National Geographic History - USA (2022-05 & 2022-06)

Five thousand years ago, a king of Upper Egypt unified two separate lands into what became the world’s first great territorial s ...

provides a window into the changes that took place during Narmer’s reign. It is a stone palette, similar to ones commissioned by ...

Armant El Kab (Nekheb) Elephantine EL AMRA Naga el-Deir Hemamieh Tarkhan Heliopolis Bubastis El Beda Haraga Matmar Mostagedda El ...

of the feat. The pharaohs who followed would build on Narmer’s use of royal iconography and change it. The crowns of the two lan ...

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 23 SMITER OF ENEMIES Wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, the king is shown on the Narmer Palette ...

24 MAY/JUNE 2022 The smiting tableau on the front of the Narmer Palette stood the test of time in Egyp- tian art. The positionin ...

MOMENT OF TRIUMPH The reverse of the Narmer Pal- ette features a large figure of the king wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt a ...

of the most complete is the Abydos King List, engraved upon the wall of the mortuary temple of Seti I (13th century b.c.). Engra ...

ROYAL TOMBS OF ABYDOS Beginning with Narmer, the pharaohs of Egypt’s first two dynasties were buried in the ancestral necropolis ...

SACRED STONES Starting around 4400 b.c., Egyptians made stone palettes designed to grind and mix cosmetic pigments. Around 3400- ...

(^23) BULL PALETTE. BENEATH A RAMPAGING BULL IS A LION ENCLOSED IN A CIRCLE, SYMBOLIZING A FORTIFIED CITY. CA 3200-3000 B.C. LOU ...

SHAPE-SHIFTER A youthful Dionysus is crowned with grapes in a first-century a.d. marble statue. Naples Archaeological Museum Opp ...

DIONYSUS Lord of wine and intoxication, the “twice-born” deity inspired dramatic myths, theater festivals, and mysterious cults ...

D ionysus was so much more than just the master of the vine; he was also charged with fertility, fruitful- ness, theater, ecstas ...

ca 6th century b.c. Athens begins holding an annual spring festival, the Great Dionysia, celebrating theater and dedicated to th ...

not an unprecedented one in Greek mythol- ogy: Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, was born similarly, emerging fully formed ...

HEROIC HOMECOMING Dionysus returns to Greece from India. He is represented here as a child holding bunches of grapes. Around him ...

his power, Dionysus drives the king insane. Lycurgus kills his own son after mistaking him for a grapevine. Recovering his sense ...

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE Located at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, the Theater of Dionysus was first erected between the si ...

the festival as a statue of Dionysus was borne to his theater. After the day’s performances, a bull would be sacrificed and a fe ...