Narmer Palette
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Narmer Palette |
|
Both sides of the Narmer Palette |
|
Material |
|
Size |
c. 64 cm x 42 cm |
Created |
3200-3000 BC (circa) |
Discovered |
1897-1898 |
Present location |
|
Identification |
CG 14716 |
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. It contains some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. The tablet
is thought by some to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the
king Narmer. On one side, the king
is depicted with the bulbed White Crown of Upper (southern)
Egypt, and the other side depicts the king wearing the level Red Crown of Lower (northern)
Egypt. Along with the Scorpion Macehead and the Narmer Maceheads, also found together in
the Main Deposit at Nekhen, the Narmer Palette
provides one of the earliest known depictions of an Egyptian king. The Palette
shows many of the classic conventions of Ancient Egyptian art, which must already have
been formalized by the time of the Palette's creation.[1] The
Egyptologist Bob
Brier has
referred to the Narmer Palette as "the first historical document in the
world".[2]
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 Nekhen, during the dig season
of 1897–98.[3] Also found at this
dig were the Narmer Macehead and the Scorpion Macehead. 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.[4] It has been
suggested that these objects were royal donations made to the temple.[5] Nekhen, or
Hierakonpolis, was one of four power centers in Upper Egypt that preceded the
consolidation of Upper Egypt at the end of the Naqada III period.[6] Hierakonpolis’s
religious importance continued long after its political role had declined.[7] Palettes were typically used
for grinding cosmetics, but this palette is too large and heavy (and elaborate)
to have been created for personal use and was probably a ritual or votive
object, specifically made for donation to, or use in, a temple. One theory is
that it was used to grind cosmetics to adorn the statues of the gods.[8]
The Narmer Palette is
part of the permanent collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.[9] It is one of the
initial exhibits which visitors have been able to see when entering the museum.[9] It has the Journal
d'Entrée number JE32169 and the Catalogue Général number
CG14716.
Contents
Description[edit]
The Narmer Palette is a
63-centimetre tall (2.07 ft), shield-shaped, ceremonial palette, carved
from a single piece of flat, soft dark
gray-green siltstone. The stone has often
been wrongly 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 the 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.[10] 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 2nd dynasty pharaoh Khasekhemwy, found in the same
complex as the Narmer Palette at Hierakonpolis, also was made of this material.[10]
Both sides of the Palette
are decorated, carved in raised relief. At the top of both sides are the
central serekhs bearing the rebussymbols n'r (catfish)
and mr (chisel) inside, being the phonetic representation of
Narmer's name.[11] The serekh on each
side are flanked by a pair of bovine heads with highly curved horns, thought to
represent the cow goddess Bat. She was the patron
deity of the seventh nome of Upper Egypt, and was also the deification of the cosmos
within Egyptian mythology during the pre-dynastic and Old Kingdom periods of
Ancient Egyptian history.[12]
The Palette shows the
typical Egyptian convention for important figures in painting and reliefs of showing the
striding legs and the head in profile, but the torso as from the front.
The canon of body
proportion based
on the "fist", measured across the knuckles, with 18 fists from the
ground to the hairline on the forehead is also already established.[13] Both conventions
remained in use until at least the conquest by Alexander the Great some 3,000 years
later. The minor figures in active poses, such as the king's captive, the
corpses and the handlers of the serpopard beasts, are much
more freely depicted.
Recto
side[edit]
Narmer Palette (recto)
As on the other side, two
human-faced bovine heads, thought to represent the patron cow goddess Bat, flank the serekhs. The
goddess Bat is, as she often was, shown in portrait, rather than in profile as
is traditional in Egyptian relief carving. Hathor, who shared many of
Bat's characteristics, is often depicted in a similar manner. Some authors
suggest that the images represent the vigor of the king as a pair of bulls.
A large picture in the
center of the Palette depicts Narmer wielding a mace wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt
(whose symbol was the flowering lotus). On the left of the king is a man
bearing the king's sandals, flanked by a rosette symbol. To the right of the
king is a kneeling prisoner, who is about to be struck by the king. A pair of symbols appear next to his head, perhaps
indicating his name or indicating the region where he was from. Above the
prisoner is a falcon, representing Horus, perched above a set of
papyrus flowers, the symbol of Lower Egypt. In his talons, he holds a rope-like
object which appears to be attached to the nose of a man's head that also emerges
from the papyrus flowers, perhaps indicating that he is drawing life from the
head. The papyrus has often been interpreted as referring to the marshes of the
Nile Delta region in Lower Egypt, or that the battle happened in a marshy area,
or even that each papyrus flower represents the number 1,000, indicating that
6,000 enemies were subdued in the battle.
Below the king's feet is
a third section, depicting two naked, bearded men. They are either running or
are meant to be seen as sprawling dead upon the ground. Appearing to the left
of the head of each man is a hieroglyphic sign, the first a walled town, the
second a type of knot, probably indicating the
name of a defeated town.
Verso
side[edit]
Narmer Palette (verso)
Below the bovine heads is
what appears to be a procession. Narmer is depicted at nearly the full height
of the register, emphasizing his god-like status in an artistic practice called
hierarchic scale, shown wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt,
whose symbol was the papyrus. He holds a mace and a flail, two traditional
symbols of kingship. To his right are the hieroglyphic symbols for his name,
though not contained within a serekh. Behind him is his sandal-bearer, whose name may be
represented by the rosette appearing adjacent
to his head, and a second rectangular symbol that has no clear interpretation
but which has been suggested may represent a town or citadel.[14] Immediately in
front of the pharaoh is a long-haired man, accompanied by a pair of hieroglyphs
that have been interpreted as his name: Tshet (this assumes
that these symbols had the same phonetic value used in later hieroglyphic
writing). Before this man are four standard bearers, holding aloft an animal skin,
a dog, and two falcons. At the far right of this scene are ten decapitated
corpses, with heads at their feet, possibly symbolizing the victims of Narmer's
conquest. Above them are the symbols for a ship, a
falcon, and a harpoon, which has been interpreted as representing the names of
the towns that were conquered.
Below the procession, two
men are holding ropes tied to the outstretched, intertwining necks of two serpopards confronting each other. The serpopard is a
mythological creature whose name is a portmanteau of the words
"serpent" and "leopard" (though the spotless beast with
tufted tail more closely resembles a lioness.) The circle formed by their
curving necks is the central part of the Palette, which is the area where the
cosmetics would have been ground. Upper and Lower Egypt each worshipped lioness
war goddesses as protectors; the intertwined necks of the serpopards may thus
represent the unification of the state. Similar images of such mythical animals
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.[15]
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.[16] This posture of a
bovine has the meaning of "force" in later hieroglyphics.
Scholarly debate[edit]
The Palette has raised
considerable scholarly debate over the years.[17] 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,[18] or the last
stronghold of a Lower Egyptian dynasty based in Buto.[19] 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.[20] 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".[21]
In popular culture[edit]
The Narmer Palette is
featured in the 2009 film Watchmen. The Australian
author Jackie
French used
the Palette, and recent research into Sumerian trade routes, to create her
historical novel Pharaoh (2007). The Palette is featured
in manga artist Yukinobu Hoshino's short story "The temple of El Alamein". The Palette is
also featured in The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan where the actual
palette is fetched by a magical shwabati servant instead of just a picture to
Carter's utter horror. In Ubisoft’s 2017 release of Assassins
Creed: Origins, the Palette is a quest item and minor plot point toward the end
of the main quests storyline.
See also[edit]
·
Libyan Palette (another well-known
Predynastic Egyptian palette)
·
Warka Vase (a comparable
contemporary work of narrative relief sculpture from the Sumerian civilisation)
References[edit]
1. ^ Wilkinson, Toby
A.H. Early Dynastic Egypt. p.6 Routledge,
London. 1999. ISBN 0-203-20421-2
2. ^ Brier, Bob. Daily
Life of the Ancient Egyptians, A. Hoyt Hobbs 1999, p.202
3. ^ The Ancient Egypt Site -
The Narmer Palette Archived2006-06-15 at the Wayback Machine accessed September
19, 2007
4. ^ Shaw, Ian. Exploring
Ancient Egypt. p.33 Oxford University Press,
2003.
5. ^ Bard, Kathryn
A. The Emergence of the Egyptian State, in The
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Ian Shaw, p.61. Oxford University
Press, 2000
6. ^ Wilkinson 1999, pp. 36-41.
7. ^ Friedman 2001, pp. 98-100, volume
2.
8. ^ Brier, Bob. Great
Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, The Great Courses lecture
series
9. ^ Jump up to:a b Shaw, Ian. Ancient
Egypt: A Very Short Introduction. p.4. Oxford
Press, 2004.
10. ^ Jump up to:a b Shaw, Ian. Ancient
Egypt: A Very Short Introduction. pp.44-45. Oxford
University Press, 2004.
11. ^ Wengrow,
David, The Archaeology of
Ancient EgyptCambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-83586-2 p.207
12. ^ Wilkinson, Richard
H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, p.172 Thames
& Hudson. 2003. ISBN 0-500-05120-8
13. ^ Smith, W.
Stevenson, and Simpson, William Kelly. The Art and Architecture of
Ancient Egypt, pp. 12-13 and note 17, 3rd edn. 1998, Yale University Press
(Penguin/Yale History of Art), ISBN 0300077475
14. ^ Janson, Horst
Woldemar; Anthony F. Janson History of Art: A Survey of the Major
Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day Prentice Hall
1986 ISBN 978-0-13-389321-2 p.56
15. ^ Wilkinson, Toby
A.H. Early Dynastic Egypt. p.6, Routledge, London. 1999. ISBN 0-203-20421-2.
16. ^ Breasted, , James Henry. Ancient Records of Egypt,
Chicago 1906, part Two, §§ 143, 659, 853; part Three §§ 117, 144, 147, 285 etc
17. ^ Hendrickx, Stan,
2017. ”Narmer Palette
Bibliography”
18. ^ Shaw, Ian and
Nicholson, Paul. The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. p.197 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1995. ISBN 0-8109-9096-2
19. ^ Wilkinson, Toby
A.H. Early Dynastic Egypt. p. 40. Routledge, London. 1999. ISBN 0-203-20421-2
20. ^ Shaw, Ian. &
Nicholson, Paul. The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, pp. 196–197. The
British Museum Press, 1995.
21. ^ Baines, John
"Communication and display: the integration of early Egyptian art and
writing" Antiquity, vol. 63:240, 1989, pp. 471–482.
Bibliography[edit]
·
Brier, Bob. The First Nation in
History. History of Ancient Egypt (Audio). The Teaching Company. 2001.
·
Friedman, Renée (2001),
"Hierakonpolis", in Redford, Donald B., The Oxford Encyclopedia
of Ancient Egypt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 98–100, volume 2.
·
Hendrickx, Stan (2017), Narmer Palette Bibliography (PDF).
·
Kinnaer, Jacques. "What is Really
Known About the Narmer Palette?", KMT: A
Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Spring 2004.
·
Wilkinson, Toby A. H. Early
Dynastic Egypt Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18633-1.
·
Grimal, Nicolas Christophe A
history of Ancient Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell, London 1996, ISBN 0-631-19396-0.
·
Kemp, Barry J. (May 7,
2007). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of
a Civilisation. London: Routledge. p. 448. ISBN 0-415-23550-2.
·
Davis, Whitney Masking the Blow:
The Scene of Representation in Late Prehistoric Egyptian Art. Berkeley,
Oxford (Los Angeles) 1992, ISBN 0-520-07488-2.
Further reading[edit]
·
Bard, Kathryn A., ed. Encyclopedia
of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge, 1999.
·
Brewer, Douglas J. Ancient Egypt:
Foundations of a Civilization. Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2005.
·
Davis, Whitney. Masking the Blow:
The Scene of Representation In Late Prehistoric Egyptian Art. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992.
·
Lloyd, Alan B., ed. A
Companion to Ancient Egypt. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
·
Málek, Jaromír. In the Shadow of
the Pyramids: Egypt during the Old Kingdom. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1986.
·
Redford, Donald B., ed. The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. 3 vols. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
·
Shaw, Ian. Ancient Egypt: A Very
Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
·
Shaw, Ian, and Paul Nicholson. The
British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Rev. ed.
London: British Museum, 2008.
·
Wengrow, David. The Archaeology of
Early Egypt: Social Transformation in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
·
Wenke, Robert J. The Ancient
Egyptian State: The Origins of Egyptian Culture (c 8000–2000 BC).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
·
Wilkinson, Toby. Early Dynastic
Egypt. London: Routledge, 2001.
External links[edit]
|
media Commons has media related to Narmer Palette. |
Library resources about |
·
Good images of Narmer
Palette Scroll
down to the drawing of the Palette and take the link to the photographs
published by Francesco Rafaele.
·
The Narmer Palette: The
victorious king of the south
·
Narmer Palette
(weber.ucsd.edu)
·
Narmer Palette
(ancient-egypt.org)
·
Corpus of Egyptian Late
Predynastic Palettes Images of more than fifty such
palettes with various motifs
·
Narmer Catalog (Narmer Palette)
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