IFAO

Abstract: 

Although best know for the rock inscriptions and rock art of the Wadi Hilal, the wider desert hinterland of Elkab—from Sebaiya in the north to Gebel Waz in the south, and extending east through the Wadi Schagab and associated wadis—is home to a large collection of rock inscription sites, several first discovered by the Yale Elkab Desert Survey. At a number of these sites are early hieroglyphic inscriptions. Palaeographically the inscriptions parallel those of the labels and dipinti of the well-known Tomb U-j at Abydos. Seen in the light of the earlier Predynastic rock art of the Elkab region, the early hieroglyphic inscriptions reveal a replacement of earlier zoomorphic and nautical imagery—emphasizing animal representations of power alongside images of ritual power—with more direct manifestations of the truly literal authority of the nascent Protodynastic state. The Elkab early hieroglyphic inscriptions also provide an interesting comparative group for those at sites in the Western Desert hinterland of Naqada and Thebes (discovered by my earlier Yale Theban Desert Road Survey). Differences between the use of the early script between the northern and southern sites reveal a use of the script at the southern sites that is removed from iconographic augmentation, providing the reader with little if any visual clues to the meaning of the texts.