A list of a small subset of ancient Egyptian palettes, ranging in the

Naqada Naqada (Egyptian Arabic: ; Coptic language: ; Ancient Greek: ) 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. Accordi ...

periods, 4th millennium BC, probably mostly from ~3500 to 3000 BC; some palettes may be from the later period of the earliest 3rd millennium BC. These

cosmetic palette Cosmetic palettes are archaeological Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, originally used in predynastic Egypt, predynastic ancient Egypt, Egypt to grind and apply ingredients for facial or body cosmetics. The decorative palettes of the late 4th mill ...

s come in numerous shapes and sizes, and were often found in tombs or graves. They were preceded by a period of palettes called rhomboidal palettes, unadorned, and without the ''cosmetic mixing circle'' found on some of the later Naqada period palettes.

Alphabetical individual listing, (abbreviated)

Battlefield Palette The Battlefield Palette (also known as the Vultures Palette, the Giraffes Palette, or the Lion Palette) may be the earliest battle scene representation of the dozen or more ceremonial or ornamental cosmetic palettes of ancient Egypt. Along with t ...

*''"Two-bird heads
palette (Brooklyn)"'' *"Bird palette (Louvre no XXX)"
(bird-resting, on its feet) *Double-Bird Palette, (''"Anchor Palette"'') *

Bull Palette The Bull Palette ( French: palette célébrant une victoire) is the fragment of an Ancient Egyptian greywacke palette, carved in low relief and used, at least in principle, as a cosmetic palette for the grinding of cosmetics. It is dated to Naqad ...

*El Ahaiwah Dog Palette *Four Dogs Palette, Giraffes Palette * Oxford Palette
''Minor Hierakonpolis Dogs Palette'' *"Fish palette (Louvre dolphin type)" *New Kingdom: Fish-shaped palette-(Bulti-hieroglyph type); Adorned fish side/ with cosmetic side for daily use. *Gerzeh Palette *Barbary Goat Palette *Trussed-Goose Palette *Guinea Fowl Palette *

Hunters Palette The Hunters Palette or Lion Hunt Palette is a circa 3100 BCE cosmetic palette from the Naqada III period of late prehistoric Egypt. The palette is broken: part is held by the British Museum and part is in the collection of the Louvre. Content The ...

*"Ka Palette (no. 1)" *"Ka Palette (no. 2)" * Libyan Palette * Manshiyat Ezzat Palette *Min Antelope Palette * Min Palette *

Narmer Palette The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, belonging, at least nominally, to the category of cosmetic palettes. ...

*"Turtle palette (no. 1)"-(Louvre)
(See

zoomorphic palette The zoomorphic palette is a type of cosmetic palette made during the predynastic period of Egypt. The palettes are found at burial sites, for example Abydos in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. Overview The term ''zoomorphic'', or anim ...

) *Turtle Palette no. 2

List of ancient Egyptian Predynastic palettes

Shield-shape palettes

A list of shield-shaped palettes; the majority are vertically oriented. (The

is an example of a horizontally-oriented palette.)

Zoomorphic palettes

A list of

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from the Greek ζωον (''zōon''), meaning "animal", and μορφη (''morphē''), meaning "shape" or "form". In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It c ...

, or

animal style Animal style art is an approach to decoration found from China to Northern Europe in the early Iron Age, and the barbarian art of the Migration Period, characterized by its emphasis on animal motifs. The zoomorphic style of decoration was used ...

Egyptian palettes. {, cellspacing=0 cellpadding=4 border=1 , - bgcolor="#ececec" style="text-align:center;" !Name !Dimensions !Location !Notes + ''Topic'' , - , "Anchor Palette"
("Double Bird (Pelta) Palette") , – , Pelta? , Anchor-shaped, double outward facing bird-heads , - , Bird (Louvre)
(a goose) , – , Louvre , Naqada IId-IIIc , - , "El Ahaiwah Dog Palette" , – , , from El Ahaiwah- ( El Ahaiwah) , - , "Duck, trussed"
Trussed-Goose Palette-G54 , – , British Museum , portrayed later in hieroglyphs as G54, a 'trussed goose' , - , Elephant palette , (length-(horizontal):
~20.5 cm, (~8 in) , Egyptian Museum, Berlin , , - , Geese Palette , (broken palette)
14.5 x 11.5 cm
(6 x 5 in) , British Museum, 32074 , schist
remainder piece has large, entire ''cosmetic circle'', 2 small confronted geese below , - , Barbary Goat palette , – , British Museum , , - , Turtle Palette
{circular) , – , Louvre , Circular shape
with small turtle appendages , - , Turtle Palette no. 2
{circular) , – , Egyptian Museum, Berlin , Circular shape
with small turtle appendages , -

Bird palettes

{, cellspacing=0 cellpadding=4 border=1 , - bgcolor="#ececec" style="text-align:center;" !Name !Dimensions !Location !<-->
Form !Notes + ''Topic'' , - , Bird (Louvre)
(a goose) , – , Louvre , G42 , Naqada IId-IIIc
goose, seated-(at rest) , - , "Duck, trussed"
Trussed-Goose
Palette-G54 , – , British Museum , V38
G54 , , - , ''"Two-bird heads
palette (Brooklyn)"'' , 22.5 x 11.8 cm
(8.8 x 4.6 in) , Brooklyn Museum, USA , V38
H1-H1 , Unadorned palette, Shield-shaped, with 2-opposed-Bird-Heads , - , Guinea Fowl Palette , 28.5 x 19 cm
(11.3 x 7.5 in) , Brooklyn Museum, USA , ? , Guinea Fowl shape, Naqada II, (with small inlaid white eye) , -

Miscellaneous palettes, fragments

{, cellspacing=0 cellpadding=4 border=1 , - bgcolor="#ececec" style="text-align:center;" !Name !Dimensions !Location !<-->
Form !Notes + ''Topic'' , - , Min Antelope Palette , – , , N33 , (Naqada IId-IIIc)
circular with ''suspension hole'', inscribed with antelope, 1/3 of face , - , "Ka Palette (no. 1)" , – , ? , Q3 , D28,
Ka hieroglyph-shaped plate
large vertical offering-style plate (see the

Hotep Hotep (; also rendered ''hetep'') is an Egyptian word that roughly translates as "to be satisfied, at peace". The word also refers to an "offering" ritually presented to a deity or a dead person, hence "be pleased, be gracious, be at peace". ...

-style plates, and the

Ancient Egyptian offering formula The offering formula, also known under transliterated forms of its incipit as the ''ḥtp-ḏỉ-nsw'' or ''ḥtp-ḏj-nswt'' formula was a conventional dedicatory formula found on ancient Egyptian funerary objects, believed to allow the deceased ...

)Wikimedia Commons, ''Hotep offering tables''
/ref> , - , "Ka Palette (no. 2)" , – , ? , Q3 , D28,
Ka hieroglyph-shaped plate
plus

Ankh Progressive ankylosis protein homolog (ANK ilosis H omolog) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''ANKH'' gene. This gene encodes a multipass transmembrane protein that is expressed in joints and other tissues and controls pyrophosphate ...

Papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

, and U3S-staff S34, M13, S40 , -

Egyptian hieroglyphs and the palette's corpus

A list of the

Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

and the individual palettes.

Gerzeh Palette

The Gerzeh Palette, or "Hathor Palette", "Cow-Head Palette" has topics containing 5-stars, a pair of horns, and a stylized "head". The hieroglyphs are: N14, F13, and possibly a relation to Y8, Hathor-sistrum, (the shape of the cow's head, as on the

), and R20.

Min Palette

The only adornment is a "

typographic ligature In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the first li ...

" style combination of the ''archaic "Min symbol"''--R23 with the hieroglyph for ''"crook-staff"''--S39
(1/4 of palette face).

Galleries

Zoomorphic gallery

File:Egypte louvre 312.jpg, Bird - (non-typical, sitting Goose-(duck)) File:Egypte louvre 311.jpg, Fish-(Dolphin-shape) File:Hippo shaped cosmetic palette.jpg, Hippopotamus File:ProtodynasticPalette-Turtle-ROM.jpg, Turtle

Miscellaneous pallettes

File:Battlefield palette.jpg,

File:Palette with quadrupedes-E 11052-IMG 9460-9470-gradient.jpg, Four Dogs Palette File:HuntersPalette-BritishMuseum-August21-08.jpg,

File:NarmerPalette-ROM-back.jpg,

(copy) File:Plover palette.jpg, Plover palette. File:Ceremonial Palette from Hierakonpolis.jpg, Oxford Palette
Minor Hierakonpolis Palette

References

*Schulz, Regine; Seidel, Matthias eds.; ''Egypt, The World of the Pharaohs,'' (w/ 34 contributing Authors), Konemann, Germany, c 1998, (538 pp), (hardcover, ).

External links

Corpus of Egyptian Late Predynastic Palettes by Francesco Raffaele
{{Ancient Egypt * Ancient Egypt-related lists