Naqada culture

Female figure with bird traits. Naqada II period, 3500-3400 BC. Brooklyn Museum

The Naqada culture is an archaeological culture of Chalcolithic Predynastic Egypt (ca. 4400–3000 BC), named for the town of Naqada, Qena Governorate.

Its final phase, Naqada III is coterminous with the so-called Protodynastic Period of Ancient Egypt (Early Bronze Age, 3200–3000 BC).

Chronology

Pre-dynastic Naqada cooking pot. Scientific analysis has shown that this pot once contained a meat stew with honey

William Flinders Petrie

The Naqada period was first divided by the British Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, who explored the site in 1894, into three sub-periods:

• Naqada I: Amratian (after the cemetery near El-Amrah)
• Naqada II: Gerzean (after the cemetery near Gerzeh)
• Naqada III: Semainean (after the cemetery near Es-Semaina)

Werner Kaiser

Petrie's chronology was superseded by that of Werner Kaiser in 1957. Kaiser's chronology began c. 4000 BC, but the modern version begins slightly earlier, as follows:

• Naqada I a-b-c (about 4400–3500 BC)
  • black-topped and painted pottery
  • trade with Nubia, Western Desert oases and Eastern Mediterranean
  • obsidian from Ethiopia
• Naqada II a-b-c (about 3500–3200 BC)
  • this culture represented throughout Egypt
  • first marl pottery, and metalworking
• Naqada III a-b-c (about 3200–3000 BC)
  • more elaborate grave goods
  • cylindrical jars
  • writing

Monuments and excavations

Predynastic Egyptians in the Naqada I period traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean to the east. They also imported obsidian from Ethiopia to shape blades and other objects from flakes. Charcoal samples found in the tombs of Nekhen, which were dated to the Naqada I and II periods, have been identified as cedar from Lebanon.