5,000-year-old inscription displays early Egyptian dominance in Sinai

A rock art panel discovered at Wadi Khamila, South Sinai, last year sheds new light on the origins of Egyptian colonization of the region. Dating to around 3000 B.C., the central image of the rock tableau is a striding man with raised arms in a sort of bicep flex posture over a kneeling man with his arms tied behind his back and an arrow in his chest. Behind him is a boat, a symbol of Egyptian rulership.

The southwestern Sinai has some of the earliest images and inscriptions depicting Egyptian military and economic control over a subjugated local population. The earliest named ruler of Egypt, predynastic king of Upper Egypt Iry Hor, features in the inscription of the earliest known smiting scene (32nd century B.C.) found in southwestern Sinai. Egyptian rulers sent regular expeditions to the region to exploit its rich raw material resources in the Pre/Proto and Early Dynastic periods and during the Old Kingdom.

Rock art reliefs referring to the success of the Egyptian expeditions have been previously found at the Wadi Ameyra, Wadi Humur and Maghara sites in the southwestern Sinai. The panel found last year adds a fourth site to the list. It has significant parallels in iconography with the other Egyptian dominance inscriptions.

“The southwest of the Sinai is the region in which we can find economically motivated colonization using images and inscriptions, some of which are over 5,000 years old,” says Egyptologist Prof. Dr. Ludwig Morenz from the University of Bonn. “The motif that has now been discovered is one of the oldest known scenes of killing with an accompanying inscription.” The fear-inducing Egyptian standing in a victor’s pose in front of a kneeling, injured Sinaite depicts the subjugation of the local population.

The inhabitants of the Sinai Peninsula at that time had no writing, no government organization, and were inferior to the Egyptians in socio-cultural terms. The Egyptians advanced into the region in search of natural resources – such as sought-after copper and the gemstone turquoise – and colonized it. “Until now, Wadi Khamila has only been mentioned in research in connection with Nabataean inscriptions that are around 3,000 years younger,” says Morenz. “5,000-year-old evidence of the Egyptians was previously unknown there.”

The Wadi Khamila rock art is accompanied by a short inscription above the central scene. Researchers translate the inscription, which is very early in the development of Egyptian hieroglyphic forms and therefore open to interpretation, as: “(God) Min, ruler of copper ore / the mining region.” Min is mentioned in the Wadi Ameyra rock art inscription too. In the Proto and Early Dynastic periods, Min was the god who dominated the territories outside of the Nile Valley, the patron deity of early Egyptian expeditions to the Sinai. The image of the victor with raised arms may represent the god Min, although he is lacking the deity’s characteristic attributes (phallus, crown), or possibly the Egyptian king.

The research team has published the findings in the journal Blätter Abrahams. It can be read in pdf format here.

* This article was originally published here