The great votive palette of King Narmer represents a type of artefact peculiar to Egypt and of considerable significance in the early periods; it was recovered from the ‘Main Deposit’ at Hierakonpolis. Such palettes, generally made of schist, a grey-green, friable stone often of great beauty, range from small utilitarian plates for grinding kohl, the dark-green eyeshadow much favoured by Egyptians, which were customarily included in the kits supplied to the dead and placed in the tomb, to a monumental piece like Narmer’s Palette, which was elaborately carved and, from its exceptional size was evidently a dedicatory offering. It was presumably laid up in the Falcon capital as an act of piety by the followers of the victorious king, though it may not actually be a product of his lifetime.
When this type of artefact was first identified in Egypt in the last century archaeologists believed that these ‘slates’, as they were often called, were Mesopotamian in origin. The mistake is understandable since they often contain many Mesopotamian design elements; the earlier types have a density of action and detail that is only comparable with the cheerful confusion of the elements of some of the early Elamite and later Arabian Gulf seals. Examples of these palettes with a much more richly endowed field of design than is usual with Egyptian artists are the Hunters Palette8 and the Exotic Animals (or ‘Two Dogs’) palette9 from Hierakonpolis.
This last artefact is a very remarkable production. The entire surface, except for the kohl-grinding area, is filled with animals, some of a very strange appearance. Dominating both sides are two great canids, probably jackals. A good cross-section of the larger fauna of Egypt is represented but the strangest, most mysterious figure is that of a dog-or jackal-headed creature, reared up on its hind legs, playing a sort of flute. (Did Orpheus have
Figure 5.3 This limestone head of a ruler has been described as a portrait of King Narmer; it does bear some resemblance to Narmer depicted on the famous palette ascribed to him.
Source: reproduced by courtesy of University College London.
His origins in predynastic Hierakonpolis or is this some masked, musical Master of the Beasts? Perhaps it is the enigmatic god Set who pipes who knows what strange melodies to the whirling animals (and monsters) which attend him).
The palettes are, however, uniquely and peculiarly Egyptian, though they do begin to appear in quantities at the time of what may have been maximum Mesopotamian penetration. They may have originated from some sort of Mesopotamian precedent or workmanship, but the genius of the Egyptian artificers quickly made the palettes one of the most distinctive of early Egyptian artefacts.
The earliest palettes and those which continued to be used by the simpler people are generally rectangular in shape, made particularly elegant by the grinding surface being bounded by two or three narrow, incised lines cut on the stone. This gives even these everyday objects a grace which is formidable. Marvellous representations are there of the chase; others, as we have seen, record royal occasions. Once again it is chastening to observe the techniques employed: the skill required in cutting away the surface and then grinding it and polishing it to the final state is very considerable.
The schist palettes represent a sort of rudimentary sculpture, requiring considerable skill in the making. After the time of King Khasekhemwy, one of the most influential in the Early Dynastic period, sculpture in the round advanced very rapidly. That stone was beginning more and more frequently to be used in architecture is shown by the granite employed in the construction of a monumental doorway in what was probably Khasekhemwy’s palace in Hierakonpolis. It is a splendid if somewhat sinister piece of carving; used as the base for the massive door hinge it shows an Asiatic captive sprawled on the ground, his face twisted in a rictus of hate and rejection.
Narmer’s Palette is the largest and most handsome of the votive palettes to survive.10 The Temple of the Falcon at Hierakonpolis, where it was found, was one of the principal centres of the family cults of the founding kings, the meeting place for the followers of the Falcon and for the rites which they practiced there, from predynastic times. The palette is intact. It carries elaborate designs on both sides and seems to be intended to commemorate Narmer’s ascendancy over the Two Lands; in that context, it is one of the most important historical documents from remote antiquity as well as being one of the first products of a royal or state propaganda machine. It is designed, with considerable subtlety, to emphasize the king’s sovereignty over both Upper and Lower Egypt. The symbolism of the events depicted on the palette are convincing interpretations of the process of the unification of the Valley, or at least the early stages of it.
On the obverse the king is portrayed as ruler of the southern kingdom. He wears the high White Crown which was always distinctive of Upper Egypt, just as the curious, inverted, saucepan-like object served as the Red Crown of Lower Egypt immemorially. The king is attended by his sandal-bearer, a high dignitary, perhaps his son, who is identified by a rosette, the divine or royal emblem. Narmer is shown in the act of striking a kneeling captive, probably one of the defeated princes of the north, whilst above, Horus himself brings to the king six thousand captives from the marshes. The representations are surmounted by two Hathor heads (showing how ancient was the worship of the goddess in that form) and the king’s name, its syllables made up of the crude glyphs for chisel and catfish, its unlikely compound. Already the royal name is contained within the palace-facade serekh: this will now always be firmly associated with the princes responsible for the unification.
On the reverse the designs are more complex. Here, surmounted by the Hathor heads and the royal name in its palace-fagade enclosure, the king walks solemnly forward, wearing the Red Crown of the northern kingdom and carrying his war mace. Behind him walks the same boyish sandal-bearer; another high courtier carries what looks like a bolas, a device used from the remotest times in hunting to bring down the larger game; it may, on the other hand, be a rope for hobbling animals, which came to represent the hieroglyph ‘tt’. The king and his two attendants have symbols or devices, the ancestors of hieroglyphs, before them. The king’s we know; the sandal-bearer, who before was marked by a seven-petalled rosette, now seems to be identified by a throwing stick and a six-petalled rosette whilst his colleague who, unlike him, is shaven headed (perhaps because he is a child) wears a full and heavy wig, and is marked by another version of the object he carries in his hand, suspended above an inverted closed semi-circle.
Before the royal party, scaled down in much the same proportion to the king’s two attendants as they are to him, are four little figures carrying standards on which are displayed the symbols associated throughout Egyptian history with certain of the nomes or districts of the Two Lands. Of the standards which the four little standard bearers carry two are falcons, one is associated with Wepwawet, the dog or jackal tutelary divinity of Asiyut, and the fourth is probably the sign of the Royal Placenta, one of the most potent symbols associated intimately with the king.
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