Before Order Was King: Chaos Expressed through Animal Imagery from Early Mesopotamia to Predynastic Egypt (ca. 3300–2900 BCE)

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

At first glance, this fragment from Khafajah’s Sin Temple IX that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago reminded me very much of the obverse of Egypt’s Two-Dog Palette that I photographed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, as they appear to speak the same visual language. Both present densely packed fields of interlocking animals, ambiguous action, and a lack of clear narrative resolution. Humans, when present, are not dominant. These compositions evoke instability, danger, and forces beyond easy control—an early visual strategy shared across regions at the threshold of complex state formation in the Third Millenium BCE.

Khafajah (Diyala Region), Sin Temple IX, Early Dynastic I–II (early 3rd millennium BCE)
Fragmentary relief from a carved vessel depicting densely interwoven animal figures and a human participant, rendered without registers or a dominant focal figure. The continuous, all-over composition emphasizes movement, conflict, and interdependence rather than narrative resolution. In a temple context dedicated to the lunar god Sin (Nanna), such imagery reflects a Mesopotamian cosmology in which humans, animals, and divine forces operate within a perpetually negotiated order maintained through ritual and institutional religion rather than embodied kingship. Photographed at the Institute for the Study of ancient Cultures, University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch.

Egypt, “Two-Dog Palette” (obverse), Late Predynastic–Early Dynastic period (Naqada III–Dynasty 0/1), ca. 3300–3100 BCE
Cosmetic palette carved with a crowded field of overlapping animals engaged in pursuit and confrontation, lacking strict registers, hieratic scale, or a clearly identified ruler figure. The composition preserves an early Egyptian visual strategy for representing liminality and uncontrolled forces prior to the consolidation of divine kingship. Unlike later dynastic monuments, chaos here is neither fully subordinated nor resolved, marking a transitional phase in Egyptian political and religious ideology. Photographed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford by Mary Harrsch

Yet this shared imagery masks a profound divergence in worldview that would soon follow, according to my research, driven largely by environmentally shaped political realities.

In Egypt, the predictable annual inundation of the Nile created an agricultural system that could be planned, coordinated, and administered over long time horizons. Surplus could be anticipated, labor mobilized in advance, and resources redistributed through centralized authority. This environmental regularity strongly favored early political unification and long-term continuity. Egypt’s geography reinforced this stability: deserts to the east and west, the Mediterranean to the north, and cataracts to the south functioned as natural buffers that reduced persistent external threats. As a result, political authority consolidated early around a single ruler whose role as organizer of labor, ritual, and landscape appeared inseparable from the continued functioning of the world itself.

This combination of environmental predictability and geographic insulation allowed Egypt to develop a worldview in which order (maʿat) was conceived as singular, enduring, and ultimately guaranteed through kingship. Chaotic forces—so vividly expressed on the Two-Dog Palette—came to be understood as transitional or external, something to be mastered and resolved. Within a few generations, Egyptian elite art would abandon dense animal chaos in favor of compositions asserting clarity, hierarchy, and the decisive action of a divinely sanctioned ruler, as seen in the Narmer Palette.

Mesopotamia followed a different path. There, rivers flooded unpredictably and destructively, arable land lay exposed on open plains, and political authority remained fragmented among competing city-states. No single ruler could plausibly claim permanent control over nature or history. In this context, chaos was not a phase to be overcome but a persistent condition of existence. Religious and political authority developed as institutional, negotiated, and contingent upon divine favor rather than embodied in a god-king.

The Khafajah fragment reflects this enduring Mesopotamian worldview. Its interwoven animals and human figure do not announce conquest or resolution; instead, they visualize a cosmos in constant motion, one that must be continually managed through ritual and divine appeasement rather than definitively ordered. The scene belongs comfortably within a temple setting, where maintaining balance—not proclaiming victory—was the central concern.

Seen together, the Two-Dog Palette and the Khafajah fragment capture a shared early moment of visual experimentation before environmental and political realities pushed Egypt and Mesopotamia in sharply different ideological directions. One culture would come to imagine order as stable, centralized, and conquerable; the other would accept instability as permanent and order as something endlessly negotiated.

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