The egyptian oracle project ancient ceremony in augmented reality by robyn gi...
The egyptians
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5 THE EGYPTIANS
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3 Of all ancient societies, Egypt perhaps has the widest popular appeal.
4 The huge amounts of archaeological material, from the vast and
5 imposing temples to the small objects of daily life, make us believe
6 that we can approach the society and empathize with it.
7 This study introduces the reader to the broad span of Egyptian
8 history and cultural development from its origins to the arrival of
9 Islam. It examines the structure of Egyptian society, its changes over
20111 time, and the ways in which the economy and religious institutions
1 were used to bind society together. Challenging some of the accepted
2 truths and highlighting the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the
3 author also explains the place of Egypt in the Western European
4 tradition that led to the development of academic Egyptology, and
5 considers how the West has constructed its own version of the
6 Egyptian past.
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8 Robert G. Morkot lectures in Egyptology at the University of
9 Exeter. His areas of interest include relations between Egypt and
30111 other ancient societies, notably Nubia, and Egypt in the Western
1 tradition. Among his publications are The Black Pharaohs, Egypt’s
2 Nubian Rulers (2000) and The Historical Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian
3 Warfare (2003).
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5 CONTENTS
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3 List of illustrations vi
4 Preface viii
5 Acknowledgements ix
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1 Defining ancient Egypt 1
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8 2 The Egyptian world 19
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3 Esoteric knowledge and oriental mystery:
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the lure of Egypt 51
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2 4 Constructing the Egyptian past 70
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5 Origins and first flowering 88
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5 6 Imperial Egypt: the Middle and New Kingdoms
6 (c. 2025–1069 BC) 107
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7 Continuity with metamorphosis: Egypt 1100 BC
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to AD 641 130
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30111 8 Rulers and ruled 151
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9 Town and country in ancient Egypt 174
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3 10 The culture of ancient Egypt 200
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5 Appendix: king list 222
6 Notes on the text 230
7 Further reading 231
8 Index 241
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51 ILLUSTRATIONS
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F I G U R ES
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5 1.1 The king crowned by the goddesses of Upper and
6 Lower Egypt 6
7 1.2 A fecundity figure with the sign of the nome of
8 Khemenu (Hermopolis) 7
9 1.3 Sennefer, the Mayor of Thebes, and his wife 11
20111 2.1 Map of Upper Egypt from the first to the fourth nome 23
1 2.2 Map of Upper Egypt from the fourth to the ninth
2 nome 27
3 2.3 The Nile near Qena 29
4 2.4 Map of Upper Egypt from the ninth to the sixteenth
5 nome 32
6 2.5 Map of Upper Egypt from the seventeenth to the
7 twenty-second nome, with the Fayum 35
8 2.6 Map of Lower Egypt, eastern nomes 38
9 2.7 Map of Lower Egypt, western nomes 44
30111 2.8 Map of the Egyptian world 48
1 5.1 The ceremonial palette of Horus Narmer 93
2 5.2 Giza, the pyramid and sphinx of Khaefre 99
3 6.1 Chariot warrior: Sety I on the exterior of the Hypostyle
4 Hall at Karnak 118
5 7.1 The classic temple in its ultimate form: Dendera 144
6 8.1 Ramesses III performs religious rites 155
7 8.2 Egyptian officials at work 158
8 9.1 A simple depiction of a house: Thebes, Tomb of
911 Nebamum 186
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8. ILLUSTRATIONS
1111 9.2 A house within a compound surrounded by trees:
2 Thebes 187
3 9.3 Temple magazines in Akhetaten 191
4 9.4 A reward scene 198
5 10.1 Figure of the god Horus in the temple at Kom Ombo 201
6 10.2 The temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu 204
7 10.3 The restored pyramid on the tomb of Sennedjem at
8 Deir el-Medina 212
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TA BL E
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2 4.1 Dating differences: significant dates given by a
3 number of Egyptologists 86
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51 PREFACE
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2 Writing a ‘general’ and ‘introductory’ book on ancient Egypt is a
311 daunting and challenging task. However deep one’s specialist know-
4 ledge, this is the opportunity to reveal one’s ignorance to the world.
5 It is tempting to repeat the ‘accepted lies of our discipline’, but if
6 you want to argue detailed rejections of them, there is not really the
7 space to do it to the satisfaction of colleagues.
8 The approach to ancient Egypt that I have adopted in this book is
9 modelled very closely on introductory courses I have taught over a
20111 number of years. These go back to ask some very basic questions,
1 such as ‘Where is Egypt?’ and ‘Who were the Egyptians?’. The
2 answers are frequently far from straightforward, and allow us to look
3 at the broader issues of what Egypt means and has meant. So, rather
4 than a stream of ‘facts’, accepted truths or the opinions of Egyptol-
5 ogists, I have deliberately tried to raise the question of the limits
6 of our evidence. In confronting these issues, I also deal with an issue
7 that is perhaps much less appealing to the general reader, but
8 immensely significant: how has the Egyptian past been reconstructed
9 in terms of its history, culture and society? This in turn raises the
30111 issues of imperialism and appropriation which are now widely dis-
1 cussed in ancient history, and increasingly so in Egyptology. But I
2 have tried to avoid this becoming entirely discourse, and present a
3 wide range of ‘information’ and ‘facts’ that represent our (academic
4 Egyptology’s) current view of ancient Egypt. Inevitably, my own
5 interests and preoccupations will come through, perhaps to the
6 annoyance of colleagues, but I have tried to raise issues that are not
7 always covered in other general introductions.
8 I have dispensed with the paraphernalia of footnotes in favour of
911 a more straightforward guide to further reading.
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5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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3 My thanks go to Richard Stoneman for asking me to write this book,
4 and to the readers of the original outline for their valuable and con-
5 structive comments, which I have tried to incorporate. My thanks
6 also go to Stephen Quirke and the late Dominic Montserrat, who
7 have presented the range of alternative Egypts in their work, both
8 written and, in Stephen’s case, practical, through his pioneering
9 curatorship at the Petrie Museum. The series of volumes Encounters
20111 with Ancient Egypt, deriving from a conference at the Institute of
1 Archaeology, University College London, devised by Dominic
2 Montserrat and John Tait, presents this range of alternative Egypts
3 and marks a shift in attitude among (some) Egyptologists. Dominic’s
4 death has deprived British Egyptology of one of its most challenging
5 and enquiring teachers.
6 My thanks, as always, to John Vincent and Peter James for support,
7 advice and ideas. Also to my students and classes for being victims of
8 experiments, not always successful, in trying to understand ancient
9 Egypt and what it means to us now.
30111 All illustrations are by the author, unless they are credited otherwise.
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5 DEFINING ANCIENT
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7 EGYPT
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3 Unlike ‘ancient Greece’, which, culturally, embraced a region far
4 wider than the narrow geographical limits of its modern namesake,
5 or ‘Rome’, which was culturally diverse within its broad political
6 boundaries, Egypt, ancient, medieval, and modern, is closely defined
7 in geographical terms. Yet ‘placing’ Egypt in the world is actually
8 fraught with difficulties: Egypt belongs in different places according
9 to historical and political episodes, cultural changes, and individual
20111 viewpoints. The question ‘Where is Egypt?’ can elicit a wide range
1 of responses, most of them ‘correct’ in some senses, but all of them
2 requiring some qualification.
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WH ER E I S EG Y PT?
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6 The most obvious answer, but not necessarily the one most
7 frequently given, is ‘Africa’. To an African-American/British audi-
8 ence, this would be the first, and perhaps only, location, not only
9 in simple geographical terms, but in broader cultural and percep-
30111 tual ones as well. Others might prefer to limit the reply with ‘north’
1 or ‘north-east’ Africa, effectively separating Egypt from ‘black
2 Africa’. For European scholarship Egypt’s cultural place in ‘Africa’,
3 and Africa’s cultural impact on Egypt, have been constantly chang-
4 ing. Much early Egyptology viewed Egypt as distinctly African,
5 but the borders were redefined in the nineteenth century, drawing
6 a line across Sudan, south of which became the world of ethnology
7 and anthropology, contrasted with archaeology (large stone-built
8 monuments) and written records to the north. Some Egyptologists
9 and anthropologists have argued that there was an African basis to
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1111 Egyptian culture and institutions, notably the kingship; others have
2 preferred to treat Egypt as totally separate from Africa. There can
3 be no doubt that the origins of Egyptian civilization lie in Africa.
4 But the name, and perception, of ‘Africa’ is itself an important
51 issue. Today, we tend to speak about Africa and ‘African’ peoples
6 and cultures as if somehow they were a homogeneous entity. This
7 in itself is a residue of colonial attitudes that denies the variety and
8 complexity of cultures and peoples in that vast continent. Indeed,
9 the name ‘Africa’ is a fine example of the specific becoming general.
10111 Deriving from the name of a small ‘tribal’ group of part of Tunisia,
11 the Afri, Africa was the name given to a Roman province, and
2 then became more widely applied first by the Byzantines, and then
311 (as Ifriqiya) by the Arab conquerors, as a general term for north-
4 west Africa. It was adopted by Europeans for the same region,
5 eventually being used for the whole continent. Africa is, quite liter-
6 ally, a colonial name.
7 In the European academic tradition, in museums and universi-
8 ties, Egypt has been included in the ‘Near East’ for a range of
9 reasons. The Near East was a term used for the former territories
20111 of the Ottoman Empire, and had a utility that the inaccurate modern
1 replacement ‘Middle East’ lacks. Middle East now seems to be used
2 as a confused blanket term for the Islamic world (itself confused
3 with the ‘Arab world’). The ancient Near East can, legitimately,
4 be treated as a central interacting block of states, from (modern)
5 Iran in the east to Greece and Libya in the west. As the academic
6 disciplines developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
7 the Near East was a region that particularly attracted attention: it
8 had formed the eastern part of the Roman Empire, and before it the
9 Hellenistic kingdoms, the Persian, Babylonian and Assyrian
30111 empires, and their predecessors. There was also immense interest in
1 the exotic world of Western Europe’s main political rival, the Otto-
2 man Empire, which was close, yet strikingly different. In the Near
3 East, Western Europe rediscovered the physical remains of its
4 cultural ancestry, which was already well known through Greek and
5 Latin literature. For scholarship, there were numerous large standing
6 monuments to be observed, inscriptions recorded, ‘art works’ to be
7 transferred to museums, and, with the development of archaeology,
8 there were cemeteries and town mounds to dig in. Archaeology in
911 much of sub-Saharan Africa is much more recent, so there is still
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1111 an enormous imbalance in our understanding of the greater part of
2 the continent.
3 These two placings for Egypt, Africa and the Near East represent
4 not quite opposed points of view. Locating Egypt raises issues about
5 how Europeans, who are largely those who have written Egyptology,
6 have viewed Egypt both as part of, and distinct from, ‘Africa’. It is
7 also a useful starting point for discussing issues of culture and influ-
8 ences which we consider in later chapters.
9 Modern perceptions of where Egypt is are very different to those
10111 of the past. All terminology is, of course, subjective. To the Greeks
11 ‘Egypt’ was the land of the Nile Valley, bounded by Asia on the
2 east, ‘Libya’ (their term for the whole of the rest of north Africa) on
3 the west, and Aithiopia (a vast, ill-defined region at the southern-
4 most limit of the world) to the south. The Greek name Aigyptos
5 (L. Aegyptus) derives from the name given to the city of Memphis,
6 Hu(t)-ka-Ptah, meaning ‘The House of the Ka (-Soul) of Ptah’. In
7 the languages of western Asia the country was known as Musri
8 (modern Arabic Misr), and is found as such in biblical and Assyrian
9 texts. To the Assyrians, Egypt was in the West. The Assyrian records
20111 of the Sargonid Period (721–626 BC) refer to the pharaoh as the
1 ‘King of the Westland’. To them, the ‘Mediterranean’ (the central
2 sea) was not central at all; it was the ‘Great Sea’, the ‘Upper Sea’
3 (contrasted with Lower Sea, the Gulf) or the ‘Sea of the Setting
4 Sun’. Presumably, the Kushites thought of Egypt as, in some sense,
5 ‘north’, lying downstream on the same river. To the Romans, and
6 their cultural heirs, Egypt was in the East, the Orient.
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8 N A M I N G EG Y PT
9 All of these locations of Egypt have been established by other peoples,
30111 or in relation to other peoples and places. For the Egyptians, Egypt
1 was, of course, the centre. But ‘Egypt’ itself is a name imposed from
2 outside: imposed by the Romans as the name of a province of their
3 empire. And this brings us to one of the key problems of Egyptology
4 and studying Egypt. Because, as we shall see in Chapter 3, the early
5 European reconstructions of ancient Egypt’s history and geography
6 relied on Greek, Roman and biblical sources, as well as contemporary
7 Arabic names, the literature displays a confusing, not to say bewilder-
8 ing, array of variant name forms. In his attempts to decipher hiero-
9 glyphics, Champollion used names known from such Greek and
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1111 Roman sources to find the Egyptian forms. As the proper Egyptian
2 pronunciation was unknown to the Egyptologists (and still is) the
3 names used in literature were ‘Latinized’, so that we often find
4 Latinized forms of Greek versions of Egyptian names. In recent years,
51 many Egyptologists have preferred to use a written form of the
6 Egyptian name that is closer to a direct rendering of the Egyptian
7 hieroglyphic signs (although it may not resemble the way the name
8 was pronounced in ancient times).
9 So, to take one common name, the old form derived from the
10111 Greek and Latin writers was ‘Amenophis’ but the form from the
11 hieroglyphic is ‘Amenhotep’. Similarly, we have ‘Sethos’ and ‘Sety’,
2 ‘Sesostris’ and ‘Senusret’ or ‘Senwosret’, ‘Ammenemes’ and ‘Amen-
311 emhat’. The problem persists, as some writers prefer to use the
4 Latinized forms and some the more Egyptian forms. Some writers
5 even prefer to use the Latinized forms for pharaohs and Egyptian
6 forms for others in order to distinguish the pharaohs, resulting in
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sentences that talk about a pharaoh ‘Amenophis III’ and his official
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Amenhotep. Not all pharaohs are mentioned in Greek and Roman
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sources (Hatshepsut, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun being the three
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obvious ones) so they have no Latinized forms; consequently, those
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who use the old forms have to mix them with Egyptian forms.
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The reasons for using a form which is derived directly from the
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4 Egyptian are obvious. While we still cannot be certain how names
5 were pronounced (Egyptian lacks vowels, so we only have the con-
6 sonants) the Egyptian forms are a more honest attempt at rendering
7 what is written in the hieroglyphic.
8 The same problem occurs with names of gods and goddesses, some
9 writers preferring, for example, the Greek ‘Arsaphes’ for ‘Herishef’,
30111 and ‘Satis’ for ‘Satet’ (or ‘Satjet’). Most divine names, however, still
1 appear in their Latin/Greek forms: Osiris (rather than the Egyptian
2 Usir), Isis (not Aset), Nephthys (not Nebet-hat), and Thoth (not
3 Djehuty).
4 With place names the confusion increases since parts of archaeo-
5 logical sites are usually known by the Arabic names for the particular
6 mound (kom or tell) or area. Generally, Egyptologists still refer to
7 ancient towns and cities by the Greek (or Latinized Greek) names.
8 Heliopolis (Helios-polis, the city of the sun) was the Greek name
911 for the ancient Egyptian Iunu (meaning ‘the Pillar’); Thebes was
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1111 a Greek name for Waset; Memphis was the Greek form of the
2 Egyptian ‘Men-nofer’; and Bubastis comes from ‘Per-Bast’ (‘Temple/
3 Domain of Bast’, the cat goddess).
4 The forms used here are generally the ‘Egyptian’ ones, although
5 gods such as Isis and Osiris still appear in the more familiar Greek
6 style. The ‘Egyptian’ forms of names are derived from a ‘transliter-
7 ation’ of the original Egyptian (which is usually written in
8 hieroglyphic). The Egyptian language was written with signs which
9 give the consonants and some ‘semi-vowels’: there were no full
10111 vowels in Egyptian (as in modern Arabic). A transliteration of,
11 for example, the name we read as ‘Amenhotep’ combines the signs
2 and sign groups I-mn-htp. Conventionally, Egyptologists insert
3 vowels to get ‘Amen-hotep’. The transliterations can only be approx-
4 imate, as Egyptian has, for example, four different sounds for ‘h’: in
5 technical works these are identified with ‘diacritical’ marks (dots and
6 lines under the letter).
7 This confusing system of names is the result of the way in which
8 Egyptology, and the understanding of the Egyptian language,
9 developed.
20111 The Egyptians themselves used a number of names for their land,
1 but most reflected duality, rather than unity. The Nile Valley,
2 ‘Upper Egypt’, enclosed for most of its length by limestone cliffs,
3 was ‘Ta-Shemau’ and was represented in hieroglyphic by a flowering
4 sedge plant (or ‘lily’). The broad expanse of the Delta, Lower Egypt,
5 was ‘Ta-Mehu’, represented by a clump of papyrus.
6 By the time of the New Kingdom we find references to ‘this land
7 of KeMeT’. Kemet means ‘black’ and is generally taken to mean the
8 land which is covered by the silt during the inundation of the Nile.
9 Many Afrocentrist writers have argued that Kemet defines Egypt as
30111 the ‘land of the black people’, but this is a grammatically incorrect
1 reading. That Kemet means the land rather than people is further
2 confirmed by its use in contrast to DeSHReT, the ‘red’, a term for
3 the areas beyond the cultivation, continuing into the deserts.
4 The Egyptians thought of their land as the result of the unifica-
5 tion of two kingdoms, and Egyptian ideology emphasized this
6 duality to the Roman Period. Each kingdom had its own crown
7 and protective deities. Ta-Shemau, Upper Egypt, had as its symbol
8 the sedge plant, and, as its ruler, the king wore the white crown.
9 The protective goddess was the vulture, Nekhbet. Ta-Mehu, Lower
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6 Figure 1.1 The king crowned by the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt.
7 Ptolemaic Period, temple of Kom Ombo.
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20111 Egypt, was symbolized by the bee, or the papyrus, the Red Crown
1 and the goddess Wadjet (Buto) (Figure 1.1).
2 Egypt was also divided into smaller districts which are generally
3 known by the Greek-derived word nome, rather than the Egyptian
4 term for them, sepat. Earlier Egyptologists thought that the division
5 into nomes was a vestige of how Egypt had been before the uni-
6 fication, that each represented one of the chiefdoms which were
7 eventually brought together into the two kingdoms. There were
8 eventually 42 nomes, each represented by an androgynous figure
9 symbolizing the fecundity of the flooding Nile (Figure 1.2). Outside
30111 the Nile Valley and Delta were regions that were ruled by Egypt,
1 but not defined as nomes, notably the Oases of the Western Desert
2 and the Wadi Natrun.
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W H O WER E TH E EG Y PTI A N S ?
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6 Did a ‘Dynastic Race’ sail from Mesopotamia along the Gulf and
7 around Arabia then up the Red Sea? Or did they spread from some
8 intermediate place such as Dilmun (Bahrain) in both directions? Few
911 rational Egyptologists would nowadays subscribe to this idea. It was,
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6 Figure 1.2 A fecundity figure with the sign of the nome of Khemenu
7 (Hermopolis) in Middle Egypt: part of a procession in the temple
8 of Ramesses II at Abydos, nineteenth dynasty.
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20111 however, very popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
1 centuries. The leading British archaeologist of Egypt, Flinders
2 Petrie, formed the ‘Dynastic Race’ theory to explain the rapid devel-
3 opment of Egyptian civilization, assuming that Africans needed an
4 external impetus. Deriving from nineteenth-century anthropological
5 theories, Petrie’s Dynastic Race theory was not fully accepted by
6 Egyptologists, but it had a deep influence, notably on the American
7 George Reisner in his reconstruction of Nubian cultures, and it was
8 still being argued by W. B. Emery, excavator of important early
9 royal cemeteries, in his study of early Egypt in 1961.
30111 Speculation about the ‘race’ of the Egyptians began in the eight-
1 eenth century and increased during the nineteenth and early
2 twentieth centuries, with the growing European influence over the
3 Near East, Africa and Asia. Ideas about race were used as a justifi-
4 cation for imperial expansion, and some of the developing academic
5 disciplines were called upon to lend support to the racial theories.
6 Notable among these were language studies, with languages soon
7 being used to define peoples. The new theory of ‘Evolution’ too, was
8 a major factor. Early anthropology proposed a ‘unilinear’ evolu-
9 tionary development for humans, and claimed to produce scientific
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1111 evidence for this by complex cranial measurements. The living ‘races
2 of mankind’ were then ordered along a presumed scale of develop-
3 ment. As a result, the Egyptians could be blackened or whitened
4 according to the personal agenda of the writer.
51 The Dynastic Race theory was the ‘scientific’ (in that it was
6 claimed to be based on archaeological evidence) exposition of the
7 attitude that Egypt, being in Africa, was unable to produce a high
8 culture, therefore the Egyptians (or, at least, the ruling class) must
9 have come from somewhere else. As with every other significant
10111 cultural group (such as the Dorians in Greece) in late nineteenth-
11 century interpretations, this place of origin turned out to be
2 somewhere in central Asia, the supposed Indo-European/Aryan
311 homeland. As the German Egyptologist, Heinrich Brugsch, put it
4 in one of the most influential of late nineteenth-century histories
5 of Egypt:
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according to ethnology, the Egyptians appear to form a third
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branch of the Caucasian race, the family called Cushite; and
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this much may be regarded as certain, that in the earliest
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ages of humanity, far beyond all historical remembrance, the
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Egyptians, for reasons unknown to us, left the soil of their
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early home, took their way towards the setting sun, and
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4 finally crossed that bridge of nations, the Isthmus of Suez,
5 to find a new fatherland on the banks of the Nile.
6 (Heinrich Brugsch, Egypt Under
7 The Pharaohs, 1891: 2–3)
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9 Brugsch here summarizes the European academic view that had
30111 developed during the nineteenth century, and which had completely
1 overturned the view of Egypt as African. Egyptology generally
2 adopted a view that the ancient Egyptians were a ‘brown’ north
3 African race or the result of a mixture of black African and lighter-
4 skinned peoples. Physical anthropology shows that there is a strong
5 continuity in the appearance of the Egyptians from ancient to
6 modern times.
7 The most extreme form of the Dynastic Race theory claims that
8 civilization came from somewhere other than Earth itself. There is
911 no good archaeological evidence that the ancient Egyptians or their
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1111 culture came from Mars or any other distant planet or galaxy,
2 through ‘Stargate’ or by spaceship! But whether or not Egypt was
3 the creation of extra-terrestrial peoples, there are many writers
4 who insist that Egypt was the repository of a ‘Higher Culture’ of,
5 for example, the lost races of Atlantis. None of these ideas gets much
6 sympathy from Egyptologists, but they do belong to the very broad
7 range of uses and perceptions of ancient Egypt. These ideas may
8 lack ‘scientific’ or archaeological authority, but that does little to
9 diminish their popularity and indeed, just as biblical and classical
10111 literature before, they have resulted in archaeological investigations,
11 if only to refute them. Egyptologists may ignore or despise these
2 extreme uses of ancient Egypt and its culture, but they capture the
3 public imagination in numerous books, newspapers and television
4 programmes. They also represent that search for ‘the other’ that
5 Egypt has represented to outsiders since ancient times.
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8 W H O W E R E TH E A N CI EN T EG Y P T I A N S ?
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Our knowledge of the prehistory of north Africa has changed quite
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dramatically in the past thirty years. Environmental studies now
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show that, rather than one phase of desiccation, the Sahara has had
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several wet and dry phases, and these have affected movements
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of animals and peoples. With the desiccation of the Sahara in the
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5 period 10,000–5000 BC peoples moved from the central regions in
6 different directions, some coming into the Nile Valley – or initially
7 settling along the desert plateau above the swampy valley. Current
8 research suggests that the southern regions of Nubia may have fallen
9 within the seasonal rain belt much later than we had previously
30111 thought, perhaps as late as the New Kingdom. The Wadi Howar,
1 originally a tributary of the Nile which connected with it in the
2 Dongola Reach, runs from Darfur, Kordofan and Chad. The Wadi
3 may even have been able to support some arable production and
4 pastoralism into the early centuries AD, and perhaps served as a
5 route between the Nile and regions further west throughout ancient
6 times. The complexity of climatic change suggests that for a long
7 period before the emergence of Egypt as a unified state, there were
8 peoples, probably pastoralists, ranging over large regions of what is
9 now the Sahara.
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1111 Evidence from recent excavations in some Delta sites shows that
2 there were very close contacts between that region and Canaan from
3 the late prehistoric period into the Early Dynastic. There was consid-
4 erable trade between the two regions, and there were Asiatic settlers
51 in Egypt, and Egyptian settlements (probably trade based) in Sinai
6 and Canaan.
7 The evidence of language is also relevant here. Ancient Egyptian
8 belongs to a language group known as ‘Afro-Asiatic’ (formerly called
9 Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African
10111 languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt’s cultural features, both
11 material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show
2 clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt
311 was an African culture, developed by African peoples who had wide-
4 ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia.
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W H AT D I D TH E A N CI EN T EG Y P T I A N S
7
LOOK LIKE?
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9 The European idea of the ancient Egyptians has varied a lot in the past
20111 three hundred years, and has been the subject of much recent study.
1 Martin Bernal in Black Athena shows how Egyptian culture and peo-
2 ples were ‘blackened’ and ‘whitened’ according to racial prejudices,
3 bolstered by changes in academic thought. This is epitomized in the
4 quotation from Heinrich Brugsch above, which promotes the idea
5 that the ancient Egyptians were Caucasians. Much nineteenth-century
6 painting of biblical events or episodes set in ancient Egypt includes
7 elite Egyptians who are remarkably European in colouring and
8 appearance. ‘Brown’ and black people appear, but nearly always in the
9 role of servants or slaves: the main characters of pharaohs and female
30111 royalty (such as the princess in the numerous pictures of the ‘finding
1 of Moses’) are distinctly white. In these paintings ancient Egypt was
2 used for all sorts of purposes. From the Egyptological perspective,
3 these choices are certainly wrong: the ancient Egyptians were not
4 ‘white’ in any European sense, nor were they ‘Caucasian’.
5 So were they ‘black’? This depends, in part, on your own point
6 of view and how you would define ‘black’. Much Afro-American
7 literature promotes the view that the ancient Egyptians were essen-
8 tially like modern Afro-Americans. The more extreme (and, it must
911 be said, racist) versions state that the present-day Egyptians are
folio 10
23. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 ‘only’ Arabs who came in later. Certainly, there have been migra-
2 tions from Arabia throughout medieval and early modern times, and
3 no doubt in ancient times as well. However, the Arab Conquest of
4 CE (AD) 641 was, like the Roman or Norman conquests in England,
51 essentially an elite conquest rather than a mass population move-
6 ment. In Egypt, once the country had been taken over there were
7 large-scale conversions to Islam, but the population remained
8 essentially that of late Roman Egypt.
9 One major problem in discussing ethnicity is time. There is a
10111 tendency in both polarized extremes to dismiss the later historical
11 phases (from the end of the New Kingdom onwards). Both groups
2 say that by then the Egyptians were no longer ‘Egyptian’, having
311 been replaced or ‘diluted’ by increasing numbers of ‘foreigners’. Both
4 assume some sort of ideal early-Egyptian race, in the one case ‘black’
5 and in the other perhaps less clearly defined. This ignores earlier
6 non-Egyptians in Egypt, and places too much emphasis on the
7
foreign ancestry of individual pharaohs. It raises the fundamental
8
question of how we define ancient Egypt. Both professional Egypto-
9
logists and other interest groups impose a time limit on ancient
20111
Egypt. The attitudes of Egyptologists are of immense importance
1
in forming the attitudes of secondary literature. For a long time the
2
Ptolemaic and Roman Periods have been regarded as distinctly
3
4 ‘after’, and the first millennium has not been given equal import-
5 ance with the earlier ‘kingdoms’. Yet if we look at Egyptian culture,
6 there is much in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt that is a direct contin-
7 uation of the earlier periods. We cannot expect any society to remain
8 monolithic and unchanging over five thousand years. The evidence,
9 increasing in quantity and diversity from the earlier to the later
30111 phases, also puts our attempts to understand out of balance. There
1 is a tendency in general works (such as this one) to illustrate
2 aspects of Egypt by using evidence from different periods. This again
3 is perhaps a problem of the timescale involved, and the apparently
4 unchanging culture; we would not do this with, for example,
5 Mesopotamia, much less with Greece or Rome.
6 At all periods there were ‘foreign’ populations absorbed into
7 Egypt, most notably the Libyan tribes. There were settlements of
8 Greeks (from Greece, the islands and Asia Minor) and Macedonians
911 in the Ptolemaic Period. There were people from the south (‘Nubia’)
folio 12
24. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 in Egypt at all periods, and in the Aswan region they must always
2 have been a significant element of the population. Similarly, Asiatic
3 and other captives of war would have been integrated. In the New
4 Kingdom we have good evidence for royal marriages with foreign
5 princesses, who were accompanied by large numbers of female atten-
6 dants, some of whom would have been given in marriage to
7 courtiers. Not all of the sons of foreign rulers who were educated at
8 the Egyptian court returned to their homelands, and many took up
9 administrative offices and married Egyptian wives.
10111 It is impossible to make a generalization about the appearance of
11 a single population over a period of five thousand years, but we can
2 say that the earliest population of ancient Egypt included African
3 people from the upper Nile, African people from the regions of the
4 Sahara and modern Libya, and smaller numbers of people who had
5 come from south-western Asia and perhaps the Arabian peninsula.
6 By the period of the unification of Egypt, and the beginning of
7
‘Dynastic’ history, these peoples had been living in Egypt for thou-
8
sands of years: they were indigenous. Throughout the succeeding
9
millennia individuals and groups (generally fairly small) of people
20111
from all of those same regions continued to settle in Egypt, but there
1
were no mass movements of population that ‘replaced’ the original
2
population.
3
4 So, what is the evidence for the appearance of the ancient popu-
5 lations? We have extensive human remains preserved as skeletons or
6 mummies. The better-preserved mummies, particularly of royalty,
7 require little imagination or restoration to give an impression of the
8 appearance of the person when alive. Less well-preserved or skeletal
9 remains require reconstruction, and considerable advances have been
30111 made in recent years in the re-creation of faces from skulls. This, of
1 course, gives us the features of the person, but not necessarily skin,
2 hair or eye colour. It should also be noted that the majority of the
3 well-preserved remains are of members of the elite; relatively few
4 non-elite cemeteries have been examined in detail.
5 There is a wealth of artistic representation in the form of stat-
6 uary, relief sculpture and painting from all periods of Egyptian
7 history, and depicting all social classes. As in all societies where
8 portraiture is practised there are various conventions, idealizations
9 and period styles which affect the image. The face of the reigning
folio 13
25. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 monarch frequently influences the portrayal of his subjects, perhaps
2 most obviously in the reign of Akhenaten. There are certainly
3 specific types of face at certain periods, but this does not necessarily
4 indicate any ethnic change.
51 The most important conventions in Egyptian art are the distin-
6 guishing of male and female by colour: men are painted red-brown,
7 women creamy yellow (Figure 1.3). These conventions clearly reflect
8 a social ideal: that elite women are paler because they stay indoors
9 and do not work in the fields. In the New Kingdom these conven-
10111 tions change slightly, and Nefertiti, for example can be coloured
11 red-brown like Akhenaten; slightly later, pinkish tones were added
2 to the palette and used for female figures (e.g. Nefertari, wife of
311 Ramesses II). There is also an idealization of the figure, particularly
4 the body. This is notable in, for example, statues of Senusret III
5 where the face is lined and, if not old, at least ‘careworn’, yet the
6 body is the ideal youthful image. Occasionally, royal images do not
7 conform to the ideal, as with some statues of Amenhotep III and his
8 son Akhenaten. But these deviations from the ideal are relatively
9 rare, and were created with a specific ideological message.
20111 Foreigners too are designated by conventions. At times these can
1 be almost caricatures of racial stereotypes, but that is to emphasize
2 their foreignness, and their difference, particularly when they appear
3 as enemies of Egypt. In some instances, such as in the scenes of
4 Nubian captives in the tomb of Horemheb at Saqqara, the foreign
5 captives are portrayed with great sympathy, and it is the petty
6 Egyptian officials who are shown unflatteringly. When a foreigner
7 was absorbed into Egyptian society s/he could be shown as an
8 Egyptian. For example in the tomb of Tutankhamun’s Viceroy of
9 Kush, Huy, a Nubian prince named Heqa-nefer, is depicted. Because
30111 he appears as a subject foreigner bringing the tribute of Nubia to
1 the pharaoh, Heqa-nefer is shown wearing the feathered headdress
2 and costume of a Nubian, and is painted black in colour. Yet, in
3 his own tomb, where he was portrayed as a member of the Egyptian
4 elite, Heqa-nefer was depicted as any other Egyptian official, painted
5 red-brown in colour and wearing conventional Egyptian costume.
6 Occasionally foreigners seem to emphasize their origins, such as the
7 Nubian mercenaries depicted on stelae from Gebelein, the Asiatic
8 soldier with his Egyptian wife and servant on a stela from Amarna,
911 and the Kushite pharaohs of the twenty-fifth dynasty.
folio 14
26. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 SELF-DEFINITION: WHO DID THE
2 E GYP TI A N S TH I N K TH EY W E R E ?
3
Ancient Egypt had no myth recording the origin of the population
4
or the foundation of the state dependent upon one ‘people’ as, for
5
example, Rome and the Israelites had. Egyptian origins of both the
6
people and the state are attributed to the creation of the gods. Insofar
7
as they defined themselves at all, an Egyptian was simply someone
8
who lived in Egypt and presumably conformed, to a greater or lesser
9
10111 degree, to Egyptian culture, and spoke the language. There does
11 not appear to have been a view of being Egyptian based upon ‘race’
2 or ‘ethnicity’. The descriptions of individuals in documents as ‘the
3 Kushite’, ‘the Syrian’ or ‘the Libyan’ are usually due to the type
4 of document and the context. There is also an unspoken assump-
5 tion that, although we have rich evidence of ‘foreigners’ in the
6 New Kingdom and later Egypt, there were fewer in the Old and
7 Middle Kingdoms. It may be true that from the New Kingdom to
8 Roman times ‘foreigners’ came from a greater range of countries,
9 and from much further away than in earlier times, but there would
20111 always have been significant groups of people from the south
1 (‘Nubia’), the west (‘Libya’) and the east (the desert, Sinai and
2 southern Canaan).
3 The Egyptians did distinguish themselves from other peoples.
4 The lists of foreign or subject countries and city-states that can be
5 found in temples from the New Kingdom onwards carry the name
6 of the place surmounted by a figure representing it. The names are
7 then grouped together, usually as northern and southern localities.
8 The broad divisions of peoples that Egyptians recognized were estab-
9 lished, like so much royal ideology, in the developing years of the
30111 state, and reflected those early direct contacts with their nearest
1 neighbours to the south, west and east. These groups were called
2 remetj, the ‘people’, representing the Egyptians themselves; Nehesiu,
3 black-skinned southerners (‘Nubians’); Tjehenu, ‘Libyans’, and Aamu,
4 ‘Asiatics’ (originally representing the people of south Canaan).
5 As Egyptian knowledge of the world expanded, new peoples and
6 places were included in lists, but still clustered in the same groups.
7 When, in the eighteenth dynasty, Egypt became involved with the
8 kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia, Mitanni in north Syria and
9 Khatti (the Hittites) in Anatolia, along with the people of Cyprus,
folio 15
27. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 Crete and Greece, they were all included in Aamu, as extensions of
2 the north and east.
3 There is evidence for a form of xenophobia in Egyptian attitudes
4 to foreigners, foreign places, food and cultures, but this, as in most
51 ancient societies, is based on their being non-Egyptian, rather than
6 on race or religion. As the ‘Great Hymn to the Aten’, written in
7 the reign of Akhenaten (c. 1352–1336 BC), expressed it:
8
9 You (the sun god) made the earth as you wished . . . you
10111 set every man in his place, you supply their needs; everyone
11 has his food; his lifetime is counted. Their tongues differ in
2 speech, their characters likewise; their skins are distinct, for
311 you distinguished the peoples.
4 (Lichtheim 1973: 131–2)
5
6 What did the Egyptians call themselves? By the Middle Kingdom
7 official documents refer to the ‘people of Kemet’, but at the same
8
time emphasize that they are all subjects of Pharaoh, and hence rank
9
in the same categories as the ‘Nine Bows’ and any other of those
20111
groups that he must control. The people of Egypt are often called
1
the ‘rekhyt’ in texts. The word is written with the hieroglyph of a
2
lapwing, and the bird appears as a symbol for the Egyptian people
3
4 in numerous contexts. On the ceremonial mace head of King
5 ‘Scorpion’, from the period of state unification, dead lapwings are
6 shown hanging from standards, as a symbol of defeated peoples
7 (perhaps here specifically the people of the Delta). Otherwise, the
8 Egyptians are simply remetj, ‘the people’.
9 In the rarer personal evidence, such as letters and ‘autobiograph-
30111 ical’ inscriptions, it is clear that the Egyptians usually defined
1 themselves by relation to their local town. This is shown by the use
2 of theophoric names and invocations to local gods. Clearly some
3 deities, such as the state gods Amun, Ptah and Re, and the funerary
4 gods Osiris and Isis, were worshipped all over Egypt; others had
5 more localized popularity. So the name Wepwawet-mose suggests
6 that the man came from the region of Asyut, whereas the name Nes-
7 Iusaas suggests that he came from Iunu (Heliopolis).
8 Letters such as those in the archive of the late twentieth-dynasty
911 scribes of the Theban necropolis, the father and son Dhutmose and
folio 16
28. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 Butehamun reveal their dislike of being away from their home town,
2 whether elsewhere in Egypt or in Nubia. They use a term, colour-
3 fully translated by one Egyptologist as ‘hellhole’, for places in both
4 Nubia and northern Egypt, and they constantly urge their families
5 to pray to the gods of the home town for a safe return. While at
6 certain periods the pharaoh provided burial places near his own
7 pyramid or tomb for selected high officials, there was a distinct pref-
8 erence for being buried in one’s home town. This is demonstrated
9 by the burial of a Viceroy of Kush, named Hori, who served in
10111 the reign of Ramesses III. Hori came from the important town of
11 Per-Bast (Bubastis) in the eastern Delta, and on several monuments
2 he dedicated in the viceregal domain he included invocations to the
3 patron goddess of his home town, Bast. Hori died in Nubia, and
4 was probably mummified there before the long journey to his burial
5 place in Per-Bast. A series of rock inscriptions records the journey
6 of his body northwards, accompanied by officials of his retinue and
7
professional mourners. It must have taken several weeks for the body
8
to sail from Nubia to the Delta, where it was laid to rest in a massive
9
sarcophagus of red Aswan granite in his family tomb.
20111
In common with many other ancient peoples, the Egyptians
1
acknowledged that there were differences in skin colour and
2
language, but they did not define themselves by race. The Egyptians
3
4 are perhaps best defined by cultural factors: those who lived in Egypt
5 and belonged to the Egyptian system. We have generally assumed
6 that the range of cultural values and religious beliefs documented
7 by the written and material remains were common to the whole
8 society. But we have to remember that most of our evidence comes
9 from a very narrow sector of that society. Trying to penetrate
30111 ancient Egypt beyond the world presented by the elite is actually
1 very difficult. Another factor that cannot be forgotten is the enor-
2 mous timescale of ancient Egypt. From the developing period of
3 the recognizable Egyptian state and culture to the Arab conquest is
4 some five thousand years; there were certainly enormous changes
5 during that time, but the Egyptians themselves chose to emphasize
6 continuity.
7 Egypt was the first large nation state. It was a geographically
8 well-defined unit with one dominant language, and culture, ruled
9 by a king and centralized administration. It was also, in many ways
folio 17
29. DEFINING ANCIENT EGYPT
1111 different from the other countries with which it was involved. This
2 difference was something that was emphasized by the Asiatic, and
3 later by Greek and Roman writers: Egypt did things differently, and
4 this has contributed to her enduring myth.
51
6
7
8
9
10111
11
2
311
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
folio 18
30. 1111
2
3 2
4
5 THE EGYPTIAN
6
7 WORLD
8
9
10111
11
2
3 People entering Egypt from other parts of Africa usually came from
4 the south along the Nile, or by the desert roads. The ancient
5 evidence emphasizes the Nile route, but in medieval and early
6 modern times large numbers of people came, or were brought, along
7 the Darb el-Arbain, the ‘Forty Days road’, that crossed the desert
8 from the southern side of the Sahara, through several small oases to
9 Kharga, and thence to the Nile at Girga or Asyut. This was the
20111 route favoured by official deputations from the Muslim kingdoms
1 of West Africa to Cairo, where they joined the Hajj to Mecca. It
2 was also the route used by the slave traders. How much of this route
3 was used in ancient times is still very uncertain, although parts of
4 it into, and from, Nubia certainly were. The major access to Egypt
5 from the west was along the Mediterranean coast, and this was,
6 in some periods, defended against Libyan attack with a chain of
7 fortresses.
8 Most people arriving in Egypt before the advent of air travel came
9 by sea, or across the Sinai land bridge. They therefore arrived at one
30111 of the mouths of the Nile or, later, at Alexandria, before travelling
1 upstream. The Delta and its cities were, therefore, the first places
2 encountered before approaching Heliopolis and Memphis. Viewing
3 Egypt this way helps us to appreciate that, despite the wealth of its
4 surviving monuments, Thebes was actually quite remote from the
5 ancient centres of population and production. This should perhaps
6 make us rethink our ideas of Thebes as a ‘capital’ and question the
7 emphasis that we place on its surviving monuments.
8 To the Egyptians the orientation of their world was dictated by
9 the valley and the river flowing from south to north. The religious
folio 19
31. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 world was on a predominantly east–west axis: dictated by the rising
2 and setting sun.
3 The Herodotean view of Egypt as a long, narrow country defined
4 by the Nile is endlessly repeated in books, but how far does it reflect
51 an ancient Egyptian perception of the country? Certainly, the
6 Egyptians abhorred the deserts, but we are now realizing that they did
7 in fact use desert travel far more than we have previously acknow-
8 ledged. Evidence from excavations in the western oases shows that
9 Dakhla, and no doubt Kharga and Bahariya, were under Egyptian
10111 authority during the Old Kingdom: ancient Egypt as a state was never
11 confined to the Nile Valley and Delta, even if that was its main focus.
2 Over the past thirty years there has been an enormous advance in
311 our understanding of the changing environment of Egypt in prehis-
4 toric and historic times, notably through the work of Karl Butzer.
5 We are now far more aware of climatic change and its far-reaching
6 effects, and the fluctuations in the flooding of the Nile, and this has
7 influenced our interpretations of state formation and state collapse
8 at, for example, the end of the Old Kingdom.
9 To the Egyptians, the ‘Nile’ was known as Iteru, perhaps meaning
20111 ‘the seasonal one’. When in flood it was Hapy. The Nile in Egypt
1 and Nubia is a single stream carrying the waters of the White Nile,
2 which flows from the lakes of Equatorial Africa, and the Blue Nile
3 and the Atbara, both issuing from the highlands of Ethiopia. It was
4 the Ethiopian waters that brought the rich silt that made Egypt
5 fertile. In its very early history the Nile had other tributaries
6 running in from the Sahara, and was fed by the water courses that
7 ran from the hills of the surrounding desert (now forming the dry
8 wadis). Throughout its history the annual inundation has varied, at
9 times dramatically, dependent as it is on the rains in Ethiopia. Since
30111 the construction of the dams at Aswan, the inundation has been
1 controlled, and the rich silt no longer feeds the land.
2 The flood waters began to rise in early June at Aswan (eight to
3 fourteen days later at Memphis), their arrival predicted by the
4 appearance of the star that we call Sirius and the Egyptians call
5 Sopdet. The river rose slowly, gradually covering the whole of the
6 broad flood plain, which remained under water for four to six weeks
7 to a depth of 1.0–1.5 metres (3–5 feet). Grain was sown as the waters
8 receded during October and November. The crops grew and ripened
911 over winter and were harvested in March or April. This cycle gave
folio 20
32. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 the seasons: Akhet, ‘the inundation’; Peret, literally, ‘coming forth’ –
2 the growing season; and Shomu, the dry season. In earlier historical
3 phases the Egyptians had little need to improve upon this natural
4 flooding of the land. As the population increased, dykes were used
5 to keep water in the fields for longer, and canals carried water to
6 the edges of the flood plain. Additional watering of fields and
7 gardens was by the simple method of filling two pots slung on a
8 yoke. Irrigation by mechanical means only came much later: the
9 shaduf, a bucket on a pivoting pole was not introduced until the
10111 New Kingdom, and the saqia, a type of water-wheel, not until
11 Persian or Ptolemaic times.
2 Throughout its history the course of the river has moved in the
3 broad valley, generally towards the east. Irrigation canals presum-
4 ably ran throughout the flood plain, with larger waterways
5 connecting to the river the bigger towns that were not set on the
6 river itself. Settlements were built on pockets of higher ground, so
7 that they did not get completely flooded, and they were presumably
8 surrounded by dykes and walls to protect them.
9 Travel by river was fairly slow. The current moved downstream
20111 at a rate of one knot (1.85 km per hour), increasing to four knots
1 during the inundation. Sailing upstream, against the current,
2 required sails. The detailed accounts of early European travellers
3 indicate that it took about ten days to sail from Luxor to Cairo in
4 late August, although contrary winds and other problems could
5 extend the time to sixteen days. In 656 BC the princess Nitoqert,
6 daughter of Psamtik I, took sixteen days to sail to Thebes, probably
7 from Memphis (or perhaps Sau in the Delta): but her progress was
8 ceremonial, rather than urgent.
9 Nothing is really known of the ancient road system, but it may be
30111 assumed that roads would have been created on top of the field
1 embankments. Such limited evidence that we have suggests that
2 routes along the desert edge were used for donkey caravans, and later
3 for swift courier communications using horses and chariots. The site
4 of Akhetaten (Amarna), Akhenaten’s city in Middle Egypt, is one of
5 few where a road network can be identified. There, the main routes in
6 the town, and roads leading to the tombs and other religious areas
7 away from the centre, are still clearly visible. These were maintained
8 with the larger stones being moved to the edges, defining the roads
9 and creating a smoother surface. There is a clear preference for straight
folio 21
33. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 lines connecting points at Akhetaten, and we may assume that any
2 major road system in Egypt would have been similarly planned.
3
4
UPPER EGYPT
51
6 The Egyptians themselves numbered the sepat (nomes) of Upper
7 Egypt from the First Cataract to the apex of the Delta. There were
8 22 nomes in Upper Egypt, and these were clearly defined by the
9 fifth dynasty. In the Delta the number of nomes changed at different
10111 periods, being fixed at 20 in Ptolemaic–Roman times. There are
11 complete lists of the nomes on monuments from the Old Kingdom
2 to Ptolemaic Period, and these show a little variation in the names.
311 In historical times, the southern border of Egypt was at the ‘first’
4 cataract of the river (actually the last from its sources) – modern
5 Aswan. In the prehistoric periods (700,000–5000 BC), and perhaps
6 to the late Predynastic Period (3500–3000 BC) the region of Gebel
7 Silsila seems to have marked the southern border of the kingdom of
8 Nekhen (Gk Hierakonpolis). The first nome of Upper Egypt, between
9 the Cataract and Silsila, was called Ta-Seti. Usually understood
20111 as ‘Bow Land’, it was a name that was also given to the region south
1 of the Cataract (Nubia), and archaeology shows that the early
2 Nubian cultures did extend north of the Cataract towards the Kom
3 Ombo basin. This southern frontier was political and practical: the
4 Cataract is the most easily defensible point on the river. The main
5 settlement was on the large island of Abu (Gk Elephantine), where
6 the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute have uncov-
7 ered the remains of the Early Dynastic town beneath the extensive
8 remains of the later settlement. In Egyptian, Abu means ‘elephant’
9 or ‘ivory’. Some writers suggest that the name derives from the
30111 massive granite outcrops that resemble elephants or that this was
1 the northern limit at which elephants were encountered in the
2 Predynastic Period; but it is more likely that the name derives from
3 the function of the original Egyptian settlement: as an ivory trading
4 centre in Nubian territory. The town was later dominated by the
5 temples of the Cataract god, Khnum, and his associated goddesses,
6 Anuqet and Satjet. In the Old Kingdom, the town’s officials were
7 important as controllers of the frontier and leaders of expeditions
8 into Nubia. In the Middle Kingdom, a long wall enclosed the whole
911 of the Cataract, protecting the road from the mainland settlement
folio 22
35. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 to the port, situated at the head of the Cataract on the plain of
2 Shellal. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptian army sailed from here
3 into Nubia, and there were numerous inscriptions recording the
4 progress of the viceroy and his staff. With the loss of the Nubian
51 domains at the end of the New Kingdom, Abu became a frontier
6 town. In Persian times there was a Jewish garrison on the island,
7 with its own temple. This garrison is well documented from a
8 large archive. There is also good evidence for the developing main-
9 land town, called in Egyptian ‘Sunu’, later Syene (modern Aswan),
10111 deriving from a word meaning ‘trade’. Although the official frontier
11 throughout the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods (until the reign of
2 Diocletian) lay at Maharraqa in Nubia, there was a garrison at
311 Aswan, and defence network stretching across the desert.
4 As well as its role as frontier town, supply base for the Nubian
5 fortresses in the Middle and early New Kingdoms, and starting
6 point for trading and military expeditions, Abu was important for
7 the quarrying of granite. The islands in the Cataract, and quarries
8 on the mainland, supplied huge quantities of red, black and grey
9 granite for architectural and sculptural work throughout Egypt. The
20111 quarrying of stone on islands in the river had the added advantage
1 of clearing the way for ships.
2 Abu had religious importance, too, since the Nile was believed to
3 be controlled by the Cataract god Khnum and to flow from a cavern
4 here. In the Late Period the cult of the goddess Isis was introduced
5 to the island of Philae (Egn Pa-iu-rk), at the head of the Cataract,
6 and under royal patronage the temples expanded, becoming a major
7 pilgrimage centre in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods.
8 The nome of Ta-Seti stretched northwards through the fertile
9 Kom Ombo basin, where Nubt (Gk Ombos) was another major settle-
30111 ment. There are extensive prehistoric remains in the Kom Ombo
1 basin. The crocodile god Sobek was worshipped here, and Nubt also
2 had a temple dedicated to the god Horus ‘the elder’. In the Ptolemaic
3 Period, a new double temple was built for both gods and their
4 consorts. Nubt stood at the end of desert roads into Nubia (as nearby
5 Daraw served them in early modern times) and to the Red Sea.
6 The gorge at Silsila (Egn Heny) is a natural geological boundary,
7 near the change of the valley from sandstone to limestone. It prob-
8 ably served as the southern border of the ‘kingdom’ of Nekhen
911 in the Predynastic Period. In the New Kingdom Silsila was a major
folio 24
36. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 source of sandstone: the temples of Thebes are built largely of stone
2 from here. As the narrowest point on the river in Egypt, it also
3 served as a place where the Nile flood was measured and its god,
4 Hapy, worshipped.
5 The second nome was Wetjes-Hor, ‘Throne of Horus’, with its
6 capital at Edfu. The town was called by a variety of names in ancient
7 times: Djeba ‘the perch’ (signifying the reed on which Horus as a
8 falcon alighted); Behdet; and Mesen. Through the association of
9 the chief god Horus with Apollo, in Greek times it was called
10111 Apollonopolis Megale (L. Magna). Horus took as his consort Hathor of
11 Dendera, whose statue was brought here to celebrate the ‘Feast of
2 the Beautiful Meeting’. Their child was called Hor-sema-tawy
3 (‘Uniter of the two lands’) or Ihy.
4 Edfu stood near the end of desert routes to Kharga Oasis and
5 Nubia on the west bank, and through the Eastern Desert, along the
6 Wadi Abbad, to the Red Sea. The town of Edfu is dominated by a
7 massive Ptolemaic temple, built on an ancient site, with part of the
8 New Kingdom temple preserved. Recent excavations in the exten-
9 sive town mound have yielded important information on the Second
20111 Intermediate Period.
1 The third nome was Nekhen. The principal town, Nekhen, is
2 often known by the Greek form Hierakonpolis, deriving from the local
3 falcon god, who was here depicted as mummified. The importance
4 of Nekhen as a major centre in the Predynastic Period was estab-
5 lished by early archaeologists with the discovery of the ceremonial
6 palette of Narmer and the mace head of king ‘Scorpion’. Excavations
7 directed by Michael Hofmann and his successors in the past two
8 decades have considerably expanded our knowledge of this major
9 Upper Egyptian town. Nekhen’s early importance was probably
30111 associated with its position near the end of one of the routes across
1 the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea.
2 Almost opposite Nekhen, on the east bank, lay another important
3 town, Nekheb (Gk Eleithyiaspolis; Ar. el-Kab), home of the epony-
4 mous vulture goddess Nekhbet. Within the extensive remains of the
5 great enclosure wall of this significant town are the temple of
6 Nekhbet, patroness of the white crown of Upper Egypt, and a pre-
7 dynastic town. In the cliffs nearby are tombs of the early eighteenth
8 dynasty with important autobiographical inscriptions of soldiers
9 who fought in the campaigns against the ‘Hyksos’.
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37. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 Downstream from Nekhen, the Nile flows through a double bend
2 with Iunyt, ‘the Pillar’, on the west bank. The town was later known
3 as Ta-sent, the origin of its modern Arabic name, Esna. By Ptolemaic
4 times this had become the capital of the nome, and was called
51 Latopolis, after the fish sacred to the goddess Neith, who was
6 worshipped here. The principal temple was dedicated to the ram-
7 headed creator god Khnum. Iunyt stood at the end of desert roads
8 to Kharga Oasis.
9 There were other smaller towns within the nome. A falcon god,
10111 Hemen, was worshipped at Hefat (el-Moalla). This town played a
11 significant role in the First Intermediate Period when its ruler,
2 Ankhtify, opposed the expanding power of Thebes. At the northern
311 limit of the nome was Per-Hathor (Gk Pathyris), which served as a
4 base for Nubian mercenary troops in the First Intermediate Period,
5 and a well-documented garrison in the Ptolemaic Period; the Arabic
6 name, Gebelein, refers to the two prominent hills that mark the
7 boundary between the third nome and its northern neighbour.
8 The fourth nome, Wase(t), ‘the divine sceptre’, occupies rich
9 country on a bend in the river. The small town of Sumenu (Gk
20111 Krokodilopolis, modern Rizeiqat), at the point where the river bends
1 sharply to the east, was a cult-centre of the crocodile god Sobek,
2 but the chief deity of the nome was the falcon-headed Montju,
3 who had solar and warrior attributes. His main cult centres were
4 Armant, Tod, Karnak and Medamud. From the late First Inter-
5 mediate Period onwards, another sky god, Amun, became increas-
6 ingly prominent with royal patronage of his temples at Ipet-sut
7 (Karnak) and Ipet-resyt (Luxor). In the New Kingdom it was Amun
8 and his sanctuaries that dominated the region, although Montju
9 regained importance in the Libyan and Late Periods. Amun acquired
30111 a consort in the vulture goddess Mut, and the moon god Khonsu
1 became their child.
2 In Ptolemaic times, Iunu, ‘the Pillar’, was known as Hermonthis
3 (Ar. Armant) after Montju, who had a large temple here, and whose
4 sacred bull, Buchis, was mummified and buried here. On the east
5 bank, another temple to the god was built at Djerety (Ar. Tod).
6 The small town of Wase(t) (Thebes, modern Luxor) has one of the
7 most beautiful settings on the Nile. The cliffs come close to the
8 river, unusually on the west rather than eastern side of the river,
911 and the whole is dominated by the natural pyramid of the Qurn.
folio 26
39. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 Prosperity began with the local rulers of the First Intermediate
2 Period, who expanded their power to north and south, and reunited
3 the whole of Egypt. The town received considerable royal patronage
4 from the rulers of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties, and the
51 temple of Amun was enlarged. In the Second Intermediate Period,
6 Wase(t) was the capital of a kingdom that stretched from Aswan
7 into Middle Egypt. Again, it was the local rulers who reunited Egypt
8 and established the New Kingdom. The town and its temples were
9 now elevated to a rank beside the great northern cities of Iunu
10111 (Heliopolis) and Memphis. Amun was merged with the sun-god Ra,
11 and Wase(t) became Iunu-shemau, ‘the Southern Iunu’. It was also
2 known quite simply as Niu(t) (No) ‘the City’, and appears in biblical
311 texts as ‘No-Ammon’, ‘City of Amun’, and in Greek as Diospolis
4 Megale (L. Magna), through the equation of Amun with Zeus. Thebes
5 was never the ‘capital’ of all Egypt in any modern sense – it was far
6 too removed from the centre of Egypt’s prosperity and population,
7
but as a royal burial place it played a particularly important role.
8
In the rich lands to the east of the city was the small town of Madu,
9
another cult centre of Montju.
20111
The importance of the fifth nome, Bikwy, ‘Two Falcons’, or
1
Netjerwy, ‘Two Gods’, was in part due to its position, controlling
2
access to the main routes through the Eastern Desert along the Wadi
3
4 Hammamat to the gold mines, the quarries and the Red Sea.
5 The town of Gesa (Ar. Qus) stood at the end of one branch of the
6 desert roads. From the association of its patron god Horus with
7 Apollo, it became Apollonopolis Mikra (L. Parva) in the Ptolemaic
8 Period. Opposite Gesa, on the west bank, was Nubt (Gk Ombos),
9 now generally known by the Arabic name Naqada. The extensive
30111 archaeological remains here became the ‘type site’ for predynastic
1 Upper Egyptian pottery, and the name generally applied to the
2 culture of Upper Egypt in that formative stage.
3 Although Gesa and Nubt may have been important early, the
4 nome capital Gebtiu (Gk Koptos; Ar. Qift) remained significant
5 throughout Egyptian history. Some of the earliest colossal sculptures
6 were discovered here, representing the town’s chief god, Min.
7 Temples to Min and his consort Isis continued to be raised here until
8 the Roman Period. Min combined his usual aspect of fertility god
911 with a role as patron of the deserts.
folio 28
40. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10111
11
2
3
4
5 Figure 2.3 The Nile near Qena.
6
7 The river, which has been flowing north-east, now turns west-
8 ward, and the impressive range of the Eastern Desert plateau comes
9 to the river, its sheer cliffs dominating the east bank throughout
20111 most of the valley to Cairo (Figure 2.3). Now the river runs close
1 to the east bank, although it may have been farther west in ancient
2 times. At the entrance to the sixth nome, ‘the Crocodile’, another
3 town stood near the routes into the Eastern Desert, Kaine, or
4 Kainepolis (Ar. Qena). The nome had Iun(et), ‘the Pillar’, as its chief
5 town, later known as Ta-Iunu-ta-netjeret, ‘the Pillar of the Goddess’,
6 and Tentura (Ar. Dendera). The presiding deity was Hathor who
7 took as her consort Horus of Edfu. Their child was Ihy, the child
8 god of music and jubilation. With origins in the Old Kingdom, the
9 vast and imposing remains of the Ptolemaic–Roman temple of
30111 Hathor stand testimony to the ancient importance of Dendera.
1 The seventh nome was originally Bat, later Sesheshet, ‘Sistrum’.
2 The goddess Bat was depicted full face with the ears of a cow and
3 curling horns. Quite early she was assimilated with the neigh-
4 bouring goddess Hathor, and with her votive object the sistrum.
5 The principal town was Hu(t)-Sekhem, abbreviated Hu, hence
6 the Arabic Hiw. In Ptolemaic times it was called Diospolis Mikra
7 (L. Diospolis Parva).
8 The eighth nome, Ta-wer, ‘the Great Land’, had as its chief town
9 Tjeny (Gk This or Thinis) which is probably near (or the same as)
folio 29
41. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 the modern town of Girga. Little is known of Tjeny in ancient times,
2 but it probably owed its importance to its position at the end of the
3 desert road to Kharga. In the late twenty-fifth and early twenty-
4 sixth dynasties, Tjeny was the seat of the Vizier of Upper Egypt.
51 The town’s principal god was Inheret-Shu, son of Ra.
6 The most notable archaeological remains in this district are at the
7 great ancient centre of Abedju, Abydos (Ar. el-Araba el-Madfuna),
8 perhaps the cemetery of Tjeny. The chief god here was Khenti-
9 amentiu, ‘the Foremost of the Westerners’. By the late Old Kingdom
10111 he had been assimilated with and supplanted by Osiris. Abydos
11 became one of the most important religious sites in Egypt, and by
2 the Middle Kingdom the tomb of one of the earliest pharaohs in
311 the vast desert cemetery was identified as the burial place of Osiris.
4 Little has been excavated of the ancient city, or the chief temple
5 of Osiris, although there are well-preserved temples of Sety I and
6 Ramesses II at the edge of the cultivation. The Early Dynastic ceme-
7
tery stretches out toward the entrance of a major wadi, which was
8
clearly a religious focus (probably as the entrance to the underworld).
9
The cemetery is still producing exciting new archaeological material,
20111
and it now seems likely that the seat of the Upper Egyptian kingdom
1
had moved from Nekhen to Tjeny some considerable time before
2
the unification.
3
4 North of Abydos the Nile flows close to the cliffs of the Eastern
5 Desert plateau, often high and sheer. In the west the rise to the
6 desert escarpment is more gradual, and the flood plain is broad.
7 At Asyut the western cliffs do come closer to the river, and north
8 of the city a branch of the Nile, the Bahr Yusef, begins its parallel
9 journey, eventually turning into the Fayum basin. Although the
30111 ancient Egyptians regarded the whole valley from Memphis to
1 Aswan as Upper Egypt, the region north of Asyut is now usually
2 referred to as Middle Egypt, and its broad, rich agricultural lands
3 are today planted with fields of sugar cane and cotton.
4 In times of internal weakness, a natural division in Upper
5 Egypt appears to the north of Tjeny. In the First Intermediate
6 Period, the princes of Thebes controlled this region, to the border
7 with Asyut. In the Third Intermediate and Late Periods, the
8 northern boundary of the Theban territory was in the same area, and
911 at times the vizier of Upper Egypt had his power base at Tjeny,
folio 30
42. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 rather than Thebes. In the Ptolemaic Period a new administrative
2 city for Upper Egypt was built at Ptolemais Hermiou (Ar. el-Mansha)
3 in the same region.
4 The ninth nome, Khen(t)-Min, was probably bounded on the east
5 bank by Gebel Toukh in the south and Gebel Haridi in the north.
6 These are both places where the eastern cliffs come to the river;
7 between them the plain broadens and the river makes several sharp
8 turns. The chief town was, like the nome, called Khent-Min (the
9 origin of the modern name Akhmim) or Ipu. Through the associa-
10111 tion of Min with Pan, it became Panopolis in Greek. On the west
11 bank the large modern town of Sohag may be the ancient Neshau,
2 and nearby lay Hut-repyt (Ar. Wannina), which has a Ptolemaic
3 temple. Panopolis and the region to its south were important in the
4 religious developments of the Roman Period.
5 The tenth nome, Wadjet, ‘the Cobra’, lay between Gebel Haridi
6 and Gebel Selim. The capital of the nome was Tjebu (Gr. Antaio-
7 polis), near the modern Qaw el-Kebir, where there are large, terraced
8 and partly rock-cut funerary complexes of the local elite of the
9 twelfth dynasty.
20111 The emblem of the eleventh nome was the animal of the god Seth.
1 The chief town was Shay-sehetep (Ar. Shutb) and its elite were
2 buried at Deir Rifeh. It was the smallest nome, confined to the west
3 bank.
4 The twelfth nome, ‘Viper Mountain’, was entirely on the east
5 bank, facing the territory of the thirteenth nome. Its capital was
6 Per-Nemty (Ar. el-Ataula), and the tombs of its elite were carved
7 in hills near Deir el-Gebrawi. Nemty (Anti) is a rather obscure falcon
8 god, later called Duen-anwy and Hor-nubti ‘Horus of Gold’.
9 The thirteenth and fourteenth nomes have the same emblem
30111 combining a tree (a sycamore-fig or perhaps a pomegranate) and a
1 viper, one nome being designated ‘upper’ (khentet) and the other
2 ‘lower’ (pehut). Nedjfet-khentet was an important nome with Sauty
3 (Ar. Asyut) as its capital. The chief deity was the canine Wepwawet,
4 hence the Greek name Lykopolis. Asyut played an important role at
5 many times in Egyptian history, ancient and medieval, although
6 archaeological exploration has been concentrated on the rock-cut
7 tombs and cemeteries.
8 Nedjfet-pehut had as its capital Qis (Gk Cusae) probably to be
9 identified with el-Qusiya, although there are no significant remains.
folio 31
44. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 The tombs of the nomarchs of the sixth and twelfth dynasties are
2 carved into the cliffs at Meir.
3 Much more is known of the history and archaeology of the
4 fifteenth nome, Unu, ‘the Hare’. Lying at the heart of the rich agri-
5 cultural lands of Middle Egypt, the Hare nome had the city of
6 Khemenu (Coptic, Shmun, hence Ar. Ashmunein) as its capital.
7 Khemenu could also be called Unu, like the nome, and through the
8 identification of the principal god Thoth with Hermes, it became
9 Hermopolis Megale in the Ptolemaic Period. The ruins of the ancient
10111 town cover a huge area, with the remains of several temples, and a
11 basilica of the Roman Period. The tombs of the Old Kingdom
2 nomarchs were in the steep cliffs at Sheikh Said, and those of their
3 Middle Kingdom successors at el-Bersha, both sites on the east
4 bank. An extensive cemetery in the desert west of Khemenu, at Tuna
5 el-Gebel, was used from the Late to the Roman Periods, and also
6 has the underground galleries where mummified creatures sacred
7 to Thoth, notably ibises and baboons, were buried. Khemenu was a
8 major religious centre, and also played a significant political role in
9 a number of periods. In the later Libyan Period, an independent
20111 kingdom was centred on the city. The best documented of its
1 pharaohs was Nimlot, who figures prominently in the inscription of
2 the Kushite conqueror Piye (c. 735–712 BC).
3 Within the territory of the Hare nome two unusual towns were
4 founded. At the southern end, Akhenaten chose a site on the east
5 bank of the river for his new city, Akhetaten (usually known as
6 ‘Amarna’), built as an upper Egyptian administrative and religious
7 centre to replace Thebes. The town area was clearly defined by a
8 semi-circular bay in the cliffs, some ten kilometres long. Agricul-
9 tural land for the estates of the officials was on the west bank, and
30111 defined by boundary stelae along the desert cliffs. Also on the east
1 bank of the river, a little to the north of Hermopolis, the emperor
2 Hadrian founded Antinoöpolis (also Antinoë, the modern el-Sheikh
3 Ibada) in memory of his favourite, Antinous, who drowned in the
4 Nile nearby. Standing at the river end of the Via Hadriana running
5 through the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea ports, Antinoë was a
6 flourishing centre throughout the Late Antique Period.
7 To the south-east of Akhetaten were the important quarries of
8 Hat-nub (‘House of Gold’) where ‘Egyptian alabaster’ or calcite was
9 extracted. Used as building material and for sarcophagi and statuary,
folio 33
45. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 ointment jars and small cosmetic containers, this easily worked stone
2 was popular throughout Egyptian history.
3 To the north of ‘the Hare’ lay the sixteenth nome, Ma-hedj, ‘the
4 Oryx’, with its early capital at Hebenu (Ar. Kom el-Ahmar) on
51 the east bank and cemeteries nearby at Zawiyet el-Maiyitin (Zawiyet
6 el-Amwat). The later capital seems to have been Menat-Khufu, the
7 modern city of Minya, on the west bank. The nomarchs of the
8 Middle Kingdom were buried at the south of the nome, in the east
9 bank cliffs at Beni Hasan, with its magnificent views northwards
10111 over the territory they ruled. A little to the south of Beni Hasan
11 was Seret, usually known by the Greek name Speos Artemidos,
2 where the valley was a quarry, but also sacred to the local goddess
311 Pakht, a wild cat. Here the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, ordered a
4 rock-cut shrine for the goddess, which carries a lengthy inscription
5 alluding to the time of ‘Hyksos’ rule in Egypt. In the Late Period
6 mummified cats were buried here as offerings to Pakht.
7 There has been much less archaeological work in the region of
8 the seventeenth nome, Inpu, ‘the Jackal’. It was an agricultural
9 district on the west bank, and its principal town was Saka (Ar. el-
20111 Qais), which had temples to Anubis (Inpu) and later to Bata. The
1 only significant historical event recorded is the attack on the town
2 by the Theban ruler Kamose during his northward advance against
3 the ‘Hyksos’.
4 ‘The house of the king’, Hut-nesut (Gk Cynopolis, Ar. Kom el-
5 Ahmar Sawaris), was the capital of the eighteenth nome which lay on
6 the east bank of the river. The nome took its name from the god,
7 Nemty (Anti, later called Duen-anwy), the falcon with outstretched
8 wings. At its southern limit was Dehen (Gk Akoris, Ar. Tihna) and at
9 its northern, Ta-dehen-wer-nakhtu, ‘The Crag-Great-of-Victories’,
30111 also called ‘the Crag of Amun’ (also Teudjoi, Gk Ankyronpolis,
1 Ar. El-Hiba). Both names signify rocky outcrops, which presumably
2 served to delimit the nome. The northern town became a major
3 fortress in the Libyan Period.
4 On the west bank the nineteenth nome, Wabwy, ‘the Two
5 Sceptres’, is another relatively unexamined region. Its principal
6 town, Per-medjed, modern el-Bahnasa, was called Oxyrhynchus in the
7 Ptolemaic–Roman Periods after the cult of the fish. Nothing is
8 known of the archaeology of the site before the Ptolemaic Period,
911 but excavations between 1896 and 1907 produced huge quantities
folio 34
47. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 of papyri which describe the theatres, baths, temples and other
2 public buildings associated with a Greek town. It continued to be
3 important into late Roman times. The papyri, mostly in Greek, but
4 with some in Latin, Demotic, Coptic and Arabic, are informative
51 about the society, culture, economics and religion of the town
6 throughout the Roman Period. There were also many fragments of
7 literary texts.
8 The twentieth nome, Nar-khent, ‘Upper sycamore-fig’, stood in
9 a commanding position at the entrance to the Fayum. The chief
10111 town was originally called Nenu-sut, or Nen-nesut, later becoming
11 Hu(t)-nen-nesut, which is found in Assyrian texts as Khininshi and
2 Hebrew as Hnes, and is the origin of the Arabic Ahnas or Ehnasya.
311 The Greeks identified the chief god of the town, a ram-headed
4 creator god, Herishef, with Herakles, hence the town’s late name,
5 Herakleopolis. The town became politically significant in the First
6 Intermediate Period when it replaced Memphis as the principal
7 residence city under the ‘house of Khety’: no significant remains of
8 that phase have yet been recovered. The evidence of late New
9 Kingdom papyri shows that there were many settlements in the
20111 nome, including significant numbers of veteran soldiers of Asiatic
1 origin. In the later part of the Third Intermediate Period, the town
2 was again important as the seat of Libyan pharaoh, Pef-tjau-awy-
3 Bast.
4 The twenty-first nome, Nar-pehut, ‘Lower sycamore-fig’, included
5 the residence city of the twelfth-dynasty pharaohs at Itj-tawy (el-
6 Lisht), and the early fourth-dynasty pyramid and elite cemetery at
7 Mer-tem (Medum). The northern boundary of the nome lay between
8 Itj-tawy and Dashur.
9 The northernmost nome of Upper Egypt, the twenty-second, lay
30111 on the east bank. Called ‘the Knife’, its principal town was Tep-ihu
1 (Ar. Atfih), and its patron deity ‘the white cow’, a form of the
2 goddess Hathor (hence the Greek name, Aphroditopolis).
3
4
L O WER EG Y PT
5
6 The broad expanse of the Delta presents a very different landscape
7 to the valley. The shape of the Delta coastline has changed signifi-
8 cantly since prehistoric times, with the formation of a series of large
911 shallow lagoons separated from the Mediterranean by coastal sand
folio 36
48. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 ridges: from east to west these are el-Manzala, el-Buruillus, Edku
2 and Maryut. In ancient times there was certainly extensive marsh-
3 land and swamp along the southern edges of these lakes. Into
4 Ptolemaic times the Delta was one of the major papyrus-producing
5 regions. Used for a range of purposes as well as the manufacture
6 of ‘paper’, the plant had to be processed quite close to where it
7 was cut.
8 Immediately to the north of Cairo, the Nile divides into two main
9 branches, the Rosetta and Damietta, but in ancient times there were
10111 three main rivers, and four branches from these. It is difficult to
11 trace the ancient river courses accurately, and no doubt they changed
2 over time, and were developed by clearing and digging. The main
3 channels were the Pelusiac, the Sebennytic and the Canopic, known
4 to the Egyptians as the waters ‘of Ra’, ‘of Amun’ and ‘of Ptah’. The
5 Mendesian and Saitic were lesser natural branches, and the Bolbitine
6 and Bucolic artificial ones.
7 The eastern Delta was more developed and settled than the
8 western. This was due to the spread of a natural feature across the
9 eastern Delta: sandy islands, usually known by the Arabic term gezira
20111 (also called turtle-backs), that rise up to 12 metres (39 feet) above
1 the surrounding land. These were ideal places for settlement.
2 The first nome of Lower Egypt was Inbu-hedj, literally the ‘White
3 Walls’, but sometimes rendered as the ‘White Castle’ or ‘White
4 Fortress’. This was the name of the fortified enclosure founded by
5 ‘Meni’ as the new capital for a united Egypt. It was also called
6 Mekhat-tawy, the ‘Balance of the Two Lands’, from its position
7 between the Delta and valley. This early settlement was probably in
8 the vicinity of Abusir. Throughout the Old Kingdom the royal
9 residence moved with the royal burial site, from Saqqara south to
30111 Medum and Dashur, north to Giza and Abu Rawash, and south again
1 to Abusir and Saqqara. The name of one of the royal burial places,
2 the Pyramid of Pepi I, called ‘Mery-ra-men-nofer’, ‘Meryra is estab-
3 lished and perfect’, was abbreviated as Men-nofer (Gk Memphis), and
4 by the time of the New Kingdom was generally applied to the whole
5 town. Another name, that of the main religious complex, also
6 became general: Hut-ka-ptah, used in the Ramesside Period for the
7 town, became in Greek Aigyptos.
8 The principal gods of Memphis were: Tatjenen, representing the
9 earth as it appeared from the flood waters; the bull Apis; the creator
folio 37
50. THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
1111 god, Ptah, with his consort, Sakhmet, and child, Nefertum; Hathor,
2 the ‘Lady of the southern Sycamore-fig’; and the goddess Neith. The
3 presiding deity of the cemetery region was the falcon, Sokar, who
4 later merged with Ptah and Osiris.
5 Although the royal residence moved around in the Old Kingdom,
6 in the New Kingdom the palace and temple quarters appear to have
7 become anchored. An eastward movement of the river may have
8 played a crucial role in the city’s development, creating new land.
9 In the Ramesside Period there was a quarter for traders from western
10111 Asia, and the cults of the Asiatic deities Baal, Qadesh, Astarte and
11 Baal-Zephon were celebrated. Later, Herodotos refers to the ‘camp
2 of the Tyrians’ as part of the city. Peru-nefer, the port of Memphis,
3 probably lay in the northern part of the city.
4 Immediately to the north of Memphis was the second nome,
5 ‘Foreleg’, which had a form of Horus, Khenti-irty, also called
6 Khenty-Khem, as its presiding deity. The capital, Khem (Gk
7
Letopolis, Ar. Kom Ausim) has not been fully explored. The tenth
8
nome, the ‘Black Bull’, stood in a controlling position in the south
9
central Delta, with its capital at Hut-hery-ib (Gk Athribis, Ar.
20111
Benha). Although it is known to have existed by the fourth dynasty,
1
and statues of Middle and New Kingdom date have been found, the
2
evidence for large architectural monuments is of the later periods.
3
4 The town and its ruler played a key role in the conflict between the
5 Saite chief Tefnakht and the Kushite king Piye in the eighth century
BC. The surviving remains of the temple of the chief god, Horus-
6
7 khenty-khety, date from the time of the Kushite pharaoh Taharqo
8 and the succeeding twenty-sixth dynasty.
9 On the east bank of the Nile, controlling the major crossing point,
30111 was the thirteenth nome, ‘Prospering Sceptre’. The nome’s capital,
1 Iunu (‘the Pillar’, Gk Heliopolis), was already a major religious centre
2 in the Old Kingdom, and remained one of the three most important
3 cities in Egypt. Here the forms of the sun-god, as Ra, Harakhty,
4 Atum and Khepri, sometimes combined, were worshipped. Little
5 remains of the vast temples: most of the obelisks and statues were
6 removed to Alexandria, and later to Rome. In addition to the
7 temples of the individual gods, there were other shrines such as the
8 Hut-ben-ben, which had a sacred stone (ben-ben) in the form of an
9 obelisk or pyramidion as its focus. The Hut-bennu honoured the
folio 39
