Gebel El-Arak Knife, at the Louvre Museum

Between 2002 and 2012, I simultaneously researched and wrote the Raising Up Pharaoh six-novel epic series that I published in 2014. By that time, my research convinced me that the only reason archaeologists, or laymen, believed the Early Dynastic civilization “sprang up from the soil” in Egypt was that such political correctness would predispose local authorities to treat the archaeologists’ excavation requests more favorably.

The people who lived in Egypt during the fourth millennium BC were in the vast majority born there, and likely gravitated there following the 5.9Kya weather event. However, consider the presence of Sumerian art forms in the Scorpion Maceheads, the Narmer Palette, and the flint knives with an intricately carved ivory handle such as on the Gebel El-Arak Knife, the Ritual Knife at the Brooklyn Museum, and the Pitt-Rivers Knife at the British Museum. These artifacts are high luxury items and clearly related to early predynastic elites (or pharaohs).

Zooming in on the carved handle motifs of the Gebel El-Arak Knife, we see mace, knife, and club-wielding folks clearly defeating what appear to be Egyptians wearing fairly classic head cloths on one side. On the other side stands a “Beast Master” in Sumerian robe and Shepherd hat holding two lions at bay, a couple of hunting dogs, a lion killing an ox, and goats.

Sumerian art motifs showing up in neolithic Egypt are not home-grown coincidences. These items did not “spring up from the soil.” Sumerian Uruk was quite advanced with early forms of cuneiform writing and examples of identical art forms by this time. The Ancient Origins article makes this clear.

Thanks for visiting,

R.E.J. Burke