Think Like an Egyptian (21 page)

The divide between the reign of the lesser beings and the named kings corresponds with the transition from prehistory to history, through the invention of writing, and with the appearance of a united monarchy. Prior to Menes there would have been no written records of kings and their deeds for the ancient Egyptians to consult.

The primeval age was a golden age, providing a standard of absolute perfection for the living to match up to. When an expedition in the reign of Queen Hatshepsut reached the land of Punt it was said to be a marvel without equal since the time of “all these kings who have existed since the primeval age of the earth.” The qualities of the primeval age were so taken for granted that the Egyptians did not elaborate on them. Its duration was finite, however. The gods—the primeval ones—had precise lengths of reign: 7,726 years in the case of Thoth. The Egyptians wrote myths about the gods, such as the quarrel between Horus and Seth, or the attempt by Ra to destroy mankind by unleashing the goddess Hathor against them (see no. 18, “Beer jug”). These myths were not set in the primeval age specifically but in a timeless world, and one in which violence occurs.

The Egyptians accepted that the universe had not existed for a past eternity. It had come into existence at a particular moment. They attempted as seriously as they could to visualize the transition from the preexistence of things to their existence, relying often upon metaphor. One set of images, perhaps the most complicated that the Egyptians developed, involved the creation of life from the primeval waters (see no. 8, “Water”). A far simpler image for spontaneous creation used the metaphor of spittle or semen ejected by a creator-god (usually Atum) from which developed not the matter of the universe directly but a hierarchy of gods responsible for various elements of the world (for example, the earth, the sky, and the luminosity of the daytime air). A key figure was the god Khepri, depicted as the scarab beetle, whose name meant “Becomer” and in whose habits the Egyptians found another metaphor for the inexplicable spontaneous appearance of life (see no. 77, “To come into existence”). Egyptians saw no need to develop a consistent, standard treatise that pulled together the various different strands of their mythology. They believed that complicated subjects were better covered by parallel explanations of equal validity.

 

 

 

 

It is not clear if the hieroglyph for spirit—a crested ibis (
Ibis comata
)—was conceptually associated with a bird, or whether it was chosen on account of its phonetic similarity with the bird’s name.

In Egyptian life, “spirits” (the singular is
, or
akh
) were a distinct category of beings, in one text listed along with people, gods, and the dead. In most of the sources “spirits” are the dead who have been transformed into something radiant, through contact with the sun-god, so that they become minor incarnations of the sun-god themselves. In the New Kingdom, and especially at the necropolis workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina, people made small memorial tablets dedicated in each case to a “perfect spirit (or incarnation) of Ra.” Each tablet had a personal name which is clearly that of a family ancestor; they are our clearest guide to what the word “spirit” meant. “Spirits” could be encountered in the Field of Iaru (see no. 15, “Plough”), where they were each eight cubits (four meters) tall and reaped giant cereals. King Akhenaten, whose name must mean something like “incarnation of the Aten,” was unique in claiming to be a “spirit” while still alive: from the Egyptian’s point of view this would have been a bold and even arrogant claim.

In keeping with their view of a primeval age, the Egyptians could not imagine a prehistoric society that was simpler and on a smaller scale than their own, and so they invented a mythical period in which a group of spirits had reigned over Egypt in the distant past, following the era of gods and before the kings (and immediately before an enigmatic group called “followers of Horus”; see no. 60, “To follow”). No myths giving names or details about these remote spirits have survived, however.

The adjectival form “spiritual” meant something like “glorious,” “beneficial,” even “useful.” To say a person was “beneficial of heart” was to say that he was compliant and willing to serve. When the word was applied to buildings it probably kept something of its core meaning of divine manifestation. King Tuthmosis III added a large and elaborate stone building at the back of the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. One of its functions was to celebrate the king’s ancestors, each of whom was represented by a statue. He called the building Akh-menu, which means roughly “the Most Glorious of Monuments.”

In the uncertain world of the Egyptians, even “spirits” could change into something threatening. The malevolent forces that entered a house at night seeking to harm the living, in part through bringing sickness, included “spirits” as well as other ghostly forms. This is another pointer to the fact that outside the world of temples and their confidant portrayals of a universe under control, spiritual forces were fickle; what was supposedly good could suddenly harm, and people had to take the initiative through magic in order to guard themselves (see no. 99, “Protection”).

 

 

 

 

Egypt’s line of kings spanned 3,000 years, beginning around 3000 BC and ending with Roman emperors, who were depicted on temple walls in all the trappings of their Egyptian precursors even though they belonged to a different culture and rarely, if ever, visited Egypt.

For most of its history ancient Egypt was ruled by hereditary kings who for long periods of time maintained the succession within a single family, or “dynasty.” The 1st Dynasty won its place through warfare against rival families at a time when Egypt was still in the process of becoming a single united kingdom (see no. 57, “To unite”). By the time Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC, 31 dynasties had ruled. For a long time they were Egyptian. Often we do not know the details of how one dynasty replaced another. The 11th Dynasty, based in the city of Thebes, came to power when the king emerged as the winner in a civil war. The 18th Dynasty, which also came from Thebes, began with the expulsion of the Palestinian Hyksos kings and lasted for nearly 250 years. King Akhenaten was its last major representative. The failure of his unifying religious vision and the early death of his successors (including Tutankhamun) allowed military families from the north of Egypt to take over. For long periods after the end of the 20th Dynasty (around 1000 BC), Egypt was ruled by foreign kings. The Libyan kings of the 22nd Dynasty made Egypt their home, as did, to some extent, the Sudanese (Nubian or Kushite) kings of the 25th Dynasty. To the Persian kings of the 27th Dynasty, however, Egypt was a distant province that they ruled from their homeland of Elam, now an area of Iran close to the border with Iraq.

The power of Egyptian kings rested partly in their claim of divinity and partly in their control of resources. Each king was “the good god,” and his father was the sun-god Ra or, by the New Kingdom, the Theban god Amun-Ra. The king’s statues would be found in temples throughout the country, either alongside those of the local god or on their own (see no. 96, “Statue”). The huge temple at Soleb in Nubia built by Amenhetep III was dedicated solely to a statue of himself. Through a centralized system of administration, kings had access to materials and to labor and were able to build large monuments that glorified themselves and, at the same time, the gods. Some of the largest of the monuments were the kings” own tombs, as in the case of the pyramids of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Although they did not have a monopoly of armed force (see no. 13, “Province”), kings could raise larger armies than others. By the New Kingdom the king’s army had become a permanent force.

It was the duty of kings to maintain order through just administration and pious deeds for the gods, and to keep Egypt safe from foreign invasion. Kings were expected to be wise as well as to be soldiers who led their armies into battle. They relied upon a circle of advisers and administrators, the principal of whom was the “vizier” who effectively ran the internal affairs of the country. We have detailed accounts of the elaborate ceremony of the vizier’s installation, his duties and the protocol by which his own dignity was maintained. Foremost among his duties was hearing petitions from aggrieved subjects, and adjudicating between conflicting petitions. His audience hall served as the principal law court of Egypt, and it was, in theory, open to anyone seeking to present a case. The responsibilities were such that, at the installation of the vizier Rekhmira, the king remarked that being vizier “is not sweet; it is as bitter as gall. He is the bronze that shields the gold of his master’s house.” In the Old Kingdom many viziers, who were also in charge of pyramid building, were sons of kings, but afterward viziers seem to have been appointed from outside the royal family. This was presumably to limit the threat that such a powerful office posed to the king himself. After the mid-Old Kingdom, princes were generally restricted from adopting a prominent role in society.

This is in contrast to the queens and other women of the king’s family—his mother, sisters, and daughters. These formed a conspicuous and powerful group given their own palaces, income derived from grants of land, and their own hierarchies of officials. They maintained a staff of female servants and companions. Some of these were daughters of families of the elite and took the title “royal ornament,” a mark of status that they kept after they married. Some of them were foreigners, brought to Egypt when the king married the daughter of a foreign king. No fewer than 317 of them accompanied Gilukhepa, daughter of the king of Mitanni, when she journeyed to Egypt to marry Amenhetep III. In the reign of Rameses III a group of court women and their male supporters plotted to assassinate the king with the aim of placing a young prince on the throne. The assassination succeeded but not the rest of the plot. Instead, the men faced a trial followed either by execution or the honor of suicide. One queen, Hatshepsut, managed to rule Egypt for around 15 years while the prince who had already been chosen as the next king, Tuthmosis III, retired into the background. For a short time after the death of Akhenaten, it looks as though his queen, Nefertiti, ruled in her own right.

The majority of kings are no more than names to us. For only a very few can we catch glimpses of individuality, mostly from their reputations. Rameses II was the most successful all-rounder: prolific builder of monumental temples, battle leader, and maker of peace with Egypt’s great enemy, the kingdom of the Hittites. He fathered at least 100 children whose names and images he included on the walls of his temples. Some 60 years later, Rameses IV prayed: “You shall double for me the long duration, the great kingship of King Rameses II, the great god” (the prayer failed: he died in his seventh regnal year).

Amenhetep II, another great king, commemorated his physical skills. As an 18-year-old, “he had no equal on the field of battle. He was one who knew horses; there was not his like in this numerous army. Not one among them could draw his bow; he could not be approached in running.” Firing from his chariot, his arrows passed through each of four bronze targets 7.5 centimeters thick.