Predynastic bull's head ivory amulets from grave at Naquada
Since the discovery
of the Predynastic cultures of Egypt at the end of the nineteenth
century interpretations of the religious beliefs and practices of the period have been
numerous and speculative. Inference has to be based on the funerary customs,
depictions found on the objects and some of the objects themselves, such as
figurines. In the absence of a developed writing system these chance finds are open
to different interpretations, often influenced by the fashions of modern times or the
sex of the scholar! For instance, one or two past lady scholars championed the
existence of the great 'mother' goddess to whom all other male gods were
subordinate. Male scholarly predilections were for the interpretation of the motifs
solely from the historic point of view, which involved extrapolating the known
symbolism from Dynastic times back into the Predynastic. Now social
anthropological models have entered the argument with emphasis on the
dependence on agriculture and the development of a stratified society.
The true picture of
religious belief in the Predynastic period may include quite a few
of the suggestions which have been made, but there are one or two basic certainties.
It is known from later religious and funerary practices that the Egyptians believed in
an afterlife and made provision for it in their burials. The practice of elaborate burial of
the dead with grave goods indicates that this belief goes back to the Predynastic and
continued to develop. It is also known that the Egyptians took various precautions to
safeguard the souls of their deceased through prophylactic amulets, spells and
rituals, a custom also known in other ancient and modern societies. Amulets
certainly existed in the Predynastic, and there are rare depictions of ceremonies. In
later times there was a large pantheon of gods and goddesses, many of which were
linked to, or personified by, animals. From the earliest times the Egyptians observed
a predetermined pattern in the natural world which implied superhuman powers and
a basic order which gave their religion a long tradition of conservatism. The
depictions of various animals in the Predynastic can therefore sometimes be
interpreted as representations of deities as well as prophylactic devices to ward off
evil or ensure good hunting. Some figures were no doubt connected with ensuring
fecundity, given a probable high infant mortality rate and the need to encourage the
continued gift of the Nile's fertility. Pharaoh was also a god to his people and the
development of a graded society with one ruler is echoed by the evolution of artistic
subjects into the Protodynastic and Early Dynastic periods when the Upper Egyptian
king, or his manifestation the bull, was often shown in a position of prominence
undertaking important ceremonial duties.
The fact that it was
most usual, but by no means consistent, to place the body in the
grave with the head pointing towards the south and the face to the west has led to
the notion that the Egyptians had already identified the locality of the 'land of the
dead'. The foetal position for eternal rest is standard and quite often there might be
more than one occupant in a grave, perhaps a man and a woman, two individuals of
the same sex, an adult and a child, or a group of children. Their rest was sometimes
disturbed by what may have been ritual dismemberment before interment. Many of
the reported cases of dismemberment were probably caused by the actions of
robbers or scavengers, but there remain some instances where the practice may
have taken place. This might indicate some form of ancestor worship, particularly in
cases when the head was removed and either deliberately placed somewhere else
in the grave or replaced with something else. It may also simply be that relatives
replaced a revered head when a robber had torn it off to get at a necklace, which
seems to be the explanation for some later instances of dismemberment. The
emplacement of grave goods was logical: small pots, cosmetic containers, amulets
and palettes near the head and larger pots at either end of the grave. Some of the
large storage jars in Gerzean graves were found to contain ashes with a thick
vegetable paste on the top, as if some funerary feast and pouring of libation had
taken place at the graveside before burial. The wavy-handled pottery jars often
contain what was originally aromatic fat, the precursor to the seven sacred oils of the
Old Kingdom, but sometimes have only good Nile mud as a substitute.
The design elements
on white cross-lined (C class) Naqada I pottery are restricted to
geometric devices, hills, plants, domestic and desert animals, hippopotami and
crocodiles. More rarely there are depictions of humans.
The hippopotamus was
certainly respected and perhaps even worshipped. Apart
from the paintings of them around the interior of bowls, amulets of pottery, bone and
ivory in this form were also popular in the Amratian. The front cover of this book
shows a pottery bowl from a woman's grave, the richest in the cemetery at El
Mahasna, with modelled hippopotami around the rim. This grave also contained a
male figurine with a penis sheath, and an ivory figure which has been identified as the
first depiction of the mysterious animal of the god Seth, who, as god of chaotic
forces, was connected with the hippopotamus in later times. From the prolific use of
hippopotamus ivory in Predynastic and Dynastic times, it is certain that the animal
was hunted and perhaps these charming early depictions served as protective
devices against the marauding habits of the animal on the river banks.
A cow godess is known
from a relief of a cow's head with five stars on the horns on
a slate palette from a grave at Gerzeh and from various potmarks, who is likely to be
Bat, the cow-goddess of Upper Egypt.
The repertoire of depictions
on Gerzean pottery is greater and subsequently open to
more interpretations. Certain elements seem to be standard, the Naqada plant,
sycamore trees, ostrich, gazelle, water lines, spirals and hills . The Naqada plant,
which seems to sprout from a small pot, has been identified as an aloe, a sycamore
tree, a rush with shoots and a relative of the date palm. The smaller divided tree is
usually accepted as a sycamore, which was a sacred tree in historical depictions,
from which the goddess Hathor poured libations.
Figures in the round
of animals include the theriomorphic vessels in pottery or stone.
Of these, birds and fish were the most popular, although frogs (figure 19) and other
animals are also known. The fashion for these animal-shaped vessels, chiefly
featuring hippopotami, began in the Badarian and continued into the Amratian. The
painted birds and fish were popular in the Gerzean and it seems that, like the
decorated pottery, they were meant to confer an afterlife which would include an
abundance of Nile fauna. Apart from the birds that may be falcons, they do not seem
to represent divinities. The pottery model boats , which copied papyrus river skiffs,
can be included in the same genre and the symbolism conveyed by the boat in
historic times was the journey through the underworld. Models of animals in pottery
were mostly rougher models of bulls, cows, sheep and pigs, whilst in the rarer, fine
flint sculptures birds, cows, snakes, bulls, sheep and hippopotami were depicted and
such models of domestic animals can be assumed to be appeals to ancestors or
divinities for an increase in the herd, or to be a record of such an event. The bull's
head, or bucranium, which probably represents power and stability, was stylised into
an amulet which looks like a mushroom slice in Naqada II and III. Another animal
which conveyed a sense of guardianship and strength was the lion, and a particular
way of depicting this animal in the round evolved from the late Predynastic. Lion
models began to feature as game pieces in sets with dogs or hares, balls, brick
shapes and rods and this style of game continued into the Early Dynastic period. At
first the lion was carved with a gash mouth and its tail straight down between its
haunches and then it began to grin and its tail curved up over its back in a question-
mark shape during the Protodynastic. This archaic style of lion sculpture persisted
into the middle of the First Dynasty, when it was succeeded by the classic type of
lion which had a closed mouth and its tail curved around its haunch, and the lioness
was even depicted in a jewelled collar as if tame animals were used in the hunt.
