Fascination with ancient Egypt has often been cyclic in nature like the seasons of the Nile. Whilst the great temples and tombs of the pharaohs are a perpetual lure, interest in the beginning of the country's civilisation has been revitalised by excavations since the 1970s, not only in the Predynastic desert cemeteries of traditional exploration in Upper Egypt, but also in their associated settlements and in hitherto unexplored parts of the alluvial Nile delta. This book is a synthesis of interpretations of the ceremonial treasures relating to the Protodynastic/Early Dynastic transition and the information derived from new and old fieldwork set in a chronological framework. The authors blend their complementary interests into a reappraisal of this exciting, remote and unresolved period of Egypt's unification and the activities of the early kings of the First Dynasty. Barbara Adams is Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. She is editor of the Shire Egyptology series. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Egyptian Mummies Krzysztof M. Cialowicz is an Associate Professor in the Archaeological Institute of the Jagiellorian University, Krakow, Poland.