The period from 5000 to 3400 BC was characterized by the improved preparation of stone tools and weapons to suit an increasingly sedentary existence.
With an increase in settled farming, bringing an increase in economic security and leisure there was a marled rise in population. Arts and crafts began to flourish.
What is known as the Naqada culture, overlapping with the Badarian culture developed over a span of nearly a thousand years – from 4000 BC to the beginning of the dynastic period. This culture is clearly distinguished from the other cultures of the Nile valley, and in the course of centuries it either ousted, engulfed, or incorporated them.
Ultimately this process of cultural encroachment culminated in political unification and incipient statehood.
The Naqada culture of Upper Egypt is named after the largest known Predynastic site, Naqada, excavated by W. M Flinders Petrie in 1894 – 1895. Naqada was situated within the loop of the Nile north of Luxor where the river most closely approached the Red Sea. Some of the earliest settlers may have set up camp on levees at the edge of the river.
The Naqada period was first divided into three phases by the British Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, who explored the site in 1894, into three sub-periods:
Naqada I: also called Amratian (after the cemetery near El-Amrah – flourished from 4000 to 3500 BC).
Naqada II: it was known as Gerzean (after the cemetery near Gerzeh) c. 3500-3200 BC. Simple, egalitarian community evolved a stratified society with an exploitative elite increasingly distinct from the rest of the population.
Naqada III: Semainean (after the cemetery near Es-Semaina). The last Predynastic phase, culminated in the unification of the Egyptian state and the creating of ancient Egyptian civilization.
Naqada culture in Egypt
