The evidence for commercial and diplomatic links between the emerging state of Egypt and its various neighbouring cultures and states often survives in the form of exotic raw materials and products, as well as the vessels in which they were carried. Although Egypt was clearly self-sufficient in a wide diversity of rocks, plants, and animals, there were nevertheless many much-prized materials that were not obtainable within the Nile Valley itself Turquoise could be obtained only from Sinai; silver probably from Anatolia or the north Mediterranean, via the Levant; copper from Nubia, Sinai, and the Eastern Desert; and gold from the Eastern Desert and Nubia, while such fine woods as cedar, juniper, and ebony, as well as products such as incense and myrrh, had to be imported from western Asia and tropical Africa.
One of the most well-travelled and sought-after materials was lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone, streaked with glistening pyrite and calcite, which was known to the Egyptians as khesbcd. It was used for jewellery, amulets, and figurines from at least as early as the Naqada II Period (c.3500-3200 BC), but the principal ancient source seems to have been located at Badakhshan in north-eastern Afghanistan (some 4,000 km. from Egypt), where four ancient quarries have so far been identified: Sar-i-Sang, Chilmak, Shaga-Darra-i-Robat-i-Paskaran, and Stromby. Badakhshan lay at the centre of a wide commercial network through which lapis lazuli was exported over vast distances to the early civilizations of western Asia and north-east Africa, no doubt passing through the hands of many middle men en route.
Some of the most important archaeological data for the earliest Egyptian links with the outside world take the form of the pottery vessels in which many commodities (usually food, drink, or cosmetics) were transported to and from the Nile valley. The cache of about 400 Palestinian-style vessels that filled one chamber of Tomb U-j, in the Naqada III Cemetery U at Abydos (see Chapter 4), shows that this elite tomb-owner in c.3200 bc—perhaps an early ruler—was able to exert considerable commercial influence in order to obtain these grave goods (probably wine jars). Very few of these vessels have been identified with pottery from contemporary sites in Palestine; therefore they seem to have been types produced specifically for export. The same tomb also contained Palestinian-style wavy-handled Egyptian vessels. Another tomb (U-127) yielded fragments of ivory handles carved with images apparently depicting rows of Asiatic captives and women carrying pottery vessels.
Pottery found at early urban sites in southern Palestine itself suggests that an Egyptian trade network may have been flourishing in this region as early as the first phase of the Early Bronze Age. It has been suggested that the expansion of the Naqada culture into the Delta region in the late Predynastic Period may well have resulted from the Upper Egyptian rulers’ desire to gain direct commercial contact with Palestine, rather than obtaining goods via the middlemen of Maadi and other Lower Egyptian sites. By at least the ist Dynasty, the newly unified Egyptian state had expanded beyond the Delta into southern Palestine, with a thriving trade route passing through several hundred encampments and way stations along the northern end of the Sinai peninsula (see Chapter 4). Several of the Early Dynastic royal tombs at Abydos contained fragments of Palestinian vessels, showing that the rulers of Egypt included imported Asiatic commodities among their funerary equipment.
At about the same time that Egyptians were first establishing commercial links with the inhabitants of Early Bronze Age Palestine, they were also making contact with the people of Lower Nubia (primarily in order to gain access to the exotic products of tropical Africa, as well as the mineral resources of Nubia itself). The archaeological traces of these people, whom George Reisner named the ‘A Group’, have survived throughout Lower Nubia, dating from about 3500 to 2800 bc. The grave goods often include stone vessels, amulets, and copper artefacts imported from Egypt, which not only help to date these graves but also Demonstrate that the A Group was engaged in regular trade with the Egyptians of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. Bruce Williams has made the controversial suggestion that the chiefdoms of the early A Group were actually reponsible for the rise of the Egyptian state, but this has been refuted by most scholars (see Chapter 4).
The wealth and quantity of imported items appear to increase in later A-Group graves, suggesting a steady growth in contact between the two cultures. Sites such as BChor Daoud (comprising no settlement remains but hundreds of silos containing Naqada-culture pottery vessels that originally held beer, wine, oil, and perhaps cheese) were evidently trading posts at which exchange of goods took place between the late predynastic Egyptians, the A Group, and the nomads of the Eastern Desert. Judging from some of the rich tombs at the Sayala and Qustul cemeteries, which contain prestige goods imported from Egypt, the elite within the A Group were able to profit substantially from their role as middlemen in the African trade route. However, a rock carving at the Lower Nubian site of Gebel Sheikh Suleiman (now on display in the Khartoum Museum) appears to record a ist-Dynasty campaign as far south as the second cataract, suggesting that contacts with the A Group had by this date become somewhat more militaristic.
A process of severe impoverishment appears to have taken place in Lower Nubia during the ist Dynasty, probably as a direct result of the depredations of early Egyptian economic exploitation of the region. It has been suggested that there might have been an enforced reversion to pastoralism (perhaps partly due to environmental changes) or that the local Nubian population might even have temporarily abandoned the region, perhaps moving south and eventually returning as the so-called C Group (once regarded as quite separate from the A Group, but now seen to have a number of cultural features in common).
The C-Group people were roughly synchronous with the period in Egyptian history from the mid-6th Dynasty to the early i8th Dynasty (c.2300-1500 BC). Their principal archaeological characteristics included hand-made black-topped pottery vessels bearing incised decoration filled with white pigment, as well as artefacts imported from Egypt. Their way of life seems to have been dominated by cattle-herding, while their social system was probably essentially tribal (until they began to be integrated into Egyptian society). In the early 12th Dynasty their territory in Lower Nubia was taken over by the Egyptians, perhaps partly in order to prevent them from developing contacts with the more sophisticated Kerma culture that had emerged in Upper Nubia (see Chapter 8).
World History
