{"it":{"id":"NX-A43","name":"Gebel el-Arak Knife","kind":"artifact","sub":"Disputed","place":"Abydos area, Egypt (proposed find-spot; dealer reported Gebel el-Arak)","lat":26.18517,"lon":31.91889,"date":"Naqada II C-D, c. 3600-3200 BC (Louvre); 3450-3400 BC (Wikipedia)","src":[{"t":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"t":"Wikidata Q695039","u":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"t":"Louvre collections","u":"https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010007467"},{"t":"Louvre collections, E 11517","u":"https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010007467"}],"tags":[],"nfacts":12,"coord_basis":"find-spot (coordinate of discovery-place entity): Abydos","acc":"Louvre E 11517","flag":"provenance problem","sum":"On one side of an ivory knife handle, a bearded man in a cap holds back two rearing lions. On the other side, men fight and boats sail. The knife was made in Egypt before the first pharaohs.\n\nThe Louvre lists it as the Gebel el-Arak knife, E 11517. It is 25.5 cm high and 4.5 cm wide, with a handle of hippopotamus ivory and a flint blade. Its date, the Nagada II C-D phase of about 3600 to 3200 BC, comes from its style alone. The museum bought it from the dealer Maurice Nahman in 1914, and the purchase was ratified on 30 April that year. The record gives the place of discovery as Gebel el-Arak with a question mark, \"according to the seller\". It is shown in room 633.\n\nThe hard part is the provenance. There is no excavation and no grave, so the find-spot rests on a dealer's word. The image of a man mastering two lions also raises the question of where the scene came from.\n\nGeorges Bénédite, who published the knife in 1916, saw a hero \"mastering the two lions in the manner of Gilgamesh\", a figure from Mesopotamia. In 1919 Jean Capart called it a \"pseudo-Gilgamesh\" and looked at the figure again. The Louvre itself catalogues the knife as Egyptian work, with the date set by style and the place by the seller.\n\nIf the knife's only witness to its find-spot was a dealer, how much weight can its lion scene bear?","nsrc":4,"new":1,"qs":["A Mesopotamian-style figure appears on an Egyptian knife before the pharaohs. How connected were the first civilisations?","Its find-spot rests on a dealer's word. How much history should we build on an object with that kind of provenance?","Real foreign contact, or a motif passed along trade routes? Which do you think explains the 'Master of Animals'?"],"why":"An Egyptian knife older than the pharaohs carries a lion-taming scene, and its find-spot rests on a dealer's word.","yt":"Read provenance studies.","rel":["NX-A06"],"hook":"Bought from a dealer in 1914, this Egyptian knife shows a man taming two lions."},"S":{},"rec":{"id":"NX-A43","qs":["A dealer named the find-spot in 1914. How much history should rest on an object like that?","Bénédite saw Gilgamesh; Capart saw a \"pseudo-Gilgamesh\". Which reading do you find more convincing?","Could one image travel between early Egypt and Mesopotamia without people travelling with it?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Couteau_de_Gebel_el-Arak_-_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre_Antiquit%C3%A9s_%C3%A9gyptiennes_E_11517_-_recto_verso.jpg/1280px-Couteau_de_Gebel_el-Arak_-_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre_Antiquit%C3%A9s_%C3%A9gyptiennes_E_11517_-_recto_verso.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Couteau_de_Gebel_el-Arak_-_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre_Antiquit%C3%A9s_%C3%A9gyptiennes_E_11517_-_recto_verso.jpg","title":"Couteau de Gebel el-Arak - Musée du Louvre Antiquités égyptiennes E 11517 - recto verso.jpg","lic":"CC0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en","by":"Shonagon","cap":"Photo of Gebel el-Arak Knife","alt":"Photo of Gebel el-Arak Knife"}],"ms":[{"a":"Height","v":"25.5 cm","u":"","b":"V","g":"VERIFIED","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"a":"Width","v":"4.5 cm","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"a":"Materials","v":"hippopotamus ivory and flint","u":"","b":"V","g":"VERIFIED","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"a":"Acquired","v":"1914","u":"","b":"V","g":"VERIFIED","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"a":"Inventory","v":"E 11517","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"a":"material (Wikidata)","v":"elephant tusk","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikidata Q695039","url":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"a":"height (Wikidata)","v":"25.5 centimetre","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikidata Q695039","url":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"a":"width (Wikidata)","v":"4.5 centimetre","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Wikidata Q695039","url":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"a":"inventory (Wikidata)","v":"E 11517","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikidata Q695039","url":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"a":"collection (Wikidata)","v":"Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Wikidata Q695039","url":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"a":"Width","v":"4.5 cm","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"MEASUREMENT","c":"Louvre collections, E 11517","url":"https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010007467"},{"a":"Inventory","v":"E 11517","u":"","b":"S","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","t":"DOCUMENTARY_FACT","c":"Louvre collections","url":"https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010007467"}],"aa":[],"ac":[],"src":[{"t":"Wikipedia: Gebel el-Arak Knife","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife"},{"t":"Wikidata Q695039","u":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q695039"},{"t":"Louvre collections","u":"https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010007467"},{"t":"Louvre collections, E 11517","u":"https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010007467"},{"id":"VNX-A43-5","t":"Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1919 (Persée)","u":"https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_1919_num_63_5_74203"}],"sum":"The dealer did not know that the two pieces belonged together. In February 1914, in Cairo, the antiquities dealer Maurice Nahman offered the Egyptologist Georges Bénédite an ivory knife handle and, separately, a flint blade. The blade, Bénédite later wrote, the seller \"did not suspect\" belonged with the handle, and he presented it as evidence of recent finds from Abydos. Bénédite bought both for the Louvre. On 16 March he wrote to Charles Boreux, head of the museum's Egyptian department, that he had found \"the masterpiece of predynastic sculpture,\" and that the Louvre would own, in tangible form, \"the first chapter of the history of Egypt.\" The emphasis was his.\n\nWhat excited him was a single figure. At the top of one face of the handle, a bearded man in a long garment and a cap stands between two rearing lions and holds them back, one in each hand. To Bénédite the clothes were \"Chaldean,\" the cap like that of the Mesopotamian ruler Gudea, and when he published the knife in 1916 he described the hero \"mastering the two lions in the manner of Gilgamesh.\" In 1919 the Egyptologist Jean Capart looked again and called him a \"pseudo-Gilgamesh.\" The question of what a Mesopotamian-looking figure was doing on an Egyptian knife made before the first pharaohs has not gone away.\n\nThe knife is in the Louvre as E 11517, shown in room 633 of the Sully wing. It is 25.5 centimetres high and 4.5 wide. The museum's record dates it, on style alone, to the Naqada II C-D phase, about 3600 to 3200 BC; Wikipedia's summary gives the end of Naqada II, about 3450 to 3400 BC. The Louvre's record says the museum bought it from Nahman in 1914, with the purchase ratified on 30 April, and gives the place of discovery as Gebel el-Arak with a question mark, \"according to the seller.\"\n\nThat find-spot is doubtful. Gebel el-Arak is a plateau near Nag Hammadi, about 40 kilometres south of Abydos, and it has produced no other archaeological finds. Abydos, by contrast, was being dug intensively at the time, at the royal cemetery of Umm el-Qa'ab, and the dealer's own words about the blade point there. Most now think the knife came from Abydos. But there is no excavation record and no grave, and the find-spot rests in the end on a dealer's word.\n\nEven the material has changed in the telling. The Louvre lists the handle as hippopotamus ivory, as was first thought; later examination found it to be elephant ivory, cut along the axis of the tusk, with a dark spot above the lion-tamer's head marking the tip of the pulp cavity. The handle is only 2 to 3 millimetres thick around the tang of the blade, and it has cracked there. Bénédite saw traces of gold leaf at its base, now gone, where a metal collar may once have joined handle and blade. In 1933 Léon André fitted the two pieces together and conserved the ivory; the latest restoration was in 1997.\n\nThe blade is a work of art in its own right, a fine yellowish chert worked in five stages. One side was ground smooth, perhaps to imitate metal. The other was ripple-flaked: long thin strips were pressed off in parallel to leave a regular pattern of S-shaped waves, probably with pointed copper tools. The edge was finished with fine serration. The ripple-flaking does not make the blade any sharper, and a use-wear study shows that the knife was never used. The tang is too short and the handle too thin for practical work. The specialist Béatrix Midant-Reynes argues that the labour goes far beyond what a working knife needs. It was a display piece, made to show skill.\n\nThe carving is in low relief, never more than 2 millimetres deep, cut register by register from top to bottom with a flint tool. One face shows a battle: men armed with flint knives, clubs and pear-shaped maces fight hand to hand, and boats sail below. The pear-shaped mace is considered an innovation from Mesopotamia, replacing the older Egyptian disc-shaped mace. Some scholars have suggested that the battle shows warriors of Abydos and Hierakonpolis, the two great rival cities of the time, and note that most of Egypt was later unified under rulers from Abydos. The other face carries the lion-tamer above what Bénédite called a hunting scene, and a pierced knob through which a cord could be threaded, so that it could hang from the body.\n\nThe lion-tamer is what scholars call a Master of Animals, a motif very common in Mesopotamian art. Modern scholarship generally ties this figure to the \"priest-king\" Master of Animals images of the Late Uruk period in Mesopotamia. The two lions have been read as the morning and evening stars. Robert du Mesnil du Buisson identified the central figure as the god El; the Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal declines to name him and calls him simply a \"warrior.\" Bearded men with similar headgear also appear on Egyptian ivory figurines of the Naqada I period, so the image may not have been wholly foreign. A painting in Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis, from around the same time, shows the same theme: a man between two lions, with fighters and boats.\n\nThe knife is one of 17 known ceremonial knives with decorated handles. Some carry rows of animals, a Mesopotamian-style rosette, or prisoners and an enthroned ruler. The blades are so alike that the scholar Diane Holmes proposed they all came from a few workshops in one area, made by a handful of craftsmen over a few generations.\n\nFlinders Petrie called the knife \"to Egyptian history what the Bayeux Tapestry is to English history, a national monument of conquest,\" and used it as one of the main arguments for his theory of a \"dynastic race.\" The Louvre catalogues it simply as Egyptian work. Between those two readings lies the figure in the long garment, holding his lions apart.\n\nIf the only witness to where the knife was found was a dealer, how much weight can that lion scene carry as evidence of contact between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and what else, buried in the same ground, might have settled the question?"},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":null,"hs":{},"lh":{"s":"img/h/NX-A43.webp","w":1280,"h":1600,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Couteau_de_Gebel_el-Arak_-_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre_Antiquit%C3%A9s_%C3%A9gyptiennes_E_11517_-_recto_verso.jpg/1280px-Couteau_de_Gebel_el-Arak_-_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre_Antiquit%C3%A9s_%C3%A9gyptiennes_E_11517_-_recto_verso.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}