Badarian Culture: Early Farmers of Upper Egypt

The Badarian culture was the earliest known farming culture of Upper Egypt, flourishing along the Nile from about 4400 to 4000 BC. Named after the El-Badari district between Asyut and Sohag, it is known mainly from cemeteries that held fine rippled pottery, cosmetic palettes, ivory figurines and some of Egypt’s first copper objects. It stands at the beginning of the long sequence that led, through the Naqada culture, to the first pharaohs.

Discovery

The culture was identified by the British archaeologist Guy Brunton, working for Flinders Petrie’s British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Between 1922 and 1925 he excavated cemeteries in the El-Badari area on the east bank of the Nile and found graves older than the Predynastic material Petrie had already recorded at Naqada.

Gertrude Caton-Thompson joined the work and excavated the settlement site of Hemamieh, where layered deposits confirmed that Badarian remains lay below those of the Naqada culture. Their joint report, The Badarian Civilisation, was published in 1928. Later work at nearby Mostagedda and Matmar added many more graves.

Dating and origins

Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates place the Badarian culture mainly between about 4400 and 4000 BC, although some researchers argue that it began several centuries earlier. Its exact relationship to the even less well-known Tasian material from the same area is still debated.

Farming reached Egypt from south-west Asia, with domestic wheat, barley, sheep and goats appearing in the Nile Valley in the sixth and fifth millennia BC. In northern Egypt, farming villages are known from the Faiyum and Merimde Beni Salama. The Badarians also show links with the herding cultures of the eastern desert and the Sahara, which was then wetter than today.

Daily life

The Badarians lived in small, probably seasonal settlements on the edge of the floodplain, with light huts and storage pits. They grew emmer wheat and barley, kept cattle, sheep and goats, and fished and hunted along the river. Grinding stones and sickle flints show the importance of cereals.

Their craftsmanship was high. The finest Badarian pottery has walls only a few millimetres thick, with a combed or rippled surface that was burnished to a shine. Many pots are “black-topped”: red or brown below and black around the rim, an effect created during firing.

People also made slate palettes for grinding malachite and other minerals into eye paint, ivory combs and spoons, stone vessels and beads of glazed steatite. A few graves held small copper beads and pins, mostly made by hammering native copper. Female figurines in ivory and clay are among the earliest human images from Egypt.

Burial customs

Most of what is known about the Badarians comes from their graves. The dead were laid in shallow oval pits in a contracted position, usually on their left side with the head to the south, facing west. Bodies were often wrapped in mats or animal skins.

Grave goods included pottery, palettes, jewellery and tools. Some graves were noticeably richer than others, which suggests early differences in status. Animals, including cattle, sheep and dogs, were sometimes buried wrapped like humans. The western orientation of the dead foreshadows later Egyptian beliefs that linked the west with the land of the dead.

Trade and contacts

Several materials in Badarian graves did not come from the Nile Valley itself. Shells from the Red Sea, turquoise, malachite and steatite point to contacts with the Eastern Desert and Sinai, while ivory came from elephants or hippopotamuses. These goods probably passed along chains of exchange between neighbouring groups rather than through organised long-distance trade.

The Badarians were not isolated villagers. Their pottery and stone tools share features with those of herders in the Eastern Desert and in Nubia to the south, and some researchers see the culture as a blend of local Nile traditions with influences from mobile pastoralists. How far it spread is still being studied: Badarian-style material has been reported from sites well beyond El-Badari, including in the Eastern Desert, but the core of the culture remains the stretch of the Nile Valley in Middle Egypt.

Legacy

The Badarian culture was followed in Middle and Upper Egypt by the Naqada I phase, starting around 4000 BC. Many traditions continued without a break: black-topped pottery, cosmetic palettes, contracted burials and a growing emphasis on grave goods.

Because the Badarian period marks the first clear appearance of settled farming, herding and elaborate burial in Upper Egypt, it is often seen as the opening chapter of Predynastic Egypt. It shows that the foundations of Egyptian civilisation were laid more than a thousand years before the unification of the country.

Timeline

• c. 5000–4500 BC: Farming spreads in northern Egypt and the Nile Valley.
• c. 4400–4000 BC: Main period of the Badarian culture in Upper Egypt.
• c. 4000 BC: Naqada I culture develops in the same region.
• 1922–1925: Guy Brunton excavates Badarian cemeteries at El-Badari.
• 1924–1925: Gertrude Caton-Thompson excavates the settlement at Hemamieh.
• 1928: Publication of The Badarian Civilisation.

Why it matters

The Badarian culture is the oldest well-known farming society of Upper Egypt. Its thin, polished pottery, cosmetic palettes and carefully arranged graves reveal a creative and increasingly complex society, and many of its customs passed directly into the cultures that created ancient Egypt.