Material form: overriding the border of nature/artifice

South of the desert-edge temple at Badari (Chapter 2), in a cluster of half a dozen tombs from about 2300-2150 Bc, one simple small pit burial contained an exceptional version of the cosmetic equipment typically included in burials of young women at this period (Brunton 1927, 30, pl.49, burial 3217). A later tomb had cut away more than half the burial, leaving only the items placed at the feet: two copper fasteners from a wooden box, a few beads, blue-glazed cowry-shaped amulet, and two sliced shells, recalling later cowrie girdles. There were also three cosmetic vases, one inscribed for the king's mother Ankhnespepy (one of the only three royal name inscriptions out of hundreds of stone vases of this age in these cemeteries), and then a more exceptional find: “an elaborate natural shell (Strombus tricornis?) was with these, carved with dog's head and monkey, and having a ram's head added in clay and limestone. The spout is of thin bone.” Inside the adapted shell was found a seal-amulet in the typical disk form of the period, with symmetrical four-legged motif (Brunton 1927, pl.32.60). The cosmetic set also included a bone spatula and “bone spoon, handle ending in hand with bent fingers” (Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3 Shell with animal depictions and extensions, from Badari burial 3217, about 2200 BC. Brunton, G. 1927. Qau and Badari I. British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London., pl.32. © of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL.

The inscribed vase and shell pourer belong broadly to ritual and healing associations of adornment. Inscribed cosmetic vases may only be indirectly connected with the kings and mothers of kings named on them. Perhaps either the vessels or their contents came from kingship rituals, from which they were distributed to select participants and in this way reached regions far from kingship centers. Some vessels of the period, with king name inscriptions, take the form of a monkey mother nestling her young, (Arnold 1999), recalling the monkey carved from the edge of the shell in the Badari burial. It may be misleading to call the animal figures on the shell additions to the natural surface, in our modern division of nature and culture. In formal sculpture for eternity, at the start of the Opening of the Mouth rites, an artist/ritual performer conceives the form in the stone block; here too, perhaps an artist reveals the forms already present within the material. The feature called dag's head by Brunton is less easy to identify. The limestone ram face with clay horns curving back might, in this region, evoke Khnum, main deity at Shas-hotep across the river from Badari, most often depicted with ram head, but perhaps the artist intended no link to any one divine force by name.