Evidence obtained in the decade before the Second World War allows us, however, to solve the problem, at least as far as it concerns the formative phase of Egyptian civilization. For the discovery in Mesopotamia of remains of the Protoliterate period revealed the source from which curious and passing features of Egyptian culture in late predynastic and protodynastic times were obviously derived.
The strongest evidence of this contact between Mesopotamia and Egypt is supplied by three cylinder seals shown by their very material and by their designs to have been made in Mesopotamia during the second half of the Protoliterate period (Figs. [33], [34]), but found in Egypt. One was excavated at Naqada ([Fig. 32]), in a Gerzean grave; and the same origin is probable for the other two.[171] These importations were not without consequence: from the beginning of the First Dynasty the cylinder seal was adopted in Egypt and made at once in considerable quantities. Since it is an odd form for a seal, used only in countries in contact with Mesopotamia, and since one of the Mesopotamian cylinders was found in Egypt in a context just ante-dating the earliest native seals, it would be perverse to deny that the Egyptians followed the Mesopotamian example. But it is quite characteristic for them that they exploited the new suggestion with the greatest freedom. They even used engraved cylinders for a purpose for which there is no Mesopotamian prototype: some of these objects, found in the graves of the First Dynasty, are not seals at all but funerary amulets showing the dead man at the table (Figs. [37], [38], [39]).[172] In addition, the Egyptians used cylinders as seals, but they very rarely covered them with pictorial designs. They engraved upon them the names and titles of officials written in hieroglyphs (Figs. [35], [36]). In Mesopotamia the earliest cylinders (Figs. [14]-16, [42], [44]) bear designs, not inscriptions; inscribed seals are unknown before the second Early Dynastic period, and then even the inscribed examples always bear a design as their distinctive feature. Moreover, the early Egyptian seals are usually made of wood, a material not used in Mesopotamia, as far as we know. Since, on the other hand, the cylinder was better adapted to the sealing of merchandise and clay tablets than to that of documents on papyrus, it was replaced in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom by the stamp seal in the shape of a scarab. The Egyptians, therefore, in no way copied slavishly the Mesopotamian invention, but adapted it to their own needs until such a time as they had discovered a more suitable form of seal.
In the field of art a somewhat similar development can be observed.[173] We can distinguish two groups of phenomena: motifs are taken over from Mesopotamian monuments of the Protoliterate period, or Egyptian motifs are composed in a manner which is, to judge by later usage, un-Egyptian and can be understood as a passing influence of Mesopotamian style. The most striking example of the copying of an alien, Mesopotamian, motif, is the group of the man dominating two lions on the Gebel el Arak knife-handle ([Fig. 23]). Such groups are common at all times in Mesopotamia but exceedingly rare in Egypt. And in the present case the derivation cannot be doubted: the hero between the lions copies in every detail of his appearance—his garment, his beard, his hair, wound round his head and bound up in a chignon at the back—the often recurring figure of the “leader” or king depicted on a granite stela from Erech and on numerous seals (Figs. [15], [44]). Even the style of the figure, the way in which the muscles in the legs are rendered, for instance, is entirely un-Egyptian, as a comparison with the figures on the other face of the knife-handle ([Fig. 24]) shows.
Other motifs on palettes and knife-handles likewise have Mesopotamian prototypes. The serpent-necked lions or panthers on the Narmer palette ([Fig. 28]) recur, identically intertwined, on seals of the early and late Protoliterate period ([Fig. 16]). Winged griffins ([Fig. 40])[174] and intertwined snakes ([Fig. 41])[175] are also at home in Mesopotamia from the Protoliterate period onwards and put in a passing appearance in Egypt.
Antithetical groups[176] and the carnivore attacking an impassive prey (Figs. [23], [40]), are examples of Egyptian designs composed in an un-Egyptian manner.[177] We may even formulate the way in which they are un-Egyptian: they share with the group of the hero dominating two lions, the intertwined snakes and lions, and the serpent-necked panthers a pronouncedly unrealistic character. Animal forms are, in all these instances, used to produce a decorative design; they are subjected to a purely aesthetic purpose. And though the Egyptians eventually used plant motifs in such a fashion, they never again so employed animal or human figures. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, imagination and design usually prevailed over probability or nature.[178] Hence we see, once again, that the Egyptians experimented with Mesopotamian inventions during the formative phase of their civilization but soon rejected what was uncongenial.
There remain two fields in which Mesopotamian examples have produced results more important than those we have discussed so far. They are architecture and writing. With the First Dynasty, monumental brick architecture makes its appearance in a form, both as regards material and plan, which recalls the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia.[179] It is a moot point whether bricks were made in Egypt in prehistoric times. In Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor (Mersin) they were used on a great scale from the Al Ubaid period onwards, and were known even earlier. In Egypt a few bricks have been found in prehistoric context, but not actually in walls, and whether they were used for buildings may well be doubted, since in Nubia, where prehistoric culture continued to flourish even after the accession of Menes, bricks were used only at a later date. Moreover, a design on the Hunters’ Palette ([Fig. 25]), and hieroglyphs representing traditional palaces and shrines, indicate that predynastic public buildings were made of wood and matting, or perhaps of wattle and daub. It is likely that the palaces and other important buildings of the First Dynasty were still made of those materials.[180] But in this dynasty highly sophisticated brick architecture is suddenly used in the construction of graves.
In Egypt secular buildings were at all times less permanent than tombs and temples. When, from the Third Dynasty onwards, these were built of stone, houses and palaces were still built of brick. And this distinction holds good for all subsequent periods. Under the First Dynasty, when brick architecture came into its own, this new and more permanent architecture was used, at first, for the royal tombs which were decorated with buttresses and recesses on all four sides (Figs. [46], [47], [50]). This ornamentation was achieved, in some cases ([Fig. 46]),[181] by the use of two kinds of bricks—large ones for the core of the building and smaller ones for the recessing. These small bricks are of a size and shape peculiar, in Mesopotamia, to the latter half of the Protoliterate period and were used in an identical fashion, three rows of stretchers alternating as a rule with one row of headers.[182] The recesses and buttresses duplicate exactly the recessing of Protoliterate temples. Other technical details—the manner in which a plinth or platform is constructed ([Fig. 47]),[183] the use of short timbers inserted horizontally as the strengthening in the niches (Figs. [49], [50])—likewise reflect Mesopotamian usages of the Protoliterate period ([Fig. 48]).[184] In Mesopotamia the whole method of recessed brick building can be seen to come into being, starting with the temples at Eridu and Tepe Gawra of the Al Ubaid period (when the buttresses, widely spaced, seem merely to strengthen the walls), until, in the Protoliterate age ([Fig. 45]), the exact degree of complexity was reached with which brick building appears under the First Egyptian Dynasty, unheralded, and yet with every refinement of which the material is capable. Contemporary but simplified renderings of these buildings on Protoliterate cylinder seals in Mesopotamia resemble those on First Dynasty monuments in Egypt (Figs. [42], [43], [44]).[185] There are differences, too, which indicate that the Mesopotamian renderings were not copied in Egypt, but that the Egyptian and Mesopotamian renderings are abbreviations of buildings which themselves were closely alike. The towers appearing on the Stele of Djet ([Fig. 43]) are found in the later part of the Protoliterate period ([Fig. 42] right). Entrance towers with straight sides were, since Early Dynastic times, in use in Mesopotamia but not in Egypt, where the pylon with a pronounced batter was developed.
In view of this great variety of detailed resemblances there can be no reasonable doubt that the earliest monumental brick architecture of Egypt was inspired by that of Mesopotamia where it had a long previous history. In conclusion, it is worth notice that the architectural forms used in Mesopotamia for temples were applied in Egypt to royal tombs and royal castles.[186] But then, Pharaoh—in life and in death—was a god. Stone architecture, so characteristic for Egypt in historical times, replaced bricks in the royal tombs from the Third Dynasty onward.
We must turn, finally, to the invention of hieroglyphic writing. It is a moot point whether it first appears on the macehead of Scorpion ([Fig. 26]), or whether the two signs on the Hunters’ palette ([Fig. 25]) must count as writing. These cannot be read, although they may mean “shrine of (the earth-god) Akeru,” for this name is written with the double forequartered animal in the pyramid texts. Whether this palette or the Scorpion mace is the first inscribed monument, the appearance of writing falls within a period in which Mesopotamian influence has been proved to exist.
It has been customary to postulate prehistoric antecedents for the Egyptian script, but this hypothesis has nothing in its favour.[187] In the annals of the kingdom (which happen to survive in a version of the Fifth Dynasty), events are recorded only from the First Dynasty onwards, a fact suggesting that no written records of earlier times existed. Only some names of prehistoric Chieftains were still known and entered in the annals as “kings” preceding Menes.[188]