Hunters Palette
The Hunters Palette or Lion Hunt Palette is a 5,000-year-old cosmetic palette that is among the few objects that feature the earliest Egyptian bas-reliefs from the late predynastic period of Naqada III.
The Hunters Palette is decorated on one side only with scenes in low relief showing iconography of lion hunting as well as the hunting of other animals such as birds, desert hares, and gazelles.
Three men carry the standards denoting different tribes or provinces, and the other men have weapons, which include the bow, spear, mace, throw-stick, and a rope used for tethering.
Two iconographic conjoined bull-forefronts adorn the upper right alongside a hieroglyphic symbol.
The palette is broken; the British Museum holds one of the parts. The other part is in the collection of the Louvre. Originating in the late prehistory of Egypt at around 3100 BC, the Hunters Palette is one of the very few cosmetic palettes found.
It represents an object used in predynastic Egypt to grind and apply ingredients for cosmetics. The decorative palettes of the late 4th millennium BCE appeared to have lost their cosmetic function and became commemorative and ornamental objects.
During the fourth millennium BC, early Egyptians of the lower Nile valley used elaborate stone palettes to grind eyeshadow.
It is assumed that the eyeshadow was green, made from copper ore and that the ritual played an essential role in their ceremonial or religious customs.
The palettes eventually became art objects and treasured objects that were later placed with the deceased in their tombs.
Hunters Palette (also known as Lion Hunt Palette)
- Artifact: Hunters Palette (also known as Lion Hunt Palette)
- Date: 3100 BCE
- Culture: Naqada III period, Ancient Egypt
- Find Spot: El-Amarna, Egypt
- Materials: Grey mudstone
- Dimensions: 66 cm x 26 cm
- Acquisition: 1888
- Museum: The British Museum
Hunters Palette Egypt c.3200BC – British Museum London
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Ancient Egypt and Sudan Collection
- The Rosetta Stone
- The Battlefield Palette 3100 BC
- Quartzite Head of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III
- Colossal Granite Statue of Amenhotep III
- Hunters Palette
- Tomb of Nebamun
- Younger Memnon (Ramesses II)
Middle East Collection
- The Lion Hunt
- Cyrus Cylinder
- Royal Game of Ur
- Gilgamesh Flood Tablet
- Stela of Shamshi-Adad V
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- Ram in a Thicket
- Tell al-‘Ubaid Copper Lintel
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- Tomb of Payava
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Information on The British Museum
Hunters Palette
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“Experience will show you,
a master can only point the way.”
– Egyptian Proverbs
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