as the niched palace facade and high-prowed boats, are also found on Naqada II and III artefacts and also in the rock art. The styles of these motifs are more characteristic of the glyptic art of Susa in south-west Iran than of the Uruk culture, and the fact that such artefacts are not found in Lower Egypt has raised the possibility of some southern route of contact between Susa and Upper Egypt, the nature of which is unknown at present.

In Lower Nubia there are numerous burials of the A-Group culture (which was roughly contemporaneous with the Naqada culture), and these contain many Naqada craft goods. The A-Group wares are very distinct from the Naqada ones, and Egyptian products were probably obtained through trade and exchange. It has been suggested by Bruce Williams that the elite A-Group Cemetery L at Qustul in Lower Nubia represents Nubian rulers who conquered and unified Egypt, founding the early pharaonic state, but most scholars do not agree with this hypothesis. The model that may best explain the archaeological evidence is one of accelerated contact between the cultures of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia in later Predynastic times. Luxury raw materials, such as ivory, ebony, incense, and exotic animal skins, all greatly desired in Egypt in Dynastic times, largely came from further south in Africa, passing through Nubia. Some A-Group chiefs must, therefore, have benefited economically from the trade in raw materials, as is clearly evident from the rich burials excavated at Qustul and Sayala, but the kind of socio-political complexity attested in Upper Egypt at that date is unlikely to have occurred in Nubia. The floodplain of the Nile is much narrower in Lower Nubia than in Upper Egypt, and Lower Nubia simply did not have the agricultural potential to support greater concentrations of population and full-time specialists such as craftsmen and government administrators. The fact that the material culture of the Naqada culture was later found in northern Egypt with no Nubian elements would also seem to argue against any Nubian origin for the unified Egyptian state.