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Narmer Palette
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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, and containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found.
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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, and containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. It is thought by some to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by king Narmer. On one side the king is depicted with the White crown of Upper (southern) Egypt and the other side depicts the king wearing the Red Crown of Lower (northern) Egypt. Along with the Scorpion Macehead and the Narmer Maceheads also found together in the "Main Deposit" at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis), the Narmer palette provides the earliest known examples of Egyptian kings, depicted using many of the classic conventions of Egyptian art that already must have been formalized by the time of the palette's creation. The Egyptologist Bob Brier has referred to the Narmer Palette as "the first historical document in the world".
The palette, which has survived five millennia in almost perfect condition, 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. 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. It has been suggested that these objects were royal donations made to the temple. Hierakonpolis was the ancient capital of Upper Egypt during the pre-dynastic Naqada III phase of Egyptian history.
Palettes typically were 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 deities, but the participants in ceremonies could be numerous and preparations might have followed ceremonies dictated by temple rituals performed by priestesses and priests as the participants dressed. Religion and government were inexorably interwoven in ancient Egypt.
The Narmer Palette is part of the permanent collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and it is one of the initial exhibits that visitors see when entering the museum. It has the Journal d'Entree number JE32169 and the Catalogue Génèral number CG14716.
Description
It is a large (63 cm), shield-shaped, ceremonial palette, carved from a single piece of flat, soft green siltstone. The stone often has been incorrectly 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 this 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. 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 second dynasty pharaoh Khasekhemwy, found in the same complex as the Narmer Palette at Nekhen (Hierakonopolis), also was made of this material.
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. The serekh on each side are flanked by a pair of bovine heads with highly curved horns, thought to represent the cow goddess Bat, who was the patron deity of the seventh nome of Upper Egypt and also was the deification of the cosmos and the Milky Way within Egyptian mythology during the pre-dynastic and Old Kingdom periods of Ancient Egyptian history.
Obverse side
Below the representations of Bat and the serekh of Narmer is what appears to be a procession, with Narmer depicted at almost the full height of the register (a traditional artistic representation emphasizing his importance) shown wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. He holds a mace and a flail, two traditional symbols of kingship. To his right are the hieroglyphic symbols for his name, although not contained within a serekh. Behind him is his treasurer bearing the symbol of his rank around his neck and carrying sandals and a pot, his name may be represented by the rosette and urn next to his head. Immediately in front of the king is a long-haired person, a pair of hieroglyphs appearing in front of him, which has been interpreted as being a name "tt" although Ancient Egyptian is somewhat different from Middle Egyptian. In front of this person are four standard bearers, holding aloft an animal skin, a dog, and two falcons. At the far-right of this scene are Horus using a hook to opening a door for ships and ten bodies fallen.
Behind him is a man holding a pair of sandals, whose name may be represented by the rosette appearing by his head, and a second rectangular symbol above him which may represent a town or citadel. Immediately in front of the king is an individual with long hair and leopard-skin, accompanied by a pair of hieroglyphs that spell the word tt, which may be an early version of the word for vizier. Before this man are four standard bearers, holding aloft an animal skin, a dog, and two falcons.
Below the procession, two men are holding ropes tied to the outstretched, intertwining necks of two lionesses confronting each other. Close examination of the image indicates that the felines are lionesses with long necks that intertwine. 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 unique imagery in Egyptian art appearing only on palettes and there is nothing to suggest that either animal represents an identifiable part of Egypt, although each had lioness war goddesses as protectors and the intertwined necks may represent the unification of the state. Other Egyptian palettes are ornamented with different animal species—having the same exaggerated, long-curving necks to form a receptacle for minerals used to make cosmetics.
Similar animal images are known from other contemporaneous cultures, and there are other examples of late-predynastic objects (including other palettes and knife handles) which borrow similar elements from Mesopotamian iconography.
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, Bat. This posture of a bovine has the meaning of "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).
A large image in the center of the palette depicts Narmer wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, whose symbol was the flowering lotus, and he is wielding a mace. To his left is a man bearing a pair of sandals, above his head is a rosette symbol indicating royalty, his head is shaved indicating he is a priest, around his neck he wears a badge indicating the rank of treasurer. His position and size and the number of symbols indicate he is of some importance.
Under the rosette is the glyph ib which gives us his name.
To the right and above king Narmer the falcon, Horus, is perched above a personified field holding in his talons a cord attached to the nose of the god of the earth Akre who emerges from the papyrus flowers in the field. Horus opens Akred nostrils and gives the fields life. Below Horus is the kneeling god Akre the god of the earth and the personification of the field. Acre is labeled
with a pair of symbols. In the upper symbol there is a hook used by farmers to pull down their dikes and let the waters of the innundation in to their fields. The lower symbol names the kneeling god Aker who is controlled by Narmer with the hieroglyph for setat or irrigated field. Akre is controlled by the king with what is known as the "Narmer" pose. What the palette illustrates is that in a desert he who controls the water controls the land.
Below the king's feet is a third register thought to depict two bearded ancestors or defeated enemies. Appearing to the left of the head of each man is a hieroglyphic sign, the first a walled town, the second a knot. If ancestors, they may be the foundation on which authority is based. They are named, inh the wall, founder of the city and as its protecter s3 his son.
Scholarly speculation
The palette has raised considerable scholarly debate over the years. In general the arguments fall into one of two camps: scholars who believe that the palette is a record of actual events, and other academics who argue that it is an object designed to establish the mythology of united rule over Upper and Lower Egypt by the king.
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, or the last stronghold of a Lower Egyptian dynasty based in Buto.
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. John Baines has suggested that the events portrayed are "tokens of royal achievement" from the past, and that "the chief purpose of the piece is not to record an event but to assert that the king dominates the ordered world in the name of the gods and has defeated internal, and especially external, forces of disorder. It also may commemorate a ritual re-enactment of an earlier or wholly-mythical military victory, early coronation rituals are known to have included a "Unification of the Two Lands" ceremony, and the palette may depict Narmer participating in an early version of this act.
An argument in favour of an interpretation of the palette as representing events of contemporary historical significance is supported by the recent discovery of a label bearing the name of Narmer and which also depicts an event found on the palette.
Further Reading
- Brier, Bob., The First Nation in History. History of Ancient Egypt (Audio). The Teaching Company. 2001.
- Davis W., Narrativity and the Narmer Palette, in: P.J. Holliday (ed.) Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, 1993, 21(?)-54
- Gosline S.L., Palettes as Early Evidence of Egyptian Writing, GM 169. 1999, 65-72
- Antonio Loprieno
- Kinnaer, Jacques. What is Really Known About the Narmer Palette?, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Spring 2004.
- Köhler E.C., History or Ideology? New Relations on the Narmer Palette and the Nature of Foreign Relations in Pre- and Early Dynastic Egypt, in: E.C.M. van den Brink - T.E. Levy (eds.), Egypt and the Levant... 2002, (Chapter 31) 499-513.
- Peet T.E., The Art of Predynastic Period, J.E.A. 2 (1915) p. 88-94
- Petrie F., Ancient Egypt (1917)
- Petrie F., Prehistoric Egypt (1920)
- Petrie F., Prehistoric Egypt. Corpus of Prehistoric pottery and palettes (1921)
- Petrie F., Ceremonial Slate Palettes ... H. Petrie - M. Murray (eds.), (1953)
- Quibell J.E., Hierakonpolis. Part I (1900)
- Quibell J.E., F.W. Green, Hierakonpolis. Part II (1902)
- Raffaele F., Dynasty 0, in: S. Bickel - A. Loprieno (eds.), Basel Egyptology Prize 1, Aegyptiaca Helvetica 17, 2003, 99-141
- Rice, Michael
- Ridley R.T., The Unification as Seen Through a Study of the Major Knife-Handles, Palettes, Maceheads (1973)
- Stevenson A., The material significance of Predynastic and Early Dynastic palettes, in: Mairs, Stevenson (eds.), Current research in Egyptology 2005. Oxford, 2007, 148-162
- Wilkinson, Toby A.H. "What a king is this: Narmer and the concept of the ruler" Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 2000, vol. 86, pp. 23-32
See also
External links
- - Archaeowiki.org
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- scroll down to the drawing of the palette and take the link to the photographs published by Francesco Rafaele
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- Images of more than fifty such palettes with various motifs
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