Naqada culture

Female figure with bird traits. Naqada II period, 3500-3400 BCE. Brooklyn Museum

Coordinates: 25°57′00″N 32°44′00″E / 25.95000°N 32.73333°E / 25.95000; 32.73333 The Naqada culture is an archaeological culture of Chalcolithic Predynastic Egypt (ca. 4400–3000 BC), named for the town of Naqada, Qena Governorate. A 2013 Oxford University radio carbon dating study of the Predynastic period, however, suggests a much later date beginning sometime between 3,800-3,700 BC.^[1]

Its final phase, Naqada III is coterminous with the so-called Protodynastic Period of Ancient Egypt (Early Bronze Age, 3200–3000 BCE).

Chronology

Pre-dynastic Naqada cooking pot. Scientific analysis has shown that this pot once contained a meat stew with honey

William Flinders Petrie

The Naqada period was first divided by the British Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, who explored the site in 1894, into three sub-periods:

• Naqada I: Amratian (after the cemetery near El-Amrah)
• Naqada II: Gerzean (after the cemetery near Gerzeh)
• Naqada III: Semainean (after the cemetery near Es-Semaina)

Werner Kaiser

Petrie's chronology was superseded by that of Werner Kaiser in 1957. Kaiser's chronology began c. 4000 BC, but the modern version begins slightly earlier, as follows:

• Naqada I a-b-c (about 4400–3500 BC)
  • black-topped and painted pottery
  • trade with Nubia, Western Desert oases and Eastern Mediterranean^[2]
  • obsidian from Ethiopia^[3]
• Naqada II a-b-c (about 3500–3200 BC)
  • this culture represented throughout Egypt
  • first marl pottery, and metalworking
• Naqada III a-b-c (about 3200–3000 BC)
  • more elaborate grave goods
  • cylindrical jars
  • writing

Monuments and excavations

Predynastic Egyptians in the Naqada I period traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean to the east.^[2] They also imported obsidian from Ethiopia to shape blades and other objects from flakes.^[4] Charcoal samples found in the tombs of Nekhen, which were dated to the Naqada I and II periods, have been identified as cedar from Lebanon.^[5]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Naqada culture.

References