Near East (4,365 – 2,638 BCE) Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic — Canal Gardens, Copper, and Maritime Aegean

Geographic and Environmental Context

• Anchors: the Nile Valley and Delta; Sinai–Negev–Arabah; the southern Levant (with Tyre as the sole Levantine node in this subregion); Hejaz–Asir–Tihāma on the Red Sea; Yemen’s western uplands/coast; southwestern Cyprus; western Anatolian littoral (Smyrna–Ephesus–Miletus–Halicarnassus–Xanthos; Troad).

Climate & Environment

• Flood variability increased; Delta marshes fluctuated; Aegean coasts stable; Arabian west slope drier, highlands stable.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Canal/levee fields in Nile Delta/Valley matured; orchard–garden mosaics; caprine herding in Sinai–Negev; mixed farming in Ionia–Lydia–Caria.

• Yemen western terraces in embryo; Hejaz oases (Ta’if-like) incipient.

Technology

• Copper metallurgy in Anatolia; advanced pottery; reed boats; early sails; improved qanat/terrace conceptions in Arabia highlands (proto-forms).

Corridors

• Nile–Delta–Mediterranean shipping; Anatolian maritime loops; overland Sinai/Negev into the southern Levant.

Symbolism

• Temple precincts (Egyptian cores outside our exact geography but influence strong); Aegean cape sanctuaries; ancestor cults.

Adaptation

• Canal/qanat + terraces hedged droughts; coastal fisheries stabilized diets.

A cuneiform script is in use in Sumer by 3200 BCE, by which time writing has spread from Mesopotamia to the Egyptians in the west and to the Elamites of southwestern Iran.

Village life has followed the domestication of plants and animals at Jericho and other sites in the Fertile Crescent, with the site of Byblos apparently taking the lead.

The growing city is evidently a wealthy one, and seems to have been an ally of "those who are on his waters" of Egypt for the next several centuries.

First Dynasty tombs use timbers from Byblos.

One of the oldest Egyptian words for an ocean going boat as "Byblos ship.”

Settlement in the region of Gaza dates back to 3300 BCE–3000 BCE at Tell as-Sakan, a site located south of the present-day city, which began as an Egyptian fortress built in Canaanite territory.

Tell as-Sakan prospers as Canaanite cities begin to trade agricultural goods with the Egyptians.

When Egypt's economic interests shift to the cedar trade with Lebanon, however, Gaza's role is reduced to that of a port for ships carrying goods and it declines economically.

The site is virtually abandoned and will remain so throughout the Early Bronze Age II.

It seems certain that Egypt became unified as a cultural and economic domain long before its first king ascended to the throne in the lower Egyptian city of Memphis where the dynastic period did originate.

Political unification has proceeded gradually, perhaps over a period of a century or so as local districts establish trading networks and the ability of their governments to organize agriculture labor on a larger scale increases.

Divine kingship may also have gained spiritual momentum as the cults of gods like Horus, Set, and Neith associated with living representatives become widespread in the country.

Some scholars suggest that Egypt most likely became unified through mutual need, developing cultural ties and trading partnerships, although the status of Memphis as the first capital of united Egypt is undisputed.

Narmer, thought to be the successor to the predynastic Serket, is considered by Most Egyptologists as the last king of the Protodynastic period as well as the so-called "Scorpion King(s)".

Some consider Narmer to be the founder of the First dynasty, and therefore the first pharaoh of all Egypt.

There is a growing consensus that Serket and Narmer are identical, but no identification with any early pharaoh can yet be definitively proven.

The hieroglyphic sign for a catfish (n'r) and that of a chisel (mr) represent Narmer's name phonetically.

Modern variants of his name include "Narmeru" or "Merunar,” but convention uses "Narmer.” Both sides of the large (around sixty-four centimeters/twenty-four inches tall), shield-shaped, ceremonial Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, are decorated, carved in raised relief from a single piece of flat, soft green siltstone.

The famous palette, discovered in 1898 in Hierakonpolis, shows Narmer displaying the insignia of both Upper and Lower Egypt, giving rise to the theory that he unified the two kingdoms.

Menes is traditionally credited with this unification, and he is listed as being the first pharaoh in Manetho's list of kings, so this find has caused some controversy.

Some Egyptologists hold that Menes and Narmer are the same person; some hold that Menes is the same person as Hor-Aha and that he had inherited an already-unified Egypt from Narmer; others hold that Narmer began the process of unification but either did not succeed or succeeded only partially, leaving it to Menes to complete.

Arguments have been made that Narmer is Menes because of his appearance on several ostraca in conjunction with the gameboard hieroglyph, Mn, which appears to be a contemporary record to the otherwise mythical king.

There are, however, inconsistencies within every ostracon that mentions Menes, precluding any definitive proof to his identity.

Menes, an Egyptian pharaoh of the First dynasty, is to some authors the founder of this dynasty, to others he is the founder of the Second.

Memphis, the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt, becomes the first capital of the new Egyptian state, unified through warfare.

Menes, the first pharaoh to unite Egypt's Two Lands, establishes his capital on the banks of the Nile by diverting the river with dikes, according to a legend recorded by the Egyptian priest Manetho, writing in the third century BCE.

Meni, the Egyptian form of the pharoah's name, is taken from the Turin and Abydos king lists (dated Dynasty XIX).

The name Menes means "He who endures".

Rather than a particular person, the name may conceal collectively the protodynastic pharaohs Ka, Scorpion and Narmer.

The archaeological record for the Early Dynastic Period refers to the pharaohs by their Horus-names, while the historical record, as evidenced in the Turin and Abydos king lists, uses an alternative royal titulary, the nebty-name.

The different titular elements of a pharaoh's name are often used in isolation, for brevity's sake, although the choice varied according to circumstance and period.

Mainstream Egyptological consensus follows the findings of Flinders Petrie in reconciling the two records and connects Hor-Aha (archaeological) with the nebty-name Ity (historical).

The same process has led to the identification of the historical Menes (a nebty-name) with the Narmer (a Horus-name) evidenced in the archaeological record (both figures are credited with the unification of Egypt and as the first pharaoh of Dynasty I) as the predecessor of Hor-Aha (the second pharaoh).

The commonly used name Hor-Aha is a rendering of the pharaoh's Horus-name, an element of the royal titulary associated with the god Horus, and is more fully given as Horus-Aha.

There has been some controversy about Hor-Aha.

Some believe him to be the same individual as the legendary Menes and that he was the one to unify all of Egypt.

Others claim he was the son of Narmer, the pharaoh who unified Egypt.

Narmer and Menes may have been one pharaoh, referred to with more than one name.

Regardless, considerable historical evidence from the period points to Narmer as the pharaoh who first unified Egypt (see Narmer Palette) and to Hor-Aha as his son and heir.

Legend has it that Hor-Aha was carried away by a hippopotamus, the embodiment of the deity Seth.

Provided that Hor-Aha was the legendary Menes, another story has it that Hor-Aha was killed by a hippopotamus while hunting.

Hor-Aha's chief wife was Benerib, whose name was "written alongside his on a number of [historical] pieces, in particular, from tomb B14 at Abydos, Egypt".

Tomb B14 is located directly adjacent to Hor-Aha's sepulcher.

Hor-Aha also had another wife, Khenthap, with whom he became father of Djer.

She is mentioned as Djer's mother on the Cairo Annals Stone.

If Menes or Narmer and Hor-Aha were separate rulers, this would make Djer the third pharaoh in the dynasty.

The Abydos King List lists the second pharaoh as Teti, the Turin Canon lists Iteti, while Manetho lists Athothis.

Djer's Horus name means "Horus who succors".

Manetho indicates that the First Dynasty ruled from Memphis—and indeed Herneith, one of Djer’s wives, was buried nearby at Saqqara.

Manetho also claimed that Athothis, who is sometimes identified as Djer, had written a treatise on anatomy that still existed in his own day, nearly three millennia later.

Egyptians soon borrow the notion of writing from the Sumerians, but invent a system for expressing the Egyptian language in pictures instead of words.

The Egyptian language (called Old Egyptian, the oldest attested language of the Afroasiatic family) makes the transition from picture writing to word writing by 3000 BCE.

Egyptian scribes have developed hieratic script, a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian, and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the thirty-third century BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid 1st millennium BCE.

It is primarily written in ink with a reed pen on papyrus.

The first known system of taxation appears in Egypt around 3000 BCE to 2800 BCE: the pharaoh appears before his people in a biennial event, the "Following of Horus," and collects taxes, revenues due to him in his dual role, as the head of state and the incarnation of the god Horus.