BUILT ENVIRONMENT
In contrast to the portable ceremonial artefacts that were the restricted preserve of a
small inner circle of elites, are the once highly visible and imposing funerary
monuments that appear in the first dynasty at sites such as Abydos, Saqqara (Figure
32. 3 ), Naqada, Tarkhan, Naga-ed-Der, Giza and Abu Roash. The external façades of
these mud-brick mastabastructures were niched in a manner that recalls Uruk temples.
In Egypt, such architecture is often referred to as the ‘palace façade’ as it was long
assumed to be connected with the appearance of the royal palace. This hypothesis was
seemingly confirmed in the 1970 s with the discovery of a monumental Early Dynastic
gateway at Hierakonpolis (Fairservis et al. 1971 – 72 : 29 – 33 ). The association of the
palace façade with kingship was further encoded in the form of the serekh, introduced
in the late Predynastic (Naqada III), which by the Early Dynastic period was the
convention for framing the royal name.
When Frankfort ( 1924 : 124 ) first postulated a Near Eastern origin for Egyptian
buttress-recessed architecture, the only comparisons then available were from sites such
as Ur. Further discoveries at Uruk and Tepe Gawra permitted Frankfort ( 1941 ) to
further extend his thesis, but it was not until the 1970 s and 1980 s with the unexpected
discovery of buttress-recessed structures at Habuba Kabira and Jebel Aruda that a wider
comparative context was revealed. To many, these discoveries were further testament to
the consequences of the ‘Uruk expansion’, and underscored the role of the ‘Syrian
connection’ in introducing Uruk forms to Egypt (e.g. Moorey 1987 : 40 – 46 , 1990 : 62 ).
–– Alice Stevenson ––Figure 32.2
Decorated pottery vessel
from Predynastic Egypt,
Naqada II, with
triangular lug handles
(E 10758 , courtesy of the
Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago)