APPENDIX The Influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt Towards the End of the Fourth Millennium B.C.[169]

APPENDIX The Influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt Towards the End of the Fourth Millennium B.C.[169]

The problem to which we turn now has been discussed intermittently for the last fifty years, but in the earlier discussions preconceived ideas played a considerable part. For while it is admitted that intercourse stimulates individuals, it is often believed that granting foreign influence to have affected a people is derogatory. The essential difference between mechanical copying and creative borrowing, between a slavish dependence on foreign examples and a free selection of congenial material, is entirely overlooked. Another circumstance, too, has militated against an unbiased weighing of the evidence. When our knowledge of the ancient Near East was fragmentary, it was habitual to explain changes in terms of conquest and immigration from some hypothetical, as yet unknown, region; but the extensive explorations which took place between the two world wars have discredited this type of explanation, and the supposed homelands of the newcomers proved, in cultural matters, to have been peripheral dependencies of the two great centres in Egypt and Mesopotamia. These, on the other hand, were seen to 122 have been unusually resistant to foreign influence and capable of imposing conformity upon all comers.[170]

Our increased knowledge has thus induced an unwillingness to appeal to foreign influence or migrations as explanations of cultural changes. Now, however, the opposite viewpoint receives exaggerated emphasis, and we find students proudly proclaiming their ignorance of anthropology and emphasizing, without a critical examination of all the facts, the autonomy and self-containedness of the great cultural centres of the Near East.

Evidence obtained in the decade before the Second World War allows us, however, to solve the problem, at least as far as it concerns the formative phase of Egyptian civilization. For the discovery in Mesopotamia of remains of the Protoliterate period revealed the source from which curious and passing features of Egyptian culture in late predynastic and protodynastic times were obviously derived.

The strongest evidence of this contact between Mesopotamia and Egypt is supplied by three cylinder seals shown by their very material and by their designs to have been made in Mesopotamia during the second half of the Protoliterate period (Figs. 33, 34), but found in Egypt. One was excavated at Naqada (Fig. 32), in a Gerzean grave; and the same origin is probable for the other two.[171] These importations were not without consequence: from the beginning of the First Dynasty the cylinder seal was adopted in Egypt and made at once in considerable quantities. Since it is an odd form for a seal, used only in countries in contact with Mesopotamia, and since one of the Mesopotamian 123 cylinders was found in Egypt in a context just ante-dating the earliest native seals, it would be perverse to deny that the Egyptians followed the Mesopotamian example. But it is quite characteristic for them that they exploited the new suggestion with the greatest freedom. They even used engraved cylinders for a purpose for which there is no Mesopotamian prototype: some of these objects, found in the graves of the First Dynasty, are not seals at all but funerary amulets showing the dead man at the table (Figs. 37, 38, 39).[172] In addition, the Egyptians used cylinders as seals, but they very rarely covered them with pictorial designs. They engraved upon them the names and titles of officials written in hieroglyphs (Figs. 35, 36). In Mesopotamia the earliest cylinders (Figs. 14-16, 42, 44) bear designs, not inscriptions; inscribed seals are unknown before the second Early Dynastic period, and then even the inscribed examples always bear a design as their distinctive feature. Moreover, the early Egyptian seals are usually made of wood, a material not used in Mesopotamia, as far as we know. Since, on the other hand, the cylinder was better adapted to the sealing of merchandise and clay tablets than to that of documents on papyrus, it was replaced in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom by the stamp seal in the shape of a scarab. The Egyptians, therefore, in no way copied slavishly the Mesopotamian invention, but adapted it to their own needs 124 until such a time as they had discovered a more suitable form of seal.

In the field of art a somewhat similar development can be observed.[173] We can distinguish two groups of phenomena: motifs are taken over from Mesopotamian monuments of the Protoliterate period, or Egyptian motifs are composed in a manner which is, to judge by later usage, un-Egyptian and can be understood as a passing influence of Mesopotamian style. The most striking example of the copying of an alien, Mesopotamian, motif, is the group of the man dominating two lions on the Gebel el Arak knife-handle (Fig. 23). Such groups are common at all times in Mesopotamia but exceedingly rare in Egypt. And in the present case the derivation cannot be doubted: the hero between the lions copies in every detail of his appearance—his garment, his beard, his hair, wound round his head and bound up in a chignon at the back—the often recurring figure of the “leader” or king depicted on a granite stela from Erech and on numerous seals (Figs. 15, 44). Even the style of the figure, the way in which the muscles in the legs are rendered, for instance, is entirely un-Egyptian, as a comparison with the figures 125 on the other face of the knife-handle (Fig. 24) shows.

Other motifs on palettes and knife-handles likewise have Mesopotamian prototypes. The serpent-necked lions or panthers on the Narmer palette (Fig. 28) recur, identically intertwined, on seals of the early and late Protoliterate period (Fig. 16). Winged griffins (Fig. 40)[174] and intertwined snakes (Fig. 41)[175] are also at home in Mesopotamia from the Protoliterate period onwards and put in a passing appearance in Egypt.

Antithetical groups[176] and the carnivore attacking an impassive prey (Figs. 23, 40), are examples of Egyptian designs composed in an un-Egyptian manner.[177] We may even formulate the way in which they are un-Egyptian: they share with the group of the hero dominating two lions, the intertwined snakes and lions, 126 and the serpent-necked panthers a pronouncedly unrealistic character. Animal forms are, in all these instances, used to produce a decorative design; they are subjected to a purely aesthetic purpose. And though the Egyptians eventually used plant motifs in such a fashion, they never again so employed animal or human figures. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, imagination and design usually prevailed over probability or nature.[178] Hence we see, once again, that the Egyptians experimented with Mesopotamian inventions during the formative phase of their civilization but soon rejected what was uncongenial.

There remain two fields in which Mesopotamian examples have produced results more important than those we have discussed so far. They are architecture and writing. With the First Dynasty, monumental brick architecture makes its appearance in a form, both as regards material and plan, which recalls the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia.[179] It is a moot point whether bricks were made in Egypt in prehistoric times. In Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor (Mersin) they were used on a great scale from the Al Ubaid period onwards, and were known even earlier. In Egypt a few bricks have been found in prehistoric context, but not actually in walls, and whether they were used for buildings may well be doubted, since in Nubia, where prehistoric culture continued to flourish even after the accession of Menes, bricks were used only at a later date. Moreover, a design on the Hunters’ 127 Palette (Fig. 25), and hieroglyphs representing traditional palaces and shrines, indicate that predynastic public buildings were made of wood and matting, or perhaps of wattle and daub. It is likely that the palaces and other important buildings of the First Dynasty were still made of those materials.[180] But in this dynasty highly sophisticated brick architecture is suddenly used in the construction of graves.

In Egypt secular buildings were at all times less permanent than tombs and temples. When, from the Third Dynasty onwards, these were built of stone, houses and palaces were still built of brick. And this distinction holds good for all subsequent periods. Under the First Dynasty, when brick architecture came into its own, this new and more permanent architecture was used, at first, for the royal tombs which were decorated with buttresses and recesses on all four sides (Figs. 46, 47, 50). This ornamentation was achieved, in some cases (Fig. 46),[181] by the use of two kinds of bricks—large ones for the core of the building and smaller ones for the recessing. These small bricks are of a size and shape peculiar, in Mesopotamia, to the latter half of the Protoliterate period and were used in an identical fashion, three rows of stretchers alternating as a rule with one row of headers.[182] The recesses and buttresses duplicate exactly the recessing of Protoliterate temples. Other technical details—the manner in which a plinth or platform is constructed 128 (Fig. 47),[183] the use of short timbers inserted horizontally as the strengthening in the niches (Figs. 49, 50)—likewise reflect Mesopotamian usages of the Protoliterate period (Fig. 48).[184] In Mesopotamia the whole method of recessed brick building can be seen to come into being, starting with the temples at Eridu and Tepe Gawra of the Al Ubaid period (when the buttresses, widely spaced, seem merely to strengthen the walls), until, in the Protoliterate age (Fig. 45), the exact degree of complexity was reached with which brick building appears under the First Egyptian Dynasty, unheralded, and yet with every refinement of which the material is capable. Contemporary but simplified renderings of these buildings on Protoliterate cylinder seals in Mesopotamia resemble those on First Dynasty monuments in Egypt (Figs. 42, 43, 44).[185] There are differences, too, which indicate that the Mesopotamian renderings were not copied in Egypt, but that the Egyptian and Mesopotamian renderings are abbreviations of buildings which themselves were 129 closely alike. The towers appearing on the Stele of Djet (Fig. 43) are found in the later part of the Protoliterate period (Fig. 42 right). Entrance towers with straight sides were, since Early Dynastic times, in use in Mesopotamia but not in Egypt, where the pylon with a pronounced batter was developed.

In view of this great variety of detailed resemblances there can be no reasonable doubt that the earliest monumental brick architecture of Egypt was inspired by that of Mesopotamia where it had a long previous history. In conclusion, it is worth notice that the architectural forms used in Mesopotamia for temples were applied in Egypt to royal tombs and royal castles.[186] But then, Pharaoh—in life and in death—was a god. Stone architecture, so characteristic for Egypt in historical times, replaced bricks in the royal tombs from the Third Dynasty onward.

We must turn, finally, to the invention of hieroglyphic writing. It is a moot point whether it first appears on the macehead of Scorpion (Fig. 26), or whether the two signs on the Hunters’ palette (Fig. 25) must count as writing. These cannot be read, although they may mean “shrine of (the earth-god) Akeru,” for this name is written with the double forequartered animal in the pyramid texts. Whether this palette or the Scorpion mace is the first inscribed monument, the appearance of writing falls within a period in which Mesopotamian influence has been proved to exist.

It has been customary to postulate prehistoric antecedents for the Egyptian script, but this hypothesis has nothing in its favour.[187] In the annals of the kingdom 130 (which happen to survive in a version of the Fifth Dynasty), events are recorded only from the First Dynasty onwards, a fact suggesting that no written records of earlier times existed. Only some names of prehistoric Chieftains were still known and entered in the annals as “kings” preceding Menes.[188]

But the writing which appeared without antecedents at the beginning of the First Dynasty was by no means primitive. It has, in fact, a complex structure. It includes three different classes of signs: ideograms, phonetic signs, and determinatives.[189] This is precisely the 131 same state of complexity which had been reached in Mesopotamia at an advanced stage of the Protoliterate period. There, however, a more primitive stage is known in the earliest tablets, which used only ideograms. To deny, therefore, that Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems of writing are related amounts to maintaining that Egypt invented independently a complex and not very consistent system at the very moment of being influenced in its art and architecture by Mesopotamia where a precisely similar system had just been developed from a more primitive stage. To state this view is, of course, to reject it.

But, again, the Egyptians did not copy the Mesopotamian system slavishly; they were merely stimulated to develop a script of their own, once the notion that language could be rendered graphically had been conveyed. The writing signs—the “hieroglyphs”—which they invented have nothing at all in common with the Mesopotamian signs. They depict Egyptian objects; they depict them faithfully; and they remain to the end exact pictures in the majority of cases. In Mesopotamia the tendency to use abstract symbols was strong from the beginning, and prevailed at an early date. And before the middle of the third millennium even the pictograms had lost all trace of semblance to the objects they originally rendered (Fig. 13). This contrast between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian scripts undoubtedly has a twofold cause. The Egyptians always loved the pictorial rather than the abstract and had a strong inclination towards the concrete. This tendency (which also prevented them from distorting 132 animal forms for the sake of ornamental schemes) made them adopt and retain minute images as writing signs. But, in the second place, writing was at first used in Egypt for a purpose different from that to which the Mesopotamians put it. In Mesopotamia writing was invented to serve the practical needs of administration. In Egypt it was used, at first, as an element of monumental art, in the form of legends added to reliefs (Figs. 26, 27, 28).

The legends fixed the identity of the figures in the reliefs which could be made explicit only by the adding of names and titles. But once writing was introduced, it was—in Egypt also—used for practical purposes; and this required a shorter and more cursive script. In the tomb of Djet, the fourth king of the First Dynasty, a note in cursive script has been discovered;[190] and it has been pointed out[191] that documents must have been in common use in the Second Dynasty since the sign of the papyrus roll, tied up and sealed, is used from then on. For monumental inscriptions, however, the pictorial hieroglyphs were used even under the Roman emperors.

In view of the doubt which persists in many quarters, it seems worth while to represent the evidence for Mesopotamian influence in Egypt at about 3000 B.C.—excluding writing—in a table which shows that we are confronted, not by a few random resemblances, but by a group of related phenomena. And this is, in fact, corroborated by the observation that the foreign features in Egypt all derive from one and the same phase of Mesopotamian civilization, namely, the later part of the Protoliterate period.[192] Now this phase (formerly 133 called after Jamdat Nasr) represents an age of expansion: a richly equipped temple was built at Brak in Northern Syria (see above, p. 84); Mesopotamian tablets were found not only at Susa in Elam but at Sialk near Kashan in Central Persia (Fig. 51); and Mesopotamian cylinders were found, not only at the places mentioned just now, but as far afield as Cappadocia and Troy. At a time when Mesopotamian influence radiated in all directions it was but natural that it should touch Egypt also. Thus the traces of 134 Mesopotamian arts and crafts which we find in pre- and protodynastic Egypt represent but one more manifestation of the expansion of Mesopotamia during the latter part of the Protoliterate period.

MESOPOTAMIAN INFLUENCE IN PRE- AND PROTODYNASTIC EGYPT

I. EVIDENCE OUTSIDE THE FIELD OF ART.

A. Mesopotamian Objects found in Egypt.

1. Three cylinder seals of the late Protoliterate period.

B. Mesopotamian Usages temporarily adopted in Egypt.

1. Sealing with engraved cylinders.

2. Recessed brick building for monumental purposes.

C. Mesopotamian Objects depicted on Egyptian Monuments.

1. Costume, on the Gebel el Arak knife-handle.

2. Scalloped battle-axe on fragment of late predynastic stone vase.[193]

3. Ships, on Gebel el Arak knife-handle, “decorated” vases, and ivory labels of First Dynasty.[194]

II. EVIDENCE IN THE FIELD OF ART.

A. Mesopotamian Motifs depicted in Egypt.

1. Composite animals, especially winged griffins and serpent-necked felines, on palettes and knife-handles.

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2. Group of hero dominating two lions, on Gebel el Arak knife-handle and in tomb at Hierakonpolis.

3. Pairs of entwined animals, on knife-handles and Narmer palette.

B. Mesopotamian peculiarities of Style apparent in Egypt.

1. Antithetical group, on knife-handles and palettes.

2. Group of carnivore attacking impassive prey, on knife-handles.

3. Drawing of musculature, on Gebel el Arak knife-handle.

It would, however, be an error to see the birth of Egyptian civilization as a consequence of contact with Mesopotamia. The signs of change accumulating towards the end of the predynastic age are too numerous and the outcome of the change is too emphatically Egyptian in its general character and its particulars to allow us to speak of derivation or dependence. In fact, Mesopotamian influence can be entirely discounted—except in the field of writing—without altering in any essential respect the outcome of the change. We have said elsewhere that there is no necessity to assume Mesopotamian influence in order to explain the development of Pharaonic civilization, but it so happens that we have evidence that such influence was, in fact, exercised. We observe that Egypt, in a period of intensified creativity, became acquainted with the achievements of Mesopotamia; that it was stimulated; and that it adapted to its own rapid development such elements as seemed compatible with its efforts. It mostly transformed what it borrowed and after a time rejected even these modified derivations.

It is unfortunate that we cannot yet answer the question where and how contact between Egypt and Mesopotamia 136 was established. We only know the time at which it took place. The signs of Sumerian influence point, one and all, to the Protoliterate period in Mesopotamia, and more especially to the latter half of that period; and they appear in Egypt towards the end of the Gerzean period and during the very beginning of the First Dynasty. This is, of course, an invaluable synchronism, even though it is still impossible to express it in exact dates. It may also have a bearing on the question in which locality contact was established.

In Egypt, signs of contact with Sumer almost cease after Narmer’s reign; and since contact with Syria increased rather than diminished during the First Dynasty, it seems unlikely that the Mesopotamian influences reached Egypt from the north. The argument is not conclusive; we have seen that Sumerian culture moved upstream along the Tigris and Euphrates, and that a great temple was built at Brak on the Khabur in North Syria in Protoliterate times. But in Syria we do not find signs that native culture was deeply affected by contact with Sumer. This may be due to the incompleteness of our evidence; or it may be that Syrian culture was so unprogressive that it could not profit from such contact in the way Egypt demonstrably did. But before we accept this view we must consider an alternative.

It is possible that the Egyptians came into contact with Mesopotamia in the south, on the route which led from the Red Sea, past Southern Arabia, to the Persian Gulf. There are two arguments against this assumption: it has no analogy in historical times; and there is absolutely no sign of contact with Egypt to be found in Mesopotamia. But it is possible that the meeting-place was a region along the southern route, outside Sumer. In both Sumerian and Egyptian temples censing with aromatics was usual. In the time of 137 Herodotus, frankincense was used for this purpose in Babylon, but we do not know at what date this was first introduced. In Egypt frankincense was known very early; if that holds good for Sumer also, contact might have been established in the regions from which frankincense was obtained—Southern Arabia or the Somali coast. There missions might have met, or middlemen might have acquainted Egyptians with Sumerian achievements. We know that the route to the Red Sea from Egypt—through the Wadi Hammamat—was used at a very early date. Archaic statues of the god Min were found at Koptos at the Egyptian end of that route.[195] They belong to the end of the Gerzean period or to the First Dynasty, and bear designs scratched on their sides which include the sword of the swordfish and pteroceras shells, found in the Red Sea. But the bearing of these facts upon the question where contact between Egypt and Sumer took place must remain, for the moment, a matter of surmise.

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