98
PTOLEMY I
Macedonian general who founded a dynasty
99
MANETHO
The father of Egyptian history
100
CLEOPATRA VII
Tragic queen who became a legend
Chronology and King List
Map
Sources of Quotations
Further Reading
Index
Copyright
Introduction
What was it really like to live in ancient Egypt? Our impression of pharaonic civilization is dominated by its visible remains, by pyramids, temples and tombs: but what of the people who commissioned and built them, who staffed the offices of central and provincial government, who served in the temples, who fought to defend Egypt’s borders, who toiled in its fields? What of the men and women of the Nile Valley who created and sustained its spectacular culture? Individual perspectives on ancient Egypt are rarely encountered in the literature, with the exception of a few well-known pharaohs, such as Hatshepsut or Amenhotep III, Ramesses II or Cleopatra. Yet rulers lived lives heavily circumscribed by ideology and ritual and, for this reason, they are often rather less interesting witnesses than their subjects. It is surprising, therefore, that so little has been written about the ordinary people who actually experienced Egyptian civilization at first hand. For it is only by sharing their viewpoint that we can begin to appreciate the variety and complexity of life under the pharaohs. That is the simple aim of this book: to explore the history and culture of ancient Egypt through the lives of its inhabitants, to give them their own voice.
In selecting our hundred subjects, the aim has been to strike a balance – chronological, geographical and social. The limits of the available evidence have not always made this an easy task. Take the chronological scope of ancient Egyptian civilization: 3,000 years separated the birth of the Egyptian state from its absorption into the Roman empire. Put another way, the era of the Great Pyramid was more remote from Cleopatra’s time than she is from our own. If a single generation approximates to thirty years, then ancient Egypt – as an independent and vibrant culture – spanned one hundred generations. Hence, with one hundred lives, this book should be able to cover every phase of pharaonic history in equal detail. Unfortunately, the vagaries of archaeological preservation do not permit so even-handed an approach. More is known about a single thirty-year span in the fourteenth century BC (the so-called Amarna Period) than about the first half-millennium of Egyptian civilization (the Early Dynastic Period). Hence, in this book, ten personalities have been selected to represent the former whereas the latter has only eight representatives. Nevertheless, care has been taken to ensure that every major phase of ancient Egyptian history is covered, together with all the main turning-points: the collapse of the Old Kingdom, the rule of the Hyksos, the rise of the Ramessides, and so on.
The geographical extent of ancient Egypt was as impressive as its longevity. The state’s core territory stretched from the First Cataract in the south to the shores of the Mediterranean in the north, a distance by river of some 1,000 km (625 miles). At particular periods of its history, Egypt extended its borders still further, through conquest and colonization, to take in large parts of Nubia and the Near East. Within this vast empire, administrative and religious life was concentrated in two or three major centres: Memphis at the apex of the Delta; Thebes in Upper Egypt; and, from the thirteenth century BC onwards, various cities in the central and eastern Delta. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of our characters lived and died in these great conurbations. But the provinces were important, too, and even shaped the country’s destiny at certain key moments. To get a fully rounded picture of life under the pharaohs, it is crucial to give a voice to the inhabitants of the towns and villages of rural Egypt, from the broad marshlands of the Delta to the narrow valley of southern Upper Egypt. Our witnesses therefore include citizens of places like Busiris, Herakleopolis and Elkab, as well as their metropolitan counterparts.
Although surprisingly extensive, the evidence for ancient Egyptian lives is by no means evenly spread across different sectors of society. Because the majority of monuments and texts were commissioned by men for men, our view of ancient Egyptian culture is filtered almost exclusively through a male lens. A few women gained positions of prominence, especially in the 18th Dynasty royal family, but, in general terms, the lives of half the population remain hidden from view. In this book, eleven out of one hundred subjects are women: less of a gender bias than in many treatments of ancient Egypt, but still far from an ideal balance. Furthermore, most of the scenes and inscriptions on tomb and temple walls, the texts on statues, stelae and other artifacts, and the surviving papyrus documents pertain to the careers and family relationships of Egypt’s small, literate ruling class. By contrast, the lives of the illiterate peasantry, comprising up to ninety per cent of the population, are largely unrecorded. Yet, even within the governing elite, many different ethnic backgrounds were represented. Egypt was always a melting pot of peoples and cultures, a crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe. Indeed, at various times, the kings themselves were Asiatic, Libyan, Nubian or Macedonian. Their stories lift the veil of cultural conservatism promulgated in art and architecture, revealing Egypt as a multi-ethnic and dynamic society.
During the three millennia of Egyptian history, essential continuity and stability were provided, above all, by the bureaucrats: the men who served in the royal household, the central administration and the provincial government. These officials are some of the best-known figures from the ancient past, and they too – from a vizier to a court dwarf – have their stories to tell. Equally influential in pharaonic society were the great priesthoods of the country; no picture of ancient Egypt would be complete without including its religious personnel, from the High Priest of the chief state god to a humble priestess in a provincial temple. Joining them in the following pages are myriad others, including a doctor, a dentist, a draughtsman, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, a soldier, a sailor, a farmer, a housewife, a criminal, an historian, even the first Egyptologist: for these are the real ancient Egyptians, and it is their experiences that give the best idea of what life was like in the Nile Valley twenty, thirty or forty centuries ago.
PART 1
Foundations
Early Dynastic Period
Around 3000 BC, the first nation-state in history was born – in Egypt. In the Nile Valley and Delta (known to the Egyptians themselves as the Two Lands), the various rival kingdoms and territories which had developed over a period of a thousand years were unified into a single country ruled over by a single king who claimed divine authority. This process, known as the unification, seems to have occurred fairly quickly, taking a few generations at most to complete. Although the precise course of events remains a little hazy, the outcome is clear: the kings of This (ancient Tjeni), one of two or three proto-kingdoms in Upper Egypt (the southern Nile Valley), emerged supreme. They overcame not only their rivals in the south of the country, but also the rulers of towns and cities throughout the marshlands of the Delta. The king known to us as Narmer (no. 1) is the first monarch who can be said with confidence to have ruled over the whole of Egypt, from the First Cataract in the south to the shores of the Mediterranean in the north. He was recognized by his near-contemporaries as a founder figure, and has a special place in Egyptian history as the first king of the 1st Dynasty.
The challenge for Narmer and his immediate successors (nos 2–4) was to develop and prescribe the means for ruling their new, geographically vast realm. Egypt was certainly not lacking in cultural dynamism: two distinctive and vibrant traditions had grown up, in the Nile Valley and Delta, respectively, during the millennium or more preceding the unification. Technologically superior and more in tune with the conspicuous consumption favoured by Egypt’s early ruling class, Upper Egyptian culture had supplanted its northern counterpart in the Delta during the late predynastic period, mirroring the process of political unification that was likewise driven from the south. The kings of the 1st Dynasty took this cultural tradition, and refined and codified it as an expression of the court’s own power. Art and architecture were carefully deployed to enhance the prestige of the monarchy as an institution, allowing it to overcome challenges such as the regency under Merneith (no. 2) or all-out civil war in the early years of Khasekhemwy’s reign (no. 4). The barrage of propaganda worked spectacularly well: kingship swiftly became the ideological glue that bound Egypt together; government without monarchy was unthinkable. One of the great achievements of Egypt’s early rulers was thus to develop an iconography and ideology of royal rule that survived, virtually unchanged, for the next 3,000 years.
Relatively little is known about the early kings as individuals, since hieroglyphic writing was still at an early stage of its development and, in any case, monarchy thrived best behind a veil of secrecy and mystery. But the political, economic and religious programmes of these rulers can be deduced from scraps of textual and archaeological evidence. The first three or four centuries following unification – known as the Early Dynastic Period – were a time of great innovation and of rapid developments in Egyptian civilization, when all the major building blocks of pharaonic culture were put in place. Some of the techniques used to extend and maintain the state’s power would be familiar to us today. While expounding a creed of strident nationalism to bolster its own legitimacy, the government quietly increased formal contacts with foreign lands, using the revenue from trade to fund increasingly elaborate royal projects (notably the king’s tomb). Internally, the state tightened its grip on all areas of administration, in particular ensuring that every aspect of the national economy was subject to state regulation, if not direct control. The inauguration of a regular census of the country’s wealth combined with meticulous record-keeping set the pattern for Egypt’s enduring love-affair with bureaucracy.
The two interlinked policies – of economic and political centralization, and an obsession with monumental architecture – came together in the reign of Djoser (no. 5) with the construction of the first Egyptian pyramid. The enormous feat of engineering required to erect a mountain of stone high on the Saqqara plateau was matched by the logistical operation needed to quarry and transport the blocks, and recruit, house, feed and direct the massive workforce. The sheer administrative complexity of pyramid-building necessitated a more professional bureaucracy, rather than the small cabal of royal relatives with shifting areas of responsibility which seems to have characterized government in the first two dynasties. Men like Hesira (no. 6) and Metjen (no. 8) show the changing nature of high office under Djoser. The titles lovingly recorded on their funerary monuments allow us a glimpse of individual careers, for the first time. The most famous official of the king’s inner circle, Imhotep (no. 7), achieved even greater prominence and was venerated as a god of learning and wisdom by later generations of Egyptians. His great creation, the Step Pyramid complex, dominates the 3rd Dynasty, and marks it out as a transitional era, when the achievements of Egypt’s formative period were consolidated and the scene set for future glories.
1 | Narmer
