Battlefield Palette

The carving shows the aftermath of violence. Captives and dead people share the surface with birds and a lion. Their crowded arrangement fills a broken mudstone fragment made around 3100 BC, before the long sequence of Egyptian kings most visitors know. Look at how the human and animal forms occupy the stone. The lion has been read as a symbol of royal power, but it may also be a scavenger within the scene. The surviving image leaves that interpretation open. An early object can contain a forceful image without giving us all the information needed to explain the event. The display joins surviving material with a cast representing a fragment held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The cast helps you understand a larger composition. It has a different history from the ancient stone beside it. Follow the broken edges as well as the figures. They show how much of the palette survives and where a modern reconstruction helps bridge the gaps.