Hierakonpolis

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 150

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Ancient Egyptian Nekhen, or modern Kom el-Ahmar (‘Red Mound’) is a huge and sprawling site located 50 miles south of Luxor on the West Bank of the Nile. It is popularly known by its ancient Greek name Hierakonpolis (‘City of the Falcon’), as it was the cult centre of the falcon god Horus. In fact, it is the largest Predynastic settlement known in Egypt, and runs for about 1.5 miles north to south along the Nile, and some 2 miles from east to west, from the cultivation on the flood plain, across the desert, to the cemetery HK6. At its height, in the Naqada Period (c.3800-3500 BC), Hierakonpolis was probably the largest urban settlement or ‘town’ along the Nile, and the capital of an Upper Egyptian kingdom; it was clearly still of some significance in the Early Dynastic Period, with activity at the site continuing until at least Ptolemaic times. The various excavations that have taken place at Hierakonpolis since the end of the 19th century have unearthed a wealth of fascinating – and often spectacular – archaeological evidence pertaining to the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods, unrivalled in Egyptian archaeology; what follows is but a summary of that evidence.

James Quibell and Frederick Green at Hierakonpolis

The first archaeological description of Hierakonpolis was undertaken by Dominique Vivant Denon, one of the savants who accompanied Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, from 1798 to 1799. He recorded the remains, now lost, of a substantial Ptolemaic temple at the site. The temple was removed in the middle of the 19th century, when its sandstone blocks were used as building material for a sugar factory in Esna. Hierakonpolis was put firmly on the Egyptological map by the English archaeologist James Quibell during his excavations at the site in 1898. He found the ‘Main Deposit’ – a remarkable and diverse cache of votive material comprising hundreds of artefacts – in a series of pits and chambers that had been dug below an Old Kingdom mud-brick temple. Quibell, who was sent there in 1897 by Flinders Petrie (funded by Petrie’s Egyptian Research Account), was later joined at Hierakonpolis by fellow archaeologist and compatriot Frederick Green. Petrie had recognised the site’s archaeological potential after his brief visit there in 1887. It is worth pointing out that Green and Quibell lived in the New Kingdom tombs, leaving many remnants of their stay in the Tomb of Hormose while working at Hierakonpolis between 1887 and 1899. Quibell was assisted by his future wife, Annie Pirie, who commented in her later book A Wayfarer in Egypt (1939): ‘Of all the different dwelling places, give me for choice, if for not too long a time, a good tomb.’

The Main Deposit

The most famous objects discovered in the Main Deposit are, of course, the Narmer Palette and the mace-heads of King Narmer and King ‘Scorpion’. They are the most significant artefacts yet known from the so-called ‘Unification Period’, when the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt were united, marking the beginning of the Dynastic Period.

However, many other notable items were recovered from the Main Deposit, among which was another important piece from the Unification Period – the ‘Two Dogs Palette’. Like the Narmer Palette, the Two Dogs Palette is an oversized, ceremonial version of the stone palettes commonly used by people of the Naqada Culture for grinding cosmetics, and is beautifully carved with low-relief decoration. It takes its name from the two African wild dogs (commonly known as Cape hunting dogs; Latin name Lycaon pictus – meaning ‘painted wolf’), which frame the scenes on its two faces, although one of the dogs is now missing its head. These scenes depict a mixture of wild and fantastical animals, the most striking being the two ‘Serpopards’, feline creatures with impressively long necks that stand either side of the central, circular reservoir (for grinding cosmetic pigments) on the obverse face of the palette. Serpopards also appear on the Narmer Palette. Among the other creatures depicted on the Two Dogs Palette are a pair of lions; a griffin with comb-like wings; Saluki hunting dogs; gazelle; a leopard and a giraffe; and a curious jackal-headed figure playing a long flute, perhaps representing a shaman wearing an animal mask. Although we can never know for sure the true meaning of the striking iconography on the Two Dogs Palette, its skilfully carved decoration suggests a theme of royal and divine power bringing order and control to chaos.

The Horus, Pepy I, and Khasekhemwy statues

Prior to the discovery of the Main Deposit, Quibell had unearthed other spectacular finds in the temple area at Hierakonpolis. The first was a superbly made sheet-gold and copper statue of Horus – probably dating from the Sixth Dynasty (c.2345-2323 BC) of the Old Kingdom, furnished with lifelike obsidian eyes and a tall, double-plumed headdress. Quibell discovered it in a pit dug below the floor of one of the temple’s five chambers. Unfortunately, the thin copper plates forming the body of Horus cracked, but they were retained and have now been skilfully restored, together with the long copper carrying-pole. The head of Horus is now on display in its original form in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, giving us a rare view of an actual cult statue.

Even more impressive was the copper statue (measuring 178 cm in height) of Pepy I of the Sixth Dynasty that Quibell unearthed shortly after the discovery of the Horus statue, in a pit below the floor of another of the temple’s rooms. After the removal of the king’s statue, Quibell was astonished to find that a second, smaller statue was hidden inside its torso. This statue is now generally thought to represent Pepy as a youth, although it was originally taken to be a representation of his son and successor Merenra.

Also found with the Pepy statues were a charming lion figurine made from polished red pottery, and a fine, greenstone-schist statue (about 62 cm in height) of Khasekhemwy, the last pharaoh of the Second Dynasty. Unfortunately, Khasekhemwy was found with half his head missing, but the statue was otherwise in very good condition, and today can be seen in Cairo.

Khasekhemwy is shown wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt and the heb-sed tunic; on the base of the statue is a depiction of a military campaign against the Delta, showing the fallen bodies of the king’s conquered foes, and a precise inscription recording that Khasekhemwy had killed 47,209 Lower Egyptian rebels. Although it is possible that very many individuals lost their lives, it is more likely that this is an exaggeration, and that Khasekhemwy used the statue as a piece of royal propaganda. Quibell found another statue of Khasekhemwy in the temple area that was almost identical, although it was made of limestone rather than schist – it is now in the Ashmolean Museum. These are the oldest stone statues depicting a named pharaoh yet known from Egypt.

Khasekhemwy’s ‘Fort’

During the first excavation season at Hierakonpolis, Quibell investigated the massive mud-brick enclosure that, even though much reduced in stature from its original form, still dominates the site of Hierakonpolis. Known as the ‘Fort’, this enigmatic structure was constructed for Khasekhemwy during his reign and is the oldest free-standing monumental mud-brick building still preserved to near its original height in the world. The enclosure measures 67 by 57 metres, and its niched ‘palace-façade’ walls, which at their base measure 5 metres thick, still reach close to their original height of 10 metres in some places; when complete, they were coated with white plaster inside and out, and must have gleamed brightly under the fierce Egyptian sunlight. Despite its military appellation, the Fort served no military purpose, and its function remains something of a mystery. It may originally have been intended as Khasekhemwy’s funerary enclosure, but the king chose instead to be buried at Abydos, where he built a new, but much larger mud-brick enclosure (the Shunet el-Zebib – over one hectare in area) to accompany his equally impressive tomb. Alternatively, and perhaps more probably, the Fort may have been a ceremonial centre, where Khasekhemwy participated in various activities associated with his kingship, such as his heb-sed (jubilee) festival. Time and later archaeological investigations have taken their toll on the structure, and this impressive monument is now being conserved by the current expedition.

The ‘Painted Tomb’

In 1899, it was the turn of Frederick Green, who was working at Hierakonpolis without Quibell, to make his own spectacular and hugely important discovery. While investigating a Predynastic cemetery containing more than 200 burials, mostly dating to the Naqada II or ‘Gerzean’ Period (c.3500-3200 BC), he unexpectedly came across five large, mud-brick tombs. These tombs would originally have been richly furnished with grave goods for their elite occupants to take into the next life.

Green believed they had been plundered only a few years before his investigation, as unfortunately he found them seriously depleted of their contents. However, any disappointment Green felt at their robbed-out state must have been assuaged with the discovery of a remarkable prehistoric mural on the walls on one of the tombs – known as Tomb 100, or more aptly the ‘Painted Tomb’. The mural is dominated by the depiction of six huge boats with curved prows, around which are various smaller scenes showing human and animal figures, with hunting and warfare the essential thematic thread linking them all together. The scenes were painted in black, white, and red pigments on an ochre background, with some boat hulls overlain with green malachite. To date, Tomb 100, which may have been the final resting place of a powerful ruler or chieftain, remains the only painted tomb known from the Egyptian Predynastic Period. Unfortunately, all that remained of the individual(s) who were buried in the tomb was a pile of pulverised bone and bone dust. Frederick Green removed the surviving wall paintings to the Cairo Museum, where parts are now on display having been recently cleaned and conserved. Green also made a full-size copy of this precious Predynastic artwork, some 5 metres long, which is preserved in the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford.

Early 20th-century excavations

Following Quibell and Green’s archaeological investigations at Hierakonpolis, John Garstang of the University of Liverpool, and the French archaeologist Henri de Morgan (working on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum, New York) conducted excavations at the site in the first decade of the 20th century. During his 1905-1906 excavations, Garstang excavated nearly 170 Predynastic graves, which yielded numerous artefacts, at a cemetery within Khasekhemwy’s Fort. While working at the temple site, his assistant Harold Jones found a lapis lazuli head fitting a figurine previously discovered by Quibell and Green. De Morgan worked at Hierakonpolis and at other sites in the surrounding region between 1907 and 1909. His excavations yielded many interesting objects, such as the superb flint knives and other lithics he recovered (using rakes!) from the Predynastic domestic deposits or ‘kitchen middens’ that lay to the south of the Fort. At the Predynastic cemetery at Mamariya, a satellite site of Hierakonpolis located about a mile north of its larger counterpart, de Morgan found 16 fine terracotta figurines.

Some 25 years later, in 1934-1935, Ambrose Lansing of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) directed excavations at Hierakonpolis. Not only did he investigate the rock-cut, decorated Dynastic tombs located in the low, isolated sandstone hill, or inselberg, behind the Fort – among which is the important Second Intermediate Period tomb of the official Horemkhauef (see AE 136) – but he also uncovered around 200 Predynastic graves lying near its walls. Quibell and Green brought back hundreds of skulls from the site, which are now in Cambridge. The skulls Lansing had found were put back in the graves; he planned to do a study at a later time, but this was never done.

The Hierakonpolis Expedition

The interdisciplinary Hierakonpolis Expedition began in 1967, under the directorship of Walter Fairservis (working for the American Museum of Natural History), and has subsequently made numerous notable discoveries, the team’s ongoing excavations gradually unravelling the compelling story of Hierakonpolis and its ancient inhabitants. Notable ones made during the early years of the expedition include the remains of an elaborate, niched mud-brick façade that had surrounded an Early Dynastic Palace near the temple site, and a well-preserved Predynastic house in the desert (accidentally burnt down after it was built), the first to be excavated using modern scientific methods. The house was excavated in 1978, by Michael Hoffman (who became head of Predynastic Research at Hierakonpolis), following a nine-year hiatus in the archaeological exploration of the site because of the unstable international political situation. It should be mentioned that Hoffman was the author of Egypt Before the Pharaohs (1991), an indispensable and highly readable work that should be on the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in prehistoric Egypt.

Following Hoffman’s untimely death in 1990, the directorship of the Hierakonpolis Expedition passed in 1996 to Renée Friedman and Barbara Adams (curator at the Petrie Museum from 1965). Following the death of Adams in 2002, Friedman became the sole director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition, and continues the work there with an international team.

The elite cemetery HK6

Some of the most significant discoveries made in recent time are in cemetery ‘HK6’, a high-status burial ground of the Naqada Culture, discreetly located in the wadi that runs from the north-western edge of Hierakonpolis into the Western Desert. The excavations undertaken here have revealed impressively large tombs, surrounded by a series of satellite graves containing both human and animal burials. Some of the tombs were covered by wooden superstructures, and many were surrounded by fences. The skeletons of nearly 150 animals were recovered from these graves, nearly 50 of them being wild animals, with a remarkable range of species represented, including 3 wild cattle (aurochs), 3 hippopotami, a hartebeest, 19 baboons, 1 wild cat, a leopard, and 2 African elephants! Unfortunately for these animals, they had doubtless been ritually sacrificed, and it is suspected that their human counterparts (men, women, and children) had met a similar fate. In the central part of cemetery HK6, the post-holes belonging to a remarkable group of wooden-pillared buildings were discovered, probably representing early examples of hypostyle halls, and acting as the focus of mortuary cults associated with the elite occupants of the necropolis.

Unsurprisingly, the HK6 tombs and subsidiary graves had been plundered in the past, but nevertheless still yielded numerous artefacts (as did the pillared halls), perhaps the most notable being the unique, and somewhat eerie, pottery masks, two of which were found near Tomb 16 by Adams. They are curved to fit over the face of the deceased, and were attached by string passed through holes drilled behind the ears of the masks. These ceramic funerary masks seem to represent embryonic examples of a long tradition employed by the pharaohs of Dynastic Egypt, which is most famously seen in the funerary mask of Tutankhamun.

Urban evidence

Much important archaeological evidence relating to daily life at Hierakonpolis has been unearthed by the more recent excavations undertaken by the Hierakonpolis Expedition – for example, an industrial zone on the north zone of the town, where beer was made on a huge scale (c.100-200 gallons per day). Also found was a palisaded enclosure inside which were the remains of a palace or administrative centre containing workshops. Here, items such as fine flint tools, carved vessels made from exotic and decorative stone, and semi-precious beads were made by Predynastic artisans. The oval courtyard of an important ceremonial centre (in use for around 500 years) was discovered inside this enclosure, too. On its southern side, the enclosure featured a monumental gateway framed by four massive wooden posts. Numerous middens or rubbish pits were found on the periphery of the ceremonial centre, from which nearly 40,000 animal bones of both domestic and wild animals were recovered. This suggests that it was a location for feasting and sacrifices in Predynastic times.

Doubtless, Renée Friedman and her colleagues will continue to make many more fascinating discoveries, of both a domestic and a funerary nature during future excavations at Hierakonpolis, a truly remarkable and justifiably famous site that has shone much light on the formative stages of ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Julian would like to thank Renée Friedman for her contributions to this article and for kindly supplying images used in this article.

Julian Maxwell Heath is a freelance archaeological illustrator and the author of Before the Pharaohs: exploring the archaeology of Stone Age Egypt (Pen & Sword, 2021). He is a regular contributor to AE magazine, most recently writing in AE 145 about George Reisner.

Further reading:
• J E Quibell and F W Green (1902) Hierakonpolis II (London).
• B Adams (1995) Ancient Nekhen: Garstang in the City of Hierakonpolis (Whitstable).
• R F Friedman (2011) ‘Hierakonpolis’, in E Teeter (ed.) Before the Pyramids: the origins of Egyptian civilization (Oriental Institute Museum Publications 33; Chicago), pp.33-44; downloadable at https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/publications/oimp/oimp-33-pyramids-origins-egyptian-civilization.
• Currently being updated, the website http://www.hierakonpolis-online.org has back issues of Nekhen News which detail the latest discoveries on finds both new and old.