representing the local population from which the élite had already been separated, to be buried in discrete areas—was identified as belonging to a child. The artefacts in the grave included 24 pottery vessels, palettes and copper objects (B.Adams 1987:67–8). As Egypt progressed on the path to statehood, social distinctions became greater and these became increasingly explicit in the mortuary record. By the end of the Predynastic period, local élites—now royal families in every sense—had successfully monopolised the economic resources in their territories to such an extent that they were able to command sufficient labour to construct monumental tombs. Moreover, they could call upon the services of professional administrators to obtain prestige goods from abroad by long-distance trade, and employed skilled craftsmen to manufacture further elaborate grave goods. The birth of the Egyptian state with its rigid hierarchies can therefore be charted in the growing differentiation and elaboration of mortuary provision.
THE ICONOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY OF RULE
Power can be expressed in many ways, both explicit and subtle. One of the most effective ways of appealing to people’s deeper feelings is through art. A repertoire of distinctive symbols, employed in a consistent and highly symbolic way (iconography) was a feature of Egyptian kingship from the earliest times. The series of carved stone palettes and ivory knife handles from the late Predynastic period are well known examples of royal iconography (Williams and Logan 1987; Davis 1989, esp. 141–9, figs 6.9–14; Cialowicz 1991). Some motifs are borrowed from contemporary Mesopotamian iconography (Boehmer 1974; Teissier 1987; H.S.Smith 1992 plus references), but the total compositions reflect a peculiarly Egyptian view of rule. The king is presented in animal form, emphasising both his coercive power and the concentration of the powers of nature in his person. By the end of the Predynastic period, many of the characteristics of
Egyptian art had already been canonised, including the conventions of representation, the hierarchical scaling of figures, the use of register s to order the composition, and the attributes of kingship. However, the roots of royal iconography—and of the ideology it expresses – go back much further.
At the end of the Naqada I period ( c. 3500 BC) we have the first indications that an ideology of power was being formulated by the ruling lineages of Upper Egypt. Iconography is the articulation of beliefs through the medium of art, and the earliest example of royal iconography—recognisable as such from later parallels—marks the beginning of a phase of rapid social change which, with accelerating speed, led to the emergence of classic kingship ideology within the space of some two hundred years. Recent excavations in the earliest part of the Predynastic Cemetery U at Abydos have revealed some astonishing examples of Naqada I craftsmanship, in graves which clearly belonged to persons of high status. The burial of a premature baby (U-502) was furnished with an elaborate pottery vessel of unique appearance: eight female figurines, modelled in clay, are arranged around the rim of the bowl, holding hands; each figure is distinctive, and traces of bitumen wigs survived. Three larger, male figurines found in the same grave may once have decorated a similar bowl (Dreyer 1996). Most striking of all, however, was a vessel from another, contemporary grave. On a red background, the decoration in off-white paint included a scene of pregnant women, and a male figure wearing a tail and with a feather on his head, holding a mace in the classic smiting pose of later royal iconography (Dreyer 1995a). It is hard to interpret this latter motif as anything other than the depiction of a ruler, so close are the parallels with royal scenes on monuments from the period of state formation. To date, the Abydos vessel is the earliest example of the ruler figure in
Dorothy Parker, Colleen Bresse, Regina Barreca