Military control of the unified state did not stop at Egypt’s borders, and there is evidence of expanding Egyptian control to the south (Lower Nubia) and northeast (northern Sinai and southern Palestine) in Dynasty 0 and the early 1st Dynasty. One Egyptian motivation was economic, to control the trade of desired raw materials from Palestine and regions to the south of Lower Nubia (see 3.9).
Near modern Gaza City a large, fortified settlement, which was probably an Egyptian colony dating to the Early Bronze Age I, has been excavated at Tell es-Sakan. Egyptian serekhs of Dynasty 0 (mostly Narmer’s) and the 1st Dynasty have been found on jars, most of which are made of Egyptian clays, at camp sites in the northern Sinai located by Israeli archaeologist Eliezer Oren. Similar potmarks are also found in southern Palestine, such as the site of Ain Besor to the east of Tell es-Sakan. In stratum III of the Ain Besor excavations, 90 fragments of hieroglyphic seal impressions of Egyptian kings were found in association with a mud-brick building. The sealings were impressed in local clay by officials of 1st-Dynasty kings (Djer, Den, Anedjib, and probably Semerkhet). Pottery in this stratum was mainly Egyptian, especially fragments of ceramic molds for making bread. Such evidence suggests Egyptian officials of the state who occupied what may have been a kind of trade emporium through much of the 1st Dynasty. But Egyptian control of southern Palestine did not last into the 2nd Dynasty, when such evidence is no longer found there. Egyptians were probably unable to continue to assert their authority there as the fortified Early Bronze Age II cities of indigenous Canaanite peoples expanded their control over the region, and by the early Old Kingdom Egyptian contact with the Levant shifted to Byblos via a seafaring route. What Egypt lacked in large timbers, used in construction of some monuments and seafaring ships, had to be obtained from the forests of Lebanon.
In Lower Nubia, the indigenous A-Group culture disappears in the archaeological record later in the 1st Dynasty, which most likely coincided with Egyptian military penetration there. Rock art at Gebel Sheikh Suliman near Wadi Halfa (the Second Cataract) of later Predynastic times is usually cited as evidence of an Egyptian military campaign there. Intimidated by Egyptian forces, A-Group peoples eventually left Lower Nubia, but where they went is unknown: some may have moved farther up the Nile beyond Egyptian areas of control. Although evidence is lacking for Egyptian settlements in Lower Nubia during the Early Dynastic Period, their presence at Buhen (at the Second Cataract) is well attested in the old Kingdom. Indigenous peoples did not occupy Lower Nubia again until late in the Old Kingdom, when the earliest C-Group burials are found - coinciding with loss of direct Egyptian control over the region (see 6.12).
World History
