Early Dynastic Egypt (73 page)

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 developed 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, w
hich 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.