Masking the Blow: The Scene of Representation in Late Prehistoric Egyptian Art.

• Author: Finkenstaedt, Elizabeth

Davis examines the best-known Egyptian late prehistoric objects, including ivory knife handles and the larger palettes, in respect to positions of animals and human figures in narrative representation. The basic outline is contained in an introductory chapter on problems of interpretation. This is followed by the interpretations themselves; a lengthy study of the Palette of Narmer; and, finally, an appendix addressed to principles of narratological research. The title of the book refers to a limited part of this complex study. Reduced to the simplest terms, Davis contends that predatory animals are unseen by their prey, and that human hunters or warriors are unseen by their enemies. Blows remain potential or disguised.

When this principle is applied to the Palette of Narmer, so that Narmer's mace-wielding stance on the reverse translates into a blow on the saucer-and thus on the viewer - on the observe several assumptions require validation. Davis assumes that the larger palettes, including the Hunters Palette, the Oxford Palette, and the Palette of Nar,mer, were held by the viewer and turned over and over like the pages of a book so that the narrative on one side provides the key to interpreting the continued on the opposite side. On the Oxford Palette and the Palette of Narlmer, part of the action is perceived as taking place between the sides of the objects, that is, within the thicknesses of the palettes themselves, in unseen but nonetheless dimensional space.

A second assumption is that the viewer can and should read the narrative. Apart from the physical difficulty of flipping the palettes over, actually or even metaphorically, it is unlikely that an ancient viewer and a contempoirkry art historian share the same kinds of sophistication. Torns, the "serpopards" on the Oxford Palette perform an obscure act as they lick a horned animal. The ancient Egyptian, on the other hand, might immediately recognize magical spells in which licking would be either helpful or harmful, for such spells must have existed long before they...