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.
