The Palette of Narmer
A ceremonial siltstone palette from Hierakonpolis carved around 3100 BCE, showing King Narmer on one face smiting a captured enemy with a mace and on the other reviewing decapitated captives, long read as an early record of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. The falcon-god Horus perches above a bound foe on the same face, holding a rope, and the king wears the white crown of Upper Egypt on one side and the red crown of Lower Egypt on the other. Found in 1898 in the Main Deposit of the temple along with the golden falcon and the Narmer macehead, it is one of the most analysed objects of