ABSTRACT
In the Neolithic Age, human settlements moved generally closer to the Nile. At Hierakonpolis, a yet more elaborate tomb of late Gerzean date has walls and floor of bricks covered with plaster and whitewashed. Across the Nile from Nekhen at the present el-Kab was the ancient Egyptian town of Nekheb, the center of the worship of the vulture goddess Nekhbet. Although it is within the Prehistoric period, it is customary to speak of a Predynastic period in the later part of the development that leads up to the first historical dynasty of Egypt. With respect to the Badarian, Amratian, and Gerzean phases of the Predynastic period, layers representing the cultures have been found in plain stratification in this order in an excavation near the village of el-Hammamiya, so the temporal sequence of all three cultures is confirmed. As in Mesopotamia, so too in Egypt the evidences of human cultures are found already in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic ages.
