Illustrative model — an approximation, not a scan of the original object.
c. 3300 – 3200 BCE
Gebel el-Arak Knife
Late Naqada II.
- Material
- Flint blade, hippopotamus-ivory handle
- Dimensions
- Length c. 25.5 cm
- Findspot
- Attributed to Gebel el-Arak near Nag Hammadi — provenance uncertain
- Discovery
- Acquired by the Louvre in 1914 on the Cairo antiquities market; its archaeological context is unknown.
- Held by
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Inventory number
- E 11517
A ceremonial knife with a finely carved ivory handle: one side shows combat and boats; the other a man grasping two lions.
The "master of animals" motif and the man’s appearance resemble imagery from Mesopotamia and Elam, so the knife is cited as evidence of contact between the regions.
Certainty: Uncertain
Because the knife was bought on the market, its findspot rests on a dealer’s account and cannot be verified.
- Musée du Louvre, Paris — Department of Egyptian Antiquities “Gebel el-Arak knife, inventory E 11517”
- Béatrix Midant-Reynes (2000) “The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Pharaohs” Blackwell
Certainty: Probable
Its decoration is cited among the evidence for exchange of ideas and imagery between Egypt and Southwest Asia in the late fourth millennium BCE.
Scholarly note: The nature of this contact — direct trade or intermediaries — is debated.
- David Wengrow (2006) “The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC” Cambridge University Press