‘It will indeed (seem) to you a benefaction, when you behold (in contrast) what the ancestors have done, in poor and ignorant works. Remember my name.’
His wish was to be answered: the underground gallery, or Serapeum as it later came to be known, remained in use, just as Khaemwaset had intended, for the next thirteen centuries.
His interest in the past went beyond reverence for the cult of the Apis. Khaemwaset was clearly impressed and enchanted by the Old Kingdom monuments that still dominated the skyline of the Memphite necropolis. In his own words, he ‘loved the noble ones who dwelt in antiquity before him, and the excellence of everything they made, in very truth, a million times.’ Crucially, he also had the resources to indulge his passion. In his late thirties, he therefore he set about visiting, inspecting and restoring the pyramids and sun-temples of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Dynasty kings. On each monument he investigated he had a standard inscription carved to record his work. The inscription on the Great Pyramid ran:
‘It is the High Priest, the sem-priest, the King’s Son Khaemwaset who has perpetuated the name of King Khufu.’
While conducting his tour of inspection at Giza, Khaemwaset even undertook a small-scale excavation, anticipating the work of archaeologists by more than three thousand years. He was rewarded with a remarkable discovery:
‘It was the High Priest and King’s Son Khaemwaset who delighted in this statue of the King’s Son Kawab, which he discovered in the fill of a shaft in the area of the well of his father Khufu.’
The statue was subsequently erected in the temple of Ptah at Memphis, so that its discoverer could admire it on a daily basis.
Beyond his religious duties, Khaemwaset was responsible for the administration of the Memphite area. He also acted as royal herald, making the official proclamation of his father’s first five jubilees. By the time he had reached his late fifties, Khaemwaset’s three older brothers had predeceased him, making him Crown Prince and heir apparent. But Khaemwaset’s time on earth, too, was fast running out, and he died in his father’s fifty-fifth regnal year, having given forty years of devoted service to Memphis, its cults and its monuments.
A great builder and restorer, a model priest and prince, Khaemwaset was remembered for centuries after his death, featuring as the hero of a popular cycle of stories over a millennium later. In his beloved Memphite necropolis, his memory was honoured in a hilltop sanctuary at Abusir with a view of all the pyramids: the perfect monument for the first Egyptologist.
73 | Mes
V
ICTOR IN A LONG
-
RUNNING COURT CASE
There is a tendency to view ancient Egyptian civilization through rose-tinted spectacles. The Egyptians themselves desired and strove to portray themselves and their culture in ideal terms, since the very act of recording a person or event conferred immortality; and there was an overriding and understandable wish to perpetuate the best, not the worst, aspects of their lives. This idealizing view of the pharaonic world is beguiling to the modern, jaundiced eye, yet it is as false as it is alluring. For example, when it comes to the ancient Egyptian family, it is tempting to focus on the exemplary model portrayed on stelae and in tomb paintings: parents, children and relatives living in harmony and mutual support. This may have been the case for a few lucky individuals, but experience – especially in societies where large extended families live in close proximity – suggests that disagreements, jealousies, strife and even open hostility were probably closer to the norm.
A unique inscription from the early 19th Dynasty proves that the ancient Egyptians, too, were prone to complex and often stormy family relationships. The author of the account was a man named Mes. He lived during the reign of Ramesses II and, like his father before him, rose to the modest office of Treasury Scribe in the temple of Ptah at Memphis. But his claim to fame, the proudest moment of his life, was nothing to do with his career. Rather, it concerned his victory in a court case, an internecine legal battle between relatives, that by its close had dragged on for a full century.
The background to the case went back to the very beginning of the New Kingdom and the reign of Ahmose. Mes’s distant ancestor, Neshi, had been superintendent of the seal and admiral under Ahmose, and had fought valiantly in the wars of liberation against the Hyksos. Like other loyal officers, Neshi was granted an estate near the capital city of Memphis as a reward for his military service; it came to be known as ‘the settlement of Neshi’. The estate passed down through the generations, eventually being inherited by Mes’s great-grandmother, the lady Shentra. Shentra had several children and this is where the trouble first arose. For when Shentra died, in the reign of Horemheb, one of her daughters, Wernuro (probably the eldest), evidently believed she should inherit everything; her siblings thought otherwise. Wernuro therefore went to court to uphold the legal unity of the estate and confirm her position as sole heir. She was only partly successful, winning the right to act as administrator of the estate while having to accept that the law recognized the shares of her co-heirs.
This decision was evidently too much for one member of the family, Wernuro’s sister Takhuru. She now filed a second lawsuit to gain formal control of her portion of the inheritance. When this was granted, Wernuro and her son Huy (Mes’s father) counter-sued to win back their administrative rights over the whole estate. The dispute had now split the family asunder. The level of ill-feeling was acute, and was to be passed on to the next generation. Hence, when Huy died, perhaps some forty or more years later, his relatives decided to settle the matter once and for all. They hired a dubious character called Khay to expel Huy’s widow Nub-nofret and her baby son Mes from their land.
Facing destitution and permanent exclusion from her family estate, Nubnofret filed a fourth lawsuit. Her aim was to regain control of the estate, but she was thwarted by Khay’s machinations on behalf of her relatives. He conspired with a court official to falsify the tax records held at the Delta city of Per-Ramesses. These would have shown that Huy had indeed farmed the land, upholding Nubnofret’s claim. But when the documents were brought before the High Court of the Vizier in Heliopolis (ancient Iunu) no mention of Huy was to be found in them. Khay’s assertions were vindicated, and it looked as though Mes and his mother had lost everything.
However, the gloating family had not reckoned on the young boy’s determination to right the wrongs done to his mother. When he came of age, he filed a fifth lawsuit in the Great Lawcourt at Memphis. His case against Khay comprised two charges. The first was to re-establish his right to the ancestral land-holding as a direct descendant of Neshi. The second was an accusation against Khay and an accomplice of falsifying the tax records. On the first charge, Mes was cleverer than his opponent. Realizing that the documentary record had been tampered with and would not substantiate his claim, Mes appealed directly to the local inhabitants in the vicinity of ‘the settlement of Neshi’. They were able to testify to his descent and therefore his right to the land. Living witnesses were more powerful evidence than mere documents, and even Khay had to admit Mes’s legitimate descent before the court. His inheritance established, Mes brought in other documents to support the accusation against Khay.
With baited breath, plaintiff and defendant awaited the final verdict. It was announced by a scribe in front of the bench of judges. Like all ancient Egyptian legal decisions it took the form ‘A is right, B is wrong’. The court found in Mes’s favour, and he lifted his hand to greet the verdict. Khay, by contrast, bowed his head under the stick wielded by the court officer. Mes was triumphant and left the court with his arms held high; his opponent left in disgrace. To celebrate his historic victory and ensure that his claim was upheld in perpetuity, Mes had the full details of the case inscribed on the walls of his tomb-chapel at Saqqara.
Mes the litigant, unafraid to go to law to gain justice, is a curiously familiar figure in the modern, western world. He is also a stark reminder that family feuds are a universal human experience.
74 | D
IDIA
C
HIEF DRAUGHTSMAN OF FOREIGN ANCESTRY
One of the chief wishes of an ancient Egyptian was to bequeath his office to his children. A draughtsman named Didia, who lived in Thebes in the reign of Ramesses II, exemplifies the realization of this wish. For Didia was the seventh generation of his family to hold the office of Chief Draughtsman of Amun. His distant ancestor, named Pada-Baal (‘Baal redeems’), had come to Egypt from Syria-Palestine, perhaps as a prisoner of war, in the mid-18th Dynasty. He had evidently been keen to assimilate as quickly as possible into Egyptian society, so gave his children Egyptian names. Yet, the family retained a sense of its origins, most of the male members marrying women who were themselves foreigners or of foreign ancestry. Didia was proud of his genealogy, inscribing it on a stela.
As Chief Draughtsman of Amun, Didia’s skill was in drawing, painting and designing. His work was not, however, confined to mere sketching. He served the Vizier Paser in the construction and decoration of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak, begun under Seti I and finished under Ramesses II. Next, as Didia himself recorded, ‘I was charged by His Person to do work for Amun, to restore monuments in Karnak and on the Great West of Thebes.’ His commission was to restore the temples of the 18th Dynasty and earlier periods that had fallen into disrepair, namely the Festival Hall of Thutmose III at Karnak; the joint funerary temple of Amenhotep I and Ahmose-Nefertari, and the mortuary temple of Thutmose III in western Thebes; and the temple of Mentuhotep II, the Amun temple of Thutmose III, and the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri.
Didia was also able to produce, or commission from colleagues, his own finely executed stelae and a black granite statue. His inscriptions invoked a plethora of gods and goddesses: Amun of Karnak and Mut, naturally, but also the Heliopolitan deities Ra, Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb and Nut; the Elephantine triad of Khnum, Satet and Anket; Horus of Behdet; Nekhbet; Hathor of Gebelein; Sobek-Ra, Lord of Sumenu; and Montu the Theban. After seven generations of living and working in Thebes, a family of Syro-Palestinian origin had become more Egyptian than the Egyptians.
75 | Merenptah
P
HARAOH WHO SUBDUED
I
SRAEL
During his extraordinarily long reign, Ramesses II had deliberately blurred the distinction between the divinity of his office and his own human frailty. Moreover, he must have seemed practically immortal to the thousands of his subjects whose entire lives were contained within his sixty-seven years on the throne. His heirs, too, must have wondered if the old king would ever die, and a succession of crown princes had their expectations thwarted as they predeceased their father. When Ramesses finally departed his earthly life, in his nineties, the next in line to the throne was not his first, second or even third son, but his thirteenth, a prince named Merenptah.
He was himself an elderly man, probably in his sixties at the time of his accession. Married with three or four children, Merenptah must have spent most of his adult life completely unaware of his eventual destiny; but as one older brother after another died, he rose inexorably in the line of succession. When the moment came for him to assume the kingship, the unexpected heir must have realized that his reign would be a short one. Work began straight away on his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and his mortuary temple was built in record time by reusing blocks from the nearby monument of Amenhotep III. It was a race against time and not even respect for his royal ancestors could be allowed to stand in the way.
Merenptah’s instinct to emulate the glory of his father Ramesses II was at odds with the pressing urgency to complete his own architectural legacy. The new king’s mortuary temple exemplified this tension: its entrance pylon was nearly as large as the Ramesseum’s, proclaiming the grandeur of its royal builder; but the temple behind the façade was only half the size of his father’s colossal edifice.
Ever conscious of the need to fulfil the traditional role of pharaoh, one of Merenptah’s first acts as king was to order a thorough inspection and refurbishment of temples throughout Egypt. For good measure, he had his own name added to many of them; in this, he certainly took after his father. In international relations, too, Merenptah honoured his predecessor’s accomplishments. Under the terms of the peace treaty with the Hittites, which had followed the inconclusive Battle of Kadesh, Merenptah shipped grain to the Hittite kingdom to relieve a famine. However, it was not all peace and friendship in the Levant.
The early years of a new reign were always a vulnerable time. The death of a king and the inauguration of an untested monarch presented the perfect opportunity for foreign adversaries and rebellious provinces to launch an offensive. When the death in question was that of the great pharaoh and military commander Ramesses II, and the new king was a sexagenarian, the temptation was irresistible. In Merenptah’s first year on the throne, the cities of Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam in Syria-Palestine revolted against Egyptian domination. Merenptah had to act decisively to prevent the break-up of the empire his father and grandfather had so determinedly created. So he sent his Crown Prince, Seti-Merenptah, to crush the rebels and restore control. A fortified well was subsequently established at a strategic location in the hills outside Jerusalem, to provide drinking-water for Egyptian trading, diplomatic and military expeditions in the Levant. The ‘Well of Merenptah’ served its purpose, and normal communications across Syria-Palestine were resumed within a year of the unsuccessful rebellion.
However, a far greater threat to Egypt was still to come. In Merenptah’s fifth year on the throne, Nubians in the south of the Nile Valley launched their own revolt. This was no ordinary insurgency: it seems to have been a deliberate diversionary tactic, designed to lure the Egyptian forces away from the real attack. For, along the western edge of the Delta, a full-scale invasion was underway, led by the Libyans in alliance with the mysterious and much-feared Sea Peoples. The latter included Ekwesh (probably Achaeans from mainland Greece), together with Sherden – some of whose compatriots had served in Ramesses II’s army – and Shekelesh, Teresh and Lukka. Together, these peoples from the eastern Mediterranean made up perhaps a third of the total invasion force. It was the deciding moment of Merenptah’s reign. He had to act quickly and decisively if Egypt was not to labour again under a foreign yoke.
