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THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORYCHAPTER
XI
THE EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD IN EGYP by I. E. S. EDWARDS, F.B.A. Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum
I.
THE
EARLY MONARCHY AND THE UNIFICATION OF EGYPT
Tradition
and a substantial body of indirect evidence suggest strongly that Egypt, in the
period immediately preceding the foundation of the First Dynasty, was divided
into two independent kingdoms: a northern kingdom, which included the Nile
Delta and extended southwards perhaps to the neighbourhood of the modern
village of Atfih (Lower Egypt) and a southern kingdom comprising the territory
between Atfih and Gebel es-Silsila (Upper Egypt). The residences of the kings
are believed to have been situated at Pe, in the north-west Delta, and at
Nekhen (Hierakonpolis), on the west bank of the river near Edfu, both of which,
in historical times at least, possessed important sanctuaries of the falcon-god
Horus, the patron deity of the rulers. In the vicinity of Pe lay Dep, the seat
of a cobra-goddess Uadjit (Edjo); the two places were together known in the New
Kingdom and later under one name Per-Uadjit (House of Edjo), rendered as Buto
by the Greeks. Across the river from Nekhen stood Nekheb (El-Kab), where a
vulture-goddess Nekhbet had her sanctuary. Both goddesses came to be regarded
at a very early date, perhaps while the separate kingdoms were in being, as
royal protectresses.
Even such
information about this period as was recorded in the king-lists is largely lost
and what remains is difficult to interpret. The first line of the fragmentary
Palermo Stone consists of a series of compartments, seven only being entirely
preserved, each of which contains a name and a figure of a king wearing the
crown of Lower Egypt, but no historical events are mentioned. Manetho speaks of
the predecessors of the kings of the First Dynasty as the ‘Spirits of the
Dead, the Demigods’. In the Turin Canon, which dates from Ramesside times, the
last predynastic rulers are called both the ‘Spirits who were Followers of
Horus’ and the ‘Followers of Horus’. With what appeared to be well-reasoned
arguments Kurt Sethe maintained that these epithets could be applied to the
kings of Pe and Nekhen, in virtue of being adherents to the cult of Horus, and
could also be explained as the Egyptian equivalent of Manetho’s ‘ Spirits of
the Dead, the Demigods’. As a general description of kings of the remote past
the term ‘Followers of Horus’ does occur sporadically in Egyptian texts dating
from the end of the Second Intermediate Period until Ptolemaic times, and in a
fragmentary papyrus of Roman date, which may well preserve an ancient
tradition, two successive entries refer to the ‘Souls of Pe, Followers of Horus
as Kings of Lower Egypt’ and the ‘Souls of Nekhen, Followers of Horus as Kings
of Upper Egypt’. This usage of the term seems however to have been a relatively
late development which resulted from a misinterpretation of the early dynastic
records.
At most,
only two predynastic kings, both of Upper Egypt, are known from contemporary
records, one bearing a name which has generally been read as Ka and the other
being indicated by the hieroglyphic sign representing a scorpion. In some cases
the name of Ka is written anomalously beneath the panelled door of the
serekh—the rectangular frame surmounted by the falcon of Horus within which the
official names of kings were inscribed. It is, however, far from certain that Ka
is the correct reading of the name; several authorities have preferred to
regard the single sign with which it is written as a cursive form of a
scorpion, thereby identifying this king with his supposed successor, and the
suggestion has also been made that the name should be read as Sekhen. Scorpion
is the first king of whom any historical details are known, owing to the
discovery at Hierakonpolis of some fragments of a limestone mace-head decorated
with scenes in relief commemorating symbolically episodes in his life. The
scenes are arranged in three registers: in the uppermost register there is a
series of standards, each surmounted by the emblem of a particular nome.
Suspended by a rope from every standard is either a bow or a lapwing, the rope
being tied around the neck of each bird. When bows—always nine in number—occur
on later monuments, they symbolize the enemies of Egypt, and the lapwing, as a
hieroglyph, represents the Egyptian populace. It has therefore been surmised
that the scene portrayed in this register commemorates the victory of a group
of Upper Egyptian nomes, under the leadership of Scorpion, over foreigners,
living in the oases and neighbouring deserts, and some Egyptians, possibly of the
Lower Egyptian kingdom, dwelling either in the Delta or somewhat further south.
In the middle register Scorpion, wearing the crown of Upper Egypt and holding a
hoe in his hands, initiates the digging of an irrigation canal; an attendant
stands before him holding a basket to receive the soil removed. Possibly the
artist’s intention was to show the measures taken by the king to develop the
land after his victory. The surviving portion of the lowest register shows the
Nile, on the bank of which the previous ceremony had taken place, and some men
engaged in agricultural work on two islands formed by its waters.
It seems
evident that steps—perhaps not the first—towards the subjugation of the
northern kingdom were taken by Scorpion. How far he was able to advance cannot
be precisely determined. A pot found at the protodynastic cemetery of Tura was
once thought to bear his name and to indicate that he had penetrated to that
region, but further study has shown that this reading was incorrect.
Nevertheless his conquest may have reached a point as far north as the apex of
the Delta. He may even have captured the eastern part of the Delta, but it is
improbable that he overcame the entire northern kingdom, because the mace-head
shows him wearing only the white crown of Upper Egypt; there is no parallel
scene of the king with the red crown as ruler of Lower Egypt, although the
suggestion has been made that a king seated under a canopy and wearing the
crown of Lower Egypt who is represented on a fragment of another mace-head from
Hierakonpolis is to be identified with Scorpion. The distinction of completing
the conquest and of uniting the two kingdoms belongs, in all probability, to
Narmer, who is thought to have been Scorpion’s immediate successor. A remarkable
record of this victory is preserved on the famous slate palette from
Hierakonpolis. On the obverse Narmer, followed by his sandal-bearer, is shown smiting
with a mace a captured Delta chieftain, possibly belonging to the north-western
nome which had a harpoon as its ensign. Above the victim is a monogram composed
of a falcon perched on a papyrus plant and a human head attached to a body
deliberately flattened in order to resemble the hieroglyph of foreign land;
tied to the nose is a cord, held by a hand projecting from the falcon’s breast.
Since the falcon was the hieroglyphic sign for the god Horus and the papyrus
was the symbol of Lower Egypt, it has been conjectured that the whole group
means: ‘Horus brings (to the king) captives of Lower Egypt.’ The sequel to this
scene appears in the uppermost of three registers on the reverse, where the
king is shown, accompanied by attendants, going out to inspect the slain
northerners who, with their severed heads between their feet, are set out in two
rows. It is unlikely that pure chance is responsible for the fact that the king
wears the crown of Upper Egypt in the first scene and of Lower Egypt in the
second; far more probable is it that the sculptor intended to show that this
victory marked the final defeat of the northern kingdom and the assumption of
its crown by Narmer.
Another
palette, of which only the lower portion is preserved, may well refer to a
continuation of the same campaign by Narmer, but since no name is given, the
identification cannot be proved. One face of the palette depicts rows of
cattle, asses and rams, and some trees once thought to be olives. Among the
trees is a hieroglyphic group reading Tjehenu-land, which is believed to have
been situated in Libya, near the north-western limits of the Delta. Narmer
certainly conducted a campaign against this region, as is attested by an ivory
cylinder from Hierakonpolis, bearing his name and that of Tjehenu-land, which
shows prisoners captured in the battle. On the other face of the palette there
are seven rectangular outlines with crenellated sides representing walled
towns. Within each rectangle is the name of a city, while above it stood
originally a bird or animal, only four of which (a falcon, a lion, a scorpion
and twin falcons on perches) have survived. Each of these creatures hacks with
a mattock at the wall of the town which it surmounts. The identification of the
individual towns presents serious difficulties, but it has been presumed that
all of them lay in Tjehenu-land and that their downfall led to the capture of
the booty shown on the opposite side of the palette. Equally difficult to
determine is the exact significance of the various creatures attacking the
walls: they have been explained as royal titles—not, however, of Narmer but of
Scorpion—and as symbols of either the divine or the human allies of the king
whose victory the palette commemorates If they represented Scorpion himself,
it might have been expected that his name would be distinguished in some way
and not merely included among his titles; moreover, there is no other evidence
to suggest that Scorpion ever succeeded in reaching the north-western Delta. It
seems rather more likely, therefore, that deities were intended and that they
symbolized the falcon-king of Hierakonpolis—supposedly Narmer—and the leaders
of those nomes which assisted him in his campaign against the North.
Closely
connected with the problems raised by this palette is the question of the
character of the relationship between the Horus-king and the local rulers of
other nomes at the time of the conquest. The most important contemporary
sources of information are Scorpion’s mace-head, a damaged mace-head of Narmer,
the two palettes already mentioned and two fragments of palettes, one in the
Louvre and the other in the Ashmolean Museum. Both the mace-heads and the
Narmer palette undoubtedly display nome-standards, so integrated into the
general design as to suggest that their respective nomes played an important
part in the main events depicted. Even more graphically portrayed are the
scenes on the two fragments: five standards which terminate in hands pulling
together on a single rope are shown on the Louvre fragment; on the Ashmolean
Museum fragment (which joins a larger fragment in the British Museum depicting
a battlefield) two standards with projecting arms are represented leading two
bound captives. In the absence of any king’s name, neither of these two
fragments can be precisely dated, but their style strongly suggests that they
belong to the period of Scorpion and Narmer. Prominent among the various
standards are those bearing the wolf-god Wepwawet of Asyut, the ibis of the
Fifteenth Lower Egyptian nome and the symbol of Min of Akhmlm and Koptos,
together with those of other nomes which are less easily identified. The
purport of all these scenes is hard to comprehend unless it be supposed that
the nomes represented contributed materially to the conquest of unification.
It is possible, moreover, that they also denote that the reigning king of
Hierakonpolis was not the omnipotent despot of later times, but rather the
leader of a confederation of nomes fighting as allies against a common enemy.
Some authorities who hold this view consider that these allies of the
falcon-king or their local gods— and not the predynastic kings of Pe and
Nekhen—were the real Followers of Horus whose true identity must, in that case,
have been forgotten in later times. In favour of this explanation is the
undoubted fact that from the Old Kingdom onwards similar standards in
representations of the Sed-festival—itself a reenactment of the episodes in
the conquest of unification—are described in the accompanying texts as the
‘Gods, Followers of Horus’. From the same period there is also evidence that
the Followers of Horus could mean members of the king’s retinue, while at an
even earlier date a biennial tour of inspection by river made by the king and
his entourage was called the ‘ Following of Horus’.
According to
the Turin and Abydos king-lists the first king of Egypt was Meni, who is to be
identified with Men (Miv) of Herodotus and Menes, the founder of
Manetho’s First Dynasty. Not without reason, however, it has been doubted
whether the name occurs in any contemporary document and, in consequence,
whether a person so named ever existed. In order to account for its appearance
in later times, it has been suggested that the name, which means ‘He who
endures’, was coined as a mere descriptive epithet denoting a semi-legendary
hero who in the remote past had unified the Two Lands under one crown and whose
true name had been lost. In that event ‘Menes’ might conceal the personages of
Ka, Scorpion and Narmer. But it is far from proved that Menes is not mentioned
in at least one inscription dating from the beginning of the historical epoch.
An ivory label from Naqada, now in the Cairo Museum, bears the Horus name of
Aha side by side with the framework of a building, within which is the royal
title ‘Two Ladies’ (nbty) and a single hieroglyph (mn) which most authorities
have taken to represent the name Menes. At one time it was thought that these
two names belonged to the same king, Menes being the nbty-name of the
Horus Aha. A more plausible explanation is, however, that the label records the
construction by Aha of a funerary booth (wrmt) for the deceased Menes, who
would thus have been his immediate predecessor, but it does not necessarily
follow from this interpretation that the king in question was the Horus
Narmer. Nevertheless there are other grounds for supposing that Aha was
Narmer’s successor. Indeed no further demonstration that Narmer and Menes were
one and the same person would be required if it were not also possible that the
building is not a funerary booth, but a shrine (sh) inscribed with its name
‘The Two Ladies Endure’. A clay seal-impression from Abydos which bears the
name of Narmer alternating with the sign mn has been considered to provide
proof of the identity of Narmer and Menes, but it is hard to believe that
the omission of the title ‘Two Ladies’ before Men is not significant. Men, in
this instance, may be the name of an official or a prince, who was entitled to
use the seal, or it may be the verb, the whole group having the meaning
‘Narmer endures’.
Scribal
mistakes certainly occurred in the lists of early dynastic kings as they were
recorded in later times, but in most instances these mistakes can be explained,
and it is apparent that they arose through simple confusions or through the
inability of copyists to recognize correctly hieratic signs. Of the general
soundness of the tradition which the lists preserve there can be no doubt. No
suspicion of a misreading has been entertained by scholars in the case of
Menes. That it represents the nbty-name, and not the Horus-name, may be
deduced from the fact that the nbty-names are given in the lists for subsequent
kings of the First Dynasty. The third king in the Abydos list, of whose name
nothing except the royal determinatives is preserved in the Turin Canon, is
Iti, who is securely identified by the Cairo Annals with the Horus Djer.
Unless it be supposed, as one writer has suggested, that the second king, also
called Iti in the Turin Canon but Teti in the Abydos list, is to be equated
with an ephemeral king whose Horus-name is not known, the Horus Aha alone
remains to occupy the second position, leaving the Horus Narmer to be
identified with Menes. This conclusion accords well with the evidence of his
famous slate palette. As the founder of the First Dynasty tradition may well
have credited him with a greater share in the achievement of the unification of
the Two Lands than was his due, and to that extent he may be regarded as a
legendary figure.
II.
THE
FOUNDATION OF MEMPHIS
Herodotus
states that Menes, besides establishing the Egyptian monarchy, founded the city
later called Memphis and its temple dedicated to the god Ptah. In order to do
so at the place chosen, Menes was obliged to construct a dyke some hundred
stades to the south, which diverted the course of the river and protected the
city against flooding during the annual inundation. Since Herodotus obtained
this information from the priests of Ptah, who might be suspected of a natural
desire to glorify their temple by associating its foundation with the
illustrious Menes, it is necessary to examine his account and to assess its
inherent probability. There is certainly no reason to doubt that the
construction of a dyke would have been required before the city could be
built. Until the introduction of modern methods of irrigation, the whole of the
Giza province owed its protection from inundation to a dyke in the
neighbourhood of Wasta. Such a dyke probably existed in the time of Herodotus,
but did not necessarily date back to Menes. Diodorus, apparently quoting a
Theban tradition received from Hecataeus, ascribes the foundation of Memphis to
a Theban king Uchoreus, whose name may well be a corruption
of ’Oxvpeús, which would be a translation of Menes. The two historians are
therefore virtually in agreement. Manetho does not mention the actual
foundation of the city, but says that a palace was built there by Athothis, the
successor of of Menes—a statement which need not however imply that Athothis
was the first king to build a palace in Memphis. A king-list, formerly on the
wall of a Nineteenth Dynasty tomb in the Memphite cemetery of Saqqara and now
preserved in the Cairo Museum, begins with the name of Anedjib, which may mean
that the priestly owner of the tomb wished to attribute the foundation of
Memphis to the sixth king of the First Dynasty, but no other evidence supports
this assumption. While tombs and funerary equipment dating from the beginning
of the First Dynasty have been discovered in abundance at Saqqara, traces of an
earlier occupation are absent; it must therefore be admitted that at present
there is nothing to suggest that the tradition quoted by Herodotus is in any
important respect unsound.
Two further
questions concerning Memphis which require consideration are its original name
and the motive which prompted its foundation. The name Memphis belonged in the
first instance to the pyramid of the Sixth Dynasty king Phiops I
(Men-nefer-Pepi) at South Saqqara and was only later applied to the city
itself. Previously it was called the ‘White Wall’ or ‘White Walls’, sometimes
abbreviated to the ‘Wall’ or ‘Walls’. White was the national colour of the
Upper Egyptian kingdom and a city founded by the victorious king of the South
on captured territory might have been named the ‘White Wall’ to emphasize the
victory; equally it could be a purely descriptive name referring to the white
gesso with which its walls of mud-brick were covered. The explanation offered
by the early commentators of Thucydides that the city was so named because it
was built of white stone, whereas other cities were built of brick, is
fanciful, for it is improbable that the skilled labour necessary for cutting so
much stone would have been available at the beginning of the First Dynasty.
With regard to the purpose of its foundation, Menes may well have intended it
to serve as a bastion for the protection of Upper Egypt against possible
attacks from the inhabitants of the Delta. On the other hand, being situated
at the junction of the Two Lands, it stood at the most convenient point for
directing the affairs of the newly-unified kingdom and may therefore have been
designed from the beginning as the capital and the site of the royal residence.
Some support for this view is to be found in the Palermo Stone and Cairo
Annals, which show that two of the most important elements in the coronation of
the early dynastic kings were the ceremonies of ‘Uniting the Two Lands’ and
‘The Procession around the Wall’, both of which undoubtedly took place at the
White Wall and were intended to commemorate the two outstanding deeds of Menes,
namely the unification of the monarchy and the foundation of the White Wall. If
the White Wall had merely been a fortress and not the capital, it is unlikely
that the commemoration of its foundation would have figured so prominently in
the coronation ceremonial or that the coronation would have been performed
within its precincts. Manetho, however, associates the First and Second
Dynasties with This, in the neighbourhood of Abydos, but his assertion may be
interpreted as meaning that they were of Thinite stock and not that This was
their seat of government.
III.
THE
CEMETERIES OF ABYDOS AND SAQQARA
The problem
of the status of Memphis in the beginning of its history is linked with the
difficult question of where the early dynastic kings were buried.
Archaeological discovery has shown that rulers were generally buried near their
capitals, even if the capital did not coincide with their place of birth. When
Amélineau, and subsequently Petrie, uncovered at Abydos several ‘tombs’
containing objects inscribed with the names of one queen and all the kings of
the First Dynasty, and of two kings belonging to the Second Dynasty, it
seemed highly probable, particularly in view of the Manethonian tradition
connecting these dynasties with This, that the actual sepulchres of the kings
had been found. The absence of human remains in the ruined burial-chambers
could easily be explained as being due to the operations of robbers.
Nevertheless some misgivings concerning the purpose of these ‘tombs’ were
expressed soon after their discovery, but their title was not seriously
challenged until 1938, when a large brick mastaba containing sealings with the
name of Aha was excavated by W. B. Emery in the early dynastic cemetery of
North Saqqara. Further excavations brought to light additional mastabas
which, by their contents, could be dated to later kings (and to two queens) of
the First Dynasty, and, as a result, the contention of their excavator
that among them lie the actual tombs of six of the eight kings who comprised
the First Dynasty has been accepted by several authorities. Other writers
have felt unwilling to go further than to admit that the weight of evidence is
in favour of Saqqara or have preferred to remain neutral.
In almost
every respect the problems set by the two cemeteries are different. At Abydos
an unbroken series of ‘tombs’ could be ascribed each to a particular royal
owner, not only by mud sealings and other inscribed objects but, in the case of
Narmer, Djer, Djet, Den, Mer(it)neith, Semerkhet, Qaa and Peribsen, by stelae
bearing their names which stood in pairs, one pair outside each ‘tomb’.
Although no stelae were recovered from the ‘tombs’ of Aha, Anedjib and
Khasekhemwy, there is no reason to doubt that they were originally provided
with them. More than eight hundred subsidiary graves were constructed in
trenches around the First Dynasty ‘tombs’ from the ‘tomb’ of Djer onwards,
and a further five hundred, which were dated to Djer, Djet and Mer(it)neith,
were arranged in three hollow rectangles at a short distance to the north-east
of the main cemetery. The occupants of these graves, apart from a few
domestic animals, were members of the royal harem and persons who had been in
the service of the owner of the principal ‘tomb’, but the discovery of an
arm with four beadbracelets of gold and semi-precious stones, which had been
hidden by a robber in a hole in the north wall of the ‘tomb’ of Djer, left
little room for doubt that the burials had also included some women of high
rank, perhaps queens. To sum up the problem of the royal ‘tombs’ at Abydos, it
can be said that neither their ownership nor their sepulchral nature is open to
question; what is in doubt is whether they were ever occupied or intended to be
occupied by those whose names were inscribed on the stelae. If they were mere
cenotaphs a further difficulty arises, because some reason must then be found
to account for their construction. But first it is necessary to summarize the
evidence on which the claim that the real tombs of the First Dynasty kings lie
at Saqqara is based.
Near the
edge of the escarpment at the north-east corner of the Saqqara necropolis
excavations conducted intermittently between 1935 and 1956 revealed twelve
large mud-brick mastabas of the First Dynasty, some with subsidiary graves
comparable with those which surrounded the royal ‘tombs’ at Abydos but much
less numerous. Like the latter ‘tombs’ they had been subjected to ruthless
pilferage. Structurally, however, they were better preserved and some of the
burial-chambers contained human remains. There can be no doubt therefore that
these mastabas were actual tombs. The whole problem in this cemetery is the
determination of ownership, for none of the mastabas yielded even a fragment
of a royal stela and only one non-royal stela was found. Inscribed material
included in the equipment enabled each mas- taba to be dated to a particular
reign, but did not provide clear evidence of the identity of the person for
whom it was built. That the owners were persons of very high rank is attested
both by the quantity and the quality of their funerary equipment and by the
size of the mastabas, on average nearly twice as large as the royal ‘tombs’ at
Abydos. Is it to be imagined that even the highest officials would build larger
and finer tombs than the kings under whom they held office? If the answer be
in the negative it seems necessary to suppose that some of the twelve mastabas
at Saqqara belonged to kings and the remainder perhaps to other royal persons of
importance. On the evidence of the inscribed objects among their contents two
mastabas can be ascribed to queens, Mer(it)neith and Herneith, and one each to
Aha, Djet and Anedjib. Since no objects were found bearing the names of
either Narmer or Semerkhet, three only of the eight First Dynasty kings remain
as claimants for the seven outstanding tombs: Djer, Den and Qaa. For these
kings inscriptional evidence provided a choice of three mastabas for Den and
two each for Djer and Qaa, the only criteria in the cases of the mastabas of
Djer and Den being size and, to some extent, the relative wealth of the
funerary equipment. Neither criterion can be regarded as a safe guide
because what has survived of the equipment is mainly the result of chance, and determination
by size would entail taking into account large mastabas elsewhere, particularly
at Naqada, Tarkhan, Giza and Abu Rawash. It is indeed not impossible that the
famous mastaba at Naqada found by De Morgan in 1897 was the real tomb of
Narmer, although both Queen Neithhotpe and an official whose name is written
with three birds, probably ostriches, have undeniable claims to be considered
as its owner. The larger of the two mastabas dated to Qaa possessed two
features of great interest and perhaps suggestive of royal ownership. The first
was an imposing mortuary temple reminiscent, both in its orientation on the
north side of the tomb and in its plan, of the mortuary temple of the Step
Pyramid of Djoser. Within this temple, in a chamber partly paved with
limestone, were found the lower portions of two wooden statues, approximately
two-thirds life-size, certainly objects of great rarity at this period. The
second, rather enigmatic, feature was the single subsidiary grave situated
between the mastaba and the eastern enclosure wall. This grave belonged not to
a humble member of the household but to a very high official named Merka whose
stela was found lying nearby. So high an official, it may reasonably be
supposed, would hardly have been buried in such a relatively simple grave if
the owner of the principal tomb were not the king himself.
Excavations
at Saqqara have not yet revealed tombs for Peribsen and Khasekhemwy, the two
Second Dynasty kings represented in the Abydos cemetery. Nevertheless, a
Fourth Dynasty priest named Shery, who was buried at Saqqara, records in
his tomb inscriptions that he was the Overseer of the Priests of Peribsen.
Since it is unlikely that he would have been buried far from the scene of his
official duties, it may be inferred that Shery superintended the mortuary cult
of Peribsen at Saqqara and consequently that Peribsen, at least, had built a
tomb there. Shery moreover mentions that he served the mortuary cult of
Peribsen’s predecessor Sened in the same capacity, but Sened’s tomb also has
not yet been found. A possible clue to the whereabouts of both these tombs may
be offered by the existence of two other large tombs cut in the rock beneath
the causeway and the mortuary temple of King Unas which have been ascribed, on
the evidence of seal impressions, to two of the first three kings of the Second
Dynasty, Reneb and Nynetjer. Neither of these two kings nor Sened
possessed a ‘tomb’ at Abydos, so that even if conclusive proof were forthcoming
that they were buried at Saqqara they would still fall into a different
category from Peribsen. Such as it is, however, the evidence from Saqqara seems
to show that the Manethonian tradition, according to which the Third Dynasty
was the first dynasty associated with Memphis, need not be interpreted to
imply that earlier kings were not buried in the Memphite necropolis at
Saqqara.
Later Egyptian history provides several instances of the construction of more than one tomb for a king, the best known perhaps being Djoser’s Step Pyramid and South Mastaba at Saqqara and Sneferu’s two pyramids at Dahshur. Thus there is no inherent improbability in the assumption that the kings whose ‘ tombs ’ were situated at Abydos were also the possessors of other tombs elsewhere. Architecturally the Abydos ‘tombs’ display features, including the round-topped stelae, which seem to be Upper Egyptian in origin, whereas the Saqqara mastabas preserve the house-tomb tradition of Lower Egypt; since the dual role of the king was emphasized in so many ways in life it would not be strange if in death he were given two tombs, one as king of Upper Egypt and the other as king of Lower Egypt. The suggestion has, however, been made that the Abydos ‘tombs’ were constructed for the mock burials of the kings at their Sed-festivals, a later parallel to which may exist in the Eleventh Dynasty ‘tomb’ of Nebhepetre Mentuhotpe situated within the precincts of his funerary temple and rock-tomb at Deir el-Bahri. Whether this suggestion be right or not it is remarkable how many inscribed objects referring directly or indirectly to Sed-festivals were found at Abydos, whereas very few recognizable allusions occur on objects discovered in the Saqqara mastabas; a limestone relief showing two figures of a king in Heb Sed dress, obtained from the shaft of a Third Dynasty mastaba, is, however, believed to date from the First Dynasty. Neither of
the theories put forward to explain the purpose of the ‘tombs’ at Abydos can
easily be reconciled with the fact that they included one ‘tomb’ of a queen,
but the exceptional privileges which she enjoyed in other respects render her
position in the state difficult to determine. A further problem left unresolved
is why Abydos should have been chosen as the location of the second tomb,
especially if it were intended for the Heb Sed, a festival usually celebrated
at Memphis. There is certainly evidence that some of the last predynastic
kings of Upper Egypt were buried (or at least built cenotaphs) at Abydos, so
that its choice by the kings of the Early Dynastic Period may be explained as
merely a continuance of a practice already established, prompted perhaps by a
desire to possess temporary residences which they could inhabit when visiting
their forbears. But why were the tombs (or the cenotaphs) of these forbears at
Abydos if their seat of government lay at Hierakonpolis? If the Manethonian
tradition associating the early dynastic kings with This is sound the
explanation may be that their immediate ancestors, who were presumably also of
Thinite stock, chose to be buried in their place of origin. On the other hand
it is possible that even at this early period Abydos was regarded with
particular reverence. In later times, when it had become the centre of the cult
of Osiris, Sesostris III, Amosis I and Sethos I built cenotaphs, and countless
private persons erected stelae, on its sacred territory. It is indeed not
illogical to suppose that the early kings chose Abydos as the site for the
cenotaphs for the very reason which led to the transference of the dead Osiris
from his home in the Delta to Abydos. What the precise reason may have been is
problematical, but perhaps it was related to the special attributes of the
local god Khentiamentiu, Chief-of-the-Westerners, as the guardian of the dead.
The Cemeteries of Abydos : Egypt Exploration FundAbydos : Petrie, W. M. FlindersExcavations at Saqqara, 1905-1906Excavations at Saqqara, 1907-1908Excavations at Saqqara, 1911-12: the tomb of Hesy
IV.
THE
SUCCESSORS OF MENES
Manetho
declares that, after a reign of sixty-two years, Menes was killed by a
hippopotamus. Diodorus, perhaps preserving a more fanciful version of the same
tradition, avers that he was attacked by his own dogs when in the neighbourhood
of Lake Moeris, but was saved by a crocodile which carried him across the lake
to safety. Menes accordingly marked his gratitude by building on the shore of
the lake a city—Crocodilopolis—and by decreeing that crocodiles should live and
breed in the lake unmolested. The legend, which contains obvious anachronisms,
is patently devoid of historical value, an invention by priests of later times
who wished to connect their cult with Menes. A scribe’s palette in the Berlin
Museum bears an inscription which shows that the Greek tradition crediting
Menes with the construction of a temple for Ptah at Memphis dates back at least
to the Nineteenth Dynasty. If he is to be identified with the Horus Narmer,
as seems likely, the occurrence of his name on a rock in the Wadi el-Qash, east
of Thebes, indicates that Menes or one of his officers conducted an
expedition to the eastern desert, though for what purpose is unknown.
The final
year and a half of Aha’s reign, which lasted according to Africanus for
fifty-seven years and according to Eusebius for twenty-seven years, are
probably recorded on the Palermo Stone, but only the biennial royal tour of
inspection (sms Hr) and the creation of a figure of the god Anubis are
mentioned. His name, which means the Fighter, was possibly indicative of his character
and of the requirements of the time: one of the few extant records of his
reign, a wooden label found at Abydos, commemorates a campaign against the
Nubians, which may mean that he conducted a war in the northern Sudan or that
it was he who extended the southern boundary of Egypt beyond Gebel es-Silsila, its probable limit in the time of Menes, to the Nubian nome
terminating at Elephantine. Some other plaques bear representations of
Egyptian captives, and one scene is accompanied by an inscription which reads:
‘Receiving Upper and Lower Egypt’; his main preoccupation therefore appears
to have been to consolidate the work of his predecessor in unifying the country
and to establish the authority of the Double Crown over the whole length of the
Nile Valley from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean coast. As an
indication of his policy towards the inhabitants of the Delta, it is
significant that he placed on record the foundation of a temple to Neith,
the goddess of Sais, which suggests that he was anxious to placate the
conquered northerners. According to Manetho, Menes’ successor, whom he calls
Athothis, was the author of some works on anatomy, a tradition which seems to
date back at least to the time of the New Kingdom, for the compiler of the
Ebers medical papyrus asserts that a preparation for strengthening the hair was
invented for the mother of a king named Teti, who may have been Aha, though
it is also possible that the founder of the Sixth Dynasty was the king in
question.
In the
Abydos king-list the third king of the dynasty is Iti, better known by his
Horus-name Djer which has sometimes been incorrectly read as Khent. Seventeen
of a total of approximately fifty years occupied by his reign are recorded on
the Palermo Stone and the Cairo Annals, but the events mentioned are mainly of
religious rather than historical interest. One year, almost exactly in the
middle of his reign, is however called ‘The Year of smiting the land of
Setjet’—a name which, though applied in later times to the whole of western
Asia, was probably restricted in the Early Dynastic Period to Sinai; it is
tempting to speculate whether the turquoise of the four bracelets found in
Djer’s ‘tomb’ at Abydos was not secured as a result of this campaign. Perhaps
it also brought about the peaceful conditions necessary for obtaining the ore
for some hundreds of copper objects discovered at Saqqara in the brick mastaba
which contained Djer’s seal-impressions, but copper in considerable
quantities was available nearer home in the eastern desert and the early kings
may have mined only turquoise in Sinai. His name is carved on a rock at Wadi
Haifa accompanied by a battle scene which, in spite of its damaged
condition, affords good evidence that his army reached the Second Cataract. It is possible
ttat he also conducted a campaign agamst tlie Libyans. Queen
Herneith, whose mud-brick mastaba at Saqqara ft dated to his reign, is thought
to have been his wife. At a hter date which cannot be predsely fixed his
‘tomb’ at Abydos was regarded as the grave of and in consequence,
underwent some structural alterations in the Eighteenth Dynasty; the vast
numbers of pots deposited there by pilgrims led the Arahs to call its
immediate neighbourhoocl Umm el-Qaab ‘The Motbier of pots’, a name ft has
retamed to the present day.
Manetho
omits from his list both Djer and his successor Djet and substitutes for
them the names Kenkenes and Uenephes. Uenephes can hardly be anything but a
faulty transcription of the Egyptian wnn-nfr, normally rendered
Onophris, a synonym for Osiris, particularly in view of the supposed
connexion of Osiris with the ‘tom ’ of Djer; a different kind of confusion
may have led to the introduction of Kenkenes. The fourth king in the Abydos
list is called Ita, a name which is not far unlike Iterty, found on a label
in conjunction with the Horus Djet and is thought to be his nbty-name.
Historical details of his reign are exceedingly sparse, but nothing in the
archaeologjcal evidence now available suggests that any break of continuity
occurred in the political and cuftural development observable under his
predecessors. One of his subject possibly the leader of an expeditionti scratched the
king‘s name on a rock in the Wadi Miah some fifteen mfies east of Edfu along a
route known to have been used m ptolemaic times by caravans proceeding from
the Nile Valley to the port of Berenice on the Red Sea coast. Meagre though
this information is, it suggests that Djet was able to despatch expeditions,
of either a military or a commercial character, outside the Nile Valley.
One of the
most puzzling personages of the Early Dynastic Period is Mer(it)neith.
Theophorous names compounded with Neith usually belonged to women, and
consequently most authorities have deduced that Mer(it)neith was female; the
rule, however, is not invariable. None of the instances adduced for the
spelling of this name with the inclusion of the feminine termination t is free
from doubt, but its omission in hieroglyphic writing at this period would not
necessarily have any grammatical significance. It is at least clear that no
king was intended, for the royal titles are never prefixed. If Mer(it)neith was
a woman she must have attained a position seldom, if ever, equalled by a
member of her sex in early dynastic times. One inscription mentions her
treasury, which suggests that she possessed sovereign status. Her ‘tomb’ at
Abydos differed in no material respect from the ‘tombs’ of the kings: like
Djer and Djet she was provided with attendants, some of whom were interred
within her own complex and others in the neighbouring cemetery. One
peculiar feature, however, was the absence of any jar-sealings bearing her
name; when a name occurred it was in nearly every instance that of Djet’s
successor Den, but the sealings were for the most part different in design and
content from those found in Den’s own ‘tomb’. Some examples appear more
primitive than the sealings of Den and it may not be without significance that
a piece of ivory inscribed with the name of Mer(it)neith was found in the tomb
of Djer, while at least one of her jar-sealings bore the name of Djet’s
vineyard. From this slender evidence it may be conjectured that she was born
in the time of Djer and that she died early in Den’s reign; the equipment and
construction of the mastaba at Saqqara, which contained objects and
jar-sealings inscribed with her name, would seem to support this dating—a
deduction which need not depend on whether Merfitjneith was in reality the
owner. As a mere hypothesis it may be suggested that she served as regent,
perhaps while Den was still a minor, and
Two
features, which subsequently became characteristic of royalty, make their first
appearance on objects dating from the time of Den: one is the so-called double
crown (shmty, ‘the two powerful ones’) and the other a title (perhaps read in
this period as niswt-bity, but later having the phonetic value ni-sw-bit, the
literal meaning of which is ‘He who belongs to the sedge and the bee’. In
effect, the title means ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’, though in origin it
may have referred particularly to the towns of Heracleopolis and Sais. As the
King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Den’s name was written with a hieroglyphic
depicting hill-country repeated twice; this group possesses two values, Khasty
and Semty, and it is not clear which reading should be adopted
in this instance. The later Egyptians themselves experienced some difficulty
with the name, but for a different reason: when written cursively in ink the
hieroglyph for hill-country resembled two other signs, which in duplicate would
read Septy and Qenqen respectively. Hence Khasty or Semty appears on the Abydos
list as Septy, and Manetho reproduces the same reading, but with its later
value Hesepty, and transcribes it into Greek as Usaphais. The introduction of
Kenkenes instead of Djer into Manetho’s First Dynasty may have originated with
some scribe who, when copying two possibly incomplete manuscripts, included
both Qenqen of one document and Septy of the other without realizing that they
stood for the same king.
Although the
surviving archaeological material from the time of Den is considerable, very
few details of his personal history are known. A recently discovered fragment
naming Den has proved that the fourteen years of a king, chronicled in the
third line of the Palermo Stone, refer to his reign and are not the annals of
his successor Anedjib, as was once supposed. That he was an energetic and
enterprising ruler who encouraged the arts and crafts and developed the
administrative machinery of the kingdom is evident. Two of his officials,
Hemaka and Ankhka, are mentioned by name on many contemporary dockets and
jar-sealings. In quantity, the objects recovered from the mastaba at Saqqara
attributed at the time of its discovery to Hemaka represent the largest single
collection of funerary equipment so far discovered in any tomb of the Early
Dynastic Period. An ivory docket from Abydos shows the king smiting a kneeling
Asiatic with a mace—a scene which is described in the accompanying inscription
as ‘The First Time of smiting the East(erners)’; whether this docket is to be
interpreted as a record of an historical event, signifying a military campaign
against the inhabitants of Sinai or the nomads of the eastern desert, or merely
as commemorating a ceremonial episode is a matter for conjecture. Possibly the
‘Easterners’ were the same people as the ‘Nomads’ mentioned in
the third line of the Palermo Stone as the victims of a similar fate. Two other
dockets from Abydos, which also agree with an entry on the Palermo Stone,
record incidents in the king’s Sed-festival, which in later times often
marked the conclusion of thirty years’ rule; its position on the stone
certainly indicates that the festival occurred early in the second half of a
reign which may have exceeded fifty-five years. In later times Den acquired a
legendary reputation as the king in whose time certain spells in the Book of
the Dead were found, and his name also figures in connexion with medical
prescriptions in the Ebers papyrus and in the Berlin medical papyrus.
Anedjib
followed the example of Den in adopting the title ‘King of Upper and Lower
Egypt’, but usually combined with it a new title composed of two falcons on
perches. This title (nbwy—‘The Two Lords’) identified the king with Horus and
Seth, symbolizing Lower and Upper Egypt respectively. His personal name was
Merpe (or Merpebia), which appears as Merbapen in the Saqqara list and
Miebis in Manetho. Such archaeological evidence as is now available seems to
indicate that his reign was short, which may explain why his ‘tomb’ at Abydos
was the poorest in construction and least productive in material remains of any
king of the First Dynasty. Again, the missing portion of the royal annals
between the Palermo and the Cairo fragments is not believed to have contained
more than fourteen year-frames; within the gap it is necessary to fit the whole
of Anedjib’s reign and an unkown number of years of the reign of Den. A claim
sometimes advanced for Anedjib that he was the first king to reside in Memphis
is based solely on the unexpected occurrence of his name at the head of the
Saqqara king-list, Menes and his four immediate successors being omitted.
According to
the Cairo fragment of the royal annals, which preserves his reign in its
entirety, Semerkhet ruled for eight years and some months. His
personal name underwent in the course of time vicissitudes of a kind closely
analogous to those already noted in the case of Den. A hieroglyphic sign,
which represented a man clothed in a long garment and holding a stick and
which seems to have had the consonantal value of iry-ntr, was mistaken for a
very similar sign reading smsw or smsm, the name thus appears in the Turin
Canon as Semsem and in Manetho as Semempses. In place of the nbwy-title
adopted by Anedjib, Semerkhet combined the nbty (Two Ladies) with the ‘King of
Upper and Lower Egypt’ title, for reasons which are now obscure. Several of
the fragments of stone vases found in his ‘tomb’ at Abydos had originally
borne the names of Mer(it)neith, Den or Anedjib, but Mer(it)neith and Anedjib
were invariably erased. Examples of the inclusion of vessels inscribed with
the names of preceding kings are not uncommon in tombs of this period, and the
erasures made in this instance suggest that Semerkhet wished to disown two of
his predecessors, perhaps regarding them as usurpers; why Den should have been
treated with greater respect is not evident. It is strange that Semerkhet’s
Sed-festival, which, is shown on fragments of vases from Abydos,
appears not to be mentioned in the Cairo Annals, unless it was included in one
of the two year-frames of this reign which are now illegible. Manetho’s
statement that a very serious calamity befell Egypt under Semerkhet is not
confirmed by contemporary records.
Inscriptions
of Qaa, the eighth and last king of the First Dynasty, show identical Horus and
personal names; Sen, which sometimes takes the place of Qaa after the
nbty-title, is probably not a name but is the verb ‘to embrace’, the meaning of
the whole group being ‘The Two Ladies embrace (the Horus Qaa)’. The Abydos and
Saqqara king-lists and also the Turin Canon give his personal name as Qebeh(u),
which apparently owes its origin to a twofold error: in the first instance Qaa
was misread as Qeb and subsequently the latter was confused with Qebeh(u), a
mistake made possible by the fact that, in hieroglyphic writing, qb and qbh shared a common determinative. Scarcely any information regarding his
reign, apart from the bare assertion that he lived to celebrate his second
Sed-festival, can be extracted either from the numerous objects found in
his ‘tomb’ at Abydos or from the inscribed stone vessels of his time buried
under Djoser’s pyramid. Some of his jar-sealings show the name of Semerkhet
erased; Anedjib’s name, on the other hand, was allowed to stand, which
suggests that Qaa regarded his predecessor with the same disfavour as
Semerkhet, in his turn, had evinced towards Anedjib. A relic of Semerkhet’s
unpopularity may perhaps be detected in his omission from the Nineteenth
Dynasty Saqqara list, which includes both Anedjib and Qaa.
Nothing is
known of the circumstances in which the First Dynasty came to an end. Manetho
concludes the dynasty with a king named Bieneches or Ubienthes, both of which
seem to represent Baunetjer of the Turin and Saqqara lists. Contemporary
inscriptions mention two problematical Horus-names in conjunction with sacred
buildings known to have belonged to Qaa. One of these names is written with a
single hieroglyph representing a bird, the true reading of which has not yet
been determined; the other name may be read Seneferka, Sekanefer or Neferseka.
If the owners of these names were independent rulers they were probably
ephemeral followers of Qaa. There is certainly no clear evidence that Qaa’s
sovereignty was ever challenged by a rival line of dynasts or that the end of
his reign was marked by untoward happenings affecting the normal course of
succession. The Turin Canon enumerates the kings of the First and Second
Dynasties in unbroken sequence, giving the first indication of a break in
continuity at the beginning of the Third Dynasty. Of the length of time
occupied by the First Dynasty, widely divergent estimates have been given by
modern historians using the same data. Contemporary annals, mainly in the form
of ivory and wooden dockets, show that regnal years were not numbered, as in
later times, but were named after some important event, usually of a religious
character. So few dockets of this kind have however been preserved that they
are useless for compiling even a skeleton chronology of the period. The Fifth
Dynasty Palermo Stone and Cairo Annals, though invaluable, have proved to be
capable of more than one reconstruction. Manetho gives an aggregate of 253
years for the dynasty, but the figures attributed to the individual reigns total
263 years—a number which seems too high to be reconciled with the annals, even
after making the maximum allowance for the lacunae.
Little more
than the names and order of succession of the kings belonging to the first part
of the Second Dynasty has yet been established with any probability; of their
deeds and the political conditions of their time virtually nothing is known. An
inscription on the shoulder of a stone statuette, thought to date from the end
of the Second Dynasty, in the Cairo Museum gives the Horus-names of the first
three kings, Hetepsekhemwy, Reneb and Nynetjer, probably in their right order.
The apparent inversion of the names of Hetepsekhemwy and Reneb on a stone
vessel found in the pyramid temple of Mycerinus, although disconcerting, has
been plausibly explained as the result of a usurpation by Reneb.
Hetepsekhemwy (‘The Two Powers are at peace’) bore the personal name Hetep
which, when written in hieratic, was misread so that it appears as Bedjau in
the Abydos list, and the hieratic writing of Bedjau was in turn misinterpreted
to give Baunetjer of the Turin Canon and the Saqqara list. Bedjau is however
preserved in Manetho as Boethos and Bochos. The name Bedjapu, which occurs
before five kings of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties on a writing-board of the
Fifth Dynasty found at Giza, may also be derived from Bedjau.
Reneb (Re is
[my] Lord), whose tomb-stela is now in the Metropolitan Museum, provides the
earliest example of a royal name compounded with the name of the sun-god of
Heliopolis, which suggests that the cult of this deity, although not destined
to attain full power until the Old Kingdom, was already temporarily in the
ascendant. Presumably Reneb is to be identified with Kakau of the New Kingdom
lists and Kaiechos of Manetho, but the explanation remains to be discovered.
Either he or Nynetjer bore the personal name Nubnefer. Nynetjer in any case
possessed a personal name which was identical with his Horus-name; it is this
name which the Abydos and Saqqara lists reproduce in the corrupt forms
Banetjeren and Banetjeru followed by Manetho who reads Binothris. Although
nearly half of Nynetjer’s reign is recorded on the Palermo Stone, the only
historical fact which can be ascertained is that he ruled for about
thirty-eight years; the entries on the stone, apart from enumerating the
biennial censuses of the king’s property, refer exclusively to the construction
of buildings and the celebration of various festivals. His immediate
successors, Weneg and Sened, are even more obscure. Vases inscribed with
the name of Weneg, and certainly dating from his time, were found under the
Step Pyramid. Sened, although known from a fragment of an inscribed vase
discovered at Giza, is better attested by inscriptions in the Fourth
Dynasty tomb at Saqqara, whose owner styles himself ‘Overseer of the Priests of
Sened in the (Saqqara) necropolis, Shery’. The names of both kings
appear in the later lists, Sened (Sethenes in Manetho) without undergoing any
radical change of form, but Weneg, owing to a scribal misunderstanding, becoming
Wadjnes, literally ‘Green-of- Tongue’, which in Coptic would be rendered
Wet-las and which Manetho gives as Tlas. In view of the professed association
of the second king of the dynasty with the solar cult, it is perhaps
significant that Weneg should have been chosen as a royal name, because a god
Weneg, who must have been venerated in early times, is described in the Pyramid
Texts of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties as the ‘son of Re’.
Shery,
besides being a priest of Sened, served the mortuary cult of the next king of
the Second Dynasty, Peribsen, in the same capacity. Peribsen’s name, in
contemporary inscriptions, is preceded not by the traditional Horus-title, but
by the Seth-title and, in one instance, by Seth-Re. An interesting commentary
on this new title is provided by one of his seal-impressions which reads: ‘The
Ombite (i.e. Seth) hath given the Two Lands to his son Peribsen’. The
discovery in his ‘tomb’ at Abydos of jar-sealings inscribed variously with the
Seth Peribsen and with the Horus Sekhemib (niswi-bity and nbty Sekhemib
Perenmaat) led to the deduction, which has, however, not gained universal
acceptance, that the two names were borne by one king who discarded his
original Horus-name and title and adopted a new name with the title of
Seth. It is unfortunate that the evidence on this point is equivocal, for
the problem has a vital bearing both on the assessment of Peribsen’s claim to
the throne and on the interpretation of some records of historical importance
belonging to the Horus Khasekhem. If Peribsen was not originally a
Horus-king, he may not have been of Hierakonpolite stock, but may perhaps have
been a native of some place in the province of the god Seth, whose centre was
Ombos, the modern Naqada. In that event it is conceivable that Peribsen and
Khasekhem ruled concurrently, the former over the territory north of Gebelein
and the latter over the region between Gebelein and the First Cataract; a state
of affairs implying that the unity of the kingdom was temporarily broken would
thus have existed. If, on the other hand, Peribsen ascended the throne as
the Horus Sekhemib, no Ombite ancestry or division of authority need be
postulated, but it must be supposed that the change of name and title was
governed by religious or political causes. There is, however, evidence that the
early dynastic kings were always closely associated with both Horus and
Seth, and consequently the substitution of one deity for the other in the
royal titulary need not point to changes of a revolutionary nature.
Nevertheless, the innovation was certainly not without its significance, and
it is at least arguable from the title Seth-Re that Peribsen was responsible
for introducing the cult of Seth into Heliopolis.
The
monuments of Khasekhem are chiefly characterized by their emphasis on his
military achievements. One of the most graphic is a fragmentary relief which,
when complete, showed the king kneeling on a prostrate Nubian, whose body, like
that of the Northerner on the palette of Narmer, was depicted in the shape of
the hieroglyph for foreign land; beneath the scene is an inscription
reading ‘Excellent Sandal against foreign lands, the Horus Khasekhem’—an
epithet which appears to have been no idle boast. Another reference to a
campaign in the south may perhaps be detected in a scene carved on a number of
commemorative vases which represent the vulture-goddess Nekhbet before the
serekh of the king binding the symbolical plants of Upper and Lower Egypt with
one claw and holding in the other a ring containing two hieroglyphic signs
spelling the word Besh. The interpretation of Besh is, however, extremely
problematical; at different times it has been explained as the personal name of
the king, as the name of a Libyan people dwelling in the neighbourhood of El-Kab
and as a more northern Libyan tribe domiciled near the Faiyum. The title of
the scene, ‘The Year of fighting and smiting the Northerners’, favours the last
interpretation, but no final proof is yet forthcoming. Khasekhem’s most
important campaigns were certainly conducted in the north, and it is to these
wars that the reliefs and inscriptions on the bases of his two statuettes
refer, although the number of slain recorded—47,209 on one statuette and on
the other 48,205—is certainly hyperbolical. Such campaigns within the confines
of Egypt itself can only have been necessitated by a breakdown in the authority
of the crown; it is difficult to believe that the circumstances which led to
the adoption of the Seth-title by Peribsen were not ultimately the cause of
Khasekhem’s military exploits. An imaginative account of his struggle may
perhaps be contained in the so-called Myth of Horus, which is inscribed on a
wall in the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu. According to this text, Horus,
accompanied by his harpooners (msntlw), defeated the followers of Seth, who
assumed the forms of crocodiles and hippopotami, in a series of river battles
between Edfu and the sea-coast. Having completed the conquest, Horus returned
southwards to quell an insurrection at Shashert in Nubia and, after
accomplishing this task, he divided among his followers the territory which had
previously been controlled by the adherents of Seth. While the general purport
of the myth is not inconsistent with the victories recorded on the monuments of
Khasekhem, the possibility that it reflects events of a later period, such as
the expulsion of the Hyksos or the overthrow of the Persians, cannot be
excluded. It is at least unlikely that Khasekhem’s northern campaign occurred
during the lifetime of Peribsen, for if Peribsen had been defeated in battle it
is hard to understand how he came to have a ‘tomb’ at Abydos, unless the
‘tomb’ was built and partly equipped while Peribsen was still alive and, for
some reason was not dismantled after his defeat. If, however, the monuments of
Khasekhem describe a struggle for the kingship which followed the death of
Peribsen, the existence of the ‘ tomb ’ would not be surprising, because
subsequent developments suggest that a policy of appeasement towards the
adherents of Seth was soon introduced.
An even more
perplexing question than Khasekhem’s connexion with Peribsen is whether the
former is to be identified with Khasekhemwy or was succeeded by him. Alone
among the kings of Egypt, Khasekhemwy adopted the dual title of Horus and Seth.
His serekh frequently contains his personal name, Nebwy Hetepimef, added to his
official name, and the group thus written may be rendered ‘The Horus and Seth
Khasekhemwy, the Two Lords (i.e. Horus and Seth) are at peace in him’. It
seems clear, therefore, that a reconciliation had been effected between the
followers of the two deities; whether it occurred under Khasekhem, whose name
was altered to Khasekhemwy in order to signalize the event, or under a
different king called Khasekhemwy from the time of his coronation, cannot be
deduced with any certainty. The absence of a ‘tomb’ at Abydos which may be
ascribed to Khasekhem, whereas the ‘tomb’ of Khasekhemwy in that cemetery has
been found, and the similarity of the two names support the conjecture that
Khasekhem and Khasekhemwy represent only one person; on the other hand, it may
be argued that the conditions for bringing about the reconciliation would have
been more favourable under a new king.
As a
consequence of the restoration of peace and order, a marked advance in
technical achievements occurred under Khasekhemwy. According to the Palermo
Stone, which preserves the records of the last six of the seventeen years of
his reign, a copper statue of the king was made in his fifteenth regnal year,
showing that the figures of Phiops I and Merenre found at Hierakonpolis were by
no means the first to be produced in that metal. It is also stated that two
years previously he built a temple of stone named ‘The Goddess Endures’—an
assertion which finds support in the fact that the chamber of his Abydos ‘tomb’
was composed of hewn limestone. Moreover, fragments of granite door-jambs
carved with inscriptions and reliefs which were found at Hierakonpolis and at
El-Kab display a thorough mastery over this stone. In these and in many other
respects it is evident that the reign of Khasekhemwy was culturally the
forerunner of the Old Kingdom. He was closely related to Djoser, the second
king of the Third Dynasty, whose mother was almost certainly the ‘Mother of
the King’s Children’, Nymaathap. Jar-sealings bearing her name were discovered
in the Abydos ‘tomb’ of Khasekhemwy and consequently it has sometimes been
supposed that she was Khasekhemwy’s queen. In the Turin Papyrus, however, the
accession of Djoser is marked as the beginning of a new dynasty, which, if
he was the son of Khasekhemwy, would be surprising. It seems possible,
therefore, that Nymaathap was Khasekhemwy’s only child and that she married a
prince who was not in the direct line of succession.
Contemporary records of the later kings in the Second Dynasty differ widely from the names in the New Kingdom king-lists. The Turin Canon and the Saqqara list give as the successors of Sened: Aka [(or Neferkare), Neferkasokar, Hudjefa and Bebty (or Beby). The Abydos list mentions only Djadja. Both Bebty and Djadja may be misreadings of a hieratic writing of Khasekhemwy, hile Hudjefa has been explained as being originally intended not as a name but as a scribal note meaning ‘lacuna’. Manetho’s last four kings in the dynasty bear the names Chaires, Nefercheres, Sesochris and Cheneres. To these kings alone he ascribes reigns which in aggregate amount to 120 years. His total of 302 years for the whole dynasty, however, exceeds estimates based on other sources of evidence by about a century.
V.
ROYALTY
AND THE STATE
The whole
structure of the Egyptian constitution was founded on the general acceptance of
the doctrine that its rulers were divine. Throughout the Early Dynastic
Period, with the exception of the reigns of Peribsen and Khasekhemwy, every
king bore the title of Horus and thus signalized his claim to be the earthly
embodiment of that deity; Peribsen and Khasekhemwy modified this practice only
to the extent of adopting a different divine identity. At death, when a new
incarnation of Horus had succeeded to the throne, the deceased king surrendered
the right to his Horus-titles; for this reason the New Kingdom royal lists
consistently enumerate the kings under their personal names, to which the
nbty-title had generally been prefixed in contemporary inscriptions. Perhaps
the fact of deification was considered as implicit in the assumption of
kingship and needed to be marked by no special ceremony either at the
coronation or at the jubilee festival (Heb Sed), when the principal ceremonies
of the coronation were re-enacted. The royal annals describe the coronation as
the ‘Rising of the King of Upper Egypt, Rising of the King of Lower Egypt,
Union of the Two Lands and Procession around the Wall’, which suggests that
the ritual was mainly intended to commemorate the early division of the land
into two kingdoms, the unification of these kingdoms under one crown and the
foundation of Memphis by Menes. Being a deity, the king was doubtless entitled
to the same degree of reverence from his subjects as other gods and he, in
turn, was expected to conform with the supposed divine code of behaviour. Like
the gods, he married and had children. Several of the queens of the Early
Dynastic Period are known by name: Neithhotpe, Mer(it)neith, Herneith and
Nymaathap are the only queens who figure in contemporary inscriptions, but the
Cairo Annals record that Khenthap and Betrest (?) were the mothers of Djer and
Semerkhet respectively, and it may therefore be assumed that they were the
wives of Aha and Anedjib. The fact that the mothers are mentioned in this
manner strongly suggests that the right of succession to the throne was,
already at the beginning of Egyptian history, transmitted through the
principal queen, who was variously called ‘She who unites the Two Lords’
, ‘She who sees Horus and Seth’ and ‘Mother of the
King’s Children’. Princes and princesses are seldom mentioned
by name at this period, but princesses seated on litters are occasionally
included in representations of ceremonies, sometimes accompanied by their
tutor. Normally the royal family lived together in the palace,
built mainly of mud brick; no early example of such a building has yet been
discovered, but it is not unlikely that the façade is reproduced in the design
of the serekh (literally, proclaimer), within which the Horus-name of the king
was written. The interior of the palace was probably divided into official and
domestic quarters, the latter comprising the harem, the ‘Mansion of
Life’ or royal dining-room, wine-cellar, the
slaughter-house, and certainly many other sections which are not
specified in extant inscriptions. Courtiers, whose numbers must have been very
considerable, were graded according to their position, the most exalted
being the ‘Controller of the Two Thrones’, ‘He who is at the head
of the King’, and possibly several bearing the title ‘One
concerned with Royal Affairs’. In virtue of his supposedly divine
nature, the king ruled as an absolute monarch with complete authority over both
secular and religious affairs. He was, however, assisted by a body of officials
whose titles, found on seal-impressions, fragments of stone vases and other
‘documents’, constitute the chief, though lamentably inadequate, source of
information for reconstructing, in broad outline, the political and social
organization developed by Menes and his immediate successors. As in later
times, the administration was centred on the capital and had its branches in
the provinces. At the head of the central administration stood the ‘King’s
House’, which exercised jurisdiction not only over such matters as
were considered to be the sole prerogative of the king, but also over all the
other government departments. Perhaps the records from which the archivists of
the Fifth Dynasty compiled the Palermo Stone and its congeners in the museums
of Cairo and University College were kept in the ‘King’s House’. Usually, as
its name implies, the king presided in person over this House, with the ‘Master
of the Secrets of the (Royal) Decrees’ as his principal
lieutenant, a ‘Companion’ serving as a senior official and a
body of scribes to perform the clerical duties. The suggestion has been made
that a hieroglyphic group tt, borne by a person who is represented in company
with the king’s sandal-bearer and other royal attendants on the slate palette
and mace-head of Narmer, is to be explained as an early method of writing the
title tzty, which, in the Old Kingdom and later, signified ‘Vizier’. It seems
more likely, however, that tt is to be connected either with wtt ‘beget’, so
that it would signify‘son’, ‘crown-prince’ or with ztt ‘tutor’. Nevertheless
the title tity is attested by vase-inscriptions dating from before the time of
Djoser, all with reference to a certain Menka, but its bearer may not have
occupied the same exalted position as the viziers of the Old Kingdom. Menka’s
two other titles ‘He of the Curtain’ and ‘Judge’, however, show
that the office was already one of great importance. Perhaps the highest administrative
official was the ‘Chancellor’, who was in charge of the White House and the Red House, as the Treasuries of Upper and
Lower Egypt were called, after the national colours of the Two Lands. His
staff consisted of one or more ‘assistants’ and ‘scribes’. Their
functions, in so far as they can be deduced, comprised not only the
supervision of national revenue, which included, by the end of the Second
Dynasty, the organization of the biennial ‘census of gold and of fields’, but
also the collection and distribution of various stores, such as oils and
certain other products which were levied as taxes. In such capacities they
probably played a leading part in the biennial royal tour of inspection, the
‘Following of Horus’ recorded on the Palermo Stone. Together with
the King’s House, the two Treasuries received the wine from the royal
vineyards, apparently situated in the neighbourhood of Memphis and always
supervised by a high state official. How prominently the control of provisions
figured in the economic and administrative organization is shown by the many
different departments which dealt with commissariat: cereals were at all times
the particular care of the ‘Granaries’, second in importance only to
the ‘Treasuries’; perhaps the ‘ Office of the Miller’ was a
subdepartment of the ‘Granaries’, where the corn was ground; the distribution
of supplies to the temples and to courtiers and other privileged persons was
conducted from the ‘House of the Master of Largess’, a
department closely linked with the ‘Mansion of Life’ in the palace; the ‘Food Office’ is often mentioned in the documents, but little is known
of its activities beyond what may be deduced from the name and from the
conjecture that the vineyards were under its control; fats were kept in a
special storehouse called the ‘House of Cattle-fat’. Military
affairs probably required the attention of a permanent branch in the administration;
nothing is known of the constitution of the army and its terms of service are
completely obscure. At the end of the Second Dynasty, under Khasekhemwy, an
‘Overseer of the Foreign Country’ is found, but it is not clear
whether the title was intended to designate an official charged with foreign
affairs in general or referred in a more restricted sense to some particular
land beyond the frontiers of Egypt.
Numerous
problems confront any inquiry into the methods of provincial
administration adopted by the early dynastic kings. Is it, for instance, to be
assumed that the nomes of Upper Egypt and of the Delta were administered in the
same way? Social conditions in the Two Lands probably differed fundamentally:
the predynastic Upper Egyptians were mainly a nomadic folk who had settled in
communities distributed at intervals along the banks of the river, whereas the
inhabitants of the Delta seem to have congregated in groups at no great
distance apart; a system of government, perhaps feudal in character, suited to
the needs of Upper Egypt would have been impracticable in the North, where a
more urban regime would seem to have been more appropriate. After the
unification, it is likely that a measure of uniformity in governmental control
was introduced, at least in the highest posts, linking the provinces with the
central administration, although special privileges may have been accorded to
some of the southern nomes in recognition of their service to Menes. How
many of his successors respected the claims of these nomes to preferential
treatment and in what way such events as the political upheaval which
culminated in the accession of Peribsen may have affected the whole machinery
of provincial government are questions which cannot at present be answered. Of
titles borne exclusively by provincial officials, contemporary documents
preserve only two or possibly three: ‘Keeper of Nekhen’ a less
specific epithet usually rendered ‘Administrator of a Province’ and
‘Hereditary Prince’. The ‘Keeper of Nekhen’ (literally, He who
belongs to Nekhen [?]) was probably a kind of viceroy of the southernmost
nomes, whose seat at Nekhen owed its origin to the historical association of
that city with the founders of the First Dynasty. In later times the office
carried with it the title of ‘Count’ a rank ascribed to Ankhka in the reign
of Den, who, however, is not known to have held the post of ‘Keeper of Nekhen’.
The appointment of a similar dignitary in Lower Egypt, the ‘Keeper of Pe’, may not have been initiated until the Third Dynasty. Several
wine-jar sealings of the First Dynasty are inscribed with the title, and often
the name, of the ‘Administrator’ of the nome in which the vineyard was situated;
there is no clear evidence that the specialized significance of ‘Customs’
Official’, which perhaps prevailed in the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, was
attached to this title in the Early Dynastic Period. The few instances on
record of an ‘Hereditary Prince’ connect the office with that of the High
Priest of Heliopolis. Future discoveries, not only in the Delta, but also in
Upper Egypt, may well show that many of the provincial offices and institutions
attested by monuments of the Third and Fourth Dynasties, such as the Council of
the ‘Tens of Upper Egypt’, originated in early dynastic times.
VI.
FOREIGN
RELATIONS
It is
unlikely that any close or regular connexions were maintained between Egypt and
the neighbouring countries in the period immediately preceding and following
the institution of the united monarchy. The evidence, admittedly sparse, points
rather to brief migratory movements towards the Nile Valley, intermittent
commercial dealings and isolated military expeditions by the Egyptians either
in defence of their frontiers or to obtain a commodity not readily available
at home. Anthropological research may some day shed much-needed light on what
was perhaps the most important of the migrations by establishing the identity
of the so-called ‘Armenoids’ or ‘Dynastic Race’, whose presence in Egypt at
the beginning of the dynastic period, although discounted by many authorities
in the past, has been further attested by recent excavations. Physically these
people differed unmistakably from the predynastic Egyptians: whereas the
latter were unusually small in stature and possessed long and narrow skulls
(about 132 mm. in breadth), the newcomers were more massively built and their
skulls (about 139 mm. in width) were appreciably broader than those of their
predecessors. The quantity and distribution of the skeletons hitherto found
suggest that the ‘Dynastic Race’ entered Egypt in considerable numbers from the
north, where the purest examples of their racial types have been discovered;
this fact alone would suggest that the immigrants came from Asia, but it is doubtful
whether the assertion sometimes made that they were Armenoids is anatomically
justifiable. Before the end of the First Dynasty they had already penetrated
southwards as far as Abydos and were becoming merged into the general
population—a process which appears to have been intensified with the passage of
time. So long as the origin of this people remains unexplained, it is difficult
to determine what fresh knowledge they may have brought with them to Egypt, but
it is probable that a generous share of the credit for the acceleration in
cultural progress observable at this time should be ascribed to their presence.
Perhaps the Semitic elements in the structure and vocabulary of the Egyptian
language were also introduced by them. Archaeological evidence suggests that
they provided the ruling class and that they adapted their way of life to
conform with the customs already prevailing in their new home; in this respect
they set a precedent which was to be followed by successive invaders of the
Nile Valley down to Roman times.
SOUTHERN
MESOPOTAMIA
Foremost
among the indications of early contacts between Egypt and southern Mesopotamia
must be counted the occurrence in both countries of a small group of remarkably
similar artistic designs, mostly embodying animals. Fantastic monsters in the
shape of serpent-necked lions, such as are carved on the Narmer and Ashmolean
palettes, possess striking parallels on seals and seal-impressions discovered
at Uruk and on a cylinder seal in the Louvre which, although its provenance
cannot be proved, is generally considered to be of Mesopotamian origin and to
date from the Uruk-Jamdat Nasr period. Both on the Narmer palette and on the
seals, the necks of the monsters are interlaced—a well-attested motif in
Mesopotamian art, to which the interlaced serpents found on three protodynastic
Egyptian knife-handles may be an additional artistic parallel. Equally typical
of Mesopotamian products is the antithetical arrangement of these monsters and
serpents. As a variation of the same motif, a central feature is sometimes
introduced into the antithetical group: some slate palettes and one very early
First Dynasty engraved cylinder are decorated with two giraffes separated by
a palm-tree; occasionally the central figure is a human figure. Without doubt
the best Egyptian illustration of this latter class appears on the famous ivory
knife-handle from Gebel el-Araq which portrays in finely carved relief a bearded
man clothed in Sumerian costume and holding apart two fierce lions; so closely
does the composition of this scene resemble the so-called Gilgamesh motif,
frequently represented on Mesopotamian seals, that the source of its
inspiration can hardly be questioned. Also Mesopotamian in character are the
ships with high and almost perpendicular prow and stern, and the lion attacking
the hindquarters of a bull, which decorate other parts of the same
knife-handle. Several objects, including mud seal-impressions, ivory
knife-handles and combs and a fragment of a slate palette, display a regular
Mesopotamian trait in the arrangement of animals in file; a serpentine
mace-head from Hierakonpolis and a shell plaque of unknown provenance show a
continuous file of overlapping animals, but more usually the animals are spaced
in broken file and divided into registers. As a class, ceremonial mace-heads
with sculptured decoration, like those of Scorpion and Narmer, are reminiscent
of Mesopotamian art.
In a somewhat
different category from the decorative motifs must be placed two productions,
one of which was also shared by certain neighbouring countries, while the other
may have attained a similar form in Egypt and Mesopotamia through a parallel,
but independent, process of development. These productions were the engraved
cylinder and a distinctive kind of brick architecture exemplified in Egypt by
mastabas of the Naqada type. Outside Egypt and Mesopotamia, engraved cylinders
were used at the beginning of the historical era in Elam, Anatolia, north Syria
and elsewhere, but it can hardly be without significance that two of the
earliest specimens found in Egypt are indistinguishable in style and decoration
from some Mesopotamian cylinders of the Jamdat Nasr period, and the most
probable explanation seems to be that they were imported from that country.
These cylinders were discovered in tombs of the second Naqada period; the
history of two other cylinders of the same kind is not ascertainable, but
there can be little doubt that they also came from Egypt. When, early in the
First Dynasty, the Egyptians began to manufacture their own cylinders, they
sometimes, as has already been shown, imitated Mesopotamian styles of
decoration, which alone would suggest an association with Mesopotamia in the minds
of the makers; coupled with the evidence provided by the four earlier
cylinders, the indications pointing to a Mesopotamian ancestry for the Egyptian
cylinder are more telling than any arguments which can be advanced in favour
of other parentage. More problematical is the architectural connexion which has
been claimed between the Naqada type of brick mastaba and Mesopotamian brick
temples with facades similarly composed of alternating projections and
recesses. It is true that excavation in Mesopotamia has revealed the more
primitive wooden constructions from which this style of architecture was no
doubt derived, and that the earliest Mesopotamian examples in brick are
considerably older than the first mastabas of the Naqada form found in Egypt,
where they appear quite suddenly at the beginning of the First Dynasty, but it
is possible to account both for the absence of any known Egyptian archetype in
wood and for the discrepancy in time by assuming that brick tombs of the Naqada
pattern were a Lower Egyptian development of predynastic times, only adopted by
the Upper Egyptians after the conquest of unification; if that be the case
the putative antecedents of this kind of mastaba must be sought in the regions,
hitherto largely unexcavated, of the Delta. In these circumstances, it seems
necessary to suspend judgement, but not without recognizing that tangible
evidence in support of a Mesopotamian origin is already at hand, whereas the
arguments favouring independent evolution in the two countries are still
hypothetical.
Although
unrelated morphologically, Sumerian and Egyptian hieroglyphic scripts show
certain affinities, which may not be merely fortuitous, in the mechanical
principles employed. Signs were not used only to denote the objects depicted,
but also other words of like sound which were difficult or impossible to
represent pictorially: thus, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the sledge and the mace
signified respectively both these actual objects and the verbs ‘be complete’
and ‘be bright’. It is evident, therefore, that, at least in their developed
usage, the two hieroglyphs mentioned had gained a phonographic value. By a
further extension of the same principle, signs acquired a syllabic value, which
in Egyptian writing specified only the consonantal composition of the syllable,
in contrast with the Sumerian syllabic signs which defined also the vocalic
content. Finally, though examples are very rare in the oldest Egyptian texts,
both scripts added signs as determinatives to words (in Egyptian invariably as
suffixes, but in Sumerian more often as prefixes) in order to indicate their
general sense. Only in one respect, the invention of the consonantal alphabetic
signs, did the Egyptians possess a graphic element unknown to the Sumerians,
although the latter employed single signs as vowels. In spite, however, of the
similarities, the divergences in method, when considered in combination with
the purely native character of Egyptian hieroglyphs, are too significant to be
disregarded, and it is probably correct to assess the Sumerian contribution to
the Egyptian science of writing as mainly suggestive and limited to imparting
a knowledge of the underlying principles. With this assistance the Egyptians
proceeded to develop one of the most characteristic and lasting features of
their civilization.
While the
historical fact that contacts between southern Mesopotamia and Egypt existed in
protodynastic times can be demonstrated, the nature of these contacts is far
from clear. Commercial intercourse, which might appear at first sight to
furnish the simplest explanation, must be regarded as unlikely because of the
absence of any trace of Egyptian influence on Mesopotamian productions during the
Jamdat Nasr and first Early Dynastic Periods; the movement seems to have been
in one direction only—from East to West—and, unless future excavations bring
to light some evidence of a corresponding movement in the reverse direction, it
is necessary to conclude that the bearers of the Mesopotamian influences were
Sumerians who migrated to Egypt and settled in the Nile Valley. By what route
the immigrants travelled and entered the country it is difficult to decide, but
two approaches were geographically possible: either by way of the Red Sea and
thence by land through one of the wadis (perhaps the Wadi Hammamat) to the Nile
Valley, or by way of Syria and the isthmus of Suez to the Delta. In favour
of the Red Sea route it may be argued that the foreign ships noted on the Gebel
el-Araq knife-handle suggest that the immigrants were seafarers; moreover,
some of the earliest traces of their presence in Egypt have come to light in
the neighbourhood of the western end of the Wadi Hammamat. It is, however, noticeable
that the period when Mesopotamian influence can most easily be detected
coincides with the conquest leading to the unification of the Two Lands, at
the time when Upper Egypt might have been expected to appropriate certain
productions which had formerly been confined to the North. Clearly, the
problem cannot be solved with any degree of finality while the early levels of
the Delta remain virtually unexplored and it is by no means inconceivable that
the immigrants reached Egypt by more than one route. There are good grounds for
believing that the number of immigrants was not such as to constitute an.
invasion and that the flow could not have continued after the beginning of the
First Dynasty; otherwise they must surely have exercised a deeper and more
prolonged influence on Egyptian cultural and technical development. The
decorative motifs in which Mesopotamian inspiration can be discerned were
either integrated into an Egyptian setting or entirely adapted by the substitution
of subjects familiar to the Egyptians but foreign to the Sumerians, as in the
case of the antithetical group displaying so essentially African an animal as
the giraffe or the dibatag; furthermore the employment of these motifs, at no
time common, was discontinued soon after the foundation of the united monarchy.
Extant specimens of sculptured mace-heads all belong to the age of Scorpion and
Narmer. Cylinder-seals, which seldom—and only at their first appearance—betray
in their ornamentation the origin ascribed to them, remained in general use
until the end of the Old Kingdom, when they were superseded first by the button
seal and then by the scarab, but were sometimes used archaistically in later
times. The Naqada style of mastaba, if its architecture should ultimately be
shown beyond doubt to have been derived from Mesopotamia and thus warrant its
inclusion in this category, did not outlive the First Dynasty before being
succeeded by a mastaba of a simpler and less distinctive external design.
Hieroglyphic writing, alone among the possible contributions of early
Mesopotamia, gained a permanent and unchallenged footing in Egypt, but the
reason for its retention lies in the singular position which it immediately
assumed in the religous concept of the Egyptians combined with their extreme
conservatism in such matters.
SYRIA,
PALESTINE AND SINAI
Excavations
at Byblos have yielded conclusive proof that Egyptian products were reaching
Syria from very early times. The first object which can be precisely dated is
a fragment of a polished stone vase bearing the name of Khasekhemwy; a figure
of squatting ape, a gold bead and two gaming-pieces may, however, be ascribed
to the protodynastic period, while a slate palette in the form of a bird is
characteristic of predynastic workmanship. The fact that these objects lay
beneath the pavement of a temple dating from the Middle Kingdom suggests that
they had formed part of the property of an earlier sanctuary which had been
rebuilt; without doubt they were brought as propitiatory offerings to the local
goddess, the ‘Mistress of Byblos’, by Egyptian traders. In later times the main
purpose of such missions was to obtain timber from the Lebanon. Perhaps the
commodity sought by the first traders was cedar-oil which is mentioned in an
inscription dating from the time of Anedjib. Moreover, various pottery vessels
found in early dynastic tombs display Syrian features either in their
decoration or in their shape; how many of these vessels actually came from
Syria, perhaps filled with oils and resins, and how many may have been made in
Egypt as deliberate imitations cannot be determined, but, even if statistical
analysis could prove that the ratio of imports to local manufacturers was
small, the occurrence of a foreign class of ceramics in a country already well
provided with established wares implies some familiarity with its place of
origin, if not also with the special products with which the vessels were
particularly associated.
The
discovery of Egyptian objects at Byblos, a port, suggests that traffic between
Egypt and Syria was conducted by sea. Passage by land would have presented
serious practical difficulties in the conveyance of merchandise and would only
have been feasible if the intervening territory had been either under Egyptian
control or occupied by friendly peoples. Some slight evidence of sporadic
intercourse between Egypt and Palestine is admittedly available, perhaps from
the time of Narmer, but not enough to indicate a close relationship. Sinai, as
in later times, was in all probability the abode of undisciplined bedawin whose
presence would have rendered transport through its sandy wastes an extremely
hazardous operation: Djer and Den claim to have engaged the
local inhabitants in combat. The historical inference to be drawn from these
scraps of information seems rather to be that the early dynastic kings
periodically found it necessary to assert themselves against the bedawin,
either in defence of the eastern Delta or for the purpose of obtaining
turquoise and possibly copper, than that Sinai was included within the
Egyptian realm and only became the scene of punitive action in times of revolt.
LIBYA
Of the
various Libyan peoples who figure on Egyptian monuments, only the dwellers in
the region called Tjehenu are attested in texts of the Early Dynastic
Period, unless the enigmatical Besh, mentioned on the vases of Khasekhem, is to
be regarded as referring to a Libyan folk. Painted scenes on the walls
of Old Kingdom temples depict the people of Tjehenu with several typically
Egyptian features: their skins are dark red, a short beard projects from
the chin, on the brow they have a tuft of hair suggestive of the royal uraeus,
an animal’s tail hangs from the back of the girdle and in front, even when the
figures are of women, is suspended the phallus-sheath often worn by Egyptians
when represented on slate palettes and other objects of the protodynastic and
predynastic times. The people themselves are called Hatiu-a, ‘Princes’,
probably on account of their regal-looking attire; for the same reason and also
because they sometimes bear Egyptian names it is likely that they were closely
akin to the Egyptians. Perhaps the separation of the two peoples resulted from
the incomplete subjection of the Hatiu-a by the Upper Egyptians in the war of
unification; two objects dating from that time, one inscribed with the name of
Narmer, record victories in the land of Tjehenu, but otherwise the
documents of the Early Dynastic Period, apart from labels of jars denoting that
their contents consisted of Tjehenu-oil (generally considered to have been
olive oil), contain no mention of Tjehenu-land or of its inhabitants. There
can be little doubt, however, that the traditional enmity between the
Egyptians and both the Libyans and the Asiatics of Sinai, which so often found
expression in parallel scenes carved on the walls of later temples, originated
at this time.
NUBIA
Ethnically
the predynastic Egyptians and the main body of the so-called A-group of
dwellers in Lower Nubia probably belonged to the same branch of Hamitic people;
whether they spoke the same language cannot be ascertained in the absence
of written documents. Culturally also the inhabitants of the two countries in
the Early Predynastic Period were identical; divergences are first detectable
in Nubian tombs of the Middle Predynastic Period and become more marked with
each succeeding age until the final disappearance of the A-group at the end of
the Third Dynasty. Being far removed from the influence of those forces
which brought about so rapid an advancement in protodynastic Egypt, the Nubians
were unable to keep pace with their more fortunate relatives in the North.
Early dynastic tombs in Nubia were not only more poorly furnished than
contemporaneous tombs in Egypt, but were still provided with pottery and other
funerary equipment of a kind not found in Egyptian tombs after late
predynastic times. The frontier between the two countries, when first
established, probably lay somewhere in the vicinity of Gebel es-Silsila, which
may explain why the Egyptians called the region southward to the First
Cataract, comprising the first Upper Egyptian nome of the historical lists, the
‘Nubian Land’. Perhaps the wooden docket of Aha, which mentions
the smiting of the ‘Nubian Land’, commemorates the annexation of this
territory rather than a military expedition into Lower Nubia. A mutilated
battle scene carved on a rock at Wadi Haifa bears the name of Djer, who may
have been the actual conqueror. The Palermo Stone records that an unnamed king
of the First Dynasty, who was undoubtedly Den, smote the ‘Nomads’ but this
designation was applied by the Egyptians to all their neighbours and it is more
likely that the particular ‘Nomads’ overcome by Den were the inhabitants of
Sinai. Kha-sekhem, in his graphic inscription discovered at
Hierakonpolis, leaves no room for doubt that the Nubians suffered the same
severe treatment at his hands as the rebellious northern Egyptians; the
circumstances of the time were, however, exceptional and the king may have
found it necessary to obviate any risk of attack from the rear before advancing
towards Middle Egypt and the Delta. Normally relations between the two peoples
were of a pacific character limited, in the main, to an exchange of merchandise.
Ebony and ivory were probably among the regular commodities traded by the
Nubians in return for articles such as pottery and stone vessels manufactured
in Egypt.
VII.
RELIGION
AND FUNERARY BELIEFS
Political
and social changes of so fundamental a kind as those which occurred in Egypt
under the First and Second Dynasties were almost certainly accompanied by
religious developments of far-reaching significance: some deities whose domain
had previously been confined to one locality probably gained wider recognition,
while others may have suffered a diminution in status. Few of these vicissitudes
are capable of demonstration, not only because the religious history of the
preceding period is largely conjectural, but also because the early dynastic
records are extremely fragmentary and difficult to interpret; even in those
rare instances in which sufficient evidence exists for showing that a
particular deity was of importance in the First and Second Dynasties, it is
generally impossible to decide whether the distinction was newly acquired or
already achieved in the predynastic period. To this uncertain category it is
necessary to relegate Horus, about whose early geographical connexions opinion
is at present divided. One fact alone stands out as fairly evident, namely
that in virtue of his position as god of Nekhen, the seat of the rulers of
Upper Egypt before the unification of the Two Lands, he became the patron deity
of the conquerors of Lower Egypt and of their immediate successors. Nekhen was,
however, only one of the centres in which Horus was worshipped in early times
and the problem, which on the information now available seems to defy solution,
is whether some of the other sanctuaries of the Horian cult, notably those of
Pe and Behdet, were founded before or after the cult was established at Nekhen;
in other words, whether Horus was in the first instance a god of Lower or of
Upper Egypt. Relying mainly on later sources, some authorities take the view
that his original home lay in the Delta and that the diffusion of the cult into
Upper Egypt occurred in predynastic times as the result of a conquest of the
South—formerly the province of Seth—by the inhabitants of the North. Advocates of
the southern origin of Horus, on the other hand, deny the theory of the
predynastic invasion and maintain that the advance of the cult northwards was a
concomitant of the subjugation of the North by Scorpion and Narmer. Since the
weight of evidence appears evenly balanced, judgement on this vital question
and on a wide range of ancillary issues must be reserved. Nevertheless, the
kindred problem of the position occupied by Seth in early dynastic times cannot
be passed over without comment. On the mace-head of Scorpion1 two standards
bearing the Seth-animal are displayed in a setting which suggests that his
worshippers, comprising the inhabitants of a group or confederation of nomes
centred around his native town of Ombos (Naqada), were among the chief allies
of the Horus-king in his northern conquest. A similar explanation may also
account for the adoption of the titles ‘Two Lords’ (i.e. Horus and Seth) by
Anedjib and ‘She who unites the Two Lords’ and ‘She who sees Horus and Seth’ by
queens; if so, the titles designated the king as ruler of Upper Egypt only and
it must be assumed that Seth was singled out from the other gods of Upper
Egypt, who were also the king’s allies, as a mark of particular respect, though
the reason for the choice is not apparent. Later tradition in the main,
however, ascribed to the two gods, when they were not depicted as adversaries,
the role of representatives of Lower and Upper Egypt; the titles, if
understood in this sense, would conform, except in order of geographical
precedence, with the nbty and niswt-bity titles of the king. Whichever
explanation is to be preferred and whatever view is taken of the relationship
between Horus and Seth in the preceding period, it seems evident that, by
early dynastic times, the adherents of the two gods were living in a state of
amity, probably based on considerations of political expediency and subject to
temporary interruption, as is demonstrated by the monuments of the Seth-king
Peribsen and his Horian successor Khasekhem.
Among the
relatively small number of deities who are actually attested in early dynastic
documents, Ptah, in virtue of being the principal god of Memphis, must have
occupied a privileged position, and yet he is represented only twice on the
extant monuments of this period. Neither of the two etymologies put forward to
explain his name, with the meanings ‘Opener’ and ‘Sculptor’ or ‘Engraver’
respectively, can be accepted without reserve on account of the late
appearance of their Semitic roots in Egyptian writings; nevertheless the
title of his High Priest, ‘Greatest of Artificers’, although not
frequent in the Early Dynastic Period, and the designation of another
craftsman who may have been attached to this priesthood, the ‘Carpenter,
Sculptor and Maker (?) of Stone Vases’, denote
that Ptah was early regarded as the patron of arts and crafts. How many of the
extravagant claims attributed to Ptah in the text of King Shabako date from the
Early Dynastic Period cannot be assessed, for the original text, as a whole,
seems to have been a product of the ensuing age when the priests of Memphis
were endeavouring to assert the supremacy of their god over the more favoured
sun-god of Heliopolis. Two other Memphite deities, the bull Apis and the
mummified falcon Sokar, are better documented, their festivals being recorded
both on inscriptions of the First Dynasty and on the Palermo Stone and
Cairo Annals. By the Old Kingdom, at latest, Neith also possessed a sanctuary
at Memphis ‘North of the Wall’, so named in contrast with the sanctuary of Ptah
‘South of his Wall’ which tradition ascribed to Menes. Primarily,
however, Neith was at all times associated with the town of Sais in the western
Delta, where her temple, called the ‘House of the Bee’, was situated;
the adoption of her crown by the kings to symbolize their sovereignty over
Lower Egypt, the royal title ‘He who belongs to the Bee’ and the frequent
occurrence of her name in theophorous compounds, of which Neithhotpe and
Mer(it)neith are only two of the many known or suspected instances, prove that
the kings of the First Dynasty regarded this goddess with particular esteem and
suggest that her cult held a predominant position in Lower Egypt at the end of
the predynastic period. Among the deities who figure with Seth on the
protodynastic mace-heads and palettes are Min of Akhmim and Koptos, Wepwawet,
the wolf-god of Asyut, the ibis of Thoth, whose cult was associated in early
times with the Fifteenth Lower Egyptian nome, and the jackal-god Anubis, all of
whom seem to have been admitted as allies by Scorpion and Narmer. The vulture Nekhbet of El-Kab and the serpent Uadjit
of Buto appear as protecting goddesses in connexion with the personal names of
kings, first on the ivory tablet of Menes and regularly from the accession of
Semerkhet. Deities whose significance at this time is more obscure include
Bastet, the cat-headed goddess of Bubastis, Sopd of Saft el-Hinna in the
eastern Delta, Sobk, the crocodile-god of the Faiyum, Seshat, the goddess of
writing, Khnum, the ram-god of Antinoopolis and such lesser members of the
pantheon as Mafdet, a feline goddess, Kherty, a ram-god of Letopolis, Neser, a
fish-god, and Ash, an anthropomorphic god with the head of the animal of Seth.
No trace can be found in the early dynastic records of Osiris, whose cult was
early associated with that of Andjety at Busiris. Of the undoubted
existence of the sun-cult at this time, the name of the king Reneb, the
composite god Seth-Re and the title of the Heliopolitan high-priest ‘Greatest of the Seers’ constitute the sum of the written
evidence hitherto recovered. Incomplete and partly fortuitous though the
catalogue of deities preserved from this period must be considered, it is
noteworthy both that divine iconography had, to a great extent, been finally
established and that the proportion of Lower Egyptian deities is higher than
might have been expected at a time when Upper Egypt was politically
predominant. A legitimate inference from this latter fact seems to be that the
new rulers freely recognized the deities of the conquered peoples as a means of
securing their acquiescence and friendly co-operation.
Excavations
carried out on early dynastic sites have so far failed to bring to light any
religious texts. That such works were compiled appears likely from numerous
passages in the Pyramid Texts of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties referring to
practices and conditions which were out of date at that period, and from the
priestly title ‘Scribe of the God’s Book’ found on early
dynastic vases. In the absence of written evidence it is necessary to turn for
information to material remains, which consist of little more than tombs and
their contents; the scope of possible investigation is consequently limited in
the main to beliefs regarding the Next Life.
Tombs of the
Early Dynastic Period were of two types: pits of varying size and interior
construction surmounted by circular, oval or rectangular mounds of stones and
gravel, which differed in no essential respect from the predynastic graves,
and secondly mastabas built of mud brick. The objects buried in the pit tombs
suggest that the needs of the after-life were thought to be similar to those of
this life, but nothing definite is revealed about its nature or its
surroundings. Nor can any clear inference be drawn from the orientation of the
body. In the majority of cemeteries it was laid, tightly or loosely contracted
and wrapped in woven reed matting or in linen, on the left side facing
eastwards, but the earlier custom of placing the body on the left side facing
westwards was very often maintained. Only the most elaborate pittombs give
the impression of having been designed as houses. Mastabas however were
probably regarded from the first as houses in which the dead would reside and
enjoy their protection and amenities. This character, perhaps a legacy of Lower
Egyptian practices in predynastic times, is plainly illustrated in the
substructures of some of the Second Dynasty mastabas at Saqqara, which
included not only apartments believed to represent quarters for the domestic
staff and possibly even stalls for cattle, but also a bathroom and a lavatory.
Easily distinguishable in this complex of rooms is the bedchamber where the
deceased was placed, sometimes in a wooden coffin, itself in the form of a
house, and sometimes lying on a bed. Near the body, on pottery dishes ready
for consumption, might be set a complete meal consisting of cereals, fish,
meat, sweets and fruit, and ajar of wine. Large quantities of similar
provisions were stored elsewhere in the tomb, while further supplies of fresh
food were probably brought by relatives and laid in the larger of the two niches
on the east side of the superstructure. A curious custom, which seems to have
been connected with alimentation, was the attaching of bulls’ heads, modelled
in clay and provided with real horns, to a brick bench at the base of the
palace facades of some of the First Dynasty mastabas at Saqqara. When, perhaps
before the end of the First Dynasty, the funerary stela was introduced into the
equipment of the mastaba in order to supplement by magical means the supply of
provisions, the bull’s head was included as an item in the list of offerings,
together with the heads of birds and antelopes, to serve as an abbreviation for
the hieroglyph showing the entire animal, a graphic device which was retained in
the offering-lists of later times. On the basis of somewhat slender evidence it
has been suggested that some funerary stelae of the Second Dynasty found at
Saqqara were placed near the top of the larger offering niche outside the
superstructure, and thus in the same position as their successors in
false-doors of the Old Kingdom mastabas. Several stelae of a similar kind
discovered in the Second Dynasty tombs at Helwan were, however, placed face
downwards at the lower ends of shafts in the ceilings of the burial
chambers, apparently with the intention of enabling the deceased without
moving to enjoy the benefits which they conferred by magic. Somewhat
paradoxically the shafts themselves seem to have been designed to allow the
spirit of the deceased more easily to leave and re-enter the tomb. How far they
may have wished to travel is not revealed, but the provision of a wooden boat
buried in a brick- or mud-lined pit outside some of the mastabas at
Saqqara, Helwan and Abu Rawash suggests that journeys of some
distance, perhaps to attend festivals, were envisaged. If the royal ‘tombs’ at
Abydos were indeed cenotaphs it must be supposed that the spirits of their
owners possessed the power to transport themselves thither from Saqqara, a
distance of about three hundred miles.
There is no
reason to suppose that the beliefs which led to the development of
mummification in the Old Kingdom were not also held in earlier times.
Continuity of existence depended, it was thought, on the preservation of the
body or at least on the provision of a stone or wooden figure which the spirit
could occupy through the powers of magic if the body were destroyed. While
graves were merely shallow pits and bodies were separated from the sand by
nothing more than a layer of linen or matting, physical decay was prevented by
the desiccating properties of the warm, dry sand. Deeper tombs cut in the
substratum of rock and covered by a superstructure of mud-brick, although
giving greater protection against interference, deprived the body of the
natural benefits afforded by close proximity to the sand. That the Egyptians of
the Early Dynastic Period soon became aware of this consequence may be inferred
from the fact that already in the Second Dynasty they had devised a method of
preserving the outward form of the body by placing under the bandages, in which
the various limbs and members were individually wrapped, linen pads soaked in a
resinous substance and moulded to the appropriate shapes. There is, however,
no trace either of the removal of the most quickly decomposable organs or of
the impregnation of the body with salt or natron, both of which were regular
operations in the process of mummification. In general, it must be concluded
that various kinds of magic, and particularly the spoken word, were invoked in
order to ensure continuity of existence and, by implication, the preservation
of the body. Some relics at least of the spells uttered by the mortuary priests
in earlier times are to be found among the Pyramid Texts, the most obvious
being the spells with allusions to conditions which no longer prevailed in the
pyramid tombs of the Old Kingdom, for example, ‘Cast the sand from thy face’
and ‘The bricks are removed for thee from thy great tomb’. Considerable
reliance must also have been placed in the power of imitative magic. Apart from
the confidence placed in it as a means of supplying the material needs of the
dead, faith in its efficacy may be detected in the inclusion of wooden figures of
nearly life size, no doubt to serve as substitutes for the body, in the
funerary equipment. Hitherto only a very few fragments of these figures have
been found and the rarity of their occurrence strongly suggests that in
the Early Dynastic Period their possession was a privilege confined to
royalty. Even the humblest of mortals, however, might entertain the hope of
physical preservation through the agency of the mound of sand and rock piled
above the grave, which in origin was probably intended merely to mark the
position of the grave in order to prevent accidental disturbance and to enable
relatives to locate it when bringing their offerings. How early in its long
history a magical significance was attached to it is unknown, but the
discovery that some of the mud-brick mastabas of the early First Dynasty at
Saqqara embodied within the superstructure a mound of sand overlaid with
brick, which had no structural purpose, shows that by that time it had
become an important feature. It is not difficult to imagine that the reason for
this development was the supposed resemblance of the mound to the Primeval Hill
which had emerged from the waters of chaos—the so-called High Sand—and on which
the creator-god had manifested himself at the creation of the world. By
the action of imitative or symbolic magic the mound above the grave,
notwithstanding its purely practical origin, would, it was believed, acquire
the same vital power as the Primeval Hill and thus be able to impart life to
the corpse lying beneath it.
Situated in
close proximity to several of the large tombs of the First Dynasty were rows of
subsidiary graves in which members of the deceased’s household and certain
other dependants were buried. At Abydos and Abu Rawash the graves
were provided with roughly carved stelae bearing the names of the occupants,
some of whom were undoubtedly women, a few apparently captives of war.
Among the twenty subsidiary graves surrounding the mastaba dated to the time of
Mer(it)neith at Saqqara were a number which belonged to artisans whose
trades were indicated by the tools and other objects buried with them: model
boats with perhaps a boat-builder, knives with a butcher, copper and flint
tools with a stone vase carver, pots of pigment with a painter and pottery
vessels with a potter. Similarly at Giza, in association with the mastaba
dated to Djer, one of the graves contained two palettes which suggested that
the deceased was a scribe or an artist. While it is evident that the occupants
of subsidiary graves were intended to serve the owner of the principal tomb in
the Next Life, it is very difficult to judge to what extent they were buried at
the time of the funeral of their patron, either alive or after receiving a
lethal dose of poison. In the Abydos ‘tombs’ of Semerkhet and Qaa only is it
certain that the superstructure of the principal ‘tomb’ covered the subsidiary
graves, and consequently there can be little doubt that all the burials in
each ‘tomb’ were made at one and the same time. Elsewhere the subsidiary graves
lay outside the principal tomb, either at intervals apart or in long trenches
with brick partition walls between the graves. Both these arrangements, and
particularly the detached pattern, allow of the possibility that the persons
concerned were buried individually when they died a natural death, unless it
can be shown that the graves in any one trench were all roofed by a single
superstructure. That separate superstructures were, at least sometimes, built
has been proved by the discovery at Saqqara of a series of sixty-two
trench-graves, each with its own mastaba-form superstructure. Reisner, after a
re-examination of the evidence at Abydos, maintained that the number of burials
which were undoubtedly made in the mass was but a fraction of the many hundreds
found in the subsidiary graves surrounding the royal ‘tombs’. In spite of the
insufficiency of the evidence to show the extent of the practice of human
sacrifice during the Early Dynastic Period, the fact of its existence cannot
be questioned. If the number of subsidiary graves bears any relation, as is
probable, to the number of persons sacrificed, the custom reached its peak
under Djer, whose two ‘tomb’ complexes at Abydos contained more than 590
subsidiary graves, and thereafter declined, twenty-six graves only being found
in the ‘tomb’ of Qaa. If it was continued throughout the Second Dynasty the
scale was probably further reduced, but the only evidence available comes from
the ‘tomb’ of Khasekhemwy at Abydos which Reisner estimated contained not more
than ten or fifteen subsidiary burials.
VIII.
ARCHITECTURE,
SCULPTURE AND THE SMALL ARTS
Apart from
the massive brick ‘fortress’ enclosures with panelled faces at Abydos and
Hierakonpolis, standing examples of early dynastic buildings are almost
entirely confined to tombs. Two groups of model buildings in mud-brick
associated with the mastaba dated to Aha at Saqqara provide an exception, but
their purpose is uncertain; they have been compared, on the one hand, with the
dummy chapels in the Heb Sed court of Djoser, and, on the other, with rows of
objects figured at the top of the blue-tiled panels of the Step Pyramid and
thought to represent granaries. Traces of temples have been found both at
Abydos and at Hierakonpolis, and a mortuary temple showing affinities with
the mortuary temple of Djoser has been excavated in the enclosure of a mastaba
at Saqqara dating from the time of Qaa. Early dynastic sacred edifices and
dwellings were certainly built of soft and perishable materials, including
matting of woven reeds attached to frameworks of wood, and they were probably
dismantled when their purpose had been fulfilled or when replacement was
considered necessary. Nevertheless, it should not be supposed that because
they were so constructed they were invariably simple in design and devoid of
artistic character. Contemporary representations of shrines and temples on
ivory and wooden tablets and cylinder seals show that these buildings embodied
many distinctive architectural features, some of which were reproduced in the
stone monuments of later times, notably in the Step Pyramid enclosure.
Cemeteries
of the Early Dynastic Period have been found at more than forty places in Egypt
between Gebel es-Silsila in the south and El-Qatta on the west side of the
Delta near its apex. The greater number of these cemeteries contain, however,
only the graves of simple people or minor officials, which have little
architectural interest except in so far as they demonstrate that the open
corbel vault built of brick was employed as early as the Second Dynasty. Far
more instructive are the monumental tombs, and especially the group of
mud-brick mastabas at Saqqara. When newly built these mastabas must have
presented a most colourful appearance in contrast with the monotony of their
desert surroundings. A well preserved example, dated to the reign of Qaa, showed
that the mud-brick walls of the superstructure were overlaid with a coat of
mud-plaster covered with white lime stucco. On this surface were painted, in
imitation of woven reed hangings, geometrical patterns of many kinds executed
in red, white, black, blue, green and yellow. Some evidence has been found to
suggest that trees were planted around the superstructures, but their botanical
species has not been identified.
At the
beginning of the First Dynasty the substructure of a mastaba usually consisted
of a shallow trench cut in the rock-bed of the desert. This trench was divided
by cross-walls into a series of compartments, the middle and largest
compartment becomingthe burial-chamber while the other compartments served as storechambers for provisions and other funerary
equipment. All were roofed with wooden beams supporting a ceiling of planks,
and the rock walls, coated with mud-plaster, were faced with woven reed mats.
Above this trench, and extending far beyond its limits on ground level, a
rectangular superstructure was built of mud-brick, its main axis running, like
that of the trench, approximately northsouth. The outer faces of the walls,
which on the longer sides inclined inwards from the base to the top, were
constructed in the form of alternating panelled recesses and projections, an
architectural design known as the palace façade; the inner faces were perpendicular
and plain. Within the hollow superstructure, at least in some early mastabas
and possibly in all at Saqqara, a low rectangular mound of sand and rubble
cased with brick was erected on ground-level directly over the burial-chamber
but covering a larger area. Intersecting walls were built at somewhat
irregular intervals from all four inner sides of the superstructure dividing
the whole of the lower part of the interior into a large number of rectangular
compartments. Inside these compartments, the floors of which were raised by
means of sand to the level of the top of the mound, were stored pots, stone
vessels and objects of a less personal kind than those placed in the
substructure. Sand and rubble were put in the space between their timber roofs
and the brick roof of the mastaba. Since no large mastaba with its upper
portion intact has survived, the shape of the roof is not known with certainty,
but there can be little doubt that it was curved. In every probability it was
bounded at each end by a flat parapet, a feature reproduced in the wooden
coffins of the Second Dynasty, but it is also possible that the four walls of
the superstructure formed a continuous parapet of such a height that the roof
was concealed from view. Surrounding the building was an enclosure wall, on
the north side of which lay, at least in some instances, a brick-lined
boat-pit. The subsidiary tombs, simple pits surmounted by plain mastabas with
rounded top and one niche at the southern end of the east wall, were also constructed
outside the enclosure wall in single rows set parallel to the sides of the main
mastaba.
Until the
latter part of the First Dynasty no significant change, apart from a
progressive increase in size, occurred in the outward form of the monumental
mastabas. Internally a gradual process of development continued throughout the
period. Substructures were cut to a greater depth in the rock and were in
consequence less easy of access both to the tomb-robber and to those charged
with performing the burial. The large mastaba dated to Den, and once thought to
be the tomb of Hemaka, furnishes the earliest example of a new method of
approach to the substructure by a wooden-roofed passage which sloped downwards
to the burialchamber from the floor of the open corridor outside the east wall
of the superstructure. Three massive slabs of limestone, set in grooves cut in
the rock-walls of the passage, were lowered by means of ropes, after the
fashion of portcullises, in order to block the way to the burial chamber when
the body, enclosed in a wooden coffin, had been laid to rest. No doubt the
mouth of the passage was filled with rubble and covered, like the rest of the
open corridor, with a brick paving. Besides the portcullises and the sloping
passage, part of the floor of which was cut in steps, this mastaba included as
a new feature three small storerooms entirely hollowed out of the rock and
connected with the burial chamber by doors. An elaboration found in a mastaba
dated to the reign of Anedjib was the development of the simple brick-cased
mound within the superstructure into a long mound with steps at the sides, a
feature which time may show to have been the architectural ancestor of the
Third Dynasty step pyramids. One of the two monumental mastabas in the Saqqara
group dated to the reign of Qaa provides evidence not only of the
discontinuance of the practice of incorporating store rooms in the
superstructure, but also of the approaching end of the palace facade, the west
side of this tomb being merely panelled with a series of evenly spaced
pilasters. The same mastaba has preserved the latest known example of the
brick bench on which were mounted model bulls’ heads. A most important
innovation was a mud-brick temple, built on the north side of the mastaba
within the inner enclosure wall, one of the rooms of which was paved with
slabs of limestone. Its smaller coeval, situated a short distance to the
north, possessed few of the characteristics of the First Dynasty: apart from a
single niche at the southern end of the east side, the exterior walls were
plain and the interior of the superstructure, although divided by crosswalls
into large compartments, was entirely filled with sand. An unexpected
discovery in the enclosure was a row of four subsidiary tombs, the
burial-chamber of one of which was roofed with a leaning barrel-vault of brick
which supported a sand-filled brick superstructure with curved roof.
The
subsequent architectural history of the early mastaba may be summarized as a
continuation of the process of deepening and enlarging the substructure and the
general adoption of the plain superstructure without interior storerooms.
Sporadic examples of the palace façade, usually only partial, are known from
the Second Dynasty and even later, but they are not typical. As a rule the
niches were reduced to two of unequal size, one at each end of the east face,
the larger being at the southern end. No longer was the substructure excavated
from above as a pit; it was entirely tunnelled in the rock from the lower end
of the entrance stairway. In the early part of the Second Dynasty the stairway
led to a large apartment which was divided by walls of brick into an entrance
hall and a number of chambers, the burial-chamber being hollowed out on the
west side of the entrance hall. Later in the dynasty all the chambers were
hewn separately on each side of a passage leading from the bottom of the
stairway. At the same time the mouth of the stairway, instead of lying
outside the mastaba, was located under the superstructure, the rubble filling
of which could therefore not have been put in place until after the funeral.
It is not
difficult to deduce that the motive underlying both the deepening and the elaboration of the substructure was the hope of gaining greater security for the body and the funerary equipment; less clear is
the reason for the change in the external design of the superstructure. It is
however possible that the niches in the palace façade, whatever its origin,
had come to be regarded in the main as false-doors to the compartments in the
superstructure which were used as storerooms. When the superstructure was no
longer used for the storage of objects, false-doors in such numbers lost their
purpose and, in consequence, were reduced to two, one, the main dummy entrance
to the tomb, being the place where
offerings were laid and the other perhaps
being considered as a subsidiary entrance.
Comparison between the monumental mastabas of Saqqara and the royal ‘tombs’ at Abydos is made difficult by the almost complete destruction of the superstructures in the Abydos group. Nevertheless it is clear that the substructures of the First Dynasty at Abydos, though smaller, resembled both in their method of construction and in their course of development the substructures at Saqqara. The initial operation in each cemetery was the excavation from above of a rectangular open pit. In the earliest ‘tombs’ at Abydos the entire area of the pit, apart from a lining of mud-brick around the walls, was occupied by a single chamber built of wood. The three succeeding ‘tombs’, belonging to Djer, Djet and Mer(it)neith, were larger, and the wooden chamber, which may have been partitioned by interior walls of wood, was supported at the sides by buttresses of mud-brick, the spaces between the buttresses in the ‘ tombs’ of Djer and Djet being used for the storage of funerary equipment. Den’s ‘tomb’ was chiefly notable for the granite floor of its burial-chamber, but it also marked, as did the contemporaneous mastabas at Saqqara, the introduction of an entrance stairway, a feature which thenceforth became regular. Until the time of Semerkhet, all the subsidiary burials were placed outside the main ‘tomb’. Semerkhet and Qaa however used for their subsidiary graves the space between the sides of the pit and the burial-chamber, which in the ‘tombs’ of Den and Anedjib had been filled with thick linings of mud-brick. Since the superstructures covered the entire pit and the stairways led only to the burial-chamber and some storerooms, the bodies must have been placed in the subsidiary graves before the superstructures were built. What form these superstructures, and those of the preceding ‘tombs’, were given is very uncertain. That their sides were plain, and not decorated with the palace façade, is clear from the traces of the retaining wall found above the ‘tomb’ of Djet, and Reisner’s suggestion that the earliest ‘tombs’ were covered with simple mud-brick mastabas has not been disputed. However his theory that the superstructures of the ‘tombs’ of Djer and Djet rose by two and three steps respectively to a flat summit, about eight and twelve metres in height, has not found favour with more recent writers, who prefer to regard their superstructures either as low flat-topped mounds of sand held together by rectangular retaining walls of brick or as higher structures of the same character but with curved or slightly domed roofs. Peribsen and Khasekhemwy alone among the ten kings of the Second Dynasty built ‘tombs’ at Abydos. Unlike the mastabas of their period at Saqqara, these ‘tombs’ were constructed of mud-brick in open pits, the ‘tomb’ of Peribsen consisting of a burial-chamber surrounded by about a dozen storerooms and an outer corridor running between the brick lining of the pit and the back-walls of the storerooms. Khasekhemwy’s ‘tomb’, which covered a much larger area, had more than fifty compartments, chiefly storerooms but the eight nearest to the burial-chamber appear to have been reserved for subsidiary burials. The most interesting feature of the ‘tomb’, however, was the burial-chamber itself (about 5-25 m. by 3-0 m.); the floor and walls of which were constructed of dressed limestone blocks laid in regular courses. Very different in character were two cavernous tombs at Saqqara tunnelled seven metres belowground-level and later partly covered by the Pyramid temple of King Unas. On the evidence of mudsealings found therein these tombs have been ascribed respectively to Nynetjer and to either Hetepsekhemwy or Reneb. Manetho
quotes a tradition, which appears to date back at least to Ramesside times,
that it was Imhotep, Djoser’s architect, who invented the technique of building
with hewn stone. Possibly there is some truth in the tradition, for, although
the Palermo Stone records that an unnamed king at the end of the Second Dynasty
erected a stone temple, the earliest known buildings composed entirely
of stone are those in the Step Pyramid enclosure at Saqqara. Stone had,
however, been employed for parts of buildings before the days of Djoser and
Imhotep, the granite pavement of Den and Khasekhemwy’s chamber of limestone
blocks, in their ‘tombs’ at Abydos, being perhaps the two most notable
examples. In the mastaba of Herneith at Saqqara and also in a mastaba
of the early First Dynasty at Tarkhan, slabs of limestone were laid above
the wooden ceilings of chambers, while the same material was used to pave part
of the temple attached to the largest of the three mastabas at Saqqara which date
from the time of Qaa. Large limestone slabs were also employed for lining
the inner walls of the First Dynasty brick mastabas at Helwan, perhaps in order
to provide support for stone roofs which have disappeared. Linings of a
similar kind were undoubtedly used for this purpose in a brick tomb of the
Early Dynastic Period at Hierakonpolis, part of the stone roof of which was
preserved. It is clear, from the occurrences at Tarkhan and Helwan that
construction in stone was not confined to the tombs of royal persons; perhaps
the proximity of the Tura limestone quarries was a contributory factor in the
choice of material at Helwan where the pits were cut in gravel, but a similar
reason cannot be given for Den’s pavement, which must have been brought from
the neighbourhood of Aswan. The skill necessary both for the cutting and for
the transport of stone having once been acquired, it might have been expected
that an immediate and progressive increase in its employment would have
followed; that such a development did not occur may be attributed to a belief
that mud-brick, which could easily be produced and handled in quantity, was
sufficiently durable and also to the fact that the most essential parts of the
tomb, which housed the body and funerary equipment, were in many instances
already hewn out of solid rock and needed no further protection.
In sculpture
and the small arts, to no less a degree than in architecture, the protodynastic
and early dynastic periods were an age of progress and development; artists
and craftsmen were experimenting with new technical methods and applying the
materials at their disposal to fresh uses, sometimes with remarkable success
and sometimes with results which betrayed their inexperience. Complete mastery
was, for instance, attained in the production of stone vessels; profiting no
doubt from the knowledge inherited from their ancestors, the vase-makers of
the First Dynasty manufactured enormous quantities of vessels in alabaster,
slate, diorite, breccia, basalt, rock crystal, granite and a variety of other
stones, which were never surpassed in quality of form and workmanship. Many
notable feats were also achieved by sculptors, especially when carving in
relief, although their art was still in its infancy. No class of objects
demonstrates the different stages of progress more impressively than the
decorated slate palettes of the protodynastic period to the beginning of the
First Dynasty. In the examples which are considered to be the earliest,
the human and animal figures are usually represented as separate units, without
any overlapping, and are evenly distributed in close array over the whole
surface of the palette; this method of arrangement is not displeasing to the eye,
but the purport of the scene is obscured by the mass of representations, the
absence of logical grouping and the uniform size of the figures. Intermediate
examples display both overlapping figures and well-spaced groups. The final
stage is illustrated by the palette of Narmer—a masterpiece judged by any
standards—in which the scenes are divided into registers, emphasis is given to
the importance of the king by magnifying his stature and some hieroglyphic
captions are added. A very similar technique is to be observed on the limestone
maceheads of Scorpion and Narmer, which, by reason of their rounded
surface, must have presented more formidable problems in carving and
arrangement than the flat or almost flat slate palettes. Of subsequent works,
the limestone stelae of Djet and Mer(it)neith, a limestone
lintel with figures of recumbent lions in the mastaba of Herneith, the
fragmentary slate stela of Khasekhemé and the granite door-jamb of Khasekhemwy
show that the art of carving in relief was well maintained throughout the Early
Dynastic Period.
Few large
sculptures in the round have been discovered in a state of preservation which
allows their artistic qualities to be fairly assessed, but it is difficult to
believe that the earliest human figures, as exemplified by the specimens found
at Hierakonpolis, were not invariably heavy in appearance; nevertheless an
alabaster baboon inscribed with the name of Narmer and a granite lion, both in
the Berlin Museum, prove that realistic likenesses of animals were
sometimes achieved. Before the end of the Second Dynasty a distinct improvement
in rendering the features of the human face is perceptible; the granite
kneeling figure of an official, now in the Cairo Museum, which bears the
names of the first three kings of the dynasty and the slate and limestone
statuettes of Khasekhem show a striking liveliness and subtlety of facial
expression. Among the small figures in stone, two in the Ashmolean Museum are
perhaps the most notable, a basalt standing man and a lapis lazuli
standing woman, the first as a vivid piece of sculpture and the second
mainly on account of its material, the precise origin of which has not yet been
ascertained, although both Abyssinia and Afghanistan have been suggested.
Small objects composed of ivory must be reckoned among the principal works of art of this period. The knife-handles from Gebel el-Araq and elsewhere have already been mentioned; of the many other articles, including cylinders, wands and maceheads decorated with scenes in relief, perhaps the most impressive is a figure of a bound Asiatic captive carved on a gaming-piece which was found in the tomb of Qaa at Abydos. The incised ivory and wooden dockets are more sketchy in execution, seemingly because they were intended not for display, but merely for recording the year when the article to which they were attached was made. By reason of its softness, ivory lent itself more readily than stone to delicate modelling and to the delineation of detail; these features are especially conspicuous in the small figures carved in the round, an outstanding example being the statuette of a king clad in a woven robe which was found in the temple-deposit at Abydos and is now in the British Museum. Scarcely inferior in artistic quality, but less well preserved, are a number of figurines from Hierakonpolis, while many gaming-pieces in the form of dogs and lions portray these animals in a very lifelike manner. Despite the
fact that their productions were generally among the main objectives of the
tomb-robber, some notable examples of clever workmanship by jewellers,
metalsmiths and craftsmen of different kinds have survived. The four ornate
bracelets, which were still attached to the arm of their female owner when they
were discovered in the ‘tomb’ of Djer at Abydos, consist of beads and
plaques of gold, turquoise and lapis lazuli fashioned with great skill and
arranged with excellent taste. No less pleasing are some necklaces of gold
beads engraved with geometric patterns or shaped like snail-shells, two gold
amuletic figures of a bull and an oryx, and a gold capsule in the form of a
cockroach inlaid with the emblem of Neith in blue paste, all of which were
buried in a middle-class grave at Naga ed-Deir. Such a degree of
proficiency in the fabrication of gold as is denoted by these isolated objects
could have been achieved only by long practice, which presupposes that a
considerable supply of this metal, obtained partly from the eastern desert, was
available. The coppersmiths of the period were also most accomplished
craftsmen: one First Dynasty mastaba at Saqqara alone yielded a vast quantity
of well-made copper tools and instruments, while smaller deposits of the
same kind have been found elsewhere. In the light of these discoveries the
statement on the Palermo Stone that a copper statue of Khasekhemwy was made at
the end of the Second Dynasty does not seem incredible, although the figures
of Phiops I and his son, dating from the Sixth Dynasty, are the earliest
examples in copper which have hitherto been recovered. Of other types of
craftsmen whose works have been preserved, the makers of inlay deserve
mention, in particular, the makers of five ornamental stone disks found in the
tomb formerly attributed to Hemaka, Den’s chancellor. The finest of these
disks, which were perhaps spinning tops, is composed of black steatite inlaid
with slightly raised figures in coloured stones of hounds and gazelles, one
hound pursuing a fleeing gazelle and the other seizing a prostrate gazelle by
the throat; both technically and artistically it is a work of consummate
skill.
Considered as a whole, undoubtedly the most outstanding feature of early dynastic art is its contribution to the succeeding ages: forms and motifs invented during the period remained in use for generations and even, in some cases, until Roman times. The mastaba, which persisted until the end of the Middle Kingdom, is only one instance of such a survival in the field of architecture; the fluted columns of Djoser and the lotus-cluster columns of the Fifth Dynasty may have been translated into stone for architectural purposes in the Old Kingdom, but they were certainly not artistic creations of that time, for the same shapes occur in miniature on early dynastic ivories. Again, the blue glazed faience tiles lining the subterranean chambers of Djoser’s pyramid and mastaba at Saqqara can be paralleled by earlier specimens found at Hierakonpolis and Abydos. Many conventions adopted by Egyptian sculptors of all periods, such as the representation of the king as a towering figure, the placing of the left foot in advance of the right in striding statues, statuettes and reliefs and the classic scene of the king smiting his kneeling enemies with a mace can all be traced to the First Dynasty. It was indeed the age in which the traditional attitudes and attributes received their stereotyped forms.
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