Female Icons of the Badarian Era

Archaeologists like to name cultural epochs (or "horizons") after a paradigmatic or typical site: thus, in Syria, the Halafian neolithic era, or Harappan in India, or Valdivia in Ecuador, or Hopewell from Ohio to Illinois.

In Egypt, we have to contend with a plethora of namings, which overlap in confusing ways. Here are the primary categorizations:

Badarian (usually given as 4400-4000 bce, but reaching back as early as 5000 bce, named after the Badari site in the Asyut region of Upper Egypt, aka Nubia) A farming culture that made terracotta and ivory figurines of women (many of them found in funerary contexts). They worked stone, especially slate and malachite, and copper. The made a characteristic black-on-red polished pottery which stretches into Sudan.

Naqada (4000-3200 bce, or to 2900 according to others) is divided into numbered phases (I, II, III), which are in turn further subdivided (IIa, IIIb). The older classifications break these out differently, using names like Amratian (Naqada I), Gerzean (Naqada II) and Naqada III (the latter part of which is sometimes termed Thinite and is protodynastic. All this terminology can make for a rather confusing picture. The Naqada era overlaps with the Badarian, to the extent that some regard these as geographic than than temporal distinctions, but that is controversial.

The black-on-red ware continues in the early Naqada period, but is gradually displaced by C-ware, with cream paint on red, and then by D-ware (ochre on cream-colored clay). The video shows many example of these. They are the richest source of the Goddess-in-Riverboat scenes, the primary ceremonial imagery from the Naqada period (the 4th millennium bce).

Early Badarian figure that looks extremely modernistic, but dates around 64 centuries ago.

Here she is from the back, with what I can only guess is a fan, a common theme in ceramic paintings of the Naqada era. Some ceremonial scenes show women are shown holding similar fans. This sculpture is a one-off.

The icon above foreshadows a style of terracotta figurine that continues for over 1000 years: abstract, with small hanging breasts, big hips and legs together in a single mass. Arms are often attenuated like this one, only suggest by bumps on the shoulders. This example is totally coated with red ochre (remember these were mostly found in burials, so the theme of regeneration is there). As as typical, she came unidentified by site; I'm gradually starting to be able to put place names on some of these.

Above: she appears to be carved in stone. Again, no site name.

I've seen this woman in hippo ivory identified both as Naqada and Badarian. These ivory figurines have incised eyes and prominently marked vulvas. Counterparts have been found across the Sinai in the Negev desert, at Be'ersheva.