Pre-Dynastic Egypt spans many millennia, a complicated timeline of events with many different cultures, who had many different practices, beliefs, styles of art, influences and ways of living. There are many gaps in the archaeological record too and like with any part of the world being researched, the further we go back in time, the more fragmented the story gets.
We do know that Egypt was not a unified country until the dynastic era, when it looks as though a king from the south, Narmer or Menes, defeated the Maadi Culture of the north, and began a new era of history.
With regards to Ancient Egypt, my primary interest has always been the Giza Plateau, the history of the pyramids and the Great Sphinx, and so, in terms of Pre-Dynastic history, I’m most interested in the Maadi Culture, the people who occupied this region immediately prior to the dynastic era.
They were replaced by the Naqada III culture from Upper Egypt, but whether this was by conquest or infiltration, well, it’s open to debate. Some draw upon objects like the Narmer palette, to show that what most likely happened was the people of the south suppressing the northern people of the marshes by force.
In this video, I will first be presenting an overview of the Maadi Culture, the people of Lower Egypt before the dynastic era, a unique people with architectural feats unlike anything seen anywhere else in Egypt at the time, the implications of which must be considered.
Then I will document their presence at Giza. These were the first known people of the Giza Plateau and they left behind more archaeology than most people know, with at least three documented sites of interest.
Furthermore, these were the first people that could have potentially built the first Proto-Sphinx and although speculative, it’s even possible they left something else behind that so many have overlooked, something actually preserved inside the Great Pyramid itself. Watch this video to learn more!
VIDEO CONTENTS
0:00 – Introduction
4:07 – Maadi Culture
19:33 – Pre-Dynastic Giza
24:57 – The First Sphinx
32:22 – Secret in the Great Pyramid
All images are taken from Google Images and the below sources for educational purposes only. Please subscribe to Ancient Architects, Like the video and please leave a comment below.
Sources:
Jade Bajeot, (2017), Predynastic Maadi in Context The Research of the Italian Expedition Revisited (1977-1986), Studi di Preistoria Orientale (SPO)
Bruce Williams, (1987), The Metropolitan Museum Knife Handle and Aspects of Pharaonic Imagery before Narmer, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
John and Morton Edgar, (1910) Great Pyramid Passages Volume 1
Piazzi Smyth, C, (1880), Our inheritance in the Great Pyramid
Isabella Caneva et al, (1989), Recent excavations at Maadi (Egypt), Late Prehistory of the Nile Basin and the Sahara.
Jean Perrot, (1963), The Prehistoric Culture of Beersheba, The Journal of Educational Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 8.
Zach Zorich, (2015), The Pyramid Effect, Scientific American , Vol. 313, No. 5 (NOVEMBER 2015), pp. 32-39.
U. Hartung, (2013), Some Remarks On The Chronological Position Of The Predynastic Settlement at Maadi (Egypt) and its Relations to the Southern Levant. Paléorient , 2013, Vol. 39, No. 1.
Freya Sadarangani & Alexandra Witsell, (2010), Settlement and Cemetery at Giza: Papers from the 2010 AERA-ARCE Field School.
#AncientArchitects #AncientEgypt #GizaPyramid
To Be Added
Watch more new videos about Archeology | Synthesized by Mindovermetal English
Thank you for watching and for being here! If you want to support the channel, you can become a YouTube Member at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCscI4NOggNSN-Si5QgErNCw/join or I’m on Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/ancientarchitects
The face resembles one of the Pharaoh who wanted to be worshiped
Very Interesting!
Yep!
18:11 i dont believe the ones who made these pottery vases also made the beautifulky carved stone one right after
This is SUCH a great video Matt! I have leaned so much from this particular release and now I’m extremely interested in the Maadi culture! I would love to see more about this predynastic culture in subsequent videos!
The amount of time you must spend researching is commendable
What is the DNA if the Maadi people, and how does that compare to the Melanesian and Andaman people's, and in sites in Canaan? Is there any evidence of the canabalism reported in Egyptian legend, and in those other people, most of whom come from the coastal migration out of Africa?
Great Show..Never knew this stuff
But I got gut feeling those pots
Are quite ghostly in substance
In solidifying anything …
Long way from pots to pyramids
Watching you grow from an alt-history skeptic buff, to a proper historian has been a great journey
I love watching the evolution of your channel 😊
Excellent as always
Fascinating conjecture!! :-)) VERY well done
Do you know the relative location of the ramp used to build Great pyramid to the Queens chamber?
the earlier and prolific use of wood is a testament to the difference in climate at the time.
the fact that there was rather advanced pottery is very interesting. wheel thrown. that is changes a lot for me.
Maybe the original proto sphynx was some kind of tomb or a primitive type of mausoleum to a local king or chief. Probably a pre-mastaba with a garden on top of the "body" of the "Sphynx" and the head, could be an statue of that hypothetical local chief. Or maybe it was a monument to a local fertility God/Goddes, I don't know. I'll better go to re-study my books from old kindom and pre-dynastic time.
Thanks Matt
"wadi digla" sounds like a Pootitang catch phrase
good stuff man!!
Good presentation, Matt, giving a lot of food for thought. I would agree on the possibility that if we consider the Maadi culture to have been the dominant
and well developed as shownculture of Lower Egypt and the Nile Delta region, then it seems also likely that the Giza Plateau may already have held some cultural or religious importance to them, which may also mean they had some sort of monuments or structures there that later were modified or expanded/built over by Narmer and following generations.As for the Sphinx and the possible depiction on the Narmer palette, there are some things I d like to throw in as further food for thought:
1. The degree to which Upper and Lower Egypt had already been unified before Narmer (or Menes, if he turns out to be the same person as Narmer) united all of it, is still debated. So the influence of Upper Egypt's Naqada III culture on the Maadi culture of Lower Egypt and what they knew of each other and how they interacted is still a mystery due to the limited archeological findings.
2. Your interpretation that the Narmer Palette could show the Sphinx of the Giza Plateau being "claimed" by Narmer makes a lot of sense to me, for a variety of reasons. The palette was found in Nekhen, the cult center of the Cult of the Hawk. The palette shows some hostile action against the people of the North (Lower Egypt), prior to the unification. Narmer is shown subjugating someone (maybe someone from the Maadi culture). The patron of the king symbolized as the Horus Falcon is sitting on the Sphinx (a symbol of religious/cultural importance to the Maadi people), forcing its head up with a hook to make it face Narmer, acknowledging his superiority. And if we assume that the king was also symbolically likened to the sun, then the Sphinx is forced to face him, literally facing the sun if it is indeed the Giza Sphinx that is shown there.
We could even go further and interpret that those stalks on the back of the Sphinx could symbolize the decline of the sun, with Narmer representing the rising sun. And since the sun goes down in the west, which symbolically was the land of the dead… it might add another layer of meaning to those sun rays, meaning the end of the Sphinx's power and reign as it bows to the new god/king. Of course all of this is speculation, but I thought it might support your line of thinking.
6:49 Didn’t cook the rabbits? Wadi the Madi with you?
Sharing
6:14 – as Randall, Russ and Kyle might say – LOOK at that underfit river valley! The bluffs of Giza and the symmetrical bluffs of this other place are very lively the old YDB pluvial shorelines – the “chaos” pre zep tepi when khemet was TRULY beneath the waters – and then emerged in the light of Ra on the primordial mound – and as Plato records – there WAS more than one flood – 30kya ending and 12kya ending.
As always, Great Stuff.
what's fascinating is that this would have been the END of a culture, think about how prosperous they were when there was more rains in the Sahara.
The earliest civilization in Egypt was the Badarian culture followed by Naqada I-III then enter pre-dynastic. These civilizations developed writing independant of Asiatic cultures. There was not a high amount of trade at this time.
So cool how African Egyptians look exactly like Asiatic Persians and other Asiatic people who invaded the country. So cool.
Maddai is mentioned in the table of nations in genesis
Great Work
Great video!!
Hell yeah but the Earth is flat or something
👍🏼