Egypt–Mesopotamia relations
[9][10] The same "Priest-King" is visible in several older Mesopotamian works of art of the end of the Uruk period, such as the Blau Monuments, cylinder seals and statues.
[11] Objects such as the Gebel el-Arak knife handle, which has patently Mesopotamian relief carvings on it, have been found in Egypt,[3] and the silver which appears in this period can only have been obtained from Asia Minor.
[12] Red-slipped spouted pottery items dating to around 3500 BCE (Naqada II C/D), which were probably used for pouring water, beer or wine, suggest that Egypt was in contact with and being influenced by Mesopotamia around that time.
[19] Cylinder seals were made in Egypt as late as the Second Intermediate Period, but they were essentially replaced by scarabs from the time of the Middle Kingdom.
[1] Glyptic art also seems to have played a key role, through the circulation of decorated cylinder seals across the Levant, a common hinterland of both empires, particularly Mesopotamia.
[32] Also, it is considered unlikely that something as complicated as recessed panel architecture could have worked its way into Egypt by proxy, and a possibly significant contingent of Mesopotamian migrants or settlers is often suspected.
[1] These early contacts probably acted as a sort of catalyst for the development of Egyptian culture, particularly in respect to the inception of writing, the codification of royal and vernacular imagery and architectural innovations.
[43] Early Egyptologists such as Flinders Petrie were proponents of the Dynastic race theory which hypothesised that the first Egyptian chieftains and rulers were themselves of Mesopotamian origin,[44] but this view has been abandoned among modern scholars.
[51] There is however a lack of direct evidence that Mesopotamian writing influenced Egyptian form, and "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt".
[57] Some scholars point out that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..."[58] Since the 1990s, the discovery of glyphs on clay tags at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, may challenge the classical notion according to which the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one,[59][60][61] although perhaps tellingly, Egyptian writing does make a 'sudden' appearance at that time with no antecedents or precursors, while on the contrary Mesopotamia already had a long evolutionary history of sign usage in tokens dating back to circa 8000 BCE, followed by Proto-Cuneiform.
[64] According to Frank Yurco, "Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Nubia, and not in the Delta cultures, where the direct Western Asian contact was made, further vitiates the Mesopotamian-influence argument".
[67] There is also a possibility that the depictions of the Mesopotamian king with a muscular, naked, upper body fighting his enemies in a quadrangular posture, as seen in the Stele of Naram-Sin or statues of Gudea (all circa 2000 BCE) were derived from Egyptian sculpture, which by that time had already been through its Golden Age during the Old Kingdom.
[69] Rare etched carnelian bead have been found in Egypt, which are thought to have been imported from the Indus Valley civilization via Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria.
[70][71] Egypt records various exchanges with Semitic West Asian foreigners from around 1900 BCE, as in the paintings of the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan.
These exchanges also included tributes of gold paid to Assyrian kings during the 16th and 15th centuries BCE, in an attempt to ellicit their support in Egypt's conflict with the Hittite and Hurrian-Mitanni empires.
In the 11th century BCE the Assyrian king Ashur-bel-kala is known to have received a tribute of exotic animals and plants from Egypt for his Zoological and Botanical gardens in Assur.
[79][80] after Assyria had invaded and conquered Egypt with remarkable speed, defeating and driving out the Nubian Kushite Empire, the 25th Dynasty of Egypt, which had provoked Assyria by repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempting to gain an influence in the Southern Levant and Northern Arabian Peninsula by instigating and supporting rebellions by Israelites, Judeans, Moabites, Edomites, Phoenicians and Arabs against Assyrian rule during the reigns of Shalmaneser IV, Sargon II and Sennacherib.
As a result, Egypt came into conflict with Assyria's fellow Mesopotamian state of Babylonia, which along with the Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Cimmerians and Scythians, amongst others, were fighting to throw off Assyrian rule, and Pharaoh Necho II fought alongside the last Assyrian emperor Ashur-uballit II (612-c.605 BCE) against Nabopolassar, Cyaxares and their allies for a time.
