The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities

4. Polities

c h a p t e r 4 Polities The Scribe Inena communicating to his lord, the Scribe of the Treasury Qa-g[abu]. . . . Another communication to my lord to [wit: We] have finished letting the Bedouin tribes of Edom pass the Fortress [of] Mer-[ne]-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat . . . to the pools of Per-Atum. Report of an Egyptian Frontier O‹cial, late Nineteenth Dynasty (ca. 1295–1188 b.c.; from J. A. Wilson, “The Report of a Frontier O‹cial”) The countries of Khor and Kush, The land of Egypt You [god Aten] set every man in his place. Egyptian Hymn to Aten, late Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1552–1295 or 1314 b.c.; from M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature) Perhaps the most remarkable single artifact bearing on the formation of an early complex polity is the shield-shaped slate “Palette of Narmer” that was discovered in the ruins of a temple at Hierakonpolis in the Nile River valley of southern Egypt (fig. 18). On one side of the palette, carved in low relief, a king, wearing the bulb-tipped white crown of Upper Egypt and identified by the Horus name “Narmer,” stands poised with mace in hand ready to smite a captive (perhaps a rival ruler) delivered by Horus from the Delta region of Lower Egypt (Kemp 1989: 42; Aldred 1984: 81). Below this scene lie two fallen figures accompanied by the outline of a fortified town and a ribbon-shaped emblem.1 In the upper register on the 149 1. The latter has been described in Aldred 1984: 81 as symbolizing the gazelle traps characteristic of the Sinai Peninsula. figure 18. The Palette of Narmer. Late Predynastic, ca. 3150–3125 b.c. Recovered at Hierakonpolis. Slate, H:63.5cm. Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (Photo courtesy of Scala/Art Resource). a. Back. b. Front. other side of the palette, Narmer, now wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt and accompanied by four distinctive standards, surveys two rows of bound and decapitated enemies. At the bottom of the image, Narmer, rendered in the form of a bull, razes a fortified town, treading his enemy underfoot. In between these scenes of destruction, serpentine heads of lionesses intertwine to symbolize the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into a single polity. What is remarkable about the Palette of Narmer is the way in which it simultaneously maps the territorial claims of a unified Pharaonic polity (encompassing the territories of Upper and Lower Egypt), represents the polity in the body of the new king, and attempts to generate an imagined community through syncretic symbols of political coalescence (a syncretism that would further play out during the First Dynasty in such motifs as the double crown). In its remarkably succinct way, the Palette of Narmer addressed the central spatial problems for constituting authority within polities—the delineation of a bounded territory within which a sovereign regime rules a community of subjects integrated by a shared sense of identity that binds them together in place. The formation of the Pharaonic polity is framed, at a very early moment in dynastic history, as coterminous with the production of a distinct political landscape.2 Following Anthony D. Smith’s definition of the “nation” as “a named community of history and culture, possessing a unified territory, economy , mass education system and common legal rights” (1996: 107) it could fairly be argued that the Palette of Narmer represents an initial statement in a project of dynastic Egyptian nation building. The palette itself describes the unification of two named communities into a territorial polity; within a few centuries, Old Kingdom Pharaohs would sit at the epicenter of a large administrative apparatus concerned with the regulation of religion, social order, and economy.3 I do not raise the term “nation”4 as a salvo in the essentially typological dispute over whether such polities existed in antiquity or are unique to the modern world.5 Nor do I intend POLITIES 151 2. A. J. Spencer (1993: 53) is no doubt correct in arguing that the Palette of Narmer should be understood as one part of a gradual process of political accretion in the Nile valley rather than a snapshot of a single moment of unification; however, this observation does not decrease the complexity of the palette’s representational strategy. 3. John Baines (1995: 3) argues quite forcefully that ancient Egypt can...