Nagada

Nagada or Naqada is an archeological site Chalcolithique, which gave its name to the culture of Nagada or Amratien (-3800/-3150) in High-Egypt, and at the last predynastic period of the Egyptian, subdivided in three phases.

Nagada

the culture of Nagada (-3800/-3500) in High-Egypt is represented by many sites of necropoles localized of the north of Abydos to Louxor in the south. The most outstanding witnesses are El-Amrah and Nagada. The cultural features of the Badari are amplified considerably by it.

Rectangular tombs with pit, of which some of beautiful dimensions (2,50 m X 1,80 m), are equipped with a material rich person who shows remarkable technological advances. A very beautiful polished red ceramics, being able to be decorated with various figurative reasons painted in white, representing nilotic fauna (hippopotamuses, crocodiles), or of the savanicole steppe (giraffe, gazelles, Bovidae), of the plants and always of the geometrical reasons. Many human ivory, terra cotta figurines sometimes, appear specific certain tombs.

The habitat evolves/moves: large oval huts of light structure (Hemamieh) and well structured rectangular houses, partly buried, make think that beside seasonal installations of the more important and fixed centers settle. With Hiérakonpolis, a habitat of dispersed hamlets tending to specialize according to their function (artisanal habitat, a house of potter at summer identified), develops in withdrawal of a more important center with the outlet of large a ouadi .

The companies are treated on a hierarchical basis. Beside the pastor-farmers appear craftsmen specialized in the pottery (many vases carry marks of potters or owners), but also in the work of the stone (pallet with make-up zoomorphe out of schist, truncated bludgeons, first stone vases, more elaborate flint tools). The first Egyptian earthenware tests attest control of technologies of fire, little applied to metal, except perhaps for gold. Copper, rare, remains cold-stretched as with the Badari in. Hunting appears like a noble activity and of prestige, having a quasi-monopoly of the representations. The “Master of hunting” seems a character with the important capacity. The civilization of Nagada develops a life of relation and contacts important by the river towards the south (group “has” Nubie) and north (Maadi).

Nagada

Starting from -3500 begins the culture of Nagada: the cultural features of Nagada evolve/move and extend gradually to north from the valley (Maadi). Appears a dark ceramics of decorations on a clear paste, always representing the hunting of the savanicole steppe, but developing especially the topic of navigation underlining the intensity of the life of relation by the river, essential topic that one finds in the frescos of large falls from Hiérakonpolis (fall 100). The architecture of ground and raw brick develops (necropoles of Nagada and).

The first cities of the valley of the the Nile appear, built on eminences ( kôms ) natural escaping the rising, being structured architecturalement inside enclosures (El-Kab, Hiérakonpolis, Éléphantine, Abydos). Spaces specialize according to their function (crowned surface, administrative space, habitat).

Kingdoms of Bouto in north and Nekheb (El-Kab, which associated with Nekhen will give Hiérakonpolis) in the south, are certainly made up after long fights between clans. Semitic populations appear which are based quickly with the people autochtones. The goddess vulture of Nekheb, Nekhbet, is the guardian goddess of the royalty of the South, like the goddess cobra of Bouto, Ouadjet, is for the royalty of North. Texts of the pyramids of and, between -2600 and -2500 seem to describe a civilization of the north of Egypt before the fusion of north and the south: a grouping of name Is would have been opposed to that of the West. The populations of the West of Protoberbères would have come in the delta by the road from Siwa. That of the East, the people in the past installed with the the Sinai. They would have been unified later by the god Osiris, king of North. At the same time, the High-Egypt was controlled by Seth, the god of Ombos, in the north of Nagada. The son of Osiris, Horus, would have attacked and conquered the kingdom of Seth, but the occupation of High-Egypt would have been of short duration. The capital of this unified kingdom would be located at Héliopolis, close to the Cairo. It would quickly have been divided into two States, the kingdom of Bouto in North and Nekheb (El-Kab) in the South.

Nagada

The culture of Nagada (-3300/-3150) sees the unification of the cultural features in the valley of the Nile and the delta.

At the end of Nagada, the structure of the decorative diagram changes, the scenes are organized in registers, the first notations hieroglyphic appear. The topics evolve/move the assertion of the preeminence of a chief whom incarnates the whole group, whose force and power can be expressed through the image of the lion or the bull. Violence penetrates the iconography which develops the ideology of a coercive capacity. The reliefs of the pallets and objects votive then make it possible to seize a share of the historical process of constitution of the royal ideology melting the State and the political unification of the valley and the delta.

One has even desired to see (Mr. Bietak) a driving role of the royal institution in the urbanization of Egypt, from one of these historiées pallets (“pallet of the cities” or the “Libyan tribute”), one of the faces showing the images of strengthened enclosures, seen in plan, surmounted royal numina (falcon, lion, scorpion) holding the hoe. Founding document (Bietak) or destruction of cities? This last interpretation keeps solids arguments. It is the emergence of a royal capacity extremely not hesitating to resort to violence to subject the cities and to make of them the relays of its authority which is underlined here. The particular shape of the enclosures represented, rectangular with the angles rounded, can be close to archaeological traces with Hiérakonpolis and Abydos.

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