Excellent article. Cairo museum is a treasure house. I’ve seen the Narmer palette without a clue as to what it was! I lived in Egypt for a few years. It’s a surreal place. Layers of history and culture and mingling of genes. Remarkable. Like a pilgrimage, I’d visit the pyramids and Sphinx twice a week and the magic never dimmed. Only a fraction of antiquities have been excavated. On my excursions in the desert, I saw quite a few tops of temples exposed! It was like a postcard etching. Hard to not speculate about buried treasures.
Reminded me of ‘Ozymandias,’ a poem by Shelley I think.
Thank you for lucidly explaining the Palette and Macehead. It’s easy to believe that Pharaohs we’re aliens!