Wadi el Malik and Wadi Nacam are socio-cultural landscapes northeast of the Egyptian city of Aswan and parts of the large Wadi Abu Subeira, featuring rock carvings over five millennia old. Themes, iconography and stylistics of the rock art show a homogeneous visual design typical for the proto-dynastic period (some perhaps even earlier), with a concentration around the Protodynastic kings from Hor to Nar(-meher). As such, the socio-cultural periphery during the formation of the pharaonic central state (3150-3050 BC) seems to have been of significant historical importance in terms of internal colonization, strongly influencing the socio-cultural character of the landscape.