Naqada Culture

The Naqada culture is an archaeological culture of Chalcolithic Predynastic Egypt (c. 4000–3000 BC), 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 final phase of the Naqada culture is Naqada III, which is coterminous with the Protodynastic Period (Early Bronze Age ) in ancient Egypt.

Chronology

William Flinders Petrie

The Naqada period was first divided by the British Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who explored the site in 1894, into three sub-periods:
*Naqada I: Amratian (after the cemetery near El-Amrah, Egypt)
*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Petrie's chronology was superseded by that of Werner Kaiser in 1957.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 has been adjusted slightly, as follows:
*Naqada I (about 3900–3650 BC)
**black-topped and painted pottery
**trade with Nubia, Western Desert oases, and Eastern Mediterranean
**obsidian from EthiopiaBarbara G. Aston, James A. Harrell, Ian Shaw (2000). Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw editors. "Stone," in ''Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology,'' Cambridge, 5-77, pp. 46-47. Also note: Barbara G. Aston (1994). "Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels," ''Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Altägyptens'' 5, Heidelberg, pp. 23-26. (See on-line posts:

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*Naqada II (about 3650–3300 BC)
**represented throughout Egypt
**first marl pottery, and metalworking
*Naqada III (about 3300–2900 BC)
**more elaborate grave goods, first Pharaohs
**cylindrical jars
**writing

File:WLA brooklynmuseum Terracotta female figure.jpg, Figure of a woman. Naqada II period, 3500–3400 BCE. Brooklyn Museum
File:Pre-dynastic Naqada cooking pot HARGM 9833.JPG, Pre-dynastic Naqada cooking pot - scientific analysis has shown that this pot once contained a meat stew with honey
File:Incised hippopotamus ivory tusk, upper canine. Four holes around top. From Naqada Tomb 1419, Egypt. Naqada period. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London.jpg, Incised hippopotamus ivory tusk, an upper canine with four holes around top, from Naqada Tomb 1419, Egypt, Naqada period, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London
File:Spatha shell. From Naqada tomb 1539, Egypt. Naqada I period. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London.jpg, Spatha shell from Naqada tomb 1539, Egypt, Naqada I period, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London
File:Naqada D-ware Jar.jpg, Naqada D-ware jar with image of a boat
File:Palette with Bull-E 11255-IMG 9459-9466-gradient.jpg, Bull Palette
File:The Battlefield Palette 3100 BC - Joy of Museums.jpg, The Battlefield Palette, 3100 B.C.
File:Predynastic human figures.jpg, Predynastic human figures, Naqada.
File:Gebel el-Arak knife (front and back).jpg, The Gebel el-Arak Knife, Musée du Louvre (3300-3200 BCE).

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. They also imported obsidian from Ethiopia to shape blades and other objects from flakes. 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.

Biological anthropological studies

Some craniometric analysis of predynastic Naqada human remains found that they were closely related to other Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting the Horn of Africa and the Maghreb, as well as to Bronze Age and medieval period Nubians and to specimens from ancient Jericho. The Naqada skeletons were also morphologically proximate to modern osteological series from Europe and the Indian subcontinent. However, the Naqada skeletons and these ancient and recent skeletons were phenotypically distinct from skeletons belonging to modern Niger-Congo-speaking populations inhabiting Tropical Africa, as well as from Mesolithic skeletons excavated at Wadi Halfa in the Nile Valley. The 1993 craniofacial study performed by Brace et al reached the view that "The Predynastic of Upper Egypt and the Late Dynastic of Lower Egypt are more closely related to each other than to any other population" and most similar to modern Egyptians among modern populations, stating that "the Egyptians have been in place since back in the Pleistocene and have been largely unaffected by either invasions or migrations." In 2022, the methodology of the Brace study was criticised by biological anthropologist S.O.Y. Keita for “misstating the underlying assumptions of canonical variates and principal component analysis used in others’ work”. Also, Keita noted that the 1993 study overlooked “the fact that even in their study Egyptians could be found clustering with ancient Nubians and modern Somali, both tropical African groups”.

Hanihara et al. (2003) performed a cranial study on 70 samples from a global database which featured samples from Predynastic Naqada and 12th-13th dynasty Kerma which were classified in the study as "North Africans" and other samples from Somalia along with Nigeria which were classified as "Sub-Saharans" but lacked a specified dating period. The samples from predynastic Naqada and Kerma clustered closely whilst the other samples from Sub-Saharan Africa showed "significant separation from other regions, as well as diversity among themselves".

Various biological anthropological studies have found Naqada skeletal remains to have African biological affinities. Biological anthropologists, Shomarka Keita and A.J. Boyce, have stated that the "studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans". Keita and Boyce further added that the limb proportions of early Nile Valley remains were generally closer to tropical populations. They regarded this as significant because Egypt is not located in the tropical region. The authors suggested that “the Egyptian Nile Valley was not primarily settled by cold-adapted peoples such as Europeans”.

In 1996, Lovell and Prowse reported the presence of individuals buried at Naqada in what they interpreted to be elite, high-status tombs, showing them to be an endogamous ruling or elite segment who were significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently nonelite cemeteries, and more closely related morphologically to populations in Northern Nubia than to neighbouring populations at Badari and Qena in southern Egypt. Specifically, the authors stated that the Naqada samples were "more similar to the Lower Nubian protodynastic sample than they are to the geographically more proximate Egyptian samples" in Qena and Badari. Although, the samples from Naqada, Badari and Qena were all found to be significantly different from each other and from the protodynastic populations in northern Nubia. Overall, both the elite and nonelite individuals at the Naqada cemeteries were more similar to each other than they were to the samples in northern Nubia or to other predynastic samples in southern Egypt.

In 1999, Lovell summarised the findings of modern skeletal studies which had determined that "in general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas" but exhibited local variation in an African context. She also wrote that the archaeological and inscriptional evidence for contact between Egypt and Syro-Palestine "suggests that gene flow between these areas was very likely".

In 2018, Godde assessed population relationships in the Nile Valley by comparing crania from 18 Egyptian and Nubian groups, spanning from Lower Egypt to Lower Nubia across 7,400 years. Overall, the results showed that the Mesolithic Nubian sample had a greater similarity with Naqada Egyptians. Similarly, Lower Nubian and Upper Egyptian samples clustered together. However, the Lower Egyptian samples formed a homogeneous unit, and there was a north-south gradient in the data set.

In 2020, Godde analysed a series of crania, including two Egyptian (predynastic Badarian and Nagada series), a series of A-Group Nubians and a Bronze Age series from Lachish, Palestine. The two pre-dynastic series had strongest affinities, followed by closeness between the Nagada and the Nubian series. Further, the Nubian A-Group plotted nearer to the Egyptians and the Lachish sample placed more closely to Naqada than Badari. According to Godde the spatial-temporal model applied to the pattern of biological distances explains the more distant relationship of Badari to Lachish than Naqada to Lachish as gene flow will cause populations to become more similar over time. Overall, both Egyptian samples were more similar to the Nubian series than to the Lachish series.

Genetic data on the Naqada remains

Keita and Boyce (1996) noted that DNA studies had not been conducted on the southern predynastic Egyptian skeletons. Although, various DNA studies have found Christian-era and modern Nubians along with modern Afro-Asiatic speaking populations in the Horn of Africa to be descended from a mix of West Eurasian and African populations. Several scholars have highlighted a number of methodological limitations with the application of DNA studies to Egyptian mummified remains.

Relative chronology

References

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Predynastic Egypt
Chalcolithic cultures of Africa
5th-millennium BC establishments
3rd-millennium BC disestablishments in Egypt
Archaeological cultures in Egypt