Early Dynastic Egypt Read online

  The concern to provide for life after death is one of the best known aspects of ancient Egyptian civilisation. To it is due such characteristic features as mummies and pyramids. The most impressive monuments to have survived from Early Dynastic Egypt are the funerary structures built for the kings and their relatives. The development of the royal tomb, leading eventually to the concept of the pyramid, is explored in Chapter 7. The changes in the form of the royal burial over the course of the Early Dynastic period reflect not only advances in architecture and building technology, but also changes in the concept of the afterlife. Moreover, as the most important project of a king’s reign, the royal tomb can tell us much about the self-image and public portrayal of kingship.

  Religion plays an important role in most societies and early Egypt was no exception. The bewildering array of cults so characteristic of pharaonic Egypt was a feature of religious life in the Nile valley from the beginning of Egyptian history. Numerous gods and goddesses are attested from Early Dynastic Egypt, together with religious festivals and other cultic activities. Chapter 8 presents the evidence for early Egyptian religion, and examines the way in which religion was manipulated by the royal court for its own ends. The concerns of the individual and those of the state rarely coincide where interaction with the divine sphere is involved. Nothing illustrates the divide between the early Egyptian state and its subjects better than temple building: whilst care was lavished on a few, nationally significant, temples, local shrines received little or no state attention. An analysis of religion in the first three dynasties highlights the tension between rulers and ruled: a tension that Egypt’s first kings sought to contain, and which forms a central theme of the current work.

  Tombs and temples are certainly impressive and informative, but they tell only part of the story. To get to the heart of Early Dynastic Egypt, to understand life in the Nile valley and how it developed, we must escape the alluring world-view promoted by the court and look instead at individual communities and regions. This is the focus of Part III, which seeks to provide a counterbalance to the court-centred culture so dominant in books about ancient Egypt. The growth of urban communities marks an important stage in the history of human society. The process of urbanisation in Egypt is particularly instructive as it seems to reflect local and regional factors more than centrally inspired policies. In recent years the number of settlements excavated in Egypt has increased markedly. Chapter 9 discusses the evidence for early urbanism, pointing out the factors which influenced the development of each community.

  This leads on to the final chapter of the book, which stands back and takes a regional view of developments in Early Dynastic Egypt. Much of the history of Egypt is the history of its regions. Particular combinations of natural and strategic advantages favoured some parts of the country over others; the interplay between regions affected the development of Egyptian society as a whole. Chapter 10 seeks to explain why some areas prospered during the first three dynasties while others declined; for in the answers to such questions lies the history of Egypt’s formative period.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS‌

  Plate 3.2 is reproduced with the kind permission of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society.

  This book could not have been written without the assistance, support and encouragement of many individuals.

  First and foremost, my thanks are due to Christ’s College, Cambridge, which, in awarding me the Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowship in Egyptology, provided generous financial support for the four years of research and writing which went into this book. I should like to express my gratitude to the Managers of the Lady Wallis Budge Fund; to the Research Fund Managers and the College Council of Christ’s College for further financial support; and not least to the late Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge himself, one-time scholar of Christ’s College, for the generosity and foresight which have so benefited British Egyptology in the six decades since his death. Christ’s has also provided the perfect environment in which to live and work, for which everyone in the College—the Master, former Master, fellows, staff and students—deserves my heartfelt thanks.

  My research into the early periods of ancient Egyptian civilisation has benefited greatly from discussions with a number of colleagues. For their unfailing interest in my work, their help and encouragement, I should like to thank Cambridge Egyptologists Barry Kemp, John Ray, Janine Bourriau, Dr Eleni Vassilika, Dr Kate Spence and Will Schenck. Kate Spence also drew the excellent illustrations which accompany the text. Other scholars have given generously of their time to provide advice and information: Barbara Adams, Nicole Alexanian, Professor John Baines, Dr Stan Hendrickx, David Jeffreys, Dr Christiana Köhler, Ian Mathieson, Dr Stephan Seidlmayer and Ana Tavares. Many distinguished experts were kind enough to read and comment on the first draft of this book: Dr Edwin van den Brink, Dr Stan Hendrickx, Barry Kemp, Dr Geraldine Pinch, Dr Stephen Quirke, Dr Kate Spence and Dr Jeffrey Spencer. I should like to express my profound thanks to all of them for their insightful comments and suggestions which have contributed immeasurably to the final form of the work. Any errors or omissions remain, of course, the author’s sole responsibility.

  Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to all my family and friends, without whose love, friendship and encouragement this book could not have been written. I should like to single out the chapel choir of Christ’s College, Cambridge which has, over the years, provided the perfect antidote to academic research. For their unwavering support, I offer my special thanks to Cathy, Duncan and Sarah, Hilary, John, Nicki, Parshia and Siân. My greatest source of inspiration has undoubtedly been my nephew, Benjamin, and it is with love and pride that I dedicate this book to him.

  NOTE‌

  Those words in bold throughout the text can be found in the glossary at the end of the book.

  Map 1 Map of Egypt and Nubia showing sites mentioned in the text. Small capitals denote ancient place names. Key: 1 En Besor (included here to help relate Map 1

  to Map 2); 2 Tell el-Fara’in/BUTO; 3

  BEHDET; 4 Kom el-Hisn; 5 SAÏS; 6 Tell er-Ruba/Tell Timai/MENDES; 7 Ezbet et- Tell/Kufur Nigm; 8 Tell el-Farkha and Tell el-Iswid (south); 9 Tell Ibrahim Awad; 10 Tell ed-Daba; 11 Minshat Abu Omar; 12 SETHROË?; 13 el-Beda; 14

  Beni Amir; 15 Tell Basta/BUBASTIS; 16

  LETOPOLIS; 17 HELIOPOLIS; 18 Giza;

  19 Maadi and Wadi Digla; 20 Tura; 21

  Saqqara; 22 MEMPHIS; 23 Dahshur; 24

  Tarkhan; 25 es-Saff; 26 Medinet el-

  Fayum; 27 Seila; 28 Maidum; 29 Abusir

  el-Meleq; 30 Haraga; 31 HERAKLEOPOLIS; 32 Zawiyet el- Meitin; 33 Matmar; 34 Badari; 35

  Hemamia; 36 Qau; 37 el-Etmania; 38

  Akhmim; 39 THIS?; 40 ABYDOS; 41

  Abu Umuri; 42 Hu; 43 Abadiya; 44

  Dendera; 45 Qena; 46 Qift/COPTOS; 47 Quseir; 48 Tukh; 49 Naqada and Ballas; 50 Deir el-Bahri; 51 Medamud; 52

  Armant; 53 Gebelein; 54 Adaïma; 55 el-

  Kula; 56 Elkab; 57 HIERAKONPOLIS;

  58 Edfu; 59 Gebel es-Silsila; 60 Kubania;

  61 ELEPHANTINE; 62 Aswan; 63

  Shellal; 64 Seyala; 65 Toshka; 66 Qustul;

  67 BUHEN; 68 Gebel Sheikh Suleiman; 69 Balat; 70 BERENICE. For sites in the Hierakonpolis, Abydos and Memphite regions, please refer to Figures 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3.

  Map 2 Map of the Near East showing sites mentioned in the text. Small capitals denote ancient place names. Key: 1 KNOSSOS; 2 Habuba Kebira; 3 Sheikh

  Hassan; 4 Tell Brak; 5 Uruk; 6 SUSA; 7

  UGARIT; 8 BYBLOS; 9 Mt Hermon; 10

  Azor; 11 Tel Erani; 12 Nizzanim; 13 Tel

  Maahaz; 14 LACHISH; 15 Ai; 16 Nahal

  Tillah; 17 Rafiah; 18 Taur Ikhbeineh; 19 En Besor; 20 Tell Arad; 21 Tell el- Fara’in/BUTO; 22 Saqqara; 23

  HIERAKONPOLIS; 24 ELEPHANTINE

  (sites 21–24 are included here to help relate Map 2 to Map 1).

  PART I INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE EGYPTOLOGY AND THE EARLY‌

>   DYNASTIC PERIOD

  THE PIONEERS: 1894–1935

  Abydos: Amélineau and Petrie

  The history of Egypt began at Abydos. Here in Upper Egypt, on the low desert beneath the towering western escarpment (Plate 1.1), the Predynastic rulers of the region, and their descendants, the earliest kings of a united Egypt, were buried with their retainers and possessions. Amongst the tombs of the ancestral royal cemetery, a burial of unparalleled size was prepared around 3150 BC for a leader who may already have ruled over most, if not all, of Egypt. About a century later, another king was buried nearby: Narmer, who was apparently regarded by his immediate successors as the founder of the First Dynasty, and whose ceremonial palette recalls the unification of the Two Lands, in ritual if not in fact. The mortuary complex of Narmer’s successor, Aha, was also constructed at Abydos. Aha’s reign may mark the systematic keeping of annals, and it may thus be regarded as the beginning of Egyptian history in a strict sense of the word.

  Egyptian history also began at Abydos in another sense: it was here, in the dying years of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth, that archaeologists first uncovered evidence of Egypt’s remote past. The excavation and re-excavation of the royal cemetery at Abydos—which still continues after more than a century—has transformed our understanding of the earliest period of Egyptian history. Today, as a hundred years ago, each new discovery from the sands of Abydos enhances or modifies our picture of the Nile valley during the formative phase of ancient Egyptian civilisation. As we shall see, many other sites have contributed to the total picture, but none more so than Abydos. Abydos, above any other site, holds the key to Egypt’s early dynasties.

  Before the first excavations in the royal cemetery at Abydos, there was not a single object in the Egyptian Museum that could be dated securely to the First or Second Dynasty (de Morgan 1896:181). Indeed, before excavators began unearthing the burials of the Early Dynastic kings, ‘the history of Egypt only began with the Great Pyramid’ (Petrie 1939:160). The pyramids of the late Third/early Fourth Dynasty at Maidum and Dahshur were the oldest monuments known to scholars. The Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara had not yet been excavated from the drift sand. As for the kings of the first three dynasties recorded in the king lists of the New Kingdom and in Manetho’s history, they were no more than names, legendary figures for whom no historical evidence existed.

  Plate 1.1 The Umm el-Qaab at Abydos, burial ground of Egypt’s early rulers (author’s photograph).

  Emile Clément Amélineau (1850–1915) was the first to clear the royal tombs of the First and late Second Dynasties in a systematic way, although Auguste Mariette (1821–

  81) had worked at the site some forty years before. Amélineau’s excavations at Abydos from 1894 to 1898 yielded important results, but his unscientific methods drew criticism, especially from his great rival and successor at Abydos, Petrie. It is probably fair to say that the Mission Amélineau was driven more by the ambition of private collectors than by academic or scientific concerns for the culture of early Egypt. However, the same was undoubtedly true of many other excavations in the Nile valley at that time and later. Amélineau’s contribution—in bringing the importance of Abydos to the attention of Egyptologists —should not be dismissed, despite his obvious failings by modern standards. The objects he found in the royal tombs were published in four volumes (Amélineau 1899, 1902, 1904, 1905) and were sold at auction in Paris in 1904. Some entered museums, others ended up in private collections. Scholarly interest in Egypt’s

  earliest historical period had now been well and truly awakened, and archaeologists were swift to follow in Amélineau’s footsteps.

  William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), the founding father of Egyptian archaeology, had been interested in Egypt’s formative period for some years. His pioneering mission to Coptos in 1893–4 revealed material of the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods for the first time—most famously the colossal statues of a fertility god—and effectively pushed back Egyptian history by some 400 years, from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the beginning of the First Dynasty (Petrie 1896). Petrie’s subsequent excavations at Naqada and Ballas in 1895 yielded extensive Predynastic material (Petrie and Quibell 1896) and led him to formulate his famous sequence dating system, the principle of which has been used by scholars ever since to date Predynastic contexts.

  Petrie’s ‘discovery’ of the Predynastic period was followed by new insights into the earliest dynasties, gained through his excavations at Abydos in 1899–1903. He rushed to the Early Dynastic royal cemetery following the departure of Amélineau and was able ‘to rescue for historical study’ (Petrie 1900:2) what had been left behind. Petrie no doubt exaggerated Amélineau’s failings and his own achievements, but there is no denying that Petrie’s discoveries were of great significance, and dramatically enhanced understanding of Egypt’s early history, not least by establishing the order of the First Dynasty kings (Petrie 1900, 1901). In the later seasons, Petrie turned his attention to the early town and temple of Abydos (Petrie 1902, 1903). His excavations uncovered a small cemetery of the early First Dynasty, a jumble of walls belonging to the Early Dynastic temple, and three deposits of votive objects.

  At the same time as Petrie was re-excavating the royal tombs at Abydos, his colleague John Garstang (1876–1956) was investigating Predynastic and Early Dynastic sites a little to the north, in the vicinity of the villages of Mahasna, Reqaqna and Beit Khallaf. Near the first two he revealed a cemetery of Third Dynasty tombs (Garstang 1904), while on the low desert behind Beit Khallaf he excavated several huge mastabas of mudbrick (Plate 1.2), also dated to the Third Dynasty (Garstang 1902). From the point of view of Early Dynastic history, the most important finds from Beit Khallaf were the seal- impressions. One of these, from mastaba K2, shows the name of King Sanakht opposite the lower end of a cartouche. This is the earliest attested occurrence of the frame used to enclose the royal name, and the sealing provides the sole evidence for equating the Horus name, Sanakht, with the cartouche name, Nebka.

  Plate 1.2 Mastaba K1 at Belt Khallaf, dating to the reign of Netjerikhet, Third Dynasty (author’s photograph).

  Discoveries further south: de Morgan, Quibell and Green

  Whilst Amélineau and Petrie were arguing over the spoils of Abydos, discoveries in southern Upper Egypt were shedding important new light on Early Dynastic Egypt, its rulers and their achievements. Together with Abydos, two sites are of key significance for the process of state formation and for the early development of Egyptian civilisation, Naqada and Hierakonpolis, and it was at these two sites that excavations at the turn of the century yielded spectacular results. One of the outstanding achievements of Jacques Jean Marie de Morgan (1857–1924) was the discovery and excavation of the royal tomb at Naqada (de Morgan 1897). Identified at first as the tomb of the legendary Menes (Borchardt 1898), but subsequently as the burial of Queen Neith-hotep (probably the mother of Aha), this was the first substantial structure of the First Dynasty to be excavated in Egypt, and it demonstrated the scale of monumental architecture at the very beginning of Egyptian history. De Morgan also established the link between the Predynastic period and the early dynasties, thus implicitly recognising the Early Dynastic period as the culmination of a long sequence of cultural development.

  In the same year as de Morgan’s great discovery at Naqada, excavations began on the town mound at Hierakonpolis, the Kom el-Ahmar. They were directed by James Edward Quibell (1867–1935), who had excavated with Petrie at Coptos in the pioneering season of 1893–4. Assisted by Frederick Green and Somers Clarke, he worked at Hierakonpolis from 1897 to 1898, before handing over to Green for the following season (Quibell 1900; Quibell and Green 1902). In the temple area of the town mound the archaeologists found a circular revetment belonging to the Early Dynastic temple and a crude limestone cylindrical statue similar to the colossi from Coptos. The temple also yielded spectacular

  objects of Old Kingdom date, including l
ife-size copper statues of two Sixth Dynasty kings and a golden hawk head. Most significant for Early Dynastic studies was the discovery—in circumstances which remain unclear—of the so-called ‘Main Deposit’, a hoard of early votive objects including the famous Scorpion and Narmer maceheads and the Narmer palette. These provided the earliest images of Egyptian kings, bringing life to the otherwise obscure royal names attested at Abydos and Naqada. They also represent the earliest expression of the classic conventions of Egyptian artistic depiction, and indicate that these principles were formalised and canonised at the very beginning of the Egyptian state. The complex iconography of the palette reveals much about early conceptions of kingship, whilst the quality of workmanship gives an indication of the sophisticated taste of the early Egyptian court. Since its discovery, the Narmer palette has acquired something of the status of an icon of early Egypt. Today it is displayed in the entrance hall of the Egyptian Museum, where it serves as an admirable starting-point for the glories of Egyptian civilisation. The palette, together with the other Early Dynastic objects that had flooded into the museum since Amélineau’s work at Abydos, was catalogued by Quibell in his capacity as a member of staff of the Antiquities Service. The two volumes of Archaic objects (Quibell 1904–5) represent the first published corpus of early material.