Two Dog Palette

myminifactory

From around 4400 BC stone palettes made of siltstone, providing a flat surface for grinding body pigments, were placed in ancient Egyptian burials. By 3300-3000 BC, they had evolved into ritual objects featuring images associated with kingship carved in shallow relief on both sides. The most famous examples discovered at Hierakonpolis in southern Egypt include the Narmer Palette now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and this specimen, the Two Dog Palette. Both artifacts are adorned with serpopards - felines with long snaking necks that encircle the central grinding area. On the Two Dog Palette, those serpopards lick the body of a gazelle. Similar fabulous creatures appear on contemporary objects from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). The head of one dog at the top of the palette is missing, and two drilled holes near its base indicate it was repaired in ancient times. On the reverse side, a mixture of fantastical and real wild animals occupy the left-hand portion of the scene where they attack native North African herbivores from above. At the top are lions, a serpopard, a leopard, a hyena, and a griffin with comb-like wings. Near the bottom is a long-tailed dog-like creature wearing a belt and playing an end-blown flute. Some of this imagery likely arrived in Egypt via trade routes, possibly as seal impressions on containers, whereupon exotic creatures were adopted by early Egyptian kings to express their divine status and power.