UCL's Digital Egypt calls the Fayum Neolithic "the earliest securely attested full Neolithic culture in Egypt" and dates its sites to about 5200-4000 BCE. What stands behind the label, and what the source does not say.
PERIOD GUIDE · Egypt
The Neolithic in Egypt: between domestication and fishing
The Met's timeline dates the Neolithic cultures of Egypt to about 7000-4500 BCE: permanent settlements, domesticated plants and animals, and hunting and fishing alongside them. In the Fayum, according to UCL, the Neolithic culture continues to about 4000 BCE.
Approximately 7000-4500 BCEMove through the periods
Its place in the Egypt scheme
The whole scheme with this period marked; the periods before and after are its neighbours in the row. Boundaries follow the sources and are not to scale.
- The Neolithic in Egypt7,000-4,500 BCE
- The Predynastic period in Egypt4,500-3,100 BCE
- The Early Dynastic period in Egypt3,100-2,649 BCE
- The Old Kingdom of Egypt2,649-2,150 BCE
- The First Intermediate Period in Egypt2,150-2,030 BCE
- The Middle Kingdom of Egypt2,030-1,640 BCE
- The Second Intermediate Period in Egypt1,640-1,550 BCE
- The New Kingdom of Egypt1,550-1,070 BCE
- The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt1,070-712 BCE
- The Late Period in Egypt712-332 BCE
- Macedonian and Ptolemaic Egypt332-30 BCE
- Roman rule in Egypt30 BCE - 330 CE
- Byzantine rule in Egypt330-641 CE
- Early Islamic Egypt641-969 CE
- Fatimid Egypt969-1,171 CE
- Ayyubid Egypt1,171-1,252 CE
- Mamluk Egypt1,250-1,517 CE
The frame
On the Met's timeline for Egypt, 8000-2000 BCE, the "Neolithic cultures" are dated about 7000-4500 BCE. According to the same page, the earliest permanent settlements belong to this period, identified from the remains of huts, hearths, granaries and nonportable stone tools for grinding grains. People had begun to exploit domesticated plants and animals, but animal bones show that the hunting of birds, small game and fish remained important to the economy; tools of bone and ceramic vessels were used alongside stone tools. The site adopts this timeline's division of periods for Egypt, from the Neolithic to the Middle Kingdom, because it offers one consistent sequence for the whole span and the museum records on the site use the same period names. Source 1.
Boundaries and overlaps
The upper boundary, 4500 BCE, is the start of the Predynastic Period in the same source. UCL's Digital Egypt dates the sites of the Fayum Neolithic to about 5200-4000 BCE, so some five hundred years of that range already fall in the site's Predynastic period. The range is not trimmed: the Fayum stays in the Neolithic, because that is how the source defines it, and the overlap is stated explicitly. Merimde Beni Salama crosses the boundary too: the Met mentions it in the Neolithic entry and again in the entry for the Badarian Period (about 4500-3800 BCE). Before 7000 BCE the same timeline lists the Paleolithic cultures (about 500,000-7000 BCE), which have no page on this site. Sources 1, 2.
On this site
Two articles are placed in this period. "The Fayum Neolithic: what a 'full Neolithic' means" examines what is documented at the lakeshore sites - almost no building remains, but about 248 "fire-holes" and many grain silos - and what the source leaves undefined. "Merimde Beni Salama: a human face from the Delta" deals with a representation of a human face that the Met calls the earliest known example of sculpture from ancient Egypt, at a site also placed in the Predynastic period. The site has no dated museum objects from this period yet. Sources 2, 1.
Source
Sources and further reading
The research and references behind this page. Rights to external content remain with their owners.
- 1
Egypt, 8000-2000 B.C. (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, chronology)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · 2000 · Checked
- 2
Fayum Neolithic
University College London (Digital Egypt) · Checked