Abydos Suhaj Egypt

A lead figure that dates from 3500 BCE, found in the temple of Osiris in the ancient city of Abydos in Egypt, is now housed in the British Museum.

Lead will be used in pharaonic Egypt to glaze pottery and make solder as well as for casting into ornamental objects.

The Egyptian language begins to be written in words instead of pictures, when a Egyptian scribes invent or adopt a writing system, based on hieroglyphics, around 3100 BCE.

Hieroglyphic script develops from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt, possibly influenced by trading contacts with Sumer, although the syllabic signs do not indicate differences in vowel sounds, as does the Sumerian script.

A hieroglyph can represent either a sound, an idea, or an identifying mark attached to another sign.

The earliest recognizable Egyptian hieroglyphics occur sparsely, as personal and place names, in narrative reliefs dating from this period.

The earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was for many years the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar) in the 1890s, which has been dated to about 3200 BCE.

A German archaeological team under Günter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) in 1998 will uncover tomb U-j of a Predynastic ruler, and recover three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs, dating to the early Naqada IIIA period.

Egyptian scribes, when using brush and ink, have adopted a cursive writing system known as hieratic.

First used during the Protodynastic Period, developing alongside the more formal hieroglyphic script, hieratic will continue to develop until it bears little resemblance to the hieroglyphic script.

Hieratic is not a derivative of hieroglyphic writing; true monumental hieroglyphs carved in stone do not appear until the First Dynasty, well after hieratic had been established as a scribal practice.

The two writing systems, therefore, are related, parallel developments, rather than a single linear one.

Various small city-states have arisen along the Nile.

Centuries of conquest have reduced Upper Egypt to three major states: Thinis, Naqada, and Nekhen.

Not much is known of Lower Egypt's political makeup but they may have shared in Naqada's Set cult while Thinis and Nekhen are part of the Horus cult.

Being sandwiched by Thinis and Nekhen, Naqada is the first to fall.

Thinis then conquers Lower Egypt.

Nekhen's relationship with Thinis is uncertain but these two states may have merged peacefully with the Thinite royal family ruling all of Egypt.

Thinis is attributed in Manetho's chronological list to being the home of the First and Second Dynastic kings, though no proof of this has been found.

The location of the ancient city of Thinis is unknown, but there is the possibility it was located near or under the modern town of Girga.

The Thinite kings are buried at Abydos in the Umm el-Qa'ab cemetery.

King Serket, translated as King Scorpion or sometimes The Scorpion King, refers to one or two kings of Upper Egypt during the Protodynastic Period.

His name may refer to the goddess Serket.

Believed to have lived just before or during the rule of Narmer at Thinis, the only pictorial evidence of his existence is a macehead found in the main deposit in a temple at Nekhen.

He may have been a local king of Nekhen who had nothing to do with the ruling house of Thinis or a rival from within that family; another theory makes him identical to Narmer as an alternate name.

An Egyptian sarcophagus, the oldest known, dates to around 3000. (The term, derived from two Greek words meaning "flesh-eating," stems—according to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder—from the use, during prehistoric ages as well as in ancient Egypt and Greece, of coffins lined with a type of stone, possessing caustic properties that was believed to consume a corpse in forty days.)

Egyptians notables construct for themselves complex tombs called mastabas, consisting of underground funerary chambers with stone or brick structures above.

Egyptian monuments from about 3000 contain drawings of giant dogs similar to the modern Great Dane.

Djer may have pushed Egypt’s boundaries farther south beyond the First Cataract to the Wadi Halfa in present Sudan, where archaeologists will find an inscription of his name (of questioned authenticity, however).

Inscriptions concerning Djer, on ivory and wood, are in a very early form of hieroglyphs, hindering complete translation, but a label at Saqqarah may depict the early Old Kingdom practice of human sacrifice.

An ivory tablet from Abydos mentions that Djer visited Buto and Sais in the Nile Delta.

One of his regnal years on the Cairo Stone was named "Year of smiting the land of Setjet", which often is speculated to be Sinai or beyond.

Similarly to his father Hor-Aha, Djer was buried in Abydos.

Djer's tomb is tomb O of Petrie.

His tomb contains the remains of three hundred retainers who were buried with him.

Several objects were found in and around the tomb of Djer.

Women carrying titles later associated with queens, such as great one of the hetes-scepter and She who sees/carries Horus wee buried in subsidiary tombs near the tomb of Djer in Abydos or attested in Saqqara.

These women are thought to be the wives of Djer and include Nakhtneith (or Nekhetneith), buried in Abydos and known from a stela; Herneith, possibly a wife of Djer, buried in Saqqara; Seshemetka, buried in Abydos next to the king, and said to be a wife of Den in Dodson and Hilton; Penebui, her name and title found on an ivory label from Saqqara, and bsu, known from a label in Saqqara and several stone vessels (reading of name uncertain; name consists of three fish hieroglyphs).

The tomb of Djer is associated with the burials of three hundred and thirty-eight individuals, most likely retainers sacrificed upon the king’s death.

Little is known about the reign of Djer’s successor Djet, but he has become famous because of the survival, in well-preserved form, of one of his artistically refined tomb steles.

It is carved in relief with Djet's Horus name, and shows that the distinct Egyptian style already had become fully developed at that time.

His reign was listed in the lost or destroyed sections of the Palermo Stone.

Djet's queen was his sister Merneith.

There is a possibility that a lady called Ahaneith was also his wife.

Djet and Merneith's son was Den, and their grandson was Anedjib.

Egypt has achieved a highly developed and complex dance culture by 2400 BCE.

The laity and priests gather at the yearly festivals of Abydos to enact in dance the death and resurrection of Osiris.

The austere angularity and severe linear form characteristic of Egyptian dance is blended with drama and song to produce the first known example of mythological ritual as pageant, as religious mystery play, and as the earliest view of dance as both communal event and spectacle.

After uniting the southern nomes, Intef clashes with his main rivals, Herakleopolitan kings, for the possession of Abydos.

The city changes hands several times, but Intef is eventually victorious, extending his rule north to the thirteenth nome.

The Thebans establish more friendly relations with the Herakleopolitan kings after the Eleventh Dynasty’s wars of reunification, and the remainder of the reign of Intef II is peaceful.