From the Acheulean hunters of the Nile valley and the cemetery of Jebel Sahaba through the cattle herders of Nabta Playa, the farming villages of the Faiyum and Merimde, and the Badarian and Naqada cultures, to the dawn of writing at Abydos and Narmer's union of the Two Lands around 3100 BCE. Slide across the millennia to read the major events that shaped Egypt before the pharaohs.
Bands of early humans range along the terraces of the Nile and the springs of the Western Desert, leaving behind the symmetrical Acheulean hand-axes that mark the oldest human presence in Egypt.
From the Acheulean hunters of the Nile valley and the cemetery of Jebel Sahaba through the cattle herders of Nabta Playa, the farming villages of the Faiyum and Merimde, and the Badarian and Naqada cultures, to the dawn of writing at Abydos and Narmer's union of the Two Lands around 3100 BCE. Slide across the millennia to read the major events that shaped Egypt before the pharaohs.
Bands of early humans range along the terraces of the Nile and the springs of the Western Desert, leaving behind the symmetrical Acheulean hand-axes that mark the oldest human presence in Egypt.
On the east bank of the Nile in Nubia, hunter-gatherers bury their dead in an organised cemetery; many of the skeletons bear arrowhead wounds, evidence of some of the earliest known human conflict.
In a seasonal lake basin of the Western Desert, pastoral communities herd cattle, dig deep wells, and store grain, building one of the earliest organised societies in north-eastern Africa.
As the Sahara dries, communities settle along the Nile and the Faiyum lake, cultivating wheat and barley, herding sheep and goats, and weaving the first Egyptian villages from reed and mud.
Around El-Badari in Upper Egypt, a refined farming culture produces thin rippled pottery, ivory and slate ornaments, and carefully arranged burials that hint at growing belief in an afterlife.
Centred on the great Upper Egyptian towns of Naqada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos, the Amratian culture spreads a shared style of red-painted pottery, figurines, and decorated palettes along the Nile.
Hierakonpolis swells into a true town with a temple and elite cemeteries, long-distance trade reaches Mesopotamia and the Levant, and powerful chiefs begin to fashion the symbols of Egyptian kingship.
In the royal tomb U-j at Abydos, bone and ivory tags incised with the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic signs record goods and place-names, marking the birth of writing in the Nile valley.
King Narmer of Upper Egypt unites the Nile valley and Delta into a single kingdom; the great ceremonial palette from Hierakonpolis shows him wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt.