In the preceding sections, I have examined three find types bearing graphical imagery, labels, stone vessels and stelae, with emphasis on their materiality in terms of surface transformation and evidence for practices of making, remaking, unmaking as well as partial making. If matter was removed from a surface rather than added to it, an image could not be easily changed or erased and work accumulated an internal ‘stratigraphy’ (Davis 1989: 184). At the same time, as part of different object types with different material properties, these surfaces were not simply passive foundations to support graphical imagery, but actively constituted and influenced expression and practice. By thinking through the chaîne opératoire of image-making we come to understand the ways in which imagery simultaneously embodied material processes and their outcomes.
Whether in making images fully or partially, or subsequently undertaking their adjustment, the particular contexts of those acts revealed different sets of choices and outcomes. For the wooden label in Figure 13, rather than a more comprehensive erasure, crossing out was used. This may have been a way of effectively decommissioning or cancelling potential use for ritual (?) or administrative (?) purposes. Perhaps the depositional context of the cemetery was nevertheless one of discard. The perforated bone plaque from the northern Egyptian cemetery site of Saqqara in Figure 14 reveals a similar scribal act but on a smaller scale, indicative of intentions and choices bound up in a different set of circumstances. Here the marks of crossing out appear to be the correction of a perceived error, that the upper part of this large central sign or depiction was deemed to protrude too much. Such an adjustment seemingly resulted in the continuation of the object’s intended use based on its well-preserved find context in Tomb 3035 at North Saqqara, which included, in addition to the leather bag and other finds, another almost identically perforated and inscribed plaque bearing a similar ‘container’ with a more truncated top (see Emery and Sa’ad 1938: [t] 39, [p] pl. 17B, [d] pl. 18B (412); Source No. 1422; Egyptian Museum JE 70115).3
To sum up, overall the majority of evidence for graphical adjustment consists of surface removal following original incision. Addendum is more difficult to distinguish, apart from cases such as the wooden labels marked using different in techniques (Figures 9–10) or inscriptions including sequences of ruler PIs. The erasure of applied pigment through ‘washing’ or a similar removal method is likely, but microscopy and multi-spectral analysis are needed for detection.
Because the investigator encounters only the material outcomes of action, it is easy to be seduced by the apparent fixity of the material evidence. Similarities in general archaeological context, repertoire and style, both palaeographic and compositional, point toward much of this graphical evidence being a realisation of the same emerging system (although this must remain an open question for the NIIIA1 survivals). On the basis of the high status find contexts, perceived values of materials (particularly ivory and stone), the elaborate nature of much initial inscription, this early written evidence is often infused with an air of regal or courtly precision, formality, monumentality, and fixity if not permanence. Scribal and iconographic practice is often seen as on a par with the might and power of early rulers, the administration of the early Egyptian ‘state’, recording and commemorating activities undertaken during their reigns, and conveying some definitive message about royal prerogative and control over people and goods in life and the afterlife.
Detailed consideration of the relationship between the material substances and surfaces, technological action, and the temporal and spatial conditions of making, use and reception shows that the ways in which that ‘system’ was practised was nevertheless variable and contingent. Indeed, ‘writing’ may be conceptualised as a relatively discrete category and concept in many cultural contexts. When examined in detail through the lens of practice theories (e.g. Dobres 2000), we find that individuals reproduced/renegotiated developing conventions and social structures in particularistic and complex ways. The majority of the evidence supports a firm social relationship between graphical/scribal activities and ‘royal’ and elite power and the maintenance of political authority, but these small details provide important insight into the nuance of individual and local experience. The multi-layered processes for image making, unmaking and re-making, the interactions between scribes / artisan, materials, tools, images and meaning, lends weight to Dobres’ (2000: 130–132) notion of the ‘becoming’ of material culture — a concept which I argue must also form a cornerstone of research on written evidence.
Inasmuch as writing is understood to have been developed by elite members of early Egyptian society in order to consolidate and maintain authority, to formulate ideologies of rulership and cosmic stability, and otherwise ‘fix’ symbolic meaning, perhaps the devil is in the detail when we consider that writing simultaneously embeds material messages of mutability and transformation.
3 Compared with other NIIIA1 or NIIIC–early D ‘labels’, the number of perforations (3) and graphical content of this pair are unique, raising the question of whether either should be considered a ‘label’ in the same sense as single-perforated examples.
