Naqada culture

Naqada culture

Naqada class=notpageimage| Location of Naqada
Geographical range	Egypt
Period	Neolithic
Dates	c. 4400 – 3000 BC BCE
Type site	Naqada
Preceded by	Badarian culture
Followed by	Protodynastic Period

Female figure with bird traits. Naqada II period, 3500-3400 BCE. Brooklyn Museum

The Naqada culture is an archaeological culture of Chalcolithic Predynastic Egypt (ca. 4400–3000 BC), named for the town of Naqada, Qena Governorate. A 2013 Oxford University radio carbon dating study of the Predynastic period, however, suggests a much later date beginning sometime between 3,800-3,700 BC.

The final phase of the Naqada culture is Naqada III, which is coterminous with the Protodynastic Period (Early Bronze Age, ca. 3200–3000 BCE) in ancient Egypt.

Chronology

William Flinders Petrie

The Naqada period was first divided by the British Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, who explored the site in 1894, into three sub-periods:

• Naqada I: Amratian (after the cemetery near El-Amrah)
• 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Petrie's chronology was superseded by that of Werner Kaiser in 1957.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 begins slightly earlier, as follows:

• Naqada I (about 4400–3500 BC)
  • black-topped and painted pottery
  • trade with Nubia, Western Desert oases and Eastern Mediterranean
  • obsidian from Ethiopia
• Naqada II (about 3500–3200 BC)
  • represented throughout Egypt
  • first marl pottery, and metalworking
• Naqada III (about 3200–3000 BC)
  • more elaborate grave goods
  • cylindrical jars
  • writing

• 
  Pre-dynastic Naqada cooking pot. Scientific analysis has shown that this pot once contained a meat stew with honey
• 
  Incised hippopotamus ivory tusk, upper canine. Four holes around top. From Naqada Tomb 1419, Egypt. Naqada period. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London
• 
  Spatha shell. From Naqada tomb 1539, Egypt. Naqada I period. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London
• 
  Naqada D-ware jar with image of a boat.
• 
  Bull Palette.
• 
  The Battlefield Palette, 3100 BC.

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.

Craniometric analysis of predynastic Naqada fossils 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 specimens from ancient Jericho. The Naqada skeletons were also morphologically proximate to modern osteological series from Europe and the Indian subcontinent. However, the Naqada fossils and these ancient and recent skeletons were phenotypically distinct from fossils belonging to modern Niger-Congo-speaking populations inhabiting Tropical Africa, as well as from Mesolithic skeletons excavated at Wadi Halfa in the Nile Valley.