Archaeological Discovery Of Unknown Pharaonic King Inscription

SIS Gov/Egypt State InformantionF ^ | 3-3-2004

[blam]

March 3 , 2004

Archaeological discovery of unknown pharaonic king inscription

The American archaeological expedition working in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in Al-Kharga Oasis discovered a rocky inscription north of the oasis including a royal name dating back to pre-dynastic era (32nd century B.C).

The SCA Secretary-General Dr Zahi Hawass said that the name was unknown and the rocky inscription discovery came during the survey actions by the archaeological teamwork in Al-Kharga oasis region.

The chairman of the US archaeological expedition Dr Solima Al-Harram pointed out that the discovery would reveal new information about the Egyptian royal presence in the western desert in the pre-dynastic era.

She added that the inscription showed a new royal name which read Hoor within a shape representing the old pharaonic palace on top of it a bird of Horus, common at the eras of 1st and 2nd dynasties.

She asserted that the inscription indicated the trade activities with Africa through the western desert or to find out the different natural raw materials for buildings and industries during that early period of the Egyptian history preceding the era of the unified country.

[ZULU]

"I seem to recall being mildly surprised that so much predynastic stuff was found at the oases"

Really ancient material in the Nile valley is probably silted over.

[ZULU]

I agree with you. Know of any new good books on the Pre-Dynastic or Old Kingdom?

By the way, Zahi Hawass in his latest semi-biographical book agrees with us.

[Heatseeker]

Wow, Dr Zahi Hawass, the World Emperor of Archaeology, agrees with little old us???

Actually I'm passing fond of the good doctor, even if he is a bit publicity-crazy. He had the good sense to institute new, stricter controls about foreign expeditions digging here there and everywhere - before, there were poorly-disciplined foreign teams digging up artifacts and spiriting them out of the country.

As for books, I'm afraid my library is very out-of-date in this area. The main work I have on the predynastic period is Michael A Hoffman's "Egypt before the Pharaohs", published in 1979. In fact, I'm waiting for someone who actually knows what they're talking about to come into this thread and disprove everything I've said. :)

[Fedora]

There's an old theory in predynastic Egyptology that the prehistoric Aterian peoples (basically desert dwellers) were forced into the Nile Valley by the climate warm-up and that this helped push population densities up and encouraged more agriculture. I think it kind of got blown away when it turned out this happened in the 30,000-40,000 bp range, rather than more recently.

Was that theory advanced by V. Gordon Childe?--sounds familiar. But I was thinking more along the lines that just as Mesopotamian agricultural technology is believed to have spread to Egypt c. 5500 BC, there may also have been nomadic migration from Western Asia to Egypt around the same time or earlier (or later), not excluding the possibility that there may have also been earlier periods of migration like the one you mention.

Still I can't help but picture Al Gore going from hunting camp to camp in his loincloth - "the climate is changing - we're doomed!" - just before said climate change kickstarts civilization. :)

Al Gore invented Egypt :)

[Fedora]

In fact, I'm waiting for someone who actually knows what they're talking about to come into this thread and disprove everything I've said. :)

I'm not persuaded anyone really knows what they're talking about when it comes to predynastic Egypt :) Our whole concept of Egypt's early history is based on Manetho's record, which comes to us through secondary sources starting with Josephus in the 1st century AD, so that's not a particularly reliable source for events alleged to have taken place c. 3000- BC. Prior to the period covered by Manetho's record we're completely dependent upon archaeological speculations, which are often based on circularly-reasoned correlations with Palestinian and Greek archaeology (on this cf. Amihai Mazar's Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, e.g. p. 29: "Imported pottery and other artifacts from Cyprus and Greece also play a significant role in chronological studies, but sometimes one forgets that absolute dates in these countries are based to a large extent on those in Egypt and the Levant, making the danger of circular argumentation great."), and are prone to being wildly wrong, as the recent collapse of the Bering Strait hypothesis illustrates.

I'd have to agree with you on Rachel Weisz in The Mummy Returns, though :)

[Heatseeker]

You may be right - the name sounds familiar - but wasn't Childe a notorious Stalin apologist, even if he did inspire Toynbee (one of my favorites) to some extent?

In any case you're no doubt right about inmigration from Asia. I'm also glad we agree about Manetho - and Ms. Weisz. :)

[Fedora]

Yes, Childe was influenced by Hegelian/Marxist concepts of history and said dumb things about Stalin ("Childe did not mind that his materialism made him a convenient whippingboy for pedagogical purposes. He never married, could indulge his whims, and did so. I remember the impact his black broadbrimmed Australian hat and flowing cape made on the driver of a Chicago bus late one evening in 1939 when he was being returned to his downtown hotel. He must have had to look hard to find a quotation from Stalin which could be dragged into the conclusions of his Huxley lecture with any pertinence at all, but he did barely manage it.": V. Gordon Childe). Incidentally I wasn't endorsing Childe's theory, just identifying it as a possible source of the theory you mentioned. But regarding Toynbee, I do like Toynbee's methodology and the way he uses it to synthesize so much information, which is an art that I think recent historians have lost due to the increasing emphasis on specialization.

[Heatseeker]

No worries, I knew you weren't endorsing Childe. Just my way of acknowledging that he was an influence on Toynbee. I ran into "A Study of History" early in life and it was an amazing read (what of it I could follow anyway). Much of the details have been contradicted by subsequent scholarship but his challenge/response thesis is still valid IMO. Wonder what Toynbee would have made of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"?

BTW I've dug out my old text on the predynastic period and it does mention Childe in a couple of places.

[Dr.Deth]

Many translators of the Qur’an have translated the word hoor as ‘beautiful maidens’ especially in the Urdu translations.

I think you'd get a different translation in New York City.

[Fedora]

No problem, just wanted to clarify my own post. I agree Toynbee has some valid ideas even if on some details he's been superseded by subsequent scholarship. I imagine he'd agree with Huntington's gist, though perhaps he'd broaden Huntington's analysis beyond the Christendom/Islamic conflict to wider considerations of conflicts between Christendom and other elements in the contemporary social/cultural order. Thanks for looking up the info on Childe. I should dig and see if I can find some more on the history of the theory we were discussing--I find it enlightening to study the "history of history" and see where some of these historical theories came from and what assumptions undergirded them, which is one reason I like reading older historians like Toynbee and Childe.

[PIF]

If you haven't read them, I suggest the science-historian & egyptologist Robert Temple's books: Egyptian Dawn, The Sphinx Mystery, The Crystal Sun (links to pages about the books w/illustrations and pictures). Amazon carries all these & his work on China.

[bert]

Houri are virginal servants