May he put his guard about me;
I am the nursling of early dawn,
I am the nursling of night’s early hours.’
For all his superhuman achievements, Intef still regarded death and the afterlife with a mixture of awe and trepidation. Another touching indication of his humanity was immortalized on a second, more informal stela, where the king was shown in the company of his beloved pet dogs. Their names are Berber – suggesting imported, pedigree animals – with Egyptian translations: Behkai (‘gazelle’), Abaqer (‘hound’), Pehtes (‘blackie’) and Teqru (‘kettle’). The king who ruled for fifty years and set Thebes on the road to national domination still found time for the simple pleasures of life.
26 | Tjetji
H
IGH OFFICIAL WHO SERVED TWO MONARCHS
Intef II’s military victories greatly expanded his area of control and marked a turning-point in the civil war. They created a sense, for perhaps the first time, that the Theban rulers were true kings-in-waiting, rather than mere provincial leaders jockeying for position and influence. This shift in direction and mind-set was marked by the establishment of a fully fledged royal court at Thebes, complete with its functionaries, artists and craftsmen. The emergence of the fledgling Middle Kingdom state is exemplified by the career of Tjetji, who served as Chamberlain and Treasurer under Intef II and his successor Intef III.
Tjetji’s funerary stela, a rectangular slab of limestone with finely executed hieroglyphs and reliefs, shows the development of a new courtly style under the Intefs, replacing the sub-standard work of the local workshops during the preceding decades. The figure of Tjetji himself is elegant and ornate, wearing a calf-length kilt with starched apron, and a broad bead collar around his neck. In the hierarchy so typical of ancient Egyptian government, he is accompanied by two lesser officials, shown on a smaller scale: his seal-bearer and favourite Magegi, and his follower Tjeru.
As well as being the king’s chamberlain, with private access to the monarch, Tjetji held the important post of Chancellor, responsible for all economic matters within the Theban realm. He tells us that Intef ruled an area ‘from Abu to Tjeni’, comprising the eight southernmost provinces of Egypt. Although representing less than one-quarter of the country, this territory included some of Egypt’s most productive agricultural land, as well as its holiest site, Abydos (ancient Abdju). It was therefore a major responsibility to account for all the income and expenditure of the royal treasury, but Tjetji boasted of fulfilling his duties in an exemplary fashion:
‘The treasure was in my hand, under my seal, being the best of every good thing brought to The Person of my lord from Upper Egypt, from Lower Egypt… and what was brought to The Person of my lord by the chiefs who rule the Red Land, owing to the fear of him through out the hill countries… I accounted for them to him without any punishable fault ever happening, because my competence was great… I was thus His Person’s true intimate.’
At the heart of the economy was the assessment and collection of taxes, and Tjetji saw to it that a new boat was built to carry treasury officials up and down the Nile to perform their duties.
Nothing was more characteristic of ancient Egyptian administrators than an obsession with correct procedure, and Tjetji was proud of his record in improving the performance of the departments under his control. He also took satisfaction in being a self-made man who had risen to the top through his own achievements: ‘I am wealthy, I am great, I furnished myself from my own property, given me by The Person of my lord, because of his great love for me.’ This contentment is reflected in Tjetji’s portly figure, with a rotund chest and rolls of fat at his waist.
The key historical interest in Tjetji’s inscription lies in its reference to the death of Intef II – ‘he went in peace to his horizon’ – and the accession of his son and heir, Intef III. These moments of transition were dangerous and uncertain, especially for members of the outgoing regime, but Tjetji’s qualities were too valuable for the new king to do without, so Intef III ‘gave me every function that had been mine in the time of his father’. At the end of a long and successful career, Tjetji looked forward to his own passing, and his stela included a moving prayer for a blessed afterlife:
‘May he cross the firmament, traverse the sky,
Ascend to the great god, land in peace in the good west…
May he stride in good peace to the horizon,
To the place where Osiris dwells.’
This is an eloquent demonstration that the promise of life after death had already spread beyond the king and his immediate family to other sections of the population. The turbulent years of the First Intermediate Period had changed Egyptian society forever, and Tjetji had been in the middle of those changes. In his hopes for an eternal life, as in the manner of his earthly existence, he pointed the way to a new order.
27 | Mentuhotep II
R
EUNIFIER OF
E
GYPT
The reign of Intef III was brief, lasting no more than a few years at most. He was succeeded on the throne by his son. The new king, rather than bearing the same name as his three predecessors, was instead named after the 11th Dynasty’s founder, Mentuhotep (‘Montu is satisfied’). This signalled the new ruler’s devotion, not only to his illustrious forebear, but also to the Theban war-god, Montu. Indeed, the young king was to fulfil both promises, proving himself a great war-leader and completing the work of the dynasty by bringing the whole of Egypt together again, under Theban control. In the annals of later generations, Mentuhotep II would be listed alongside the legendary Menes (Narmer), first king of the 1st Dynasty, as one of Egypt’s great founder rulers: the man who reunified the Two Lands and brought to an end the shame of political disunity.
Mentuhotep can scarcely have been older than a teenager when he acceded to the throne. Inspired by his association with the Theban god of war, the young king must also have been acutely conscious of the military successes of his grandfather Intef II. With a double descent from the great king, through his father and mother (both of whom were children of Intef II), Mentuhotep must have felt a special sense of responsibility for defending and widening his grandfather’s hard-won victories. There is little evidence pertaining to the first decade of his reign, but he probably spent it learning and honing his skills as a military strategist and leader of men. His opportunity to put these into practice came in his fourteenth regnal year, when the nome of This – which included the sacred site of Abydos (ancient Abdju) – rose in rebellion against Theban rule. If the Herakleopolitan kings of the 9th/10th Dynasty could win back control of such a symbolic region, the tide of the civil war might turn in their favour. The long-term repercussions of allowing the Thinite nome to secede from the Theban confederation and join with the enemy would not have been lost on Mentuhotep. The battle for This would be the crucial encounter of the whole, decades-long struggle for reunification.
Not only did the Thinite rebellion draw a swift and crushing response from Mentuhotep’s forces, but the king was also careful to ensure that the momentum of victory was maintained. Having dealt with the insurgents, the Theban troops marched steadily northwards, capturing the key Herakleopolitan stronghold of Asyut (ancient Sawty) before eventually taking the enemy capital itself, the fortified town of Herakleopolis (ancient Hnes). If he had proved his tactical capabilities in war, Mentuhotep showed himself equally adept at using psychology to stir patriotic feelings in the minds of his people: in a remarkable example of national myth-making, he had sixty Theban soldiers, slain in battle, interred in state in a mass tomb at Deir el-Bahri in western Thebes. It was one of the world’s first ‘war cemeteries’, a reminder to the Thebans of their collective sacrifice in the cause of national reunification. Moreover, to mark his decisive victory over the old adversary, Mentuhotep adopted a new throne-name and added a Horus-name to his royal titulary. As the undisputed king of all Egypt, he was now the true and worthy incarnation of the supreme celestial deity.
Kingship in the traditional Egyptian mould required more than nomenclature to project itself: it also required grand buildings. In his unusually long reign of fifty years – equalling that of his grandfather, Intef II – Mentuhotep commissioned construction projects throughout his Theban heartland, at Gebelein, el-Tod, and Deir el-Ballas; and further afield at Elkab, Dendera and Abydos. But by far his most ambitious undertaking was his own mortuary temple, in a spectacular embayment in the cliffs at Deir el-Bahri. Not only did the site afford a magnificent natural backdrop for a building; it also lay directly opposite – and within view of – Karnak, where Intef II had begun a temple to the local Theban god, Amun. Perhaps most important for Mentuhotep, however, was Deir el-Bahri’s long association with the mother-goddess and royal protectress, Hathor, who was believed to dwell in bovine form within the Western Mountain of Thebes. By choosing to build his tomb and temple for eternity at Deir el-Bahri, Mentuhotep was symbolically enfolding himself in Hathor’s protecting embrace.
As the monument of a unifying king, it was only fitting that Mentuhotep’s mortuary temple should combine aspects of the distinctive 11th Dynasty Theban style with elements typical of Old Kingdom, Memphite architecture. The building rose from the ground towards the cliff in great terraces, linked by ramps. The façade of the lowest terrace comprised a long series of pillars, and this theme was continued on the upper level with porticoes surrounding a central massif. Behind lay yet more pillars, laid out in the form of a hypostyle (columned) hall. The overall impression would have been startlingly different from anything that had been built before, yet undeniably regal in its scale, decoration and bold symmetry. The king’s tomb itself lay deep inside the cliff, in an alabaster shrine nestling at the end of a passageway 150 m (492 ft) long, hewn into the rock. Balancing this, at the entrance of the temple, another long tunnel led to a chamber for the king’s ka-statue, representing him with the black skin of the god-king Osiris.
Some of Mentuhotep’s key officials chose to be buried within the sacred precincts of their monarch’s architectural masterpiece: the Chief Steward Henenu, the Chancellor Khety, and the Viziers Ipi and Dagi; the limestone sarcophagus of the last-named was inscribed on the inside with a full complement of Coffin Texts, showing that religious concepts previously reserved for the king had fully percolated down to other echelons of society. Khety also seems to have played a key role in Mentuhotep’s military campaigns following the reunification of Egypt. These were targeted against Nubia. In the thirty-ninth year of the king’s reign, an expedition was launched to Abisko, south of the First Cataract, probably to regain Egyptian control of trade routes. The success of this action was marked by Mentuhotep’s adoption of the epithet ‘unifier of the Two Lands’. Two years later, Khety was able to sail at the head of a large fleet from Lower Nubia to Aswan. Mentuhotep’s policies in Nubia, though carried out on a relatively small scale, none the less laid the foundations for the more aggressive military operations of the succeeding 12th Dynasty.
Nor were Mentuhotep’s conquests confined to the battlefield, for he had at least seven wives. Indeed, unusually for a ruler of the Middle Kingdom, his family life is remarkably well attested. His chief consort, Neferu, was also his full sister. A secondary wife, Tem, bore him his only known child, the son who was to succeed him as Mentuhotep III. Three other women, Ashayet, Henhenet (who died in childbirth) and Sadhe, were all named in inscriptions as ‘king’s wives’, while two further concubines, Kawit and Kemsit, were buried within the king’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri. The scenes on their fine limestone sarcophagi and in their burial-chamber – Ashayet is shown smelling a fragrant lotus flower, Kemsit a jar of perfumed ointment, while Kawit is shown having her hair braided – conjure up an image of relaxed sophistication, of a court enjoying the fruits of peace in the aftermath of a brutal civil war. Such was the lasting achievement of Mentuhotep II: to restore Egypt to her former glory, dispelling the divisions of the past and ushering in a new golden age of high culture.
28 | Meketra
C
HANCELLOR UNDER
M
ENTUHOTEP
II
With the wars of reunification over, the administration of Egypt under Mentuhotep II returned to its primary task of overseeing the economy: recording the country’s wealth, collecting taxes, and supervising the manufacture of secondary products to pay government employees and finance the court’s building projects. At the centre of operations, in charge of the treasury, was the chancellor, one of the most important officials in the country. Mentuhotep’s chancellor, however, is famous not so much for his career as for the contents of his Theban tomb.
His name was Meketra and he was buried in an impressive resting-place, cut into the hillside near Deir el-Bahri. The tomb was built according to the latest fashion, with an approach ramp sloping steeply up the cliff face, and a broad court giving access to a passageway leading to the burial-chamber. Most of the tomb and its contents were robbed in antiquity, but the thieves overlooked a small, concealed chamber near the entrance. When archaeologists opened it in the 1930s, they found a unique collection of wooden models, numbering twenty-five in total. Their size, quality and attention to detail are remarkable; together, they provide fascinating snapshots of the life of a high official in 11th Dynasty Egypt.
The most complex of the models depicts the census of cattle. As well as being a practical necessity, allowing the state to keep a count of the nation’s livestock, this was also a highly symbolic act, since ‘cattle’ signified agricultural wealth in general. As the herds of cattle were driven past, Meketra sat on a stool under an awning, accompanied by scribes and other officials. His other duties would have required frequent travel the length and breadth of Egypt, and we may reasonably assume that Meketra’s fleet of thirteen model boats replicated the full-size craft at his daily disposal. They included four boats for river travel, two kitchen tenders, four faster yachts, a lightweight sporting boat and two fishing boats.
