A storage jar imported from the Levant, with some of its original contents. The congealed matter in the jar would have been imported as oil. Imported storage vessels of the late fourth millennium BC at Abydos and elsewhere have revealed a substantial volume of trade between Western Asia and the Egyptian royal courts during the period of unification of Egypt into a single kingdom. This example is one of the first to have been discovered, in the 1899 excavations at Hierakonpolis, and it demonstrates the importance of that city as a centre of kingship participating in international trade.
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