EB II-III aegyptiaca east of the Jordan: a reevaluation of trade and cultural interactions between Egypt and Transjordanian urban centres

Abstract

Trade and cultural interconnections between pre-dynastic Egypt and the Southern Levant are
established early, and most intensely since the end of the 4th millennium BC, to continue in renewed
forms during the 3rd millennium BC between the Pharaonic state and the earliest urban centres of the
Levant, both west and east of the Jordan.
The increasing number of Egyptian, and Egyptian-style items, identified in the first Jordanian
cities of Early Bronze II-III, provides an opportunity for a reconsideration on the movement of
Egyptian objects beyond the Jordan, up to the edge of the Syro-Arabian desert; on the evolution of the
relations between Pharaonic Egypt and the urban centers of southern Levant in the 3rd millennium
BC; and, eventually, on the role these commercial and cultural interactions played in the early urban
societies of the region.