Out of the Black Land (52 page)

Egyptians used few slaves; those they had were all captives of war; and the child of a slave was not necessarily a slave. Therefore, during the reigns of the belligerent kings, say Rameses II, Egypt had a lot of slaves; and in the reigns of the politically ingenious pharaohs, such as Amenhotep III, there were correspondingly fewer slaves.

Indentured labour—farmers who had not paid their tax and labour levied in something similar to the feudal corvee in Europe—had to be fed and cared for; and their services could not be either demanded during the farming season or kept beyond the dry season.

All those monuments which astound the beholder were built either by indentured or by hired labour, and not by slaves. The Romans also used soldiers, not slaves, to build all those roads which led to Rome and all those remarkable water systems. As the 20th Century has shown, slaves do not make good labour.

On Meteorites, Heliopolis & the Bnbn Bird

Have I mentioned that much study on Egyptology drives people insane? Nowhere is this more clear than in the subject of pyramids. One look at the astounding symmetry and telemetry of the pyramids has fine scientific minds talking about a pre-existing and possibly alien race which must have existed before 10,500
BC;
because how otherwise could such simple people align these monuments perfectly on 30 degrees of latitude.

You see what I mean? I don’t know how they did it either; except that assuming ancient people were stupider than we are (because we are so terribly modern and have computers and technology) is foolish.

For this reason—but more so because they were built long before the time I am considering—I shall say no more at all about pyramids.

But the bnbn bird, on the other hand, is fascinating.

Every visitor to Egypt in the ancient times was told about the long-awaited bnbn—or benben—bird. The Greeks called this self-created, self-generating creature the Phoenix. It was later adopted into Christian iconography as a symbol of Christ and his resurrection.

The temple of the Phoenix at Karnak is an open space surrounded by massive walls. In it is the Bennu pillar—a pillar with a rounded top, later a stele with a rounded top,—on which the bnbn bird will perch when it returns to Karnak. Escorted by all the birds of the air, it will deliver its ‘parent’—a ball of myrrh and semen which produces the new Phoenix. (Squeamish later writers made the bird female and the ‘parent’ an egg, which is much more sanitary).

Then the bird will betake itself to its favourite date palm, make a nest of cinnamon, cassia and frankincense and sing its last song; after which it will summon fire, by cupping its wings, and burn away to ash. The new Phoenix, or the same one, will then fly from Karnak returning only to die, in the same way, after an interval variously described as anything between 500 to 12,000 years.

Tacitus, in his
Annals,
and agreeing with Herodotus, suggests that it came back to Karnak in AD 34 after 500 years; while Pliny, in
Natural History
says 1200 years. The best poem about it is by Lactantius, who describes, in gentle elegaics, its escort by the birds, its red and gold colouring and its final and glorious death:
ipse quidem, sed non eadem quia et ipsa nec ipsa est, aeternam vitam mortis adepta bono
—‘Because she is herself and not herself, gaining eternal life by the boon of death’.

I am, by the way, entirely convinced by Bauvel and Gilbert’s thesis of
The Orion Mystery
that the pyramids were aligned to the rising of Isis/Sothis/Sirius; and that the Egyptians were aware of the precession of the equinoxes.

This also solved a problem for me. In the remarkable book,
Akhenaten: The Heretic King
, Redford has shown that Nefertiti was repeatedly depicted as priestess to the Bennu/Benben/Phoenix bird in the form of a black stone—like the pyramid-capping stone in the Cairo museum. This is explained by the hypothesis that this was—like the
ka’aba
in Mecca—a meteorite, which flew like a firebird and left just a black iron egg behind; from which it would doubtless again arise.

The connection of the Queen to the cult is not obvious, but may be as I have hypothesised—that she signified the divine or cosmic womb, the womb of Isis seeded by Osiris/Orion, who gave birth to the Aten, the mystic unknowable God whose avatar was the disc of the Sun.

I am fairly sure that the Phoenix can be identified with Isis/Sothis/Sirius; and that possibly the interval of 1260 years—a Sothic cycle or Sirius year—regulates the return of the Phoenix.

However, the fact that the iconoclast monotheist Akhnaten has a whole wall and chamber at his new Aten In Splendour temple at Karnak devoted to Nefertiti as the head priestess of the bnbn cult is strange and to my mind must signify more than a desire to confer honour upon his wife. I have suggested some reasons why the King did this.

The Fate of…

Ankhesenamen

No one knows what happened to the sister/wife of Tutankhamen. If she was alive or present at the accession of Horemheb, he would certainly have married her. She did attempt to bring a prince of Assyria to marry her, and he met with a fatal termination of his matrimonial hopes somewhere on the border. Several writers have sentimentalised about her sad fate, notably Desroches-Noblecourt, who thinks that Ay is a good guy and Horemheb a cruel and brutal dictator. It occurred to me, however, that she might have decided to take some hand in her own fate before she expired of acute nomenclature.

Tutankhamen

The young Pharaoh’s mummified body has extensive damage, but it is now hard to tell if it is post or antemortem. If it was postmortem, then someone dropped the Divine Corpse down a lot of stairs.

Ay, who took over the rule of the Black Land, is the obvious suspect.

Mutnodjme

The accidental Queen of Egypt died in childbirth some years after the accession of Horemheb. He never remarried and had no children. After his death, the kingdom went to an old army commander, and thence to a new dynasty.

Horemheb

The warrior Pharaoh died peacefully after reigning for twenty-seven years. He had the temple of the Aten pulled down, and even the tombs of Huy and Ay looted of their treasures (though their bodies were not touched). Despite his bad press, I do see his point.

Horemheb was certainly not a tyrant and his reign smoothed away most of the problems created by the Amarna experiment. However, the kinglist puts him directly after Amenhotep III, giving him a reign of fifty years, and making the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb a real surprise because no one could identify him. Horemheb decided—or the later writers decided it for him—that the Amarna dynasty had been a mistake and that the Pharaoh who
should
have followed Amenhotep the Wise, was Horemheb; and therefore deleted all references to all of them.

I don’t think, as some writers have suggested, that Horemheb was a miser who robbed all the Amarna tombs for gold and who only missed Tutankhamen’s tomb because he couldn’t find it. He was at the funeral; he knew where it was. He merely pillaged the tombs of the pillagers; and since he spent most of his reign attempting to mend the damage they did to Egypt, one can see his point.

Ptah-hotep

The scribe was actually called Amenhopis but, for story I had to tell, I decided this would cause too many identification problems as I already had two Amenhoteps.

Ptah-hotep died at an advanced age and in honour. His tomb paintings—which rather stress Thoth god of scribes and the making and drinking of wine—also include a hut by the river with a dog on guard, and two men making love in the reeds.

***

The amount of research which this book entailed was much heavier than I expected, due to the aforementioned state of Egyptology.

I was surprised by the change in my attitude to the Egyptians. I began by thinking that they worshipped death, and ended by realising that they worshipped life.

Kerry Greenwood

Bibliography

Original Sources

Egyptian Rituals and Incantations
translated by John A Wilson in ed James B Pritchard Ancient and Near Eastern Texts Relating to the New Testament 3rd Edition Princeton UP 1969

From
The Literature of Ancient Egypt
ed W.K. Simpson (New Haven) Yale University Press 1997

The Maxims of Ptah-hotep

The Prophecies of Neferti

The Instruction of Dua-Khety (The Satire on the Trades)

The Man Who Was Tired of Life

The Instruction of a Man for his Son

The Instruction of Amunnakhte

Medinet Habu Temple Calendar

Documents relating to the Amarna Dynasty and the accession of Horemheb

From Breasted James H
Ancient Records of Egypt Histories
and Mysteries of Man
Ltd London 1988

From the
Papyrus of the Scribe Ani
in The Book of the Dead translated by E.A. Wallis-Budge, Bell Publishing Company New York 1962

The Pyramid Text

The Book of Coming Forth By Day

The Book of Gates

The Amarna Letters
translated by William L. Morgan from The Amarna Letters John Hopkins University Press Maryland 1992

Secondary Sources

Aldred, Cyril
Akhenaten Pharaoh of Egypt
Abacus Thames and Hudson London 1968

Andrews, Carol
Egyptian Mummies
British Museum London 1984

Bierbrier, Morris T
omb Builders of the Pharaoh
British Museum London 1982

R. Bauvel and A. Gilbert
The Orion Mystery
Mandarin London 1995

Cott, Jonathan
The Search For Omm Sety
Arrow London 1989

Cottrell, L.
The Secret of Tutankhamen’s Tomb
Mayflower New York 1964

Cottrell, L.
The Warrior Pharaohs
Evans Bros. London 1968

David, Rosalie A.
The Ancient Egyptians, Religious Belief and Practices
Routledge and Kegan Paul London 1982

Desroches-Noblecourt, C.
Tutankhamen
Penguin London 1965

Desroches-Noblecourt, C.
Life and Death of a Pharaoh
Rainbird London 1963

Desroches-Noblecourt, C
Temples de Nubie Des Tresors
Menacés UNESCO Paris 1961

Duff, J. Wright and Arnold
Minor Latin Poets
(Lactantius) Heinemann London 1961

Edwards, I.E.S.
The Pyramids of Egypt
Pelican London 1947

Freed, Rita A.
Egypt’s Golden Age
Museum of Fine Arts Boston 1982

Grant, Joan
Eyes of Horus
Corgi London 1942

Gurney, O.R.
The Hittites
Pelican London 1966

James, T.G.H.
Egyptian Painting
British Museum London 1985

James, T.G.H. and Davies W.V.
Egyptian Sculpture
British Museum London 1983

Jenkins, Nancy
The Boat Beneath The Pyramid
Thames
&
Hudson London 1980

Kamil, Jill
The Ancient Egyptians
Wren Publishing London 1976

Lamy, Lucie
New Light on Ancient Knowledge: Egyptian Mysteries
Thames and Hudson London 1981

Laver, James
Costume in Antiquity
Thames
&
Hudson London 1964

Leavesley, J.H.
Medical By-ways
A.B.B. Books Sydney 1984

Malek, J. and Forman W.
Echoes of the Ancient World
Orbis Books London 1986

Mertz, Barbara
Red Land, Black Land
Hodder
&
Stoughton London 1966

Neubert, Otto
Tutankhamun and the Valley of the Kings
Mayflower London 1972

Norton, Andre
Shadowhawk
Harcourt Brace New York 1960

Oates, Joan
Babylon
Thames
&
Hudson London 1979

Osman, Ahmed
Stranger in the Valley of the Kings
Grafton London 1993

Redford, Donald B.
Akhenaten: The Heretic King
Princeton University Press published in Egypt by The American University Cairo Press Cairo 1992

Simpkins (series title, no authors given)
The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut
and
The Temple of Karnak
(guides bought in Egypt at site)

Strouhal, Eugen
Life in Ancient Egypt
Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1992

Tyldesley, Joyce
Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt
Viking London 1994

Velikovsky, I.
Oedipus and Akhnaton
Sidgwick and Jackson London 1978

Wallis-Budge, E.A.
Egyptian Religion
Routledge and Kegan Paul London (reprint) 1975

Wallis-Budge, E.A.
The Gods of the Egyptians: Studies in Egyptian Mythology
Dover New York 1969

Journal Articles

Aldred, Cyril ‘The Tomb of Akhenaten at Thebes’ in
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
1957 p41

Botermans, Jack and ors Le Monde des Jeaux Société nouvelle des editions du chine, Amsterdam 1987

Gardiner, Sir Alan ‘The Coronation of King Haremhab’
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
1953 13-31

Sandison, Dr A.T. ‘Analysis of Frolichs Syndrome and Akhenaten’ in Aldred, JEA op cit

Tait, John ‘Senet’
New Scientist
22/29 December 1990

Thibault, Daniel U. ‘Senet: The Game of Passing Through the Underworld’ in
Tournaments Illuminated
Autumn
1996
Issue
120 p16

Music

Music in the World of Islam
2. Lutes 4. Flutes and Trumpets and 5. Reeds and Bagpipes.

Tapes and recordings done by Jean Jenkins and Paul Olsen Tangent Records London 1972.