How old was the El Amrah stone? disputed

Positions

1. 4800 BC, or more than 7,000 years

   The EAU History Office and BAUS date the stone to 4800 BC; Riches in 1967 called it more than 7,000 years old. These figures follow early twentieth-century chronologies of predynastic Egypt.

   Sources

   1. EAU History Office: Cutting for the Stone Museum or society
   2. BAUS Virtual Museum: Ancient Egypt Museum or society
   3. Riches 1967, The history of lithotomy and lithotrity (Arnott Demonstration, RCS) Secondary

2. Predynastic on the modern chronology

   Radiocarbon modelling (Dee et al. 2013) puts the start of the predynastic Naqada culture at about 3800 to 3700 BC, later than the 4000 BC long assumed. The Amratian (Naqada I) phase, named after El Amrah, is placed by current summaries between about 4000 and 3500 BC.

   Sources

   1. sci.news report of Dee et al. 2013 (radiocarbon chronology of early Egypt) Secondary
   2. Wikipedia: Naqada I Secondary
   3. Wikipedia: El-Amrah Secondary

Evidence

No direct date on the stone or the skeleton is reported in the sources read. Every figure derives from the cemetery's place in the predynastic sequence, and that sequence has been redated. The grave has not been assigned to a particular phase.

Current standing

The older figures are inflated. The film says the boy was buried before the first pharaoh, more than five thousand years ago, which fits a predynastic burial without fixing its phase.

All sources