Discovered at Hierakonpolis in 1898, the Narmer Palette functions like Egyptian art's birth certificate. On one face King Narmer wears the white crown of Upper Egypt and clubs a defeated enemy; on the other, in the red crown of Lower Egypt, he inspects rows of beheaded foes.

Every feature of the composition becomes a rule the next two millennia will obey: figures scale by hierarchy — the king largest, the defeated smallest; torso frontal, head in profile, feet sideways; empty space is forbidden, scenes are divided into registers. These conventions render not the world a viewer sees but the world the ruler claims.

The palette was probably a ceremonial offering of cosmetic kohl, but its underlying message is political: a declaration that scattered lands are now bound under a single sovereign. Now in the Cairo Museum, it is the earliest fully formed example of what later ages will call the 'pharaonic style'.