History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery. L. W. King
found on the hills near by, but the larger portion of the antiquities were recovered from the temple-ruins, and date back to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, exactly the time when the kings of Hierakonpolis first conquered the kingdom of Buto and founded the united Egyptian monarchy.
The ancient temple, which was probably one of the earliest seats of Egyptian civilization, was situated on a mound, now known as el-Kom el-ahmar, “the Red Hill,” from its colour. The chief feature of the most ancient temple seems to have been a circular mound, revetted by a wall of sandstone blocks, which was apparently erected about the end of the predynastic period. Upon this a shrine was probably erected. This was the ancient shrine of Nekhen, the cradle of the Egyptian monarchy. Close by it were found some of the most valuable relics of the earliest Pharaonic age, the great ceremonial mace-heads and vases of Narmer and “the Scorpion,” the shields or “palettes” of the same Narmer, the vases and stelas of Khâsekhemui, and, of later date, the splendid copper colossal group of King Pepi I and his son, which is now at Cairo. Most of the 1st Dynasty objects are preserved in the Ashmo-lean Museum at Oxford, which is one of the best centres for the study of early Egyptian antiquities. Narmer and Khâsekhemui are, as we shall see, two of the first monarchs of all Egypt. These sculptured and inscribed mace-heads, shields, etc., are monuments dedicated by them in the ancestral shrine at Hierakonpolis as records of their deeds. Both kings seem to have waged war against the Northerners, the Anu of Heliopolis and the Delta, and on these votive monuments from Hierakonpolis we find hieroglyphed records of the defeat of the Anu, who have very definitely Semitic physiognomies.
On one shield or palette we see Narmer clubbing a man of Semitic appearance, who is called the “Only One of the Marsh” (Delta), while below two other Semites fly, seeking “fortress-protection.” Above is a figure of a hawk, symbolizing the Upper Egyptian king, holding a rope which is passed through the nose of a Semitic head, while behind is a sign which may be read as “the North,” so that the whole symbolizes the leading away of the North into captivity by the king of the South. It is significant, in view of what has been said above with regard to the probable Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan Northerners, to find the people typical of the North-land represented by the Southerners as Semites. Equally Semitic is the overthrown Northerner on the other side of this well-known monument which we are describing; he is being trampled under the hoofs and gored by the horns of a bull, who, like the hawk, symbolizes the king. The royal bull has broken down the wall of a fortified enclosure, in which is the hut or tent of the Semite, and the bricks lie about promiscuously.
In connection with the Semitic origin of the Northerners, the form of the fortified enclosures on both sides of this monument (that to whose protection the two Semites on one side fly, and that out of which the kingly bull has dragged the chief on the other) is noticeable. As usual in Egyptian writing, the hieroglyph of these buildings takes the form of a plan. The plan shows a crenelated enclosure, resembling the walls of a great Babylonian palace or temple, such as have been found at Telloh, Warka, or Mukayyar. The same design is found in Egypt at the Shuret ez-Zebib, an Old Kingdom fortress at Abydos, in the tomb of King Aha at Nakâda, and in many walls of mastaba-tombs of the early time. This is another argument in favour of an early connection between Egypt and Babylonia. We illustrate a fragment of another votive shield or palette of the same kind, now in the museum of the Louvre, which probably came originally from Hierakonpolis. It is of exactly similar workmanship to that of Narmer, and is no doubt a fragment of another monument of that king. On it we see the same subject of the overthrowing of a Northerner (of Semitic aspect) by the royal bull. On one side, below, is a fortified enclosure with crenelated walls of the type we have described, and within it a lion and a vase; below this another fort, and a bird within it. These signs may express the names of the two forts, but, owing to the fact that at this early period Egyptian orthography was not yet fixed, we cannot read them. On the other side we see a row of animated nome-standards of Upper Egypt, with the symbols of the god Min of Koptos, the hawk of Horus of Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunên, and the jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of the North. On another slate shield, which we also reproduce, we see a symbolical representation of the capture of seven Northern cities, whose names seem to mean the “Two Men,” the “Heron,” the “Owl,” the “Palm,” and the “Ghost” Cities.
“Ghost City” is attacked by a lion, “Owl City” by a hawk, “Palm City” by two hawk nome-standards, and another, whose name we cannot guess at, is being opened up by a scorpion.
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The operating animals evidently represent nomes and tribes of the Upper Egyptians. Here again we see the same crenelated walls of the Northern towns, and there is no doubt that this slate fragment also, which is preserved in the Cairo Museum, is a monument of the conquests of Narmer. It is executed in the same archaic style as those from Hierakonpolis. The animals on the other side no doubt represent part of the spoil of the North.
Returning to the great shield or palette found by Mr. Quibell, we see the king coming out, followed by his sandal-bearer, the Hen-neter or “God’s Servant,” * to view the dead bodies of the slain Northerners which lie arranged in rows, decapitated, and with their heads between their feet. The king is preceded by a procession of nome-standards.
Above the dead men are symbolic representations of a hawk perched on a harpoon over a boat, and a hawk and a door, which doubtless again refer to the fights of the royal hawk of Upper Egypt on the Nile and at the gate of the North. The designs on the mace-heads refer to the same conquest of the North.
* In his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene,
Prof. Petrie supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means
“king,” and compares the eight-pointed star “used for king
in Babylonia.” The eight-pointed star of the cuneiform
script does not mean “king,” but “god.” The star then ought
to mean “god,” and the title “servant of a god,” and this
supposition may be correct. Hen-neter, “god’s servant,” was the appellation of a peculiar kind of priest in later days, and was then spelt with the ordinary sign for a god, the picture of an axe. But in the archaic period, with which we are dealing, a star like the Babylonian sign may very well have been used for “god,” and the title of Narmer’s sandal-bearer may read Hen-neter. He was the slave of the living god Narmer. All Egyptian kings were regarded as deities, more or less.
The monuments Khâsekhemui, a king, show us that he conquered the North also and slew 47,209 “Northern Enemies.” The contorted attitudes of the dead Northerners were greatly admired and sketched at the time, and were reproduced on the pedestal of the king’s statue found by Mr. Quibell, which is now at Oxford. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like most times when kingdoms and peoples are in the making. About 4000 B.C. is the date of these various monuments.
Khâsekhemui probably lived later than Narmer, and we may suppose that his conquest was in reality a re-conquest. He may have lived as late as the time of the IId Dynasty, whereas Narmer must be placed at the beginning of the Ist, and his conquest was probably that which first united the two kingdoms of the South and North. As we shall see in the next chapter, he is probably one of the originals of the legendary “Mena,” who was regarded from the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty onwards as the founder of the kingdom, and was first made known to Europe by Herodotus, under the name of