Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 41

By 3400 people throughout Egypt surrounded themselves with similar tools and objects in life and in death, which shows us that they shared a common culture, coined Naqada IIC and III by modern archaeologists. But they did not live under a single political structure. Various centers of power coexisted within a network of villages that spread across the country. The three centers that seem to have been the most prominent were all located in a 125‐mile (200‐kilometer) stretch in the southern half of Egypt: Hierakonpolis, Naqada, and Abydos. Especially the cemeteries of these sites show that the processes of social stratification that had started centuries earlier had fully developed. All these sites had distinct cemeteries for common people and the elites, and the tombs of the latter could become very large in size and elaborately built; they also contained numerous and expensive grave goods.

The tendency to devote more resources to the burials of elite individuals culminated at Abydos, located to the north of Naqada. Here was the cemetery of the first kings of Egypt, but already before the unification of Egypt some people buried there received large tombs. One tomb, whose occupant is unidentified (the excavators call the tomb U‐j), had 12 rooms and, although it had been robbed before excavation, it still contained many bone and ivory objects, much Egyptian pottery, and remains of 800 jars imported from Palestine, which probably were filled with wine or oil originally. Among the ivory objects were some 160 small square labels incised with images that scholars interpret to signify various places in Egypt (Figure 2.2). Similar markings were drawn in ink on some 125 jars. They suggest that people from various parts of the country and beyond shipped goods to Abydos to honor the person buried around 3250 BC.

Figure 2.2 In a tomb of the Late Naqada period at Abydos, called U‐j by its excavators, were discovered some 160 bone and ivory tags bearing images perhaps precursors to those of the later hieroglyphic script. These most likely indicate the regions from which goods donated to the tomb owner derived. The sides of the tags measure between 1 and 2 cm, and they have a hole with which to tie them to a container.

Source: German Archaeological Institute, Cairo Department