Ancient wall markings of wild animals uncovered in South Aswan

Pre-Dynastic wall markings have been uncovered in Subeira Valley near Aswan

By Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 4 Oct 2017

During an archaeological survey in the desert of Subeira Valley, south Aswan, an Egyptian archaeological mission from the Ministry of Antiquities stumbled upon pre-Dynastic rock markings.

Photo courtesy of Ahram Online

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, explained that the markings can be dated to the late pre-Dynastic era, and were found engraved on sandstone rocks. They depict scenes of troops of renowned animals at that time, such as hippopotamuses, wild bulls and donkeys, as well as gazelles. Markings showing workshops for the production of tools and instruments were also found on some of the rocks.

Nasr Salama, director general of Aswan and Nubia Antiquities, described the newly discovered markings as "unique and rare" in Egypt. He pointed out that similar markings were previously uncovered at sites in Al-Qarta and Abu Tanqoura, north of Komombo town.

"These markings helped archaeologists to determine the exact dating of the newly discovered ones in Subeira Valley," Salama asserted. He added that 10 new sections of wall markings at around 15,000 years old had been discovered.

Adel Kelani described the discovery as important because it dates to the same period of markings founds in caves in southern France, Spain and Italy, which confirms the idea that art and civilisation during that time spread from Africa to Europe and not vice versa.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/278221/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Ancient-wall-markings-of-wild-animals-uncovered-in.aspx

Naqada tombs uncovered in Egypt's Daqahliyah

Four pre-dynasty tombs have been uncovered at Tel Al-Farkha in the Nile Delta 

By Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 7 Jul 2015 

A Polish mission at Tel Al-Farkha in Daqahliyah has discovered four pre-dynastic tombs, Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty announced on Tuesday.

Eldamaty said three of the tombs are in a very poor condition and include child burials. Meanwhile the fourth tomb is in very good conservation condition and can be dated to the Naqada IIIC2 era.

The minister told Ahram Online that the tomb is a small mastaba with two chambers. The southern one was filled with 42 clay vessels, mainly beer jars, bowls as well as a collection of 26 stone vessels of different shapes and sizes. Some of them are cylinder and globular. A collection of 180 small carnelian beads is also among the deceased funerary collection. The corpse of the deceased was also unearthed in the northern chamber.

Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Ministry of Antiquities, pointed out that the most important discovery was the remains of a brewery with fragments of two vats surrounded with multiple clay and burned fire-dogs.

Head of the Polish mission, Marek Chlodnicki, told Ahram Online that on the eastern sand pile located on the northern and eastern sides of the Naqada III mastaba, the mission discovered the remains of two huge buildings. The first is a rectangular shaped structure, with very thick walls and a row of rooms located on the eastern side of a wide courtyard, raised in Naqada IIIA1 period.

The second is a rounded structure, located on the north-eastern slope of the sand pile, built during the second half of the First Dynasty. Chlodnicki said that the rounded structure consists of double adjacent mud-brick walls, each 95cm thick, with the interior seven metres in diameter. Close to the rounded building, a unique ceramic big stamp with hieroglyphs was discovered. 

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/134767/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Naqada-tombs-uncovered-in-Egypts-Daqahliyah.aspx

Museum Pieces - Amulet in the form of a head of an elephant

Amulet in the form of a head of an elephant

Period: Predynastic, Naqada II

Date: ca. 3500–3300 B.C.

Geography: From Egypt

Medium: Serpentine Bone

Dimensions: h. 3.5 x w. 3.6 x d. 2.1 cm (1 3/8 x 1 7/16 x 13/16 in.)

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1959

Accession Number: 59.101.1

Few amulets from the Predynastic Period are known. In the past, Egyptologists identified these amulets as representing a bull's head, but the round face and eyes, the horns that curve inward to the face, and a snout with a defined ridge make a strong argument for its identification as an elephant. During this period, elephants lived in oasis-like zones in the high desert created by greater rainfall than today. They were probably a rare sight to floodplain dwellers, but their size, tusks, and aggressive displays made them an awe-inspiring creature and an excellent subject for a potent amulet.

An amulet is a small object that a person wears, carries, or offers to a deity because he or she believes that it will magically bestow a particular power or form of protection. The conviction that a symbol, form, or concept provides protection, promotes well-being, or brings good luck is common to all societies: in our own, we commonly wear religious symbols, carry a favorite penny, or a rabbit's foot. In ancient Egypt, amulets might be carried, used in necklaces, bracelets, or rings, and—especially—placed among a mummy's bandages to ensure the deceased a safe, healthy, and productive afterlife.

Egyptian amulets functioned in a number of ways. Symbols and deities generally conferred the powers they represent. Small models that represent known objects, such as headrests or arms and legs, served to make sure those items were available to the individual or that a specific need could be addressed. Magic contained in an amulet could be understood not only from its shape. Material, color, scarcity, the grouping of several forms, and words said or ingredients rubbed over the amulet could all be the source for magic granting the possessor's wish.

Small representations of animals seem to have functioned as amulets already in the Predynastic Period (ca. 4500–3100 B.C.). In the Old Kingdom (ca. 2649–2150 B.C.), most amulets took an animal form or were symbols (often based on hieroglyphs), although generalized human forms occurred. Amulets depicting recognizable deities begin to appear in the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030–1640 B.C.), and the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1070 B.C.) showed a further increase in the range of amulet forms. With the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1070–712 B.C.), there was an explosion in the quantity of amulets, and many new types, especially deities, appeared.

Sources:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/59.101.1
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/547235
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/egam/hd_egam.htm

Museum Pieces - Predynastic Male Figurine

Figurine of a man

Period: Predynastic, Naqada II
Date: ca. 3650–3300 B.C.
Geography: From Egypt
Medium: Ivory (elephant)
Dimensions: h. 6.5 x w. 2.2 x d. 0.9 cm (2 9/16 x 7/8 x 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1954
Accession Number: 54.28.2

The earliest pieces of Egyptian sculpture represent men and women in formal poses. Figurines were made from mud or unbaked clay, ceramic, or ivory; details such as body hair, clothing, and tattoos were either incised or painted on the clay surface. This bearded man is made from the end portion of a hippo incisor. The features of his face and clothing(?) were incised into the ivory and filled with a black paste like substance. Figurines are very rare in this period of Egyptian art and little is known about their use in the Predynastic cultures that created them.

Predynastic Art

The term predynastic denotes the period of emerging cultures that preceded the establishment of the 1st dynasty in Egypt. In the 6th millennium bce there began to emerge patterns of civilization that displayed characteristics deserving to be called Egyptian. The accepted sequence of predynastic cultures is based on the excavations of British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie at Naqādah, at Al-ʿĀmirah (El-ʿÂmra), and at Al-Jīzah (El-Giza). Another earlier stage of predynastic culture has been identified at Al-Badārī in Upper Egypt.

From graves at Al-Badārī, Dayr Tasa, and Al-Mustaqiddah evidence of a relatively rich and developed artistic and industrial culture has been retrieved. Pottery of a fine red polished ware with blackened tops already shows distinctive Egyptian shapes. Copper was worked into small ornaments, and beads of steatite (soapstone) show traces of primitive glazing. Subsequently, in the Naqādah I and Naqādah II stages predynastic civilization developed steadily. Pottery remains the distinctive product, showing refinement of technique and the development of adventurous decoration. Shapes already found in Badarian graves were produced in Naqādah I with superior skill and decorated with geometric designs of white-filled lines and even simple representations of animals. Later, new clays were exploited, and fine buff-coloured wares were decorated in dark red pigment with scenes of ships, figures, and a wide variety of symbols.

The working of hard stones also began in earnest in the later Predynastic period. At first craftsmen were devoted to the fashioning of fine vessels based on existing pottery forms and to the making of jewelry incorporating semiprecious stones.

Sculpture found its best beginnings not so much in representations of the human form (although figurines, mostly female, were made from Badarian times) as in the carving of small animal figures and the making of schist (slate) palettes (intended originally for the preparation of eye paint) and ivory knife handles. The Hunters and Battlefield palettes show sophisticated two-dimensional representation.

The basic techniques of two-dimensional art—drawing and painting—are exemplified in Upper Egyptian rock drawings and in the painted tomb at Hierakonpolis, now lost. Scenes of animals, boats, and hunting (the common subjects of rock drawings) were more finely executed in paint in the tomb, and additional themes, probably of conquest, presaged those found in dynastic art.

Sources:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/54.28.2
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/180644/Egyptian-art-and-architecture

Artifact Trove at Egyptian Tomb Illuminates Life Before Pharaohs

Archaeologist uncovers human sacrifices and evidence of strife.

By Andrew Curry
National Geographic

A recently discovered tomb at a key Egyptian settlement has yielded the largest trove of artifacts ever found in a tomb there—including a young man's burned and scattered bones—and is shedding new light on the ancestors of the pharaohs.

Part of a cemetery complex that predates the formation of the ancient Egyptian state, the find is one of the richest "predynastic" burials archaeologists have ever seen.

The tomb, at the site known as Hierakonpolis, yielded 54 objects, including combs, spearheads, arrowheads, and a figurine made of hippopotamus ivory. Arrayed around the tomb are dozens more burials, including possible human sacrifices and exotic animals.

The latest find, announced earlier this month, is adding to the remarkable story coming out of the Hierakonpolis cemetery, which has been under investigation since 1979.

"It demonstrates the importance of this cemetery, with its high-status burials," says Boston University archaeologist Kathryn Bard. "They have some very interesting secondary burials of humans and animals and wooden structures that are unique to Hierakonpolis."

Hierakonpolis, located on the Nile River about 300 miles (500 kilometers) south of Cairo, was the most important settlement in Egypt's predynastic period, a five-century stretch that began around 3,500 B.C. and preceded the formation of the ancient Egyptian state.

The finds at Hierakonpolis show that the roots of ancient Egyptian civilization stretched back centuries. There are clear signs of social divisions, with elite tombs that are richer and larger than others. "There must have been a whole dynasty of predynastic kings," says Renee Friedman, a British Museum archaeologist who is director of the expedition.

The Hierakonpolis elite erected elaborate wooden structures over their tombs, parts of which have been preserved for more than 6,000 years by the dry climate. Their graves were surrounded by retainers, wild animals, and other accoutrements for their journey into the afterlife, foreshadowings of the mighty civilization that followed.

Pre-dynastic tomb uncovered in Egypt's Edfu

Tomb held an unidentified mummy and an ivory statuette, a find that Egypt's antiquities minister says should help shed light on the pre-dynastic era

by Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 6 May 2014

A British-Egyptian archaeological mission working in the Al-Kom Al-Ahmar area of the Upper Egyptian town of Edfu has discovered a pre-dynastic royal tomb of an unidentified king, the antiquities ministry reported.

The unearthed tomb contains the deceased mummy and an ivory statuette depicting a man with a barb, said Ali El-Asfar, head of the ministry's ancient Egyptian antiquities section.

El-Asfar described the statuette as unique and likely featuring the tomb's owner or a protective deity from the time period.

He also said that early studies carried out on the mummy suggest that the deceased died young, when he was around 17 to 20 years old.

"It is a very important discovery," said Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, adding that it would add more to Egypt's history as well as reveal more of the customs, religious beliefs and funerary rituals of people before the pre-dynastic era.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/100635.aspx

8 Rulers of Ancient Egypt: Most Precise Timeline Revealed

By Laura Poppick, Staff Writer   |   September 03, 2013

The most precise chronology of Early Egypt yet suggests the country formed much more quickly than previously thought.

The new finding reveals a robust timeline for the first eight kings and queens of Egypt, including, in order of succession Aha, Djer, Djet, Queen Merneith, Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet and Qa'a. The accession of King Aha to the throne is often thought to define the start of the Egyptian state, with the new study suggesting (with 68 percent probability) that he became king between 3111 B.C. and 3045 B.C.

Existing timelines of Egypt's transition from a nomadic community along the Nile River to a permanent state are mainly based on changes in pottery artifacts found at various locations around the country. However, such timelines are flawed due to the subjectivity required to distinguish one pottery style from another, and because styles might vary from site to site without signifying a change in time period.

To create a more reliable timeline, archaeologists based at the University of Oxford have developed the most comprehensive chronological analyses of Early Egypt artifacts yet based on a computer model of existing and newly measured radiocarbon dates. The analyses suggest the rise to statehood occurred between 200 and 300 years faster than previously thought, beginning between 3800 B.C. and 3700 B.C., rather than the past estimate of 4000 B.C. The findings, which also suggest the preceding Neolithic period lasted longer than thought, are detailed Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Uncovering the Origins of Ancient Egypt

Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff in Explorers Journal on April 22, 2013


Ancient Egypt has stood out even among the impressive remains of other ancient civilizations for three main reasons: the pyramids are enormous, the cultural style and imagery remained consistent for ages, and it is really, really old. In fact, the pyramids were roughly as old to ancient tourists from classical Greece as the ruins of Athens and Delphi are to us today.

One of the biggest questions surrounding ancient Egypt then is “where did it come from?” Last week at the Dialogue of Civilizations in Guatemala, National Geographic grantee Renée Friedman of the British Museum, and Ramadan Hussein, recent recipient of a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Tuebingen, set out to answer that question.

The Catfish

Friedman began by showing the “Narmer Palette,” which dates from 3100 BC, and features a ruler, triumphant over his enemies, seen with the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt. He is identified by two animal images: a falcon, symbol of the leader of gods, Horus; and a catfish his own personal symbol, since the ancient Egyptian word for catfish was “nar.”


According to Friedman, the iconography of forceful leadership and control over chaos illustrate that already at this early date, the role of kingship in Egypt fit a pattern that would continue for the next 3,000 years. But this is still not the beginning.

Murder and mayhem in Predynastic Egypt

by Renee Friedman and Daniel Antoine, curators,

British Museum

Using some of the latest imaging technology we now know that about 5500 years ago (about 3500 BC) the natural mummy known as Gebelein Man was stabbed in the back.

The ability to determine the cause of death in ancient remains is rare enough, but because his skin and muscle tissue are so well preserved, further detective work has allowed us to trace the trajectory (from above) and estimate the size (about two centimetres across, maximum) of the implement responsible.

Based on this information, the murder weapon was most probably a dagger.

While a projectile point is also a possibility, it is unlikely that it could have been removed without causing further tissue damage, and the cut on his skin is not lacerated. Only if it were a broad-edged transverse arrowhead, like those carried by the men on the Hunters’ Palette, might this be possible.

While this type of arrowhead was common in Predynastic Egypt, it was rarely made in a size matching the wound in Gebelein Man’s left shoulder.

We can probably also rule out flint knives, although they were prevalent throughout the Predynastic period (3800-3100 BC), with various examples displayed in the British Museum’s Room 64: Early Egypt gallery.

From their shape it is clear that they were mainly for cutting and slashing, using their edge rather than their point to inflict wounds. Most are also too wide to fit the forensic evidence from Gebelein Man. Instead, it seems most likely that he was done in by a metal blade.

Tools and weapons of metal (mainly copper but also silver) are rare in Predynastic Egypt mainly because implements of such valuable materials would have been recycled rather than discarded by the living and were among the first things to be robbed from the dead. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that copper was widely used at this time. For example, the central ridge depicted on the lances carried on the Hunters Palette (slightly later in date than Gebelein Man) indicate they were made of metal.

Six dagger blades of copper and silver have been preserved. Some still have their ivory handles, while all have a triangular blade with a mid-rib down the centre, and are 15-16.5 cm long with a maximum width of four-five cm. These blades are so far the best fit for the weapon used against Gebelein Man, and the two cm cut at the rib level suggest such a blade was plunged into his back for most of its length. The composite example shown here gives an idea of the original appearance, and evidence from one Predynastic cemetery suggests they were worn interlaced through armlets on the left upper arm for easy and rapid access.

We will never find the perpetrator responsible for Gebelein Man’s death, or determine his motives (revenge?, a hunting accident?, an act on the battlefield?), but the iconography and artefacts of Predynastic Egypt suggest it was not always a peaceful place.

Already 200-300 years before Gebelein Man met his end, scenes on pottery show human prisoners threatened with stone maces. Mace-heads of hard stone are well-known throughout the period. While they were probably used mainly in hunting, that they were also used against humans is clear from excavations in a cemetery at Hierakonpolis, contemporary with Gebelein Man, where several individuals suffered massive and fatal skull fractures inflicted by such an instrument. Further defensive wounds suggest these injuries were attained in battle.

These may have been minor skirmishes, but shortly after Gebelein Man died, scenes depicting pitched battles begin to appear.

While Gebelein Man may simply have been the unfortunate victim of interpersonal violence, he lived in a time when several regional centres in Upper Egypt, Gebelein being one of them, were beginning to vie for power and territory, in a process that ultimately led to the so-called unification of Egypt and the establishment of the Dynastic Egyptian nation state at about 3100 BC. Diplomacy may have been influential in this process, but there is no doubt that violence also played a major role, as the scene on the Battlefield Palette (about 3200 BC) leaves little to the imagination.

Was Gebelein Man a victim of his times? Recent research, suggesting that he was buried in a large well-endowed grave and with a number of lethal weapons of his own, only adds to the mystery that now surrounds him.

Source: 

http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2012/12/06/murder-and-mayhem-in-predynastic-egypt/

Oldest Pharaoh Rock Art Rediscovered in Egypt

This ancient rock picture near Egypt's Nile River was first spotted by an explorer more than a century ago—and then almost completely forgotten.

Photograph courtesy Hendrickx/Darnell/Gatto, Antiquity

Scientists who rediscovered it now think it's the earliest known depiction of a pharaoh.

The royal figure at the center of the panel wears the "White Crown," the bowling pin-shaped headpiece that symbolized kingship of southern Egypt, and carries a long scepter. Two attendants bearing standards march ahead of him; behind him, an attendant waves a large fan to cool the royal head. A hound-like dog with pointed ears walks at the ruler's feet. Surrounding the king are large ships, symbols of dominance, towed by bearded men pulling on ropes.

The picture, which was engraved on a sheer cliff face in the desert northwest of the city of Aswan, was probably created between roughly 3200 and 3100 B.C., according to researchers who published their discovery in December's issue of the journal Antiquity.

At around the same time that the picture was crafted, northern and southern Egypt were united under the reign of a supreme monarch, or pharaoh. The pharaoh in the picture may be Narmer, the king who overcame the last vestiges of northern resistance to southern rule and is considered by many to be Egypt's founding pharaoh.

This rock art picture, known as tableau 7a, is nearly ten feet (three meters) wide. That makes it the largest of the pictures at the site, called Nag el-Hamdulab after the neighboring village.

Earlier Egyptian art tends to show not kings themselves, but emblems of royal or divine power, said Yale University's John Darnell, one of the paper's authors. An image of a bull or falcon, for example, was often used as a stand-in for the king. When human rulers were shown, they were small and peripheral, as if they didn't count for much.

But here, for the first time, the king is dominant. "It's an amazing depiction, artistically and textually, of the birth of dynastic Egypt," Darnell said.

The change in the king's depiction reflects changes in the nature of kingship at the time, said Yale University archaeologist Maria Gatto, another author of the paper.

"He's not just a regular man like everyone else," she said. "He's a god, someone special who can help you be in contact with the supernatural."

—Traci Watson

Published November 29, 2012

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/pictures/121129-oldest-pharaoh-rock-art-egypt-science/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ng/News/News_Main+(National+Geographic+News+-+Main)

Dynasties of Egypt Part I: Pre-Dynastic and Early Dynastic Period

Predynastic Period

The Predynastic Period of Ancient Egypt (prior to 3100 BC) is traditionally the period between the Early Neolithic and the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy starting with King Narmer. However, the dates of the Predynastic period were first defined before widespread archaeological excavation of Egypt had taken place, and recent finds which show the course of Predynastic development to have been very gradual have caused scholars to argue about when exactly the Predynastic period ended. Thus, the term Protodynastic Period, sometimes called Dynasty 0, has been used by scholars to name the part of the period which might be characterized as Predynastic by some and Dynastic by others.

The Predynastic Period is generally divided into cultural periods named after the places where a certain type of Egyptian settlement was first located. However, the same gradual development that characterizes the Protodynastic Period is present throughout the entire Predynastic Period, and individual "cultures" must not be interpreted as separate entities but as largely subjective divisions used to facilitate easier study of the entire period.

The Protodynastic Period of Egypt (generally dated 3100 - 3000 BC) refers to the period of time at the very end of the Predynastic Period, equivalent to the archaeological phase known as Naqada III. During the Protodynastic Period, Egypt took the first steps toward political unification, leading to a truly unified state during the Early Dynastic Period. Also during this time, we see the Egyptian language first being recorded in hieroglyphs. 

The Roots of Art in Ancient Egypt

By SOUREN MELIKIAN


NEW YORK — How art begins is one of mankind’s greatest enigmas to which an answer has yet to be found.


If there is any hope of discovering the process out of which it emerges, ancient Egypt might be the place that will yield some clues.

The admirable show, “Dawn of Egyptian Art,” put together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Diana Craig Patch, reveals a world of seething artistic creation headed in multiple directions. Much of it bears no recognizable connection to the statuary and objects from Egypt under its historic dynasties.

The most startling revelation is the simultaneous existence by the end of the fourth millennium B.C. of pure abstraction, highly stylized figuration and representational art close to nature.

All three trends are occasionally observed side by side on a single object.

A large earthenware vessel from Naqada, a site north of Luxor in Upper Egypt, is thus painted with some abstract motifs above a group of simplified human figures. Around and below them, desert goats are accurately rendered with their characteristic twisted horns. The vessel was created around 3300-3200 B.C.

During the centuries that preceded it, Egyptian artists had been exploring radically different avenues.

Gold mining in ancient Egypt

The historical narrative of South Africa’s mining industry has been and, to a certain degree, continues to be dominated by the story of gold mining – and quite rightly so, considering the fact that it was the discovery and exploitation of gold, particularly on the Witwatersrand in the late 1880s, that largely fuelled the economic development of the country for the better part of a century.

Further, it was the mighty gold mining industry that had a significant influence in the shaping of South Africa’s socioeconomic and political structures in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Thus, it is appropriate that the historical narrative of the South African gold mining industry be dealt with in this column.

However, before turning attention to that subject, it is necessary to reflect on the broader history of gold mining. This, it is hoped, will go some way to explaining humanity’s obsession with the yellow metal and to revealing the central role that gold has played in every major society since the dawn of civilisation.

The history of gold is as old as that of man. There is no doubt that it was one of the first metals known to primitive man, as it exists in nature in an elemental state. Its association with primitive cultures is evidenced by the fact that crude ornaments of gold have been found among the remains of all prehistoric peoples.

However, the first people to use gold on a considerable scale were the ancient Egyptians. Archaeological evidence reveals that the yellow metal came into fairly extensive use during the predynastic period, that is, before 3100 BCE.

Although the origins of gold mining in predynastic Egypt are shrouded in mystery, it is likely that, during that period, the metal was extracted from alluvial deposits.

It was only with the advent of the early dynastic period, from 3100 BCE onwards, that gold began to be extracted by systematic mining. Some of the earliest mining operations were conducted in the granite mountains east of Coptos and further south, in Nubia, between the Nile and the Red Sea, during the early dynastic age.

Such Magnificent Beasts the Egyptians Made ‘The Dawn of Egyptian Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: April 12, 2012

In many ways the art of dynastic Egypt brought nature to a standstill, freezing the figure in an elegant, quietly pulsing suspended animation. Especially in its grandest, most monumental expression — the eerie, somnolent statues of the gods and of the pharaohs who were their earthly junior-god emissaries — Egypt offers us the sleekest, longest-running style in the history of art. It is also probably as instantly recognizable and firmly imprinted on human consciousness as any we know.

This style’s consistency is, if you think about it, frightening. It bespeaks an authoritarian power that was consolidated under the first Pharaoh around 3100 B.C., and that, despite political ups and downs, maintained a firm grip on the country’s aesthetic program for nearly three millenniums. The duration of Egyptian art may dull curiosity about how it began, since it is hard imagining a time when it didn’t exist. But of course everything starts somewhere: the high Egyptian style did not spring fully formed from the forehead of Osiris, god of the afterlife.

This is demonstrated by “The Dawn of Egyptian Art,” a sublime, view-shifting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art dominated foremost by small, startlingly personable sculptures and vessels from around 3900 to 2649 B.C. The show’s around 190 objects include animal sculptures and figures carved in wood, ivory and stone or modeled in clay; ceramic vessels painted with boats and their regal occupants. There are game boards, also of carved stone, including one in the shape of a coiled rattlesnake, and numerous wafer-thin hand-size stone palettes for mixing makeup whose minimally inflected silhouettes nonetheless intimate various animals, including fish, lions and a pair of mating turtles. 

Ancient Egypt: Predynastic Period

By Alistair Boddy-Evans

This period corresponds to the Late Neolithic (Stone Age), and covers the cultural and social changes which occurred between the late Palaeolithic period (hunter gatherers)and the early Pharaonic era (the Early Dynastic Period). During the Predynastic Period Egyptians developed a written language (centuries before writing was developed in Mesopotamia) and an institutionalised religion. They developed a settled, agricultural civilization along the fertile, dark soils (kemet or black lands) of the Nile (which involved the revolutionary use of the plough) during a period in which Northern Africa was becoming more arid and the edges of the Western (and Saharan) desert (the deshret or red lands) spread.

Although archaeologists know that writing first emerged during the Predynastic Period, very few examples still exist today. What is known about the period comes from remains of its art and architecture.

The Predynastic Period is divided into four separate phases: the Early Predynastic which ranges from the 6th to 5th millennium BCE (approximately 5500 - 4000 BCE), the Old Predynastic which ranges form 4500 to 3500 BCE (the time overlap is due to diversity along the length of the Nile), the Middle Predynastic which roughly goes form 3500 - 3200 BCE, and the Late Predynastic which takes us up to the First Dynasty at around 3100 BCE. The reducing size of the phases can be taken as an example of how social and scientific development was accelerating.