Chapter 4
Egyptian Prehistory
The Paleolithic and Neolithic
Paleolithic
4.1 Paleolithic Cultures in Egypt
Ancient Egyptian civilization is a very recent phenomenon compared to the prehistoric cultures which preceded it for hundreds of thousands of years. For most of the prehistoric past in Egypt hunter-gatherers lived in small groups generally called bands. The oldest evidence in Egypt of the Paleolithic, which means “Old Stone Age,” is from perhaps as early as 700,000 years ago, although the dating of very early remains cannot be precise (see Box 4-B). Paleolithic groups, in Egypt and elsewhere in the Old World (Africa, Asia, and Europe), subsisted in part by hunting, but gathering edible wild plants (and sometimes mollusks) was probably more important for daily subsistence than hunting (and fishing), which depended on opportunity, technology (of the tools used), and some degree of cooperation among the hunters, at least to hunt large mammals. Farming and animal husbandry, which provide most of our food today, were not known during Paleolithic times, and Paleolithic hunter-gatherers lived in temporary camps, not permanent villages. Paleolithic peoples used stone tools, although it is likely that tools of organic materials, such as wood, bone, and animal horn, were used throughout the Paleolithic. Such tools have not been preserved in Egypt until the Late Paleolithic and later, and stone tools provide most of the archaeological evidence for the Paleolithic. Pottery was not invented until Neolithic times.
Since most of what is known about Paleolithic cultures is from the remains of stone tools, a typology of stone tools is used to describe the different cultures, from the earliest to the latest. The earliest Paleolithic cultures are called Lower Paleolithic, and are characterized by large stone tools known as handaxes (Figure 4.1). Although smaller flake-tools were also made in the Lower Paleolithic about 250,000–200,000 years ago, flakes became the characteristic tool of the Middle Paleolithic in Egypt, ca. 250,000–50,000 years ago. Following a transitional period, Upper Paleolithic cultures are known from about 33,000 years ago onward and are characterized by long, thin stone tools known as blades. By ca. 21,000 years ago, during the Late Paleolithic, a new type of stone tool called bladelets had developed; these small blades are a type of microlith, less than 5 centimeters long. The last Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in Egypt belonged to Epipaleolithic cultures (also known as Final Paleolithic), after ca. 10,000 years ago.
Figure 4.1 Handax.
Source: Drawing by Angela Close. Reprinted by permission.
There are many gaps in what is known about Paleolithic cultures in Egypt, especially in the sequence of archaeological evidence, as well as where the evidence has been found. One major problem is that the Nile has changed its course, volume, and pattern of alluviation, and other geological and hydrological factors have caused evidence to be buried or destroyed. In the Eastern and Western Deserts, areas outside of the oases were only occupied by hunter-gatherers where there were edible plants and animals – and water, all of which were present only during less arid climatic episodes. Because of their isolation, Paleolithic sites in the desert are often much better preserved than those in the Valley, but archaeological exploration of the deserts has also been limited. This is in part due to the very inhospitable conditions there and difficult logistics for fieldwork. Much more investigation is needed in the desert regions.
Map 4.1 Paleolithic sites in Egypt, Nubia, and the Western Desert.
The Paleolithic stone tools that have been found in Egypt were not all produced by the same species of early man. Although there is no fossil evidence of who made Lower Paleolithic handaxes in Egypt, it is presumed that these tools are associated with Homo erectus, which evolved in East Africa about 1.8 million years ago. Homo erectus literally means “erect man,” although it is now known that bipedal locomotion developed much earlier than 1.8 million years ago. H. erectus eventually migrated out of Africa sometime after its evolution there and populated many parts of the Old World. An important route of migration was the Nile Valley, which also provided a rich environment for the Homo erectus that remained there.
As a species, we (anatomically modern humans) are classified as Homo sapiens sapiens, which means “wise man.” The Middle Paleolithic in Egypt is associated with an archaic form of Homo sapiens and modern humans, who evolved in Africa about 200,000–150,000 years ago. Although Homo neanderthalensis is known in Europe and southwest Asia, evidence of Neanderthals has not been found in Egypt or other parts of Africa. By Upper/Late Paleolithic times H. sapiens sapiens was the only species of humans in Africa and elsewhere in the Old World.
4.2 Lower Paleolithic
A major problem with dating the Lower Paleolithic in Egypt is that many stone tools of this period have been found in eroded deposits along the rocky terraces to either side of the Nile Valley, or scattered across the surface of the low desert. It is difficult to date the tools without the geological contexts in which the tools were deposited, and they have to be dated according to a set of types, from early to late types established by specialists who study stone tools.
The Lower Paleolithic tools that have been found in Egypt, on the margins of the Nile Valley and in the Western Desert, are representative of a stone tool industry known elsewhere in the Old World as Acheulean, the most characteristic tool of which is the handax (Figure 4.1). Formed by chipping off flakes from a block of stone, handaxes were worked along the edge on both sides (bifacial flaking). It is not known what handaxes were used for, but possibly for cutting up animals for food and their skins for clothing. The handaxes were too large and heavy to be points for spears or arrows. They might have been multi-purpose tools, for cutting, sawing, chopping, and hammering.
Fred Wendorf, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University (see 1.4), began excavating Paleolithic sites in the 1960s, first in Nubia and later in the Western Desert and Upper Egypt. From his extensive investigations, and research in Kharga and Dakhla Oases, it is now known that during less arid periods in Lower Paleolithic times people lived in the Western Desert next to pools of water fed by oasis springs, as well as next to seasonal ponds and lakes to the south of these oases which formed when there was some rainfall. Typologically, the handaxes at these sites are late Acheulean, possibly 500,000 years old. Earlier Acheulean tools were recorded in Lower Nubia in the 1960s, and handaxes may also be associated with ancient east–west river channels now buried under the southern part of the Western Desert. These channels were located by ground-penetrating radar images taken from a satellite, but extensive excavation is needed to demonstrate their age(s).
4.3 Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic began in Egypt ca. 250,000–220,000 years ago. Handaxes became rare and then were no longer made, while smaller flake-tools became characteristic of this long period (up to 50,000–45,000 years ago). Flakes were made by the Levallois method, in which a core was specially prepared from a chert nodule from which flakes of a predetermined shape could then be struck (Figure 4.2).
Figure 4.2 Steps in the making of a Levallois flake.
Source: François Bordes, “Mousterian Cultures in France,” Science n.s. 134 (3482) (22 September 1961). www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/bordes_1.pdf.
Middle Paleolithic tools have been found in the Nile Valley, in Egypt and Nubia, but the best preserved sites are in the Western Desert. Two sites excavated by Wendorf, Bir Sahara East (about 350 kilometers west of Abu Simbel) and nearby Bir Tarfawi, had permanent lakes during wet intervals between 175,000 and 70,000 years ago. The savanna and savanna–woodland environment there supported large mammals such as rhinoceros, giant buffalos and camels, giraffes, and various antelopes and gazelles, but also small animals such as hares and wild cats. There were also fish in the lakes. The stone tools are of the (Saharan) Mousterian industry, which is the Middle Paleolithic stone tool industry known in other parts of Africa, Europe, and western Asia. In the Nile Valley, in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, there is evidence of Middle Paleolithic quarries and workshops, where cobbles from escarpment terraces were obtained for stone tool production.
After ca. 70,000 years ago the Western Desert was dry and cool, and human habitation was no longer possible except in the oases. In Upper Egypt near Qena, evidence of a late Middle Paleolithic culture dating to ca. 70,000–50,000 years ago has been identified by Pierre Vermeersch, an archaeologist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Blades, which become the characteristic tool of the Upper Paleolithic, appear in the stone tool assemblage for the first time, suggesting a transitional phase. At the site of Taramsa-1, near the Ptolemaic temple of Hathor at Dendera, the oldest known skeleton in Egypt has been excavated. Dating to ca. 55,000 years ago, it is the burial of an anatomically modern child. Although many factors could have led to the destruction of early burials such as this one, burials are uncommon until the Neolithic and later. A burial this old is unusual in any part of the Old World, not only in Egypt. The intentional act of burial, even a simple one which did not require much energy expenditure, suggests some form of commemoration of the dead by living members of the child’s family or social group that was of some social and/or symbolic significance to them.
4.4 Upper Paleolithic
In southern Europe where the dating of the Upper Paleolithic (ca. 45,000–10,000 years ago) is a much longer span of time than the Upper Paleolithic in Egypt and Nubia, there is evidence of cave paintings of great beauty, as well as sculpture and jewelry. Comparable evidence – of early rock art – is now known in Egypt from Late Paleolithic times (see 4.5), which is contemporaneous with later Upper Paleolithic cultures in Europe. Blades, which are flakes that are at least twice as long as they are wide, are the characteristic stone tool of this period. The Egyptian examples are long and narrow, with greater standardization in the finished tools, which were retouched along the edges, than is evident in earlier stone tools.
The Western Desert remained uninhabitable until after ca. 10,000 years ago, creating a gap in the archaeological evidence of human cultures until after the Upper and Late Paleolithic. Upper Paleolithic sites in the Nile Valley are also rare. The oldest known underground mine in the world (ca. 35,000–30,000 years ago), a source of stone for tools, is located at the site of Nazlet Khater-4 in Middle Egypt. Also excavated at this site was the grave of a robust Homo sapiens sapiens – with a stone ax placed next to his head.
4.5 Late Paleolithic
Many more sites are known for the Late Paleolithic, which dates from ca. 21,000–12,000 years ago, than for the Upper Paleolithic. Late Paleolithic sites are found in Lower Nubia and Upper Egypt, but not farther north, where contemporary sites are probably buried under later river alluvium. From Late Paleolithic times onward the archaeological evidence points to more rapid technological and cultural development than had occurred during the several hundred thousand years of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic (with major gaps of information for the Upper Paleolithic). Bladelets which appeared at this time are so small that they must have been hafted to make compound tools with sharp cutting edges or points, possibly suggesting the invention of the bow and arrow. Mortars and pestles are another new type of stone tool associated with the Late Paleolithic. According to Wendorf, the sequence of Late Paleolithic stone tool industries points to more regional variation than earlier, between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, and within each region, which may represent local innovation and exploitation of a wider range of resources.
Late Paleolithic sites are located in different environmental settings, which were occupied, often repeatedly, at different times of the year. Archaeological evidence also suggests greater variation in subsistence strategies than earlier, with more diversified hunting and gathering practices. Large mammals such as wild cattle and hartebeest (as well as the small dorcas gazelle) were still hunted, but waterfowl, shellfish, and fish (including tilapia and catfish) were also consumed.
At Wadi Kubbaniya near Aswan, Wendorf has excavated Late Paleolithic sites dating to ca. 21,000–17,000 years ago in which the diversity of hunting and fishing is clearly demonstrated. Behind a dune at the mouth of the wadi, a seasonal lake formed after the yearly flooding. Eventually the wadi was blocked off entirely from the Nile and fed by ground water. Catfish were harvested in large quantities, probably when they were spawning, and then smoked in pits to preserve them for future consumption. At several sites there are also the first remains of (wild) plants that had been gathered for consumption: tubers, especially nut-grass, and seeds of wetland plants. The tubers contained toxins that could only be removed by grinding, and the grinding stones found there and at other Late Paleolithic sites in the Nile Valley were probably used for this purpose. That a significant effort was made to process these plants to make them edible demonstrates the increasing importance of plants in the diet, perhaps as a seasonal supplement to animal protein.
To the north of Wadi Kubbaniya (about 34 kilometers to the south of Edfu and to the south of the village of el-Hosh), Belgian archaeologists have recently discovered a locality with Late Paleolithic rock art carved on cliffs of Nubian sandstone. More Late Paleolithic rock art, which was first discovered by Canadian archaeologists in the early 1960s, has been (re)located across the river near the village of Qurta, 15 kilometers north of Kom Ombo. The Qurta rock drawings consist of at least 179 individual images incised or hammered in outline in a naturalistic style – similar to images in Upper Paleolithic caves in southern Europe. Wild cattle predominate among the Qurta figures, but there are also other large mammals, birds, fish and a few stylized human figures (Figure 4.5). A Late Paleolithic settlement has also been discovered at the base of one of the Qurta cliffs with rock drawings. Thus, there is emerging evidence that in Egypt as well as in Europe toward the end of the Pleistocene hunter-gatherers were creating a form of “art” that was relevant to their cultures, in different locations and different media – depending on opportunities in the local environment.
Figure 4.5 Figures of wild cattle at the Late Paleolithic rock art site of Qurta I, locality 1.
Source: D. Huyge et al., First Evidence of Pleistocene Rock Art in North Africa: Securing the Age of the Qurta Petroglyphs (Egypt) through OSL Dating, Antiquity 85 (2011): 1184–1193, Figure 2. © Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels.
Around 13,000–12,000 years ago the last Ice Age came to an end, followed by the early Holocene, the present geological epoch in which we live. In highland Ethiopia there was increased rainfall and river discharge, and the White Nile, which had previously been dry, began to flow again. As a result of this significantly moister climate in East Africa, there were very high Nile floods in Egypt. Because of what has been termed the “Wild Nile” of this time, there are many gaps in the archaeological record. Three Late Paleolithic cemeteries in Nubia, however, date to the time of the Wild Nile, and belong to a culture with microlithic flakes, known in Lower Nubia and Upper Egypt as the Qadan industry.
The earliest known Qadan cemeteries in the Nile Valley (ca. 14,000–12,000 bp) are in Lower Nubia. At the site of Jebel Sahaba, near Wadi Halfa on the east bank of the Nile, 59 burials of men, women, and children were found. They had been buried in pits covered with sandstone slabs. About 40 percent of the burials show evidence of violent deaths, with stone points still embedded in their bones or deep cut marks on their bones.
This may be the earliest evidence of human conflict in Egypt and Nubia. As the numbers of hunter-gatherer-fishers grew in the Late Paleolithic in the Upper Nile Valley, perhaps there was increasing competition for resources, especially since there were major changes in the volume of the Nile at the time of the Jebel Sahaba burials (ca. 12,300 bp). Although there are other possible explanations (including social conflict and inter-group raiding) for the violent deaths in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery, some river locations may have been more resource rich than others, and competition between different groups may have resulted in conflict.
In another Late Paleolithic cemetery, at Wadi Tushka north of Abu Simbel in Lower Nubia, 19 burials were excavated. Several of these burials were marked with the skulls of wild cattle. Cattle horns and bucrania have also been found in some Neolithic (human) burials in Upper Nubia and northern Sudan. These later developments were not simply “cattle cults,” but reflect gradual, long-term changes in subsistence/economic practices with the increasing importance of herding, and ritual practices and beliefs found in the mainly preserved evidence of human burials, as David Wengrow has elegantly discussed. Much later in Nubia, in the late third and early second millennia BC, remains of domesticated cattle are significant in burials of the C-Group and Kerma cultures, demonstrating the continuing symbolic importance of cattle there.
4.6 Epipaleolithic (Final Paleolithic)
With warmer weather globally in the early Holocene, glaciers in the northern hemisphere began to melt and sea levels rose worldwide. In the Nile Valley many occupation sites of the last Paleolithic hunter-gatherers are probably deeply buried under alluvium. Consequently, little evidence of the Epipaleolithic has been recovered from within the Nile Valley. Only two Epipaleolithic cultures have been found, both dating to ca. 7000 BC: the Qarunian culture with sites in the Faiyum region, where a much larger lake existed than the present one, and the Elkabian, in southern Upper Egypt.
Investigations have also shown that in the Western Desert changing climatic conditions brought some seasonal rainfall ca. 9000–5000 BC, making human habitation possible in some parts of the desert which are completely dry today. Using satellite images and digital elevation models, Olaf Bubenzer and Heiko Riemer have been able to specify areas in the Western Desert which were favorable in relief for surface waters to accumulate during the early Holocene wet phase, and near seasonal sources of water such as ponds there is evidence of large camp sites of hunter-gatherers (and in some cases pastoralists; see 4.7).
At some Epipaleolithic sites in the Middle East, such as Abu Hureyra in Syria and Natufian sites in Israel, there is evidence of transitional cultures which led to the important inventions of the Neolithic (see Box 4-C). But such evidence, especially the transition from harvesting wild cereals to cultivating domesticated ones, is lacking in Egypt because the innovations of a Neolithic economy were introduced into Egypt and not invented there. While Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers at Natufian sites (ca. 12,300–10,800 BC) were living in permanent villages occupied year round, such evidence is missing in Egypt until much later, in the Predynastic Period, and even then the evidence of permanent villages and towns is ephemeral (see 3.3).
Working in the Faiyum, Gertrude Caton Thompson (see 1.4) identified two Neolithic cultures, which she termed Faiyum A and Faiyum B. The latter was thought to be a degenerated culture that followed Faiyum A. More recent investigations in the Faiyum in the 1960s, by Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild (of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition), have identified Faiyum B as the Epipaleolithic Qarunian culture, ca. 1,000 years before the Neolithic Faiyum A. The Qarunian people were hunter-gatherer-fishers who lived near the shore of the lake. There is no evidence to suggest that they were experimenting with the domestication of plants and animals. They hunted large mammals such as gazelle, hartebeest, and hippopotamus, and fishing of catfish and other species provided a major source of protein. The tool kit was microlithic, with many small chert blades.
Fishing was also important for the Epipaleolithic peoples at Elkab, and they may have used (reed?) boats for deep-water fishing in the main Nile. Originally these sites were located next to a channel of the Nile. The evidence has been relatively well preserved because the sites were later accidentally protected by a huge enclosure built at Elkab in the Late Period, long after the Nile channel had silted up.
Like the Qarunian, the tools at these Elkab sites are microlithic, with many small burins (chisel-like stone tools). Grinding stones are also present. These were probably used to grind pigment, still evident on the stone, rather than to process cereals or other wild plants for consumption. Mammals, such as dorcas gazelle and barbary sheep, were also hunted. The sites were camps with no evidence of permanent occupation, and the hunters may have gone out of the Valley for seasonal hunting in the desert, which in the early Holocene had become a less arid environment.
Neolithic
4.7 Saharan Neolithic
Although there is evidence in southwest Asia of early Neolithic villages practicing some agriculture and herding of domesticated animals by ca. 9700 BC, contemporary Neolithic sites in Egypt are found only in the Western Desert, where the evidence for subsistence practices is quite different from that in southwest Asia. Occupation of the Western Desert sites was only possible during periods when there was rain. In the early Holocene there was not enough rainfall in the desert for agriculture, which in any event had not yet been invented or introduced into Egypt. Permanent villages are unknown in the earliest phase and the sites are like the seasonal camps of hunter-gatherers. While there may have been permanent settlements later, these were not villages increasing in size and population, and after about 5000 BC they were gradually abandoned, as the Western Desert became more and more arid. The Saharan Neolithic sites do not represent a true Neolithic economy (see Box 4-C). They have been classified as Neolithic because of the associated pottery and the possible domestication of cattle, which may have been herded.
Three periods of the Saharan Neolithic have been identified in the Western Desert: Early (ca. 8800–6800 BC), Middle (ca. 6500–5100 BC), and Late (ca. 5100–4700 BC). Excavated by Fred Wendorf, Neolithic sites in the Western Desert have been found in a number of localities, especially Bir Kiseiba (more than 250 kilometers west of the Nile in Lower Nubia) and Nabta Playa (ca. 90 kilometers southeast of Bir Kiseiba). Neolithic sites are also found farther north in Dakhla and Kharga Oases.
At Early Neolithic sites Wendorf has evidence of small amounts of cattle bones and argues that cattle could not have survived in the desert without human intervention, that is, herding and watering them. Whether these herded cattle were fully domesticated, or were still morphologically wild, is problematic. By ca. 7500 BC there is evidence of excavated wells, which may have provided water for people and cattle, thus making longer stays in the desert possible. But hare and gazelle were also hunted, and cattle may have been kept for milk and blood, rather than primarily for meat, as is still practiced by cattle pastoralists in East Africa.
The microlithic tools of the Early Neolithic are similar to those of the Epipaleolithic Qarunian and Elkabian cultures. Stone tools include backed bladelets (with one side intentionally blunted), some of which are pointed and were probably used for hunting. Grinding stones were used to process wild grass seeds and wild sorghum, which have been preserved at one Nabta Playa site. Later evidence at the same site includes the remains of several rows of stone huts, probably associated with temporary lake levels, as well as underground storage pits and wells.
Early Neolithic pottery is decorated with patterns of lines and points, often made by impressing combs or cords. The pottery (and that of the following Middle Neolithic) is related to ceramics of the “Khartoum” or “Saharo-Sudanese” tradition farther south in northern Sudan – as well as farther west into the central Sahara. Since potsherds are few in number at Early Neolithic sites, water was probably also stored in ostrich egg shells, of which more have been found (or possibly also in animal skins that have not been preserved).
Middle and Late Neolithic occupation sites in the Western Desert are more numerous. There are more living structures and wells, as well as the earliest evidence of wattle-and-daub houses, made of plants plastered with mud. Some of these sites may have been occupied year round, while the smaller ones may still represent temporary camps of pastoralists. Sheep and goat, originally domesticated in southwest Asia, are found for the first time in the Western Desert, but hunting wild animals still provided most of the animal protein.
Bifacially worked stone tools called foliates and points (arrowheads) with concave bases become more frequent. There are also grinding stones, smaller ground stone tools (palettes and ungrooved ax-like tools called celts), and beads.
In the Late Neolithic at Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba a new ceramic ware appears that is smoothed on the surface; occasionally some of this pottery has rippled surfaces. There is also some black-topped pottery, which becomes a characteristic ware of the early Predynastic in the Nile Valley. The appearance of this new pottery in the Western Desert, and later in Middle and Upper Egypt (see 4.9), may be evidence for seasonal movements of people, but other forms of contact and exchange (of pottery, technology, ideas, etc.) are also possible. After ca. 5000 BC more arid conditions prevailed in the Western Desert, making life for pastoralists there increasingly difficult except in the oases, where Neolithic cultures continued into Dynastic times.
Some very unusual Late Neolithic evidence has been excavated by Wendorf at Nabta Playa, including two tumuli covered by stone slabs, one of which had a pit containing the burial of a bull. Also found there were an alignment of ten large stones, ca. 2 meters × 3 meters, which had been brought from 1.5 kilometers or more away, and a circular arrangement of smaller stone slabs, ca. 4 meters in diameter (Figure 4.6). It has been suggested that the stone alignments had calendrical significance based on astronomical/celestial movements (as is known for more complex stone alignments, the most famous of which is Stonehenge in southern England). Such a specific explanation for the Nabta Playa stone alignments is difficult to demonstrate, but they appear to have had no utilitarian purpose. They should probably be understood as related to the belief system of these Neolithic pastoralists.
Figure 4.6 Late Neolithic stone alignment at Nabta Playa.
Source: Fred Wendorf/Copyright © The Trustees of The British Museum.
4.8 Neolithic in the Nile Valley: Faiyum A and Lower Egypt
In the Egyptian Nile Valley farming and herding were just beginning to be established in the later sixth millennium BC. Since this major cultural transition had occurred much earlier in southwest Asia, with permanent villages in existence in the Epipaleolithic, it seems strange that the Neolithic economy (see Box 4-C) appeared much later in Egypt, and of a very different type there – without permanent villages. Several explanations for the late development of the Neolithic in the Egyptian Nile Valley have been suggested:
- None of the species of wild plants or animals that later became domesticated, with the possible exception of cattle, were present in Egypt.
- Some of these species (six-row barley, sheep) did not appear in the southern Levant until close to 6000 BC, so they could not have appeared in Egypt until after that time. In addition, the Sinai Peninsula, which was too dry for farming, provided an effective barrier for the flow of farming technology between Egypt and the southern Levant.
- The timing of the introduction of the Neolithic in Egypt coincides with a major climatic change to more arid conditions in the southern Levant and the end of the Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) there – when some of these early farmers may have migrated to Egypt.
- The Nile Valley was such a resource-rich environment for hunter-gatherer-fishers that the need to supplement this subsistence with farming and herding did not develop until much later than in southwest Asia.
- Much archaeological information from the Epipaleolithic, when technological developments were taking place which led to the invention of agriculture and herding of domesticated animals in some parts of the Old World, is missing for geological reasons in the Egyptian Nile Valley – especially if such settlements were located next to the river.
Although none of these is a satisfactory explanation by itself, in combination they help to clarify some of the problems surrounding the lack of evidence for the transition to a Neolithic economy in Egypt.
In the Faiyum region there is a gap of about a thousand years between the Epipaleolithic Qarunian culture and the Faiyum A Neolithic sites first excavated by Caton Thompson. These sites are the earliest known Neolithic ones in (or near) the Nile Valley, dating to ca. 5500–4500 BC. The sites contain evidence of domesticated cereals (emmer wheat and six-row barley) and domesticated sheep/goat, all of which were first domesticated in different parts of southwest Asia. Cattle bones were also found, only some of which are domesticated.
Recent work in the Faiyum by Willeke Wendrich has uncovered evidence of clay floors and a few postholes, which suggests huts that were present and used for short spans of time. But there is no evidence of permanent villages, and many of the Faiyum A sites resemble camps of hunter-gatherers with scatters of lithics and potsherds. The only permanent features are a great number of hearths and granaries – ca. 350 hearths at the site of Kom W, and 56 granaries (some lined with baskets) at nearby Kom K. Another 109 granaries were excavated near Kom W, one of which contained a wooden sickle (for harvesting cereals) with chert blades still hafted to it.
Although the domesticated cereals and sheep/goat at the Faiyum A sites were not indigenous to Egypt, the stone tools there argue for an Egyptian origin of this culture. Lithics include grinding stones for processing cereals, but also concave-base arrowheads for hunting, which are found earlier in the Western Desert. Faiyum A ceramics are simple open pots of a crude, chaff-tempered clay. But there is also evidence of woven linen cloth (made from domesticated flax), well-made baskets, and imported materials for jewelry, including seashells and beads of green feldspar (from the Eastern Desert), obtained by long-distance trade or exchange.
As elsewhere at early Neolithic sites in the ancient Near East, farming and herding in the Faiyum were in addition to hunting, gathering, and fishing, and cereals were probably stored for consumption in the drier months, when wild resources became scarce. Unlike Neolithic evidence in the Nile Valley, the Faiyum A culture did not become transformed into a society with full-time farming villages. In the fourth millennium BC when social complexity was developing in the Nile Valley, the Faiyum remained a cultural backwater. From around 4000 BC there are the remains of a few fishing/hunting camps in the Faiyum, but the region was probably deserted by farmers who took advantage of the much greater potential of floodplain agriculture in the Nile Valley.
Somewhat later Neolithic sites have been excavated in Lower Egypt, at Merimde Beni-Salame near the apex of the Delta, and at el-Omari, a suburb south of Cairo. Radiocarbon dates for Merimde range from ca. 4750 to 4250 BC. The site was excavated from 1929 to 1937 by Hermann Junker, but many of the field notes were lost in Berlin during World War II. Junker thought that the large area covered by the site (ca. 24 hectares) represented a large village/town. It has since been demonstrated that the village was never that large at any one time, but that occupation shifted horizontally through time.
Beginning in 1977, new excavations were conducted at Merimde by Josef Eiwanger, who identified five strata of occupation. In the earliest stratum (I) there was evidence of postholes for small round houses, with shallow pits and hearths, and pottery without temper. In the middle phase (stratum II) a new type of chaff-tempered ceramics appeared, which is also found at the site of el-Omari. Concave-based arrowheads were also new. In the later Merimde strata (III–V) a new and more substantial type of structure appeared that was semi-subterranean, about 1.5–3.0 meters in diameter, with mud walls (pisé) above. The later ceramics occur in a variety of shapes, many with applied, impressed, or engraved decorations, and a dark, black burnished pottery is first seen. Granaries from this phase were associated with individual houses, suggesting less communal control of stored cereals, as was probably the case at the Faiyum A sites with granaries.
Merimde represents a fully developed Neolithic economy. From the beginning there is evidence of ceramics, as well as farming and the herding of domesticated species, supplemented by hunting, gathering, and especially fishing. While Merimde subsistence practices are similar to the Faiyum A Neolithic, the Merimde remains also include the earliest house structures.
The Neolithic site at el-Omari, which was occupied ca. 4600–4400 BC, is contemporaneous with the latest phase at Merimde. El-Omari was excavated for only two weeks in 1925 and then briefly in 1943 by Fernand Debono. It is now covered by a highway. Although re-excavation of the site is impossible, more recent interpretation of the earlier evidence points to a Neolithic economy similar to that at Merimde, except that storage pits and postholes for wattle-and-daub houses are the only evidence of structures. In addition to tools that were used for farming and fishing (but very little hunting), there is evidence of stone and bone tools for craft activities, including the production of animal skins, textiles, baskets, beads, and simple stone vessels.
Although contracted burials (in a fetal position) are known at both Merimde and el-Omari, they were buried within the settlements. Burials at Merimde usually lacked grave goods; at el-Omari they frequently included only a small pot. Specific cemetery areas for these sites may not have been found (or recognized) in the earlier excavations, but the lack of symbolic behavior concerning disposal of the dead is in great contrast to the type of burial treatment and symbolism that began to develop in the Neolithic Badarian culture in Middle and Upper Egypt, and which became much more elaborate in the later Predynastic Naqada culture of Upper Egypt.
4.9 Neolithic in the Nile Valley: Middle and Upper Egypt
In Upper Egypt there is evidence of a transitional culture contemporaneous with the Faiyum A. In western Thebes scatters of lithics with some organic-tempered ceramics have been found by Polish archaeologists at the site of el-Tarif, and the associated material is called the Tarifian culture. Another Tarifian site has been excavated at Armant to the south. The chipped stone tools, which are mainly flake tools with a few microliths, seem to be intermediate in typology between Epipaleolithic and Neolithic ones. There is no evidence of food production or domesticated animals. In the New Kingdom this region of western Thebes was greatly disturbed by excavation of tombs for high-status officials, so most of the evidence of this prehistoric culture has probably been destroyed. What is known about the Tarifian culture suggests that a Neolithic economy was to be found farther north in the Faiyum at this time, and was not yet fully developed in the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt, where hunter-gatherers were making very small numbers of ceramics.
South of the Faiyum, clear evidence of a Neolithic culture is first found at sites in the el-Badari district, located on desert spurs on the east bank in Middle Egypt. Over 50 sites were excavated in the 1920s and 1930s by Guy Brunton, and more recently Badarian sites have been found farther south – as far south as Elkab and Hierakonpolis. From the el-Badari district sites Brunton identified a previously unknown type of pottery, which he thought was typologically earlier than the ceramics from Predynastic sites farther south. Made of red Nile clay, frequently with a blackened rim and thin walls in bowl and cup shapes, these vessels had a rippled surface achieved by combing and then polishing. Brunton’s hypothesis was demonstrated to be correct by Gertrude Caton Thompson’s stratigraphic excavations at another el-Badari district site, Hammamiya, where she found rippled Badarian potsherds in the lowest stratum, beneath strata with Predynastic wares. Later investigations of el-Badari district sites were conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by Diane Holmes (Institute of Archaeology, University College London). Holmes obtained radiocarbon dates of ca. 4500–4000 BC, also verifying the early date of the Badarian.
Near Deir Tasa, Brunton identified some artifacts as coming from an earlier culture that he called Tasian. Tasian pottery includes black-topped ware and black beakers with incised decoration, which have subsequently also been found at sites in the Eastern and Western Deserts. This evidence probably represents seasonal movements of desert peoples into the Nile Valley as the deserts were becoming more arid.
At the Badarian sites, Brunton excavated mainly storage pits and associated artifacts, the only remains of settlements, and cemeteries. At one site he found postholes of some kind of light organic structure, but evidence of permanent houses and sedentism was lacking. Possibly the sites that Brunton excavated were outlying camps, once associated with larger and more permanent villages being sited within the floodplain and now destroyed.
Badarian peoples practiced farming and animal husbandry, of cattle, sheep, and goat. They cultivated emmer wheat, six-row barley, lentils, and flax, and collected tubers. Fishing was definitely important, but hunting much less so. Bifacially worked tools include axes and sickle blades, which would have been used by farmers, but also concave-based arrowheads for hunting. The stone tools made from side-blow flakes suggest origins in the Western Desert, and the rippled pottery may have developed from the burnished Neolithic pottery known in the Western Desert.
What may be seen at the Badarian sites is some of the earliest evidence in Egypt of pronounced ceremonialism surrounding burials, which become much more elaborate in the fourth millennium BC Naqada culture. Brunton excavated about 750 Badarian burials, most of which were contracted ones in shallow oval pits. Most burials were placed on the left side, facing west with the head to the south. This later became the standard orientation of Naqada culture burials. The Badarian burials had few grave goods, but there was usually one pot in a grave. Some burials also had jewelry, made of beads of seashell, stone, bone, and ivory. A few burials contained stone cosmetic palettes or chert tools. Although burial elaboration becomes much more pronounced in the later Naqada culture, Wendy Anderson has suggested that a few Badarian burials show greater wealth than the majority – suggesting an incipient (two-tiered) form of social differentiation.
Burials such as the Badarian ones represent the material expression of important beliefs and practices in a society concerning the transition from life to death (see Box 5-B). Burial evidence may symbolize roles and social status of the dead and commemoration of this by the living, expressions of grief by the living, and possibly also concepts of an afterlife. The elaborate process of burial, which would become profoundly important in pharaonic society for 3,000 years, is much more pronounced in the Neolithic Badarian culture of Middle and Upper Egypt than in the earlier Saharan Neolithic or the Neolithic in northern Egypt.
Many Badarian and contemporaneous sites are located at the mouths of large wadis that ended in the Nile Valley. Studies by geologists David Dufton and Tom Branton suggest that pastoral nomads had seasonal settlements at the mouths of these wadis, but as the desert climate became drier occasional rainfall created wadi wash-out and vegetation no longer grew on the wadi floors. Later settlements became more and more focused on the Nile Valley and its changing geomorphological setting – so that by Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times settlements were located on the river levees.