Arabia

It is a matter of speculation to what extent the early Egyptians were aware of or had any real contact with the tribes who lived in the western part of the Arabian peninsula. The peoples who lived to the west of Sumer, the barbarous, illiterate, and savage tribes (in the Sumerians’ minds at least) who inhabited the Syrian and Arabian deserts, were generally called Martu. They were the ancestors of the Amuru who ranged across much of the northern, central, and eastern Arabian deserts, moving through the oases over immense distances.

Archaeological research in south-western Arabia has revealed contact with Egypt at the end of the third millennium17 but, so far, little before it. However, some contact is suggested at a much earlier period by the icono-graphic similarities between the hunters depicted on the ‘Hunters’ Palette’ and on western Arabian rock carvings at Bi’r Hima, which is surprisingly far to the south of the peninsula.

Connections with Sinai and Palestine have been suggested from the plentiful implementation of Syrian and Palestinian pottery in the late predynastic and Early Dynastic periods and a study of one particular detail in the design of Narmer’s Palette.18 This is a curious feature which has been identified as a ‘desert kite’, an enigmatic structure which is certainly found in the Sinai and in the Palestinian deserts but which is also typical of the northern Arabian desert. The ‘kites’, long lines of stones which have been interpreted as the remains of corrals or traps for animals, are thought to date from as early as the end of the fourth millennium. In Arabia, particularly in the north-west, structures of this sort and also rather larger ones which sometimes even assume almost monumental proportions, seem to be associated with early copper-working regions.