straightforward. However, the campaigns of Khasekhem against northern, perhaps Lower Egyptian, rebels at the end of the Second Dynasty may provide a later parallel for the sort of action that was required to subjugate the Delta.
KINGS BEFORE THE FIRST DYNASTY
As we have seen, there is convincing evidence for the emergence of at least three Upper Egyptian polities by the Naqada II period (c. 3500 BC). The sites of This (with its cemetery at Abydos), Naqada and Hierakonpolis appear to have stood at the centres of powerful territories, each ruled by an hereditary élite exercising authority on a regional basis. The rulers of the three territories—plus an individual buried at Gebelein, who may have controlled a smaller area—used recognisably royal iconography to express the ideological basis of their power, and may justifiably be called ‘kings’. However, the respective owners of the Abydos vessel, the tombs in Naqada Cemetery T, the Hierakonpolis painted tomb and the Gebelein painted cloth are anonymous. Whilst their status is clear, they are quite literally prehistoric, having left no written evidence. It has been proposed that these kings exercising only regional authority might be grouped together as ‘Dynasty 00’ (van den Brink 1992a: vi and n. 1), recognising their royal status but emphasising their place in prehistory. The term is perhaps rather contrived, and has not won general acceptance. None the less, the place of these late Predynastic anonymous rulers at the head of the later dynastic tradition should be acknowledged.
History begins with the advent of written records, in Egypt’s case the bone labels from Abydos tomb U-j. Despite the number of inscribed labels from the tomb, the name of the owner himself is not certain. Several pottery vessels from U-j were inscribed in ink with the figure of a scorpion (Dreyer 1992b: pl. 4), and this has been interpreted as the owner’s name, not to be confused with the later King ‘Scorpion’ who commissioned the ceremonial macehead found at Hierakonpolis (Dreyer 1992b: 297 and n. 6, 1993a: 35 and
n. 4). Other vessels from tomb U-j bear short ink inscriptions consisting of a combination of two signs (Dreyer 1995b: 53, fig. 3.a-d). Some of the inscriptions have one sign in common, interpreted by the excavator as a stylised tree, perhaps indicating ‘estate’. It has been suggested that the accompanying sign in each case is a royal name, giving the sense ‘estate of King X’ (Dreyer 1992b: 297, 1993a: 35, 1995b: 52 and 54). This hypothesis is based upon later parallels which may not be appropriate to the Naqada III period, and the identification of a large number of new royal names on vessels from a single tomb may be questioned. However, many scholars accept the hypothesis, even if the existence of late Predynastic kings called ‘Fish’ and ‘Red Sea shell’ seems somewhat unlikely.
‘Dynasty 0’
Subsequent kings of the Thinite royal family were interred in the same ancestral burial ground, those rulers prior to Djer being buried in the section known to modern scholars as Cemetery B. The name of at least one pre-First Dynasty king is known, whilst inscriptions on vessels and on rocks in the eastern and western deserts attest the existence of further named kings before the reign of Narmer (Figure 2.3). Other inscriptions which may or may not be kings’ names have also come into the discussion. It is these rulers that
collectively constitute ‘Dynasty 0’. The term has caused some confusion, and it is rather unhelpful as the word ‘Dynasty’ suggests a single ruling line, moreover one which exercised control over the whole of Egypt. The various names undoubtedly represent rulers of various polities from different regions of the country, and it is practically impossible to establish which king was the first to rule over the whole of Egypt. However misleading it may be, the term ‘Dynasty 0’ has nevertheless come into general use and is unlikely to be discarded. A preferable and more neutral term might be ‘late Predynastic kings’.
Figure 2.3 Kings before the First Dynasty. Royal names of four late Predynastic rulers, incised on pottery vessels to indicate royal ownership of the contents: (1) serekh of ‘Scorpion’ (after Kaiser and Dreyer 1982:263, fig. 14.34); (2) serekh of ‘Ka’ (after Kaiser and Dreyer 1982:263, fig.
14.23); (3) serekh of unidentified King A (after van den Brink 1996: pl. 30.a); (4) serekh of unidentified King B (after Wilkinson 1995:206, fig. l.b). Names not to same scale.
Several tall storage vessels from Tura and el-Beda (at the western end of the north Sinai coastal route) are incised with the motif of a serekh surmounted by two falcons (Junker 1912:47, fig. 57.5; Clédat 1914; van den Brink 1996: table 1 nos 5–6, pl. 25.a). Some scholars have suggested that this represents the name of a particular late Predynastic ruler, perhaps based in Lower Egypt (von der Way 1993:101). It could equally be a mark designating royal ownership without specifying the ruler in question.
The more famous of the two rock-cut inscriptions at Gebel Sheikh Suleiman in Lower Nubia shows an early serekh presiding over a scene which apparently records a punitive Egyptian raid into the Second Cataract region at the end of the Predynastic period. Once erroneously dated to the reign of Djer, the inscription has now been shown conclusively to date to the period of state formation (Murnane 1987; cf. Shaw and Nicholson 1995:86). The serekh is empty and therefore anonymous, but we may hazard a guess that the ruler who ordered the inscription to be cut was an Upper Egyptian king, perhaps based at Hierakonpolis. The Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription proves that Egyptian military involvement in Lower Nubia—probably aimed at maintaining Egyptian access to sub- Saharan trade routes—began before the start of the First Dynasty. The process of Egyptian expansionism which led to the collapse of the Qustul kingdom and the disappearance of the indigenous A-Group culture may therefore have lasted several generations (cf. Williams 1986:171).
Although the rulers buried at Qustul in Cemetery L adopted royal iconography, they do not seem to have recorded their names in recognisable form. An incised inscription on a pottery vessel from tomb L2 has been interpreted by the excavator as the name of an otherwise unattested Lower Nubian king, *Pe-Hor (Williams 1986:149). However, once again, the inscription may not be a name at all, but rather a general mark of royal ownership.
Two pottery vessels from the Early Dynastic cemetery at Tura (Junker 1912:47, fig. 57.3–4; van den Brink 1996: table 1 nos 7–8, pl. 25.b and d) are inscribed with a serekh which has been read as *Ny-Hor (Kaiser and Dreyer 1982:264–8) but which may simply be a cursive rendering of the name of Narmer (Fischer 1963:44–7), since abbreviated writings of this king’s name are common (cf. Kaiser and Dreyer 1982: fig. 14.38). The same may be true of the serekh from Tarkhan (Petrie 1914: pls VI and XX.l; van den Brink 1996: table 1 no. 9, pl. 26.a), read by some scholars as *Hat-Hor (Kaiser and Dreyer 1982). However, in both cases, the vessels themselves suggest a date somewhat earlier than the reign of Narmer (van den Brink 1996), and the possibility that they record the names of earlier rulers cannot be excluded. The name written in ink on a vessel from tomb 412 at Tarkhan (Petrie et al. 1913: pl. XXXI.71) is unlikely to be royal (contra von der Way 1993:100–1), as it is not written within a serekh. More probably the tomb owner was a member of the local or regional élite.
The owner of Abydos tomb B0/1/2
Many sherds and complete vessels from tomb B1/2 and the adjacent pit B0 at Abydos are inscribed with a device consisting of a falcon perching on a mouth-sign. This has been read as the name of a king and the presumed owner of the tomb, *Iry-Hor (Kaiser and Dreyer 1982:212; cf. Petrie 1902:4). There are problems with such an interpretation (Wilkinson 1993b; O’Brien 1996:131–2), not least the fact that the ‘name’ is never found
in a serekh, despite this device already having been in use for royal names prior to the construction of tomb B0/1/2 (von der Way 1993:99, seeks to counteract this argument by citing the pot mark from Qustul Cemetery L discussed above). None the less, the existence of a King *Iry-Hor has gained wide acceptance (for example, van den Brink 1996). Whilst it is possible that the tomb belonged to a contemporary of Narmer’s (Wilkinson 1993b), the recent re-excavation of chambers B1 and B2 and the discovery of an adjoining pit B0 (Dreyer et al. 1996) mak
e it more likely that the whole complex belongs in the sequence of royal burials stretching back from the First Dynasty tombs in Abydos Cemetery B to their Predynastic forerunners in the adjacent Cemetery U. Moreover, the twin chambers closely resemble the tombs of kings ‘Ka’ and Narmer, and the location of B0/1/2—if not the pottery—also suggests that the owner of the complex should be placed immediately before ‘Ka’ in the order of succession (Hendrickx, personal communication, contra Kaiser 1990:289, fig. 1, who seems to place *Iry-Hor rather earlier, to account for the lack of a serekh).
King A
In contrast with some or all of the above cases, two royal names from the late Predynastic period almost certainly refer to particular kings. Because neither can be read as yet, they are designated here as King A and King B. The first is attested on a vessel from the eastern Delta. The inscription consists of a serekh, surmounted by a falcon, with three h signs/maces in its upper part (Fischer 1963:44, fig. 1, pl. Vl.a and c; van den Brink 1996: pl. 30.a). Although the signs may be a writing of a royal name, it should be noted that maces and serekhs occur together on several other vessels dating to the threshold of the First Dynasty (van den Brink 1996: pls 26.a, 28, 30.b-c). Hence, the three maces on the eastern Delta jar may simply represent general symbols of royal authority, and the inscription as a whole could be ‘an extended version of an anonymous serekh’ (Hendrickx, personal communication). Two similar serekhs are attested on vessels from Tura (Junker 1912:46 and 47, fig. 57.1 and 2), though both lack the Horus falcon. Moreover, in both cases the h signs/maces occur in the lower part of the frame, replacing the more usual vertical strokes by which the palace facade is indicated, and three circles are shown beneath the serekh (van den Brink 1996: table 1 nos 18–19). Because of these differences, the Tura serekhs may not represent the ruler whose mark appears on the jar from the eastern Delta. If, on the other hand, the three inscriptions do signify one and the same king, the fact that he is unattested outside Lower Egypt may be significant (van den Brink 1996:147), but it would be dangerous to reconstruct the extent of a ruler’s authority on the basis of a few pot marks.
King B
Two rock-cut inscriptions in the western desert behind Armant show another royal name (Wilkinson 1996a). The epigraphy of the inscriptions, particularly the rendering of the falcon atop the serekh, confirms that the king in question reigned at the very end of the Predynastic period (‘Dynasty 0’, c. 3100 BC). Because of difficulties in deciphering early Egyptian script, a plausible reading of the name has not yet been proposed. Given the southerly location of the inscriptions, it is possible that the king was a member of the
royal family of Hierakonpolis, which seems to have maintained control over the southernmost part of Upper Egypt until the threshold of the First Dynasty. The extent of King B’s authority cannot be ascertained, but he was clearly in a position to mount expeditions into the western desert. The inscriptions highlight the extent of Egyptian interest in the peripheral areas prior to the First Dynasty. The serekh of King B may occur again, but without the falcon, on a rock-cut inscription in the eastern desert (Winkler 1938,1:10 and 31). The site lies on the ancient Qena to Quseir route to the Red Sea coast, in an area visited regularly by Egyptian expeditions in late Predynastic and Early Dynastic times.
‘Scorpion’ and/or ‘Crocodile’
One of the most striking royal monuments from the period immediately preceding the First Dynasty is the Scorpion macehead from Hierakonpolis. Despite the objection of some scholars (for example, Malek 1986:29), the scorpion sign almost certainly records the name of the king, since it has been convincingly demonstrated that the rosette/palmette sign above the scorpion signified the ruler (H.S.Smith 1992:244). In view of the close stylistic similarities between the Scorpion macehead and the monuments of Narmer, the two kings were probably near contemporaries (Kaiser 1990:289, fig. 1). However, since no evidence of Scorpion has been found at Abydos— but note that the four-chambered tomb B50, devoid of any inscriptions, has been suggested as a possible burial place for Scorpion (Dreyer 1990:71)—he may not fit into the Thinite dynastic sequence at all. Instead, he may have belonged to the royal house of Hierakonpolis (Trigger et al. 1983:46), as suggested by the place he chose to dedicate his ceremonial macehead. In this case, he may have been at least partly contemporary with Narmer. The serekh of ‘Scorpion’ may occur on a wine jar from Minshat Abu Omar (Wildung 1981:37, fig. 33; van den Brink 1996: pl. 28), although this inscription has also been read as the name of Aha (Wildung 1981:35) Two serekhs written in ink on pottery vessels from Tarkhan (Petrie et al. 1913: pl. LX; Petrie 1914: pl. XL) have been read as ‘Scorpion’ (Kaplony 1963, II: 1090), although in the absence of any further comparable inscriptions a definitive reading remains impossible for the present.
A recent hypothesis assigns the Tarkhan inscriptions to another proposed king of ‘Dynasty 0’, the Horus ‘Crocodile‘ (Dreyer 1992a). This reading is based upon new infra-red photographs of the inscriptions and their comparison with a seal-impression from a third tomb at Tarkhan, dated to the reign of Narmer. The sealing, which may have belonged to a governor of the Tarkhan region, shows a series of crocodiles above coils which probably represent water. On the basis of the inscribed vessels themselves and the form of the serekhs, the Horus ‘Crocodile’ is identified as a usurper or alternatively a king reigning concurrently with the main Thinite royal family, early in the reign of ‘Ka’. Following this interpretation, the Minshat Abu Omar serekh mentioned above has now been attributed to ‘Horus (Crocodile) the Subduer’ (van den Brink 1996:147). The proposed new reading of the three inscriptions and the existence of a King ‘Crocodile’ is not universally accepted. By contrast, the Scorpion macehead remains a powerful piece of evidence for the existence of a late Predynastic king of this name.
‘Ka’
The horizontal stratigraphy of the royal burials at Abydos and the ceramic evidence—the types of pottery associated with the early royal names – make it fairly certain that Narmer was immediately preceded (as ruler of This, and perhaps as king of all Egypt) by the king whose Horus name shows a pair of arms, the hieroglyph later read as k3. King ‘Ka’, as he is generally known (but note Kaplony 1958), was buried in the double tomb B7/9, situated between the graves of his Predynastic forebears in Cemetery U and the tombs of his successors, the kings of the First Dynasty (Petrie 1901: pl. LIX). (The theory that the serekhs of ‘Ka’ from tomb B7/9 refer to the ka(-tomb) of Narmer [Baumgartel 1975:31; repeated by O’Brien 1996:132] would seem to be invalidated by the occurrences of the same serekh at sites other than Abydos.) Clay sealings from tomb B7/9 confirm its attribution (Petrie 1901: pls II.l and XIII.89). ‘Ka’ is the best attested king before Narmer, his name having been found at sites from Tell Ibrahim Awad in the north-eastern Delta (van den Brink 1992b: 53, n. 14) to Abydos in Upper Egypt. Two jars incised with the serekh of ‘Ka’ were found in graves at Helwan (Saad 1947:111 and 112, figs 11–12), apparently indicating that the city of Memphis—which the Helwan necropolis served— was already in existence before the reign of Narmer. This is despite later tradition that Menes founded Egypt’s new capital at the beginning of the First Dynasty. The serekh of ‘Ka’ also occurs on a cylinder vessel from Tarkhan (Petrie et al. 1913: pl. LXI). Here, and in the numerous inscriptions from the king’s tomb at Abydos (Petrie 1902:3, pls I- III), the accompanying signs refer to revenue received by the royal treasury. They illustrate the functioning of the centralised economy before the beginning of the First Dynasty, and they confirm that, from earliest times, tax collection was organised separately for Upper and Lower Egypt.
A NATION IS BORN
From the beginning of the First Dynasty, the Nile valley and Delta, from Elephantine to the Mediterranean coast, was under the control of a single government, presided over by a king from the Thinite royal family. Although the First Dynasty kings chose to be buried in their ancestral royal necropolis at Abydos, for at least part of the year they probably resided at and governed from a new capital city, located
strategically at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, ‘the balance of the two lands’. The foundation of Memphis as the national administrative centre really represents the culmination of the unification process. The earliest élite tomb at North Saqqara dates to the reign of Aha (c. 2950 BC), but burial activity at Helwan—which served as the capital’s second cemetery—began at least as early as the reign of ‘Ka’ (cf. Saad 1947:111 and 112, figs 11–12). It was ‘Ka’s’ successor and Aha’s predecessor, Narmer (probably the historical Menes), who became associated in later tradition with the foundation of Memphis, and he may have been the first king to establish his residence in the city.
Once the prize of national unity had been won, Egypt’s early kings set about establishing mechanisms of rule that would maintain and bolster that unity, guaranteeing their own privileged position at the same time. The ideology of divine kingship, elements of which had been developed by Upper Egyptian rulers in Predynastic times, was promulgated vigorously through iconography, architecture, ritual and royal activities. The
king was presented as the binding force of national unity and as the champion of Egypt and its people against the forces of chaos, embodied in Egypt’s neighbours. Official xenophobia, nationalism and a strong sense of Egyptian identity were deliberately fostered by the early state as part of its propaganda of rule. In essence, the concept of the nation state, so dominant in world politics today, was the invention of Egypt’s early rulers. The means they employed to promote this concept and the character of the state they moulded form the subjects of Parts II and III.
Early Dynastic Egypt Page 9
