Essay Question:

Discuss the process that may have led to the unification of Egypt.

Essay written by David Rohl (2nd Year Ancient History/Egyptology).

Submitted to Amelie Khurt on the 24th January 1989.

The events and processes which led to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into a single state administered from the new capital at Memphis are numerous and complex. Or rather, perhaps it would be better to say that the theories propounded by scholars to explain the unification are numerous and complex. The historical reality itself may have been somewhat different. Whatever the case, the exact circumstances and conditions are now unlikely to be recovered, given the paucity of the surviving material-evidence and the inevitable distortions of later Egyptian pseudo-mythological literature on the subject.

The evidence we do possess, as is practically always the case with pre-New Kingdom archaeology, tends to come from a funerary context. This phenomena, in many ways peculiar to Egypt, inevitably distorts the historical picture in terms of the surviving artifactual evidence and tells us very little about the political history of Predynastic and Protodynastic Egypt.

What the cemeteries do provide, however, is an overview of the political topography of Egypt at this time, especially in terms of locating the major population centres and therefore the distribution of the principal chiefdoms. This is, however, really only applicable to the Nile valley, as the Delta Predynastic settlements now lie well below the current water table and remain inaccessible to archaeology. A few sites in northern Egypt, particularly in the Faiyum (Faiyum A) during the Badarian period and around Cairo (Ma'adi, el-Omari, Merimde and Heliopolis) in the later Gerzean (Naqada II) period, have been found but even these have not in general been properly published and cast little further light on this difficult period.

Artifacts from graves, of course, generate considerable extra information, both chronological (via pottery seriation) and anthropological (through burial customs and funerary equipment). Unfortunately these deposits, although providing indicators to major cultural changes, tell us almost nothing about the unification process itself. However, small groups of objects have been found which do provide some information concerning the activities of the late rulers of the Predynastic period and the early kings of the 1st Dynasty. These are the inscribed mace-heads and ceremonial cosmetic palettes from Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen) and the wooden and ivory labels found in the royal tombs at Abydos (ancient Thinis?). In addition, we may include here the only other significant inscriptional material for this period: the rock-drawings of the desert wadis (in particular the Wadi Hammamat), the painted tomb at Hierakonpolis and the Gebel el-Arak knife handle, all of which will be discussed in more detail below.

Finally, we are left with two other important areas of potential evidence: a) modern methods of assessing climatic changes in the ancient past, using radiocarbon dating, and b) interpretation of the near contemporary material of the Old Kingdom, such as cultural motifs, architectural features and cylinder seals, which we may reasonably suppose derive, in good part, from the earlier period in which we are interested.

Even when taken as a whole, this fairly short list of source material fails to provide firm answers to the unification question and modern scholarship is still dependent to a large degree on intuitive guesswork to construct the political events of Predynastic Egypt as compared to the later 'historical' periods. This situation has, of course, much to do with the fact that writing itself appears to have come into use only after the onset of the 1st Dynasty and even then the obscure sign groupings typical of this period are virtually undecipherable. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not become a recognisable language until much later, in the Old Kingdom.

What we have then is a series of speculations, none of which is entirely convincing, but all of which have their good points. These theories can be divided into two basic groups which line up on either side of the well know debating theatre of 'Diffusion versus Independent Invention'. The formation of the Egyptian state and culture is perhaps the classic example of this genre of historical debate.

From the early 1900s onwards Egyptologists, and in particular archaeologists led by Petrie [1] (and later taken up by the likes of Vandier [2]), were convinced that an important cultural change had taken place not long before the unification and that this change was brought about by the arrival into Upper Egypt of a foreign population at the beginning of the Naqada II period. This 'aristocratic' group immediately dominated the less sophisticated indigenous population and, after a period of consolidation, proceeded to unite the rest of the country by force of arms. This hypothesis was later encapsulated by Derry [3] and Emery [4] and has become known as the 'Dynastic Race Theory'.

On the other hand, the other school of thought, formulated in the 1960s and led by Arkel and Ucko [5], believes that the 'civilising' process in Egypt was a purely Egyptian affair and that, at most, there was only a foreign 'artisan' influence present in the native chiefdoms of Upper Egypt, sometime prior to the unification.

Given the agreement on both sides concerning the existence of a foreign element, the issue can therefore perhaps be summarised in the following questions: Were the foreigners who came to Egypt immigrant conquerors or foreign traders/immigrant craftsmen? And were the later kings of the 1st Dynasty native Egyptians or the descendants of this foreign element? These will be the two questions upon which this essay will concentrate, but before that we should briefly discuss the theory of climatic changes which purportedly led to an increase in the Nile valley population and brought the various tribal groups into conflict over the limited land resources then available. One of the main proponents of this idea was Butzer who developed his scenario from survey work in the Great Wadi at Hierakonpolis [6].

This angle of the indigenous unification theory suggested that an increase in aridity forced nomadic, but native Egyptian, groups living on the plateau regions to descend into the valley during the 4th millennium. The scientific data, however, appears to contradict this scenario as there was actually an increase in precipitation at around 4000 BC following a brief dry spell. The next dry period, which turned the uplands and wadis into the desert terrain we can see today did not begin until around 2400 BC [7]. With an increase of vegetation in the wadis during Predynastic times one might have expected just the opposite sort of population movement and, if anything, a decrease in habitation in the valley itself. This idea then does not have much to commend it and we come back to the idea of an influx of new people to explain any signs that may exist of a surge in population (if indeed there were any).

Given that the increase in Nile valley population may not anyway in itself suffice to explain the sudden transition to a unified state and that not all the numerous cultural changes appearing in the 'royal' court at this time can be put down to independent invention, we must now turn back to the older theory of diffusion and the Dynastic Race to see if this, perhaps in combination with some indigenous population changes, was the catalyst of the ancient Egyptian civilisation.

The consensus of those who advocate the proposal for the influx of a more advanced people into Upper Egypt, and indeed those who simply acknowledge outside influences like Frankfort and Hoffman, is that the motifs and new features which predominate in the Protodynastic period derive from Mesopotamia. Some go further and pinpoint the principal area as that around the city of Susa, at the centre of the later state of Elam and situated on the plain south of the southern Zagros range.

Links with Mesopotamia

There are a number of features of early Egyptian culture which appear at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty and which seem not to have precursors in the Predynastic period, at least before the Naqada II/Gerzean phase. The earliest foreign influence is pinpointed by Kantor:

“The situation in Gerzean and the contemporary Maadian was in the sharpest contrast to that prevailing earlier. For the first time there were unmistakable foreign relations, which mark Gerzean as a period of greatly widening horizons.” [8]

We have already mentioned the sudden development of writing and to that we should add the appearance of cylinder seals bearing heraldic animal motifs so typical of early Mesopotamian culture. A prime example of this type of motif, but on a much larger scale, is that of the two intertwined long-necked lions found on the famous Narmer palette. In this category we should also include the motif of the griffin with horizontal wings which Amiet has shown comes specifically from Susa [9].

Another striking feature of apparently Mesopotamian origin is the motif of a man being attacked (?) by a pair of antithetical lions as illustrated on the Gebel el-Arak knife handle and in the painted tomb at Hierakonpolis. On the knife the man appears to be wearing a hat of the Sumerian type worn, for example, by certain of the Old Babylonian rulers [10].

Pottery tells a similar story with the sudden appearance of tilted-spout vessels at the beginning of the Gerzean phase. Kantor notes that this style of pottery is convincingly similar to Mesopotamian ware of the Protoliterate period (Amuq Phase G) [11]. The picture is the same with other types of pottery.

The 'palace niched facade' of the Late Gerzean and Archaic mastabas also has close parallels with the architecture of Mesopotamia from the early Ubaid periods onwards. Emery, in discussing the recessed panelling of the 1st-Dynasty royal mastabas is forced to conclude that:

“... with the advent of the dynastic race, this form of monumental architecture makes its first appearance, and it is in this form of building that the Mesopotamian connexion is most apparent. The striking similarities of the recessed brick buildings of both areas is too obvious to be ignored, particularly when we consider that in Egypt there is apparently no background or evidence of development for these immense and intricate structures.” [12]

Kantor confirms the rapidity of this new development:

“In Egypt, niched tombs appear suddenly without any antecedents ... at the beginning of the First Dynasty, immediately after the Mesopotamian connections of the Late Gerzean period.” [13]

The remains of painted decoration on the Sakkara mastabas shows that these mudbrick structures were also imitations of reed and tented forerunners (see below). The patterns employed on panels of the tomb of Ka'a at Sakkara are identical to those found on columns from Uruk [14].

The problem with all this category of material is that it does not favour the Dynastic Race theory to the exclusion of the argument for the indigenous origins of the 1st Dynasty rulers. This is simply because the proponents of the latter school of thought have accommodated this material within their scenario as 'copies from trade goods' or as a result of 'artisan imigration'. Thus they do not deny the origins of the emblems, merely downgrading the impact of this culture-change to the influence a small group of foreign craftsmen upon the native ruling families of the Nile valley. In this they have a good argument because no specifically Mesopotamian artifact has been found (apart from four seals [15]), only motifs on native Egyptian objects. On the other hand, no identifiable Egyptian motifs have been found in Mesopotamia when one would expect such a trading pattern to have been reciprocal – a visiting trader would not return home empty-handed and surely some Egyptian items would have reached the Euphrates. This point generally favours the idea of a one-way migration of artisans, although one could argue that Egypt had little in the way of luxury goods to trade with and that the return traffic must have predominantly carried smelted gold.

The artisan migration theory is, however, less convincing when we introduce the emblems which are specifically associated with the two parts of the later Egyptian state. By their nature they are royal insignia and would therefore be expected to closely reflect the geographical origins of the tribal groups of those rulers. For a closer look at this material we must now turn to the architecture and art of a slightly later period.

Within the corpus of stone architectural features introduced by Imhotep in the building of the Step Pyramid complex at Sakkara it is possible to discern a great many elements that indicate a continuity with what had gone before in the funeral complexes of the two earlier dynasties of the Archaic Period and, at the same time, what are believed to have been the regular features of domestic and ritual architecture – originally constructed in perishable materials – from the Predynastic period. What follows is a brief look at the principal elements which I believe provide further connections with Mesopotamian/Susian culture.

Heracleum giganteum (the Giant Hogweed)

On each of the facades of both the Houses of the North and South in the Step Pyramid complex, and on certain of the chapels in the heb-sed court, there appears a series of either three or four engaged columns, with fluted shafts and capitals composed of two pendant leaves in profile. In the centre of the capital a square hole was cut which must have originally engaged a wooden standard (or a giant wooden imitation of a bull's horn [16]) – although nothing now remains to confirm this [17]. Fluting, of course, was not extensively used again in ancient architecture until the Greek Dorian Period some 2000 years later.

These particular columns were discussed at length in the 1940s and 50s in order to try to identify the original source of the design. Ricke tried to maintain that the fluting represented coniferous timber pillars on which 'stylized traces of the incisions made by the rounded cutting-edge of the tools used by the early Egyptians in dressing the surface of the trunk' had created a scouring effect in parallel lines [18]. This was a very tenuous hypothesis and was greatly undermined by other known architectural features representing wood – such as the log-beam ceilings of the entrance colonnade – which clearly show no such markings. Lauer, the architect-turned-Egyptologist whose name is now synonymous with the Step Pyramid thanks to the years he has spent in reconstructing the complex, also viewed the columns as representing tree trunks, but regarded the fluting as a deliberate decorative device [19].

Neither of these proposals was convincing and so a third hypothesis was suggested by Newberry [20]. He proposed that, like the papyrus and lily pillars from the Courts of the North and South, these engaged columns represented a single stem of a plant known in ancient times as the Silphium which had been first copied in wood on a much enlarged scale in the palaces of the Early Dynastic period. This plant was engraved on Greek coins from Cyrenaica and was at first thought to be Thapsia garganica, which grows today around Cyrene. Thapsia, however, has none of the properties that the Classical writers ascribe to Silphium. Growing to a height of only one metre and without a straight stem section seems also to rule it out as the model for the Sakkara motif [21].

Newberry, therefore, searched for an alternative umbellifer and came up with Heracleum giganteum which grows to around 5 metres in height with a stem diameter of 6 cms at the base. He found that: 'The stems are hollow and when in the green state are ribbed, but when dry are beautifully fluted.' [22]. Just as in the column capitals, this plant also had broad pendant petioles spaced at intervals along the stem.

Thus a botanical specimen had been found to match all the characteristics of these unusual pillars – a type of motif which does not re-occur again throughout the architectural history of Egypt. The only snag is that today Heracleum giganteum is a native plant of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus and no similar species are to be found in Egypt or North Africa. An almost identical fluted/ridged-stemmed plant is Heracleum Persicum which is native to western Iran (the area of ancient Elam). It too grows to a height of five to six metres as described by Newberry. It is this latter species which I believe to be the model for the fluted columns of the Zoser festival courts.

A few samples of miniature fluted columns have been found in the tombs of the 1st Dynasty – in particular, a fine example from the Abydos mastaba of king Djer was discovered by Petrie which is thought to be part of a piece of furniture [23]. This piece provides the link to the Zoser pillars and takes the use of this design back to the period under discussion.

Reed Shrines and Dwellings

Another type of pillar found in the Step Pyramid complex, is known as a ribbed or fasciculated column and appears to be of a different class to the other type of designs. The papyrus, lily and fluted columns 'imitate a single stem of a plant' but much enlarged, whereas the ribbed type may represent near to life-size bundles of reeds [24] – or bundles of the Heracleum Persicum – which were used in much earlier times as a supports for reed-built dwellings or shrines. It has been stated that Heracleum Persicum is an extremely rigid plant when dry and has the characteristic strength of the bamboo, [25] it would therefore have been an excellent choice as a load bearing material.

This then brings us to one of the other planks of the Mesopotamian connection – the reed dwelling. The facades of the House of the North and the House of the South, as well as a number of heb-sed chapels in the Zoser complex (all specifically 'royal' buildings associated with kingship), resemble to an uncanny degree the modern-day Marsh Arab dwellings (mudhif) of southern Iraq. These reed huts have arched facades, the shell of which is composed of tall reed bundles bent from each corner and secured at the centre to form the arch. Two or three vertical reed-bundle pillars are attached at intervals to the arch to give it rigidity and the spaces inbetween are filled by reed matting secured to the uprights. There is no doubt that this type of architecture is extremely old and that it formed the basis of one of the earliest types of free-standing building in Mesopotamia. The hieroglyphic sign representing the Shrine of the South confirms that this was also a building technique employed in early Egypt [26]. It has also been shown that the later decorated surfaces of the mudbrick mastabas were copies of painted patterns from the matting panels of the older reed huts. Again we must ask the question whether this was another case of independent invention, particularly given the royal context.

The long-stemmed white lily (Lilium Candidum)

Finally we come to what I believe to be the most convincing evidence in favour of the Dynastic Race theory – although surprisingly this connection does not appear to have been raised before. The 'Lily of the South' was the emblem of Upper Egypt [27], and at Sakkara a single pillar motif, supposedly of a lily, was discovered in the courtyard of what is now called, for obvious reasons, the 'House of the South'. I have been unable to find a published illustration or photograph of this pillar and so am unable to describe its appearance. However, in spite of the 1000-year interval, it would most likely have resembled the heraldic pillar of the 18th Dynasty found at Karnak upon which a group of three lily stems are carved in high relief. The column is identical in shape to the papyrus motif but the flower umbellates to form three semi-pendant petals in profile (this would, according to Egyptian artistic convention, represent a flower of six petals just like the long-stemmed lily).

Unfortunately, a modern-day species around which to attribute the ancient Egyptian lily design cannot be readily identified and, perhaps more to the point, botanists are in agreement that climatic conditions in Egypt make it impossible for long-stemmed lilies to have ever been indigenous to the region. Lilies 'are not tolerant as regards soil and flourish under certain definite physical and hydrological conditions only ... Prolonged dryness is anathema to them. At the same time, too great heat can destroy them if the base of the plant is not protected by a layer of organic debris or thick turf-like vegetation.' [28] Clearly the very conditions that weigh against the successful natural growth of the lily are those that are characteristic of Upper Egypt. Indeed, a trial cultivation was undertaken further to the north in Cairo and Alexandria in 1840 and of the five species tested only one survived – the Lilium Candidum or 'Madonna Lily'. There is therefore a considerable problem here in identifying the original source of this motif. What can be said is that the only way a species of long-stemmed lily could have grown in Egypt was if it had been introduced from outside and then carefully nurtured before harvesting the flowers for perfume. Such an activity is by nature a royal or ruling class prerogative when considered in terms of early civilisation.

Where then does this type of lily grow today in its non-cultivated form and where might it have been an indigenous plant in ancient times? The general modern distribution of the wild Madonna Lily spans an area from the hill slopes of Macedonia, across Anatolia to the mountains of the Balkan Peninsular and southward to the hills of Lebanon and Mt Carmel in Palestine [29]. Schauenberg confirms that the long-stemmed lily would only survive naturally in temperate zones such as that across southern Europe and western Asia and further notes that Mt Carmel is the southernmost point where Lilium Candidum could grow in a wild state, and then only on high ground [30]. Brian Mathews (Principal Scientific Officer at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew) agrees that the plant is 'probably indigenous to parts of the Balkan Peninsular and the Eastern Mediterranean' having noted the frescoe scenes of long-stemmed lilies in the Palace of Knossos on Crete [31] which indicate that in ancient times a variety grew on the mountain slopes of that island.

Ferns states that the Madonna Lily is now reluctant to seed which indicates that it has been cultivated over a lengthy period [32]. Others agree that this lily is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world, thus making it a possible candidate for the emblem of Upper Egypt. He goes on to suggest that it may have been cultivated in ancient Iran before deforestation and over-cultivation changed the character of the landscape in that region. Given the required growth conditions one would expect the ideal environment for the long-stemmed lily to have been not dissimilar to that pertaining on the southern slopes of the Zagros Mountains in ancient times.

With this conclusion in mind one might tentatively suggest that the Madonna Lily, as the best candidate for the royal emblem of Upper Egypt, was introduced into Egypt by a group of new settlers coming from the region of Elam and the southern Zagros. The name of the ancient capital of this region was Susa (ancient Shushan) and the semitic word for the long-stemmed lily is shushan. What is more, in the Saite period of Egyptian history we learn that the Egyptian term used for this same lily is ssn.

This motif cannot like the others be so easily explained away as another feature introduced by foreign artisans because it was a definite heraldic emblem of a people, a symbol which represented a characteristic feature of a geographical region and one which later, along with the papyrus plant of Lower Egypt, became symbolic of the unification of Egypt by the Horus kings of Upper Egypt.

If, as I have argued, the evidence so far offered appears to favour the Dynastic Race theory, it is beholden upon me to bring together the published material which enables proponents of the invasion hypothesis to identify this group and to put forward an historical scenario to explain the process of Egypt's unification. Fortunately, we have been left a number of clues as to both this race's original homeland (as already discussed) and their route into Upper Egypt.

In the Wadi Hammamat a number of rock paintings have been found which date to Predynastic times [33]. They show ships with square hulls upon which chieftains stand, one holding a pear-shaped mace. These are not at all similar to Egyptian Nile vessels which have a distinctive shallow crescent shape. They do however resemble later types of Mesopotamian craft [34]. Helck has argued that these boats are of Egyptian origin but Kantor has taken issue with him on this point and states categorically that they are 'overwhelmingly similar to Mesopotamian ones and unlike standard Gerzean representations' [35]. Helck's uneasy arguments are typical of certain Egyptologists who have great difficulty in accepting that the civilisation on which their discipline is founded may in fact have received its impetus from another region of the Near East. This is an unfortunate situation which could be easily avoided if scholars were not so defensive of their own disciplines and determined to establish the pre-eminence of one civilisation over another in the fashion of their earliest precursors, Manetho and Berossus.

The arrival of this new foreign element may tie-in with the major cultural change which took place at the beginning of the Gerzean period when much of the Mesopotamian-type material first appears and when the pear-shaped mace-head takes over from the disc-shaped variety. This is also the time when lapis-lazuli from Afganistan and obsidian are first found in grave deposits at Naqada. This period also sees the introduction in Egypt of thereomorphic stone vessels similar to those found at Susa.

Frankfort [36] favours contact with Mesopotamia via the Red Sea route rather than through Palestine, and clearly the Wadi Hammamat provides the best route to the Nile in Upper Egypt if the Red Sea passage for Mesopotamian contacts is accepted.

What is extremely interesting is that the Palermo Stone provides the information that the inundation of the Nile in the Early Dynastic period (and presumably earlier) was much higher than is indicated for later periods (as shown in the records of the Middle Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period). This raises the possibility that the Wadi Hammamat, leading from the Nile just opposite Naqada (at Quft) to the shore of the Red Sea at Quseir, was navigable at a certain time of year in this early period. In modern times the Wadi Qena has been flooded to a considerable depth well out into the eastern desert and an ancient dam has been discovered in the Wadi Garawi [37] so this idea is not as unlikely as it first appears. Indeed, the graffiti of the 'square boat people' include a scenes of boats being towed by gangs of men, suggesting that their ships were capable of travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile with the help of pulling teams. If this was really the case, then the battle scene on the Gebel el-Arak knife handle would begin to make a good deal of sense.

This knife now becomes the link which ties the square boat people with the conquest of Upper Egypt by what we can further define as the Naqada II people of Petrie's Cemetery T. The scene shows two groups in combat, the victors with square-hulled boats and the vanquished with crescent Nile boats. Coupled with the Mesopotamian-hatted gentleman on the other side of the handle we might venture to conclude that the victors were responsible for the manufacture of the knife and that the craftsman was of Mesopotamian origin.

An historical scenario for the Dynastic Race theory

Putting all the information discussed so far together, we may come up with a scenario somewhat on the following lines:

During the Amratian (Naqada I) period the native Egyptian population of Hammitic stock (perhaps partly of Upper Nile origin) steadily developed a semi-sophisticated tribal system with urban centres along the Nile valley. A gradual increase in population may have resulted from certain climatic changes but may simply have been as a result of the centralising effect of the trading system introduced by these tribal groups. That is to say, people from the wadis and those scattered within the valley were drawn to the population centres because they offered both protection and opportunities to benefit from the trading networks that had grown up around the settlements.

At this time traders began to arrive from Mesopotamia (perhaps principally from the Susa region) bringing with them certain luxury goods which appealed to the local Egyptian tribal chieftains. These goods were probably exchanged for gold which was being mined in the eastern wadis opposite Hierakonpolis and Naqada. Some of these traders may have settled in Egypt but others almost certainly took back the news of a land rich in gold and blessed with abundant water and vegetation.

Within a few generations a new 'aristocratic' group of Mesopotamians, replete with a force of armed men, arrived on the shores of the Red Sea at Quseir, having used the old trading route out of the Gulf, hugging the Arabian shoreline and into the Red Sea. They may have utilised trading posts set up by the friendly local natives of Punt and perhaps Sheba to obtain fresh supplies for their long voyage. Finally they began their journey along the Wadi Hammamat in their high-hulled ships when the very high Nile flood afforded a passage by water across the eastern desert. This operation involved the hauling of ships and even perhaps the dragging of the heavy craft over slipways. They eventually reached the Nile where their sea-going ships were too powerful for the local craft and the indigenous population were subdued by force of arms.

With their ancestors having visited Egypt as traders, the newcomers were familiar with both the native population and the terrain of the country. As a result they settled at the old sites along the river near to the gold fields and no doubt integrated with the local population. We know that they brought women with them (they are shown in the rock-drawings), but it is more than likely that Egyptian wives were taken as well and within a couple of generations a Hammo-Semitic aristocracy had formed at these centres. This was the stock which would become the eventual unifiers of the land under Menes.

This last phase of the process may have had several stages. Firstly, as already stated, it is likely that more than one settlement was formed when the square boat people arrived through the Wadi Hammamat and we may pinpoint these centres at Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), Naqada and perhaps Abydos (Thinis). Eventually it appears that the Horus worshipers of Nekhen (perhaps the 'Shemsu Hor' of the later texts) may have conquered the Seth worshipers of Thinis and established a unified kingdom throughout Upper Egypt. This technically advanced civilisation, which had brought so many new innovations to Egypt, then went on to conquer the north and establish its new capital at Memphis so as to control the new Delta acquisitions more easily.

Thus Manetho's 1st Dynasty was born and Egypt blossomed into fully fledged civilisation. Many of the motifs from their Mesopotamian homeland were utilised by the new group in the early years, but as time passed and they became accustomed to their environment, they adapted to Egypt and developed an Egyptian culture independent of their distant homeland. This pattern was later repeated both by the asiatic Hyksos rulers and the Libyan chiefs who both assimilated, to a great extent, to the Egyptian culture, even adopting purely Egyptian kingly names and titles whilst retaining their native birth names or nomens.

In spite of this Egyptianising of the square boat people, certain motifs and features of the old country were never lost because of their royal or cultic significance. These hearkenings back to the homeland include amongst others the cylinder seals, the reed shrines, the niched architecture, the heraldic animals and the lily motif of the conquering southerners. Many of the Semitic words found in the Egyptian language may have been introduced at this time rather than later when contact with Palestine was developed on a much greater scale.

This scenario is admitedly fanciful, but it does bring together many of the elements discussed above and in my opinion offers a better explanation for the Mesopotamian influences than a simple trading situation. One of the major considerations is the duration given to the Gerzean or Naqada II phase. A relatively long period would allow for the foreign element to gradually assimilate to the indigenous population and develop the Egyptian culture which is in many ways fundamentally different to that which grew up in Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age. On the other hand, a relatively short Gerzean would make this scenario unlikely precisely because there would be no time for assimilation. Most authorities give the Gerzean period around 400 years and this is ample time, in my view, for the former scenario of a gradual adoption of a new specifically Egyptian culture.

The conquest of the North

Finally, we should look in a little more detail at the supposed moment of conquest of Lower Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty and, at the same time, try to identify the ruler later known as Meni or Menes.

The evidence for one single campaign of conquest is somewhat equivocal in spite of the fact that certain scholars seem to see scenes of the southerners' triumph over the north in nearly every artefact. Thus a wooden label found at Naqada purports to show events such as the building of a temple of Neith at Sais by Aha [38]. It has also been argued that the Narmer mace-head shows a marriage scene of this king to a Delta princess, perhaps, Emery suggest, Neithhotep [39]. Here we have the attractive scenario of a marriage alliance to unite the two royal houses following the supposed victory of Narmer (Menes).

This may well have been the case, or at least quite near to the truth, but due caution is needed in making such interpretations from the limited information provided by the scenes on these objects. It is perhaps equally as valid to propose that these artefacts were made to celebrate the kings' jubilee festivals (heb-sed), for many, if not all the scenes, appear on heb-sed reliefs from later periods. Thus we have the depiction of a palanquin containing the stn mst ('royal daughter') being brought before the enthroned monarch in the Niuserre reliefs [40], just as in the so-called 'marriage' mace-head of Narmer; the scene on the Narmer mace-head of three running captives is similar to that in the heb-sed of Osorkon II where three men are shown running and shouting 'to the ground' [41]; the running bull on the Aha label may in reality depict the 'Running of Apis' ceremony [42], whilst the boat journey on the same object would be the ceremony of the 'Following of Horus'; the hoeing scene on the mace-head of king 'Scorpion' is in turn repeated in the Niuserre jubilee reliefs which, in fact, represents the equivalent of a modern 'laying of foundations' for the jubilee shrine [43]. With this perspective, much of the material normally associated with the conquest of the north and the establishment of Memphis may simply be the earliest representations of the heb-sed and therefore, because this jubilee is in part a celebration of the unification, must be dated to the post-unification period.

This leaves us with one artefact which appears to be unequivocally a representation of the conquest of at least part of the Delta by an Upper Egyptian ruler – the Narmer palette. In this instance the king is shown wearing both the white and red crowns indicating his rule over both lands; rows of decapitated bodies are laid out in a post-battle scene; the king in the form of a great bull smashes down the wall of a city; and the Horus image of the king is shown dominating a Delta chieftain represented as the hieroglyphic sign for the Delta marshes. Thus we can reasonably conclude that Narmer did win a victory over the north and that he was credited with the kingship of both lands; what we cannot say is whether the palette commemorates the first conquest of the Delta or merely the suppression of a later revolt. The fact that a sherd bearing the name of Narmer has been found in southern Palestine suggests that this king did indeed control at least the eastern Delta and that some contact with the Levant had been established by the southern rulers at this time. Even if we accept this evidence at face value, we only then have a terminus ante-quem for the unifacation and cannot rule out the possibility that an earlier king, such as 'Scorpion', may have unified the country. If the mace-head scene showing this king hoeing the ground is indeed a heb-sed rite then this would have to be the case. On the other hand, the hieroglyph for the scorpion is not in a serekh and may not be a royal name at all; this would open up the interesting possibility of the king on the mace-head being perhaps either Narmer or Aha.

The question still remains as to whether Narmer or his successor, Aha, was the Menes of tradition. The limited evidence is as follows, and I leave it to the reader to make a choice, given that our current knowledge is really insufficient to decide the issue positively either way.

We have shown that Narmer had won a victory and was in control of at least part of the Delta. He portrayed himself wearing both crowns (although not as a double-crown). On the other hand a tomb for this king has not so far been identified at Sakkara. This last point may suggest that he was not the founder of Memphis and therefore not the Menes of tradition.

In favour of Aha there is one important piece of evidence and that is the label which shows the king's serekh name next to a nebti name which is without question the hieroglyphic sign mn, in other words the writing of the name Meni. The question is, does this sign group display the full titulary of king 'Horus Aha, the Two Ladies, Meni' or is it simply the name of Aha juxtaposed with the name of his deceased father Meni (Narmer)? The former understanding is perhaps the most straightforward.

Summary

We have looked in some detail at the meagre evidence that pertains to the unification processes of Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty or thereabouts and I have put forward an historical scenario favouring the foreign invasion hypothesis. However, it must be restated that the picture is still uncertain and very much a matter of personal preference. This writer tends to lean towards the 'new race' theory, probably for no better reason than it has not received serious attention in recent years, the majority opinion having been in favour of the more fashionable anthropological and gradualistic approach to history.

The current scholarly climate is not sympathetic to theories of relatively rapid population movements and migrations in the ancient world, the pendulum having now swung to the opposite extreme. It is hard to find many modern historians prepared to argue the case for a full blooded invasion of 'asiatics' in the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt as described by Manetho, nor a large scale population movement at the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Levant. In the discipline of Aegean studies there is also difficulty in accepting the Dorian invasion and instead an uprising of the indigenous population is preferred. This too is in contradiction to the traditions. Biblical studies has a similar scenario in place to explain the appearance of the Israelites in Canaan, preferring a revolt rather than accepting the Joshua Conquest narrative as an historical event.

It seems to me that we may be guilty of the very crime of which our predecessors have been accused: that is, viewing history from the standpoint of our own time and allowing the political events of recent generations to affect our perception of historical truth. We cannot surely impose our feelings of revulsion and horror at the 'Aryan' doctrines of 1930s upon past history and deny the possibility of 'migration and conquest' of a more technically advanced group as a mechanism for obvious political and cultural changes in the ancient world.

Notes and References

1. W. M. Flinders Petrie: The Making of Egypt (London, 1939), p. 77.

2. J. Vandier: Manuel d'Archaeologie Égyptiene Vol. 1 (Paris, 1952), pp. 330-32.

3. D. E. Derry: 'The Dynastic Race in Egypt' in JEA 42 (1956), pp. 80-85.

4. W. B. Emery: Archaic Egypt (Harmondsworth, 1961), pp. 38-42.

5. A. J. Arkel & P. J. Ucko: 'Review of Predynastic Development in the Nile Valley' in Current Anthropology 6 (1965), pp. 145-66.

6. For a brief discussion of this theory see M. A. Hoffman: Egypt Before the Pharaohs (New York, 1984), p. 155 ff.

7. B. G. Trigger et. al.: Ancient Egypt: A Social History (Cambridge, 1983), p. 9.

8. H. J. Kantor: 'The Relative Chronology of Egypt and Its Foreign Correlations before the Late Bronze Age' in Chronologies in Old World Archaeology (Chicago, 1954), p. 7.

9. P. Amiet: 'Glyptique susienne archaique' in Revue d'Assyriologie LI (1957), p. 126.

10. A good example of this sort of head gear is to be seen on the so-called diorite head of Hammurabi now in the Louvre.

11. H. J. Kantor: op. cit., p. 8.

12. W. B. Emery: op. cit., p. 177.

13. H. J. Kantor: op. cit., p. 15.

14. L. Woolley: Ur 'of the Chaldees', new revised edition by P. Moorey, (London, 1964), p. 37.

15. H. J. Kantor: op. cit., p. 10.

16. Numerous examples of the heb-sed shrines are depicted with projecting horns which suggests that these shrines may have been connected with bull-worship. The associations of the king's Jubillee and the Apis bull are discussed in a forthcoming article by the author of this essay in JACF II. These shrines are usually shown in profile in Old Kingdom inscriptions and this perspective reveals that a tail was also attached and that the shrine could be moved about on a sledge.

17. For the method of attachment of these proposed standards see J.-P. Lauer: Histoire Monumentale des Pyramides d'Égypte, Vol. I – La Pyramide à Dègres (Cairo, 1962), pp. 156-57.

18. H. Ricke: Beitrage zur Ägyptischen Bauforschung and Altertumskunde Vol. 4 (Zurich, 1944), pp. 78-79.

19. J.-P. Lauer: Etudes complementaires sur les monuments du roi Zoser à Saqqarah (Suppl. aux Annales du Service, No. 9), p. 36.

20. I. E. S. Edwards: 'Some Early Dynastic Contributions to Egyptian Architecture' in JEA 35 (1949), pp. 125-26.

21. R. M. Smith & E. A. Porcher: History of the Recent Discoveries at Cyrene (London, 1864), pp. 87-89.

22. I. E. S. Edwards: 'Some Early Dynastic Contributions' op. cit., p. 126.

23. W. M. F. Petrie: The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties Vol. II (London, 1901), plate XXXIV, No. 73.

24. Ricke's explanation of this architectural feature (op. cit., p. 78) is as implausible as his fluted columns theory and need not be dealt with here. Although it has been argued that the columns might be representations of Heracleum giganteum in its green state, with ribbed stem, it seems that what appears to be an imitation of leather capping over the tops of the bundles and the rounded plinth bases at the contact point with the ground lends strong support for the bundle hypothesis. Unlike the other three columns, this type does not have a true capital which also suggest that it was not intended to represent a natural botanical species.

25. I. E. S. Edwards: 'Some Early Dynastic Contributions' op. cit., p. 127.

26. C. M. Firth & J. E. Quibell: The Step Pyramid Vol. II (Cairo, 1935), plate 17.

27. For illustrations of this motif see E. Wilson: Ancient Egyptian Designs (London, 1986), plates 34-39.

28. P. Schauenberg: The Bulb Book (London, 1965), pp. 197-98.

29. V. Tackholm: Flora of Egypt Vol. III (Cairo, 1954), p. 274.

30. Lilium candidum is a white flower but there is a similar variety, Lilium monodelphum, which is yellow and is a native of the Crimea, the northern side of the Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, and the central Caucasus on the south side as far as northern Turkey. These two lilies grow up to 4 feet tall and the latter species can certainly look spectacular growing in its thousands in mountain meadows.

31. B. Mathews: Bulbs (London, 1981), p. 37.

32. F. E. B. Ferns: Quarterly Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society 146:1 (March 1978), pp. 24-27.

33. H. A. Winkler: Rock-Drawings of Southern Upper Egypt Vol. I (London, 1938).

34. P. Amiet: La glyptique mesopotamienne archaique (Paris, 1961), plates 13 & 46.

35. H. J. Kantor: op. cit., p. 12.

36. Frankfort: The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Bloomington, 1951), pp. 110-11.

37. G. W. Murray: 'A note on the Sad el-Kafara: the Ancient Dam in the Wadi Garawi' in Bulletin de l'Institut d'Égypte 28, (1945-6), pp. 33 ff.

38. W. B. Emery: op. cit., p. 51.

39. W. B. Emery: op. cit., pp. 44-47.

40. W. M. Flinders Petrie: Researches in Sinai (London, 1906), p. 183.

41. E. Uphill: 'The Egyptian Sed-Festival Rites' in JNES 24 (1965), p. 377.

42. W. K. Simpson: 'A Running of the Apis in the Reign of Aha and Passages in Manetho and Aelian' in Orientalia 26 (1957), pp. 139-42.

43. W. F. von Bissing & H. Kees: Das Re-Heiligtum des Königs Ne-woser-re (Rathures) Vol. III (Leipzig, 1923), plates 1a, 1b, 2 nos. 3-5.