Tasa culture

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The Tasa culture is named after its place of discovery Deir Tasa near Mostagedda, about 30 - 40 km south of Assiut on the right bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt . Mostagedda is another important site of this culture. It is a fully developed Neolithic culture of predynastic Egypt . The Tasa culture existed from around 4,300-4,000 BC. This culture found its distribution in the whole of northern and at least in most of central Upper Egypt to about Armant, 20 km south of Luxor on the west side of the Nile. It shares the settlement area with the later Badari culture . Compared to the Badari and the later Naqada cultures , the Tasa culture has considerably fewer finds - hardly any larger sites, only a few remains of settlements, individual graves, individual finds - although the pottery is quite well known. From this find situation, an exact identification and separation from the other cultures is relatively difficult.

The seemingly simple ceramics can essentially be divided into two types, which are not easy to distinguish from one another:

  • a particularly coarser brown product in which round and pointed shapes predominate,
  • a better-made gray-black product with characteristic vertical grooves.

A third item with incised ornaments filled in with white has been found rather seldom, the most prominent form of which is the tulip cup. The bottoms are partially pointed or round.

So-called black topped - (ceramics with black edges) and polished red - (red-polished) ceramics, which are actually particularly typical of the Badari and Naqada cultures, occur very rarely . But here it is to be assigned to the Tasa culture due to its shape and in particular its vertical fluting. The ceramics of the Tasa culture have "comparatively small standing areas, of which the vessel walls rise obliquely outwards and bend back inwards to different degrees via a rounded bend". There are hardly any flared edges or special lip formations like in the Badari culture. More than in the Badari culture, which almost only knows round-bottomed shapes, flat floors appear in the Tasa culture (especially with the gray-black goods), as they are characteristic of Naqada I ceramics.

The origins of this Tasa pottery can be traced back to Northern Egypt, where similar simple, undemanding vessel types can be found in the middle and late Merimde and Fayum A cultures .

For the first time, oblong, rectangular make-up palettes have also been found, in contrast to those from the Badari culture, however, mostly made of alabaster or limestone.

Since, in addition to the similarities of the ceramics, the anthropological findings from the graves of the Tasa culture point to northern Egypt, a migration of people and cultural elements from the north to central Egypt can be assumed.

In contrast to the previous opinion that the Badari originated from the Tasa culture, important points can be cited for a derivation of the Naqada I ceramics from the Tasa ceramics. In addition to the fundamental connections in the design, the preferred or even almost exclusively flat bottom formation of both ceramic cultures in the Upper Egyptian Nile Valley and its wider African area speaks for this. A direct relationship can be established between the strictly geometric triangular and line decor of the Tasa cups and the corresponding painting on some of the Naqada I goods. Connections can also be seen in the closed forms of both cultures. From these findings it can be concluded that there are genetic connections between the Tasa and Naqada I cultures.

This conclusion is partly confirmed in stratigraphic evidence: e.g. B. the partial simultaneity of both cultures in the settlement of Hamamiya-Nord. Between the early Tasa and later Naqada I cultures, the Badari culture will be established in northern Upper Egypt, whose ancestors migrated from the eastern desert to the Nile and developed into the determining earliest Neolithic culture in southern Upper Egypt.

In summary, it can be stated: Northern Egyptian Neolithic influences were fundamental for the Neolithic-Early Chalcolithic development of Upper Egypt, from which the Tasa culture initially emerged in northern and central Upper Egypt. A development series Tasa - Badari - Naqada I can only be assumed in northern Upper Egypt, not for the whole of Upper Egypt. The influence of the Badari culture was weakest in central Upper Egypt, where the early Naqada I culture apparently evolved from the Tasa culture.

literature

  • Werner Kaiser: On the southern expansion of the prehistoric delta cultures and the early development of Upper Egypt. In: Communications from the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo Department. Volume 41, 1985, pp. 61-87.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Kaiser: On the southern expansion of the prehistoric delta cultures and the early development of Upper Egypt. In: Communications from the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo Department. Volume 41, 1985, p. 73.