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( Nekhen)
Coordinates 25°5'50?N 32°46'46?E? / ?25.09722, 32.77944 Nekhen was the center of the cult of a hawk deity Horus of Nekhen, which raised in this city one of the most ancient temples in Egypt, and it retained its importance as the cult center of this divine patron of the kings long after it had otherwise declined. The original settlement on the Nekhen site dates from the culture known as Naqada I of 4400 BC or the late Badarian culture that may date from 5000 BC. At its height from about 3400 BC Nekhen had at least 5,000 and possibly as many as 10,000 inhabitants. The ruins of the city originally were excavated toward the end of the nineteenth century by the English archaeologists James E. Quibell and F. W. Green. In the "principal deposit" of the temple of Nekhen they found important ceremonial Protodynastic artifacts such as the Narmer Palette [1] and the famous macehead bearing the name of King Scorpion. More recently, the concession was excavated further by a multinational team of archaeologists, egyptologists, geologists, and members of other sciences, which was coordinated by Michael Hoffman until his death in 1990, then by Barbara Adams of University College, London and Dr. Renee Friedman representing the University of California, Berkeley and the British Museum until Barbara Adams's death in 2001, and by Renee Friedman thereafter.
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