Footnote 4 – Narmer’s Enigmatic Palette

A particularly controversial point is whether the scenes on the Narmer Palette include references to actual historical events. In 1998 the American Egyptologist Frank Yurco reiterated an idea also expressed by earlier scholars that the palette shows Narmer as the “conqueror of the Delta” and the “first attested unifier of all Egypt.” Other scholars, however, flatly contradict this notion, following John Baines’s suggestion that the scenes on Narmer’s palette refer to a “ritual affirmation of conquest, not a real event.”