Think Like an Egyptian (23 page)

Palaces were the center of government. The king ruled with the help of his senior officials, including his vizier. After discussing matters he would make pronouncements and issue decrees, copies of which, if they were on subjects of wide application, would be sent by messengers throughout the country. Some of these pronouncements were “laws,” but they were not necessarily remembered by the name of the king who made them. When a case came to be judged, it was enough to declare: “The Law of Pharaoh states ...” Part of the business of state was maintaining correspondence with foreign rulers, some of them heads of powerful independent kingdoms and others clients of the Pharaoh in the Egyptian empire. Those in the Near East corresponded in a Semitic language written in cuneiform script impressed into mud tablets. Among the Pharaoh’s staff were translators who had to tell him what the letters said, and then compose his replies. A hoard of more than 300 of these letters (the Amarna Letters) was discovered buried beneath the floor of an office at Akhenaten’s city of Tell el-Amarna.

In addition to officials with specific jobs were courtiers whose high rank kept them close to the king and who acted as his companions and advisers. They bore titles like “fan-bearer on the right hand of the king” and “cup-bearer.” A man’s chances of royal favor must have been helped if he was a good hunter, since many scenes record the king hunting game in the desert accompanied by his court. (Before the New Kingdom the huntsmen, including the king, were on foot; subsequently, they hunted in chariots.) Such men did not necessarily live in the palace grounds, however. At Akhenaten’s city of Tell el-Amarna, where the evidence is better preserved than elsewhere, many courtiers and high officials, including the vizier, lived in houses among the suburbs up to two kilometers from the nearest palace, making journeys into the center of the city to meet the king.

 

 

 

 

The hieroglyph shows lungs and a windpipe (not to be confused with the nfr sign, see no. 24, “Good”), the word for which had the same series of sounds—s + m +
3 = sm3
(
sema
)—as the verb “to unite.”

The greatest periods of stability and prosperity in Egyptian history arose when the country was ruled by one king at the head of a single administration. These periods we know as the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. During the other “intermediate” periods, Egypt was divided into several independent or semi-independent territories ruled by men who might claim the title of king or accept a lesser title. During the last centuries of ancient Egyptian history, the Late Period, when Egypt was for long periods ruled by foreign kings, the contrast between unity and disunity was less obvious.

The king had a duty to “unite” the country against fragmentation and the local fighting that would inevitably follow. His coronation involved a ceremony of symbolic reunification. Modern reconstructions of the formation of the first ancient Egyptian state see the process of unification as a complex interplay among several ambitious families of local rulers. In their mythology, however, the Egyptians imagined that their country had originally been home to only two separate kingdoms, the north and the south, each under the patronage of a separate god (Horus and Seth). Each had its own symbols, including distinctive crowns, creatures (the vulture for the south, the cobra for the north), and plants (papyrus for the north and either a type of reed or the lotus for the south). Combining or juxtaposing them expressed political unity. On the forehead of King Tutankhamun’s gold mask, for example, the heads of vulture and cobra sit side by side; in carved and painted scenes the plants grow intertwined, their stems tied together in a knot around the vertical shaft of the “unity” sign.

On their accession, kings were given special names (see no. 55, “Cartouche”), and some of these reflected the king’s role as the bringer of unity. Teti was known as “who placates the two lands,” Pepi I as “who loves the two lands,” Sankhkara Menthuhetep as “who brings to life the two lands,” Amenemhat I as “who pleases the two lands,” and Nebhepetra Menthuhetep and the Persian King Cambyses as “who unites the two lands.” The full name of the new administrative capital built near Memphis by King Amenemhat I after a period of instability was “Amenemhat seizes the two lands” (Amenemhat-ith-tawy often abbreviated by the Egyptians to Ith-tawy).

 

 

 

 

The Egyptians believed that invisibly present behind the experience of living there lay a guiding force that tipped the balance toward order, harmony, truth, and justice. This they called “Maat,”
m૩
t
, and in it they summed up civilized values as they saw them. To write the word a single ostrich feather is used as the hieroglyph. It vividly expresses weightlessness, but we do not know if this is the full explanation.

The goddess Maat,
, was the daughter of the sun-god Ra, who had come from the primeval mound, the place of creation, only “after he had set Maat in the place of chaos.” Kings inherited the responsibility for ensuring that she remained there. In the prophecy of the priest Neferti, a period of chaos and confusion is ended by the coming of a good king when “Maat will come into her place while disorder is driven out.” In temple ritual the king made a symbolic presentation of an image of Maat to the gods. Some kings incorporated Maat into their names. Thus Sneferu was “lord of Maat,” and Amenhetep III was “the lord of Maat is Ra.” In a story from a private library at Deir el-Medina, the opposition between Maat and disorder becomes a more obviously moral tale for ordinary people. Based on the myth of the conflict between Horus and Seth, the tale concerns two brothers called Truth and Falsehood. Truth’s fate is to be blinded and work as Falsehood’s doorkeeper, although after a series of fantastic episodes the roles are reversed and it is Falsehood who becomes Truth’s blind doorkeeper, aided by his loyal but vengeful son.

Kings and the sun-god were said to “live on Maat” as if it were their food; one text made the contrast with the Nile god Haapy who lived on fish. The king who promoted this idea most strongly was Akhenaten who constantly referred to himself as “living on truth (Maat).” His main interest was in revealing what lay at the heart of theology when this was stripped of its endless irrelevant additions (as he saw it) of gods and myths. To him, therefore, Maat perhaps meant “religious truth.”

Maat, like our term “justice,” was dispensed by the ministers of the king. At the installation of the vizier Rekhmira, his king (Tuthmosis III) addresses him: “My Majesty knows that decisions are many and there is no end to them, and the judgment of cases never flags. May you act according as I say. Then will Maat rest in her place.” Afterward Rekhmira acknowledges his responsibility by calling himself “priest of Maat,” a figurative term rather than meaning that he had priestly duties in a temple of Maat.

Egyptians believed in an ultimate judgment after death, based on the conduct of their lives. When a person was led into the hall of Osiris on their death, their “truth” would be measured on a scale (see no. 90, “Balance”). Their heart would be balanced against a feather, the symbol of Maat, which also expressed lightness. The god Thoth stood ready to record the result, and the god Anubis checked to see that the balance was properly set up. If the balance did not tilt, a person was considered “true of voice” and allowed to enter the kingdom of Osiris. A creature that combined the head of a crocodile, foreparts of a lion, and hindquarters of a hippopotamus and whose name meant “Eater of the Dead” stood waiting, in case the balance did tilt. The phrase “true of voice” was found as an epitaph on memorial stones and tombs, immediately following the name of the deceased, in expectation that the owner had satisfactorily passed the test.

 

 

 

 

The details of the hieroglyph do not allow us to judge exactly what it represents. It is a pillar with a layered top, and one interpretation is that it shows a single tree trunk with the remains of lopped-off branches. It writes the word “stability,”
d
dt
(
djedet
)
,
and is itself the Djed-pillar, the design for a common amulet.

“Stability” was a key ingredient in an ordered world, and a potent power in itself. It was, together with “life” and “dominion,” a quality that the gods gave to the reigning king. The pillar of the hieroglyph gained its power when ritually set upright. Temple scenes show a ceremony in which a large pillar of this shape was raised vertically from a leaning position by the king, in the presence of the gods. Such an act, of moving from potential to completion, also signified rebirth. The ritual was performed for deceased kings, and the distinctive shape of the pillar was turned into an amulet to accompany the dead generally, so that all could benefit. A link was made with Osiris by attaching to the pillar some of his characteristics: it was given a pair of arms holding the crook and flail, and the distinctive crown of Osiris made from two ostrich feathers side by side above a pair of long curly ram’s horns. Egyptians took delight in enriching symbols by adding further elements.