6000 BCE onward: (The Common Ritual Template — Treatments of the Dead Becoming Remarkably Uniform Across the Entire Middle Nile Culture Area, Individuals Lai…

6000 BCE onward: (The Common Ritual Template — Treatments of the Dead Becoming Remarkably Uniform Across the Entire Middle Nile Culture Area, Individuals Laid to Rest in Pits with Knees Contracted and Hands Cupping Their Faces, Bodies Wrapped in Animal Skins or Reed Mats and Decorated with Ornaments of Colored Stone Blades Pierced Shells and Worked Bone Tooth and Ivory, Burials Accompanied by Small Vessels Combs Stone-Grinding Palettes Rubbing Pebbles and Maceheads): Across the steppe grasslands of the Middle Nile Culture Area — to use the words of Wengrow and his coauthors — treatments of the dead became remarkably uniform, following a common ritual template. All across these regions, from Sudan to Middle Egypt, individuals were laid to rest in pits, with their knees contracted and with their hands often cupping their faces. Before burial the intact body was wrapped in animal skins or reed mats and decorated with an array of ornaments made of colored stone blades, pierced shells, and worked bone, tooth, and ivory. The peoples of these lands buried their dead not just with the same kinds of decorative items but also the same range of practical artifacts: small clay, bone, or ivory vessels; combs of bone or ivory; stone-grinding palettes along with rubbing pebbles; and maceheads. The uniformity is staggering in its geographical extent. A burial at El-Badari in Middle Egypt and a burial near the Nile confluence in Sudan, separated by 1,500 kilometers, exhibit the same body position, the same wrapping materials, the same categories of grave goods. This is not the coincidence of independent invention. This is the signature of a shared cultural world — a world in which the most intimate act a community performs, the preparation of its dead for the afterlife, follows a single template from one end of the culture area to the other. The funerary practices of predynastic Egypt — the contracted burial position, the grave goods, the palettes, the maceheads — are not Egyptian inventions. They are Middle Nile Culture Area practices, shared with Sudan and Nubia, inherited from a common cultural tradition that was African to its foundations.