Early Dynastic Egypt
Page 51
ennead (n.) A group of nine deities, particularly those associated with the creation myth of Heliopolis (Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys).
entrepôt (n.) A location which acts as a collection and processing centre for incoming commodities, especially trade goods.
epigraphy (n.) The study, style or technique of ancient inscriptions.
epithet (n.) A descriptive word or phrase, often applied to a god.
eponymous (adj.) Giving its name to something. (For example, in the royal annals, each year is designated by one or more particular eponymous events.)
fetish (n.) A symbol or totem associated with a deity and believed to contain or invoke the supernatural power associated with that deity.
flail (n.) A short rod with two or more pendant strips or strings of beads attached to it; perhaps originally a shepherd’s whip for goading his flock, the flail became part of the royal insignia from late Predynastic times.
funerary enclosure (n.) At Abydos, Hierakonpolis and Saqqara, a large, rectangular court, either surrounded by solid walls of mudbrick or masonry, or delineated by lines of graves; an enclosure was probably intended to serve as a focus for the mortuary cult of the king who built it (although other purposes have been suggested), and is likely to have been provided with additional structures inside, either temporary or permanent; funerary enclosures are sometimes called ‘funerary palaces’.
gezira (n.) Arabic name for a low, sandy hill, rising above the Nile floodplain; such features, also called ‘turtle-backs’, are particularly common in the eastern Nile Delta where they provided suitable locations for early settlement.
glazed composition (n. and adj.) A more accurate term than ‘faience’, used to describe the glassy material—composed of crushed quartz with small amounts of lime, plant ash or natron, and colouring agent -from which votive offerings and other small objects were made throughout Egyptian history.
Hamitic (adj.) Belonging to the grouping of north African languages or cultures which includes, amongst others, ancient Egyptian and Berber.
hierarchical scaling (n.) A system used in ancient Egyptian art to indicate the relative status of human figures, whereby the larger the figure, the greater its importance.
Horus (n.) An ancient sky god, depicted as a falcon (in later periods as a human figure with the head of a falcon). Horus was closely associated with kingship from the earliest period of recorded history; according to ancient Egyptian ideology, the king was the earthly incarnation of Horus; the image of Horus atop the king’s principal name (serekh) proclaimed this identity.
iconography (n.) A system of symbols and motifs used in a consistent way, above all to express notions of theology and ideology.
ideogram (n.) A hieroglyphic sign that stands for a concept or a whole word rather than a letter or syllable.
inundation (n.) Before the construction of the Aswan dams in modern times, the annual flooding of the River Nile which renewed the fertility of the land; the floodwaters rose in July and receded again in September.
ka (n.) Ancient Egyptian term for the creative life-force which survived the physical death of a person and required sustenance in the afterlife; the royal ka was the divine essence of kingship which passed at the death of a king directly to his successor, inhabiting his body and giving him the supernatural powers associated with the ruler.
king list (n.) A list compiled in ancient times recording the names and order of succession of Egyptian kings, sometimes with additional information about reign lengths and salient events; with the possible exception of the Turin Canon, king lists were not intended as objective historical documents, but were compiled to promote a particular view of kingship, stressing the unbroken line of rulers from the beginning of time; hence, foreign kings and others who were viewed by posterity as illegitimate were excluded from the king lists at Abydos, Karnak and Saqqara.
label (n.) A small rectangular piece of wood, bone or ivory, inscribed with characters and attached to an object by means of a piece of string threaded through a hole in one corner of the label. The inscription might denote the quantity, provenance, ownership or contents of the object. More elaborate year labels carried additional information about the date of the labelled object.
lappet (n.) A flap or pendulous side-piece of a wig.
Lower Egypt (n.) The northern part of the Egyptian Nile valley together with the Nile Delta, from the Fayum entrance in the south to the Mediterranean Sea; it includes the Memphite region.
Maat (n.) Ancient Egyptian for ‘truth, justice’. The concept of correct behaviour and cosmic order which it was the king’s primary duty to uphold and defend against the forces of chaos. In later periods, Maat was characterised as a goddess in her own right. macehead (n.) The solid end of a mace, conical, disc-shaped or piriform, perforated by a hole for the shaft; made from clay or, more frequently, stone, maceheads were potent symbols of authority in late Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt; ceremonial maceheads were made as vehicles of iconography, but were not intended for practical
use.
magazine (n.) A store-room.
magnetometry (n.) A method of remote sensing using a device (magnetometer) that detects buried features by the slight distortions they produce in the earth’s magnetic field.
‘Main Deposit’ (n.) Name given to a large collection of votive objects unearthed at Hierakonpolis at the end of the nineteenth century in circumstances which remain unclear; many of the objects date to the period of unification, including the famous Scorpion macehead and Narmer Palette’, other artefacts may be somewhat later in date.
marl clay (n.) Calcareous clay used to make pottery which is generally finer, harder and less porous than pottery made from alluvial Nile clay; the production of marl clay pots, centred around Qena in Upper Egypt, required more advanced ceramic technology and its inception marks an important stage in the process of cultural development during the late Predynastic period.
mastaba (n.) Arabic for ‘bench’. Name given to a tomb with a rectangular superstructure whose walls slope slightly inwards; in the Early Dynastic period mastabas were constructed for both royal and private individuals; the external walls of mastabas were often decorated in the ‘palace façade’ style.
Memphite (adj.) Belonging to the city or region of Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt from the beginning of the First Dynasty.
Menes (name) According to later Egyptian tradition (including the New Kingdom king lists), the first king of Egypt; credited by Herodotus with diverting the course of the Nile and founding the city of Memphis; Menes may be a semi-legendary figure, or may be a conflation of more than one king; he has been identified both with Narmer and with his successor Aha.
Middle Egypt (n.) A rather imprecise geographical term, applied to the stretch of the Nile valley between the entrance to the Fayum and the Thinite region; corresponds to northernmost Upper Egypt.
mummiform (adj.) Shaped like a mummy; that is, a human figure tightly wrapped in bandages.
Naqada culture (n.) Modern name given to the Predynastic cultural tradition of Upper Egypt, after the important settlement and cemeteries at Naqada, north of Luxor.
necropolis (n.) A large burial ground, often comprising several cemeteries or distinct cemetery areas.
Neolithic (n. and adj.) ‘New Stone Age’. An archaeological period, characterised by the use of stone tools and the replacement of hunting and gathering by agriculture as the primary means of subsistence; the Neolithic is followed in the Near East by the Chalcolithic and EBI, in Egypt by the Predynastic period.
Neolithic subpluvial (n.) A geological period of increased rainfall over Egypt; its end, c. 3300 BC, was marked by the desiccation of the desert savanna and a probable influx of population into the Nile valley.
nome (n.) A province and administrative division of Egypt; Upper Egypt was divided into 22 nomes, Lower Egypt into 20; the origins of the nome system probably go back to the First Dynasty, and the system was fully deve
loped in the early Old Kingdom.
nswt-bỉty (n.) Ancient Egyptian for ‘he of the sedge and bee’. Title borne by Egyptian kings, to express the many dualities over which they ruled; often translated ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’, though ‘dual king’ is perhaps more accurate.
obsidian (n.) A hard, black volcanic glass, used to make sharp cutting blades and for inlays.
‘palace-façade’ (adj.) A style of architectural decoration—used predominantly on tombs of the Early Dynastic period—whereby alternating recessed niches and buttresses give a panelled appearance to the facade of a building; the motif is believed to have imitated the external appearance of the early royal palace.
Palermo Stone (n.) Name given to the largest surviving fragment of an ancient annals
stone, now housed in the Archaeological Museum in Palermo.
palette (n.) A flat piece of siltstone, designed for grinding mineral pigments to make cosmetics; carved in a wide variety of shapes, palettes are one of the most distinctive types of artefact from Predynastic Egypt; during the period of state formation, elaborate ceremonial palettes were decorated with complex scenes; most famous of such objects is the Narmer Palette.
papyrus skiff (n.) A lightweight boat made from papyrus reeds, used by the ancient Egyptians especially for fishing and hunting birds in marshland environments.
petrographic analysis (n.) The scientific technique of examining thin sections of pottery or rock under magnification to determine the mineral composition and hence, often, the provenance of the sample.
phyle (n.) A team of workers which served with other teams on a rotational basis in the service of the royal palace or mortuary cult.
piriform (adj.) Pear-shaped, usually applied to maceheads.
polity (n.) A territory under unified political control; applied to the kingdoms which came into existence before the unification of Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BC.
pr-nswt (n.) Ancient Egyptian for ‘king’s estate’. A separate department of the administration responsible for the personal estates and income of the king; it was presumably concerned with supporting the king, the royal family and the royal retinue, and was probably under direct royal control.
Predynastic (adj.) Term applied to the period of Egyptian prehistory ending with the unification of Egypt and the advent of the First Dynasty, c. 3050 BC; the beginning of the Predynastic period is not so easily defined, but is often taken to coincide with the appearance of the Neolithic Badarian culture in northern Upper Egypt; in the Predynastic sequence of Upper Egypt, the Badarian is followed by three major phases of the Naqada culture’, before c. 3200 BC, the Predynastic period in Lower Egypt is characterised by a sequence of several indigenous material cultures .
raised relief (n.) A technique of decoration, usually applied to walls, whereby the background is cut away, leaving the figures and/or texts raised above the surrounding surface.
red crown (n.) The head-dress worn by the king in his capacity as ruler of Lower Egypt, though perhaps of Upper Egyptian origin; called dirt (‘the red one’) in ancient
Egyptian, the crown has a low front and a tall back projection with a coil protruding forwards from it.
register (n.) In ancient Egyptian art, one of a series of horizontal compartments or strips into which scenes were divided.
resistivity (n.) A method of remote sensing that detects buried features by passing an electrical current through the soil and measuring changes in conductivity; such changes can be caused by the differential retention of groundwater that distinguishes built features from their surroundings.
rosette/palmette (n.) A symbol found on royal monuments from the period of unification, resembling a flower with six or seven petals, or a crown of palm leaves viewed from above; it is thought to have signified the ruler.
scarab (n.) The dung-beetle, viewed by the ancient Egyptians as a manifestation of the sun god; amulets and seals in the form of scarabs were popular from the end of the Old Kingdom onwards.
šdšd-device (n.) From the ancient Egyptian word, an unidentified bag-or balloon-shaped object of unknown origin which is often shown attached to the front of the standard of the jackal god Wepwawet.
Sed-festival (n.) The pre-eminent festival of kingship which served to renew and rejuvenate the king’s powers through a series of highly symbolic rituals.
sequence dating system (n.) A system developed by the British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie for assigning relative dates to Predynastic graves, largely by means of their pottery; the system was based upon the study of pots from the cemeteries at Naqada, B alias and Diospolis Parva; it relied on several assumptions, notably that graves containing similar types of pottery are close in date, and that certain classes of pottery—especially cylinder vessels and their forerunners, wavy-handled jars— underwent gradual but continuous stylistic change.
serdab (n.) Arabic for ‘cellar’. The room in a mastaba tomb where a statue of the deceased was placed to act as a resting place for the ka; the room was often provided with ‘eye-holes’, giving the ka access to the statue and allowing the statue to ‘look out’; the earliest serdab is in the Step Pyramid complex of Netjerikhet, from the beginning of the Third Dynasty.
serekh (n.) Ancient Egyptian word for the rectangular device, representing a section of the royal palace-façade, which served as a frame enclosing the king’s Horus name; the serekh is usually surmounted by the figure of a falcon.
Seth-animal (n.) The mysterious dog-like animal with a long snout, square-ended ears and upright, forked tail which embodied and signified the god Seth; it has been variously identified as an anteater, pig, dog or wild ass, but probably represents a composite or entirely mythical creature.
sherd (n.) A piece of broken pottery.
Shunet ez-Zebib (n.) Arabic for ‘storehouse of raisins’. Nickname given to the massive funerary enclosure of mudbrick built for the last king of the Second Dynasty, Khasekhemwy, at Abydos.
siltstone (n.) A very fine-grained, green-grey rock, used especially for the manufacture of elaborate stone vessels in the Early Dynastic period (erroneously called ‘slate’,
‘schist’ or ‘greywacke’ by earlier authors); the main source of this rock was the Wadi Hammamat in the eastern desert.
social stratification (n.) The division of a community into a hierarchy of social classes, based upon differences in status; the presence of social stratification is generally taken as an indication that a society is becoming increasingly complex and is moving towards state formation.
stela (plural stelae) (n.) A slab of stone or (less often) wood, usually rectangular with a rounded top, bearing inscriptions and/or figurative scenes; stelae served funerary, votive and commemorative purposes, and could also be erected as boundary markers.
stratigraphic (adj.) Relating to the sequence of layers (strata), their order and significance (stratigraphy), on an archaeological site.
subsidiary burial (n.) A small grave, usually one of a group, accompanying the tomb of a king or high official, or a royal funerary enclosure; the servants and retainers interred in subsidiary burials would accompany their master or mistress into the afterlife to continue their service.
syncretism (n.) The identification or fusion of two (or more) deities to produce a compound deity incorporating attributes from both (or all) its ‘parent’ gods; an example of early syncretism is the close identification of the goddesses Bat and Hathor.
Syria-Palestine (n.) Geographical term applied by Egyptologists to the area of the Near East comprising the modern countries of Israel, Lebanon, Syria and western Jordan.
tell (n.) Arabic for ‘hill’, ‘mound’. An archaeological site, especially in the Nile Delta, where the accumulation of cultural material over centuries has resulted in a mound visible above the surrounding area.
Thinite (adj.) Belonging to the city or royal house of This/Thinis, capital of the Abydos region from Predynastic times and ancestral home of the First and Second Dynasties. titulary (n.
) The collected titles and names borne by a king, comprising a number of
separate and distinctive elements; Early Dynastic royal titularies comprised the Horus title (written with the serekh), ‘Two Ladies’ title, nswt-bỉty title and the ‘Golden Horus’ title; the name which followed the last of these came to be written in a cartouche.
transliteration (n.) The rendition into the Roman alphabet (with some additional special signs and accents) of ancient Egyptian words, using a standard system; this allows ancient Egyptian words to be written when a hieroglyphic font is not available, and to be ‘pronounced’ following certain conventions:
3 stands for a sound which occurs in Hebrew and Arabic but not in English, a little like the glottal stop; conventionally pronounced like the a in ‘car’
í another sound common in Hebrew and Arabic but not in English; like the English y; conventionally pronounced like the i in ‘bit’
stands for the equivalent of the Hebrew and Arabic letter ayin, not found in English; a guttural sound made in the back of the throat; conventionally pronounced like the a in ‘car’, so difficult to distinguish in ‘spoken ancient Egyptian’ from 3
h an aspirated, emphatic h; often pronounced like a normal h