Archaeology

There are many and various threats to Egypt’s cultural heritage, however managing this cultural heritage cannot be achieved if the extent of the cultural heritage that exists within Egypt’s borders is unknown. Therefore it is imperative that a National Heritage Register (NHR) of Sites and Monuments or a central Site and Monuments Record (SMR) is created, along with records of Historic Buildings, Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage. A record of all Egypt's sites and monuments (historic buildings, cultural landscapes, intangible heritage) is the first step in cultural heritage management, and an essential first step to their protection.
The first step in creating a NHR-SMR is a literature survey to gather the accumulated knowledge on the sites already surveyed and excavated. The next step is a nationwide archaeological survey. Surveys already conducted or in progress must be tied into the nationwide survey, so that the process is not duplicated.
The information needs to be stored on a relational database linked to a geographic information system, enabling this data to be retrieved and updated. The NHR is a primary and reliable source of information for archaeologists, heritage managers, policy-makers, researchers, developers, planners, media professionals, teachers, tourist organizations, community groups, property owners and the general public. Listing sites promotes their preservation and protects sites against damage and destruction, as management planning is possible if information on the sites is readily available.

The stages of social development during the Predynastic through the Early Dynastic and into the Old Kingdom are marked by a sharp increase in social differentiation, which necessitated an increased need for visual bodily displays of status. Hair, the most malleable part of the human body, lends itself to the most varied forms of impermanent modifications. The resulting hairstyles convey social practices and norms, and may be regarded as a “representation of self”. As such they may be considered as an integral element in the maintenance and structuring of society. This paper explores the structural relationships between variations in hairstyles and the principal changes in social organisation in ancient Egypt from the Protodynastic period to the beginning of the Old Kingdom (3,250-2,613 BC). An interval that witnessed the rise and consolidation of centralised authority.
The results reveal that hairstyles were linked to the identity of individuals and social groups, such as men, women, children and the elderly. Within the social hierarchy hairstyles were used as a means of displaying status. After experimentation with a broad spectrum of hairstyles during the Protodynastic and early Dynasty I, an institutionalised canon for hairstyles was established, coinciding with the creation of administrative institutions. Once the canon was established standard hairstyles continued to serve as the norms for identifying members of the administration or signs of authority.
Although initially the majority of men had their hair cut short, modifications of short hair and the adoption of mid-length and long hair became progressively more common. The use of certain hairstyles was restricted to the higher social offices, with longer hair being symptomatic of power and divinity. Women, by contrast, initially had long hair with greater variety occurring by Dynasty I and a more restricted array from Dynasty II onwards. However, long hair was always predominant among women of all social statuses at all times. Long hair may have thus been related to the perception of women as mothers responsible for childbirth and nursing, and hence their perceived role as directly linked with procreation and fecundity. After the Protodynastic the only occurrences of men wearing the tripartite style are on ritualistic occasions, on the mummified form of King Djer and the statues of King Netjerikhet in his serdab and Heb-sed court. The adoption of long hair by men may have thus been related to this ‘generative’ aspect of feminine hairstyles.

The particular focus of this paper is the Old Kingdom though it also attempts to trace the development of what may be considered erotic and sexual notions in the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Period, and to foreshadow the evolution of these concepts into the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. An examination is made of ancient Egyptian notions of eroticism and sexuality within the context of broader concepts of the body and of gender, in art, religious beliefs, funerary practices and everyday life in the Old Kingdom. Sexual acts are ritualistic, in that they follow a set pattern and formula, normally bounded by moral constraints and codes of conduct that send out signals to others. Egyptian sexuality was the celebration of the continuity of life, both of a person and the family, permeating both thought and action. The ancient Egyptian understanding of the body held that female sexuality was concerned with gestation, birthing, nurturing and protection, whereas male sexuality was about fertility, potency, and strength. Eroticism was a part of Egyptian secular and religious life, the very foundations of Egyptian religion and kingship were based on the transgression of the gravest of taboos.

The spread of domesticated cereals and animals out of the Levant to both Europe and Africa has been a subject of much debate. In Egypt the earliest evidence of farming practices are at present found in the Faiyum and Merimde Beni Salame ca. 7,000 cal BP  (5,000 BC), some 3,000 years after the beginning of agricultural practices in the Levantine PPNB. Recent research has shown that there was a time delay in mixed economy farming receahing the Southern Levant. Whereas in the Negev and Sinai rather than taking up mixed economy farming, the Timnian herder-gatherer tradition based on goat herding supplemented by hunting developed just before 7,950 cal BP (6,000 BC). It appears that it was this group that transmitted goat herding practices to Egypt at 7,850 cal BP (5,800 BC), whereas the full farming package was transmitted to Egypt ca. 5,350 BC by Late Neolithic Levantine migrants. The people of this Timnian culture acted as the middlemen in an interaction zone that connected the Levant with Egypt, and were the conduit for various products and ideas between the two regions. The uptake of farming practices by communities in the Nile Valley only occurred because they already had a predilection to manage wild animals, manipulate wild grasses and had a technology that was ready for the process of Neolithisation. In Nubia and the southern part of the Western Desert pottery had begun to be produced at 8,600 BC by semi-sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherers, and by 7,000 BC indigenously domesticated cattle were not only present at Nabta Playa, but in Upper Nubia. The choices taken and adaptations made to the new environment and different ecological zones that developed after the Last Glacial Maximum laid the foundations for the distinctly different cultures of Egypt and the Sudan to those of the Levant. These heterogeneous regions took separate paths to food production, and it was the path that was chosen by the communities in the Nile Valley that formed the basis of many of their cultural and religious traits even after farming practices had been introduced from the Fertile Crescent. Documenting the changing socioeconomic processes in the Early to Mid-Holocene in the various regions is essential in understanding the beginnings of the Predynastic and rise of the first nation state in Egypt. Egypt was both a gift of the Nile and a result of climatically induced migrations from the Western Desert and the Levant. Within 500 years of the end of the Neolithic, a relatively short timespan, the agrarian communities of Egypt had formed into proto-states and by 3,060 BC had formed one of the first pristine states, while the societies of the Southern Levant remained much less centralised, partially due to ecological constraints.

Investigations into the earliest rulers of Egypt can be traced to the turn of the nineteenth century. However, the process of state formation goes back at least 400 years prior to the establishment of Dynasty I. Examination of radiocarbon age measurements on wood, reed, and  linen from the tombs dating to the reign of the kings of Dynasty I reveals discrepancies between older dates and more acceptable younger dates for the same king attributed to the recycling of older wood and settlement debris. Statistical analysis and calibration of the pooled mean of multiple age measurements that are statistically the same provide age estimates of 2995-2927, 2922-2886, 2906-2887, and 2819-2748 cal BC for Aha, Djet, Den and Qa’a - first, third, fourth and seventh (last) kings of Dynasty I, who succeeded King Narmer.

Tattooing was practised by many ancient societies, including the ancient Egyptians and Nubians. Egypt, for example, boasts iconographic and physical evidence for tattooing for a period spanning at least 4000 years - the longest known history of tattooing in the world. The second oldest physical evidence for tattooing world-wide was recovered from Middle Kingdom contexts in Egypt and C-Group contexts in Nubia (Hanslabjoch ice man being the oldest). It has been suggested that tattooing was also practised in the Predynastic Period as evidenced by figurines with geometric designs, however, no physical evidence has yet been found at this early period. Strangely there is almost no mention of tattooing in the ancient Egyptian written records. Historical and ethnographic records indicate that tattooing was also practised much more recently in the Coptic, Islamic and modern eras. Unlike many past societies tattooing in Egypt appears to have been a custom practised almost exclusively on women. Tattooing tools have not yet been convincingly identified from ancient Egypt. Ethnographic sources suggest that bundles of metal rods were used in Egypt’s younger history. This paper discusses physical and iconographic evidence for tattooing in ancient Egypt and investigates if five copper rods found at Kafr Hassan Dawood, a Predynastic to Early Dynastic site in the East Delta could be physical evidence for tattooing during this early period.