Palette – zoomorphic, hartebeest PAL-0013
By Droux, Xavier
, Tomb T4.
1894–1895 : William M.F. Petrie excavation.Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, AN 1895.1204.
Date : Naqada IIB
Date of the funerary assemblage.
Material : Greywacke
Preservation : Almost complete
Preservation information :
Tip of the horns missing and small damage to the tip of the muzzle.
Description
The palette has a mostly ovoid shape with added stylised zoomorphic details. The hartebeest is shown standing, with its head raised just above the level of the back. A small hole is drilled through the back, likely for attaching a string or thong.
Decoration
The head is rendered in a very simple way, without much detail. Both horns are broken off, yet enough is preserved to determine that they were seen frontally, with a hole drilled through the palette dividing the right and left horns. They were lyre-shaped: after progressing first outward, the horns curved back inwards, without connecting to one another above the hole, and their tip pointed again outward, as is characteristic of the hartebeest. A hole drilled through the palette represents the eyes; it was perhaps originally inlaid. A small, triangular ear projects backward below the horn.
There is a marked hump at the back before the junction with the neck. The legs appear as two simple, rounded protuberances that are shorter than the bottom of the belly. The tail is not indicated.
Dimensions (cm)
9.2
14.8
Additional information
pal_bov_2a
Comments
Palettes of shape-type pal_bov_2 are all carved in the shape of the hartebeest, although identification is sometimes tentative; sub-type 2a seems to pre-date sub-type 2b; see Droux (2019); this assumption is based on stylistic considerations since no palette of sub-type 2b comes from a known, precise archaeological context. This palette had seemingly been deposited against the east edge of the tomb.
Acknowledgements
We thank Liam McNamara for facilitating the study of this artefact.
References
1894–1895
Unpublished manuscript excavation Notebook [no. 71: Naqada Great Cemetery (tombs N52–N61, N100–N160, with gaps), Naqada Cemetery B (tombs B8–64, with gaps), Cemetery T (tombs T2-T59, with gaps, accounting]. Petrie Museum, UCL
, 33 ("animal slate").1896
Naqada and Ballas, 1895. Egyptian Research Account 1. London
, pl. XLVII.2, LXXXII, plan T4.1905
Primitive art in Egypt; translated from the revised and augmented original edition. London
, fig. 54.1921
Corpus of prehistoric pottery and palettes. British School of Archaeology in Egypt & Egyptian Research Account 32, 23rd year, 1917. London
, pl. LII, 3D.1993
Catalogue of the predynastic Egyptian collection in the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford
, 222, cat. no.1808.2002
Bovines in Egyptian predynastic and early dynastic iconography, in: Hassan, Fekri A. (ed.), Drought, food and culture: ecological change and food security in Africa's later prehistory. New York & London
, Appendix C, no. 9.
