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.
