A new look at Eygptian prehistory

Submitted by coldrum on Friday, 16 July 2010 Page Views: 1409

Among Zahi Hawass's ambitious plans to introduce specialised museums across the country is a proposed predynastic museum at Qena.
Anyone interested in the antecedents of the Egyptian civilisation and the cultures that predated the unification of the country under one king may soon have many of their questions answered.

Items showing evidence of the activities of the early peoples of the Nile Valley, from the predynastic cultures of Upper and Lower Egypt, Fayoum and the oases of Siwa and Kharga selected from storehouses around the country, plus pieces from various museums, will soon be on display in a new predynastic museum at Qena.

The museum is currently being built at an ideal location -- a prominent five-feddan site overlooking the Nile. Mahmoud Mabrouk, head of the museums sector of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), which is overseeing the work, says that a plan has already been worked out to start surveying and registering predynastic items in order to prepare a database of antiquities.

As were other parts of the world, Egypt was occupied by Stone Age hunting, fishing and food-gathering communities in the Late Paleolithic. In about 5000 BC, Neolithic or New Stone Age people wandered along the river terraces of the Nile Valley, and traces of their agricultural, hunting and animal domestication activities have been found on numerous sites. Interestingly, from very early times many of the artefacts produced had a peculiarly "Egyptian" character, and their styles continued through various development phases well into the early historical period.

The work on predynastic sites, discovered independently by Britain's Flinders Petrie and France's Jacques de Morgan in the late 19th century have now been expanded. Literature has become specialised and scattered, and the sources and types of material, in the absence of a written language, remain wide-ranging and complex. Take pottery for example. It was used for vessels which served a wide variety of functions long before the first Pharaohs -- for everyday cooking and domestic purposes, storage of cosmetics and oils, for the transportation of food and drink, and funerary rituals. There were also fancy vessels in the form of humans, animals and birds, decorated vessels, and mother- goddess figures. The historical development of Egyptian pottery alone, and its role in Egyptology, is extremely complex.

What do predynastic objects tell us about the inception of Egyptian culture? What do flint tools, stone mace heads, chisels and adzes, metal jewellery, slate cosmetic palettes, leather and textile clothes and containers tell us about society? Were small objects in ivory, stone, shell and faience depicting zoomorphic figures actually representations of deities? Were they devices to ward off evil? And to what extent do they reveal a complex and developing community, its class structure, its organisation? Were goods created for trade? Were luxury items and minerals unobtainable locally and therefore imported into the country?

These are but a few of the questions raised by scholars of various specialisations, and the predynastic sites so far excavated -- both settlement sites and cemeteries -- reveal a truly remarkable picture.

The new museum at Qena, devoted to predynastic objects of all periods, will be a valuable source of information covering a field that is rapidly expanding and increasingly capturing the interest of travellers and the lay public as well as scholars.

For much more, including examples of Pre-Dynastic Sites, see weekly.ahram.org.eg.

Note: New Museum Will Represent 10,000 Years of Pre-Dynastic Culture.

Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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