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Dancing or Fighting? A Recently Discovered Predynastic Scene from Abydos, Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2001

Yosef Garfinkel
Yosef Garfinkel
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, Israel, garfinkel@h2.hum.huji.ac.il.
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Abstract

A recently discovered painted pottery vessel from the Predynastic cemetery of Umm el-Qaab in Abydos, Egypt (early fourth millennium bc), bears one of the most sophisticated proto-historic scenes surviving from the ancient Near East. The excavators interpreted the scene as a depiction of warfare. A systematic analysis of its various components, however, as well as two similar contemporary scenes, suggests that the scene depicts dancing. It is even possible that the scene represents four stages in a sequence of movement. If so, it is one of the earliest movement notation documents preserved from antiquity.

Keywords

Predynastic potterydancing representationsAbydos, Egypt, potteryUmm el-Qaab cemetery
Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , October 2001 , pp. 241 - 254
Copyright
© 2001 The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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