This volume represents the 6th installment of proceedings of the successful international conference series Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt , which this time was held at the University of Vienna in Austria from 10th to 15th of September 2017.
With this new peer-reviewed volume of focused research on early Egypt, the 41 contributors dedicated their research to various questions surrounding prehistoric Egypt, the emergence of Pharaonic civilization and the territorial state. While some papers present new archaeological results from on-going excavations, others involve the analysis and interpretation of previously known evidence from the different regions along the Nile Valley. A large group of papers specifically discuss the area of ancient Memphis, which was also a central theme of the conference helping to summarize 20 years of research at the archaeological site of Helwan.
Following the good tradition of previous Origins conferences, a very large number of papers are dedicated to the area of Lower Egypt and the Nile Delta from early prehistoric through to the early Old Kingdom periods. These papers highlight the significance and enormous progress of archaeological fieldwork in an area that was long considered an uninhabitable swampland in prehistoric times. Other papers report on new fieldwork at different sites in a largely unexplored region of the Egyptian Nile Valley - the Eastern Desert of Middle Egypt, where active mining on a very large scale has taken place raising questions about the organization and scale of such activities during the formative periods of Egyptian civilization. There are numerous contributions on archaeological evidence from sites in Upper Egypt and their material culture, many of which having been excavated long ago but offering the opportunity to raise new questions. Material culture from within and outside the Nile Valley, bioarchaeological data as well as modern theoretical approaches discussed in several papers, offer great potential for arriving at wider conclusions about specialized craft production, religious practice, interregional exchange, funerary cult, social organization, kingship, administration, state formation as well as music in early Egypt.
This volume is yet another exciting collection of latest research on the origins of Pharaonic Egypt and a must-have for any scholar interested in the archaeology of early civilizations.