Gebel el-Arak Knife

Gebel el-Arak knife

The Gebel el-Arak knife, on display at the Musée du Louvre.
Material	Elephant ivory, flint
Size	25.8 centimetres (10.2 in)
Created	Naqada II d from c. 3450 BC
Discovered	Bought by Georges Aaron Bénédite in Cairo from antique dealer M. Nahman, February 1914
Present location	Musée du Louvre, Sully wing, room 20
Identification	E 11517

The Gebel el-Arak Knife is an ivory and flint knife dating from the Naqada II d period of Egyptian prehistory, starting circa 3450 BC, showing Mesopotamian influence. The knife was purchased in 1914 in Cairo by Georges Aaron Bénédite for the Louvre, where it is now on display in the Sully wing, room 20. At the time of its purchase, the knife handle was said by the seller to have been found at the site of Gebel el-Arak, but it is today believed to come from Abydos.

The Gebel el-Arak knife was bought for the Louvre by the philologist and Egyptologist Georges Aaron Bénédite in February 1914 from a private antique dealer, M. Nahman, in Cairo. Bénédite immediately recognized the extraordinary state of preservation of the artefact as well as its archaic date. On March the 16th, 1914, he wrote to Charles Boreux, then head of the département des Antiquités égyptiennes of the Louvre about the knife the unsuspecting antique dealer presented him:

[...] an archaic flint knife with an ivory handle of the greatest beauty. This is the masterpiece of predynastic sculpture [...] executed with remarkable finesse and elegance. This is a work of great detail [...] and the interest of what is represented is even beyond the artistic value of the artefact. On one side is a hunting scene; on the other a scene of war or raid. At the top of the hunting scene [...] the hunter wears a large Chaldean garment: he head is covered by a hat like that of our Gudea [...] and he grasps two lions standing against him. You can judge the importance of this asiatic representation [...] we will own one of the most important prehistoric monuments, if not more. It is, in definitive, in tangible and resumed form, the first chapter of the history of Egypt (emphasis in the original).

At the time when the knife was bought, its blade and handle were separated as the seller did not realize that both fitted together. Later on, C. Boreux proposed that be knife be restored and that the blade and handle be put together. These operations were performed in March 1933 by Léon André who worked mainly on consolidating the ensemble and treated the ivory of the handle for its conservation. The last restoration of the knife was carried out in 1997 by Agnès Cascio and Juliette Lévy.