The Scarlet Thread of Egypt: Two Views on the Pre-Dynastic

Jake submitted this review awhile ago, but editorial negligence obstructed a speedy street date. In it, our historian par excellence looks at the conclusions of two archaeologists on the subject of pre-Pharaonic Egyptian culture. - RD

What is the scarlet thread of Egyptian culture? Is it the hierarchical structure exemplified by monumental tomb projects that demarcate the king from peon and rich from poor? Or is the centralized bureaucracy, where goods and services filtered into the state? This is precisely what Midant-Reynes, the great French Egyptologist, and Katerine Bard, her American counterpart, spar over. They examine the Egyptian culture(s) that antedate the rise of Pharaonic civilization (ca 3000-200 BCE) in order to locate the nascent trends that adumbrate later Pharaonic civilization. Midant-Reynes looks for hierarchy and Bard looks for centralized bureaucracy.

Midant-Reynes examines tomb excavations of the Naqada culture in order to identify wealth striation and iconography that foreshadow the hierarchy of the later pharaonic civilization. She draws attention to the early tombs filled with artifacts and painted with warrior themes and suggests that “a group of hunter-warriors [were] already invested with an aura of power” (Shaw 49). She contrasts this with the Maadian culture to show how their culture was primarily pastoral-agricultural with very little social stratification, and were thus replaced by the hierarchical Naqada culture.

The arguments of Midant-Reynes are delimited by her search for social stratification. She correctly appropriates the work of Petrie and Kaiser on horizontal cemetery accumulation, but she does not utilize enough recent data. Her treatment is too one-sided and even quixotic because she focuses only on what she considers to be the seed of pharaonic civilization: hierarchy. She neglects the mundane process of cultural change; she does not look at city plans, including walls, especially as they relate to warfare and sacred space; and she fails to interact with Egyptian artifacts found in neighboring countries.

Bard’s article is a more robust treatment of Predynastic culture with a far more subtle definition of pharaonic civilization: complex societies and centralized bureaucracy. She briefly highlights several of the major tomb excavations and shows how grave artifacts indicate far more than social status, but also trade patterns, industry, and technology. She then interprets this data under the rubric of an emergent centralized bureaucracy.

Although Bard surveys most of the relevant research, she only flirts with the definition of complex societies. This becomes a problem if a complex society, defined as a village, could not produce everything necessary for cultural survival. One could argue that the Naqada culture, by itself, was a complex society because of its pottery exportation. She also neglects the role of walls and how walls circumscribed Egyptian society. If sacred space constituted a core element of ancient Egyptian identity, then it requires perusal. Changes to the intellectual landscape of ancient Egypt may result.

Midant-Reyes and Bard both ultimately search for the seeds of pharaonic civilization: Midant-Reynes looks for hierarchy and Bard looks for a complex society and centralized bureaucracy. But they miss the flora and fauna of ancient Egypt. They are both conversant with recent archaeological excavations to the degree to which the archaeology supports their idea of what constitutes the core element of pharaonic civilization.

- Jake McCarty