Masking the blow

by Whitney Davis

"The meaning of late prehistoric Egyptian images has until now been tantalizingly mysterious and as little understood as the circumstances of their production. Analyses of these images, as a result, have been merely general and often incorrectly illustrated. Whitney Davis's Masking the Blow: The Scene of Representation in Late Prehistoric Egyptian Art provides a welcome remedy in its detailed reinterpretation of images carved on ivory knife handles and schist cosmetic palettes, including the Narmer Palette, often considered the very inception of ancient Egyptian canonical image making in the dynastic pharaonic tradition. Davis deciphers the intriguing pictorial narratives and complex metaphors of images that are concerned with "masking the blow" of the ruler. "Masking the blow" refers to the many ways in which the late prehistoric Egyptian images represent, elide, or suppress the depiction of a ruler's decisive violent act of conquering an enemy, whether a hunted animal or a human anta