ration (white on red and red on light-colored desert clays).Historically significant patterns can be discerned. Political elites developed, supported by agricultural surplus, partly through control over valuable resources that were beginning to be used in new technologies. Originally, tools and weapons were made of stone and organic materials, but in southern (and slightly later in northern) Egypt copper and precious metals became increasingly important. By Nakada II times, larger, more efficient river ships were built and trade along the Nile was expanding. These and other factors stimulated the emergence of an elite class whose graves are larger and richer than normal, and ultimately regional political leaders are identifiable by "chieftains tombs" at several sites. According to later traditions, by late Predynastic times (c. 3300 BC) chiefdoms had coalesced into two competitive kingdoms, northern and southern. Gradually, the characteristic material culture of the south had been spreading, and it replaced the once different one of northern Egypt in Nakada III times.Throughout the period 5000-3100 BC foreign influences were significant, but direct ones are hard to distinguish from indirect. Domesticated grains and some domesticated animals may have come via Syria and Palestine, perhaps at the time of Merimdehs's earliest phase, which shows influences from these regions in material culture also. Both northern and southern Egypt traded with Syria, Palestine, and northeast Africa throughout Predynastic times. Particularly striking and so far found mainly in southern Egypt (Nakada I and II) are Mesopotamian-style cylinder seals, pottery, and artistic motifs, but these may have come through intermediaries rather than by direct contact.Predynastic architecture, using wood, matting, and mud brick, is best attested in cemeteries, where pit graves were lined with wood or brick and roofed with matting or stone slabs; eventually, some gra...
