Free Early Dynastic Egypt by Toby A. H. Wilkinson

graves of early Naqada II. As the élites of Upper Egypt grew increasingly powerful during the second half of the fourth millennium BC, they came to require prestige goods to demonstrate and reinforce their exalted social status. A particular type of Palestinian vessel—a jar with wavy ledge handles—was evidently so sought after that it inspired Egyptian potters to copy it, giving rise to a whole class of Naqada II Egyptian pottery known as wavy- handled jars (Bourriau 1981:130–3; Needier 1984:212–17). Demand for genuine imports

Figure 2.2 Trade, ownership and power. Objects from Abydos tomb U-j: (1) Bone labels (enlarged), originally attached to commodities. The short inscriptions record the quantity or provenance of the goods:
the number eight; (b) Bubastis (ancient Egypt B3st ) in the north-eastern Delta (after Dreyer 1993: pl. 7.d, i). (2) Some of the hundreds of imported vessels found in the tomb; petrographic analysis suggests
     
     
     
     

many of the vessels were manufactured in northern Israel, and may have contained wine (author’s photograph).
     
grew, and with it the intensity of foreign trade practised by middlemen such as the Predynastic inhabitants of Minshat Abu Omar. The frequency of Palestinian pottery in the Predynastic graves at Minshat indicates that the community maintained close contacts with its neighbours to the north-east (Kroeper and Wildung 1985:97–8). At the other end of the Nile valley, the Lower Nubian rulers buried at Qustul undoubtedly derived their power and influence from their ability to control Egyptian access to goods from sub- Saharan Africa, such as ebony, ivory and ostrich eggs. Qustul seems to have been at the hub of an extensive long-distance trade network, since some of the royal tombs were furnished with imported vessels from both Upper Egypt and Syria-Palestine (Williams 1986: pls 17–24 and pl. 25, respectively). With communities (and their rulers) on the frontiers of Egypt growing rich and powerful from trade, it is perhaps not surprising that the jealous eyes of the most influential Upper Egyptian rulers should have turned to trade routes. As we shall see, gaining direct access to imported commodities seems to have been one of the main motives behind the process of political unification.
The mass of foreign vessels from Abydos tomb U-j illustrates the commodities imported by Egypt from the Near East, but the other side of the trading relationship is less well attested. Gold may have been an important export for Predynastic Egypt; it was highly valued throughout the ancient world and, as we have seen, the early importance of at least one major Upper Egyptian centre, Naqada, may have been based upon exploitation of this precious metal. Egypt may also have exported cereal crops, its fertility and agricultural potential the envy of other, less fortunate lands. Such exports would be difficult, if not impossible, to detect in the archaeological record, but a few indications of trade with Egypt have been found in the Near East. Pottery storage vessels (or sherds from vessels), made in Egypt and incised before firing with marks of the royal treasury, have turned up throughout northern Sinai and southern Palestine, at sites such as el-Beda, Rafiah, Tell Arad and Nahal Tillah (van den Brink, in preparation). Some of these sites may have been Egyptian ‘colonies’, established to exploit local economic resources directly (Brandl 1992; Porat 1992). Others, notably Tell Arad, are known to have been flourishing centres of the indigenous late Chalcolithic/ Early Bronze Age Palestinian civilisation (Amiran 1978), and it comes as little surprise that they maintained active trade links with Egypt.
The identification of commodity consignments—both those destined for foreign markets and those traded within Egypt—by means of pot marks illustrates the growing obsession of the Upper Egyptian rulers with ownership, accounting and the detailed management of economic resources. The