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PRE-HISTORY OF EGYPT

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Bianca
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« Reply #15 on: June 19, 2009, 08:23:20 am »











Suffice here to underline three points: 1) none of the 'proofs' for the identity of Menes with Narmer or Aha has revealed to be decisive out of any doubt: the so called 'tomb of Menes' a giant niched mastaba at Naqada probably built for the king's mother Neithhotep, produced an ivory label on which the 'Men' sign was below the shrine of the double goddesses, represented beside the serekh of Aha. The scholars advanced scores of theories on the meaning of this shrine[9], on the reading of the sign [10], and on the interpretation of the name Men (Menes) as that of Aha or Aha's dead father (Narmer) [11].

By the same way Helck's interpretation of the "Prinzenseal" of Narmer with rows of his serekh beside the men checkboard [12], has had, with the diffusion of this opinion in some articles of the Lexicon der Aegyptologie, a certain weight in the equation Aha - Menes. Another important factor is that Menes was later said to have been the foundator of Memphis; Narmer is indeed scarcely attested at Saqqara and Helwan [13], while Aha appears as the first ruler to have had a giant mastaba (S 3357) in North Saqqara (probably built for his highest official of the Memphite administration) with impressive funerary offerings [14].

2) I have mentioned [15] the modern interpretations of the Narmer palette and the fact that the Unification it was once thought to depict, seems to have happened well before Narmer's reign and lasted for more than a reign or a generation [16].

3) Despite frequent examples of misinterpretations of early dynastic writings (espec. kings' names) by later scribes, it is not easy to think that Menes (Meni in New Kingdom lists) ought to be considered an entirely mythical figure [17]; leaving aside the latest (and more corrupted) sources we must admit that the Ramses II period occurrance of Meni in the funerary king lists (Abydos) and Royal Canon of Turin [18] can't be overlooked, also given the general correspondence of the other names with Nebty names attested on Ist Dynasty objects. But this name strangely appears only with the 18th and 19th dynasty ! Furthermore on the Turin papyrus it directly follows the Shemsw Hor (which in turn come after the dynasties of gods) and is written twice: on the first of the two lines with a human determinative, and on the second one with the god determinative. I continue to prospect the alternative hypothesis that, whatever the meaning of the 'men' on the Princes-seals of Narmer and on the Naqada and Abydos Aha label, New Kingdom scribes or priests might have mistaken archaic documents which they surely knew or they could have created a mythical figure of the initiator of the Egyptian human kingship for religious and propaganda purposes, for the need to estabilish a precise point of departure of their successful kingship, state, tradition, culture[19].

In 1986 the German expedition re-excavating Umm el Qa'ab and the cemeteries B and U at Abydos, found an important seal impression with the Horus names of Narmer, Aha, Djer, Djet, Den and the king's mother Merneith; some years later a new example, again with the kings' names and the necropolis god Khentyamentiw was found containing all the names up to Qa'a, the last Thinite king of the Ist Dynasty (but now Merneith's was excluded).

On both the clay impressions the oldest king in the list was Narmer: a clear statement of the light in which he was in the middle and late First Dynasty! If a Menes did exist, in his quality of initiator of an epoch, he would have never been preceeded by another individual's name: thus Aha can't be considered Menes and, even if Aha's reign monuments at Saqqara, Abydos, Naqada are much more impressive than Narmer's ones, we can plainly believe that this depends on the fact that Aha enjoyed the wealthy state which his father (?) handed him down. As I' ve stated above, Narmer is much more attested in the whole country and abroad and his reign is marked by an evident evolution in various aspects of the culture of this growing civilization which appears to owe more to him than to Aha [20].
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« Reply #16 on: June 19, 2009, 08:27:49 am »















Many more objects bearing the name of Narmer are known: in the Hierakonpolis temple 'Main Deposit', together with the Great Palette and further older objects, it was also found a small decorated ivory cylinder with the Nar-fish of his name handing a reed towards three rows of Libyan prisoners; another well known and widely discussed and described object is Narmer's Macehead; very important is also the 1998 finding at Abydos, a label






with the year-event depicting the same military victory as on the palette and the cited ivory (see n.16 and part I n.2); the recent book of T.A.H. Wilkinson has a good summary of the sources for this king [21]; however it doesn't include some pieces which have often been related (indeed without any sure ground to do it) to Narmer, as the unprovenanced king's head in University College (he proposes a Second Dynasty date for it), or the ivory statuette from Abydos in the British Museum, or, possibly, the limestone stela fragment from Abydos (U.C. 14278; it might have belonged to Horus Aha); furthermore Narmer's serekh is on the base of a statue of Baboon, the god Hedj-Wr, in Berlin [22], and (almost completely erased) on the thigh of one of the three Coptos Colossi, the one in Cairo Museum (incisions) [23]. A 6,5cm diorite male head found in 1898 by F.W. Green at Hierakonpolis, is at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (E109.1898): there's no trace of it neither in the original publication nor in B. Adams' publication of Green's MS and in the distribution lists (Ancient Hierakonpolis. Supplement, 1974), but it is proposed as 'perhaps representing king Narmer' (thanks to Laura degli Esposti for informing me of this attribution; cf. Fitzwilliam Museum object label and the on-line catalogue). Indeed, considering material and style, it is more likely of 2nd-3rd Dynasty, besides not necessarily a royal portrait.

A stone vessel from Djoser's complex at Saqqara (note 13) has his serekh incised, some vessels from Abydos bear his serekh in relief and a couple of cylinder jars from Tarkhan (?) are inscribed in ink with Narmer's Horus name. It is not sure if Nar(mer) rather than Scorpion or [Ra]Neb is the inscription in the lower half of a serekh incised on the left part of the thorax of a statuette (h 11,2cm) in München St. Samm. ÄK(7149) (cf. the earlier Oxford -"MacGregor" man [1922.70] and the Third Dynasty Brooklyn Museum [58192] Onuris statuette).
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« Reply #17 on: June 19, 2009, 08:39:57 am »






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« Reply #18 on: June 19, 2009, 08:43:33 am »










As I have said above, Narmer is attested in the Desert (graffiti around Hierakonpolis, Wadi Qash, Gebel Tjawty, Coptos).
[NOTA: removed passage on Western Desert graffiti].

Yet most of the occurrances of Narmer's name is on jars and jar fragments; an astonishing number of serekhs has emerged in the last 25 years from excavations in Israel and Palestine (Tel Erani, Arad, 'En Besor, Halif Terrace/Nahal Tillah and more) signifying an apex of commercial contacts between Egypt and Canaan (in comparison, such proofs are less frequent for the preceeding and following periods).
Some more serekhs have been excavated at Minshat Abu Omar (44.3), Tell Ibrahim Awad and Tell Fara'in-Buto in the Delta and at Kafr Hassan Dawood (913) in a c. 1000 tombs cemetery on the southern limit of the Wadi Tumilat.

Dreyer interprets a mark on a jar in a private collection (cfr. n. 22) as an estate of Narmer in the Eastern Delta.

There is a slight possibility that a Naqada IIIb1 ruler with the name Nar did exist: a couple of serekhs of this one appear on too early jars types (cfr. n. 22 and n. 50); but all the other forms 'Nar' do belong to Narmer.

Infact his name often recurs in this abbreviated form with only the Nar sign; it is unlikely that, as it was hypothesized, the use of the writing 'Nar' was (always) from the latter part of his reign [24].

Narmer was buried in the sacred necropolis (B) of Abydos, tomb B17/18 (two united rectangular mudbrick-lined chambers; tot. length c. 10m x 3,00-3,10 large and 2,50-2,80 deep); it is few meters north of the westernmost chamber (B10) of his follower Aha (Kaiser-Dreyer, M.D.A.I.K. 38, 1982, 220-221).
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« Reply #19 on: June 19, 2009, 08:45:21 am »











Some meters to the north of Narmer's, a true double chamber tomb B9/7 (these two are circa 1,80 meters distant; B9 is c. 5,9 x 3,1m; B7 is c. 6 x 3,2 m; both are c. 1,9m deep), produced inscriptional material of his predecessor: his name, KA, also appears in at least two different writing forms: with the standard 'ka' sign and with the same sign but upset; because this latter can also have a different reading, i.e. the verb 'to embrace', P. Kaplony proposed (1958) to read the name Sekhen.

More than 40 inscriptions have been found in Ka's burial chamber (B7, the southern of the two) of the Abydos tomb: one is a seal impression, all the remaining ones are inscribed on tall jars or cylinder vessels (incised or written in black ink).



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« Reply #20 on: June 19, 2009, 08:48:45 am »

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« Reply #21 on: June 19, 2009, 08:49:54 am »











Apart from this site, the only further attestation of Ka in Upper Egypt is a carbon inscription on a jar fragment recently found at Adaima (N. Grimal in B.I.F.A.O. 99, 1999 p. 451 fig.1; more inscriptions in van den Brink, Archéo-Nil 11, 2001 in print).
Other traces of Ka have been found in northern sites: in the cemetery A of Tarkhan an ink inscribed cylinder vessel from tomb 261, and in Helwan tombs 1627 H2 and 1651 H2 two tall jars with incised inscriptions; a couple of inscribed vessels fragments are unprovenanced.

A new serekh has been found on pottery by F. Hassan in tomb 1008 at Kafr Hassan Dawood, at the southern boundary of the Wadi Tumilat (Hassan in E.A. 16, 2000, 37-9), and another one is known from a pottery fragment from Tell Ibrahim Awad (van den Brink, The Nile Delta... p. 52 fig. 8.2).

Finally there is a cylinder seal from Helwan 160.H3 with an anonymous serekh and a human figure beside it; this has his arms raised and the right hand appears to be partly placed in the serekh, just nearby to where the name would be written; A.J. Serrano has thus proposed that this figure could designate the king and his royal name -Horus Ka- contemporarily [25].

The serekh is probably anonymous and of slightly earlier date than Ka's reign, as Dr. C. Koehler believes.


The stratigraphic analysis at cemetery B seems to confirm that Ka immediately preceeded Narmer; indeed there are some inconsistenies: an important tall jar type which has been used before and after Ka's reign, has never been found during his own.

A recent useful innovation in the study of this period has been achieved by E.C.M. van den Brink [26]: he has produced a catalog of 24 complete jars with incised serekhs of Naqada IIIb-c1. The interest of this work is in that, contrarily to two older corpora provided by W. Kaiser in 1964 and 1982, van den Brink's has been prepared giving much more than a superficial consideration to the pottery types on which the serekhs are incised. The analysis of the pottery types has resulted in a distribution of the serekhs within four main phases corresponding to the development of the jars types; this comparative study has succeeded in fixing a more certain chronological frame for some royal names of Naqada IIIb; although few minor problems do arise [27] this system has offered a valuable means of relative datation of these names and it has even avoided the weak points inherent to Kaiser's subdivision into three 'Horizonten'.
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« Reply #22 on: June 19, 2009, 08:52:50 am »










Before continuing to ascend the Abydene line of Dynasty 0 we must consider two rulers who have left no trace of themselves at Abydos; King SCORPION (II) and Horus Crocodile. Both are known by very few inscribed objects.

The particularity of these rulers is that the epigraphy, provenance and typology of their sources speaks for a datation surely not post-Narmer and very likely neither pre- Ka. They might be thought to represent 'Gegenkonigen' (as Dreyer defines Crocodile) thus rebels or usurpers; more likely they were the last expressions of ancient local indipendent ruling lineages which ceased to reign only when the powerful kings of the Thinite region moved northward to occupy the territiries with which, until then, they had only entertained peaceful commercial relations; but in this respect the position of Scorpion II at Hierakonpolis is harder to explain and Dreyer thinks this was a Thinite king too. The different writing of his name and the Nekhen finds can't be a certain indication of the Hierakonpolite origin of Scorpion II: Iry Hor had a different royal name mark too, and Narmer was also known at Nekhen.

The giant macehead of Scorpion from Hierakonpolis (it's bigger than Narmer's) is another important masterpiece of the period; for this reason (as well as for its being virtually the only object surely attributable to this king, for the debates on the ritual it depicts and for some further motives) this macehead is of public domain in the field of divulgative Egyptology; there is no need to add a detailed description; I only remark that the name of this king is not written in the serekh and is not surmounted by Horus; the expression for 'sovereign' is rendered by the 'Rosette' [28]; Cialowicz thinks that at the right end of the rows of Rekhyt-bows standards and dancers in the upper registers, there would be the standing king Scorpion represented (in higher scale) with the red crown of Lower Egypt (cfr. Adams - Cialowicz, Protodynastic Egypt, 1997 fig.1).

Another macehead from the same cachette at Hierakonpolis, far more fragmentary than the already fragmentary previous one, shows a king sitting under a canopy; he wears the red crown and the Heb Sed robe; Arkell interpreted a slightly visible sign before the head as a Scorpion [29]; Adams has found no trace of the rosette in a break in front of the red crown curl; therefore the object could belong to another king of the period immediately before Narmer (or Narmer's own): I would suggest that the fragmentary glyph might be interpreted as a standard with a crocodile whose tail hangs down (Horus Crocodile ?).

Cialowicz has given a convincing interpretation of the scene as the Sed celebration after a military victory of Scorpion (or Narmer); to the right of the sitting king, in the centre of the scene, there is a big falcon (turned towards the king) holding in the claws a rope which directs to the right-end of the preserved fragment; here, behind and in a lower position than the falcon, there must be a number of prisoners (one ear is clearly visible) which the rope kept during their presentation to the king by Horus.

The last reluctantly accepted piece of evidence for king Scorpion II is a graffito in Upper Nubia, Gebel Sheikh Suleiman [30].

It is not far from the notorious graffito now in Khartoum Museum: it represents a scorpion with a prisoner into its claws; two more human figures with a bow and false tails, are directed towards the captive and the scorpion. This scene could, in my opinion, be far earlier than the presumed time of Scorpion II: it's surely related to a chief, but I would prefer a date in Naqada IIIa (Scorpion I?) or even late Naqada II.

The date is far more certain for an alabaster vessel from Quibell and Green's Hierakonpolis excavations: but the scorpions and bows which surround its body can't be attached with full confidence to king Scorpion; a larger group of objects which would be assigned to this king's reign has been proposed by Kaplony [31]: but it can't be assumed that almost any known late predynastic representation of scorpions ought to refer to the king in object.

The tomb of Scorpion II has never been found; Dreyer and Hoffman have speculatively proposed respectively the 4- chambers Abydos B50 and the Hierakonpolis loc. 6 tomb 1 [32]. Therefore the slight traces of Scorpion II hinder any safe reconstruction about the place of origin of this obscure sovereign and his role in the late predynastic history.



http://xoomer.virgilio.it/francescoraf/hesyra/dynasty0.htm
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« Reply #23 on: June 19, 2009, 09:13:07 am »
















A royal name within a falcon topped serekh incised on a jar from tomb 160.1 at Minshat Abu Omar has been alternatively read as Aha and Scorpion. The sign does look like a scorpion, curved with both the tail (which is drawn above the body) and the head looking rightward, whereas the falcon looks towards the left. Van den Brink has proposed that this sign might be an upset variant of the coil identified by Dreyer on two vessels and a seal impression from Tarkhan (cfr. below) [33].

The two ink-inscribed cylinder vessels were found by Petrie [34] in tombs 1549 and 315.


 
Kaiser and Kaplony read their serekhs name as Scorpion (with the tail now curved below the animal); but this is impossible because the scorpion would have on both the examples an opposite orientation than the falcon above the serekh; Dreyer [35] has introduced, to account for these two serekhs (but not the M.A.O. one), a king CROCODILE, ruler of the Tarkhan region; he also advanced that to this king might belong the apparently anonymous serekh (? cf. n. 36) (surmounted by a bull's head and surrounded by crocodiles) on a seal impression also found by Petrie at Tarkhan (tomb 414, Narmer's reign)[36].

Contrarily to Kaiser and Kaplony, Dreyer (thanks to new infrared photos) doesn't see only one sign in the ink serekhs, but a crocodile (in profile) above a coil of rope (cfr. note 39).

I must now make a remark: the M.A.O. 160.1 has much more distinction between a squarish body and a slender linear tail, but I suggest that a crocodile would not be depicted, even in a cursive and stilized writing, as an animal with two very distinct parts of the body (cfr hieroglyphs of other animals as bees, scarabs, birds), because it has a uniform shape from his head to almost all the tail length; so this is surely not a crocodile. The sign looks more like a scorpion (this must not necessarily mean that it belongs to king Scorpion II of Hierakonpolis, it might also be another omonymous sovereign). The alternative proposed by van den Brink is also interesting (note 33) becuse he thinks that the only coil is here represented, thus (Crocodile) The Subduer (snj.w).

The crocodile is generally depicted in profile (with straight or curved tail) not to be confused with the lizard [37]; the scorpion sign here is identical with the Gardiner's sign G 54 ('fear') which is used in Saqqara king list and Turin Canon as a later variant of the mid Second Dynasty king's name Sened.

This makes what we have assumed to be the scorpion tail become the head of a goose; and this is the only way to account for the animal to look towards the opposite direction than Horus (unless considering it as an unlikely kind of political statement against the other Horus kings of the country), because the sign 'snd' is always written with the body in accordance to the writing direction and the curved snout and face in the opposite direction (cfr the Saqqara King list and Turin Canon).

Therefore the two vessels in Tarkhan t. 315 and 1549 could not name Scorpion (II) but a Naqada IIIb2 king whose name can be read Horus Sened, The Dreadful [38] or (if two signs are involved as Dreyer has hypothesized) Crocodile the Subduer [39].
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« Reply #24 on: June 19, 2009, 09:18:40 am »











The oldest king known from Abydos necropolis B is IRY HOR. His name was read 'Ro' by Petrie but the identification as a royal name was considered doubtful because the falcon is directly placed on the mouth sign and it never appears in a serekh; only since an article of Barta (G.M. 53, 1982 p. 11-13) and the publication of the second DAIK (re)excavations campaign at Umm el Qaab his status and reading as king 'Iry Hor' has been almost universally accepted; Wilkinson has advanced this could be a treasury mark; Kaplony read it, since 1963, as a private name Wr-Ra (thus interpreting the bird as a wr swallow) [40].
Many jar fragments from the chamber B1 (c. 6 x 3,5) of his double tomb (B1/2) were incised with this name; the German equipe excavation of B2 (m. 4,3 x 2,45) produced another incised jar fragment plus eight ink inscriptions and a private seal impression, vessels fragments with the name of Narmer and Ka and parts of a bed, in particular a fine ivory fragment of bull-leg bed-foot. An offering pit B0 is immediately south of B2.

Two seal impressions with rows of Hor+mouth (no register line) are known: one from Abydos B1 and another from debris of tombs Z86-89 at Zawiyet el Aryan [41]; this latter is the only signal of the presence of Iry Hor outside of Abydos necropolis, if we exclude a further uncertain incision on a spindle whorl from Hierakonpolis [42].

Few meters north of Iry Hor's B 0/1/2 there are 3 tombs (X, Y, Z) which link the B cemetery with the more ancient cemetery U; some of its latest tombs (U-j, U-k, U-s, U-f, U-g, U-h, U-i, U-t and the cited U-x, U-y, U-z datable to Naqada IIIa2-b1) prosecute towards the past the history of the Abydos chiefs; they will be analyzed in a further study ("Dynasty 00").

We leave now definitively Abydos to consider royal names from other cemeteries. Note that (contra Kaiser, Dreyer, van den Brink and partly T. Wilkinson) Stan Hendrickx doubts that all the serekhs I am going to consider from early Naqada B actually do represent royal names (G.M. 2001 in print).
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« Reply #25 on: June 19, 2009, 10:04:25 am »







Three pear-headed mace signs form the name of another king whose serekhs were found at Turah [43]; these have both three circles below the serekh and no falcon atop it. These signs substitute the palace facade device in the serekh, and only a narrow empty space (where the name is usually written) is left in the upper part. But a variant of the same name was found somewhere in the Eastern Delta, with the palace facade lines, the three maces in the name compartment and a further mace out of the serekh (which this time has the falcon on it) [44]. All the three inscriptions were incised on (completely preserved typ.74j) jars which belong to van den Brink's IIIrd phase/type [45], roughly spanning Naqada IIIb2 (Kaiser's Horizon B), therefore the same period as the reigns of Iry Hor, Ka, early Narmer, Crocodile and Scorpion.


Interestingly van den Brink has associated this rulers' name with the sign Gardiner M8 (sha) and with Helck's reading 'Wash' of the name of the prisoner Narmer smites on the verso of his palette [46]. If the writing showed instead tree maces the reading would be Hedjw / HEDJW-HOR.


Two more serekhs from Turah are dated in v. den Brink phase/typology IIb (Kaiser, 1982 Horizont A) or Naqada IIIb1 [47]; the serekhs have only an horizontal line in the name-space, so, despite the lack of the falcon, they' re usually read NY-HOR.

Sometimes they have been read as a variant of Narmer's name [48]: a serekh of this latter (?) from Ezbet el-Tell [49] has the Nar sign represented just as an horizontal stroke. Another serekh has been always considered to be of Narmer: it was found by Petrie in Tarkhan tomb 1100; the (complete) jar inscription has the Nar fish inside the serekh (no falcon upon) and a kind of mer-hoe below it; Helck supposed this sign was an alternative to the mer chisel for the second part of the king's name; but probably the hieroglyph is Gardiner sign U13-14 (shen'a, deposit). The problem with this vessel arises by its form typology (74b), which is v.d.Brink type IIb: too early for Narmer's reign; indeed the horizontal hieroglyph is here not a simple stroke but it closely resembles the body of the Nar-fish [50].


HAT-HOR is the reading of a serekh on a jar from Tarkhan tomb 1702 (as for Nj-Hor this serekh is falconless too, so the reading could be simply Hat or Haty [51]); the name sign would be probably associated with Nar(mer) too if the jar on which it is incised (type 74b) wasn't of too early a type for Narmer's reign which is Naqada IIIb2-c1.

The earliest serekhs of Naqada IIIb1 (van den Brink type IIa) are, alike the oldest of those emerged from the necropolis U at Abydos (IIIa2) [52], anonymous and without falcon atop of them.

The only exception is provided by five known attestations of an anonymous serekh surmounted by two falcons facing each other.
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« Reply #26 on: June 19, 2009, 10:10:51 am »











Generally indicated as Double Falcon this king name was encountered by M.J. Cledat; in the spring of 1910 he was excavating at El Mehemdiah, in north-eastern Delta, when a bedawin arrived to his camp with a jar and some fragments incised with inscriptions which Cledat soon recognized as archaic; their provenance was a site few miles distant, known as El-Beda, where they had been found during the planting of a palm-grove. Led to that place Cledat found more fragments in the debris, but, when he returned once again in the following year he only gathered few flints [53]. In his publication he reported three serekhs with the double falcon and another one with only a strange mark on its right (see below and n.56).

In 1912 it had already been published the excavation in Turah by Junker; in a tomb at Ezbet Luthy (SS) [54] some years before, a complete jar with the Double-falcon serekh had been found.

The fifth inscription of Double Falcon is on a jar from Sinai [55]; all the 5 incised serekhs have a mark on the right (but the Turah on the left). Dreyer (M.D.A.I.K. 55, 1999, 1ff) thinks the upper part of two of the serekhs from el-Beda represents a 'dw' related to the royal name Double-Falcon (he considers dw as a variant of the three-mounts sign khaset) which might have influenced later concave-top serekhs.
The last known Double-Falcon serekh fragment has been found at Tell Ibrahim Awad (van den Brink, Nile Delta p.52 fig. 8.1).

More inscriptions of Double Falcon will be published by van den Brink in Archéo-Nil 11, 2001 in print.

A relief on a slate palette in Geneva shows a standard (?) with two falcons facing each other; beside it there is the curly-tail dog which is also found on the Brooklyn Museum Knife handle from Abu Zeidan tomb 32 (early Naqada III, cfr. Needler, 1984), on the Pitt-Rivers comb, and on the Gebel Arak and Gebel Tarif knife-handles (see their pictures below, in the Conclusions).
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« Reply #27 on: June 19, 2009, 10:14:46 am »









Anonymous serekhs are being somewhat frequently found in Delta, Upper and Lower Egypt, but also in Southern Palestine.

One of the fragments Cledat found at El-Beda had and incised serekh (without name-compartment) with a strange mark on its right: it could perhaps represent a name, Ka(?)-Neith [56].

Two complete jars with serekh have been found at Rafiah, Southern Palestine [57], one on a v.d. Brink type IIa and another on a type I jar; type I corresponds with late stufe IIIa2 / early IIIb1 to which two more examples are added by van den Brink: they are anonymous serekhs on two jars from tombs 1021 and 1144 at Abusir el Meleq [58].
Early Naqada IIIb1 are the Abydos tombs U-s (119) and U-t (120) which yielded some ink anonymous serekhs [59].

The study of these inscriptions provide important informations about the oldest forms of writing and their use: this always concerns the royal propaganda and the royal administration.

They can give interesting clues about the regional authority of the rulers and the range of their commercial - exploitative activities.

Indeed it is very difficult trying to trace the area of influence of many of these local chiefs basing on few inscriptions only. The problem is that all the rulers attested in Naqada IIIB (= b1-2), with the exception of the Thinite line Iry Hor-Narmer, have not been documented by royal tombs of their own but only from inscriptions found in their dignitaries' tombs, in desert graffiti or on some unprovenanced objects. In this respect it is noteworthy the material excavated in urban or cultual areas as those reached by the German at Tell Fara'in Buto where serekhs have been found too.

Ancient royal inscriptions reported in the desert sites can be a valid suggestion not only to know the paths to some resources but also to understand possible directions of commercial or 'colonial' interest (as the discussed case of the Wadi Qash and Djebel Tjawty or those in Nubia).

During the 1910-11 archaeological survey of Nubia, C.M. Firth found at Sayala in a disturbed tomb (n.1 of cemetery 137) a gold mace-handle (now lost) decorated with embossed motives representing rows of animals, a typical late Naqada theme often found on ivories, bones, combs and knife-handles [60]. This object was probably imported from Upper Egypt; the chiefs of the Seyala polity controlled the entrance to the Wadi Allaqi (rich in gold mines) and a part of the trade circuit between Egypt and Upper Nubia. Some of the graves in cemetery 137 had sandstone slabs as a roof and the mentioned tomb 1 also contained two Egyptian palettes, two stone vessels, two mace heads (each one with gold handle) and other status-marking objects; thus Seyala must have been an important trade center which, as possibly the whole A-Group and the much later C-group culture, benefited of the role of mediation in the complex net of interexchange of products between Upper Nubia and Upper Egypt and beyond; near Seyala there were found rock drawings with reprsentations of boats in the peculiar style of Naqada IIc-d.
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« Reply #28 on: June 19, 2009, 10:18:51 am »









Some 150 km upriver from Seyala there is the site of Qustul; some materials from older excavations have been published by B. Williams; they show clear traces of Egyptian influence. The most important tomb of the cemetery (L) was L24, in which a stone decorated fragment from an incense burner revealed an astonishing representation of a boat procession towards a palace facade building; the first boat carries a prisoner held onto a seat by another individual; the central boat carries the king, sitting and equipped with long robe, flail and white crown; he faces towards the last boat as the falcon on the serekh which is just in front of his head followed by a 9 slender petals rosette; before the last boat an arpoon, a rampant antelope and a man and, below the prow of the last boat a kind of saw-fish saw (cfr. those on Coptos Colossi) and a big fish. The last boat is occupied by a wild animal (halfway between bull and lion) followed by a falcon (?) topped standard [61]. Another incense burner was found in tomb L11(below).

Such a evidence, even not lacking chronological problems, was interpreted by the excavator as a proof for a possible Nubian A-group influence on the Egyptian state formation! Now that excavations in the cemetery U at Abydos have brought to the light a series of early Naqada III royal tombs (the 12-chambers U-j is contemporary or earlier than Qustul L24) this theory needs no alternative discussions to be disproved (but indeed K. Seele and B. Williams proposed an early Naqada IIIa datation for the "Archaic Horus" burner from L11, the Qustul burner of L24 and the emergence of the Nubian monarchy -cfr. B. Williams, op.cit. 1986, 1987).

Some of the paintings on vessels from the tombs of Qustul have motifs related to the late Naqada II- early Naqada III Egyptian iconography, especially the bowls from tombs L19 and L23 (see figure below); this parallels the similarities between the A-group incense burners (but also seals -cf. below- and the Sayala mace-handle) and the Upper Egyptian decorated ivories.
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« Reply #29 on: June 19, 2009, 10:20:51 am »











Cross-comparisons of ceramic types (in the richest tombs there was also pottery imported from Upper Egypt and Palestine) lead us to prefer a later Naqada IIIb1-2 date for the emergence and apex of this Ta-Seti state into the A-Group culture.

Initial A-Group coincides with Naqada I, terminal A-Group with Early Dynastic period; military raids and the more frequent presence of Ist Dynasty rulers in Nubia likely aimed to obtain a direct control of the products trades with the lucrative markets of the far south (felines pelts, elephant tusks, gold, resins, timber, apes and other exotic genders); therefore when Egypt was capable to bypass or to abolish the costly intermediation of A-group centers, this culture rapidly declined, and certainly the military intervention of Egypt accelerated its complete extinction.

Another tomb (L2) at Qustul contained, among some objects, a cylinder jar (net-painted decoration) and, above all, a storage jar [62] inscribed with a falcon on a squarish sign; it has been read PE-HOR. This possible royal-name was incised, unlike most of the serekhs on jars, post - firing; in these circumstances, as van den Brink notices [63], the clay can't consent easy round scratches as when it's wet, but, like in rock graffiti, it forces the engraver to produce mostly squarish signs. T. Wilkinson [64] states that the inscription may merely represent a ownership mark.

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