Information about Narmer Palette

The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. It is thought by some to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the pharaoh Narmer. On one side the king is depicted with the crown of one area and on the other side the king wears the crown of the other. Egyptologist Bob Brier has referred to the Narmer Palette as "the first historical document in the world".^[1]

The palette, which survived intact, was discovered by British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W. Green in what they called the main deposit in the temple of Horus at Hierakonpolis during the dig season of 1897/1898^[2]. Also found at this dig were the Narmer Macehead and the Scorpion Macehead. Unfortunately the exact place and circumstances of these finds were not recorded very clearly by Quibell and Green. In fact, Green's report placed the palette in a different layer one or two yards away from the deposit, which is considered to be more accurate on the basis of the original excavation notes.^[3] It has been suggested that these objects were royal donations made to the temple.^[4] Hierakonpolis was the ancient capital of Upper Egypt during the pre-dynastic Naqada III phase of Egyptian history.

Palettes were typically used for grinding cosmetics, but this palette was too large and heavy to have been for personal use, and was likely a temple object. One theory put forward was that it was used to grind cosmetics to adorn the statues of the gods.

The Narmer Palette is part of the permanent collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.^[5]

Description

It is a large (63 cm.), shield-shaped, ceremonial palette, carved from a single piece of flat, soft green siltstone. The stone has often been wrongly identified in the past as being slate or schist. Slate is layered and prone to flaking, and schist is a metamorphic rock containing large, randomly-distributed mineral grains. Both are unlike the finely-grained, hard, flake-resistant siltstone, whose source is from a well-attested quarry that has been used since pre-dynastic times at Wadi Hammamat.^[6] This material was used extensively during the pre-dynastic period for creating such palettes, and also was used as a source for Old Kingdom statuary. A statue of the 2nd dynasty pharaoh Khasekhemwy, found in the same complex as the Narmer Palette at Hierakonopolis, also was made of this material.^[7]

Both sides of the palette are decorated, carved in raised relief. At the top of both sides of the palette are the central serekhs bearing the rebus symbols n'r (catfish) and mr (chisel) inside, being the phonetic representation of Narmer's name.

Obverse side

Below the bovine heads thought to represent the cow goddess Bat, who was a patron deity, flanking the serekh of Narmer. Below that is what appears to be a procession, with Narmer shown wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt whose symbol was the papyrus. He holds a mace and a flail, two traditional symbols of kingship. To his right are the hieroglyphic symbols for his name, though not contained within a serekh. Behind him is his sandal bearer, whose name may be represented by the rosette appearing adjacent to his head, and a second rectangular symbol that has no clear interpretation, though it could also represent the name of a town. Immediately in front of the king is a long-haired man, a pair of hieroglyphs appearing in front of him, which has been interpreted as being his name: Tshet. This is assuming that these symbols had the same phonetic value used in later hieroglyphic writing. In front of this man are four standard bearers, holding aloft an animal skin, a dog, and two falcons. At the far-right of this scene are ten decapitated corpses, likely the victims of Narmer's conquest. Above them are the symbols for a ship, a falcon, and a harpoon, again perhaps indicating the name of the town that was conquered.

Below the procession, two men are holding ropes tied to the outstretched, intertwining necks of two feline serpopards—or more likely—lionesses given that there are no spots indicated. The circle formed by their exaggeratedly curving necks is the central part of the palette, which is where the cosmetics would be ground. These animals have been considered an additional symbol for the unification of Egypt, but it is a unique image in Egyptian art and there is nothing to suggest that either animal represents an identifiable part of Egypt, although each had lioness war goddesses as protectors and it may indicate the unification with the intertwining.

At the bottom of the palette a bovine image is seen knocking down the walls of a city while trampling on a fallen foe. Because of the lowered head in the image, this is interpreted as a presentation of the king vanquishing his foes, "Bull of his Mother" being a common epithet given to Egyptian kings as the son of the patron cow goddess. ^[8] This posture of a bovine represents force' in later hieroglyphics.

Reverse side

Repeating the format from the other side, two human-faced bovine heads, thought to represent the patron cow goddess Bat, flank the serekhs, uncharacteristically shown in full frontal view. This frontal display of the cows is atypical in ancient Egyptian art except for representations of this goddess and Hathor (who often appears in this view also). Some authors suggest that the images represent the vigor of the king as pair of bulls.

A large picture in the center of the palette depicts Narmer wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt whose symbol was the flowering lotus, and wielding a mace. To his left is a man bearing the king's sandals, again flanked by a rosette symbol. To the right of the king is a kneeling prisoner, who is about to be struck by the king. A pair of symbols appear next to his head, perhaps indicating his name, or indicating the region where he was from. Above the prisoner is a falcon, representing Horus, perched above a set of papyrus flowers, the symbol of Lower Egypt. In his talons he holds a rope-like object which appears to be attached to the nose of a man's head that also emerges from the papyrus flowers, perhaps indicating that he is drawing life from the head. The papyrus has often been interpreted as referring to the marshes of the Nile Delta region in Lower Egypt, or that the battle happened in a marshy area, or even that each papyrus flower represents the number 1,000, indicating that 6,000 enemies were subdued in the battle.

Below the king's feet is a third section, depicting two naked, bearded men. They are either running, or are meant to be seen as sprawling dead upon the ground. Appearing to the left of the head of each man is a hieroglyphic sign, the first a walled town, the second a type of knot, likely indicating the name of a defeated town.

Scholarly debate on the palette

It had been thought that the palette either depicted the unification of Lower Egypt by the king of Upper Egypt, or recorded a recent military success over the Libyans. More recently scholars such as Nicholas Millet have argued that the palette does not represent a historical event (such as the unification of Egypt), but instead represents the events of the year in which the object was dedicated to the temple. Whitney Davis has suggested that the iconography on this and other pre-dynastic palettes has more to do with establishing the king as a visual metaphor of the conquering hunter, caught in the moment of delivering a mortal blow to his enemies.^[9]

The Narmer Palette resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and is one of the initial exhibits that visitors see when entering the museum.^[10] It has the Journal d'Entree number JE32169 and the Catalogue Génèral number CG14716.

References

• Brier, Bob., The First Nation in History. History of Ancient Egypt (Audio). The Teaching Company. 2001.
• Kinnaer, Jacques. What is Really Known About the Narmer Palette?, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Spring 2004.

See also

• Libyan Palette (another well-known Predynastic Egyptian palette)
• Warka Vase (a comparable contemporary work of narrative relief sculpture from the Sumerian civilisation).

External links

• good images of Narmer Palette scroll down to the drawing of the palette and take the link to the photographs published by Francesco Rafaele
• The Narmer Palette: The victorious king of the south
• Narmer Palette (weber.ucsd.edu)
• Narmer Palette (ancient-egypt.org)
• Corpus of Eygptian Late Predynastic Palettes (images of more than 50 such palettes)

Gumhūriyyat Miṣr al-ʿArabiyyah

Arab Republic of Egypt

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Egyptian hieroglyphs
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Egyptian hieroglyphs (sometimes called hieroglyphics
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Upper Egypt is a narrow that extends from the cataract boundaries of modern-day Aswan to the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo. The northern section of Upper Egypt, between El-Aiyat and Asyut is sometimes known as Middle Egypt.
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Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt. It refers to the fertile Nile Delta region, which stretches from the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo, and the Mediterranean Sea.
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Narmer was an Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled in the 31st century BC. Thought to be the successor to the predynastic Scorpion and/or Ka, he is considered by some to be the founder of the First dynasty, and therefore the first king of all Egypt.
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Robert Brier, Ph.D (born December 13, 1943), also affectionately known as Mr. Mummy, is a world-renowned American Egyptologist specializing in paleopathology. A Senior Research Fellow at the C.W.
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Motto
"Dieu et mon droit" ^[2]   (French)
"God and my right"
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"God Save the Queen" ^[3]
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James Edward Quibell (11 November 1867 - June 5 1935^[1]) was a British Egyptologist, born in Newport, Shropshire.

He was educated at Adams' Grammar School and Christ Church College, Oxford.
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Frederick William Green (1869 – 1949) was an English Egyptologist, who worked at a number of sites throughout Egypt. He was born in London on 21 March 1869.^[1]
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The Main deposit was a foundation deposit of particular note in a temple (presumably of Horus) in Nekhen.^[1] It was dug during the early Old Kingdom, and was excavated in 1894.
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Horus is one of the most ancient deities of the Ancient Egyptian religion, who appears in his earliest form in late Predynastic Egypt. Represented as a falcon, his name is believed to mean 'the high' or 'the far off'^[1]
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Nekhen, (Greek: Ἱεράκων πόλις, Strabo xvii. p. 817, transliterated as Hierakonpolis, Hieraconpolis, or Hieracompolis; Arabic:
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The Narmer macehead is an ancient Egyptian decorative stone mace head. It was found during a dig at Kom al Akhmar, the site of Hierakonpolis (ancient Egyptian Nekhen.) It is dated to the reign of king Narmer whose serekh is engraved on it.
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Scorpion mace head (also known as the Major Scorpion mace head) refers to a decorated ancient Egyptian mace head found by by British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W.
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Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqadan period of ancient Egyptian history. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which had begun to take place in Naqada II, became highly visible, with named kings heading powerful polities.
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The Cosmetic palettes are archaeological artifacts originally used to grind ingredients for cosmetics. The decorative palettes of the late 4th millennium BCE appear to have lost this function and merely become commemorative and ornamental.
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Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to the most extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the world. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display, the remainder in storerooms.
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Siltstone is a sedimentary rock which has a composition intermediate in grain size between the coarser sandstones and the finer mudstones and shales.

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As its name implies, it is primarily composed (greater than 2/3) of silt sized particles, defined as grains
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Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, , metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low grade regional metamorphism.
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The schists form a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, chiefly notable for the preponderance of lamellar minerals such as micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others.
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Wadi Hammamat (Arabic: Valley of Many Baths) is a dry river bed in Egypt's Eastern Desert, about halfway between Qusier and Qena. It was a major mining region and trade route east from the Nile valley in ancient times, and three thousand years of rock carvings and graffiti
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The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – this was the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization
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Consort(s) Nimaathap?

Burial Tomb V at Umm el-Qa'ab

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Monuments Shunet ez Zebib
"Fort at Nekhen"

Khasekhemwy (d. 2686 BC; sometimes spelled Khasekhemui) was the 5th and final Pharaoh of the Second dynasty of Egypt.
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serekh is a stylised rectangle which contained the Horus name of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs (they had five regal names each). Made up of two compartments, the bottom contains parallel lines which represent the frontal view of a palace.
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Rebus Principle (Linguistics) is using the existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. Many ancient writing systems used Rebus principle to represent abstract words, which otherwise would be hard to be
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Bat was the deification of the cosmos and the Milky Way. The ancient Egyptians were cattle herders dating back to at least 8000 BC, into the Late Paleolithic. In early times the Milky Way was considered a pool of cow's milk, made by Bat, the celestial cow goddess.
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