The Eastern Nile Delta as a center of interregional interaction in the v and iv millennium bc: an analysis from the construction of the landscape

DAIZO, M. B.

París

Congreso; Origins 7 - Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt; 2022

Université Paris-Sorbonne

This research aims to attempt to review the processes that occurred in the Eastern Nile Delta towards the V and IV millennium BC within the framework of interactions with the Levant. Although numerous investigations have worked on this issue, the proposal of this work is to analyse -from the spatiality and Landscape Archaeology- the way in which transformations were developed in the modes of social-political and economic organisation and their articulation with contacts with the Levant. In this sense, we consider that the dynamics of interaction between both regions promoted both local and regional developments in the Eastern Nile Delta as relations with the Levant intensified. These dynamics, as they became more complex, would have allowed the generation of new social scenarios with profound transformations in their materiality and would have placed the Delta region as the centre of interaction for long-distance contacts. An important part of these developments is associated with the emergence of urban features such as those that can be witnessed in Tell el-Farkha. Therefore, the axes of this research will focus on the analysis of spatiality, the type and distribution of architectural structures and the "ways" of creating an "urban" landscape, together with the archaeological finds found there from the Levant (e.g. pottery, copper) and from far south regions (e.g. gold, ostrich shell). The results of these studies allow us to affirm that the urbanisation process in the Nile Delta -with different dimensions in its configuration to that of the Nile Valley- has had its own course with local developments being highly influenced by Levantine contacts and their link with the Upper Egyptian region.