Narmer Palette

The Narmer Palette is a stone plaque with shallow reliefs discovered by James Quibell and Green in 1898 at the Horus Temple in Hierakonpolis (Nejen). It is currently housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Obverse
The image depicts King Narmer wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, indicating that Upper Egypt was more superior to Lower Egypt.
He is shown striking a foreigner, representing a person with curly hair and beard. This figure has been used to identify Libyans and Asians, but Narmer may have considered residents of the Delta as foreigners because unification was achieved through military conquest, so the palette represents his victory over the western Delta residents of Sinaibedu.
The falcon-headed god Horus, symbolizing the king’s divinity, appears on some papyrus plants, which are symbols of Lower Egypt and influenced the fact that the Delta was conquered.
Below are more defeated enemies with flowing hair, beside whom are symbolic representations of two conquered city walls.

Reverse
Above is a band with a pharaoh wearing a red crown, symbolizing his rule of Lower Egypt, accompanied by his attendants before two rows of decapitated enemies.
In the lower part, two snake-leopards are depicted, mythological animals with their necks twisted together. Alan Gardiner believed that it represented an alliance between two lands under the reign of the king. (The lower portion between their necks serves as a base for grinding kohl, a makeup powder used to protect the eyes.)
Beneath it appears a bull (symbolizing the king himself), breaking down the walls of a hostile city and trampling the defeated foes.