There are so many things that interested me about this class and it was hard to choose just one topic to write about. I have always been fascinated with ancient Egyptian culture growing up and I would always check out books from the library about this great civilization. This class really fulfilled the interests I have had since childhood and also taught me new things that I had never heard of before. I always appreciated learning new things and this class was an influx of new knowledge that challenged me and yet kept me interested.
Around the middle of the semester we began discussing Egypt as a unified state and certain things that provided archaeological evidence for political control. There were three pieces of evidence that suggested this unification: the Narmer Palette, the Scorpion Macehead, and the Towns Palette. Out of these three, the Narmer Palette and the Scorpion Macehead interested me the most.
The Narmer Palette was discovered by J.E. Quibell and F.W. Green at Hierakonpolis during their excavations from the years 1897 and 1899. This palette was associated with the king Narmer and depicted a victorious battle of Upper Egypt over Lower Egypt, especially the city-state of Buto. What was cool about this palette was that Narmer was depicted as wearing two crowns, the white crown up Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt. I have seen countless examples of this in my youth but never understood it until now-which is why it was so fascinating for me. The portrayal of the king wearing these two crowns was an assertion and statement of dominance, suggesting his powerful control over the entire Egyptian state as a whole. Another thing that can be seen in this palette is a pear-shaped mace. This is also another symbol of office and power, thus elevating the perception of the pharaoh above others.
The second thing that interested me was the Scorpion Macehead. This macehead was another pear-shaped mace that represented a man named Scorpion. In the images portrayed on this macehead, Scorpion is seen presiding over an agricultural ceremony wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt and the white crown of Upper Egypt. Both of these assert his claim to dominance over the Egyptian state. Another worthy thing to note on this macehead are the standards from different districts in Upper Egypt that have dead birds hanging from them (rekhyt). During this time period, these birds were symbolic of a certain population in Lower Egypt and the portrayal of them here shows a sort of political dominance of Upper Egypt over Lower Egypt.
These two archaeological finds are important in understanding how the pharaoh went about portraying himself in ancient Egypt and it gives Egyptologists an idea of the evolution of the Egyptian state as a whole. Once again this was a very interesting thing for me to learn and I really enjoyed everything in this class.