Prehistoric Egypt - Timeline

Timeline

(All dates are approximate)

• Late Paleolithic, from 40th millennium BC
  • Aterian tool-making
  • Semi-permanent dwellings in Wadi Halfa
  • Tools made from animal bones, hematite, and other stones

• Neolithic, from 11th millennium BC
  • c. 10,500 BC: Wild grain harvesting along the Nile, grain-grinding culture creates world's earliest stone sickle blades roughly at end of Pleistocene
  • c. 8000 BC: Migration of peoples to the Nile, developing a more centralized society and settled agricultural economy
  • c. 7500 BC: Importing animals from Asia to Sahara
  • c. 7000 BC: Agriculture—animal and cereal—in East Sahara
  • c. 7000 BC: in Nabta Playa deep year-round water wells dug, and large organized settlements designed in planned arrangements
  • c. 6000 BC: Rudimentary ships (rowed, single-sailed) depicted in Egyptian rock art
  • c. 5500 BC: Stone-roofed subterranean chambers and other subterranean complexes in Nabta Playa containing buried sacrificed cattle
  • c. 5000 BC: Alleged Archaeoastronomical stone megalith in Nabta Playa.
  • c. 5000 BC: Badarian; furniture, tableware, models of rectangular houses, pots, dishes, cups, bowls, vases, figurines, combs
  • c. 4400 BC: finely-woven linen fragment

• Inventing prevalent, from 4th millennium BC
  • By 3400 BC:
    • Cosmetics
    • Donkey domestication
    • (Meteoric) iron works
    • Mortar (masonry)
  • c. 4000 BC:
    • early Naqadan trade (see Silk Road)
  • 4th millennium BC: Gerzean tomb-building, including underground rooms and burial of furniture and amulets
  • 4th millennium BC: Cedar imported from Lebanon
  • c. 3900 BC: An aridification event in the Sahara leads to human migration to the Nile Valley
  • c. 3500 BC: Lapis lazuli imported from Badakshan and / or Mesopotamia (see Silk Road)
  • c. 3300 BC: Double reed instruments and lyres (see Music of Egypt)
  • c. 3500 BC: Senet, world's oldest-(confirmed) board game
  • c. 3500 BC: Faience, world's earliest-known glazed ceramic beads
  • c. 3100 BC: Pharaoh Narmer unified Upper and Lower Egypt