the Wadi Hammamat, as they are also found some 130 km south of the First Cataract.
As for the Gebel el-Arak handle, Moorey has drawn attention to the Egyptian attire
of the so-called invaders, casting doubt on ‘whether the ships with rising prows and
sterns have anything to do with Mesopotamia,’ (Moorey 1987 : 39 ).
Notwithstanding these issues, sea contact cannot be categorically ruled out. The
Arabian peninsula occupies a central juncture between the Indian subcontinent and
Africa and is noted as witnessing some of the earliest known maritime trade activities
and seafaring routes (Boivin et al. 2009 ). It is only in the last decade or so that details
from new archaeological work in countries such as Oman have been forthcoming,
providing new evidence that communities in this part of the world were embedded
within a wider nexus of exchange relations encompassing the Indus Valley and
Mesopotamia, often mediated in the early second millennium by Dilmun. Similarly,
the extent of Indus valley activities has also begun to be revealed (Agrawal et al. 2010 )
and lapis bead working is noted in the earliest levels at Harappa, c. 3300 – 2800 BC
(Kenoyer 1997 : 267 ). These activities largely post-date the introduction of lapis into
Egypt and most of the reported evidence concerns the later third and early second
millennium BC. Nevertheless, this evidence highlights how a range of societies made
up possible chains of connections and it is clear that future investigations have the
potential to alter our understanding of the dynamics of exchange across this region in
earlier periods. Communities in Egypt at least seem to have tapped into networks on
the side of the Red Sea early on as evidenced by the presence of obsidian in several
Predynastic graves (Hendrickx and Bavay 2002 ). Recent studies of obsidian artefacts
suggest that several had an origin either in the hinterland of western Yemen on the
Arabian peninsula, or from a region on the Eritrean coast and the northern part of the
Rift Valley in Ethiopia (Aston et al. 2000 : 46 ; Bavay et al. 2000 ; Zarins 1989 : 367 ).
Other studies indicate that Anatolian sources were also being exploited, and unworked
obsidian has been found on the Lebanese coast suggesting a northern maritime route
(e.g. Bavay et al. 2000 ). Obsidian thus demonstrates the multiple pathways of
exchange around Egypt at this time. Although international connections for lapis are
attested from the mid-third millennium BCat places such as Tarut, an island in the
Gulf close to the Arabian coast (e.g. Aruz 2003 : 324 ), lapis is currently not attested in
the archaeological record of the Arabian peninsula for the fourth or early third
millennium BC. It thus remains, for the time being, an unproven possible avenue of
early exchange between Egypt and the East.
The lack of inter-regional evidence may in itself turn out to be significant. For
example, the disparity between the conspicuous impact of Mesopotamian imports on
communities in the Nile valley at the end of the fourth millennium BCand the
minimal evidence for an equivalent influence on the Levant is notable. Philip ( 2002 :
225 ) suggests that this may be attributed to the social contexts of reception whereby,
despite widespread contacts, only certain communities with favourable social or
political circumstances accommodated foreign elements within their own traditional
practices. In this regard, the timing of Uruk expansion was fortuitous and rather than
instigating developments in Egypt, communities of the Nile Valley seem to have been
particularly receptive to exotic resources that could be creatively incorporated into
already developing cosmologies (see below). Moreover, Egypt had particular contexts
of consumption in the form of display-orientated burial practices which have been
more favourable to the preservation of material culture than is the case elsewhere.
–– Egypt and Mesopotamia ––