Long before the first king, people were farming along the Nile. The pharaohs did not appear out of nowhere: they grew out of more than a thousand years of village life, trade and slowly growing chiefdoms in the two halves of the country.
Key idea
Why it works
| Phase | Dates | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Badarian | c. 4400–4000 BC | farming villages in Upper Egypt; fine thin pottery |
| Naqada I | c. 4000–3500 BC | more villages; black-topped red pottery; graves with goods |
| Naqada II | c. 3500–3200 BC | larger towns, painted pots with boats, trade with the Near East; the culture spreads north |
| Naqada III | c. 3200–3000 BC | rulers of "Dynasty 0", the first writing, the joining of the country |
North and south
In the Delta and around the Faiyum, other farming cultures (at Merimde and in the Faiyum, and later at Maadi and Buto) had their own pottery and houses. During Naqada II and III, Naqada-style pottery, burials and goods replaced the northern styles. Whether this happened through trade, migration, conquest or all three is still discussed.
How we know
Most of what we know comes from cemeteries. In the 1890s Flinders Petrie dug thousands of Predynastic graves, at Naqada and nearby sites, and worked out how to put them in order by the changing styles of their pottery, a method called sequence dating. Today radiocarbon gives the dates in years, and excavations of settlements at Hierakonpolis and elsewhere show houses, breweries and workshops.
Worked example: Reading the evidence
- Grave goods reflect what a family could afford to bury, and how they wanted the dead to be seen.
- A few very rich tombs among many plain ones mean wealth was concentrated in a few hands.
- That is a sign of a ranked society with leaders, the kind of society from which kings emerged.
Answer: A ranked society, with a small, wealthy ruling group.
Common mistake