Early Dynastic Period (Archaic Period)

Emphasizing its ancient origin in Egyptian iconography, the PStE goes back as far as the Predynastic Period intertwined with the rise of the institution of the rulership (and its transformation to the kingship) with three forerunners on three different object types. In the sketched execution scene in the wall paintings of Hierakonpolis tomb 100 in the Nile Valley in Upper Egypt. Hierakonpolis 100 is the oldest known Egyptian painted tomb (in Kom el-Ahmar, Nekhen, dated about 3500 B.C.–Naqada II). The depicted scenes and motifs associated with power and authority indicate that the tomb might have belonged to an early king or ruler.⁴⁸ In the tomb scene, a larger male figure holding a hand-weapon, perhaps a mace or a club, is striking down three smaller figures bound together with a rope, which is considered to be the first attestation of the motif.⁴⁹ The larger scale of the smiting figure may indicate that he is a chief or a ruler defeating enemy prisoners. A similar scene featuring a larger figure using a hand weapon (mace or club) to smite one smaller figure who has his hands tied behind his back, who is being grasped by his forelock, is attested on ivory cylinder seals from the same site. Due to

48 For more references, see Case – Payne 1962: 5–18; Payne 1973: 31–35.

49 Swan-Hall 1986: 4.

18 the type of object, the fact that the scene is constantly repeated in the three circular image fields below each other on the cylinder seals may support the eternal meaning of the scene.⁵⁰

The alabaster palette of the tomb of Zer (Djer)⁵¹, the third king of Dynasty I,⁵² from Saqqara shows the king grasping a Libyan enemy by his forelock and performing the smiting before a recumbent lion figure represented as his frontal part, emphasizing symbolic domination during the act of execution. The recumbent frontal part of the lion may represent the king. It resembles the early form of the hieroglyph of “front” (ḥȝt, Gardiner F4), supposed to refer to the frontal position of lion statues in Egyptian temple architecture, which may confirm the idea that the scene is presented at a sacral place.⁵³ The king is wearing a short kilt and a wig or headdress, similar to the ruler depicted on the Hierakonpolis ivory cylinder seals. The smiting weapon has a handle, but its end is not visible.

The scene depicted on the obverse of the cosmetic palette of Narmer, made from siltstone,⁵⁴ found at the New Kingdom temple area also at Hierakonpolis, may indicate that it was a votive offering for the victory of Upper Egypt over the Delta (people of the Papyrus Land, literally known as Lower Egypt),⁵⁵ and it is commonly regarded as the first example of the classical PStE depiction. As a special object type of this period, the cosmetic palette is considered a ceremonial object related to the early concept of kingship.⁵⁶ It was made at the end of the Early Dynastic Period, ca. 3000 B.C., as a symbolic commemorative document of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.⁵⁷ The huge central figure of the bearded king Narmer is shown wearing the Upper Egyptian white crown (ḥḏt) and a ceremonial garment passing over his shoulder, with four short tassels hanging on the belt, ending in cow-shaped Bat-Hathor heads (the faces of the two goddesses refer back to the decoration of the King’s ornament on the upper register of the palette)⁵⁸ with a bull-tailed streamer behind. The bull symbolizes the might of the king. The king in the form of a bull is trampling over an enemy and breaking into a fortress with his horns on the lower register of the other side of the palette.⁵⁹ The right arm is holding a

50 For the objects, see Quibell 1900: Pl. XV; Bommas 2011: 13.

51 For the line drawing about the scene, see Swan-Hall 1986: fig. 7.

52 The reign of Zer is dated to the mid-31th century B.C., see Wilkinson, T. A. H. 1999: 71–73.

53 Pérez-Accino 2002: 97.

54 Stevenson 2007: 148–162.

55 For the object (JE 32169, The Egyptian Museum, Cairo), see Keel 1997b: 293–294; Schroer – Keel 2005: 236–

238.

56 More about the cosmetic palettes, see Finkenstaedt 1984: 107–110; Stevenson 2009: 1–9.

57 Davis 1992. I thank István Nagy for drawing my attention to this work. For further selected references on the literature about the Narmer palette, see Goldwasser 1992: 67–85; Baines 1995: 95–156; Yurco 1995: 85–95; Davis 1996: 199–231; Wilkinson, T. A. H. 2000: 23–32; O’Connor 2011: 145–152.

58 Schroer – Keel 2005: 236.

59 Schroer – Keel 2005: 238.

19 mace, the left leg is striding forward to the single kneeling enemy, who is grasped by his hairlock, preparing to face death. The symbol of the raised hand (or fist), interpreted as a common symbol of power with apotropaic connotations, is considered as the most meaningful part of the entire scene.⁶⁰ The apotropaic meaning of the fist is underlined by the fact that fist-shaped amulets, attested as common articles in the Old Kingdom,⁶¹ can also be found in later periods of Egyptian culture.⁶²

The barefooted legs of the king also indicate the holiness of the ground on which he stands.

The king is barefooted in the scene until the New Kingdom, when Tutankhamun is first depicted wearing sandals on his ceremonial shield from Thebes.⁶³ The transcendental presence during the smiting act is provided by the falcon-god Horus. Hierakonpolis, the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt, was the major cult centre with a great temple of the falcon-god, Horus of Nekhen.⁶⁴ As the divine patron of the kingship, the god of heavenly spheres in his falcon form also performs an act of domination over Lower Egypt, displayed with a complex pictorial symbol before the face of the smiting king: with his human arm he is grasping a rope that is attached to the nose of an enemy head, which serves as the end of a pedestal of six papyrus stalks. The cryptographic symbolic reading might be translated back into hieroglyphs as “land”

(Gardiner, N17), serving as a pedestal for the six papyrus stalks ending in the enemy’s head, and “falcon” (Gardiner, G5), for the falcon-shaped Horus, and refers to the land of the Nile Delta.⁶⁵ The serekh-name of Narmer (n'r, “catfish” mr, “chisel”) is found in the upper edge register, between the cow-shaped heads of the goddess Bas or Hathor. His catfish-serekh depicted on a macehead from Hierakonpolis may represent the offensive face of kingship and be associated with the smiting act that decorates the type of weapon used as royal insignia, which is usually featured in canonical smiting scenes.⁶⁶ As the common hand-weapon represented in early smiting scenes, the mace can be attested in the archaeological material from the Naqada I period (preserved maceheads), which is intertwined with the early ideology of Egyptian kingship right from the beginning.⁶⁷

60 For the reference to this concept, see Altenmüller 1977: 938–939; adapted by Cornelius 1994: 256

61 The fist-shaped amulet dated to the Old Kingdom (MMA 59.103.22, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), see “Additions to the Collections” 1960: 57.

62 The fist-shaped amulet dated to the Late Period (MMA 15.43.42, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), see https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/560913

63 For the object (JE 61576, The Egyptian Musem, Cairo), see Swan-Hall 1986: 6.

64 Quibell 1902: Pl. LXXII.

65 Keel 1997b: 225, 292.

66 For the object, see Millet 1990: 53–59, fig. 1.

67 Wilkinson, T. A. H. 1999: 168.

20 Due to their natural habitat, catfish generally live in muddy waters associated with the Egyptian chthonic deity Aker,⁶⁸ the ferryman of Ra and the protector of the Sun God, helping to navigate the nocturnal barque during the night passage through the primeval waters of the underworld.

This concept may be reflected, for example, in the depiction of the group of anthropomorphic catfish-headed Naru-demons (n’ry) accompanying Aker on the sacrophagus of Djedhor from the Ptolemaic period.⁶⁹ The catfish, as the apex predator of the Nile (the domain of water), was thus associated with the king and the early ideology of kingship in Egypt, and played a role in maintaining cosmogonic equilibrium.⁷⁰ The smaller servant figure behind the king holds his sandals and a vessel for purification.⁷¹

The ivory label (known as the “MacGregor Plaque”) served as an element of a sandal from the tomb of Den in Abydos.⁷² Den was the fifth king of Dynasty I, whose Horus-name “The One who Slays”⁷³ first bears the title of “King of Lower and Upper Egypt” (nsw-bity) in his throne name, and he was also the first depicted as wearing the Double Crown (pschent), as seen on a fragment of another ivory label from his tomb in Abydos (Umm el-Qaab, Tomb T).⁷⁴ The

“MacGregor Plaque” depicts the smiting beardless, barefooted pharaoh wearing the khat, headcloth with a uraeus and a short kilt with a ceremonial tail attached behind. The wearing of the khat (without stripes hanging open on the back) as the headcloth of the nobility dates back to Dynasty I.⁷⁵ As an important part of the royal garment, the ceremonial bull’s tail symbolized, as part of royal regalia, the strength, vitality and power of the animal nature of the king from the Early Dynastic Period onwards.⁷⁶ He is grasping the Eastern enemy by his hairlock together with the ames, and smiting him with a mace. The ȝmš-sceptre (Gardiner S44), consisting of a club or mace combined with a flail, is a symbolic weapon and insignia of the invincible pharaoh.⁷⁷ The standard of Wepwawet,⁷⁸ depicted with the shedshed⁷⁹ symbol⁸⁰ and uraeus on a bracket at the top on a pole with streamers hanging down before the king, highlights the sacral

68 More about Aker as protector of the Sun God, see Leitz 2002: 83–85.

69 For the object and about the role of the Naru-demons, see Roberson 2012: 256–258, fig. 5.57.

70 Finger – Piccolino 2011: 20–28.

71 Keel 1997b: 292.

72 For the object (BM EA 55586, The British Museum, London), see MacGregor 2010: 62–67, no. 11.

73 Meltzer 1972: 338–339.

74 For the object (now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo), see Petrie 1901: 21, Pl. X. fig. 13., Pl. XIV. figs. 7–7a.

75 Wilkinson, T. A. H. 1999: 196.

76 Wilkinson, T. A. H. 1999: 161–162.

77 Bunson 2002: 34.

78 Frankfort 1948b: 91–92.

79 The interesting interpretation of shedshed symbol as an artistic representation of the burrow or lair of a canine.

For the iconographical evolution of the Wepwawet-standards, see Evans 2011: 104–115.

80 Considering the shedshed depicted together with a bi-lobed sphere with a long streamer symbolizing the Royal Placenta associated with rebirth. For the connection of the shedshed with the sky, see Frankfort 1948b: 92.

21 context of the act of execution and is closely associated with kingship and power, recurring in smiting scenes from the Old Kingdom onwards. Wepwawet is a wolf-headed or later jackal-headed anthropomorphic deity, and in his theriomorphic form he appears as a wolf or jackal.

His main cult centre was in Asyut in Upper Egypt. Wepwawet as “The Opener of the Ways” is considered to be a chthonic deity associated with war and death. In his anthropomorphic form he is depicted as a warrior equipped with a mace and a bow as his attributes.⁸¹

Unusually, the contesting behaviour of the kneeling enemy is observed to reach the calf of the king’s striding left leg. The rendering of the scene suggests that the enemy is trapped between the king and the Wepwawet-standard which frames the slaying, and might seal off the possibility of escape due to the power it embodies.

The position of the both legs stays on the ground till the end of the Old Kingdom, although the ivory label of Den seems to contradict this general statement, because of the raised heel of the right leg. The heel of the back foot will first be raised from the ground in the Middle Kingdom, and this remains typical from the New Kingdom onwards, bringing greater dynamism to the whole scene.⁸² The raised mace constructs an imaginary visual triangle with the diagonally rendered ames and the striding left leg.