The Temple Oval

Hierakonpolis reveals one very remarkable architectural parallel between an Egyptian structure and what seems to be a definite Mesopotamian example. This is the construction in the Early Dynastic temple known as the ‘Temple Oval’, possibly dating to the First Dynasty. From the centuries immediately preceding the definite appearance of the Sumerians in what is now southern Iraq (the periods which are identified with Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and are contemporary in Egypt with late Naqada I and Naqada II) there are several

(a)

(b)

Figure 4.1 In the late fourth millennium Hierakonpolis, one of the centres of nascent royal power in Upper Egypt, the temple area is bounded by a revetment (a) which is identical in plan and evident purpose to similar structures in Sumer, notably the Temple Oval at Khafaje (b) whilst others are known at Tepe Gawra and Al-Ubaid. A thousand years later, a similar oval structure was built in the great temple at Barbar on the north coast of Bahrain (see pl. 36).

Sources: (a) From J. E. Quibell and F. W. Green Hierakonpolis I (1899): pl. LXXII. Reproduced by courtesy of University College London; (b) The Temple Oval at Khafaje, Iraq, first building complex, from The Temple Oval at Khafaje, Chicago, 1934. Reproduced by permission of the Oriental Institute of Chicago.

Examples of Temple Ovals, oval or semi-circular walled structures or revetments which contain virgin sand; on these mounds, clearly intended as ritually pure places, the earliest shrines identifiable in the town concerned were raised.

Such ovals are known from Khafajae, AI-Ubaid, and Tepe Gawra; recently another has been reported from Tel Brak.9 There is also an intriguing and very puzzling example of a Temple Oval in the great Temple complex at Barbar on the main Bahrain island, in the middle of the Arabian Gulf.10 But, disconcertingly, that example would appear to be nearly a thousand years later in date than the similar structure which appears at Hier-akonpolis and some five hundred years later than the Mesopotamian ovals. The temple oval at Barbar on the north shore, is identical to the other two except that it has a flight of steps leading down to a sacred well, fed by a perpetual spring, which has suggested to some that the temple itself may have been dedicated to Enki, the Sumerian god of the subterranean waters.

At Hierakonpolis the oval enclosing wall is referred to in the excavators’ reports as a ‘revetment of rough stones which retained the earth upon which the temple was built. The revetment ran round in a curved or almost circular form’.11 This is a very fair description of the Oval at Barbar also, except that there the stone revetment is finely shaped, but it must be remembered that it dates from nearly a millennium after the Hierakonpolis oval, But, in any event, there is nothing even remotely like it in the whole of Egypt.

The presence of this apparently Mesopotamian structure in the Upper reaches of the Nile Valley at Hierakonpolis at this time is hardly less remarkable. It is yet another enigma amongst the apparent connections which seem so strangely to link the two most important lands in the ancient world at this formative time.

Another, more equivocal feature at Hierakonpolis which recalls Mesopotamian precedents was the ceramic nails, referred to in Chapter 2. When these were first identified at Buto they were thought to indicate the presence of Uruk-type structures, on the basis of similar nails or ‘cones’ being used in Uruk to decorate late fourth millennium buildings, introduced by the migrant Uruk potters who do appear to have been present in Buto at the end of the millennium. This is now discounted, though the pottery parallels remain.12