Narmer Palette in the context of "Fourth millennium BC"

The 4th millennium BC spanned the years 4000 BC to 3001 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history.

The city states of Sumer and the (Predynastic) Kingdom of Egypt were established and grew to prominence. Agriculture spread widely across Eurasia.

The Warka Vase or Uruk vase is a slim carved alabaster vessel found in a temple complex in the ruins of the ancient city of Uruk, located in the modern Al Muthanna Governorate, in southern Iraq. Like the Uruk Trough, Mask of Warka, and the Narmer Palette from Egypt, it is one of the earliest surviving works of narrative relief sculpture, found, no in situ, in a layer dated to c. 3100–2900 BC. Simple relief sculpture is also known from much earlier periods, from the site of Göbekli Tepe, dating to circa 9000 BC.

The bottom register displays naturalistic components of life, including water and plants, such as date palm, barley, and wheat. On the upper portion of the lowest register, alternating rams and ewes march in a single file. The middle register conveys naked men carrying baskets of foodstuffs symbolizing offerings. Lastly, the top register depicts the goddess a female deity accepting a votive offer. A female deity stands at the front portion of the gate surrounded by her richly filled shrine and storehouse (identifiable by two reed door poles with dangling banners). This scene may illustrate a reproduction of the ritual marriage between the goddess and her consort that ensures Uruk's continued vitality.

State-building as a specific term in social sciences and humanities, refers to political and historical processes of creation, institutional consolidation, stabilization and sustainable development of states, from the earliest emergence of statehood up to the modern times. Within historical and political sciences, there are several theoretical approaches to complex questions related to the role of various contributing factors (geopolitical, economic, social, cultural, ethnic, religious, internal, external) in state-building processes.

Since the end of the 20th century, state-building has developed into becoming an integral part and even a specific approach to peacebuilding by the international community. Observers across the political and academic spectra have come to see the state-building approach as the preferred strategy to peacebuilding in a number of high-profile conflicts, including the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and war-related conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In art and archaeology, sculpture and painting, a register is a horizontal level in a work that consists of several levels arranged one above the other, especially where the levels are clearly separated by lines. Modern comic books typically use similar conventions. It is thus comparable to a row, or a line in modern texts. In the study of ancient writing, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, "register" may be used of vertical compartments like columns containing writing that are arranged side by side and separated by lines, especially in cylinder seals, which often mix text and images. Normally, when dealing with images it only refers to row compartments stacked vertically.

The use of registers is common in Ancient Egyptian art, from the Narmer Palette onwards, and in medieval art in large frescos and illuminated manuscripts. Narrative art, especially covering the lives of sacred figures, is often presented as a sequence of small scenes arranged in registers.