ce. In this regard, Hornung cites the so-called Battlefield palette to describe images of highly potent lions, great birds, and animal-adorned warriors plainly overpowering naked, relatively weak human beings, males, who might be interpreted as vanquished warriors or slaves, but whose subjection is obviously in evidence. Hornung points out that he human figures have pointed beards, which in dynastic times was associated with royalty. But here, these beard-groomed humans are far from exerting influence or authority over their environment. In the predynastic period, then, the power over human beings is attributed to animals, not to the humans in the picture. Nevertheless, it is the bearded human beings who appear to be the real objects of representation, like whom one infers the artist most must have looked. The conclusion is that the animals were to be considered divine in some aspect. At minimum, the representation of relative strength depicts a view of the universe in which human beings understood their relatively weak position in the physical environm
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