origin, it is clear that any such influences were subject to local redefinition, resulting
in a distinctly Egyptian material culture. Such conclusions are not new nor are they
in dispute. Similarly, we cannot yet discount Frankfort’s ( 1951 ) closing observation of
his seminal work that ‘the question where contact between Egypt and Sumer took place
must remain, for the moment, a matter of surmise’. The question can be reformulated,
however, for it presupposes a singular point of intersection. Rather, it is the social
networks through which these elements traversed and the local contexts in which they
were consumed that remain to be fully qualified, not just within the Egyptian and
Sumerian worlds, but also in the spaces in between.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to Lisa Mawdsley and Paul Smeddle for commenting on an earlier draft
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