11.3: Social Historical Context

The social history of this early period is reconstructed mainly on the basis of evidence found in funerary contexts. It is thought that members of a small number of polities rose to prominence in Upper Egypt, gradually accumulating political power at local, and eventually regional, levels. The main geographical areas of Upper and Lower Egypt, and outlying desert areas, were brought under the control of a single ruler who administered the so-called ‘territorial state’ through various political-religious institutions run by groups of officials (Baines 1995; Kohler 2010; Trigger et al. 2001 [1983]; Wengrow 2006; Wilkinson 2001 [1999]). Among the array of cultural developments associated with processes of Egyptian ‘state’ formation were marking systems including early hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts (Kahl 2001; Regulski 2009), which developed in conjunction with related marking practices (e.g. Baines 2004; Bard 1992; van den Brink 1992). The earliest widely-accepted evidence for ‘writing’ appears in Upper Egypt during the Late Predynastic period (c.3300 / 3200 BCE), although there is limited direct support for deciphering phonetic values and grammatical function (see Regulski 2008: 992). Much of the early scriptorial evidence is pictorial; given its depictive attempting to distinguish too strictly ‘art’ from ‘writing’ can be unhelpful. One wonders whether the term ‘writing’ is best avoided for this earliest evidence given the endless and often inconclusive debates and teleology that has characterised attempts at decipherment (e.g. cf. Baines 2004: 161–167 and Breyer 2002 with Dreyer 1998: 139-145). Palaeographic, art historical, and other approaches demonstrate that increasingly standardised sets of intermingled script – image motifs variously construct, communicate and display relationships of social and divine power, with particular emphasis on the ideology of rulership (Baines 2004). Numerical marks, names and titles or other ‘personal identifiers’ (hereafter ‘PI’, see Piquette 2010: 56), and indicators of social status and affiliation point to developing administrative structures and the importance of marking goods as well personal and collective identities (Piquette 2007; Wengrow 2006: 200–207).

Other archaeological evidence from cemetery, ceremonial and limited settlement sites provides parallel evidence for increasingly complex social stratification, and centralisation of bureaucratic, political and religious institutions. It is from this general social historical context that the case studies presented below derive, but with the recognition that for the theme of writing as a material practice, these objects were probably part of the activities and experiences of a very restricted segment of early Egyptian society.