Biblical Archaeology From the Ground Down: Narmer Palate

Welcome to our episode of Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, presented by Bible Interact and hosted by Dr. George Sparks. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of the Bible from leading experts in the field of archaeology. Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. David Graves, an experienced biblical archaeologist and CEO of Electronic Christian Media. I'm here today with another exciting episode on our Archaeology Discoveries channel, where we discuss important archaeological artifacts related to the Bible. Thanks for watching, and be sure to like and subscribe to our channel. Well, welcome today. This is Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact. My name is Dr. George Sparks. Special guest is Dr. David Graves, Ph.D. We got a very interesting subject today. I think if you don't find it a little bit of humor in this, well, we're going to try. Two academics trying to have a sense of humor. We're going to talk about, were there dinosaurs in Egypt? And we're going to actually use an Egyptian relic, an artifact, for a type of example. And the reason for this is that we were cruising through the internet and actually saw articles using Egyptian hieroglyphs as well as artifacts, and having those as illustrations that there were actually dinosaurs. Maybe they were aliens, but I don't think they're dinosaurs. This is what we're going to talk about. Sorry to laugh before we get going, folks. So anyway, we're going to give our points of view, and we're going to look at an Egyptian artifact. And also in front of me are a couple authentic dinosaur eggs from the Gobi Desert. So paleontologists have suggested that these dinosaurs, the eggs right here in front of me as a little small cluster of two, are actually around 65 million years old. Now don't turn off the channel just because I said 65 million. Don't get scared. Stick with us, folks, because this is really not about these dinosaur eggs. I just want to let you know that we do believe, at least, in dinosaur eggs. What do you think, Doctor? Well, we certainly have empirical evidence of the dinosaurs, and you've got a couple of nice samples right there in front of you. But what we're going to talk about is, I want to make sure we can fade this, get this in the photo right here, is the Namur Palate. We're going to give a better illustration of this. Let me move the eggs. I want this for breakfast anyway. So anyway, this is a palette, and when we say palette, it's a cosmetic palette used to put on probably like an eye shadow or what have you. You can see it right here in the center, a little depression, and this is where the makeup would be. And of course, the Egyptians wore, even men, a type of eye shadow for a number of different reasons to block the sun, possibly keep the flies away and different types of other insects, of course, and they would dab it right here and put it on their eyes. But understand that this is just a copy that we can show you because the authentic one is probably four times this size. It's pretty huge. So with that introduction, Dr. Graves, what do you have for us today? Well, we're going to take a look at the tablet itself, the palettes, and some of the different parts of the palette and explain the significance of it and what's kind of going on there. It's interesting, maybe you should explain the pyramid and the dinosaurs behind you there on your... Oh, wow. That's right. You know, I just... Did I move my chair? There it is. There you go. I thought this slide was appropriate for the discussion today because now it's hard not for us to kind of chuckle a little bit, but however, there are millions of people that actually take this very, very seriously. So here we have... I'm not a dinosaur person, so of course here he's bringing supplies in to build the pyramids. So there are the pyramids back behind here and the Egyptian on the top helping to direct the... I guess that's a brontosaurus. If I'm not, folks, remember I told you I don't know anything about dinosaurs, but this is what the photo is about. So here they are. The dinosaurs are helping bring all those tons of stones to the pyramids to help build it. So that's what the slide is. Hope everybody has a good time today with this podcast. All right, Doctor. Well, the thing to note first, I'm an archaeologist, I'm not a paleontologist, nor am I a geologist. And a lot of people always ask me about dinosaurs and I'm digging in the ground and I'm not a paleontologist. That's a totally different field. But the fact we have some dinosaur eggs and there's no doubt they existed. The only issue is where do you fit them into the biblical record? And it's called the Narmer Pallet. Have archaeologists found evidence of dinosaurs with that pallet? My answer, of course, to that is no. But it's a good clickbait. It's something we can have fun with. But I find the long neck creature in the middle of the pallet very interesting and intriguing. We'll talk about that a little bit. But I don't believe it's a dinosaur. Right. Okay. Well, that's your opinion, though. Oh, yes. Some people do think it is possibly, but we'll talk about that in a few moments. They're dated around 3200 to 3000 BC. So that puts it about 5,000 years ago. So that's pretty old. And it's one of the very earliest evidences we have of hieroglyphs. There's a couple of other names for it. The Narmer Victory Pallet and the Great Hieracopolis Pallet. There's the recto view and the verso view. That's the front and the back. Coins are named similarly. Reverso and obverse. That's here for the pallet. Here's a drawing of it that gives you a little better idea of how it would look because it's a black pallet and it's hard to see. But here we have all the different pictures depicted on it. We're going to take a look at those. So the engraving depicts a victorious Egyptian king unifying the land under his rule. Traditionally this king was known as Mernes. Mernes, the first king of the early dynastic period. And he united the upper and lower Egypt through conquest. Remember the upper and lower Egypt, the Nile River flows from inland out to the coast of the Mediterranean. So you have to reverse in your head the upper and the lower parts of Egypt. We have an Egyptian historian, Manentho, he names it Narmer. One way we'll see that his name is actually on the pallet. Sir Flinders Petrie was the first to associate Mernes with Narmer and claimed that they were a single ruler and they were the same individuals. According to Flinders Petrie, Mernes was the honorary name, meaning he who endures while Narmer was a personal name. Egyptians had a number of names, usually three or four, personal name and their royal name and honorary name. So not unusual for them to have different names. The association of the name Mernes with a larger ruler would pose no problem. He could have given the same honorific name when he became king and they would just give him that honorary name. He was the first king of the first dynasty in Egypt, so he was one of the very earliest pharaohs likely created to celebrate his military victories over lower Egypt. It indicates the king of the upper Egypt conquering the lower Egypt and then unifying the two of them. But modern scholarship doubts this was actually accomplished by just one king, a lot of debate over that. The dates for the unification, again 3150 BC and as late as 2680 BC, so one of the early pharaohs. It's usually accepted that the date for unification is 3150 and then there's a lot of fighting back and forth. Every king of the second dynasty had to contend with some kind of civil unrest or outright civil war and inscriptions from the time indicate that the conflict was between the upper and lower Egypt, not some foreign antagonist coming in. So if Narmer did unite the land of Egypt, he most likely did so through military conquest and if he united the land peacefully, he would have probably had to hold it together through repeated conquests such as the one depicted on the Narmer palate. Well we're going to take a look at the palate itself in more detail, kind of close-ups. The name of the guy is right on the top part of the recto, it has his name, the catfish in the top is Nar in Egyptian and the chisel in the bottom is Mar, so Narmer is where we get the name from in Egyptian, that's why they call it the Narmer palate and it's some of the earliest forms of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Here are some of the symbols that are on it, the catfish, the chisel and of course we have the falcon and some other designs for the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The middle section has a picture here of a pharaoh pulling the hair of an enemy and he's got the mace of course behind him. It's colorized here and we have Hathor, the mother god, here on the bull at the top. The falcon, the human arm in the god Horus, shown holding a rope binding the foe's head. You see the foe right here, the head of the foe cut off in a marsh with the reeds, likely personification of the lower part of Egypt. We have an impotent foe here, the sign may name his region of origin as well, so where the slave had come from. The bottom, dead foes with a walled city, perhaps a personification of the city. On the left side here, the mace, we have a sandal bear carrying his shoes and now we're wearing the white crown of the upper Egypt. That's why we know it's upper and lower Egypt because of the crowns that they're wearing. The bull tail here and the royal beard, they wear the kilt associated with the goddess Bat. There are some of the symbols we have on this side of the palette. Want to say anything, George, on that? Okay, what I'll do is I'll just put mine two cents in at the end when you get done here. Oh, okay, no problem. There's the slain enemies. I don't know if you want to say anything about that at all, but here we have the vocabulary of power. Here's both sides of it. On this side, you see the crown of lower Egypt here and this is the crown of upper Egypt that he's wearing here. Beheaded enemies are all laying out here in the field and the circular depression here surrounding by feline heads. This is what we said at the beginning, kind of looks like a couple of dinosaurs, their ropes around their necks, they're being restrained. Probably mythical creatures because the Egyptians had mythical creatures all over the place and all the gods were represented as mythical creatures with the bull on the top here and the falcon and the crocodile. And we even see it, of course, on the Babylonian Ishtar Gates where you have a dragon on that one as well as the lion. So they're full of all kinds of beautiful images. There's the crown of the lower Egypt and beheaded enemies, close-up of that. See people laying there with their heads between their legs, their heads chopped off. There's a close-up of the feline heads. They kind of look like lion heads, feline lion heads, long necks, such as you would see in sort of a giraffe or something. Then you have this creature with the bottom that looks like a lion's body and a curled tail like a monkey. But as George had mentioned earlier, they probably use this to put their makeup on. They could have also used it to do some painting with because they mixed their paints when they would do their painting of things like the caves. And then we have a bull here and we have an enemy being trampled. We have a fortified city here. So it's just basically the redoing of the conquests of this particular pharaoh, uniting the lower and upper Egypt, either with peaceful means or through a conquest. All right, so that's the end of my brief presentation. Did you want to go back to any of those close-ups, George? If you would, let's go back to where you had both sides of the stela up at the same time. There you go. Now, if everybody can see that, and so the pharaoh being represented as, you could say the bull. We'll see on the, you know, if I say the reverse side, on the very bottom of the next stela, so the bull's there several different times. But anyway, you can see that the pharaoh is placing on the top and also on the bottom, yes. But we can see that the pharaoh is putting his enemies under submission. Yes, under his feet. And it looks like on where the pharaoh has the mace head, the mace, and he's holding it up and he's smiting the foe. The foe has a beard. It looks, I'm just going to say Asiatic or Canaanite because the Egyptians were clean shaven. So it looks like a foreigner. And I'll just say that's what it looks like to me. All right. Then you have the falcon on top of the reeds representing, again, a portion of Egypt, which would be, this one is what? Upper Egypt? Lower Egypt? This one's Lower Egypt? This is Upper Egypt, this one. Okay. Yeah, that's right. The reeds are always Upper Egypt. So the horse, so where he's, looks like he's smiting the foe could possibly be in the upper delta region. And he also, in the form of Horus, has that individual under submission because he's got a cord wrapped through his nose. Yeah. Well, George, the Upper Egypt is down in the southern part of Egypt. Okay, yes, yes. So then we go down to the bottom where those are some more slain enemies under his feet. So obviously he's putting his enemies under his feet. Now I'm getting confused with upper and lower. But you got it right there because it says on the next one, Namur, Crown, Lower Egypt. So Lower Egypt, there's going to be to the north. So this is going to be the delta region. That's the delta region. That's right. And the crown is very, very distinctive. We know, you know, those are the crowns of the Upper and Lower Egypt and they're a classic and they haven't changed. So that's how we can tell. And in this one, he's got the foes beheaded and their heads are, I'll just say, decapitated. And they're between the feet. So interesting. That set me off on a lesson. Like I thought, well, how did the Egyptians dispense with people that were troublemakers or enemies or nemesis? So I looked that up real quick just for the fun of it and see what they did. I didn't, I wasn't a real, I didn't realize some of this at all. All right. One way was they impaled them. Did you know that? I don't think I've ever seen that. Impaled. Next one, buried alive. Buried alive. Of course, the one we see right here is decapitated, was on the list too, decapitated. And the fourth one, then of course, this isn't all of us. The ones I thought were kind of like, I didn't, I didn't know this. Fed to the crocodiles. Yeah, yeah. The impaling ones actually on the, on the Assyrian reliefs in the British museum depicted from the conquest of Lachish. And you can see them all impaled on sticks. So it was a common practice, but yeah, feeding them to crocodiles and burying them alive and cutting their heads off. Those were all the same kind of things you would, I guess, think of in the horrors of war. Even in some modern capacities. So the, so here in the palette where it shows the enemies being beheaded, well, that's an example of, you know, what I've actually read as well. I don't know if, did you, this image right here looks like there might be a head impaled on a stick. I don't know if that's a standard that they're carrying there. I didn't, I can't see. From what I read, they were standards. Okay. And it could be areas in which the king has conquered or has represented. Of course, what the palette is really doing is bragging. This is like, this is what the king did. He conquered both upper and lower Egypt. I think the problem, the troublemakers, and I'll get to my conclusion on this one. I think for the king to unify both upper and lower Egypt, he had to take care of his problems in the North by the Delta. Yeah. And the reason why I'm saying this towards the very bottom, you got the bull coming against what looks like a fortification. Now, if this is going to happen in history, we know what date it's going to be around 3100 BCE, 3100, somewhere in that time period. Right. So I'm looking around some archaeological records and I'm looking at the design of the formation of that fortress. And you can see towers separated by a distance. So they have, it looks like a horseshoe, but also there's towers. Those are towers right there, yes. So I went to what I suspected someplace close, someplace that might be well fortified in the early Bronze Age, 3100 BCE, that might be a problem if you want to unify the upper and lower Egypt. Somebody that might control the trade route other than the Egyptians, maybe somebody that could go by the trade route. And you could say, could take land. With land, you're also going to have crops, productions, resource materials. Who would threaten that to unify the north? So I went to the biggest fortress that I could find in the northern area, I think it's towards the upper Negev, is Arad. And I, okay, so I started reading the records of the early excavations of Tell Arad. It does have early Bronze Age fortified wall, which is pretty intense. And it does have a number of towers, kind of in the same positions. Now just understand that this is hypothesis, but interesting. Also, I was reading some of the artifacts, antiquities that they found in situ. And on one of the ostracons, guess whose name was there? Namer. Yeah. So it could be, because we have a wall city that dates to that time period, they are in the northern territory, could pose a problem to Egypt, that these are maybe people that he had to put under submission. Maybe they failed to pay tribute. We don't know. It doesn't tell us. But it looks like he had to put somebody under submission. And why would he say that? Why would it be on the palate if you just have to unify Egypt? It looks like he had a foe to fight. At least somebody he thought was threatening the unification and his seat as the pharaoh. And of course, many Egyptologists, I'm not going to say all, but many believe that it this individual, Namer, that unified Egypt. So we're talking about the first, what we call the first dynasty, I believe. Now, would you agree with that or not? I don't know. I think so. I mean, apparently the Egyptologists are debating as to whether it was a peaceful takeover, a unification, or a violent one. But I think the pictures we have on this indicate it was a rather brutal takeover. And to unify the north and the south. But it probably didn't happen all under just one individual either. It probably happened over a period of time with a number of these pharaohs that had come to power and had gradually brought the upper and lower Egypt together. But again, I'm no Egyptologist. And these are just my hypothesis. But it's a really, really interesting artifact. I titled it the Vocabulary of Power. I think that captures it well, that this palette encapsulates the vocabulary, the language, and the pictures. You might also call it the visuals of power, not just the vocabulary. But nonetheless, quite interesting. And conquering your enemies was a common practice. And they did lots of these in the ancient Near East. So as far as these two mythical creatures being dinosaurs, in my personal opinion, they're not. Me too. The Egyptians use a lot of, you could say, half human, half animal, or bodies of a human, the heads of some type of an animal, whether it be a horse or a crocodile or the hippo or the falcon, to represent their gods and goddesses. And if we visited, I'm sure you probably visited the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Great Pyramid of Giza. And one of the first things you see is the Sphinx, a lion with the head of a possible pharaoh. And I don't think anybody suggests that that was really a creature that existed. Somebody could probably come up with some fabrication that said, at one time, it was the body of a whatever, a unicorn, and then later they chiseled the head of a pharaoh on it. You know, people come up with whatever. You can't find all the angles that somebody can come up with for a theory. But I think, as a sound interpretation of this particular artifact, it's strictly an early unification or the first unification of Upper and Lower Egypt being depicted. And it shows that the king had to put in a certain group of people under submission to fulfill his agenda of unifying Egypt. Yes. And here we see that the pharaoh could be represented as a person. He could be represented as a bull. He could be represented as the falcon or Horus, if you would, Horus. So, this artifact also shows us that the Egyptians did use mythical symbols of, let's say, the bull as power. Like, at the very bottom of the stela, you see the bull, and he's trampling over the enemy. Very, very common, even in the biblical narrative, right? Put your enemy under your feet. Yes. You hear it again and again and again. And we actually see it here in this Egyptian artifact that this is just a very, you could say, common way and expression of a victory, of submission. Yes, this is a cosmetic palette. Those are not dinosaurs. That's just two mythical creatures representing the unification of Egypt. You can see how their heads are kind of like intertwined. And also, next to them are probably two servants that have them under submission. The idea of submitting the upper and lower Egypt to unify it. It's also not just telling us a huge, you know, epic in history, but it has a use to it. It's a cosmetic palette. So, it's kind of neat. Yeah, it certainly is. You said it well. It's a representation of their history, something significant. It'd be like putting out on the Magna Carta on a palette for us, or pictures of the Civil War for those of you that are from the United States. Okay. Hey, Doctor, why don't you share with us? I see your bookshelf behind you. You want to share with one of your books today? Okay, sure. I'll do that. Yeah, I have one here. It's the, if we can see that, cultural background of the Old Testament. Okay. And it's got a photograph there of a four-room house from Jordan on it. And inside, there's lots of, it's in full color, lots of photographs. It has the cultural background, so you can see, has the outline of every book of the Old Testament, the date of the writing. It has also a brief introduction, deals with the author of each book, and then it goes into the cultural background that might pertain to that particular chapter. Such things as we have the weapons. Okay, there we go. All right. We have those indicating in Joshua's time, the kind of weaponry that would be used, the cultural background time. And that's pretty accurate. Matter of fact, let me show people right here. I'm going to get my showcase. Uh, no, I don't have one of those. Although I was privileged to actually. Oh, you got the mace, dagger. Oh, the build, the duck build, duck build, axe. Wait a second, wait for it. Oh, yeah, it's okay. You had it in your photo there too, kind of like an epsilon axe. Yeah, it's a duck build axe, yeah. So you're, so there it is in his book there, the one with the hand, long handle on it, the very bottom. So there you go, folks. So his book is very accurate, and this is the actual artifact, and there it is in his book. So I do recommend that he's got a series of books, and they're very good for study material, and also to get a copy and give it to the pastor of the church, or at least let the church be aware of this type of information, these books, so that they can, if I don't have all your books, but I got a stack of them over here, and people, I use them for resources. I told Dr. Graves, I said, I use them for resources, but I never give them credit, so because it makes me look really smart. So if we have any narcissistic pastors out there, then there you go. Could you hold up that again for us real quick, your book, and it's called The Cultural Background of the Old Testament, and there you go, folks. And just to let you know, I worked in the museums for like over 20 years now, and I just showed you an artifact that is represented in his book as being Egyptian, the Epsilon, or he's called the Duxville, and the thing is, is that, and I had one right here, so that was right on, and then, and that was just random, you know, I could have called you on this, but you were right. See, now, like I said, that's not, but no, you were right. I gotta admit. Yeah, that's based all on the archaeology and the research for many, many years. So the NAMR palette, I can't get it all on because I'm too short. I gotta make it match. See, there it is. So anyway, well, like we said, this is kind of what it looks like, except this is just a smaller version, much, much smaller. Here you see the two creatures in the front, mythical creatures. You know what? For a neck to be that long, maybe they're giraffes. Well, I wondered at the time, but a combination giraffe and monkey and lion and, but I didn't If you had a neck that long, you'd tip over. I didn't deal with it in any of my books. It's one that didn't directly relate to the Old Testament, so I didn't put it in, but it's a very unique and interesting artifact that was fun to talk about today. It is fun to talk about because people do believe that dinosaurs helped construct the pyramids. Now, I would think that we did a nice job on trying to debunk that theory, but, but Dr. Graves, it still doesn't mean the aliens didn't do it. Well, you never know, you know, you got these aliens coming from these Canaanite aliens, you know? Well, you know, that's a different definition of aliens, isn't it? I guess we do have aliens in here for the Egyptians, these foreigners entering into their land or whatever. Here they are, these used to be aliens, but, but there you have it, folks, the Namur Palate. And of course, you get on the web, and if you have, if you've never heard of it before, you don't, it's not talked about a lot, but it's extremely interesting, very early part of Egyptian history. And if we say we give it around 3,000 years, then it's going to be around, let's say, 500 years earlier than the pyramids. That's all. Yeah, that's all. I don't know when they first started coming up with hieroglyphs. This has got to be very, very close to that time period. Yeah, these are some, some of the earlier, earliest ones. Yeah, but anyway, as we, all right, doctor, thank you for your time. I really appreciate that. Yeah. And sharing your, your book with us. And I do recommend people, before we close out, it's called Christian Electronic Media, right? That they can go to Amazon. Electronic Christian Media, ECM, yeah. And then we can get this as well. Did you say you just went on Amazon with them? I thought you said. Yeah, the books are all on Amazon. Because I thought you said you had to adjust pictures so it would fit, so that, you know, you do all this technical stuff. I just agree with you, like a bobblehead in a car, because I don't get it. But I'll tell you what, folks, I got stacks of his books over here. And I do use them as resource material. And I do recommend them to the listening audience and also to the churches. And I don't think it matters what denomination. This is archaeology. So if you're Baptist or Lutheran or Methodist, Pentecostal, it's all great stuff. All right. Doctor, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. You're welcome, George. Always good to be with you. All right. Thanks, people. Hey, once again, everybody, don't forget to like and subscribe. Everything's going great. We're up to around 51,000 subscribers due to you and also your interest in the program. And it's really appreciated. Thank you for your time.