Bull Palette

The Bull Palette is an ancient Egyptian palette in the corpus of iconographic cosmetic palettes that focus on topics from the Late Predynastic Period, ca late 4th millennium BC.

Some of the various palettes in the corpus, Narmer Palette, Libyan Palette, Hunters Palette, Min Palette, etc. contain forerunner iconography, or actual hieroglyphs of the Egyptian hieroglyph language.

The Bull Palette-(remainder piece), about 10 inches (25 cm) is made of mudstone or schist, and is etched in more atypical medium to medium-low relief. A presumed 'fortified city' on the front in the upper register has a major loss of the city-rectangle on upper left showing this medium-level bas relief. The register below appears to be a smaller area of the palette, and has the remains, (about 1/4), of a second fortified city; a bird is one identifier in the city-fortified interior, with the rest missing.

The front of the Bull Pallette has the top left iconography of the Bull overpowering a Warrior. The right half is missing, with a probable second bull facing the first, as part of the upper borders, the left and the right.

The rest of the front contains a large "fortified-walled-city", and is identified in the center with a "larger-lion-and-'Nu'-(vessel); a smaller register section below contains the upper left quarter of a 2nd fortified-city. The 2nd city is of smaller size than the upper register identified city.

The reverse has the same Bull overpowering a Warrior-(reversed).

A rope appears to encircle, or is at least part of the entire reverse, as one of the reverse motifs. The remaining piece-(of this Bull Palette) has possibly one of the more important motifs preserved in the palettes corpus. Five standards are shown collectively on the palettes right, and each is an iat standard (hieroglyph), but notably the base of each standard transforms into a 'clenched hand', which embraces the large-diameter encircling rope.

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