At first glance this is a collection of rather unprepossessing little objects. Squares of ivory, with a small hole and hieroglyphic sign or two etched onto the surface. They’re not terribly big, just about the size of the museum’s number for the objects.

And that juxtaposition illustrates what they are – they are labels. Very very old labels with some of the first evidence for the use of hieroglyphs. They were found in Tomb U-j at Abydos, which had been looted in the distant mists of time but some of the labels remained.

It’s thought that they were attached to the various funerary goods that were buried with the tomb’s owner. There are numbers on some of them, others are thought to name towns – including what looks like the names of a couple of towns in the Delta region far to the north.

It’s not entirely certain whose tomb this is, but it probably belongs to a ruler called Scorpion – probably not the one with the famous macehead but an earlier one, who may’ve unified Upper Egypt around 3150 BCE.

These are now in the Cairo Museum, but I don’t have accession numbers for them.

See it on my photo site: https://photos.talesfromthetwolands.org/picture.php?/479/category/4

I’ve written about Egyptian writing on the blog before: https://talesfromthetwolands.org/2020/10/01/write-like-an-egyptian/

Jigsaw Puzzles:
easier: https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=1c8ebb4a5b53
harder: https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=03521a781453