Already the contemporaries of king Narmer (1^st king of the 1^st dynasty of a united Egypt) associated papyrus with the Delta to such an extent, that to them it epitomized the newly conquered region. On the king’s great victory palette - the well-known Narmer palette - this takes form in the following group.

We see here a strip of land, from which sprout a head, and six papyrus flowers. The head stands for the people of this land, which the papyrus flowers identify as the Delta. Both are held in a firm grip by the falcon god Horus: the head by a rope (from a ring through the nose?), the papyrus flowers by a claw. To the left of this stands the king. The combined meaning of this group is surmised as: “Horus leads the Delta captive towards the king”.

It has frequently been suggested that this “rebus” constitutes a primitive stage in the development of the script: that in fact the script evolved from rebuses like this.

The known corpus of Early Dynastic texts may not be all that large, it is large enough to thoroughly refute this idea. The Narmer rebus is not a primitive piece of writing: it’s a primitive attempt at combining symbols into a monumental image. By the time it was composed, all the relevant principles of the hieroglyphic script had already fully emerged. (For more on the origin of writing and other symbols, as well as their significance for early man, see “Magic and Religion in Ancient Egypt, Part I: The Roots” - elsewhere on this site.).

When they first started extending their influence into the Delta, the people of Upper Egypt were no doubt already well acquainted with papyrus. Today, modern water-management and agriculture have resulted in the total disappearance from Egypt of papyrus in the wild, but in pharaonic times, it was abundant everywhere: not only in the Delta, but all along the Nile. Apparently though, the immense papyrus marshes of Lower Egypt were quite another thing: enough so to make papyrus the natural symbol for the region.

In Old Kingdom mastabas, the north wall of the tomb chapel was usually devoted to activities, typical for the Delta: fishing and fowling, boating and rafting, cattle breeding, and work in orchards and vineyards. For the court elite of the period, the Delta was apparently a bit of a playground, something of a holiday resort, and the depictions on these walls vividly testify of their intense appreciation for life in these happy, lush environments. And one element that recurs again and again is that of the papyrus marshes. The ancient draftsmen exploited the decorative potential of this theme to the fullest: the contrast between the rigid, vertical lines of the stems on the one hand, and the lively gestures of the boatmen on the other; the graceful flowers so serene, yet so full of bustling, exuberant animal life: it was perhaps never captured better than in the mastaba of Ti near Saqqara. The virtual reality that was thus created on these tomb walls no doubt further reinforced the association of papyrus with the Delta.

With papyrus nonetheless firmly established as the Delta’s emblem plant,  the symmetry-loving Egyptians needed an Upper Egyptian counterpart. And that is, where the plot thickens… Against the steadfast, unwavering use of papyrus for Lower Egypt, at least two different plants could stand for Upper Egypt: the flowering sedge, and the lotus (see the previous section). Considering the importance of the concept of the Two Lands for the Egyptians, as well as their mostly strict adherence to once defined symbols, this state of affairs is truly amazing.

Why either of these two plants was considered to typify Upper Egypt, is simply not known.