Ubaid - pannous/hieros GitHub Wiki

To understand the development of the first dynasties in Egypt one needs to understand the Mesopotamian Ubaid phenomena, the developments in Susa and Mehrgarh and the subsequent Eridu and Uruk periods.

Contrary to early narratives, the Ubaid 0 culture(s) seems to have developed mainly from older Halaf and Hassuna cultures with special importance to the local stratigraphy of Tell Brak, Zaidan and Gawra. It is paramount to distinguish the multiple Ubaid phenomena which expressed (super)regional features that were shared with different regions of the Ubaid horizon(s):

  • Stamp seals from Anatolia to Tell Bakun excluding southern Mesopotamia!
  • Ophidian figurines in southern Mesopotamia and western Iran absent in Syria.
  • Tattoos and scaring: data too scarce, customs may be reflected in figurines.
  • Body ornaments: beads, flanged disks (earrings?), labrets proven lip tokens
  • Head-shaping cranial modifications: Levante tradition different to new Iranian circumferential type
  • Clay nails, mullers, sickles
  • burial practices (sitting, extended) communal cemeteries replace in-house ancestors, later individualized
  • Tripartite houses selectively adapted into older Anatolian traditions.
  • Niced and buttressed public buildings π“Š… later very prominent in Egypt 𓀨
  • Cooking habits: hearth inside, oven outside
  • Feasting / Serving: clear guest - host architecture with hidden rooms
  • Storage: pottery in the south, more perishable fabrics in the north
  • Local pottery styles: Hajji Mohammad exclusively Ubaid 1-3 in the south
  • Pottery types: pot, bowl, beaker, basin, pouring jar, globular storage jar, tripod(!)
  • Lithic extraction/fabrication/import: flint from rivers, obsidian from far trade, complex patterns
  • Lithic artifacts: cores, blades, scrapers, piercers, borers, burin, notch, chopper, hook, hoe, pick, rod, debris, denticulates
  • Weapons: mostly absent except a few arrow heads in Ras Shamra III and Kenan Tepe (hunting)
  • Beginning of secondary products revolution: meat before milk before wool (age ratio of sheep)
  • tabular scrapers from Sinai / Negev as butchering / shearing knives?
  • Spindle whorls getting smaller ⇨ finer fabrics
  • Wool sheep after the Chalcolithic, clearly distinguished type in 3000 BC text
  • Workshops: distinguished work areas (pottery in Tell Shamali…)
  • Flail π“‹Ύπ“Œ… and crown π“‹‘ on figurine king markers (only part NOT whitened ⇔ π“‹”)
  • Swastika on Samarra bowls and Tell-i Bakun figurines
  • copper sun disks as amulets in susa