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Naqada نقادة | |
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Coordinates: 25°54′N32°43′E / 25.900°N 32.717°E | |
Country | ![]() |
Governorate | ![]() |
Area | |
• Total | 35.94 sq mi (93.08 km2) |
Population (2021) [1] | |
• Total | 188,984 |
• Density | 5,300/sq mi (2,000/km2) |
Time zone | UTC+2 (EST) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC+3 |
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nbyt [2] [3] in hieroglyphs | |||||
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Era: Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BC) | |||||
Naqada (Egyptian Arabic: نقادةNaqāda; Coptic language: ⲛⲉⲕⲁⲧⲏⲣⲓⲟⲛNekatērion; [4] Ancient Greek: ΠαμπανιςPampanis, [3] Ancient Egyptian: Nbyt), is a town on the west bank of the Nile in Qena Governorate, Egypt, situated ca. 20 km north of Luxor. It includes the villages of Tukh, Khatara, Danfiq, and Zawayda. According to 1960 census, it is one of the most uninhabited areas and had only 3,000 inhabitants, mostly of Christian faith [5] who preserved elements of the Coptic language up until the 1930s. [6]
The ancient town contained a cemetery that held approximately 2000 graves. [7] The first person to excavate the site was archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie in 1894. Petrie was working for the Egypt Exploration Fund (now the Egypt Exploration Society) when he excavated the site. Some of the findings during the excavation included artifacts from the Amratian (Naqada I) and the Gerzeh (Naqada II). [8]
Naqada stands near the site of a prehistoric Egyptian necropolis: The town, called Ombos, was the centre of the cult of Set and large tombs were built there c. 3500 BCE. [9]
The large quantity of remains from Naqada has enabled the dating of the entire archeological period throughout Egypt and its environs, hence the town name Naqada is used for the pre-dynastic Naqada culture c. 4400–3000 BCE. Other Naqada culture archeological sites include el Badari, the Gerzeh culture, and Nekhen.[ citation needed ]
Petrie's initial findings during his excavations lead him to incorrectly believe he had found a new race of people who had invaded Egypt during the First Intermediate Period. This would later be disproven by the work of Jacques de Morgan who had conducted his own digs in the Naqada Region. Morgan's findings showed that the artifacts came from an earlier era and this lead Petrie to revise his own findings. [10] [11]
The graves that were uncovered contained bodies that were less intact and were placed by streams and in covered pits compared to the Egyptian practice of usually placing the graves on a cliff face or rising ground and having the bodies lie in a hollow or a cave and they lacked the embalming typical of Egyptian burials. [12]
Research into the predynastic sites of the dead in the Naqada region came to show that they had transitioned into a state style of civilization and away from a chiefdom. Many of these graves had contained many items ranging from amulets to hairpins to knives made of flint. Few of these graves had items of value or were of special use which tells us that they had a developing class of people who resided within the upper class including an established group of middle class individuals. This level of monetary stability is thought to have come from the region having an established gold trade as reveled by seals found in cemeteries. [13]
A survey of the area in the years between 1978 and 1981, led by Fekri Hassan, working with the Washington State University in a project titled Predynastic of Naqada was done in an attempt to find more cemetery sites. This project did lead to the discovery of more cemeteries. This survey also lead to the rediscovery of the Royal Tomb that was found by de Morgan which was then later re-evaluated. Through the survey the area of Nubt, in the south town, was found to have been looted and used by the farmers in the area as a form of fertilizer called Sebakh. The objects that were left behind had been moved from their original location or were sold on the black market. [14]
In August 2018 the Egypt Exploration Society had conducted tests in the area of Nubt to test for its ability to be used for further research. The purpose of this survey is to bring more attention to the usefulness of the site and for protecting it. Later seasons will take looks into how to best preserve the sites. Further work will begin on the surrounding area. [10]
In the Stargate franchise, alien civilizations make extensive use of a mineral, naquada, named after the archaeological site.
Abydos is one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, and also of the eighth nome in Upper Egypt. It is located about 11 kilometres west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N, near the modern Egyptian towns of El Araba El Madfuna and El Balyana. In the ancient Egyptian language, the city was called Abedju (Arabic Abdu عبد-و). The English name Abydos comes from the Greek Ἄβυδος, a name borrowed by Greek geographers from the unrelated city of Abydos on the Hellespont. Abydos name in hieroglyphs
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt in conjunction with his wife, Hilda Urlin. Some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah Stele, an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred. Undoubtedly at least as important is his 1905 discovery and correct identification of the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.
Upper Egypt is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel N. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake Nasser.
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Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt is the period of time starting at the first human settlement and ending at the First Dynasty of Egypt around 3100 BC.
The Gerzeh culture, also called Naqada II, refers to the archaeological stage at Gerzeh, a prehistoric Egyptian cemetery located along the west bank of the Nile. The necropolis is named after el-Girzeh, the nearby contemporary town in Egypt. Gerzeh is situated only several miles due east of the oasis of Faiyum.
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Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Egyptian prehistory, dating from approximately 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which began in Naqada II, became highly visible, with named kings heading powerful polities. Naqada III is often referred to as Dynasty 0 or the Protodynastic Period to reflect the presence of kings at the head of influential states, although, in fact, the kings involved would not have been a part of a dynasty. In this period, those kings' names were inscribed in the form of serekhs on a variety of surfaces including pottery and tombs.
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The Amratian culture, also called Naqada I, was an archaeological culture of prehistoric Upper Egypt. It lasted approximately from 4000 to 3500 BC.
The Naqada culture is an archaeological culture of Chalcolithic Predynastic Egypt, named for the town of Naqada, Qena Governorate. A 2013 Oxford University radiocarbon dating study of the Predynastic period suggests a beginning date sometime between 3,800 and 3,700 BC.
The following outline is provided as an overview of a topical guide to ancient Egypt:
Hilda Mary Isabel, Lady Petrie, was an Irish-born British Egyptologist and wife of Sir Flinders Petrie, the father of scientific archaeology. Having studied geology, she was hired by Flinders Petrie at age 25 as an artist, which led to their marriage and a working partnership that endured for their lifetimes.
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