Naqada culture, state formation period, Egyptian Dynasty 0 presence in Southern Levant

Andelkovic 2002; see also: (1995 book) The Relations between Early Bronze Age I Canaanites and Upper Egyptians ; (2012 paper) Hegemony for Beginners: Egyptian Activity in the Southern Levant during the Second Half of the Fourth Millennium B.C.

The boat is ubiquitous in Predynastic sources and it was the subject of several studies. Whether real boats or miniature models (made in clay, ivory or wood), depictions painted on vases or engraved on rock, the thematic of navigation holds a privileged place in the documentation of the 4th millennium B.C. Areas to which it refers are multiple: expression of power, politics and economics, but also daily life and funerary practices. This paper aims to present some preliminary observations resulting from the study of several Predynastic boat models kept in the collections of the Petrie Museum (UCL, London), the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford and the Archaeological and Anthropological Museum of Cambridge.

ABSTRACT-The boat depictions that adorn pre-dynastic Gerzean, Naqada II, D-ware pottery  vases are often described as ‘sickle boats.’ This familarity barely hides the deep problem of their unrealistic portrayal. A recognition of the practicality and importance of these fourth millennium BC ships to the founding of Egypt and its extensive Mediterranean trade will only be brought into focus by deciphering these distorted images and in the process of inspection, other clues will be found as to the prowess of these early navigators.
Compelling evidence to support a novel view of how these boats should be seen comes from peculiarities noted by documentors of ship petroglyphs north of Aswan, which the authors have stylistically dated to a similar era  to the Gerzean pots. In proposing a solution this paper complements ‘The prehistoric navigation compass and seaworthy ships of the fifth to second millennium BC’ (Hill 2014) and will prepare the ground for papers about the  founding of  the Copper Age in Britain and Ireland in the third millennium BC and The Clodgy Moor Boat Slate whose prehistoric creator has directed this floruit of documents.

Le bateau occupe une place privilégiée dans la documentation nagadienne, celui-ci apparaissant sur l’ensemble des médias qui nous sont parvenus et comptant parmi les motifs iconographiques les plus anciens. Il est omniprésent, que ce soit sous la forme de véritables embarcations ou de modèles en argile, de marques de potiers, de représentations peintes sur les vases ou encore gravées dans la roche. Les domaines auxquels ces sources font référence sont multiples : elles informent tant sur les pratiques funéraires et religieuses que sur les sphères politique et économique des périodes pré- et protodynastiques (ca 4500-2700 avant J.-C.).

L’ensemble des catégories de sources considérées dans ce travail illustre un même processus à l’œuvre durant le 4e millénaire et dont l’aboutissement n’est autre que l’apparition de l’idéologie pharaonique, bâtie autour de ce concept phare qu’était la Maât. Loin d’être limitées à une seule fonction, les représentations de bateaux surprennent par leur forte variabilité sémantique. Le bateau est en effet rapidement investi de diverses notions symboliques parmi les plus fondamentales de l’idéologie nagadienne : marque de prestige et de pouvoir, il pouvait également incarner l’Ordre dominant le Chaos, voire l’institution royale. Ces concepts sont marqués par des divergences régionales et influencés par des traditions séculaires. Les modèles réduits témoignent quant à eux de l’évolution des pratiques cultuelles. La concentration de ces objets dans les premiers temples et dépôts cultuels atteste l’homogénéisation de ces pratiques et le développement de la composante religieuse en Égypte.

La politique de standardisation artistique, religieuse et philosophique menée sous les deux premières dynasties décide quel concept idéologique conserver et quel autre définitivement écarter. Dès les premières personnifications iconographiques du roi, seul garant de l’ordre cosmique sur terre, le bateau perd progressivement de ses prérogatives allégoriques pour se voir cantonné à des fonctions funéraires et religieuses. C’est à cette époque que se développent les inhumations de barques, pratique qui culminera sous les rois bâtisseurs de l’Ancien Empire.

L’objectif de ce travail est d’analyser l’ensemble des productions artistiques, artisanales et architecturales pré- et protodynastiques en lien avec le bateau afin de mettre en lumière le processus global qui l’a conduit à incarner ces notions symboliques et idéologiques primordiales. Il vise également à fournir une synthèse portant sur les débuts de la navigation en Égypte et sur ses implications dans la formation de l’État pharaonique.

Full version available online: https://urlz.fr/8S5r

This paper deals with the royal stelae of the first two dynasties discovered at Abydos and, more specifically, with the "stela" of King Den exhibited at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels (E.0562). A careful analysis shows that this object can hardly be a royal stela. This paper presents the arguments that allow us to doubt the now centenary identification of this object and then adresses the issue of the royal stelae of Abydos. It offers a new analysis of the data at our disposal and deals in particular with the materials that were used and the architectural evolution of the royal tombs during the first dynasty. This study is based on an updated catalog of these stelae.

Andelkovic 2004 paper: To understand the state formation process, one should be able to organize the events of the past in their correct order, by a specific “state seriation”, so that the observed changes potentially reflect chronological order. Along with the most important features we considered in relation to the Naqada culture that mark the presence of the state, such as monopoly of the means of violence, territoriality, sovereignty, bureaucracy, authority and legitimacy, a subject’s “citizenship” and taxation, the basic setting for identifying the state is also distinguished by a different territorial extent (i.e., separate Upper Egyptian polities; unified Upper Egypt; expansion of Upper Egypt into Lower Egypt; expansion into Lower Nubia and Southern Canaan) and the accompanying social, political and chronological implications.

The terms ‘Naqadans’, ‘Naqada people/societies/communities’ have been widely used from the beginning of research on the Predynastic Period. In 19th- and 20th-century archaeology, one of the common practices was to ‘equate pots with people’. Since then, both terms have been used to denote the representatives of the Naqada culture, i.e. the communities who, between c. 4000 and 3000 BCE, lived in the
area surrounding the sites identified as the Naqadan, and who shared some common characteristics of this culture. Although currently the state of the research on the Naqada culture is different than in the 19th and 20th century and our knowledge of the relations between the past societies, archaeological cultures/records, and ethnicity in archaeology has changed, the term ‘Naqadans’ is still used in the archaeology of
Predynastic Egypt. The key objective of this paper is to analyse the contexts in which the term ‘Naqadans’ appeared in archaeological interpretations and to explore its different meanings.

Andelkovic 2014: Ideological ‘patterns of continuity’, archaeologically perceivable as early as Naqada I, that constitute the most distinctive hallmarks of nascent Egyptian civilization, are, to a great extent, defined by the concept of Divine Ruler, as a charismatic amalgam of sacral authority, ideological values, economic and military power. Divine Kingship, ‘presiding over everything’, seems to be a key ideological issue in the rapid political transformation of Predynastic Egypt.

The map reproduced in this short report is the product of a 2011 pottery seriation, which is itself part of a long running project into the chronology of the Egyptian Predynastic. The map displays the relative chronological ordering of a number of graves in the ‘Great New Race’ Predynastic cemetery at Nagada, an analysis of which shows both chronologically homogeneous and heterogeneous areas within the parameters of the cemetery. The clearest homogeneous area consists of a dense population of PNC/Nagada 1 graves which are sited at the mouth of the wadi and adjacent to the presumed location of the Predynastic walled settlement of South Town.

This paper discusses the underdetermined changes brought about by the introduction of extractive metallurgy in the southern Levant. It takes a long-term-perspective. The author sums up current perspectives with regard to a modified chronology based on calibrated radiocarbon dates before re-evaluating the interconnections between technical innovation and social change. Arguments in favor and against a Schivelbuschian view on extractive copper metallurgy are discussed as well as a variety of social fields in which changes can be detected

The boat is ubiquitous in Predynastic sources and it was the subject of several studies. Whether real boats or miniature models (made in clay, ivory or wood), depictions painted on vases or engraved on rock, the thematic of navigation holds a privileged place in the documentation of the 4th millennium B.C. Areas to which it refers are multiple: expression of power, politics and economics, but also daily life and funerary practices.

This paper aims to present some preliminary observations resulting from the study of several boat models kept in the collections of the Petrie Museum (UCL, London), the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford and the Archaeological and Anthropological Museum of Cambridge. This category of source is definitely the one which is the less known. Generally considered to be an offering to the dead, allowing him to travel in the other world, or even to be mere toys, boat models are most generally badly published and badly dated. Moreover, they show a high variety of shapes and general manufacture. All of this prevents to provide concrete information about their production and role(s).

This communication is divided in three parts: first, I would like to stress the possibility that these models are not the result of random productions but are specific objects with a specific role and that it is possible to precise their chronology based on different factors. It seems that several groups can be identified and that comparisons with depictions of boats, for example in rock art but also on some Naqadian objects, can be made. Then, I will briefly examine the information they bring us about naval architecture. Finally, I will propose a repartition map of these objects, with both a geographical and chronological perspective.

When the archaeology of Predynastic Egypt was last appraised in this journal, Savage (2001a, p. 101) expressed optimism that “a consensus appears to be developing that stresses the gradual development of complex society in Egypt.” The picture today is less clear, with new data and alternative theoretical frameworks challenging received wisdom over the pace, direction, and nature of complex social change. Rather than an inexorable march to the beat of the neo-evolutionary drum, primary state formation in Egypt can be seen as a more syncopated phenomenon, characterized by periods of political experimentation and shifting social boundaries. Notably, field projects in Sudan and the Egyptian Delta together with new dating techniques have set older narratives of development into broader frames of reference. In contrast to syntheses that have sought to measure abstract thresholds of complexity, this review of the period between c. 4500 BC and c. 3000 BC transcends analytical categories by adopting a practice-based examination of multiple dimensions of social inequality and by considering how the early state may have become a lived reality in Egypt around the end of the fourth millennium BC.

The author of the review analyzed the book of Russian sociologist S.A. Davydov writing in the genre of the sociology of history and contains three chapters. The first chapter about the genesis of a state, the second about the early history of ancient Egypt and its ‘mobilizing economy’, and the third about ancient Mesopotamian society, particularly about freedom and slavery in its economic activity. Davydov used of scholars works by second and third hands and factual lapses significantly reduce the quality of this work. A significant part of the book is a review of selected places from several famous books (for example, “The Stone Age Economics” by M. Sahlins), which reduces the independence of the work. The problem is not only in lack of material for the book, but the fact that Davydov is not sufficiently know the history of the development of scholarship about the ancient world, and therefore often considers as relevant the theories that have long been recognized as outdated. Davydov's basic ideas are not as fresh and brave as he thinks. For example, when the author disputes the despotic nature of ancient Eastern societies (Egypt and Mesopotamia), he struggles with the stereotypical perception of despotism, which has nothing to the knowledge about ancient societies and not connected with contemporary scholarly theories. The author’s reflections about “freedom – slavery” in the ancient world only come close to ideas that were represented by M. Finley and I. Gelb more than fifty years ago. Nevertheless, the attempt of a historical and sociological analysis of ancient history deserves attention and may be useful for the development of historical scholarship.

The repercussions of the emergence of kingship and of the formation of the State have necessarily been numerous. Although hardly perceptible by archaeology, it is possible to highlight various socio-political and economic phenomena directly attributable to the events that led to the birth of the Pharaonic institution. Among them are the first official delimitation of the Egyptian territory, the probable regulation of the access to the deserts, the annexation of geographical areas of economic interests, the insertion of Egypt in pre-existing exchange networks and the adoption by the first kings of new behaviours towards neighbours and economic partners. This paper aims to highlight some of these aspects thanks to the analysis of Early Dynastic rock art on the one hand and, on the other hand, of the changes that occurred in the procurement of exotic goods during the Naqada III period.