Hierakonpolis, Egypt: The Significance Of The Palette
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The palette is from Hierakonpolis, Egypt around the year of c.3000-2920 B.C.E. The palette was discovered amid a collection of sacred implements ritually buried in a deposit within an early temple in Hierakonpolis. The Palette is a very valuable piece which is unable to leave the country due to being one of the most important artifacts from the beginning of Egyptian civilization. This beautifully crafted piece of siltstone is decorated on both faces and features detailed low relief. The scenes on the palette include a king, who is shown on each face with his sandal bearer. Also featured are creatures including serpopards which are leopards with long, snaky necks who are being controlled by a pair of attendants. The name of the king is written in hieroglyphics within a squared element representing a palace front and is shown as a catfish and a chisel. There are many theories suggesting what the scenes mean on this palette. Some of which interpret a battle scene as a historical record of the…show more content… The importance is also implied through several reasons. One of which is, limited amounts of plates such as this one were discovered in a controlled excavation. Secondly, there is a quantity of reserved and iconographic appearances happening on the palette that remain conservative in Egyptian two-dimensional art for the following three millennia. This is shown through the way that the figure is represented, the scenes organized in regular horizontal zones and the use of hierarchical scale to imply relative significance of the individuals. There are many other palettes that were created for multiple purposes, some of which served the purpose of being a ground for grinding and mixing cosmetics and possibly had images of animals, while others similar to the Narmer, focused on human