The Scorpion King

I was watching this movie the other day, and it reminded me of something I'd heard before regarding the real King Scorpion, who supposedly reigned before King Menes, the Dynastic Pharoh who has been believed to be the first Egyptian King for thousands of years. It is a fact that their records show him as the earliest in the first Dynasty, but this guy is suppposed to predate that. There was a dig at Hierakonpolis around the turn of the century at which a large quantity of early Dyanastic artifacts were found. The Narmer Palette is one of the most important, as it is this that archaeologists have used to determine that someone did indeed once rule Egypt before Menes. On this piece is the Scorpion Macehead and they hieroglyphs for King and Scorpion. The piece itself depicts a battle between King Scorpion and another King to unite all of Egypt. Here is that relief.


Among the findings both here and Abydos are bone tags that seemed to catalogue materials and riches. Most interestingly, however, the symbols used for the writing when dated go back almost two hundred years before sumerian cuniform, which is widely known and accepted as the oldest we have ever discovered. The History Channel has done an extensive study on this subject, and the video can be bought at any time. If anyone is interested, it is called "The Real Scorpion King". And just when we thought we had something nailed. Just goes to show, I guess. There is always more.

I've seen this program "The Real Scorpion King" on the History Channel a couple of times, and I will watch it again when it re-runs. It is very good and extremely educational.

Regarding the early writings by preDynastic Egyptians though, I believe that the idea is that the labels from that period were only pictograms, and had not yet been put to use as an alphabet. Hence the persistence of the idea of cuneiform being the "oldest" form of written language.

Harte

Perhaps that's all it is. Written language being defined as one containing an alphabet, as opposed to one that conveys the point needing to come across. If this is the case, then I suppose one would have to default the Sumerian origins. But then, if we went with the concept that written language is anything inscribed that could be used to communicate, then we could for all intents and purposes consider even cave drawings as written language. Good point. Still, the concept of an preDynastic Egyptian King is interesting. I'm going to do a little delving and see if there has been anything new since the airing of that program, I believe it has been a few years. If they could find a burial mound for King Scorpion, then perhaps excavations nearby might have revealed even more. I'll post more on this topic as it progresses.

As far as I remember, it was thought that the jars that those "tags" were attatched to were a form of tax and the tags were like a receipt or form of proof that you paid your taxes. Also, I do remember that they were only single pictures and no alaphabet had yet been found. I do beleive that they were, at the time, trying to figure out if there was, in fact, a working alphabet made by these people. In the show though they did refer to this discovery as proof of an earlier form of writing. I'll see what I can find.

Okay, here's some new info: A couple named John and Deborah Darnell made a discovery in an area called Gebel Tjauti of a protodynastic tableau that they call the scorpion tableau. The inscription is thought to be possibly the oldest document in history. Apparently the tableau is very worn and has some graffiti on it but you can still make out some of the inscription. It is much like the scorpion mace head, depicting the scorpion king with his mace over a captive prisoner. John Darnell thinks this is to commemorate the king's victory over Naqada. The tableau also has an image of a bird eating a snake. This is thought to be Horus(the falcon) defeating Set (the snake) showing the scorpion kings victory over Naqada whose patron god was Set. The symbol of the bird and the snake later evolved into a generalized symbol for victory.
Ahah, okay I found out that I was right about them thinking the tags were tax receipts here's the website: www.archaeology.org...
Alright, thats all I have for now.