Egypt

Database of Early Dynastic inscriptions

Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster

lona Regulski, Assistant Director for Archaeology/Egyptology, Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo

The current database (which will be accessible to the general public soon) assembles all available Early Dynastic inscriptions, covering the first attestations of writing discovered in tomb U-j (Naqada IIIA1, ca. 3250 BC) until the earliest known continuous written text in the reign of Netjerikhet–more commonly known as Djoser (ca. 2700 BC). The database originated as a computerized Access document containing the collection of sources on which the author’s Ph.D. dissertation “A Palaeographic Study of Early Writing in Egypt” was based. The latter was kindly reformed into a web compatible application by Prof. Erhart Graefe, head of the Department of Egyptology and Coptology at the University of Münster, Germany. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to him.

The database contains 4524 inscriptions. Each inscription was assigned a source number. The source list, published by J. Kahl in Das System der ägyptischen Hieroglyphenschrift in der 0.-3. Dynastie, 171-417, was the point of departure. His sources dated to the later part of the Third Dynasty, after the reign of Netjerikhet/Djoser, were left out since they were not part of the initial Ph.D. study. The sequence of the Kahl list is chronological but this could not be followed when new sources were added as they were found. About 700 sources could be added to his collection starting from number 4000 onwards. Multiple impressions from the same cylinder seal were incorporated as one source since they are copies of one inscription.

The database furthermore includes detailed information regarding date, provenance, type of inscription, dating criterion, and present depository.

Chronological information

The date is indicated by period –for example “dyn. 1”– and/or by the reign of the king when this is known. The starting point of the palaeographic survey was tomb U-j at Umm el-Qa‘ab since it contained the earliest known attestations of writing in Egypt. This tomb has been dated to stage IIIA1 of Hendrickx’s system, ca. 3250 BC, thought to be between a century and a century and a half before the beginning of the First Dynasty. The duration of the period in between, occasionally referred to as “Dynasty 0” and corresponding to Hendrickx’s Naqada IIIA-B period, cannot yet be assessed with any degree of accuracy. There is a whole series of anonymous rulers, known from lavish burials or inscribed material, although there is some dispute about the reading of their names. It seems, therefore, more feasible and appropriate to restrict the term “dynasty” to the First and Second Dynasty when rulers can be identified with more certainty, and when a certain degree of historical and political continuity can be observed. We will refer to the more specific Naqada phases when dealing with inscriptions from the time before the reign of Narmer.

In doing so, we follow the relative chronology of Hendrickx as far as the Naqada phases are concerned and Kahl’s System der ägyptischen Hieroglyphenschrift regarding the succession of kings. More recent revisions since the latter work are referred to in a footnote.

Naqada IIIA1-A2
Naqada IIIB = Iri-Hor
Naqada IIIB = Sekhen/Ka
Naqada IIIB = Scorpion
Naqada IIIC1/Dyn. 1 = Narmer
Dyn. 1 = Aha
Dyn. 1 = Djer
Dyn. 1 = Djet
Dyn. 1 = Meretneith
Dyn. 1 = Den
Dyn. 1 = Adjib
Dyn. 1 = Semerkhet
Dyn. 1 = Qaa
? Dyn. 1 = ‘bird’
? Dyn. 1 = Seneferka
Dyn. 2 = Hetepsekhemwy
Dyn. 2 = Raneb/Weneg
Dyn. 2 = Ninetjer
? Middle of Dyn. 2 = unclear:
Nebunefer?
Sened?
Dyn. 2 = Peribsen/Sekhemib
Dyn. 2 = Khasekhemwy
Dyn. 3 = Netjerikhet

See the above page for the rest of the introduction.

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Egypt