Hierakonpolis is the largest Predynastic settlement still extant and accessible in Egypt.Preserved as a unit, it contains all the component parts that made up a city-houses and trash mounds (HK29, HK11 settlement features), cemeteries, industrial zones (Breweries, Pottery production), cult centers (HK29A) and more. As such, Hierakonpolis can tell us more about developments in this formative period than any other place. At its peak, at about 3600-3500 BC, Hierakonpolis must have been one of, it not, the largest urban units along the Nile, a regional center of power and a capital of an early kingdom destined to have intimate links with Egyptian kingship, as shown by the Palette of Narmer and the other amazing objects from the temple in the floodplain. The city was to become a cult center of the god Horus, to whom every king of Egypt was assimilated and whose sacred bird figured in the site.