The A-Group and 4th Millennium BCE Nubia

This chapter discusses the 4th millennium bce in Nubia, which was characterized by a further advance in the process of socio-economic complexity already underway during the previous Neolithic phase, undoubtedly enhanced by interaction with Predynastic Egypt. This ultimately produced the emergence of the A-Group, an indigenous complex polity that appeared at the end of the millennium and reached its climax about the time of the Egyptian unification, ca. 3100 bce. The A-Group was characterized by a fluid economic pattern that included more than one subsistence activity, with herding retaining a distinctive social value within the society; and by organizational differences resulting from mobile and flexible politics, which gave rise to a regional polity based on trade and control over its logistics, social networking and alliance building, and a distinct form of distributed authority.

Hippopotamus hunting in Predynastic Egypt: Reassessing Archaeozoological evidence

Hippopotamus hunting as an iconographical motif is widely attested during most of Egyptian history. Both private and royal Egyptian tombs spanning from early Old Kingdom to Roman times show these images in their walls. The motif was often depicted in Predynastic iconography but, due to some of its particularities, some authors suggested that hippopotami were, in fact, not killed but rather captured alive. Decades have passed, and evidence both ar- chaeological and archaeozoological has since grown significantly. We now have enough sources to reassess the corpus of evidence to debunk or ratify such hypotheses. Particularly relevant to confirm these was the finding at Hierakonpolis of a young hippopotamus’ remains showing signs of having been kept captive in the village. Moreover, it is helpful to examine evidence not taken into account by the authors such as ethnohistorical research and the latest archaeozoological find- ings. The outcome of this research seems to suggest that the killing of hippopotami did, in fact, take place during hunting expeditions, due to the danger of transporting the beasts alive. Further- more, the idea of iconographic evidence as a narrative of actual events should be challenged and understood instead as being one of symbolic nature.

Formation of the Personality - Self-consciousness of the Individual in Pre-dynastic Egypt

The question of the appropriateness of the use of the term and category of Personality in relation to studies of the model of the world and the model of I in predynastic Egypt is considered. Points of view are given on the scope and application of the concept, both from the point of view of various schools of psychological science, and researchers belonging to a number of humanitarian areas of science who consider the concept of identity in the context of historical development and historical memory. At the same time, it is taken into account that a personality is traditionally defined in psychology as a self-regulating dynamic functional system of continuously interacting properties, relationships and actions that take shape in the process of ontogenesis of a person. A person is considered as a phenomenon of social development, a specific living person with consciousness and self-awareness (capable of self-reflection). It is taken into account that in social sciences a person is considered as a special quality of a person acquired by him in a sociocultural environment in the process of joint activity and communication. The article considers the social role and hierarchy in predynastic Egypt, as well as funeral rituals in the context of individualizing practices or in the context of attributing it to a collective personality. Two of these arguments allow us to talk about the applicability of the concept of Personality to this historical period. The study suggests that in relation to the period under study, the level of formation of self-awareness Personality can be talked about in relation to social leaders (chief / regional kings). The study is based on the study of archaeological sites such as elite necropolis, a ritual center in Hierakonpolis, as well as artifacts originating from the tombs of an elite necropolis in Hierakonpolis, determining the development of a socially hierarchical society with an aristocratic clan to which the social leader (chief) — regional king) belonged. The study of the formation of the category Personality notes the special role of finds of funerary masks, which most likely represent the first ancestors in the developing form of the cult of the ancestors. The leader in the period under study in the history of Egypt is a collective person and he also leaves for the ancestors, who are also the incarnations of a collective person. Thus, for the preliterate period, there is no way to talk about specific personalities (including named personalities). But already at the initial stages of the development of the Early kingdom, when writing occurs, we can talk about the naming of each of the kings, since the name reflects the personality (its qualities that contain the names themselves). Nevertheless, the name of each king was also accompanied by the name of the ancestor — the deified legendary king Horus in Hierokonpolis, and later — in the royal title, his name as a name of the god was added to the names of the ruling pharaohs until the end of the era of ancient Egypt. The work, therefore, is debatable, since in psychological science the emergence of self-consciousness and personality as an entity is usually referred to the New Time. The question of the possibility of using modern psychological concepts (Personality), to a person of antiquity, in particular to representatives of preliterate culture, is investigated. The image of a person for an individual of a given era was reconstructed through the prism of the reflection of a person of a given period over the limitations of social stratification, ritual and death. Specific personality traits are described as an individual who performs various social roles and is buried according to his merit, both in terms of personal ethics and in the hierarchy of society.

ЗАГАДКИ ДОДИНАСТИЧЕСКОЙ ПЕТРОГЛИФИКИ С ПОПРАВКОЙ НА КЛИМАТ И ГИДРОЛОГИЮ: ЛОДКИ (И РЕКИ?) В ВЕРХНЕЕГИПЕТСКИХ ВОСТОЧНЫХ ВАДИ

Prehistoric rock drawings of large boats in wadis of the central Eastern Desert, Egypt, divided their investigators into two main groups with quite different views about their origins and cultural affiliation. One of the groups (P. Červiček et al.) insisted on ‘religious’ (cultic, magic, etc.) nature of these petroglyphs attributing them to local traditions but actually tearing away from the reality, primarily on the ground that boats could have never come to be in the desert many tens of kilometers from both the Nile and the Red Sea. Another one, following ideas of W. M. Flinders Petrie, interpreted these boat images as ships of a ‘Dynastic Race’ of oversea invaders who conquered Egypt and consolidated her under their power. This hypothesis, once disapproved by most of archaeologists and Egyptologists, has recently acquired many new adherents; it assumes, in particular, the most real rivers to have flown at the time of the earliest boat petroglyphs (5th to 4th Millennia B.C.) along Wadi Hammamat and Wadi Barramiya, where short routes pass from the Red Sea coast to the Nile. Even rejecting Petrie’s ‘diffusionistic’ version on the whole, one cannot ignore the palaeogeographical fact that the climate of Predynastic Egypt was moist, characterized by monsoon rains which, in combination with geomorphology of the Eastern Desert, could only have favoured here in the period under consideration the formation of regular tributaries of the Nile.

Predynastic Egyptian Figurines

Anthropomorphic figurines attributed to fourth millennium bc predynastic Egypt are exceptionally rare. This chapter focuses its attention on the even smaller subset of those representations that can be contextualized archaeologically. This more selective treatment is intended to shift the core of the discussion of these artefacts from the usual focus upon visual representation towards consideration of embodiment and the spaces in which these things were made, encountered, and experienced. In particular, it is argued that figurines were affective devices that elicited emotional attention within ritual practice. Attention is also paid to the broader social and material contexts of predynastic development in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of both the presence and the absence of these figurines.