Origin of Egyptian Civilization

The Sumerians Nirmer along with his son Menes and an army of 5000 Akkadian guards set out on a conquest of the Nile valley around 3200 BC. They followed the northern route along Euphrates that reached the Nile valley through Syria. On the periphery of the Nile valley they subjugated local people of African origin and expanded their army further, eventually conquering the Egyptian valley without much of a fight. A prehistoric flint knife, with a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus, in the possession of Louvre and found at Gebel el Arak near Nag Hamâdi depicts a scene from the conquest. On one side of the handle is a battle-scene including some remarkable representations of ancient boats. Many of the warriors are nude with the exception of a loin girdle, but, while one set of combatants have shaven heads or short hair, the others have abundant locks falling in a thick mass upon the shoulder. The nude warriors are obviously of local African origin. It displays the wisdom of the conquerors in utilizing locals for their campaigns. On the other face of the handle is carved a hunting scene. In the upper field is a remarkable group, consisting of a personage struggling with two lions arranged symmetrically. The rest of the composition is not very unlike other examples of prehistoric Egyptian carving in low relief, but here attitude, figure, and clothing are un-Egyptian. The hero wears a turban on his abundant hair, and a full and rounded beard descends upon his breast. A long garment clothes him from the waist and falls below the knees, his muscular calves ending in the claws of a bird of prey. There is no doubt that the heroic personage is represented in the familiar attitude of the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh struggling with lions, a favorite subject of early Sumerian and Babylonian seals. His garment is Sumerian rather than Egyptian. The design itself is unmistakably of Mesopotamian origin. There was no physical barrier to the use of the river-route from Mesopotamia into Syria and of the tracks thence southward along the land bridge to the Nile's delta.
After the conquest Nirmer returned to Babylon leaving his son Menes in charge of the new kingdom. Menes unified the scattered communities of the entire Nile Valley. There he established the First Egyptian Dynasty with a Sumerian civilization. The unified state led to the development of writing, the start of large scale construction and the venturing out from the Nile Valley to trade. The most remarkable evidence of cultural connection is shown in the architecture of Early Dynastic tombs of Egypt and Mesopotamian seal-impressions showing exactly similar buildings. A problem that early Sumerian ruling class faced upon arrival in Egypt was the different, even contrary religious beliefs. Egyptians glorified the floods whereas the Sumerian dreaded it because of their religious records of the deluge that had originally flooded their homeland and beautiful cities on the western coast of India leading to their exodus. However the Sumerians soon assimilated everything useful they found in the new lands and thus developed their culture even further. Unlike the colonists of eighteenth century the Sumerians arrived in any new territory with the intention of making it their home and progressed from strength to strength as they marched westwards. However the Nile valley was the limit of their expansion since their were no other great rivers flowing through vast arid plains to the west of the Nile.