Pre-Dynastic Ivory & Bone Figures

Before Egypt’s first kings unified the Two Lands, local cultures along the Nile were already producing works of remarkable grace and imagination. The Predynastic Period (spanning roughly from 4500 to 3100 B.C.) was a time of experimentation and regional identity, when communities from Upper Egypt, particularly around Naqada, Abydos, and Hierakonpolis, evolved the symbols, rituals, and aesthetic ideals that would later define dynastic civilisation.

Among the most evocative survivals from this formative age are small carvings in ivory, bone, and stone. The artisans of the Naqada I–II phases (c. 4000–3400 B.C.) transformed the tusks of hippopotami and other materials into amulets, figurines, pins, and combs; objects that united the functional, the magical, and the beautiful. Animals such as hippopotami, gazelles, and bovids, as well as stylised human forms, populate this early sculptural world, revealing an emerging sense of proportion, motion, and sacred symbolism. These figures often served as personal adornments or ritual instruments, their smooth polish and careful incision inviting touch and reflection alike.

Understanding the Predynastic Period in Egyptology

The Predynastic Period refers to the long span of time in Egypt before the unification of the Two Lands under the first kings of Dynasty I, around 3100 B.C. It covers roughly two millennia of cultural and social development, from small Neolithic farming villages to the threshold of centralised monarchy. Egyptologists divide this era into archaeological phases (not political dynasties) based on changes observed in settlement patterns, pottery, burial customs, and artistic styles. These divisions allow scholars to trace how regional communities along the Nile gradually evolved into one of the world’s earliest states.

The Badarian Culture (c. 4400–4000 B.C.)

The Badarian marks the earliest well-defined culture of Upper Egypt. Centred around al-Badari in Middle Egypt, its people lived in small agricultural settlements and buried their dead in simple oval graves lined with mats. They produced fine black-topped red pottery, graceful in shape and polished to a mirror sheen, as well as small figurines in bone, ivory, and clay; some of the first stirrings of Egyptian sculptural art. Although still Neolithic in scale, the Badarian shows the beginnings of social differentiation, with some graves containing richer offerings, suggesting early hierarchies.

Naqada I – The Amratian Phase (c. 4000–3600 B.C.)

Named after finds at Naqada (ancient Nubt) and el-Amrah, this period reveals greater craft specialisation and long-distance trade. Pottery is decorated with painted river scenes, boats, and animals; stone vases and personal ornaments become more common. Communities expand southward and interact with neighbouring regions of Nubia and the Eastern Desert. The increasing use of ivory and bone for figurines and combs reflects both wealth and symbolic refinement. This is the world of the earliest Naqada women; graceful, stylised figures whose poses hint at ritual or devotional meanings.

Naqada II – The Gerzean Phase (c. 3600–3300 B.C.)

During Naqada II, Egyptian society becomes recognisably complex. Settlements grow into proto-urban centres, and regional elites begin to dominate trade and ritual life. The material culture shifts: pottery designs become more abstract, decorated palettes appear, and copper tools and weapons come into use. Motifs of boats, standards, and deities prefigure the royal iconography of later dynasties. Imported materials (lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, obsidian from Ethiopia, and cedar from Lebanon) testify to wide-ranging exchange networks. It is within this phase that the first hieroglyphic symbols begin to appear, foreshadowing writing.

Naqada III – The Protodynastic or Semainean Phase (c. 3300–3100 B.C.)

The final Predynastic stage, often called Naqada III or the Protodynastic Period, bridges prehistory and history. Regional rulers, such as those buried at Abydos (Umm el-Qaab), begin to assert kingship through monumental tombs, standards, and royal emblems. The famous Narmer Palette and Scorpion Macehead belong to this milieu, blending art with political propaganda. Administrative seals, writing, and elite workshops emerge; the instruments of a nascent state. By the close of Naqada III, Egypt is unified under a single ruler, ushering in Dynasty I and the Early Dynastic Period.

How Egyptologists Separate These Phases

The distinctions between Badarian, Naqada I, II, and III are not based on written history but on archaeological typology; especially ceramic styles, grave goods, and settlement stratigraphy. Excavators such as Flinders Petrie and Werner Kaiser pioneered the use of sequence dating, comparing layers of pottery forms and motifs to establish relative chronology long before absolute dating by radiocarbon was possible. Although boundaries between phases blur (cultures often overlapped), the Naqada sequence remains one of the clearest archaeological frameworks for any early civilisation.

In essence, the Predynastic Period traces Egypt’s transformation from a network of small agrarian chiefdoms to a unified kingdom. Its successive phases (Badarian simplicity, Amratian experimentation, Gerzean complexity, and Semainean consolidation) chart the emergence of pharaonic civilisation itself, centuries before the first king wrote his name in a serekh.

Bone Figurines from Naqada: The Birth of Gesture

Within Egypt, Predynastic ivories range from the abstract to the startlingly naturalistic. Figures from this time demonstrate how confident early carvers already were in modelling anatomy, while many Naqada-period pieces retain the schematic elegance of line and contour that would remain central to Egyptian art for millennia. Together, they mark a transition from local craft traditions to a shared visual grammar; a shift from village artistry to the refined idiom that would soon grace the temples and tombs of kings.

Beyond the Nile Valley, contemporary cultures were also experimenting with the expressive power of ivory. In Syria and Mesopotamia, artists conveyed presence through the motif of the watchful gaze: at Tell Brak, thousands of “eye idols” with enormous incised pupils filled a sanctuary devoted to divine observation; in Uruk, the celebrated Warka Head once gleamed with shell eyes and lapis lazuli pupils, the “blue-eyed” visage of a goddess. While the Egyptians pursued clarity of profile and the interplay of polished surface and shadow, their Near Eastern neighbours achieved luminosity through inlay; two different artistic languages responding to the same ancient impulse: to give form to spirit, and sight to the unseen.

Alongside the finely carved hippopotamus ivories of the Naqada culture, sculptors also worked in bone; a more common yet equally expressive material that reveals the same striving for elegance and meaning. An example of this Pre-Dynastic elegance is the bone figurine from Naqada in the British Museum (EA 32141), which embodies this early artistic sensitivity. Though only a few centimetres high, its elongated form, tilted head, and gently tapering body convey a surprising grace and psychological depth. The figure’s abstraction, reduced to essential lines and curves; anticipates later Egyptian ideals of proportion and serenity.

Together, these ivory and bone carvings form a unified corpus of Predynastic miniatures, in which artisans explored the human and animal form with remarkable sophistication long before Egypt’s first kings. Their shared traits; deliberate stylisation, careful polish, and subtle rhythm, suggest that these were not mere ornaments, but images imbued with spiritual presence. Whether used as amulets, offerings, or tokens of identity, they reveal how early Egyptians conceived the body as both symbol and vessel; a link between the visible and the divine.

These diminutive bone figures from Naqada rank among the earliest portrayals of the human form in Egyptian art, yet even at this formative stage they display a remarkable range of gesture and emotion. One figure (British Museum. EA 32139) stands erect with arms close to her sides and her head faintly inclined, her body reduced to a slender column of quiet poise. Another (British Museum. EA 32141) folds her arms beneath her breasts in the famous “I’m cold” stance; a posture echoed in contemporary figurines from the ancient Near East, where it was variously read as devotional, modest, or maternal.

Such variations are not artistic caprice but meaningful reflections of belief and purpose. The figure with arms lowered embodies composure and balance, mirroring the Egyptian ideal of enduring stillness that would later shape royal sculpture. The folded-arm type, by contrast, conveys a sense of inner life; self-containment, reverence, and perhaps the warmth of renewal after death. Through the simplest movements of the torso and hands, these artisans explored how gesture itself could suggest spirit.

A third example, EA 32140, bridges the two attitudes. One arm lies at her side in the earliest pose of repose, while the other rises delicately beneath the breast, creating a gentle asymmetry that animates the figure. The stance seems to mediate between restraint and vitality, an early experiment in expressing both power and vulnerability. In later Egyptian art, a hand drawn to the chest would become a mark of divinity or authority; here, the gesture feels newly invented; half instinct, half revelation. The contrast between the still and the lifted arm lends the piece a quiet rhythm, as if caught in the act of becoming.

Carved not from precious ivory but from bone, these figures possess an intimacy of scale and texture. The porous surface allowed soft modelling and preserved the imprint of the sculptor’s touch. Unadorned and bareheaded, they are stripped of attributes yet rich in implication; at once votive offering, ancestor, and archetype. In their simplicity lies the essence of Predynastic vision: the human body conceived as a vessel of order and vitality, poised between the tangible and the eternal.

Predynastic Egypt and the Art of the Ancient Near East

Many Predynastic Egyptian ivory and bone figures, including examples from Naqada and Abydos, possess deeply drilled or hollowed eyes; sockets that once held minute inlays of stone, shell, or glass. Though their glinting pupils have long vanished, the vacant recesses still lend these figures a haunting, sentient intensity. For the ancient viewer, such eyes were not mere decoration: they bestowed animation and awareness, transforming inert matter into a living image. Even at this early stage, Egyptian sculptors were exploring a profound concept; that vision itself was life, and that to endow a figure with sight was to bridge the mortal and the divine.

A comparable aesthetic emerged centuries later in southern Mesopotamia, epitomised by the Tell Asmar Hoard of votive statues (c. 2900–2600 B.C.). These alabaster worshippers, with their clasped hands and wide, shell-inlaid eyes, gazed eternally before their gods. Their unblinking devotion mirrors the spiritual energy of Egypt’s earlier ivories: both traditions sought to capture the living gaze, to create a presence capable of perception and prayer long after its maker had departed.

Although no direct contact can be proven between the artisans of Predynastic Egypt (Naqada I–II) and those of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, both belonged to a vast interaction sphere stretching from the Nile to the Tigris. The fourth millennium B.C. witnessed the growth of towns, workshops, and exchange networks that carried luxury materials such as ivory, lapis lazuli, obsidian, and shell (the very substances favoured for inlay) across the Levant and the Red Sea. The shared emphasis on the eye, whether hollowed for pigment and stone in Egypt or gleaming with shell and bitumen in Mesopotamia, reflects a parallel spiritual logic rather than imitation: that a statue could be “awakened” through its gaze, endowed with awareness, and granted the power to watch and to intercede.

This idea of the animate image had even deeper roots. The Urfa Man from southeastern Anatolia (Şanlıurfa), carved in sandstone around 9000 B.C., anticipates the same language of restraint and perception. With his tightly held hands and obsidian-inlaid eyes, he exudes the same poised intensity as the Naqada ivories created five millennia later. Though separated by vast time and geography, both works convey the same universal human impulse; to capture presence through simplicity: the upright body reduced to essential geometry, the hands drawn close to the heart, the eyes drilled deep to contain light.

Across millennia and materials, from the sandstone of Urfa, to the ivory of Naqada, to the alabaster of Tell Asmar, artists of the ancient Near East returned again and again to the same sacred vocabulary. In their art, the act of seeing became a metaphor for consciousness itself. The sculpted eye, whether inlaid, painted, or merely hollowed, stood as the earliest expression of awareness made visible; a testament to humanity’s enduring desire to give life to stone.

From as early as Naqada II (c. 3600 B.C.), Egypt was firmly linked to the Levantine and Mesopotamian sphere. Imported lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, cedar from Lebanon, and bitumen from the Persian Gulf reached the Nile through trade routes that crossed the Sinai and Red Sea. Egyptian artisans adopted and adapted motifs familiar in the east; boats with standards, rosettes, horned animals, and even architectural ideas such as niched façades, which appear on both Egyptian tombs and early Mesopotamian temples.

Culturally too, both civilisations evolved along parallel trajectories: the growth of city-like centres, the emergence of specialised crafts, the invention of writing systems, and the establishment of divine kingship. The similarities between Egyptian ivories and Mesopotamian votive figures (like the Tell Asmar statues) are part of this shared artistic vocabulary. Egypt was never isolated; the Nile was one river within a much larger Afro-Asiatic world connected by trade and ideology.