ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010
ANCIENT EGYPT
A SOCIAL HISTORY

B. G. TRIGGER, B. J. KEMP,
D. O'CONNOR A N D A. B. LLOYD

CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS

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© Cambridge University Press 1983

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Ancient Egypt. 1. Egypt.
1. Egypt - History - To 640
1.Trigger, B. G.
932 DT83

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 CONTENTS

IJst of figurespage vii

Preface xi

1 T h e rise of Egyptian civilization i

by B. G. T R I G G E R , Department of Anthropology, McGill
University, Montreal
Orientation i
Predynastic Egypt 13
Early Dynastic Egypt 44
Conclusions 68
Appendix: chronology of the Early Dynastic Period 69

2 Old K i n g d o m , Middle K i n g d o m and Second Inter-

mediate Period c. 2686— 1552 BC 71
by B A R R Y J . K E M P , Faculty of Oriental Studies, University
of Cambridge
Divine kingship 71
The royal family 76
The central administration 80
Pious foundations 85
The Memphite court cemeteries 86
Provincial Egypt 96
The First Intermediate Period 112
The African hinterland 116
Egypt and the Mediterranean world 137
The Second Intermediate Period in Egypt 149
The Second Intermediate Period in Nubia 160
The Theban defeat of the Hyksos and of Kush 173
Explanations of historical change in the Old and Middle
Kingdoms 174

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 CONTENTS

3 New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period,

1 5 5 2 — 6 6 4 BC 183
by D A V I D O ' C O N N O R , University Museum, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
Prolegomena 183
The Egyptian world-view 188
Internal history 202
The New Kingdom 203
The Third Intermediate Period 232
The onset of the Late Period 249
Egypt's relations with Africa 252
Relations with Kush and the eastern desert 255
Egypt and Punt 270
Egypt and Libya 271

4 T h e Late Period, 664—323 BC 279

by A L A N B . L L O Y D , Department of Classics, University
College of Swansea
Prolegomena 279
Organization 288
Economic structure 318
Government 3 31
Foreign policy 337
Conclusions 346

Bibliographical Essays 349

Bibliography 365

Index 429

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 FIGURES

I. I Relative chronology of Egypt and neighbouring

regions page 6
1.2 Maps indicating known distributions of Predynastic
sites in Egypt and Lower Nubia at different periods 28
1.3 General map of the Hierakonpolis area 35
1.4 Jebel el-Araq ivory knife-handle 38
1.5 The obverse side of the so-called 'Libyan palette' 45
1.6 The royal tombs and funerary palaces at Abydos 53
1.7 Early remains in the Saqqara necropolis 54
1.8 Reverse side of the slate palette of King Narmer 59
2.1 Volumes of pyramids from the Fourth to the
Thirteenth Dynasties 88
2.2 Three examples of the distribution, by nomes, of
estates in pious foundations for mortuary cults 91
2.3 The Valley Temple of King Menkaura's pyramid
complex in its final phase towards the end of the Old
Kingdom 93
2.4 Plan of the Old Kingdom town at Hierakonpolis, as
revealed by partial excavation 97
2.5 Plan of the town and temple enclosure remains at
Abydos 98
2.6 Plan of the Old Kingdom town at Elephantine 100
2.7 The remains of Tell Edfu 101
2.8 Comparative sizes of Old and Middle Kingdom
settlements 102
2.9 The Egyptian frontier at Semna during the Middle
Kingdom 133
2.10 Northern Egypt, Sinai and Palestine in Chalcolithic,
Early Bronze Age, late Predynastic and Early Dynastic
times 140
2.11 Lengths of reign from amongst the first fifty kings in
succession to the Twelfth Dynasty 15 2

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 FIGURES

2.12 Castle at Kerma (Western Deffufa, KI), contemporary

with the Hyksos period in Egypt 164
2.13 Part of the royal cemetery at Kerma, contemporary
with the Hyksos period in Egypt 165
2.14 Map of Egypt in the Old and Middle Kingdoms 169
2.15 Map of Nubia in the Old and Middle Kingdoms 172
3.1 Plans of a nobleman's villa at Tell El- Amarna and of an
artisan's house at Deir el-Medineh 193
3.2 Sectional view of a typical New Kingdom temple 198
3.3 An oracle is sought from a New Kingdom local god,
the deified King Amenhotep I 200
3.4 Schematic outline of the developed structure of
government in the new Kingdom 208
3.5 The changing pattern of Egyptian foreign relations in
(1) the New Kingdom and (2) the Third Intermediate
Period 210
3.6 Political map of Egypt in (1) the New Kingdom and
(2) the Third Intermediate Period 212
3.7 Reconstruction of typical New Kingdom provincial
settlement pattern 213
3.8 Plans of the towns of Tell el-Amarna and Thebes 216
3.9 Genealogy of the Twentieth Dynasty 225
3.10 The fluctuating values of emmer wheat and barley in
the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties 228
3.11 Diagram illustrating the history of the Merybast family
and their relations with two other powerful families of
the Twentieth Dynasty 230
3.12 Political map of Egypt in the late Third Intermediate
Period, and the recent pattern of population density
and agricultural yield 233
3.13 Genealogies and interrelationships of the Twenty-first
Dynasty 234
3.14 The Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties, and
their relationships with the High Priests of Amen of
Thebes and the governors of Herakleopolis 236
3.15 Simplification of fig. 3.14 to show basic pattern of
relationships 237
3.16 A passage from the Amada stela of Merenptah
describing the impalement of Libyans in the vicinity of
Memphis 238

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 FIGURES

3.17 Scenes carved upon the walls of a temple built by

Taharqa (Twenty-fifth Dynasty) at Kawa 244
3.18 Schematic version of the modern population pattern of
north-east Africa, probably approximating to that of
the second and first millennia BC 253
3.19 Maps of Wawat and Kush 256
3.20 Officials of the administration of Nubia under
Tutankhamen, bringing gifts to the viceroy Huy 261
3.21 Egyptianized Nubians (?) delivering tribute to the
viceroy Huy; and Nubians delivering tribute to
Tutankhamen 264
3.22 The three (?) chiefdoms of Lower Nubia (Wawat) in
the Eighteenth Dynasty 265
3.23 Genealogies and offices of the 'chieftains' families' of
(1) Tekhet and (2) Miam 267
3.24 Merchants from Punt arriving at the Red Sea coast of
Egypt and being received by Egyptian officials 271
3.25 The Libyans and Egypt in the New Kingdom 273
3.26 Mashwash Libyans fleeing the army of Ramesses III
during the Libyan campaign of his year 11 275
4.1 Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East in
the first millennium BC 283
4.2 Egypt in the first millennium BC 290
4.3 The genealogy of Petiese III 304
4.4 The site of Memphis 319
4.5 The site of Nebesheh 320
4.6 Plan of the Palace of Apries at Memphis 322
4.7 The Saqqara temple town in the Ptolemaic period 324
4.8 Schematized drawing to illustrate the principles of the
basin system of irrigation. 327
4.9 The Levant in the first millennium 339
4.10 Libya and the oases 344

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Fig. 4.4 is reproduced by courtesy of the Department of Egyptology,

University College London; Figs. 4.5 and 4.7 by permission of the
Egypt Exploration Society; Fig. 4.6 by permission of the author and
the editor of Mitteilungen des deutschen archdologischen Instituts Abteilung
Kairo; and Fig. 4.10 by permission of the American University in Cairo
Press.

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Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010
 PREFACE

Ancient Egypt has proved remarkably resistant to the writing of history

which is not traditional in character; which is not, in other words,
concerned primarily with the ordering of kings and the chronicling of
their deeds. Traditional, narrative history is the inescapable key to man's
historic past, but alongside this the twentieth century has seen the
emergence of a rich and varied range of alternative approaches, opening
up for exploration such fields as social and economic change and the
structure of political formations. These alternative approaches mirror
the many ways in which we analyse our own contemporary societies;
and thus they begin to provide continuity between past and present.
If the thread of continuity in the institutions of society is followed far
enough into the past, it leads us to the early civilizations of which Egypt
was one. Although much of the superficial image of ancient Egypt is
of a remote and alien world - and herein lies much of its popular
appeal - Egypt was one of a small number of centres which first
developed on a significant scale the apparatus of exploitation and of
bureaucratic government together with an ideology of social coherence,
and so created the basis for all modern states. Egypt has a particular
interest because, with relatively little disruption, one can trace the course
of development from primitive society to a time when the country
became just one part of a wider world of Mediterranean culture where
the innovations of formative phases had long been taken for
granted.
The difficulties of writing 'alternative' histories of Egypt are,
however, enormous. For one thing, the very completeness of the
chronological listing of kings which several generations of modern
scholars have given us creates an image of knowledge in detail which
other kinds of evidence cannot match. The abundance of royal art and
architecture compounds the problem with an illusion of familiarity. But
the truth is that the names and faces of great and lesser kings are masks
that conceal a void. Remove them and any kind of significant continuity
in written records which might interest the adventurous historian is
gone. What survives illuminates only tiny patches spread across a
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 PREFACE

three-thousand-year tapestry of human striving, inevitably raising the

question in each instance: is it typical, can we generalize from it?
Continuity of a different order is, however, provided by the material
remains that are open to the archaeologist to explore. But in Egypt
archaeology has remained stubbornly the servant of history, having
been consistently regarded from the beginning as a means of providing
scholars with further texts and royal monuments, and museums with
specimens of material culture which illustrate the typical. The idea that
archaeology, and especially settlement archaeology, if pursued with
sufficient attention to stratigraphy and spatial context, can offer a record
of social and economic change that has a validity of its own and is
parallel to the images created by written sources has been little pursued
until recently, and even now gathers momentum only fitfully. Technical
reasons peculiar to the Nile Valley provide some excuse. But at the heart
of this failure is the hypnotic power of the images which the monuments
and texts of ancient Egypt create. The urge to write something new
is rapidly thwarted.
The first three chapters of this book were written for a history in the
Cambridge series, namely, volume i of the Cambridge History of Africa.
From a combination of individual preference on the part of the authors
and enlightened patience on the part of the volume editor, J. Desmond
Clark, the authors followed their own ways in trying to write chapters
which addressed themselves more to the broader issues in the study of
the past which exist outside Egyptology; and, as well, in view of the
series of which the volume was but a single part, which explored Egypt's
relationship with African neighbours. If, at the outset, they had written
for a book with the present title their contributions might have turned
out a little differently in content, though not in tone, and it is this latter
aspect that has seemed to us to be the most important.
The first chapter spans the formative age of the Predynastic and Early
Dynastic Periods. From the introduction of a south-west Asian-style
subsistence economy into the Nile Valley, it follows the development
of agricultural communities leading to a few urban centres, the
appearance of court art and, through a phase of internal conflict,
the emergence of a political state. The second chapter analyses the
characteristics of Pharaonic Egypt in the ensuing phase of a mature state
still relatively isolated from the outside world. It comprises the periods
conventionally termed the Old and Middle Kingdoms and the First and
Second Intermediate Periods. One theme of great importance throughout
was the resolution of internal tensions between court and provinces,
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 PREFACE

and, at a personal level, between loyal service and private wealth

accumulation. It ended in a short period of foreign domination of
northern Egypt and of the Egyptian enclave in Nubia. The reaction to
foreign rule led to the rapid creation of an empire in Nubia and Western
Asia. The third chapter covers the imperial age (the New Kingdom)
and its complicated aftermath (the Third Intermediate Period). From
a richer body of source material it becomes possible to write more
knowledgeably on the structure of government, which embraced a
large court and an increasingly powerful priesthood. The post-imperial
period witnessed the reappearance of internal political tensions as a
major factor, and a new external group, the Libyans, exerting pressure
on the north of the country. The final chapter, specially written for this
volume, provides an account of society in the Late Period, the last
centuries of native rule and recognizably pharaonic culture when Egypt,
no longer a dominant military power, experienced periods of defeat and
subjugation by rulers from the Sudan, Assyria and Persia. But parallel
to military failures, distinctive developments in ideology and society
occurred which represent a significant readjustment of traditional forms
to greatly changed circumstances. For the first time, too, we have
descriptions of Egypt by outsiders, the Greeks, whose accounts are fully
utilized in the chapter. The period ends with the conquest of Egypt by
Alexander the Great, and the formal entry of Egypt into the Hellenized
world.

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 CHAPTER 1

THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

ORIENTATION

Through Pharaonic Egypt, Africa lays claim to being the cradle of one
of the earliest and most spectacular civilizations of antiquity. The aim
of this chapter is to trace the development of this civilization from the
introduction of a south-west Asian-style subsistence economy into the
Nile Valley to its florescence at the beginning of the Old Kingdom,
conventionally dated about 2700 BC. Egyptologists conventionally
divide this span into a Predynastic Period, prior to the traditional First
Dynasty of the Egyptian chronicler Manetho, and a subsequent Early
Dynastic Period, which corresponds with Manetho's first two dynasties.
This division has been justified by assuming that the beginning of the
First Dynasty corresponded with the political unification of Egypt and
marked a critical break in Egyptian history. While it is evident that
political unification played a major long-term role in shaping the
cultural patterns of ancient Egypt, this achievement was part of a
continuum of social and cultural change that was well advanced in late
Predynastic times and reached its culmination in the Old Kingdom.
Because of this, it is profitable to view the entire formative period of
Egyptian civilization as a single unit.
Although the Egyptian script was developed during the Early
Dynastic Period, written sources for this period are extremely limited
and present numerous epigraphic difficulties. Even the succession of
kings and the identifications of the royal Horus-names appearing on the
monuments of this period with the nebty- or insibya-names given in the
later king-lists are far from certain in many cases (see appendix, p. 69).x
For both the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods the archaeological
evidence tends to be largely restricted to cemeteries in Upper (southern)
Egypt, while in the north the Predynastic Period is mainly represented
by habitation sites that have been found in marginal locations and are
often poorly reported. Few stratified sites have been carefully excavated
and there is a dearth of reliable palaeobotanical or palaeozoological data.
These shortcomings of the archaeological data have recently been
1
For an outline of what is known about the dynastic history of the first two dynasties, see
Edwards (1971, pp. 1-35).
I

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

discussed in detail by a number of scholars, so that there is no need to

repeat their strictures here (see Arkell and Ucko 1965). Because of this,
I have chosen to focus on the positive, rather than the negative, aspects
of the work that has been accomplished to date.
This synthesis differs from many earlier ones in two important
respects. Firstly, all inferences about Egyptian prehistory that are based
principally on myths, religious texts and the distribution of religious
cults at a later period have been rejected. By treating this material as
an accurate reflection of political events in prehistoric times, Sethe
(1930) was able to postulate the existence of a Deltaic kingdom the
power of which spread over the whole of Egypt long prior to the First
Dynasty; however, many alternative and mutually exclusive historical
interpretations of the myths he used have been offered (Griffiths 1960,
pp. 119-48), while other scholars, notably Frankfort, have rejected the
proposition that there is any historical basis to these myths (Frankfort
1948, pp. 15-23). Whatever historical events may have influenced
Egyptian religious traditions, they can only be interpreted in the light
of what we know about the development of Egyptian culture from other
sources. The present study therefore limits itself to archaeological and
contemporary epigraphic data.
Secondly, those once-fashionable interpretations that automatically
assumed that in antiquity all cultural changes resulted from the intrusion
of new groups of settlers into an area have been eschewed. Petrie argued
that the Fayum A culture represented a ' Solutrean migration from the
Caucasus', which he stated was also the homeland of the Badarian
people. The Amratian white-lined pottery was introduced into Egypt
by ' Libyan invasions', while the Gerzean culture was brought there by
the 'Eastern Desert Folk', who overran and dominated Egypt. Finally,
Egypt was unified by the 'Falcon Tribe' or 'Dynastic Race', that
'certainly had originated in Elam' and came to Egypt by way of
Ethiopia and the Red Sea (Petrie 1939, pp. 3, 7, 77). In each case, Petrie's
arguments were based on alleged connections between a limited number
of traits found in Egypt and elsewhere, while the continuities in the
Egyptian cultural pattern as a whole were ignored.
Ideas of this sort have continued to exert a strong influence on
interpretations of early Egyptian development. On the basis of limited
similarities between the Badarian culture and the Khartoum Neolithic,
Arkell (Arkell and Ucko 1965) and Baumgartel (1970, p. 471) have
proposed a southern origin for the former. Vandier has suggested that
an invasion is necessary to account for the development of the Gerzean

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 THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

culture (Vandier 1952, pp. 330—2) and Emery (1961, pp. 38—42) has
recently maintained that the Early Dynastic culture was introduced by
a' master race' coming from the east. Each of these suggestions has been
specifically denied by other Egyptologists (see Arkell and Ucko 1965).
Today, however, a growing number of Egyptologists follow the lead
of Frankfort and Kantor in emphasizing the continuities rather than the
discontinuities in Egyptian prehistory (see again Arkell and Ucko 1965).
While foreign cultural traits can be shown to have diffused into Egypt
and become part of the Egyptian cultural pattern during the period we
are considering, there is no convincing archaeological or physical-
anthropological evidence of large-scale migrations into Egypt at this
time. It also now is recognized that cultural diffusion did not necessarily
involve large-scale migrations and that in order to understand why traits
were accepted at any particular period a thorough knowledge of the
recipient culture is essential. The latter point justifies concentrating on
the developmental continuities in Egyptian culture in the absence of any
clear-cut breaks in the archaeological record.
Prior to the last decade of the nineteenth century, no archaeological
finds were known that dated prior to the Third Dynasty. It was in 1894,
after a season at Koptos, that Petrie and Quibell began clearing the large
cemeteries at Naqada and El-Ballas (Petrie and Quibell 1895). These
produced the first clear evidence of the Amratian (or Naqada I) and
Gerzean (or Naqada II) cultures. Further excavations revealed these
cultures to be widely distributed in Upper Egypt. It was not, however,
until Brunton and Caton Thompson had worked in the vicinity of
El-Qaw, between 1922 and 1925, that the still earlier Badarian culture
was identified (Brunton and Caton Thompson 1928). The village sites
of the Northern Egyptian Predynastic Sequence were discovered still
later. The Fayum A sites, the only ones for which final reports are
available, were excavated by Caton-Thompson and Gardner between
1924 and 1926 (Caton-Thompson and Gardner 1934); Merimda, in the
western Delta, by Junker between 1928 and 1939; Ma'adi by Menghin
and Amer after 1930; and El-Omari by Debono between 1943 and 1952
(for references to this literature see Hayes (1965, pp. 139—46)). The
conviction that Egypt was not an important centre of plant and animal
domestication and a consequent shift of interest to south-western Asia
are, in part, responsible for the dearth of fieldwork on Predynastic sites
in recent years. Since 1952, the most important work on this period has
been restudies of earlier data by Baumgartel (1955, 1960), Kaiser (1956,
1957) and Kantor (1965).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Studies of Early Dynastic Egypt began with Amelineau's rough-shod

excavations of the royal cemetery of the First and Second Dynasties at
Abydos, which began in 1895 (Amelineau 1889—1905). This was
followed by the systematic re-excavation and publishing of this site by
Petrie between 1899 and 1901 (Petrie 1900, 1901a). In 1896—7, de
Morgan excavated a large First Dynasty tomb at Naqada and, in 1897-8,
Quibell and Green carried out excavations at Hierakonpolis which
yielded, among other treasures, the famous slate palette of King Narmer
(B. Adams 1974, Quibell 1900, Quibell and Green 1902). Further
discoveries were made by Petrie at Tarkhan and other sites and, in 1912,
Quibell found traces of large Early Dynastic tombs near the Step
Pyramid at Saqqara. Firth began to excavate these tombs in 1932 and,
after his death, this work was carried on by Emery between 1936 and
1956 (Emery 1949-58). From 1942 to 1954, Saad cleared a vast Early
Dynastic cemetery, containing many graves of less important officials,
at Helwan, on the east bank of the Nile opposite Saqqara (Saad 1969).

Chronology

Unlike in south-western Asia, few stratified sites have been discovered

in the Nile Valley that could serve as a basis for working out a cultural
chronology for Predynastic Egypt. Merimda appears to have been such
a site, but, for the most part, its stratigraphy has gone unrecorded. This
leaves the tiny site at El-Hammamiya, which was inhabited intermittently
from Badarian into Gerzean times, as the only stratified Predynastic site
with any chronological significance.
In an effort to work out a chronology for the graves of the Amratian
and Gerzean cultures, Petrie developed his system of ' Sequence
Dating', which constituted the first substantial application of the
principles of seriation in archaeology (Petrie 1901b, pp. 4—8: for recent
appreciations of Petrie's seriation see Kendall 1969, 1971). This system
was based on fluctuations in the popularity of different types of pottery
from some 900 graves, each containing not less than five different types.
On the basis of these fluctuations, Petrie assigned each grave to one of
fifty successive temporal divisions, numbered 30 to 80. The time-scale
is uncertain, so that it can only be said, for example, that S.D. (Sequence
Date) 40 is theoretically earlier than S.D. 41; further, there is no reason
to believe that the interval between S.D. 49 and 50 is necessarily the
same as between S.D. 60 and 61. It appears that the nearer Petrie's
divisions are to the historic period, the shorter periods of time they

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 THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

represent. Petrie placed the transition between the Amratian and

Gerzean cultures at about S.D. 40 and saw the transition between the
Gerzean and Early Dynastic Period (his Semainean Period) starting
about S.D. 65. The beginning of the Early Dynastic Period is now
placed at about this stage. In terms of cultural development, the most
important feature of Petrie's system is its assumption of enough stylistic
continuity and uninterrupted change to permit the construction of a
single developmental sequence from Amratian through into Early
Dynastic times. This continuity harmonizes very poorly with the
importance that Petrie attached to migrations as a principal source of
cultural change.
Continuities in varied categories of artifacts suggest that the Badarian
culture is earlier than the Amratian one and ancestral to it. The site at
El-Hammamiya provides stratigraphic evidence that the Badarian
culture came to an end before the end of the Amratian. Kaiser suggests,
however, that, since certain types of Amratian pottery are found in some
Badarian sites, the two are likely to have been contemporary with each
other and represent parallel cultures, or ethnic groups, inhabiting
different parts of Upper Egypt (Kaiser 1956, pp. 96—7; see also Hays
1976). Arkell and Ucko (1965) have pointed out that the mixture of
pottery could have come about as a result of the contamination of an
early site with later sherds and Kantor has argued that the similarities
between the two cultures can better be interpreted as evidence that
Badarian developed into Amratian (Kantor 1965, pp. 3-4). Brunton also
defined a Tasian culture which he claimed represented an earlier phase
of the Badarian. It is now generally agreed that the graves which are
assigned to this culture, and which have never been found in isolation
from Badarian and Old Kingdom ones, do not constitute a valid
assemblage (Arkell and Ucko 1965, Kantor 1965, p. 4). This leaves the
Badarian as the earliest known Predynastic culture in Upper Egypt.
Petrie's pottery classification has been described as 'the paraphernalia
of the Dark Ages' and the cultural chronology derived from his system
of Sequence Dating is now highly suspect in some of its details (Lucas
and Harris 1962, p. 385, n. 3 ; Ucko 1967). On the basis of a re-analysis
of the Predynastic cemetery at Armant, Kaiser (1957) has worked out
an alternative system which differs in many small respects from that of
Petrie and in which the Amratian-Gerzean sequence is divided into
three stages and eleven sub-stages. On the whole, however, the general
cultural sequence that Petrie worked out has stood the test of time
remarkably well (Vandier 1952, p. 233).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Lower Upper Lower Palestine Southern

Sudan
Years Nubia Egypt Egypt Mesopotamia
BCa Early Bronze
Old Kingdom - - _Age 111 —
(empty) Early
Omdurman Second Dynasty Early Bronze Dynastic
Bridge Age II
First Dynasty
3000 A-group
Protoliterate
Abkan/ Late Ma'adi Early Bronze c and d
Khartoum Khartoum Age I
Neolithic .j/ariant/ Gerz
El-Omari Protoliterate
Late
Shamar- Early a and b
3500 _ -7 7 --L -?-- Chalcolithic
kian
7 -7.
Ghassulian
Amratian Merimde 'Ubaid

4000

Bada Fayum A I Jericho V11I

Shamarkian
etc.
and other
cultures

4500

Khartoum Pottery
Mesolithic Neolithic

5000
a 14
Dates before 3000 BC based on C dates using 5568-year half-life
Fig. I.I Relative chronology of Egypt and neighbouring regions.

Not enough material has been published so far to permit a seriation

of artifacts from the habitation sites which belong to the distinctive
Northern Egyptian Predynastic Sequence. On the basis of similarities
in specific types of artifacts, the Fayum A culture has been roughly
correlated with the Badarian, the apparently long-inhabited site of
Merimda with the Amratian, and El-Omari and Ma'adi with successive
stages of the Gerzean (Kantor 1965, pp. 4—6). The main reason for
suggesting that Fayum A was earlier than Badarian was the total absence
of metal in Fayum A. Metal is also lacking at Merimda and El-Omari,
however, which clearly are coeval with the Upper Egyptian Sequence.
Although Baumgartel has argued that the Northern Sequence is
culturally retarded and that hence all of these sites date much later,
radiocarbon datings support the generally-accepted sequence and pro-
posed correlations with the south (Baumgartel 195 5, pp. 14-17, 120—2).
These dates also provide possible support for the priority of Fayum
within the Northern Sequence, since the datesforFayum A overlap only

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 THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

with the earlier ones from Merimda. The later Merimda dates correlate
with the two available for Amratian, while the one date for El-Omari
correlates with those for the Gerzean culture (fig. I . I ) .
Since the first radiocarbon dates became available, it has been
observed that dates for earlier Egyptian historic material are consistently
younger than the calendar dates established on the basis of dynastic
chronologies. This led some Egyptologists to doubt the applicability
of this dating technique to their region or to use it only as a means of
establishing relative dates, while others became concerned that the
historical chronology might be too long (Hayes 1970, pp. 192-3;
H. S. Smith 1964; Trigger 1968, p. 64). Recent calibrations of dated
tree-rings of bristlecone pine with the radiocarbon dates that these
tree-rings have yielded have indicated major fluctuations in the for-
mation of 14 C, which have now been studied as far back as 5 200 BC. These
studies indicate that radiocarbon dates are approximately 200 years too
recent by the end of the mid second millennium BC and some 800 or
900 years too recent by the beginning of the sixth millennium. While
these calibrations remain at the experimental stage, they would place
the majority of radiocarbon dates for the Early Dynastic Period between
the calendar dates 3400 and 2650 BC. Traditionally, Egyptologists have
dated the beginning of this period between 3100 and 2900 BC and the
end of the Second Dynasty about 2686 BC (Derricourt 1971, Suess 1970).
If the calibrations that have been suggested for dates prior to
3000 BC are accepted, they would extend the duration of the known
Predynastic sequences over a much longer period. Known radiocarbon
dates for Fayum A would fall roughly between the calendar years 4700
and 5200 BC; Merimda between 3500 and 5200 BC (and, rejecting one
date, between 4600 and 5200 BC); and the single date for El-Omari
between 4000 and 4200 BC. Only two dates are available for the
Amratian culture, but these fall about 4500 to 4700 BC, while the three
Gerzean dates range between 3500 and 4600 BC. TWO potsherds from
the lowest Badarian level (below the breccia) at El-Hammamiya recently
have yielded thermoluminescent dates of 5 5 80 + 420 and 5495+405 BC.
Five other presumably Badarian sherds from higher levels in the site
date, according to depth in the deposit, to between 4360+355 and
4690+ 365 BC; while a Gerzean sherd from the still higher 2.5-foot level
is dated 3775 + 330 BC. 1 More thermoluminescent dates must be
obtained before their implications can be considered.
1
For details of these determinations see Derricourt (1971). For correct attributions of dates
to the Amratian and Gerzean cultures see Arkell and Ucko (1965) and Kantor (1965, p. 5). For

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

The radiocarbon dates suggest a longer duration for the Gerzean

culture than the archaeological evidence indicates is at all likely. The
radiocarbon calibrations prior to 3000 BC may be too early. Alternatively,
the Gerzean sample is small and the dates were obtained early in the
development of the radiocarbon method, using specimens whose
radiocarbon content may have been altered by contamination with fossil
fuels during long periods of unprotected storage in museums. It may
be significant in this respect that the date for a sample collected recently
from the Fayum Kom K site is several hundred years more recent than
for two samples collected by Caton-Thompson. More determinations
will be needed from Egypt, and the proposed calibrations carefully
tested, before an acceptable radiocarbon chronology is worked out prior
to 3000 BC.

Environment
The Nile floodplain was formerly believed to have been a vast
swampland, unfit for permanent settlements. It was believed that, at
first, human beings lived only along the edges of the valley, locating
their camp-sites at the foot of cliffs or on rocky promontories. Only as
the highlands turned into desert was man forced to settle in the jungle-like
valley bottom and to begin the arduous process of clearing it. Passarge
and Butzer have come to the conclusion that the topography of the
valley is such that swamps were always a minor feature of the landscape,
except in the northern Delta. Most of the plain consisted of seasonally
flooded natural basins which supported various grasses and brush
vegetation during the dry season. The higher levees along the river were
covered with trees, such as acacia, tamarisk and sycamore, and the ones
that remained permanently out of the water were ideal sites for
year-round habitation. Butzer has also obtained evidence which indicates
that the Delta has not extended seaward in recent millennia and that
physical conditions there in Predynastic times were little different from
what they are today. Raised sand deposits would have provided ideal
loci for settlement within the inner Delta, immediately adjacent to the
rich soils of this area (Butzer 1959, Passarge 1940). These observations
run completely counter to Baumgartel's argument that the Delta was
the thermoluminescent darings see Caton-Thompson «nd Whittle (1975) and Whittle (1975). It
should also be noted that the currently accepted, but admittedly somewhat speculative, chronology
of early Egyptian history has recently been called into question by Mellaart (1979). On the basis
of radiocarbon determinations, Mellaart proposes to date the beginning of the First Dynasty at
about 3400 BC-and the end of the Second Dynasty at about 2950 BC. Mesopotamian periods are
moved correspondingly back in time.

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 THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

unfit for human settlement much before the Early Dynastic Period
(Baumgartel 1955, p. 3).
Instead of there being unremitting desiccation in north-eastern
Africa at the end of the last Ice Age, there is evidence of increased
rainfall and runoff on the steppes adjacent to Egypt at several intervals
thereafter. The first appears to have lasted from about 9200 to 6000 BC,
while another began about 5 000 BC and, after a dry interval, continued
after 4000 BC. Fairly abundant vegetation persisted in the wadis of
northern and eastern Egypt until as late as 2350 BC, by which time a
level of aridity comparable to the present was established (Butzer 1971,
p. 584). At the maxima of precipitation, the northern Red Sea Hills
supported tree cover and grazing land, while trees and wild grasses
also grew in the wadis on both sides of the Nile and fish lived in the
pondings along these wadis (Murray 1951; W. A. Fairservis, personal
communication). During such periods, these upland areas and wadi
systems, as well as the Nile Valley itself, supported considerable
numbers of elephant, giraffe, rhinoceros, ostrich, wild ass and cattle, as
well as antelope, gazelle, ibex and deer. That the adjacent deserts had
become far more habitable than they are today during the period that
saw the rise of Egyptian civilization vitiates the suggestion that an
increase in population, resulting from climatic deterioration on the
neighbouring steppes, played a major role in encouraging the develop-
ment of civilization in the Nile Valley (Butzer 1971, p. 594). The
moister climate appears to have facilitated the movement of human
populations into and through the desert and this, in turn, may have
encouraged more communication and more rapid cultural change in the
Sahara.
There is considerable evidence that both the river bed and floodplain
of the Nile in Egypt have slowly aggraded throughout historic times,
as the result of the annual deposit of a thin layer of silt. Although an
average rise of 10 cm per century is frequently quoted, Butzer has shown
that the rate of deposition has varied considerably from one period to
another. Between about 4000 and 3000 BC, the Nile floodplain in Lower
Nubia appears to have been six to seven metres higher than at present
(Butzer 1959, Butzer and Hansen 1968, pp. 276—8). A review of annual
flood heights recorded on the Palermo Stone later in the Old Kingdom
indicates a decrease in the average height and volume of the Nile flood
during the First Dynasty. Bell (1970) has estimated that the difference
between the average flood height of the First Dynasty and that of the
Second to Fifth Dynasties is not less than a decline of 0.7 m.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

It appears that throughout Egyptian history most settlements have

been built on the floodplain, while, in Upper Egypt at least, cemeteries
are frequently located in the desert, just beyond the edge of the
cultivation. As a result, most living-sites, except those located on high
ground or built, like the town of Kom Ombo, on tells formed by the
debris of earlier villages, have either been buried under more recent
deposits of silt or washed away by changes in the course of the river.
This explains the low ratio of Predynastic, and later, living-sites to
cemeteries that has been recovered in Upper Egypt (Butzer 1966). It
also appears that between 8000 and 5000 BC the Egyptianfloodplainwas
lower than it is today and the valley narrower; hence in most places
even the cemeteries that were located along the margins of the flooded
land at that time are now buried under more recent deposits of alluvium
(Butzer 1971, p. 5 87; Wendorf, Said and Schild 1970). Butzer has shown
that in Middle Egypt, which was hitherto often believed to be
uninhabited in Predynastic times, cemeteries of this period are likely to
have been either destroyed by shifts in the channel of the river or buried
under substantial later deposits of sand and alluvium. Dunes have been
particularly active on the west bank of the Nile in this part of Egypt,
while, on the east bank, few landforms which would have been close
to the edge of the valley in Predynastic times yet which remain unburied
by later silts can be found north of Deir el-Gabrawi (Butzer 1961). The
Predynastic habitation sites that have survived are all on scarps or
embankments several metres above the present alluvium. According to
Butzer, their preservation is fortuitous, since it was only sites at this
height that have escaped the inundations and lateral expansion of
irrigation in recent years.
This suggests that known distributions of Predynastic cultures may
be determined more by geological than by cultural factors. For example,
it is possible that both the Badarian and Amratian cultures extended
almost as far north as did the Gerzean. Moreover, while all the people
of Upper Egypt are assumed to have buried their dead on the margins
of the Valley, it seems likely that most of the richest and culturally most
advanced settlements were built on now-buried levees along the banks
of the river and hence have never been discovered by archaeologists.
This raises the possibility that the small Badarian settlements studied
by Brunton, or the El-Hammamiya site, may be the encampments of
simple pastoral groups, living both geographically and culturally on the
fringes of a more advanced society. There is good evidence that an
important part of the Predynastic settlement at Hierakonpolis extended

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 THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

onto the floodplain, where the settlement was located in historic times
(Butzer 1966, Vandier 1952, p. 519).

Language

Numerous similarities have long been apparent in the grammar, lexicon

and phonology of ancient Egyptian and the Semitic languages. Because
of this, it is often stated that Egyptian is either a Semitic language
obscured by change or a Creole language resulting from the mixing, in
Predynastic times, of an ' African' and a Semitic language. This African
language is sometimes identified as a Hamitic language (which some-
times is, and sometimes is not, believed to be distantly related to
Semitic) and sometimes as a 'Negro' language (Lambdin 1961, Vergote
1970). Such speculation has been closely related to theories that there
were various migrations into Egypt from south-western Asia in
prehistoric times and that these have resulted in ethnic and cultural
changes.
Borrowings from some Semitic language or languages are well
attested in historic times and Kees and others are probably correct in
concluding that these languages exerted a strong influence over
Egyptian in late Predynastic times, when there is also evidence of
south-west Asian influence in the realms of art and material culture
generally (Kees 1961, p. 42). There is, however, no evidence of an
'African substratum' in ancient Egyptian, in the sense that it can be
proved that all of the similarities with the Semitic languages found in
Egyptian are borrowings superimposed on an identifiable, specifically
African language. On the contrary, Greenberg (1955, pp. 43—61) has
shown that many of these similarities are not borrowings at all, but
indicate that both Egyptian and the Semitic languages are derived from
a common ancestor. He has also demonstrated that Semitic, ancient
Egyptian and Cushitic, found to the east of the Nile (principally in
Ethiopia), and Berber and Chadic, found in the western Sudan,
constitute five co-ordinate branches of the Afroasiatic (or Hamito-
Semitic) language family. It now seems likely that the Cushitic languages
constitute not one, but two, major branches of Afroasiatic (Cushitic
proper and Omotic) alongside Berber, Egyptian, Chadic and Semitic
(Fleming 1969). Greenberg has the impression that Old Kingdom
Egyptian and Akkadian are slightly more differentiated than Romanian
and Portuguese, which would suggest 5 5 00 to 6000 BC as the time when
the branches of Afroasiatic became separate from one another (Trigger

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

1968, p. 74, based on J. H. Greenberg, personal communication). While

no studies of the lexical aspects of proto-Afroasiatic have been under-
taken in order to shed light on the geographical point of origin of these
languages, the 'principle of least moves' would suggest the eastern
Sudan, or perhaps Egypt, as likely areas (Fleming 1969). Alternatively,
while western Africa seems an unlikely point of origin, it is possible
that, if special economic conditions, or population pressures, existed in
south-western Asia, the language family might have been carried
westward into Africa from that region. Although it is as yet impossible
to trace the spread of Afroasiatic in the archaeological record, it does
not seem impossible that Chadic and Berber were carried into the
western Sahara during the 'wet phase' that began about 5000 BC.
In any case, it appears quite likely that the Predynastic cultures of
Egypt were associated with a people who already spoke Egyptian and
that later, specifically Semitic, borrowings were made from a closely
related group of languages. These borrowings are, however, much less
spectacular than was formerly believed and cannot be construed as
evidence of creolization or massive population mergers. Of the hypo-
thesized non-Afroasiatic 'African substratum' no trace exists.

Physical Anthropology
Just as some linguists have tried to discern an 'African substratum' in
the Egyptian language, so some Egyptologists have assumed that the
earliest Predynastic population was negroid, and see in any caucasoid
element evidence of the later migration of'Hamito-Semitic' types into
the country. Too often there has been a tendency to attribute the
cultural development of Egypt to the repeated incursions of people of
the latter type. Batrawi, on the other hand, has shown from the careful
study of osteological evidence that there was very little change in
physical type in Upper Egypt from Predynastic times into the historic
period (Batrawi 1945, 1946). Although there was some variation within
the population, the Upper Egyptian people were mostly small in stature
and had long narrow skulls, dark wavy hair and brown skin. This
continuity in physical type does not provide evidence of migration or
gene flow, although it cannot rule out the possibility that new groups
of similar physical type entered Upper Egypt from time to time.
Skeletons found at Merimda, El-Omari and Ma'adi suggest that the
Predynastic inhabitants of the Delta were taller and more sturdily built
than the Upper Egyptians and that their skulls were broader. Morant

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(1925) saw in such skeletons evidenceforthe early existence of a ' Lower

Egyptian type', which persisted in the north into the Hellenistic period
and gradually modified the physical type present in Upper Egypt. The
most recent use of physical anthropological findings to advance
culture-historical arguments has been Emery's acceptance of Derry's
theory of a 'Dynastic Race' as proof that the Early Dynastic civilization
was brought into Egypt by a 'civilized aristocracy or master race'.
Emery claims that this group may have originated along the Indian
Ocean and also may have laid the foundations of the Sumerian
civilization (Emery 1961, pp. 39—40). Edwards has suggested more
cautiously that' the fresh knowledge they may have brought with them'
accounts for the 'acceleration in cultural progress observable at this
time' (Edwards 1971, pp. 40-1). According to Derry (1956), a massively
built, mesocephalic people entered Egypt about the start of the First
Dynasty, probably from Asia, since they can be identified with the
armenoid physical type found in that region. By the end of the First
Dynasty, they had penetrated as far south as Abydos and gradually were
merging with the indigenous population. It would appear that, in fact,
the Predynastic population of Lower Egypt was ancestral to Derry's
'Dynastic Race' and that he was interpreting a basically geographical
difference as an irruption of new settlers into the Nile Valley (Berry,
Berry and Ucko 1967, Hayes 1965, p. 135). The population of the Delta
was probably in contact with south-western Asia in prehistoric times,
and settlers may have entered the region and mingled with the local
population throughout this period, as they did in later times. This
process may explain some of the similarities that Derry noted between
these people and the armenoid type, common in Syria and Lebanon.
It is prudent, however, to assume that whatever gene flow went on in
northern Egypt, at least in later Predynastic times, was incidental to
cultural development. To go further and attribute the Early Dynastic
culture, or any earlier one, to the appearance of an intrusive ethnic group
is to transgress permissible limits of inference.

PREDYNASTIC EGYPT

Predynastic Subsistence Patterns

The lower reaches of the Nile and the Tigris—Euphrates valleys are both
extensive, but circumscribed, areas of rich, easily cultivated alluvium.
As such, they shared the potential of becoming centres of high

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population density and of early civilizations. In spite of this, the

differences between the two areas were very great. The natural
floodplain of the Nile Valley was wider and richer than the Mesopo-
tamian one and the annual floodwaters more predictable and less
difficult to control. Moreover, salination did not pose a serious problem
to the Egyptian farmer as it did in Mesopotamia. Merely by modifying
natural basins to retain the floodwaters for longer periods, it was
possible to convert the edges of the Nile floodplain into highly
productive agricultural land. This was particularly easy to do from
Abydos southwards, where these basins were smaller and more easily
managed than in Middle Egypt or the Delta. Grain was one of ancient
Egypt's principal exports and Herodotus, who travelled widely, stated
that the Delta was the easiest land to work in the known world (Butzer
1976, pp. 18-22; Frankfort et al. 1949, pp. 39—51, 138—9). Throughout
Predynastic times periodic rainfall over the catchments of wadis
draining towards the Nile seems to have facilitated a limited amount
of agriculture along the margins of the Nile Valley. Farming of this type
may have been of no small importance in the early phases of the
development of an agricultural economy in this area.
The general settings of Egypt and Mesopotamia were even more
different than their river valleys. Mesopotamia was flanked by a series
of highly diversified local environments embracing a variety of different
altitudes, rainfall patterns and distributions of vegetation. Particularly
in the north and west, these included areas that had witnessed the
earliest development of sedentary agricultural life. Such diversity was
conducive to trade, communication and, under pressure from expanding
populations, innovations in subsistence patterns. The relative ecological
uniformity of the Sahara and its limited potential for sustaining more
than a meagre population even under the most favourable conditions
provide a striking contrast with the Mesopotamian hinterland and
explain the rudimentary cultural development of this region into later
times. While the political, economic and cultural relationship between
the Nile Valley and its Saharan hinterland is a subject that deserves
careful study, it seems clear that the peoples of the Sahara played a far
less important role in the rise of Egyptian civilization than the peoples
bordering on Mesopotamia did in that area.
With the development of intensive agriculture in the Nile Valley, its
inhabitants became increasingly isolated from their Saharan neighbours
by a distinctive and internally highly differentiated way of life; the
Egyptians had little motivation, of an economic or any other sort, for
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much reciprocal interaction with them. To no small degree, the power

of the Egyptian state must have rested on the scorn and distrust that
the Egyptian peasant felt towards the desert-dwellers and on his
inability to adapt to life outside the Nile Valley. Ancient Egyptian
civilization reflected in many ways this economic and cultural inde-
pendence from the cultures of its desert hinterland, which contributed
in no small degree to the self-sufficiency and ethnocentrism that, more
than for most other early civilizations, were its special hallmarks
(Frankfort et al. 1949, p. 45).
The lack of geological deposits in the Nile Valley north of Aswan
which can be dated to between 8000 and 5000 BC hinders an under-
standing of the beginnings of a food-producing economy in this area.
Moreover, the study of the Predynastic cultures to date has been such
that even more recent food-producing sites which lacked or contained
only very simple pottery are likely to have been overlooked. It has been
pointed out, quite correctly, that there is no reason to believe that the
Fayum A and Badarian cultures are necessarily the oldest food-producing
cultures in this part of the Nile Valley (Arkell and Ucko 1965). In a
recent paper, Clark has reviewed the evidence for the independent origin
of food production in the Nile Valley. He stresses the rich faunal
resources of the region in early Holocene times and draws attention to
the wide range of edible and potentially domesticable trees and plants
there (possibly including wild barley). He queries whether this rich
environment provided the basis for a population increase that en-
couraged the subsequent manipulation of these resources or whether,
as in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, this very richness of natural resources
inhibited rather than stimulated innovation. He also suggests that the
rapid adoption of an agricultural complex that was largely of external
derivation might have taken place more easily if earlier local experi-
mentation had made the Egyptians aware of the advantages to be gained
by doing this (Clark 1971).
In spite of this, direct evidence for what was happening prior to
5000 BC is available only from south and west of the Egyptian Nile
Valley. As P. E. L. Smith has explained (Smith 1982), Wendorf has pos-
tulated a reliance on wild grains among some late Pleistocene groups in
Nubia and Upper Egypt, beginning well before 10000 BC. While
putative evidence, in the form of grinding stones, persists into Terminal
Palaeolithic times (about 6000—5000 BC), there is no clear evidence of
increasing sedentariness or group size. Wendorf has therefore suggested
that a trend towards incipient cultivation was reversed when increasing

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

desiccation made wild grains less abundant before the populations of

Egypt and Nubia had become fully dependent on them (Wendorf 1968,
vol. n, p. 1059; Wendorf */ a/. 1970). Hobler and Hester (1969) have
suggested the specialized collecting or incipient cultivation by
floodwater farming of unknown grains (perhaps millet, Panicum
turgidum) at the Dunqul Oasis, west of the Nile, at about 6000 BC. They
also suggest that it may have been from this area that ideas of food
production were introduced up and down the Nile Valley. Possible
cultivation in the Ahaggar has been suggested by pollen grains of
Pennisetum from Amekni, dated to between 6100 and 4800 BC and by
a ' type of cultivated grass' at Meniet from the first half of the fourth
millennium BC (Camps 1969^. 188, also Camps 1982,pp. 566—9;Hugot
1968). Whatever the status of this evidence, collecting wild grass or
incipient food production did not lead to the development of sedentary
communities in the Sahara; instead the pattern appears to have given
way to nomadic pastoralism as domestic animals became available and
as the climate of the Sahara deteriorated (P. E. L. Smith 1976).
The best evidence of increasing sedentariness in Holocene times in
the Nile Valley is the presumably pre-agricultural 'Khartoum Meso-
lithic' culture, whose type-site appears to have been inhabited, at least
seasonally, for a considerable period of time. At this site, a wide variety
of animal bones were found, bone harpoons indicate thatfishingwas
important and grinding stones are reported, although Arkell believes
that these were used only for grinding ochre. The apparently negroid
population that inhabited this site also gathered the fruit of wild trees,
such as Celtis integrifolia. Shelters were constructed of reeds covered with
clay, and brown pottery bowls were decorated with wavy lines and later
also with dots (Arkell 1949). Related pottery has been found as far north
as Dongola and from Kassala, in the east, west to the Ennedi, Tenere
and Ahaggar; some of the latter has been radiocarbon dated to between
6000 and 5000 BC (Arkell and Ucko 1965, Clark 1971, Marks 1968). This
pottery is, however, associated with different lithic industries and
therefore seems to have diffused among established local groupings. Its
wide distribution may bear witness to the growing sedentariness made
possible by a highly successful collecting economy which flourished
along the southern fringes of the Sahara during a period of increased
rainfall, in the fourth millennium or earlier. It must be remembered,
however, that the rich resources of the Nile Valley seem to have given
rise to at least some permanently occupied settlements in Egypt already
in Upper Palaeolithic times (Clark 1971).

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The domesticated plants and animals that were of major economic

importance in Predynastic Egypt generally seem to have been utilized
in south-western Asia at a still earlier period (Wright 1971). The
important plant domesticates were wheat, barley and flax (all efficient
winter-rainfall crops) and the domesticated animals were sheep, goats,
dogs, cattle and pigs. The only obviously locally domesticated animal
was the donkey (Equus asinus), which is convincingly represented as tame
in the art of the late Predynastic period (Zeuner 1963, pp. 375—6). The
herding of gazelles has also been suggested for the Gerzean period on
the basis of kill patterns, although the true significance of this evidence
is far from certain (Reed 1966). There is no evidence of either Panicum
or Pennisetum species in Egypt in early times, despite the alleged use of
millet farther west; however, grains oiEchinochloa colonum, a Panicum-type
grass, have been found in the intestines of corpses from the Predynastic
cemetery at Naga ed-Deir and it has been suggested that this plant was
being cultivated as a cereal at that time (Clark 1971, Dixon 1969). It
has also been conjectured that the Ethiopian domesticate enset {Ensete
edule) might have been an important food crop in Egypt before it was
displaced by wheat; however, the alleged representations of enset on
Gerzean pottery are generally believed to be aloes (Simoons 1965).
Whatever steps towards plant and animal domestication may have been
taken locally, these domesticates appear to have given way before the
superior types of domesticates that had been developed in south-western
Asia.
On the basis of evidence from the Fayum, Wendorf is of the opinion
that the technological and typological differences between the local
Terminal Palaeolithic industry and Fayum A, which is only about 1000
radiocarbon years later, are so great that Fayum A is unlikely to have
developed from a local Palaeolithic culture. He therefore suggests that
the early Predynastic cultures record the arrival of a new population
in Egypt, who brought with them the cultural base from which
Egyptian civilization was to develop (Wendorf et al. 1970). If, in fact,
the Afroasiatic language family originated elsewhere than in Egypt, the
appearance of this ' new population' might correspond with the arrival
of the first ancient Egyptian-speakers in their historic homeland.
Unfortunately, the Fayum is somewhat peripheral to the Nile Valley,
so that the transition between the Terminal Palaeolithic and Predynastic
cultures may have been somewhat later than it was along the River Nile.
In view of the variety of Palaeolithic industries in the Nile Valley at
any one time and the long gap that remains in the archaeological record,

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it seems best to leave open the possibility that, in some fashion, the lithic
traditions of Predynastic times evolved from a Palaeolithic culture
native to the Nile Valley. It has been suggested that the bifacial
technique of stone-working may have spread north from a nuclear area
in the Congo and western Sudan during a period of climatic amelioration
in the Sahara (Clark 1962). It is also possible that the movement of
domesticates across the Sinai peninsula was aided by the wet phase that
began about 5000 BC, although an unconfirmed relationship between
the microlithic industry found near Helwan and that of the Natufian
culture (about 9500—7500 BC) may suggest possible ties between Egypt
and Palestine while the latter area was passing through a stage of
incipient agriculture and animal domestication. While the Natufian
corresponded with a period of climatic amelioration, no evidence of
domesticates has been forthcoming, although pig bones occur in refuse
heaps (Reed 1966).
Wheat, barley and flax are already present in the Fayum A culture.
The only species of wheat prevalent in early times was emmer (Triticum
dicoccum). A small amount of club wheat (T. compactuni) has been found
at Merimda and El-Omari, but Helbaek is of the opinion that it was
a stray, accompanying other crops, which did not establish itself in
Egypt (Dixon 1969). Wild emmer (T. dicoccoides) occurs in the upper
part of the Jordan Valley, while einkorn (T. monococcum) seems to have
been domesticated in west central Turkey about 6000 BC. Although both
emmer and einkorn have been identified as grown at Jericho as early
as 6500 BC, only the former made its way into Egypt (J. M. Renfrew
1969). Barley was an important crop in Egypt from early times and
occurs in the abdominal contents of a large number of human bodies
of Pre-dynastic date from Naga ed-Deir in Upper Egypt (Dixon 1969).
The wild ancestor of barley {Hordeum spontaneum) is widely dispersed
around the fringes of the fertile crescent. Reports of naked barley in
ancient Egypt have not been substantiated and four- and six-rowed
hulled types appear to be most common. Six-rowed hulled barley
requires large amounts of water and thus was suited for cultivation in
the Nile Valley. It is reported from Ali Kosh, in Iran, about 6000 BC,
but became an established food crop in south-western Asia only after
the appearance of irrigation about 5500 BC (Wright 1971). The wild
ancestor of flax (Linum bienne) occurs in the Kurdish foothills and may
have been domesticated there (J. M. Renfrew 1969). Although current
evidence favours an Asian origin for all the principal Egyptian
cultigens, Vavilov and Sauer have maintained that wheat and barley

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were first domesticated in Ethiopia (Simoons 1965, Wright 1971). While

this now seems highly unlikely, the possibility must be left open that
rainfall regimes resulted in distributions of wild plants in early Holocene
times different from those postulated on the basis of modern distri-
butions. Some surprises may therefore be in order.
The full complement of domestic animals, except for the donkey, is
generally assumed to have been present in Egypt throughout the
Predynastic period; however, osteological studies are lacking for most
sites. According to Reed, bones of domestic goats are attested with
certainty no earlier than the Amratian period, while domesticated sheep
and dogs are attested in the Gerzean, and probably domesticated cattle
and pigs also. Goat skins have been reported, however, from Badarian
sites; dogs, resembling the greyhound or saluki type, are represented
on leads on an Amratian pottery vessel; and what seem to be models
of domesticated cattle have been found in graves of the same period
(Reed 1966, Zeuner 1963, pp. 138, 222).
There is no evidence that the wild ancestor of the goat (Capra hircus
aegagras) lived in Africa or that wild sheep (Ovis orientalis) were ever found
south of Syria. Likewise, there is no support for ArkelPs suggestion
(in Wright 1971) that the dwarf goat, found at the Gerzean site of Tukh
and at Esh-Shaheinab, is descended from the so-called 'native dwarf
goat' found in Algeria and Zaire (Reed 1966, Wright 1971). Sheep and
goats were both domesticated in south-western Asia considerably
earlier than the first known Predynastic cultures and the earliest dated
occurrence of one or both these animals in north-eastern Africa is in
the Neolithic levels at Haua Fteah (radiocarbon-dated about 4800 BC),
while the earliest occurrence to the south of Egypt is at the ' Khartoum
Neolithic' site of Esh-Shaheinab (radiocarbon-dated about 3100 to
3 5 00 BC) (Arkell 19 5 3, pp. 15-18; Higgs 1967). While it is possible that
these domesticates reached Haua Fteah by way of the Mediterranean
and north-west Africa, it is equally possible, and perhaps more likely,
that they spread south and west after reaching northern Egypt across
the Sinai peninsula. The absence of other domesticates at both Haua
Fteah and Esh-Shaheinab further suggests that sheep and goats may
have reached north-eastern Africa ahead of other domesticates. Prior
to the Middle Kingdom, Egyptian sheep were a screw-horn, hair
variety, also known in Mesopotamia. Goats display a range of horn
types similar to those found in Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in
Palestine (Zeuner 1963, pp. 138, 178).
Zeuner is of the opinion that both long- and short-horned breeds of

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domestic cattle in Egypt were descended from the native long-horned

wild cattle of North Africa (Bos primigenius), although Gaillard has
argued that a separate subspecies of wild short-horned cattle lived in
Upper Egypt during the late Pleistocene (Zeuner 1963, p. 222).1 Wild
pigs also seem to have been abundant in the Delta and Reed believes
it likely that these were domesticated by the Egyptians rather than
domesticated pigs being driven across the Sinai Desert. It would appear,
however, that, even if Egyptian domesticated pigs and cattle were bred
from North African wild ancestors, the idea of their domestication must
have come from south-western Asia, where there is a definite priority
for domesticated pigs and a highly likely priority for domesticated cattle.
Although cattle are not milked in parts of West Africa at the present
time, there is definite evidence that they were milked in Egypt at least
as early as the Old Kingdom.
While the late Neolithic economy of Egypt appears to be an extension
of that found in the Near East, an older indigenous pattern of hunting,
fishing and utilizing wild plants appears to have played an important
role in the subsistence economy of Egypt until the late Predynastic
Period. As the population increased and the onset of desiccation began
to affect the adjacent deserts, natural plant resources diminished and
many species of animals began to die out or were drastically curtailed
in numbers. Elephants, giraffes and ostriches seem to have disappeared
from both the desert and the floodplain in late Predynastic times, while
the remaining savanna-type species, including antelope, ibex and
gazelle, were decimated before the start of the Middle Kingdom (Butzer
1958, p. 114). On the other hand, large swamp- and river-dwelling
animals, hippopotami and crocodiles, managed to survive throughout
the Pharaonic period, although their habitats continued to diminish as
a result of land clearance. The disappearance of animals from the
floodplain probably resulted, in large part, from the pre-empting of their
natural habitats by human beings for fields and for grazing land for their
animals. This trend would have been intensified after the First Dynasty
by lower flood levels, which resulted in a narrower floodplain. It is
uncertain from the archaeological record when an increasing population
made it necessary to supplement simple floodplain and runoff cultivation
by increasingly modifying natural basins. While the drainage works that
Herodotus later claimed were carried out at the beginning of the First
Dynasty suggest a long-standing familiarity with the problems
connected with large-scale irrigation projects (Baumgartel 1970, p. 482),
1
These are almost certainly female Bos primigenius (Reed 1966).

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additional proof of this is lacking. Basin agriculture and flash flood

cultivation can be practised on a small scale and it seems likely that,
as in Mesopotamia, large-scale undertakings were a result of centralized
control rather than an important factor in the development of this
control (Frankfort 1956, p. 33; Nims 1965, p. 34).

The Northern Predynastic Sequence

Knowledge of Predynastic sites in northern Egypt is extremely limited.
No sites of this period have been discovered as yet in the inner Delta,
which was almost certainly the key area of settlement in northern Egypt
in Predynastic as it was in later times (Wilson 1955). Most of these sites
now either lie below the watertable or are covered by more recent
settlements. A small number of sites found at the apex of the Delta and
around its margins indicate that in Predynastic times the cultural pattern
of this region was different from that of Upper Egypt. The principal
sites are, however, few in number and located some distance apart, hence
it is not always possible to distinguish clearly between temporal and
geographical variations in culture. All of these sites appear to be
characterized by undecorated, or simply incised, monochrome red or
black pottery. Throughout all of Egypt, early Predynastic pottery tends
to lack handles, spouts or fancy lips and to take the form of open bowls,
cups and dishes. Later, closed and fancy forms of vessels become more
common. There is, however, a total absence in the Northern Predynastic
Sequence of the fancy decorated pottery found in Upper Egypt
(Baumgartel 1955, pp. 17-18).
The oldest known components of the Northern Predynastic Sequence
seem to be the habitation sites of the Fayum A culture.1 These were
located along the northern and north-eastern shores of an old lake level
in the Fayum Depression. The encampments seem to have consisted of
mat or reed huts erected in the lee of buttes or mounds near the fertile
soil along the edge of the lake. Possibly to avoid ground moisture, the
communal underground granaries associated with these settlements
were located on higher ground some distance from the settlements.
Bones of sheep, goats and possibly of domesticated cattle were reported,
although none were examined by specialists. The granaries yielded the
remains of emmet wheat and six-rowed barley.
1
For a summary of the archaeological data related to Predynastic northern Egypt see Hayes
(1965, pp. 91-146); for Upper Egypt see Baumgartel (195 5, i960) and Vandier (1952, pp. 167-466,
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While the Fayum A people were clearly agriculturalists and may have
kept domesticated animals, they appear to have remained dependent on
hunting and fishing to a considerable degree. Large mammals, including
elephants, crocodiles and hippopotami, were hunted, and fish and
mussels were taken from the lake. Small harpoons and bevelled points
made of bone were preserved, but no fish-hooks. The harpoons are said
to resemble those from Palestine rather than the kinds found in the
Republic of the Sudan and East Africa. Shells, which were used for
ornaments, were obtained from both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
A few amazonite beads do not necessarily indicate contact with the
Tibesti region to the west, since this mineral also occurs in the Nile basin
(Lucas and Harris 1962, pp. 393—4).
Many of the stone tools are large, thick flakes with notches and
denticulates. Sickle flints were set in wooden handles; stemmed and
winged arrow-heads and leaf-shaped pieces were bifacially chipped,
and celts were chipped and provided with polished cutting edges.
Baskets were common and used to line granaries, and rough linen cloth
was being manufactured. Pottery was made from coarse, straw-
tempered clay and consisted mainly of bag-shaped vessels and flat-
bottomed dishes. Some vessels had a burnished red slip, others a plain
rough surface. McBurney suggests that the pottery, as well as other
aspects of the culture, show connections with the coastal areas of the
Levant (McBurney i960, pp. 233—8). Although the most substantial site
(Kom W) was 600 m long, the lack of house structures does not suggest
a strongly sedentary settlement pattern. It has been speculated that these
sites were probably seasonal ones. To what degree the Fayum settlements
were representative of life in the Nile Valley at that time remains
problematical. Communal granaries occur in many (but not all) Pre-
dynastic sites in Egypt and suggest that village or local groups played
an important corporate role in the allocation of resources. Even if few
villages were larger than extended kin groups, these corporate activities
must have enhanced the status of local headmen (Baumgartel 1970,
pp. 482-3)-
The earliest evidence of fully sedentary village life in the Nile Valley
is the site of Merimda, on the western margin of the Delta. It has been
estimated to cover about 180000 sq. m with cultural debris up to 2 m
deep (Butzer 1966, Kemp 1968a). Although the site was dug in arbitrary
levels and its stratigraphy not properly recorded, radiocarbon dates
suggest that it may have been inhabited for 600 years. In general, the
pottery and stone artifacts resemble those of Fayum A, although the
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shapes and decoration of the pottery are more varied and elaborate.
Polished black pottery is found only in the upper layers of the site. The
pear-shaped stone mace-heads found at Merimda may be derived from
Asian models and are likely prototypes for the later Gerzean ones. A
special type of vessel supported by four modelled human feet is also
found in the Amratian culture (Kantor 1965, p. 5).
In the early stages, the inhabitants of Merimda appear to have lived
in sparsely scattered wind-breaks or pole-framed huts. These dispersed
' farmsteads' frequently became engulfed in sand and, at one point, there
is evidence of extensive sheet-flooding resulting from rainfall (Butzer
1966). In the higher levels of the site, the occupation is denser and there
is evidence of semi-subterranean adobe huts, whose walls rose several
feet above the ground and probably were covered by a pitched roof.
Not one of these houses was over three metres in diameter and most
were so small they could only have been lived in by one adult or a
woman and her children. Clusters of single-adult dwellings, usually
occupied by groups of patrilineal, polygamous kinsmen are found in
various parts of modern sub-Saharan Africa and analogous settlements
appear in the archaeological record of the Natufian and pre-pottery
Neolithic cultures in Palestine (about 9000 to 6500 BC). Flannery has
queried whether the African compounds may not be surviving examples
of a settlement type that once stretched from Palestine into north-eastern
Africa (Flannery 1972, Trigger 1965, p. 60). At Merimda a number of
these huts were found laid out in ragged rows on either side of what
was believed to be a street; but the plan suggests that alternatively they
might have been part of a double ring of huts (Vandier 195 2, pp. 117—19).
Granaries, consisting either of baskets or clay jars buried up to their
necks in the ground, were scattered throughout the village and seem
to have been associated with individual dwellings. What appear to have
been circular clay-lined threshing floors are also reported. Butzer has
tentatively estimated that Merimda had a population of 16000, although
it is far from certain that the entire site was occupied at any one time
or that the occupation was sufficiently dense to support this estimate.
Kemp considers it likely that Merimda was a relatively small community.
He also demonstrates that the evidence is insufficient to prove that, at
Merimda, the custom was to bury the dead within the village in such
a position that they faced the hearth of their former home. Kemp (1968a)
suggests that a small number of adults may have been buried in the
empty spaces that existed between the houses at any one period. Similar
practices are attested in Upper Egypt in spite of the importance

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apparently placed on cemeteries and grave-goods there in Predynastic

times. The graves found within the limits of Merimda contained almost
no grave-goods.
Approximately contemporary with the final occupation at Merimda
is a group of settlements and cemeteries collectively known as
El-Omari. These are clustered in and around the mouth of the Wadi
Hof, between Cairo and Helwan. In Predynastic times this wadi was
probably suitable for growing crops. The pottery is predominantly red
or black and almost devoid of decoration, although vasiform and lipped
vessels are more common than at Merimda. Most of the stone tool types
found at Merimda also occur at El-Omari, although there is a greater
emphasis on flake and blade tools, that appears to foreshadow the
predominance of blade tools in the still later settlement of Ma'adi.
Unfortunately, El-Omari has been less completely explored than either
the Fayum sites or Merimda, and only cursory accounts of the
excavations have been published. The main settlement, which like
Merimda appears to have been lived in for a lengthy period, occupies
a gravel terrace sloping down to the estuary of the Wadi Hof. Traces
of many oval shelters made of poles and basketwork were found on the
surface of the site, as well as various sized pits lined with matting or
baskets. These were all probably granaries, although the excavators
believed the larger ones to be semi-subterranean huts (Vandier 1952,
p. 156). Still larger areas enclosed with reed fences were probably pens
for domestic animals. Evidence of an area given over to flint-knapping
was found on the outskirts of the settlement. A smaller site, apparently
contemporary with this one, was found near two natural rain catchments
on one of the highest terraces of the Jebel Hof. Many cores and
hammerstones suggest considerable amounts of flint-working, but
numerous burials in and around the site, as well as millstones, indicate
that it too was a settlement. The relationship between the upper and
lower settlements is unclear, although it does not seem impossible that
the former was established as a naturally-defended outpost of the latter.
Another small, and possibly later, village was discovered in a branch
of the estuary of the Wadi Hof.
Bodies were interred within both of the older settlements. In the
larger settlement, these burials were made over a long time; some were
disturbed by later building on the site, while later ones were placed in
granaries of an earlier period. Bodies were generally laid on their left
side, head south, as they were in Upper Egypt, but not at Merimda.
One skeleton was found holding a staff about 3 5 cm long and similar
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to the ames sceptre associated with kings and deities in historic times.
It has been suggested that he may have been a local headman.
Grave-goods were generally sparse, as they were at Merimda. Two
cemeteries containing dispersed graves covered with stone tumuli
appear to have been associated with the later village.
Ma'adi is located 10 km north-west of El-Omari. Here a sprawling
site up to z m thick and covering some 18 hectares flourished from late
Predynastic into Early Dynastic times. The dwellings at Ma'adi are
concentrated in the central part of the site. For the most part, they
consist of oval huts or horseshoe-shaped wind-breaks constructed of
posts driven deep into the ground to support walls of wattle or reeds
covered with mud. Grindstones and storage jars or storage pits were
sometimes found inside, or closely associated with, these houses, which
continued to be built throughout the history of the site. Two rectangular
structures were also noted; one with walls of reeds and straw, the other
built of logs laid horizontally. A number of spacious subterranean
chambers were dug to a depth of over z m into the sandy soil. These
were circular to rectangular in plan, were entered by stairways and
evidently were dwellings, since they contained hearths, as well as traces
of roof-poles. Special storage areas existed on the periphery of the
settlement, which recall the segregated granary areas associated with the
Fayum A settlements. Pottery storage jars, about i m high and buried
up to their necks in the sandy soil, occupied the northern outskirts of
the settlement. On the south side were numerous storage pits, with
vertical or sloping sides and sometimes lined with mud or basketwork.
Many of these storage pits contained carbonized grain, but basalt vases,
carnelian beads and other valuable items were also found inside them.
It has been suggested that the settlement was protected by palisades and
ditches. Burials within the settlement were limited, with few exceptions,
to the bodies of unborn children and three cemeteries have been found
in the vicinity of the town. The grave-goods in the Wadi Digla cemetery
are richer than in the other two. A number of dogs and gazelles were
buried in graves of their own in these cemeteries.
Hunting and gathering seem to have been less important at Ma'adi
than they had been in the earlier sites of northern Egypt. The remains
of wild animals are sparse and limited to ibex and to riverine species,
such as hippopotami, turtles, fish and molluscs. On the other hand, at
Ma'adi there is evidence not only of agriculture and herding but also
of advanced craft specialization. A copper axe-head spoiled in casting
and masses of copper ore indicate that copper was being processed at

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Ma'adi. Ma'adi is the oldest site in northern Egypt in which copper

artifacts have been found. Although copper tools and weapons have not
survived in large numbers, traces of disintegrated copper artifacts
occurred with some frequency in the site. Ma'adi is located at the mouth
of the principal wadi leading eastward to the copper deposits of Jebel
'Ataqa and the Sinai and Baumgartel has suggested that a copper
industry connected with the first exploitation of the Sinai mines might
have been the reason for Ma'adi's existence; however, no evidence has
been adduced that indicates that the Egyptians were mining copper
in the Sinai peninsula at this period, or to any significant degree
in Pharaonic times (Baumgartel 1955, p. 122; Hayes 1965, p. 129;
Rothenberg 1970). More likely Ma'adi was an important entrepot
handling trade between the Nile Valley, the Sinai peninsula and
Palestine. Gerzean pottery and stone artifacts occur at Ma'adi and have
been interpreted as evidence of increasing cultural influence from the
south, which can already be noted at El-Omari. On the other hand, in
historic times the main road from Egypt to Palestine passed by Ma'adi,
before crossing the eastern Delta. Kantor (1965, p. 9) has established
the existence at Ma'adi of a 'considerable body' of imported pottery
from the Early Bronze Age I culture of Palestine, which is coeval with
the late Predynastic Period. It is therefore possible that copper was being
imported from the east at this time, rather than that the Egyptians were
going to the Sinai peninsula to mine it themselves. While these
alternative explanations must be considered further, it is possible that
the Upper Egyptian influences in the north came about as a result of
long-distance trade in which, at least during early Gerzean times, the
people of Ma'adi and other sites in north-eastern Egypt were playing
a key role.
Although the Predynastic cultural sequence in northern Egypt
remains poorly defined, the sites in this area are distinguished from those
of Upper Egypt by their monochrome, mainly undecorated, pottery and
by a greater scarcity of jewellery, sculpture and decoration. On the other
hand, the suggestions that pigs, either wild or tame, were eaten in
northern Egypt but not in the south; that in the north people were
buried inside their settlements rather than in cemeteries; and that
settlements in northern Egypt are substantially larger than in Upper
Egypt are all dubious distinctions between the two areas. The sequence
of sites known at present suggests that, as the Early Dynastic Period
was approached, there was progressively less reliance on hunting and
an increasing emphasis on crops and herding. It is possible, however,
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that because of the rich natural resources of the Delta, the transition
there was slower than it was in Upper Egypt. While communities such
as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role as entrepots through
which goods and ideas from south-western Asia filtered into the Nile
Valley in late prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition
that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be
found not in the north but in the south. To understand why this was
so, we must examine the cultural development of Upper Egypt.

The Upper Egyptian Predynastic Sequence

Cemeteries of the Badarian culture have been excavated along the
eastern flank of the Nile Valley between El-Matmar and El-Etmanieh.
In addition, Badarian habitation sites have been found in the stratified
site at El-Hammamiya, at El-Matmar, at El-Mostagedda and at the foot
of the cliffs at El-Badari. Few of these sites are more than a few
centimetres thick. Although Kaiser believes that the Badarian culture
was confined to this area, typical Badarian artifacts have been found at
Armant, Hierakonpolis, and in the Wadi Hammamat (Kantor 1965,
p. 4; Hayes 1965, p. 147; for Hierakonpolis, W. A. Fairservis, personal
communication). It therefore seems likely that more Badarian sites will
eventually be found elsewhere in Upper Egypt (fig. 1.2).
The remains of the Badarian culture appear to reflect a simple,
semi-sedentary way of life. No certain evidence of house structures has
been noted in any of the Badarian settlements, whose inhabitants
presumably lived in skin tents or huts made of mats hung on poles. The
site at El-Mostagedda consisted of a circle of grain pits, some lined with
baskets or matting, which outlined an area of ash and sand. Cemeteries
were located in the desert behind the settlements. The typical Badarian
grave was an oval or rectangular pit roofed over with sticks or matting.
Graves contained one or more bodies, loosely contracted on their left
side, head south. The body was covered with mats or hides, and food
and other offerings were placed in the graves. The offerings included
rectangular stone palettes, ivory spoons, and small ivory or stone vases;
all of which appear to have been associated with the grinding and use
of green face-paint. These items were to remain a part of the Predynastic
burial kit. Fancy ivory combs and ivory and clay human figurines were
also placed in graves. Although graves were of different sizes, the
absence of obvious distinctions of wealth among them may, but does
not necessarily, indicate a lack of social stratification at this time. While

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Second Cataract Second Cataract

. Amratian sites • Gerzean sites

. Badarian sites o Northern sites
o Roughlycontemporary
o Roughly contemporary
northern sites x ContemporaryA-group sites
northern sites
x Nubian sites + Gerzean finds in Delta

Fig. 1.2 Maps indicating known distributions of Predynastic sites in Egypt and
Lower Nubia at different periods.

it is assumed that all of the people living along the east bank of the river
would have used the cemeteries adjacent to the floodplain, there seems
to be a close connection between the cemeteries and settlements found
along the edge of the desert (O'Connor 1972). This suggests either that
the Badarians only occupied the floodplain seasonally or that the
cemeteries belonging to the population of the valley, as opposed to the
desert margin, have not yet been discovered. Until this problem is
resolved, any interpretation of the Badarian culture will remain
hazardous.
Wheat and barley were grown and traces of bread were found in some
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graves. Castor seeds, probably wild, were collected for their oil.
Clothing was woven out of linen, although skin clothing, with the hair
turned inwards, and leather clothes were also worn. The bones of cattle,
sheep and goats are listed as occurring on Badarian sites, although they
were not studied by experts. A number of animals, some putatively
domesticated, were wrapped in mats or cloth and buried in separate
graves, like human beings, in the village cemeteries. Flint arrow-heads,
throwing-sticks (not boomerangs) and perforated fish-hooks made of
ivory and shell reflect the continuing importance of food-collecting, and
bones of wild animals, fish and birds are reported from Badarian sites.
On the whole, however, the evidence does not seem to indicate as great
a dependence on wild game as is found in coeval sites farther north.
Badarian flint-working is not of a high order of expertise. It is
primarily a core industry, utilizing nodules found on the surface of the
desert. Small push-planes and bifacial sickle-stones are common and
arrow-heads were both leaf-shaped and concave-based. The Badarians'
failure to use the tabular flint found in nearby cliffs has been interpreted
by some as evidence that they did not originate in this part of the valley
(because they did not know its resources) and that they came from the
south (since flint-bearing limestone ceases south of Esna) (Brunton and
Caton Thompson 1928, p. 75). By contrast, the manufacture of Badarian
pottery exhibits a high degree of sophistication, although the shapes
tend to be simple; semicircular bowls predominate. Ordinary vessels
are either smooth or rough brown, but the best quality of pottery is
thinner than any other produced in Predynastic times. The surfaces of
many vessels were combed and burnished before firing. Thefineware
is either polished red or black in colour, but the most distinctive type
was red with a black interior and lip formed by removing the pot red-hot
from the kiln and placing it upside down in carbonizing material (Lucas
and Harris 1962, pp. 377-81).
A small number of awls and pins that were hammered out of copper
have been found in Badarian sites, as well as beads made of steatite
covered with blue—green glaze. It has been suggested that these objects
may have been obtained from itinerant traders coming either from
Palestine or across the Red Sea (Arkell and Ucko 1965). In addition to
shells from the Red Sea, other supposed evidence of long-distance trade
takes the form of turquoise, believed to come from the Sinai peninsula;
pine, cedar and other woods thought to come from Syria; and an
unusual four-handled vessel similar to some Ghassulian ones (Kantor
1965, p. 6). Since, however, the climate of North Africa was moister
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then than it is today, the wood may have been indigenous to the Red
Sea Hills and better climatic conditions would have made the
exploitation of that area easier than it is at present. Copper ores are
also found not far to the east of the Nile Valley and it has been suggested
that the turquoise may have come from the Libyan massifs. Although
it is generally assumed that a knowledge of metallurgy reached Egypt
from Palestine, the total absence of copper in sites in northern Egypt
prior to late Predynastic times suggests that the use of copper possibly
evolved independently in Upper Egypt. The earliest artifacts may have
been hammered out of native copper, although this is far from certain.
In any case, the well-attested use of copper ore (malachite) for face-paint
suggests that conditions were favourable in the Badarian culture for the
discovery of how to obtain copper by smelting the ore (Lucas and Harris
1962, pp. 201, 404). Malachite occurs in the eastern desert in sufficient
quantities to have supplied the demand for it in Predynastic times.
Steatite is also found in Egypt, so that it too may have been glazed
locally. This might be interpreted as evidence that the Badarian culture,
as it was manifested either elsewhere in Upper Egypt or in sites on the
floodplain, was technologically more advanced than is indicated by the
marginal sites discovered so far.
Amratian sites generally appear to be larger and more prosperous
than the Badarian ones and are found from Deir Tasa as far south as
the Nubian border. There is evidence of an Amratian occupation in the
town-sites at Hierakonpolis and Naqada, both of which appear to have
been key locations in the Predynastic development of Upper Egypt. A
concentration of early Amratian sites between Abydos and Naqada also
suggests that this stretch of river may have played an important role
in the development of the Amratian culture (Kaiser 1957, pp. 74-5).
The only house structures definitely identified as Amratian are nine hut
ovals at El-Hammamiya, and even these continued to be inhabited into
early Gerzean times. The huts were about one to two metres in diameter
and, while one had been used to store dung for fuel, at least one other
contained a hearth and was clearly a small dwelling. The foundations
were built of chips and rough pieces of sandstone set in mud, while the
upper parts appear to have been of wattle and daub. As with the huts
at Merimda, there were no traces of doorways. The latter were probably
set in the walls of the houses some distance above ground level, after
the fashion of huts built in parts of the southern Sudan at the present
time. Wooden posts in one part of the site have been interpreted as the
remains of wind-breaks. Similar wind-breaks are reported from El-

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Mahasna and cooking pots were found in situ at Armant. While these
two settlements appear to have been inhabited in both Amratian and
Gerzean times, no more permanent structures were found there. The
subsistence economy of the Amratian culture seems to have been much
like that of the Badarian. The art of the period demonstrates a
continuing familiarity with elephants and giraffes (Vandier 195 2, p. 270).
In essential features, cemeteries also appear to be little changed from
Badarian times. Headless bodies and extra skulls suggest the possibility
of head-hunting at this time, which might betoken the patterns of blood
revenge associated with tribal society. It is possible, however, that these
finds are related to a more widespread custom of dismembering corpses.
There is no archaeological evidence to confirm traditions of cannibalism
in Predynastic times (Vandier 1952, p. 248).
A striking improvement can be noted in the manufacture of stone
tools, most of which are bifacial. The best flint knives were ground to
thin them, prior to being given afinalflakingto produce a cutting edge.
The most impressive of these tools are thefish-tailartifacts (of uncertain
use) and rhomboidal knives. A few basalt vases with a small splayed,
or conical, foot have been found and, since somewhat similar vessels
are known in Mesopotamia at about the same time, it has been suggested
that the Egyptian ones are foreign imports or local imitations of these
vessels (Arkell and Ucko 1965, Vandier 1952, pp. 366-8). Crude stone
vessels were manufactured in Badarian times, however, and seem to
represent the beginning of a tradition of stone-working that was
hereafter to be a part of Egyptian culture. The ability of the Egyptians
to shape hard stone expertly in Amratian times is proved by the so-called
'disc-shaped' mace-heads. The Amratians also ground rhomboidal
palettes out of slate and carried on the Badarian tradition of carving
and modelling. Ivory combs have long teeth and their handles are
ornamented with human and animal figures. Pairs of ivory hippo-
potamus tusks, sometimes ornamented with bearded human heads, may
have been of ritual significance. A large number of human figurines,
both in ivory and clay, appear to date from this period (Arkell and Ucko
1965, Ucko 1968). Perrot has suggested that the elongated shapes of
the ankles and faces, as well as the drill holes found in the ivory
statuettes, suggest a cultural affinity with those of the Ghassulian culture
(Kantor 1965, pp. 6-7). These similarities are tenuous, however, and
the nature of contacts at this period remains to be demonstrated.
While black-topped pottery declined in quality, and rippling died out
early in the Amratian period, red wares remained popular. Some of this

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pottery was painted with white cross-lined designs and later with scenes
depicting people and animals in a free and vivid style. Men are
frequently shown wearing feathers in their hair, as the Nubians and
Libyans did in historic times, as well as penis sheaths, which were worn
occasionally into the historic period. Ucko has studied the prehistoric
sheaths preserved in the Naga ed-Deir cemetery and offers a provisional
classification of them (Ucko 1967). Baumgartel has suggested that the
white cross-lined red ware may have been inspired by the painted
pottery of Susa I and contemporary Mesopotamian and Iranian cultures.
The similarities that Baumgartel has indicated are very general ones,
however; hence few scholars are convinced by her arguments (Baum-
gartel 1955, pp. 5 4—71; Vandier 1952, pp. 294—6). The absence of similar
painted pottery in the Delta is also against an Asian origin for Amratian
painted pottery. Metal objects are as rare in Amratian sites as in Badarian
ones. Copper pins date from the Amratian period and two gold beads
have been tentatively ascribed to it. In general, however, the level of
cultural development appears to be little different from what it was in
Badarian times. In both periods, the villages of Upper Egypt probably
had largely self-sufficient economies, which had as their resource base
the Nile Valley and the adjacent eastern desert. It may turn out,
however, that the limited evidence now available does not adequately
reflect the cultural development of either period.
By contrast, the Gerzean period appears to have been one of rapid
change, marked by abundant evidence of contacts with south-western
Asia and the evolution of complex social and economic institutions. For
the first time, there is positive evidence of south-west Asian influences
in Upper Egypt. In the early Gerzean, these influences are limited to
the imitation of foreign pottery. The most important of these borrowings
were the ledge-handled, or wavy-handled, vessels, which appear to be
derived from the Early Bronze Age I culture of Palestine. In Egypt,
these vessels have no prototypes, but in Palestine ledge-handles appear
in the Early Chalcolithic period (4000 to }6oo BC) and by Early Bronze
Age I times they were used on a number of different types of vessels.
The type introduced into Upper Egypt gave rise to a whole class of
pottery, which henceforth developed along its own lines there. The
exact point at which these vessels began to be produced in Upper Egypt
remains in doubt, but it is no longer assumed that it was at the very
beginning of the Gerzean period (Kantor 1965, pp. 7-8, Ucko 1967).
Vessels with tilted spouts and, less certainly, ones with triangular lug
handles also appear to be imitations of forms which evolved in

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Mesopotamia in the 'Ubaid or early Protoliterate periods. The spouted

vessels occur in the 'Amuq area, when that region was a western outpost
of Protoliterate influence, and also in the Early Bronze Age I culture
of Palestine. These occurrences probably outline the route by which
these forms were carried from Mesopotamia to Upper Egypt. Ma'adi
was already functioning as an entrepot between Palestine and Upper
Egypt and may have played some role in their transmission. Near the
start of the Gerzean period, the pear-shaped mace-head, which was
ultimately of south-west Asian origin, appears to have diffused to Upper
Egypt from the Delta, where it was already present at Merimda.
Within the Gerzean culture, there is evidence of increasing craft
specialization and wider markets. Until this time, all pottery was made
of clay deposited by the River Nile, and it is likely that most of this
pottery was traded over only a small area. In Gerzean times, however,
vessels with a light-coloured fabric began to be made of a mixture of
clay and calcium carbonate that is washed out of the limestone hills
bordering the Nile Valley. Two areas well known for this clay are Qena
and El-Ballas, where deposits have been exploited from an early period;
however, other, less important deposits occur in Middle Egypt (Lucas
and Harris 1962, pp. 383—4). The ledge-handled jars and another class
of pots decorated in red paint with various patterns, and later with
representations of sacred boats, trees and files of birds and animals, were
made of this same clay type. The standardized forms of these vessels
that are found distributed throughout Egypt are evidence not of
cultural uniformity but of the mass-production of this ware in one or,
at most, only a few centres. The shapes of many red-ware vessels also
reflect the impact of mass production during the Gerzean period. While
opinions differ, it is possible that a slow, hand-turned wheel was now
used to fashion parts of vessels (Baumgartel 1970, p. 488; Lucas and
Harris 1962, p. 369). If so, the innovation coincided with the increasing
scale of pottery manufacture at this time. The florescence of painted
pottery, prior to its decline at the end of the Gerzean period, indicates
that, in spite of large-scale production, fancy pottery continued to serve
as a vehicle of artistic expression, as it had done in the Amratian period.
Copper artifacts became much more common during the Gerzean and
at the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period. Daggers, knives, adzes,
axes; spear-heads, harpoons, fish-hooks, needles, finger-rings, small
tools and ornaments were now cast, as well as hammered, from this
metal and the copper that was used appears to have come from both
the eastern desert and the Sinai peninsula where the contemporary,

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chalcolithic culture of the Nawamis (Petrie 1906, p. 243) has some

elements in common with Predynastic Egypt (Lucas and Harris 1962,
p. 209).* It is possible that the techniques of casting used by the
Egyptians owed something to Palestinian metallurgical experience,
although the relationship still remains to be worked out (Kantor 1965,
p. 7). Gold was also worked at this period and some luxury goods were
ornamented with gold foil. Silver objects are described as 'more
substantial than one would expect', although the silver is unlikely to
have been imported into Egypt as Baumgartel (i960, pp. 6-7) suggests
it was. Prior to the Middle Kingdom, 'silver' appears to have been
mainly a silver-rich alloy of gold and silver, which is found in the eastern
desert. Until the end of the Middle Kingdom, this ' white gold' was
valued more highly by the Egyptians than was yellow gold (Lucas and
Harris 1962, pp. 246-8).
There was also a marked development in other crafts. Decoration was
more finely conceived and formally arranged than ever before and the
execution of designs was often of high quality. Flint blades became more
common, although the most elaborate flint objects continued to be
produced using careful bifacial techniques. Thin, scimitar-like knives
manufactured by controlled ripple-flaking were made towards the end
of the Gerzean period and bear witness to the skill of certain highly-
specialized craftsmen. Slate palettes were manufactured in the shape of
fish, birds and animals and zoomorphic vases were ground out of hard
stone. Beads and amulets increased in number and quality and were
produced in exotic stone, including lapis lazuli, as well as in gold and
silver. These objects bear witness not only to artistic and technological
advances but also to the emergence of a clientele interested in possessing
such luxury goods.
It has been observed that the pottery from the Naqada periods that
is found in cemeteries differs considerably from that found in settlements.
Much of the fancy pottery as well as many other kinds of luxury goods
may have been manufactured specifically for funerary purposes. It is
often pointed out that a highly-developed cult emphasizing funerary
offerings may greatly stimulate production (e.g. C. Renfrew 1972,
pp. 489—94). It is therefore possible to assign a major role to Upper
Egyptian funerary customs in increasing the division of labour and
generally promoting the development of social complexity from Pre-
dynastic times into the historic period.
1
On the basis of recent work, Bar-Yosef et al. (1977) have been able to cross-date tombs of
this type to about Early Bronze Age I of the Palestinian chronology.

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Recent alluvium 5 Predynastic cemetery

i Predynastic settlements 6 Decorated tomb
• Wadis 7 Second Dynasty 'fort'
Old Kingdom town of Hierakonpolis 8 Kula Pyramid (Third Dynasty ?)
El-Kab 9 Temple of Rameses I I
Late Predynastic town-site 10 Temple of Amenophis HI
Extension of town-site ontofloodplain (borders unknown)

Fig. I.J General map of the Hierakonpolis area. (After Butzer IQ6O.1

While Gerzean sites extend from the borders of the Delta as far south
as the Nubian border, the main centres of cultural activity were to the
south of Abydos. From its cemeteries, Naqada, the historic Nubet,
appears to have been an extremely important centre of population.
There was also a major Gerzean settlement, with satellite villages, at
Hierakonpolis (fig. 1.3). It is perhaps no coincidence that in historic
times these two communities were the respective cult centres of the gods
Seth and Horus, who feature so prominently in the Egyptian myths of
kingship. While most Egyptians appear to have lived in small com-

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munities and been content with reed shelters, even these small settle-
ments had communal kilns for drying grain, in the construction of
which brickwork played a part (Baumgartel i960, pp. 134-5; Vandier
1952, pp. 503-8). At the South Town at Naqada, rectangular brick
houses seem to date from this period. Petrie also recorded part of a town
wall at Naqada, although its relationship to the houses is unclear. A clay
model found in a tomb at Hu shows a portion of the wall surrounding
a building or town being guarded by sentinels. A rectangular house
model from a grave at El-Amra seems to consist of a single room and
an enclosed courtyard, while a house with a similar ground plan was
found beneath the temple at El-Badari and is tentatively assigned to the
Predynastic or Early Dynastic Periods (Baumgartel i960, pp. 133^5).
It is suggested that these were the houses of the wealthier and more
urban classes. Under the historic temple at Hierakonpolis there was an
oval retaining wall, built of sandstone blocks laid with a pronounced
batter on the outside. This retaining wall was almost fifty metres across
and closely resembles the traditional Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for the
town. It is suggested that the retaining wall supported a layer of sand
on which a temple was erected. As far as can be determined, this
structure was built in late Predynastic times. If so, it was the sole trace
of monumental architecture surviving from that period (Vandier 1952,
pp. 518-25).
Increasing social stratification can be traced in the varied size and
design of Gerzean tombs and in the grave-goods being put into them.
Some graves were lined with wooden planks and special niches were
constructed to receive grave-goods or the bodies of the dead. In
Cemetery T at Naqada and at Hierakonpolis, a number of brick burial
chambers, each measuring about five by two metres, have been found.
These consist either of a courtyard and a single room or a rectangular
chamber divided into two rooms. The interior of the tomb at Hierakon-
polis had been plastered and was covered with paintings, in which
Gerzean motifs appear alongside others that seem to be of south-west
Asian origin. It has been suggested that both Cemetery T and the
Decorated Tomb at Hierakonpolis were the burial places of Predynastic
royalty (Kemp 1973).
In the late Gerzean period, there is evidence of a short period of either
direct or indirect contact with the late Protoliterate b and early
Protoliterate c cultures of Mesopotamia. A number of vessels and at
least some of the Mesopotamian-style cylinder seals found in Egypt
appear to be actual imports from Mesopotamia (Kantor 1952, 1965,
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p. 10). In addition, a selection of Mesopotamian (and in some cases

more particularly Susian) artistic motifs was adopted at this period,
particularly for the decoration of fancy stone palettes, ivory knife-
handles, and other luxury goods. These motifs include interlacing
serpents, serpent-necked panthers, a winged griffin, a carnivore attacking
impassive prey, a man dominating two animals, distinctive head-dress
and long robes, and possibly a high-hulled ship, although the latter
seems to be represented already on a fragment of Amratian pottery
(fig. 1.4) (Frankfort 1956, pp. i2i-37;Kantor 1965, p. 10; Vandier 1952,
pp. 280—1); however, Mesopotamian influences have been discounted
by Kelley (1974). While these motifs did not outlast the early years of
the First Dynasty, their influence on the elite artistic production of the
transitional period appears to have been quite far-reaching and suggests
intensive contact with Mesopotamia. The niched brick architecture of
tombs and other buildings that appears suddenly at the beginning of
the First Dynasty was also probably derived from south-western Asia.
Although the Egyptian structures are not exact copies of Mesopotamian
originals, the plan and exterior niches of the tombs resemble those of
Mesopotamian temples of the early Protoliterate period. In Meso-
potamia, however, the prototypes of these buildings are found as early
as the ' Ubaid period and the style was an enduring component of the
regional architectural tradition; by contrast, in Egypt, niche panelling
ceased to be important by the Second Dynasty (Frankfort 1956,
pp. 126-9). The Egyptian script can be observed developing locally
from very rudimentary beginnings and bears no specific resemblance
to that of Mesopotamia; however, general similarities in the two
systems of writing have suggested that stimulus diffusion from Meso-
potamia may have played a role in the origin of the Egyptian script
(Frankfort 1956, pp. 129-32; Pope 1966). It has also been argued that
some signs appear to have been invented by Semitic, rather than
Egyptian, speakers. This, plus a possible influx of words of Semitic and
Sumerian origin and Semitic grammatical forms at this period, suggest
the possibility of yet more Near Eastern influence (Baumgartel 1955,
p. 48; Meltzer 1970). It is significant that no evidence of reciprocal
Egyptian influence has been noted in Mesopotamia at this time.
What is not certain is by what direction these influences reached
Upper Egypt. Helck (1962, pp. 6-9) sees no evidence of direct contacts
between Egypt and Mesopotamia and believes that Mesopotamian
influences reached Upper Egypt by way of the Levant and the Delta.
Jar-sealings of Mesopotamian type have been found in the late

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Fig. 1.4 Jebel el-Araq ivory knife-handle. Of uncertain provenance, this knife is assigned on
stylistic grounds to the late Gerzean period. On the obverse appears a water battle; on the reverse
a hero subduing two lions, who resembles the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh ' Lord of the Beasts *
motif. This knife has been interpreted as showing evidence of Mesopotamian influence, although
Egyptian types of birds and animals are portrayed on it. The ' Gilgamesh' theme also appears in
the Decorated Tomb at Hierakonpolis. (Drawing by Susan Weeks.)

Chalcolithic of Palestine and probably indicate trade between these two

regions (Kenyon i960, p. 98). Since there was also trade between
Palestine and Egypt at this time, it is not impossible that Palestinians
acted as middlemen in the diffusion of ideas from Mesopotamia to
Egypt. Others, however, favour a direct sea route around the Arabian
peninsula to a point on the Red Sea opposite the Wadi Hammamat. This,
it is suggested, would explain why Mesopotamian influences are
apparently limited to Upper Egypt and not particularly strong south
or west of the 'Amuq and the northern Orontes Valley. It would also
explain why these influences reached Egypt over a very short period
of time and why many of the design elements appear to be of Susian
origin, rather than from Mesopotamia proper. While acknowledging

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that the imported pottery at Ma'adi provides evidence of contacts and

trade with Palestine at this time, Kantor (1965, pp. 11-14) and others
argue that independent contact with Mesopotamia is necessary to
explain the type of influence that this early phase of Mesopotamian
civilization was exerting on the Nile Valley.
It is hazardous, however, to assess the nature of relations between
Egypt and south-western Asia at the end of the Gerzean period without
considering the motivation for contact. The Protoliterate period is
recognized as a vigorous and expansive phase in Mesopotamian history,
and large and elaborate ships seem to be portrayed on Mesopotamian
seals at this time. This does not, however, explain why the Meso-
potamians, or their middlemen, should have been interested in trading,
either directly or indirectly, with southern Egypt or why the region
between Abydos and Aswan became the economic and political
heartland of Pharaonic Egypt (Wilson 1955).
The main product of southern Egypt that would have attracted the
interest of foreigners was gold. The gold-bearing region of Egypt lies
chiefly between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, in the part of the
eastern desert stretching from the Qena—El-Quseir road south to the
Sudan border (Baumgartel i960, p. 143; Lucas and Harris 1962, p. 244).
It is perhaps no accident that Naqada, whose Egyptian name meant
literally 'the Golden Town', was located almost opposite Koptos,
which stood at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat and thus controlled
access to much of the gold and other mineral wealth of the eastern
desert. Indeed, in later times the gold of Egypt was called the ' Gold
of the Desert of Koptos' in order to distinguish it from that of Nubia.
Hierakonpolis had a similar relationship to El-Kab, its twin city on the
east bank of the Nile, which in historic times was dedicated to the
tutelary goddess of Upper Egypt. Behind El-Kab, a wadi gave access
to gold mines in the eastern desert (Kees 1961, pp. 12 3—6). Similar routes
led into the desert east of Kom Ombo and Edfu, which were also
important towns in the historic period.
Perhaps beginning early in the Gerzean period, knowledge of the
mineral wealth of the eastern desert induced traders from south-western
Asia to establish trading relations with Upper Egypt, in order to obtain
gold and other valued minerals. Direct contact may have been established
by way of the Red Sea, although it also seems possible that traders
entered Egypt through the Delta, but tended to by-pass that area
because it did not produce the expensive and easily transportable luxury
goods for which they were looking. Efforts to control this trade and

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to exploit the eastern desert more effectively may have been important
factors encouraging the development of greater centralized control and
leading to the emergence of small states at key locations in southern
Egypt. The nuclei of these states appear to have been communities near
to points of easy access to the desert; such cities probably grew into
large towns, or small cities, as they became the administrative centres
for these states. By the late Gerzean period, the power and wealth of
the rulers of Upper Egypt may have made it possible for them to attract
Asians to their courts, whose skills were utilized both for administration
and to satisfy a growing appetite for luxury goods. Some of these Asians
may have been skilled artisans, who continued to utilize west Asian
motifs at the same time that they used their skills to turn out works
of art modified to suit the taste of their new patrons. On the other hand,
architectural forms, or skills such as writing, may have been introduced
by adventurers or traders who had only a very imperfect acquaintance
with these arts as they were practised in Mesopotamia. This influx of
foreign specialists appears to have been short-lived and the Egyptian
canons of court art which emerged early in the First Dynasty rejected
most of the foreign influences they had introduced.

Prehistoric Nubia
At Jebel Silsila, near Aswan, the limestone formations of Egypt give
way to Nubian sandstone. To the south, the Nile has cut more easily
into the rock and, as a result, the floodplain becomes much narrower
and discontinuous. The River Nile is also disrupted as an artery of
communication by a series of cataracts which continue as far south as
Sabaloka, near Khartoum. While precipitation appears to have been
higher in late prehistoric times, especially in the southern part of this
area, than it is now, Nubia has been able to sustain only a low population
by comparison with Egypt.
The oldest sites in Lower Nubia that appear to contain pottery belong
to the Shamarkian industry. These sites occur along the Nile near Wadi
Haifa and have been dated to approximately 4000 to 4500 BC. They have
yielded only minute quantities of pottery. Later' Post-Shamarkian' sites
in the same area are much larger and also contain pottery. It has been
suggested that these may be ' neolithic' sites; however, there is no direct
evidence of a farming or herding economy for these sites, hence their
food-producing status remains in doubt. The Post-Shamarkian sites
contain considerable amounts of imported Egyptian flint and have been
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dated to between approximately 3600 and 3000 radiocarbon years BC

(Schild, Chmielewska and Wieckowska 1968).
The earliest direct evidence of food production comes from the
Khartoum Neolithic culture, whose type-site, Esh-Shaheinab, is located
on the west bank of the Nile a b o u t ^ km north of Omdurman. To date,
this culture appears to be confined to the Nile Valley and the adjacent
steppeland. The pottery, which was burnished and decorated with
shallow punctate patterns, has clearly developed from that of the
Khartoum Mesolithic. At Esh-Shaheinab, stone celts suggest a new
emphasis on wood-working and bone harpoons, fish-hooks and the use
of mussels indicate possibly even more utilization of riverine resources
than in earlier times. There is also evidence that a wide range of animals,
including giraffe, were being hunted. While no evidence of agriculture
was found at Esh-Shaheinab, 2 % of the animal bones in the site were
those of sheep and goats. The site is radiocarbon-dated 3100 to 3500 BC
which, however these dates are calibrated, would make it approxi-
mately coeval with the Gerzean culture. It appears that both sheep and
goats and a kind of black-topped pottery had spread south from Egypt
and been adopted by the local population. More recently impressions
of domesticated cereals, in particular Sorghum vulgare and various millets,
have been reported on Khartoum Neolithic-like pottery from the
settlement at Kadero, dated to about 4000 BC (Arkell 1953, 1972,
Klichowska 1978, Otto 1963).
Pottery resembling that of the Khartoum Neolithic has been found
in sites in the Dongola region (the Karat Group) and also in the
southern part of Lower Nubia (the Khartoum Variant) (Marks 1968,
Wendorf 1968, vol. 11, pp. 1053-4). On the other hand, the lithics
associated with the pottery in each of these three areas differ widely,
suggesting a diffusion of Khartoum Neolithic-type pottery among
groups living in the north. Although no direct evidence of food
production has been obtained for the two northern cultures, the
dominance of small sites in the Khartoum Variant, both along the river
and for at least 20 km west of the Nile, has been interpreted as evidence
of a pastoral economy. All of these sites have been tentatively dated to
the end of the fourth millennium BC.
Another possibly food-producing culture is the Abkan, which occurs
on both sides of the Nile in the vicinity of the Second Cataract. The
Abkan lithic assemblage appears to have developed from the Terminal
Palaeolithic Qadan Industry. Abkan pottery takes the form of plain,
clay-tempered, reddish-brown, open bowls. Multiple occupation sites
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cover sizeable areas and suggest a larger population than in earlier times.
Hunting seems to have been of little importance, but no other evidence
concerning the subsistence pattern is available. The presence of small
numbers of Khartoum Variant sherds in Abkan sites, and of Abkan
sherds in Khartoum Variant sites, suggests that these two cultures must
have been at least partly contemporary. It is unclear to what degree
Abkan pottery may be related to that of the prehistoric Tergis and
El-Melik groups from the Dongola area, both of which have red-slipped
pottery with decoration limited to a few incised lines (Marks 1968,
Wendorf 1968, vol. 11, p. 105 3). Further investigations may also reveal
whether or not there is any historical connection between Abkan
pottery and that of the Northern Predynastic Sequence. It is not
impossible that, prior to the beginning of the Badarian culture, a plain
red pottery tradition extended from the Delta south into Nubia, of
which no trace has yet been identified in Upper Egypt.
The most important cultural development in Lower Nubia during
the latter part of the fourth millennium was the formulation of the
A-group culture, which persisted into the Early Dynastic Period
(Nordstrom 1972, pp. 17-32). The Abkan and Khartoum Variant
cultures appear to have played an important role in the development
of the A-group, and pottery derived from both appears in A-group sites,
especially in southern Lower Nubia. More striking, however, is the
gradual penetration of Lower Nubia by cultural traits of the Upper
Egyptian Predynastic Sequence. The earliest evidence of this penetration
is the pottery of late Amratian and early Gerzean date found at Khor
Bahan, just south of Aswan. During the Gerzean period, pottery of the
Upper Egyptian Sequence gradually spread southward along the Nile.
Some of this pottery has distinctive features which, already in the early
A-group, distinguish it from Egyptian pottery. One example is the
so-called black-mouthed variant of Petrie's black-topped ware. This was
manufactured in open bowl-shapes which, long before, had gone out
of fashion in Egypt. Other forms of pottery, including ledge-handled
jars, are clearly imports from Egypt. These jars probably contained
cheese, honey, oil and other food products which were sought after by
the Nubians. Copper tools, slate palettes and linen cloth also appear to
count among the luxury goods that were imported from Egypt at this
time (Trigger 1965, pp. 68-73).
It has generally been assumed that at this time the subsistence patterns
of Lower Nubia were based on mixed farming, as were those of Upper
Egypt; however, Firth has stressed the pastoral aspect of this economy
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and suggests that the Nubians resembled the Saharan tribes more than
they did the Egyptians (Trigger 1965, pp. 67-8). It has been confirmed
that wheat, barley and leguminous plants were grown, while cotton
seeds (Gossypium arboreum or G. herbaceum) appear to have been fed to
domestic animals (Chowdhury and Buth 1971). The Egyptians listed
cattle and goats as booty from Nubia in the Old Kingdom. No traces
of house structures have been found in any of the sites of this period,
which appear to have been small encampments inhabited by no more
than half a dozen families. Each band seems to have occupied its own
stretch of arable floodplain. Their camps were probably located by the
bank of the river for most of the year, but were moved to the edge of
the floodplain during the inundation. Although the A-group people
appear to have been physically similar to the Egyptians, their ethnic
status remains unknown and there is no basis for suggestions that they
were Egyptian, Hamitic, or Eastern Sudanic speaking (Edwards 1971,
p. 50). The cultural differences between Lower Nubia and Egypt may
be explained largely in terms of the former region's limited agricultural
potential, rather than in terms of ethnic differences.
How were the Nubians able to import ever larger amounts of luxury
goods from Egypt? It is likely that the growing wealth and prosperity
of the Gerzean culture created a market for large amounts of ivory,
ebony and other luxury products from sub-Saharan Africa. It may be
that the inhabitants of Lower Nubia engaged in small-scale trade in such
items and were able to derive a substantial profit from it. It has also
been suggested that the Khor Daud site, near the mouth of the Wadi
el-Allaqi, was a riverine bartering place for cattle pastoralists living in
the eastern desert (Nordstrom 1972, p. 26); whether such a cattle trade
could have supported a significant amount of exchange with the
Egyptians is another matter. Alternatively, many of the Egyptian items
found in Lower Nubia may have been supplied to the Nubians as
goodwill presents by Egyptian traders seeking rights-of-way to travel
to and from the south. It is also possible that, as has happened in recent
centuries, Nubians might have earned these goods as labour migrants
in the north. In particular, they may have been given in payment to
detachments of Nubians who served in the Egyptian armies in late
Gerzean times.

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EARLY DYNASTIC EGYPT

The Development of the Egyptian State

Unfortunately, current archaeological evidence sheds little light on the
political history of Egypt in prehistoric times. On the Palermo Stone,
a year-by-year record of the Egyptian kings that was compiled in the
Fifth Dynasty, a series of Predynastic rulers is shown wearing the Red
Crown of Lower Egypt, followed by others wearing the Double Crown
(shmty, ' the two powerful ones') of a united country; however, only
the names of these Predynastic kings are recorded, whereas, beginning
with the First Dynasty, the Palermo Stone chronicles each year of a
king's reign separately, noting appropriate information concerning it.
Although there is no evidence that the Double Crown existed prior to
the middle of the First Dynasty, Kaiser has shown that these early kings
and the prehistoric rulers alluded to in the Turin papyrus and Manetho's
history are all variants of a single tradition (Edwards 1971, p. 26; Kaiser
1964). This evidence was once viewed as providing support for Sethe's
theory about the emergence, in Predynastic times, of a Deltaic Kingdom
which conquered the whole of Egypt. Now, however, Egyptologists
tend to view these Predynastic kings, as later the Egyptians themselves
did, as demigods who ruled Egypt between the time of the gods and
the first human kings. As such, they may have lacked an historical
existence. This has encouraged the majority of Egyptologists to assume
that the first political unification of Egypt took place at about the
beginning of the First Dynasty. Scenes depicted on some elaborately
decorated late Gerzean palettes (fig. 1.5) and on the votive mace-heads
and palettes of Kings Scorpion and Narmer have thus been interpreted
as a record of the conquest of the northern part of the country by kings
originating in Upper Egypt. Not long ago, the major disagreement
about this period was focused on the debate as to whether King Narmer,
or his presumed predecessor, the Scorpion king, was the first monarch
to rule over the whole of Egypt (Arkell 1963). It has often been
suggested that the canons of art which developed at this time, and which
show the king as a figure increasingly aloof from his followers, are a
faithful reflection of the growing power of the king.
It has also frequently been assumed that the original Egyptian states
were small units equivalent to the nomes or districts which served as
administrative divisions of the country in historic times. Out of the
union of these tiny states, two coherent, independent kingdoms were
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Fig. 1.5 The obverse side of the so-called ' Libyan palette'. This and similar stone palettes have
been assigned on stylistic grounds to the late Gerzean period and are often interpreted as
illustrating steps in the unification of Predynastic Egypt; however, the precise significance of the
walls and the birds and animals hacking away at them are unknown. The former have been
interpreted as forts, towns, or as synonyms for a single fort or town. The figures have been
interpreted as representing a confederacy of clans or districts, gods helping the king to victory,
or the king himself. If Egyptologists disagree concerning the meaning of such key elements, it
is clear that the overall significance of the palettes must remain uncertain. (Drawing by Susan
Weeks.)

thought to have emerged; one centred in the Delta, the other in Upper
Egypt. Between them, these two kingdoms are supposed to have
controlled the whole of the Nile Valley north of Aswan. Only after these
states were in existence was the unification of Egypt brought about as
a result of the conquest of Lower Egypt by Upper Egypt (Edwards
1971, p. 1). Against this interpretation, Frankfort has argued that the
idea of a northern kingdom was created as a symbolic counterpart to
the southern one after the piecemeal conquest of a series of small states
by kings from Upper Egypt. According to Frankfort, the idea of two
kingdoms reflects the Egyptian view of a totality as being comprised
of opposites in balanced opposition (Frankfort 1948, pp. 15-23).
Whatever kind of polity, or polities, existed in the north, the rigorous
parallelism in the institutions and symbols ascribed to the two kingdoms

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supports Frankfort's view that these kingdoms were the creation of

political—theological dogma rather than historical realities. While not
attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and
religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egypt-
ologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of
Lower Egypt ever existed.
It has also been generally assumed that the cultural florescence that
took place at the beginning of the First Dynasty was a consequence of
the political unification of Egypt. Recently, however, Kaiser has
challenged this view. He interprets the tradition of kings of a united
Egypt before the First Dynasty as evidence that the conquest of the
Delta by Upper Egypt took place considerably prior to the First
Dynasty. The victory commemorated on the celebrated Narmer palette
would thus be related to a reconquest of a northern region, or the
crushing of a rebellion there, rather than to the original annexation of
that area. In Kaiser's opinion, such an early union would account for
the dispersal of various items of Upper Egyptian culture throughout
the Delta in late Gerzean times. Large pottery vessels, found not only
at Tura and Abusir el-Malaq, near Cairo, but also at Beda, in the
north-east Delta, bear serekhs that appear to give the Horus-names of
kings who ruled prior to those attested in the royal cemeteries at
Abydos. Comparing the size of the Predynastic cemetery at Tura with
the sections dating from the Early Dynastic Period, Kaiser (1964, p. 114)
estimates that the unification of Egypt may have taken place 100 to 150
years prior to King Narmer.
Kaiser's theory has given rise to much interesting speculation.
Naqada was clearly an important centre in prehistoric times and it has
long been suggested that the legend of Horus and Seth may refer to
a political crisis in Upper Egypt in which the rulers of this town were
conquered by the followers of the god Horus (Baumgartel 195 5, p. 47);
It might be that the elaborate brick tombs in Cemetery T at Naqada
are the graves of the first kings of a united Egypt, prior to their being
supplanted by the rulers of Hierakonpolis, the town sacred to the god
Horus (Kemp 1973). The last king of the Hierakonpolitan Dynasty may
have been Scorpion, whose monuments are known from that place
but not from Abydos (Kaiser 1964, pp. 102—5). C>n stylistic grounds,
Scorpion appears to have preceded by only a little time Ka (or Sekhen)
and Narmer, the earliest kings so far attested in the First Dynasty royal
cemetery at Abydos. This interpretation would make the kings of the
First Dynasty heirs of political traditions that had developed during the
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course of the previous century. Kaiser also views the political unity of
Egypt in the late Predynastic Period as laying the groundwork for the
cultural unity of Early Dynastic times. It must be noted, however, that
political unity does not inevitably give rise to cultural unity and that
at the site of Ma'adi, the Northern Egyptian cultural tradition appears
to have survived, in spite of southern influence, until the Early Dynastic
Period.
Egypt may have been politically united in late Predynastic times, even
though this unity did not express itself in monumental art or architecture,
or in any form of literacy; in short, in the formation of a Great
Tradition, such as distinguished the civilizations of antiquity.' Primitive
kingdoms' of this sort are well known in sub-Saharan Africa: the Zulu
empire and Buganda providing two examples from the last century. By
their very nature, however, polities of this sort are difficult to trace in
the archaeological record and, at present, the evidence for a single
government for the whole of Egypt prior to the First Dynasty must
be judged insufficient. The context in which most Gerzean artifacts have
been discovered in the Delta is unknown and, in any case, it is possible
that all of this material reached Lower Egypt as trade goods rather than
as a result of the spread of Upper Egyptian political influence. Pottery
bearing royal inscriptions often travelled outside Egypt in the historic
period; thus the vessels found in the presumed store-house at Beda do
not prove that this site was under Upper Egyptian control or that a
united Egypt existed in Predynastic times. It is uncertain to what extent
the north-eastern Delta was incorporated into the Egyptian state even
as late as the Old Kingdom (Goedicke 1969—70). It is possible that the
Predynastic kings whose serekbs appear on these pottery vessels were
the rulers of small states who were trading with the Delta and, either
directly or indirectly, with south-western Asia. It must also be noted
that Baumgartel interprets the rosette and scorpion on the largest of
the Hierakonpolis mace-heads as a title, rather than the name of a
monarch, and thus denies the existence of a King Scorpion (Baumgartel
i960, p. 103, 1966). Until more definite evidence is forthcoming, the
very existence of the only pre-Abydene king to whom substantial
monuments have been attributed must remain in doubt.
Recent studies of the political development of Egypt in Predynastic
times thus have not so much discredited older interpretations as they
have raised new alternatives. In the absence of substantial fresh
evidence, it is scarcely surprising that this is so. Under the circumstances,
it is only possible to outline what appears to be theoretically the most

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satisfactory sequence of events; at the same time stressing the paucity

of data on which any interpretation of this period must be based.
It has been suggested that in early Predynastic times each village was
autonomous and had a headman whose power rested on his reputation
as a 'rainmaker king'; who was presumably able to control the Nile
flood (Frankfort 1948, pp. 18, 33—5). Such rainmakers have been found
among African tribes, such as the Dinka, Ngonde and Jukun, in recent
times and, in some tribes, they were slain once their magical powers
were believed to have begun to wane. Egyptologists saw a manifestation
of similar ideas in the Sed festival of the historic period, during which
the powers of a reigning king were rejuvenated by rites in which he
symbolically died and was reborn. Those who read Seligman's accounts
of the Sudan saw in this rite a prototype of the ritual regicide reportedly
practised among the Shilluk. The validity of such analogies rests largely
on the assumption that Predynastic practices diffused to the upper
reaches of the Nile and survived there, or that Egyptian and Nilotic
cultures both developed from a common cultural substratum (Seligman
and Murray 1911). Interesting as such ideas are, they remain unproved
and it seems best to state categorically that nothing is known in detail
about the specific social or political institutions of Predynastic Egypt.
Future discoveries may compel us to modify the idea that, in early
Predynastic times, the social structure of Egypt was simple and
relatively unstratified. It is not unlikely that the rise of monarchical
institutions preceeded the development of the iconography by which
these institutions were recognized in later times. At present, however,
evidence of a high degree of craft specialization, of long-distance trade
within Egypt and of sustained contacts with south-western Asia
becomes visible only in the early phases of the Gerzean culture. The
need to integrate and manage this new economy probably contributed
to the breakdown of the relatively egalitarian tribal structures that had
hitherto regulated life in the Nile Valley, and encouraged the
development of a more hierarchical society, as well as of towns which
served as nodal points in the economic organization and as centres of
political control. The deities and cults associated with these central
places probably played a major role in validating their growing
importance and mediating their relationships with smaller subordinate
communities. It may be possible, therefore, to describe these com-
munities as cult centres, in the sense in which Wheatley (1971) uses this
term. In later times, these cults provided one of the principal sources
of identity for such communities and were an important mechanism by
which local interests could express themselves vis-a-vis the central
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government. Up to this point, social development in Egypt seems to

have followed essentially the same path as it had done in Mesopotamia.
In the latter culture, this pattern gave rise, in early historic times, to
a pattern of warring city states.
While northern communities, such as Ma'adi, may have flourished
as entrepots trading with both Palestine and Upper Egypt, the area
chiefly affected by these new developments was the southern part of
Egypt, where the Nile River approached nearest to the Red Sea Hills.
There, the procurement of minerals from the eastern desert and, in
particular, the organization of gold mining seems to have provided an
especially powerful stimulus to the development of local, or city, states.
The rulers of Naqada and Hierakonpolis were probably buried in the
so-called royal tombs in the Predynastic cemeteries associated with these
town-sites.
As trade with south-western Asia increased, all these local rulers must
have been anxious to control this trade and to monopolize the profits
derived from it. This would have led to increasing competition and
conflict, as the principal rulers of Upper Egypt strove for hegemony
over the whole area. The desire to protect trade routes and to eliminate
intermediaries in Lower Egypt may also have encouraged these rulers
to try to extend their power northward. In the course of these conflicts,
the rulers of Naqada appear to have lost their independence, although
their aristocratic descendants may have been buried in the very large
'royal' tombs erected there early in the First Dynasty (Kemp 1967,
1973). While it has been suggested that the rulers of Hierakonpolis may
have moved their capital down river to Abydos in the course of their
conquest of northern Egypt (Vandier 1952, pp. 613-14), this does not
explain the importance that the kings of the First Dynasty attached to
Abydos as a place of royal burial. It seems more likely that the rulers
of Hierakonpolis also became clients of the kings who founded the First
Dynasty and that these kings were descended from local rulers whose
tombs have gone unrecorded or unrecognized at Abydos (on the other
brick-lined tombs in the royal cemetery see Kemp (1966)).
Whether rulers other than those at Abydos extended their power
northward remains an open question, although it is not impossible that
there were dramatic shifts in the balance of power in Upper Egypt in
late Gerzean times. The respect shown for the gods Seth and Horus
by the Early Dynastic kings and the lavish gifts that the early kings of
the First Dynasty made to the shrine at Hierakonpolis suggest that these
kings were anxious to honour the gods of important rival centres and
thus to bind these centres into a coalition that would facilitate an
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extension of royal power northward. The forging of alliances with the

rulers of the various city states of Upper Egypt may have played as
important a role as military conquest in establishing a basis of power
in southern Egypt which allowed the conquest of the whole country.
It is unclear whether King Scorpion (if he existed) ruled from
Hierakonpolis or merely left votive offerings there, as did other rulers
from Abydos. As we have noted, however, if Arkell is right in reading
Scorpion's name on a much-damaged mace-head showing a king
wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, Scorpion may already have
claimed to be the ruler of a united Egypt. He appears to have been
followed by Ka, and then by Narmer and Aha, all three of whom were
buried in the royal cemetery at Abydos. The last two clearly claimed
kingship over a united Egyptian state, although it is not agreed which,
or if any of them, is to be identified as Menes, the traditional founder
of the First Dynasty (Emery 1961, pp. 32-7).
These kings, whose reigns follow not long after the phase of furtive
Mesopotamian influence noted at the end of the Gerzean period, not
only established a royal administration capable of holding together the
Nile Valley north of Aswan, but also made this administration the chief
patron under which the elite culture of Egypt was to develop in the
centuries that followed. It is highly significant that a coherent Great
Tradition had not developed prior to the unification of Egypt.
Moreover, urban institutions and civic patriotism, which were such vital
features of Mesopotamian culture and were to outlive the development
of empires in that part of the world, do not appear to have developed
to nearly the same degree in Egypt prior to the First Dynasty. With
the emergence of a strong centralized government, all of the country's
nascent economic and political institutions became subjected to royal
authority and control. The central government, either directly or
through major officials, became the employer of soldiers, retainers,
bureaucrats and craftsmen, whose goods and services benefited the
upper classes and the state gods. The large mud-brick enclosure walls
that already seem to have surrounded the principal buildings at
Hierakonpolis (Fairservis, Weeks and Hoffman 1971-2) and elsewhere
served to demarcate and shelter the nodal points in this royal
administration.
In the course of the Early Dynastic Period, artisans and civil servants
working for the central government were to fashion the highly
sophisticated traditions of art and learning that thereafter were to
constitute the basic pattern of Pharaonic civilization. In turn, this
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cultural pattern became a major factor in promoting the stability of the

new political order. It is uncertain to what degree cultural know-how
from south-western Asia played a role in the fashioning of Early
Dynastic culture, but it cannot be doubted that it was one of the factors
that helped the First Dynasty state resulting from the conquest to
produce an enduring high culture. The highly distinctive style of this
civilization and the rapid disappearance of all evidence of Mesopotamian
influence is indicative, however, of the internal dynamism of Egyptian
society at this time.
Equally striking are the structural differences between Early Dynastic
and south-west Asian social organization after this time. The fruits of
Mesopotamian civilization were divided among a number of city states
and among various interest groups within each of these urban centres.
By contrast, the fruits of Egyptian civilization were expended on a royal
court and, to a striking degree, as the emphasis on royal mortuary
complexes demonstrates, on the person of the king. While Mesopotamia
was to create nothing on the scale of the Old Kingdom pyramids, a
greater number of Mesopotamians probably benefited from, and
participated in, the Great Tradition of their society than did their
Egyptian counterparts. The achievement of a stable, centralized
government in Egypt also removed some of the insecurity which in
Mesopotamia encouraged the rapid growth of fortified urban centres
(R. M. Adams 1972, Frankfort 1956). This helped to perpetuate a
pattern of dispersed villages and only relatively small regional admini-
strative centres. Such a development may also explain the preoccupation
with rural, as opposed to urban, life that was a distinctive feature of
the elite culture of Egypt.
After unification, most Egyptians must have found daily life in their
villages little changed from what it had been before. More taxes in kind
were probably collected and additional demands made for corvee labour.
In return, peace and greater security against famine provided the
average Egyptian with increased prosperity, while agricultural develop-
ment must have both encouraged and kept abreast of a growing
population throughout this period. While the population of Egypt has
been estimated to have been as low as 100 000 to 200000 inhabitants
in late Predynastic times (Butzer 1966), a reference to 120000 men, as
either prisoners or part of a grant to a temple, on a mace-head of King
Narmer suggests a considerably larger population at the beginning of
the Early Dynastic Period (Emery 1961, pp. 44—5). A population of two
million or more is not an unreasonable guess for this period.

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Political Organisation
According to Manetho, the kings of the first two dynasties originated
in the Thinite nome of Upper Egypt. The tombs of the First Dynasty
kings are located in the Umm el-Qaab area of the Abydos cemeteries,
about 2 km west of the limit of cultivation (fig. 1.6). These tombs, the
largest of which had a floor area of about 340 sq. m, consisted of
subterranean brick chambers lined with wooden panelling. Each tomb
seems to have been covered by a low mound of sand or gravel held
inside a brick retaining wall. Here too were erected twin stone stelae
bearing the Horus-name of the dead king. While the earliest tombs
consisted of one or more single rooms, later ones had a central chamber
surrounded by store-rooms. Beginning in the reign of King Den, a
stairway gave access to the burial chamber. In Den's tomb, the burial
chamber was also paved with blocks of Aswan granite. The relatively
small size of these tombs and their proximity to one another suggests
that Umm el-Qaab was a location of special sanctity to the kings of the
First Dynasty. Perhaps, like the cemetery of the much later Nubian kings
at Kurru, it was revered as the burial place of their ancestors. Nearer
the cultivated land, and just behind the Early Dynastic town at Abydos,
each king also erected a large rectangular brick enclosure, which Kemp
(1966, 1967) suggests were intended as funerary palaces. Both the
funerary palaces and the royal tombs were surrounded by rows of
smaller graves, blocks of which appear to have shared a common roof.
The stelae accompanying the graves around the royal tombs indicate
that they contained members of the royal entourage. Many are of
women, presumably members of the royal harem, while others belonged
to minor palace functionaries, court dwarfs, or even favourite dogs. On
the other hand, at least some of the graves surrounding the funerary
palaces seem to have belonged to artisans. While there is no direct
evidence how these retainers died, at least some did so just prior to when
a royal burial was closed. This suggests that these retainers were killed
so they might continue to serve the king after death. The custom seems
to have reached its peak in the reign of King Djer, who was
accompanied by over 5 80 retainers, but persisted at a reduced level in
royal burials throughout the Early Dynastic Period.
Aside from the enigmatic Merneith (Kaplan 1979), who may have
been a regnant queen, there is no indication that other members of the
royal family, or high-ranking officials, were buried at Abydos. Two sets
of underground galleries, about 1 km south of the main Early Dynastic
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 edjib

Peribsen
50 100m Merrt'

hasekhemwy

General.plan of Abydos

Umm el-Qaab
Royal tombs

Funerary
palaces

Osireion Temple of Osiris

Temple QRamesisII C 3 Temple
ofSetil
J enclosure
Desert i S - - - - —

Fig. i.6 The royal tombs and funerary palaces at Abydos.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Early Remains in the Saqqara Necropolis (after Kemp 1967)

1 Officials' tombs. Early Dynastic Period
2 Small tombs, First Dynasty
3 Royal tombs of Second Dynasty
4 Step Pyramid of King Djoser,Third Dynasty
5 Step Pyramid of King Sekhemkhet, Third Dynasty
6 Large enclosure visibleonground
7 Traces of a similar enclosure ?

Fig. 1.7 Early remains in the Saqqara necropolis. (After Kemp 1967.)

cemetery at Saqqara, appear to be royal graves of the Second Dynasty

(fig. 1.7) (Kemp 1967). Unlike the rulers of the First Dynasty, these
kings chose to be buried near Memphis, rather than at their home town
of Abydos. The dissension which seems to have divided Egypt late in
the Second Dynasty led kings Peribsen and Khasekhemwy to build their
tombs at Abydos, while the so-called ' fort' at Hierakonpolis also may
have been erected as a funerary palace at about this time (Kaiser 1964,
p. 104, n. 4).
According to Herodotus, Menes, the founder of the First Dynasty,
constructed dykes to divert the Nile River and, on the land thus
protected, he built the city of Memphis and its main temple, which was
dedicated to the god Ptah. Whether or not this story is true, Memphis
was an important administrative centre from early in the First Dynasty

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and the palace and temple of Ptah were later regarded as closely
connected with the unification of Egypt (Kees 1961, p. 148). Although
this part of the Nile Valley was not a particularly rich agricultural area,
it was located near the branching of the Nile and was thus strategically
placed in terms of riverine communication (Wilson 1955). On the
northern spur of the Saqqara plateau behind Memphis, a cemetery was
established in the reign of Aha, which eventually contained the tombs
of many important officials of the Early Dynastic Period. These so-called
mastaba tombs were equipped with rectangular brick superstructures,
either filled with gravel or containing storage chambers. Their internal
arrangements became increasingly elaborate, as did those of the royal
tombs, as storage rooms multiplied, and by the end of the period
subterranean chambers were being excavated out of solid rock (Vandier
1952, pp. 644—72). Although the largest of these tombs were bigger than
the royal tombs at Abydos, they did not exceed in size the royal funerary
palaces. Tumuli found hidden inside the superstructures of some of the
Saqqara tombs suggest that they sought to combine the elements of
both a tomb and a funerary palace within a single structure (Kemp
1966).
A small number of other very large mastaba tombs have been
reported from Naqada, Tarkhan, Giza and Abu Rawash. Some, but not
all, of these large tombs were accompanied by subsidiary burials; over
sixty have been reported for one such tomb, although the number is
usually much smaller. This custom seems to have died out by the end
of the First Dynasty, in line with a marked curtailment of retainer
sacrifice, in royal burials. Over 10 000 graves have been excavated in
the Early Dynastic (largely First Dynasty) cemetery at Helwan, on the
east bank of the Nile opposite Memphis. While most of these are humble
graves, the cemetery also contained the tombs of numerous officials.
Although smaller than the graves at Saqqara, these too belonged to
people who had easy access to skilled craftsmen and luxury goods. Burial
chambers built of large blocks of reasonably well-cut limestone were
constructed at Helwan in the First Dynasty, but do not appear in the
royal tombs until the end of the Second Dynasty (Saad 1969, pp. 36-7).
While the graves of ordinary Egyptians differed little from those of late
Predynastic times, the more prosperous provincial cemeteries contained
a number of smaller and simpler versions of the mastaba tombs of the
upper classes. These tombs appear to have belonged to the headmen
of these communities (Reisner 1932, pp. 185—92).

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The funerary customs of the Early Dynastic Period suggest a

hierarchy of king; great nobles or high officials (including other
members of the royal family); lesser officials (including local headmen);
craftsmen and retainers; and peasantry, the latter making up the bulk
of the population. While the mortuary structures of the king in size
considerably outstripped those of the great officials and were surrounded
by many more retainer burials, the differences between these two
categories of burial are far less marked than they were during the Old
Kingdom. This suggests either that the power of the kings to
appropriate resources for their own use was more limited in the Early
Dynastic Period than it was later on, or that the kings of this period
did not choose to emphasize the differences between themselves and
other leading men in this fashion. The clustering of the largest tombs
of officials around the pyramid of the reigning pharaoh in the Old
Kingdom is generally interpreted as indicating the strength of royal
authority at that time; hence, it might be argued that the burial of high
officials, not only in their own necropolis at Saqqara but also in other
cemeteries throughout Egypt, is a sign of greater independence of royal
control at this time. On the other hand, the way in which the tombs
of even the high nobility were kept away from the Early Dynastic royal
cemeteries, both at Abydos and Saqqara, may indicate that kings were
accorded a sanctity in Early Dynastic times which did not permit other
tombs to encroach upon their burial places (Kemp 1967).1
Unfortunately, knowledge of the dynastic history and administrative
organization of Egypt during the Early Dynastic Period is extremely
limited. Information about the government is derived largely from seals,
seal impressions, and inscribed wooden and ivory labels. This material
naturally emphasizes ownership of goods and provisioning, and thus
gives a far from balanced picture of the government of Egypt at this
time. Finally, the archaic form of the Egyptian script with which this
material is inscribed presents numerous problems for the translator. In
spite of the extremely valuable work that Kaplony (1963) has done in
interpreting these early documents, no systematic analysis of the
political organization of the Early Dynastic Period has yet been
attempted.
There is, however, little doubt that, from the beginning, the kings
of Egypt claimed divine status. Through their Horus-names, which
were the ones regularly used in contemporary inscriptions, they
' Note, however, that in the Old Kingdom cemetery at Naga ed-Deir, headmen's tombs were
located away from other contemporary ones.

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proclaimed themselves to be the earthly embodiment of that deity.

Peribsen deviated from this custom only in identifying himself with Seth
in place of Horus (Edwards 1971, p. 35)- The paramount role of the
monarch was emphasized by portraying him as the sole force holding
together an otherwise separate Upper and Lower Egypt. This was
emphasized by the king wearing distinct regalia to symbolize each realm
and by his nebfy-name, which stressed his dual relationship to the vulture
goddess Nekhbet of Upper Egypt and the cobra goddess Uadjyt of
Lower Egypt. It was once believed that this name indicated that El-Kab
and Buto, the respective towns of these goddesses, had been the capitals
of Upper and Lower Egypt. Wilson argues, however, that the goddesses
of these two cities were selected as symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt
because their cult centres best embodied the extreme contrasts between
the arid far south of Egypt and the marshes of the Delta (Wilson 1955).
The king's third or insibya- name, which is first attested in the reign of
King Den, gives his style as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and thus,
like the «^/y-name, is a dual title. The latter part appears to be connected
with the worship of Neith, the goddess of Sais in the western Delta
(Edwards 1971, p. 53). A number of Sed festivals are recorded for this
period, testifying to the antiquity of this ritual. Little can be said about
either the structure of the royal family or the rules governing succession
to the throne. The lengths assigned to reigns of this period suggest,
however, that the throne was normally passed from generation to
generation, and probably from father to son, as it was in later times.
The titles of the Early Dynastic period overwhelmingly refer to
positions in an administrative hierarchy, rather than to hereditary rank.
Royal children are seldom explicitly identified as such, but, if Kaplony
is right in identifying the names of seal-bearers, when juxtaposed with
those of kings, as expressing filiation, many high officials may have been
members of the royal family. Many offices appear to have been passed
from father to son, although it is unclear whether this happened by right,
or whether each transfer had to receive royal approbation separately.
Officials served under successive kings and had estates whose produce
constituted a significant portion of the grave-goods that were deposited
in their tombs (Kaplony 1963, pp. 25, 58-9, 71). Whether all of these
estates were granted to officials by the king to sustain and reward them
for their services, or whether some of them had been hereditary in
particular families prior to the First Dynasty, is unknown. It seems
likely, however, that, whatever nominal claim the king may have made
to pre-eminent domain, older patterns of land-holding at the village

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level, and possibly among the upper classes also, were not unduly
interfered with by the king. In spite of the controls exerted over the
Egyptian economy by the central government, these controls could not
have developed in an economic vacuum; it is therefore mistaken to
underestimate the complexity of land-holding patterns and of economic
activities in Egypt at this period.
Only a few titles have been preserved that refer specifically to the
regional administration of Egypt at this time. It would be interesting
to know if important provincial officials enjoyed hereditary rights in
particular areas or if they were transferred from district to district in
the course of their career as was done during the Old Kingdom. The
general restriction of very large tombs at Naqada, and elsewhere outside
Memphis, to a relatively early date, suggests the possible suppression
of any tendency towards a feudal-style decentralization of power. While
the shifting of officials from district to district might have lessened
the efficiency of administration, it would have helped to protect the
authority of the central government and thus have laid the basis for the
spectacular exercise of this authority early in the Old Kingdom.
More is known about the administration of the palace and of the royal
estates, including the vineyards in the western Delta. There was also
a large, well-organized bureaucracy which collected taxes in kind
throughout the country, stored these goods in government warehouses
and supervised their distribution to those who were privileged to
receive royal largess. The height of the Nile flood was carefully recorded
each year and probably served as the basis for computing annual rates
of taxation on crops, while a biennial royal tour of inspection allowed
for a general census of taxable resources. Whether or not the king
personally took part in this tour, it was known as the 'Following of
Horus' (fmsw Hr) and, along with flood heights, it was faithfully
recorded on the Palermo Stone (Edwards 1971, p. 38).
The need for book-keeping, supplemented by a desire to record royal
exploits, appears to have been mainly responsible for the development
of writing in Egypt. No inscribed papyri have survived from the Early
Dynastic Period, so that the early history of Egyptian writing must be
derived mainly from jar-sealings, labels and inscriptions on monumental
objects (fig. 1.8). These indicate that the evolution of writing was closely
associated with the royal court. Until the reign of Den, seals generally
recorded only the names of kings and officials; while afterwards titles
and other bureaucratic designations became increasingly common
(Kaplony 1963, p. xxxii). At the same time, hieroglyphs ceased to serve

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Fig. 1.8 Reverse side of the slate palette of King Narmer. Here appears for the first time the
classic motif of the monarch dominating a conquered enemy. Hieroglyphs, some obscure because
of the early stage in the development"of the writing system, identify the figures. Narmer's name
is written within the royal serekb that appears top centre. (After Gardiner 1927.)

only as legends to pictorial representations and dockets covered largely

or wholly with writing began to appear. By the end of the First Dynasty,
whole sentences were being conveyed by sequences of signs (Gardiner
1961, p. 415; Vandier 195 2, p. 859). Significantly, however, no evidence
of the use of writing was found to occur prior to the Fifth Dynasty in
the small cemetery at Naga ed-Deir (Reisner 1932).
The central government used some of the food surpluses and
manufactured goods that it had at its disposal to engage in foreign trade.
While there is no evidence that the king claimed a monopoly over this
trade, the needs and wealth of the court encouraged the palace to trade
on a scale that greatly exceeded that of any other individual or
institution in the country. It therefore seems likely that it was through
the court that most foreign goods made their way into Egypt, prior to
being distributed as royal bounty. Masses of pottery vessels from the
Early Bronze Age II culture of Palestine and coastal Syria have been

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found in royal tombs of the First Dynasty, as well as in those of high

officials. Conversely, pottery of the First Dynasty has been found in sites
such as Tell Gath in southern Palestine, which has yielded a jar inscribed
with the name of King Narmer. In addition to importing jars of olive
oil from southern Palestine, the kings of Egypt obtained large amounts
of timber, suitable for building boats, lining tombs and fashioning
coffins and household furniture, from Syria and Lebanon; while other
exotic items, which came from farther to the north or west, such as
obsidian and lapis lazuli, must have entered Egypt along the same
routes. This trade appears to have been carried on by both sea and land
and to have continued through the Second Dynasty and into the Old
Kingdom (Kantor 1965, pp. 16-17). There is no evidence that contacts
with Mesopotamia were still maintained at this time; instead, Egyptian
trade seems to have been limited to areas of south-western Asia that
were economically and culturally less developed than Egypt was. The
Egyptian kings also sent expeditions into the eastern desert to exploit
the mineral resources of that area. An inscription of Narmer in the Wadi
el-Qash and another of Djet in the Wadi Mia, 24 km east of Edfu, appear
to commemorate expeditions of a commercial or punitive nature
(Edwards, 1971, pp. 22, 24—5; Emery 1961, pp. 47,49). Copper was used
in abundance in the Early Dynastic period, as was turquoise, but there
is no proof that the Egyptians had begun to send expeditions to the
Sinai peninsula at this time.
The royal court appears to have employed large numbers of artists
and craftsmen, who were capable of turning out a wide variety of luxury
goods. These craftsmen, most of whom probably worked in the vicinity
of Memphis, evolved a coherent style and established artistic canons that
were to remain an integral part of the elite culture of ancient Egypt.
Some of the jewellery, furniture and other luxury goods produced by
these artisans were distributed among the officials who served the king
to reward them and retain their loyalty. Donations to temples also
reinforced the ties between the king and the locality or region the temple
served. It is uncertain whether most temples were still the shrines of
light construction that seem to be depicted in representations of the
Early Dynastic Period or whether these had been generally superseded
by larger and more substantial buildings.1 The royal administration no
doubt played a direct role in the maintenance of the chief temples, and
royal visits to the shrines of important deities and the fashioning of cult
1
On the function and date of the so-called Temple of Khenty-amentiu at Abydos see Kemp
(1968b).

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statues of the gods are noted on the Palermo Stone as matters of great
importance (Gardiner 1961, p. 414). While craftsmen were normally
buried only with food, drink and some of the tools of their trade, there
can be little doubt that they participated, at least to a limited degree,
in the bounty of the king and his officials. Even the peasantry probably
received boons in the form of meat and drink on festive occasions,
although there is no direct evidence of this for the Early Dynastic
Period. If less that was tangible was returned to these classes than was
demanded of them in taxes and services, such devices would nevertheless
have kept alive older ideas of reciprocity and helped to maintain the
goodwill of the masses, in addition to their obedience and reverence.
It is also possible that at this period a man of ability could reasonably
hope to climb in the administrative hierarchy (Frankfort 1956,
pp. 107—8). This was particularly likely if the population was expanding
and new positions were developing in an increasingly complex society.

Foreign Relations
Although the military organization at this period is obscure, force must
have played a role in maintaining the unity of the Egyptian state and
regulating its relations with its neighbours. References to the
suppression of' northern enemies' on monuments of King Khasekhem
suggest the crushing of a rebellion, or a counter-dynasty, in northern
Egypt towards the end of the Second Dynasty (Edwards 1971, p. 33),
although others interpret this as a campaign against the Libyans, who
lived along the borders of Lower Egypt and against whom the kings
of Egypt had waged war at an early period (Gardiner 1961^.418). Both
Kings Djer and Den claim to have engaged in combat with enemies
living to the east of Egypt, but neither the eastern border nor the
identity of these enemies is certain and suggestions of military inter-
vention into Palestine at this period lack confirmation (Yadin 1955).
More is known about relations with Nubia. With the development
of the Early Dynastic court culture, the demand for products from
sub-Saharan Africa, particularly ebony and ivory, appears to have
increased sharply. In addition, the Egyptian kings may have been
concerned about securing their southern border at the First Cataract,
up river from Jebel Silsila. It has been suggested that a smiting of Nubia
reported for the reign of Aha commemorates the incorporation of this
stretch of river into the Egyptian state (Save-Soderbergh 1941, p. 7).
About the beginning of the First Dynasty, an Egyptian expedition
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probably made its way as far south as Wadi Haifa and, on Jebel Sheikh
Suliman, carved a scene claiming a victory over two villages or local
groups of Nubians (Arkell 1950).1 This is the most southerly evidence
of Egyptian penetration during the Early Dynastic Period found to
date.
A-group communities continued to flourish into the early part of the
First Dynasty, particularly in the southern half of Lower Nubia. Large
quantities of Egyptian pottery, including wine jars, as well as copper
tools, jewellery, pendants, and amulets indicate that the Nubians
continued to have access to Egyptian goods at this period, as they had
done in late Predynastic times. Rectangular houses with rough stone
walls in a village site at Afyeh indicate more sedentarism than before
(Lai 1963), while handsomely slipped and painted conical bowls of local
manufacture suggest new levels of cultural achievement. One of the
most remarkable finds from this period is the grave of a Nubian
headman from a cemetery near Sayala, which dates from the early part
of the First Dynasty. Among the imported goods found in this grave
were a number of large copper axes, bar ingots, and chisels, a dipper
of banded slate and several stone vessels, two immense double-bird
shaped palettes and two maces with gold handles, one decorated with
a series of animals worked in low relief (Kantor 1944). The source of
such wealth is uncertain, although the Nubians were probably less able
to act as middlemen or to charge tolls in the Early Dynastic Period than
they had been in late Predynastic times. Possibly, such goods were
rewards given to a headman who had servd as a mercenary in the
Egyptian army. Even more elaborate graves dated to the early First
Dynasty have been found in Cemetery L at Qustul, near the Egyptian-
Sudanese border. This period appears to be the cultural climax of the
A-group in Lower Nubia, although the population probably still
amounted to only a few thousand people, organized on a tribal basis.
In the course of the First Dynasty, the flow of Egyptian trade goods
into Nubia came to an end and the A-group culture began to break
down. It is reasonable to assume that this process was related to the
growth of the Egyptian monarchy and the centralization of the
Egyptian economy. Instead of using the A-group as intermediaries in
its trade with sub-Saharan Africa, the Egyptian court now may have
sought to carry on this trade directly. The repeated Egyptian invasions
of Lower Nubia seem to have been part of this process and no doubt
1
While the scene clearly dates from about the beginning of the First Dynasty its unity and
attribution to Djer are not undisputed: see Helck (1970).

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account for the eventual disappearance of a sedentary population in

Lower Nubia before the end of the First Dynasty (Nordstrom 1972,
pp. 29-32).
The oldest known Egyptian settlement in Lower Nubia was at Buhen,
near the Second Cataract. The large bricks used to construct the lowest
levels of the town suggest that it may have been founded as early as
the Second Dynasty, although this early date is far from certain (Trigger
1965, p. 79—80). The purpose of this settlement is not clear, but it may
have served as a jumping-off point for an overland trade route that ran
around the Second Cataract and southward to Dongola. H. S. Smith
(1966) has demonstrated that the graves Reisner assigned to his B-group,
supposedly equivalent in age to the Old Kingdom, are, in fact, poorer
or badly plundered graves of the A-group.
Almost nothing is known about the Sudan at this time. Some pottery
from the Omdurman Bridge site resembles that of the A-group, while
other pottery, decorated with incisions filled with white pigment, is
similar to both Predynastic Egyptian N-ware and some of the later
C-group pottery (Arkell 1949, pp. 99—107). Small agricultural com-
munities and pastoralist groups probably occupied the Sudanese Nile
Valley and the adjacent steppes at this time. If Egyptian trading
expeditions were already reaching the Dongola area, it is possible that
the need to collect raw materials from the south in order to trade them
with the Egyptians was encouraging greater social complexity in that
area, in a manner analogous to what had happened in Egypt in the early
Gerzean period (Trigger 1965, pp. 81—3).

Arts and Crafts

Some of the important changes that came about in Egyptian society at
the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period found expression in new
patterns of material culture, particularly as these were related to
mass-produced goods and products manufactured specifically for the
upper classes. Material of both kinds is abundantly represented in
cemetery sites, where vast quantities, and many different varieties, of
goods were buried in the wealthier graves. The allocation of such large
quantities of luxury goods to these tombs must have increased sharply
the demand for raw materials and for the services of skilled craftsmen.
Pottery continued to be mass-produced as it had been in the Gerzean
period. Vessels with the same pot-marks, apparently indicating the team
or workshop that made them, are found throughout the country (Emery

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1961, p. 203). The black-topped and painted pottery of Predynastic

times did not, however, survive into the Early Dynastic Period; at
which time the pottery is well formed, but strictly utilitarian. This does
not indicate a decline in cultural or aesthetic standards. Instead, it
suggests that pottery no longer served as a medium of artistic
expression, as it had done formerly. Pottery jars were used to store wine
and foodstuffs, including cheese, while bowls, cups and dishes were used
as eating vessels. Most pottery was a reddish-brown ware, manufactured
from Nile mud (Emery 1961, pp. 206-14). Although many copper tools
were now available for craftsmen who were in the employ of the
wealthy, flint was still widely used to manufacture knives, scrapers,
arrow- and spear-heads, sickle blades, drills and other implements.
Magnificent scimitar-like flint knives continued to be manufactured well
into the First Dynasty. Although possibly made for ritualistic purposes,
these knives sustained some of the expertise in working flint that had
developed during the Gerzean period (Emery 1961, p. 233 ; Saad 1969,
pis. 40—2).
In other spheres, the Early Dynastic culture was markedly in advance
of that of Predynastic times. Carpentry appears to have developed very
rapidly at the start of the First Dynasty, no doubt aided by the
proliferation of copper tools. In particular, the techniques of joining,
carving and inlay all manifest a sophistication not attested for the
Predynastic Period. The furnishings of wealthier houses now included
beds, chairs, stools and numerous chests and boxes, sometimes em-
bellished with ivory or copper fittings. Legs of furniture were frequently
carved to represent the limbs of cattle. Near life-size wooden statues
were also produced, at least as early as the reign of Djer (Emery 1961,
pp. 170—1). Metal ewers, bowls, dishes and other vessels, as well as
mirrors, were hammered, and later cast, from copper. Spouts were
riveted onto these vessels and handles were sometimes bound on with
copper wire. In general, copper vessels reproduced the forms of stone
ones. Although no copper statues have survived, one of Khasekhemwy
is reported to have been made in the fifteenth year of his reign (Edwards
1971, p. 34). Jewellery was made out of gold, turquoise, lapis lazuli and
other semi-precious stones. Engraved and embossed sheets of gold were
used to cover the handles of weapons and to adorn other objects. The
central chamber of one tomb at Saqqara was inlaid from floor to ceiling
with strips of sheet gold; its employment giving some idea of the
amounts of this metal available at this time (Emery 1961, p. 228). Bone
and ivory were used for inlays, jewellery, arrow-heads, spoons, gaming

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pieces and statuettes. The modelling and delineation of details on some

of the best ivory objects is of very high quality. Beads, pendants, amulets
and inlays were also made out of faience, in a wide variety of different
shapes (Emery 1961, pp. 228-31).
The most distinctive products of the Early Dynastic Period were a
vast number of vessels made of steatite, schist, alabaster, marble, quartz,
basalt, diorite and many other types of stone. While carrying on a
tradition of stone-working of long standing in Upper Egypt, the
aesthetic standards achieved in the manufacture of these vessels were
not matched either before or after this time. The softer stones,
particularly schist and alabaster, were worked into vessels of exceedingly
plastic design, while harder stone was used to fashion simpler-shaped
vessels. Sometimes, stone of one kind was inlaid with stone of another.
Many of the thousands of stone vessels that were buried in the Step
Pyramid at the beginning of the Third Dynasty were made in the Early
Dynastic Period (Emery 1961, pp. 214—17).
While the late Gerzean votive mace-heads and palettes bear witness
to the development of bas-relief sculpture prior to the First Dynasty,
these particular forms of artistic expression did not persist for long
afterwards. That bas-relief continued is demonstrated, however, by the
funerary stelae from Abydos and a frieze of lions on a limestone lintel
from the tomb of Queen Herneith. The royal stelae display erratic
variations in design and execution, some being primitive on both
counts, others well carved but lacking in balance of design. On the other
hand, the stela of King Djet is ranked among the great artistic
achievements of ancient Egyptian culture. Later in the Early Dynastic
Period, rectangular stelae from both Saqqara and Helwan portray the
deceased seated before a table surrounded by funerary offerings (Vandier
1952, pp. 724-74). An inscribed granite door-jamb of Khasekhemwy
is described as displaying all of the design and symmetry of the Old
Kingdom, in spite of the hard stone from which it was fashioned (Emery
1961, p. 169).
Stone sculpture also developed during the Early Dynastic Period.
Animal representations include an alabaster baboon, inscribed with the
name of Narmer, and a granite lion. The famous pottery lion from
Hierakonpolis may also date from this period, although the Third
Dynasty has also been suggested (Vandier 1952, p. 977). A number of
human figures, carved out of limestone and granite and smaller than
life-size, appear to belong to the Second Dynasty. These portray
kneeling officials or seated figures. From the end of the period are two

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statuettes of Khasekhem, one in schist, the other in limestone; in style

these foreshadow the classic art of the Old Kingdom. In its clean lines,
increasing symmetry and striving after a monumental effect regardless
of size, the sculpture of the Early Dynastic Period represents the
formative stage in the development of a major component of classical
Egyptian art.
We have already discussed the development of funerary architecture
during this period. If the so-called forts of the Second Dynasty are, in
fact, all royal funerary palaces, little in the way of non-funerary
architecture survives. It is reasonable to believe, however, that brick
niching was also used in non-funerary contexts. A niched wall recently
uncovered at the Early Dynastic town-site of Hierakonpolis may have
been part of some First Dynasty royal construction (Fairservis et al.
1971-2). The Palermo Stone records the erection of a stone temple at
the end of the Second Dynasty (Edwards 1971, p. 66).
There is little direct evidence concerning the intellectual achievements
of the Early Dynastic Period. Records were evidently kept of the sort
which could later be used to compile the text of the Palermo Stone. Two
treatises are also claimed, on the basis of internal evidence, to-date from
this period. One, the so-called Memphite theology, ascribes the creation
of the world to Ptah, the patron deity of Memphis. The other is a
surprisingly empirical work dealing with medical procedures (Aldred
1965, pp. 63-4).
The Early Dynastic Period appears to have been a time of great
creativity and inventiveness, in the course of which the elite culture of
Pharaonic Egypt can be seen taking shape. While this creativity was to
continue into the Third Dynasty, by the end of the Early Dynastic
Period most of the principal elements of the court culture of the Old
Kingdom were already well established. The development of new skills
and the flowering of so many arts and crafts at the beginning of the
First Dynasty have been interpreted by some Egyptologists as
' overwhelming evidence' of an incursion into the Nile Valley, which
brought with it the culture of Early Dynastic times (Emery 1961,
p. 165). While we have noted evidence of Mesopotamian influence, this
influence was only transitory and was replaced by stylistic conventions
that were of indigenous origin and which characterized Egyptian
culture in later times. The continuities between the Predynastic and
Early Dynastic cultures are so numerous as to suggest that some
explanation, other than migration or cultural diffusion, is needed to
account for the differences between these two periods.

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The crucial factor in the emergence of new traditions of craftsmanship

seems to be that it was at the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period,
or slightly before, that certain craftsmen came under the patronage and
control of the royal court. Hitherto, craftsmen had existed in Egypt
whose work was clearly of a high order. It would appear, however, that
these craftsmen looked to their community, region, or to Egypt as a
whole, rather than to a particular class in Egyptian society, as a market
for their goods. While some of the goods they turned out may have
been for the temples or for the wealthier and more powerful members
of the community, these were only some among a broad range of clients.
In early times, rulers probably were content to avail themselves of the
services of these general craftsmen.
Around the beginning of the First Dynasty, however, the kings of
Egypt started to provide work for an increasing number of specialists
on a full-time basis. As the Egyptian state grew, the court and the official
hierarchy expanded, providing a larger market for specialized goods and
services and this, in turn, facilitated a high degree of specialization
within particular lines of work. One result of this specialization was a
marked increase in the quality of what was being produced. Artisans
developed whose work was solely to provide luxury goods for the upper
classes. The need to co-ordinate the activities of groups of specialists
also encouraged the development of writing and of numerous admini-
strative skills connected with royal government. Within the overall
system, craftsmen were subject to control by scribes and bureaucrats,
who were charged with supplying them and co-ordinating their
activities. One effect of this control of production by accountants and
administrators must have been to discourage innovations, once
acceptable modes of production had been worked out. The effect of this
has been noted by Aldred when he states that, in spite of bold
experimentations during the Early Dynastic Period, once a solution had
been evolved, development ceased and a new convention was added to
a stockpile of existing traditions (Aldred 1965, p. 53).
Because the whole of Egypt was united under a single government,
at least by the First Dynasty, a common network of highly specialized
craftsmen came to serve a group of patrons on such a scale as was not
to be found among the city states of Mesopotamia, even if individual
Mesopotamian cities enjoyed hegemony over the rest from time to time.
Because of this, it is not surprising that, in the Old Kingdom, building
projects could be undertaken on a scale that was impossible in
Mesopotamia and that in specific crafts, such as those related to

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stone-working, the skills of Egyptian workmen greatly outstripped

those of their Mesopotamian counterparts. On the other hand, in Egypt
basic technological innovation tended to lag behind that of south-
western Asia; as evidenced by the late introduction of both bronze and
iron. The luxurious products of the court-sponsored culture of Egypt
were meant, however, for the use of an elite and stood as material
symbols of the superordinate position of these people in Egyptian
society. Occasionally, the minor works of highly skilled artisans may
have made their way further down the redistributive network or been
purchased by an exceptionally prosperous villager. Simplified and
cheaper versions of court fashions also seem to have diffused gradually
down to the level of ordinary people. On the whole, however, local
production and local trade must have continued to supply the needs of
the vast majority of Egyptians, as they had done in Predynastic times.

CONCLUSIONS

While the possibility that certain plants and animals may have been
domesticated locally cannot be ruled out, food production in Egypt,
from Predynastic times on, was clearly an extension of the south-west
Asian pattern. North of the First Cataract, the Nile Valley embraced
a floodplain that was larger and easier to cultivate than any in
south-western Asia. The abundance of game and natural plant foods
initially may have inhibited the spread of food production, and it was
perhaps only towards the end of the Predynastic Period that the
population became almost totally reliant on agriculture and herding.
Moreover, the especially rich natural resources of the Delta may have
resulted in an even slower realization of the full potential of a
food-producing economy than took place in Upper Egypt. Both in
Upper and Lower Egypt, however, the floodplain had the potential for
supporting a dramatic increase in population and for the development
of a more complex society, as a result of the greater productivity
inherent in an agricultural economy. Farther south, in Nubia, the
narrow and discontinuous floodplain did not hold out such promise.
In that area, food production appears mainly to have compensated for
declining natural food sources. The population of this region remained
small and at a tribal level.
The development of a complex society in Egypt was further
encouraged by the proximity of the southern part of Upper Egypt to
the mineral resources of the eastern desert. It has been suggested that
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gold became an important item of trade with south-western Asia,

probably by the early Gerzean period. This trade enhanced the
regulatory power of those headmen whose communities were well
situated to exploit these resources and may have been a major factor
promoting the emergence of these communities as important economic
and political centres. Competition over trade may also have led to
political struggles among the emerging polities of southern Egypt and
the desire to protect trade with Palestine and the rest of south-western
Asia, or to eliminate middlemen, may have led to the conquest of
northern Egypt, either at the beginning of the First Dynasty or
sometime earlier.
The consolidation of the Egyptian state was ensured by the develop-
ment of a centralized administrative system and of a court-centred
Great Tradition predicated on a united Egypt, which thereafter, even
in times of political crises, was to dominate the thinking of the Egyptian
elite. The early development of a strong central government eliminated
many of the factors that in south-western Asia led to the development
of urban centres for defensive purposes. In Egypt, regional admini-
strative centres were not necessarily marked by large clusters of popu-
lation, and the peasantry remained scattered in small villages. The royal
court set the cultural standards for the entire country; making the king
the fountainhead not only of power and preferment but also of a way
of life that the elite, and to some extent all Egyptians, wished to share.
The absence of powerful enemies on its peripheries was in early times
a source of stability for Egyptian society by comparison with the
situation prevailing in Mesopotamia; however, the elite traditions,
combined with the scale of Egyptian society, later proved strong
enough to survive periods of internal instability and foreign conquest
for over three thousand years. The forging of an elite tradition on this
vast scale was clearly the greatest achievement of the Early Dynastic
Period.

APPENDIX

CHRONOLOGY OF THE EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD

PREDYNASTIC KINGS

Palermo Stone - top register has seven names fully preserved, two partially;
all wear the crown of Lower Egypt. There are traces of more determinatives
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at either end. The main Cairo fragment has ten determinatives; six wear the
Double Crown of a united Egypt.

The Scorpion king (?)

Ka (Sekhen)

FIRST DYNASTY
FROM 3OOO+ IOO TO C. 2890 BC
Narmer
Aha
Djer (Zer, Sekhty)
Djet (Zet, Uadji, Edjo)
Den (Udimu)
Anedjib (Andjyeb, Ene2ib)
Semerkhet
Qaa (Ka'a)
(Merneith may have been a regnant queen in the early part of the dynasty)

SECOND DYNASTY
C. 2890 TO 2686 BC

Hetepsekhemwy
Reneb
Nynetjer (Nutjeren)
— Wenega
— Seneda
Sekhemib ) . -
same mler?
Peribsenb I
Khasekhem \ , .
„, ,, } same ruler?
Khasekhemwyrc )
a
Personal name, Horus-name unknown
b
Seth-name
c
Horus- and Seth-name

(Spelling and order based on Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edn, vol. 1, pt. 2,
p. 994. For correlations of Horus and personal names see ibid., and for other
interpretations of the chronology of this period Gardiner (1961, pp. 429-32).)

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 CHAPTER 2

OLD KINGDOM, MIDDLE KINGDOM

AND SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD
c. 2686-1552 BC

The Old and Middle Kingdoms together represent an important unitary

phase in Egypt's political and cultural development. The Early Dynastic
Period had seen the creation and consolidation of a type of government
and court culture which, with the Third Dynasty, now reached levels
of scale and competence marking the beginning of the plateau of
achievement for ancient Egypt. After five centuries and following the
end of the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2181 BC) the system appears to have
faltered, and there seems to have ensued a century and a half of
provincial assertion and civil war, the First Intermediate Period. But
the re-establishment of powerful central government which followed,
c. 2040 BC, seems to have been, with certain changes of nuance, the
re-establishment of the patterns of the Old Kingdom. There is thus
much to be said for treating certain important aspects of the Old and
Middle Kingdoms together.

DIVINE KINGSHIP

Divine kingship is the most striking feature of Egypt in these periods.

In the form of great religious complexes centred on the pyramid tombs
its cult was given monumental expression of a grandeur unsurpassed
anywhere in the ancient Near East. Yet despite its all-pervading
influence in Egyptian civilization it is not easy to present a coherent
account of its doctrines, especially one which avoids mixing material
from widely separated periods. One good reason for this is the Egyptian
mode of communication, presenting doctrine not in the form of
cogently argued treatises intended to persuade, but as series of concisely
worded assertions which to us often take on a deeply cryptic appearance.
The basic assertions are that the king is the holder of an office which
is divine, he is 'the good god'; that he is a particular incarnation of
Horus, an ancient sky and falcon god who became closely linked with
the sun cult of Ra; that he is a son of Ra, the sun god, something

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incorporated into royal titulary from the Fourth Dynasty onwards. In

the latter part of the Old Kingdom the deceased king became identified
with Osiris, a god of the dead standing in a special relationship to the
kingship.
For the periods under consideration three important texts, or groups
of texts, deal with divine kingship. One is the Memphite Theology,
known from an eighth-century BC copy of a document composed much
earlier, possibly in the Old Kingdom or even before, although this is
a disputed matter. It attempts to explain the geographical duality of
Egyptian kingship, the positions of the gods Horus and Seth, and the
supremacy of the capital city of Memphis and ultimately of its creator
god, Ptah. Horus is presented as the first king of Upper and Lower
Egypt, acquiring this position, having been earlier only the king of
Lower Egypt, after the god Geb had given him also the kingship of
Upper Egypt, hitherto held by Seth. The mythically aetiological element
is so manifest that it is pointless to search for strictly historical features,
particularly since the picture it suggests is at variance with the
archaeological record. The second is the Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus,
dating to the reign of Senusret I (c. 1971 BC). It contains forty-six scenes,
illustrated by thirty-one drawings, and includes instructions for the
performance of ritual acts. The rituals, accompanied by notes on their
mystic significance, seem intended for the king's accession or for his
jubilee ceremony, and we may presume, therefore, that with this text we
are confronted with ideas at the very heart of the Egyptians' concept
of kingship. We find that it is concerned primarily with the king's
relationship to Horus, Osiris, and Seth, to the very situation for which
the Memphite Theology offers its 'historical' explanation. The Pyramid
Texts, inscribed in the subterranean parts of the pyramids of kings from
Unas to Pepy II, and Aba of the Eighth Dynasty, and of three late Sixth
Dynasty queens form the third main source. Although their language
is seemingly an archaic one, those who edited the texts for a particular
pyramid would seem to have had sufficient working knowledge of it
to adapt them to changing revelations, and even perhaps to compose.
The increase and change in nature of allusions to Osiris and to Seth
is one demonstration that they represent a living tradition. Their
purpose is to assert the king's supremacy as a god, after rebirth, in a
many-sided afterlife. Although the Horus-Osiris aspect occurs through-
out, the climax of the texts is the king's identification with Ra and
a cosmic life in heaven.
Because the aetiological element in Egyptian thought, which sought

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to explain the present by creating historical myths, was so strong, and

because of the nature of Egyptian thought which did not demand that
the connection between assertions be made explicit, it is difficult both
to reconstruct from any text an earlier stage of development and in the
end to escape from simply describing the various theological facets of
kingship in the Egyptians' own terms. It is, nevertheless, evident that
any functional explanation must begin with the Osiris—Horus—Seth
motif which, as it were, underpinned kingship and one of whose main
themes was to relate the person of the living king in the closest possible
way to his country's royal ancestors, and thus to ensure that the
historical process of royal succession remained always embraced within
a central and authoritative body of myth. The relationship to Ra, the
sun god, was presumably more of an abstract compliment to the majesty
and power of the living king. Ultimately, the dogmas served to reinforce
the historical process by which a central authority had come to exercise
its control over a long-established network of community politics, and
were themselves continually reinforced in provincial association by
ritual and by the iconography of ritual which, for example, made the
king responsible for the ceremonies of provincial temples.
The prominence and consistency with which the theology of divine
kingship was proclaimed inhibits an understanding of the office of king
as a political one, and hence the writing of history, of which we know
remarkably little for the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The source
material is so slight that narrative history may be considered an
inappropriate literary form, particularly if one begins to suspect that the
impressive facade of uniformity and continuity presented by inscriptions
and monuments designed to propound the theology of divine kingship
hides a complex and changing political scene.
The realities of earthly power - the usurpations and complex family
relationships, of which one well-studied example is known from the
Fourth Dynasty (Goedicke 1954, 1955; Reisner and Smith 1955,
pp. 1—12) - imply that kingship must have been perceived on more than
one level, and that some form of rationalization was necessary. It has
been argued (Goedicke 1954) that this can be observed in the various
terms used to refer to the king, distinguishing the human individual
and the holder of divine office (the ancient justifications for the royal
succession are discussed by Brunner (1955), Otto (1969) and Tanner
(1974)). It is just such a varied presentation of kingship as a factor in
the lives of men that is found in a body of literary texts from the Middle
Kingdom and the period immediately preceding. In some of them the

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political nature of kingship is freely admitted, particularly in two which

claim to be treatises of guidance issued by a king for his son and
successor, and, in an introspective mood, contain advice on the
maintenance of power and regret at the treachery to which the office
is exposed. One of these texts is the Instruction of King Amenemhat
(see Lichtheim 1973, pp. 135-9; Pritchard 1969, pp. 418-19; Simpson
1
9 7 3 > PP • J 9 3 ~~7) • The earlier text, the Instruction to Merikara (Lichtheim
1973, pp. 97—109; Pritchard 1969, pp. 414—18; Simpson 1973, pp.
180-92), is particularly remarkable for its humanity, for its rational view
of kingship, and for its emphasis on royal responsibility:
Well tended are men, the cattle of god.
He made heaven and earth according to their desire,
and repelled the demon of the waters.
He made the breath of life for their nostrils.
They who have issued from his body are his images.
He arises in heaven according to their desire.
He made for them plants, animals, fowl and fish to feed them. . .
He made for them rulers (even) in the egg,
a supporter to support the back of the disabled.
He made for them magic as a weapon to ward off what might happen.
(Lines 130-7.)1
The position of the king from this point of view is well summed up
in a more formal text of King Senusret I :
He (the god Hor-akhty) created me as one who should do that which he had
done, and to carry out that which he commanded should be done. He appointed
me herdsman of this land, for he knew who would keep it in order for him.2
Central to the Egyptians' views of kingship was the concept of mdat
which, whilst sometimes translatable as 'justice' or 'truth', is a term
whose meaning goes far beyond legal fairness or factual accuracy. It was
used to refer to the ideal state of the universe and society, and was
personified as the goddess Ma'at. Although of eternal existence its
operation in the world of men was the responsibility of the king, and
as such must have acted as a constraint on the arbitrary exercise of
power: a 'natural' morality in the place of institutional checks.
In the Middle Kingdom this was taken as a theme suitable for
1
A related notion of mankind's equality is expressed in a contemporary Coffin Text, spell 1130
(CT VII, 461ft); see the literature cited in Grieshammer (1974, p. 167), also Lichtheim (1975,
pp. 131-2) and Pritchard (1969, pp. 7-8).
2
The so-called Berlin Leather Roll (P. Berlin 3029); see Goedicke (1974), Lichtheim (1973,
pp. 115 —18). For the metaphor 'herdsman' of mankind, applied to gods as much as to the king,
see Blumenthal (1970, pp. 27-37), D - Miiller (1961).

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exposition. The Prophecy of the lector-priest Neferty (Neferyt) (Helck

1970, Pritchard 1969, pp. 444—6; Simpson 1973, pp. 234—40) does this
with a simple literary device: a picture of chaos is sketched, calamities
of nature and anarchy in society. Then the coming of a king who is
probably Amenemhat I is described, in the form of an age when all will
be healed:' Right {ma'at) shall come again to its place, and iniquity/chaos,
it is cast o u t . ' (Lines 68 9.)1 The theme of the chaotic society-
characterized by social upheaval, the perversion of justice, lack of
security against foreign interference, natural calamities, god's abandon-
ment of man, personal alienation from the world - seems at this period
to have become something of a literary preoccupation. 2 Nowhere is it
explored with more flourish, detail and sense of immediacy than in the
Admonitions of the sage, Ipuwer, which presents a carefully-studied
negative image of the ideal society, one in which, presumably, ma'at was
no longer operative (Helck and Otto 1972, cols. 65—6; Lichtheim 1973,
pp. 149—63; Pritchard 1969, pp. 441—4; Simpson 1973, pp. 210—29).
Indeed, the imaginative powers of its author have repeatedly beguiled
people into regarding it as a piece of reporting, and thus descriptive
of a period of political and social breakdown at the end of either the
Old or Middle Kingdom. 3 The lamentations are apparently being
addressed by Ipuwer to a king who is held responsible for what is
described: 'Authority, knowledge, and truth are yours, yet confusion
is what you set throughout the land.' (Lines 12, 12-12, 13.) The
beginning of the text is lost, but the setting is perhaps best imagined
as the court of a long-dead king, as with the Prophecy of Neferty, or
the scandalous story of Neferkara and the general Sasenet (Posener
195 7a). One section is, however, positive in its content, and, by extolling
the pious duties of kings, seems to reflect the widespread ancient belief
that piety and successful rule go together (Lines 10, 12-11, 10).
This philosophical literature is something peculiar to the Middle
Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, and it has been pointed out
that it contains an element of propaganda on behalf of kingship and
the established order of society, disseminated via scribal schools. It must
1
The close and illuminating parallelism between Neferty and the much later Potter's Oracle
is explored by Koenen (1970); Goedicke (1977) follows a somewhat different line of interpretation.
2
Another important text is the fragmentary lamentation of Khakheperra-senb, whose name,
compounded from the prenomen of Senusret II, helps to date it; see Kadish (1973), Lichtheim (1973,
pp. 145-9), Simpson (1973, pp. 230 3).
3
For the later dating see van Seters (1964, 1966, pp. 103-20). A complicated history of redaction
is suggested in Barta (1974) and Fecht (1972, 1973); these studies also assume that the key speeches
are all addressed to the creator god, with none addressed to a king. A number of scholars have
expressed in recent years considerable reservations about the detailed historicity of the text.

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also reflect that the relationship between the humanity and divinity of
kings was a major intellectual problem for the Egyptians, though with
their natural mode of thought and expression being particular rather
than abstract the form which their discussions took may now seem
unfamiliar and be easily misunderstood. Nor, because of the absence
of a comparable body of texts, is it easy to make a balanced assessement
of the degree to which the character of kingship at this time differed
from that of the Old Kingdom, though in an impressionistic way this
latter may appear as an heroic age of absolute royal power untempered
by the doubts and cares expressed in these later texts. Yet the concept
otma'ai was certainly present then, as the force which ensures an orderly
universe (for example Pyramid Texts §§ 15 82, 1774-6), and as something
whose performance was the responsibility of kings (Pyramid Texts
§§ 265, 1774—6; the Horus-names of kings Sneferu and Userkaf were,
respectively, 'Lord of ma'at' and 'Performer of ma'at'). Furthermore,
the association between ma'at and the just society finds expression in
the Instructions of the vizier Ptah-hetep of the Fifth Dynasty: 'Justice
(ma'at) is great, its value enduring. It has not been disturbed since the
days of him who created it. He who transgresses the laws is punished.'
(Lines 88-90.)1 The main concepts were thus present in this earlier time,
even if some of their wider implications did not find the literary
expression that has survived. Yet some measure of the greater variety
with which kingship was perceived in the Middle Kingdom is manifest
in the royal statues of the period, some of which portray aspects of
kingship which certainly represent, whatever else, something more
complex and intellectual than the positive idealism of the Old Kingdom.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the intervening First Intermediate
Period and its civil war had a disturbing intellectual effect.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

So little is known of the history of these periods that in many cases even
the reason for dynastic change is unknown. Nevertheless, it is clear that,
with the exception of the Palestinian Hyksos kings of the Second
Intermediate Period, this was throughout these periods primarily a
matter of internal politics and largely localized around the court.
Usurpation is one obvious cause, as with Amenemhat I, founder of the
1
The alternative text reads 'since the time of Osiris'. The full text is translated in Lichtheim
(>973> PP- 61-80), Pritchard (1969, pp. 412-18) and Simpson (1973, pp. 159-76). Compare also
the short text of the vizier Neferseshemra in Lichtheim (1973, p. 17) and Sethe (1932-3, p. 198).

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Twelfth Dynasty, who has plausibly been identified with a vizier of the
same name in the court of the preceding king. But the circumstances
surrounding such an event invariably escape us. Detailed study of the
great necropolis at Giza has provided one sketchy case history of the
complex family relationships which could lie behind a succession of
kings, in this instance those of the Fourth Dynasty and perhaps those
of the early Fifth as well (see Goedicke 1954, 1955; Helck 1968; Pirenne
1932-5, vol. 11, pp. 14-23, vol. in, ii, pp. 401-2 ;Reisner and Smith 195 5,
pp. 1—12). A literary text of the late Middle Kingdom, the Westcar
Papyrus, purports to cover some of the same ground and to narrate the
circumstances surrounding the origin of the Fifth Dynasty, whose first
three kings are here presented as being all sons of the sun god and of
the wife of one of his priests (Lichtheim 1973, pp. 215—22; Simpson
1973, pp. 15-30). The prophecy of their accession and of the piety of
their future rule is made before King Khufu, builder of the Great
Pyramid, who appears in ancient times to have acquired a reputation
for both impiety and cruelty. In this tale his impiety is characterized
by a search for sacred information (precisely what is still not clear; see
Hornung (1973)) which he can use in the construction of his own tomb.
The story, which might be termed 'The doom of the house of Khufu',
may perhaps further exemplify the theme that piety and impiety have
historical consequences and thus serve to illustrate the gulf between
ancient and modern historiography.
The Fourth Dynasty is virtually the only period in the Old and Middle
Kingdoms where it is possible to learn much about the royal family at
all, particularly on the male side. The prominence of the royal family
in the great Giza necropolis in large tombs close to the pyramid of
Khufu is matched by a prominence of royal sons in the administration.
Spanning the entire Fourth Dynasty is a line of viziers, most of them
also in charge of the king's building projects, who are kings' sons,
though not destined to succeed to the throne. The last one, Sekhemkara,
a son of King Khafra, probably served into the reign of Sahura of the
Fifth Dynasty, but henceforth (with one exception) no vizier bears the
title ' king's son', though he might be married to a princess (Pirenne
1932-5, vol. 11, pp. 106-8, vol. in, i, pp. 58-65; Weil 1908).x Indeed,
it now becomes difficult to discover much at all about royal sons, the
1
An example of princesses married to other high officials is cited by Yoyotte (1950); also
Pirenne (1932-5, vol. in, ii, p. 497)- A further example of a vizier who was also a 'king's son'
is the Teti buried near the pyramid of Pepy II, but it is very possible that he should be placed
after the end of the Sixth Dynasty (Kees 1940, pp. 48-9).

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problem being complicated by the occasional use of the term to cover

a royal grandson, and its eventual use as a rank indicator (Baer i960,
p. 45; von Beckerath 1964, pp. 100—1; Nims 1938). Five tombs of
princes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties appear to be known at Saqqara.
Neither in size nor by position in the necropolis do they appear to differ
from the vast mass of officials' tombs, and inasmuch as tombs were
symbols of status give no indication that their owners had a distinctive
standard of living. The titles held by this group place them in the
administration, but not consistently high in the hierarchy. One,
Nefer-seshem-seshat (Baer i960, no. 275; Gauthier 1907, p. 108), was
vizier and overseer of the king's works, two (Isesi-ankh: Baer i960,
no. 64; Gauthier 1907, p. 138; Ka-em-tjenent: Baer i960, no. 530;
Gauthier 1907, p. 197) were overseers of the king's works and
commanders of the army, the remaining two (Ra-em-ka: Baer i960,
no. 303 ; Gauthier 1907, p. 197; Satju: Baer i960, no. 419; Gauthier 1907,
p. 198) had minor posts, one of a priestly nature. A sixth prince (Khesu:
Baer i960, no. 395; Gauthier 1907, p. 168), the location of whose tomb
is uncertain, was an 'inspector of priests' at one of the pyramid temples,
and a late Fourth or early Fifth Dynasty prince with non-executive titles
was probably buried at Abu Rawash (Fischer 1961a). The relative
insignificance of princes in the administration of the later Old Kingdom,
a period of about three centuries, is also borne out by their general
absence in texts referring to the administration, and by the surviving
court lists which occur in the reliefs of the later Old Kingdom pyramid
temples. Although princes are here put in a place of honour, they are
given either no further title, or a priestly one: 'priest of Min' or
'lector—priest'.
In the Middle Kingdom they are even more inconspicuous. If, as
seems likely from the negative results of examinations within royal
pyramid enclosures, their tombs followed the same pattern and were
spread out amongst the tombs of officials then the great destruction
which has overtaken these necropolises helps to explain this. A re-used
stele of prince Amenemhat-ankh from Dashur lists a number of titles,
but all are priestly (de Morgan 1903, figs, m , 128).1 Again, their
absence is notable from administrative records, including a lengthy
fragment of a court journal (Papyrus Bulaq 18; Scharff 1920), where
the royal family seems to consist of one prince, one queen, three
princesses and no fewer than nine 'royal sisters'.
1
Note also the apparently still unpublished stele of prince Hepu from el-Lisht referred to in
G a u t h i e r ( 1 9 0 7 , v o l . 11, p . 130, n . 2 5 ) .

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The small role which princes were allowed doubtless contributed to

the stability of government, particularly at the sensitive moment of
succession. In the Twelfth Dynasty this process was rendered more
secure by the expedient of overlapping reigns, or co-regency, in which
the heir was made king whilst his father was still alive and dated his
reign from this moment. The co-regency of Amenemhat I and Senusret
I, for example, lasted ten years. Yet, even so, a popular romance set in
this period, the Story of Sinuhe, depicts the moment of Amenemhat's
death as one of instability (lines R 17—24, translated in Lichtheim (1973,
p. 224), Pritchard (1969, pp. 18—19) anc^ Simpson (1973, pp. 58—9)).
The status of princes as reflected in funerary practices contrasts
sharply with that of princesses, queens and royal mothers. Whilst the
monumental tomb at Giza belonging to Queen Khentkawes, an
ancestral figure for the Fifth Dynasty, is exceptional, substantial tombs
for royal ladies immediately adjacent to the king's pyramid are a regular
feature of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, sometimes, in the former
period, being themselves pyramidal in form. Despite the use of titles
such as 'king's daughter' or 'king's wife' it is not always clear whether
their owners were queens, daughters, concubines or sisters of the king.
At the pyramid of Senusret III at Dashur the tombs of royal ladies
formed a carefully planned catacomb with four chapels above ground
conforming to the overall design of the pyramid complex, suggesting
that their burial arrangements had been made irrespective of their
marriage prospects. The prominence of royal ladies in the funerary cult
is also borne out by statue cults for some of them carried out by priests
attached to some of the royal pyramids. The administrative archives
from the pyramids of Neferirkara of the Fifth Dynasty at Abusir and
of Senusret II of the Twelfth at El-Lahun attest cults for, in the former
case, Queen Khentkawes (Posener-Krieger and de Cenival (1968, pis.
in, LXV); these texts are translated in Posener-Krieger (1976)), and in
the latter, for a predominantly female royal household (Borchardt 1899,
Kaplony-Heckel 1971, nos. 3, 42, 73, 81, 107, 271, 287, 307, 311, 421).
The political implications of whom the king married must have been
considerable, although for the Old and Middle Kingdoms there is no
evidence of the later custom of the king accepting in marriage the
daughter of a foreign, or at least western Asiatic, king as part of a
diplomatic alignment. It used to be claimed that Nubian blood ran in
the early Twelfth Dynasty kings, but this deduction is no longer
necessary (Posener 1956, pp. 47—8). A somewhat similar misreading of
slender evidence gave rise to a Libyan origin for one of the principal

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queens of King Khufu (Reisner and Smith 1955, p. 7). It is, in fact,
difficult to discover much at all about the backgrounds of queens.
Consequently it is hard to judge how singular is the case of two wives
of Pepy I of the Sixth Dynasty, the mothers of the future kings Merenra
and Pepy II. Both were daughters of a court lady married to a
commoner, Khui. One of their brothers, Djau, became vizier, and one
of his sons succeeded to a provincial governorship (Gardiner 1954,
Goedicke 1955)- But whether, as has been claimed, this marked an
important historical stage in the weakening of kingship vis-a-vis provincial
governors or whether it is merely a well-recorded example of how
power was kept out of the hands of princes and courtiers is difficult
to tell.1
THE CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION

Throughout the Old Kingdom Egypt's capital remained at Memphis.

Although some (though possibly not much) of the ancient town mound
and an adjacent cemetery still survive at Mit Rahina no serious fieldwork
has been done here, so that there is little with which to clothe this fact
(Kemp 1976b, Montet 1957, pp. 27—34). In particular, we have no idea
of the appearance, or even of the size, of the royal palace. In the Twelfth
and Thirteenth Dynasties a new term for the capital is found,
' Amenemhat-ith-tawy' ('King Amenemhat (I) seizes the two lands'),
often abbreviated to Ith-tawy, and written inside a symbol representing
a fortified enclosure. Over a thousand years later a town of this name
was still in existence, situated somewhere in the 5 o km between Medum
and Memphis, and providing the one specific piece of evidence that
Ith-tawy may have lain separately from Memphis, even if only as a
southerly suburb, or perhaps closer to El-Lisht. It has otherwise been
lost.
Very few administrative documents have survived from the Old and
Middle Kingdoms, too few to reveal the full structure of government
at any one time, let alone to enable its historical development to be traced
in any detail. In their place we must rely heavily on the very numerous
titles born by officials. A major difficulty here is that titles were not
necessarily descriptive of jobs, but could serve to place a man in the
hierarchy of power and thus indicate his rank relative to his fellows.
What, if any, duties were performed by, or expected of, a 'mouth of
Nekhen' (Hierakonpolis) or an 'elder of the portal' quite escape us. On
1
Pepy 1's mother, Iuput, had a statue cult at Coptos, but whether this implies a provincial origin
for her is not clear (Goedicke 1967, pp. 41-54). Another case of provincial royal connections is
dealt with in Habachi (1958).

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the parallels of better-documented cultures one might expect that the

court did indeed contain courtiers, whose role in the decision-making
and administrative process was not clearly defined though it might be
considerable. The Old Kingdom court lists seem to contain many who
might be in this category. One must also allowforthe administrative
versatility which, with organizational expertise, was a prized quality and
could, in turn, place an able man in charge of armies fighting abroad,
quarrying expeditions, or legal proceedings at court. At the same time
one should not automatically regard holders of titles as full-time civil
servants. Egyptian society, insofar as it expressed itself in inscriptions,
fell into three groups: literate men wielding authority derived from the
king, those subordinate to them (doorkeepers, soldiers, quarrymen, and
so on), and the illiterate peasantry. Titles essentially put a man on the
right side of society, the one of privilege and authority, something of
which literary compositions (especially the Satire of the Trades) provide
self-conscious expression. But how much of his life would be occupied
by administrative tasks is often not clear. Naturally, government service
was a major source of income for such a person, extending beyond daily
necessities to gifts of land and to equipment (even architectural
elements) for his tomb, although independent provision of such things
was also boasted about (Helck 1956a, 1975, chs. 7 and 8). Further
information on private wealth is, however, somewhat ambiguous, for
private commercial activity is something which finds no place in the
formal inscriptions which are our major source of information. Yet
private ownership of land is well documented for the Old and Middle
Kingdoms, often made into a trust, or pious foundation, and sometimes
on a scale which would have put the owner at the centre of a major
agricultural concern with substantial marketing implications. Further-
more, the archaeological record suggests a complex and extensive
marketing system, occasionally even satisfying a local taste for exotic
imports by producing imitations, and makes it hard to accept that this
was entirely, or even largely, the responsibility of a closed government
redistributive system.
One document unique in its class is a long fragment of a court journal
(Papyrus Bulaq 18) from the reign of a king of the early Thirteenth
Dynasty (B. Adams 1956, pp. 76-88; Scharff 1920). Partly it consists of
the court accounts, and partly of summaries of official business: the
arrival of parties of desert people (Medja) presumably to parley with
the king; the fetching of cult images from a local temple for a festival;
the suppression of some form of insurrection in a town accompanied
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by executions. It covers a period whilst a section of the court was

residing at Thebes, so should not be taken as a guide to the normal scale
of court activity at the capital. Of the royal family one queen was
present, one prince, three king's daughters and nine king's sisters, some
of whom probably had their own households. This preponderance of
female relatives of the king compares interestingly with the funerary
evidence discussed above. A ' house of nurses' is also listed, containing
nineteen persons and groups of children. Of officials, a central group
of between eight and thirteen is regularly listed, but others make
temporary appearances, boosting those on the court books by up to
sixty-five extra persons on a feast day, including the vizier. These
personnel-lists are primarily daily records of commodities issued, mainly
bread and beer, but also meat, vegetables and date-cakes. Commodities
(livestock and incense) were also supplied by the court for the cult of
the god Menthu at nearby Medamud, whose statue, with that of' Horus
protector of his father', was actually brought into the palace at the time
of a festival. The sources of court revenue are unfortunately given only
in general terms, basically three administrative divisions:' the department
of the Head of the South',1 'the office of government labour', and 'the
Treasury'. Consequently it is not clear whether, in this case, taxation
or state-owned sources was the principal provider. A further source was
the temple of Amen at Thebes.
One important function of government was the location and collection
of the resources necessary for the support of the court and its projects.
The agricultural resources of Egypt seem to have been divided amongst
three classes of estate: owned directly by the crown; belonging to pious
foundations whose relationship to the crown was a subtle one; in the
hands of private individuals and liable to taxation. The most important
event in revenue administration was the assessment of the country's
wealth. The Palermo Stone (the main fragment is published, with
commentary, in Schafer (1902)), which covers most of the Old
Kingdom, makes a generally biennial census of cattle one of the key
events for describing any particular regnal year, and the very term
translated as ' regnal year' (hsbt) probably derives from this event (von
Beckerath 1969). A number of Old Kingdom decrees of exemption
show, however, that the demands of the state left little untouched, so
that revenue could be assessed even on the basis of the ' canals, lakes,
wells, waterbags and trees' of an estate (Goedicke 1967, pp. 56, 72).
1
An expression for the more southerly part of the Egyptian Nile Valley which possessed a
notable degree of political coherence (see pp. 177—8, also Gardiner 1957).

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Persons could also be obliged to work for the government, and possibly
perform military service (Goedicke 1967, pp. 48—54; Helck 1975,
ch. 21). From the Middle Kingdom information on taxation is very
slight and relates partly to cattle and partly to land and crops, and
includes a fragment of a journal recording the progress of a team
measuring plots of land for an assessment involving the treasury (Helck
1975, ch. 25; Simpson 1965, p. 18; Smither 1941). Some Kahun papyri
could be interpreted as household census lists, and others as detailed
inventories of personal possessions, where the purpose would have been
assessment for labour obligations or tax, and which would in any case
have put into government hands a formidable amount of personal
information. Another papyrus (Hayes 1955), of the Thirteenth Dynasty,
has extracts from a prison register listing Egyptians who, having failed
to meet their obligations to labour for the government, had been
consigned to government farms and labour camps, so augmenting the
direct resources of the crown.
One must imagine a network of government agencies spread through-
out the country, attempting by bureaucratic methods total assessment
and management of resources, and overlying to varying degrees the
semi-autonomous functioning of pious foundations and private estates
whose own ' officials' would have had as their principal concern not the
facilitating of the transfer of wealth to the crown, but rather the effective
operation of the foundation or estate of which they themselves were
the chief beneficiaries. The resulting tension, or division of loyalty,
which will become clearer when provincial government is discussed,
and which may, in the Old Kingdom, have found some release in the
charters of immunity, is not made explicit in formal texts because these
conform to a particular view of the ideal society, where loyal service
to the king was paramount.
A second major area of government was the administration of law
and justice, an obligation for which justification was found in the
Egyptians' concept of ma1 at, to the extent that some high officials bore
amongst their titles that of 'priest of Ma'at'. The very limited
documentation that has survived is concerned very much with property,
its ownership and transference to others. But it again seems typical of
the Egyptian system that the judicial function was not the prerogative
of a professional, specialist body reflected in a clearly defined category
of official titles. It is true that the titles of certain officers and bodies,
such as the ' overseer of the six great mansions', are suspected to relate
entirely to the judiciary, but the basic capacity of making accepted

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judgements seem also to have extended generally to men in a position

of authority, even where their titles seem primarily administrative.1
Decisions both judicial and administrative (a distinction which is a
modern and not an ancient one) were also made collectively, by councils
or committees, sometimes possibly set up on an ad hoc basis (S. Gabra
1929, Goedicke 1967, pp. 133, 170; Hayes 1955, pp. 45-6). The
settlement of disputes, with all that this implied in terms of favouritism,
must have been a major component in the authority of provincial men
of power, and the extent to which they were, in times of weak central
government, answerable to no higher authority is closely tied up with
the important matter of provincial autonomy of which more will be said
below. It remains uncertain, however, how far there was a central body
of law or precedent governing the conduct of life generally, a criminal
code. The most important document is probably the same late Middle
Kingdom papyrus with the prison register mentioned above which deals
with the operation of criminal processes against people who have sought
to avoid government-imposed labour obligations. In referring to ' laws'
it cites precise variations of the general offence, and in so doing implies
the existence of a very detailed code of law which has otherwise not
survived.
The precise ways in which the various agencies of the central
government operated varied with the course of time, and the names
given to posts and departments in the Old Kingdom differ appreciably
from those of the Middle Kingdom. The most important constant
feature was the vizier. The principal source for this office is a set of
' instructions' which, although known only from a number of Theban
tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, is nevertheless couched in the
administrative terminology of the late Middle Kingdom. It shows that,
next to the king, his was the ultimate responsibility for fiscal,
administrative and judicial affairs. This all-embracing responsibility is
also exemplified by surviving letters sent to and from his office at
various times during the periods under review.2 There is no really firm
1
Note the boasts of impartial judgements made by various officials, e.g. Anthes (1928, no. 14,
11. 9-10; Sethe 1932-3, vol. 1, p. 133,11. 4, 5). Ptah-hetep lines 264-76 seems to be advice on conduct
with petitioners for officials generally, 'to whom petitions are made'. The peasant in the story
of the Eloquent Peasant addresses his loquacious petitions to a ' chief steward', at the 'gateway'
('rryf) and at the 'entrance (sb%) to the temple'. A useful note on 'rryt is given by Gardiner (1925,
p. 65). The Eloquent Peasant story is translated in Lichtheim (1973, pp. 169-84), Pritchard (1969,
pp. 407 10) and Simpson (1973, pp. 31-49).
2
See Hayes (1955. PP- 71—85), Simpson (1965, pp. 20-3) and Theodorides (i960, pp. 108-16).
A verbal order is recorded in the stele of Amenysenb (Breasted 1906, pp. 342-3). For bureaucratic
reaction to one such letter see Smither (1948), Theodorides (1959); a hostile response to another
is published by Gardiner (1929) and Grdseloff (1948).

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evidence for the existence, as in later times, of two viziers each

responsible for only one part of the country.

PIOUS FOUNDATIONS

These were a fundamental part of ancient Egyptian society, and were

intended ostensibly to ensure the perpetual maintenance of the cults of
statues: of gods, of kings and of private individuals. They took the form
of a fund, established by an initial donation of property, or by contracts
securing income from elsewhere, often from sources belonging already
to another foundation. This fund had to be kept intact as a single unit,
unless modified by a specific legal agreement, and was in theory for
perpetuity. The income was assigned to those who maintained the cult
and to specified supporting personnel, but could, by legal agreement,
also be diverted elsewhere. The basic idea behind this type of organ-
ization, which sought to bestow on sources of wealth, or trusts, a
permanence and inviolability greater than mortal law could provide, has
a long history in the Near East, occurring in Muslim law as the waqf.
Like the waqf it was the object of a secondary show of piety: tax
exemption.
In the short term, at least, the most important pious foundations in
the Old and Middle Kingdoms were the pyramid temples for the royal
statue cult. Whilst it is common to emphasize the mortuary character
of pyramids and to see them primarily as tombs with temples ancillary
to them, the way in which they were in fact organized and referred to
suggests that the emphasis should be reversed, and they be regarded
first and foremost as temples for the royal statues with a royal tomb
attached to each, which, acting as a huge reliquary, gave enormous
authority to what was, in essence, an ancestor cult and an important
factor in the stability of government. This was a phenomenon repeated
on differing scales throughout Egyptian society in the form of private
funerary cults. Pious foundations were also, however, the basis of
support for provincial temples, and, by involving locally based
administrators, became another important component in provincial
authority. They will therefore be discussed both in the ensuing section
on pyramid temples, and in the subsequent section on provincial
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THE MEMPHITE COURT CEMETERIES

For the Old Kingdom the court cemeteries, particularly the royal
pyramid complexes, are responsible for much of our impression of the
period, and had more survived from those of the Middle Kingdom the
same might be true here also. Indeed, it seems impossible to write of
the Old Kingdom without in some way using the court cemeteries as
an index of royal power. This is certainly a valid attitude from the point
of view of the ancients themselves since the hierarchic scaling of tomb
size symbolized and reinforced the existing patterns of leadership: ' the
very existence of impressive sepulchres in which selected individuals
were buried probably validated the power of living leaders, at any rate
if their claim to power was based on a relationship with the dead
enshrined in the tomb' (Fleming 1973), as could be said to be so in Egypt
through the Horus—Osiris myth. Furthermore, inasmuch as their
construction and furnishing was the court's principal economic
'output', pyramid cemeteries provide us with the only constant and
measurable index of economic activity available.
The channelling of so much of the country's resources into the
building and equipping of funerary monuments, which must have
represented the single largest industry running more or less continuously
through the Old Kingdom and then after a break, and perhaps
somewhat less so, through the Middle Kingdom, may seem unpro-
ductive on a modern scale of values, and was doubtless regulated by a
mixture of ambition and a recognition of the king's role in society. Yet
pyramid-building must have been essential for the growth and continued
existence of Pharaonic civilization. In ancient societies innovations in
technology and in other forms of practical knowledge (particularly
administrative control of resources), as well as improvements in the
levels of existing skills, arose not so much from deliberate research as
from the' spin-off' consequent upon developing the means to accomplish
lavish court projects. The assembling of so much labour, the training
of so many artists and craftsmen to mass-produce at a near-optimum
standard (a striking feature of Egyptian civilization), the preferment and
material rewards given to those who could accomplish these ends, all
must have been responsible for much more than the enormous scale of
the result. Quarrying and stone-working techniques had to be made
sufficient, transport rendered adequate, a body of knowledge developed
for the final handling and siting of materials and for the accurate laying
out of the building, and, perhaps most important of all, an administrative

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apparatus created capable of directing manpower, skill and resources

to a single undertaking, identified with the pinnacle of the country's
power structure: the king. But equally important, the continued
consumption of so great a quantity of wealth and the products of
craftsmanship, both in the course of building and in the subsequent
equipping of the burials, must have had only the effect of sustaining
further the machinery which produced them by creating fresh demand
as reign succeeded reign, an economic stimulus broadly equivalent to
' built-in obsolescence' in modern technological societies. Indeed, since
trade with the outside world in ancient times was primarily a matter
of securing imports rather than a search for export markets, home
consumption must have assumed an equivalently greater importance in
a country's economy. But whilst pyramid-building may be seen now
as a vital element in Egypt's prosperity, it would be a serious mistake
to introduce altruism as a motive, and to think that positive economic
or social effects were intended, or even dimly perceived. Theology and
the display of power were justifications enough.
Throughout the Old Kingdom the court cemeteries were constructed
at sites along a 3 5 -km stretch of the western desert edge (with an outlier
at Medum), the centre of concentration being slightly to the north of
Memphis. It has occasionally been suggested that the changing location
really represents a regular resiting and rebuilding of the royal palace,
but it seems more reasonable to see it simply as the result each time
of a search for a suitably flat, firm and unencumbered site. In the Middle
Kingdom new sites further to the south were chosen, as well as the old
one at Dashur. Inevitably this has influenced discussion on the location
of the contemporary Residence at Amenemhat-ith-tawy (see p. 80).
The relative sizes of the royal pyramids, expressed as volumes, are
given infig.2.1. Even as a rough index to a major economic activity
a number of complicating factors must be noted. The Fourth Dynasty
pyramids are of massive masonry blocks throughout, originally with
a carefully smoothed casing of fine limestone and sometimes of granite
as well. But from the reign of Sahura of the Fifth Dynasty the core
behind the facing was of smaller and looser stone rubble and even
gravel. In the Twelfth Dynasty, from the reign of Senusret I, the core
was constructed as a series of limestone casematesfilledwith mud bricks,
an interesting method of reinforced construction which produced a
satisfactory scale, finish and stability for a lesser expenditure. The
movement away from a megalithic core is in one sense a decline in
standards, but when set against the history of more recent building

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Huny (?) H
Sneferu (N)
Sneferu (S) 1
Khufu
Djedefra i
Khafra 1
Menkaura <
Shepseskaf
[?]
Userkaf —i
Sahura '
Neferirkara 1
Shepseskara
Neferefra (?) —< (probably unfinished)
Niuserra (
Menkauhor
Isesi 1
Unas —i
Teti —i
Userkara 0 10 20
.. ' millions of cubic feet
Merenra 1
Pepy II —<
Merenra-Antyemsaf
Netikerty
[Possibly 11 further kings]
Neferkara
Neferkamenu
Ibi
Neferkaura
Neferkauher
Neferirkara
[Dynasties IX/X and XI]
Amenemhat I 1
Senusret I 1
A m e n e m h a t II •
Senusret II 1
Senusret III 1
A m e n e m h a t III (Dashur) 1
A m e n e m h a t III (Hawara) 1
A m e n e m h a t IV
Sebekneferu
[Mazghuna] ?
[Mazghuna] —<
[Saqqara] ( A m e n e m h a t IV ?) ———•
Khendjer (17th of D y n XIII) ~>
A m e n y ' A a m u ( ? t h of D y n XIII) -i

Fig. 2.1 Volumes of pyramids from the Fourth to the Thirteenth Dynasties. (Dimensions based
on Edwards 1961a; the remains of the pyramid of Ameny 'Aamu at Dashur are published in
Maragioglio and Rinaldi 1968.) A standard angle of 52 0 was assumed, but in practice the angle
varied between about 49 0 and ; 7 0 although the consequences would be scarcely noticeable at this
scale (see Lauer 1974, pp. 542-3).

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technology with its constant search for more economic means of

achieving a given result, has an undeniably rational basis. Each pyramid
was also part of a building complex, which might represent a con-
siderable volume of masonry, but one more difficult to measure, and
with much of its inner wall surfaces decorated with painted low-relief
carving. Consideration of the Fifth Dynasty pyramids must also include
the solar temple which seems to have been a further extension of each
pyramid complex and emphasizes that pyramid temples were intended
as major cult establishments in their own right. The temples and other
surrounding structures of the Middle Kingdom pyramids have been
almost completely obliterated, but their scant traces do not suggest in
most cases a decline of scale. Indeed, the vast building which the
Classical world knew as the Egyptian Labyrinth seems to have been
nothing else than the mortuary temple of Amenemhat Ill's pyramid at
Hawara. But when all these factors are considered one is still left with
the dramatic difference in the scale of the resources deployed on the
Fourth Dynasty pyramids, for when size is doubled volume is increased
ninefold, with the result that the Great Pyramid of Khufu contains
nearly thirty times the bulk of the pyramid of Userkaf, for example. The
background to the scaling-down of pyramids after the reign of Khafra
is unknown and probably unknowable, but the consequences cannot
be observed to have been adverse for the country, possibly because the
surplus capacity for organization and for the utilization of resources was
absorbed by the provinces, whose level of prosperity and local identity
seem to have risen in the later Old Kingdom. In a sense, the continued
history of Old and Middle Kingdom civilization contained an important
element of freewheeling on the apparatus created through the building
of the early pyramids, enabling skills and administrative machinery to
be more widely and variably diffused.
The cults at pyramid temples were maintained by pious foundations.
Two sets of documents have survived dealing with the daily admini-
stration of two of them: of King Neferirkara of the Fifth Dynasty at
Abusir (Posener-Krieger 1976, Posener-Krieger and de Cenival 1968),
and of King Senusret II of the Twelfth at El-Lahun (Borchardt 1899,
Kaplony-Heckel 1971a), and in both cases belonging to a period when
the cults had already been in existence for some time. The Neferirkara
archive reveals a world of detailed and very professional administration.
Elaborate tables provide monthly rosters of duty: for guarding the
temple, for fetching the daily income (or ' offerings') and for performing
ceremonies including those on the statues, with a special roster for the
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important Feast of Seker. Similar tables list the temple equipment, item
by item and grouped by materials, with details of damage noted at a
monthly inspection. Other records of inspection relate to doors and
rooms in the temple building. The presentation of monthly income is
broken down by substance, source and daily amount. The commodities
are chiefly types of bread and beer, meat and fowl, corn and fruit. The
sources are listed as: r-/-estates of Neferirkara and of the long-dead King
Khufu,1 />r-estates of the deceased Queen Khentkawes and a princess
Irenra, possibly some establishments of Kings Neferefra and Djedefra
(Posener-Krieger and de Cenival 1968, pi. 45), the palace, the nearby
solar temple of Neferirkara, and the towns of Iushedefwi and Djed-
Sneferu (Maragioglio and Rinaldi 1971)- This multiplicity of elements
in the supporting pious foundation, involving sharing with other
establishments, seems typical of Egypt at this and other periods. In the
formal decorative scheme of pyramid temples the grants of land or
funerary domains included in the foundation are personified as offering-
bearers and preserve some idea of the numbers of units involved. The
most complete comes from the valley temple of Sneferu at Dashur where
they are grouped also into nomes, or administrative districts. In Upper
Egypt thirty-four estates are distributed amongst ten nomes (with the
record for eight nomes missing); in Lower Egypt the record is fully
preserved for only a single nome and numbers four estates (fig. 2.2). Only
rarely are the sizes given, and they vary from 2 arouras (about 0.5
hectare2) to no£ arouras (about 28 hectares) (Goedicke 1976a, pp.
351—69; Helck 1975, pp. 42—4; Jacquet-Gordon 1962, pp. 3, n. 2, 151).
The sharing of revenue extended to private funerary cults, some of
which, in the Old Kingdom, enumerate royal domains amongst the
sources for their own foundations. One sheet from the Neferirkara
archive contains a list of such deceased beneficiaries, headed by Queen
Khentkawes, but otherwise belonging to officials whose cults receive
portions of meat (Helck 1974a, p. 85; Posener-Krieger and de Cenival
1968, pis. 45B, 65). The palace is listed as another recipient, albeit a
nominal one, as also is the solar temple. Otherwise the income was
disposed of on a daily accounted basis to the temple staff as their salary,
in the form of bread, beer, meat, cloth, and so on.
The El-Lahun archive remains are, unfortunately, published only par-
1
The technical definition of this type of estate remains unclear; see Goedicke (1967, pp. 69-72),
Helck (1974a, p. 66), Kaplony (1972, pp. 567).
2
It should be noted that Baer (1956) has proposed much larger units of land measurement,
with an aroura of 8.2 hectares.

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Fig. 2.2 Three examples of the distribution, by nomes, of estates in pious foundations for the
mortuary cults of: ( i ) Khnumenty, an official of the Fifth Dynasty with tomb at Giza, one of whose
titles was ' overseer of all the works of the king'; (2) Mehu, an official of the early Sixth Dynasty
with tomb at Saqqara, whose titles included those of ' vizier' and ' governor of Upper Egypt',
despite the striking concentration of estates in the delta; (3) King Sneferu, first king of the Fourth
Dynasty. The list derives from his southern pyramid at Dashur, and is incomplete, see p. 90,
also p. 110. (Examples from Jacquet-Gordon 1962, pp. 310-12, 419-26.)

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tially, but the available information indicates a broadly similar type of

administration and record-keeping, with monthly schedules of personnel
on duty, of male and female musicians and singers and of slaves, lists
of temple equipment grouped by material with notes of inspection, and
accounts of temple income. Of note are fragmentary lists of statues
which include not only the king for whom the temple was made
(Senusret II) and mainly female members of his family, but also other
kings, private individuals, and the reigning king (Senusret III) and his
family too (Borchardt 1899, Kaplony-Heckel 1971a, nos. 3, 42, 73, 8i,
107, 108, 271, 287, 307, 311, 421), a multiplicity of recipients which is
found duplicated in provincial temples. Archaeology has provided the
setting for the very substantial community involved in the El-Lahun
archive, in the form of the mud-brick town commonly called Kahun,
which does, however, appear to have been atypically large, and should
probably be seen as part of an ancient conurbation which centred around
the site of the modern town of El-Lahun in the cultivation. Other
known pyramid towns seem to have been a lot smaller.
The size and monumentality of pyramid complexes proved to be no
guarantee for the permanence of their cults. Two examples will illustrate
their later history, and the curiously casual way in which the formal
layouts of the complexes could be treated.

Menkaura ofthe Fourth Dynasty at Gi^a1

It had evidently been planned that the pyramid and valley temples be
built in the prevailing megalithic tradition, and their completion in mud
brick was presumably a consequence of the king's premature death.
Modern excavation of the pyramid temple was not extensive enough
to determine if an area of living-quarters accompanied it. Nevertheless,
fragments from two inscriptions, probably decrees, bearing the Horus-
name of King Merenra of the Sixth Dynasty indicate that the temple
was in use late in the Old Kingdom. The valley temple, although mostly
of mud brick, had remained remarkably well-preserved, and presents
a strange history which says much for the gap that could develop
between plans and practice, and between the products of superlative
craftsmanship and the way they were treated (fig. 2.3). Outside the
1
See Hassan (1943, pp. 53-62), Reisner (1931) and Wildung (1969a, pp. 213-17). The
relationship to Menkaura's pyramid of the apparently large settlement lying to the south of its
causeway is not dear (A.-A. Saleh 1974). See also Goedicke (1967, pp. 16-21, 78-80) and Helck
('957. P- 108).

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Sanctuary

10m -N

Fig. 23. The Valley Temple of King Menkaura's pyramid complex in its final phase towards
the end of the Old Kingdom. The stippled areas are those whose floor levels had probably risen
significantly through the accumulation of rubbish.

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front of this temple an annexe had been built, part of which had been
occupied by an irregular group of houses. Not long afterwards, these
houses spread within the great open court of the temple itself. From
then onwards most of the temple except for the sanctuary was allowed
to decay, and in places was demolished to make room for the expanding
village which gradually buried the lower parts of the temple. A good
deal of temple equipment was found by the excavators still in the
original storerooms, buried in this dust and rubble. Amongst it were
the slate triads which represent some of the finest work of Old Kingdom
sculptors. Much of this equipment had been subject to careless
treatment amounting to vandalism. Many statues had been smashed up
to provide material for the manufacture of model vessels which were
a standard part of Old Kingdom burial equipment in the Memphite
area, something suggestive of a minor industry to supplement the
community's income. The process of decay had been hastened by a flood
from a sudden storm. An attempt at renovation was made, but only on
top of all this rubbish. This recognized the existence of the village,
surrounded it with a new wall, and built a new sanctuary and gatehouse
on the sites of the original ones. One still entered the sanctuary,
therefore, immediately after having walked from the gatehouse along
a path between the two groups of irregular cottages. On the mud floor
of the antechamber to the new sanctuary four beautiful life-size statues
of Menkaura were resited. The offering-place was found more or less
intact. It consisted of an altar about 5 o cm high made from a worn slab
of alabaster resting on two rough upright stones with a crude libation
basin beside it. Nearby were four unfinished diorite statuettes of the king
lying on their side, having originally perhaps stood on the altar and thus
been the object of the cult in this last phase of the temple's existence.
The date and circumstances of this rough-and-ready cult being
carried on in a dingy chamber at the back of a tightly packed mud village
are clear both from the associated archaeological material, which seems
not to extend beyond the end of the Old Kingdom, and from a decree
of King Pepy II of the Sixth Dynasty, found in the floor debris of the
gateway, exempting the pyramid town from certain obligations and
appointing an official to it. It thus demonstrates official recognition of
this site as being part of the pyramid town at a date very close to the
end of the Old Kingdom.
After the end of the Old Kingdom the site appears to have been
abandoned and the cult of King Menkaura to have ceased entirely.

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Sneferu of the Fourth Dynasty at Dashur

King Sneferu appears to have possessed two pyramids at Dashur, served
by more than one community (Fakhry 1959,1961; Helck 19 5 7, pp. 106—7;
Wildung 1969a, pp. 105-52). The only one of these so far documented
by excavation was attached to the valley temple of the southern, or
'bent' pyramid. As at the Menkaura valley temple a part, at least, of
the town had been constructed within the main enclosure wall, in this
case huddled in the space between the wall and the temple itself. Its
pottery is primarily Old Kingdom, though some may have been later.
Members of the priesthood of Sneferu are attested to the end of the Old
Kingdom, buried mostly at Giza and at Dashur itself. Unlike Menkaura,
however, King Sneferu went on to become a minor member of the wider
Egyptian pantheon, even given a cult at the Sinai turquoise-mines. At
Dashur his name began to be invoked in funerary prayers on private
objects, and at least ten individuals are known to have held an office
in his cult during the Middle Kingdom. One of them, Teti-em-saf, also
held offices in the cults of Kings Pepy II and Teti of the Old Kingdom,
as well as Amenemhat I and Senusret I of the Twelfth Dynasty, and
belonged to an apparently affluent family buried adjacent to the pyramid
of Teti at Saqqara. The nature of the cult's income at this time is not
known, but it was presumably much reduced from the extensive estates
which the Sneferu foundation had owned at the beginning.
This later cult of Sneferu continued to be celebrated in the offering-
chapel in front of the pyramid, apparently without statues at all.
Although decay and modification had produced a confused layout, the
little chapel remained intact, and was discovered still with a pair of
roughly cut stone offering-stands bearing the names and titles of Middle
Kingdom priests, and a Middle Kingdom pottery dish still containing
charcoal. The cult at Dashur did not apparently survive longer.
A further interesting case history is provided by the cult of Teti of
the Sixth Dynasty (Firth and Gunn 1926; Helck 1957, p. n o ; Porter
and Moss 1927, vol. in, pp. 129-46; Quibell 1907). A sequence of
priests - men whose small tombs show them to have been of modest
means - spans the First Intermediate Period.1 Early in the Twelfth
Dynasty the interests of the more affluent Teti-em-saf family mentioned
above and buried beside Teti's pyramid at Saqqara extended for a time
1
There is considerable difficulty in dating many of the stelae, though it is probably too negative
to follow the view of Schenkel (1965, p. 91). A note on the dating of the tomb of Ihy and Hetep,
of the Teti-em-saf family, is provided by Simpson (1965a).

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to include the priesthoods of other surviving Old Kingdom cults as

well. As a minor deity (in the form Teti-Merenptah) this king is known
from a votive stele and a statue of the Ramesside period over a thousand
years after his death.
There are other case histories which could be written, and this is,
indeed, a subject on which relatively little research has been done
although it provides an important reflection on the capacities and
priorities of the central government. Their histories evidently varied
considerably from case to case, with accidents of local popularity
playing a not insignificant role. At various times their stonework was
used as quarries. The pyramid enclosure of Amenemhat I is known to
have contained re-used blocks from certain Old Kingdom pyramid
complexes, specifically of Khufu, Khafra, Unas and possibly Pepy II
(Goedicke 1971). The end of the Old Kingdom marked an important
terminal stage, as did the end of the Middle Kingdom in respect of the
Twelfth Dynasty pyramids, though their later histories are far less well
documented. The temptation for weak governments lacking the
authority for large-scale provincial revenue collection to fall back on
using the accumulated treasures of court cemeteries as a means of
supplementing their income is obvious, although this cannot be
documented.1
PROVINCIAL EGYPT

The archaeological evidence for the nature and distribution of early

settlements in Egypt is sparse and unsatisfactory, particularly as it
concerns those which were not, like the pyramid towns, artificial
developments; although it is likely, to judge from textual sources, that
Egyptian administrative policies had an important influence generally
on the shape, size and location of settlements, even if it cannot be judged
whether, say, the groupings of estates in the larger pious foundations
were built around existing settlement patterns or, alternatively, inter-
fered with them. At four sites in Upper Egypt the evidence concerning
towns of regional importance is reasonably clear, in each case at an
important cult centre with a long subsequent history, though one of
them, Abydos, was not a nome capital.
1
According to the testimony of an official inspection carried out in the reign of Ramesses IX
(c. 1103 BC), two Eleventh Dynasty royal tombs at Thebes were still, after nine centuries, intact.
If this is to be believed, it must also be remembered that Thebes probably saw a degree of
administrative continuity denied to the Memphite area (Peet 1930, pp. 28-45). I n particular, the
tomb of Nebhepetra Menthuhetep II, one of the two in question, became a cult centre of some
importance (Arnold 1974a, pp. 92-5).

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Fig. 2.4 Plan of the Old Kingdom town at Hierakonpolis, as revealed by partial excavation.
1 Part of a granite doorway of King 3 Mud-brick gateway from the Early
Khasekhemwy of the end of the Second Dynastic palace incorporated into the
Dynasty later houses
2 Site of the 'Main Deposit' of discarded
temple equipment

(1) Hierakonpolis. Almost immediately beneath the broken modern

ground level an Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom town has been
located over an area of at least 200 by 300 m (fig. 2.4), apparently
reaching its maximum extent during the Old Kingdom (Kemp 1977b).
It consists of a tightly packed mass of mud-brick housing crossed by
narrow streets, and protected by a heavy town wall, 9.5 m thick in its
final stage, following an irregular rectilinear course. Towards the
southern corner stood a mound of sand behind a rough stone revetment,
and this probably served as the foundation for the temple. This latter
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

5,0 100 m

Kom es-Sultan:
town debris, Old Kingdom to
Second Intermediate Period

Early
Dynastic
: tombs

— — - 'T^V- * " y ^ .

Petrie1902 I
excavations i
Middle Kingdom
rubbish with some
walls,of uncertain
extent

Late Period
enclosure wdlli

Fig. 2.5 Plan of the town and temple enclosure remains at Abydos.

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had been removed in later rebuildings, but part of a granite doorway

of King Khasekhemwy of the end of the Second Dynasty, statues and
votive objects were found buried in nearby caches, particularly the
' Main Deposit'. Some of the houses towards the centre had incorporated
the standing remains of a great brick gateway of the Early Dynastic
Period which, to judge from its decorative niched style, had been a
palace.
(2) Abydos. The earliest strata go back to the Early Dynastic Period.
But, as at Hierakonpolis, the Old Kingdom saw rapid expansion and
the building of heavily walled enclosures, in this case numbering two:
one for the temple (dedicated to the local god Khenty-amentiu), which
was made up of a complex of small brick buildings, and an adjoining
one for the town which gradually, through to the end of the Middle
Kingdom, grew into a stratified mound (fig. 2.5).
(3) Elephantine. This had a special role as a frontier town and trading
centre, and stood at the southern tip of the most northerly of the granite
islands which form the First Cataract.1 Partly it was built over and
around a series of irregular granite ridges which raised it high above
the river, and gave it an irregular oval plan (fig. 2.6). It had a mud-brick
wall and at least one gateway lined with stone. To the west lay what
appears to have been a separate unwalled extramural settlement.
Subsequent to this first Old Kingdom phase the town steadily expanded
and fresh encircling walls were built, possibly now incorporating the
northern part as well. In addition to at least one temple of modest
proportions, which began in the Early Dynastic Period as a cleft
between boulders, and is later found dedicated to the goddess Satet, a
popular shrine existed dedicated to a deceased local dignitary of the late
Old Kingdom called Heka-ib. The main necropolis from Elephantine
lay in the cliffs of the western bank, the Qubbet el-Hawa, but some
Middle Kingdom graves have been found on the island.
(4) Tell Edfu. The record here is more difficult to follow, although,
as the town is built on a low hill of rock, the base of the stratigraphic
sequence is readily accessible (fig. 2.7). The earliest remains visible are
a part of the Old Kingdom town and its enclosure wall lying not far
to the west of the great Ptolemaic temple which perhaps now covers
the earliest site. Subsequently the town expanded, and a fresh wall was
laid out on a complicated plan using curved sections, part of which
ran over the Old Kingdom cemetery. This was subsequently doubled,
1
As the ' doorway to the foreign lands' where tribute from Nubia was collected, Elephantine
is discussed by Edel (i96z, 1971, p. 11).

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'••'-••w- Granitemass 50m

North-west town Shrineof Heka-ib

Earlier enclosure
of Satet temple

s
-0

Fig. 2.6 Plan of the Old Kingdom town at Elephantine. Much of the interiot of the
walled enclosure is still covered with later debris.

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 Oldand Middle J Tomb and shrine of Isy
Kingdom cemetery
Original base of mound

Town walls of the First

Intermediate Period an
built over the cemetery

South Sebakh quarry Stratified town debris:

mainly Middle Kingdom and
Second Intermediate Period

North Sebakh quarry

Old Kingdom tomb

^ - Stratified town debris:

Old Kingdom to Early New Kingdom

Ptolemaic temple of Horus

Modern town Pylon entrance to

New Kingdom temple

Pig. 2.7 The remains of Tell Edfu, partly buried beneath the modern town and partly destroyed by quarrying for sebakh (fertilizer). A small section of the
early cemetery and town wall complex has been exposed.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

T=site of temple
Tomb of
Queen Khentkawes

Priests'houses
--•]"
Valley temple,
with town

Menkaura pyramid
complex at Giza

Site of
L temple

Tell Edfu -see fig. 2.7

r --_

1© i
i i
1 1
Hierakonpolis Elephantine
-see fig. 2.4 -see fig. 2.6

I T;____
i .i_i

Buhen citadel Abydos

-see fig. 2.5
300 m

Fig. 2.8 Comparative sizes of Old and Middle Kingdom settlements, with inset of the outline
of Early Bronze Age Arad in southern Palestine for comparison with Palestinian urbanism. T,
site of temple.

but on a less tortuous course. Within the walls a stratified mound

accumulated to the early New Kingdom. Edfu also possessed its own
equivalent to the Heka-ib shrine based on a tomb of the vizier Isi of
the early Sixth Dynasty (Alliot 1937-8, Edel 1954, Yoyotte 1952).
In the Nile Delta the record is even poorer, but sufficient has been
bund at widely scattered sites (principally Abu Ghalib, Mendes, Tell

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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

Basta and Ezbet Rushdi) to show that it possessed settlements and a

culture of an entirely Egyptian character.
All of these towns appear somewhat small on an absolute scale which
takes into consideration the urbanism of Classical and modern times
(fig. 2.8). But when set against a total population for Egypt which has
been estimated to have fluctuated during the Old and Middle Kingdoms
at around one and one and a half million (Butzer 1976, pp. 815), their
absolute sizes seem to call for little special comment, except perhaps for
the relative magnitude of the government-created town of Kahun,
which itself contrasts with other known pyramid communities. It is a
not uncommon pattern in non-industrial societies for much of the
population to be divided (though not equally) between one very large
city and numerous small rural villages. Although the size of ancient
Memphis at any one period is very difficult to ascertain at present, such
evidence as exists suggests for ancient Egypt a much more even
distribution for the population, who would have lived in settlements
ranked hierarchically in size down from the main provincial towns such
as those described above which seem to have been spaced fairly evenly
along the Nile Valley. It is likely, however, that this pattern was itself
a development of the Old Kingdom when in Upper Egypt, at
least, towns seem to have gone through a dynamic expansive phase
which presumably corresponded with the growth of local autonomy
which is separately documented (see pp. 107—10). By contrast, the
Predynastic period may have been characterized by a primate distribution
based, in Upper Egypt, on a very few towns (e.g. Naqada and
Hierakonpolis).
In some other countries where civilization developed in a floodplaih
provincial autonomy was the principal political development, giving
rise to a civilization of city states. In Egypt provincial aspirations were
normally contained within a system centred on a single royal
government, whose paramount authority was expressed through the
doctrines of divine kingship, containing theological elements derived
from various parts of the country, through monumental building and
through statue cults at provincial temples. As the local representative
centres of court culture and authority, as well as being the centres of
pious foundations and thus of locally important economic cycles,
provincial temples were elements of great importance in the towns. Yet
there is a striking contrast between the size and monumentality of
pyramid temples and these temples for provincial cults, something
which was probably not altered until New Kingdom times. This was
to some extent apparent from the towns discussed above, especially
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Abydos and Elephantine, and can be seen elsewhere, too. At Tell Basta
and Ezbet Rushdi in the Nile Delta relatively modest mud-brick temples
have been found dating respectively to Pepy I of the Sixth Dynasty and
Amenemhat I of the Twelfth. In the former building limestone pillars
had supported the roof. Beneath the Middle Kingdom level at Medamud
the remains have been found of a bizarre shrine consisting partly of walls
and doorways of mud brick and partly of two earthen mounds each
covering a chamber and a winding corridor.1 Furthermore, the re-used
stonework in later temples seems to confirm this picture: of essentially
mud-brick structures employing stone only for columns, doorways,
stelae and statues. Their most impressive aspect was probably their
massive brick enclosure walls, containing monumental stone gateways,
a persistent feature of Egyptian temple design given theological
significance (Reymond 1969, pp. 239—40, 280—1, 326).2 An early Middle
Kingdom papyrus containing building accounts from a provincial
temple seems to bear this out (Simpson 1963b, ch. 5). Three exceptions
may be noted: a kiosk of Senusret I at Karnak (Porter and Moss 1972,
vol. 11, pp. 61—3), a shrine of Sankhkara Menthuhetep on the mountains
of western Thebes (Porter and Moss 1972, vol. 11, p. 340; Vandersleyen
1975, pp. 15 5-6), and the late Twelfth Dynasty temple at Medinet Ma'adi
in the Fayum (Naumann 1939, Vandersleyen 1975, pp. 159-60). But
these, whilst built of stone throughout, are quite small.3
' On the establishment or enrichment of the estates which made up
the pious foundations for the local deities there is little inscriptional
record, possibly because much of this had been done in very early
periods. The Palermo Stone does record, however, amidst substantial
donations of land to the cult of Ra in the Fifth Dynasty, also donations
to the cults of Ptah, Nekhbet, Uadjyt and Hathor. It also makes a
noteworthy event of the fashioning of divine images, and the curious
dearth of statues of gods to have survived from pre-New Kingdom
times suggests that they were normally of precious materials, though
possibly quite small.4 Far more prominent is the evidence for pious
1
Robichon and Varille (1940); the associated objects seem to date to between the late Old
Kingdom and the early Middle Kingdom. On the early forms of temples see also Reymond (1969,
pp. 264-6).
2
A Middle Kingdom commemoration of the building of a large enclosure wall at El-Kab,
recorded as a deed of royal piety, is published by Legrain (1905). The strange royal name is
evidently a mistaken transformation of the Horus-name of Senusret I into a prenomen. See also
n. 1 on p. 128.
3
The uninscribed stone temple at Qasr el-Sagha, which can also be attributed to the Middle
Kingdom (see Vandersleyen 197;, p. 160), being near a quarry site, must be counted a special
case.
4
Possible exceptions are recorded in Ertman (1972), H. W. Miiller (i960) and Wildung (1972),
but these may come from pyramid temples. A possible Middle Kingdom example is given in Evers

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foundations for statues of kings and private individuals. When housed

in the local temple they might have their own little shrine, or they might
be in a specially built temple of their own, in either case called a hwt-kT,
('soul house') (Goedicke 1967, p. 44; Helck 1975, pp. 46-7; Fischer
1964, pp. 21-2). The small temple of Pepy I at Tell Basta is designated
thus (Fischer 1968, Habachi 1957); another example was found at
Dendera (Daressy 1917). Numerous statues of kings are known to have
existed in provincial temples,1 and the arrangements of which they were
the centre are exemplified by a decree of Pepy II establishing a pious
foundation for a copper statue of himself in the temple of Min at Coptos.
A financial arrangement of a different sort — a reciprocal one between
temple and central government - is attested for the temple of Amen at
Thebes in the Thirteenth Dynasty (Scharff 1920), but how normal this
was cannot be ascertained.
The nature and operation of pious foundations in the provinces is
made fairly explicit in a number of texts, mostly from private tombs,
which also show the intimate link that could exist between a local temple
and statue cults based on tombs. It would have been highly advantageous
for the control of and for the benefits from such foundations to remain
in a local family as a virtually hereditary matter, and this was evidently
very often the case. Indeed, as will be outlined below, for much of the
time considered in this chapter it was probably difficult to be a man of
much importance in the provinces unless associated with the local
temple in some way. A good example of family involvement is provided
by Nika-ankh at Tehneh in the Fifth Dynasty, a man who combined
service for the central government with the office of chief priest in the
local temple of Hathor (Breasted 1906, pp. 99—107; Goedicke 1970,
pp. 131—48; Helck 1974a, pp. 31—4; Mrsich 1968, pp. 70—85; Pirenne
1932-5, vol. 11, pp. 372-8; Pirenne and Stracmans 1954). He had been
made chief priest by a decree of King Userkaf and placed in charge of
the income of the temple's own foundation. A table lists twelve of his
sons, his wife, and a period of time (mostly of one month) when each
would serve in the temple, and presumably thereby become entitled to
a share of the income, as well as the division amongst them of a piece
(1929,fig.26), but this may be a statue of Amenemhat III himself. For the use of precious materials
in divine images see the inscription of Ikhernefret (Breasted 1906, p. 299) and the golden Horus
Image from Hierakonpolis (Quibell 1900, pis. XLI-XLIII; Quibell and Green 1902, p. 27, pi. XLVII).
1
Examples in stone and copper were found at Hierakonpolis (Quibell 1900, pis. xxxix XLI;
Quibell and Green 1902, pis. L-LVI). Other examples are from Dendera (Daumas 1973) and a dyad
of Sahura possibly from Coptos (Hayes 1953a, pp. 70-1,fig.46). The inscriptional evidence is
presented in Goedicke (1967, pp. 81-6), Helck (1978) and Petrie (1903, pi. xxiv). The cult of early
kings at Karnak recorded by the king-list there may perhaps have involved individual statues
(Bothmer 1974, Wildung 1969b, 1974).

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of land (roughly 16.5 hectares) given by King Menkaura some 25 years

earlier for the specific support of this temple's priests. A second table
allots the same sons a month's service in a separate private foundation
as well, made for a deceased local man called Khenuka, possibly one
of Nika-ankh's forbears, and some further sons are depicted as being
in charge of Nika-ankh's own foundation. Extracts from the deeds of
the mortuary foundations place his eldest son in charge, make the
arrangements hereditary, prohibit the foundations from being divided
up, and exempt these sons from any obligations beyond the provision
of offerings.'
A second highly informative set of documents is preserved in the
tomb of Hapdjefa (I) at Asyut, from the reign of Senusret I (Goedicke
1971—2, Reisner 1918, Theodorides 1968—72,1971a). Hapdjefa was both
a 'town governor' {hpj-c) and chief priest of the local temple of
Wepwawet. He draws a careful distinction between his property from
this dual position: that which came with the office of. governor, and
that which he had inherited from his father. The latter included the office
of chief priest, in charge of temple revenue, but already Hapdjefa had
arranged a pious bequest to the temple of part of the annual harvest
tax from the rented lands belonging to his governorship, following a
local practice of the common people. By means of ten legal contracts
he created a pious foundation centred on one or more statues of himself
housed, at least for part of the time, in the temple, but also involving
his tomb. In return for performing ceremonies on various feast days
and making offerings (which augmented temple income) certain specified
persons received payments in the form of gifts of land from his paternal
estate, various forms of temple income, and some of the diverted harvest
tax. The documents explain how people who had a period of service
in the temple received a regular income from it: each day's service in
the year entitled one to ^0 of each day's income (exemplified also in the
Kahun papyri; see Helck (1975, pp. 164—5)). Hapdjefa had included a
batch of twenty-seven' temple days' in the foundation. The beneficiaries
were primarily the temple staff, including the chief priest, which office,
as the sequence of tombs at Asyut shows, remained in Hapdjefa's own
family for several generations. One might further anticipate that most
of these persons were members of Hapdjefa's family or household. But
even if not, they were certainly recipients of his patronage, and the
prospect of this must have added to his authority during his life.
As with the sizes of estates making up royal mortuary foundations
so the land components of private pious foundations could vary greatly
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in size, from 4 or 5 arouras to more than 200 (i.e. from 1 to over 50

hectares). All such resources seem to have been at the ultimate disposal
of the central government. This led to a second-stage act of piety: the
granting of a royal charter of immunity from all kinds of imposition.
All examples come from the Old Kingdom, from which one might
deduce that this was, in later times, regarded as an unnecessary source
of abuse or conflict. The surviving examples concern the temple of
Khenty-amentiu at Abydos, a statue cult of the king's mother Iuput at
Coptos, the pyramid temple of Sneferu at Dashur, the valley temple of
Menkaura, and statue cults of Queens Meryra-ankhnes and Neit. But
before concluding that in this way kings were cutting themselves off
from their own revenues, one might consider the effectiveness of these
charters in the light of a letter purporting to have been written by King
Pepy II in which an order for the procurement of supplies for a
returning trade mission from Nubia is applied, amongst several
establishments, to ' every temple — without making an exception
amongst them'. 1 Similarly the great national army raised by Uni in the
reign of Pepy I included contingents under the commands of chief
priests of the temples of Upper and Lower Egypt. The relationship
between these foundations and the central government must have been
a very delicate one.
One is left with the impression that an interlocking network of pious
foundations for local deities, for statues of kings at pyramids and in local
temples, and for statues of private individuals must have played a major
role in the economic life of ancient Egypt, involving the families of a
great many people. They naturally made the temple an important centre
of economic activity and of administration, particularly in view of the
close ties which grew up between the temple and local men of power
and influence. It is interesting to note that those decrees from Coptos
which are concerned exclusively with civil appointments were found
in a cache of decrees some of which carry the explicit instruction for
erection at the temple gateway. Understandably, provincial temples
were the subject of central government decrees concerning their
condition and maintenance.
It has long been recognized that behind changes in titles relating to
provincial administration in Upper Egypt lie important historical
1
Breasted (1906, p. 161). Lichtheim (1975, p. 27) translates: 'every temple that has not been
exempted', but this is difficult to support grammatically; see Edel (1964, p. 457)- T n e possibility
that exemption decrees may not always have been entirely binding seems to be reflected in a Coptos
decree of Pepy II; see Goedicke (1967, pp. 88, 107 (n. 59) and 246), who cites the passage that
has been quoted, which comes from the biography of Harkhuf (see p. 126).

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developments. The common interpretation is that for the earlier part

of the Old Kingdom different branches of provincial administration
were run by different central government officials in such a way that
the administration of one whole governorate (or nome) did not fall to
one man. These men were sometimes buried in the court cemetery, and
must inevitably have been caught up in the pyramid-building industry
which, with its great demands on labour, must have spread its influence
throughout the country. An example would be a Fourth Dynasty priest
of Sneferu's southern pyramid temple at Dashur, Netjer-aperef, who had
also held the offices of' overseer of commissions in the nomes of Coptos,
Hu and Dendera' (Fischer 1968, pp. 8-9). But during the Fifth and Sixth
Dynasties this central responsibility for all provincial government was
gradually diluted by the appearance of true provincial governors or
nomarchs, whose position was formalized by the appearance of a new
title, 'great chief of a nome'. The title is first attested at Edfu in the
reign of King Teti at the beginning of the Sixth Dynasty (Alliot 1937—8,
Edel 1954, Yoyotte 1952), and in the course of this dynasty it appeared
throughout most of Upper Egypt. The development appears to
coincide more or less with the appearance in certain suitable localities
of finely decorated rock tombs, often for the burial of these local
magnates.
This very fact, however, points to one source of imbalance in the
data. Provincial mud-brick mastaba tombs are known from the
earlier Old Kingdom, being occasionally quite large (Arnold 1973,
Garstang 1902, 1904), but being more vulnerable the inscriptional
evidence for the position of their owners has but rarely survived. Yet
some may well have formed a complement to the great court cemeteries
at Giza which have been recognized as being not able to account for
sufficient of the high administrative officials who must thus have been
buried elsewhere. Two significant exceptions to the usual anonymity
of these provincial mastaba tombs may be quoted. One occurs at
Dendera where, amongst a group of mastaba tombs of the Fourth and
Fifth Dynasties, the only identifiable one belonged to a priest of the local
Hathor cult, one Ni-ibu-nisut, apparently with no civil titles (Fischer
1968, pp. 14-21). The other concerns El-Kab, where, in a similar
situation, the only identifiable mastaba tombs belonged to an ' inspector
of priests' Nefer-shemen, and a 'chief priest', Kameni, both of the local
Nekhbet cult (Fischer 1968, pp. 18-19 (n- 8 l ) ; Quibell 1898). Their
statues have been dated on stylistic ground to the Fourth Dynasty
(Stevenson Smith 1946, p. 45; Vandier 1958, pp. 56-7). Neither bore
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strictly administrative titles. The priesthood of a separate desert temple

at El-Kab is also known from groups of graffiti belonging to people
whose names show that the group must extend well into the Sixth
Dynasty.1 Part of their interest lies in the predominantly priestly nature
of their titles. Amongst their other titles, even in the case of the chief
priest, are very few which one can feel were strictly functional, or of
importance in the civil administration, as distinct from honorary titles
and rank indicators.
But elsewhere, though in a somewhat spasmodic way, the title ' chief
priest' was already being born by men who were also ' nomarch' or its
equivalent. Such men are known from provincial tombs of the Sixth
Dynasty at several Upper Egyptian sites. Two such men from the nome
containing Abydos were buried in the court cemetery at Saqqara, whilst
a third may have been buried at his home town (Fischer 1954, 1962).
From what has been said already about the economic role of temples
and of pious foundations this combination seems very logical. Whether
one interprets this as evidence for Egypt's having been ruled by priests
or for the priesthood having been essentially part of the apparatus of
government is a matter of modern nuance. Certainly at no point here
or in the Middle Kingdom can men of obviously outstanding authority
and power be found whose titles are strictly or even primarily priestly.
The history of the title of the chief priest of Ra at Heliopolis seems to
confirm this view, being held for the most part by courtiers, princes
or high officials as one amongst several titles.
The evidence surrounding the provincial priests of the Fourth and
Fifth Dynasties mentioned above is too slight to acquaint us with the
part they played in the life of their communities. Equally obscure is the
important question of the family origin of the Sixth Dynasty nomarchs:
did they originate from local families whose influence had hitherto been
confined largely to the priesthood, or were they men whose background
had been the court-centred civil administration and who manoeuvred
themselves into control of the local temples ? The case of the twelfth
nome, whose nomarch, appointed by the king, was a member of the
influential family of the vizier Djau from Abydos in the eighth nome,
is perhaps exceptional, but does illustrate the way in which high officials
in the central government retained provincial links, Djau possessing a
pious foundation for his statue in the temple of Khenty-amentiu at
Abydos. Nika-ankh, discussed above, must represent another tran-
1
Porter and Moss (1927, vol. v, p. 190) give the references. For the title ' inspector of Nekhbet',
the goddess of El-Kab, on mud seals from the town site, see Fouilles de El Kab (1954).

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sitional stage. The unevenness of the evidence and our difficulties in

following the backgrounds of individual officials should introduce
considerable caution into the drawing of conclusions. But it can at least
be recognized that, by the end of the Sixth Dynasty, province-centred
government had become an important part of Egyptian society, and it
is tempting to link its evolution with the scaling-down of pyramid-
building.
The evidence discussed so far relates entirely to Upper Egypt. Old
Kingdom material from the Nile Delta is so slight that few conclusions
are possible. A late Old Kingdom cemetery has been discovered from
the important town site of Mendes, and the offices of the people buried
there call for little special comment, although two chief priests of the
local temple without important civil titles may be mentioned. Nowhere
are nomarchs for Lower Egypt attested; likewise the title ' governor of
Upper Egypt', an attempt from the mid Fifth Dynasty onwards to
co-ordinate nome affairs, has (with one possible exception)1 no equiv-
alent for Lower Egypt until the Middle Kingdom. One might conse-
quently conclude that the nomarch phenomenon of the late Old
Kingdom was essentially Upper Egyptian. Some support for the idea
that Upper Egypt, particularly the more southerly part, was generally
less closely associated with the court circle than Lower Egypt comes
from the distribution of estates making up the pious foundations of
private funerary cults in the Memphite necropolis. Only a very small
number of tombs took up the custom of enumerating estates by nome,
but of those that did most display a preponderance in Lower Egypt,
and in Upper Egypt there are few indeed further south than the fifteenth
nome, thus in the true nomarch territory (fig. 2.2). Even allowing for
the possibility that there may have been more natural agricultural
potential for creating new estates in the north, it seems to imply that
the court drew fairly heavily on men whose connections were more with
the more northerly parts of the country, especially the delta.
The First Intermediate Period saw variations in provincial govern-
ment which belong to the disturbed local history of the period and will
be mentioned below on pp. 112-16. Significantly, this type of dual-role
provincial governor, in charge of the local temple as well as civil affairs,
survived to become ubiquitous in the Middle Kingdom. The standard
combination becomes 'chief priest' and hpj-c, originally an exalted
court title, but now regularly applied to a man governing a town and
1
The official is Userkaf-ankh, and the title probably 'overseer of the nomes of Lower Egypt'
(Pirenne 1932-5, vol. n, p. 470 and n. 1).

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in charge of its order and responsible for delivering its taxes to the vizier.
The translation 'town governor' often seems the most appropriate.
Their holders are known throughout Upper Egypt and now in Lower
Egypt as well. Many were owners of large and richly decorated rock
tombs, and those at Qau el-Kebir, with temples modelled on the royal
pyramid layout, were probably the largest provincial tombs to be
constructed in Egypt until the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Their owners are
often called ' nomarchs' by modern writers, but the title which is most
aptly translated thus is in most cases either not used by them at all, or
in an apparently spasmodic way. The principal exception is at Beni
Hasan where the tomb-owners appear to be true nomarchs, on the whole
without connection with the local temple. A general appreciation of the
position of' town governors', including the fact that places which were
not nome capitals, like Abydos, Armant and Kahun, had them, might
lead to the conclusion that, by the Middle Kingdom, provincial
authority and its rewards was following the ' natural' pattern of urban
development in the Nile Valley. The more artificial division of the
country into nomes may well have come to exist only as a formal overlay
whose offices were primarily honorary, held either by a town governor
or, in an exceptional case as at Beni Hasan, by aristocratic families
lying somewhat outside the more common pattern of provincial
authority.
Much has been made by historians of the fact that after the reign of
Senusret III there are no more large provincial tombs (with the
exception of one at Qau el-Kebir of the reign of Amenemhat III). The
interpretation has been offered that the power of provincial men was
curbed in an administrative reform which brought the country wholly
under a centralized bureaucracy. This needs to be seen in careful
perspective, however. In the first place, the degree of independence
implied in a display of local grandeur is not necessarily directly
proportional to the scale of that display. For example, at the height of
this phase of local government prosperity, in year 38 of Senusret I,
twenty town governors, including those from the southernmost part
of Egypt, were obliged to take part in a colossal quarrying expedition
for the king to the Wadi Hammamat, under the authority of a 'herald',
their presence being presumably required by virtue of their obligations
to supply people in their area for the royal corvee. This has the appearance
of a massive exercise in royal control of provincial government.
Secondly, whilst changes in local government may well have taken place
in the late Twelfth Dynasty, nevertheless men with the titles 'town

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governor' and 'chief priest' are known from the late Twelfth and
Thirteenth Dynasties. Thus, late in the reign of Amenemhat III Kahun
was being governed by one such title-holder; at El-Kab these offices ran
in a family who were descended from a vizier of the Thirteenth Dynasty
and who held this position until late in the Seventeenth Dynasty when
one of them, Sebek-nakht, had a decorated rock tomb made. A similar
sequence is visible at Edfu, and the daughter of a town governor of
Armant appears in an administrative papyrus of the early Thirteenth
Dynasty (Scharff 1920). What must be granted is a break in the sequence
of large provincial tombs, but that the economic factor was one inflicted
by the king is entirely a matter of modern inference. Within a generation
the size of royal tombs also went into a sharp decline, evidently
associated with instability within the kingship. But unlike in the history
of the late Old Kingdom this was not accompanied by a transfer of
wealth to the Upper Egyptian provinces.

THE FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

With the reign of Pepy II, alleged by ancient sources to have been over
90 years long, the Old Kingdom effectively ended. The outward
manifestation of this is the fact that his was the last in the sequence of
massive pyramid complexes, although it was also surrounded by a
cemetery of his courtiers in the form of curiously impoverished
provincial-like tombs of mud brick which speak eloquently of the
decline in wealth of those most closely associated with the king. At this
modest level the Memphite cemeteries continued in use, as is shown
by a sequence of tombs of priests of King Teti's cult at Saqqara which
probably spans the whole period. But the ability of the court to build
on a truly monumental scale seems to have gone altogether. The country
was not left, however, without kings. These are known from the
king-lists of Turin and Abydos which between them suggest eighteen
kings, and possibly one queen, ruling for a period of perhaps about
20 years, implying an instability of rule which must go far towards
explaining the absence of large pyramids. It is convenient to equate them
with Manetho's Eighth Dynasty, there being no evidence to support
the existence of an intervening Seventh Dynasty, whilst the Turin list
marks no break in continuity of royal succession between the Sixth
Dynasty and the last of this group. A pyramid tomb of very modest
proportions indeed (seefig.2.1) has been found at Saqqara belonging
to one of them, a King Aba, who had a reign of either two or four years
in which to accomplish it.

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At Coptos in Upper Egypt a series of fourteen decrees issued by some

of them mostly appoint members of a prominent local family to positions
in the provincial and temple administration. In so doing they create the
impression of the continued functioning of the Old Kingdom apparatus
of government, suggesting that although the power of these kings to
determine events may have been small, their role continued to bestow
authority, general approval and status on the careers of provincial men
of power.
The Memphite kingship next passed to a line of eighteen kings who
seem to have originated from the provincial town of Herakleopolis and
who are occasionally referred to in contemporary inscriptions as the
'House of Khety', after the first of the line. Whether they took over
the Memphite court or continued to rule from Herakleopolis is, like
practically everything about them, unknown. They form Manetho's
duplicated Ninth/Tenth Dynasty (von Beckerath 1966, Goedicke 1969,
Schenkel 1962, pp. 139—45). Its most famous surviving product is the
literary text, the Instruction to Merikara (see p. 74), but because of
lacunae in the text, many uncertainties in translation, and more
particularly its didactic tone, it requires considerable caution to use it
as an historical source.1
Our ignorance of royal succession and court affairs at this time is
basically a reflection of how important a part pyramid cemeteries play
in our view of Egypt in these earlier periods. When they are large and
well preserved we feel that we know something of their creators; when
they disappear the illusion is created of a ' Dark Age'. Yet as far as events
in Upper Egypt are concerned, we know far more at this time than
during the heyday of the Old Kingdom. Provincial fortunes become
evident from a close study of certain cemeteries. Thus at Mo'alla, on
the northern frontier of the nome of Hierakonpolis, the tomb of
Ankhtyfy contains important biographical texts. Like his father Hetep,
Ankhtyfy bore, amongst others, the twin titles 'nomarch' and 'chief
priest', and lived probably in the early to middle part of the Ninth/Tenth
Dynasty. He records his takeover of the adjoining nome of Edfu,
hitherto under the 'House of Khuu', an important nomarch family
itself, and there is a hint that a third nome, presumably Elephantine,
for a time was associated with his ambitions. But to his north, similar
aspirations had produced a hostile alliance between the nomes of Thebes
and Coptos, bringing about mutual attacks on fortresses. Subsequently
the whole of the southern part of Upper Egypt fell under the control
of Thebes. At Mo'alla this is presumably marked by Ankhtyfy's two
1
Contrast the historical value placed on the text by Ward (1971) and by Bjorkman (1964).

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known successors bearing only the single title' leader of Hierakonpolis'.

At Dendera, there is a long sequence of tombs covering virtually the
whole period. From between the end of the Sixth Dynasty and a point
more or less contemporary with Ankhtyfy are two belonging to men
with the same two offices of 'nomarch' and 'chief priest', and one
evidently with the same sort of ambitions as Ankhtyfy, being nomarch
of the three nomes of Thinis, Diospolis and Dendera. Their relative
independence was again curbed by Thebes. This is marked by one
official from Dendera who records serving the 'governor of Upper
Egypt, Intef the Great', a Theban. Henceforth the tombs at Dendera
belong only to 'chief priests'.
This is the period when for the first time Thebes came into
prominence. The late Old Kingdom is represented here by a group of
five rock tombs (M. Saleh 1977), two belonging to nomarchs, and from
the following period the names of three ' town governors' and ' chief
priests' are recorded in inscriptions (Bjorkman 1964; Schenkel 1965,
pp. 29-32, esp. no. 19; Winlock 1947, pp. 5-6), but their connection,
if any, to the immediately succeeding Intef family is unknown. Of this
last family, who were ultimately to emerge as the Eleventh Dynasty,
the two earliest figures are a ' nomarch' and ' chief priest' Intef (Cairo
stele 2009; see Fischer 1968, pp. 200, 203; Schenkel 1965, pp. 64—5),
and Intef the Great, referred to above.1 The success of this family in
curbing the ambitions of provincial governors to their north and south
led them to proclaim themselves kings, and to construct far more
imposing tombs in the El-Tarif area of western Thebes. Bearing the
names Intef and Menthuhetep they form Manetho's Eleventh Dynasty,
and were subsequently thought to comprise seven kings ruling for 143
years. Contemporary sources, however — especially the biography of
Hetepi from El-Kab (Gabra 1976)2 - show that the territorial foundation
of real Theban power did not occur until the reign of the third,
Wahankh Intef, and must raise some doubts as to whether kingship was
not later ascribed to the first two from motives of piety. Their position
led to a civil war with the kings of the Ninth/Tenth Dynasty in the
north. References to this come both from Thebes, and from tombs at
Deir Rifeh, near Asyut, which belong again to 'town governors' or
'nomarchs' and 'chief priests'. Two (belonging to It-ibi and Khety II)
1
See this page and Schenkel (1965, p. 66, no. 46, also perhaps no. 45). It is possible that this
Intef and the previously mentioned one, as well as the 'Intef the Great, the son of Ikui' of later
records, are all really the same person; cf. Schenkel (1962, pp. 145-9).
2
It dates to the reign of Wahankh Intef and seems to suggest that not until his reign were
the most southerly nomes brought under full Theban control. It also describes the great famine.

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contain narrative inscriptions recording the part played by their owners

in the civil war, fighting on behalf of the Ninth/Tenth Dynasty.
Both groups of inscriptions, from Thebes and Deir Rifeh, agree in
making the area of conflict lie between Thinis and various points further
to the north.1 No inscription mentions ultimate victory, but it seems
certain that it was gained by Nebhepetra Menthuhetep II, not least from
the fact that two of his officials served in Herakleopolis itself (Fischer
19 5 9a, 1960, Helck 1955, Schenkel 1965). Nebhepetra's reign also marks
an astonishingly successful attempt at creating, at Deir el-Bahari, a
monumental funerary complex richly decorated in a style which, though
based on Old Kingdom models, possessed a great vigour of its own.
With this monument the Middle Kingdom may be said to have
commenced.
The First Intermediate Period seems essentially to represent a loss
of equilibrium between a powerful court and provincial aspirations, and
in itself points to where a major source of power had come to reside.
The cemeteries of Upper Egypt show that the people of this area who
benefited most from the end of the court's ability to collect and to
consume a large part of the country's resources were the provincial
governors whose identity had become increasingly clear during the
Sixth Dynasty. Civil war there was, but only among men whose
aspirations, as far as they can be seen, were of a thoroughly traditional
nature, and who recognized the role of traditional kingship even if they
permitted it to be only a minor influence in their conduct of their own
affairs. As for the north of the country, reliable historical evidence is
wholly lacking, although reflections of events are probably present in
the Instruction to Merikara, and, as will be documented on pp. 137—8,
an Asiatic threat of probably low magnitude existed for a time in the
eastern Delta.
One aspect of the First Intermediate Period which has held a
particular fascination for historians is the possibility that it witnessed
something in the nature of a social revolution. To believe this one must
accept that behind the philosophical queryings of the literature of this
period and of the Middle Kingdom discussed on pp. 74-5, especially
the text of the Admonitions of Ipuwer, there lies some historical
actuality which took a dramatic, even revolutionary form. There is, in
fact, evidence that in funerary religion certain concepts and symbols
devised originally for the exclusive use of kings became more widely
1
It is possible that graffito no. 5 of the Abisko Graffiti in Nubia may refer to an extension
of the conflict into the Fayum area; see Brovarski and Murnane (1969) and cf. Posener (1952).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

adopted (Fischer 1963), and this has been interpreted by some as

evidence for a ' democratization of the afterlife', and a counterpart of
what was actually happening in the society of the living. Furthermore,
the tone of the philosophical literature itself implies a new awareness
by the authors concerned of the fragility of the state, and, especially in
the Instruction to Merikara (see p. 74) and in another literary work
of this time, the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, the need to ensure that
the state accommodated the hopes of the ordinary man. But to assume
that such developments could only be expressed in revolutionary action
is to take too simplistic a view of historical processes, and tends to deny
the Egyptians the capacity of speculating on and questioning rationally
the nature of their society, even if their mode of thought and
communication tended to be vividly concrete.
As to what brought about the First Intermediate Period, several
possibilities will be discussed in the final section of this chapter, on
explanations for historical change in Egypt.

THE AFRICAN HINTERLAND

An important phenomenon to be observed in the ancient cultures of

north-east Africa is a process of cultural separation whereby a people
settled in some part of the Nile Valley could become involved, for
reasons still not properly understood, in a largely spontaneous and
self-multiplying course of cultural enrichment and diversity which
separated them from their desert background. In particular, settled life
in the Nile Valley seems to have encouraged the appearance both of
leaders anxious to extend their control over neighbouring valley groups,
and of an elaborate cemetery culture. In Egypt proper this process had
given birth to the Predynastic culture from which Pharaonic civilization
had grown. But in Nubia the far smaller natural potential of this part
of the valley and the aggressive policies adopted by Egypt meant that
the process had a limited future and was liable to be arrested while still
in an incipient phase, and even reversed.
By its very nature this phenomenon obscures the external affinities
of Nile Valley groups. On present evidence, which is still very sparse,
one should probably see the deserts surrounding Egypt as having
supported a ' pool' of widely and thinly dispersed groups of people in
whose lives nomadism played a part of varying importance, and whose
simple material cultures frequently show broad overall similarities both
to each other and to those of the Nile Valley, but which possessed their
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own very long histories, probably complicated ones when examined in

detail and on a regional basis.1 Distinctive in their later phases are their
ceramic products, chiefly hand-made bowls, whose features include
burnished black interiors, black-topped red exteriors often burnished,
unburnished dark exteriors decorated with various simple incised or
impressed patterns, and occasionally ripple-burnished exteriors.
Grinding-stones are also prominent. When resemblances to Nubian
cultures seem particularly close some relationship between the peoples
concerned may be considered, but until a great deal more information
is derived from the deserts, and until more is understood of the process
of cultural development in the Nile Valley itself, considerable caution
should be exercised in identifying desert homelands for the various
valley groups. The temptation for sweeping association from the
existence of broad similarities over a wide geographical area is particu-
larly evident in the applications of the term 'C-group' (see below,
pp. 126—7), t o cultures of the western desert whose total features do
not amount to the true C-group, which appears to have been a
specialized development of Lower Nubia only. Furthermore, recent
evaluation of both the archaeological and physical anthropological
material of Lower Nubia has tended to favour the idea of, instead of
repeated waves of immigration, a basic continuity of culture and ethnic
stock from early times onwards.
The rock pictures which occur both along the Nile Valley and in the
deserts on either side are a further important product of these peoples,
but the problems of dating make them difficult to use historically. There
seems to be widespread agreement, nevertheless, that a large proportion
of the cattle drawings, which predominate in the rock art of Nubia and
the eastern desert and are found widely spread in the deserts to the west
as well, are contemporary with the periods under consideration and
attest the existence of a widespread cattle-orientated culture to which
the Nubian C-group would presumably have belonged. Beyond such
a generalized conclusion, however, it seems scarcely possible to proceed
at present, though one might note that both the ancient Egyptian ethnic
terminology and the first anthropological results from a Pan-grave
cemetery of people believed associated with the Medja nomads of the
eastern desert (see below, p. 170), suggest that more than one distinct
group of peoples were involved. An ancient cattle cemetery is known
1
The references are very scattered, but include: Bagnold etai. (1939), Caton-Thompson (1952),
Hays (1975a, b), Hester and Hobler (1969), Hobler and Hester (1968), Holscher (1955), Huard
(1965, 1967-8), Huard and Allard (1970), Huard and Leclant (1972), McHugh (1974a, b, 1975),
Shaw (1956a, b).

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to lie to the north-east of the Wadi el-Allaqi (Murray 1962), and cattle
skulls have come from a Lower Nubian site (Hall 1962).
One might expect that contact between desert and valley was always,
if only sporadically maintained, and mainly in the form of short-lived
desert-edge encampments of semi-nomads, perhaps entering into a
symbiotic relationship with the settled valley-dwellers, based on cattle
exchange. Virtually the only investigated record of this type of activity
comes from the desert edge to the west of Armant in Upper Egypt,
where the following groups were found after very careful examination
of the desert surface:1 (1) a cemetery of seventy-six graves, whose
Egyptian pottery dates them to the Early Dynastic Period. Other vessels
were of a ripple-burnished ware, some with incised chevron pattern
beneath the rim. Of the burials, twenty were of oxen. A cemetery like
this may imply something more permanent than a seasonal camp; (2)
several small camps (' Saharan Sites') represented by scatters of flint
tools and sherds with various incised and impressed patterns. At one
of them (Saharan Site 15) were also found seven sherds from Old
Kingdom orange-burnished bowls, and part of a vessel which resembles
a common Middle Kingdom form; (3) a Pan-grave cemetery, and thus
possibly for people of eastern-desert origin (see below, pp. 169—70). An
accompanying survey located further Saharan Sites all the way south
to Edfu, but none further north, at least as far as Farshut. The practice
by nomadic groups of camping on the desert edge, leading sometimes
to permanent settlement, has been continued into recent times in this
general area.2 The overall cultural impact of this process has been little
investigated.
It is surprisingly difficult to trace, in areas further south still, such
ephemeral camp-sites of people contemporary with the well-established
Nubian groups. One may wonder if the priorities of the earlier
archaeological surveys, carried out for rescue purposes, and the
tendency for a unilinear view of cultural development to prevail, have
not led to the Saharan Site type being overlooked, especially since the

1
The main results remain unpublished. Myers's records are in the archives of the Egypt
Exploration Society, and were in an advanced state of preparation at his death. Permission to quote
here some of this material was kindly granted by the Egypt Exploration Society. Preliminary
discussions can also be found in Bagnold et al. (1939) and Mond and Myers (1937).
2
The modern village of Naga el-Arab on the desert side of the Birket Habu in western Thebes
houses the descendants of a nomadic group who were settled here earlier this century. A
photograph of one of their original tented camps appears in Borchardt and Ricke (1930, p. 191).
Some of these people, or their neighbours, were reputed to have come from Kharga Oasis (Bonomi
1906).

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pottery might bear some resemblances to Nubian valley domestic wares

(see p. 124).

The western desert and oases

Archaeological material has been reported from numerous localities in

the western desert, but rarely investigated on a scientific basis. As far
away as the Gilf el-Kebir pottery has been found which is said to
resemble some of the Nubian valley cultures (specifically C-group). The
most detailed published fieldwork has been carried out in the vicinity
of the Dunqul and Kurkur Oases, no longer permanently inhabited
(Hester and Hobler 1969, Hobler and Hester 1968). A series of
occupation sites was discovered, most near the Dunqul and Dineigil
Oases, but a few at Kurkur, Nakhlai, Taklis and Sheb. The most
important were clustered around water sources which still exist today,
but even so represented probably not a single occupation but a number
of reoccupations by people with essentially the same material culture,
though displaying slight variations from site to site. Two near Dunqul
consisted of groups of rooms of rough stone masonry construction,
many so small as to suggest storage spaces or animal pens. Of apparently
the same age were a number of stone game-traps thrown across shallow
valleys at Dunqul and Kurkur, intended perhaps for gazelle and ostrich.
The occupants of these sites seem to have herded domesticated sheep
and possibly goats, and to have either herded or hunted cattle (Bos sp.).
Their material culture consisted of a chert artifact assemblage, stone
grinders, and sherds primarily from bowls and jars principally of the
following wares: thin burnished black-topped, with black interior and
red exterior; thin unburnished grey with simple incised or impressed
decoration on the outside; thin red-brown undecorated; at one Kurkur
site four ripple-burnished sherds were present as well. No cemeteries
were found at any of the sites, an important feature which distinguishes
them (and probably most other desert sites) from those in the Nile
Valley.1 From one site comes a U C date of 1690+180 BC (MASCA2
correction would be c. 2050 BC (Butzer and Hansen 1968, p. 390, Hobler
1
Although in the Wadi Howar some hundreds of grave cairns have been noted, but apparently
for burials without or with very few grave-goods (Shaw 1936a, b). In this latter case it is somewhat
misleading to attach the term Badarian to these graves in view of the incomplete history of the
various cultural groups of the deserts, who resorted from time to time to the manufacture of
ripple-burnished ware.
2
MASCA corrections, from one of several schemes for calibrating raw radiocarbon dates, are
published by the Museums Applied Science Center for Archaeology in Ralph, Michael and Han
('97})-

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and Hester 1968)), which would place the survival of these cultures well
into the periods considered in these chapters.
When the Egyptians encountered these peoples of the western desert,
not surprisingly, they ignored whatever groupings they formed and
applied to them a very imprecise terminology. A general term was
Tjemehu of the land of Tjemeh, and they or their land are mentioned
as the object of raiding parties of both the Egyptians and the Nubian
valley dwellers in latitudes as far apart as probably 300 and 200 N. A
much later reference (Yoyotte 1951), from the reign of Ramesses II in
the early thirteenth century BC, speaks of Tjemehu captured for the
building of the rock temple of Wadi es-Sebua which, significantly, lies
on the Nile bank to the east and south-east of the Dunqul—Nakhlai area.
It has been suggested that on clear ethnic grounds the Egyptians
distinguished between them and the Tjehenu, among whom the
Egyptians recognized princes or leaders, and whose lands may have lain
more towards the Mediterranean, west of the Nile Delta, on the edge
of a coastal region which was also, but in periods much later than those
considered in this chapter, to experience cultural separation from the
desert hinterland.
The most important centres of settlement in the west were presumably
the larger oases, although as yet there has been little excavation to
substantiate this for the periods under consideration. Kharga and
Bahriya provided wine for the Egyptian court (Helck 1975, p. 180), and
three Middle Kingdom graffiti have been reported from near mine-
workings at Bahriya (Fakhry 1973), but probably a more important
interest in them was the strategic one of safeguarding the various desert
routes which provide alternatives for trade and other contacts with
Nubia and lands lying further to the south. Two sources illustrate the
use of such routes. One is the biography of Harkhuf of the Sixth
Dynasty which concerns donkey caravans being used for the trade with
Upper Nubia, and in one case taking 'the oasis road', and the Second
Kamose Stele of the Seventeenth Dynasty where the concern is with
diplomatic correspondence being carried south to the same area
(Habachi 1972, p. 39; Pritchard 1969, p. 555; Save-Soderbergh 1956;
H. S. Smith and A. Smith 1976). Both most likely involved use of the
Darb el-Arba'in caravan route (fig. 2.14) and a northward extension
through the Bahriya Oasis. In the same stele Kamose actually records
the capture of this oasis, and the strategic value of controlling these
routes is presumably reflected in the linking of the conquest of ' the
oasis' (probably Kharga and Dakhla regarded as a unit) and of Lower

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Nubia in the Ballas inscription of Nebhepetra Menthuhetep of the

Eleventh Dynasty (Fischer 1964, pp. 112-18, no. 45; Schenkel 1965,
pp. 214-16) (see p. 130).
At least as early as the Sixth Dynasty, when Harkhuf was making
his journeys, some of the oases had Egyptian or Egyptianized officials
stationed there, presumably with some military support. At Dakhla (at
the site of Balat), an extensive Egyptian settlement of the Old Kingdom
has been discovered (Vercoutter 1977a), associated with mastaba tombs
belonging to men with the title 'governor of the oasis' (Fakhry 1973,
Leclant 1974, pi. xxxiv) one of them claiming to be a son of Pepy II
and buried with some gold artifacts; and from about the Fifth Dynasty
comes a statue of an Egyptian who bore the title ' governor of the land
of cattle' (Edel 1956), an evocative name which is elsewhere known to
have been used for the Farafra Oasis. From the Middle Kingdom
various officials are attested with titles concerned with the western
desert generally and with the Kharga and Dakhla Oases in particular,
including an 'overseer of the oasis army', probably referring to
mercenaries from here (Fischer 1957). A Middle Kingdom stele of an
official has been found at the watering place of Bir Nekheila, south-east
of Kharga (Fakhry 1973).
The eastern desert

The special feature of this area is the line of broken hills and mountains
separating the Nile Valley from the Red Sea. These hills induce a slight
annual rainfall, the extent and regularity of which increase southwards.
In the extensive wadi systems it supplies wells, maintains vegetation,
and even, in the higher reaches of some of the larger wadis, allows
irregular cultivation to take place (Gleichen 1905, pp. 86—8). This area
provides a home for nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralist peoples, the
more southerly called the Beja, who, from antiquity, have been regarded
by outsiders as comprising a number of distinct and relatively important
groups, more so than those of the western desert. The ancient Egyptians
mounted regular mining expeditions to exploit the mineral resources
of these hills, and, by concentrating in some of the same wadi systems,
must have come into repeated contact with the local people.1
The consequent need to find in Egyptian texts references to the
1
They were occasionally referred to as 'Asiatics', whose origin, if the term was always
correctly used by the Egyptians, may have been the people of Palestinian culture in south Sinai
in Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age times (see pp. 139-42). The modern Beja are not Semites,
in contrast to those people who inhabit the Red Sea Hills further to the north.

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peoples of this important area leads, without a serious alternative, to

an identification with the Medja-people. In the Middle Kingdom, when
Egyptian activity in the eastern hills probably grew more intensive,
Medja-people appear in texts as essentially desert-dwellers, but con-
nected with the Nile, and the object both of Egyptian surveillance and
aggression. They also entered Egyptian service. The early Thirteenth
Dynasty papyrus referred to above (see p. 81) records the arrival and
stay at court of a delegation of eight Medja men and women, and later
of a Medja prince. In this reference, as in the Execration Texts (see below
p. 134), Medja-people are subdivided into groups. The names used are
written as if of places but, as in mediaeval sources, the Egyptians may
be transferring the terminology of a settled people to names which were
really of tribes who ranged over extensive territories. To this general
argument of likelihood for the location of the Medja homeland in the
hillier parts of the eastern desert of Nubia should be added the specific
information provided by a stele from the Wadi el-Hudi which appears
to place this particular region in Medja territory (Bietak 1966, pp. 77-8).
Unfortunately, the whole area remains, archaeologically, a virtual
blank.

The Egyptian interest

The Lower Nubian valley acted as a transport corridor giving access
to important mining and quarrying areas in the deserts to east and west.
These were principally (and in addition to those east of Egypt proper):
(1) Wadi el-Allaqi-Wadi Gabgaba, an extensive network of broad
flat wadis which in ancient, as well as in mediaeval, times were important
sources of gold obtained from shallow surface workings; also probably
copper, to which large slag-heaps reported near the ancient fort of
Kubban were presumably connected. Two Sixth Dynasty graffiti have
been found 60 km from the Nile along the Wadi el-Allaqi (Piotrovsky
1966, 1967),1 and possibly three from the Middle Kingdom further on
(Cerny 1947). One must also presume that this would have been the
principal area of contact with the Medja-people.
(2) Wadi el-Hudi, a source of amethyst, and possibly of gold as well.
Inscriptions found here mention Kings Nebtawyra Menthuhetep IV
(last king of the Eleventh Dynasty), Senusret I, Senusret III, Amenemhat
III, all of the Twelfth, and Khaneferra Sebekhetep of the Thirteenth.
1
There is no need to assume that the Uni of one of these graffiti is the same as the famous
Uni of the Abydos inscription. Their titles are not the same.

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A neatly laid out fortified stone village has been tentatively dated to
the Middle Kingdom.
(3) Quarries in the western desert, north-west of Toshka, exploited
for diorite gneiss and possibly carnelian.1 Royal names found here are:
Khufu and Djedefra of the Fourth Dynasty, Sahura and Djedkara Isesi
of the Fifth, Senusret I, Amenemhat I/Senusret I co-regency,
Amenemhat II, and Amenemhat III of the Twelfth. One quarrying
record claimed that 1000 donkeys and over 1000 men were involved.
Gold was also available from riverine and riverside deposits between
Buhen and Kerma and three Old Kingdom graffiti belonging to a class
of officials apparently concerned particularly with the import of
minerals have been found at Kulb, near Dal (Hintze 1965). Pharaonic
riverside mines have been located at Saras and Duweishat, the former
apparently of the Twelfth Dynasty. It has also been suggested that wood
from both Upper and Lower Nubia was taken to supplement Egypt's
modest reserves.
Provision had also to be made for trading with regions lying even
further to the south which could provide the Egyptians with exotic
goods. One Sixth Dynasty source (Harkhuf) lists as the products of such
trade:' incense, ebony, hkttw-oil. . ., panther skins, elephants' tusks, and
throwing-sticks'. Since the sources of some of these items would have
lain beyond the reach of direct Egyptian penetration by river or by
caravan, it was necessary to come to some sort of arrangement with
Nubian middlemen, as well as to safeguard the routes themselves. This,
as noted above, involved control of the western oases.
From time to time checks were felt to be necessary on political
developments amongst the riverine peoples. The process of cultural
separation from the desert hinterland and the appearance of ambitious
leaders was always liable to take place, more successfully in Upper Nubia
where the resources were much greater. Since the imbalance in
population between Egypt and her African neighbours must have been
much less great in antiquity than in modern times such political
developments must have been viewed with an equivalently greater
urgency. The expressed Egyptian policy was always one of aggression,
but this, especially as it concerns Upper Nubia, contains the ambiguity
that amongst these peoples the Egyptians also had to find trading
partners. Although it is always possible that they entertained the hope
of being able, ultimately, to break through by river or by land to the
1
The second commodity sought was called mhntt a mineral substance for which the translation
'carnelian' (or 'jasper') has been suggested (Simpson 1963c, pp. 50-1).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

true sources of exotic goods and further gold which they were otherwise
able to reach directly only by the coastal voyage to Punt (see pp. 136-7).

The Nubian Nile Valley

The demise of the Nubian A-group culture during the first part of the
First Dynasty seems to have marked the beginning of a hiatus in the
Lower Nubian cultural record of perhaps as much as five centuries. For
some time archaeologists filled this gap with a B-group culture,
principally material from very impoverished graves. But a close analysis
of the evidence shows that there are no grounds for recognizing in any
of the Lower Nubian cemeteries a homogenous phase to be fitted into
this period, which in Egypt represents a major part of the Old
Kingdom. The most plausible interpretation is that as a result of
Egyptian harassment, including perhaps the taking of prisoners, and
possibly the exclusion from a hitherto close trading relationship with
Egypt, the inhabitants sought refuge in a semi-nomadic way of life
between the Nile Valley and the wells and oases of the adjacent deserts.
One feature of the desert cultures discussed above is the rarity of
well-defined cemeteries. If the temporary and perhaps seasonal presence
of these people in Lower Nubia had been marked by nothing more
substantial than camps of the Saharan Site type identified at Armant then
it becomes understandable how the methods and standpoints of some
of the principal Nubian surveys could have overlooked or undervalued
such insubstantial surface sites, particularly since the pottery may well
have born superficial resemblances to C-group domestic wares. One of
the most exhaustive of the more recent surveys, however, has located
some sites of just this nature, though in the ecologically more marginal
area of the Second Cataract. One of them, at Saras East, in addition to
sherds of types related to both A-group and C-group cultures yielded
an Old Kingdom orange-burnished bowl sherd, reminiscent, therefore,
of Saharan Site 15 at Armant (Mills and Nordstrom 1966).1 The
necessity for seeking some such explanation is heightened by Egyptian
inscriptions claiming the capture of substantial numbers of men and
animals from Nubia (Breasted 1906, p. 66; Helck 1974c, Schafer 1902,
p. 30).
One of the most important discoveries of the Nubian excavations of
1
Gratien (1978, p. 134) claims that outliers of her Early Kerma phase ('Kerma ancien') occur
at Aniba, Serra, Faras and Saras in Lower Nubia, as well as at Akasha, Dal, Sai and Kerma in
Upper Nubia. See also Nordstrom (1966).

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the 1960s was that as early as the Old Kingdom there had been an
Egyptian attempt to control Lower Nubia by means of centres of
permanent occupation. This was established by the excavation of Buhen
North. Here, not far from the northern end of the Second Cataract, was
a settlement, defined by a rough stone wall, whose material culture was
almost exclusively Egyptian. In the best-preserved area the crushing and
smelting of what was claimed to be copper ore had been carried on,
derived from a source as yet unlocated. Royal names, especially on
mud-seal impressions, were of Kings Khafra and Menkaura of the
Fourth Dynasty, and Userkaf, Sahura, Neferirkara and Djedkara Isesi
of the Fifth. Earlier levels, however, were tentatively ascribed to
possibly as early as the Second Dynasty on the basis of mud-brick sizes
and much decayed jar seals. Such an early date receives some support
from 14C dates,1 and a graffito on a nearby hill has also been given an
Early Dynastic date (H. S. Smith 1972). Buhen North represents a
policy of Egyptian settlement now exemplified at Balat in the Dakhla
Oasis (see p. 121), and throws a welcome light on the much earlier
discovery of a few Old Kingdom sherds at Kubban, the site subsequently
of a large Middle Kingdom fort strategically situated opposite the
entrance to the Wadi el-Allaqi (Emery and Kirwan 1935). The apparent
lack of a settled population in Lower Nubia may have rendered
unnecessary the creation of a chain of garrison forts on the later Middle
Kingdom pattern, but the Kubban sherds contain the hint that Buhen
North was not alone in Lower Nubia. Buhen North also gave the
Egyptians the potential, as in the Middle Kingdom, for striking into
Upper Nubia where the pickings must always have been much greater,
and this introduces a note of geographical uncertainty into the Fourth
Dynasty record of King Sneferu's capture of booty during a raid on
Nubia. Buhen North would likewise have been well placed for trade
with Upper Nubia, replacing Lower Nubian middlemen.
At Buhen, as in the diorite quarries, the inscriptional sequence ends
1
The various radiocarbon dates are published in Radiocarbon, 1963, 5, 21, 288-9; 1965, 7, 552;
1966, 8, 3-4; 1968, 10, 1. Seven of the eight Arizona dates give a reasonably consistent picture
when subject to half-life correction and to calibration (e.g. by the MASCA scale, see n. 2 on
p. 119), with two samples from below the Old Kingdom floor (A-333, 334) of 2920 + 60 BC and
2830—2700+ 50 BC. The five California dates (three of them from samples also used by Arizona)
and the one British Museum date are somewhat less consistent, tending to give dates for the upper
level a lot earlier than one would expect, although a key sample from a trial trench across the
centre of the site (UCLA-247) yielded a date of 2910 + 60 BC. H. S. Smith (1964) echoed by
Save-Soderbergh and Olsson (1970) has seen in the internal inconsistencies a reason for suspecting
the correct interpretation of the stratigraphy. The degree of inconsistency, however, is probably
no greater than that, for example, which is apparent amongst radiocarbon dates from the Aegean
Bronze Age.

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with the Fifth Dynasty, to be resumed at each site only at the beginning
of the Twelfth. For the Sixth Dynasty, however, there are important
inscriptions left behind by Egyptian expeditions to Nubia, often led by
officials called 'overseers of foreign troops' (L. Bell 1973, Edel 1971b,
1973, Fischer 1964, pp. 29-30; Goedicke 1966a). Such expeditions are
recorded in the Wadi el-AUaqi, and by the Nile in the Tomas-Toshka
area. In two graffiti at Tomas the leaders bore also the interesting titles
' overseer of the army of Satju' and ' overseer of the foreign troops of
Satju', referring to a local Nubian riverine community which was
presumably supplying mercenary troops. The longest inscription is the
biography of Harkhuf in his tomb at Aswan. This records three
expeditions, apparently with trade as their prime object, commencing
at Memphis and taking a route either along the river valley, or across
the western desert via the oases. One important feature of the narrative
is the references to apparently well-established Nubian groups in Lower
Nubia, the most important in territories called Satju, Irtjet and Wawat,
apparently in this south-to-north order and covering much of this part
of the Nile Valley. On Harkhuf's second journey Irtjet and Satju were
under the leadership of one man, and by the third journey Wawat had
been joined to them. It is tempting to see this as an actual record of
the process of political concentration accompanying permanent settle-
ment which in this case would have produced, near the end of the Old
Kingdom, a veritable king of Lower Nubia. The archaeological
component to this process is presumably to be found in the earliest phase
of C-group culture, the next major episode of settled life in Lower
Nubia. Occurring in a small number of cemeteries on the west bank,
mainly in the central part of Lower Nubia, a few graves of the earliest
phase contained imported Egyptian 'button seals' which, in Egypt,
were in fashion during the late Old Kingdom. Whether the appearance
of C-group culture was a cause or a result of the apparent abandonment
of Egyptian settlement in Nubia after the Fifth Dynasty cannot be
determined. At this time the governors of Elephantine bear the title
' overseer of foreign lands', in one case ' overseer of the foreign lands
of his lord: Yam, Irtjet and Wawat', and this, together with the strong
mercenary soldier element mentioned above, might suggest some
political agreement to Egypt's advantage with these Nubian groups.
C-group (or Middle Nubian) culture persisted in Lower Nubia until
the early Eighteenth Dynasty, passing through a number of phases
which are essentially modifications and elaborations of the basic pattern.
Since riverside settlement was itself an important stimulus to cultural

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development and diversity involving the appearance of an elaborate

cemetery culture there is probably little point in looking for fully-fledged
C-group cuiture outside Lower Nubia, and as mentioned above,
continuity and migration offer two opposing interpretational positions
from which to view C-group beginnings. Until the penultimate phase
(lib) in the Second Intermediate Period the only C-group occupation
sites known are small collections of huts, either of wooden posts
possibly covered with skins, or more commonly of low walls of upright
stone slabs with pitched roofs supported on timbers. The cemeteries
were elaborate affairs, sometimes containing free-standing stone slabs
occasionally decorated with pictures of cattle. Each tomb possessed a
well-built circular superstructure of dry stone masonry, and sometimes
the burial lay inside a stone cyst or beneath a mud-brick barrel vault.
But again, until the penultimate phase, there is no very obvious scaling
of tomb size to reflect social or political standing, a negative feature
possessed also in general by the earlier A-group culture.
In material culture, much of it derived from cemeteries, pottery is
the most readily distinguishable feature, particularly a varied class of
hand-made black bowls with elaborate incised geometric patterns; also
polished black-topped red bowls, a variety of coarser domestic wares,
and imported Egyptian jars, possibly for storing water. In general, the
numbers of Egyptian objects acquired seem to have been relatively
limited, and the development of C-group culture appears to have
progressed independently of the Egyptian reconquest of Lower Nubia
in the Middle Kingdom. The reconquest, however, must have frustrated
whatever political ambitions had been nascent during the Sixth Dynasty
and First Intermediate Period, but apart from this, C-group people seem
to have been able to continue their way of life in which, to judge from
their limited artistic repertoire, cattle played an important part. It also
involved a modest exchange of goods between individuals, families and
villages, but insufficient to create obvious concentrations of wealth.
C-group culture has been found at numerous sites in Lower Nubia,
with particular concentrations in the fertile areas around Faras, Aniba
and Dakka, and with one outlier in Egypt itself, at Kubaniya, 13 km
north of Aswan. At this last site the C-group elements appear to belong
to an early phase, presumably of the First Intermediate Period. During
the Middle Kingdom the descendants of this community adopted
Egyptian culture and burial practices. Southwards, it has been found
no further upstream than at Semna at the head of the Second Cataract.
Further south again stretches the southern continuation of the Batn
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el-Hagar, a particularly barren part of the Nile Valley which careful

survey has shown was virtually without a settled population in ancient
times (Geus and Labre 1974, Vila 1975). Further south still, beyond Dal,
the archaeology of Upper Nubia is still only provisionally documented.
The site of the greatest interest here is Kerma, on the east bank above
the Third Cataract (W. Y. Adams 1977a, Hintze 1964, O'Connor 1974,
el-Rayah 1974, Reisner 1923, Save-Soderbergh 1941, pp. 103—16;
Trigger 1976a).1 As will be discussed below (pp. 144-5,162-7), the most
striking of the remains - the brick castle and the great tumuli - almost
certainly represent the seat of the Kings of Kush ruling much of Nubia
during the late seventeenth and early sixteenth centuries BC. Their taste
for Egyptian products, extending to pieces of antique inscription and
statuary, has led to some confusion in modern interpretations. In the
initial analysis of the cemetery, then regarded as for the burial of
Egyptian trading officials, a relative chronology was established, with the
great tumuli at the southern end representing the earliest classic stage.
As with all relative sequences of this nature, however, it is, in theory,
reversible, and the modern realization that the great tumuli must be the
latest implies that the northern part of the cemetery contains the burials
and culture of Kerma extending back in time from the Second
Intermediate Period, presumably through the Middle Kingdom. Un-
fortunately, the small excavated areas of this part remain unpublished,
although a few general remarks by the excavator suggest, as might be
expected, features common also to the C-group of Lower Nubia, and
perhaps to the A-group as well. This alternative view of the Kerma
necropolis would seem to receive support from excavations on the
island of Sai, which is reported to contain cemeteries as large as those
at Kerma itself, though with no tombs to rival in size the royal tumuli.
A provisional scheme of archaeological classification for Upper
Nubia has been proposed on the basis of the Sai cemeteries (Gratien
1978). The Classic Kerma phase of the latter part of the Second
Intermediate Period, i.e. Hyksos Period in northern Egypt, is here
preceded by two others: a Middle Kerma phase which displays certain
burial customs common also to Classic Kerma and whose tombs
contained, amongst other material, copper daggers presumably from
Egypt; an Early Kerma apparently in succession to an Upper Nubian
1
The stele of Intef, a key document in the interpretation of Kerma, has a remarkably close
parallel in a stele from El-Kab (see n. z on p. 104), which adds weight to the idea that the Intef
stele is not describing some sort of fortified structure built locally at Kerma. Note also that a statue
claimed to have belonged to a man with the name Hapdjefa has been found at Tell Hizzin, in
the Lebanon.

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version of the A-group of Lower Nubia. Both Middle and Early Kerma
are probably to be equated with parts of the northern sector of the great
Kerma necropolis itself, and Middle Kerma is presumably the local
equivalent of the Lower Nubian C-group, and thus largely contemporary
with the Middle Kingdom. Upper Nubia may thus, to judge from the
preliminary results so far published, offer a much more continuous
cultural record than Lower Nubia, without the major hiatus between
A- and C-groups.
Whilst Kerma can no longer be regarded as an Egyptian 'trading
colony' of the Middle Kingdom, not all of the Egyptian material need
be dismissed as of later importation. This applies particularly to a cache
of broken stone vases from the castle courtyard and adjacent rooms,
probably from beneath the level of their floors, which bore the names
of Pepy I and II of the Sixth Dynasty, and of Amenemhat I and Senusret
I of the Twelfth (Reisner i92 3,pts. i—m,pp. 30— 2,ptsiv—v, pp. 507—10).1
In some respects Kerma in the Second Intermediate Period came to be
an African counterpart of Byblos: an independent state beyond Egypt's
political frontiers, with a court looking to Egypt as a source of
sophisticated court fashion. In the case of Byblos the connection owed
much to trade with Egypt. With Kerma the mechanism of contact is
more obscure, although the site lies not far from a short-cut across the
desert to the great Darb el-Arba'in caravan route. But it is in the light
of this subsequent history that one should view Harkhuf's accounts of
his trading expeditions. Their goal was the kingdom of Yam. The
internal evidence of Harkhuf's narrative is, despite much debate, too
insubstantial for locating this place, other than that it lay further from
Egypt than the Lower Nubian kingdoms mentioned above. But the
Sixth Dynasty vases from Kerma, which have their exact counterparts
at Byblos, as well as the later patterns of contact and political growth
give priority to the Kerma area as the site of Yam. Furthermore, in the
Egyptian spelling of Yam an equation has been sought with Irem, a
later name for a country in this very region (Priese 1974, Zibelius 1972,
pp. 78—81).2 It is interesting to note that Yam was already in Harkhuf's
1
Vercoutter (1967), reviewing Trigger (1965), cites an Old Kingdom vase with the cartouche
of Pepy II from a tomb at Mirgissa of the Second Intermediate Period by way of casting doubt
on the significance of the Kerma find. Nevertheless, an isolated specimen like this is hardly in
the same category as a cache of the size of the one at Kerma, which included, according to Reisner,
at least twenty-five different vases with the name of Pepy I. The Mirgissa vase is published in
Vercoutter (1975a, p. 98,fig.31).
2
The fact that to the west of Yam lay an area occupied by Tjemehu people is of less help than
might at first sight seem to be the case, in view of the archaeological evidence for a considerably
greater spread of people in the western deserts in ancient times than is probable today (see Strouhal

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time regarded as being under the patronage of the Egyptian goddess

Hathor (Lichtheim 1973, p. 26),1 who, like Horus, was to assume in
the Middle Kingdom this role in several places in Nubia, including the
diorite quarries of the western desert, as well as the mines in Sinai and
the port of Byblos.
The reconquest of Lower Nubia seems to have begun with the reign
of Nebhepetra Menthuhetep II (c. 2010 BC). A fragmentary inscription
from El-Ballas in Upper Egypt, dated to his reign on epigraphic
grounds, contains an account of conquest which includes the words:
' Wawat (Lower Nubia) and the Oasis, I annexed them to Upper Egypt'
(Fischer 1964, pp. 112—18; Schenkel 1965, pp. 214—16). From the
phraseology of a group of graffiti of his reign at Abisko, 10 km south
of Aswan, it seems likely that Buhen was reached on a proper
campaign.2 No archaeological material certainly dated to his reign has
been encountered in Nubia to show if a policy of settlement had been
begun, but the difficulties of precise reign-by-reign dating of Egyptian
artifacts should deter one from giving too firm a denial. The same is
true also for the reign of Amenemhat I, first king of the Twelfth
Dynasty, to whose year 29 a graffito of conquest in Wawat exists at
Korosko.
By contrast, beginning with the reign of Senusret I we possess
massive archaeological evidence for an Egyptian presence in Lower
Nubia in the form of heavily fortified towns. These fall roughly into
two groups, representing partly two different types of terrain and partly
two major building phases. The first group may be termed the 'plains
type', and were constructed on the flat or shelving banks of the Lower
Nubian Nile north of the Second Cataract. The most southerly, Buhen,
seems to have been in existence by year 5 of Senusret I, and shares
sufficient architectural features in common with others at Aniba (stage
II) and Kubban (stage II) to provide a similar date for them; although
when examined in detail it is also clear that each fort had its own history
and may have followed a more continuous process of independent
improvement and modification. Unfortunately, precise dating evidence
for most of the forts is lacking, but it should be noted that stage I at
Aniba and Kubban should, for architectural reasons, strictly be dated
and Jungwirth 1971). As regards proximity to the Darb el-Arba'in caravan route, Sai Island is
better placed than Kerma. In the sixteenth century AD the King of Sai collected customs dues
from caravans taking this route, but a hundred years later this was being done at Argo, near Kerma,
on behalf of the King of Dongola (Crawford 1951, pp. 140-1, 197).
1
The precise title is 'Hathor, lady of Imaau', perhaps a part of Yam (Zibelius 1972, p. 81).
2
See n. 1 on p. 115 and Zibelius (1972, pp 11-12). H. S. Smith (1976, p. 63) doubts this.

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to before the Buhen of Senusret I, as should also the stage I at Ikkur.

These early stages at these sites might just conceivably, therefore, belong
to the conquests of Nebhepetra Menthuhetep and Amenemhat I.
These forts were each defended by a massive mud-brick wall, with
external towers on all sides and at the corners. On the landward side
they overlooked a ditch, at Buhen with counterscarp and glacis. Their
most distinctive feature was a secondary defensive line at the base of
the wall, between it and the ditch. A low parapet with downward-
pointing loopholes ran along the inner edge of the ditch, interrupted
at intervals by semicircular bastions. It seems intended to thwart a fairly
sophisticated type of siege, and thus raises the possibility that it
represents a form of urban fortification developed in Egypt perhaps
during the civil wars of the First Intermediate Period. Each of the forts
also possessed a river frontage with quays, whilst at Serra East, a later
fort where the secondary line of defence had been thought unnecessary,
a small harbour was constructed actually within the walls. At Buhen
and Aniba (and possibly Kubban, too) these forts became citadels within
a much larger fortified area, though little is known about how much
of this outer part was built up. Exceptionally at Buhen the foundations
of a massive, rectangular, multi-storeyed block were found immediately
north of the citadel wall.
Apart from knowing that each contained a garrison of uncertain but
possibly modest size (Vila 1970), possessed an administration which was
apparently a specialized variant of that operating in Egypt and
presumably provided a haven for Egyptian river traffic, we know very
little about who lived in these forts, how many they comprised and what
they did. It is likely that their roles varied one from another. Thus, at
Buhen and Kubban, and possibly at Mirgissa, copper-working seems
to have been carried on,1 whilst some were involved in local trade, the
evidence for which will be discussed below. A group of stelae from
Buhen have been ascribed to people who came from the El-Rizeikat
neighbourhood of Upper Egypt, perhaps as settlers, though this is by
no means certain.
The second group of forts resulted from an Egyptian annexation of
the entire Second Cataract area in the reign of Senusret III, for which
the inscriptional and archaeological evidence is specific. In the rugged
terrain each of the new forts took the form of an irregular polygonal
1
For Buhen see Emery (1961) and Lucas and Harris (1962, pp. 207-9); the available evidence
on Mirgissa is a reference to a seal of a 'supervisor of copper workers' cited by Hesse (1971);
cf. Vercoutter (1977b).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

figure tailored to fit over an irregular natural prominence. Narrow

ridges were covered with spur walls, and in most places the terrain
rendered a ditch unnecessary. Care was taken to ensure a supply of fresh
water by the construction of a stone passageway down to the river's
edge, a feature present also in some of the Lower Nubian forts. Apart
from the island fort of Askut midway in the Second Cataract area (and
possible intermediate signalling posts) these forts cluster around the
southern part and form an obvious defensive grouping across the
narrow Semna Gorge (fig. 2.9). Two inscriptions of the reign of
Senusret III from Semna confirm that this was indeed intended as a true
frontier. One describes its purpose as: 'to prevent any Nubian from
passing it when faring northwards, whether on foot or by boat, as well
as any cattle of the Nubians, except for a Nubian who shall come to
trade at Iqen, or as an envoy'. Iqen is now known to have been the
great fort at Mirgissa which in its position, history and design is
intermediate between the two main groups of forts. The reference to
envoys is reminiscent of the entertaining at court of the Medja groups
referred to in Papyrus Bulaq 18 (see p. 81) and is a useful reminder
of the fact that, notwithstanding the consistently aggressive tone of
official texts, it was necessary, on commercial and political grounds, for
the Egyptians to come to some sort of understanding with their
southern neighbours. Two private stelae suggest a reciprocal operation,
with Egyptians venturing south into Kush on official missions of some
sort.1
The Egyptian defensive measures were not limited to walls and
battlements. Observation posts on rocky eminences in the Second
Cataract area were manned, recourse was had to magical practices to
thwart enemy intentions (Reisner, Wheeler and Dunham 1967, pis. 31,
32; Vila 1963, 1973) and, as copies of a group of despatches sent to
Thebes (the Semna Despatches) reveal, a detailed surveillance system
attempted to gather intelligence in a comprehensive way. One recurrent
topic in these despatches is the activities of the Medja-people, some of
whom appear at the same time in Egyptian service. In one despatch a
track has been followed, three Medja-people found and questioned on
their origin; in another the following of a track of thirty-two men and
three donkeys is reported; in a third (from the fort at Elephantine) a
small party of Medja-people has descended from the desert to request
service with the Egyptians, claiming that' the desert is dying of hunger'.
1
Cairo 20086, Berlin 19500. The term 'commissions' (wpwf) in the latter would be particularly
appropriate to diplomatic contact.

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• C-group sites
© Classic Kerma
sites
0 1
km

Heavy brick wall

with towers

Semna fort

Semna Sout
fort

Fig. 2.9 The Egyptian frontier at Semna during the Middle Kingdom, with plan of the
fortress of Uronarti inset.

If Medja-people were regarded as a threat, this may have been a factor

in the general preference shown by the Egyptians for siting the forts
on the opposite bank, with significant exceptions at Kubban and Serra
East, respectively opposite the entrances to the Wadi el-Allaqi and Wadi
Hagar Shams, both leading to gold-mining regions.
Concern over the eastern-desert nomads does not, however, explain

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the southward-facing disposition of the Semna group of forts (fig. 2.9).

That these looked southwards to potentially hostile riverine kingdoms
beyond the Batn el-Hagar, in Upper Nubia, becomes evident from other
inscriptional sources. Between the reigns of Senusret I and Senusret III
the principal target of Nubian campaigns is said to be Kush. This is
a geographical term with two levels of application: as a general
geographical term for Upper Nubia, and one which remained as such
throughout the New Kingdom, and as the name of a particular kingdom
there, presumably the most powerful since the Egyptians used its name
to characterize a much larger area, something which might also suggest
a locally recognized political supremacy. The references to campaigns
against Kush contain very little that is episodic, although one of them,
of year 19 of Senusret III recording the return of an expedition against
Kush and the difficulty of bringing boats back through the cataracts,
by its position at Uronarti shows that in this case a riverine expedition
south of the Semna Gorge had been undertaken. Related to these
records is a graffito of Senusret III reported from Dal (B. Bell 1975,
p. 238; Leclant 1969, p. 282). Kush in the more limited sense as the name
of a kingdom appears at or near the head of lists of conquered and
hostile places in Nubia, a sign probably of its importance rather than
of its geographical proximity to Egypt. With one exception these lists
belong to a class of document called Execration Texts.1 Written on
pottery jars or on statuettes of captive figures, and intended for a
magical rite to thwart the operation of evil forces, they list people and
things of a potentially hostile nature, including foreign kings and their
subjects. An early example of the Sixth Dynasty includes the Nubian
countries of Irtjet, Wawat, Yam, Medja and Satju (Abu Bakr and Osing
1973, Posener 1971), and for the Middle Kingdom, at least four groups
cover Nubia. Few of the places can be localized, though from the fact
that in two of the groups at least, Lower Nubia (Wawat) does not occur,
one might deduce that Upper Nubia is the prime concern. Furthermore,
although the relationship between archaeology and political structure
is always a delicate one, it would seem somewhat unlikely on the basis
of the nature of the country and of the negative archaeological record
that the area between Semna and Ukma — the southern part of the Batn
el-Hagar — could have become of much importance. In the New
Kingdom, the temple towns founded by the Egyptians in Upper Nubia,
probably following the existing political pattern, began only at Amara,
1
The exception is the stele of Menthuhetep from Buhen (Bosticco 1959, no. 29; H. S. Smith
1976, pp. 39-41).

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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

about 10 km downstream from Sai. Sai Island has been identified as the
kingdom of Shaat, which also tends to occur towards the head of the
lists. If one were to follow fairly strictly the order in which the places
are enumerated the Amara-Ukma area might, in view of these limiting
factors, seem the most likely original siteforKush. But if one considers
the historical developments in Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period
and the possibility that the position of Kush in the lists is a tribute to
its political importance, then one might conclude that Kush was, from
the outset, centred at Kerma. Some other names in the lists appear to
be compounds containing the old name Yam, and Medja kingdoms are
also included, one of them being Aushek which sent the envoys
recorded in Papyrus Bulaq 18.
There remains to be considered the question of Egyptian participation
in trade. One might envisage that, apart from Iqen, each fort engaged
in small-scale local transactions, particularly to acquire cattle from both
C-group and, in the case of Kubban in particular, Medja-people as well,
though no inscriptional evidence has survived for this. It is known that
cattle in Egypt fetched high prices. Some of the Semna Despatches
record the arrivals of parties of Nubians (six in one case) to trade in
unspecified commodities at the forts. In return they were given bread
and beer, but whether as part of the transaction or as a gift is not made
clear. A point at the First Cataract which possessed its own fort, called
Senmet, was used as a place for trading for gold with Medja-people
under the ultimate supervision of the governor of Elephantine (Edel
1962, 1971a, p. 11). Also important was the acquisition of products from
further south for transfer to Egypt, including incense for which a
considerable market must have existed in Egypt in view of its
ubiquitous use in offering-ceremonies at statue cults in temples and
tombs. It is nowhere apparent, however, if the Upper Nubian kingdoms
acted as middlemen themselves or merely exacted revenues from
caravans passing through their territory. The Semna stele quoted above
directed Nubians from the south to the special trading post at Iqen
(Mirgissa), but for caravans coming from further afield it would have
made more sense to use the Darb el-Arba'in, perhaps leaving the Nile
at Sai, and making contact with the Egyptians, perhaps to pick up an
escort, at one of the oases. Equally conjectural is what the Nubians for
their part gained from trade. Such evidence as is available from the
earlier phases at Kerma and Sai does not support the idea that, as in
the Second Intermediate Period, finished products played a large part,
though if their value was kept high by the Egyptians, the Nubians may

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have netted less for their trade than they did later when the initiative
passed more to them. It is also not yet possible to judge if perishable
commodities such as corn and cloth were significantly involved, though
one might note from Mirgissa and Uronarti thousands of mud seals
originating from sacks (Reisner 1955, Vercoutter 1970, pp. 171-2).
The inevitably conjectural nature of discussions on the pattern of
Nubian trade should not be allowed to detract from the fair certainty
that it was of considerable importance, the Egyptian demand for gold
and incense being the counterpart in the south to the demandfortimber
obtained via Byblos in the north. It should be regarded as a major factor
in the political developments of Upper Nubia in the Second Intermediate
Period.
The land of Punt
The significance of the land of Punt appears to lie in the fact that it was
the one place where the Egyptians could trade direct with an area
producing certain valuable commodities (principally 'ntyw. myrrh or
frankincense, or both) which was at the same time too remote to be
politically dangerous to them. The kingdoms of Upper Nubia and of
the Medja-people must have effectively blocked direct Egyptian contact
by land and river, but a coastal journey along the Red Sea eventually
brought them to the desired area, perhaps to an established emporium.
The precise point of contact has not yet been determined, but the
possibilities are limited by the likely ancient distribution of the various
characteristics of Punt described and portrayed by the Egyptians. On
the assumption that the Egyptians minimized their journey, the most
likely area is the Sudan—Eritrea border zone, rather than further along
the coast and even through the straits of Bab el-Mandeb. An established
emporium, wherever located, could also have drawn on the incense trees
native to southern Arabia.
The earliest definite record of contact is an entry on the Palermo Stone
of the reign of Sahura of the Fifth Dynasty: the receipt in one year from
Punt of 80000 units of 'ntyw, and quantities of electrum and two
commodities whose reading is uncertain. There are two indirect
references to contact, or attempted contact, with Punt in private
biographical inscriptions: one an allusion to a dwarf brought thence in
the reign of King Djedkara Isesi, the other to an ill-fated attempt to
build a boat on the Red Sea coastforthe trip there in the reign of Pepy
II. A Sixth Dynasty man claims to have followed his master, a governor
of Elephantine, both to Punt and to Byblos. Then from the Eleventh
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and Twelfth Dynasties come several more records, found actually on

the desert road linking Coptos with the Red Sea, and at Wadi Gasus,
close to the Red Sea. Recent fieldwork seems to have discovered the
site of the Middle Kingdom port itself, at Mersa Gawasis (Sayed 1977)-

EGYPT AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

Egypt's relations with Palestine and Syria have to be set carefully against
the cultural history of this area. Archaeological research is pointing
increasingly to the conclusion that urban civilization accompanied by
a relatively sophisticated social order was the normal condition not only
for Syria but also for much of Palestine during the greater part of the
time considered in this chapter, and at times spread into desert areas
where urbanized life could hardly have been sustained without careful
organization. These areas naturally have their own schemes of chron-
ology. In Palestine the transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early
Bronze Age seems to have occurred at a time equivalent to the latter
part of the Gerzean (Naqada II) phase in Egypt, with Early Bronze Age
I and II extending from here through the Early Dynastic Period. For
the Old Kingdom down to some point in the late Fifth or Sixth Dynasty
the Palestinian urban equivalent is the Early Bronze Age III culture,
and for the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period it is the
Middle Bronze Age (probably beginning with Middle Bronze Age IIA
of Albright = Middle Bronze Age of Kenyon). The intervening period,
which corresponds more or less to the First Intermediate Period in
Egypt, is evidently one of considerable complexity and probably
regional variation, something reflected in the still fluid nature of the
terminology used, though the term Intermediate Early/Middle Bronze
Age seems a good way of resolving the problem (Callaway and Weinstein
1977, Dever 1973, de Geus 1971, Oren 1973a, Prag 1974, Thompson
1978). It is characterized by a widespread decline in urban life, often
attributed to the destruction or disruption of immigrants. The new,
though only temporary, pattern was a mixture of villages, possibly
insubstantial occupation of some of the older cities, and the camp-sites
of nomadic or partly nomadic groups. For a time their villages and
camp-sites spread westwards across the Sinai peninsula as far at least
as the line of the modern Suez Canal. It must have been these people
of the Intermediate Early/Middle Bronze Age sites who formed the
Asiatic menace considered in the Instruction to Merikara of the
Herakleopolitan Dynasty. Although there are no archaeological sites in

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the eastern delta (as there are for the Second Intermediate Period) to
provide the basisforsome objective judgement on the seriousness of
any Asiatic incursion at this time, it must be emphasized that the cultural
background to these people is a complete contrast to that of the Hyksos
kings and their followers of the Second Intermediate Period. As will
be discussed below (pp. 156-8) these latter came from the highly
developed urban culture and society of the late Middle Bronze Age
whose transference to Egypt seems to have taken place without the
establishment of intervening settlements.
The idea has sometimes been advanced that the eastern Nile Delta
itself was not incorporated into the Egyptian state until, say, the Middle
Kingdom. This is, however, difficult to reconcile with the archaeological
evidence, both the presence of Egyptian material from the late
Predynastic Period onwards, and the equivalent absence so far of
Palestinian Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age material despite its abun-
dance in central and southern Sinai (see fig. 2.10). Indeed, one would be
obliged by the textual evidence used to support this theory to assume
the existence by the Sixth Dynasty of fortified Early Bronze Age cities
in the eastern Delta, and these are known to have been very substantial
structures. By contrast, recent fieldwork has led to the discovery of
numerous camp-sites along the whole north Sinai coastal strip, stretching
east from near the Nile Delta margins, where Egyptian objects of the
late Predynastic and First Dynasty are mixed with Chalcolithic and Early
Bronze Age I and II material, apparently in a ratio of 5:1 in favour of
the Egyptian (Oren 1973b, Thompson 1975, pp. 9—13). When added
to the widespread distribution of imported Egyptian pottery and other
objects in Palestinian sites of these same periods as far north as the
'Amuq plain, the point can even be argued that as early as the beginning
of the First Dynasty the Egyptians had begun a serious attempt at
large-scale conquest in western Asia. A further element in the argument
is the existence of large stone gazelle-traps, the so-called 'desert kites',
distributed widely in Sinai, Jordan and Syria. It has been suggested that
one such is depicted on the Narmer Palette, and that this implies a First
Dynasty campaign, at least to Sinai. But since these traps were in use
in recent times, more definite dating evidence is required before their
relevance to much earlier periods is accepted, and in any case the
Narmer Palette depiction is capable of other interpretations (Helms
1975a, Meshel 1974).
An instructive parallel can, however, be drawn with the not dissimilar
history of Lower Nubia at this time. On this basis the ready flow of
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Egyptian goods eastwards and then north-eastwards would be a sign

of trade's being carried out on a local basis, largely free from a centrally
directed political framework. The Nubian A-group can be explained as
a product of a situation like this, with Egyptian aggressive policies
having cultural repercussions only at the end, with the complete demise
of settled life and cultural activity in Lower Nubia. The similar apparent
disappearance of settlements along the north Sinai coast during or
after the Early Dynastic Period could be regarded as an equivalent
phenomenon, and more the result of a hard political frontier policy than
an attempt at anything more ambitious.
The Sinai peninsula has been, over most of historical time, a wedge
of nomadic tribal life separating two urban civilizations: Egypt and
Palestine. In the second and third millennia BC the essential difference
between the two was that between a centralized government channelling
national resources to a single pool of talent, wealth, power and
ambition, and, on the other hand, a collection of city states whose
resources remained more dispersed and were, so one might imagine,
partly consumed by the constant struggle to remain independent. It is
an unfortunate consequence of the non-literate nature of this latter
society that we know virtually nothing of its political development and,
in particular, the extent to which policies were co-ordinated either by
means of alliances or through the imposition of the will of one ruler
of greater power. It is now known that the network of Palestinian towns
and cities in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages spread southwards to
terminate in a line running between Tell el-'Ajjul in the west and Tell
Arad in the east, forming a frontier zone from which Sinai lay at a
distance not much greater than it did from Egypt. Furthermore, recent
fieldwork suggests that central and southern Sinai, in contrast to the
coastal strip, was an extension of the southern Palestinian culture zone
in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age I and II periods, and that
already its turquoise and copper deposits were being worked (fig. 2.10)
(Amiran, Beit Arieh and Glass 1973, Beit Arieh 1974, Beit Arieh and
Gophna 1976, Gophna 1976a, Rothenberg 1969, 1970—1, 1972, 1972-3).
The evidence consists of a surprising number of settlements and
cemeteries, including some stone-built villages (e.g. site 688 south of
Ain Fogeiya, and Sheikh Nabi Salah). Egyptian objects are said to have
been present in only very slight quantities, but it might still be
reasonable to see the Egyptians obtaining turquoise and copper by
trading, for example, through the site of Ma'adi, near modern Cairo.
There is the implication, too, that when the Egyptians eventually gained

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•— Desert routes
x Sites of predominantly Egyptian culture
MegiddoA
• Sites of predominantly Palestinian culture
4 A ,
Finds of Egyptian material on Palestinian sites #

I I I Land over 500 metres

0 50 100 km

Fig. 2.10 Northern Egypt, Sinai and Palestine in Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age, late
Predynastic and Early Dynastic times. Some clusters of sites have been simplified; others, along
the north Sinai coast and between El-Thamad and Jebel el-'Igma, are schematically plotted on
account of the brevity of the published preliminary reports.

sole control over Sinai it was at the expense of this Palestinian cultural
outlier. It may be significant that, unless the archaeological record differs
locally from that in Palestine proper, these widely spread settlements
seem not to have survived beyond the Early Bronze Age II period,
except for a brief reoccupation in the Intermediate Early/Middle Bronze
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Age period when the Egyptians were involved in a civil war. Again,
as with the record in Lower Nubia, a considerable destructive power
seems to be implied for the Egyptian state of the Early Dynastic Period.
Indeed, the complete clearance of settlements in both border zones and
beyond is remarkable.
Inscriptions found in situ in Sinai recording an Egyptian presence
cover the periods between Kings Sanakht of the Third Dynasty and
Pepy II of the Sixth, and then between Senusret I and Amenemhat IV
of the Twelfth, although a late Eleventh Dynasty inscription from
Thebes almost certainly describes an expedition to this region (see
p. 142). With one exception these inscriptions make turquoise the object
of the expeditions, apparently centred around three areas: Wadi
Maghara, Serabit el-Khadem and Wadi Kharit, but the very same part
of south Sinai also contains copper, widely exploited by the previous
inhabitants. Surveys have located one Egyptian copper-smelting site,
at Bir Nasb, with copper deposits nearby and in the Wadi Ba'aba, but
even this may be no earlier than the New Kingdom. Small-scale
copper-working was, however, carried on in the Egyptian miners' camp
in Wadi Maghara. During the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians built,
on a hill-top site called Serabit el-Khadem, a small shrine dedicated to
Hathor, Lady of Turquoise. Hathor was evidently felt by Egyptians sent
abroad to have both a character which was beneficent towards ordinary
Egyptians and the universal immanence necessary for localization at
foreign places, such as at Byblos and the diorite quarries in the western
Nubian desert and the Wadi el-Hudi. Votive objects from Serabit
el-Khadem include a rich and informative collection of Middle Kingdom
inscriptions, as well as a small number of private and royal statues.
In the Middle Kingdom, although only Egyptian sites have been
located in Sinai, inscriptions indicate, with none of the usual hostility
of tone, contact with ' Asiatics' of more than a passing nature. Some
of these references are to Asiatics included amongst the personnel of
the Egyptian expeditions to Sinai, in one case a party of twenty from
Hamy or Harim, a place included in the Execration Texts under the rule
of a prince with a Semitic name and to be identified probably with Tell
el-Milh, or possibly with Khirbet el-Mshash, both Middle Bronze Age
towns along the Tell el-'Ajjul-Tell Arad line mentioned above. There
is also a group of four stelae from the Serabit el-Khadem temple
featuring a man riding a donkey, identified on one as the 'brother of
the prince of Retenu (Palestine), Khebded', a man known from three
other Sinai inscriptions where he appears to have been part of Egyptian
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expeditions dated to the period between years 4 and 13 of Amenemhat

III. The distinctive manner in which he is portrayed on the stelae implies
a considerable impact on the Egyptians. This apparently symbiotic
relationship between Egyptians and Asiatics at the Sinai mines might
be interpreted as a sign that the Egyptians had found it necessary to
come to some sort of agreement with whatever political leadership was
behind the cities of southern Palestine and which was sufficently strong
to influence the conduct of Egyptian expeditions, and perhaps to share
in the mined products.
That Palestinian princes appreciated the Egyptian demand for
minerals sufficiently to involve themselves in it is suggested by the scene
in the tomb of the nomarch Khnumhetep at Beni Hasan of the arrival,
at an unfortunately unspecified locality in year 6 of Senusret II, of a
colourful Palestinian group under a 'foreign prince' Abisha, bringing
galena, a substance widely used in Middle Kingdom Egypt as an eye
cosmetic. Their homeland, Shuwet, which also appears in the Execration
Texts, has been tentatively localized in Moab. Galena was also included
amongst the minerals and stones brought back from an expedition to
Sinai and other adjacent lands by the overseer of quarry-work, Khety,
in the later Eleventh Dynasty (Helck 1955, 1975, pp. 179-80; Schenkel
1965, pp. 283—4; Ward 1971, p. 59). Amongst other substances were
not only turquoise and copper, but also lapis lazuli, something not found
naturally in this part of the Near East at all, and thus available only from
a transaction with or an attack on an existing trading centre. A term
'Asiatic copper' is seemingly attested in the late Old Kingdom
(Posener-Krieger 1969).
Except for Sinai, Egyptian sources for relations with Palestine and
with Syria are meagre in the extreme, and often do not in their
terminology enable a distinction to be made between the Sinai nomadic
wedge and the settled hinterland.1 There are, however, a few exceptions
which suggest attacks on urbanized Palestine, some of whose cities are
now known to have possessed substantial fortifications of the type
depicted in the ancient illustrations.
The earliest and most detailed is the biography of Uni from the reign
of Pepy I, describing how he led a national army, reinforced with
Nubian mercenaries, against the settled population of an unspecified
part of Palestine on five separate campaigns, followed by a land and sea
1
The term 'Aamu, 'Asiatics', was extended to peoples of the eastern desert. This is evident
not only from the well-known inscription of Pepy-nakht, but also from a graffito in the Wadi el-Hudi
(Fakhry 1952, p. 46, no. 31; also Brovarski and Murnane 1969, no. 1). Helck's suggestion (1971,
p. 21) that Pepy-nakht's expedition was to Syria is thus gratuitous. See also Couroyer (1971).

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attack in the vicinity of a place called 'Nose of the Gazelle', sometimes,

though on purely picturesque grounds, identified with Mount Carmel.
From roughly this same period come scenes of attacks on fortifications
manned by Asiatics in the tombs of Inti at Deshasha (Sixth Dynasty)
and Kaiemhesit at Saqqara (early Sixth Dynasty), probably in the
mortuary temple of Nebhepetra Menthuhetep II; and in the tomb of
Intef, of the late Eleventh Dynasty (Arnold and Settgast 1965,fig.2;
W. S. Smith 1965, pp. 148-9; Ward 1971, pp. 59-60, n. 227). From the
Middle Kingdom there are only the stele of the general Nesu-menthu
of the reign of Senusret I, which refers to hostilities against Asiatics
in which fortresses were destroyed, and the stele of Sebek-khu,
recounting a campaign conducted by Senusret III to the country of
Sekmem, identified by some with the city state of Shechem.
The archaeological record of southern Palestine and of Sinai, as well
as the advanced state which defensive military architecture had reached
in Egypt by the early Middle Kingdom, should leave little doubt that
when the Egyptians refer to or depict foreign fortresses we should
understand nothing less than the fortified cities of Early and Middle
Bronze Age Palestine.
Of a somewhat different character is the Story of Sinuhe, a literary
romance in which the hero, exiling himself from Egypt in the reign of
Senusret I, achieves fame and wealth in a Palestinian kingdom. The
avoidance of references to cities has been variously interpreted, but the
practice of sending envoys from the Egyptian court to local rulers is
given a prominent place in the narrative. This is something supported
by a few brief references in other texts, and fully in keeping with not
only the well-documented diplomatic practices of the ancient Near East,
but also with the contact via envoys which the Egyptians maintained
with their Nubian neighbours (see p. 132). Information gained by this
type of contact would be one way by which the Egyptians were
furnished with the necessary details for the Asiatic sections of the Middle
Kingdom Execration Texts. Listed there are rulers and peoples of
towns, cities and regions over most of the area of Middle Bronze Age
Palestine, from Moab and the Negev in the south to beyond Kadesh
in the north, and then over a separate area even further north lying
behind Byblos and Ullaza to Upe.
Diplomacy has as its purpose the influencing of events as well as the
collection of information. By analogy with the New Kingdom pattern
one might suspect that attacks on fortified towns were the shock tactics
intended to force favourable alliances or even vassalage which would

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

then be maintained or extended by diplomatic activity. Such a policy

might, in southern Palestine, have had some urgency if, as suggested
above, some of the city states in the area had an interest in Sinai and
in the supply of minerals and precious stones to Egypt. But as to
whether this was followed by the posting of Egyptian officials charged
with administrative, as distinct from representative, duties cannot be
determined on present evidence, although it is presumably at this point
that the term 'empire' becomes justified. One source with considerable
implications here is the title sequence of a scribe, Ka-aper of the early
Fifth Dynasty, which includes that of ' army scribe of the king' in a
number of named places which seem, from the way they are written,
to have been some of these Palestinian fortified cities (Fischer 1959b).
Of much greater ambiguity are the Egyptian objects discovered on
eastern Mediterranean sites which, with the exception of the material
from Byblos, occur in significant numbers only from the Middle
Kingdom onwards, although the recent excavations at Ebla (Tell
Mardikh) have already produced two diorite bowl fragments with the
name of Khafra of the Fourth Dynasty, and part of an alabaster lid of
Pepy I of the Sixth Dynasty (Matthiae 1978). This general paucity of
Old Kingdom artifacts is true for Nubia and Serabit el-Khadem also.
Most striking are the sphinxes of Amenemhat III and IV, and of a queen
of Amenemhat II, which have been found at several Syrian sites: Beirut,
Qatna, Ugarit and Neirab; also a statuette of Khaneferra Sebekhetep
of the Thirteenth Dynasty from Tell Hizzin. Statuettes of private
individuals have been found at Tell el-'Ajjul, Gezer (which has also
yielded a statuette of a princess), Megiddo, Ugarit, Ji'ara, Atchana and
Kiirigen Kale in Turkey and Knossos in Crete, the last three from places
beyond the confines of the Execration Texts. The sphinxes from Syria
might be regarded as diplomatic gifts, but for the statuettes, which
would normally have been made to stand in proximity to a cult place
from which they could benefit, two quite contrary parallels can be cited.
On the one hand there is the Middle Kingdom temple at Serabit
el-Khadem in Sinai (or even better, the Late Bronze Age temple at
Beth-Shan in Palestine) where inscribed Egyptian objects, including
statuettes, commemorate the temporary presence of the owner in a
foreign land and his attempt to gain the favour of a local deity, whether
that deity was Egyptian or not. On this parallel they would be an
indication of the extent of Egyptian postings abroad, though not of the
scope of the responsibilities involved. On the other hand, one can use
the parallel of Kerma in Nubia (see pp. 128, 166-7), where Egyptian

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statues and statuettes, some of them quite old by the time in question,
had an intrinsic value of their own, helping to endow their new owners
with some of the dignity and sophistication of the country that had
produced them. On this parallel it can be suggested that some of these
statuettes in western Asia reached their destinations quite late in the
Middle Bronze Age, during the Hyksos period in Egypt. It is unfortunate
that in most cases the context is equivocal, even with excavated
examples which in no case would seem to come from a clear early Middle
Bronze Age context (i.e. Albright's Middle Bronze Age IIA). This is
true, for example, for the statuette of Djehuty-hetep found at Megiddo
with three other Middle Kingdom statuettes built into the structure of
a temple probably not erected until at least the end of the Middle Bronze
Age (Dunayevsky and Kempinski 1973, Kenyon 1969, pp. 49-53).
Although the evidence from Palestine and Syria is ambiguous, the
overall effectiveness of Egyptian activity ought to be apparent, so one
might imagine, from areas even further afield, whose own rulers would
naturally feel jealous of or threatened by a successful Egyptian axis
established in Palestine and who would, at the least, seek diplomatic
contact. The New Kingdom would provide the appropriate parallel to
this situation. Thus the lack of any reference in Egyptian texts to contact
with kingdoms even further to the north in Syria and beyond may have
some positive significance. There is, too, the archive of the important
city of Mari on the Upper Euphrates. Diplomatic contact by means of
letters written on clay tablets was maintained with places as far south
as Hazor and Byblos, but Egypt is nowhere even mentioned. The period
of the letters is not, however, that of the powerful Twelfth Dynasty
in Egypt, but the Thirteenth, and more specifically the period of
Neferhetep I whose rule began about 45 years after the end of the
Twelfth Dynasty, but whose name was, nevertheless, still commem-
orated at Byblos by one of the local rulers.
Byblos had a very special relationship with Egypt, and the archae-
ological record is unique as far as Egyptian contact in the eastern
Mediterranean is concerned. As the principal centre for the trade which
provided the Egyptians with badly-needed timber from the coniferous
forests of the Lebanon, as well as resin, a by-product early in demand
for mummification, it became a focus for Egyptian cultural influence.
Partly this is visible in the form of votive objects from the local temples,
where one of the deities was a further form of Hathor:' Lady of Byblos',
though some ambiguity must surround the identity of who was
responsible for donating them, and under what circumstances. Amongst
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the Egyptian objects from the temples and adjacent areas are pieces
bearing the names of kings Khasehkemwy of the Second Dynasty,
Khufu, Khafra, Menkaura of the Fourth Dynasty, Sahura (?), Neferir-
kara, Djedkara Isesi (?), Neuserra and Unas of the Fifth Dyasty, Teti,
Pepy I, Merenra and Pepy II of the Sixth Dynasty, and Amenemhat III
of the Twelfth Dynasty. There are also a part of a statue ascribed on
stylistic grounds to King Neuserra (Bothmer 1971) and a fragment of
a sphinx of a Middle Kingdom princess. Amongst the uninscribed
objects in Egyptian style are numerous faience animal figurines and a
hoard of scarabs, beads and trinkets. During the Middle Bronze Age
one of the temples was furnished with small, locally-made obelisks, one
with a hieroglyphic inscription made for a prince of Byblos. These
princes, who can be traced into the Second Intermediate Period, also
had their own scarabs manufactured, as well as hieroglyphic funerary
or votive stelae, one of which records building work in a temple
dedicated to the goddess Nut, presumably a rendering, by the use of
an Egyptian equivalent, of the name of a local goddess, perhaps Anath.
Egyptian influence is even more strikingly evident in the funerary
equipment of some of these princes or kings of Byblos contemporary
with the later part of the Twelfth Dynasty. It takes the form of
Egyptian-made objects equivalent in their artistic standard to objects
from Egyptian court burials (e.g. the gold-bound obsidian casket, the
obsidian ointment jar decorated with gold, the silver mirror; two
pectorals with the names of Amenemhat III and IV from somewhere
in the Lebanon may also derive from here); local imitations of Egyptian
objects (gold and inlaid pectorals, an elaborate pendant with the name
of prince Yapa-shemu-abi in a cartouche, bronze uraeus figures with
silver inlays in niello technique); and non-Egyptian-style objects given
hieroglyphic inscriptions (the scimitar). Taken together, the cartouches,
Egyptian epithets, uraei and jewellery suggest a pastiche of Egyptian
royalty at the Byblite court. On their scarabs the princes call themselves
simply ' governor of Byblos', and if these were used for sealing items
sent to Egypt they may reflect a wish to conform in this one instance
to an Egyptian view of their status, whereas their Pharaonic pretensions
were for a local context. Even so, this would seem to represent a unique
compromise arrangement which involved recognition by the Egyptians
that Byblos was an extension of their urban world. The same equivocal
status vis-a-vis the king of Egypt is apparent from a block showing
another one of these princes, Inten, seated, offering a prayer to the
Egyptian god Ra-Horakhty, with the cartouche of Neferhetep I also

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present; also just possibly in the inscription on a lapis lazuli cylinder

seal from the early Thirteenth Dynasty. Furthermore, although essen-
tially a Middle Kingdom phenomenon, one should note an Old
Kingdom cylinder seal with similar cultural implications (Goedicke
1966b, 1976b, du Mesnil du Buisson 1970, pp. 76-88).
By contrast, records from Egypt of contact with Byblos are very
slight for these periods (Horn 1963, Leclant 1954). The name 'Byblos'
first occurs in a Fourth Dynasty mastaba at Giza; on the Palermo Stone
an entry from the reign of King Sneferu records the acquisition of forty
shiploads of timber, and it is assumed that their origin was Byblos; the
same official at Aswan who recorded visiting Punt with the governor
of Elephantine included Byblos as well; ' Byblos-ships' were thought
suitable for the journey to Punt. For the Middle Kingdom references
to Byblos are confined to a few naming 'Hathor, Lady of Byblos'.
Overall, the evidence for the nature and extent of Egyptian influence
or control in western Asia is highly unsatisfactory, and in this situation
it is presumably better to err on the side of caution, and to limit the
sphere of direct Egyptian interference to the cities of southern Palestine,
the motive being that of securing an extensive border zone. It should
be noted, however, that the imperialist phraseology of the New
Kingdom can, in essence, be found already in the Middle Kingdom, if
not before (Blumenthal 1970, pp. 189-201; Goedicke 1969-70).x

The Aegean
The only part of the Aegean region which received Egyptian goods in
any quantity and whose own goods in turn reached Egypt was Crete.
A surprising number of Egyptian stone vessels of types dated between
the late Predynastic Period and the early Middle Kingdom have been
found on Crete, and gave rise to local imitations. But whilst a few come
from Early Minoan II or Early Minoan II-Middle Minoan IB/II
contexts, many were still apparently in circulation in the Late Minoan
periods, thus contemporary with the Hyksos period and New Kingdom
in Egypt. To this material should be added some twenty Middle
Kingdom scarabs, and a solitary Middle Kingdom statuette from
Knossos. The converse situation is represented by small quantities of
imported Middle Minoan pottery at Egyptian sites. This consists of two
or three Middle Minoan I sherds from El-Lisht, sherds from thirteen
and twenty-one Middle Minoan II vessels respectively from Kahun and
1
Cf. also the title of Pepy I or II on an alabaster vase from Byblos: ' Ra of the foreign lands'
(Chehab 1969, p. 18).
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El-Haraga, from a Middle Minoan II vase found in a tomb at Abydos,

and a complete vessel from a tomb at Elephantine (Kemp and Merrillees
1980). At Kahun Minoan pottery was imitated, and local potters also
produced small amounts of polychrome pottery evidently under its
stimulus. Kahun has also yielded a Minoan stone vase lid.
The probable Egyptian name for Crete, Keftiu, whilst it may have
been known to Egyptians in the Middle Kingdom, does not occur in
any context which suggests direct contact. But it must be admitted that
there is a serious paucity of documents which might be expected to have
contained such records, such as the decorative schemes of royal and
court tombs. Direct contact is not particularly difficult from a seafaring
point of view, involving a relatively short open-sea crossing to
Cyrenaica, followed by a coastal voyage eastwards to the Nile Delta.
Minoan contact with the North African coast during the early New
Kingdom seems to be implied by the miniature marine painting from
Thera. But it is equally possible for the exchange of goods to have been
indirectly carried out via Byblos or Ugarit, both of which sites have
also produced Minoan pottery.
A very small number of inscribed Egyptian objects have been found
even further afield: a small vase bearing the name of the funerary temple
of King Userkaf of the Fifth Dynasty from the island of Kythera, lying
between Crete and the Peloponnese; fragments of a gold-plated chair
with the name of King Sahura said to come from a tomb at Dorak in
north-western Anatolia, about 200 km east from the Aegean coast; and
a gold cylinder-seal of an official of the Fifth Dynasty, possibly also from
Anatolia (Vermeule and Vermeule 1970, Young 1972). Even if the last
two should receive further verification as to provenance, it need not
imply a direct link with Egypt. One way by which valuable objects were
distributed in the ancient world was as gifts from one ruler to another,
in the course of which gifts were made from those already received from
some other head of state, or other source. A mixed provenance of this
nature can be seen in one hoard of precious objects found in Egypt:
the Tod treasure. Apart from Babylonian seals the precise source of the
objects, mainly silver vessels, is hard to determine, though Minoan
influence is probably visible. Although found in bronze chests of
Amenemhat II there is no necessity to assume that the treasure was
originally associated with them, and it is clear from the excavation report
that, because work on the temple foundations in which the treasure was
found was being done as late as the Thirtieth Dynasty, the treasure
cannot be regarded as a sealed deposit of the Middle Kingdom.

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In general, much more needs to be understood about the mechanisms

of ancient trade and other forms of contact before objects found far
distant from their homeland can be written into a history of foreign
policies pursued by different countries.

THE SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD IN EGYPT

All the indications are that in Upper Egypt the administrative and
cultural patterns of the Twelfth Dynasty continued well into the
Thirteenth, with a degree of continuity which might justify extending
the term Middle Kingdom to cover this as well as the Twelfth Dynasty.
The town of Kahun which housed the community administering the
mortuary estate of the nearby pyramid of Senusret II exemplifies this,
for it continued to function probably into the latter part of the
Thirteenth Dynasty, the last royal name from here being Wahibra Ibiyau
(Petrie 1890, p. 31, pi. x. 72; the name is only partially preserved and
some doubt must remain over it), whilst administrative papyri from the
first two reigns of the Thirteenth Dynasty illustrate the continued
operation of the late Twelfth Dynasty administrative system here. Not
very far distant, the middle-class cemetery at El-Haraga displays a
homogeneity in material culture extending from some point in the
Twelfth until probably well into the Thirteenth Dynasty.
At least six tombs of kings of this period have been discovered in
the Memphite area: two at Saqqara (one of them belonging to King
Khendjer), two at Mazghuna, two at Dashur (Ameny 'Aamu and
Awibra Hor). Five are pyramids, small in size but complex in internal
design. Another, that of Awibra Hor at Dashur, in some ways
epitomizes this period. Built modestly within the pyramid enclosure of
Amenemhat III but with funeral trappings very similar to those of the
court burials of the Twelfth Dynasty, it displays a basic continuity from
the past with an inability to promote the construction of a monumental
court cemetery, something inevitably bound up with a general brevity
of reign, in this case a mere seven months according to the Turin king-list.
Inscriptions from provincial sites further south in Upper Egypt imply
a recognition both of kings ruling from (Amenemhat-) Ith-tawy in the
north and of an administrative system apparently identical to that of
the late Twelfth Dynasty. This material includes the stele of Horem-
khauef (stylistically dated to the very end of the Thirteenth Dynasty and
probably very close to the beginning of the Seventeenth (Hayes 1947,
Vandersleyen 1971, p. 208)) which describes a visit made to the court
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 T A B L E 2.1 Royal names from statues, stelae, offering-tables and building blocks found at temple sites in Upper Egypt,
and on small objects and papyri from Kahun

Years BC Kahun Abydos Coptos Medamud Karnak Deir el-Bahari Tod Gebelein Elephantine/Sehel

1782 XIII.! XIII. I

XIII. 5 XIII. 3 XIII.4?

XIII.4
XIII.7
XIII.C
XIII. I 2 XIII. 12
XIII. 15
XIII.16 XIII. 16
XIII. 17
XIII.21 XIII.21 XIII.21? XIII.21
XIII.22 XIII.22 XIII.2 2
XIII.24 XIII.24 XIII.24

XIII.27
XIII. 2 8 XIII.28
XIII. 31
XIII.32
XIII.F XIII.F
XIII.G
XIII.37 XIII.37
XIII.41 XIII.41
XIII.J XIII.J
XIII.K
XIII.44
XIII.L
c. 1650 XVII. 1 XVII. 1 XVII. 1
[XV.4]
XVII. 2 XVII. 2 [XV.,]
XVII. 3 XVII. 3 XVII. 3 XVII. 3 XVII.3
XVII.6
XVII.9?
XVII. 10 XVII. 10
C. I J 60 XVII. 15

Note: The numbers are those of von Beckerath (1964) the Roman numerals indicating the dynasty. The table stresses the continuity of government between the
Thirteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties in Upper Egypt.

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 T A B L E 2.1 Royal names from statues, stelae, offering-tables and building blocks found at temple sites in Upper Egypt,
and on small objects and papyri from Kahun

Years BC Kahun Abydos Coptos Medamud Karnak Deir el-Bahari Tod Gebelein Elephantine/Sehel

1782 XIII.! XIII. I

XIII. 5 XIII. 3 XIII.4?

XIII.4
XIII.7
XIII.C
XIII. I 2 XIII. 12
XIII. 15
XIII.16 XIII. 16
XIII. 17
XIII.21 XIII.21 XIII.21? XIII.21
XIII.22 XIII.22 XIII.2 2
XIII.24 XIII.24 XIII.24

XIII.27
XIII. 2 8 XIII.28
XIII. 31
XIII.32
XIII.F XIII.F
XIII.G
XIII.37 XIII.37
XIII.41 XIII.41
XIII.J XIII.J
XIII.K
XIII.44
XIII.L
c. 1650 XVII. 1 XVII. 1 XVII. 1
[XV.4]
XVII. 2 XVII. 2 [XV.,]
XVII. 3 XVII. 3 XVII. 3 XVII. 3 XVII.3
XVII.6
XVII.9?
XVII. 10 XVII. 10
C. I J 60 XVII. 15

Note: The numbers are those of von Beckerath (1964) the Roman numerals indicating the dynasty. The table stresses the continuity of government between the
Thirteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties in Upper Egypt.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

No.
of
kines

_L _L
<1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8
8-9 9-10 10-1111-12 13
or
23
Length of reign, years

Fig. 2.U Length of reign from amongst the first fifty kings in succession to the Twelfth
Dynasty. (After Kitchen 1967a and von Beckerath 1964.) King Sekhemkara is given between
7 and 8 years on the basis of the Semna inscription reported by B. Bell (1975)-

at the old capital of Ith-tawy. The names of many of the kings are
attested on statues, stelae, offering-tables and building blocks at a
number of temple sites (see table 2.1).
Of the Turin king-list no less than six of its eleven columns are
devoted to the period between the end of the Twelfth and the beginning
of the Eighteenth Dynasty, representing some 175 reigns for a period
of perhaps 220 or 230 years. Current estimates of how many of these
names should be ascribed to Manetho's Thirteenth Dynasty vary
between the first fifty and the first ninety of those following the last
ruler of the Twelfth Dynasty, Sebek-neferu (Manetho himself allotted
sixty kings to it). Where the length of reign is preserved in the
fragmentary king-list it is often of the brevity to be expected of the
situation, as can be seen from fig. 2.11.
Nevertheless, these twenty-three kings represent about a century of
rule, a period not much less than the maximum which can be allotted
to the Thirteenth Dynasty as a whole, between about n o and 125 years.
This raises the question of how far this group of kings really represents
a single line ruling successively from the vicinity of Memphis. The
inscribed capstone from the pyramid tomb of one of them, Merneferra
Ay, whose reign of 13/23 years and 8 months is the longest known of
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this group, has been found, not in the Memphite area at all, but in the
eastern Delta, near Faqus, from an area sufficiently rich in remains of
this and later periods to suggest the existence of a city of some
importance. Barring the distant possibility that it was transported there
at a later date, it might be taken as a hint of a degree of fragmentation
of rule in northern Egypt, although the authority of this man was
sufficient for his commemoration in the temple at Karnak. Objects
probably from a temple in this same area also record the piety of a King
Nehesy, who occupies a position about twenty-three places further on
in the Turin list. Acceptance of the idea of a fragmentation of northern
Egypt into city states with some rulers writing their names in cartouches
becomes a necessity in dealing with the continuation of the Turin list,
which gave to six 'foreign kings' (Hyksos) a total reign of 108 years,
so covering the remainder of the Second Intermediate Period whilst still
leaving at least 79 and possibly as many as 119 kings to be accounted
for. Of these, 15 can be set aside as kings of Upper Egypt ruling from
Thebes contemporaneously with the Hyksos and in succession to the
Thirteenth Dynasty. But this still leaves a great many, whose numbers
may even have to be augmented by kings whose names appear on
objects, principally scarabs, and cannot be identified with any in the
Turin list.
Manetho ignored altogether the possibility of contemporaneous rule,
and divided these various kings after the Thirteenth Dynasty into four
more dynasties. But in doing this he was, like the king-list compilers
before him, working to a preconceived idea: a unitary succession of
kings, whose reigns could be added together when necessary to produce
extended periods of rule, and who, in Manetho's work, could also be
neatly grouped into dynasties ascribed to a city of origin. It is not an
attack on the basic veracity of the king-list compilers to say that they
sometimes brought a spurious tidiness to periods of history where a
degree of complexity, even of disorder, prevailed. Their interest in the
past was essentially confined to numbers, names, pious deeds and scraps
of legend. The neatness of Manetho's scheme is not in itself necessarily
a viable starting-point for historical study, and for this period may be
largely unhistorical. Indeed, all that one may in the end be entitled to
see in this period as far as kingship goes is that there was a proliferation
of kings who can be divided into four groups:
(1) kings following the Twelfth Dynasty whose authority was, for
political reasons which may at times have been quite complex, recognized
in Upper Egypt and who continued for the most part, but not

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

necessarily in every case, to rule from and be buried near Memphis, and
who may have also exercised a general overlordship, if not total rule,
over parts or all of northern Egypt;
(2) a line of kings ruling Upper Egypt in succession to them, but
now centred at Thebes, and buried there;
(3) six 'foreign kings', i.e. Hyksos, who replaced group (1) in the
north and who ruled at the same time as group (2);
(4) an uncertain number of client kings, presumably of city states,
mostly in the north of Egypt and including some with the title ' foreign
king', distributed uncertainly in time vis-a-vis the other groups.
Purely for convenience the following equations can be made with
Manetho: (1) = XIII, (2) = XVII, (3) = XV, (4) = XIV and XVI.
With groups (1) and (4) it can become needlessly pedantic to argue as
to which dynasty a particular king belonged since the ancient thinking
behind the grouping of kings proceeded from a view very different from
our own as to what the past was about. There are strong grounds for
regarding the hereditary principle of royal succession as having
thoroughly broken down during the Thirteenth Dynasty, with
continuity of government vested, for at least part of the time, in a family
of viziers (von Beckerath 1951, Berlev 1974). Only in the sub-dynasty
of Neferhetep I and his successors is any direct family continuity visible
(Dewachter 1976, Simpson 1969a).1 In this essentially non-dynastic
situation, implying the existence of several families whose relatives had
at some not too distant point in the past been kings, the question of
legitimacy must have become so clouded that the appearance of
contemporaneous kings in the north is more easily understandable.
There is no need to attribute it to foreign influence and to see it as a
post-Hyksos development.
As noted, the eventual fate of the northern part of the country is not
in doubt. Tentatively placed in the penultimate column of the Turin
list is a fragment summarizing the 108-year rule of six 'foreign kings'.
The term used (\hk$w\ h$sn>t, literally ' rulers of foreign lands') contains
the true etymology of Manetho's term 'Hyksos'. Manetho, as quoted
by Josephus, told a story of how, in the reign of a King Tutimaeus,
Egypt had been seized by ' invaders of obscure race/ignoble birth' who
'burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of the
gods and treated all the natives with a cruel hostility'. Although ruling
at first from Memphis, they subsequently built a great fortified
1
For the family background of another king of this time see Macadam (1951).

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stronghold on the site of Avaris in the eastern delta. Finally they were
attacked by kings from Thebes, confined to Avaris, and allowed to leave
Egypt in peace. This view of the Hyksos, as an essentially destructive
interlude in Egyptian history, has in the past exercised considerable
influence on the writing of the history of the period. It is a view which
can be found expressed even more anciently, in Papyrus Sallier I of the
reign of Merenptah (i 224-1214 BC), a popular tale in which the Hyksos
king Apepy (Apophis) in Avaris appears as an archetypal villain; and
in the Speos Artemidos inscription of Queen Hatshepsut, where the
supposed disorder of the Hyksos period becomes, on a purely un-
historical plane, the target for the deliverance from evil which was a
fundamental role of kings in Egyptian theology, Hatshepsut claiming
to have restored the land to order after their rule. The tradition of the
Hyksos was evidently not an entirely uniform one, however. A
remarkable genealogy which once probably adorned the walls of a tomb
of a priest of Memphis of the Twenty-second Dynasty traces his
ancestors back to the Eleventh Dynasty. In listing some of the kings
under whom they are supposed to have served, two or three Hyksos
kings are given (including Apepy) in place of the Theban Seventeenth
Dynasty kings whom one might have expected if the document had been
drawn up in Upper Egypt (von Beckerath 1964, pp. 27—8).
What few material remains the Hyksos kings themselves have left
behind lend little support to the more lurid views of their rule. For,
like later foreign overlords of Egypt, whether Libyan, Sudanese,
Persian or Roman, they chose both to present themselves as Pharaohs,
complete with traditional titulary employing names compounded with
the name of the sun god, Ra, and to indulge in or to encourage a little
embellishment of temples, by additions to the fabric, as at Bubastis and
Gebelein, or by dedicating an offering-table, or by having their names
added to the statues and sphinxes of earlier kings.
Already in the later Middle Kingdom there is evidence for surprisingly
large numbers of 'Asiatics' present in Egyptian society, apparently
more or less assimilated. An extensive list can be compiled of those in
domestic service, the most striking example being Brooklyn Papyrus
35.1446 of the Thirteenth Dynasty from Thebes, where 45 amongst a
total of 79 domestic staff are identified as Asiatic. Documents from
Kahun refer to the ' officer in charge of the Asiatic troops' and to the
' scribe of the Asiatics', suggesting an interesting counterpart to the
position of Nubians in the Old Kingdom (Kaplony-Heckel 1971a,
pp. 3, 5-6). A few can be traced in administrative positions, and by their

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names one or more of the Thirteenth Dynasty kings identify themselves

as having possible Asiatic origin.1 It may, however, despite the formal
presentation of themselves by the Hyksos as traditional kings, be
misleading to place too much emphasis on this process of immigration
as an antecedent to Hyksos rule. For the foreignness of the Hyksos
was evidently something which left a deep impression on some
Egyptians. Most notably, apart from the literary tradition, the Turin
king-list distinguished them uniquely by writing their names without
a cartouche and with a hieroglyphic sign added which designates them
as foreign, and by using the term ' foreign kings' to describe them. They
appear to have represented something more than assimilated Asiatics
who had gained the throne through the normal processes of internal
politics of this period.
It is at this point that the evidence of archaeology becomes important.
In Upper Egypt cemeteries at widely separated places (such as Hager
Esna, Abydos, and Qau) show, during this whole period, nothing more
than slow changes of fashion which appear to be internally derived. This
is not in itself a sign of political stability since the same was broadly
true for the First Intermediate Period, but it at least limits the extent
of a foreign cultural element present in Egypt at this time. Moving
further north, in the El-Lahun area there appears to be a considerable
cultural hiatus corresponding to the Hyksos period, and affecting both
Kahun and El-Haraga, as well as Medinet el-Ghurab. If the life
of the El-Lahun area depended heavily on association with govern-
ment activity, as it may well have done, then this may perhaps reflect
a serious interference with established administration under Hyksos
rule.
But it is in the Delta itself, and more particularly its eastern border
area, that archaeology makes a vital contribution to our knowledge of
the period. At several sites on the east side of the ancient Pelusiac branch
of the Nile (principally at Tell el-Yahudiya and Tell ed-Dab'a, see
fig. 2.13), a culture heavily influenced by that of contemporary Middle
Bronze Age II Palestine has been encountered in tombs and settlement
strata (Bietak 1968a, 1970, 1975a, pp. 165, 167; Petrie 1906, chs. 1 and
2).2 The main elements are: domestic pottery of Egyptian type; jugs
1
Khendjer and Ameny 'Aamu; note also Hetepibra Hornedjheritef son of'Aamu. However,
the name 'Aamu (='Asiatic') can be given the alternative reading Kemau, 'landworker',
'winnower' (von Beckerath 1964, pp. 40-2; Posener 1957b).
2
Attention should also be drawn to a remarkable jewellery hoard, which includes a golden
circlet ornamented with stags' heads, and thought to be possibly of the Hyksos period, which
is said to have come from F.l-Salhiya, 16.; km east of Tell ed-Dab'a, and is now in the

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and juglets, bronze axe-heads and toggle-pins of Palestinian inspiration

or origin; a small amount of Cypriote pottery; donkeys accompanying
human burials (Boessneck 1970, Stiebing 1971); scarabs of designs
common to both Egypt and Palestine at this period, and clearly
produced in large quantities in the latter area. At Tell el-Yahudiya, as
well as at Heliopolis, a large earthen embankment has been compared
to the plastered slopes beneath the cities of Middle Bronze Age
Palestine, but the comparison probably has no historical validity (Parr
1968, Seger 1975, G. R. H. Wright 1968). The finds from Tell ed-Dab'a,
a site with an area at this period of about half a square kilometre, gain
greatly in significance from the likelihood that the Hyksos city of Avaris
is to be located here (Bietak 1975 b). Amongst buildings excavated, there
is a complex of temples of probably Palestinian type.
This marked Palestinian influence, however, seems to have been fairly
limited in extent, for it has not been encountered at sites lying further
to the west,1 nor in the cemeteries of the Memphite area. It would be
interesting to know how much Palestinian influence was present in the
eastern Delta in earlier periods, but the evidence is very limited and
fragmentary, though where it exists it is consistently without Palestinian
features, and includes the lowest strata at Tell ed-Dab'a itself, apparently
of the later Middle Kingdom. Tell ed-Dab'a has also yielded an
important collection of anthropological material, from 134 bodies of
the Hyksos-period cemeteries (Jungwirth 1970). Preliminary reports
describe the population as distinctly different from the usual west
Semitic type, more akin, indeed, to types from cemeteries of similar date
in north and central Europe. But the real meaning of such comparisons,
in this case very tentatively made, is by no means obvious and no
far-reaching conclusions should be drawn, particularly in view of the
lack of comparative material from the eastern Delta from earlier periods.
The proximity to Asia, however, may explain the prominence in this
area of a cult of the god Seth, who could serve as a manifestation of
the alien nature of the country beyond Egypt's borders. It may have
been established as early as the late Old Kingdom, and seems certainly
to have been in existence before the Hyksos Dynasty. The local

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Aldred I97i,pp. 204-5,pi. 89; Gomez-Moreno 1972—3;
Vandersleyen 1975, p. 390. pi. 395a).
1
Although the amount of excavation done further to the west is very slight indeed. On the
western edge of the delta the cemetery of Kom el-Hisn seems to provide negative evidence in
that in four seasons of excavations in burials dating from the First Intermediate Period to the New
Kingdom the only possible Palestinian material was a single Middle Bronze Age II painted juglet
(Hamada and Farid 1947).

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importance and character of this god may sufficiently explain why the
Hyksos associated themselves with him, though in no instance did one
of them employ the name Seth in forming his cartouche.
When seen in the perspective of Palestinian cultural history, this
period takes on a particular significance. In Palestine this was a period
of great fortified cities and military camps, and, it has been said, ' of the
greatest prosperity that the country had seen to that time, or would see
again before the Roman peace' (G. E. Wright 1971). Although the
absence of written records from Palestine inevitably tends to an
undervaluation of its historical role and leaves us ignorant of the
doubtlessly complex political background to the striking urban achieve-
ment of the Middle Bronze Age II period, it is possible to see in the
situation a temporary reversal of the roles between Egypt and Palestine,
with north-eastern Egypt falling under the aegis of an emergent
Palestinian civilization, receiving increased immigration and accelerated
cultural contact, as well as a royal house.
Contemporary finds in Egypt record the names of far more than six
kings of this period. Some, like Joam, Jakbaal and Anath-her, display
Semitic names, others use the title 'foreign king'. These, together with
others with Egyptian names, presumably make up Manetho's Sixteenth
Dynasty of' lesser' Hyksos, and can only represent vassal rulers of city
states especially in the northern part of Egypt.
The beginning of the Hyksos period in the north may perhaps be
imagined as a combination of various Palestinian groups migrating
direct from southern Palestine into the eastern Delta, intent upon
settlement, and more mobile fighting groups, perhaps centred on or in
loose federation with a main army making for Memphis, fanning out
and taking over various delta cities, though also leaving others still in
the charge of their Egyptian rulers, perhaps by prior agreement.
Destruction levels noted at some eastern delta sites, including Tell
ed-Dab'a (Bietak 1968a, pp. 84, 89; 1975 a, p. 194), may record some
of the more serious conflicts. (The date of the installation of the first
Hyksos king is apparently to be placed between about 1672 and
1649 BC.)1
It has been claimed that the pattern of overlord and vassal was
something introduced from western Asia where it was a recognized part
1
By adding the 108 years of the Turin king-list fragment to a date for somewhere around year
10 of Ahmose I of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Unfortunately, it remains difficult to be precise with
New Kingdom chronology (Redford 1970, Wente 1975). The relative date of the fall of Avaris
is discused in Vandersleyen (1971, pp. 33-40); an even later date is suggested in Hodjache and
Berlev (1977).

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of the political scene. But even if true, this may simply have been a
matter of bringing a formally recognized scheme to an existing situation
in view of the possibility that northern Egypt had begun to fragment
politically during the Thirteenth Dynasty.
Some objects bearing the name of the Hyksos king Seuserenra Khyan
have been found outside Egypt, but so far outside as to make any
political deduction from them very hazardous. They comprise: a small
lion statuette bought in Baghdad, the lid of an alabaster vase from
Knossos and a fragment of an obsidian vase from Boghazkoi; also a
seal impression from southern Palestine. In view of the likely origin of
the Hyksos it would not be surprising to find that a part of southern
Palestine remained under their hegemony. But possible direct references
to this seem limited to the second Kamose stele, and even these are
ambiguous.1
The most important of those ruling a part of Egypt simultaneously
with the Hyksos was a line of kings of Thebes who form Manetho's
Seventeenth Dynasty. They perhaps numbered as many asfifteen,and
are best known from objects from their small pyramidal tombs in the
Dira Abu el-Naga necropolis of western Thebes. Within the southern
part of Egypt, perhaps southwards from the Abydos area, they appear
to have been able to exercise some of the traditional functions of
kingship, notably by making additions and donations to temples,
including those at Abydos, Coptos, Deir el-Ballas, Medamud and Edfu
(see table 2.1). The temple of Abydos, in particular, furnishes a record
of royal patronage between the end of the Twelfth and the beginning
of the Eighteenth Dynasties which leaves the Hyksos very conspicuous
by their absence. Only at Gebelein, upstream from Thebes, have the
names of Hyksos kings been recovered on monumental blocks,
apparently from the temple of Hathor there, the kings being Seuserenra
Khyan and Aaweserra Apepy.2 But to these can be added a few other
signs that in the minds of some people in Upper Egypt the Hyksos claim
to kingship was legitimate.3 Two further inscriptions illustrate aspects
1
Second Kamose stele, line 4: Apepy is addressed as ' prince of Retenu ( = Palestine)', but this
may signify his origin; lines 13-15 list commodities captured from ships, summarized as 'the
produce/tribute of«Retenu', the word inw being somewhat ambiguous in its implications. Cf. also
Giveon (1974a), who argues that scarabs from Canaan also support Hyksos rule over Palestine.
2
Note also a sistrum from Dendera with the name Apepy (von Beckerath 1964, p. 148); an
adze-blade with the name ' Aaweserra, beloved of Sebek, lord of Sumenu', to the south of Thebes
(James 1961). Von Beckerath (1964, pp. 148-9) doubts whether the Gebelein blocks came
originally from this site, but it is difficult to imagine why they would have been imported from
much further north to an area so close to stone quarries.
3
Principally the dating of the Rhind mathematical papyrus to year 3 3 of Aaweserra Apepy.
It is said to have come from Thebes.

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of government operating under the authority of these Theban kings

without reference to the Hyksos. In one, King Nubkheperra Intef
orders the expulsion from his office in the temple of Min at Coptos of
a priest accused of an act of sacrilege; in the other, the transference of
a civil office, that of 'governor of el-Kab', was conducted under the
aegis of King Sewadjenra Nebiryaw and a copy on stone of the deed
displayed in the temple at Thebes by the king's favour. This document
is also one source which enables the history of this governorship to be
traced with an important degree of continuity through much of the
Second Intermediate Period.
If the Hyksos kings tacitly accepted these Theban kings governing
this, from their point of view, most distant part of the country, it may
have been because it seemed neither rich nor important enough to
warrant serious interference.

THE SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD IN NUBIA

As in Egypt, the transition from the Twelfth to the Thirteenth Dynasty

has left no immediately obvious trace of discontinuity. The names of
various kings from the first part of the Thirteenth Dynasty have been
recovered from the Egyptian fortresses in Lower Nubia, amongst them
a sealing of Sekhemra-khutawy Amenemhat Sebekhetep from Mirgissa,
a statue and stele of Khutawyra Ugaf from Semna and Mirgissa, and a
plaquette of Khasekhemra Neferhetep from Buhen.1 At the Semna
Gorge (and at Askut Island) a series of graffiti recording, presumably
with some concern, unusually high flood levels spans the period
between year 2 of Amenemhat III to year 1 of Sedjefakara (probably
the fifteenth king of the Thirteenth Dynasty), a period of some 70 years
of which about the last 18 belong to the Thirteenth Dynasty (B. Bell
1975). However, from the absence of names of later Thirteenth Dynasty
and Seventeenth Dynasty kings prior to Kamose, as well as from the
state of political affairs made very explicit in the Kamose stelae (see
below), it has to be assumed that Egyptian government control over
Nubia was eventually lost or relinquished. Some of the fortresses show
signs of conflagration, but whether from the attacks of hostile Nubians,
from local warfare in a confused situation following the withdrawal of
Egyptian control, or from the invading Egyptian armies of the New
1
For the Ugaf stele from Mirgissa see Vercoutter (1975 b). Note also a statue of Khaneferra
Sebekhetep from Argo Island, but this is not far from Kerma so the same doubt attaches to it as
to the statuary from Kerma itself.

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Kingdom is difficult to say.1 All of these choices are feasible because

of evidence that some of these fortresses remained occupied during parts
at least of the ensuing periods.
Thus, at Aniba, the main cemetery of family vaults with brick
superstructures displays a probable continuity of Egyptian-style burial
from the late Middle Kingdom to the New Kingdom.2 The occurrence
of true Tell el-Yahudiya juglets,3 a product of the Hyksos period in
Egypt, is to be noted (Steindorff 1937). In the fortress some restoration
of the defences was carried out at a time when the ditches were about
one-third filled with sand and rubble. The dry-stone masonry used in
the reconstruction has been plausibly seen as a sign of the influence of
the local C-group tradition of building, an influence which would be
less likely at other periods.
The preliminary statements published so far concerning the site of
Mirgissa date the principal surviving building phase in the upper fort
to the Thirteenth Dynasty, and the corresponding Egyptian-type
cemeteries to both this and the Hyksos period.
At Uronarti the evidence is to be found in a large group of mud
sealings (about 4500) from letters, sacks and boxes bearing the
impressions of stamp seals and scarabs. Most were found in the
'commandant's house', and amongst them was one, a 'sample-sealing',
bearing the name of the Hyksos king Maatibra (Lawrence 1965, p. 86,
n. 1, Tufnell 1975). A few impressions carry designs from scarabs which
in style might also belong to the period of Hyksos rule. It seems
impossible to isolate any other material in the fort which could be
ascribed to this period, but neither is there a trace of an alien cultural
presence, suggesting that whoever was handling these seals was
essentially Egyptian in culture.
The most explicit record, however, comes from Buhen, where a
cemetery sequence similar to that at Aniba exists, again including true
Tell el-Yahudiya juglets (Randall-Maclver and Woolley 1911, pis. 49,
92). But the fortress itself has yielded a group of stelae which, on
grounds of style, epigraphy and content must be ascribed to the period
of the Hyksos and Seventeenth Dynasty in Egypt (Barns 1954,
Save-Soderbergh 1949).4 The owner of one (named Sepedher) states:
1
The evidence from Buhen now seems to favour the first explanation (H. S. Smith 1976,
pp. 80-2).
2
Note that these are mainly family vaults covering perhaps several generations, in some cases
running into the New Kingdom.
3
On the distinction between true Tell el-Yahudiya ware and Rl-Lisht ware, see n. 1 on p. 167.
4
More of these, covering several generations, are published in H. S. Smith (1976, pp. 72—6,
80-5); cf. also Vandersleyen (1971, pp. 56-61).

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' I was a valiant commander of Buhen, and never had any commander
done what I did. I built the temple of Horus, lord of Buhen, in the days
of the King of Kush.' The owner of another (named Ka) also records
service with the King of Kush, whose name is given as Nedjeh. Another
possible record of mercenary service (not from Buhen) is that of
a soldier, Ha-ankhef, who after six years' service in Kush returned
home to Edfu in Upper Egypt with enough gold to buy himself
land.
The recognition by these men of the rule of this king is but a hint
of the power which this Nubian ruler had come to acquire. On the pair
of stelae set up at Karnak by Kamose, last king of the Seventeenth
Dynasty, describing the early stages of the civil war between Thebes
and Avaris, Kamose makes a speech: 'Give me to understand what this
strength of mine is for. A king is in Avaris, another is in Kush, and
so I sit alongside an Asiatic and a Nubian. Each one has his slice of
this Egypt, dividing up the land with me.' The expression 'this Egypt'
reflects a claim that Nubia was a part of Egypt (Vandersleyen 1971, pp.
53—6; Vercoutter 1970, pp. 184—6). His courtiers, in a diffident reply,
confirm this situation: 'Behold, it is Asiatic territory as far as
Cusae... Elephantine is strong. [Thus] the middle part of the land is
ours, as far as Cusae.' During the ensuing invasion of Hyksos territory
Kamose's army intercepts a letter being conveyed, apparently via the
Darb el-Arba'in route, from the Hyksos king Aaweserra Apepy to a
king of Kush, newly in office. The text of the letter, quoted in full on
the stelae, contains nothing less than an invitation by Apepy for the king
of Kush to invade Kamose's kingdom from the south: 'Come, journey
downstream! Fear not! He is here with me, and there is no-one [else]
who will stand up against you in that part of Egypt. Behold, I will
allow him no road until you have arrived. Then shall we divide up the
towns of that part of Egypt, and (our lands) shall thrive in joy.' (Habachi
1972 (note that Habachi restores ' Khent-hen-nefer' a term for Nubia,
instead of 'our lands'), Save-Soderbergh 1956, H. S. Smith and
A. Smith 1976.)
The implication is that Kush had emerged as a kingdom of con-
siderable strength and importance, a counterpart to the Hyksos kingdom
of the north. Yet although both here and in the Buhen stelae Lower
Nubia appears to be under the control of these kings, both in the Middle
Kingdom and in the New Kingdom Kush as a geographical entity seems
to have been regarded as typically Upper Nubian. And it is in Upper
Nubia that excavation has revealed, at Kerma, the site which seems, in
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all respects, to invite identification as the capital of these kings.1 As

already noted (p. 128), the site stands at the beginning of the fertile
Dongola Reach, just above the Third Cataract. It consists of two
parts.
Close to the river stood the town. Current excavations are revealing
a spread of small brick houses of more than one occupational phase,
with traces on the southern edge of what may be a substantial system
of fortifications to surround the town, employing a ditch and walls of
stone and brick (Bonnet 1978a, 1979). But the dominant feature in the
town was a massive brick building, the 'Western Deffufa', an early and
very impressive form of castle. Traces of earlier architectural phases
have recently been revealed, but in its final form it consisted of an
L-shaped block (fig. 2.12), preserved up to 18 m high, and for the most
part of solid mud brick. A single broad staircase rose up through the
interior, doubtless to the apartments which must have been built on the
top. In the latest phase the great staircase rose from a courtyard, on
whose opposite side was a building wing representing one of the earliest
known uses in the Nile Valley of baked brick.
Amidst the debris which had collapsed into a group of cellars were
numerous mud-seal impressions, mostly from the sealing of pots,
baskets and other receptacles. The repertoire of designs contrasts
sharply with that from Uronarti. Entirely absent are those with the
names and titles of administrators. The only names were those of
Hyksos kings (Jakeb-her, Sheshi, Maatibra, also Queen Ineni), occurring
just once or twice in each case. Two-thirds of the sealings had been done
with five scarab seals carrying designs which are probably in all, and
certainly in three cases stylistically of the Hyksos period (Reisner 1923,
pts. 1—in, pp. 38—9, pts. iv—v, p. 81). The implication, an important one,
must be that most of the sealing was done at Kerma itself, presumably
on the receipt of goods sent or brought in from outside, thus employing
an administrative practice derived from Egypt. The local origin of some
of the sealed receptacles is further confirmed by the incised patterns from
Nubian pots faithfully impressed on the backs of some of the seal-
ings.
The debris from buildings surrounding the castle contained industrial
waste from the manufacture of the distinctive local pottery, of objects
glazed in the Egyptian fashion, of beads, and of mica ornaments.
On the desert plateau behind lay the cemetery of tumulus graves, only
1
The picture of Kerma may need some modification from the current excavations of the Henry
M. Blackmer Foundation; for preliminary reports see Bonnet 1978a, 1979.

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-Staircase

Cache of alabaster
vase fragments

V/A Mud brick

X < \ Baked brick

0 5 10m

Fig. 2.12 Castle at Kerma (Western Duffufa, KI), contemporary with the Hyksos period in
Egypt. The plan of the outer walls is a slightly simplified rendering of the latest of several
superimposed phases.

partially excavated and published. The southern part was most likely
the latest, and was dominated by three exceptionally large tumuli (Kill,
IV, and X) (fig. 2.13) possessing internal structures of mud brick which
included a central burial chamber and containing as well numerous
separately-made subsidiary graves. Burial was on a bed, in one case of
glazed quartz, surrounded by personal effects and pottery, and accom-
panied by the bodies of up to a dozen humans, mostly females, and also
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Foundations of
small chapels

Sacrificial
corridor

gof
black stones

Mud brick
^
SSSKS Sandstone

0 30 m Ox skulls

Fig. 2.13 Part of the royal cemetery at Kerma, contemporary with the Hyksos period in Egypt.

of rams. The human burials around the main one seem to have been
sacrificial, and were in addition to the mass of sacrificial victims found
in the central part of the great tumuli, over 300 in one case.
By their size and complexity, and by the evidence they give of the
power over the lives of others which is so vividly demonstrated by the
sacrificial bodies, these tumuli leave little doubt that they were the tombs
of powerful kings of Nubia. Indeed, a record of the burial practices for
Sudanese kings of the Middle Ages contains some remarkably close
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parallels (Vycichl 1959). Furthermore, that their date was one contem-
porary with the Hyksos and Seventeenth Dynasty should not be in
doubt. The scarabs found in them are, when not of local design and
manufacture, primarily of this period (including one of the chancellor
Har); so also are the datable contexts in which the distinctive Classic
Kerma pottery is found, sometimes as imports, in Lower Nubia and
Egypt (Bietak 1968b, pp. 123-7, 180).1 Other tumuli in this part of the
cemetery would have belonged, so one imagines, to members of an
extensive royal family and court, but to the north the largely unexcavated
portions probably continue the burial record back into the Middle
Kingdom and perhaps beyond. Recent excavations have now uncovered
a group of large stone-lined structures, possibly elaborate tombs of a
quite different type, in an area lying to the south of the Western Deffufa
(Bonnet 1978b).
The court at Kerma must have been both rich and colourful, with
reminders of Pharaonic Egypt to set the tone for civilized life (as it had
done at Byblos) and to supply symbols of dignity, sometimes in the form
of second-hand statuary. Although in the badly plundered tumuli little
gold was left, it occurred in places - heavy plate on wooden bed legs,
a rim on a pottery cup — suggesting an abundant supply. Court ladies
wore leather or cloth cylindrical caps on which were stitched pieces of
mica cut in various shapes, including some derived from Egyptian
symbolism. One lady had worn a crown of thin silver. Egyptian
influence can be seen in the handful of burials employing wooden
coffins, and more particularly in the introduction into the cemetery of
mortuary temples. Two large brick examples were built,2 one of them
(KXI) encased in sandstone blocks. The other (KII) had been given an
external frieze of lions in Egyptian style composed of faience tiles, and
possessed a granite door lintel decorated with a carved winged-disc, an
Egyptian motif found painted also on a wall of the burial chamber of
one of the royal tumuli, Kill. Inside, the walls of both mortuary temples
had been painted with scenes in Egyptian style, depictingfleetsof sailing
ships, and giraffes and other animals. Although points of contact with
1
Supposed Kerma beakers found in a tomb at Saqqara (Mastaba 3507, no. 10) and now in the
British Museum, London, resemble only superficially Classic Kerma beakers, being much coarser,
and should not be identified as such. The group is listed in Merrillees (1968, pp. 27—8). For dating,
note the scarab of Nubkheperra Intef from the Mirgissa cemetery (Vercoutter 1970, pi. xxvi), and
the scarab of Maatibra from the Akasha cemetery (Maystre 1975).
2
The basic design, in which rooms occupy only a relatively small part of the otherwise solid
brickwork, can be paralleled in the Middle Kingdom temple at Ezbet Rushdi in the Nile Delta
(Adam 1959), but this may be just a common feature of the times. Some of the faience tiles from
KII are illustrated in W. S. Smith (1962, 1965,fig.60).

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Egypt are essentially influences on an overwhelmingly indigenous

culture, and although no fully Egyptian-style tombs have been found,
one must accept the presence at Kerma of a number of Egyptians, both
artisans directing mud-brick building and various industrial processes
(glazing, joinery, metal-casting), and perhaps advisors or administrators
responsible for the sealings found in the castle, and for doing the
secretarial work necessary for maintaining the diplomatic contact with
Egypt exemplified by the letter captured by Kamose's army.
One important question which has to receive a somewhat imprecise
and speculative answer is the source of Kerma's wealth. As noted above,
Upper Nubia must have been actively involved in trade with Egypt
during the Middle Kingdom, but to what local economic benefit is not
clear. The rich, Classic phase of Kerma culture seems primarily to have
coincided with Hyksos rule in the north of Egypt, and during this time
the kings of Kush may have had ample opportunity to acquire a virtual
monopoly of Nubian gold. By having gold to offer for services they
may have had no difficulty in attracting Egyptian craftsmen and
soldiers, like the man from Edfu mentioned above. As a trading partner
Kush must have grown even more important than hitherto, but since
the Darb el-Arba'in caravan route could put Kush into direct contact
with Hyksos-held territory, by-passing the kingdom of the Theban
Seventeenth Dynasty altogether, it is particularly difficult to estimate
what the arrangement might have been, though the modesty of the
Seventeenth Dynasty royal burials at Thebes compared to their counter-
parts at Kerma might be an indication that they were, in fact, being
passed by in whatever trade was being conducted with the south. Some
of the second-hand statuary may have come from Upper Egypt
(O'Connor 1969, pp. 31—2) but otherwise the Egyptian material from
Kerma itself is of little help in determining its ultimate origin, though
one can imagine that analysis of the composition of the bronzes might
yield important clues. An interesting negative feature is the absence so
far of true Tell el-Yahudiya pottery juglets,1 contrasting with the
numerous examples from Egyptian-style graves at Buhen and Aniba.
The culture of Kerma is that of a court, and in this respect remains
unique. Naturally, the political influence of its rulers cannot be
measured accurately by archaeology, and so the fate of the other Nubian
kingdoms of the Middle Kingdom lists is not known. Classic Kerma
material has been found as far south as Bugdumbush, and on sites
1
True Tell el-Yahudiya juglets should be carefully distinguished from the El-Lisht type which
appeared during the late Middle Kingdom (Merrillees 1974, 1978).

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northwards to just beyond the Dal Cataract, of which the most

important are claimed to be Sai Island, Akasha and Ukma West (Geus
and Labre 1974; Giorgini 1971, ch. 2, pi. 4; Gratien 1973, 1974, 1975,
1978; Macadam 1955, p. 160, no. 0919; Maystre 1975; Report of the
Antiquities Service and Museums in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1946, p. 10,
1947, pp. 5, 9; Vila 1975). Further north still, in Lower Nubia, Classic
Kerma forms a distinctive component of the culture contemporary with
the Hyksos and Seventeenth Dynasties. In widely scattered localities
individual or small groups of burials with features characteristic of
Kerma culture, including the distinctive pottery, have been found,
suggestive of immigrants from the south forming a numerically very
small but widely dispersed element in the population. Not surprisingly,
the largest of these cemeteries (twenty-three graves) occurs in the most
southerly part of Lower Nubia, at Mirgissa. Kerma pottery has also been
noted in the debris of two forts, Mirgissa (Hesse 1971, Vercoutter 1970,
pp. 13, 22—3, 183, n. 125) and Buhen (Egypt Exploration Society 1963,
Randall-Maclver and Woolley 1911, p. 239, pi. 50; H. S. Smith 1976,
p. 81), in both cases apparently associated, in very limited quarters, with
a level of destruction or decay. Kerma pottery has also been found in
tombs in Upper Egypt, but, with the exception of two adjacent graves
at Abydos containing contracted burials, the style of burial and of other
grave goods is wholly Egyptian, suggesting that the Kerma pots are
either trade goods themselves, or perhaps even souvenirs from a period
of mercenary service.
The knowledge that at Buhen and Aniba (and apparently Mirgissa
as well) there were Egyptians who continued to live and be buried after
the severing of Egypt's political control provides an acceptable historical
context for understanding the significance of groups of graffiti at
various Lower Nubian localities, containing one or two somewhat
eccentrically written royal names not attested elsewhere: Ii-ib-khent-ra
and Kakara In. Although normally ascribed to the First Intermediate
Period, they are accompanied by names and titles of officials which, as
a group, are essentially Middle Kingdom.1 One interpretation which can
be placed on them is that they derive from an attempt at establishing
an independent kingdom by Egyptians who had once belonged to the
garrisons of the Egyptian forts, engineered during the later Thirteenth
Dynasty. It would have been of relatively limited duration since, by
1
The two most important are: imy-r '-hnwty (Gauthier 1918, Helck 1958, p. 12, n. 9) and Igrp
skw (Gardiner et at. 1955, vol. 11, p. 97, n. c). These titles accompany the Abu Hot graffito.
Accompanying the Medik graffito is one of ' the prophet Khnum-hetep'; an identically written
graffito also occurs at Semna (Reisner, Dunham and Janssen i960, p. 133, pi. 94A).

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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

- Desert route Mediterranean Sea

Land over 500 m

it r
Fig. 2.14 Map of Egypt for the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The Delta branches are after Bietak
(1975a, Abb. 25); ancient desert routes can only be inferred from more recent patterns, one useful
source for the western desert being the map at the rear of Bates (1970). (Seep. 182 for explanation
of numbers.)

Kamose's time, Lower Nubia seems to have been a vassal of the kings
of Kush.
To a complex situation in Lower Nubia, as well as in Egypt, must
be added a further element: the immigration and settlement of desert
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

peoples whose culture passes under the term' Pan-grave'. The cemeteries
are often small, but reached at least the total of 49 burials at Balabish
and 107 at Mostagedda in Upper Egypt, and occur on both banks of
the Nile between Deir Rifeh in Upper Egypt and Toshka in Lower
Nubia (with possible Pan-grave influence in the Second Cataract area),
a sign that some of these immigrant groups crossed the river. Related
material which may or -may not be real Pan-grave has been found even
further north (Kemp 1977a, Menghin and Bittel 1934). Distinctive
features of the culture are its pottery (bowls, often with indented or
emphasized rim, either black-topped red or dark with roughly incised
patterns), bracelets made of mother-of-pearl strips, and bucrania (some-
times painted) buried in the cemeteries. Small camp sites have been
found on the desert margins in the El-Badari area, and incised sherds
of pottery of apparent Pan-grave character have been found on the
surface of Egyptian town sites at Kahun, Abydos, Ballas, Hierakonpolis,
Edfu, Qasr es-Sagha, Karnak (Bulletin de Liaison du Groupe Internationale
d'Etude de la Ce'ramique Egyptienne 1977) and El-Kab, and at the Nubian
forts of Kubban and Mirgissa.
Although it cannot be substantiated by particularly convincing
evidence, there is a strong suspicion, which must at present rest largely
on the greater dissimilarity between Pan-grave and western desert
material than between the latter and C-group culture, that these
newcomers originated in the eastern desert, being thus Medja-people.
Comparisons have been made with material from distant parts of the
eastern Sudan (Kassala) and northern Ethiopia (Agordat) (Arkell 1954,
Bietak 1966, p. 70), but the similarity is not apparently one of total
culture, only of selected individual traits in pottery decoration, and thus
not necessarily of immediate relevance in view of the widely dispersed
and long-lasting pottery traditions of north-east Africa. A preliminary
statement on the physical anthropology of a Pan-grave group from
Sayala in Lower Nubia contrasts them strongly with C-group people
(and with Kerma people, too) (Strouhal and Jungwirth 1971), and finds
similarity with a much more ancient stratum of population encountered
in the Wadi Haifa area in Late Palaeolithic (Mesolithic) times.1 But as
with the Hyksos material from Tell ed-Dab'a there is insufficient
comparative material to know what is really implied by this observation.
The historical inscriptions of Kamose's attack on the Hyksos record
that his army contained units of Medja troops, and the suggestion that
1
Statements on the significance of anthropological data should be considered in conjunction
with van Gerven, Carlson and Armelagos (1973).

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Pan-grave culture belonged to the same people is quite an old one.1 But
whilst it still seems perfectly feasible to regard Kamose's Medja
mercenaries as drawn from these immigrants, their number and ubiquity
suggests a much more important movement of people affecting Lower
Nubia as well as southern Egypt. Indeed, if they are to be identified
with Medja-people they would have to be regarded as more than
disjointed groups for, as Papyrus Bulaq 18 shows for the Thirteenth
Dynasty (see pp. 81, 122), the Medja-people possessed leaders
sufficiently identifiable to receive an invitation to the Egyptian court
at Thebes. The reasons for this migration, which became a unique
cultural intrusion in Upper Egypt in the Pharaonic period, remain
wholly obscure, as does the long-term effect. As with the Palestinian
Middle Bronze Age II culture in the eastern Delta, Pan-grave culture
failed to retain its identity beyond the beginning of the New Kingdom,
but there is no evidence to suggest that its bearers were subject to Upper
Egyptian hostility. It is just possible that the prominent Ahmose—Paheri
family at El-Kab in the early Eighteenth Dynasty was descended from
such people.2
In Lower Nubia, alongside the various newcomers and remaining
Egyptians, C-group culture continued to exist, and in fact passed
through its most developed phase (lib), though towards the end of the
period exhibiting (in its phase III) a degree of local variation and
influence from the immigrant groups as well as a possible overall decline
in its affluence. The most striking feature of phase lib is the appearance
of a greater variation in tomb size, the larger tumuli sometimes coming
to possess small mortuary chapels of mud brick or stone and suggestive,
perhaps, of a greater degree of social stratification. This also coincided
with the emergence of larger C-group settlements, in the form of
fortified stone villages well exemplified at Areika and Wadi es-Sebua.
These were evidently designed as places of refuge in troubled
times.
It becomes evident that in the late Thirteenth Dynasty and Hyksos
period Lower Nubia passed through a complex and eventful period of
history which has more than a few echoes of events in northern Egypt:
1
Note also the soldier's archery case reported in Shore (1973), an object of the Seventeenth
or early Eighteenth Dynasty from Upper Egypt, where the owner is depicted attended by a Nubian
soldier.
2
The foreignness of some of the names in this family has been commented on by others, e.g.
Helck (1971, p. 101) and Vandersleyen (1971, pp. 24-5), with the assumption of Asiatic origin.
But another relative actually bore the name Mdty-s,' Medja-man' (Tylor and Griffith 1894, pi. VII).
The ru element in two other family names, Itruri and Ruru, also occurs in Nubian names, e.g.
Rwiw and R»»3 (Save-Soderbergh 1965), R-k$ and Rmiw/Rwi^ (Steindorff 1937, p. 250).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

el-Hudi
+ Egyptian fort \24
- - Wadi • K u kut
L S\\\
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Desert route Oasis
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0 100 km V_ ^
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1
Fig. 2.15 Map of Nubia in the Old and Middle Kingdoms.
(See p. 182 for explanation of numbers.)

a fragmentation of society, exacerbated by immigration, with ultimate

authority eventually passing to a dominant power from outside, the
kingdom of Kush, whose court looked to Egypt for symbols of
authority and employed Egyptians in its service. Thus the Second
Intermediate Period emerges as one of great significance in the history
of Egypt's relationships with her neighbours. A time of internal
governmental weakness coincided with a period of prosperity and
political growth in Palestine and Nubia so that, for once, the Egyptians
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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

found themselves the victims of both the political initiative and cultural
momentum of others.

THE THEBAN DEFEAT OF THE HYKSOS AND OF KUSH

Both kingdoms were simultaneously destroyed in a period of warfare

probably initiated by Kamose, the last king of the Seventeenth Dynasty,
and continued by his immediate successors of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The evidence for hostilities prior to Kamose is somewhat ambiguous,
though it has been strengthened by the demonstration that Kamose's
predecessor, Sekenenra Ta'a II, died a violent death from weapons, one
of which had the distinctive shape of a Syro-Palestinian axe-head of a
type found in the eastern Delta at this time (Bietak 1974). A conflict
between this king and the Hyksos king Apepy is narrated in Papyrus
Sallier I, a much later popular tale, but this may have been of the
' out-witting' type, although it correctly presupposes in its setting the
opposed interests of the two kingdoms. The main source for the Theban
revolt is a pair of stelae (and a scribal copy of one of them) erected in
Karnak temple by Kamose and dated to his year 3 (Habachi 1972,
p. 39;Pritchard 1969, pp. 554-5; Save-Soderbergh 1956; H. S. Smith and
A. Smith 1976). In a council of war the scene is initially set as a stable
tripartite division of Egypt: the Hyksos kingdom ruled by Aaweserra
Apepy, who is known to have reigned for at least 40 years, Thebes and
Kush. This is used as a contrasting literary device to emphasize
Kamose's personal responsibility for making the winning aggressive
move of a northward attack, commencing with the town of Nefrusy,
' a nest for Asiatics', ruled by one Teti son of Pepy, presumably an
Egyptian vassal of the Hyksos. The difficult language of the text, which
mixes narrative with rhetoric, leaves one in doubt as to with what
success Kamose penetrated the Delta.1 The text ends abruptly, not with
the defeat of the Hyksos in battle or siege, but with a triumphal return
to Thebes at the onset of the inundation season. The last engagement
mentioned is described thus: ' I sent a strong troop overland to destroy
the Bahriya Oasis — whilst I was in Sako — in order to prevent rebels
from being behind me.' Sako is still about 70 km south of Herakleopolis,
and the action was presumably designed to sever communications
between the Hyksos kingdom and Kush. It was at this point that the
famous letter from Apepy was captured.
1
The stele of Emheb, a man who seems to have belonged to Kamose's force, also refers to
reaching Avaris in this same year 3 (Cerny 1969).

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This letter from Apepy has already been mentioned. Before inviting
the King of Kush to invade southern Egypt, Apepy sets the scene: 'Do
you see what Egypt has done to me? The king of the place, Kamose
(given life!), is attacking me on my ground. I had not assailed him in
the manner of all that he has done to you. He chooses to plague these
two lands, mine and yours. He has ravaged them.' The allusion to a
prior attack on Kush was probably no rhetoric. A building inscription
of this same year 3 of Kamose at Buhen (H. S. Smith 1976, p. 8,
pis. 11, 1 and LVIII. 1, no. 488) suggests an almost simultaneous conquest
of the whole of Lower Nubia, borne out by two graffiti of his reign
at Arminna commemorating possibly the earliest holders of the New
Kingdom office of Viceroy of Kush (Simpson 1963c, p. 34).1
The ultimate success of the Theban revolt had to await the early
reigns of the New Kingdom. It was not limited to regaining control
of the territory ruled by the Middle Kingdom, but became, in the end,
the conquest and the attempt to control the lands whence the kings of
Kush and the 'foreign kings' from the north-east had originated.

EXPLANATIONS OF HISTORICAL CHANGE IN THE OLD

AND MIDDLE KINGDOMS

The presentation of ancient Egyptian history in narrative form inevitably

draws particular attention to change and development, but, for the
laudable purpose of making narrative lively, tends in practice to an
overdramatization which the sources often do not warrant. In the
sections on Egyptian internal history in this chapter the narrative
element has consciously been played down. But the alternative of
presenting the historical basis of the Old and Middle Kingdoms in the
form of a governmental system, with each part — the king, his officers,
provincial governors, and temple staff — playing its role without unduly
disturbing others can easily lead too far in the opposite direction, and
by presenting the system as so harmoniously balanced make it hard to
comprehend how, in particular, the upsets of the First Intermediate
Period came about. With the exception of the Hyksos Dynasty the roots
of historical change seem to lie within Egypt, and, at the political level,
particularly in the relationships between the king, the officers of his
1
Vandersleyen (1971, pp. 61-3) discusses a further possible source. The stele of Emheb (see
previous note) couples the reaching of Avaris with a Nubian locality called Miu. Historical
circumstances demand that this cannot be identical with the Miu of the Armant stele of Tuthmosis
III, evidently a far-distant place, but was perhaps related to the tp ('head of) Miu in the Pennut
tomb at Aniba.

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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

court, and provincial men of ambition. But the lack of documentation

often makes it difficult to discover if the development of some
institution or facet of society, other than the kingship itself, is an
indication of a weakening of royal control or a sign of the ability of
the office of king to adapt to and perhaps bring about change. It is only,
for example, the need of modern historians to find some reason for the
First Intermediate Period which sees the emphasis on solar worship in
the Fifth Dynasty as a sign of diminishing royal authority rather than
as an interesting development in the cults patronized by the court which
in no way detracted from the king's dominance in government, and may
just as easily have added to it. The resort to post hoc, ergo propter hoc
reasoning is often the only alternative if comprehensive explanation for
events is regarded as essential.
It may be, however, that an ad hoc historical approach, concentrating
on just one specific situation at a time, places too great an emphasis on
the more superficial aspects. There is the alternative of beginning from
a more theoretical, determinist position, and of arguing that the
bureaucratic state possesses certain basic structural properties, some of
them weaknesses, and that in the case of early floodplain civilizations,
they took a particular common form.1 If one wished to consider Egypt
from this point of view, several closely interrelated aspects of society
require attention.
In the first place, although the Nile has a regimen somewhat different
from, say, the Tigris-Euphrates system, with irrigation remaining at the
elementary level of basin irrigation not requiring elaborate central
control (Butzer 1976, pp. 42-3), it would still have possessed, with other
major floodplains, the capacity for producing an agricultural surplus
beyond the immediate needs of its overall initial population. However,
although subsequent population increase was probably never on a scale
to constitute a problem in the periods under consideration,2 rising
demand stimulated by the conspicuous consumption of the court may
have eventually led to the extension of agriculture to less productive
lands with consequent diminishing returns.
Bureaucracy is a central feature of the early major civilizations, and
1
An important phase of discussion began with Wittfogel's 'hydraulic hypothesis' (Wittfogel
'95 5. 1957). This has provoked much critical comment, some of it of considerable value, e.g.
Friedman (1974), Kappel (1974), Lees (1974) and Mitchell (1975).
2
A valuable review of recent discussions of this topic is in Cowgill (1975). Helck (1974c, 1975,
pp. 98-100) has postulated that the growth of bureaucracy and demand for labourers and craftsmen
in the Old Kingdom created a demand for increased population, to be met by raids on neigh-
bouring countries.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

in Egypt probably arose primarily to serve the ambitions of the early

kings. When seen in operation through surviving administrative texts,
it seems to have been concerned mainly with facilitating the transfer
of produce to the various centres which made up the ' court' and to
its provincial outliers and with supervising constructional work, rather
than with the maintenance of the agricultural system. It would be in
this group that a proliferation of numbers and rise in material
expectations would produce serious pressures on the agricultural
surplus.
Pious foundations occupied a key place in the Egyptian economy.
Those which were mainly or exclusively for the benefit of private
individuals, and were then most effectively operated in the provinces,
offered one way through which people living off surplus could
safeguard their economic positions and perhaps satisfy growing expec-
tations, but this would ultimately have been something in competition
with the court. The economic behaviour of these foundations probably
had an important role in the history of the early periods, but the terrible
dearth of quantifiable data would make a more detailed assessment very
difficult.
Finally, although monumental tomb construction and burial of riches
is an obvious feature' of ancient Egypt, its effects are still not properly
understood. Explanation for the First Intermediate Period has some-
times been sought in the idea that continued pyramid-building exhausted
the country. However, this may have been true only in so far as it stood
in the way of growing demand amongst the official class, bearing in
mind the finite limits of agricultural surplus. Irrespective of whether
this private demand, channelled through pious foundations, was
instrumental in creating a weak and unstable court, the latter's inability
to continue massive court cemetery construction would have been a
most damaging failure for the long-term continuation of what we
recognize as ' civilization' in Egypt and to the prosperity of those very
people who may have been competing with it. For in this form of
monumental construction the authority of the king and all that this
implied politically was finalized, ambitious men found a prestigious and
rewarding outlet within a controlled framework, and the country's
material and intellectual resources were stretched to a greater degree
within a centralized programme. The role of strong central government
in raising the general level of prosperity is shown by the way in which,
during the First Intermediate Period, and even probably during the late
Old Kingdom, the level of consumption of men of power, as indexed

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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

by their tomb sizes, seems to have declined. Yet they were now no
longer in competition with a lavishly endowed court.
This type of formal approach implies a degree of inevitability,
particularly if the bureaucratic state is regarded as, in the long term,
an unstable phenomenon. But even if one allows this, it does not
deprive the historian of the opportunity of explaining why, at one
moment rather than another, history took a particular course. The
political element is not readily absorbed into a determinist framework
of explanation. Thus the re-establishment of a single strong kingship
in the Middle Kingdom which allowed, or was forced to accept, the
continued existence of provincial governors of considerable pretensions
is not an obvious product of a determinist explanation of why the Old
Kingdom had come to an end. Furthermore, this provincial aspect of
Egypt's system of government was no longer in existence at the end
of the Twelfth Dynasty, so that the second period of short reigns and
downturn in the scale of court activity which followed cannot be
explained in quite the same way as the first, and is, indeed, difficult to
explain adequately on either political or determinist grounds.
The notion that explanation is possible at all also depends on the
assumption that the evidence and the factors at work were distributed
fairly evenly around the country, so that what is encountered in one
area can be regarded as nationally typical. But the possibility must be
considered that, because accidents of preservation have greatly favoured
Upper Egypt, our attention is focused too much on a part of the country
whose involvement in Memphite court politics was often less than the
more northerly regions, and which does not therefore always offer a
particularly reliable guide to those factors which most seriously affected
the fortunes of the ruling house at Memphis. An examination of the
broad sweep of ancient Egyptian history (including the later periods
not considered in this chapter) might suggest that a political dichotomy
can be seen emerging in those times when a strongly centralized and
centralizing government was absent. In such periods, the country
tended to divide, as a first stage, into two parts: the delta and the seven
or eight most northerly nomes of Upper Egypt on the one hand, and
the rest of Upper Egypt south of, say, El-Minya or Asyut on the other
(see Wainwright 1927). The next step in the north was for continued
fragmentation into city states to produce eventually a pattern known
elsewhere in the ancient Near East, with complex ties recognizing a
hierarchy of authority amongst them which included a nominal capital
at Memphis or somewhere else in the north. The more southerly part

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

of Upper Egypt was, however, more readily kept together as one unit,
ruled from a single place whose pre-eminence received justification
through theology, whereby a local cult was paid special attention and
its deity given a central place in the theology of divine kingship. The
gods Seth and Horus represent the legacy of prehistoric periods when
respectively Naqada and Hierakonpolis were in turn centres of im-
portance in Upper Egypt. Thebes was to fill this role from the Eleventh
Dynasty onwards, with its temple eventually becoming the principal
cult centre in Upper Egypt and its god Amen/Amen-Ra, gaining a
dominant position in the theology of kingship. Memphis also had this
symbolic role, justified in the Memphite Theology, but it acted less
effectively in the north in times of weak central government.
This geographical factor is useful as a possible overall perspective to
prevent irregularities in the preservation of evidence from having too
great an influence in the writing of history. But from period to period
modification is obviously necessary in the light of what is known of
the complexities of situations which are bound to be, in detail, unique
every time. Thus the short-lived fragmentation of Upper Egypt under
nomarchs in the Eighth and perhaps early Ninth/Tenth Dynasties was
an exceptional occurrence which happened at a time when no one place
in Upper Egypt had yet emerged with pre-eminent regional authority
since at least the Early Dynastic Period. This vacuum was shortly filled
by Thebes. Then again, the Thirteenth Dynasty seems to have been able
to continue to rule Upper Egypt, including the Thebaid, at a time when
the fragmentation of the delta may already have been beginning. This
last possibility leads to an interesting argument (though one for which
supporting evidence is conspicuously lacking): whilst in the late Old
Kingdom it was the provincial governors of Upper Egypt who began
competing for resources with the court, in the late Middle Kingdom
this role was taken over by incipient city states in the Delta. It does
not seem unreasonable to consider that the rash of client kings who must
have ruled the northern part of Egypt under the Hyksos overlordship
had come into possession of a system which had some historical and
economic background.

Climatic variation
The interaction of political, economic and social factors should not be
considered against an entirely stable climatic background. Evidence of
a rather scattered kind has been used to suggest certain important
variations both in seasonal rainfall over Egypt and in Nile flood levels
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 FROM OLD KINGDOM TO SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

(the two should be very carefully distinguished) for the Old and Middle
Kingdoms. The evidence stems either from interpretations placed on
ancient written and pictorial sources, or from field observations in areas
geographically marginal to the Egyptian Nile Valley.
Representations of desert fauna and trees in tombs suggest that by
the end of the Old Kingdom both had been depleted, presumably by
the onset of more arid conditions, though in view of changes in the
fashions of subject matter and the very selective nature of the Egyptian
representations of their world the evidence should be treated cautiously.
The archaeological evidence for herding and hunting communities in
the western desert mentioned above (pp. 119-20), ought to be crucial,
but the dating evidence is as yet highly unsatisfactory. The appearance
of C-group culture in Lower Nubia has been seen as an effect of
deteriorating conditions of life in the desert, but the really widespread
immigration of desert peoples into the Nile Valley represented by the
Pan-grave people did not take place until significantly later. Whether
ecological change in the neighbouring deserts had any significant effect
on the Egyptian economy is hard to tell. In southern Upper Egypt and
Lower Nubia greater wadi activity in the period c. 4000—3000 BC is
apparently to be attributed to winter rains. This did not recur in
Pharaonic times (Butzer 1975, Butzer and Hansen 1968, ch. 3), and the
evidence obviously supports the idea of increasing aridity in the early
centuries of Egyptian history.
A little futher south, careful investigation into the relationship
between geology and late Neolithic settlements in Sudanese Nubia
(especially at Debeira West and Ashkeit) has pointed to a major decline
in Nile flood levels during the later prehistoric phases (Butzer and
Hansen 1968, pp. 277—8; de Heinzelin 1968). By the late fourth
millennium BC areas of the river bed had been permanently exposed.
It would seem that this degradation phase must have ended somewhere
around the beginning of the dynastic period, when deposition of silt
began again, but with the Nile now flowing permanently in a somewhat
lower floodplain. There appears to be some correlation actually within
the summer monsoonal rainfall belt whence the Nile waters originate
(Butzer 1976, pp. 30-3; Grove, Street and Goudie 1975). Connected
with this are ancient Nile flood levels, recorded on the Palermo Stone,
which appear to show a decline of average flood levels of a little over
a metre during the First Dynasty, but to maintain themselves thereafter
into the Fifth Dynasty, when the record ceases (B. Bell 1970). In the
Fayum, the maximum extent (at 22-24 m above sea level) of Lake

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Moeris seems to have persisted into Old Kingdom times, covering the
greater part of this depression (B. Bell 1975, Said et al. K)-]2.2L, b). But,
by the mid Twelfth Dynasty the level had dropped to below 18 m,
possibly to below 15 m, thus exposing a substantial area of land for
cultivation. On it were built the temples of Medinet Ma'adi and Kiman
Faris, and the colossi of Biyahmu. This was presumably a delayed
consequence of declining Nile flood levels, the crucial regulating factor
being the state of the Hawara channel at any particular time, something
still not properly documented. This newly exposed land would have
been a major addition to the agricultural resources of the Nile Valley.
From the period following the end of the Old Kingdom comes a
remarkably large number of the ancient references to famine in Upper
Egypt, some explicitly linked with low Nile levels. By contrast, as noted
on p. 160, a series of Nile flood-level records from Nubia covering the
late Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties document an intermittent
series of high flood levels averaging about 7.3 m above their modern
counterparts. A Thirteenth Dynasty stele from Karnak records the
flooding of the temple of Amen, but since the chronological position
of the king named is not certain, this particular flooding need not belong
to the same series recorded at Semna.1 Finally, it should be noted that
a completely different type of source, the Admonitions of Ipuwer, has
been used as an eye-witness account not only of historical events but
also of natural disasters, including famines from low Niles. But as noted
above (pp. 74—6), its date and nature are open to such widely varying
interpretations, some of which lift it right out of the category of
eye-witness reporting, that it is dangerous to use it as a source for the
events of any one period.
Human society must inevitably be sensitive to ecological change, yet
one must also allow a margin of adjustment and ability to overcome
calamity and adverse circumstances. In some of the texts of the early
First Intermediate Period the great famine is presented not as something
which reduces man to helplessness and despair but as an illustration of
the writer's authority and capacity to administer relief, sometimes over
a wide area. As far as provincial cemetery culture in Upper Egypt south
of the Fayum is concerned, no breaks of more than local significance
can be observed over the entire period considered in this chapter, even
1
Baines(i974, 1976), Habachi (1974). The practice of recording individual levels in Egypt itself
similar to the Semna levels is attested by an inscribed block found loose at Naga ed-Deir dated
to year 2 3 of Amenemhat III (Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology 1966, p. 64). A startling
alternative theory that the Semna levels are evidence for an ancient barrage at Semna has been
advanced by Vercoutter (1976a).

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when accompanied by variations in burial rate. Furthermore, the

blossoming of court culture in the Middle and New Kingdoms is itself
a sign that whatever changes in environment (and society) did occur,
they were not of a permanently damaging nature.
The only climatic change of any dimensions that has been deduced
is the ending of the Neolithic subpluvial late in the Old Kingdom, which
seems to have affected the desert fauna. But as noted above, the Pan-grave
movement into the Nile Valley some three or four centuries later is
perhaps a sign that its consequences were more long-drawn-out or
regionally variable. The cry 'the desert is dying of hunger' comes not
from the late Old Kingdom, but from a small party of Medja-people
in the reign of Amenemhat III (see p. 132).
In the case of the river Nile, once the major adjustment of the
floodplain had taken place in the Early Dynastic Period, one would
expect, from the records of more recent periods, both an annual
variation of a few metres (3.8 m in modern times), and cyclic overall
changes of level and volume, operating generally within reasonable
limits but occasionally producing critical effects on the communities
living on its floodplain. Of these, high floods, although they damage
property and food stores, may be counted somewhat less serious in their
consequences than very low floods which endanger the whole basis of
agriculture. The famine records of the First Intermediate Period are
evidently to be understood, from their phraseology, as the result of an
extreme trough in the cyclic pattern of Nile variation.
It can scarcely go unnoticed that the decline of court culture after
the Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties occurred close in time to freak Nile
levels: the famine-creating lows of the early First Intermediate Period
and the highs of the Semna levels. Although neither seems to have
interfered appreciably with the development of riverine culture in
Nubia, an area which one might have supposed to be even more exposed
to ecological change than Egypt, they can scarcely be ignored in
attempting to understand the historical processes at work at these times.
It involves far too simplistic a view of society to see governmental
decline as a direct and inevitable consequence of ecological adversity.
Its most likely contribution would have been to impose a further strain
on the balance between competing demands for surplus, particularly if
it also came at a time of diminishing returns from a period of
increasingly intense agricultural exploitation. But the way in which this
aggravated situation was resolved would depend very much on the
relative strengths of the competing groups. The way in which a period
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of governmental weakness seems to have followed these two periods

of eccentric Nile behaviour may itself be evidence for the existence of
groups of people before whose power kings had to give way.

Explanation of numbers for figs. 2.14 and 2.1

Fig. 3.14
Elephantine 2
9 Dier el-Gabrawi
2 Kubaniya 3° Cusae
3 Kom Ombo 31 Meir
4 Gebel es-Silsila 32 Deir el-Bersha
5 Edfu 33 Sheikh Said
6 Hierakonpolis 34 Hermopolis
7 El-Kab 35 Beni Hasan
8 Esna 36 Nefrusy
9 Mo'alla 37 Cynopolis
IO Gebelein 38 Deshasha
11 Tod 39 Herakleopolis
12 Armant 4° Medinet Ma'adi
13 Theban necropolis 4i Medinet el-Fayum
14 Thebes 42 Hawara
I! Medamud 43 El-Lahun
16 Naqada 44 Atfih
17 Ballas 45 El-Lisht
18 Coptos 46 Kasr es-Sagha
•9 Dendera 47 Memphis
20 Diospolis Parva 48 Saqqara
21 Balabish 49 Tura
22 Abydos 5° Heliopolis
23 Bet Khallaf 51 Tell el-Yahudiya
24 Naga ed-Deir 52 Inshas
25 Akhmim 53 Tell Basta
26 Qau el-Kebir 54 Tell ed-Dab'a
27 Deir Rifeh 55 Mendes
28 Asyut 56 Buto

Fig. 2.15
Bugdumbush
1 13 Askut
2 Kawa 14 Mirgissa
3 Kerma 15 Buhen
4 Soleb 16 Faras
5 Amara 17 Serra
6 Firka 18 Aniba
7 Akasha '9 Tumas
8 Ukma 20 Wadi es-Sebua
9 Duweishat 21 Sayala
10 Semna 22 Kubban
11 Shalfak 23 Dakka
12 Saras 24 Biga (Senmet)

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NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD

INTERMEDIATE PERIOD, 1552-664 BC

PROLEGOMENA

Chronology
The history of Egypt between 1552 and 664 BC, as for earlier periods,
is conventionally divided up into usually sequential, numbered dynasties
(table 3.1). These are derived from later 'Epitomes' of Manetho's
history of Egypt (late fourth century BC) and usually do in fact coincide
with real breaks, alterations or divisions in the line of dynastic
succession.
The absolute chronology of these dynasties has been reconstructed
with a high degree of reliability. It is true that two chronologies can
be postulated for the Eighteenth to Twentieth dynasties (155 2—1069 BC),
because it is uncertain whether several dynastically-dated astronomical
observations - vital for chronological reconstruction - were made near
Memphis ('high' chronology) or near Thebes ('low' chronology). On
the whole, the ' low' chronology fits the available evidence better, and
is followed in the chronological table; nevertheless, neither the 'high'
nor ' low' chronologies can yet be shown to be unquestionably correct.
For the period between 945 and 330 BC there are an increasing number
of reliable synchronisms, another dated astronomical observation,
and some chronologically exceptionally well-documented dynasties
(Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh), and the degree of disagreement
amongst scholars is correspondingly smaller. In fact, disagreement about
the absolute chronology of the entire period 15 5 2—664 BC is quite small;
significant developments within Egypt and the ever-changing pattern
of its contacts with other areas can be dated with considerable if not
complete precision.
Egyptian absolute chronology should prove a most important
complement to radiocarbon and other dating methods in the recon-
struction of the ancient history of north-east and east Africa as a whole.
Egyptian contacts with these regions were extensive (see pp. 252—78);
the absolute chronology of the comparatively well-known Nubian
cultures is based upon datable Egyptian contacts and, as the indigenous
cultures of Punt and Libya become better known, Egyptian contact
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TABLE 3.1 Names and dates of the kings of Egypt from ijj2 to 664 BC

NEW KINGDOM
Eighteenth Dynasty Nineteenth Dynasty
Regnal dates Regnal dates
Ahmose 1552-1527 Ramesses I 1305-1303
Amenhotep I 1527-1506 Seti I 1303—1289
Tuthmosis I 1506-1494 Ramesses II 1289-1224
Tuthmosis II •494-149° Merenptah 1224—1204
Hatshepsut 1490—1468 Amenmesses 1204-1200
Tuthmosis III 1490-1436 Seti II 1200-1194
Amenhotep II 1438—1412 Siptah 1194-1188
Tuthmosis IV 1412-1402 Twosret 1194-1186
Amenhotep III 1402—1364
Amenhotep IV Twentieth Dynasty
1364-1347
Akhenaten Sethnakht 1186-1184
Smenkhare 1351-1348 Ramesses III II84-II53
Tutankhamen i347->3}7 Ramesses IV II53-I146
Ay 1337-1333 Ramesses V II46-II42
Horemheb Ramesses VI II42-II35
Ramesses VII II35-II29
Ramesses VIII II29-II27
Ramesses IX II27—II09
Ramesses X IIO9-IO99
Ramesses XI IO99—1069

THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

Twenty-first Dynasty Twenty-third Dynasty
Smendes I 1069-104 3 Pedubast I 818-793
Amenemnisu 1043—1039 IuputI 804-785
PsusennesI 1039-991 Shoshenq IV 783-777
Amenemope 993—984 Osorkon III 777-749
Osochor 984—978 Takeloth III 754-734
Siamun 978-959 Rudamun 734—731
Psusennes II 959—945 Iuput II 731-720
Twenty-second Dynasty Shoshenq VI 720—715

Shoshenq I 945-924 Twenty-fourth Dynasty

Osorkon I 924-889 Tefnakhte I 727-720
Shoshenq II c. 890 Bakenranef 720—715
Takeloth I 889-874
Osorkon II 874-850 Twenty-fifth (Kushite) Dynasty
Takeloth II 850-825 Alara c. 780—760
Shoshenq III 825-773 Kashta c. 760-747
Pimay 775-767 Piankhy 747-716
Shoshenq V 767-730 Shabako 716—702
Osorkon IV 75°-7iJ Shebitku 702-690
Taharqa 690-664
Tanwetamani 664-656

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should prove chronologically important to their study. Moreover, it

seems likely that the cultures of the contact areas will prove to have
had interconnections with more remote and as yet unknown African
cultures, which will thus be linked indirectly to Egyptian chronology.
Radiocarbon, thermoluminescence and similar dating methods (with
their still considerable and perhaps irreducible margins of error) cannot
contribute significantly to Egyptian dynastic chronology. However,
they are most important for the absolute chronology of Egyptian
archaeological data, i.e. for establishing dates for many structures,
occupation strata and graves associated with sites in Egypt or Egyptian
settlements abroad, and for the absolute time-ranges of the specific types
and techniques of Egyptian artifacts of all kinds. Political, social and
economic changes within Egypt and the chronology and nature of its
continually changing foreign contacts are strongly reflected in the
archaeological record, which often reveals aspects of these historical
phenomena that the written sources either never did or no longer do
preserve.
The data
During the period 15 5 2-664 BC Egypt generated a great mass of richly
varied data suitable for analysis by historians. Archaeologically, there
is a variety of settlement types, including extensive urban complexes,
palaces and fortresses, as well as smaller rural or more specialized
villages. Temples of varying sizes were frequent, either as parts of larger
units or as centres of settlement complexes. And the dead, of all social
strata, were habitually buried in cemeteries. To a degree these types of
archaeological data overlap. A wide range of socio-economic status
and of profession is reflected in the remains of large towns; palaces and
temples had significant resemblances in appearance and function; and
the cemeteries yield many decorated chapel walls depicting the social
types and characteristic occupations of the population, as well as
numerous artifacts of secular as well as specifically funerary use. Despite
this overlapping, however, the total complexity of Egyptian society and
history cannot be appreciated without fully representative samples of
all the types of archaeological data.
In the apparently abundant textual data a most important distinction
should be made between archival material and the monumental texts. The
archival texts - usually on fragile papyrus or small ostraca (pottery or
limestone fragments) include the varied records of government at all
levels (e.g. official reports, court proceedings, land registers) and the
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mass of letters, memoranda, agreements and wills generated by the

population as a whole. A related category of more specialized texts
includes literary works, religious material, mathematical and medical
records and the like. The monumental texts are those carved or painted
upon the walls of temples and tombs or upon artifacts designed for these
contexts, such as statuary, offering-tables and coffins.
The complementary character of the two main sets of textual data
is vital for the reconstruction of Egyptian history. Despite frequent and
useful inclusion of historical and biographical information, the
fundamental purposes of most monumental texts are limited and
religious. They are not concerned with the details of civil and religious
government or of the ordering of social relationships (all of which are
richly represented in papyri and ostraca). Addressed primarily to the
gods, the monumental texts present a highly idealized version of
Egyptian history and life.
In Egyptian belief both the formal appearance and essential natures
of their political, social and economic systems had beenfixedby a creator
god aeons earlier. The network of relationships which linked the
members of the Egyptian community to each other and to foreign
political and cultural units were part of an immutable world order (see
pp. 196—7). This idealism which dominates the monumental texts is
historically significant since a continuous interaction between the ideal
and the real, between ideology and practice, was important in policy-
making and in political and social relationships. However, in order not
to offend the gods, important but deviant events and practices had to
be ignored or at best referred to in oblique terms. They must often be
inferred from changes in the pattern of political or ritual activity,
unusual combinations of titles and offices or the desecration of royal
and private monuments, and are only revealed in detail in archival and
similar records.
Thus any significant political or religious act — conservative, reforma-
tive or innovative — was invariably presented to the gods as being
in accordance with a long-established, universal order. Akhenaten, a
religious innovator, claimed to 'live upon' Ma'at (Wilson 1969, p. 370),
the ancient personification of that order (pp. 196—7), but his successor
Tutankhamen abolished that innovation with the claim that 'Ma'at is
established, she causes falsehood to be the abomination of the land, as
in (the land's) first time' (Bennett 1939). Akhenaten himself is never
referred to in subsequent monumental texts, but his true status in later
times is expressed unambiguously in the archival record, where he had
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to be referred to for dating purposes; there he is identified as 'the

Enemy' (Gardiner 1905, pp. 11, 23). Offences against Ma'at, frequently
referred to in the archives, were ignored in the monumental record. An
assassination attempt upon Ramesses III is described in great detail in
papyri generated by the subsequent state trial but is nowhere referred
to in the extensive texts in his temples or tomb.
Given the potential richness and variety of the data, and the essential
complementary interrelationships of the different types, it is, therefore,
disappointing to record that the modern scholar has a most dispro-
portionate representation at his disposal. Information derived from
inevitably biased textual and archaeological data from temples and
cemeteries far outweighs that from settlement remains and archival or
functionally short-lived texts.
Several factors are responsible for this imbalance and, of these,
cultural ones are the least significant. Admittedly, politically unstable,
economically depressed periods (especially the Third Intermediate
Period) produce fewer major monumental buildings and elaborate
tombs, and customs can change in important ways. Scenes of daily life
on tomb walls and the funerary deposition of artifacts of secular use,
for example, are much less frequent after the New Kingdom.
Nevertheless, throughout the entire period there was always consider-
able building activity in the towns and villages, and large quantities
of archival and similar material were produced.
Preservation is a more critical factor. Throughout Egypt most of the
mud-brick palaces and settlements, with their invaluable, archival and
other textual material, were located in the alluvial plain of the Nile, as
were perforce many of the Delta cemeteries. These remains therefore
were particularly susceptible to damage from the annual inundation, the
rising level of the plain and the water table and the activities of a dense
rural population. Many temples of the New Kingdom and after,
however, were built of stone and, whatever their location, either have
survived largely intact or at least have yielded many inscribed elements.
Moreover, in Middle and Upper Egypt cemeteries were usually located
in the low desert or valley cliffs flanking the alluvial plain and, apart
from the ravages of plundering, are relatively well preserved.
Most critical of all, however, are systematic exploration and recovery,
for without these, we cannot estimate the degree to which information
has been genuinely and irretrievably lost through damage. For reasons
of traditional interests and convenience, Egyptologists have tended to
concentrate on material from cemeteries of Upper and Middle Egypt
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and from temple sites; there are few excavated settlement sites for any
period, although many certainly exist, and both earlier and recent work
has shown that Delta sites in general are better preserved than might
be expected. Moreover, certain areas and, to a degree, certain periods
have been traditional foci for scholarly attention, especially the ceme-
teries of Memphis and Thebes, and the temples of the latter, in the New
Kingdom. This means that our knowledge of provincial history is
extremely patchy and that many major sites in the Delta, which was a
particularly important area after the New Kingdom, have not been
adequately explored.
The inadequacies of the data explain the inevitably conjectural or
indecisive character of many conclusions about specific events or
general patterns within Egyptian history, and exacerbate the normal
problems of historical interpretation created by the assumptions and
values of individual historians. For example, one scholar notes the
' absolute power' of the Eighteenth Dynasty kings in all spheres, while
another claims that they 'relinquished [their] religious [and military]
authority to others' (compare Hayes (1973, p. 313) with Wilson (1974,
p. 401)). The usurpation of monuments and a contemporary, archival
reference to conflict during the Twentieth Dynasty suggest to one
historian a civil war, with all its political and social implications, but
to another, merely customary activity and an 'obscure local conflict'
(compare Cerny (1975, pp. 612-13) with Kitchen (1972)).

THE EGYPTIAN WORLD-VIEW, I 5 J 2—664 BC

The world-view of a society is here denned as a set of concepts, held

by all or most of its members, about the natural, human and supernatural
worlds of which that society is a part; and about the interrelationships
which link these worlds into a meaningful, intelligible whole. In this
sense a world-view is not an intellectual abstraction but rather an
historically important phenomenon which plays a major part in shaping
the political, social, and economic life of the society. Since a specific
and identifiable world-view dominated Egyptian thought, attitudes, and
actions throughout the period discussed here a preliminary discussion
of it renders material later in this chapter more readily intelligible and
eliminates repetitious commentary.
At the outset it can be said that throughout the period 15 5 2—664 BC,
there was no basic change in the fundamentals of the Egyptian
world-view, although there were important shifts of emphasis, particu-
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larly in the Third Intermediate Period. Moreover, the world-view

described below was shared by all strata of society, albeit with inevitable
variations in sophistication.
Several major factors contributed to the shaping, sustaining, and
social pervasiveness of the Egyptian world-view. Tradition was an
extremely important one. New Kingdom and later Egypt enjoyed an
unbroken linguistic and cultural unity with its past, accessible through
rich and intelligible textual and iconographic records, and the world-
view of earlier periods continued to be a most potent model for
contemporary thought and action. Its potency derived from a charac-
teristic Egyptian religious belief. Through both their ritual and social
activity men had a vital role to play in ensuring the continuity and
survival of an ideal universal order — ma'at (p. 196) — established by a
creator god aeons earlier. Conformity to earlier patterns of political and
religious life was therefore encouraged, and innovations — if they were
to be successful — had to adapt but not radically alter the supernaturally
sanctioned formal structure.
The influence of the earlier world-view was then not dependent solely
on an unconscious process of cultural transmission. Rather, ancient
precepts and beliefs were deliberately sought out as guides for current
policies and behaviour, while increasingly in the Third Intermediate
Period there were also copies and adaptations of earlier attempts at
rendering the Egyptian world-view in visual terms — in painting, reliefs,
statuary and even architecture. Archaism was partly a style, partly
manipulative propaganda; but it was also a process of ritual and
religious significance. When there were significant changes in historical
circumstances their effect was to reinforce the traditional world-view;
partly this was due to the quality of these changes (pp. 194-6), but
also to the inherent flexibility of the world-view and the supernatural
strength it embodied. By repeating ancient formulations of the early
world-view, reviving the names of famous kings and individuals and
by copying the style and content of earlier art-forms, the Egyptians
believed they created channels along which the supernatural potency
of the past flowed into the present ensuring the success of the attitudes
being emulated.
Particularly important for the sustaining of a similar world-view over
time were basic continuities in the natural and human environment.
There was no major climatic change, although periodic changes in the
volume of the annual inundation had economic repercussions. The floral
and faunal repertoire remained essentially unchanged throughout the
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period except for the introduction of the horse from Asia (c. 1600 BC),
an innovation which enhanced both warfare and communications
(giving rise to chariotry and, perhaps as early as 930 BC, cavalry).
The size, density and ethnolinguistic homogeneity of the population
was another important factor. No doubt the absolute population size
fluctuated as it did in mediaeval and recent times, but its general
parameters are indicated by estimates of a population of 2900000 to
4 5 00 000 for the late New Kingdom and by explicit references to a figure
of 7000000 to 7500000 for Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. These last
two figures are unlikely to have been reached in pre-Hellenistic times.
Assuming that some 6000000 arouras (about 1500000 hectares) were
cultivated in pre-Hellenistic times, the average density was fairly high,
and, in fact, there was a higher density in the more fertile and
'urbanized' regions (p. 213). Over the entire 1200 years substantial
groups of foreigners were absorbed, but they never appeared in
overwhelming numbers, and despite the 'official' prominence of
Aramaic under the Persians, the Egyptian language and its characteristic
writing systems survived far beyond the period discussed here.
Essentially, then, the population provided a strong and concentrated
resource base, without being so large as to create administrative and
social problems unprecedented in earlier times. Largely sedentary and
agricultural, the population remained amenable to centralized control,
and its density created a favourable environment for the communication
of uniform ideas and attitudes, both geographically and across socio-
economic divisions. It was characterized by a set of social interactions
and conflicts similar to those of earlier periods and therefore requiring
no basic change in attitudes or governmental policies.
The governmental system enjoyed great authority because of its
antiquity and supernatural implications. It was adequate to meet the
perennial social and economic needs of the population and it was adept
at reinforcing and enhancing its own political power. The form of this
government was a unique, quasi-divine kingship, the desirability of
which to the Egyptians is evident from its perpetuation throughout the
period and later. It is true that its partial disintegration in the Third
Intermediate Period (pp. 2 32fT.) led to a shift of emphasis, then and
in the Late Period, whereby the personal political initiative of the king
was minimized in the monumental record (p. 186) and his role as an
'instrument' of the gods emphasized (Otto 1954); but the king
remained potentially and usually in reality the most powerful figure in
government. Strong centralization, combined with a comprehensive
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concept of government's functions, encouraged the maintenance of a

departmentalized and hierarchical structure.
The functions of government, as conceived by the Egyptians, are
identified explicitly in various texts and implicitly by actual policies.
Always vigorously stressed was a religious function reflecting the
supernatural basis of the governmental system, the provision of ritual
attention and economic benefits to the kings' 'fathers, all the gods, in
the desire to placate them by doing that which their kas [spirits] love,
so that they may protect [Egypt]' (Bennett 1939).
Externally the government was expected to maintain Egypt's terri-
torial integrity and, under the auspices of the gods, extend its frontiers.
Internally, its functions were more varied. These included maintaining
and enhancing the agricultural economy upon which depended Egypt's
ability to produce the surplus needed to support the governmental
superstructure. They also included the development and maintenance
of the regulating and arbitrating mechanisms that would control the
entropy that threatens any society.
The imperative to create civic and individual security led to a
continuous stress upon the necessity for efficient, impartial and incor-
ruptible administration. These maxims recur throughout the period, but
are most concisely summarized in the formulaic verbal instructions
issued by the kings in the New Kingdom during the installation of their
viziers (p. 208). 'Law' and the 'regulations' must be adhered to
throughout the bureaucracy, 'for what is required is the doing of justice
by the fiat of the vizier... [for] he has been its rightful guardian since
[the time of the creator] God' (Faulkner 195 5). The persistence of this
ideal as an integral element of the Egyptian world-view is more
important than the frequent trangressions against it, for it reflects that
national consensus without which no system of government can long
exist. We cannot pose as an absolute the question as to 'whether these
ideals were obligations or facade' (Helck 1958, p. 543) and suggest a
dichotomy between ideal and actual motives in the activities of
government, for motivation was complex, involving both self-interest
and altruism.
The principal divisions of the society whose world-view we are
discussing were the vertical ones of the occupations — this form of social
classification was a bureaucratic commonplace — and, cutting across
these horizontally, broad socio-economic divisions. The persistence and
nature of the chief activities of the population can be appreciated by
comparing those listed in a rental record of 1143 BC (the Wilbour
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T A B L E 3.2 Small-scale farm-holders recorded in the Wilbour Papyrus (see

pp. 227-8 and Helck (1961, p. 260))

Plot size in Stable-

aroura Priests, % Citizenesses, % Soldiers, % masters, % Herdsmen, %

2 2.91 2.63 — — —
3 16.50 23.16 95.22 2.89 —
5 62.14 59-47 5.08 92.15 80.67
IO 17.48 10.55 1.69 3-94 13-45
2O 0.97 4.21 — 1.05 5.88
Total each
occupation 105 190 256 119 581

Papyrus) with those enumerated by the historian Herodotus some

700 years later. The earlier document reveals a typical cross-section of
contemporary society, a small group of high-ranking and wealthy
officials and a much larger group of scribes (i.e. bureaucrats), priests,
soldiers (military colonists) stable-masters (concerned with chariotry
horses), 'citizenesses', cultivators and herdsmen. Artisans were another
important group, not frequent in this particular document because their
income came not directly from land but as payment for their products
or as government rations. Later, Herodotus (11. 164) describes the
principal occupations as those of ' priests, warriors, cowherds, swine-
herds, tradesmen, interpreters and pilots'; the obvious omission here
is that of ' cultivators'.
The Wilbour Papyrus provides rare specific evidence on the wide
range of economic resources to be found in Egyptian society (table 3.2),
while broader socio-economic divisions are strongly reflected in
textual and archaeological data (fig. 3.1). The elite - the royal dynasty
in its fullest sense (pp. 207—9) anc^ t n e high-ranking officials of
government - enjoyed high status, substantial economic benefits and
considerable potential for significant activity within the confines of the
traditional political system. Of lesser status and economic importance
(except in periods of political fragmentation) were the provincial
nobilities, also based upon government service but perhaps more secure
in the hereditary possession of their offices. A group of lesser bureaucrats,
priests, military officers, wealthy farmers and artisans probably had a
distinct enough intermediate socio-economic position to be identified
as a 'middle class', while the 'lower class', bv far the largest segment
of the population, had great diversity of occupation (soldiers, minor
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10 20 m

4 n
|
1

entrance
—3- 1
1 h r
8
> . jlr ..
Main
9 ii 13 r s e r v "ce C )

o
entrance
12 • • " • 4 entran
1 HM
• r

It
_2
14
. 1
1 y Earlier1
Entrance »
17

• •
r d 22

-f
24
— - •

Fig. 3.1 Plans of a nobleman's villa at Tell el-Amarna and of an artisan's house at
Deir el-Medineh. Both New Kingdom.
1 Chariot house 13 Ante (sic)
2 Gatekeeper 14 West Loggia
3 Servants' quarters 15 Central room
4 The chapel 16 Store
; Chapel garden 17 Kitchen court
6 Altars 18 Master's bedroom
7 Flower bed 19 Vestibule
8 Later porch 20 Guest's room
9 Earlier porch 21 Anointing room
10 Vestibule 22 Inner sitting room
11 Store 23 Ante
12 North Loggia 24 Magazines

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officials and priests, tenant-farmers, peasants of virtually serf status and

slaves), and also of income and quality of subsistence.
The political influence of the middle and lower classes was extremely
limited, and was most evident in times of general disorder and disunity.
Nevertheless, their indirect political significance was considerable. The
elite, while exploitative, were conscious of the necessity of providing
certain basic services and recognizing particular rights in order to ensure
social stability. The gods explicitly sanctioned attention to the problems
of the less fortunate, and government was aware of the importance of
both the appearance and reality of correct behaviour. 'As for a
magistrate who judges in public', the Instructions to the Vizier (p. 191)
noted, 'wind and water make report of all that he does.' (Faulkner 195 5.)
Periodic reforms of abuses are well documented, and officials'
biographies frequently refer to their aid to the disadvantaged. Indeed,
the severe and socially disturbing problems of the Third Intermediate
Period appear to have accentuated this aspect of the Egyptian world-
view. Thereafter officials felt that the ethical performance of their duties
had an intrinsic value, separate from the utilitarian one of making them
acceptable to the gods of the afterlife.
Another important continuity was the Egyptian attitude to foreigners.
By the New Kingdom centuries of successful military and quasi-military
commercial activities in neighbouring regions had established an
Egyptian self-image as a culturally superior group whose foreign
activities were encouraged by their gods. Despite the shock of the
Hyksos invasion (see chapter 2), this image was reinforced by the
general success of New Kingdom expansionist policies and the failure
of any comparably strong political unit to develop in immediately
adjacent areas (except, later, to the south, in Kush). Subsequently, this
concept of the nature of the appropriate relationship between Egypt and
foreign states had to be adjusted in the face of serious vicissitudes, but
it was done without changing its fundamental nature. The Libyans and
Kushites who invaded and infiltrated Egypt at various times from the
later New Kingdom on were partially and increasingly acculturated, and
while conflict later on with' superpowers' evidently more powerful than
Egypt (Assyria, Babylonia and Persia) was psychologically disturbing,
several periods of foreign occupation did not in fact substantially alter
the traditional governmental and social structure or its supporting
religious ideology. A potent factor in sustaining the sense of Egyptian
superiority was its supernatural validity, which made reverses abroad,
however serious, mere incidents in a cosmic drama in which Egypt and
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its gods would ultimately triumph. Mythic and real struggles were
inextricably fused; the state, personified by the king, ritually aided the
gods in their implicitly always successful struggle against supernatural
enemies and disorder, while the gods promised the state ultimate victory
over its foreign enemies, who were themselves part of that threatening
chaos.
It has been argued that changes in internal and external historical
circumstances were so great that by the Late Period there was a
fundamental change in the Egyptian world-view. In this interpretation
Late Period Egypt was afflicted by a 'Janusgesicht' (Janus head)
(Kienitz 1967), a national schizophrenia characteristic of a culture in a
state of advanced decay. In this view, Archaism reflected a deliberate
effort to expunge the memories of the Third Intermediate Period;
society was static and rigid; and extreme tension was generated by the
contrast between traditional concepts of foreign relations and the
reverses suffered by Egypt abroad. Moreover, traditional, often mean-
ingless religious beliefs and practices were out of keeping with a strong,
if largely subterranean, belief in ethically-based behaviour. At least
partially, 'this culture was dying away from within' (Otto 1951).
The present writer, however, sees the Third Intermediate and Late
Periods as representing complex and subtle responses by a flexible
political and ideological system to greatly changed circumstances, but
not a fundamental reordering or internal disintegration. Egypt did not
need to, and apparently did not, perceive itself as in decline; despite
periods of foreign occupation, it remained relatively prosperous for
most of the Late Period and was often successful in its foreign-policy
aims. It did finally collapse before the innovative military machine of
the Macedonians (323 BC), but so did the other Near Eastern powers.
And if national resistance to the Macedonian Ptolemies was less
successful than that against the Persians (343 BC), this was partly due
to the differing attitudes of the new conquerors, which were more in
keeping with the traditional Egyptian world-view. The Ptolemies
treated Egypt as their territorial centre, not as a province; they exploited
traditional religious beliefs to their own advantage and encouraged an
at least partially successful Egypto-Greek symbiosis which eased the
problems of internal cultural heterogeneity.
The social pervasiveness of the Egyptian world-view — allowing for
the varying degrees of sophistication to be expected in a social spectrum
ranging from a literate court and bureaucracy to a mass of illiterate
peasants of narrow horizons — was due to several factors. The state itself

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encouraged the acceptance of a world-view in which the existing

political system had an integral position and the world-view of the elite
maintained a sustaining contact with the attitudes and needs of Egyptian
society as a whole. Another important mediating agency was the middle
class, to some degree socially mobile and linked to both the elite and
the lower classes. Another was the occupational categories, which
formed important chains of contact and communication running
through all three classes.
Also significant was the deep involvement of government and all
segments of the population in agricultural life and in the values,
priorities and religious activities naturally associated with it. Most
administrative activity was concerned with enhancing and exploiting
the agricultural economy; much state and private religious activity was
directed towards ensuring agricultural fertility; and land and its
products were the chief sources of wealth and status. The elite owned
substantial estates and expressed a strong and genuine appreciation of
the amenities of rural life, while urbanism never became strong endugh
to generate a clear dichotomy between city and rural life.
Finally, a potent source of the world-view's tenacity and pervasiveness
was the religious system and its characteristic myths and rituals, which
were shared by all classes of society. Modern scholarly reaction to the
rich complexities of Egyptian religion is diverse. It has been variously
described as ' vast accumulations of mythological rubbish' (Gardiner
1961) and as 'the ever growing and creative thought of an intelligent
polytheism' susceptible to a' subtle and profound syncretism' (Redford
1976). The latter attitude is more historically accurate, recognizing the
utility and flexibility of the system. Certainly the course of Egyptian
history cannot be understood without continual reference to the
intricate interrelations between religious and secular life.
Historically of great importance was the concept of mdat —
the appropriate arrangement of the universe and of human affairs - an
effort to summarize the Egyptian world-view in coherent, mythic form.
Centuries old by the time of the New Kingdom, the concept of ma'at
was a crystallization of a myriad of religious and secular ideas, and its
continuity depended upon their continuity; nevertheless, its very
existence as a formalized statement of Egyptian beliefs helped to
perpetuate the ideas and attitudes upon which it was based.
The clearest expression of the significance of ma'at is found in several
creation myths. The identity of the creator god and the mechanism of
creation vary (compare the masturbation of Atum with the intellectual
and emotional acts of Ptah), but the basic theme is identical: a unique
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creator god emerges from primeval chaos, sets the creative process in
operation by creating the other gods, fashions the universe with those
astronomical and seasonal rhythms and geographic circumstances
characteristic of the Egyptian environment and, finally, establishes the
bases of social life and technological organization as understood by the
Egyptians.
(Thus justice was given to) him who does what is liked (and injustice to) him
who does what is disliked. Thus life was given to him who has peace and death
was given to him who has sin. Thus were made all work and all crafts, the
movement of the legs, and the activity of every member - [Ptah] had formed
the gods, he had made cities, he had founded nomes [provinces], he had put
the gods in their shrines... . (Wilson 1969, p. 5.)
The world-view expressed through the myths was not complacent
and self-satisfied. The Egyptians had a keen sense of the tension and
conflicts which threatened political and social stability and of vicissitudes
in the natural environment which could create acute personal or
national distress. These fears were extended into the supernatural world,
being embodied in a number of ambiguous or clearly malevolent figures
and most specifically in Seth, a powerful god associated with disorder,
sterility, sexual aberration, the desert and thunder, and the Egyptians
felt themselves deeply involved in the continuous efforts of the gods
to stave off a threatening chaos. Nevertheless, the forces of disorder
were felt to be under the control of the creator god; ' Reharakte (king
of the gods) says: "Let Seth. . .be given to me (as son). And he shall
speak out of the sky, and men shall be afraid of him."' (Wilson 1969,
p. 17.)
There were many gods with different personalities and functions, each
having one or more main cult centres. This regional diversity was
further complicated in that some, probably many, communities had
distinctive pantheons dominated by a local form of the chief regional
god but incorporating others selected by criteria which varied according
to the nature of the community. Despite this variety, however, the
various personalities and functions of individual gods interlocked to
form the very substance of the universe, while theological synthesis,
mythic marriages and other relationships created many additional links
amongst them. Besides the gods, certain genii and spirits and the dead
formed other significant supernatural communities, but the ritual needs
of all three groups were very similar, creating great uniformity in both
cult activity and in the structures which were the scenes of this activity.
All classes of supernatural beings were potent, even the dead, to
whom letters were sometimes addressed accusing them of harming the

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Fig. 5.2 Sectional view of a typical New Kingdom temple. Its form reflects the processional character of the rituals followed, while its
rich relief decoration moved from the 'public' acts of the reigning king (e.g. victory in battle, prowess in the hunt) on the pylons and sometimes
in the first columned hall, to a depiction of the king's intimate relations with the gods and of his performance of the cult.

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

living, or appealing to them to bring good fortune. The gods, however,

were the most powerful figures and communication with them was of
greatest concern. Their desires and wishes might be indirectly expressed,
as when a low Nile or a major political disturbance implied divine anger,
but they were frequently sought out explicitly by means of an oracle,
a practice first seen in the New Kingdom and persisting thereafter.
Oracles were employed at high levels of government in the New
Kingdom to ratify important decisions, but later, as royal authority
lessened, they were resorted to for relatively minor administrative and
judicial decisions. Government appeals to the oracle were merged with
a more generated function of oracles which affected all levels of
society. Oracles, which were always delivered by a specific god but
variously in his ' national' or local form, were a source of reassurance
and guidance for individuals and an important social mechanism easing
the tensions and conflicts inherent in closely-knit and largely self-
regulating town and village communities. The local kenbet-councils
(p. 214) were clearly unable or unwilling to solve many disputes
involving ownership or rights and cases of theft or other crimes, and
these were therefore submitted to a god as a neutral arbitrator of
unimpeachable authority. While some manipulation was involved, there
is good evidence that the process was carried out in good faith under
the influence of'suggestion and autosuggestion' (fig. 3.3) (Cerny 1957,
P-76).
Myths provide us important insights to the world-view, but ritual
and not myth or theology dominated Egyptian religious life. The
religious experiences and perceptions of the individual were insignificant
compared to the ritual activity of the community which, through cult
and festival, hoped to effect 'the renewal and rejuvenation of the life
of the cosmos, of the community and the individual' (Bleeker 1967,
p. 22). Primary foci for the rites were of course the temples, which ranged
from the great national shrines to hundreds of smaller, local ones and
which followed a uniform plan and decorative system (fig. 3.2).
Temples had a cosmological symbolism: each represented a universe,
the roof being the sky and the sanctuary the horizon where the sun rose
and set, symbolizing an eternal cycle or renewal, decline and rebirth in
the universe. At least once the royal city itself became subsumed into
this concept; Tell el-Amarna (p. 220) was conceived of as set totally
within a natural temple, defined by the real sky and horizons of the
valley. In both the houses of the nobility and of the middle and lower
classes there was considerable domestic cult activity directed towards
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O
o

Fig. 3.3 An oracle is sought from a New Kingdom local god, the deified King Amenhotep I, whose image has just been carried on a litter out of its temple
(right). The god's High Priest, Amenmose, stands before the litter holding an incense burner and wearing a leopard skin, and asks the god to judge which of two
men (bowing and partially obliterated behind the high priest) is 'right' in some unspecified dispute. The god explicitly finds one of the men 'right', probably by
'forcing' his bearers to approach the favoured disputant. (See Cerny 1962, pp. 42-; and fig. 9.)

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

the same gods, while the cemeteries, both royal and non-royal, were
other centres of fundamentally similar rituals.
Turning to the main political and economic effects of the religious
system, we note first that while it contributed to the dominant position
of the king, it also subtly qualified his apparently absolute power.
Dogmatically, the survival of the kingship was vital; the formal
relationship between Egypt and its gods, which symbolized its integral
position within a divinely-created universal order, depended upon the
king, who was the chief channel of divine power and guidance. To
maintain the order established by the gods the king was given supreme
political authbrity, while he sustained a fruitful reciprocal relationship
between men and gods through his unique ritual role. All the priests
serving the myriad cults were merely his delegates, temple iconography
depicting only the king performing the ritual. Yet the king's dogmatic
position was not unambiguous. He enjoyed the powers of and reverence
due to the gods, but he was implicitly and sometimes explicitly
subordinate to them; even the powerful kings of the New Kingdom
sometimes sought 'a command. . .from the great throne [of a god], an
oracle of the god himself (Breasted 1906, II s. 285). Moreover, kings did
not have the specific wonder-working powers of the gods. The royal
temple built by each king was for his funerary cult for, after death, kings
no longer remained 'on earth' but, like the gods, dwelt in some celestial
realm.
This dogmatic ambiguity had its effects in the political sphere. The
king's ritual and dogmatic position enhanced his political authority and
motivation. The altruistic performance of his duties was identical with
his self-interest in maintaining his political supremacy and that of his
dynasty. Yet the existence of ma'at set up a kind of formal standard
against which the king's ability, and the degree of divine approval he
enjoyed, could be measured. Weakness, inability or inefficiency on the
part of the king could create persistent maladministration in Egypt or
losses abroad, all evidence of the disintegration of ma'at. That such an
attitude was inherent in Egyptian thought is clearly revealed in the
Demotic Chronicle (Ptolemaic period), which attributes the fall of
several Late Period kings to their failure to satisfy the gods, and is seen
earlier in the destruction of monuments that had been set up by certain
kings later deemed offensive to ma'at and in the common vernacular
identification of Akhenaten (in the Nineteenth Dynasty) as ' the Enemy'.
Every Egyptian god was supplied with a temple to house his
cult-image, a staff of priests and servants, and estates and other gifts
to support his establishment. The chief gods (and amongst these Amen,

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

in various forms, was the most important in the New Kingdom and
held a more qualified dominance for the remainder of the period) had
special functions and status, reflected in the size and elaboration of their
temples, the great number and variety of their personnel, and their
extensive and diverse possessions (lands, mines, quarries, ships, and
even villages and towns). In about 115 3 BC the temples as a whole owned
about one-third of Egypt's cultivable land and about one-fifth of its
inhabitants, although, on the broader time-scale, the size of the temple
holdings doubtless fluctuated considerably.
However, while the high priests of the main cults, and especially the
High Priest of Amen of Thebes, were undoubtedly high-ranking and
influential figures, we must not exaggerate their political importance.
Theologically, they were subordinate to the king, high priest of all the
gods, and the nature of the religious system was such that the priests
(literally,' the god's servants') could undertake no politically disturbing
theological initiative; influential 'prophets', in the Hebrew sense,-were
unknown. All religious appointments and promotions were theoretically
subject to royal approval and, while hereditary rights to certain
positions did becomefirmlyestablished, so did they in all other branches
of government as well. The administration of religious establishments
was essentially part of the civil government, and although the temples
were income-generating (through renting land and trading), the col-
lection and control of this income appears to have been, at least partially,
subject to the civil government. Substantial amounts of royal income,
in the form of booty, land and other gifts, were transferred to the
temples, but royal relatives and loyal officials were also appointed to
many of the resulting religious sinecures. Most significantly of all, the
temple establishments had neither the necessity nor the occasion of
developing substantial military or police powers, coercive resources
which were intimately linked to political power in ancient Egypt.
Temple establishments were, therefore, on the whole more subject to
political manipulation and exploitation, rather than initiators of such
activity.

INTERNAL HISTORY

The period between 1552 and 664 BC is conventionally divided into two
main phases, the New Kingdom (15 5 2-1069 BC) a n ^ t n e Third
Intermediate Period (1069-664 BC). The New Kingdom was a period
of extraordinary Egyptian expansion abroad and of strong centralization
and considerable stability internally. During the Third Intermediate
Period Egypt's foreign contacts contracted sharply and foreign policy

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

was with rare exceptions defensive and unaggressive until the Twenty-
fifth Dynasty (747—656 BC). These characteristics of Third Intermediate
Period foreign relations directly reflect a high degree of internal
decentralization and indeed at times disintegration of government,
breaking out sporadically into civil war.
Despite their strong differences the two periods are of course
intimately related; the Third Intermediate Period was the direct result
of political, social and economic processes which came into being in
the New Kingdom. The exact natures and interactions of these
processes are — and will long remain - matters of debate; but a descrip-
tion and analysis of them, however qualified, must be the substance
of any historical discussion of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate
Period. The details of Egyptian relations with other parts of the ancient
world are not of prime interest in this book.1
In the following sections, emphasis will be placed upon the internal
effects of foreign affairs; variations in the formal structure and in the
tone and character of government, and the political implications of these
variations; the interplay of competition and conflict within the political
system; and the effect of all these factors upon the relations between
government and governed and upon the social and economic condition
of the population as a whole.

T H E N E W K I N G D O M (1552—1069 B C)

For the New Kingdom especially a brief description of the general

pattern of Egypt's foreign affairs and certain key events within them
is essential for the understanding of internal history. During this
period Egypt maintained control over extensive foreign conquests and
sustained its Levantine position successfully against the pressure of the
other two dominant powers in the region, the Mittanians and their
successors, the Hittites. Extensive political—commercial contacts were
developed with a number of other states and groups in the Aegean, the
Near East and East Africa. During the reign of Ramesses III, in the
twelfth century BC, two critical events occurred: the Asiatic conquests
were apparently lost and the political and ethnic structure of Syria,
Palestine and Anatolia was drastically altered as the result of a
mysterious population movement, that of the 'Sea-Peoples', who
surged along the eastern Mediterranean and had to be repulsed at the
seaward and eastern frontiers of Egypt itself. At the same time, perhaps
1
For the latter, reference should be made to the Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd ed, vol. 11, and
to Kitchen's Tie Third Intermediate Period in Egypt.
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not coincidentally, Libyan pressure, which had been building up for

forty years, reached a climax in two abortive invasions of the western
Delta.
To a degree, these developments were uncontrollable; neither the
Hittites nor any other state in the region had been able to resist the
'Sea-Peoples', while the Libyans had never before demonstrated the
strength they showed from the reign of Ramesses II onward. But it is
significant that Egyptian reaction was comparatively weak. After the
time of Ramesses II Egypt was unable to regain its position in the
Levant, now broken up into a number of comparatively small kingdoms
with no dominant 'great power'; it could not prevent massive and
continuing Libyan infiltration; and, only about eighty years after
Ramesses Ill's death, Egypt also lost its African conquests after a
struggle that was more of a civil war than a foreign conflict. Clearly
the reverses of the late New Kingdom must have had serious internal
repercussions, some of which will be discussed below; but are they
sufficient in themselves to account for the deteriorating situation in
foreign affairs, let alone the internal political problems of the Third
Intermediate Period that followed?

The structure of government

To attempt to answer that question we must turn to the internal history
of the New Kingdom, and in particular to an important historical
problem that is epitomized in two quotations. The first is of a type
repeated continuously in royal texts: the god Amen declares to King
Tuthmosis III ' I cause your victories to circulate in all lands. The
gleaming [serpent], she who is upon my brow, is your servant, [so that]
there shall arise none rebellious to you as far as that which heaven
encircles.' (Wilson 1969, p. 374.) The second is an extremely rare type:
Piankh, High Priest of Amen and generalissimo of southern Egypt —
hence one who owed his position theoretically to royal appointment
and favour — writes contemptuously of Ramesses XI in a letter: ' Of
whom is Pharaoh superior still?' (Wente 1967, p. 53.) This apparent
contradiction cannot be interpreted too arbitrarily. It is only partly a
matter of chronology, for although Piankh's question reflects a real
decline in royal power and authority towards the end of the New
Kingdom, the supremacy of the king was still formally stated in the
monumental record. It is therefore also a problem of sources, for the
paucity of those letters, memoranda and private reports against which
we can check the validity of the picture of royal power presented in
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the monumental texts makes it extremely difficult at any time to assess

the degree to which the king's political independence was circumscribed
by the system of which he was part.
Piankh's attitude, although extreme as a result of specific historical
circumstances, reflected a fundamental characteristic of the political
system. An inherent problem of a comparatively highly centralized
system based on a single individual, the king, is that whatever the king's
theoretical powers may be, his political effectiveness depends upon the
support and co-operation of others. Inevitably they will attempt to
exploit this situation to their own advantage. Beyond this particular
problem is a more general one, the development of a concentration of
power elsewhere within the system which will create the potential for
an individual or group to usurp important functions nominally reserved
for the king and his chief executive officials, and perhaps to replace the
latter and even usurp the kingship.
In general the reality of royal power through most of the New
Kingdom seems confirmed by the admittedly largely inferential evi-
dence. This includes the explicitly acknowledged role of the king in
administrative and military affairs, the long-sustained and successful
policy of Egyptian expansion, the executive and economic strength
indicated by the extensive temple-building programmes undertaken by
most of the kings, and the development of a luxuriant mythology
concerning the quasi-divine aspects of the kingship. More specific
events are also revealing, particularly those connected with Akhenaten
(pp. 219—22). A significant but gradual change in the nature and
strength of royal power seems to become evident first in the late
Nineteenth Dynasty and increasingly in the Twentieth. Prior to this
time, favourable circumstances abroad, the structure of the political
system itself and the supervisory and manipulative abilities of the kings
appear to have rendered the royal power, so frequently celebrated in
the monumental record, a reality.
Throughout the New Kingdom, the Levant and north-east Africa
were the foreign areas of greatest Egyptian interest. Egypt had already
been active in these income-producing regions for one and a half
millennia, and the traditional stimuli to renewed contact and expansion
were reinforced in the early Eighteenth Dynasty by the presence in both
regions of powerful forces which had been sources of great humiliation
and danger to Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period (see chapter 2).
The effect of foreign affairs was certainly significant internally. The
expulsion of the Hyksos and of the Kushites in c. 1555—1540 BC (see
chapter 2), the expansion, which was a logistical necessity to prevent

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

further invasion, and the conflict which this expansion generated with
Mittanians and the Hittites, meant that Egypt was on a permanent
war-footing. The early Eighteenth Dynasty kings were true war-leaders,
directing and often personally participating in major campaigns, estab-
lishing a tradition that continued to be an ideologically potent
convention and often a reality for the rest of the New Kingdom.
However, the kings were not preoccupied with campaigning and in fact
devoted most of their reigns to internal affairs. Apart from those of the
atypical Tuthmosis III, campaigns were usually restricted to the early
years of each reign, partly perhaps because actual or incipient revolts
tended to occur at a reign-change, but probably also to demonstrate the
military abilities of the new king and the divine approval he enjoyed.
These periodic campaigns, the need to control the conquered lands
and the necessity for rapid military action in external emergencies, led
to the development of a permanent, professional army. Its profession-
alism lay in a permanent military administration, headed by a 'great
army general', standing garrisons abroad and in Egypt, and a continuous
levying and training programme which created a large, experienced
reserve which could be rapidly mobilized. In addition, many veterans
were settled on farms in Egypt which were inherited by their families
so long as the male descendants remained available for military training
and service. The army was professional also in its organization, being
divided up into various units, primarily infantry and chariotry but also
more specialized units, each with its own hierarchy of officers. There
was thus created a most significant element in the political structure,
highly organized and with a potential for great coercive force, which
was also thoroughly integrated into the fabric of society because of its
dependence on military colonists and general levies. Its functional and
ideological links with the kingship were strong, and were enhanced by
royal policies described below.
Expansion and conquest also augmented royal income and increased
the manipulative capabilities of the kings. To the traditional income
from taxes, the personal possessions of the dynasty, and a monopolistic
position in foreign trade were now added sporadic but often large
amounts of booty, regularly delivered foreign tribute, and expanded,
quasi-political trading opportunities. As war-leader and sole delegate
of the gods, the king naturally received much of this additional income
himself, and had firm control over the distribution of the remainder.
He was able to emphasize the status of the royal family by the scale and
embellishments of its palaces and estates, demonstrate his ideological

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authority by lavishly endowing the major temples and reinforce this

political power by judiciously rewarding loyal bureaucrats and
officers.
The exigencies of foreign affairs and the military experiences of the
kings and of many important officials also strongly affected the structure
of government. This was based on a Middle Kingdom prototype and,
like it, responded efficiently to certain perennial social and economic
needs of the population, but the New Kingdom structure was less
complex and thus more rapidly responsive to royal command, mobil-
ization and the need for creating war-materials and supplies. From the
point of view of internal politics, the most interesting aspect of
government is that its very structure reinforced the dominant position
of the kings and enhanced their manipulative abilities, but at the same
time presented them with serious supervisory problems and created the
potential for other competitive and divisive power centres to develop.
The governmental structure is well documented and is summarized
on fig. 3.4. This schematic version of course ignores some known
changes in administrative organization and does not reflect the fluctu-
ations of power throughout the system which are, in any case, rarely
recorded explicitly in the textual record. But its general outline seems
to be valid for the entire New Kingdom. The structure was shaped to
a large degree by functional efficiency and geographical circumstances,
but these contributed also to royal supremacy, as did a sometimes clearly
evidenced manipulation of the system. Thus government was broken
into three major units, of which two, internal government and the
administration of the conquests, make sense functionally; the third, the
dynasty proper, on the other hand had a very limited political role. While
it undoubtedly must have been a large and complex group, most of its
members were excluded from major political or military office and
normally also from the succession, unless they belonged to a certain
segment of the direct line. This effectively restrained any individual who
might have had some not too remote claim to the supernatural authority
emanating from the kingship. Only those dynasty members with a
vested interest in maintaining loyalty to the reigning king received
important posts: the crown prince — the designated heir — was fre-
quently 'great army general', controlling the military in the king's
name; and the king's chief wife, the 'great royal wife' (or, alternatively,
her eldest daughter) was appointed 'God's wife of Amen'. This mytho-
logically justifiable role for the chief queen (the New Kingdom kings
believed that their mothers had been impregnated by Amen) also

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 KING

I
INTERNAL GOVERNMENT GOVERNMENT OF CONQUESTS

ARMY, MARINE RELIGIOUS GOVERNMENT CIVIL GOVERNMENT

I GOVERNOR OF SOUTHERN LANDS.

CROWN PRINCE
- COMMANDER IN CHIEF OVERSEER OF PROPHETS KING'S SON OFKUSH
S,nSWtpy!J
OF •: ALL THE GODS) GOVERNORS OF (imy-r IJJIWC riywt. »-niw Ki)
OF UPPER AND LOWER EQYPT c NORTHERN LANDS
(imy-r hiswt mhywt nb)
NORTHERN SOUTHERN
nw SmjwMhw)
VIZIER VIZIER
HELD AT VARIOUS TIMES W) (,3rysm3w)
OTHER RELATIVES BY VIZIER, (tity), I
CHANCELLOR b CHIEF STEWARDb
HIGH PRIEST OF AMEN, VASSAL BATTALION DEPUTY DEPUTY BATTALION
imy-r sdiwty) ;imy-r pr wr
OVERSEERS [2) KINGS COMMANDERS OF OF COMMANDER
{hm ntr rpy n Imn)
CHIEF DEPUTY CHIEF DEPUTY <hry pdt) WAWAT KUSH OF KUSH
OF THE
(idnw n Wjwjt) (idnw n Ks) fhry pdr n Ks)
TREASURY
OF THE OF THE (imy-r pi hd)
CHAMBERLAIN
NORTHERN SOUTHERN
CORPS CORPS
OVERSEER
OF THE
GRANARIES
OF UPPER
GENERAL OFFICERS AND LOWER
EQYPT
BUREAUCRACY (imy-r snwt n
SmjwMhw

OVERSEER MAYORS (hjty- c ) CHIEFS (wr}

OF INDIGENOUS
OF EGYPTIAN
GROUPS
CENTRES
E HIGH PRIEST HIGH PRIESTS OF
OTHER GODS

BUREAUCRACY,JUDICIARY, POLICE
BUREAUCRACY

COUNCILS
(knbt)
TOWN AND VILLAGE GARRISONS
LEVIES MILITARY (INTERNAL)
VILLAGES

Fig. 3.4 Schematic outline of the developed structure of government in the New Kingdom. The fragility of much of the evidence on which this diagram
is based must be emphasized, as must its inability adequately to illustrate significant changes in the structure (for some indication of these, see notes b and
c). Nevertheless, the writer believes that the diagram gives a reasonable approximation of the divisions of functions and powers within New Kingdom government.
(a) On the sometimes ambiguous terms used to designate the crown prince, see Kitchen (1972).
(b) On the rise of the 'chief steward* at the expense of the 'chamberlain', see Helck (1958, pp. 80-2).
(c) Held at various times by the vizier, the High Priest of Amen (frequently) and others.
(d) On the office of'high taxing master', the importance of which is still in dispute and which is as yet dated no earlier than Akhenaten, see especially Gardiner
(1948, pp. 10, 150, 165, 206), Helck (1958, pp. 143-5) an<i Seele (1959, p. 9).

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

brought a substantial portion of Amen's temporal possessions under

direct royal control.
Since the king normally spent most of his reign in Egypt, the
government of the conquered lands was internally significant to the
degree that it might provide a power-base for an individual or group
who could then usurp royal functions and perhaps the throne itself. In
fact, the richest and politically most sophisticated of the conquests, the
'North lands' along the Mediterranean coast of Asia (fig. 3.5), were
unlikely to do so. They were, for topographical and administrative
reasons, divided ultimately into three provinces, each with its own
governor, usually an Egyptian but sometimes an Asiatic. These
governors in practice shared political power with a number of vassal
kings and were not militarily strong. The garrisons of Egyptian (and
Kushite) troops in the ' Northlands' were small, scattered and under the
direct control of several 'battalion-commanders' and not of the
governors. For perennial, but small-scale, police and military activities
considerable use was made of the forces of the local city states and, in
major campaigns, the large armies sent from Egypt were under the
command of the king or the 'great army general'. The 'Southlands'
(Wawat and Kush), with their Nubian population, were potentially
much more significant. The region was ruled by a single governor, who
shared no important administrative power with the local chieftains; its
military forces were centralized under a single 'battalion-commander';
and it had a geographical unity combined with easy and rapid access
to Egypt proper. The power of the Viceroy of Kush was to be important
internally at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty.
The internal government of Egypt was divided for functional
reasons, into four major units (fig. 3.4) and these were sometimes
further divided geographically, in the interests of efficiency and perhaps
also of the stability of royal power. Centralized control was maintained
by means of the small group of powerful officials who headed each
department, who reported directly to the king, and who were appointed
and removed by him. It was amongst these that the politically most
influential and potentially most divisive individuals within the system
were normally to be found. Within the general system, the disposition
of coercive power was particularly significant. The military had a
minimal role to play in the normal operations of government, being
concerned primarily with registering and training those liable for
military service, administering the small standing garrisons in Egypt
and abroad, stock-piling and dispatching supplies, and mobilizing on
a large scale when necessary.
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o

HHa Zone of
control
Zone of 1 1 Principal zone
control ^ ^ of contact
Zone of Y//2 Assyrian
domination Empire
1 I Zone of I 1 Kushite
contact Kingdom

Fig. 3.5 The changing pattern of Egyptian foreign relations. 1, New Kingdom; 2, Third Intermediate Period.

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

The civil government was concerned primarily with regulating

agriculture, collecting taxes, administering justice and maintaining civic
order and its orders were enforced by a relatively weak police force,
the Medjayu.
The personal possessions of the king and the royal family were
extensive and formed virtually a separate branch of government which
we may call the 'royal domain', while another substantial mass of land
and other income-generating assets accumulated under the religious
government, a fact that was politically useful to the kings (p. 202). The
administration of the religious establishment was particularly frag-
mentary and the degree to which it came under a centralized control is
uncertain; the High Priest of Amen was certainly the most powerful
individual within this governmental unit, and he often (although not
always) held a post entitled ' overseer of all the priesthoods of Upper
and Lower Egypt'. The real, as compared to the titular, importance of
this office has not, however, been documented but it was presumably
in the royal interest to keep this supernaturally charged and economically
wealthy section of the government politically weak. It is interesting in
this connection to note that in two New Kingdom depictions of high
officials processing in hierarchical order, the sequence is crown prince,
viziers, stewards of the royal estate and court, high-ranking military and
civil officials and finally important high priests, who are followed by
a provincial official in one instance and by lower ranks of priests in the
other (Hayes 1973, p. 362).
Dominant as the royal position was, however, each branch of
government exercised some degree of effective power. To appreciate
better the interplay of power and influence, and the peculiar problems
of royal power, we must examine also the political geography of Egypt
and the tone and character of government. For the New Kingdom these
aspects are comparatively well documented.
Two factors of fundamental importance for the stability of govern-
ment were the effectiveness of the links between the central and
provincial governments and the pervasiveness of royal authority and
supervision. Facilitating these was the concentration of population
upon the alluvial plain and the usefulness of the Nile as an administrative
artery (fig. 3.6), but problems were created by the extreme length of
the country, the highly personal character of government and the
comparative inefficiency of communication.
The structure of provincial government is poorly documented and
the following sketch highly tentative. There was a distinct hierarchy of

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

• Royal residence and

administrative capital
• Royal ordynastic cemetery
• Provincial (nome) capital
+ Garrisons orvillages of veterans
• Major fortresses of theThird
Intermediate Period

Fig. j.6 Political map of Egypt in (i) the New Kingdom and (2) the Third Intermediate Period.
For garrisons and villages of veterans see Helck (1939, pp. 17-20); those immediately south of
Herakleopolis represent a zone of such settlements rather than specific sites (O'Connor 1972a),
and the military settlements of the Delta aie inferred from the later importance of Mendes,
Sebennytos, Busiris, Bubastis and Pi-Soped as centres for Mashwash soldiery.

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LLLLU Dense settlement,primarily

agricultural economy
Sparser settlement, pri-
marily pastoral economy
Provincial capital
Town with mayor
9 Significant town
0 30 km

Fig. 3.7 Reconstruction of typical New Kingdom provincial settlement pattern.

settlements. The cities were Memphis, Thebes and (later) Pi-Ramesse.

Elsewhere, in any given region, the provincial capital was usually the
most important administratively and probably the largest in population.
It was surrounded by a zone of fairly large and densely concentrated
villages (interspersed by rare towns intermediate in administrative
function (and size?) between the villages and the capital), which thinned
away to smaller, scattered settlements (fig. 3.7). Unfortunately, it is
impossible to equate this hierarchy with any certainty to Egyptian
nomenclature;' cities',' towns' and' villages' (respectively nlwt, dmi and
tvhji) were distinguished from each other, but the terms appear to be
used with great looseness. Slightly less ambiguous are smaller units,
such as 'nobleman's estate' (bbn) and 'house (hamlet?) of X ' ('tnx).
The key units in the administration of these varied settlements were
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

the mayors (h^ty-') and kenbet-councils (knbt) (seefig.3.4); for both

categories there was internal hierarchization and differences in function.
National and provincial capitals each had a mayor, as did some (perhaps
all) of the 'intermediate' towns. Village {rvhji) mayors are sometimes
referred to in general terms, but more precisely village leaders were tsn>
(literally ' commanders') and perhaps often simply the functionally and
socio-economically dominant figures in the community. The degree to
which the major provincial mayors had authority over the agricultural
hinterlands and over the 'lesser' mayors remains uncertain, but the
functions of mayors in general were clear; they were responsible for
collecting taxes, facilitating the work of representatives of the central
government, and implementing orders received from them.
The New Kingdom kenbet-councils were primarily judicial but they
were also quasi-administrative, since they were often concerned with
property rights. The two 'great kenbet-councils' of Thebes and
Memphis were each headed by a vizier and were concerned with civil
cases. Throughout Egypt were many lesser kenbet-councils, a more
widespread mechanism than that of the mayors, and their primary
functions were to prosecute criminal activity (excepting that involving
capital punishment, which was referred to the vizier) and to resolve
countless cases of property rights and disputes. Holding ' court in the
towns according to the excellent plans' (Pfliiger 1946) of the king, these
councils were an important source of civic order. The ' great kenbet-
councils ' consisted of high-ranking priests, bureaucrats and soldiers;
the provincial ones, certainly subject to government approval, were
made up of people of high local socio-economic status.
The provincial centres were of course widely dispersed (fig. 3.6),
while the offices and archives of the central government had to be
physically concentrated. As a partial solution to the problems of
administration, the New Kingdom continued the traditional practice of
dividing Egypt up into two (rather than, as earlier, three) major units,
one governed from Thebes and the other from Memphis. Important
offices were divided, if their responsibilities were sufficiently complex
and extensive. This was true of the vizierate (that is, there was a
northern arid a southern vizier) responsible for the efficient functioning
of the civil government as a whole, of the Treasury and of the two
military 'deputies'. At times the office of 'great steward of the royal
domain' was also divided. Other important offices with more limited
responsibilities remained unitary, such as those of the 'overseer of
granaries' and the ' overseer of cattle', both concerned with regulating
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economic life and storing or securing the taxes owed to the state. The
chief agents of communication between the centres and the provinces
were the viziers' 'messengers' and the representatives of other depart-
ments who frequently visited provincial towns to carry out specific
tasks and check the conduct of local officials.
The national capitals were also the chief royal residences, enabling
the king to enhance his control over administration through a variety
of formal and informal personal contacts. Since there were two and, after
Ramesses II founded another at Pi-Ramesse, three such capitals, the king
clearly had to divide his time between them. In fact, since each was also
a major religious centre celebrating annual festivals in which the king
took a leading part, the royal circuit often served as a provincial tour
of inspection by the king. In this way the king was not dependent solely
on his chief officials for knowledge of provincial affairs and the
population as a whole was reminded of the king's primary role in
politics.
The potential (although, in the New Kingdom, rarely used) coercive
power of the kingship, derived from its close links with the army, was
enhanced also by the undefended character of Egyptian towns and the
reliance of civil government on police rather than military power. This
potential was, probably deliberately, further improved by the disposition
of military forces within Egypt (fig. 3.6). Perhaps only the capitals or
royal residences had garrisons of any significant size while the military
colonists, the most rapidly mobilized and efficient of the reserve troops,
were located, in general, in areas close to the capitals. The colonists were
not armed, and when mobilized they and other levies were equipped
at arsenals in the residence cities where, as one text significantly puts
it, they were armed ' in the presence of Pharaoh' (Edgerton and Wilson
1956, p. 36).
The tone of government life in the capitals is well documented
textually, in art and to a certain degree by architectural remains. Texts
and scenes convey a vivid impression of elaborate court ceremonies such
as the presentation of taxes (by the mayors and others responsible, under
the supervision of the appropriate central officials) and of the more
intimate life of the court; of the mixture of dignity and excitement at
the regular hearings presided over by the vizier, with petitioners ranked
before him in order of precedence; and of the king's personal
involvement in administration, as in the vignette of the vizier and
treasurer meeting every morning in the palace gateway, comparing
notes after the vizier had reported to the king. The structure of the royal
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Thebes

Fig. 3.8 Tell el-Amarna and its chief elements

1 Royal residence complex 8 South residential zone (government
2 North (ceremonial) palace officials, high-ranking priests)
3 Cemetery of officials of the court and 9 Village of artisans of the royal tomb
priests of the Aten cult 10 Royal tomb (up wadi)
4 North residential zone 11 Cemetery of chief officials of the central
5 Great Aten temple government and the city, with some
6 Official city cult officials
7 Ceremonial palace and annexe 11 Maru-Aten
(The broken line represents the main north—south road.)
Thebes under Amenhotep III: tentative reconstruction
1 Tombs of the kings 7 Royal residence complex of Amenhotep
2 Deir el-Bahari, funerary temples of III at Malkata
Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III and 8 Modern Birket Habu = Maru-Amen (?)
Hathor chapel 9 Katnak temple of Amen: with
3 Cemetery of court and government hypothetical adjoining 'official city' and
officials ceremonial palace, the latter possibly
4 Village of artisans of the royal tomb 'Amenhotep III is the shining sun-disc'
5 Funerary temple of Amenhotep III IO Hypothetical residence zones for
(approximate) officials
6 Residential area (?) in the time of 11 Luxor temple of Amen (of Amenhotep
Amenhotep III III), with hypothetical residential zone
(The broken lines represent the main processional routes linking the various parts of the city which,
as reconstructed here, is much more diffuse and less continuous than Tell el-Amarna.)

cities is documented only for Akhenaten's capital at Tell el-Amarna,

although one can reasonably conjecture that Thebes, under his father,
Amenhotep III, may have been similar in important ways. Tell el-Amarna
was not very rigorously planned, but certain structural differentiations
were deliberate (fig. 3.8). The royal residential palace-complex was
located in the north, with nearby settlements probably occupied by
court officials and servants (as indicated by the burials in the adjacent
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

cemetery). A ceremonial palace marked the transition to a residental

zone, which was succeeded by the official quarter, containing the main
Aten temple and a large ceremonial palace which, with its annexe, was
the setting for the ceremonial public activities of the king. Immediately
adjacent were the offices of the government and the police headquarters.
A smaller temple, surrounded by a pseudo-fortified wall, indicated a
transition to a less sacred, more supernaturally vulnerable area, in fact
the chief residential city, where resided the vizier, high priest, police
chief, mayor, and other chief officials of the government and the city.
Providing a structural backbone was a broad avenue, running from the
northern royal complex to a' Maru^ Aten' a southern complex combining
shrines, pavilions and artificial lakes.
The sequestered character of the royal residence and the splendid
settings designed for the ceremonial and ritual acts of the king in the
official quarter aptly indicate the high status of the kingship in the late
Eighteenth Dynasty. Simultaneously however, the clustering of royal
residence, government centre and officials' residences within a single
city reflects the close personal supervision the king exercised over the
central government. Thebes under Amenhotep III was perhaps similarly
differentiated (fig. 3.8), but whether this urban pattern existed earlier
and continued after the Eighteenth Dynasty, is as yet unknown.
The sources also illustrate other methods whereby the kings main-
tained politically useful personal contacts with their chief subordinates.
The true dynasty was excluded from power (p. 207) but a number of
high officials enjoyed a kind of quasi-dynastic status as the sons or
husbands of royal wet-nurses and harem women; this custom is well
attested in the Eighteenth Dynasty and occurs as late as the Twenty-first.
Gift-giving was another important relationship; the kings regularly
rewarded deserving officials in public ceremonies and, in turn, received
New Year gifts from officials and institutions. There is also evidence
suggesting that the king banqueted regularly with groups of officers and
soldiers, and he certainly rewarded retired officers with posts on the
royal estates.
The obligations of the population in terms of taxes, compulsory
labour levies and the like are well known but it is evident that, in return,
conditions of security and relative prosperity prevailed for much of the
New Kingdom. Relationships between government and the governed
showed a mixture of bureaucratic sophistication and other mechanisms
emphasizing more personal, direct and, in a sense, 'primitive' means
of inquiry and decision-making.
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At the provincial level the varied conflicts and tensions typical of

village communities are well documented at the artisans' village of Deir
el-Medineh. Here the local kenbet-council usually settled disputes or
accusations without reference to a higher, outside authority; the
mechanisms used included reference to written documents, personal
judgement and, frequently, recourse to an oracle (p. 199) delivered
publicly by the local god and clearly expressing the general feeling and
judgement of the community.
Relationships between central and provincial governments and
individuals are documented by a court case (of the time of Ramesses
II) about a perennial problem, disputes within an extended family
concerning hereditary rights to the ownership and income of an estate.
The comparatively small scale at which government worked is seen in
the involvement of the vizier's ' great kenbet-council' of northern Egypt
in current and earlier disputes about the estate, which was substantial
(about 5 or 6 hectares) but not huge, and the owners of which were
of comparatively low status. The disputants regularly resorted to
petition and officials cited, from records, earlier decisions about the
estate over the previous eighty years as well as its original foundation
300 years earlier! However, records were not relied on exclusively and
with reason: forged documents had been inserted, even into the vital
land-registers of the treasurer and ' overseer of granaries' in the capital.
The local Memphite kenbet-council, with its better knowledge of local
affairs, was involved; a representative of the 'great council' several
times visited the village and took (sometimes perjured) oral depositions;
and the final decision was based on oral testimony of members of the
community who were not involved in the dispute.
In microcosm, therefore, we see a system which, despite the abuses
of inefficiency and corruption, appears to have fundamentally satisfied
the need of the population for arbitration and control.

The royal succession

The basic form and character of the political system just described
evolved throughout the early Eighteenth Dynasty, but there is very little
data on specific, internally significant events until c. 1490 BC. (Foreign
affairs are, from the outset, comparatively better documented because
of the nature of the surviving evidence.) The first apparent crisis is
suggested by the atypical, officially recognized co-reign (22 years) of
Tuthmosis III and 'king' Hatshepsut, by the latter's sex and by the
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

defacement of her monuments by Tuthmosis after her peaceful (?) death.

These peculiarities and the apparent bitterness of Tuthmosis have, to
some scholars, reflected the clash of powerful institutions, perhaps a
coterie of civil officials supporting Hatshepsut against the army, with
the Amen priesthood supporting Tuthmosis. Yet the evidence (defaced
tombs and monuments) on the fall of Hatshepsut's supporters is
ambiguous, and during her lifetime Tuthmosis was allotted considerable
civil and, more significantly, military power, which he did not turn
against her.
That an unusual manipulation of the succession system was involved
has long been evident and a recent suggestion is that, while the
succession was patrilineal (i.e. father-son), royal mothers and wives had
a symbolically critical matriarchal role which Hatshepsut attempted to
turn into real power. However, other factors may also have been
significant. In the New Kingdom, succession was rapid and automatic,
and practice reveals a general agreement that the heir, in order of
preference, should be son of the chief queen, or of a lesser queen, or
husband of a chief queen's daughter. The last procedure eased a critical
situation when there was no direct male heir, and was used, for example,
to legitimize the transfer of kingship between the Eighteenth,
Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties.
If the new king was a minor, a regent (preferably a female relative)
had to be appointed (as had been done for Ahmosis?), and Tuthmosis
III was unusually young. At accession he was a stripling and, despite
his 54-year-long reign (1490—1436 BC) his mummy shows little sign of
ageing. Hatshepsut's accession, within a few years of his, may have been
as much a dynastic defence-mechanism as an act of personal ambition.
The co-reign no doubt generated tension, but it appears to have been
fundamentally amicable, and the destruction of Hatshepsut's monu-
ments is partly explicable as the expunging of a politically necessary reign
which was offensive to the concept of ma'at (p. 201).
The next important set of events — those surrounding Akhenaten's
reign (1364—1347 BC) — are better documented. Although his reign was
politically significant, its precise implications remain controversial.
Akhenaten is no longer seen as a social reformer or international pacifist,
although it is still generally agreed that his explicit physical peculiarities
were reflected in mental ones which affected his actions. To some, the
unique features of Akhenaten's reign suggest a conflict between the
king and other powerful sections of government, specifically the civil
bureaucracy and the Amen priesthood. More probably, however, they
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were extreme examples of a tendency to royal absolutism which was

inherent in the political system.
Akhenaten was both offensively innovative and politically strong. He
promoted a monotheistic form of religion based on the Aten (sun-disc);
he excluded the traditional pantheon from the new capital he began at
Tell el-Amarna; and he tried to eradicate their cults elsewhere in Egypt.
(It is uncertain how comprehensive this effort was except so far as the
dominant state god, Amen, was concerned).
Akhenaten's strength arose partly from skilful manipulation of the
traditional resources of kingship. He maintained the image of a
war-leader; he initiated one campaign in Nubia; and in the Levant he
responded to the collapse of the Mittanians before the Hittites with a
mixture of diplomacy and military action. If on the one hand formal
adulation of the monarch reached new heights, on the other there was
increased elaboration in ceremonial gift-giving to bureaucrats and
soldiers. The Aten-cult itself had strong traditional elements and art
continued to emphasize the high status of king and dynasty, and their
intimate links to the supernatural.
Akhenaten's other source of strength was a contemporary process
(begun before his time and persisting long after it) of enhancing royal
authority by emphasizing its quasi-divine aspects and yet avoiding the
rigid, politically debilitating role of uncompromising deification.
Increasing stability abroad since Amenhotep II's time (1438-1412 BC),
internal tranquillity and growing royal wealth had created exceptionally
favourable circumstances for this.
The increased importance of the Aten-cult was one aspect of the
process; although a symbol of imperial power the sun-disc was
mythically colourless and a more suitable manifestation of the kings'
immanent divinity than was the already strongly defined Amen. The
identification of king and disc had become more explicit in the reign of
Tuthmosis IV (1412-1402) and was to continue until Ramesses II
(1289-1224) and the cult itself survived, despite its associations with
obnoxious innovations. Characteristic also of the later Eighteenth
Dynasty were the ' purification' of royal rituals and strong interest in
the kingship's antiquity. At Abydos at this time, a tomb of a First
Dynasty king was indentified as that of Osiris, long since a symbol of
all deceased kings, while early Nineteenth Dynasty kings built vast
temples at Abydos celebrating their co-equal status with the chief gods.
Prominence was given to king-lists implicitly (and, in the Turin Canon,

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in the time of Ramesses II, explicitly) linking the contemporary

incumbents to the divine dynasty which originally ruled Egypt.
Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, was particularly significant in
this process, and provided a model for cultic activity concerning the
kingship in the Nineteenth and, less directly, the Twentieth Dynasties.
Under him, the creation of dramatic functional and symbolic expressions
of ideas about the kingship accelerated. A new royal residence city at
Malkata (fig. 3.8), western Thebes, was associated with a more
' pristine' version of the ancient royal site of the Sed festival and some
functionally absurd elements of the site, such as its excessively large
harbour, reflect its ritual and symbolic, as well as utilitarian, roles. The
royal residence for the first time was dominated by the royal funerary
temple, not that of a national god (Amen or Ptah); an innovation not
perhaps continued later. The colossal scale of Amenhotep's temple
architecture and particularly of his funerary temple was also emulated
by later kings (Ramesses III in fact attempted no major construction
except for his funerary temple) and the production of large numbers
of huge royal colossi (some explicitly and probably all implicitly
hypostases of a divine Amenhotep and cult-statues in their own right)
were also paralleled later, sometimes in a directly imitative way,
especially by Ramesses II.
Akhenaten's innovations are explicable in the context of this process.
His general relationship to it is indicated by his devotion to the Aten
and the cult of kingship, and the colossal scale of his temple-buildings.
These included hundreds of royal colossi, whose at times hermaphroditic
form reveals not so much Akhenaten's personal abnormalities as 'an
extreme symbolism which, since he was "in the likeness of Aten"
depicted him as having all the attributes of the major godhead, the
" father and mother " of all creation' (Yoyotte 1966, p. 2 5 o). Akhenaten's
unique monotheism was itself, in part, an abortive offshoot of royal ab-
solutism; the old gods were gone, but (to his own political benefit) the
king maintained his traditional role as mediator between men and the
wishes of the new, unhistorical god, inscrutable to all but Akhenaten.
Perhaps most importantly, the cessation of the festivals which were
the main focus of Egyptian religious life must have profoundly
disturbed the population,1 while Akhenaten's religious innovations were
equally repugnant to the educated elite. His son-in-law and successor,
Tutankhamen, acting on the advice and, as a minor, the compulsion of
1
See Wente 1976, pp. Z3-4.

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officials who had also been prominent in Akhenaten's government,

restored the traditional religious system and abandoned Amarna. But,
continuing bitterness surfaced some fifty years later, when Akhenaten's
mummy was probably destroyed and the official denigration of his
memory began. It was, however, symptomatic of the kingship's power
that there was no overt opposition during Akhenaten's reign and that
the execration of his memory, long delayed, was released only on royal
(Nineteenth Dynasty) initiative. Contemporary texts depict Akhenaten
as an effective ruler, promoting innovations from a vulnerable, unwalled
city and securely in control of the military structure. We are uncertain
about the degree to which his policies were economically disruptive,
created excessive administrative centralization leading to abuses, re-
placed professional bureaucrats with less efficient new men and thus
indirectly led to the loss of substantial parts of the Asiatic conquests.
Akhenaten's immediate (to Horemheb) successors coped successfully
with serious internal and external problems, and consequently the early
Nineteenth Dynasty kings were able to function as traditionally
successful rulers, enjoying great internal authority and reacting strongly
to recurrent emergencies abroad. However, after Merenptah (1224—
1204 BC) the succession was clearly irregular for several reigns and there
may have been a partial breakdown of political and social stability.
Order was restored by Sethnakht (1186—1184 BC)> first ruler of the
Twentieth Dynasty, and the regime of his successor, Ramesses III
(1184-1153 BC), was sufficiently stable to respond effectively to strong
pressures from Asia and Libya.
From the reign of Ramesses III on, there are clear indications of
growing internal problems. Contraction, not expansion, characterized
the foreign policy while the disintegration of government became
evident in the unprecedented events which closed the period of the New
Kingdom, as we shall see.
Efforts to identify the ultimate causes of this disintegration need
considerable qualification. The conservative reaction after Akhenaten,
it has been suggested, so strengthened the Amen establishment in its
inherent conflict with other political elements that ' the history of the
Ramesside period is that of the conflict' (Helck 1968, p. 183). But the
political weakness of the religious system should be noted (p. 202) and
military officers, not priests, were responsible for the final division of
New Kingdom Egypt into two units. The idea that Akhenaten
destroyed a professional, idealistic bureaucracy which was thereafter
staffed increasingly by deracinated men, frequently of foreign origin and
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

military background, and characterized by inefficiency and corruption,

must be set against the continuation of effective centralized government
for a further 2 5 o years and the disproportionate amount of surviving
Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty archival material, always more
revealing on abuses than the monumental record. The concept of
increasing tension between an innovative, sophisticated northern world-
view and that of a conservative south, exacerbated by later New
Kingdom rulers' preference for a northern residence, is suggestive, but
the north—south division was always a feature of the administrative
structure (p. 214).
The fundamental problem was the decline in royal religious authority,
military prestige and political power, factors upon which the integrity
of the state depended. This decline cannot be traced in detail, but
important contributing factors and symptoms are evident. Particularly
significant in this highly personal form of government were problems
inherent in the succession system and overt challenges to it. The latter
disturbed the dynastic integrity necessary for royal stability, while both
impaired the effectiveness of royal political manipulation, either by
lessening the king's personal efficiency or by creating dynastic factions
competing for the support of various segments of government. Both
also depreciated royal prestige and authority by offending, sometimes
subtly, against ma'at.
While the succession system functioned effectively during the difficult
transition period after Akhenaten (all kings between Tutankhamen and
Ramesses I were heirs by marriage, not direct descent (p. 219) it is
certain that Seti II was usurped (temporarily, and only in Upper Egypt?)
by a 'king' Amenmesses. If the latter was indeed both a royal relative
and Viceroy of Kush the event demonstrates the wisdom of the usual
divisive and dynastically exclusionary policies of the kings (p. 207). This
was followed by further irregularities, in particular the accession of
another female 'king', Twosret (as co-regent, ultimately successor of
a short-lived minor, Siptah). Equally revealing was the plot to assassinate
Ramesses III in favour of a ' lesser' son, far removed from the chance
of direct succession. The plot involved harem and court members and
important government officials, including high military officers; their
failure, despite some close family links, was due probably to the absence
of any institutional means of bringing these forces effectively together.
Peculiar features of the succession during the Twentieth Dynasty
surely contributed to its political problems. These features were the
unusually large number of short reigns and elderly kings (table 3.3),
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

TABLE 3.3 Comparative regnal lengths in the New Kingdom. Particularly

short reigns {8years or less) are in bold type; it is noteworthy that they tend
to cluster in the late Nineteenth and earlier Twentieth Dynasties

Eighteenth Dynasty Nineteenth Dynasty Twentieth Dynasty

Regnal Regnal Regnal

Name length Name length Name length

Ahmose 25 years Ramesses I 2 years Sethnakht 2 years

Amenhotep I 21 years Seti I 14 years Ramesses III 31 years
Tuthmosis I 12 years Ramesses II 65 years Ramesses IV 7 years
Tuthmosis II 4 years Merenptah 20 years Ramesses V 4 years
Hatshepsut 22 years Amenmesses 4 years Ramesses VI 7 years
Tuthmosis III 54 years Seti II 6 years Ramesses VII 6 years
Amenhotep II 26 years Siptah 6 years Ramesses VIII 2 years
Tuthmosis IV 10 years Twosret 8 years Ramesses IX i8 years
Amenhotep III 38 years Ramesses X 10 years
Amenhotep IV \ 17 years Ramesses XI 30 years
Ahkenaten j
Smenkhare 3 years
Tutankhamen 10 years
Ay 4 years
Horemheb 28 years
Average regnal
length 19.56 years 15.63 years 11.70 years

generated by inherent weaknesses in the royal succession system itself,

in this case by the survival of several inevitably elderly heirs of the
long-lived Ramesses III combined with the premature deaths of
younger kings (Ramesses V, VII), who would have generated the usual
father—son, relatively long-reigned succession pattern (fig. 3.9). These
events were both psychologically and administratively disturbing. The
concept of ma'at accommodated the limitations of humanity within
royal quasi-divinity but in the context of a natural progression in the
ruler's life from early maturity to a substantially later death. The
comparatively rapid succession of elderly or dramatically mortal rulers
stressed the ambiguous character of the kings' relationship to the
supernatural (pp. 199—201). Moreover, the political system depended
upon the personal energy and flexibility of the ruler and had developed
in the context of relatively young accession ages which now, for a
period, were no longer the norm.
One of the two main rhythms of Egyptian official life was now
disconcertingly discontinuous. The normal routine of the bureaucracy
(now largely hereditary, even in its upper echelons; see p. 229), based
largely on the agricultural year, continued uninterruptedly. But each
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

Sethnakhte
(2 years)

I
Ramesses III
(31 years)

I
_J
Khamwas,
Pre hirwenmef,
Sethirkhopshef i;
Amenhirkhopshef i;
(four eldest sons, each
successively 'crown
prince', each predeceased
Ramesses III)
Ramesses IV
(7 years; died
in fifties)

Ramesses V
(4 years; he and Ramesses VI
sons (?) died of (7 years)
smallpox (?))

Ramesses VII
(6 years) Ramesses VIII
(2 years)
I

Ramesses IX
(18 years)
I

Ramesses X
(10 years)
I
Ramesses XI
(30 years)
Fig. 3.9 Genealogy of Twentieth Dynasty; regnal lengths are given, and a broken line
represents an assumed relationship. (See Kitchen 1972.)

king at accession normally entered upon a characteristic programme,

generally similar but different in important details and based upon the
expectation of a long reign (Ramesses IV made a request of Osiris for
a 134-year reign!). Sometimes important administrative or foreign-
policy initiatives were involved, and always the symbolically important
features of a potentially substantial temple-building programme and the
development of the royal incumbent's funerary establishment. Short
reigns and probably a degree of personal remoteness (p. 231) would have
contributed to the aborted building programmes, subdued foreign
policy and reduced political flexibility evident for the Twentieth
Dynasty kings.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Economic problems and their significance

Although there was probably a weakening of royal economic power - a

potent source of political influence and prestige - in the Twentieth
Dynasty, its full nature and intensity remain uncertain. Marked dimi-
nution in temple-building or expansion even during longer reigns
(Ramesses III, IX, XI) is the best proof, but is ambiguous in its
implications. The king initiated and to a degree funded temple-building,
but the state levied the large labour forces and collected the food and
building supplies required. Was there a quantitative decrease in the
economic resources available to the king and his officials, or was there
a qualitative decline in the efficient manipulation of these resources?
The elaborate annual ceremonies of presenting taxes and tribute to
the king symbolized the fact that in general little distinction was made
between royal and state income. However, certain resources were more
immediately accessible to the king's manipulation than others; tribute,
booty and much foreign trade were his prerogatives as war-leader and
the dynasty's estates were administered by his personal stewards. By
contrast, state income from taxes (one-tenth of grain crops and
animals?), dues, government lands, monopolies and requisitioning
powers, had to support the civil, religious and military establishments
and passed through a complex structure of administrative intermediaries
who, to some degree, were capable of manipulating the economic
system. Decrease in any of the resources was politically significant,
especially those most accessible to the king, but so was a decline in the
quality of administration.
It may, in fact, be reasonably presumed that tribute, booty and
foreign trade declined after Ramesses III (p. 204), while royal copper-
mining expeditions to Sinai and the Arabeh ceased after Ramesses V
and VI respectively. However, the decrease in the wealth of the kingship
should not be exaggerated. Sudanese gold was accessible until the end
of the dynasty; Ramesses XI at one time gave gifts worth 50 deben of
silver (equivalent to a year's food for 470 people) to a high priest; and
Smendes, as de facto (soon to be dejure) king, imported Lebanese cedar.
It has been argued that the amount of cultivable land effectively
controlled by the king and his government shrank seriously during the
later New Kingdom. Although in theory the king owned all land and
merely delegated its use to others, some scholars believe that, by the
end of the Twentieth Dynasty, temples and private individuals, by a
gradual process of alienation, in effect 'owned' most land. Given good

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

administration, this development would still have provided the

government with income from taxes and dues, and it is in any case not
provable. The Harris Papyrus (Ramesses IV) shows that the temples
then owned one-third of Egypt's arable land, but the status of the
remaining two-thirds remains unknown, as does the degree to which
the kings were able to tax and manipulate the use of temple lands. In
a survey of temple, royal and government lands within a specific region
(Wilbour Papyrus; Ramesses V), the temples appear as by far the
greatest landowners, but the statistical significance of this is unknown,
for the document is concerned with only a small proportion of the arable
land actually available within the region.
In fact, the Wilbour Papyrus - our chief source on New Kingdom
land tenure - seems to reveal an interpenetration of civil and temple
administration which would make it unlikely that the temples could
become effective economic and political counterweights to the kingship.
Here, as in other documents, secular officials are shown as having
responsibility for and some power over temple lands (unless these were
specifically exempted). The land surveyed was divided partly into large
estates and partly into much smaller farms. The owning institutions
perhaps rented out the estates for half their annual yield and paid a tax
on this income. The investors - wealthy officials and priests — expected
a profit from the remainder, even though it was shared with the agents
and cultivators who actually supervised and worked the land.
The small farms were primarily for the subsistence of the family of
each individual who held a farm and paid a small part (much less then
half) of the yield to the owning institution. Rather than reflecting a
deliberate government policy of systematically dividing up arable land
amongst all but the lowest levels of Egyptian society, these small-scale
tenants were probably created in two independent ways. One large
group — priests, scribes, herdsmen, cultivators and (rarely) artisans —
presumably worked for the owning institution and each was also
allotted a dues-paying farm for his subsistence (cf. the manors of early
mediaeval Europe). The other large group, functionally unconnected
with the temples, consisted of military personnel whose subsistence was
a particular government concern (p. 206), here apparently settled
on primarily temple lands — another index of secular power! The great
uniformity of farm size was not so much ' planned' as a spontaneous
response to subsistence needs (a phenomenon again paralleled in
mediaeval European manors); the normal farm occupied five arouras
(about 1.25 hectares), sufficient for a family of eight or so, while

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

EMMER WHEAT

sniw dbn Late

(silver) (copper Nineteenth — 1 Mid Twentieth Late Twentieth
early Twentieth I Ramesses XI
Ramesses ' j
VII - IX ' l
I

BARLEY
Ramesses III
Mid Twentieth Late Twentieth
Ramesses XI

Fig. 3.10 The fluctuating values of emmet wheat and barley in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Dynasties: although the general chronological variation is valid, it must be noted that many of the
instances are dated only approximately and that the figure represents chronological ' blocks' of
instances, not a precise chronological progression. The data are taken from J. J. Janssen (197s,
pp. 112-16, 119-22). Certain doubtfully dated examples, or atypically high values, have been
omitted. The unit of measurement is 1 hjr (76.48 1), the values are expressed in the sniw of silver
(5 dbn copper) and the dbn of copper (91 g).

' soldiers' (although not other military personnel such as stable-masters)

and their families habitually occupied only three arouras (about 0.75
hectare), perhaps because some family members were permanently or
periodically on duty elsewhere.
Another economic phenomenon, the rising inflation of the later
Twentieth Dynasty, may have been politically significant but, again, its
causes and effects remain uncertain. After Ramesses VI grains, and
perhaps other produce, increased sharply in value (fig. 3.10), but the
prices of cattle, donkeys and manufactured items did not rise, partly

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

because of the strong traditionalism of the Egyptian barter economy,

partly because the cost-factors of raising animals or making artifacts
were not reckoned as part of their value. Deliberate manipulation was
most unlikely to have been involved in the rising value of grains and
perhaps of produce. Recurrently inadequate inundations of the Nile or
a declining labour force could have created an absolute decrease in
available foodstuffs, but there is little evidence for these during the
6o-year period (compare the frequent references to famine during the
first hundred years of the First Intermediate Period (see chapter 2) with
the single reference under Ramesses XI).
Administrative inefficiency was a more likely cause of economic
problems. Abuses in the collection and distribution of food are
documented (peculation of temple grain, Ramesses III, IV and V, and
artisans' strikes provoked by arrears, not formally decreased rations,
Ramesses III to Ramesses X). The robbery of royal and private tombs
in the Theban area at the time was linked to these abuses as well as to
the deteriorating integrity of local administration. Only the lower
echelons of government were directly involved in these events, but the
resulting scandals created intrigues and declining morale amongst
higher officials.

The weakening of the kingship

Probably the most important contributors to the weakening integrity
of the kingship were the changing relationships between king, civil
government and army. Governmental structure did not collapse in the
late New Kingdom — it survived to provide a foundation for the revised
political system of the Third Intermediate Period - but it was
characterized by the growing strength of hereditary office, a tendency
that is analysed in detail in a recent study (Bierbrier 1975). Related to
this was the growth of family ramifications linking the powerful upper
levels of institutionally separate branches of government, vividly
epitomized by the Merybast family which held several vital offices from
the reign of Ramesses III to Ramesses XI (fig. 3.11). Particularly
noteworthy was their substantial control of major economic resources
of the state, the dynasty and the religious establishment but, at the same
time, their dependence upon the traditional diffusion of powers. As the
deposition of Amenhotep, the High Priest of Amen, showed, the famil)
had no significant military strength.
In any case, the civil government became less susceptible to roya

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 KUYAL CIVIL AMEN ROYAL CIVIL AMEN
Ec.Oth. Ec.Oth. Ec.Oth. Ec.Oth. Ec.Oth. Ec.Oth.
Seti I X Bakenkhons I
HPA
Ramesses II
X
Ramesses III X? HPA A Merybast I
3PA? CRSt CTM
A (m)
MTh
I I
3PA Usimaarenakht I
HPA

Ramesses IV X X Ramessenakht I
MTh HPA
CTM
3PA daughte
3PA
Usimaarenakht II
Ramesses V CRSt CTM CSA
Nesiamen
A HPA
3PA
Amenhotep
MTh? HPA
Ramesses IX X
X I 2PA
I
I
I
Ramesses X X A
MTh
Herihor
Ramesses XI HPA GAC Viz.

female
A male
Fig. ; . n Diagram illustrating the history of the Merybast family and their relations with two other powerful families
of the Twentieth Dynasty; particularly noteworthy are the hereditary character of the offices and the family relationships
linking institutionally separate branches of government. (Adapted, with changes, from Bierbrier (1975, pp. 2-13)-)
E c , economically significant. Oth., other. HPA, High Priest of Amen. 2PA, 3PA, second and third prophets of Amen
(next in hierarchy after High Priest). CRSt, chief royal steward. CTM, chief taxing master. CSA, chief steward of Amen.
MTh, mayor (h3ty-c) of Thebes. GAC, great army commander. Viz., vizier. (For most of these titles see fig. 3.4.) (m),
marriage link.

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

control. The kings reduced their travels and became more remote from
immediate administration; their personal influence decreased and they
lost a degree of informed knowledge. Possibly the need to defend the
north against the Libyans and to re-establish commerce with the Levant
were sufficiently important to reinforce an already evident royal
preference for northern residences (cf. Pi-Ramesse) and the age and
physical strength of several kings may also have been significant.
As the kings' supervisory tours became less frequent, royal princes
and other deputies carried out major religious rites formerly performed
by the kings; and butlers of the royal court played a prominent role
in important administrative acts, as if checking upon the highest officials
of civil government. These butlers, however, lacked the expertise of the
bureaucrats and were themselves not necessarily reliable, as evidenced
by the involvement of some in the assassination attempt upon Ramesses
III.
The assigning to the High Priest of Amen of certain functions that
would normally have been performed by civilian officials (as, for
instance, paying the artisans of the royal tomb, securing building
materials for Karnak) may also have been administratively convenient
but the price was a further loss of royal prestige. The High Priest
Amenhotep had had himself depicted as equal in stature to the
king — iconographic lese-majeste\
The coercive resources of the kingship also declined. Despite the
Libyan victories of Ramesses III, the threat of violence from Libyan
infiltrators continued to disturb the work routines of the local inhabi-
tants, as far south as Thebes and as late as the time of Ramesses IX
and X, a fact suggesting a militarily weak situation in the primary
infiltration areas of the Delta and Middle Egypt. After Amenhotep's
deposition by a local faction, Ramesses XI restored order by requesting
Penehasy, Viceroy of Kush, to take control of Upper Egypt in direct
command of his own forces — two unprecedented steps — instead of
himself dispatching troops from the northern garrisons. Penehasy's
regime in Middle and Upper Egypt, using substantial numbers of
Nubian troops (the %ccw, literally 'jabberers'; see Bell 1973, Wente
1966), was sufficiently akin to a foreign invasion to act eventually as
a catalyst for internal mobilization. After perhaps seven years of rule
Penehasy retreated into Kush, presumably under pressure from the
newly emerged, politically dominant and essentially militaryfiguresof
the Theban Herihor and his son (?) Smendes. Piankh, Herihor's son
and successor in the south, continued to campaign against Penehasy in
Lower Nubia.
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

The discipline of the Egyptian armed forces, therefore, continued to

be a politically stabilizing resource, as it had been earlier when
Horemheb staffed with the 'finest of the army' the depleted and
demoralized priesthoods left by Akhenaten's innovations (Gardiner
1953). But, in contrast to the fruitful relationship between king and army
which had eased the transition from the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth
Dynasties, Herihor and Smendes imposed upon Ramesses XI, their
titular monarch, a territorial division of Egypt which was plainly
opposed to the integrity of New Kingdom government and kingship.
Ramesses XI survived as titular head of both divisions until his death;
Smendes then became king of ' all' Egypt, but effectively only of the
north, while the descendants of Herihor controlled Middle and Upper
Egypt. Ramesses IX's appeal to Penehasy reflected the fact that only
in Kush did the exigencies of control and defence still permit a
substantial and responsive standing army, but the king's surrender of
war-making prerogatives to the viceroy set a precedent followed by
subsequent military leaders such as Herihor.
A final index to the disintegration of traditional government was the
granting of extraordinary combined powers to individuals. These were
not unprecedented in times of crisis, but there were now significant
differences. Formerly the grants were less extensive, were held by
formally proclaimed (if not birthright) crown princes and were a
temporary expedient. But Penehasy, a commoner, was simultaneously
Viceroy of Kush, an army-leader and overseer of granaries, while
Herihor was vizier, High Priest of Amen and generalissimo, the last two
titles to be inherited by his successors in perpetuity.

THE THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

The ensuing Third Intermediate Period was characterized by virtually

continuous tension, only rarely flaring into open conflict, between
centralizing and centrifugal forces. The interaction of these forces led
to extreme political fragmentation in the last century of the period. They
also, however, sustained a striving towards stability that resulted in
rapid and effective recentralization under the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
For the first 124 years of the Third Intermediate Period (Twenty-first
Dynasty) government was relatively stable, despite the deepfissurein
the state's integrity created by the concordat whereby a unique royal
dynasty (of Smendes) received formal recognition throughout Egypt,
in return for ceding effective control of Middle and Upper Egypt to
a line (descended from Herihor) of' great army commanders' who were
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

1 Sais
2 Sebennytos
3 Mendes
4 Tanis
5 Busiris
U S Kingdom of the West \ Thebe
^ 6 Leontopolis
7 Mostai
I m j Kingdoms 8 Bubastis
HH1 Princedom 9 Pi-Sopd
iO Athribis
Great Chieftainships
of the Ma (shwash)
Theban zone
Capital of independent or semi-
independent political unit iood—veryhigh population density/
Former provincial capital agricultural production
Importantreligioussinecureheld by
thefamilyof the High Priests of Amen in]1 E=3 Fair—poor population density/
theearlyThird Intermediate Period agricultural production

Fig. 3.12 1 Political map of Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period, c. 730 BC.
2 The recent pattern of population density and agricultural yield superimposed on the political
map (see Wilson 1955)'

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 BUBASTIS TANIS THEBES
(Great Chiefs of (Twenty-first Dynasty (High Priest of Amen)
BC the Ma(shwash))
1099 Ramesses XI
Herihor

1069 0 - Smendes
1
Piankh
'The Libyan'
Buyuwawa
|
1043 Amenemnisu 0 = Pinudjem I
1039
I Psusennes I
Mawasen T X Masaharta|
993 Amenemope O = Menkheperre | Djed-khons-ef-ankh
Nabnashi

I
Paihut

I
984 Shoshenq Osochor
Nimlot
Smendes
978 Siamun Pinudjem II
959 Shoshenq I
Psusennes II I
945 Psusennes III*
A j
O = daughter
924 i r X = declared king
Osorkon I - O *The High Priest Psusennes ill probably
became the last king of the Twenty-first
dynasty, the second Psusennes of the
royal line
Fig. 3.13 Genealogies and interrelationships of the Twenty-first Dynasty, and the two contemporary families of the
High Priest of Amen, 'great army commanders* of Thebes and the 'great chiefs of the Ma(shwash)* at Bubastis.

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

simultaneously High Priests of Amen at Karnak. Potential conflict was

avoided because the two lines were branches of the same family
(fig. 3.13) and had different preoccupations. The Twenty-first Dynasty,
residing at Tanis, the former port of Pi-Ramesse, was more internally
secure than the Herihor lineage and, as a result, was comparatively
expansive (though usually pacific) in its relations with the Levant. The
'great army commanders' had more pressing internal problems; they
resided, for strategic reasons, at El-Hibeh, not at the old centres of
Memphis or Thebes (fig. 3.6), and made no serious effort to penetrate
Kush, their logical area of expansion and the region they explicitly
desired to control.
Power was apparently amicably transferred from the Twenty-first to
the Twenty-second Dynasty, whose members were descended from
hereditary Libyan 'chiefs of the Ma' at Bubastis but resided at Tanis.
This dynasty attempted to enhance royal power by ending the hereditary
principle in the rule of Middle and Upper Egypt, but they did not alter
the basic administrative methods of the Twenty-first Dynasty nor its
reliance upon royal relatives in government. The foreign policies of
Shoshenq I and Osorkon I in the Levant were unusually aggressive but,
thereafter, foreign policy became more subdued as internal dynastic
tensions and powerful elements amongst the Egyptian provincial
nobility became more pressing. In response, the dynasty entered upon
a formal bifurcation of the state. It installed a royal co-dynasty at
Leontopolis (the Twenty-third; fig. 3.14) which was, in effect, charged
with reasserting dynastic control of the south while the Twenty-second
concentrated upon the Delta.
The effort was a failure and contributed to further disintegration. As
a result the Twenty-second/Twenty-third Dynasties were unable to
display the major military initiative needed in the Levant, where the
expansion of Assyria was threatening Egypt's commercial interests.
Internally, other royal relatives at Herakleopolis and Hermopolis
followed the example already set and declared themselves kings, while
in the Delta several ' great chiefdoms of the Ma' became increasingly
independent. One, based on Sais, was particularly expansive, and under
Tefnakhte (Twenty-fourth Dynasty) it gained control of the western
Delta from Memphis to the sea. In the extreme west, a further divisive
unit was a 'great chiefdom' of the Libu, caused by continuing
immigration from Libya. In the south, a Kushite kingdom was
extending its control over Middle and Upper Egypt.
Throughout the Third Intermediate Period there was increasing
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Twenty-second Dynasty Governors High Priests of Amen Twenty-third Dynasty

DATES
BC TANIS HERAKLEOPOLIS THEBES LEONTOPOLIS
945 1. Shoshenq I

1. Nimlot
I
1. Iuput
924 2. Osorkon I
T
2. Shoshenq II
I
3. Iulot
889 3. Takeloth I

874
1
4. Osorkon II
4. Smendes

5. Harsiese A
1 I
2. Nimlot | 6. (Name lost)
(=HPA) 7. Nimlot j
850 5. Takeloth II
3. Ptahudjankhef I
-I-
8. Osorkoin 9. Harsiese B

825 6. Shoshenq III I

4. Pimay * • 1. Pediibast I

1
5. Hemptah A 10. Takeloth E 2. Iuput I

. Bekenptah | 3. Shoshenq IV
X 7. Pasenhor
I
773 7. Pimay 8. Hemptah B 4. Osorkon III
767 8. Shoshenq V
I I
9. Takeloth 11. Takeloth
(=HPA;Tak. Ill) daughter 5. Takeloth III
10. Peftjauawybast (GWA)
9. Osorkon IV

1
730 6. Rudamen
7. Iuput II

1
Fig. 3.14 The Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties, and their relationships with the
High Priests of Amen of Thebes and the governors of Herakleopolis. HPA, High Priest of Amen.
GWA, god's wife of Amen. (See Kitchen 1975)

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 NEW KINGDOM AND T H I R D I N T E R M E D I A T E PERIOD

Twenty-
High Priests second Governors High Priests of Amen Twenty-third
of Ptah Dynasty Dynasty

MEMPHIS TANIS HERAKLEOPOLIS THEBES LEONTOPOLIS

O Royal daughter • Governor of Herakleopolis

• High Priest of Ptah A High Priest of Amen

Fig. 3.15 Simplification of fig. 3.14 to show basic pattern of relationships. The High Priests
of Ptah have been added. GWA, god's wife of Amen. (See Kitchen 1973.)

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©At l
\
Fig. 3.16 A passage from the Amada stela of Merenptah describing the impalement of Libyans
(captured in the campaign of regnal year ;) in the vicinity of Memphis. The determinative
(arrowed) makes the sense of the text quite unambiguous. (After a hand-copy, Kitchen 1968.)

tension over the degree of regional or provincial independence which

could be tolerated or secured, and over the control of vital economic
resources. The competing elements arose from the political and social
structure of the late New Kingdom and represent, in significantly
altered form, potentially divisive elements which New Kingdom
government had been designed to keep subordinate. Royal relatives
were now assigned unprecedented administrative power, collateral
dynasties were inadvertently or deliberately created by royal policies and
a variety of local hereditary bureaucrats, priests and military chieftains
of provincial origin became more firmly entrenched in their positions.
High officials of central government (e.g. the viziers), formerly in-
fluential and powerful, were now, in the case of Tanis (fig. 3.6), effective
only within the immediate territory of their residence city; at Thebes,
the descendants of the agents of centralized government and of the
Amen establishment continued to hold the appropriate titles but became
themselves a very powerful provincial nobility. Glimpses of other
provincial nobilities can be caught elsewhere: at Memphis one lineage
monopolized the high priesthood of Ptah until c. 870 BC and continued
to hold valuable benefices there subsequently, while at Thinis, the local
nobility secured valuable administrative and economic monopolies
which lasted well into the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
In the north,' chieftains of the Ma' were particularly important. They
were descended from the Libyan chiefs of Mashwash military settlements
attached to some central and eastern Delta towns after the Libyan
victories of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. Foreign prisoners
of war and foreign levies by that time were a regular constituent of the
Egyptian army in thefield,but the Libyan prisoners were unprecedented
within Egypt and not easily subject to selective weeding-out. Exemplary
cruelty was tolerated (fig. 3.16), but not extermination; expulsion to
Libya (not controlled by Egypt) was strategically undesirable; and
Libyan fighting ability was needed to enhance the power of the kings
(now usually resident in the Delta) and to strengthen the eastern
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frontier, hence, the settlements. Originally subordinate to Egyptian

officers, some Ma chiefs came to dominate certain towns and their
territories, aided by the weakness of the central government but also
by their own military resources and a degree of ethnic solidarity evident,
despite strong Egyptianization, in personal names, dress and,
occasionally, in political action (cf. Twenty-second Dynasty, p. 236).
In the Twenty-first to the Twenty-third Dynasties, the primary royal
response to the problem of controlling a fragmenting political system
was to assign extraordinary combined civil, religious and military
powers to royal relatives, install them in strategic regional and provincial
commands throughout the country and explicitly recognize military
force, not bureaucratic control and police power, as the basis of
government's authority. Dynasty members functionally displaced the
officials of centralized government, hence the latter's decline. The new
policy was opposed to normal New Kingdom practice (p. 207) but,
given the greatly changed historical circumstances, had significant
antecedents in that period.
Supreme power had always been reserved for dynasty members (king,
chief queen, crown prince); government's personal character was such
that high officials regularly received quasi-dynastic status; and royal
relatives, politically ineffective, nevertheless held high rank in military
and religious establishments. The combined powers now held by royal
relatives were anticipated by those of' adoptive' New Kingdom crown
princes in times of political crisis (p. 232), an endemic situation in the
Third Intermediate Period.
Earlier foreign policy was also relevant. Large areas of Egypt,
because of the independent, sporadically aggressive attitudes of their
inhabitants, were analogous to New Kingdom foreign conquests, and
dynasty members were akin to the earlier governors of foreign lands,
maintaining control through garrisons and fortified towns at internally
strategic points. Regionally diffused members and branches of the royal
family (and leading members of the provincial nobilities) took on some
of the character of independent rulers and a complex, politically
motivated network of intermarriages developed between these elements
and the theoretically dominant royal line. This practice had been
important in earlier foreign (not internal) policy, although now royal
daughters were married into the other power-groups while, earlier, the
reverse was usual.
The new policy sustained dynastic power and the formal appearance
of a united kingship, but at considerable cost to royal manipulative and
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coercive resources. The governing royal relatives were habitually' great

army commanders' or ' army-leaders' controlling their own forces and
residing in heavily fortified provincial centres hard to reduce militarily
(Breasted 1906, iv, ss. 857-65). Dynastic integrity was strained, since
these relatives naturally tended to establish semi-independent,
provincially-based collateral dynasties, sometimes even claiming royal
status. The Twenty-first Dynasty solution was to recognize frankly the
dynastic status of the south's 'great army commanders' and High
Priests of Amen. The inherent tension caused by the latter's sporadic
claims to royal titles was eased by close family links. Pinudjem I
(fig. 3.13), son-in-law (and nephew?) of Smendes, became a 'co-king'
at Tanis and, when the royal line died out, the incumbent' commander'
naturally became king (Psusennes II;fig.3.13).
The Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties tried to strengthen
royal control by restricting regional commands to sons of the reigning
king rather than to more remote relatives, thus preventing collateral
dynasties. This policy, initially successful, within eighty years generated
problems which caused Osorkon II to petition Amen to ' establish my
children in the [posts which] I have given them, so that brother is not
jealous [?] of brothefr]' (Kitchen 1973, s. 276).
In the south, which was now divided into two units, one governed
from Herakleopolis and one from Thebes, deviations from desired
practice were soon evident (figs. 3.14-15). The Theban High Priest,
Shoshenq (2) generated a collateral dynasty, being succeeded by his two
brothers (3 and 4) who were markedly independent of their nominal
king, Takeloth I; and by a son, who declared himself 'king' (5), and
a grandson (6). King Osorkon II rectified the situation, appointing as
governor of Herakleopolis and Thebes his son Nimlot (Herakleopolis
2, Thebes 7), who was appropriately succeeded at Thebes by Osorkon
(8), crown prince of King Takeloth II. High Priest Osorkon's rule,
however, was sporadic and contested by descendants of Shoshenq (see
Thebes 2-9) and Nimlot (see Thebes 10) and by other grandees as far
north as Hermopolis (Kitchen 1973, ss. 293-4; see also Caminos 1958,
pp. 29 and 153, i n and 164, 88 and 161, 105 and 163). The result was
widespread, ten-year-long civil war. Herakleopolis itself was ruled by
a rarely interrupted collateral dynasty descended from Osorkon II via
Nimlot (2-8), while the (?) crown prince of Osorkon II, installed as the
Memphite High Priest, founded yet another dynasty (figs. 3.14—15).
This disintegration, combined with the independence of provincial
elements, prompted the division of power between the Twenty-second
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and Twenty-third Dynasties. King Shoshenq III (825-773 BC) asserted

his control of the Delta, establishing a hereditary fiefdom for Twenty-
second Dynasty crown princes at Athribis-Heliopolis, and installing
other sons at provincial centres (Sais?, Busiris). In the south, the
Twenty-third Dynasty had to dispute for control at Thebes and
Herakleopolis with descendants of the collateral dynasties of the
Twenty-second, but Osorkon III (777-749 BC) succeeded in installing
his crown prince at both centres. When the latter became co-regent,
another royal relative was appointed to Herakleopolis (10), while the
'Theban problem' was solved by an ingenious adaptation of New
Kingdom practice: the office of 'god's wife of Amen' (p. 207) had
survived. The High Priesthood was now left in abeyance; the 'god's
wife' became dominant and was always a royal daughter, installed by
the incumbent king. Now required to be a virgin, the ' god's wife' could
not generate a collateral dynasty!
While the central bureaucracy of the north was absorbed into the
residence city at Tanis and continued to be under the traditional direct
supervision of the kings, the descendants of central government
administrators at Thebes were only sporadically in direct contact with
their overlords, usually (Twenty-first Dynasty) 'Commanders' or
sometimes (Twenty-second Dynasty) residents at El-Hibeh or Herak-
leopolis. The Theban nobility characteristically conflicted with the
(broad) dynasties over access to important and lucrative Theban
religous sinecures. The family of Herihor attempted to monopolize
these, as later did royal sons and Libyan allies of the Twenty-second
Dynasty and, in each case, Theban resistance forced a compromise,
whose ill-effects for the dynasties were eased by intermarriage with the
Thebans. Not surprisingly, the Thebans supported semi-independent,
locally-based collateral dynasties such as that of Shoshenq, and refused
even formal co-recognition to the Twenty-second Dynasty after the
Twenty-third was established. The transfer of political dominance at
Thebes to a woman, initiated by Osorkon II and continuing after,
further strengthened in a male-oriented society the Theban bureaucrats
who were nominally her agents.
Another royal response to contemporary internal problems was to
revive the expansionist foreign policy which had, in the past, benefited
royal power (pp. 205-7). However, internal weakness forced tactics far
different from earlier ones. Emphasis was now upon maintaining
commercial and diplomatic relations with the Levant (cemented by
marrying Egyptian princesses to foreign rulers, the reverse of earlier
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practice) rather than on military aggression, and in both cases the

geographical extent of Egyptian activity was much less than before
(fig. 3.5). The Palestinian military campaigns of Siamun and Shoshenq I
were isolated instances. Although the later Twenty-second Dynasty
intrigued against Assyrian expansion, its kings were reduced to ' buying
off' any Assyrian army which threatened the Egyptian frontier.
Shoshenq's scribes chose New Kingdom literary models (from
Amenhotep III; see p. 221) to celebrate his victories, a reminder that
foreign campaigning had religious and propagandistic as well as
practical ends. Throughout the Twenty-first to Twenty-third Dynasties
the kings tried to maintain authority by persistently summoning up the
supernatural potency of the politically stable past. Royal names and
epithets identical with, or similiar to, those of New Kingdom rulers
were frequently assumed and, of at least two Sed festivals (symbolic
celebrations of the kingships' political and religious role) documented,
one was based on a New Kingdom version of the 'absolutist'
Amenhotep III. Paradoxically, the ideal of a royal political structure
conformable to ma at made it the model for the indigenous (and
intrusive Kushite) elements competing with the dynasties.

The rise of the Kushites and Saites

Weak royal government and a concentration upon Levantine and
internal relationships were responsible for the expansion of Sais and the
Kushites, which changed the situation. The development of a Kushite
kingdom and its invasion of Upper Egypt was facilitated by a
comparative lack of Egyptian royal interest in Kush, by the condition
of Lower Nubia (formerly a buffer zone and now an uninhabited
corridor) and by the relative decline of Aswan (p. 247). The north-west
and western Delta, agriculturally poor and commercially insignificant,
were also of peripheral interest to the Twenty-first and Twenty-second
Dynasties. Tefnakhte of Sais and his father, among the 'great chiefdoms
of the Ma', were able gradually to expand their control in these regions,
eclipsing the Libu 'great chiefdom' until they forged the vital strategic
link with Memphis and gained access to Middle Egypt (fig. 3.12).
By this time, Egypt was divided into eleven major and virtually
independent political units governed by a bewildering variety of rulers
(fig. 3.12). They consisted of five formally proclaimed kings whose
very contemporaneity was an extraordinary offence to the earlier
concept of ma'at (pp. 196—7); a crown prince and another royal son;
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Tefnakhte, prince of the western Delta and now (?) 'great chief of the
Libu and Ma' (the two major Libyan groups deeply involved in
Egyptian history since the Nineteenth Dynasty); and four ' great chiefs
of the Ma'. Some lower-ranking rulers also had a degree of indepen-
dence, including ' chiefs of the Ma', a local high priest, and several h$ty-',
the latter more akin to the similarly titled, independent, magisterial
governors of 1400 years earlier, than to the New Kingdom mayors.
Under Piankhy (Twenty-fifth Dynasty) in 728 BC, the Kushites halted
Tefnakhte's expansion southwards (but not eastward) into the home
territories of Tanis and Leontopolis, where the Twenty-second/Twenty-
third Dynasties continued to rule. In 715 BC, Piankhy's successor
Shabako conquered the Delta, making the Twenty-fifth Dynasty
recognized overlords of all Egypt, but the fragmented political structure
survived their half-century of rule unchanged. Most of the same
political units continued to exist for another sixty years, their rulers
often the lineal descendants of those of Piankhy's time and bearing
identical titles, including 'king'.
The Twenty-fifth (Kushite) Dynasty failed to generate internal
reunification, even during its first relatively peaceful forty years. Ruling
two kingdoms may have made reunification impossible to achieve but,
more likely, it was realized that a strong Egypt could not be controlled
by the smaller Kushite state. Kushite rule was based on military
strength, and local civil government was left largely to the Egyptian
dynasts. Nevertheless, Kushite contributions to future unity were
significant. At Thebes, the Kushites continued the politically useful
office of ' god's wife'; the High Priesthood, held by a Kushite prince
and his son, was revived but stripped of military and civil authority.
The former was surely exercised by Kushite commanders, the latter first
by Kushite governors, and later by Theban bureaucrats. A distribution
of powers strongly reminiscent of the stable New Kingdom was
emerging.
Psychologically important was the subtle Kushite exploitation of
traditional religious ideas concerning the kingship. Stressing symbolic
unity and recalling the form if not actuality of the great periods of
centralization, the Kushites were genuinely devoted to ma'at. Their
devotion, they argued, generated supernatural aid and demonstrated the
legitimacy of Kushite accession. They preferred the Old and Middle
Kingdoms to the New Kingdom as models. A sophisticated, pseudo-
Old-Kingdom creation myth was developed; Memphis (the Old King-
dom capital) became the preferred royal residence, and the royal tombs

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Fig. 3.17 Scenes carved upon the walls of a temple built by Taharqa (Twenty-fifth Dynasty) at Kawa. Depicting the king as
a sphinx trampling Libyan opponents, the scenes are based closely upon Old Kingdom prototypes, clearly copied directly from
still standing monuments at Saqqara and Abusir. (After Macadam 195;.)

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

at Napata in the Sudan were modelled on the Old Kingdom royal

pyramids {not the New Kingdom pyramidal tombs, known since the
mid-eighth century but not copied). With a subtle selectivity, scenes
from Old Kingdom royal funerary temples were reproduced to embellish
contemporary gods' temples; not accidentally, they included an Old
Kingdom depiction of victory over the Libyans (fig. 3.17).
Superficially, the main political emphasis thereafter was upon the
struggle between Kush and Assyria for the control of Egypt. The
Twenty-fifth Dynasty aggressively opposed Assyria in the Levant,
mounting a major campaign there in 701 BC and repulsing an Assyrian
invasion of Egypt in 674 BC. Assyria conquered the Delta in 671, lost
it to King Taharqa in 668/7, gained control of all Egypt in 667/6, and
regained it in 664/3 after being temporarily driven out by a campaign
of King Tanwetamani. However, on another, less obvious, level these
events gave a major impetus to Egyptian reunification, an outcome
desired neither by Kush nor Assyria. Their policies, combined with
fortuitious circumstances, eventually created a context in which the
most expansive of the Egyptian dynasts, Psammetichus I (Twenty-sixth
Dynasty) of Sais and the ' Kingdom of the West' was able rapidly to
restore unity to the Egyptian state.
Kushite and Assyrian policies inadvertently had a decisive effect upon
this process. Kushite emphasis upon the ideological and ritual unity of
the state prepared Egypt psychologically for a return to centralized rule;
while the active Kushite opposition to Assyria required an unpre-
cedented degree of military and political co-ordination amongst the
Egyptian dynasts. Subsequently, the Assyrian conquerors, reluctant to
assume total control, tried to create a system of Egyptian vassal states
that would be too disunited to threaten Assyria's position in the Levant
but strong enough to resist (with Assyrian aid) a successful reinvasion
by the Kushites. Kushite desire to maintain fragmentation had ensured
the survival of the Saite kingdom, and Assyria now assigned it a major
although not uniquely dominant position in its vassal system.
Despite Assyrian insensitivity to Egyptian susceptibilities - Egypt
sent regular offerings to Assyrian gods without apparent reciprocity -
reality compelled a relatively benevolent regime in Egypt. The Egyptian
dynasts' relationship with Assyria was complex; as vassals and compelled
to offer tribute, they escaped total Assyrian rule by protecting the true
area of Assyrian interest, the Levant, against Kushite attack. Assyrian
military officials resident in Egypt supervised tribute collection and
military preparedness but the highest ranks of Assyrian military and civil

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

officials were not installed there. Civil government and a degree of

military power was left to the dynasts aided by indigenous Egyptian
tax-collectors and 'chiefs' who bore Assyrian titles.
The only dynasts to enter (as inferiors) into treaty alliances with
Assyria and consequently to receive special attention, were Necho of
Sais and the Ma chief Pekrur of Pi-Soped. The former had territorial
strength (the west and Memphis, and Athribis—Heliopolis under
Necho's crown prince, Psammetichus). The Ma chief had a strategic
location (Pi-Soped) which dominated the convergence of the invasion
routes linking Palestine and Memphis. Thus, both were essential to the
buffer system and politically useful counterweights to each other. In any
event, Sais proved loyal to the Assyrians during King Tanwetamani's
campaign, while Pi-Soped eventually led the submission to him. As a
result, Assyrian reconquest led to Pi-Soped's eclipse and ensured the
dominance, of Sais.
The final assertion of Saite rule occurred when Kush was militarily
exhausted and Assyria distracted elsewhere; Assyrian hegemony had
enhanced Sais' opportunities for foreign contact and enabled it to
recruit foreign mercenaries from Anatolia who tipped the internal
military balance in its favour; and its chief Egyptian rival, Pi-Soped,
was weak. Psammetichus I showed great skill not only in exploiting
these circumstances but in enhancing the internal trend towards a stable,
ideologically acceptable kingship. Within a ten-year period (664—6 5 4 BC)
he had effectively reunited the country and, by the time of his death
in 610 BC had largely, if not entirely, consolidated this unity.

New patterns of settlement

Throughout the Third Intermediate Period, the map of real and
symbolic power altered as it reflected changing political circumstances
and their cultural effects; and there was probably an important change
in the general pattern of settlement, responding to a new political
system, the altered relations between government and the governed, and
a prevailing civic insecurity. Ultimately, these alterations reflected
important changes in the character of Egyptian life.
Particularly striking was the changing pattern of 'royal cities' i.e.
towns which were royal residences and administrative centres (cf. figs.
3.6, 3.12). Pi-Ramesse was eclipsed by Tanis, a port-town more easily
defensible than the former capital and vital for maintaining profitable
sea-links with the Levantine trade. Memphis and Thebes also declined,
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because of internal strategic considerations which had not been relevant

in the New Kingdom political structure (see below). Thebes enjoyed
only sporadic royal status and Memphis was not again 'the city of
kingship' until the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Some other claims to royal
status (Herakleopolis, Hermopolis) were late and ephemeral, reflecting
the acute stage of fragmentation. The rise of Leontopolis and Sais was
also linked to the problem of controlling and exploiting two vital
regions, the Delta apex and the valley from Hardai to Gebelein
(fig. 3.6).
According to recent analogy these regions would have been particu-
larly fertile and densely populated (fig. 3.12) and as prime surplus-
producing areas they would not only have provided the subsistence
basis for most of the population and the superstructure of government,
but also supported the personal estates and religious benefices of royal
and collateral dynasty members and their provincial rivals. The estates
of Amen of Tanis and associated cults presumably lay in the Delta, while
the strings of benefices occasionally listed for dynasty members in the
south demonstrably lay mainly between Hardai and Gebelein.
The importance of the Delta apex is further indicated by the exclusion
of Mash wash and Libu settlements from it since the late New Kingdom;
by the royal (Twenty-third Dynasty) status of Leontopolis and the
crown prince's fief Athribis—Heliopolis, both of which enhanced
dynastic access to the Delta apex and to the routes linking it to Tanis;
and by the assumption of royal status by Sais after it had secured control
over the western edge of the apex. The significance of the Hardai—
Gebelein zone (fig. 3.6) was marked by the fortification of its northern
(El-Hibeh, and nearby Shurafa) and southern ends (Gebelein) early in
the rule of the Twenty-first Dynasty ' army commanders', and by the
relative decline of Aswan, located in an infertile area and of lessened
strategic and commercial importance after the loss of Kush at the end
of the Twentieth Dynasty. El-Hibeh and Herakleopolis owed their
importance at this time to the fact that they were better able than Thebes
to maintain the vital dynastic intercommunications with Tanis and yet
were more convenient for the control of the southern fertile zone than
Memphis. Moreover, the many villages with military traditions in the
immediate area were an important resource (fig. 3.6).
Significant changes in symbolic topography are evident in royal and
dynastic cemeteries (fig. 3.6), which reflect shifting political power,
insecurity and the strong regional and local character of politico-religious
attitudes. In the New Kingdom, kings and royal relatives were always
2
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buried at Thebes, but it was notoriously susceptible to cemetery-

plundering after the Twentieth Dynasty. Thenceforth, relatively secure
Tanis housed the tombs of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second
Dynasties (in the very heart of the temple and administrative quarter,
i.e. within the city) but the Twenty-third to Twenty-fourth and the
Twenty-sixth Dynasties preferred Leontopolis and Sais respectively,
and the Twenty-fifth distant Napata, its ancestral centre. High Priests
of Amen and Twenty-second Dynasty High Priests of Ptah (both royal
relatives) were buried at Thebes (in 'secret' tombs) and Memphis
(within the city) respectively. The relative stability of Tanis was further
reflected by its being chosen as the site of comparatively continuous
major temple-building and additions, although Thebes's traditional
importance stimulated sporadic building activities when economic
circumstances permitted.
The proliferation of walled, fortified cities made a striking contrast
to the New Kingdom. The process began as early as the late New
Kingdom when the massive fortifications of Ramesses Ill's Theban
funerary temple-' town' must have been paralleled elsewhere. By the late
eighth century, the process had reached an advanced stage. Piankhy's
stele, commemorating his defeat of Tefnakhte in 728 BC, refers to
nineteen fortified towns along a 266-km stretch of the river in Middle
Egypt (and average of one for every 14 km!) and, in general terms, to
the 'walled towns' of the Delta, whose appearance is documented
both archaeologically and iconographically. Fortified towns
responded to insecurity, civil war and invasion, but also reflected the
fragmentation of administration and the reliance upon armed force in
government. Major administrative changes were usually accompanied
by the building of supporting fortresses.
Data also suggest that the fairly extensive settlement pattern of the
New Kingdom (p. 213) had become more concentrated and that more
people than formerly lived in urban or semi-urban contexts. For
example, in the late Twentieth Dynasty some 86% of the population
within a 7-km zone between the funerary temples of Seti I and Ramesses
III at Thebes lived within a densely packed town within the latter's walls.
Later, at El-Matmar in Middle Egypt a local population, earlier spread
over a wider area, now lived within the walls of a provincial temple.
Insecurity, particularly in the outlying villages, contributed to this
process (cf. Piankhy's orders about a besieged town: 'Let not the
peasants go to the field, let not the plowman plow.' (Breasted 1906, iv,
s. 821, cf. s. 833)). This uneasiness, together with the difficulties of

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trading in bulky grains in the context of a fragmented political structure,

underlay the depressed land values of the period. More positive factors
also promoted concentration. Local markets were now prime outlets
for surplus, and access to local government, the chief source of
arbitration, was more important. Contemporary funeral inscriptions
reveal that the local town-gods had increased in status as mediators and
centres of cult activity.

THE ONSET OF THE LATE PERIOD

Throughout the Late Period, Egypt made a sustained and largely

successful effort to maintain an effectively centralized state which, except
for the two periods of Persian occupation (Twenty-seventh and
Thirty-first Dynasties) was based upon earlier indigenous models.
However, despite its strong, deliberately cultivated affinities with the
stable political systems of the New Kingdom and earlier periods, Late
Period Egypt displayed certain unique features which were caused by
the effects of the Third Intermediate Period and by factors which had
been less significant or non-existent before.
The traits inherited from the Third Intermediate Period were not
purely negative. They provided important mechanisms for the transition
to centralized government under Psammetichus I, and archaism became
a useful ideological and administrative tool in the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty. Less beneficial was the kingship's decreased sanctity (but not
political power!) and its increased susceptibility to usurpation. The
periodic re-emergence of regionally-based politico-military units whose
importance ultimately derived from the Third Intermediate Period (Sais,
Sebennytos, Mendes) was complex in its effects. It contributed
significantly to the revolts against Persian occupation, but also to the
recurrent internal crises of the Twenty-eighth to Thirtieth Dynasties.
The most important new factors were the restricted access to
traditional sources of royal income in the Levant and in the Sudan, and
(particularly after the end of the first Persian occupation) persistent
pressure upon Egypt's own territorial integrity. As a result, while Egypt
was on a more or less permanent war-footing, its foreign policy was
more defensive than in the New Kingdom and involved contacts and
alliances with a new group of foreign states (fig. 3.5). In addition, the
use of foreign soldiers (and mariners) was much more important than
before both in foreign and internal affairs.
The career of Psammetichus I typifies the often subtle mixture of the
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old, recent and new characteristics of Late Period policies and society.
At the outset (664 BC) he was a vassal of the Assyrians like the eleven
other rulers (each residing in a fortified town and commanding an army)
with whom he shared control of Egypt. Already king of the largest
single unit (p. 246) Psammetichus arranged for a Memphite oracle,
strongly reminiscent of the type issued by ' national' gods in the New
Kingdom, proclaiming his right to sole rule. Another oracle, of a more
local and recent character, at Buto, near the coast of his kingdom,
legitimized his use of Ionian and Carian mercenaries (the latter from
Asia Minor) who had arrived there possibly at Psammetichus's invita-
tion. The special abilities and equipment of these mercenaries gave
Psammetichus an advantage over the indigenous troops of his rivals.
He probably used both military and political strategy in the Delta, which
came quickly under his control (by 657 BC), and the long, exposed
internal frontiers both compelled and facilitated an at least partially
military solution.
The military reduction of the less exposed, strategically stronger
centres of Middle and Upper Egypt was likely to be undesirably
protracted. The threat of foreign intervention, for which this would be
an excellent opportunity, was omnipresent. Psammetichus's unification
policy was specifically noted by the Assyrians as a violation of his treaty
with them and he also had to reckon with the Kushite king, now
residing at Napata, whose adherents at Thebes still recognized him as
late as 657 BC.
Political action alone, backed by the threat of superior force, was,
therefore, desirable south of Memphis. In this process the appointment
of loyal northerners to strategic southern posts was certainly important,
but less so than the exploitation of Third Intermediate Period mech-
anisms which made such appointments possible without military
activity. For example, Herakleopolis had apparently been in eclipse since
Memphis became a quasi-national capital in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty,
and it did not appear in an Assyrian list of major and minor Egyptian
'kingdoms' of 667—666 BC. By 661 BC, however, it had regained its
earlier status as the residence and centre of royal relatives governing
Middle and Upper Egypt. Psammetichus's first such official, Pediese,
was either from the Saite region or was an incumbent Herakleopolitan
governor, deliberately linked by marriage to the king.
Pediese and his son and successor, Somtutefnakht, had, in fact,
limited territorial control, but they effectively exercised the unique office
of' overseer of the (river) harbours' of Middle and Upper Egypt. This
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ensured royal control of the main communication artery, generated an

increasing revenue from dues (within four years a 50%, within fifteen
a 100%, increase) and secured some kind of hold over the provincial
harbours, weak links in the cities' defences. Father and son were
essentially royal officials, not semi-independent rulers; they generated
no collateral dynasty and their most powerful functions had been
eliminated by the end of the reign.
In general, Psammetichus left local rulers in office if they abandoned
such 'independent' titles as 'king', 'great chief and 'army-leader' and
became incorporated into a centralized form of royal government. This
process, apparently rapid in the Delta, was undertaken cautiously in less
readily accessible regions. The admittedly royal, but uniquely powerful,
office of'overseer of harbours' survived to at least Psammetichus's year
34, while relations with Thebes, the major southern centre, were
typically complex.
Thebes still controlled the six southernmost Egyptian provinces
when it reached a political settlement with Psammetichus in 656 BC. The
chief office-holders of the region (including two descendants of Kushite
kings) were confirmed in office, and the royal government was inserted
in typical Third Intermediate Period fashion by the adoption of
Psammetichus's daughter as heir to the 'god's wife of Amen' (p. 241).
Thereafter, this office continued to be held by a Twenty-sixth Dynasty
princess. During Psammetichus's reign a royal governor was placed
over the second and third Upper Egyptian provinces, and a royal
garrison installed at Aswan, effectively ending Theban-Kushite contact.
However, the assimilation of the Theban administration was still
continuing some seventeen years after the settlement, when much of
the power formerly held by the Theban mayor cum governor of the
south was transferred to the steward of the 'god's wife'. Either during
Psammetichus's reign or later (by year 1 of Psammetichus II) the office
of High Priest of Amen was combined with that of ' god's wife' and
remained so to the end of the dynasty.
In 655/4 BC a major crisis permitted Psammetichus to demonstrate
(and perhaps increase) his already considerable power. At this time
much of western Egypt from Oxyrhynchus to the sea - almost one-third
of Egypt's length — was invaded by Libyans, who may have been in
collaboration with dispossessed Egyptian dynasts. Psammetichus took
the initiative of driving them out in good New Kingdom style, ordering
' the mayors ih7)tj-i) of all the towns' of Egypt to send their troops to
join his army (Spalinger 1976).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Despite recentralization, the effects of the Third Intermediate Period

probably persisted through the following three centuries. Massive
Persian intervention and pressure was a major new feature but the
periodic instability experienced by the independent Egyptian dynasties
reflected continuing internal as well as external problems.

EGYPT'S RELATIONS W I T H AFRICA

Throughout the nine centuries covered in this chapter, contacts

between Egypt and other African regions were active and varied and
must now be surveyed in detail; the Sudan after the rise of the
Twenty-fifth Dynasty is excluded.
The 'Africa' known directly or indirectly to the Egyptians was
comparatively small in area and restricted to regions adjoining Egypt,
the sole exception being an ephemeral expansion of knowledge in the
Late Period under Necho. Little evidence supports claims for widespread
Egyptian influence throughout the continent, from western to southern
Africa; rather, we still await better documentation of the available facts
(see Leclant 1972). Even if some claims eventually are proven, cultural
diffusion via partly Egyptianized Kushites and Libyans is likely to have
been a more important mechanism than direct contact.
Egyptian contact with and knowledge of Africa was relatively
shallow, partly because of severe natural restrictions on access such as
the Sahara and the difficulty of movement along the upper Nile. A
related and equally important factor was the comparatively unsophisti-
cated Egyptian political and military organization, which never created
an ' imperial' hegemony like that of the Assyrians, the Persians or, even
earlier, the Hittites. Once territorial integrity was assured and control
over or access to relatively close trade routes and sources of raw
materials was established the Egyptians seem to have had little impetus
to advance further. Changing historical circumstances were also sig-
nificant. Contacts and knowledge gained in the expansive New Kingdom
dwindled in the contracting Third Intermediate Period, and were
hindered in the re-expansive Late Period by a strong Kushite state in
the south. The extraordinary circumnavigation of Africa sponsored by
Necho failed to discover any major new sources of income and its
time-span (over two years) must have confirmed the primacy of the
short-run Red Sea and Mediterranean routes.
To the Egyptians ' Libya', the northernmost contact area, probably
stretched no further 'west than Cyrenaica (fig. 3.18). Libya, in the New
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

— Dense population, often sedentary

• '• •• Sparse population, of ten nomadic
I I Uninhabited

Fig. 3.18 Schematic version of the modern population pattern of north-east Africa,
probably approximating to that of the second and first millennia BC.

Kingdom and later, was frequently called Tjehenu or Tjemeh, archaic

and loosely applied terms; the former tended to refer to a peripheral
zone of Libyan settlement along the western Delta and the latter to more
remote areas. It is unfortunately impossible to match with certainty two
sets of Libyan tribal names, the first supplied by New Kingdom sources,
the other 600 years later by Herodotus. The dominant tribes during
the New Kingdom were the Libu and the Mashwash, both probably
located in Cyrenaica. Their sustained interaction with Egypt and their
contacts with the ' Sea-Peoples' of the eastern Mediterranean makes it
unlikely that either was based at Tripolitania, an important area of
coastal occupation but some 2 5 00 km west of Egypt. Their substantial
animal holdings and relative independence strongly suggests that the
well-watered Cyrenaican plain and massif was their homeland and not
the harsh coastal plain to the east.
South of the Libyan coastal region, population rapidly fell to virtually
nil, as it did throughout most of the deserts flanking the relatively
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densely settled Nile Valley, until there began a gradually increasing

density, part of a broad arc sweeping from the western coast of the Red
Sea across central Africa (fig. 3.18). The arc marked the beginning of
the semidesert, shading eventually into savanna, created by the northern
edge of the east and central African rainfall belt which, in antiquity,
corresponded roughly to the modern limits between latitudes 200 and
i4-i6°N.
The deserts themselves were not entirely devoid of population. The
western Egyptian oases supported populations and linked the desert
routes, running north and south, which were of economic and strategic
interest to Egypt. Consequently, throughout the entire 900 years
covered here, at least some, and sometimes all, of the oases were under
Egyptian control. To the east, the relatively better watered Red Sea Hills
supported an appreciable nomadic population persisting perhaps as far
north as latitude 270 N (cf. the distribution of intrusive Pan-grave/Medja
sites; see chapter 2). These eastern nomads were, in the New Kingdom
at least, still called Medja-people and, because of their dispersed
character, were not easy to bring under control.
The New Kingdom conquest of 'Kush', comprising the riverine
zones of Wawat (Lower Nubia, First to Second Cataracts; previously
occupied by Egypt in the Middle Kingdom) and Kush proper (Upper
Nubia, Second to Fourth (?) Cataracts), gave Egypt intimate knowledge
of its Nehasyu ('southerner, Nubian') population. Egyptians also
penetrated the area south of the Fifth Cataract but to a depth which
remains uncertain. New Kingdom Egypt was also regularly in direct
contact with the country of Punt, a region which can now be
approximately defined (O'Connor 1982, pp. 926, 935) and, on at least
one occasion, penetrated its interior perhaps to a depth of 250 km.
Although Egyptian contacts re-expanded after the Third Intermediate
Period contraction, Kush proper remained under indigenous control
from the Kushite capital at Napata, with Wawat a virtually uninhabited
and contested area between the two powers. No definite recontact with
Punt is recorded but, during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty and the period
of Persian occupation, Egyptian shipping was active in the Red Sea
and, in view of the strong maritime emphasis of the Late Period, may
have anticipated the Ptolemaic pattern of contact which ran as far south
as the Bab el-Mandeb and Cape Guardafui.
The location of some of the African toponyms referred to by the
Egyptians is of great importance for the reconstruction of Egyptian
activity in Kush, Punt and contiguous regions. Unfortunately, the
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

locations of most of the toponyms — even the most important — remains

a matter of debate. The writer follows in this chapter the conclusions
published in O'Connor 1982 (pp. 925-40).
The changing pattern of relations between Egypt and other African
regions was shaped by several factors. These included the aims of
Egyptian policy, which varied from region to region; the logistics
imposed by specific topographies; the characteristics of the indigenous
cultures and their reactions to contact with Egypt; and the vicissitudes
of Egypt's own internal stability. Policies followed by Egypt in the
Levant and Africa were closely linked. Successful expansion into the
Levant depended upon there being no threat of a substantial distraction
created by rebellion in Kush, and the gold which became a major
element in Egyptian Levantine policy was derived from Kush.
The conquest of Kush created new contacts and conflicts with more
remote Nubian groups, while the increasing importance of Nubian gold
in Egypt's diplomatic relations with Asiatic states led to significant
policy shifts in the regions to the south of Egypt. By contrast, Libya
lacked desirable resources and only became a matter of acute concern
when its threat to Egyptian security increased (p. 203). Punt, chief
source of the highly desired incense used in religious ritual, was
somewhat remote and was probably not contacted again directly until
Hatshepsut's reign. Thereafter its products and the access it provided
to inland regions ensured that Egyptian contacts with it were maintained
to the end of the New Kingdom.

RELATIONS WITH KUSH AND THE EASTERN DESERT

Expansion southward (fig. 3.19.1) was, therefore, intimately linked to

relations with the Levant and to internal events which either inhibited
or enhanced Egyptian activity abroad. Kamose (Seventeenth Dynasty)
and Ahmose (Eighteenth Dynasty) had simultaneously to deal with the
Hyksos and the Kushites, who were politically and strategically linked,
expelling them respectively from Egypt and Wawat and creating buffer
zones in southern Palestine and the Second Cataract region. Internal
rebellions late in Ahmosis' reign showed that the Egyptian political
situation itself was not completely stable and, not surprisingly, his
successor, Amenhotep I, seems to have advanced southward no further
than Sai and to have attempted no Asiatic campaigns. Tuthmosis I,
however, did secure the whole Third Cataract region, consolidating his
hold by building a fortress at Tombos, and traversed Kush itself, setting
2
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 •Kharga
Dakhla l:::i?i::] Basic complex region
Nekhen yielding gold ore
• Ancient gold-mine

I Fortress,
fortified town

Selima
Amara

Soleb
Sesebi
Amara
Third CataractiJTomboS

200 km ,'

Fig. 3.19 1 New Kingdom Egypt in Wawat and Kush

2 Gold-bearing areas of Wawat and Kush (after Vercoutter 1959).
The dotted line across the Bayuda desert indicates the route formed by a series of water holes (see Chittick 1955)'

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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

up an at least symbolically significant frontier stele at Kurgus (just as,

shortly after, he set up another on the Euphrates). Nevertheless,
stubborn resistance to the Egyptian advance continued. That against
Amenhotep I and Tuthmosis I was almost certainly led by unique
political and military leaders descended from the ' rulers of Kush' (based
at Kerma) who had dominated much of Upper Nubia and Wawat during
the later Second Intermediate Period; the Kushite 'royal family', with
allies from further south in Upper Nubia, appears to have made its final
resistance against Tuthmosis II.
Even so, the Third Cataract region remained unstable until
Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III not only finally reduced it but extended
full Egyptian control as far south as the Fourth Cataract. Although the
evidence is slight, it is sufficient to show that the atypically intense and
sustained Levantine campaigning of Tuthmosis Ill's sole reign, which
extended permanent Egyptian control over a much expanded area, was
preceded by a comparable expansion in Kush during the co-reign of
Tuthmosis and Hatshepsut. This campaign was less demanding than
the conflict with the urbanized and politically and militarily sophisticated
Asiatics, but the final suppression of potentially distracting Kush was
a necessary prelude to expansion into the Levant.
If, as was likely, an early Nubian campaign of Hatshepsut was
provoked by attacks on Egyptian garrisons it logically would have been
in the most recently conquered zone, i.e. the Third Cataract region; and
twenty years after her accession, Tuthmosis III, on Hatshepsut's behalf,
quelled a rebellion or invasion in Miu, a territory of the same approxi-
mate region. The co-rulers were also familiar with regions further
south, since Hatshepsut set up a list of toponyms including Irem and
others probably located in the Fifth to Sixth Cataract area; further, a
strong Egyptian expedition at least once contacted Irem and exacted
tribute, reaching the valley from the land of Punt in the east while
Tuthmosis III, during Hatshepsut's reign, hunted a rhinoceros in the
' Southlands', which lay south of Upper Nubia, itself environmentally
unsuitable for such an animal (O'Connor 1982, appendix).
Thereafter, Tuthmosis was extremely active in the Levant from his
years 22 to 42, an indication that Egyptian dominance in Upper Nubia
had been securely established under Hatshepsut or in the early sole reign
of Tuthmosis III. The significant date may well be Tuthmosis' year 31,
the first time the b$ku> (revenue) of Wawat and Kush was recorded. In
year 34, four sons of the chief of Irem were dispatched (as hostages,
prisoners?) to Egypt; and it was probably the next year that Tuthmosis
2
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

set up a duplicate of Tuthmosis I's frontier stele at Kurgus, just as he

had two years earlier on the Euphrates. Napata was certainly a
permanent Egyptian centre by year 47.
The Third Cataract region, now under close Egyptian control,
remained peculiarly important throughout the New Kingdom despite
its agricultural poverty and relatively low population. Several major
fortress (or temple) towns developed here, continuing to flourish even
after the more fertile remainder of Kush was finally conquered and
one - Amara — was the preferred administrative centre for Kush, despite
its non-central position. This continuing importance reflects the area's
early role as a base of operations, its reduced exposure to external attack,
and its economic value, for the chief riverine gold sources were precisely
in this zone (fig. 3.19.2). It also has been argued that this area was an
important focus for desert trade routes linking Upper Nubia and the
northern Butana.
Thereafter, with Kush secured, the foci of Egyptian military activity
moved, in partially interrelated ways, both east and south. Throughout
the New Kingdom Napata and Karoy (the riverine zone between the
Fourth and Fifth Cataracts) are consistently referred to as the southern
limit of full Egyptian control; but the development of a looser form
of control in the Fifth and Sixth Cataract regions, and even further, was
imperative. The uninhabited nature of Karoy and the difficulties of
riverine movement through it, as well as the aridity of the Bayuda desert,
made this a natural frontier zone; while the diffused pastoral populations
of the regions beyond Karoy would have exacerbated the normal
problems of full control. But these same populations, if left completely
unhampered, could monopolize access to desirable products (e.g.
gold) and raid the tempting targets provided by Egyptian centres
and a pacified population in adjoining Kush. Eventually, the Egyptians
seem to have established a system of control in Irem and adjoining
regions based not on permanent centres, but on patrols, interspersed,
when necessary, with campaigns (cf. the similar situation between Sixth
Dynasty Egypt and Wawat, and - to a degree - Middle Kingdom
Wawat and Kush; see chapter 2).
The eastern Nubian desert, accessible primarily from Wawat via the
Wadis el-Allaqi and Gabgaba, contained valuable gold resources
(fig. 3.19.2); Wawat sometimes yielded twenty times more gold than
Kush. The Egyptians were again exploiting these resources in the early
Eighteenth Dynasty; but the area increased in importance when gold
became a major source of Egyptian influence in the Levant (as
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campaigning was largely replaced by alliances and quasi-diplomatic

commercial relationships in the later Eighteenth Dynasty and, after a
renewal of major campaigning, in the Nineteenth Dynasty).
Aridity created logistical problems in eastern Nubia but equally
significant was the presence of a nomadic or semi-nomadic population
(in broad terms, the Medja-people) who interfered with Egyptian
exploitation. The eastern deserts were related to Irem and contiguous
regions in several ways: all contained significant gold deposits (fig.
3.19.2); their populations were probably in contact; and the Medja-
people were directly — and the Irem and nearby peoples indirectly —
linked to the Red Sea coast. Certainly Egyptian activities in both
regions seem at times to have been linked together.
Given the policy aims suggested above, a consistent pattern for later
Eighteenth Dynasty activity in the south can tentatively be suggested.
Tuthmosis IV campaigned in the deserts east of Wawat and perhaps
in Irem and two other toponyms in its vicinity; if so, he anticipated
the better documented activity of his successor, Amenhotep III,
presumably for the same reasons. In the reign of Amenhotep III, a
comprehensive plan to expand and improve the exploitation of the
gold-mining areas as a whole can be discerned. At about this time the
authority of the Viceroy of Kush was extended to include the southern
Egyptian gold-mines and, in fact, the name of Amenhotep's viceroy,
Merymose, has been found in southern Egypt at Reddesiyeh, an area
which had become an important gold producer by the early Nineteenth
Dynasty. Ibhet, a region in the gold-bearing desert east of Wawat, was
invaded by the same Merymose, moving from the valley along the Wadi
el-Allaqi, probably in conjunction with other campaigns which date to
Amenhotep's fifth regnal year.
During this year an army sailed along the Red Sea coast, opposite
Wawat and Kush, and harassed the Nehasyu inhabitants of the region;
these were presumably nomads based on the coastal plain or hills who
had been penetrating inland and hindering an expanded exploitation
of the gold-mines. The area affected was called Wr/fyfe], probably the
same toponym as the eastern-desert toponym Tjwfk, dominated by the
Medja-people in the Middle Kingdom. Amenhotep also indicated that
Irem and a nearby toponym Twrk were invaded by another army; this
would have improved security on the frontier and enhanced access to
the gold-mines of 'mu> — along latitude 190 N (O'Connor 1982, p. 939)
— from which came the gold of Karoy specifically referred to in con-
nection with this campaign.
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The depth of the penetration of Amenhotep III into the eastern desert
is marked by the appearance of a new toponym, Akuyta, first attested
in the toponymical lists of his reign, and certainly to be located in this
region. Akuyta's continuing importance is reflected by its reappearance
in lists of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), Horemheb, Ramesses II and
Ramesses III and was based upon the continuous effort to maintain the
enhanced gold supply created by Amenhotep III. Akhenaten punished
the Akuyta people for threatening the food supplies of the gold-miners,
while Seti I and Ramesses II were much concerned about the water
supply of their gold miners in Akuyta. A viceroy of Ramesses II
recorded the submission of Akuyta's chief, although Ramesses' suc-
cessor Merenptah may have had further trouble in the east; how else to
explain a campaign of his in year 4 connected with long stabilized and
acculturated Wawat ? Thereafter perhaps Akuyta was more submissive
to Egypt; the ' deputy of Wawat' was active in Akuyta as late as the
reign of Ramesses VI while under Ramesses IX Nehasyu from Akuyta
assisted the Egyptians by repelling nomadic attack upon the gold-mines
of the Wadis Hammamat or el-Allaqi.
Activity in the area of the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts was also
maintained. The locations of the Nubian campaigns of Tutankhamen(P)
and Horemheb are unknown. However, once Seti I had concluded his
vigorous campaigning in Asia with diplomatic accord the need for
diplomatically potent gold was reinforced. In year 9 Seti began the
further development of the southern Egyptian gold-mines and at the
same time attacked Irem. Ramesses II also campaigned in Irem and
recorded tribute from thence and Ramesses III probably also engaged
in hostilities against Irem. Captive chiefs of Kush, of an obliterated
toponym perhaps to be restored as Irem, and of two other toponyms
in Irem's vicinity were depicted at Medinet Habu, and Irem people were
compelled to serve at the royal court in Egypt. Significantly, Ramesses
III also exploited the gold-mines of'mw, access to which depended upon
the acquiescence of Irem.
The long Egyptian occupation of Kush and Wawat (to the end of
the Twentieth Dynasty) generated an intense and sustained interaction
between Egyptians and indigenes which had results of the greatest
interest. The more important aspects of that interaction are epitomized
in the wall scenes of the tomb of Huy, Viceroy of Kush under
Tutankhamen (fig. 3.20). Textual commentary is minimal but the
content and symbolically varying scales of the iconography reflect
the basic Egyptian interests in the region; the administrative structure
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Fig. 3-zo Officials of the administration of Nubia under Tutankhamen, bringing gifts to the
viceroy Huy. They are: upper register, left to right, the deputy of Wawat (destroyed), the deputy
of Kush, the mayor of Soleb, and an overseer of cattle; lower register, left to right, the high priest
of Tutankhamen at Faras, the 'deputy' of the fortress of Faras and the mayor of Faras. (After
Davies and Gardiner 1926.)

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that satisfied them; and, partially, the nature of the relations between
Egyptians and indigenes.
The depiction of Huy's investiture emphasized both the importance
of the viceroy and his close personal relationship with the king. The
data on the viceregal office shows that it was intimately related to the
expansion into Wawat and Kush, a phenomenon strongly linked to
the actual power and the mystique of the kingship. The first viceroy
was installed perhaps by Kamose but certainly by Ahmose, and thirty
have now been documented, succeeding each other until the end of the
reign of Ramesses XI; few, if any, are yet to be discovered. The earliest
viceroys were perhaps, like Ahmose Turo (Ahmosis—Tuthmosis I),
drawn from the administration set up to control the expanding conquest
territory, but thereafter they were drawn from the administration within
Egypt, except for the relatively rare cases when a son succeeded his father
as viceroy. The chief responsibilities of the viceroy were to collect and
deliver tribute and taxes (given pride of place in Huy's tomb), to exploit
efficiently the gold-bearing regions, and to oversee the civil government
of the province. Although the viceroys rarely bore military titles
contemporary with their incumbency and although formal military
command was vested in the 'battalion-commander of Kush', in
practice, they could assume direct military command of the province's
forces (e.g. Merymose under Amenhotep III and Panehesy under
Ramesses XI). Moreover, at least a third of the viceroys between the
later Eighteenth and earlier Twentieth Dynasties were drawn from the
royal chariotry or royal stable-administration, a fact that probably
reflects their role in the desert campaigning typical of that period
(pp. 258ff.).
The viceroys' close links with the king were emphasized by their
titles, administrative habits and origins. The viceroys were functionally
equivalent to (although inherently more powerful than) the Levantine
'overseers of northern lands', and enjoyed a unique quasi-dynastic
status as 'king's son' or 'king's son of Kush' (p. 209). Appointed by
the king and reporting directly to him, many (nearly 50%) of the
viceroys were drawn from the ' royal' sections of the bureaucracy and
army, i.e. from the ranks of royal envoys, heralds, scribes, charioteers
and stable-overseers. This close connection facilitated royal control over
an unusually powerful official governing an extensive territory (from
Nekhen in Upper Egypt to Napata), the chief product of which -
gold - was peculiarly important to the temporal and supernatural
power of the kingship, since king and Amen establishment were the
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 NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

chief beneficiaries. It also however reflected the symbolic importance

of Kush, wherein the war-making, divinely-approved abilities of the
Egyptian kings were particularly satisfactorily demonstrated.
The administrative structure of Kush, sketched out in Huy's tomb
(fig. 3.20) and documented elsewhere, interestingly mimicked central-
ized royal government in Egypt. The viceroy had his own staff of
scribes, envoys and agents, while Wawat and Kush were each directly
administered by a 'deputy' (idnw). Government was centralized in two
provincial capitals, clearly Faras and Soleb (ancient Khaemhet; see
fig. 3.20) under Tutankhamen (see the prominence given to the officials
of these towns in Huy's tomb) but more usually Aniba and Amara.
These and the other towns renovated or founded by the New Kingdom
Egyptians throughout the region were each governed by a mayor (h^ty-')
or, when of a military character, by a military official {tsw, hry pdt, or
imy-r mr htm), and most of them had a priesthood serving the cults of
Egyptian gods.
Throughout the New Kingdom, these ethnically and culturally
Egyptian urban centres were surrounded by a substantial population
which was un-Egyptian in ethnicity, language(s) and, initially (in Kush
if not in Wawat), in material culture. There is no reason to assume a
massive displacement of indigenes by incoming Egyptians and the
theory that Wawat, and even Kush, became gradually depopulated
because of falling river levels or repressive Egyptian policies seems to
the writer unlikely. The subordinate roles of the Nubians are emphasized
in Huy's tomb, where they are shown apparently delivering tribute to
centres in Nubia and certainly accompanying the presentation of the
tribute to the king. Nubian chiefs humble themselves before the king,
their children appear as hostages or future royal harem members and
other Nubians appear as prisoners or slaves (fig. 3.21). Certainly, the
basic agricultural and pastoral system of Kush must have been
maintained by the indigenes, their services on behalf of the civil, military
and religious establishments of the province enforced, and numerous
Kushites drafted into the army, frequently as specific segments of the
Levantine garrisons.
Two aspects of the indigenes' relations with Egypt were particularly
important. First, some southerners were incorporated into the admini-
stration of the province, not, as in the Middle Kingdom, excluded from
it; secondly, there was, at all levels of indigenous society, increasing
acculturation to Egyptian norms in material and intellectual culture,
eventually complete in Wawat and presumably reaching an advanced
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fngX>Tr V SJlfcaztKT'lCS

Fig. 3.21 1 Egyptianized Nubians (?) delivering tribute to the viceroy Huy.
2 Nubians delivering tribute to Tutankhamen. Upper register, right to left: the three chiefs
of Wawat, including Hekanefer, followed by a Nubian princess and several princes. Lower register,
right to left: three of the six chiefs of Kush depicted in Huy's tomb. (After Davies and Gardiner
1926.)

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Elephantine
New Kingdom fortress, fortified town
Modern villages
I Principal zones of C-group and
New Kingdom settlement

ISemna/Kumma

Fig. 3.22 The three (?) chiefdoms of Lower Nubia (Wawat) in the Eighteenth Dynasty. It is
assumed that each chiefdom coincides with one of the three principal zones of settlement
(cf. Trigger 1965, figs. 2, 3), an assumption supported by the distribution of the tombs and
monuments of the chiefs and their relatives (fig. 3.23), and by the three chiefs of Wawat depicted
in Huy's tomb (fig. 3.21).

degree in at least some parts of Kush. Given these facts, one may
legitimately speculate that the distinctions between resident Egyptians
and numerically dominant Nubians became increasingly blurred, with
Nubians beginning to move into the upper levels of provincial
government and society. Unfortunately, the acculturation process in
Wawat makes it impossible to confirm this hypothesis, while data from
Kush are as yet inadequate.
The indigenous elite was dominated by paramount 'chiefs' (wrw),
best documented in the Eighteenth Dynasty but also referred to later.
For that period, depictions of Nubian tribute, in which the chiefs are
indicated by their activity, large size, and distinctive apparel, suggest
there were only a small number of chiefs (between seven and nine) for
Kush in its broader sense. In Huy's tomb only three chiefs of Wawat
are shown (fig. 3.21), and in fact two principal chiefdoms therein are
well documented, leaving room for another in the north. This division
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corresponds to topographically enforced breaks in the Lower Nubian

settlement pattern (fig. 3.22) which had affected indigenous political
structures as early as the Old Kingdom. This implies, of course, that
the twenty-five toponyms assigned to Wawat in the list of Tuthmosis
III (see O'Connor 1982, p. 928) were subsumed into the larger political
units of the chiefdoms, and a similar process must be envisaged for Kush
proper. Although at least eight or nine toponyms of the Tuthmoside
list are to be located in Upper Nubia, only six chiefs of Kush are depicted
in Huy's tomb. Earlier, in fact, Tuthmosis II, in apparent reference to
Upper Nubia as a whole, specifically describes it as divided into five
chieftainships (Breasted 1927, p. 139; see also Gardiner 1961, p. 180).x
These chiefs were appointed by the Egyptians but were probably drawn
from the upper levels of Nubian society, perhaps even from the families
of hereditary chiefs of earlier periods.
Two chiefs' ' families' of Eighteenth Dynasty Wawat illustrate the
administrative functions of the chiefs and the increased acculturation
their role encouraged. The tombs, graffiti, dedicatory statues and stelae
of one family are concentrated within the chiefdom of Miam, and the
other in that of Tekhet (figs. 3.22—3). Chiefs' sons appear to have been
sent to Egypt as hostages, brought up as pages at the Egyptian court
(as were many Egyptians, including some viceroys, who later achieved
high office) and subsequently incorporated into the bureaucracy of
Wawat as 'administrators,' 'scribes' and 'viceregal deputies'. Those
who eventually succeeded their fathers or other relatives as chiefs (wrw)
presumably managed the internal affairs of the Nubian communities,
and were the chief liaison between the indigenes and Egyptian officials.
Although ethnically non-Egyptian (e.g. Hekanefer, as depicted in
Huy's tomb; fig. 3.21), the chiefs were completely acculturated. Their
personal names are usually partially or entirely Egyptian, their tombs
Egyptian in function, form and decoration; and they appear to have
assumed partially indigenous regalia only on such symbolically sig-
nificant occasions as the presentation of tribute to the king. Icono-
graphic evidence indicated that the Kushite chiefs underwent a similar,
although not necessarily identical, process.
Archaeological evidence shows that, with a few exceptions, the
indigenes of Wawat at all levels of society acculturated rapidly to
Egyptian norms, at least in terms of material culture. Except on the
' The number of ' chiefs' actually involved in this text is ambiguous, but the reference to a
five-fold division is explicit, and is suggestive in the context of the other data cited in this
paragraph.

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Tety D^
[
Rwiw Senmose (temp. HatshepsutJ
(Nubian name) Tomb: Aswan
Chief (wr) of
Tekhet; scribe.
Tomb: Debeira East (?)
Monuments: Aswan

Djehutyhotep P^-itsy (temp. Hatshepsut) Amenemhet (temp. Hatshepsut; and

(Nubian name) sole reign of Tuthmosis III
Chief (wr) of Tekhet; formerly (?) Chief (wr) of Tekhet; formerly
the able administrator (hrp) of the the able senior administrator (hrp) of
queen, scribe of the south land. the king; the able administrator in Wawat.
Tomb: Debeira East the scribe.
Tomb: Debeira West (opposite that of
Djehutyhotep)
Monuments: Buhen

(illegible name) Rwl [a>] = (?) Rwiw (Nubian name [s])

Deputy (idnw) of the
viceroy; headman {tpy)
of the viceroy.
Tomb: Aniba (Miam)

Pahu .. [Hek]anefer=(?) Hekanefer (temp.

Tutankhamen)
Chief (wr) of Miam; also
a royal page (hrd n kp)
and chief of oarsmen
(hryhn(y)t)
Tomb: Toshka

Fig. 3.Z3 Genealogies and offices of the 'chieftains' families' of (1) Tekhet and (2) Miam. For
the former, see Save-Soderbergh (i960, 1963) and Edel (1963)- As for the individuals from Miam,
the identification between R»<i[ii<] and Rwiw is quite possible (cf. Steindorff 1937, 27; Plates, Taf.
13.56, for R»;'[»'] and Text 69-70, 79 for Rwiw). The restoration of the name of Rwi[w\'% son as
[Hekjanefer (not suggested by Steindorff, but cf. his Text 37, Plates, Taf, 13.56) is less plausible
since, as Lanny Bell pointed out to me, the restoration requires the 'aleph vulture-sign (3) to be
written out, which would not normally be the case in the New Kingdom. On Hekanefer, chief
of Miam, see Simpson (1963).

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southern edge of Wawat, the characteristic C-group culture (see

chapter 2) did not survive the Second Intermediate Period. During that
time, traditional C-group cemeteries rapidly became' Egyptian' in tomb
types, funerary artifacts and burial customs. The characteristic circular-
oval C-group houses of rubble, vegetable materials and leather (?) were
also replaced by right-angled structures making considerable use of mud
brick. For lack of evidence, changes in contemporary Kushite material
culture cannot yet be traced. It is important to note that a thoroughly
'Nubian' archaeological assemblage claimed to postdate and to be
descended from the Second Intermediate Period ' Kerma culture' is, in
fact, probably the latter's Middle Kingdom predecessor (see chapter 2).
At the end of the New Kingdom, the Kushite viceroy Penehasy,
expelled from Egypt, retained control of Lower (and implicitly Upper)
Nubia, since he was buried at Aniba (ancient Miam). The Lower Nubian
population was markedly heterogeneous, consisting of Egyptians, many
settled there for generations, a majority of Egyptianized Nubians and,
probably, some Egypto-Nubians, but it maintained its political cohesion.
This is indicated by its strong resistance to the sustained Egyptian effort
at reconquest under Herihor and his son Piankh (p. 231); by a possible
successor to Penehasy, who bore titles somewhat similar to his and
whose recognition of the titular authority of Ramesses XI did not
preclude continued hostility to Herihor; and by the voluntary and
wholesale evacuation of Lower Nubia at about this time, which may
initially have been caused by the intensity of Piankh's campaigning.
This intensity is demonstrated by the facts that the younger artisans of
the royal romb at Thebes were drafted into Piankh's army, and the
Theban necropolis scribes were assigned to organizing the production
of metal weapons instead of the normal artisans' tools.
The depopulation of Lower Nubia was long sustained, largely
because of political circumstances rather than fluctuations in Nile level
or in the local agricultural economy. Resettlement was, at first,
precluded by Egyptian hostility; as late as Pinudjem II the ruling family
of southern Egypt still claimed the title of Viceroy of Kush, and the
Nubian campaign of Shoshenq I indicates more explicit conflict. No
major resettlement was attempted under the Twenty-fifth (Kushite)
Dynasty, and the unprecedented existence of a Kushite state approxi-
mately equal to Egypt in military and political strength throughout the
Late and Ptolemaic Periods encouraged the maintenance of a mutually
advantageous, largely empty, buffer zone, as did periodic open conflicts.
Psammetichus II invaded Upper Nubia, and Cambyses and probably
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Khababash (c. 335 BC?) also campaigned against the southerners. Only
the strong expansionist tendencies of the Ptolemaic and Meroitic states
(see chapter 4; Shinnie 1981), combined with some form of Egyptian—
Meroitic accord under Ptolemy IV, led eventually to the resettlement
of Lower Nubia in the first century BC.
The evolution of a Kushite state throughout the Third Intermediate
Period is undocumented, except for the tombs of the apparent
predecessors of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty at Kurru, near Napata.
Going back to about 860 BC, these tombs indicate that the society from
which the Twenty-fifth Dynasty arose was Upper Nubian in origin and,
in its earlier phase, little affected by Egyptian culture. The circular
earthen tumuli covering the simple pit-and-chamber tombs and the
non-Egyptian orientation of the latter strongly suggest that, whatever
degree of acculturation was reached in the New Kingdom, it had been
lost in the intervening two centuries. However, even these earlier graves
had assemblages of funerary goods which were dominated by artifacts
imported from contemporary Egypt, indigenous culture being repre-
sented by stone arrow-heads and certain pottery types. These imports
were presumably the result of trade, probably in Nubian gold, which
occurred frequently amongst the grave-goods. Quite apart from the
internal Egyptian demand for gold, Egypt had become increasingly
involved in commercial and diplomatic activities in the Levant since the
reign of Siamun (Twenty-first Dynasty). Given Egypt's weak military
structure, gold was probably even more important in these activities
than it had been in the New Kingdom.
The continual recurrence of Egyptian artifacts in the Kurru tombs
shows that trade persisted and other evidence suggests an increasing
intensity and variety of contact. During the eighth century BC, square
mastabas replaced the tumuli style; stone masonry was used with
increasing frequency; a preference for right-angled architectural forms
became evident; and the burial-pit orientation conformed to Egyptian
practice. These developments imply increased exposure to Egyptian
models and techniques, a greater penetration of the Egyptian cultural
region (aided certainly by the accelerating political fragmentation within
Egypt) and perhaps the importation of Egyptian artisans. Conversely,
the growing centrality of the Kushite state, reflected in the increasing
size and elaboration of these royal tombs, culminated perhaps under the
'son of Re', 'the chieftain', Alara. His successor, Kashta, controlled
Lower Nubia and was in close contact with Egypt. Shortly thereafter,
the Kushite Piankhy conquered Middle and Upper Egypt. This led to
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a period of intense cultural interaction with Egypt which deeply affected
the subsequent development of both Napatan and Meroitic culture.
These themes are explored elsewhere (Shinnie 1981).

EGYPT AND PUNT (fig. 3.24)

Punt was an important African contact area for the Egyptians, who
probably visited it fairly regularly, but the region is tantalizingly poorly
documented. The single detailed Egyptian source is the Punt reliefs of
Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari and the region occupied by Punt has not
been explored archaeologically. Within broad limits, the location of
Punt is now well established (O'Connor 1982, p. 935) although it is
important to note that the savanna animals sometimes ascribed to Punt
actually are characteristic of Irem and Nm$yw, adjoining Punt on the
western side. Punt included the coastal plain and the hilly
country east of it between latitudes 170 and I2°N, but little of the
semidesert and savanna lands east of the hills. The characteristic
indigenous Puntite products were cntjw incense, much desired by the
Egyptians for ritual uses, ebony and short-horned cattle. The Puntites
also traded in products derived from elsewhere - ivory (elephants are
never associated with Punt or Irem and Nm%yu>), gold and panther and
cheetah skins.
The Puntites are depicted in several Eighteenth Dynasty scenes.
Typically, the men have dark reddish skins and fine features; charac-
teristic negroid types are not shown, although they occur amongst
depictions of riverine southerners (of Wawat, Kush, Irem, etc.). Other
Puntite features are also not found amongst other southerners. Long
hairstyles are typical for Puntites until the reign of Amenhotep II;
during his reign and earlier, in that of Tuthmosis III, an intermediate
' bobbed' hairstyle appears, and thereafter Puntites have close-cropped
hair similar to that of the chief of Punt under Hatshepsut. A long or
medium dressed goatee is found at all periods, and decoration and dress
are relatively simple; a medium-length or long kilt is the only male
garment. Puntite women are rarely depicted and were in some cases
steatopygous. Dwellings were beehive-shaped structures on piles.
The Egyptians — so far as we know — always reached Punt by sea,
while conversely Puntite raft-like boats sometimes sailed to the Red Sea
coast of Egypt in order to trade. Puntites, including the children of
chiefs, also came to the Egyptian court and probably Punt acknowledged
some kind of Egyptian overlordship. It must however have been very
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Fig. 3.24 Merchants from Punt arriving at the Red Sea coast of Egypt and being received by
Egyptian officials. Probably reign of Amenhotep III. (After Save-Soderbergh 1946.)

loose. The fundamental Egyptian—Puntite relationship was one of trade,

not political super- and subordination. Warlike activity against Punt is
never referred to and indeed Punt would have been logistically very
difficult to control. No permanent Egyptian centres were established
there. However, sailing conditions in the Red Sea encouraged Egyptian
expeditions to spend two or three months in Punt and to penetrate
further inland. Archaeological exploration will eventually surely reveal
traces of those visits — certainly rock inscriptions and graffiti, and
perhaps more. Hatshepsut's expedition, for example, set up a shrine to
Amen and the queen in Punt.
Egyptian-Puntite contacts are attested from the reign of Hatshepsut
to that of Ramesses III. Thereafter, no reference has survived and
probably direct contact with Punt was lost in the contraction of foreign
contacts typical of the Third Intermediate Period.

EGYPT AND LIBYA

New Kingdom and later relations with Libya, the other main African
contact area, are one of the most intriguing and least studied aspects
of Egyptian foreign relations. Any effort - such as the following - to
analyse these relations must necessarily be tentative until further
archaeological and epigraphic fieldwork is carried out in the western
Delta, the adjacent deserts and Cyrenaica itself.
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There are no explicit references to conflict with Libyans in the

Eighteenth Dynasty. Intensifying although never specifically charac-
terized contact is indicated by increasing references to Libyans in the
later Eighteenth Dynasty. An official of Amenhotep III had Libyan
(Mashwash) cattle in his stockyard, though whether these were booty,
imports, or simply a type bred in Egypt is unknown; and Libyans
(perhaps specifically Libu; see p. 253) are depicted as present at
Akhenaten's court. Here they appear as chiefs or ambassadors bringing
tribute or witnessing the king's public activities and also as members
of the (predominantly Egyptian) military escort of the king.
References in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties are more
frequent and increasingly detailed. Seti I fought a campaign against the
chiefs of Tjehenu, the enemy being iconographically identifiable as
Mashwash // the Egyptians were consistent in their depictions of the
apparently slight differences in dress and appearance which distinguished
the Mashwash from the Libu. Under Ramesses II, there are generalized
references to conflict with the Tjehenu and Tjemehu and once specifically
to the Libu, the earliest occurrence of that name. Ramesses II also
founded or renovated a series of architectural complexes running along
the coastal road to Libya and along the north-western edge of the Delta;
the exact nature of these has never been fully investigated, but the
exposed positions of some (fig. 3.25) and the military titles of an
Egyptian(?) official associated with one, suggests that at least some of
them were fortresses.
Both Merenptah (year 5, c. 1220 BC) and Ramesses III (year 5,
c. 1180 BC) fought off substantial Libyan invasions, both dominated by
the Libu. Merenptah killed over 9300 Libyans and their allies, but the
figures of Ramesses III, if taken at their face value, indicate that over
28000 Libyans were slain! Later, in year 11 (c. 1174 BC) Ramesses III
forestalled a Mashwash invasion, killing 2175 and capturing a further
2052. Even if the numbers of Libyans slain during the first campaign
of Ramesses III are lowered, they still numbered between 12 000 and
13000, and the overall figures emphasize the seriousness of these
invasions. Egyptian records rarely record the numbers of enemy slain
and captives are usually numbered in hundreds or less, not in thousands.
The general level of culture and acculturation reached by the Libyans
at this time is difficult to assess. Although they are shown as wearing
entirely non-Egyptian dress, this depiction may be misleading, since it
is in just such battle and capture scenes that traditional indigenous garb
was regarded as symbolically appropriate by Egyptian artists (p. 266).
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50

I Fortresses built by (?)

RamessesII

Fig. 3.2; The Libyans and Egypt in the New Kingdom. The broken lines on the smaller map
indicate possible lines of Libyan movement, while the stippled area on the larger shows the area
apparently affected by Libyan settlement and raiding. For fortresses see Rowe (1954)-

That pastoralism was a major element in Libyan economy is suggested

by the animals captured by the Egyptians, particularly the very large
numbers of cattle, sheep and goats taken from the Mashwash under
Ramesses III. Yet reference to the 'town' of the Libu chief Meryey and
the 'towns' of the Mashwash indicate that permanent settlements
existed, and the gold and silver, the numerous bronze swords and other
artifacts, and the (primarily Mashwash) chariots included in the booty
from the Libyans suggest that the level of material culture was well
above that of a simple pastoral society. Here again, we must wait upon
systematic survey and excavation for further data.
Typical of Egyptian—Libyan relations in the later New Kingdom
were infiltration and culminating invasion by the latter, although the
'invasions' were, perhaps, actually organized Libyan resistance to
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periodic Egyptian attempts to exterminate or expel the infiltrators. The

details of these processes are only partly reconstructible, largely because
the locations of most of the relevant toponyms are unknown. The actual
zone of Libyan settlement was only once defined (under Ramesses III)
as running along the western Delta frontier from the Memphite
province to Karabona, a place of unknown location. Possibly the
primary zone of Libyan settlement lay between Kom el-Hisn and Ausim
(fig. 3.25), avoiding the apparently heavily fortified north-west corner
of the Delta. Such a pattern would help explain their far-flung
depredations in the central Delta and the anxiety with which, according
to Merenptah, Memphis and Heliopolis reacted to the news of invasion.
The Libyan settlements along the Delta fringe were the bases for
extensive raiding, sometimes lasting for months, according to Meren-
ptah, and even for 'many years', according to Ramesses III. Under both
kings the raiders reached the Sebennytic branch of the Nile (' the Great
River') and threatened the region of Bubastis on the eastern Nile branch
('the waters of Re'), and the raiding of the Xoite region is also noted
under Ramesses III.
The Libyan campaign of Merenptah (<r. 1220 BC) and the second
Libyan campaign of Ramesses III are described in some detail and may
have occurred in the same area. In each case the invading Libyans came
from abroad, first attacking 'Tjehenu-land', in this context a pacified
zone incorporating the northern oases and the home of such subdued
groups as the Tjuk—Libyans who served in the Egyptian army in the
Twentieth and Twenty-second Dynasties. Merenptah defeated the
invaders between a fortress in Pi-yer and a point called ' the beginning
of Earth' [Wpt-t^), and Ramesses III between a fortress at Wpt-tT, and
another about 16 km away, called the 'House of Sand' (Hwt Icy). This
battle is depicted in a desert landscape (Fig. 3.26). The expression Wpt—1$
was habitually applied to the furthermost limits of Egyptian dominion,
but may not refer to an identical area in the two texts cited here; and
the location of the 'House of Sand' remains uncertain, although a
Thirtieth Dynasty text indicates that it lay west of the Delta proper. Its
strategic importance is suggested by the titles of its tutelary deity, Min
of Hwt Icj, specifically charged in Ptolemaic times with control of the
Tjehenu and Tjemehu.
The New Kingdom Egyptians appear never to have attempted to
establish permanent control over Cyrenaica (which would have yielded
them little desirable income) and perhaps they never penetrated it. The
westernmost known point of Egyptian occupation was the Ramesside
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Fig. 3.26 Mashwash Libyans fleeing the army of Ramesses III during the Libyan campaign of
his year 11. The relevant text reads (above the fortresses in the background):' The [slaughter which
his majesty made among the foe of] the land [of Mash]wash, who had come to Egypt; beginning
from [the towjn of Ramesses III which is upon the [mountjain of Wpt-tz, [to] the town Hw/ sry,
making 8 iirm (i.e. about 84 km) of carnage amongst them.'(See Edgerton and Wilson 1936,p. 61.)
(After Nelson eta/. 1932, pi. 70.)

fortress (?) at Zaouyet um el-Rakham, which is perhaps to be

identified with the 'Fortress of the West' under Merenptah, which
reported that a defeated Libyan chieftain had fled past it into his
homeland, where he was deposed by his own people. Ramesses III did
attempt to impose an Egyptian vassal (a youth, perhaps a chiefs son
and a hostage brought up in Egypt) over the Libu, Mashwash, and
others: but the result was a major rebellion, not the acquiescence that
would have been anticipated, for example, in contemporary Kush.
2
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What were the causes of this unprecedentedly intense and long-

sustained interaction between Libya and Egypt? The westernmost Delta
had been periodically penetrated by Libyans for millennia, partly
because of its natural proximity but also because of its lightly settled
character. Prior to the Hellenistic period, this region was of low
agricultural productivity, was given over chiefly to cattle grazing and
had an inferior status in the hierarchy of government concerns — facts
alluded to under Merenptah. However, while these circumstances
facilitated the developments outlined above, they are insufficient as a
cause.
There may have been pressure upon Cyrenaica's food supplies, due
to climatic change or to a population increasing naturally or by
immigration. The texts of Merenptah's reign suggest that the Libyan
invasion of his time was caused by famine, and the Mashwash invasion
under Ramesses III had the character of a true migration, since
substantial numbers of women and enormous numbers of animals
accompanied the fighting men. The relatively late appearance of the
Mashwash and Libu in Egyptian texts (p. 253) might also suggest the
appearance of new immigrant groups in Cyrenaica, but might equally
well reflect the informed interest that Egypt was compelled to take as
a result of Libyan pressure. Only archaeological fieldwork within
Cyrenaica can resolve these questions. Unfortunately, so far, not even
tentatively identified indigenous remains have been located prior to the
sixth and fifth centuries BC.
Perhaps more significant than population pressure was a growing
political cohesion and military strength amongst the Libyans, stimulated
partly by the models presented by Egypt but also by other contacts.
Surprisingly, non-Libyans made up perhaps a third of the Libyan force
defeated by Merenptah, the foreigners consisting of the ' foreign Peoples
of the Sea' the Sherden, Shekelesh, and Ekwesh, originating in the
Aegean-western Anatolian region; the Teresh, of unknown origin; and
the Lukki, from Lycia, also in Asia Minor. These foreigners clearly
reached Libya by ship and were, the texts imply, recruited by the Libu
chief, presumably because of their superior weaponry and armour. That
trading contacts existed even before this time is suggested by the
numerous bronze swords of Sherden type (and even armour) owned
by (or derived from?) the Mashwash and included amongst the booty
recorded by Merenptah. The international implication of these contacts
is deepened by the, admittedly highly tentative, identification of the
south-western Anatolian kingdom of Ahhiyawa with the Ekwesh, who

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made up about two-thirds of the foreign allies of the Libyans. Ahhiyawa

was a powerful coastal state causing much concern to the contemporary
Hittite kingdom, with which Merenptah was on good terms and which
he may even have actively supported against such enemies as Ahhiyawa!
A substantial degree of political centralization and military efficiency
seems to have existed amongst the Libyans. It is true that the Libu and
the Mashwash, the two most important groups, must be distinguished
from each other. Although both probably included both dark-skinned,
brunette types and fair-skinned, blue-eyed 'Berbers', they differed in
dress and general appearance and in resources, the Mashwash having
a much greater number of horses as well as apparently better links with
the trading network of the eastern Mediterranean. The dichotomies
suggest that the Mashwash were coastal and the Libu lived in the
hinterland, or that the Mashwash were east of the Libu and better
located for contact with Egypt and the Levantine seas.
Despite these differences, the two groups acted in concert, the
Mashwash participating under Libu leadership in the battles against
Merenptah and Ramesses III (year 5); and, if the Mashwash alone faced
Ramesses III in year 11, they explicitly did so at the urging of the Libu.
The dominant figure in each Libyan invasion was a single chief (wr),
representing hereditary dynasties which respectively ruled the Libu and
the Mashwash. For the former, the succession of the chiefs Ded, his
son (?) Meshken, and his son Meryey is documented. Meryey, after his
defeat by Merenptah, was deposed in favour of one of his 'brothers',
and one of Meryey's descendants was, perhaps, the Libu chief opposing
Ramesses III. For the Mashwash, we know that the chief Meshesher
led the Libyan forces against Ramesses III, and that his still-living father,
Kheper, also had great political authority. The military strength of the
Libyans is indicated by the great relief the Egyptians expressed at their
defeat, and, more explicitly, by the bowmen, swordsmen and foreign
troops used by the Libu against Merenptah, as well as by the substantial
number of chariots, bowmen and swordsmen found in the Mashwash
army, defeated by Ramesses III.
The Libyan 'invasions' appear to have been the culmination of
substantial, relatively long-term Libyan infiltration and settlement in the
western Delta, which continued even after the great defeats described
above. This movement was facilitated by internal political disintegration
within Egypt, the relatively unimportant status of the western Delta in
Egyptian eyes, and the rise of dynasties of Libyan origin (Twenty-second,
Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth) in the Third Intermediate Period. Even
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in the later Twentieth Dynasty the roving bands of ' desert-dwellers'

(h^styw; sometimes specifically identified as Libu and Mashwash) which
disturbed the Theban area may have been infiltrators as much as unruly
soldiery. The importance of the Mashwash centres of the Delta during
the Third Intermediate Period was partially derived from the military
colonies of freed( ?) Libyan prisoners of war set up in the Twentieth
and perhaps Nineteenth dynasties but probably also from continuing
immigration. The western Delta appears to have sustained a fresh wave
of Libu immigration during the latter part of this period. The military
clash between Psammetichus I and the Tjehenu (c. 654 BC) who
occupied the western edge of the Nile Valley from Oxyrhynchus to the
sea, while stated to have been caused by a Libyan invasion, is highly
reminiscent of New Kingdom efforts to remove long-established
infiltrators in that zone.

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 CHAPTER 4

THE LATE PERIOD, 664-323 BC

The years between the beginning of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty in 664

and the death of Alexander the Great in 3 23 are an age of unique interest
in the history of Pharaonic Egypt. In the first place, they include the
last periods during which it functioned as an independent political
entity; secondly, since the source material is often unusually varied, both
in origin and in character, this era yields insights into historical events
and the nature of Egyptian society which would be difficult to parallel
in earlier times; finally, and most intriguing of all, we are presented
during these years with the spectacle of Egyptian culture under pressure
from major civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East
and are able to study in some depth the adaptations which it made in
ideology, institutions, and technological apparatus in order to counter
recurrent challenges to its cultural identity. In the present chapter an
attempt will be made, in the first instance, to define the political and
military context within which these developments unfolded; we shall
then proceed to a detailed analysis of the socio-economic system whose
vigour, efficiency, and flexibility ultimately determined the success and
even survival of the nation during these years of intermittent triumph
and disaster.

PROLEGOMENA

Chronology

To the Egyptologist chronology is a recurrent problem, and the period

covered by this chapter is no exception. Indeed, the difficulties are
particularly acute; for not only is it necessary to deal with no fewer than
three oriental systems of dating - Egyptian, Babylonian and Jewish -
but the historian is also required to master Greek and Roman
chronological techniques as well.
Egyptian, Babylonian and Jewish chronologies are all based on the
regnal years of kings, that is, an event is said to take place in regnal
year x of king j . Theoretically, converting such dates into dates BC is
a simple matter: all we need to do is to establish the sequence of kings
2
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and the length of each reign and then identify one fixed point which
can be tied into our own chronological scheme. Unfortunately, it is
impossible to realize these preconditions fully in the period under
discussion for a variety of reasons. To begin with, it is sometimes
impossible to establish the sequence of kings or their reign-lengths —
sometimes both. Regnal dates for the Saite period present no problem,
since the reign-lengths of all its kings are known, and we have fixed
points convertible into our dating system in the form of an astronomical
date and the date of the Persian invasion of Egypt at the end of the
Saite Dynasty. The regnal dates of the Persian kings of the Twenty-
seventh and Thirty-first Dynasties are equally trouble-free since they can
be determined from unimpeachable Babylonian and related sources. On
the other hand, those for the Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and
Thirtieth Dynasties are more problematic since the fragments of the
Egyptian historian Manetho, on which they must be based, present
serious problems of interpretation: his History of Egypt survives only
in later quotations of dubious accuracy, and the chronological data
given in the quotations relating to our period are contradictory. This
situation, combined with the paucity of contemporary Egyptian
sources, means that some uncertainty remains on reign-lengths and even
the order of succession of some Pharaohs of the period. The beginning
of the reign of Nectanebo II is fixed by astronomical evidence at 359/8,
and, if Manetho is used in conjunction with all available data, a workable
chronological scheme can be constructed, but regnal dates should in
general be regarded with a measure of circumspection.
Even if these difficulties did not exist, there are still pitfalls awaiting
the unwary chronographer. In the first place, establishing the reign-
length of an Egyptian king is not as straightforward as it might seem.
To the Egyptians, unlike the Babylonians, a king's first regnal year
began as soon as he came to the throne and ended with the end of that
calendar year. This was regarded as regnal year 1, irrespective of the
length of time involved. However, it also counted as the last regnal year
of his predecessor. We must always make allowance for these
conventions in any attempt to establish the actual length of a Pharaoh's
reign. Difficulties can also arise when attempting tofixdates given in
the Egyptian scheme within a particular reign. It is easy to forget that,
when converting a date expressed in regnal years, we need to count
inclusively, for example regnal year 3 of Amasis is 570 — 2, not 570—3.
There is another less obvious, but much more insidious danger. It can
happen that, with the increase in our knowledge, the dateforthe

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TABLE 4.1 Names and dates of the kings of Egypt from 664 to $23 BC

SAITE PERIOD FIRST PERSIAN PERIOD

Twenty-sixth (Saite) Dynasty Twenty-seventh Dynasty

Regnal Dates Regnal Dates
Psammetichus I 664-610 Cambyses 525 521
Necho II 610-595 Darius I 521-485
Psammetichus II 595-589 Xerxes 48; 464
Apties 589-570'* Artaxerxes I 464-423
Amasis (Ahmose II) 570-526 Darius II 423-404
Psammetichus III 526—525

EGYPTIAN INDEPENDENCE

Twenty-eighth (Saite) Dynasty Thirtieth (Sebennyte) Dynasty

Amyrtaeus c. 404/3-398/7 Nectanebo I c. 379/8-361/0
Nepherites I c. 398/7-392/1 Tachos/Teos c. 361/0-359/8
Achoris c. 392/1—379/8 Nectanebo II c. 359/8-342/1
Psammuthis (?)*
Nepherites II c. 379/8 Ochus 342 -337

SECOND PERSIAN PERIOD

Thirty-first Dynasty
Regnal Dates
Artaxerxes III (Ochus) 341/0-357
Arses 3 37-3 3 5
Darius 111 (Codomannus) 33; 332
Alexander III of Macedon 332-323

a
Deposed 570, killed 567 (Bdel 1978, pp. i3ff).
Regnal year, undatable, but probably contemporaneous with one of the earlier regnal years
of Achoris.
accession of a ruler will be altered, as has happened in recent years in
the case of the kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. This means that all
dates for events within the reign, if they are based on regnal years, will
also need to be revised to keep in step. A classic example of the
consequences of failing to do this is provided by the current confusion
over the dating of the Nubian campaign of Psammetichus II which is
still often given as 591. The date in the Egyptian chronological scheme
is regnal year 3, which was originally converted using one of the older
dates for Psammetichus' accession, viz. 593: subtract 2, answer 591.
Unfortunately the accession date has now been raised to 595; subtract
2, answer 593.*
Dates given in the Classical writers who are so important for our

1
For detailed discussions of the Egyptian chronology of this period see Kienitz (1953,
pp. 153ft"); Drioton and Vandier (1962, pp. 621ft"); Lloyd (1975a, pp. 191ft"); for Jewish chronology
see Finegan (1964); for Babylonian chronology see Parker and Dubbetstein (1956).

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period employ several systems. Herodotus' Saite chronology consists

simply of giving reign-lengths which are evidently based on Egyptian
sources. The systems used by Diodorus Siculus (first century BC), our
main authority for fourth-century Egyptian history, are Greek or
Roman, being based on annual magistracies in Athens or Rome and
Olympiad dates.1 The conversion of such dates into years BC presents
no difficulty, but the results are often startlingly confused: for instance
at xv, 29, Achoris is described as making hostile moves against Persia
in 377, which was after the end of his reign; at xvi, 40, Artaxerxes
Ill's attack on Egypt is dated to the archonship of Thessalus (actually
Theellus), which fell in 351, and the consulship of Marcus Fabius and
Titus Quinctius, which fell in 354. Since these cases are far from
isolated, it is impossible to place any confidence in his chronological
precision, and dates for fourth-century Egyptian history emanating
from his work should be regarded as tentative only, even if they are
not contradicted by internal or external evidence.

Political and military history

The Twenty-sixth Dynasty represents the last great age of pharaonic
civilization. Its political basis was created by Psammetichus I of Sais.
When he succeeded his father Necho I as ruler of Sais in 664 he
controlled a small kingdom comprising the western Delta and the
Memphite area under the nominal suzerainty of the Assyrians. On his
death in 610 he had made Egypt a powerful and unified kingdom able
once more to take its place amongst the great nations of the Orient.
This transformation was not achieved without difficulty. The unification
of the country and the consolidation of the kingdom were a matter of
decades of judicious and sometimes ruthless effort in the face of major
obstacles. Within the country he had to cope with rival princes, the
ambitions of the priesthood of Amen-Ra at Thebes, and, initially, his
own economic and military weakness. Externally, Assyrians, Ethiopians
and Libyans all posed a constant threat to Egyptian security and even
independence.
Psammetichus' first problem was inevitably that of providing himself
with the economic and military means necessary for the fulfilment of
his ambitions. According to our Greek sources he satisfied the first
requirement by embarking on a large-scale policy of establishing
1
Tables of Athenian archons and Roman consuls will be found in Bickerman (1968, pp. i68ff).
For dating by Olympiads see ibid., pp. 75ft".

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

trade-relations with Greeks and Phoenicians. Foreigners also played an

important role in meeting his military needs. No doubt many of his
troops derived from the native Egyptian warrior class, but our sources
make it clear that the cutting-edge of his army was made up, in the main,
of mercenary troops, particularly Carians and Ionian Greeks. Having
established his power on this basis of economic and military strength,
Psammetichus rapidly conquered the rival princes of the Delta to
achieve total domination of the northern part of the kingdom.
In Middle and Upper Egypt more subtle methods were employed.
The Petition of Petiese1 reveals that, at an early period in his reign,
Psammetichus was able to neutralize his rivals in Middle Egypt by
exploiting his close relationship with Petiese and Somtutefnakht,
'Shipmasters' of Herakleopolis, the most important city in that area.
To the south diplomacy proved equally effective in dealing with the
power of the Theban temple state (see below p. 303) which was brought
firmly, if deftly, under his control in 65 6. However, gentle though these
measures both in Upper and Middle Egypt may have been, it would
be unwise to ignore the fact that the velvet glove concealed a mailed
fist. As in Lower Egypt, the ultimate sanction and guarantee of
Psammetichus' power was military force, particularly his tough foreign
mercenaries who would be even less likely than Egyptian troops to be
troubled by scruples in discharging any instructions issued by their
paymaster.
All in all, we may say that after 656 the policies pursued by
Psammetichus I operated more and more efficiently and that a steady
integration of the kingdom ensued, accompanied by a growing sense
of national unity and power. This was evidently expressed by the
resumption of interest in all the traditional spheres of activity, particu-
larly in the resuscitation of a nation-wide programme of building on
a monumental scale, and was complemented by carefully orchestrated
and highly successful military and political activity abroad.
The half century of Psammetichus I's reign clearly achieved such
success in the resurgence of the country that his son Necho II (610-595)
was able to commit a high proportion of his resources and energies to
a policy of expansion abroad. Not surprisingly, therefore, these activities
dominate our tradition. Trade with the Red Sea coast was pursued with
1
Recorded in P. Kylands ix, published by Griffith (1909). It dates to the reign of Darius and
records the fortunes of a priestly family at El-Hibeh from the time of Psammetichus I down to
the early years of the reign of Darius. This text is our most important source for the social history
of the period which it covers and has been heavily used in the following discussion.

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enthusiasm, and he is even alleged to have dispatched an expedition to

circumnavigate Africa.
To the east Egyptian military control of the Levant was pushed for
a short while as far as the Euphrates but maintaining these Asiatic
possessions proved, in the long term, beyond Necho's capabilities, and
all was lost after his defeat by the Chaldaeans at Carchemish in 605.
Nevertheless he did succeed in thwarting all efforts of this aggressive
and ruthless enemy to follow up his success by invading Egypt itself.
Necho's activities in Asia had their African counterpart in the short
reign of Psammetichus II (595-589) when a great military expedition
was dispatched into Nubia in 593. This certainly penetrated beyond the
Third Cataract but did not lead to the resumption of Egyptian control
over the area. Psammetichus also attempted to reaffirm Egyptian
authority in Philistia by conducting a ceremonial progress there in
592.
The reign of Apries (5 8 9- 5 70), despite its concluding disasters, left an
impression in later traditions of considerable success and prosperity.
Again, however, it is foreign relations which loom largest in the record.
The spectre of the north-east frontier haunted Apries as much as it did
his predecessors and led to large-scale military and naval operations in
Phoenicia, Palestine and Cyprus to check the ambitions of Chaldaea. The
western frontier also posed problems in the form of the rising power
of the Greek city of Cyrene. Here Apries most unwisely resolved upon
a military solution and dispatched a large force of native Egyptian
troops to deal with the threat. The disastrous defeat of this army led
to a mutiny which was fanned to white heat by nationalist resentment
against the privileged position of the foreign mercenaries favoured by
Apries. The mutineers set up a courtier of Apries called Amasis as a
rival Pharaoh, defeated Apries, and forced him tofleethe country (5 70).
He then took refuge with the Chaldaean king Nebuchadrezzar II who,
in 5 67, dispatched an army to Egypt to reinstate him as a pro-Chaldaean
puppet. This force was met in the Delta by Amasis and crushingly
defeated in an action during which Apries himself was killed.
Amasis (570—526) was, beyond doubt, the last great Pharaoh of
Egypt. Herodotus speaks in fulsome terms of the immense prosperity
of the country under his rule, and this is confirmed both by the
substantial body of documents surviving from this time and by the large
amount of building, some of it on a colossal scale, which he was able to
carry through. It is clear that his reign saw the consummation of the
process of unification initiated by Psammetichus I, but, prosperous
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though the country might have been, it was in continual danger of

attack, first from the Chaldaeans and later from the Persians, and
Amasis clearly devoted much thought and energy to the problem. An
army of Egyptian troops and mercenaries was maintained, financed, in
the main, by commercial dealings with foreign states. Alliances were
also concluded against Chaldaea and later against Persia, which were
cemented in some cases by intermarriage and in the others by a
calculated generosity which was spectacularly successful in winning him
good will. In all these activities one detects the workings of a mind
keenly aware of the international political scene and capable of the
shrewdest appraisal of political and strategic realities. It would appear
that he was not even above exploring the advantages of marrying off
an Egyptian princess into the Persian royal family.1
With the reign of Amasis' son Psammetichus III (526/5) the Saite
period comes to an end. Even in Amasis' time the steady rise of Persia
had caused increasing anxiety, and in 525, after prodigious preparations,
the Persian king Cambyses invaded the country. He quickly overran it,
deposed Psammetichus, and eventually executed him.
Persian control of Egypt fell into two periods separated by an interval
of independence under native Egyptian rule. The first and most
successful phase began in 525 with the conquest of the country by
Cambyses and ended in 404. Cambyses himself gained a grim reputation
in Egypt for impiety and cruelty, but there is good evidence that this
was largely unjustified. In some cases, he certainly took a stringent view
of temple privilege, but, in general, his policy was characterized by
forbearance and conciliation. This was also the attitude of Darius
(521—485), whose regard for Egyptian religious sentiment and concern
for the general well-being of the country won him the respect and,
sometimes, the devotion of the native Egyptian population. The
honeymoon was, however, brief, and was succeeded by a series of
revolts. The first began in 486 at the end of the reign of Darius in the
wake of the Persian defeat at Marathon in 490. It was put down by the
beginning of 484, but it had the most serious consequences in that it
led to a much more repressive attitude on the part of the Persian
administration which all but guaranteed the resumption of hostilities.
The second revolt, the famous rebellion of Inarus, began c. 463/2 and

1
According to Herodotus (111, 1-2) there was a tradition that Amasis had given an Egyptian
princess in marriage to Cyrus or Cambyses. This narrative undoubtedly owes much to Egyptian
nationalist propaganda (Lloyd 1982b, p. 175), but it is at least possible that it is based on an
historical attempt of Amasis to establish close links with the Persian royal house.

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simmered on until c. 449; the third broke out in 414/13 and ended with
the liberation of the country by Amyrtaeus of Sais in 404. The roots
of this instability lay in two factors: the inveterate hostility of a small
number of high-ranking Egyptian and Egypto-Libyan families to
Persian domination, and the fact that Egypt was quite simply too far
away from the heart of the Empire to be held securely for more than
a few decades.
The independence won in 404 lasted until 343. The history of these
years is dominated by two factors: in foreign relations the spectre of
resumed Persian intervention was an overwhelming consideration
which found expression sometimes in covert support, sometimes in
active alliance with rebellious Persian vassals or satraps in the western
provinces of the Persian Empire, and in particular, a close, if pragmatic,
relationship with the Greek state of Sparta whose generally anti-Persian
stance created a strong community of interest with Egypt and made her
a ready collaborator in Egypt's foreign policy; internally, stability was
continually threatened by squabbling between the feudal princes and
families of the great cities of the Delta, in particular Sais, Mendes and
Sebennytus, a situation which could not but weaken the military
strength of the kingdom. In general, however, it could be said that it
was Egypt's distance from the heart of the Empire and, therefore, its
relatively low priority in the scale of imperial preoccupations which
saved it from renewed subjection to Persian power until the second half
of the fourth century.
The second and final period of Persian domination began with the
reconquest of the country by Artaxerxes III in 343, after an earlier
unsuccessful attempt, apparently in 3 51, and lasted until the Macedonian
conquest in 332. Source material is far from plentiful for this decade,
but the documentation available creates a strong impression that
rapacity and avarice were conspicuous features of Persian administra-
tion. Indeed, there is a distinct possibility that armed rebellion once
more raised its head in the form of the revolt of the enigmatic Khabbash,
perhaps about 338, but the precise date of this event remains uncertain.
It is, however, beyond dispute that Alexander the Great, who arrived
in the last months of 332, was welcomed with open arms by the
indigenous population for whom the presence of yet another foreigner
on the throne of Egypt was of much less importance than the definitive
expulsion of the hated Mede. Unfortunately for the Egyptians, the
misrule of the conqueror's minions over the next ten years was to prove
such jubilation premature, and it was not until the country passed into
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the hands of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, after Alexander's death at Babylon

in 323, that sound government was re-established in the country.

ORGANIZATION

The political and military achievements described in the preceding

summary were expressions of a specific socio-economic structure. It is
the main purpose of the remainder of this chapter to define that
structure as precisely as possible within the limits of the space available.
Any such discussion is inevitably dominated by the issue of kingship
since Pharaoh provided nothing less than the theoretical and institutional
basis of the entire system, and the first part of this section will be
devoted to an analysis of that office. We shall then proceed to describe
social stratification in the Late Period, settlement patterns, economic
structure, and internal administration.

The king
According to traditional concepts Pharaoh was a god incarnate, the
earthly embodiment of the god Horus and, as such, the champion of
the cosmic order (miff). To fulfil this role he disposed of three main
qualities: SIT,, 'perception', hw, 'authoritative utterance', and military
prowess. He discharged this cosmicizing function in three main
capacities: as priest of all the deities of Egypt he maintained the power
of the gods and, with it, the very fabric of the universe; as administrator
he was responsible for the economic well-being and ordered life of the
Egyptian people; as soldier he repelled the enemies of Egypt and
guaranteed, by main force, the continuance of ordered life.
If we consider the concept of kingship which prevailed in the Late
Period, we find much that fits perfectly into these age-old patterns of
thought. The five-fold titulary used since the Old Kingdom as a
dogmatic statement of the functions of an Egyptian king was still de
rigueur, and the vocabulary applied to Pharaoh and the language of royal
documents present an equally familiar picture: he is designated by the
traditional terms hm •/,' His Majesty', nb t^wy,' Lord of the Two Lands',
hkq C3 n Kmt,' Great Ruler of Egypt', and his actions are described using
the time-honoured terminology which evoked his divine function as a
source of order. There are, however, significant variations: in the Sake
period the royal titulary can be written in ways which recall features
characteristic of Old Kingdom inscriptions. Similarly, the Apries stele
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 THE LATE PERIOD

at Mit Rahina imitates the language and structure of Old Kingdom

decrees and even the very shape of Old Kingdom stelae (Gunn 1927,
pp. 21 iff). There can be no doubt that these and similar traits are
considerably more than an antiquarian fancy and that they reveal an
important aspect of the way in which these kings conceived of the royal
office; their role was not simply to embody the ideal of kingship, but
to restore Egypt to the pinnacles of its ancient glory.
The iconography of kingship shows a similar pattern of traditional
motifs interspersed with significant variations or points of emphasis.
Ancient forms of head-dress, such as the crowns of Upper and Lower
Egypt, the blue crown, and the nemes, retain their popularity, as do the
royal kilt, the bull's tail and the royal beard. Occasionally, however, the
material shows an unusual and highly revealing interest in a particular
motif: during the Saite period the blue crown was particularly popular,
probably for two reasons: in the first place, since it was never worn
by the Nubian conquerors of Egypt, whose vestigial power in Upper
Egypt had been destroyed by Psammetichus I, its use in the Saite period
was probably tantamount to a forceful affirmation of the Egyptian ori-
gin of the Saite Dynasty itself; secondly, inasmuch as the use of this crown
seems always to have expressed a claim to legitimacy (Davies 1982,
pp. 7iff), its insistent employment by Saite kings amounted to nothing
less than an assertion of their right to rule. The prevalence of the sphinx
in the royal iconography of the Late Period may have served a similar
propagandist function. At all periods such sculptures usually, if not
always, represented the king with a lion's body and clearly symbolized
his role as a powerful and invincible protector of the people against
Typhonic forces. Amasis seems to have had a marked taste for depicting
himself in this form, and the granite lions of Nectanebo I in the Vatican
representing the king as a recumbent lion are patently no more than
variations on the same theme which have their antecedents in the New
Kingdom. It need hardly be said that a symbol of the king as guardian
and protector of his people was more than marginally relevant in the
perilous world within which Egypt was striving to maintain its unity,
independence, and cultural integrity in the years between 664 and 323.
The examination of the facial expressions of royal statues can often
yield insights into contemporary concepts of the role of the kingly office,
the classic case being the royal statues of the late Twelfth Dynasty. Saite
sculptures were not as brutal or as strident in conveying their message,
but were, nevertheless, capable of portraying significant variations from
one reign to another. Representations attributed to Psammetichus I

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290 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

MEDITERRANEAN SEA El-Miny;

;
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AshmuneinV fl.(Antinoopolis)
,* * P xUDeire-Bersha
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UAswan
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Fig. 4.2 Egypt in the first millennium BC.

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 THE LATE PERIOD

show a face which is rather grim and determined, no doubt accurately

reflecting a reaction to the formidable problems with which that king
was confronted. On the other hand, the statues of later Sake rulers
display a mixture of benevolence and god-like detachment quite at
variance with those of the dynasty's founders. Again, we can be sure
that the features in question are a reflection of historical circumstances:
the struggles of Psammetichus' reign had given way to a quiet
confidence in Egypt's ability to maintain its unity and security. In none
of this, however, can one detect fundamental changes from traditional
modes of royal iconography. This last remark cannot, however, be made
of a group of statues of Nectanebo II, the last native Egyptian Pharaoh,
which show him under the protection of a god represented as an animal.
In the green schist example from Heliopolis, for instance, the king is
shown under the protection of Horus who is depicted as a huge falcon
towering above the minuscule figure of the king. This statue has, of
course, conceptual affinities with the well-known Old Kingdom seated
statue of Khafra in which the latter is represented with a hawk at his
head, but the difference of scale between animal-god and king in the
two statues speaks volumes for the evolution of concepts of kingship.
Khafra, whilst acknowledging his role as the incarnation of Horus,
confidently asserts his individual majesty and power; Nectanebo, on the
other hand, confesses his total dependence on the beneficence of the god
for his continued enjoyment of the kingly office. It might be argued
that this is not particularly novel since the Instruction to Merikara
(Simpson 1973, pp. i8ofF) written at the end of the First Intermediate
Period also insists on the dependence of kings on the will of the gods,
but the evidence of the Demotic Chronicle (see below, pp. 2998^
suggests that these Thirtieth Dynasty statues reflect an acknowledge-
ment of royal dependence upon divine help which passes beyond
anything previously identifiable.
The continued vitality of the traditional concept of kingship exem-
plified by the material already discussed is also reflected in the survival
and enthusiastic exploitation of traditional genres in literary and
epigraphic descriptions of royal action. There is still a taste for the
Konigsnovelle ('tale of royal deeds') in which the king is first of all
represented in council with his courtiers about him who are completely
at a loss as to how to deal with a particular problem; the king then
provides the answer, and the courtiers respond with encomia in honour
of their omniscient ruler. There are two excellent examples of this motif
from the Saite period: the Nitocris Adoption Stele, which refers to the

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

installation of Psammetichus I's daughter as prospective High Priestess

of Amen-Ra in 656, is quite clearly cast in this mould, and the Amasis
Stele describing the conflict between Amasis and Apries also exploits
this motif (Caminos 1964, pp. 7iff; Edel 1978, pp. i3nc). Another genre
which continues to enjoy popularity is the biographical inscription
describing royal commissions discharged by officials. Examples of the
Saite period are plentiful: in the biographical inscription of Peftjuaneith
we are informed that the owner was sent by Amasis to Abydos where
he conducted the reconstruction of the sanctuary and the reorganisation
of its revenues; Neferibranefer in the reign of Psammetichus II
describes how he was sent by the king to save the sanctuaries of the
gods of Sais; Nakhthorheb narrates his achievements when he was
placed in charge of ensuring the offerings of temples in the reign of
Amasis; and Psamtjeksineith boasts in the same reign that he was chosen
by the king to make monuments in Sais (Lloyd 1982b, p. 167, n. 4).
Such texts, at all periods, give expression to the canonical doctrine that
power and initiative are the preserve of the king, and that officials of
all ranks function as no more than his deputies.
The concept of the king preserved in Egyptian popular tradition of
the Late Period was very different from that described above but is, in
its way, equally traditional. It is characterized by a marked irreverence
for the royal office. Readers of Herodotus will be familiar with his
picture of the bibulous and iconoclastic Amasis (II, 173-4), and there
can be no doubt that, despite some crude retouching, this tradition
derives from Egyptian sources. It surfaces again in the third century BC
tale of Amasis and the Skipper written on the back of the Demotic
Chronicle. In this tale we read how the king took rather too much to
drink while on a boating picnic with his harem and was afflicted on the
following morning with so severe a hangover that he was quite
incapable even of standing up. In this parlous state he made a request
to be entertained by a story and was told a tale of a boatman, his wife,
and a Pharaoh, the details of which are unfortunately lost since the end
of the papyrus is destroyed (see Spiegelberg 1914, pp. 26ff). Such
light-hearted tales of royal self-indulgence, and sometimes discomfiture,
were clearly part of the stock-in-trade of Egyptian tradition. In the
Middle Kingdom Westcar Papyrus we are presented with the spectacle
of the bored king Khufu needing amusement and being entertained with
stories, not to speak of a salacious account of his father's relaxation on
the palace-lake with the ladies of the harem! In the New Kingdom tale
of Neferkara and Sasenet the conduct of the Pharaoh Neferkara is not
only described as being distinctly unroyal but as following a pattern

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which spectacularly violated Egyptian moral sentiment! In the demotic

tale of the Setem-priest Khaemwese we are treated to a scene depicting
the humiliation of the great Pharaoh Tuthmosis III. 1 In all these cases
the motivation behind such caricatures was, in the main, the need to
provide comic relief as a counterweight to the aura of omnipotence and
ineffable majesty surrounding the god-king.
Let us now consider the question of the extent to which Late Period
Pharaohs followed the traditional programme of action characteristic
of the royal office. This involves the study of the king's actions in three
areas: the cult, defence, and administration, though it should be
emphasized that these categories are simply a matter of convenience for
the modern scholar and that, to the Egyptian, they were far from
mutually exclusive.
The religious role of Pharaoh was central to his office and entailed
nothing less that his functioning as the link between the divine order
and human beings. As such, he was the channel through which the
life-giving power of the gods was bestowed upon men and the agent
through whom the resources of men could be conferred upon the gods
to maintain them at a maximum level of potency. Without Pharaoh both
gods and men were lost. Pharaohs of the Late Period discharged their
obligations in this respect to the letter. In the first place, the building,
maintenance and endowment of temples, which had always formed an
essential part of Pharaoh's priestly duties, were vigorously pursued
whenever circumstances and resources permitted. Psammetichus I did
much work at Memphis where he built a pylon on the south side of
the Temple of Ptah and also a court for the Apis Bull (Herodotus, II,
153); the Mit Rahina Stele of Apries refers to donations to the same
temple. The Nitocris Adoption Stele lists many endowments settled on
Nitocris as the presumptive High Priestess of Amen-Ra at Thebes.
Amasis was a prodigious builder and was active at many sites including
Sais (where architectural and sculptural work is known which shows
a marked taste for gigantism), Karnak, Edfu, Philae, Elephantine, and
Memphis. In Memphis Herodotus mentions a colossus of his which
suggests that he may even have been attempting to emulate Ramesses
II's achievements in this respect in the same city (II, 176, 1). Such an
ambition would have been very much of a piece with Amasis' work
on the temple of Wad jet at Nebesheh where he clearly attempted
to associate his activities with those of Ramesses II and Senusret III.
The Persian rulers of Egypt initially adopted this priestly aspect of
1
For the Westcar Papyrus see Simpson (1973, pp. 1 jff); for Neferkara and Sasenet see Posener
(1957, pp. ii9ff); for the demotic tale of Tuthmosis III see Griffith (1900, pp. I73ff).

2
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the Pharaonic role with enthusiasm. The inscription of Udjahorresnet

of the early Persian period speaks in glowing terms of the services to
the temple of Neith at Sais of Cambyses and Darius.1 Darius was also
largely responsible for the construction of a temple in honour of
Amen-Ra at Hibis in the Kharga Oasis, was active in the temple of Kasr
el-Ghoueita in the same area, worked at Abusir, and made dedications
at Edfu. The care shown by these rulers in this respect forcefully
demonstrates the continued importance of this aspect of the Pharaonic
office in that it implies a recognition on their part that the discharge
of such duties was a prerequisite to their being accepted in the fullest
sense as legitimate rulers of Egypt. The period of Egyptian independence
from 404 to 343 provides further illustrations of this point. The
Naucratis Stele of Nectanebo I describes elaborate measures on behalf
of the finances of the temple of Neith at Sais (Gunn 1943, pp. 556°;
Posener 1947, pp. nyff), and the last native Pharaoh Nectanebo II
constructed a massive temple in honour of Isis at Behbet el-Hagar.
It is evident, therefore, that the basic principles determining the
relationship of Pharaoh to the temples show no significant modification
in our period. There are, however, some changes in the deities receiving
attention which are very much a sign of the times. Isis features
prominently: Amasis built a temple for her at Memphis, which is the
first substantial temple known to have been constructed in her honour
anywhere in the country, and another at Philae; Nectanebo II's huge
granite temple at Behbet el-Hagar, probably the goddess' place of
origin, still provides one of the most impressive ruins in Egypt. This
sudden efflorescence of her cult as a major feature of state concern is
not, however, difficult to explain: her worship was associated closely
with kingship, and in the Late Period the concept of kingship needed
all the support it could get; the cult of Isis was Lower Egyptian in origin,
and all the native dynasties of the Late Period derived from Lower
Egypt; since Isis had become increasingly popular amongst the Egyptian
people at large, royal patronage of the goddess would yield an obvious
political dividend by establishing a close bond of religious sympathy
between the crown and the populace at large. Animal cults also received
much more royal attention than previously: Nectanebo I was active at
Hermopolis on behalf of Thoth the Ibis, at Saft el-Henna for Horus,
and at Mendes on behalf of the sacred ram, to name only three;
Nectanebo II worked at Saqqara both in the Serapeum (the burial place
1
A modern English translation will be found in Lichtheim (1980, pp. 36ff). For a detailed
discussion with full bibliography see Lloyd (1982b).

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of the Apis Bulls) and in the complex of the Mother of the Apis to the
north; he also showed an interest in other centres of animal worship
such as Armant and Bubastis. The royal predilection for these cults is
again not difficult to explain. They were uniquely Egyptian, and by
supporting them these kings were, at one level, asserting the distinctive
nature of Egyptian civilization in the face of growing pressure from
foreign culture. Furthermore, like the cult of Isis, animal worship was
immensely popular, and royal support of such cults inevitably served
to encourage a sense of national identity.
The relationship of Pharaoh to the temples was not, however,
confined to ensuring their material well-being. He was also, in theory,
the priest of all the deities of Egypt, a role which is copiously illustrated
in earlier times both by written sources and on temple walls and lesser
monuments. Counterparts in the era under discussion have not survived
in large numbers, but the tradition evidently continued intact: reliefs
in the temples of cAin el-Muftella in the Bahriya Oasis depict Amasis
engaged in the cult in classic fashion; the inscription of Udjahorresnet
insists relentlessly on the central importance of this aspect of the king's
duties in the early Persian period; and the unimpaired relevance of this
concept to the very end of our period is demonstrated unequivocally
by the Demotic Chronicle.
The second traditional aspect of Pharaoh's activities requiring
discussion is his role as protector of his people. This he was expected
in earlier times to discharge in two senses: first, he was to guarantee
security within the country by adequate policing, and, if necessary,
formal military operations; secondly, he was expected to defend Egypt
from its foreign enemies. These ideas are amply illustrated by such texts
as the Twelfth Dynasty hymns in honour of Senusret III from Kahun.
It is clear from epithets and attributes borne by kings throughout our
period as well as from the measures taken to ensure internal security and
the defence of the kingdom from foreign attack (see below pp. 333,
3 3 jff) that these aspects of Pharaoh's responsibilities were as important
in the Late Period as they had ever been.
The third major aspect of Pharaoh's office was the administration of
the kingdom. It was a central dogma of the Egyptian state that all power
derived ultimately from Pharaoh, and all aspects of government were
under his control. In practice, of course, delegation of authority was
essential and far-reaching. Here again, the Late Period shows no
difference in principle from earlier practice (see below, pp. 33iff).
Up to this point, the burden of our discussion of kingship during the
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Late Period has been that, except at the end of this epoch, there does
not seem to have been any change in the ideological underpinning of
this institution. This may seem a strange conclusion in the light of some
recent writing on the subject which has made much of Herodotus'
depiction of Amasis as a drunkard and an iconoclast. One author
(Spalinger 1978a, p. 26) has written:

The Greek tales surrounding Amasis also indicate that the Pharaoh was far
from being a regal personage. Quite to the contrary, Amasis is depicted as a
common man, fond of drinking. In fact, he seems not to have been immediately
approved by all Egyptians after the conclusion of the civil war. The
fragmentary Demotic story woven around Amasis' noted drunken behavior
fully supports the traditions recounted by Diodorus and Herodotus. Amasis,
in the tale 'Amasis and the Skipper', pales in comparison to P. Berlin 13598
wherein the death of Psammetichus I is recounted in so formal a fashion as
to make one wonder if Amasis could ever have been regarded by his subjects
as divine.

This judgement is quite unsound. Apart from the fact that it is

uncertain how much of this material is Greek and how much Egyptian,
there is nothing in the least untraditional in representing Pharaoh in
so light-hearted a vein. It might be countered that Herodotus does not
tell the same tale about other Sake kings and that this must be
significant. Significant indeed it is, but what it signifies is that Amasis,
through his apparently philhellenic policy, had made a profound
impression on Greek historical consciousness which, therefore, assim-
ilated and embroidered more material concerning that king than any
other. The character of this material provides no evidence of any change
of attitudes to kingship as such during the Sake period. However, a
careful reading of Egyptian texts over the entire time-span of Pharaonic
history reveals that acceptance of the dogmas of divine kingship did
not preclude a wide divergence in personal attitudes to the crown and
individual relationships to it, and that these attitudes can be ascribed
to contemporary circumstances when it is possible to ascribe them an
origin at all. Old Kingdom tomb inscriptions, composed at a time of
strong central government, insist on the deceased's dependence on royal
favour; Ankhtyfy, in the late Herakleopolitan period (c. 2200), an age
of weak central government, never mentions the king in his great
biographical inscription and leaves us with the impression of a man
exulting in his independence and de facto autonomy, though there are
good reasons for believing that he acknowledged, at least formally, the
suzerainty of Herakleopolis (Schenkel 1965; pp. 456°); Tjetji, at the

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beginning of the Eleventh Dynasty, in the centralized, if relatively small,

Theban state, is abject in his confessions of reliance on royal patronage
(Lichtheim 1975, pp. 906°). It is not surprising, therefore, that certain
features are detectable in Late Period attitudes to kingship which quite
clearly reflect contemporary conditions without, in any way,
compromising ancient dogmas.
In the first place, the Egyptians were faced with the problem of
reconciling their ancient concept of kingship with the fact of foreign
domination, initially Persian, then Macedonian. Pharaoh was the
champion of order; foreign rulers, by definition, were traditionally
regarded as Typhonic beings, the agents of destruction and chaos. The
Egyptian reaction to this dilemma was typically pragmatic: if the
foreign ruler was prepared to accept fully the role of Pharaoh, with all
its obligations, the Egyptians were prepared to accept him. For some
Egyptians, at any rate, Cambyses fell into this category. The inscription
of Udjahorresnet informs us that he had accepted the Pharaonic titulary
and other forms, had shown particular respect to the royal city of Sais
and its cults, had assumed the priestly office there, and had carried it
through with particular fervour and close attention to ancient practice.
Given Cambyses' studied orthodoxy, the author of the inscription has
no difficulty in speaking of the Persian's conduct in precisely the same
terms as those used of a native Egyptian king. If someone acts like
Pharaoh, he is Pharaoh! Darius' conduct was equally exemplary in that
he restored the House of Life at Sais, was active in temples at Abusir
and possible El-Kab, and devoted much attention to the temples of the
Kharga Oasis. All these actions are classic Pharaonic actions and led
to his full acceptance by the Egyptians as a legitimate Pharaoh.
Alexander the Great sacrificed to the gods at Memphis, was crowned
there, with all traditional pomp, as Pharaoh, and then visited Siwa where
he not only honoured Amen-Ra but was actually greeted by the priests
as the son of the god himself. Not surprisingly, the Egyptians had no
difficulty in accepting him as Pharaoh in the fullest sense. Indeed they
even invoked the ancient doctrine of the theogamy to sanction their
acquiescence. According to this dogma, which dated back at least to
the Old Kingdom, the king was the physical son of the sun-god who
was supposed to have visited the queen incarnated as the king. It is likely
that this doctrine was applied to Cambyses since Herodotus records
(III, 2) an Egyptian story that Cambyses was the son of Cyrus and an
Egyptian princess called Nitetis, a claim which may well reflect a
theogamy in which Cyrus was represented as Amen-Ra, but there is no

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doubt at all in the case of Alexander; for the Alexander Romance

contains the explicit tradition that he was the physical son of the last
native Egyptian Pharaoh Nectanebo II and Olympias, the wife of
Philip II of Macedon.
It hardly needs saying that by no means every foreign ruler was as
successful as these in winning Egyptian acceptance. Such rejections
were caused quite simply by their failure to integrate with the ideal of
kingship. When this happened the Egyptians would invariably have
recourse to the traditional stereotype of foreign rulers as Typhonic
beings. Their reigns meant the absence of Pharaoh, the absence of order,
and the irruption of chaotic forces into the land. Xerxes fell firmly into
this category. In the Satrap Stele of 311 he is described as an enemy
of order who had deprived the gods of Buto of a large tract of land
in violation of ancestral custom. This ungodly act, we are told, was
punished by the gods with the deposition of Xerxes. Artaxerxes III is
a similar case. According to Classical sources, his invasion of Egypt in
343 was accompanied, amongst other things, by gross abuse of
Egyptian temples, disasters which are ascribed to divine abandonment
of Egypt in the biographical inscription of Somtutefnakht, a contem-
porary of these events. At no time in any text is the perpetrator of
these abominations assimilated to the Pharaonic ideal (Lloyd 1982b,
pp. Hjff).
A second characteristic of Late Period attitudes to kingship is the
marked determination of officials to emphasize their independence of
royal control or, at least, their insistence on their own responsibility for
a particular achievement. For instance, officials frequently underline
their own role in guaranteeing the well-being of their cities. Intriguingly
enough, in doing this they will often use of themselves terminology
drawn from royal inscriptions and from the texts of the First
Intermediate Period. Some inscriptions even go so far as to claim that
Pharaoh was actually dependent upon the owner or, at the very least,
they allow the royal role in a particular situation to slip into the
background and assign the centre of the stage to the non-royal subject
of the inscription; in the reign of Apries Nesuhor emphasizes that it
was he who got the king out of difficulties with his mercenaries;
Udjahorresnet asserts continually that he was responsible for directing
Cambyses' activities at Sais; and Peftjuaneith gives scant space to his
royal master when describing his personal achievements at Abydos.
These traits all reflect ultimately the consequences of the greater need
for self-reliance and independence of action created by the uncertainties
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of life and uneven effectiveness of royal authority in Egypt in post-New

Kingdom times.
This greater independence of officials from the king is part of another
tendency apparent at this time: the determination to diminish Pharaoh's
own independence. We can see this in the recurrent willingness to
concede the king's reliance on the gods. This is certainly not new and
can be exemplified in earlier periods of internal weakness, but now it
led to a startling and distinctive development: the concept of royal
dependence evolved into the notion that the king might fail in the sight
of heaven itself. The concept of royal fallibility emerges occasionally
in older texts, e.g. the Instruction to Merikara in the First Intermediate
Period (see p. 74), and the inscription of Mes in the New Kingdom,
but now the Egyptians go much further in that this notion is established
as a major principle of historical causation. The Demotic Chronicle of
the early Ptolemaic period, which consists of a series of oracles with
their interpretations relating to kings of Egypt from Amyrtaeus
(c. 404-399) to Nectanebo II (c. 3 5 8-41), preaches the doctrine that only
those kings who live in accordance with the will of the gods will prosper
and explains recent disasters in Egyptian history as illustrations of this
principle. Earlier texts normally assume that the king is, ex officio, in
harmony with the divine will whereas this text insists that many were
not. What seems to have happened is that the disruption and
fragmentation of central authority has demolished the aura of godhead
surrounding Pharaoh. He has been brought nearer mortals, and the
moral code which applies to them is now applied to him. Men can
violate the divine order, incur divine wrath, and be punished; so can
the king (see further Lloyd 1982a, pp. 4iff). Although these attitudes
receive their clearest statement in a text composed after our period, there
can be no doubt that they existed earlier; for in the biographical
inscription of Somtutefnakht, whose official career began in the
Thirtieth Dynasty, there is a definite implication that the defeat of
Nectanebo II by the Persians was the result of divine hostility, and that,
in turn, must mean that Nectanebo himself was considered to have fallen
from divine grace.

Social stratification
The population of Egypt during our period is stated in no extant source.
Diodorus Siculus claims (I, 31, 7—8) that during the first century BC it
was not less than three millions, and that it had been about seven
millions 'in antiquity'. The precise point of reference of the second
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figure is unclear, but, since it corresponds approximately to that which

Lane calculated to be the absolute maximum supportable in the
agricultural conditions of the early nineteenth century (Lane 1966,
pp. 23ff), it is a reasonable guess that it related to the early Ptolemaic
period when technological innovations in agriculture, combined with
a ruthless and totalitarian efficiency, must have raised the population
as close to the maximum as it ever reached in antiquity. The pre-
Ptolemaic figure must have been lower. A peak was certainly attained
during the Sake Dynasty; for Herodotus himself insists on the
unusually high population in the time of Amasis (II, 177, 1), but a
precise figure is largely a matter of speculation. Herodotus' statements
on the maximum size of the two groups within the warrior class are
the only guide-lines available. Unfortunately, these totals are not related
to any specific period, but they can hardly refer to any time-range earlier
than the beginning of the Saite Dynasty. If, therefore, we accept that
the maximum totals for the two groups were reached at the same time,
we can interpret Herodotus' comments as implying that, at some time
between the beginning of the Saite Dynasty and his visit to Egypt
in the middle of the fifth century, the total number of warriors was
c. 410000. If we then allow for each warrior household a total of four
persons, which Lane considered reasonable for the provinces in his own
time, we get a total for warriors and dependants of c. 1640000.
Confidence in this figure is strengthened by the fact that it is confirmed
by another method. According to Herodotus every warrior was given
a fief of 12 arouras of land (see below, p. 310). If Baer is right in claiming
that the carrying capacity of Egyptian agriculture was a little less than
one person per 2 arouras (Butzer 1976, pp. 76ff), a warrior's plot would
have supported a maximum of five, and the average would certainly
have been lower. There is, then, some justification for accepting that,
when the warrior class was at its most numerous, they and their families
did indeed amount to a total off. 1 640000. Now the warriors held over
half the agricultural land of Egypt (see below, p. 310), and, if we as-
sume a similar density of settlement for the rest, we get a total
population of c. 3000000. This figure is entirely compatible with
estimated figures for the New Kingdom (see p. 190); it also has the
considerable merit of fitting a figure known to Diodorus for the
Hellenistic period and is well within the bounds of the feasible. It
should, however, be remembered that it is being suggested as a
maximum for the Saite period only, and that population figures must have
fluctuated sharply in the turbulent centuries preceding the Macedonian
conquest.

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When we come to consider the way in which this population was

stratified we are on much firmer ground. Four major groups of free men
are detectable, none of them a novelty: administrative officials, priests,
machimoi (warriors), and commoners, a term of convenience which we
use to cover peasants, craftsmen, and comparable elements. The
privileged position of the first three classes is amply demonstrated by
Egyptian and Classical sources, but there was, at all periods, a certain
amount of overlap between them. Indeed, the upper strata of the higher
social groupings tended to merge, and it can become very difficult at
that level to assign an individual to one or other of these groups: a
high-ranking soldier could be, or become, a priest or official and
sometimes all at once. Nevertheless, the rank-and-file will have preserved
their sense of corporate identity and communal interest, and, with them,
the capacity to bring corporate pressure to bear and the potential to
express corporate resentment. In addition to free men there were also
serfs and slaves in Egyptian society during the Late Period. Their
numbers are impossible to establish, but the documentation, for all its
deficiencies, leaves the impression that serfs, at any rate, formed a
significant element in the population. We must also make allowance for
a substantial foreign population.

Administrative officials
During the Saite and Persian periods, government officials constituted
an extremely important and numerous social grouping whose activities
penetrated almost every aspect of Egyptian life. They ranged from the
humblest of scribes toiling with the minutiae of local government to
functionaries of national importance based in the capital whose
competence ranged over issues of national and even international
importance. We shall, however, postpone the detailed discussion of their
organization for our section on internal administration (see below,
p. 3 3 iff).
Priests
In Ptolemaic times the priests were one of the three main land-owning
bodies of Egypt, alongside the Crown and the warrior class (Diodorus
Siculus, i, 73). It is impossible, with the available evidence, to gain a
precise estimate of their economic power during the Late Period, but
some pointers do exist: Herodotus leaves us in no doubt that they were
a highly privileged group during the First Persian Occupation and
speaks of them in much the same breath as the warriors, who, to judge
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from his data, held over half the cultivable land in the country (see
below, p. 310); when Psammetichus I installed his daughter Nitocris as
prospective High Priestess in the temple of Amen at Thebes in 6 5 6, she
was given an endowment of no less than 2230 acres, apart from revenues
in kind such as bread, milk, cake, herbs, emmer, oxen, geese and beer,
some offered daily, some on a monthly basis; Apries' Mit Rahina Stele
describes the dedication to the temple of Ptah at Memphis of a perpetual
endowment, tax-free, consisting of a neighbouring district and all marsh
and arable land adjacent to it, including serfs, large and small cattle,
produce in town and country, and the farmlands of gods and goddesses
located there, the whole clearly amounting to a very sizeable donation;
the Petition of Petiese of the Persian period speaks of the tax-free temple
estates of Amen of Teuzoi (El-Hibeh) and mentions herds of cattle
belonging to Amen-Ra as far north as the Oxyrhynchite Nome (XlXth
of Upper Egypt); according to the Satrap Stele of 311 the temples of
Buto had held during the Persian period a prodigious estate called ' the
Land of Wadjet' bounded by the Mediterranean to the north, the Saite
Nome to the south, the Canopic Branch of the Nile to the west, and
the Sebennytic Nome to the east. These and other references leave the
strong impression that a very high proportion of the wealth of the nation
must have been locked up in temple estates even if the proportion was
not as high as the figure given by Diodorus for later times. Such a
situation would not, of course, be any great novelty. The Great Harris
Papyrus of Ramesses III reveals that the temples held about a third of
the cultivable land and about one-fifth of its inhabitants in the early
Twentieth Dynasty, whilst the Wilbour Papyrus of Ramesses V informs
us that a high proportion of the land in the part of Middle Egypt
covered by the text was held by the temples (see above, p. 227).
It is hardly surprising that the temples were not always left in
undisturbed tenure of such wealth, and during our period we encounter
several references to royal interference in their economic power: a
decree of Cambyses recorded on the back of the Demotic Chronicle
describes the curtailment of temple incomes, though he is careful to
exclude the great temple of Ptah at Memphis from these measures;
Xerxes confiscated the estate of Buto described above, and it was only
restored in the time of the mysterious Pharaoh Khabbash; a passage
in the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica (1350b—5 ia) describes the severe
demands made on temple exchequers by Tachos in order tofinancehis
Persian war; and, according to Diodorus (XVI, 51), Artaxerxes III
confiscated sacred treasures after the conquest of the country in 343.
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It is, however, significant that three out of the four were Persians and
that even Tachos took his dubious measures only in extremis. All four
were visited with an uncompromising damnatio memoriae for their
impiety!
The power and prestige of the temples meant that priestly offices were
highly coveted positions, but appointment was no easy matter. The
theoretical basis of the Egyptian priesthood remained constant through-
out the Pharaonic period: Pharaoh himself was the High Priest of
all the gods of Egypt and the sole officiant entitled to celebrate the main
rituals in the holy of holies at the rear of the temple within which the
divine statue stood. The priests who attended him, whatever their rank,
were simply assistants appointed by him to discharge essential but
subordinate functions. In practice it was impossible for Pharaoh to carry
out his priestly duties in every temple in the land, and it was necessary
for him to appoint proxies who were generally known simply as 'the
first god's servants', that is, High Priests, though in some shrines they
were given a distinctive title. Dogmatic orthodoxy was ensured by the
ritual conversion of the High Priest into Pharaoh before he began the
daily cult. Whether we consider this priest or his subordinates, however,
their positions all had the same basis de jure: they were all royal
appointments. In practice, inevitably, the situation was more compli-
cated. We find at all periods that there was a tension between the right
of the king to appoint, on the one hand, and the hereditary principle
on the other. Appointments to the lower ranks of the priesthood were
presumably made by the High Priest or his immediate subordinates and
at best ratified by Pharaoh. The office of High Priest was another matter.
When the central government was strong, Pharaoh himself made the
appointment; when it was weak, the hereditary principle was often the
more important criterion.
In our period examples of royal appointment are not lacking. We have
already mentioned that in 656 Psammetichus exercised his prerogative
in this respeet.and dispatched his daughter Nitocris to Thebes to
become 'god's wife' of Amen-Ra and eventually High Priestess. This
precedent was followed by Psammetichus II who used his daughter
^Ankhenesneferibra in precisely the same way. The purpose of these
actions is quite transparent: at this period the most important politico-
economic unit in Upper Egypt was the Thebaid which was ruled as a
priest-state by Amen-Ra of Thebes; the most powerful sacerdotal office
was that of High Priestess of Amen-Ra; royal control of that office,
therefore, give the crown control of the Theban temple-state itself. This

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'Ankh-Sheshonk Ieturou m. Tetebheneit

priest of Amen-Ra at Thebes

Petiese (I)
Petiese assistant of Shipmaster
Shipmaster and priest
I
Somtutefnakht
Shipmaster Essemteu (I) Ieturou Peibes Nitemhe (?) m. Harudja
v
prophet of v ' s. of Peftu'ubasti
Harmakhis priest at
at Teuzoi Teuzoi
and later
prophet of Amen etc.

Petiese (II) m. Tshenterna'

Essemteu (II) m. Shpenesi

Petiese (111) the petitioner of P. Ryl. IX

Fig. 4.} The genealogy of Petiese I I I .

policy, which followed the example set by the Nubian Twenty-fifth

Dynasty, was pursued with the utmost tact, but nevertheless provides
a striking example of the way in which a powerful Pharaoh could
exercise his prerogative of appointment to his own political advantage.
The Petition of Petiese provides another example of Psammetichus
I's exercising this right. We are informed (8, 14—20) that Pharaoh
appointed Petiese I as priest of Amen-Ra, Harsaphes, Osiris, Onuris,
Min, and Sobk. Again there may have been a political dimension to these
appointments, but it is interesting to observe that the argument used
by Petiese to persuade Pharaoh of the justice of his claim was that his
own father Ieturou had already held the oflfices in question. The binding
force of this assertion was doubtless more moral than legal, but it clearly
carried weight. The same hereditary principle also emerges at 14, 9-16,
where we are informed that Petiese was succeeded as High Priest of
Amen-Ra at Teuzoi by Essemteu and that he, in turn, was succeeded
by his son Petiese (II). The wording of this passage suggests that, if
royal ratification were necessary de jure, it was of no great significance
de facto, and that the hereditary principle had simply taken its natural
course.
The hereditary principle is equally in evidence at 8, 8—14, where we
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are informed that, in the reign of Psammetichus I, a priest of Amen-Ra

at Thebes called Harudja had asked Petiese (I) for a priestly appointment
at Teuzoi and supported his request with the claim that his father had
been a priest there. Here also the argument may not be based upon legal
right, but it was strong enough for Petiese to accede to Harudja's
request without more ado. Interestingly enough, Herodotus claims
that the hereditary principle was absolute during the Persian period
(II, 37, 5). In this he is certainly incorrect, since priestly birth did not
become an absolute prerequisite for the priesthood until Graeco-Roman
times, but the very fact that this assertion could be made at all implies
that it had already become almost universal practice.
The Petition of Petiese suggests, however, that the claims of kinship
could be even more far-reaching and effective than those already
described: at 15, 1 iff, we are informed that Petiese II, High Priest of
Amen-Ra at Teuzoi, had relatives who were priests of the same god
at Thebes, and that in times of difficulty he used to go to them for
assistance. This passage speaks volumes for the workings of Ancient
Egyptian society: kinship in primitive and ancient communities usually,
if not always, implies a powerful nexus of mutual obligation and support
much greater than anything with which most modern European
societies are familiar.1 It is quite evident that Petiese's appeal for help
exemplifies precisely this principle, and that the existence of these family
ties created a strong sense of sympathy and solidarity between the two
priesthoods which could express itself, amongst other things, in a keen
regard for their mutual self-interest. It is, therefore, not at all impossible
that the Harudja discussed above was actually a relative of Petiese I
himself, and that this factor exercised a powerful, if covert, effect on
his successful request for the priesthood at Teuzoi. The existence and
ramifications of such family groupings are rarely as easy to detect as
in this instance, but we can be sure that they were to be found
throughout the country, and that they were a major factor in the
creation and expression of priestly power in all its aspects. If this was
indeed the case, then we have an example, rare in extant sources, of the
operation of a factor which must have been a major element in the
institutional structure of Egypt throughout antiquity: the exploitation
of kinship as a major integrating mechanism in the social, economic,
and political life of the country. To compare great things with small,
we might invoke as a parallel the manipulation of kinship ties by the
1
Useful introductions to the study of this issue are Bohannan (1969, parts 2—4); Mair (1977),
Index, s.v. Kin; Goody (1971).

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nomarchs of Middle Egypt during the early Twelfth Dynasty as a means

of creating feudal power-blocks (cf. BAR I, §622fT).
In most respects no significant changes were introduced into the
organization of the priesthood and the temple staff during the period
under discussion. In the Old and New Kingdoms we encounter officials
who were responsible for overseeing the administration of temples
throughout the country. In the earlier period they bore the title
'controller of every divine office', in the New Kingdom 'chief of
temples and of all the prophets of the entire country'. They were
evidently intended by the central government to keep a tight rein on
the undue exercise of the economic power of the temples. Both offices
were essentially secular in character, but we find that the latter position
could be held by the High Priest of Amen-Ra at Karnak during the New
Kingdom. At the beginning of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty it still occurs,
but then it lay in the hands of the great Theban baron Montuemhet who,
amongst other things, held the relatively humble office of 'fourth god's
servant' of Amen. After his death the office seems to disappear and no
equivalent is identifiable. On the other hand, we do encounter priests
who functioned as the head of all the priests of a particular deity, e.g.
Somtutefnakht was the ' overseer of all the a'^-priests of Sekhmet in
the entire land' in the late fourth century. The precise implications of
such titles are unknown, but it is at least possible that they reflect rather
the same governmental attitude as the offices previously discussed.
Similar suspicions also arise in connection with the office oilesonis (jmy-r
sniv) which appears frequently in our period, though it goes back at least
as far as the Eighteenth Dynasty. The lesonis functioned as a temple
president, and was, in essence, a secular official concerned with financial
administration. Inevitably, however, we find instances where priests
were appointed, such as Petosiris of Hermopolis, who held this office
alongside numerous priestly titles including that of High Priest of
Hermopolis.1 During the first Persian period and possibly throughout
the Late Period, these officials were appointed, and on occasion
deposed, by the central government.
In earlier times the priestly staff of a major temple could be very large
and was made up of several categories. At the top of the hierarchy were
the 'god's servants' (hmiv nt_r), the 'first god's servant' being the High
Priest. At Karnak we also hear of a 'second', 'third', and 'fourth god's
1
For the lesonis in general see Zauzich (1980, ioo8ff). A translation of Petosiris' biographical
texts will be found in Lefebre (1924, vol. 1). See also Otto (i954> PP- '74ff); Lichtheim (1980,
vol. Ill, pp. 44ff).

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servant'. The rest of this class was divided into four groups called
' watches' (s$w, Greek phylae) each of which served in the temple for
one month and was then off-duty for three. The upper reaches of the
hierarchy also included the prestigious, if problematic 'god's fathers'
(ttw ntr). Below these came two important classes: w£-priests (wcbw),
undoubtedly the most numerous group in the temple, and lector-priests
{hryw-hbt, lit. 'scroll-carriers'). Both categories were divided into
' watches' or phylae which functioned on the same basis as those of the
' god's servants'. The a^-priests were ritual assistants whose prime duty
was to maintain the maximum state of purity to enable them to handle
cult objects such as statues and ritual instruments whilst the lector-priests
were experts in sacred texts who ensured that the rites were carried out
in all respects according to the strict letter of the law. Priestesses were
also an important part of the staff, their role being to act as singers and
dancers in the cult. We hear, in addition, of less important officiants,
often called simply the nmivt, who are best described as lay-priests, and
of individuals described as wnw, 'shrine-openers(P)' (Gk. pastophoroi)
whose precise status is debatable but who certainly included amongst
their functions the execution of minor cultic duties in relation to divine
images.
A host of inscriptions ranging from the biographical texts of
Montuemhet at the beginning of our period to those of Petosiris at the
end, make it quite clear that the system just described remained
unimpaired throughout the Late Period in major shrines. Smaller
temples, of course, had to rest content with a smaller staff: a medium-sized
temple at Teuzoi described in the Petition of Petiese had a staff
consisting of one 'god's servant' who functioned as the High Priest and
four 'watches' of a^-priests, each with twenty members. Finally, it
should be remembered that, in addition to the priesthoods connected
with the temples of the gods, there were also many professional
mortuary priests and priestesses in the Late Period who were very
similar to the old hmw k%, 'soul-servants'. They were called n>$hw-mn>,
'choachytae, water-pourers', and usually held office on a hereditary basis.
The payment of priests was liberal and made in kind. Many, if not
all, were given land-allotments on temple estates, though legal texts
make it clear that they normally leased them out instead of working them
in person. Priests also received a proportion of the temple's income:
at Teuzoi, for instance, the temple's income in emmer wheat was
divided into ioo stipends one-fifth of which were paid to the 'god's
servant', and one-fifth to each of the four' watches' of »^-priests. Other
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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY
similar items of revenue were doubtless administered on the same
principle. In addition to all this, the priest's income also included a daily
ration which, according to Herodotus, consisted of bread, beef, geese,
wine and beer. Substantial though these rewards were, every priest had
the opportunity to increase his remuneration by pluralism, and many
availed themselves of it to the full. We have already indicated that
Petiese I of Teuzoi held priesthoods in several parts of the country and
that Harudja of Thebes felt no qualms about holding priesthoods in
Thebes and Teuzoi. Similarly, Somtutefnakht could describe himself
as 'the god's servant of Horus, Lord of Hebu, the god's servant of the
gods of the Sixteenth Nome, the god's servant of the god Smatawy
(Somtus) of Iat-hehu... the overseer of the #^>-priests of Sekhmet in
the entire land'. Indeed, the financial advantages of priestly offices
emerge in a particularly striking form in the passage in the Petition of
Petiese where a priestly stipend is actually used as a bribe to a high
official at court (P. Ky lands IX, 3, 8ff).
Thanks to Herodotus we are well informed on the priests' mode of
life during the mid fifth century BC, and we need not doubt that his
comments held true for the entire period under discussion. Not
surprisingly, he lays great stress on their obligation to maintain a high
level of ritual purity: they shaved their bodies every other day, had to
be circumcised, wore only linen garments and sandals of papyrus, and
washed twice a day and twice a night. They were also forbidden to eat
fish or beans. Whether these regulations applied throughout their career
is uncertain, but it seems likely that they were only compulsory during
the months when the priest was actually officiating within the temple.
It would, however, be a mistake to assume that prescriptions of ritual
purity were a guarantee of an upright and sober life. The invaluable
Petition of Petiese paints a grim picture of standards of probity at Teuzoi
where priests of the early Saite period did not stop short of murder to
preserve their economic interests. This crime met its due reward when
the culprits were arrested, taken before Pharaoh, and punished, probably
by death, but, given the financial rewards involved, it is hardly
surprising that such unsavoury episodes should occur from time to time,
and that priestly morality sometimes fell far short of the ideal, a situation
for which the history of the mediaeval church in Europe provides an
instructive parallel. Nevertheless, we should not allow such lapses to
induce too baleful a view of Late Period priests; Somtutefnakht,
addressing the god Harsaphes, claims: 'I am thy servant, my heart is
devoted to thee; my heart is filled with nothing but thee... my heart

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sought truth in thy house day and night '.* Where such ideals exist, there
will always be many who devote their energies to realizing them,
however far short they may fall in the attempt.

Machimoi (warriors)
The high standing of this group is clearly demonstrated by the Darius
Decree of 495/4 BC preserved on the back of the Demotic Chronicle.
At the beginning of this text three groups are mentioned as people to
be consulted when new laws were to be framed: warriors, priests, and
scribes, and it is the warriors who are listed first.
Most, if not all, of the warrior class originated from Libyan
mercenaries who had settled in Egypt during the New Kingdom or had
subsequently infiltrated the country where they were probably permitted
to take up residence on condition that they provided military service
to the Crown when called upon to do so. They were concentrated mainly
in the Delta where they grew into a numerous and powerful element
in the population. They were divided into a series of principalities which
were virtually autonomous under rulers called 'Great Chiefs of the
Mashwash (Ma)' and which survived in some cases into the reign of
Psammetichus I to be absorbed in the early phase of his expansion. This
change of political status did not impair their military value, and they
continued to play a major role as militia down to the end of the
Pharaonic period. In Sake times they were used as general infantry,
certainly by land and probably also as marines, and they also provided
Pharaoh with the Egyptian equivalent of the Roman imperial Praetorian
Guard; during the Persian period they featured prominently as marines;
and subsequently they played an important role in the campaigns of
Tachos and Nectanebo II. In these fourth-century operations they were
still predominantly infantry, but it is intriguing that Diodorus mentions
the use of cavalry in the Egyptian army (XV, 42), in a context where
Egyptian troops alone seem to have been involved.
It is claimed by Herodotus that the maximum population of the
warrior class had been 410000, a figure which probably refers to the
Saite-Persian period (see above p. 300). He also asserts that they were
divided into two groups, the Kalasiries and the Hermotybies. The
former were concentrated in the southern and eastern Delta, though
some were settled in the Theban Nome; the Hermotybies, on the other

1
For a translation consult Lichtheim (1980, vol. m, pp. 4iff); see also Lloyd (1982b, pp. iy8ff).

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hand, occupied a solid block of nomes in the western and central Delta.
Each warrior is alleged to have received from the Crown a tax-free fief
of 12 st$t of land {c. 8 acres or 3.2 hectares), which was perfectly
adequate for the maintenance of a household offivepersons, but officers
must have received more on a scale graded by rank, though we have
no information on what this scale may have been. If all these figures
are correct, the sum total of the land allotted to the warriors amounts
to two-thirds of the available agricultural land in the Delta and over
half the cultivable land of Egypt as a whole. This compares with the
proportion of about one-third held by the temples during the Twentieth
Dynasty and does not seem implausible. How the warriors organized
the working of their land is a matter of speculation. If we discount the
obvious tendency in Classical sources to confuse the warriors with the
Spartan military elite, and make our guesses on the basis of standard
Egyptian practice, it may be suggested that, since they functioned as
a militia, not as a standing army, the majority would have lived most
of their lives as peasants, but that plots could also be leased out on a
share-cropping basis wherever this was economically feasible. At all
events, the prominence of soldiers, Egyptian and mercenary, in the
agricultural life of the country, is far from novel: The Wilbour Papyrus,
for instance, demonstrates that they were amongst the most important
land-exploiting groups in the country at least as early as the Twentieth
Dynasty.

Commoners
In his survey of Egyptian society of the Persian period Herodotus
mentions several social groups in addition to the priests and warriors:
cowherds, swineherds, merchants, interpreters, and steersmen (boat-
men), by which he presumably means all those who earned their
livelihood on the water whether they captained freighters and ferries
or punted papyrus rafts about the marshes as fishermen and fowlers.
He might also have listed a wide range of craftsmen and other
specialists, both industrial and agricultural, who played a crucial role
in the socio-economic life of the country. Interestingly enough, he
makes no reference to free-men farmers in this list, presumably because
he believed that agricultural land was concentrated in the hands of
priests and warriors and that the farm labour described at II, 14, 2 was
either carried out by them or by serfs who could not be included in
a list of the classes into which free men were divided. Nevertheless, it
is quite clear that agricultural land was often rented by ordinary citizens
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during our period, though this system certainly has an earlier origin.
In the Wilbour Papyrus we find that, although most of the land was
actually owned by the Crown or temples, it was worked by, or on behalf
of, a variety of individuals including not only priests and soldiers but
also 'cultivators', 'ladies', herdsmen, scribes and stablemasters. The
Saite period presents us with the earliest known contracts for letting
such land. Dating from the reign of Amasis, they all refer to priests who
are concerned to lease out their plots in the temple-domain of Amen-Ra
and mention lessees who include herdsmen, beekeepers, and other
priests. The plots probably did not exceed 3! acres and the lessee was
required to provide everything for cultivation himself. He evidently did
not expect to do the work in person, but either used slaves or hired
labourers to farm the plot for him.

All the social groups discussed up to this point consisted of free men.
They differed from one another in many important respects, but they
all shared the same institutional foundation: the family. Before con-
sidering other social categories it is, therefore, fitting to give some
attention to the nature of this institution in the Late Period.
To the Ancient Egyptians the family did not simply consist of its
living members but was regarded as a corporation of the living and the
dead. Traditionally this attitude expressed itself through the mortuary
cult, and this practice lost none of its prominence in the Late Period.
On the contrary, we detect at that time an even stronger sense of this
relationship than emerges in earlier texts; there is evidence that it was
the custom in the fifth century to retain the mummified body of deceased
members of the family in a vault within the house itself (Herodotus,
II, 86, 7; Diodorus Siculus, I, 91, 7), and we also find a greater tendency
for individuals to assert their ancestry by recording their genealogies
in inscriptional form.1
The basis of the family in our period was monogamous marriage.
There is no evidence of polygamy, though the maintenance of
concubines was not uncommon. Close consanguineous marriages are
certainly exemplified between half-brother and half-sister, but full
brother—sister marriage does not seem to have been acceptable outside
the royal house. The traditional concept of marriage shows no change:
marriage was still a private act in which the law was not interested
per se. As in earlier times, we encounter documents which, for sake of
1
The problems of Herodotus, II, 86, 7, are discussed in Lloyd (1976, pp. $65$), where I deny
the connection with Diodorus1 comments. I now believe this view to be mistaken.

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convenience, are called by scholars 'marriage contracts', but they are

concerned essentially with the financial arrangements attendant upon
the marriage and do not constitute a legal prerequisite. Examples from
our period indicate that marriage might be patrilocal (wife moves to
husband) or, very rarely, matrilocal (husband moves to wife), and they
strikingly illustrate one of the more unexpected features of Egyptian
social life throughout Pharaonic times: the very high degree of
independence enjoyed by women. In law women were able to function
on very much the same terms as men, one of the few distinctions being
that they do not seem to have had the right to appear as witnesses in
legal transactions. Several types of late contract illustrate this point by
demonstrating the freedom of the woman to own property, retain it on
marriage, and dispose of it exactly as she chose. What is more, these
contracts are arrangements between equals, and sometimes push the
principle of reciprocal obligations to remarkable lengths: in one
contract (P. Chicago 17481) a woman hands over a large sum of money
to the bridegroom as payment for all the rights and privileges which
he will grant in the course of the marriage; the woman is empowered
to collect any arrears in her dues; the children of the marriage are to
receive everything which the father has or will have; and the husband
has no right to break the agreement unilaterally. By no means all
marriage contracts were as detailed as this — the sh n fnh, ' maintenance
document', which this text exemplifies is, in fact, an invention of the
fourth century - and a wide degree of latitude was observed in dealing
with the various problems which it attempts to solve, but the principles
and attitudes which it presupposes were of general validity.
Since marriage was a private act, the same held true of divorce: one
party simply repudiated the other. In practice, however, social pressures
must have restricted considerably the abuse of such freedom, and these
pressures were often powerfully reinforced by the marriage contract
itself in that it could make divorce as difficult as possible by ensuring
that the financial penalties were severe and sometimes crippling. No
doubt such measures were often successful, but, since we possess many
late documents relating to divorce, it was clearly a common
phenomenon.
The relationship between fathers and their children was determined
not only by social attitudes but also in law. It is evident that the father
had considerable rights even over the property of grown sons and also
had a right to their labour. It is equally clear that, in cases of debt, the
creditor could proceed legally against the children as well as the slaves
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of any defaulter. Adoption was also a possibility, but operated in such

a way that the adopted child did not necessarily lose its right to the
property of the natural father. Filial piety was a potent force in Egyptian
life, and sons were considered to be under a strong moral obligation
to maintain their parents during old age, though they were absolved
of this responsibility if the parents themselves had failed in their duties.
On the other hand, it would appear that daughters were bound by law
to support their parents.
The continued viability of any family was dependent upon the
maintenance of a satisfactory economic base, which might consist of real
or movable property, and was also considered to include any offices held
by one or more of its members. Establishing a legal title to all this was
of central importance, and the transactions by which any major item
came into the family's possession or 'user' were normally recorded
carefully in writing in the proper legal form. Acts of sale and purchase
assumed particular prominence here, and the texts show some intriguing
features. It is evident that, in earlier times, no act of sale was valid unless
the principle of balanced reciprocity had been observed: the vendor
must receive an acceptable exchange for the item being sold. The
principle of balanced reciprocity was, and is, a fundamental element in
the socio-economic life of primitive and early societies, and certainly
played a major role in the institutional machinery of Ancient Egypt.1
However, in the demotic texts of our period we find a new and
interesting modification of the principle. Previously, and in the old-
fashioned abnormal-hieratic texts used in Upper Egypt until the latter
part of the reign of Amasis, we find that it was obligatory to state
precisely what both parties received in carrying through the process of
reciprocity; in demotic deeds of sale, on the other hand, we are given
information on what was sold, but nothing on what the vendor himself
received. We are simply told that the latter was 'satisfied' with what
he had been given. Certainly, the insistence on satisfaction is not in itself
a novelty. In older contracts detailed accounts of the items exchanged
are accompanied as a matter of course with an explicit statement that
the parties in question were satisfied with the exchange. However, it
is clear that the demotic practice implies a considerable advance in legal
thinking. Previously, the law had placed the main emphasis on the
mechanical process of reciprocity; now it was insisting that the crucial
1
On reciprocity in primitive and peasant societies see Bohannan (1969, pp. 229ff); Mair (1977),
Index, s.v. Reciprocity. Theodorides (1975, pp. 87ft") offers some stimulating remarks on reciprocity
in Egyptian foreign relations.

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factor in the contract was the attitude of the participants to the

transaction.
Where family property is so important, inheritance must be an issue
of major significance. In earlier times in Egypt we find that the problem
was often solved by using a document called an imt-pr, 'deed of
conveyance', which was the standard deed employed for transference
of property of all kinds. When made in anticipation of death, it
functioned as a will. The term imt-pr seems to have been obsolete in
the Late Period, but a similar document was still often used to ensure
a smooth transference of property after, or in anticipation of, death. Not
infrequently, however, a man would die intestate, and in such cases the
eldest son occupied a privileged position in the disposal of the
deceased's property. Nevertheless, every child, male or female, had a
legal claim on the estate.
It will be evident from what has already been said that the life of the
Ancient Egyptian was document-ridden in the extreme. This situation
was aggravated by the fact that, when any transaction of sale or purchase
took place, all the documentation relating to the relevant item which had
ever existed and was still extant had also to be transferred to the
purchaser. Most families, therefore, kept their own archives where such
texts could be safely stored. Since these were periodically sorted out and
obsolete material thrown away, a number of family archives, or portions
of them, have survived to yield fascinating glimpses into the basics of
social life in Late Period Egypt.

Serfs and slaves

The question of serfdom and slavery in Ancient Egypt has given rise
to considerable debate, and some commentators have gone so far as to
doubt the very existence of slavery in the Late Period. Essentially the
problem is that of correlating the institutional structure and vocabulary
of one society with that of another. In such operations it is sometimes
possible to achieve an exact correspondence, but all too often we have
to rest content with approximate equivalents. This is the situation when
we consider the status of the 'unfree' in Ancient Egypt. It may well
be that there were no individuals in the Late Period who satisfied in
all respects the definition of a slave in Roman or Athenian law, but it
is certain that there were individuals whose degree of' unfreedom' was
so great that there is much more truth than falsehood in using the term
' slave' to describe them. The topic will, therefore, be discussed on the

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basis of the following principle: serfdom will be regarded as a specific

form of slavery in which individuals are bound to the land and required
to work for the owner or his tenant. Anyone else who is owned by
another will be called simply a 'slave'.
Serfs were a common feature of Egyptian life in earlier times when
they appear as workers on the domains of Pharaoh, the temples, and
the wealthier members of the community. They acquired their status
in a variety of ways: they might be born to it, they could be prisoners
of war, or they might have been condemned to serfdom for criminal
offences. Evidence for the institution in our period is not plentiful, but
it is sufficient to prove that serfs continued to form an important
element in the population: they are included in the donations assigned
to Nitocris by Psammetichus I in 656 (Adoption Stele, 1. 31); the Apries
Stele from Mit Rahina informs us that serfs (mrt) were included in the
king's endowment to Ptah (see above, p. 289); and in the stele of
Peftjuaneith they are given to the temple of Osiris at Abydos (see above,
p. 292). In the first two cases there is no clear indication of their origin,
though we are left with the impression that they comprised the entire
population of the areas in question; in the third instance, however, some
of them are specifically stated to have been prisoners-of-war.
Slavery was recognized by law in the Late Period and is well
illustrated by surviving contracts of sale. Legally the slave {b$k) owned
nothing at all. He was a living chattel who could be bought and sold
at will. Nevertheless, it was certainly possible for him to dispute his
status if he so wished. Many slaves would have been foreigners who
owed their position to such factors as war, foreign trade, or both, but
it was undoubtedly possible for Egyptians themselves to sink to this
level — indeed, at Elephantine during the Persian period we find
Egyptians even functioning as slaves of Jewish mercenaries. Recently
discovered evidence from an unpublished demotic ostracon unearthed
at Saqqara also attests to the existence of voluntary serfdom to temples
at this period. What circumstances gave rise to the enslavement of
Egyptians at any period is an open question, but debt or a desperate
desire to secure the means of basic sustenance would both be obvious
possibilities. However, whether the slave was foreign or Egyptian, the
overwhelming impression created by the documents is that the
relationship between slave and master was often very good and was
essentially paternalistic in character.

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Foreigners

Foreigners must have accounted for a sizeable proportion of the

population of Egypt during the Late Period. They came in a variety
of guises and from many different quarters. Merchants, mercenaries,
travellers, students, allies and conquerors are all abundantly exemplified,
and few of the major ethnic groups of the Eastern Mediterranean, Near
East, and North Africa fail to appear at some time or another. The
Egyptian reaction to their presence was far from uniform, being
marked by a complex interplay of prejudice, ideology, pride and
self-interest. More often than not, it is the last of these attitudes which
gained the ascendancy, but the others are rarely inoperative.
Herodotus gives us clear indications of the basis of the Egyptian's
perception of national identity during the fifth century. According to
him, the oracle of Amen-Ra at Siwa had declared that Egypt included
everything which was covered by the waters of the inundation, and that
everyone was an Egyptian who lived north of Elephantine and drank
the waters of the Nile; later we are told that the Egyptians considered
everyone a foreigner who did not speak Egyptian (II, 18; 158, 5).
Nowhere does Herodotus give any indication that racial considerations
were an issue of any importance; domicile and culture, not physical
characteristics, were the key criteria. In other statements he gives an
equally clear picture of Egyptian attitudes towards those who failed to
satisfy these conditions: eating habits which did not conform to good
Egyptian practice were considered disgraceful (II, 36, 2); the Egyptian
method of writing from right to left was the correct one, not that of
the Greeks (II, 36, 4); the heads of sacrificed cattle which had been
heaped with curses might be thrown into the river — or sold to Greeks;
Egyptians refused to kiss Greek men or women on the mouth and would
not use their knives, spits, or cooking pots, nor would they touch any
meat cut with Greek knives because all of these items might have been
contaminated by contact with slain cows (II, 39; 41, 2—3); at II, n o ,
the priests of Memphis are represented as comparing the achievements
of Darius with those of the legendary Egyptian king Sesostris to the
considerable disadvantage of the former. It is evident from all this that
Herodotus found the Egyptian attitude to foreigners a mixture of
cultural superiority and distaste, a distaste, moreover, which was not
infrequently powerfully reinforced by religious taboos.
In view of these attitudes it is hardly surprising that we should
encounter outbursts of hostility towards foreigners from time to time,

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but it would be a mistake to interpret these events simply as the result

of an aversion to non-Egyptians. The nationalist revolt of the machimoi
against Apries (see above p. 285) must have owed something to xeno-
phobia, but we can be sure that at least as potent a force was the
sense of injured pride felt by the Egyptian troops at the privileged
position allotted to foreign mercenaries within the Egyptian army.
Similarly, the series of revolts against the Persians during the First
Occupation were not merely expressions of a hatred for foreigners, but
the products partly of the political and economic aspirations of
power-groups within the Egyptian population and partly the legacy
of the repressive measures employed by the Persians after the reign of
Darius.
A particularly interesting example of the enmity which could arise
between Egyptians and foreigners is provided by events at Elephantine
in the year 410. Here the hostility between the priests of the Egyptian
god Khnum and the Jewish mercenary community reached such a pitch
that the Egyptian priests prevailed on the Persian officer commanding
the area to destroy the temple of Jahweh, the centre of Jewish worship
in the town. Why this antipathy arose is never explicitly stated, but it
is quite evident that it sprang from something more potent than an
Egyptian distaste for aliens. The most plausible explanation by far is
that the venom was injected into the situation by religious fervour. If,
as is highly likely, the Jews had been in the habit of sacrificing lambs
in their temple, they .would have given grave offence to the religious
susceptibilities of the priests of Khnum who was believed to be
incarnated in a ram.
One important corollary of these Egyptian attitudes is that foreigners
could become Egyptians simply by accepting Egypt as their home and
by adopting Egyptian culture in all its aspects. The importance of this
point in relation to kingship has already been discussed (see above,
p. 293), but its relevance is much broader than that. The very real at-
tractions of Egyptian civilization, particularly from the religious point
of view, ensured that many immigrants at all levels were prepared to
go a long way in adapting to local ways. Carian immigrants from Asia
Minor and their descendants showed a marked capacity for cultural
assimilation and embraced Egyptian names and Egyptian religion with
particular enthusiasm; the progressive Egyptianization of the Persian
conquerors is strikingly illustrated by such texts as the inscriptions of
the brothers Atiyawahy and Ariyawrata in the Wadi Hammamat
(476—449); the tomb of Si-amen in the oasis of Siwa, which belongs

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somewhere in our period, demonstrates that Greeks too were far from
proof against the influence of Pharaonic culture; even the Jewish
mercenaries at Elephantine were affected by the indigenous civilization,
though here the influence was less profound than in many other cases.1
This tendency to cultural integration was particularly promoted by the
widespread practice of intermarriage between Egyptians and foreigners
at this time.

ECONOMIC STRUCTURE

Settlements
There is no reason to believe that there was ever any fundamental
change in settlement patterns during Pharaonic times, and we can be
confident that the Late Period population described above was
distributed over the classic Egyptian range of sites stretching from
individual farms and hamlets through villages and local towns to great
capital cities. The majority will have lived in relatively small settlements
like those frequently mentioned in the Wilbour Papyrus (see above,
p. 227), but the centres best documented for our period are large
conurbations. As always in Egypt, the archaeological record for such
sites is entirely unsatisfactory, but there is a surprising amount of
written evidence, both Egyptian and Classical, and a clear picture can
be gained of the character of these towns even if, in most cases, we
cannot draw on an accurate ground-plan.
Towns on the alluvium fell into three main groups: national capitals,
such as Memphis and Sais; the administrative centres of the provinces,
or nomes, into which Egypt was divided, such as Bubastis and Mendes;
and smaller local towns such as Nebesheh.2 To obviate the effects of
flooding, they were invariably constructed on the highest ground
available. In their lower reaches the sites were usually based on natural
deposits such as old river banks or, in the Delta, the sandy elevations
known as 'turtle-backs', but, in a settlement of any age, these natural
raised areas were considerably heightened by the debris of generations
of inhabitants; most buildings were made of sun-dried mud brick, and,
when they collapsed, the surface was subjected to the minimum of
levelling and a new structure erected on top. These city mounds were
1
For Carian reactions to Egyptian cultural influence see Lloyd (1978, pp. ioyff); for Atiyawahy
and Ariyawrata see Posener (1936, pp. 117ff); for Si-amen see Boardman (1980, p. 159); for Jewish
mercenaries and Egyptians see Porten (1968, pp. is iff).
2
Nebesheh was the old capital of the Nineteenth Nome of Lower Rgypt but had been
supplanted by Tanis before the beginning of our period (Helck 1974, pp. i95<T).

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Fig. 4.4. The site of Memphis (after W. M. F. Petrie (1909a), pi. I).

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

Cultivated Plai

See Plan - ^ H .
of Town M*- ' - ^ House o f
;
Mos ^.••'Nebesheh
General Plan of
Tell Nebesheh '^ |-:
scale ^ ^
V« '/. mile

Fig. 4.5 The site of Nebesheh (after W. M. F. Petrie (1888), pi. XVII).

everywhere to be seen in the Late Period and made a great impression

upon Herodotus (II, 97, 137); he gives a particularly vivid description
in his account of Bubastis of one of the effects of the progressive rise
of the mound itself when he informs us that the temple of the goddess
Bastet stood in his time in a hollow surrounded by houses built on
mounds. Clearly, the mounds on which the mud-brick houses were built
had gradually increased in height with successive reconstruction whereas
the temple, being of stone, had been proof against collapse and had
remained at its original level.
The physical layout of such towns is easily established. All had at least
one nodal point; great cities such as Memphis had several. These might
consist of temples or administrative centres such as palaces and mayoral
offices. Late Period temples were of the classic type. That of Bastet at
Bubastis was constructed of granite and limestone, and appears to have
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been surrounded by an enclosure wall of black basalt about 228.6 m by

176.78 m in size and carved with relief sculpture. Between this and the
temple building proper stood a sacred grove, probably of palm trees,
symbolizing the protective and life-giving presence of the goddess.
Access to the temple was gained by a processional way about 685.8 m
long, traces of which survived into modern times. The temple enclosure
was encircled by a horseshoe-shaped lake or isrw comparable to that
surrounding the temple of Mut at Karnak. The temple complex of Neith
at Sais was particularly splendid; not only did it contain the shrines of
Neith and other major Saite deities such as Osiris Hemag, but also the
tombs of the kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. These apparently stood
in the courtyard preceding the hypostyle hall of the shrine of Neith
herself and exemplified a characteristic type of late royal tomb, namely
the temple-court burial found earlier at Medinet Habu and Tanis. Each
of these tombs comprised a superstructure, consisting of a cult-chapel
which was entered through a portico supported by palm-tree columns,
and a substructure immediately below which took the form of a burial
vault which would have contained the body of the king enclosed in a
coffin of precious metal, as at Tanis. Tombs of this type were also used
later at Mendes during the Twenty-ninth Dynasty and seem to have been
imitations of the mortuary installations associated with the prehistoric
kings of Egypt, but they were not simply inspired by conservative
sentiment: they had, in addition, the merit of conferring greater security
on the burial than the New Kingdom practice of interment in the Valley
of the Kings, and also satisfied the kings' desire to be protected in death
by the divinities of their native city.
In a great national metropolis, the splendour of the city's temples was
matched by that of the palace. Though no trace of the one in Sais has
been identified, we are informed that it was both large and spectacular.
Memphis, on the other hand, provides us with the ruins of a Twenty-sixth
Dynasty example in the form of the Palace of Apries. This stood in the
north-west angle of a great enclosure, clearly military in character,
which was surrounded by a battered mud-brick wall 10 m thick at the
base. The palace itself was constructed on an artificial mud-brick mound
of a type characteristic of the Late Period which may have been as high
as 13.66 m and was constructed on the honeycomb principle: a grid of
mud-brick walls was erected creating a large number of boxes or
casemates, and these were subsequently filled with earth or mud brick.
Access to the top was gained from the south by way of a great ramp
about 87 m wide. Once the upper surface of the platform had been
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 -Limestone Threshold Mud Brick Traces Petrie's Fosse Probable Edge of Mound in 1909

n
W

I I

7 Section
Edge of Mound in 1976
Descending Level of Platform O
Limestone Blocks in Section
Filling of Limestone Dust and Chips
n

Robber_Trench O
To the Corner Gateway i
Metres 150 Excavated by Petrie \

Fig. 4.6 Plan of the Palace of Apries at Memphis (after B. J. Kemp (1977b), Fig. 1).

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 THE LATE PERIOD

prepared, the palace was constructed on its northern section. In this

operation an unusual quantity of stone was used, and this feature,
combined with its spectacular position, must have created an over-
whelming impression of power and magnificence.
Around the focal point provided by such buildings were constructed
the houses of the populace. Excavations at Nebesheh and Elephantine
have demonstrated that street-planning in a normal Egyptian town was
as rudimentary as ever, and, wherever it occurred, we can be confident
that it was quickly broken down by the organic expansion of the
settlement, particularly through the untrammelled house extensions
characteristic even now in Egyptian rural areas. Houses were usually
of mud brick, but there is some evidence that a large amount of stone
could be used for the dwellings of the wealthy (see P. Kylands, IX, 20,
12-15).This fits our data from the Palace of Apries and may reflect a
growing tendency in the Late Period. In congested areas high-rise
building was the order of the day. At Elephantine houses were usually
of two storeys, but there is evidence that they could reach at least three
storeys at Memphis. Local differences there certainly were. At
Elephantine, for instance, brick barrel-vaults were the rule for roofing
purposes; further north, on the other hand, in the southern dependencies
at North Saqqara we find the builders employing bundles of bound reeds
laid upon wooden beams and coated with a heavy layer of mud. The
overall impression gained from the study of domestic architecture of
this period is that it continued traditional techniques and designs, and
that these traditions have remained the basis of mud-brick architecture
in the country down to modern times.
On the whole, the Late Period was an age of insecurity, and it comes
as no surprise to find that most, if not all, substantial settlements were
surrounded by fortifications. There are few remains, but the formidable
ruins of the fort at Tell Defenneh (Daphnae), as well as those of the
camp within which the Palace of Apries stands, give some idea of what
they must have been like. That they were highly effective is indisputable.
The Egyptians had long experience of military engineering, and there
is ample evidence that they had lost none of their ancient mastery.
During the revolt of Inarus (e. 462—45 5) the citadel of Memphis held
out successfully against the best efforts of the Athenians, the
acknowledged Greek experts in siege warfare; the engineering works
employed for the defence of the country during the fourth century show
consummate skill (cf. Diodorus, XV, 42); and Artaxerxes III, after his
conquest of the country in 343, paid Egyptian military architects the

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

100 200 300 400

house of rest*^
of the Ibis

Compound of Isis j f house of rest of,

HEPNEBES Isis mother of Apis \
tower (?)
house of rest of \
the Baboon ',
courtyard (?)

• ,.
PI-WA'BNEBES sanctuary (?)[] ,-
(compound of Horus, of Q/ house of rest of theHawk
Thoth, and house of Thoth) /
house of rest of the Ibis

SERAPEUM
Mountain of the North of the
Necropolis of 'Ankhtawy

"(house of rest

of the Dogs)

dromos
| | Mil |Tlll« I 1 |
The Serapeum Anubieion
The Peak (?)
house of rest
of Osiris-Apis
"(house of rest House of
miuilininil'
miuilini Bastet
of the Cats J—II

F i g . 4.7 T h e S a q q a r a t e m p l e t o w n i n t h e P t o l e m a i c p e r i o d (after J . D . R a y ( 1 9 7 6 ) , 153).

dubious compliment of demolishing the walls of the most important

cities of Egypt. Circuit walls were not, however, the limit of a town's
defences at this time. Citadels were also constructed within the walls
rather like the keeps of medieval castles. The palace of Apries was
obviously part of some such installation at Memphis, and Diodorus
Siculus mentions a fourth-century example in the north-eastern Delta
which was certainly not unique (XV, 42).
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Since water-transport was the standard means of communication, all

towns on the alluvium must have had harbours of some kind. We know
that towards the end of the fifth century a naval arsenal was located at
Memphis and may guess that it functioned as the headquarters of the
Egyptian fleet in rather the same way as the New Kingdom Prw nfr
(Bowman 1941, pp. 3O2fT; Lloyd 1980, pp. I96ff). Cemeteries were
another essential adjunct of Egyptian towns. In the Delta they were
contiguous with the settlements themselves, a good example being the
one at Nebesheh which was established just to the east of the city on
a sandy hillock where the tombs were laid out quite unsystematically
with the graves of foreigners intermingled with those of Egyptians. In
the valley, on the other hand, the dead were normally, though far from
invariably, interred in the western desert. In some cases this practice
led to a dramatic expansion of the urban complex itself. The most
arresting example of this trend is provided by Memphis itself where the
development of the western desert as an extension of the city proper
was immensely encouraged by the fact that the area was not simply the
burial place of the bodies of ordinary mortals but also the place of
interment for important Memphite sacred animals like the Apis Bull and
the Mother of the Apis. We find, therefore, that temple towns grew up
in the desert to serve the mortuary cult of these gods at least as early
as the Thirtieth Dynasty, forming a large complex closely linked to the
city of Memphis itself. However, novel though these towns may seem,
they have an obvious parallel in the pyramid towns of the Old and
Middle Kingdoms and in the temple towns of the New Kingdom, such
as those of Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum.

The economy

The sophisticated social and settlement structure described in the

previous sections could only have existed on a complex and efficient
economic base. A wealth of evidence demonstrates that the economic
system of Egypt before the Late Period was a classic example of the
storage and redistribution type. The palace was, amongst other things,
an institution responsible for organizing the entire economy, collecting
and storing wealth produced inside the country, acquiring foreign
produce, and then filtering it back through the system as it was required.
The assignment of substantial estates to temples and officials created
secondary storage and redistribution centres, but these were always
closely enmeshed with that of the palace and formed an integral part

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

of it. Although the evidence for our period is not particularly full, it
leaves us in no doubt that this machinery continued to function and
flourish. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that all circulation
of goods was dependent upon a storage and redistribution system.
Indeed, it is questionable whether that held true for any period of
Egyptian history. Day-to-day exchange of commodities was certainly
facilitated in the Late Period by the exchange of goods in town and
village market-places where surplus from the domestic economy could
be bartered by members of the household for items which they needed
and where professional merchants were also active (cf. Herodotus, II,
35, 39, 138, 141, 164).
The basis of the economy, as earlier, was agriculture in the form of
crop-cultivation and animal husbandry. How much land was available
for this purpose is not known with any precision. According to
Schlott's interpretation of a text in the temple at Edfu, the amount
available in the Ptolemaic period was c. 24808 sq. km, a figure which
is compatible with the modern situation whereby 3 5 000 sq. km are
available and 24982 sq. km are used. The same text also indicates that
there was about three times as much usable land in the Delta as there
was in Upper Egypt. Ptolemaic agriculture was certainly more efficient
than anything known in Pharaonic times, and the Edfu figures must
be too high for our period. Nevertheless, they give some idea of the
agricultural potential of the country in times of high prosperity and can
perhaps be taken as a very rough guide to the situation which obtained
at least at the height of the Saite period when the population seems to
have been relatively high (see above, p. 300), and attempts were
apparently made to increase the area of land previously exploited in the
Delta by a policy of progressive colonization (Butzer 1976, pp. 95ff).
Large-scale crop-cultivation relied at all periods upon the relatively
primitive but efficient basin system of irrigation. This was organized
at a local rather than a national level, but the ease and success of the
process was always dependent upon the volume of the Nile which varied
considerably in antiquity. There is good evidence that irrigation was
greatly facilitated in our period by unusually high floods, a factor which,
in turn, encourages confidence in the tradition that the reign of Amasis
was one of unparalleled prosperity. The engineering feats involved in
constructing and maintaining this system made a great impression on
Herodotus who speaks in awed tones of a dyke maintained by the
Persians in his own time in the vicinity of Memphis (II, 99, 3) and finds
no difficulty in believing the mistaken tradition that Lake Moeris and
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D E S E R T

Fig. 4.8 Schematized drawing to illustrate the principles of the basin system of irrigation. A -D
are basins formed by the long dyke, lateral dykes and the western cliff. When the Nile flooded,
it was held back by the long dyke until sufficient pressure had built up. The dyke was then cut
and water admitted into the basins via the basin canal. Depth of flood was controlled by the
regulators. When the water had stood on the field for the requisite time {c. 40 days in modern
times), it was released and the seed was then sown (after Lloyd (1976), 75).

the Bahr Yusuf were both excavated by the Egyptians themselves (II,
149—50); at II, 108, he describes the complex network of canals to be
found in Egypt in the fifth century; even the tomb-chamber of Khufu
was fed with water from a canal (II, 124, 4)! On the other hand, he was
astonished at the ease with which the processes of agriculture proper
were conducted as compared with the situation in Greece: he observed
farmers for whom ploughing and hoeing were quite unnecessary. They
simply waited for the river to flood, and, when the waters receded, they
sowed their seed and then let pigs loose on the land to tread it in. Once
the harvest had been gathered, the corn was simply threshed by letting
pigs trample upon it.
The main food crop during the Late Period was emmer or hulled
wheat (bdf) which gained an ascendancy over barley at the end of the
New Kingdom despite its inferior nutritional value. Barley and naked
wheat (swt) were also grown. Flax continued to be cultivated on a wide
scale together with other industrial crops and a wide range of fruit and
vegetables. As for animal husbandry, Herodotus and the reliefs in the
fourth-century tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel leave us in no doubt
of its continued importance.
It is generally assumed that, in theory, all land belonged to the crown.
This view is certainly consistent with available evidence, and there is
good reason to believe that it held true in the Late Period. In practice,
however, there were three main land-exploiting entities: the crown, the
priests, and the machimoi. The economic position of the priests and the
machimoi has already been discussed (see above pp. 3oiff, 3O9rT). As for
crown lands, they do not figure prominently in surviving texts but are
clearly mentioned in the Nitocris Adoption Stele as the source of some
of the land given to Nitocris as part of her endowment (11. 17-20), and
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we may have another reference to such land in Herodotus' description

of Amasis' reorganization of Naucratis (II, 178). Some crown land will
have been worked directly by the palace, but substantial amounts must
have been handed over to royal officials as estates by way of payment
for services rendered, in which case the land would not have become
absolute property but was only held as long as the office itself. Such
estates could be worked directly by the official or by leasing out in
whole or in part on a share-cropping basis. It is, however, a reasonable
guess that the crown would also have leased out land directly on the
same terms (cf. p. 307).
Within any economic system the circulation of wealth is fundamental.
In the Late Period this problem continued to be solved, in the main,
by payments in kind through such transactions as purchase, the payment
of taxes and wages, and the delivery of dowries and gifts.1 As earlier,
however, it was found necessary to employ media of exchange, and
emmer wheat and silver were both used for the purpose. The latter was
particularly favoured, but it was normally treated by weight, being
measured in kite (9.53 g) and deben (10 kite) in purely Egyptian
contexts, though foreigners such as the Jewish mercenaries at
Elephantine could use their own metrological systems. Silver was
certainly available in the form of Greek and Persian coins, but since in
commercial transactions they were weighed like silver in any other form,
and not accepted at face value, we cannot speak of the existence of a
money economy in the strict sense. Nevertheless, there are indications
of moves in that direction. From time to time we encounter references
to payments in the form of pieces of silver where no indications of
weight are given (e.g. P. Rylands, IX, 15, 15-19); yet the weight would
hardly have been different from one piece to another nor would it have
been irrelevant, and in these cases we can only assume that pieces of
silver of a standard weight were employed. In many commercial
dealings they would doubtless have been weighed, but where the exact
value was not crucial such pieces could have been taken at face value.
This policy would have been particularly easy to follow in the case of
the Athenian tetradrachms which were so common in the country; for
the quality and weight of these coins was absolutely consistent. The
advantages of such a system had evidently become clear to the
Egyptians themselves towards the end of our period when we occasion-
ally meet with Egyptian silver coins stamped with hieroglyphic and

1
For economic exchange at an earlier date see, in particular, Janssen (1975a, passim).

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demotic signs, a development which provides us with a particularly clear

example of foreign influence on Egyptian civilization during the Late
Period.
Many desirable commodities were not available within Egypt proper,
for instance good quality timber, silver, and magically or religiously
potent substances such as myrrh, not to speak of a wide range of luxury
items. The palace had always played the chief role in meeting these
requirements, and in the Late Period this situation did not change.
Various methods were employed to ensure supplies. In the first place,
foreign traders were encouraged to come to Egypt and establish
commercial links. According to Diodorus, Psammetichus I opened up
the country to Greek and Phoenician traders at the very beginning of
his reign and profited very considerably by his enterprise (I, 66, 8; 67,
9). Subsequently, c. 620 at the latest, he encouraged the settlement of
the Greek trading post of Naucratis in the western Delta, and there is
good evidence of other Greek trading stations within the country,
though their scale is impossible to determine. Not the least important
economic feature of the settlement at Naucratis is the fact that this site
provides the first evidence of iron smelting in Pharaonic Egypt, and
the possibility, therefore, arises that it played an important role in the
introduction of this technology into the country. However that may
be, the existence of such bases in Egypt itself is a distinct novelty and
constitutes a strikingly original response to contemporary conditions.
Some time about 5 70 Amasis concentrated all Greek import and export
trade at Naucratis which thereby assumed a status comparable to that
of Mirgissa in Nubia during the Middle Kingdom.1 The palace certainly
derived an immense profit from this measure in the form of customs
dues, as emerges from thefiscalarrangements described in the Naucratis
Stele of Nectanebo I. Probably the most valuable item in this Greek
trade from the Egyptian point of view was silver, but Greek wine was
also imported on a large scale.
Another time-honoured technique for acquiring produce or raw
materials from foreign parts was the royal expedition whereby the king
dispatched officials to sources of supply such as the Wadi Hammamat,
Sinai, Byblos or Punt. Here again precedent was observed. Expeditions
were sent into the Wadi Hammamat by Psammetichus I, Necho II,
Psammetichus II and Amasis, as well as by the agents of the Persian
government of Egypt and by later Egyptian Pharaohs. A determined
1
The privileged position of Mirgissa (Iqen) is described in the first Semna Stele of Senusret
III (BAR I, §652).

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attempt seems to have been made by Necho II to resume commercial

contacts with the land of Punt both by sweeping pirates from the Red
Sea and by undertaking the abortive construction of a great canal from
the Pelusiac Branch of the Nile via the Wadi Tumilat to the Gulf of
Suez. This enterprise provides an interesting example of the combination
of the new and the old in Saite policy: the exploitation of Red Sea
commerce features prominently in earlier Egyptian history; on the other
hand, the excavation of a great canal to facilitate such operations seems
entirely novel, though waterways were certainly cut for other purposes
in this area in earlier times. Another region to which royal expeditions
were possibly sent is Phoenicia. Several passages in Saite texts refer to
the use of ^/-wood, 'pine', which traditionally derived from the
Lebanon through the port of Byblos. It is, of course, possible that this
got to Egypt in the vessels of enterprising Phoenician traders or even
as the result of Saite military operations in the Levant, but it could well
be that it was obtained by trade missions of the ancient type.
Another means of supply which requires serious consideration is
warfare which often proved an extremely lucrative economic activity
in the ancient world and was frequently regarded in precisely these
terms. It emerges from such texts as Tuthmosis Ill's description of the
Battle of Megiddo (Pritchard, 1969, p. 234*?) that the Egyptians
themselves were perfectly well aware of this dimension, though the
question of how far economics constituted a primary motive in
Egyptian imperialism is probably unanswerable. However, there can be
no doubt that the domination exercised for most of the Saite period over
Philistia brought considerable economic rewards, particularly since it
gave control of one of the northern points of exit for trade routes from
Arabia and also for the southern end of the grand trunk road from the
north, and the situation is similar in relation to the Saite conquest of
Cyprus and, to some extent, Saite activities in Libya (see below,
pp. 3 37ff).
One final possible source of foreign goods needs consideration. In
his account of the reign of Amasis Herodotus frequently mentions gifts
given by the king to states within the Greek world: Delphi, Cyrene,
Lindus (on Rhodes), Samos, and Sparta all benefited from his largesse.
These activities undoubtedly had a strategic dimension (see below,
pp. 342ff), but it would surely be a mistake to ignore other possible
aspects. Gift-giving in primitive and early societies is a primary
mechanism for establishing socio-economic relations which can be
exploited within the entire range of human contacts since it establishes
a context within which reciprocal exchanges of all kinds are expected,
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and indeed obligatory.1 It seems, therefore, justifiable to suspect that

Amasis' gifts had economic as well as strategic motives and that he
envisaged these donations as favours which could be repaid in economic
as well as military assistance.
The foregoing analysis has been mainly concerned with the days of
Egypt's autonomy. What, however, were the effects of the Persian
occupation in 525? It is indisputable that it brought no significant
change in the internal economic structure of the country, but in foreign
relations the situation was inevitably different. The Achaemenid
conquest made Egypt part of a great world empire which stretched from
the Aegean to Afghanistan, and the Persians attempted, as far as
possible, to integrate the country into the economic machinery of the
empire as a whole. The most obvious link was fiscal: Egypt had to pay
an annual tribute of 700 talents into the imperial treasury, by no means
a princely sum for so rich a province, and was also required to provide
the Great King's table with salt and Nile water, again no heavy burden,
which presumably acted as little more than a symbol of subservience;
we are also informed that the city of Anthylla had to provide the Persian
queen with money for needles, shoes, and belts! Apart from all this,
an effort was also made to tie Egypt into the empire's economic life in
a physical sense by means of the great canal of Darius which ran from
the Pelusiac Branch of the Nile to the Red Sea. This was opened in 497,
and was evidently intended to function as a maritime counterpart to the
Persian road system, as a component in a vast communications network
devised to tie together the major sections of the widely scattered empire
(Hinz 1975, pp. 115ff). The practical economic effects of this policy upon
the Egyptians are lost upon us for lack of evidence, but it seems
improbable that it led to a major increase in imports or exports and in
any case the instability of the country after the reign of Darius must
have ensured that any such benefits were short-lived.

GOVERNMENT

The governmental institutions of Egypt were concerned at all periods

with the same basic issues: the direction of the economy, the admini-
stration of justice, the maintenance of civil order, the defence of the
1
The fundamental anthropological study of gift-giving is that of Mauss (1954). The importance
of this practice in Egyptian society is just beginning to be recognized by Egyptologists (cf. Janssen
1982, pp. 25 3ff). The Greek recipients of Amasis' gifts would have had the same attitude to the
reciprocal nature of the transaction as the Egyptians: cf. e.g. Finley (1956), Index, s.v. Gifts; Walcot
(1970), Index, s.v. Gift.

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realm, and the organization of the divine cult. In the complex machinery
devised to satisfy these requirements the king was theoretically the fount
of all authority; in principle, officials held power only as his deputies
and, whether they functioned in central or provincial government, they
were integrated into a coherent hierarchy by this one basic concept. An
obvious consequence of this attitude was that the right of appointing
all officials lay ultimately with Pharaoh himself, but in practice hereditary
claims to office exercised as potent an influence in the Saite period as
they had done earlier. Once appointed, officials who gained royal favour
could still acquire a bewildering array of functions, combining, at the
same time, civilian, military and priestly duties, a custom which
exemplifies the profound Egyptian distaste for departmentalizing auth-
ority. At the highest level the authority of Pharaoh was all-embracing;
consequently, the higher the rank of an official, the more comprehensive
his power became.
Saite central administration was certainly based at Memphis in the
reign of Amasis and this probably held true for most, if not all, of the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Within this system the king functioned as much
more than a titular head. In P. Rylands IX we find him administering
justice, vetting a high official who had been a subject of complaint, and
rewarding faithful and efficient servants; his active role in making
governmental decisions also emerges in other texts of our period. Such
personal involvement meant that major issues could often be resolved
by gaining personal access to the royal presence which seems to have
been surprisingly easy throughout Ancient Egyptian history. Under
these circumstances, those who lived in close proximity to the king,
whatever their rank, could acquire an inordinate influence on state
affairs, and it is hardly surprising to find the continued employment of
old court titles, such as' sole companion' and' acquaintance of the king',
which insist that the officials in question enjoyed a high level of intimacy
with the ruler. Royal favourites were a potent force for the same reason.
The hierarchy of civil servants to be found in Saite central government
cannot be determined in detail. The old title of'vizier' (Qty) still occurs,
but whether this dignitary continued to function as the head of the
administration is questionable, and it may well be significant that he is
never mentioned in P. Kylands IX. However, there is no difficulty in
identifying civil servants who were concerned with all the major
preoccupations of central government. We encounter an imy-r $h,
'overseer of farmlands', who was assisted by a body of'land-measurers'
and clearly occupied a position of great importance in the economic

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administration; the imy-r fnc, 'overseer of the fnc', was also a powerful
figure in the same sphere and was assisted by an influential subordinate
called the ssiwfip, 'scribe of accounts'. Justice was well served: apart
from Pharaoh, who acted as the ultimate court of appeal, we find that
high officials, such as 'the overseer of the snc', could also act as judges
in disputes. In addition there are references to a body oiwpyw,' judges',
who were associated with the cy n wpyw, 'House of Judgement', at
Memphis. Cases will have been judged by statute or customary law, but
our documentation strongly suggests that, wherever possible, judges
acted as arbitrators to bring about a reconciliation between dissentient
parties, a competence which seems even to have applied to criminal
cases. For police duties the central government used army officers; on
several occasions in P. Rylands IX we find an imy-r msc, 'army
commander', being employed in this way. These officers were, however,
also concerned with the defence of the country as a whole, as were
dignitaries like Nesuhor, 'Overseer of the Gate of the Southern
Foreign Lands', and Udjahorresnet who was 'Admiral of the Fleet'
both under Amasis and Psammetichus III. As for the central govern-
ment's role in the organization of the cult, this had already been
described in an earlier section (see above, p. 3O3ff).
Whichever field of activity we consider, the effective operation of this
elaborate machinery was ultimately dependent on a ubiquitous army of
scribes who disposed of one of the few undoubted innovations of the
Late Period, i.e. the demotic script. This system of writing, invented
in Lower Egypt, is first exemplified in P. Rylandsl of 643/2, and became
universal for ordinary purposes in the second half of the reign of Amasis,
a status which it was to retain until the demise of Pharaonic civilization
during the Roman period.
The Persian conquest brought no change in the theory of government
as far as the indigenous population was concerned: the Egyptian
Pharaoh was simply replaced by a Persian Pharaoh. In central admini-
stration the Persian imperial system was, as far as possible, simply
superimposed on the Egyptian organization with the minimum of
disruption. The head was the governor or satrap based at Memphis who
was chosen from the cream of the Persian aristocracy, and was very often
a royal kinsman. His major obligation was to guarantee taxes and any
ad hoc imposts which the imperial government might require. Despite
his birth, he was always kept under close surveillance: members of the
imperial intelligence service (the 'King's Ears') were always in
attendance; annual inspections were held by the 'King's Eye'; and the

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satrap was compelled to share the functions of government with

colleagues who acted as an effective control on his activities. Amongst
these officers may be mentioned the ' inquisitor' {patifrasa/frasaka) who
participated in the legal functions of government, and the chancellor
who directed a chancellery modelled on that of the Persian emperor.
This official was assisted by the ' scribe' and a corps of' royal scribes',
but Egyptians were also to be found in his office, many of them
presumably concerned with translating documents drawn up in Aramaic
which served as the official language of the Persian Empire. As in earlier
times, the state treasury continued to play a crucial role. It was located
at Memphis, and it is interesting to note that in the fifth century the
important office of' Overseer of the Treasury' was actually held by an
Egyptian.
On the whole, it seems to have been Persian policy to adopt a
laissez-faire attitude where possible, and this was made all the easier
by the fact that there were close similarities in principle between
Achaemenid and Egyptian systems of administration. Indeed, it is likely
that there were no significant changes in the lower echelons of the
central administration, and that even those in the upper reaches did not
involve a startling break with Egyptian tradition and were therefore
perfectly acceptable. If so, the expulsion of the Persians in 404 would
not have caused major administrative problems for the liberators, and
it would have been a simple matter to reactivate the Saite machinery
of government, though it must be conceded that the paucity of evidence
makes it impossible to establish the details of the administrative
structure during the final period of Egyptian independence.
The basis of provincial administration during the Saite period was
the nome, of which there were probably about forty. Each was
governed by a nomarch whose brief was probably to exercise a general
supervision over all aspects of local administration, with particular
emphasis on economic organization and justice. Detailed evidence is not
available, but the economic dimension of his work does emerge in the
Nitocris Stele, according to which every nomarch on Nitocris' route
south was required to provide her with supplies (1. 10), and also in the
biography of Peftjuaneith which refers to a nomarch's role in levying
taxes. His legal functions are less easy to identify, but it is at least
possible that a nomarch is described as acting in this capacity in
P. Rj/ands XI (19, 21). Much judicial business was, of course, dealt with
at a lower level by civil servants acting in a legal capacity, by courts
of'judges', by priests, by the consultation of oracles, and doubtless by

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the rough local justice of the village sheikh. Like the central government
the nomarch was assisted by an army of scribes; we hear, in particular,
of' scribes of the nome' who were evidently functionaries of high rank
concerned with the nome's administrative archives. As for the
maintenance of order, the nomarch could rely on the paramilitary ' chiefs
of police' {hryw md$y) who sometimes, at any rate, employed machimoi
in the execution of their duty. Their sphere of operation was not
confined to individual nomes, and, amongst other duties, they could be
employed to protect individuals where rights or property were under
threat. We also hear of officials called 'commissioners' [rmt pv, shn) who
were, on occasion, associated with police work, and 'factors' {rwdw),
who were used both by officials and private citizens as agents to carry
out business which they were unable to execute in person.
Within the nome, towns formed important centres of government.
At the beginning of our period we hear of a mayor {h$ty-c) at Thebes,
and some such official evidently existed in all of them. We also
encounter 'scribes of the city' who seem to have been particularly
concerned with taxation. At town and local level much legal docu-
mentation was probably drawn up by the school scribe (sh n c-sb^)
whose position and functions appear to have been comparable to those
of the fiqy or 'schoolmaster' in traditional Arabic society.
The reunification of the country under Psammetichus I, c. 656, gave
rise to a major problem in provincial administration — the maintenance
of royal writ over the nomes of Upper Egypt and, in particular, over
the temple-state of Amen-Ra in the Thebaid where authority lay dejure
in the hands of the High Priestess of Amen-Ra at Thebes and de facto
in those of the great Theban baron Mentuemhet. Psammetichus attemp-
ted to solve this difficulty by arranging for his daughter Nitocris to
be established in Thebes as the prospective High Priestess and by con-
stituting the area from the Memphite Nome to Assuan (P tores, 'the
Southern Land') as a special administrative unit under the' Shipmasters'
of Herakleopolis, who were, however, superimposed upon the nome
system in a supervisory capacity without in any way impairing it. They
were responsible, in particular, for economic administration and
received an annual report on everything produced in the area. The site
of Herakleopolis was an ideal base for such operations since it gave easy
access both to the Fayum and to Upper Egypt, and the ' Shipmasters'
themselves were an excellent choice as agents inasmuch as they had close
family ties with the priests of Thebes which would both allay suspicion
and doubtless facilitate an accommodation with the political and

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economic interests in that city. It is worth noting, however, that this

administrative device was no novelty; it had an ancient parallel in the
' overseer of Upper Egypt' introduced in the Sixth Dynasty to serve
much the same function, and it appears in a new guise in the Ptolemaic
strategos tes Thebaidos, 'governor of the Thebaid'. It quickly disappeared
in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, and there is good evidence that by regnal
year 22 of Amasis, at the latest, Saite administrative control of the entire
country was no longer a matter of dispute.
The provincial system just described was ideally suited to Egyptian
conditions and not only the Persians but also the Macedonians took
it over with few modifications. The former did, however, find it
convenient to divide Upper Egypt into at least two large provinces
comparable to the Saite Ptores. These were Tshetres, which probably
stretched from Hermonthis to Aswan, and No, which was probably the
Thebaid. Each had its own governor assisted by a chancellery in which
the ' scribes of the prince' played an important role. These functionaries
were 'royal scribes' who were responsible in particular for the
registration of land and the assessment of taxes. Each province had its
own treasury, and garrisons were stationed throughout the country
whose commanders were empowered to exercise functions which
passed far beyond the military sphere.
Up to this point we have focused attention upon the machinery of
government. We must now briefly consider the way in which it worked
in practice. In this respect, there was probably little difference from one
period to another, and much that we meet in Late Period texts has earlier
parallels. That the system had serious demerits is beyond doubt. Its
centralized character made it extremely bureaucratic and created endless
opportunities for delay and obstruction; it was so paper-ridden that
issues must often have disappeared completely beneath mountains of
papyrus; maladministration was certainly common, and bribery
endemic — indeed, well-placed baksheesh was not infrequently the only
means of breaking the inertia or indifference of Egyptian civil servants;
physical brutality was still too common a feature of the conduct of
Egyptian administrators; control of subordinates was at times totally
inadequate, and royal commands could easily be ignored even under
powerful rulers (cf. P. Rylands IX, 5, zS); in official contexts family
connections were as important as in other spheres of Egyptian life, and
they were exploited quite spontaneously and without compunction. For
all this, however, Ancient Egyptian government had great merits, and
three of these are particularly easy to detect in our period. In the first

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place, though bureaucratic, the Egyptian system was not bedevilled with
the impersonality of modern bureaucracy. Government was personal
even at the highest level; access to authority was not difficult, and the
right to make an appeal to Pharaoh in person was taken as much for
granted in the Petition of Petiese as it had been in the Middle Kingdom
Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. The old paternalistic ideal of the
relationship between ruler and ruled was also very much alive and
frequently expressed in tomb biographies: the official was the father of
his people and obliged by divine command and time-honoured codes
of conduct to consult their welfare in all respects. The system also laid
emphasis not only on achieving equilibrium in state and society, but
also on gaining the willing acquiescence in that system by the subject.
These aims are particularly evident in the weight placed upon the
principle of reciprocity and reconciliation in legal disputes where the
primary intention was not to impose a verdict on the parties, but to
get both parties to work out by mutual compromise a solution which
satisfied the requirements of each. On balance, one leaves the study of
the subject with the firm conviction that there are, and have been, far
worse systems of government.

FOREIGN POLICY

The foregoing discussion has concentrated mainly on conditions within

the country. It is, however, impossible to ignore the fact that Egypt
formed part of a large and complex Eastern Mediterranean world whose
individual elements interacted with one another at many different levels
and often with far-reaching consequences. Not surprisingly, therefore,
Egypt's relations with her neighbours exerted a powerful and sometimes
crucial effect not only on her capacity for political action, but also on
her socio-economic development. The effects of Persian domination
have already been adequately discussed. In this section it is the policies
of the independent Egyptian state between 664 and 332 to which we
shall devote our attention.

Egypt and the Levant

Throughout the Late Period Egypt's foreign policy was dominated by
the problem of defining her relationship with a series of great oriental
empires, first Assyria, then Chaldaea, and finally Persia. The character
and motives of Egypt's policy towards Assyria in the early years of the
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Saite Dynasty are still, in some respects, a matter of dispute. It is clear

that Psammetichus I, like his father, was initially an Assyrian vassal, but
it is probable that this situation changed very quickly in the early years
of his reign when he emerged as an ally of Gyges of Lydia in the latter's
rebellion against Assyria, and we are forced to assume that, at this stage,
Psammetichus was concerned to assert his independence of Assyrian
domination. Subsequently, as the tide of Assyrian imperialism in the
Levant receded, he readily availed himself of the power vacuum created
in that area. His occupation of Philistia at least is certain and was sealed
by the capture of Ashdod, probably some time between <r. 655 and
630 BC. This city was of immense strategic value since it was the
northernmost Philistine city and lay on the grand trunk road from Egypt
to Damascus and the north. Its conquest, therefore, not only guaranteed
control of Philistia itself but also created a barrier to any force advancing
from the north. His hold on Ashdod also conferred economic benefits
in that this city was commercially extremely rich, controlling, as it did,
the north-south and east-west trade routes by land and also the maritime
commerce in the area through its port at Tell Mor. Sometime between
c. 637 and 625 Psammetichus' supremacy in Philistia was temporarily
interrupted by a horde invasion from the north by Scythian barbarians,
but it is most improbable that this disaster had any serious long-
term effects on Egypt's position.
By 616 Psammetichus' relations with Assyria had undergone a
startling volte-face. In that year we find the Egyptian army operating
on behalf of the Assyrians against the rising imperial power of Chaldaea.
There can be no doubt that it was the advent of this young and vigorous
force as the new Asiastic super-power which motivated the realignment,
and it was against this threat that Necho II immediately had to turn
his attention on his accession in 610. Heavy military and naval forces,
including a fleet of war-galleys of the most modern Graeco-Phoenician
type, were committed in an attempt to halt the advance of Chaldaea at
the Euphrates, but this project proved beyond Egypt's capacity;
the remnants of her Assyrian allies were conquered in 610/9, a n d t n e
catastrophic defeat of Necho's forces at Carchemish in 605 placed the
entire Levant at the mercy of the Chaldaeans, an opportunity of which
they speedily availed themselves. On the credit side, the Egyptians
roundly defeated their attempt to invade Egypt in 601—600, and there
is some evidence that this success enabled Egyptian forces to counter-
attack. It is, however, indisputable that they did their utmost by
diplomatic means to disrupt Chaldaean control of Syria and Palestine,

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Fig. 4.9 The Levant in the first millennium.

efforts which achieved a signal success c. 590 when Zedekiah of Judah

embarked on a full-scale rebellion against his Chaldaean overlords.
Egypt became actively involved in 589 when Apries attempted un-
successfully to relieve Jerusalem. In 582 the Chaldaeans invaded Egypt
itself, but we find Apries able to mount a major offensive c. 5 74—70 when
he attacked Tyre, Sidon, and Cyprus. These operations were evidently
a carefully planned land and sea assault aimed at gaining control of
Phoenicia and Cyprus and thereby posing a serious threat to the
maintenance of Chaldaean power in the west. If successful, these
campaigns would also have conferred considerable economic benefits
in the form of raw materials, such as timber and metals, as well as control
of maritime trade routes, but, despite conspicuous triumphs, the project
ultimately failed, at least as far as Phoenicia was concerned, though it
is possible that Cyprus at least was brought under Egyptian domination.
The final round in the duel with Chaldaea was fought out in the
following reign. In 567 a Chaldaean army invaded Egypt with the
purpose of deposing the usurper Amasis and replacing him with

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the legitimate Pharaoh Apries. The advantages of this scheme from

the Chaldaean point of view are self-evident, but the plan foundered
when the invaders were disastrously defeated and Apries himself killed.
The rise of Persia under Cyrus the Great soon raised up a new threat
to Egyptian security, and rapidly led to a regrouping of forces in the
form of an anti-Persian alliance in which Amasis associated himself with
the Chaldaeans, Lydians, and Spartans. This confederacy was short-
lived: Lydia was conquered in 546, the Chaldaeans in 538, and Amasis
was left to find his salvation elsewhere. There is reason to believe that
he may have concluded a diplomatic marriage-alliance with the Persians,
but he placed his trust mainly in alliances with Greek states (see below
pp. 342ft")-
When we consider these events as a whole, it is evident that Egypt
derived two main benefits from her Asiatic policy during the Saite
period. In the first place, dangerous and predatory Asiatic enemies were
kept at bay; secondly, her military conquests conferred significant
economic benefits. What, however, was the primary motive? The
economic returns can hardly be regarded in that light; for the produce
in question could easily have been acquired through normal trade-
channels without the expensive, exhausting, and occasionally disastrous
military operations on which the Saite Pharaohs embarked. Imperialist
phantasies may occasionally have played a part, but it is impossible to
escape the conviction that their Asiatic policy was essentially defensive
in character, however aggressive some of its manifestations may have
been, and that they were concerned pre-eminently to maintain the
independence of Egypt against Asiatic powers by whatever means came
readily to hand. In their efforts to realize this aim they suffered severe
setbacks, but they were faced with formidable opponents, and it was
no mean achievement to keep the country free of Asiatic domination
until Cambyses' invasion in 525.
On turning to the period of independence between 404 and 343 we
find that Egyptian foreign policy was essentially a resumption of that
of the Saites. The dominant issue was to keep at bay a powerful Asiatic
enemy, in this case, Persia. The evidence is often confused and
confusing, but it is clear that the basic strategy was no novelty: the
enemy was kept from the frontier of Egypt by taking advantage of any
disruption in the western provinces of the Persian Empire. In the first
half of the fourth century the Egyptians found ready allies in the
Spartans whose struggle to maintain their hegemony within the Aegean
world often brought them into collision with Persian interests. Several
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phases in the development of this policy are detectable: initially the

Egyptians showed great caution. They kept out of the rebellion of Cyrus
which threw the western empire into turmoil in and immediately after
401, and they even executed one of the main insurgents who had fled
to Egypt; in the second phase, during the reign of Nepherites I and
the early part of that of Achoris, they functioned as the paymasters of
disaffected Persian subjects without, however, getting personally
involved in military operations; later, if Diodorus' account is to be
trusted, Achoris' position changed, and we find him participating
actively in the rebellion of Evagoras of Cyprus; with the accession of
Tachos we encounter total commitment. About 3 61 he took advantage
of a general revolt in the west of the Persian Empire and, with the
assistance of the Spartans, embarked on large-scale military operations
on behalf of the rebels. Despite initial success this campaign collapsed
into a civil war between Tachos and the usurper Nectanebo (II), which
led to the former's deposition. Nectanebo was understandably a great
deal more cautious, but we do find him in 3 51 collaborating with
rebellious Levantine states against the Great King.
The ability of the Persians to deal with Egyptian hostility was
severely impaired throughout this period by their commitments else-
where; Egypt was a long way from the heart of the empire and,
therefore, despite an awesome capacity for disruption, it inevitably
occupied a low level in the scale of imperial priorities. Nevertheless, the
Persians made at least three serious attempts to solve the problem: in
374 Artaxerxes II dispatched a large invasion force by land and sea
which succeeded in invading the Delta but was ultimately defeated by
a combination of Egyptian military skill, geographical circumstances,
and jealousies within the Persian high command; in 351 Artaxerxes III
made another attempt which also failed, though the details are lost;
finally, in 343, he mounted a second assault which brought speedy
success and delivered the country once more, and for the last time,
into Achaemenid hands.
When we consider these events two questions arise insistently: first,
did the Egyptians adopt the best methods for dealing with Persia;
secondly, what were the effects of their policy upon Egypt itself?
Theoretically, they had two options open to them: they might assume
an isolationist position in the hope that the Persians would reciprocate;
alternatively, they might pursue a programme of action to prevent a
Persian attack upon Egypt. There can be no doubt that the second
approach was the only practical solution. Given a chance, the Persians

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would certainly have returned, and the Egyptians wisely determined

that this chance must not be given to them. There were, however,
various ways of achieving this. Disruption of the western empire by
diplomatic means was one; large-scale military action was another. A
keen perception of military realities should have revealed that the first
was by far the least dangerous alternative, and some rulers of the period
clearly had the good sense to pursue it; the second was certain to excite
massive retaliation sooner or later and would, in addition, put strains
on Egypt itself which the country could ill withstand. That these strains
were severe admits of no doubt. War tests a nation's institutions as no
other source of pressure can, and the events of the ambitious Asiatic
war of Tachos reveal with startling clarity the instability of the
kingdom at the highest level and the ease with which the ambitions
of the mighty could be kindled to aspire to the kingly office. Egypt's
Asiatic policy could also place a massive strain upon the economy of
the country, particularly since a large part of the fighting was done by
expensive foreign mercenaries. Nothing illustrates this point more
forcefully than the desperate fiscal measures used by Tachos tofillhis
coffers for the Asiatic war (Ps. Aristotle, Oeconomica, I3 5ob-5ia), and
we can be sure that the bitterness and hardship created by this policy
played a significant part in causing the uprising which led to his
deposition.

Egypt and the north

When we turn to Egypt's foreign policy in the Aegean and Eastern
Mediterranean we find that it was, to a large extent, dependent upon
her machinations in Asia. About 600 we find Necho II shrewdly
dedicating at Branchidae, a major East Greek temple, the very breastplate
which he had worn during his victorious campaign against the
Chaldaeans in 601/600, doubtless in formal recognition of the import-
ance of Greek mercenaries in these operations. This precedent in
calculated generosity was wisely followed by Amasis, who contributed
substantially to the rebuilding of the premier Greek shrine at Delphi
which had been burnt down in 548/7, and also dedicated two stone
statues and a linen breastplate in the temple of Athene at Lindus on the
island of Rhodes. Ties with some states, however, were more formal:
he entered into an alliance with Polycrates, tyrant of Samos between
c. 5 3 3 and 5 22 and owner of the most powerful fleet in the Aegean, and
he also concluded a defensive alliance with Sparta, in both cases

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cementing the relationship with well-chosen gifts. The one exception

to this generally friendly standpoint towards the Greek world is the
island of Cyprus: Apries undoubtedly attacked and possibly took it;
Amasis certainly brought it under Egyptian control.
It is not difficult to detect the motives behind all these activities.
Although economic considerations clearly played their part, defence was
indisputably the crucial consideration. Since Egypt's security was now
to a large extent dependent upon ready access to a supply of Greek
mercenaries and the support of powerful allies in the Aegean, the
maintenance of close and amicable relations with that area was
imperative.
For most of the First Persian Occupation we cannot speak of an
Egyptian Aegean policy. The one clear exception is the revolt of Inarus
in the late 460s. At the very beginning of this rebellion Inarus formed
an alliance with the Athenians whose anti-Persian stance at this time
made them ideal for this purpose. Here he was doing no more than fol-
lowing Saite precedent, and we find the same course of action being
pursued in the period of Egyptian independence between 404 and 343
when several alliances were concluded with major Greek powers,
particularly Sparta and Evagoras of Cyprus. It is likely enough that there
were economic ramifications to all this, but the military aspects
dominate our tradition, and we need not question their pre-eminent
importance.
Egypt and Libya
As far as contacts with the west are concerned, two peoples are at issue,
the Libyans and the Cyreneans. Relations with the former began on a
bad note when Psammetichus I was forced to deal with a Libyan attack
on Egypt in 654, but subsequent contacts seem to have been friendly;
towards the end of the 5 70s we find Libyans placing themselves under
the protection of Apries, and in the fourth century Nectanebo II is
alleged to have had no fewer than 20000 of them in his army,
presumably as allies, though they may have been mercenaries. The
Greek city of Cyrene posed a less tractable problem. War broke out
c. 5 70, sparked off by bad relations between Cyrene and the neighbour-
ing Libyan tribes who had become increasingly disturbed at encroach-
ments on their territory resulting from the expansion of the Greek city
and asked Apries for assistance. This he readily gave, though his reasons
are a matter of inference only. Economically, Cyrene would certainly
have been a rich prize, but the main inducement was probably that the

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 ANCIENT EGYPT: A SOCIAL HISTORY

! El-Areg -vNijwa.misah

• ;: '"'•"
; / Qasrel-Farafra
•;.!..!' Farafra •
AbuMunqar../; -..Oasis..

Dakhla1 -.. ~"V

Oasis

-• •Uebel Uweinat S U D / A N

Fig. 4.10 Libya and the Oases (after A. Fakhry (1974), 23).

growing power of Cyrene was regarded as posing a threat to the security

of Egypt's western frontier. At all events, a force of machimoi was sent
to the assistance of the Libyans which was severely defeated. This
disaster led to the deposition of Apries and his replacement by Amasis
whose approach to the Cyrenean question was altogether different in
that he decided to neutralize the threat by diplomatic means. The
Cyreneans were certainly his allies in the campaign of 567 against
the Chaldaeans, and that alliance is known to have lasted down to the
Persian period. Its importance to Amasis is strikingly demonstrated by
the fact that he went so far as to cement it by marrying a woman of
the Cyrenean royal family.

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It is doubtless in the context of these military problems that we must

place the attention lavished by Pharaohs of the Late Period on the
Libyan oases. From at least the Old Kingdom there is evidence of
Egyptian contacts with these areas which reveals that the Egyptians
were not only concerned to exploit their economic resources and the
lucrative commercial channels which passed through them but had also
come to appreciate their strategic value as outposts for defending the
western frontier of Egypt itself. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that
by the New Kingdom, and probably long before, all the oases running
from the Wadi Natrun to Kharga lay under direct Egyptian control and
had assumed culturally and administratively the character of provincial
offshoots of Egypt comparable to Nubia. Saite Pharaohs followed, and
indeed improved upon, this precedent. Not only did they devote
themselves enthusiastically to the development of the Bahriya and
Kharga Oases and other traditional centres of interest, but we also find
them moving even further west and bringing the oasis of Siwa for the
first time under Egyptian control. It was Amasis who was responsible
for the first temple of the Siwan oracle at Aghurmi and the oldest tombs
at Jebel el-Mawta also belong to the Saite period. This extension of
Egyptian influence may, of course, have been motivated in part by
economic or even religious considerations, but it can hardly be
coincidence that the occupation of Siwa took place at the very time that
Cyrene began to pose a serious threat to the western frontier of Egypt.
This political, economic and strategic integration of the oases with
Egypt remained a constant feature of Egyptian policy and attitudes
throughout the Late Period. It is this which indubitably explains the
desire of Cambyses to bring the entire oasis area under his control, and
it is this which motivated the temple-building of Darius at Kharga,
Nectanebo II at Umm cEbeideh in Siwa, and Alexander the Great at
Kasr el-Megysbeh in the Bahriya Oasis.

Egypt and the south

The history of Egyptian attitudes towards the Nubian kingdom south

of the First Cataract shows some similarity to her relations with Asia:
at. the beginning of the Saite period the Nubians, like the Assyrians,
claimed possession of Egypt, and these claims the Saites were determined
to thwart. Since Nubia was undoubtedly the more dangerous of the two,
it is hardly surprising to find Necho I and Psammetichus I supporting
the Assyrians against their African rivals. This alliance was at first
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unsuccessful; for in 664 the Nubian king Tanwetemani defeated and

killed Necho I at Memphis, but this triumph was quickly reversed when
Psammetichus crushed Tanwetemani's forces in that area later in the
same year. Subsequently Psammetichus' problem was that of breaking
the influence of Nubia in Upper Egypt, and this aim was pursued by
diplomatic means which proved as effective as they were skilful.
Necho II certainly had an interest in the south. It is probable that his
Red Sea canal was intended to facilitate the reopening of trade relations
with Punt, and recent work at Elephantine has yielded a fragmentary
inscription which refers to activities within Africa, though insufficient
is preserved to establish the precise context (Miiller 1975, pp. 83ff).
Whatever the situation in Necho's reign, however, relations with the
south were certainly bad in that of his successor Psammetichus II who
dispatched a military expedition into the very heart of the Nubian
kingdom in 593. This enterprise undoubtedly brought some economic
benefits, but contemporary evidence proves that it was, in essence, a
pre-emptive strike designed to forestall a projected attack on Egypt by
the Nubian king himself. In this aim the campaign was entirely
successful, and it marked the end of any Nubian ambition to recover
control of the northern kingdom.
The only other Saite reference to Egyptian involvement with the
south occurs in a demotic papyrus dated to regnal year 41 (530) of
Amasis (P. Berlin 13615), but this expedition does not look like a major
military operation, and Erichsen plausibly suggested that it was simply
intended as an escort to protect a caravan (Erichsen 1941, pp. 5 6ff). We
hear very little of contacts with Nubia in the final period of Egyptian
independence, but the fact that Nectanebo II fled south in 341 suggests
that recent relations had been cordial enough to give every hope of a
friendly reception.1

CONCLUSIONS

The history of Egypt between 664 and 323 could hardly be described
as a series of unalloyed triumphs. It began in the reign of Psammetichus I
with Egypt for the last time functioning, if only briefly, as a world
power of the first rank, but subsequently her career as an independent
1
In this discussion of Egyptian foreign policy limitations of space have made it impossible
to justify every statement made. A fuller treatment will be found in the forthcoming third volume
of my commentary on Herodotus Book II and in my chapter on Egypt from 404—332 BC in the
third edition of the Cambridge Ancient History.

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state was at best that of a second-rate political force desperately striving

to preserve her autonomy against more powerful oriental neighbours
who disposed of economic resources, a stock of manpower, and a degree
of military efficiency, prowess, and dynamism with which Egypt was
quite unable to compete. This stark decline in her relative position
amongst the great nations of the earth is grimly revealed by the ultimate
humiliation of two periods of Asiatic domination as a province of the
Persian Empire. The means by which Egyptian civilization confronted
and adapted to these circumstances present an intriguing blend of
pliability and conservatism.
The character of any civilization is determined, in the final analysis,
by three factors: its technology, institutions, and ideology. If we
consider these aspects of Egyptian culture in the Late Period, we find
a varied pattern of response. In technology one observes distinctive
features such as the temple- or palace-mound, and the increased use of
stone for non-religious buildings, though it is impossible to be
confident that these developments did not have their origin before 664.
However, the Saites were certainly responsible for introducing into
Egypt a revolutionary change in naval architecture in the form of the
ramming war-galley which reflects a totally different concept of naval
warfare from that which had previously prevailed in the country. This
innovation was obviously motivated by the need to combat similar
warships in foreign navies, and the expertise which it presupposed was
itself acquired from foreign sources. Another important technological
development of the period was the introduction of the large-scale use
of iron. In the main, however, the technical apparatus of Late Period
Egypt shows few departures from older practice, and the rule would
seem to be that Egypt changed in this respect when she needed to, but
that, in general, her traditional resources were fully capable of meeting
the demands placed upon them.
When we turn to institutional structure, we encounter a more
complex picture. The basic administrative machinery shows no startling
departures, though it is possible to trace a progressive tendency to
establish Lower Egyptian norms throughout the country. In other
areas, however, significant adaptations are detectable: economically, we
observe the introduction of foreign trading stations into Egypt itself,
and halting steps were taken in the direction of a money economy; in
law the importance of the principle of intention receives greater
recognition, at least in the formulation of contracts; militarily, we note
a much greater reliance on foreign commanders and much heavier

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emphasis on alliances with foreign states, whilst we also meet the first
evidence of the use of cavalry in the Egyptian army; religion shows no
basic change, though some revealing modifications in points of emphasis
are detectable: in particular, animal-worship, the cult of Isis, and,
probably, the ancestor-cult enjoyed a greater vogue. In the sphere of
communication we encounter a particularly striking institutional change
in the introduction of the demotic script. It would, however, be a
mistake to overrate the effects of these developments. Numerous though
they may seem, they cannot be regarded as creating fundamental
changes in the institutional structure of the country. The overall
impression is of continuity with ancient practice and of undiminished
confidence in the relevance and resilience of ancestral ways of doing
things. In certain essential areas these might be modified by a process
of fine tuning to take full advantage of existing opportunities, to meet
a pressing challenge, or to intensify the Egyptians' sense of national
identity in the face of pressures from foreign cultural influence, but there
is no question of any radical restructuring of Egypt's institutions.
What of ideology? A close and sympathetic reading of contemporary
texts yields little which excites surprise. Concepts of the gods and of
the nature of man, the perception of nationality, and, for the most part,
of the royal office can all be paralleled in earlier sources. However, at
the end of the period a crucial change in attitudes to kingship does
emerge when the idea becomes firmly implanted that kings are not, ex
officio, the repositories of righteousness and the allies of the gods, but
are all too likely to act in ways of which the gods disapprove. The
currency of this conviction was a development of incalculable impor-
tance ; for it struck a deadly blow at the ideological basis of the royal
office which was nothing less than the central concept on which
Egyptian civilization as a whole was based.

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I. THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

The formative periods of Egyptian civilization, although acknowledged

to be of major historical interest, have generally been neglected by
anthropologists, while Egyptologists have devoted far less attention to
them than they have to later periods of Egyptian history. Between the
1930s and the 1960s very few archaeological excavations were carried
out that related to the Predynastic Period and most studies published
at that time were re-examinations of earlier work. Few general studies,
even today, attempt to view the early development of Egyptian
civilization in terms of a comprehensive theoretical framework. Petrie's
popular but now largely obsolete The making of Egypt (1939) was the
extreme statement of a diffusionist interpretation of the development
of Egypt in Predynastic times. Childe (1934), while not rejecting
diffusion, offered a materialist interpretation of the origin of Egyptian
civilization which saw surpluses appropriated in a more centralized
fashion than in ancient Mesopotamia. Frankfort (1956) also studied,
with special reference to their differing world views, the structural
contrasts between the mature expressions of these two civilizations and
examined their differing developmental sequences. Hoffman (1979) has
recently published a comprehensive, semi-popular account of the
archaeology and culture historical development of Egypt in prehistoric
and Early Dynastic times. His interpretations, which are anthropological
in orientation, differ from our own mainly in according Hierakonpolis
a pre-eminent role in the developments of the late Predynastic Period
and not emphasizing the role possibly played by the gold trade at that
time. Fairservis' (1971—2) description of the aims of his work at
Hierakonpolis suggests growing interest in the comparative study of
the development of Egyptian civilization. Works of this sort reflect a
growing rapprochement between Egyptology and anthropology which
is also evident elsewhere.
The archaeology of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods and
related site reports are discussed in the text. The most comprehensive
secondary source for both periods is Vandier (1952). His encyclopaedic

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work summarizes evidence and interpretations in a generally impartial

manner. For briefer and more popular interpretations of both periods,
see Aldred (1965) and Hoffman (1979). The most important recent
excavations are those carried out in 1979 by the German Archaeological
Institute of Cairo at Merimda. According to preliminary reports, five
stratigraphic levels have been identified at the site. New correlations
have been established between the oldest level and early pottery sites
in south-western Asia. The two latest levels are comparable to the
Middle Neolithic culture in Palestine and Fayum A in Egypt. Merimda
thus appears to be the oldest known Neolithic site in Egypt and may
date 1000 years earlier than was hitherto believed (Leclant 1980, p. 350).
For recent important finds at Hierakonpolis relating to the Predynastic
Period, see Hoffman (1980).
Petrie (1920) remains the basic source of published material for the
Amratian and Gerzean Periods and, along with his corpus of prehistoric
pottery and palettes (1921) and site reports (1896, 1901b), is still a much
used reference work. Needier (1981) has drawn attention to a largely
ignored but important rationalization of Petrie's pottery wares devel-
oped by Federn in the 1940s. The most important attempt to revise
Petrie's chronology is Kaiser's (1957) study of the Predynastic cemetery
at Armant; his promised book on the Predynastic Period still has not
appeared. Baumgartel (195 5, i960) has published a two-volume report
on her studies of the Predynastic cultures of Upper Egypt which
contains useful data and interesting, if sometimes speculative, inter-
pretations. She has also produced a reconstitution of gravelots from the
Naqada cemeteries and a description of the elite Gerzean Cemetery T
there (Baumgartel 1970b). Krzyzaniak (1977) has published an important
synthesis of material relating to the Predynastic Period in Upper Egypt,
stressing economic and social changes. In recent years there has been
growing interest in tracing the development of social stratification in
Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, especially using the abundant
cemetery data from Upper Egypt. Published examples include Fattovich
(1976), Krzyzaniak (1979), and a series of papers by Castillos (1978, 1979,
1981, 1982). More substantial studies of this problem are currently in
progress. The best synthesis of archaeological data concerning Pre-
dynastic Lower Egypt is the published fragment of Hayes' (1965)
unfinished history of Egypt; and the best general interpretation is found
in Hoffman (1979). Baumgartel's (1970a) latest summary of the
Predynastic Period pays inadequate attention to views other than her
own, especially concerning the cultures of northern Egypt. For still-valid

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 I THE RISE OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

critiques of research on Predynastic Egypt, see Arkell and Ucko (1965)

and Trigger (1968).
The most popular synthesis of the Early Dynastic Period is Emery
(1961), which summarizes much useful factual material, although the
concept of a 'Dynastic Race' which he champions is now widely
regarded as unacceptable. Edwards (1971) provides a useful summary
of information about the dynastic history of this period. Kaplony's
(1963) monograph on the difficult-to-read inscriptions of this period is
of exceptional importance for understanding its political and economic
structures and Kemp (1966, 1967) seems to have resolved the thorny
issue of the burial places of the First Dynasty monarchs. Apart from
the excavations at Hierakonpolis, little important archaeological work
has been done on this period in recent years.
The relative chronology of Predynastic and Early Dynastic times has
been examined by Kantor (1965), who stresses particularly connections
with south-western Asia. The implications of radiocarbon dates have
been discussed by H. S. Smith (1964) and Derricourt (1971). Much
current analysis centres on the implications of the bristlecone-pine
calibration for radiocarbon time-scales (Suess 1970) and thermolumi-
nescent dates for Upper Egyptian pottery (Caton-Thompson and
Whittle 1975). A recent attempt to use radiocarbon dates to push the
beginning of the First Dynasty several hundred years earlier in time
(Mellaart 1979) has been convincingly refuted (Kemp 1980). Hassan
(1980) is currently engaged in a systematic investigation of the radio-
carbon chronology of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods.
Work in recent decades has dispelled many entrenched beliefs
concerning the origins of the ancient Egyptians. Passarge (1940) and
Butzer (1959) had clarified the environmental setting of Predynastic
Egypt and, in particular, have rejected the notion that the Nile Valley
was a primordial swamp inimical to human settlement. Changes in
rainfall patterns (Butzer 1959) and the regime of the Nile River (Bell
1970) have also been investigated for the Predynastic and Early
Dynastic Periods. Works by Krzyzaniak (1977), Schenkel (1978), and,
above all, Butzer (1976) have sought to define the nature and role played
by irrigation during these periods. Theories of the origin of Egyptian
food production have been viewed in a broad regional setting by Reed
(1966), Clark (1971), McHugh (1974), and Wendorf and Schild (1980).
The linguistic status of ancient Egyptian as an Afroasiatic language has
been clarified by Greenberg (195 5) and Fleming (1969). This and other
linguistic problems relating to Egyptian and Afroasiatic are discussed

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 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

by Vergote (1970) and in Hodge (1971). Although no comprehensive

study of the racial characteristics of ancient Egyptians has been
published recently, Berry, Berry and Ucko (1967) and Berry and Berry
(1973) tend to reject Derry's (1956) concept of a 'Dynastic Race' and
to support Batrawi's (1945, 1946) views of continuity in early Egyptian
population; see also Trigger (1978).
A traditional summary of Nubian culture history is found in Emery
(1966). Excavations begun in Nubia in the early 1960s have greatly
extended knowledge of the archaeological sequence in this region prior
to 3000 BC (Wendorf 1968). More recent anthropological-style
interpretations of Nubian culture history can be found in Trigger (1976)
and Adams' (1977) encyclopaedic history of Nubia. Physical
anthropological studies increasingly are accounting for morphological
changes in terms of local transformations rather than major population
shifts (Carlson and Van Gerven 1977). Archaeological research in the
Sudan is slowly increasing our knowledge of Arkell's Early Khartoum
(1949) and Esh-Shaheinab (1953) cultures. Related cultures have been
found to extend over large areas of the Sudan. An important linguistic
study by Ehret (1979) sheds important light on the origin and possible
high antiquity of food production in Ethiopia and the eastern Sudan
and relates these to the spread of the Afroasiatic language family.
Excavations near Khartoum indicate that the Sudan was an important
centre of innovation with respect to the domestication of sorghum and
millet and that cattle, as well as goats, were being herded there prior
to 3000 BC (Krzyzaniak 1978; Haaland 1981). H. S. Smith (1966) has
convincingly disposed of Reisner's B-Group. Recent work on the
A-Group is summarized in Nordstrom (1972). Bruce Williams' (1980)
striking claim that there was a late A-Group kingdom in Lower Nubia
has not won support.

2. OLD KINGDOM, MIDDLE KINGDOM AND SECOND

INTERMEDIATE PERIOD C. 2686-1552 BC

The basic framework of dynasties for ancient Egyptian history laid

down by the Egyptian priest Manetho in the late fourth or early third
century BC is still followed, although there are grounds for doubting
the integrity of certain of them in the First and Second Intermediate
Periods. The surviving versions of Manetho have been edited by
Waddell (1940). It was probably more in the nature of a chronicle than
a history properly speaking, but little of it has survived other than

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summary lists of his kings, dynasties and lengths of reign. These have
been the subject of some critical comment by Helck (1956b). The most
important earlier chronological source is the Turin Canon or King List.
A complete transcription has been published by Gardiner (1959), with
further analysis and comment by von Beckerath (1962, 1964, 1966) and
Barta (1979, 1981b). Its basic data are conveniently tabulated alongside
those from the other king lists (principally from Abydos and Saqqara)
in an appendix in Gardiner (1961). The Palermo Stone is now too
fragmentary to be of much chronological use, but still contains
interesting details of the events that the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom
thought to be significant. The basic source here is Schafer (1902), with
the chronological aspects discussed by Kaiser (1961), Helck (1974b) and
Barta (1981a).
Absolute calendrical dates have been deduced by combining totals
given in the Turin King List with the results of calculations based on
ancient astronomical observations, for which the fundamental work is
Parker (1950). Debate on the accuracy of these calculations has been
continued in articles by Ingham (1969), Read (1970), Parker (1970,
1976), and Long (1974), but with nothing very seriously contradictory
emerging. More serious are the discrepancies between these and
radiocarbon dates which have been discussed in individual articles, for
example by Smith (1964), Quitta (1972), Long (1976), and Mellaart
(1979), and in two major symposia, see Michael and Ralph (1970),
Save-Soderbergh and Olsson (1970), and Edwards (1970). The cali-
brations derived from dendrochronology, however, show increasing
signs of resolving the problem (Hassan 1980, Kemp 1980).
The history of these early periods is largely built up from a
multiplicity of hieroglyphic sources, mostly very laconic. The collected
translations by Breasted (1906) still have no rival for completeness and
appear surprisingly good, although naturally there have been improve-
ments in lexicography and grammatical knowledge since they were
made. The number of significant historical texts for these periods
discovered since Breasted's day is small, the most important being the
various Kamose texts relating to the expulsion of the Hyksos edited by
Gardiner (1916) and Habachi (1972). A selection of texts relating to Old
Testament background has been translated by Wilson in Pritchard
(1969); Schenkel (1965) has provided translations of all First Inter-
mediate Period sources; and Goedicke (1967) has done the same for Old
Kingdom royal decrees. For literary texts, which sometimes reflect
political matters, there are two recent collected editions, by Faulkner,

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Wente and Simpson (Simpson, ed. 1973), and Lichtheim (1973).

Administrative and economic papyri have not been treated as a body,
but may be encountered in individual editions by Griffith (1898), Scharff
(1920), Hayes (1955), Simpson (1963b, 1965, 1969b), Posener-Krieger
and de Cenival (1968), and Posener-Krieger (1976). The second Kahun
(Lahun) archive is still available only in summary form, see Borchardt
(1899) a n d Kaplony-Heckel (1971a).
Progress in the study of Egyptian history has been slow since the
great pioneering works of Meyer (1887), and Breasted (1906), and others
of this period. Petrie (1924) is particularly noteworthy for its
documentation. The lack of widespread scepticism as to the testimony
of literary sources has been commented on by Bjorkman (1964).
Hornung (1966) and Otto (1964—6) have discussed the merging of myth
and history in the Egyptian mind, and the ritualistic conception of
history at the level of formal Egyptian monuments. Amongst the
histories of Egypt which have appeared in recent decades should be
noted those by Gardiner (1961), Drioton and Vandier (1962), Bottero,
Cassin and Vercoutter (1967), Helck (1968) and Hallo and Simpson
(1971). The ambitious attempt in the third edition of the Cambridge
Ancient History, edited by Edwards, Gadd and Hammon (1971), to cover
in considerable detail the ancient history of the entire Middle East and
surrounding areas naturally includes chapters on Egypt, and these,
written in dense narrative style and with a tendency to concentrate on
kings and chronology, provide a fundamental reference source for
historical detail, though with relatively little attention to African
connections. Detailed historical studies of separate periods have not
been common, the most valuable being those by Winlock (1947),
Schenkel (1962), von Beckerath (1964), van Seters (1966) and
Gomaa (1980). Wilson (1951) represents an imaginative attempt at
interpreting the dynamics of Egyptian history, and Posener (1956) a
study of Middle Kingdom literature as a political vehicle. The more
intractable inscriptional material from private tombs offers some
promise for regional historical studies, based very much on titles and
genealogies, but has been carried out in a serious and consistent manner
only by Fischer (1964, 1968) for the areas of Coptos and Dendera. A
useful series of detailed coloured maps of Egypt and Nubia at different
historical periods is currently being published as the Tubinger Atlas des
Vorderen Orients (TAVO).
Studies on Egyptian administration and economy tend to suffer from
an insensitivity to the idea that rational working systems were involved.

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Basic treatments of the source material in this mould are those of Helck
(1958, 1975), and to a lesser extent of Pirenne (1932-5). The
documentation for more limited periods is analysed by Helck (1954),
Adams (1956), Baer (i960), and Zibelius (1978). An important con-
tribution to our understanding of ancient Egypt's geographical back-
ground is that by Butzer (1976).
For external relationships Save-Soderbergh (1941), Arkell (1961),
Emery (1965), Trigger (1965,1976), Hofmann (1967), and Adams (1977)
deal with Nubia, in each case attempting to relate inscriptional and
archaeological sources. Whereas Egyptologists have tended to dominate
the field of Nubian studies and therefore have come to terms with the
cultural background, the same is not true for Palestine and Syria. The
archaeological record for settlement history tends to feature only
peripherally in studies on Egypt's relations with these areas, as is
particularly clear in the major documentary study by Helck (1971). Ward
(1971) and van Seters (1966) represent limited attempts to create an
archaeological context for individual periods; at the level of cultural
influence Egypt features prominently in an analysis by Smith (1965) of
the cultural interdependence of the ancient Near East. Seyfried (1981)
is a recent treatment of eastern desert expeditions in the Middle
Kingdom.
One notable aspect of Egyptology is the consistency of its intellectual
framework, which is essentially in the Classical mould: textual exegesis
dominates history, prosopography and genealogy are the mainsprings
in the study of local history, art history is regarded as the major
component in evaluating the development of material culture. This
results in a marked homogeneity in style and approach, and a consider-
able versatility amongst Egyptologists. But it also helps to make the
subject more resistant to the proper evaluation of archaeological data
and to the use, or at least consideration, of alternative frameworks into
which existing information can be set. This has the overall effect of
probability exaggerating the uniqueness of the essential character of
Egyptian culture and society. Nevertheless, some of the issues raised
by articles on the character and dynamics of early societies written
from a more theoretical point of view are appropriate for discussion in
Egyptological terms, and such discussion might be expected both to
broaden the intellectual basis on which ancient Egypt is studied, and
to make more widely accessible the rich source material which Egypt
has to offer on certain aspects of early society. An interesting step in
this direction is the collection of conference papers edited by Weeks

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 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

(1979), entitled Egyptology and the Social Sciences, which includes a section
on urbanism by Bietak.
With archaeological data, the careful analysis of cemetery sequences
offers one supplementary direction for historical study, though probably
a rather limited one, but even here where so much material exists
already, only the most tentative beginnings have been made (e.g.
O'Connor 1972, 1974; Kemp 1976a, 1982). The excavation and study
of settlement sites is still in its infancy in Egypt, and the failure to
understand such evidence as exists has led to outright denials that towns
were a significant element in Egyptian society (e.g. Helck 1975, chapter
12; cf. Kemp 1977b). The dramatic results from Tell ed-Dabfa achieved
by Bietak (1968a, 1970, 1975a) are probably exceptional in their
historical impact because of the nature of the site itself. For many more
town sites it is probably true to say that until a more coherent
framework of social and cultural processes is achieved for ancient Egypt
it will remain difficult to direct excavation to the best advantage.
Since completing the original text for this chapter several reports on
excavations have appeared which bear materially on its content. Bietak
(1981a) is a valuable commentary on his Tell ed-Dab^a excavations and
the Palestinian connections, while Bietak (1981b) adds to the limited
documentation on the Hyksos royal family. The Bulletin de I'lnstitut
fran$ais d'' Arche'ologie orientale has published a number of reports on the
work at Dakhla oasis, two dealing with the remarkable Old Kingdom
settlement there (Giddy and Jeffreys 1980, 1981). Two more Kerma
reports have appeared (Bonnet 1978, 1980) emphasizing the much
greater degree of archaeological complexity at the settlement site around
the western deffufa, whilst in a separate study (Bonnet 1981) the case
is argued for the western deffufa having been a temple. Further work
in the northern Fayum has brought a significant revision in the date
of the maximum lake level in historic times. Far from having been in
the Old Kingdom, it occurred during the Middle Kingdom (Ginter,
Heflik, Kozlowski and Sliwa 1980). The meaning of this in terms of
other Middle Kingdom sites in the Fayum and the Semna flood level
inscriptions has yet to be worked out. In textual matters, the idea that
the Memphite Theology is a composition of the Late Period and not
just a late copy of a very ancient text is gaining ground (e.g. Lichtheim
1980, p. 5).

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3. NEW KINGDOM AND THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD,

BC
I 5 5 2—664
The following bibliography is confined mainly to English language
sources; a more detailed bibliography guide is appended to O'Connor
(1982b), pp. 966-70.

1. Histories and historical studies. A good overview of the entire period

is provided in Gardiner (1961; Chapters VIII-XII), while New
Kingdom history is reviewed in detail by Hayes (1973), James (1973),
Aldred (1975), Cerny (1975), and Faulkner (1975) in the new edition
of the Cambridge Ancient History. The latter also contains valuable
chapters on the government of New Kingdom Asiatic conquests by
Drower (1973) and Albright (1975), while the New Kingdom history
of Steindorff and Seele (1957) also emphasizes foreign relations. The best
historical outline of the Third Intermediate Period is found in Part 4
of Kitchen (1973).
More specialized historical studies are Redford's (1967) discussion of
individual Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaohs, Kemp's (1978) discussion
of New Kingdom imperialism and Bierbrier's (1975) analysis of some of
the factors contributing to the collapse of the New Kingdom.

2. Texts in translation. Histories and historical studies such as the above

should be read in conjunction with translations of the relevant historical,
literary, and archival texts, which convey the reality of historical events
and processes with a vividness and immediacy that no historical
narrative can provide. The best and most comprehensive collection of
translated historical texts remains Breasted (1906, vols. II and III); more
recent translations of some of these texts are provided by Wilson in
Pritchard (1969) and Lichtheim (1976, 1980). Major literary works of
the period are translated in Lichtheim (ibid.) and Simpson (1973).
Caminos (1954) provides a variety of model letters, hymns and the like
which illuminate many aspects of contemporary New Kingdom
attitudes, while Wente's (1966) translations of later New Kingdom
letters provide a unique insight into the realities of Egyptian political
and administrative life.

3. Egyptian society in the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period. The
best introduction to the Egyptian environment and related agricultural
and demographic factors is Butzer (1976), while Kees (1961) surveys
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the interrelationships between environment and society in ancient

Egypt and introduces the student to major sites which were important
in New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period history. The raw
materials and technology of Egyptian industry is discussed in Lucas and
Harris (1962). The best history of Egyptian art and architecture in
English remains Smith (1981; Parts 4 and 5 are relevant to this chapter),
and Hayes (1959) provides a richly illustrated introduction to the
material culture of the New Kingdom, covering both the royal families
and the other classes of Egyptian society.
The governmental structure of the period has not yet received the
comprehensive analysis it requires; the best source of data on the
administrative structure is in German (Helck, 1958), while Edgerton's
(1947a) study is a rare attempt to understand the system as distinct
from the structural skeleton of government. Faulkner (1953) and
Schulman (1964b) provide good surveys of the New Kingdom army.
Theodorides (1971) is a useful introduction to Egyptian law; Wilson
(1954b) discusses the relationship between authority and law; and Cerny
(1962) provides an excellent overview of oracles and their roles in law
and general social relationships. An excellent 'case-history' of the New
Kingdom legal system in operation is the famous case of Mose, on which
see especially Gardiner (1905) and Gaballa (1977). Janssen (1975b)
outlines our very limited knowledge of the Egyptian economy and has
also published a superlative monograph on prices and wages in
Ramesside Egypt (1975a).
Egyptian religion was, as noted above, of great historical significance.
Cerny (1957) is an excellent introduction to the topic, while Bleeker
(1967) discusses the significance of festivals in Egyptian life. Wilson
(1954a) provides an interesting introduction to the world view of the
Egyptians, but other valuable approaches to aspects of this question are
to be found in Posener (i960; in French) and Hornung (1966; in
German).
Urbanism is a subject of increasing interest in Egyptological studies,
and the richest data come from the New Kingdom. A useful introduction
is O'Connor (1982a), while Kemp has published several important
reinterpretations of Tell el-Amarna, the best documented urban site
(1976, 1977, 1981). Broader patterns of settlement and urbanization in
the New Kingdom and later are discussed by Kemp (1972a, b),
O'Connor (1972a), and H. S. Smith (1972).

4. Egypt and Africa. For the New Kingdom, Save-Soderbergh (1941;

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in German) remains fundamental, but good, more recent general studies

covering both the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Periods are
Trigger (1976; Chapters VII and VIII) and W.Y.Adams (1977a;
Chapters 9 and 10). Emery (1965; Part 3, Chapters V—VIII) is also useful,
as is the well-illustrated Wenig (1978; Chapters 1 and 2); Kitchen (1971)
is a brief but excellent discussion on the location of Punt.

5. Bibliographies and chronology. Most of the works cited above have

extensive bibliographies that will guide the student in further reading
and research. There are also available several invaluable bibliographical
aids of which the student should be aware. Pratt (1925, 1942) provides
an extremely comprehensive if not totally complete bibliography
running to 1941, conveniently divided into topics and with an excellent
index of authors and topics. Federn (1948-50) covers the years 1939 to
1947 (without topic categorization but with an author index); while the
Annual Egyptological bibliography (J. M. A. Janssen 1948—63, J. M. A.
Janssen and Heerma van Voss 1964, Heerma van Voss 1968—9, Heerma
van Voss and J. J. Janssen 1971, J. J. Janssen 1971— 6; continuing) is
a completely inclusive bibliography covering 1947 to the present and
still continuing; it is not categorized, but there is an index of authors,
titles and topics for 1947—56. From 1971—1979 Kemp produced Egypto-
logical titles, an up-to-date quarterly bibliography conveniently divided
into categories. Porter and Moss (1927-74; continuing) and Malek
(1974; continuing) provide a detailed guide to all known reliefs,
paintings and hieroglyphic texts; there is no guide for hieratic or
demotic texts, or to purely architectural and archaeological data.
Convenient recent discussions of New Kingdom chronology are Hornung
(1964; the' short' chronology) and Hayes (1970; the' long' chronology);
see also Kitchen (1965). For Third Intermediate Period chronology Kitchen
(1973) is fundamental. Debate remains lively and more recent studies
are found in the bibliographic aids noted above.

4. THE LATE PERIOD, 664-323 BC

Written sources include material in hieroglyphic, demotic, cuneiform,

Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Carian, Greek, and Latin. Hieroglyphic
texts are far fewer than in the New Kingdom and particularly sparse
after the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. F^glish translations of important Saite
examples appear in Breasted (1906), though these versions have usually
been superseded, whilst the main hieroglyphic texts of the First Persian
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 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

Occupation can be found in Posener (1936). Otto's translations and

analyses of major biographical inscriptions of the Late Period (1954)
are invaluable; Lichtheim (1980) has also translated some of the
best-known specimens. Demotic material is of varying character.
Literary texts include the immensely important Demotic Chronicle
(Spiegelberg 1914; Roeder 1927; Bresciani and Donadoni 1969),
and the tales of the Petubastis Cycle also yield valuable information
if properly used (Kitchen 1973). Amongst documentary sources
P. Ry/ands IX occupies a pre-eminent position (Griffith 1909;
Wessetzky 1963). Cuneiform evidence is available in Assyrian,
Babylonian, and Persian (Luckenbill 1927; Wiseman 1961; Kent 1953);
the most important Hebrew material appears in II Kings, II Chronicles,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the derivative account of Josephus' Antiquities
of the Jews, X (Marcus 1937); the Aramaic material is analysed by
Kraeling (1953), Fitzmyer (1965), and Porten (1968). For Phoenician
texts Magnanini (1973) and Kornfeld (1978) should be consulted, whilst
the Carian material has been discussed by Ray (1982). Amongst the
Greek sources Herodotus occupies pride of place (Hude 1927; de
Selincourt 1972; Lloyd 19756^, but Hellenistic writers such as Manetho
(Jacoby 1958; Waddell 1940) and Diodorus Siculus (Oldfather et al.,
i946ff) are indispensable particularly for the late fifth and fourth
centuries BC.
There are several general works covering the political and military
history of the period. Wiedemann's account (1880) is still worth
consulting and Petrie (1905) is also valuable. Hall's work on the Saite
period in the Cambridge Ancient History (192 5) is obsolete, but discussions
of later developments in subsequent volumes can still be read with
profit. They are all due to be replaced by new studies in the revised
edition. Kienitz (1953) is essential reading, and Gyles (1959) contains
some useful material but is unreliable and best avoided by the novice.
The same holds true of Pirenne's survey (1963). Drioton and Vandier
(1962) is particularly useful for its bibliographical information and
its discussions of major problems. On specific periods there is some
excellent work, e.g. Posener (1936), De Meulenaere (1951), Kraeling
(1953), Bresciani (1958), and Kitchen (1973).
Egyptian kingship in general has been analysed by Moret (1902 a),
Muller (1938), Jacobsohn (1939), Frankfort (1948,1961), Vandier (1949),
Brunner (1956, 1964), Posener (i960), Derchain (1962), Hornung
(1966), Decker (1971), and Bergman (1972), but a modern large-scale
synthesis is a pressing need. On Late Period ideas Meyer (1915) is useful
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and Otto (1954) fundamental. Spalinger's analysis (1978a) cannot

withstand close scrutiny, but does provide a handy 'open-sesame' to
the material. Kaplony (1971), Johnson (1974), Russmann (1974), Aldred
(1980), Davies (1982), and Lloyd (1982a, b) provide food for thought
on several important points.
The structure of Late Period society has not failed to attract attention,
but much remains to be done even with the limited material available.
Meyer (1928) is still the starting-point. Pirenne (1963) should not be
ignored, but critical use is obligatory. The Classical traditions on
Egyptian society at this period are analysed by Wiedemann (1886) and
Froidefond (1971). Much can be learned by a careful comparison with
studies of Hellenistic Egypt (e.g. Rostovtzeff 1953) and also from ac-
counts of more modern Egyptian society like those of Lane (1966) and
Blackman (1927). Availability of land has been studied by Schlott (1969)
and Schwab-Schlott (1972), whilst a judicious assessment of population
size will be found in Butzer (1976). The priesthood has been better
studied than most elements of the population (Blackman 1918; Bonnet
1952; Kees 1953; Sauneron 1957; de Cenival 1972; De Meulenaere
1975—6; Vittmann 1978). Here too comparative Hellenistic material
such as that in Otto (1905—8) should not be ignored. The origins,
development and character of the machimoi are discussed by Cavaignac
(1919), Kees (1926), Meyer (1928), Struve (1932), Kienitz (1953),
Bresciani (1958), Gyles (1959), Pirenne (1963), Kitchen (1973, 1977),
Gomaa (1974) and Winnicki (1977). Rostovtzeff (1953) and Crawford
(1971) provide access to Hellenistic evidence on the class. There is no
proper survey of the data for the main body of the population. Hughes
(1952) and Seidl (1968) are helpful, but, if the evidence were properly
exploited, a much fuller picture could be gained. In the study of the
family good work has been done (Cerny 1954; Pestman 1961; el-Amir
1964; Seidl 1966; Tanner 1967; Theodorides 1976; Allam 1977, 1981),
but we still have far to go, particularly in the employment of models
of family organization based on anthropological research and customs
in other oriental societies. Slavery is discussed by Griffith (1909), Bakir
(1952), Seidl (1968), and Menu (1977). General comments on race
relations in Ancient Egypt will be found in Davis (1951), and Egyptian
attitudes to foreigners are analysed by Sauneron (1959) and Helck
(1964), but there is much on relations with individual ethnic groups:
Greeks, Mallet 1893, 1922; MacFarquhar 1966; Austin 1970; Lloyd
1969, 1972a, b, 1975a, b;Boardman 1980; Davis 1981; Cypriots, Masson
1971; Davis 1979, 1980; Carians, Masson and Yoyotte 1956; Masson

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1969; Lloyd 1975a, 1978; Jews and Aramaeans, Kraeling 1953; Porten
1968; Ghali 1969; Porten and Greenfield 1974; Dupont-Sommer 1978;
Phoenicians, Leclant 1968.
The study of town sites is one of the black spots of Egyptology, but
is beginning to receive the attention which it deserves, e.g. Ucko et al.
1972; Smith 1974b, 1976; Butzer 1976; Kemp 1977a; Leahy 1977;
Parlebas 1977. Information on specific sites during our period is far from
satisfactory: on Memphis see, in particular, Petrie (1909-13) and Kemp
(1976, 1977b, 1978b); Sais has yielded little, and the prospects are not
good (Champollion 1868; Habachi 1943; Bakry 1968; Wasif 1974),
though much profitable work has been done on the literary evidence
for the structure and installations of the city's temple area (Mallet 1888;
Matthiae Scandone 1967; Schott 1967; el-Sayed 1974, 1975, 1976;
Pernigotti 1978); Bubastis was dug unsatisfactorily by Naville (1891,
1892), better and more recently by Habachi (1957); work is in progress
at Mendes (De Meulenaere et al. 1976). The situation with Nebesheh
is much better since Petrie's work (1888) has provided an enlightening,
though far from complete, picture of the site during the Saite and
Persian periods. Late temples are discussed by Sauneron (1964), Stadel-
mann (1971), and Badawy (1975). Smith (1974b) provides a brief
summary of work on the desert settlements of North Saqqara, whilst
the work of Guilmot (1962) and Ray (1972, 1976) is suggestive.
There is no general discussion of economic organization during the
Late Period. The student is compelled to start from general studies, such
as those of Hartmann (1923) and Heichelheim (1957), and from works
concerned with earlier and better documented periods such as those
of Helck (1960—9, 1975) and Janssen (1975a, b) which can be usefully
supplemented by Hellenistic material (cf. Schnibel 1925; Rostovtzeff
1953). The workings of the basin system of irrigation have been
described by Butzer (1976), and Late Period cereal production is briefly
discussed by Griffith (1909) and Porten (1968). Some of the evidence
for landownership is analysed by Seidl (1968), but there is more to be
said even on the basis of the meagre evidence. Aspects of the circulation
of wealth are discussed by Seidl (1968), Porten (1968), and Daumas
(1977). The best-documented foreign commerce is that with the Greek
world (Austin 1970; Lloyd, 1975a; Boardman, 1980). Necho's com-
mercial interest in the Red Sea and his alleged circumnavigation of
Africa have received much attention (Senac 1967; Mauny 1976; Lloyd
1977; Janvier 1978).
Data for the workings of government during our period are highly

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defective but have been the subject of careful study. Pirenne and
Theodorides (1966) have provided a useful conspectus of older literature.
Conditions at the beginning of the Saite Dynasty are examined by De
Meulenaere (1964), Kitchen (1973, 1977), and Gomaa (1974). The
crucially important Nitocris Stele is published by Caminos (1964).
Nitocris' position has recently received the attention of Vittmann (1977,
1978) who has also discussed early Saite officials at Thebes. General
information on nomes is available in Brugsch (1879—80), Gauthier
(1925-31), Gardiner (1947), Montet(i957—61), Helck (1974), andBietak
(1975), and their distribution in the Late Period has been examined by
Gauthier (1935), Ball (1942), and Helck (1974). On Saite internal
administration Kees (1934—6) and De Meulenaere (1964) are required
reading. Wessetzky (1963) should also be consulted. The alleged
reforms of Amasis have been discussed by Tresson (1931), Ranke
(1943), Posener (1947), Malinine (195 3) and Jelfnkova-Reymond (1956).
Jurisdiction is briefly analysed by Seidl (1968), and the workings of
oracles are examined by Blackman (1925, 1926), Roeder (i960), Parker
(1962), and Ray (1981). The best description of Persian government in
Egypt is still that of Bresciani (1958), and Egyptian collaboration
with the Persians is discussed, in particular, by Cooney (1953) and Lloyd
(1982a, b).
Late-Period foreign policy should never be treated in isolation;
evidence from other periods can be illuminating even if it must be used
with caution. Theodorides (1975) has produced a perceptive discussion
of Egyptian attitudes to foreign relations down to the end of the New
Kingdom which has much to teach the student of the Late Period. The
same holds true of recent work on Egyptian imperialism in pre-Late
Period times (Kemp 1978a; Ahituv 1978). Saite activities in the Levant
have received much attention from a variety of points of view (Yoyotte
1951b; Sauneron and Yoyotte 1952b; Dothan and Freedman 1967;
Freedy and Redford 1970; Dothan 1971; Lipinski 1972; Spalinger 1974,
1976a, b, 1977b, 1978a, b ; Malamat 1950, 1968, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976;
Lindsay 1976). The problem of Saite naval policy has generated a rash
of studies (Basch 1969, 1977, 1980; Lloyd 1972a, b, 1975a, b, 1977, 1980)
which have led to a clearer understanding of the limitations of the
evidence, but large questions still remain unanswered and unanswer-
able. The analysis of Amasis' relations with Chaldaea has been placed
on a completely new footing by Edel (1978). For the Chaldaean view
of Egyptian Levantine involvements Wiseman (1961) is essential.
Foreign policy during the last years of independence is most con-

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 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

veniently studied through Kienitz (1953) and Olmstead (1959). The

evidence for Greek mercenaries is discussed by Petrie (1888), Parke
(1933), Austin (1970), Lloyd (1975a), Oren (1977, 1979), and Boardman
(1980). Egypt's relations with Samos continue to excite interest
(Jantzen 1972; Mitchell 1975). Contacts with Athens are relatively well
documented (Meiggs 1963, 1972; Salmon 1965; Libourel 1971) whilst
relations with Cyprus are summarized by Hill (1940). For a possible case
of a diplomatic marriage cementing relations between Nectanebo I and
a Greek state see Kuhlmann (1981). Late Period activities in Libya
must be studied against the background of earlier contacts summarized
by Gsell (1913ff), Holscher (1937), Fakhry (1942, 1944, 1950, 1973^4),
Redford (1977a), and Gostynski (1975). Psammetichus I's Libyan policy
is analysed by Goedicke (1962), and the Cyrene problem is studied by
Schaefer (1952), Chamoux (1953), and Mazzarino (1947). On the oases
in the Late Period see Fakhry (1973-4). Several articles deal with the
Nubian campaign of Psammetichus II (Yoyotte 1951a; Sauneron and
Yoyotte 1952a; Bakry 1967; Habachi 1974), and the evidence for
Amasis' Nubian expedition is scrutinized by Erichsen (1941).

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 INDEX

'Aamu 'Asiatics' 142n,156n Aha, king (1st Dynasty) 49, 55, 61, 70
Aaweserra Apapy 142, 159 and n, 162, 1 7 3 - 4 Ahhiyawa ? = Ekwash 276-7
Aba, king (8th Dynasty) 72, 1 1 2 Ahmose I, king (18th Dynasty) 1 ) 8 n ;
Abisco graffiti 1 1 5 n , 130 Ahmose II see Amasis
Abkhan (Nubia) 4 1 - 2 Ahmose—Paheri family 171 and n
Abu Ghalib (Delta) 102 Ahmose Turo, Viceroy of Kush 262
Abu Hor graffito 168n Ahmosis 255,262
Abu Rawash 78 Ai'n Fogeiya 139
Abusir 79, 89; pyramid, temple 294, 297 'Ain el-Mufletta (Bahriya Oasis) temple 295
Abusir el-Malaq 48 Akasha (Upper Nubia) 124n, 166n, 168
Abydos 13, 49, 96, 99, 109, 1 1 1 , 170, 258, Akhenaten, king (19th Dynasty) = Amenhotep
353; cemetery, tombs 4, 46, 52, 54, 148, IV 186-7; 201, 205, 216, 2 1 9 - 2 2 ; 223,
1 5 6 ; ' t e m p l e ' 6on; temples 1 0 4 , 1 0 7 , 232, 260, 272
109, 159, 292, 3 1 ; ; area to north and Akutya 260
south 14, 30, 35, 39, 159 alabaster 65, 144, 147n, 153
accession, king's 72 Alara, king of Kush 269
acculturation, Kush 254-6; Wawat 254, 256, Alexander III of Macedon, 'the Great' 279,
266 281, 287-8, 297, 345
Achoris, king (29th Dynasty) 281, 282, 341 Alexander Romance 298
'acquaintance of the king', title 332 Ali Kosh (Iran) 18
adaptations, Late Period 279 alliances, allies 250, 286, 316, 340, 341, 342,
administration, royal, central 50, 56, 70, 343. 345-6, 348
80-5, 1 6 3 ; pyramid-building 86-7; Amara 201, 258, 263; temple 134;
provincial, local 110, 229, 334; personnel Amara/Ukma area 155
57, 61, 77, 78, 1 1 3 , 301, 332, 354, 357 Amarna see Tell el Amarna
administration, Macedonian 287-8, 336; Amasis, king (Saite, 26th Dynasty) =
Nubia 1 3 1 , 167, 260-2, 266, 273; Ahmose II 280, 281, 285, 289, 3 1 1 , 326,
Persian 287, 333-4, 336; Saite at 338, 339-40; 344; administration 332,
Memphis 337, 347 333, 363; campaigns 363, 364; foreign
administrative archives 79, 1 1 2 , 149, 176; policy 286 and n, 345, 344, 346;
centres 40, 50, 55, 70; defects 336; Herodotus on 285, 286n, 292, 296, 300;
divisions 44; see also nomes stele 292; temples 294, 295, 342, 345;
' Admiral of the Fleet' 533 trade 329, 330
Admonitions of Ipuwer 75, 1 1 5 , 180 'Amasis and the Skipper' tale 292, 293,
adoption 3 1 3 ; Adoption Stele see under 296
Nitocris Adoption Stele Amekni (Ahaggar) 16
Aegean 147-8, 203, 340, 342, 343; Amen, god 178, 204, 2 2 1 ; cult 220; estates
Aegean/W. Anatolia 276 209, 262, 3 1 1 ; priesthood 219, 222, 238,
Africa, relations with 3 5 4 282; temples
' African substratum' 1 1 , 1 2 Amen, god, at Hibis (Kharga) 294; Karnak
afterlife 72;'democratization' 1 1 6 180, 306; Siwa 297, 316; Tanis 247;
Afyeh (S. Nubia) 62 Teuzoi 304, 305; Thebes 82, 105, 302,
Aghurmi (Siwa) temple 345 303; High Priestess, Thebes 292, 293,
Agordat (N. Ethopia) 170 302, 303-4, 335; see also Temple-state of
agriculture 14, 2 1 , 22, 25, 26, 4 1 , 68, 196, Thebes
2 1 1 , 326-8, 357; innovation 300, 326; Amenemhat I, king (12th Dynasty) 74, 95,
land 14, 20, 300, 326 96; Amenemhat III 89, iosn, 149
agriculturalists 63, 190\ see also cultivators Amenemhat-ankh, prince 78

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Amenemhat ith tawy ('Amenemhat siezes the Libyans 274; Nubians 43, 52, 209; see
two lands' = Ith-tawy) 80, 87 also mercenaries' army commander 333
Amenhotep I, king (18th Dynasty) 2 5 ; , 257; 'army-leader', title 2; 1; 'army scribe of the
Amenhotep II 220, 270; Amenhotep III king' 144
216, 217, 221, 242, 259, 260, 262, 272; aroura (unit of land measurement) 9on, 300
Amenhotep IV see Akhnaten arrow points 22, 29, 64, 269
Amenhotep, High Priest of Amen 229, 231 arsenals 215, 325
Amenmesses, king (19th Dynasty) 223 Arses, king (Persian, 31st Dynasty) 281
Ameny 'Aamu, king (13 th Dynasty) 149, art and material culture 1 1 , 31, 37, 51, 3 5 ; ,
156n 357, 3 5 9; art history 355; court arts 40,
Amenysenb, stele 84 44, 47, 50, 60, 63- 8, 183
Amer 3 Artaxerxes, king (Persian, 27th Dynasty)
el-Amir, Mustafa 361 2 8 1 ; Artaxerxes II 3 4 1 ; Artaxerxes III
El-Amra 36; Amratian culture (= Naqada I) (Ochus) (31st Dynasty) 281, 282, 287,
3, 6, 7 and n, 10, 19, 23, 30-2, 350; 298, 302-3, 323, 341
Amratian-Gerzean 5; amulets 62, 65; artisans 52, 192, 227, 231, 268, 269
pottery 2, 5, 3 1 - 2 , 92 artists 60, 86
'Amuq area (Mesopotamia) 33, 39, 138 Ashdod (Philistia) 358
Amyrtacus, king (Saite, 28th Dynasty) 281, Ashketi (Nubia) 179
287, 299 Asia, policy 340; military activity 1 3 8 , 2 8 5 ,
Anath, goddess, Byblos 146 357; proximity 1 5 7 ; threat, pressure
Anath-Her, king (16th Dynasty) 158 1 1 5 , 137, 138, 222
Anatolia 148, 203 Asia Minor 276
ancestor cult 348 Asian artisans 40; Asian domestics 137
Andjyeb (Anedjib), king (1st Dynasty) 70 Asian prototypes (maces, pottery) 23, 32
Aniba (Lower Nubia, Miam) 124, 127, 168, 'Asiatic' copper 142; origins, 13th dynasty
174n, 263, 268; cemetery, Egyptian 156; people 1 2 m , 1 4 1 , 142n
burials 161, 167; forts 130, 1 3 1 , 161 Askut Is. 132, 160
animal cult, burials 25, 29, 294-5, 3 2 ; , 347 Assyria 194, 235, 242, 245, 250, 251, 253,
animal husbandry 327; see also domestic 282, 337-8, 345; gods 245; alliances
animals 246, 2 5 1 ; vassals 250
'Ankhenesneferibra, daughter of Psammeticus Aswan 15, 38, 127, 147, 242, 247, 252, 335,
II 303 336; Aswan granite 52
Ankhtyfy nomarch/priest 1 1 3 , 2 9 4 Asyut 106, 1 1 4 , 1 1 7
anthropology 349, 352; see also under evidence Atchana 144
Anthylla 3 31 Aten (sun-disc) 220, 2 2 1 ; temple 217
Apepy (Apophis), king (Hyksos) see Athene temple (Lindus, Rhodes) 342
Aaweserra Apepy Athens, Athenians 323, 343, 364
Apis bull, court 293; Serapeum 294-5 Athribis-Heliopolis 241, 246, 247
Apries, king (Saite, 26th Dynasty) 281, 285, Atiyawahy and Ariyarraten inscription 371,
292, 298, 315, 539, 340, 343, 344; stele 3 8 1n
288, 302, 315 Atum, creator 196
Arabeh 226 Aushek (Medja kingdom) 13 5
Arabia, S. 136 Ausim 274
archaism 189, 195, 288-9 autonomy, local 103; see also provincial
architecture 357; barrel vault 323; brick 36, autonomy
37, 63, 66, 99, 163; brick tombs 36, 46, Avaris (E. Delta, Hyksos capital) 155, 157,
49, 52, 55; houses 323; mud-brick 92, 158n, 162, 173n, 174ns king 162
104, 226, 323; mud-brick in Nubia and Awibra Hor, king (Second Intermediate
south 167, 268, 270; reed-bundles 323; Period) 149
stone 320, 323, 347 axe-heads, bronze 15 7
Areika 171
Argo Is. (near Kerma) 13on, 16on Bab el-Mandeb 254
Aristotle (pseudo) Oeconomica 302, 542 Babylonia 194; Babylonian seals 148
Armant 5, 27, 31, 1 1 1 , 1 1 8 , 124, 174, 350 El-Badari and area 27, 36, 170; Badarian
Arminna 174 people, culture 2, 6, 7, 10, 15, 18, 19,
army 48, 206, 209, 286, 309, 317, 358; 27, 42, 119ns times 4

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 INDEX

Baghdad 15 9 bureaucracy 58, 83, 175 and n, 222, 224,

Bahrya Oasis 120, 173, 34; 336-7; local 238; bureaucratic control
Bahr Yusuf 327 of crafts 67; bureaucratic state 1 7 7 ;
Balabish 170 bureaucrats 50, 62, 207, 241, 243; in
Balat, Dakhia 1 2 1 , 125 Wawat 265
El-Ballas 3, 33, 150; inscription 1 2 1 , 130 burial customs 23, 24, 27, 34; burial vault
barley - wild (Hordeum spontaneum) 15, 18; 161, 3 1 1
cultivated 17, 18, 28, 43, 327; six-rowed burials, Nubian royal 128, 163-4, 166, 266,
21 269, 350; Nile valley 23, 24, 25, 168
basalt 25, 31, 65, 321 Busiris 241
baskets, basketry 22, 23, 24, 27 Butana 258
Bastet, goddess, temple 320 Buto (Lower Egypt) 57, 250, 298, 302
Batn el-Hagar (Upper Nubia) 1 2 8 , 1 5 4 button seals 126
'battalion commanders' 209; of Kush 262 Byblos 129, 130, 136, 1 4 1 , 143, 144, 145-7,
Bayuda desert 258 148, 166, 329, 330; princes 146
beads, bead-making 146, 165; amazonite 22; 'Byblos ships' 147
carnelian 25; gold, silver beads 3 2 , 3 4 ;
lapis lazuli 34; steatite 29 Cairo 24
Beckerath, J. von 78, 82, 1 1 3 , 154, 155, Cambridge Ancient History 70, 203, 346n, 354,
1 5 6 n , 1 5 9 n , 353, 354 35 7, 3 6 0
Beda 46, 47 Cambyses, king (Persian, 27th Dynasty) 268,
'beginning of Earth' fortress 274 281, 286 and n, 294, 297, 298, 302, 340,
Behbet el-Hagar, Isis temple 294
345
Beirut 144
camps, nomadic 1 1 8 , 137
Beja (modern) 121 and n Canaan 159n
Beni Hasan 1 1 1 , 142 canal (Nile-Red Sea) 330, 3 3 1 , 346
Berlin Leather Roll see P. Berlin cannibalism, alleged 31
Beth Shan (Palestine) 144 Cape Guardafui 254
bifacial technique (stone tools) 18, 22, 31, 34 capital city 80, 82, 87, 3 1 8 ; see also Ith-tawy
Bir Nasb 141 caravans, donkey 120, 123 ; trading 346;
Bir Nekheila 121 caravan dues 13on
Birket Habu, Thebes 118 Carchemish 285, 338
Biyahmu colossi (Fayum) 180 Carians 284, 317, 3i8n, 361
blades, stone 24, 34 carnelian(?) 123 and n
boat-building 60, 136; boatmen 310 carpentry 64
Boghazkoi 15 9 cartouche (absence) 156
bone assemblages 16; artifacts 64; use 177 carving, low-relief 89
booty 206, 216, 273 casket, obsidian 146
Bos sp. (cattle) 1 1 9 castor, castor oil 29
bounty, royal 60-1 cataracts 40; first 61, 99, 1 3 ; ; N. of second
bracelets, mother of pearl 170 130; first and second 254; second 4 1 ,
Branchidae (E. Greek temple) 542 124, 125, 127, 1 3 1 - 2 , 164, 25 5; second
bronze 167; objects 188, 276 to fourth 254; third 128, 163, 253, 257,
Bronze Age, S.W. Asia, Early 1 2 1 n , 137, 258, 285; to fourth 1 5 7 ; fourth to fifth
138, 139, 140; Early/Middle 140, 145; (Karoy) 258; fifth 260; S. of fifth 254;
Middle 137, 138, 139, 143, 156, 158 fifth to sixth 257, 258; sixth 260
Brooklyn Papyrus 1 ; ; cattle 201, 270, 273; art 19, 1 2 7 ;
Bubastis 1 5 ; , 295, 318, 320, 362 domesticated, herded 17, 19, 2 1 , 29,
bucrania 170 119, 352; wild 9; Nubia 43, 1 3 2 ;
buffer zone 268 taxation 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 ; trade, exchange 43,
Bugdumbush (Nubia) 167 1 1 8 , 228
Buhen 63, I34n, 160, 168, 174; fort 130, cattle-oriented culture 1 1 7 , 1 1 8
1 3 1 , 1 6 m ; cemetery stele 1 6 1 , 162, 163; cavalry 309, 348
gold 123; graves, Egyptian style 131-2 cedar wood 226
Buhen complex, see Khormusan Celtis integrifolia, nettle tree 16
Buhen North 12 5 celts (stone) 22, 41
building projects 77, 103, 104, 284, 285; cemeteries 10, 28, 124, 187, 327; Upper Egpyt
materials see also architecture 1 , 1 7 , 27, 28, 46; Lower Egypt 2 4 - ; ,

431

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cemeteries—cont. continuities 3, 5, 183, 348

26, 46; Abydos 46, 49, 52, 54; Helwan 'controller of every divine office' 306
5 ; ; Hierakonpolis 49; Saqqara 4, 5 4, conveyances (legal) 314
55, 56; Memphite court 86-92; New copper, casting 25, 33, 34, 64; hammering
Kingdom 185, 247-8; Third 30, 33, 64; use 30, 60
Intermediate Period 247-8; Nubia 52, copper artifacts - needles and pins 23, 26, 32,
127 33, 64, 70; tools 26, 29, 33, 42, 62, 64;
cemetery culture 1 1 7 ; as cult centre 197; weapons 25, 26, 33, 128
sequence 356; cattle 118 copper imports 26, 29, 62
census, household 83; cattle, etc. 5 8 , 8 2 ; copper mining, deposits 23, 26, 33 4, 139,
personal possessions 83 1 4 1 , 226; ore 25, 30; working 25, 30,
centralization of authority 73, 139, 190, 202, 122, 125, 1 3 1 and n, 141
205, 232 Coptos 3, 39, 8on, 105 and n, 107 and n,
cereals, production 362 see also agriculture; 159, 354; nome 108, 1 1 3
impressions on pottery 41 core industry (stone) 29
chalcolithic 32, 34, 38, 1 2 1 n , 137, 138 co-regency, co-reign 79, 123, 218
Chaldaeans 285, 286, 337, 338, 339-40, 344, corvee labour 5 1 , i n
363 cosmic order 288
chancellor (Persian) 334 cotton seeds 43
chariotry 190, 192, 206, 262, Libyan 277 councils and committees 84
cheetah skins 270 court, royal 59, 70, 81, 175, 2 1 5 ; court
chert 1 1 9 culture 68, 7 1 , 1 8 1 ; Kush 129, 167;
chests 64 court lists, journal 78, 8 1 - 2 ; court
'chief of the temples and of all the prophets' patronage 67
306 court proceedings (legal) 185, 187, 218
' chiefs of police' 335 cowherds 310
chief priest 105, 106, 108, 109, 1 1 4 ; chief crafts 25, 33, 34, 48; craftsmen 50, 55, 56,
priest and town governor 1 1 0 , 1 1 2 ; 60, 6 1 , 63, 67, 86, 301, 310
chief priest and nomarch 109, 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 ; creation myths 74, 196, 243
of Ra 109 creator-god 196
chiefs of Ma 235, 238 Crete T 44, 147-8
'chiefs', Wawat and Kush 205, 206 crocodile 20, 22
'chieftain' (Alara of Kush) 269 crown land 82, 3 1 1 , 327
chronology 4 - 7 , 128, 1 8 3 - 5 , 279, 282 and n, crown prince 9, 240, 241, 242
350, 351, 354, 359; dendrochronology cult centres 36, 48, 96, 197
353 cults 48, 94-6, 1 9 7 ; maintenance 85;
circumnavigation 253, 285 objects, symbols 57, 81, 85, 307; places
citadels 323, 324 144
cities, Egypt 40, 49, 50, 138, 158, 178, 3 1 8 ; cultivators 192, 227, 3 1 1
Palestine, Mesopotamia 49, 50, 5 1 , 139, culture, cultural development 13, 5 1 , 127,
158; city mounds 318-20 349; cultural unity 47; continuity 127
civil servants 50 cultural separation 116, 123, 127
civil war 7 1 , 76, 1 1 4 , 1 1 5 , 1 4 1 , 162, 188, 202, cuneiform texts 360
240, 341 currency, silver 328-9; emmer 328
client kings (Delta) 178 Cusae (Hyksos frontier) 162
climate, climatic variation 18, 30, 178-82 custom dues 327
cloth, clothing 22, 28, 42, 90, 166 cylinder seals 37, 147
coffins 60, 166; Coffin Text 74n Cyprus, Cypriots 285, 330, 339, 341, 343,
collateral dynasties 238, 240, 241 361, 364; pottery 157
collecting (plant) 16, 31 Cyrenaica 148, 253, 271, 274
combs, ivory 27, 31 Cyrene, Cyreneans 285, 330, 343, 344, 345,
'Commanders' (Third Intermediate Period) 364
240, 241, 247 Cyrus, king (Persia) 286n, 297, 340, 341
conflagration (Lower Nubia fort) 160
conquest, Lower Egypt by Upper 45, 69 Dakhla Oasis 1 2 1 , 356
conquests, administration (New Kingdom) Dakka (Lower Nubia) 127
209, loss 204 Dal (Upper Nubia) 123, 124, 128, 134, 168
consumption, court, men of power 176 Damascus 338
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Daphnae see Tell Dafenneh desert margins 8 7 , 1 1 8

Darius I, king (Persian, 27th Dynasty) 281, desert peoples 2, 14, 15, 116, 1 1 7 and n, 170,
2840, 286, 294, 297, 309, 316, 317, 3 3 1 ; 179, 254; see also Libyans, Medja, etc.
temple, Kharga 345; Darius II (27th Deshasha 143
Dynasty) 281; Darius III (31st Dynasty) desiccation 9, 16, 20
281 diffusion 3, 32-3, 4 1 , 48, 66; of ideas,
Dashur 78 and n, 79, 87, 90, 95, 107, 149 stimulus diffusion 37, 38
Debeira West (Nubia) 179 Dineigil Oasis 1 1 9
deben (unit of silver = 10 kite) 328 Diodorus Siculus 282, 296, 299, 302, 309,
Debono 3 3 1 1 and n, 323, 324, 329, 341, 360
debt 312, 315 diorite 65, 144; diorite gneiss quarries 123,
decentralization 5 8 125, 130, 141
decline (Late Period) 347 diplomacy 132 and n, 143, 167, 284, 346;
decoration 34, 37 see also pottery, decorated Mari-Byblos 145; Palestine 143; Persia
decrees, royal 92, 94 342
Ded (Libu chief) 277 diplomatic marriages 29; gifts 144; relations
defacing of monuments 218 (Asia) 255, 259, 269
Deir el-Bahari 1 1 ; Dira Abu el-Naga necropolis, Thebes 15 9
Deir el-Ballas 1; 9 disintigration (Third Intermediate Period)
Deir el-Gabrawi 10 202, 222
Deir el-Medineh 218 disruption (of Persia) 341, 342
Deir Rifeh 1 1 4 , 1 1 5 , 170 Divine Kingship 57, 7 1 - 6 , 163, 178;
Deir Tasa 30 quasi-divine 190, 205, 220, 224
Delphi 330, 342 divorce 312
Delta 40, 238; conquest 243, 24;, 250; little Djau, vizier 80, 109
known 102, 188, 2 7 1 ; people, land 7, Djedefra, king (4th Dynasty) 90, 123
14, 20, 27, 68, 326; settlements, towns Djedkara Isesi, king (5th Dynasty) 123,
104, 158, 178, 208 125, 136, 146
Delta, apex 21, 247; branches 1 5 6 , 2 7 4 ; Djed-Sneferu (town) 90
central/inner 8, 2 1 , 274; northern, Djehuty-hetep statuette 145
north-eastern, eastern 8, 46, 47, 1 1 5 , Djer, king (1st Dynasty) 52, 61, 62n, 64, 70
138, 156-7, 325; north-western, western Djet, king (1st Dynasty) 60, 70; stele 6;
3, 22, 120, 2 3 1 , 235, 242, 253, 271, 272, dogs 17, 19; burials 29
276, 277; west-central 3 1 0 ; south and domestic animals 24
east 309 domestication, animal 3, 16, 17, 18, 352;
Delta, princes 282, 284, 287; Hyksos 156-9, plant 3, 15, 17, 68, 352
173; Libyans 203, 238, 309 Dongola 16, 63, i3on; region, reach 41, 163
'Deltaic K i n g d o m ' 1, 44 donkey 17, 19, 123, 1 4 1 , 228; burials 157
demigods, predynastic rules 44 doorkeepers 81
demography see population doorways (absent) 30
Demotic Chronicle 201, 291, 292, 295, 299, Dorah (north-west Anatolia) 148
302, 309, 360 dowries 328
demotic script 333,348 dress 37, 239, 270, 272
Den, king (1st Dynasty) 52, 57, 58, 61, 70 Dunqul oasis 16, 1 1 9 ; Dunqul-Nakhai area
Dendera 105 and n, 108, 1 1 4 , 159, 354; 120
nome 108, 1 1 4 Duweishat 123
dendrochronology see under chronology dwarfs, court 52; from Punt 136
denticulate stone tools 22 dwellings, single-adult 23
'Department of the Head of the South' 82 Dynasty 1 5 4 , 2 0 7 , 3 5 2 , 3 5 3 ;
and n First 4, 9, 37, 52, 54, 55, 62 and n, 66;
deputy 263, 266 Nile flood 9, 20, 174; Nubia 63; Sinai
' deputy of Wawat' 260 138;
desert, eastern 35, 34, 60, 68, 1 2 1 - 2 , 142n, Second 4, 7, 37, 54, 55, 60, 61, 65; Nubia
253-4; 'eastern desert f o l k ' 2; Nubian 63; Libya 6 1 ;
258; western desert 1 1 9 - 2 1 , 253-4 Third 3 , 6 5 , 66, 1 4 1 ;
desert edge cemetries 87; encampments 118 Fourth 72, 73, 77, 87, 89, 1 2 5 ;
desert fauna (in tomb paintings) 179, 181 Fifth 76, 78, 87, 89, n o , 125, 144, 175;
'desert kites'(game traps) 138 Nile flood 179; Nubia, Punt 126, 136;

433

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Dynasty—cont. Early Khartoum 17, 18, 19, 352

Sixth 7 1 , 1 1 0 , 1 2 1 , 122, 123, 138, 336; Ebla 144
Nubia 126, 127, 129, 134, 258; ebony 43, 6 1 , 270
Sinai/Palestine 1 4 1 , 143; Echinochloa colonum (grass) 17
Eighth 72, 1 1 2 , 178; ecological change 180,181-2
Ninth/Tenth (Herakleopolis) 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 , economic base, resources 238, 282-4, 286,
117 325, 345; changes 62, 190, 350; motives
Eleventh 1 1 4 , 1 2 1 , 122, 137, 1 4 1 , 142, 143, 330, 343; problems 226
155, 178, 297; economy 32, 62, 108, 109, 176, 3 1 8 - 3 1 , 358,
Twelfth 77, 79, 80, 87, 122, 129, 289, 295, 362; economic activity 57, 86; war
306; Nile flood 180; Nubia/Punt 126, strain 342
129, 1 3 7 ; Sinai 141 E d f u , Tell E d f u 39, 60, 1 0 1 - 3 , 108, 112 ,117
Thirteenth 80, 8 1 , 122, 149, 150, 1 5 3 - 4 , 162, 162, 170; temple 102, 159, 293,
156, 159, 178; Nile flood 180; Nubia 294, 326; nome 1 1 3
145, 160, 1 6 1 , 1 7 1 ; Byblos 147 Edjo (Djet), king (1st Dynasty) 70
Fourteenth 154; Egypt, divisions 173, 214, 223, 232, 246
Fifteenth (Hyksos) 76, 88, 15 3-4, 156-7, Egypt, Lower 138 see also Delta; Middle 1 o,
159, 174; Nubia 128, i29n, 1 6 1 , 166, 14, 2 3 1 , 242, 2 5 1 ; Upper, southern 153,
168, 174; Byblos/western Asia 145, 158, 1 7 1 , 177, 180-2, 228, 240, 251
146; Crete 147; Egypt Exploration Society 1 0 8 n , 168
Sixteenth 154, 1 5 8 ; Egyptian Labyrinth 89
Seventeenth (Theban) 1 1 2 , 120, 154, 155, Egyptians in Nubia (Second Intermediate
159; Nubia 160, 1 6 1 , 166, 167, 168, Period) 168
171n, 173; Egypto-Greek symbiosis 19 5
Eighteenth 84, 158, 173, 184, 188, 205, Egypto-Libyan families 287
206, 2 1 7 , 357; Kush, Punt 1 7 m , 259, einkorn (T. monococeum) 18
265, 272; Libya 272; Ekwesh (? = Ahhiyawa) 276
Nineteenth 184, 205, 219, 220, 221, 222-3, Elam 2
224; Libya 238, 272, 278; ' elder of the portal' title 80
Twentieth 184, 188, 205, 219, 221, 222-4, elephants 20, 31
226, 248, 3 1 0 ; Kush 259, 260; Libya Elephantine 99 and n, 104, 148, 162, 316,
238, 272, 274, 277, 278; 3 1 7 , 323, 328, 340; governors 126, 135,
Twenty-first 184, 217, 219, 232, 239, 242, 136, 147; nome 1 1 3
247, 248; elite 192, 1 9 3 ; elite culture 50, 60, 66, 68, 70
Twenty-second (Libyan) 155, 184, 235, Eloquent Peasant, tale 84n, 1 1 6 , 337
239, 240-1, 243, 248, 274, 277; Emheb stele 133n, 134n
Twenty-third (Libyan) 184, 235, 239, emmer (Triticum diococcum) 18, 2 1 , 307, 327;
240-1, 242, 243, 247, 248, 277; as currency 328; wild (T. dtococcoides) 18
Twenty-fourth (Libyan) 184, 235, 248, 277; enemies 6 1 ; * the Enemy' (Akhenaten) 187,
Twenty-fifth (Kushite) 184, 202, 243, 247, 201
248, 268, 269, 308; Enezib (Anedjib), king (1st Dynasty) 70
Twenty-sixth (Saite) 232, 238, 254, 282, Ennedi 13, 16
300, 306, 332, 336; tombs 248, 3 2 1 ; environments 8 1 1 , 3 5 7- 8
chronology 1 8 3 , 2 8 1 ; envoys, royals 262
Twenty-seventh (Persian) 183, 249, 252, epigraphy 1, 2
280; El-Etmanieh 27
Twenty-eighth (Saite) 250, 252, 280, 281, Esna 156
289; Essemteu 304
Twenty-ninth (Mendesian) 250, 252, 280, estates 90 and n; nobleman's 2 1 3 ; private
281, 3 2 1 ; 82, 83; temple 90
Thirtieth (Sebennyte) 148, 250, 252, 274, Ethiopia 282, 352
280, 291, 299, 325; ethnic terminology 1 1 7 ; ethnicity 1 2 3 ;
Thirty-first (Persian) 149, 280 ethnocentrism 15
' Dynastic Race' 2, 13, 3 52 Eurphrates R. 2 8 5 , 3 3 8 ; frontier stele 2 5 7,
258
Early Dynastic 3, 7, 25, 27, 44 -70, 178, 1 8 1 , Evagoras of Cyprus 341, 343
349, 3 5 0 ; Nubia 42, 6 1 - 3 , 1 1 8 , 125, 139, evidence, anthropology, physical 2, 1 2 - 1 3 ,
1 4 1 ; Sinai 1 39, 141 157, 170 and n, 352

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evidence, archaeological 185, 318, 349; foreign domination 297, 298; 'Foreign
Nubia 355; astronomical 183, 280, 353; K i n g s ' (Hyksos) 153, 154, 156, 158;
documentation 318 influence 329, outposts 345; specialists
evidence, archives 185, 187, 223, 3 1 4 ; wills 40
foreign policy, contraction 6 1 - 3 , 202-3, 225
evidence, inscriptions 292, 3 1 1 , 355; 235, 337-46, 357, 363-4; defensive 340,
monumental 185, 187, 204, 353; texts 342, 343, 346; expansion 194, 202, 223,
35 2, 35 3, 359, 3 6 0 ; 2 4 1 ; see also alliances
evidence, preservation 187; see also letters; foreigners 301, 316-18; attitudes towards
tomb paintings 179 194, 195, 316-17, 3 6 1 ; Egyptiantzation,
exchange/barter 326 see also cattle exchange, intermarriage 3 1 7 - 1 8
trade forgery 218
Execration Texts 122, 134, 1 4 1 , 142, 143 fortifications 1 3 1 , 132, 246, 247, 3 2 3 - 4 ;
expansionist policies 194, 202, 205 Palestine 142, 143
expeditions, military/trading 80, 126, 134, fortified towns 239, 240, 247, 258; forts,
1 9 1 , 1 9 2 - 3 , 329-30, 355 fortresses 125, 130-1, 132, 272
Ezbet Rushdi (Delta) 103, 104, 1 0 6 n 'Fortress of the West* 275
fragmentation 153, 158-9, 177
face-paint, green 27, 30 frontier town (Elephantine) 99 and n;
'factors' (agents) 335 second cataract 132
faience 65, 146, 166 and n funerary cults 85, 90; monuments 52, 54,
'Falcon Tribe' 2 55, 66, 221, 248; see also pyramids;
family 5 1 1 - 1 4 , 3 6 1 ; family vault 161 goods 34, 146 see also grave goods
famine 1 1 4 n , 180, 1 8 1 , 229, 275 furniture 60, 64
Faqus 15 3
Farafra Oasis 121 galena (pigment) 142
Faras, Lower Nubia 1 2 4 , 127, 263 game trap 1 1 9 , 1 3 8 ; game, wild 39, 68
farmers, free 3 1 0 ; see also cultivators gaming pieces 64 5
farms, small 227, 228 garrisons 206, 207, 215, 239, 252, 263
farmlands (of gods and goddesses) 302 gazelles 9, 17, 20; burials 25; gazelle traps
fathers' rights 312 1 1 9 , 138
fauna, Predynastic 15 Geb, god 72
favourite, royal 332 Gebeiein 155, 159 and n, 247
Fayum 17, 2 1 , 104, 1 1 5 , 180, 335; Fayum A German Archaeological Institute, Cairo 350
culture 1, 2, 6, 15, 17, 18, 2 1 , 22, 350, Gerzean (Naqada II) 2, 3, 10, 17, 32-40, 63,
356 350; crafts/artifacts 26, 32, 36, 42, 47,
feathers, depicted 3 2 64; chronology 4, 5, 6, 7 and n, 8, 4 1 ,
festivals 358 13 7; external contacts 37-40; gold 39,
fiefs 300 69
figurines, anthropomorphic 27, 3 1 ; animal Gezer 144
146 Ghassalian culture 29, 31
fiqy (Arabic) ' schoolmaster' 335 gifts, gift-giving 328 and n, 330-1 and n;
'First God's Servant' = High Priest 303, gifts, royal 148, 217, 220
306 Gilf el-Kebir 1 1 9
fish, fish bones 9, 23; fishing 16, 20, 22; giraffe 9, 20, 3 1 , 4 1 ; in art 4 1 , 1 1 6
fishhooks 22, 29, 4 1 ; fish traps 3 1 ; see Giza necropolis 77, 79, 95, 108; mastaba
also harpoons tombs 55, 147
fisherman 310 glaze 29, 163, 166
fish-tail flint artifacts 31 goats 17, 19, 2 1 , 29, 4 1 , 43, 352; goatskins
flake tools, stone 24; flakes 22 19; goats, wild (Capra hircus aegagras)
flax 17, 18, 327; wild (Linum bienne) 18
fleet 325; Aegean (Samos) 342 gods 36, 48, 197-9, 308; statues, temples
flint, flint working 24, 29, 4 1 ; flint tools 64 1 9 1 , 2 0 1 ; see also under individual gods,
floodplain civilizations 175
temples, etc.
food distribution, abuses 229; surplus 69
'god's fathers' 307
food producing peoples, economies 14, 16,
'god's servants' (priests) 303, 306, 307
68, 180; food production 16, 4 1 , 68,
'god's w i f e ' 303; ' g o d ' s wife of Amen' 207,
180, 351, 352; incipient 16
241, 243, 252

43 5

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gold, eastern desert 4 1 , 5 1 , 133, 260; Nubia harbours, river 325

39, 1 2 2 - 3 , 226, 255, 258-9, Hardai 247
262; Punt, Irem 259, 270; Libya 275 harem, royal 52, 222, 273
gold objects 32, 34, 64, 1 2 1 , 166; gold in Harim 141
Levant trade/politics 39, 64, 255, Harkhuf 107, 120, 1 2 1 , 126, 129
258-9, 269; 'gold of the desert of harpoons 16, 22, 41
Coptos' 39; 'golden t o w n ' (Naqada) Harris Papyrus 227; 302
39 Harsaphes (god) 304, 308-9
government 189, 1 9 1 , 2 0 7 - 1 8 , 332-7, 358, Harudja 305, 308
362-3 Hathor, goddess 104, 105, 108, 1 9 1 ; Lady of
governors, Northlands 209; Southlands 209; Byblos 145, 147; Lady of Immau 130
foreign lands 239; Kushite 243 and n; Lady of Turquoise 141
' Governor of By bios' 146; * Governor of Hatshepsut queen (18 th Dynasty) 155,
el-Kab' 160; 'governor of the land of 2 1 8 - 1 9 , 255, 257, 270, 271
cattle' 1 2 1 ; ' governor of the oasis' Hawara 89; Hawara channel 180
1 2 1 ; ' Governor o f Upper E g y p t ' 1 1 0 , Hazor 145
114 head-hunting 31
graffiti 142n; Early Dynastic 1 2 5 ; Old headmen 22, 25, 48, 55-6 and n, 69; Nubia
Kingdom 1 2 3 ; Middle Kingdom 120, 62
122, 130; Second Intermediate Period hearths 25, 30
168 Heka-ib shrine 99, 102
grain, wild 15; see also barley, wild, and Hekanifer, Wawat chief 266
emmer, wild Heliopolis 109, 157, 1 9 1 , 274
grain pits 25, 27; prices 228 Hellenistic and Roman period 13, 190, 300,
granaries 2 1 , 22, 23, 24 305, 361, 362
graves 26, 36, 55; grave cairns i i 9 n ; grave Helwan 4, 18, 24, 55, 65
goods 24, 25, 27, 36 Hepu, prince 78n
grazing lands 276 Herakleopolis 241, 247, 250, 284, 335;
'great army general' 206, 207; 'great army Herakleopolitan period 1 1 3 , 137, 296
commander'/high priest of Amen 232, 'herald' i n
234-5, 240 herding 25, 26, 4 1 , 68
' great chief' (title) 2 51 herdsmen 192, 227, 3 1 1 ; ' herdsmen' of land,
great chiefdoms (Third Intermediate Period) people 74 and n
235; of Libu, Ma, 242, 243 hereditary kingship 229; office 229;
'great chief of a nome' = nomarch 108 priesthood 303-5
Great Harris Papyrus see Harris Papyrus Herihor, vizier, high priest of Amen,
' great kenbet councils' 2 1 4 , 2 1 8 generalissimo 2 3 1 , 232, 268; dynasty
' Great River' (Sebennytic branch of Nile) 232, 241
274 Hermonthis 336
'great royal w i f e ' 207 Hermopolis 235, 240, 247, 306
Great Tradition 47, 50, 51, 70 Herodotus 192, 282, 309, 3 1 1 and n, 316,
Greece, Greek states 284, 340; Greeks 316, 320, 328, 360; agriculture, irrigation 14,
3 6 1 ; Egyptianized 296 20, 326-7; Amasis 185, 292, 296, 300;
Grieshammer, R. 74n Memphis 54, 29 3; royal marriage
griffin, winged 37 (Persian) 2 86n, 297; priests 301, 305,
grindstones, grinding stones 16, 25, 1 1 7 , 1 1 9 308
groves, sacred 3 21 Hermotybies, warriors 309-10
Gyges of Lydia 338 Hetep, nomarch/priest 1 1 3
Hetepi 1 1 4
Haaland, R. 352 Hetepsekhemwy, king (2nd Dynasty) 70
Ha-ankhef, soldier 162 El-Hibeh (= Teuzoi) 235, 241, 247, 2 8 4 ,
Hager 15 6 302
El-Hammamiya 4, 5, 7, 10, 27, 30 Hibis (Kharga Oasis) 294
hammerstones 24 Hierakonpolis 4, 27, 30, 170, 349, 350, 3 5 1 ;
Hamy (Harim) 141 town 10, 54, 66, 9 7 - 1 0 1 , 103, 178;
Haptjefa 106; statue 128n cemetery 36; Horus shrine 46, 49,
Har, chancellor 166 105n; kings 46, 49, 1 1 4 ; nome 1 1 3
El-Haraga 148, 149, 156 hierarchy 56, 191

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 INDEX

hieroglyphs 59; writing in Byblos 146; texts incense 1 1 2 , 255, 272

359 Ineni, queen (Hyksos) 163
high priests 202, 217 see also first god's infantry 206, 309
servant; Karnak 251, 255, 506; inflation 228
Memphis 240, 248, 303; Amen at inheritance 314
Thebes 202, 2 1 1 , 229, 240, 241, 248, 252 innovation, technical 67, 68
high priestess see Nitocris 'inquisitor' (Persian legal official) 334
hippopotamus 20, 22, 25; tusks 31 inscriptions 52, 53, 54, 56, 3 5 1 ; see also under
historical change, explanation 174-82; evidence
historical myth 72, 73 insibya (name) 1 , 5 7
Hittites 203, 204, 206, 218, 253, 277 inspection, royal 215, 231
Hor-akhty, god 74 'inspector of Nekhbet' 1o9n; 'inspector of
Horemheb, king (19th Dynasty) 222, 260 priests' 108
Horemkhauef (?i 3th Dynasty) 149 Instruction of King Amenemhat 74; to
horse 190, 192, 277; see also cavalry Merikara 74, 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 , 116, 137, 281,
Horus (god) 38, 49, 7 1 , 72, 1 1 8 , 288, 291, 299; to viziers 84; to the Vizier 194; of
294; myth, legend 46, 7 1 , 86; temple, Vizier Ptah-hetep 76
Hebu 308; Nubia 130, 281, 294; Horus Intef, king (11th Dynasty) 1 1 4 , 143; stele
names 1, 46, 52, 57, 70, 76, 104n; image i28n
(golden) 105n; Horus, Lord of Buhen Intef the Great 1 1 4 and n; Governor of
162 Upper Egypt 1 1 4 n ; nomarch and chief
hostages 257, 263, 266 priest 1 1 4
houses 22, 27, 30, 36, 43, 62, 97-8, 268 see intellectual basis, Egyptology 3 5 5
also architecture; House of Judgement inyelligence reports 13 2
533; House of Life 297; house of Inten, prince of Byblos 146
nurses 82; House of Sand, fortress 274 Intermediate Period, First 7 1 , 74, 76, 95,
Hu 36; nome 108 n o , 112-16, 174, 176, 291, 299, 352;
human type, race 12, 13, 157, 170 famine 178, 299; Nubia 127, 268
hunting, decline 2 ; , 26 Second 75, 76, 149-60, 177, 205, 352, 353;
hunting-collecting societies 20, 22 Nubia 127, 128, 135, 160-74, 268
husbands, royal 217 Third 184, 204, 229, 232-49, 250, 251,
huts 2 1 , 22, 23, 24, 2 ; , 30 357; Assyria 245-6; Libya 235, 238,
Huy, viceroy of Kush 260-5 242-3, 246, 247, 278; Kush/Punt 2 3 ; ,
hydraulic hypothesis 12 5 242, 245-5, 253, 254, 2 7 1 ; world view
Hyksos 76, 153, 154, 155, and n, 158 and n, 189, 245
194, 20;, 255, 353, 356; Kush 162, interpreters 192
173-4 Inti, tomb (6th Dynasty) 143
invasion of Egypt 155, 240, 3 4 1 ; of Levant
Iat-hehu, temple 308 339; of Lower Nubia 62
ibex 9, 20, 25 invasion routes 246
Ibhet 259 Ionian Greeks 284
iconography, ritual of kingship 48, 73; see Ipuwer, sage 75
also regalia Iqen (= Mirgissa) 132, 135
ideology 347, 348 Iran 18, 32
Ieteru (father of Petiese I) 304 Irem 129, 257, 258, 259, 260, 270; people
Ihy and Hetep tomb 9;n 270
Ii-ib-khent-ra (royal name) 168 Irenra, princess 90
Ikhernefret 105 n Irjet (Nubia) 1 2 6 , 1 3 4
Ikkur (Lower Nubia) 131 iron 68, 329, 347
immigration, Cyrenaica, Western Delta 276, irrigation 18, 20, 175, 326-7, 351, 362;
278 canals 327
imperialism 147, 253, 340, 357 Isesi-ankh, prince 78
imports, Egypt from Nubia 43, 166; Nubia Isi, vizier (6th Dynasty) 102
from Egypt 40-3, 257; Lower Nubia Isis, goddess 294, 295, 348
from Upper 166; Egypt from It-ibi, priest/official n ;
Mesopotamia 36; imitations of imports Ith-tawy (12th Dynasty capital) 80, 149, 150
81 Ituri 1 7 1n
Inarus, rebel 286-7, 323, 342 Iuput (mother of Pepy I) 80n, 107

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Iushedefwi 90 Karnak 104, 105n, 153, 170, 173, 180, 227,

ivory 27, 29, 37, 43, 56, 6 1 , 64, 270, 280n; 293, 306, 321
carving, inlay 3 1 , 6 4 , 6 5 Karoy (Nubia) 258; gold 2 5 9
Kashta, king of Kush 269
Jahweh, temple (Jewish, Elephantine) 317 Kasr el-Ghoneita (Kharga area) temple 294
Jakbaal, king (Lesser Hyksos) 158 Kasr el-Megysbeh (Bahriya) temple 345
Jakeb-her, king (Hyksos) 163 Kassala 16, 170
Janus-head 195 Keftiu (= Crete) 148
jar-sealings 37, 58 kenbet-councils 214, 218
jasper(?) 123n Kerma culture ' early' 124, 268; ' classic'
Jebel 'Ataqa 26 128, 166n, 167-8, 170; cemetery 128,
Jebel el-Mawta (Siwa) 345 129, 163n, 164-6
Jebel Sheikh Suliman 62 Kerma town 128, 129, 135, 144, 162- 3 and
Jebel Silsila 40, 53, 61 n, 167; brick castle 128, 163 and n, 167;
Jericho 18 gold 123, 167; statues 144, i6on
Jerusalem 339 Khababash 269, 287
jewellery 26, 60, 62, 64, 158n Khaemhet (Soleb) 263
J e w s (mercenaries at Elephantine) 315, 317, Khafra, king (4th Dynasty) 77, 89, 96, 125,
318 and n, 328, 362 146, 149, 291
Ji'ara 141 Khaneferra Sebekhetep, king (13 th Dynasty)
Joam, king (lesser Hyksos) 15 8 122, 144, 16on
Jordan, R. 138; valley 18 Kharga Oasis 120, 1 2 1 , 294, 297, 345
Josephus 154, 360 Khartoum 70, 352; Khartoum Neolithic 2,
jubilee, royal 72 4 1 ; 'Khartoum Mesolithic' 16, 4 1 ;
Judah 339 Khartoum variant 4 1 , 42
judges 333, 334 Khasekhem, king (2nd Dynasty) 61, 66, 70
jugs and juglets, Palestinian 156 -7 and n; Khasekhemra Neferhetep, king (13th
Tell el-Yahudiya juglets 151 and n, 166 Dynasty) 160
and n Khasekhemwy, king (2nd Dynasty)
Jukun (modern) 49 (? — Khasekhem) 54, 64, 70, 100, 146
justice 83 -4 and n, 2 1 1 , 214, 334, 363; see Khebded, prince of Palestine 141- 2; brother
also ma'aty law; reconciliation 333, 141
537 Khendjer, king (13th Dynasty) 149, 156n
Khent-hen-nefer (= Nubia) 162
K a , king (Sekhen) (Predynastic) 46, 50, 70 Khenty-amentiu 'temple' (Abydos) 6on, 99,
K a , stele (Buhen) 162 107, 109
Ka-aper, scribe 144 Khentkawes, queen (5th-Dynasty ancestress)
Ka-em-tjenent, prince 78 79, 9 0
Ka'a (Qaa), king (1st Dynasty) 70 Khenuka 106
El-Kab 39, 1 1 4 , 128, 160, 170, 1 7 1 , 297; Kheper, Mashwash chief 277
temple, cult 57, io4n, 108, 109 and n, Khesu, prince 78
112 Khety, king (9th/ioth Dynasty) 1 1 3 ; Khety
Kadero (Sudan) 41 II 1 1 5 ; House of Khety 1 1 3
Kadesh 143 Khety, overseer of quarry works 142
Kahun (Lahun) 92, 103, 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 147, 149, Khirbet el-Mshash 141
155, 156, 170; Minoan objects 148; Khnu, House of 1 1 3 ; god, Elephantine 317
papyri 83, 106, 354; pottery imitated Khnumhetep, nomarch 142; prophet i68n
148 K h o r Bahan (Nubia) 42
Kaimhesit (tomb, early 6th dynasty) 163 K h o r Daud 43
Hakara In (royal name) 168 Khufu, king (builder of Great Pyramid) (4th
Kalasiries warriors 309 Dynasty) 77, 80, 90, 96, 123, 146
Kameni, priest 108 Khufa, king (Middle Kingdom) 292; tomb
Kamose, king (17th Dynasty) 160, 169, 173, 327
174, 255, 262; stele 120, 159 and n, 160, Khui (commoner) 80
162, 170, 174, 363; army invasions 162, Khutawyra Ugaf, king (13th Dynasty) 160
167, 170, 173 and n and n
Karabona 274 kilns, grain-drying 36
Karat group (Khartoum Neolithic) 41 Kiman Paris, temple (Farum) 180

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 INDEX

' k i n g ' (title, Third Intermediate Period) 243, labour levies 217, 226; migrants 43;
251 government labour 82, 93; for pyramid
king-lists 353; see also Turin Canon building 86
Kingdom, Old 1, 56, 60, 67, 76, 78, 137, labourers 3 1 1
147, 157, 179, 356; administration 58, ' ladies' (as land holders) 3 1 1
80, 82, 83, 84, 175n, 176, 353; Nubia El-Lahun 79, 89, 90, 92, 156
43, 1 1 8 , 125, 243, 266; temple lake (temple) 321
administration 306-9; titulary 288, 589 lake level, Fayum 356
Kingdom, Middle 2, 73 5, 89, 95, 138, 147, Lake Moeris 180, 326-7
1 8 1 , 243, 323, 3 2 9 , 356; administration, Lamentation of Khakheperra-senb 75
taxes 78, 83, 84, 1 7 7 ; Nubia 125, 129, land, availability 226, 302, 306, 310, 326,
134, 167, 168, 258, 268; Sinai/Eastern 3 6 1 ; holding, tenure 57-8, 81, 82, 227,
Delta 138, 1 4 1 , 144; Eastern Desert 122 310, 3 1 1 ; register 185, 218, 330
Kingdom, New 1 8 1 , 203-32, 238, 239, 242, ' land-measurers' 332-3
306, 357-8; expansion 147, 202; Kush land-owning 301, 302, 307, 327, 362;
208, 254, 255, 263, 269; Libya, Libyans government 226, 227; temple 90,
253, 278, 304; population 190, 300; 106-7, 227; private 81, 226
temples/towns 187, 248; Sinai/Levant land taxation 83
1 4 1 , 147 ' Land of Wad jet' 302
' K i n g d o m of the West' 254 language 43, 265, 352, 359, 360; creolization
kings, sequence, king-lists 1, 1 1 2 , 280 12
' K i n g ' s Ears', King's E y e ' (Persian officials) languages, ' African', ' N e g r o ' substratum 1 1 ,
333 1 2 ; Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) 1 1 ,
' king's son of K u s h ' 262 12, 17, 3 5 1 , 352; proto-Afro-Asiatic 12,
kingship 5 1 , 72, 199-201, 250, 288-96, 360, Akkadian 1 1 ; Aramaic 190, 334, 359,
384; divine 288, 296, 299; myths, 360; Assyrian 360; Babylonian 360;
iconography 36, 72, 389, 294; political Berber 1 1 , 1 2 ; Carian 359, 360; Chadic
73, 74, 2 1 5 - 1 7 1 1 , 1 2 ; Cushitic 1 1 , Egyptian 1 1 - 1 2 ,
kinship 305-8 190, 3 1 6 ; Greek 359; Hamitic 1 1 ;
kiosk of Senusret I 104 Hebrew 359, 360; Latin 359; Omotic
kite (unit of silver) 328 1 1 , Persian 360; Phoenician 359, 3 60;
Knossos (Crete) 144, 147, 159 Portuguese 1 1 ; Roumanian 1 1 ; Semitic
K o m K (Fayum) 8; Kom W 22 1 1 , 12, 37, 1 2 1 n ; Sumerian 37
K o m el-Hisn 157, 274 lapis lazuli 34, 60, 64, 140, 147
K o m Ombo 10, 39 Late Period 190, 194-5, 201, 249-52, 253,
Konigsnovelle, tale of royal deeds 291
254, 268, 279-348, 359-64
Korosko 130
late temples 362
Kubaniya 127
Later Stone A g e 5n
Kubban 122, 125, 1 3 5 ; fort 130, 1 3 1 , 1 3 3 , law 83-4; Egyptian 84, 333, 347, 358;
170 Muslim 85; Roman, Athenian 314
Kulb (near Dal) 123 ' leader of Hierakonpolis' 1 1 4
Kurdish foothills 18 leaf-shaped stone tools 22
Kiirigen Kale (Turkey) 144 learning, tradition 50
Kurgus (Nubia) stele 257, 258 leather clothes 29
Kurru (Nubia) 52, 269 Lebanon 145
Kush - kingdom, kings 128, 134, 1 6 2 - 3 , leguminous plants 43
194; people 25 3, 270; campaigns 134, Leontopolis 235, 243, 246, 247, 248
173, 174; resident Egyptians (Second lesonis 306 and n
Intermediate Period) 162, 167, 1 7 2 ; letters 162, 186, 204, 357
New Kingdom 209, 2 3 1 , 232, 254, 255, Levant 205, 257, 337-42, 563; coastal 22;
257-8, 260, 262, 263; Third Intermediate
Levant-Delta route 37; conquest/loss,
Period 235, 246, 247, 269; Late Period
campaigns 203, 245, 250; commercial,
241, 253; toponyms 134, 157
political relations 2 3 1 , 235, 241
Kushite dynasty 242-5, 250, 251
Libu 253, 272, 276, 277, 278; chief 276;
Kushites, expulsion 194
great chiefdom 235, 242; settlements
Kythera Is. 148
248
Libya 183, 253; Egyptian relations, attitudes,
labels 56, 58 238, 253, 255, 2 7 1 - 8 , 330, 343, 364

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Libyan massif 30 marriage alliances 239, 241, 540, 344;

'Libyan origin' 79-80 ' marriage contracts ' 3 1 2
Libyans 32, 61, 194, 203, 204, 2 3 ; marshland 302
campaigns 238, 245, 274; chiefs 235, Maru-Aten 217
258; threat, pressure, invasion 1, 222, Mas inscription 299
231, 252, 272, 273-4, 282, 343; prisoners M A S C A radiocarbon calibration i i 9 n
238; troops 343 Mashwash 238, 247, 278, 309; cattle, animals
limestone 25, 40, 55, 320; sculpture 65, 66 272, 276; great chiefs 309; invasions
Lindus (Rhodes) 330,342 272, 275, 277, 278; migration 276
lion (in art) 65, 289 mass production 33, 63, 86
El-Lisht 80, 147; pottery 1 6 m mastaba tombs 55, 1 2 1 , 269
literacy 47, 8 1 ; see also writing ' master race' 3
literature, literary works 186, 291, 354 material culture 263, 265, 266, 273, 355
' Lord of the T w o Lands' 286 El-Matmar 27, 248
'lower class' 193 matting 24, 32
Lower Egypt 1 1 0 , 294, 333; borders 6 1 ; mayors 214, 217, 243, 252, 263, 335
crown 44, 70; king 72 Mazghana 149
' Lower Egyptian type' 13 Medamud 82, 104, 159
Luckenbill, D. D. 360 medicine 66
Lukki (Lycia) 276 Medik graffiti 168n
luxury goods 34, 37, 40, 42, 43, 55, 60, 63, Medinet el-Ghurab 1; 6
67, 68 Medinet Habu 321, 32;
Lycia 276 Medinet Ma'adi (Fayum) 104, 180
Lycia 338, 340 Mediterranean 19, 137-49, 253, 302; eastern
253, 277, 279, 342
Ma chiefs, chiefdoms 2 3 ; , 238, 239, 242, 246, Medja people, homeland 122, 132-3, 134,
309 136, 1 8 1 , 259; arrival in Egypt 78, 122,
Ma'adi 3, 6, 12, 24, 25-6, 33, 39, 47, 49 132, 1 8 1 ; Pan-grave 1 1 7 , 172, 254;
ma'at 74-5, 76, 83, 189, 196, 201, 223, 224, troops 170, 171
241, 242; 'priest of Ma'at' 83; Ma'at Medjayu (police force) 2 1 1
goddess 74, 186 Medum 80, 87
Maatibra, kin (Hyksos) 1 6 1 , 163, 166n Megiddo 1 1 4 , 145; battle 330
mace-heads 23, 31, 33, 44, 50, 51, 62, 65 Memphis, area 282, 326; battle 346;
Macedon conquest, administration 287, 300, cemetery, tombs 54, 55, 58, 86-7, 110,
336; Macedonians 19; 1 1 2 , 1 5 3 ; court, capital 55, 60, 72, 155,
machimoi warriors 301, 309-10, 317, 327, 335, 177, 235, 243, 3 1 8 ; provincial centre
344, 3 6 1 103, 112-13 , 214, 238, 246-7, 274;
magic 1 3 2 ; see also Execration Texts priests 3 1 6 ; Ptah, patron deity 6 6 , 7 4 ;
magistrates 194 strategic point 126, 158, 242, 246;
El-Mahasna 30-1 temples 293, 295, 297, 302; town site
' maintenance document' 312 523, 324, 362
malachite 30 'Memphite theology' 66, 72, 178, 356
Malkata (western Thebes) 221 Mendes (Delta) 102, 1 1 0 , 250, 287, 294, 318,
Manetho 1 , 4 4 , 52, 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 , 150, 153, 159, 321, 362
280, 352, 366 Menes, king (1st Dynasty) 50, 54
'map'ofNubia 141-2 Menkaura, king (4th Dynasty) 92-4, 106,
maps 354 1 2 ; pyramid complex, cult 92-4, 95,
Marathon, battle 286 107
marble 65 Menthu, god 82
Marcus Fabius and Titus Quinctius, consuls Menthuhetep, king ( n t h Dynasty) 1 1 4 , 134
282 Mentuehet, Theban baron 3 3 5
Mari (Upper Euphrates) archive 145 mercenaries 1 2 1 , 126, 285, 316, 317, 342,
marine resources 195 364; Anatolian 246; Carian 250, 284;
marines 309 Greek, Ionian 250, 289, 342; Jewish
market-places 3 1 6 ; marketing system 81 3 1 5 ; Libyan 309, 343; Nubian 142; in
Markus 360 Nubia 162, 168
marriage 3 1 1 - 1 2 ; royal 286 and n, 3 1 9 ; merchants see traders

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Merenptah, king (19th Dynasty) 222, 260, Moab 1 4 1 , 142

272, 274, 275, 276, 277 Mo'alla 1 1 3 , 1 1 4
Merenra, king (6th Dynasty) 80, 92, 146 money economy 347; see also currency
Merikara (9th/1 oth Dynasty) 7 4 , 1 1 3 monopoly 206, 226
Merimda 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 18, 22-4, 350 Montuemhet (Theban baron) 306, 307
Merneferra A y , king (13th Dynasty) 152 mortuary cult, priests, priestesses 307, 3 1 1
Merneith, queen (?) 52, 65, 70 Mose (law case) 3 5 8
Merioitic culture 270 El-Mostagedda 27, 170
Merrilees, R. S. 166n ' Mother of the A p i s ' complex 295; see also
Mersa Gawasis (? port of Punt) 137 animal cults
Meryna-ankhnes, queen 107 mounds, artificial 318-20, 321, 347
Merybast family 229 ' mouth of Nekhen' title 80
Meryey, Libu chief 273, 277 mud-brick see architecture
Merymose, viceroy of Kush 259,262 mummification 145; mummified bodies 351
Meshesher, Mashwash chief 277 musicians 92
Meshken, Libu chief 277 mussels 22, 41
Mesopotamia 8n, 14, 19, 2 1 , 48, 49, 51, 349; Mut, god 321
influence 31, 32, 37, 38, ;o, 51, 60, 66 mutiny (army) 28;
metal 6, 339; weapons 208; metal working myth 2, 194, 196-7, 199, 354; of divine
167; metallurgy 30, 34; see also copper, kingship 205, 207
15on
Miam (= Aniba) chiefdom, Wawat 266, 268 Naga el-Arab 1 1 8
'middle class' 192, 193, 195 Naga ed-Deir 17, 18, 32, 56n, 59, 18on
Middle East 354 Nakhlai 1 1 9
Middle Egypt 284, 302, 306 Nakhthorheb 292
Middle Neolithic (Palestine) see under names, personal 3 1 7 ; Libyan 239
Neolithic Napata (Sudan) 245, 248, 251, 254, 258, 262,
middlemen, Nubian 62 269; culture 270
migration 2 - 3 , 1 1 - 1 2 , 17, 66, 127, 158, Naqada ('golden town') (= Nubet) 3, 4, 30,
170-1 3 ; , 39, 46, 49, 103, 178, 350; Naqada I
military 61, 209; 'deputies', officers 214, 3; Naqada II 3, 1 3 7 ; South Town 36;
222, 223; chieftains 238; forces 215, cemetery 36, 46, 55, 58, 350; mastabas
239, 242, 243; military service 83; 55
military basis 282-4, 347; military Narmer, king (1 st Dynasty) 4, 44, 46, 50, 51,
activity 284, 285; military control 70; palette 44, 46, 138; objects 60, 65
(Levant) 2 8 ; ; military prowess Natufian (Palestine) 18, 23, 29
(Pharaoh) 288 Naucratis 294, 328, 329
military settlements 61, 192, 206, 215, 227, Naumann, R. 104
238 navy, naval arsenal 325, 338; naval
millet 17, 17, 41 architecture 347; war galleys 338; naval
Min temple 105, 160, 304 policy (Saite) 363
Min, deity of 'House of Sand' 274 Near East 20, 37; civilization 279; contact
mines and mining 1 1 9 , 120, 1 2 1 - 2 , 129, 1 4 1 , 203; interdependence 3 5 5
142 Nebesheh 318n, 162
mineral resources 60, 66, 144 see also gold, Nebhepetra Menthuhetep II, king ( n t h
copper, etc. Dynasty) 96n, 1 1 5 , 1 1 9 , 130-1; cult
miners' camp 141 96n; tomb 1 1 5 , 143
Minoan - Early 147; Middle 147-8 Nebtawyra Menthuhetep I V , king ( n t h
El-Minya 177 Dynasty) 122
Mirgissa (= Iqen) fort, trading post 1 3 1 and nebty name 1 , 5 7
n, 132, 135, 156, 160, 1 6 1 , 168, 170, 329 Nebuchadrezzar II, King of Chaldea 285
and n; cemetery 129n, i66n, 168 Necho 1, king (Saite, 26th Dynasty) 246,
mirror, silver 146 252, 253, 282, 329, 34;, 346, 362; Necho
Mit Rahina 80; stele, Apries 289, 293, 302, II king (Saite, 26th Dynasty) 281,
315 284-5, 3 30, 342, 346
Mittanians 203, 206, 220 Nectanebo I (= Nectanebis), king (Sebennyte,
Miu (N. Kush) 174n, 2 5 7 ; ' head o f ' Miu 30th Dynasty) 281, 289, 294, 364
I74n Nectanebo II, king (Sebennyte, 30th

441

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 INDEX

Nectanebo II—cont. Northern Egyptian Predynastic Sequence,

Dynasty) 280, 291, 294, 298, 299, 309, tradition 3, 6, 21 and n, 27, 42, 47
341, 3 4 3 , 545, 346 Northlands (Mediterranean coast of Asia)
Nedjeh, king of Kush 162 209; governors, vassal kings 209
Neferefra, king, 90 'Nose of the Gazelle' 143
Neferhetep I, king (13th Dynasty) 145, 146, notched stone flake tools 22
154 Nubia, art 1 1 6 ; cultural history, ' cultural
Neferibranefer 292 seperation' 1 1 6 , 352; food production
Neferirkara, king (;th Dynasty) 79, 89, 90, 15, 40-3, 1 1 8 , 352; peoples, population
125 32, 40, 62, 68, 170, 209, 268; trade,
Neferkara, king (New Kingdom) tale 75, trade missions 107, 123, 125, 132,
292, 293n 135-6, 138-9, 144, 155; tribute 99n;
Neferseshemra, vizier 76 troops 2 3 T
Nefer-seshem-seshat, prince 78 Nubia floodplain 9, 68; border with Egypt
Nefer-shemen, priest 108 30, 35, 42; Lower Nubia 40, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 ,
Nefrusy 173 169, 172, 352
Nehasyu ('southerner, Nubian') 254, 259, Nubia, A-group 42, 62-3, 124, 127, 128, 139,
260 352; hiatus 124; ' B - g r o u p ' 63, 124,
Nehesy, king (?i3th Dynasty) 153 352; C-group culture 1 1 7 , 126, 128, 129,
Neirab (Palestine/Syria) 144 161, 1 7 1 , 179, 268; C-group pottery 63,
Neit, queen 107 124, 1 2 7 ; C-group cattle, agriculture
Neith, goddess 57, 284, 321 127, 1 3 5 ; C-group settlements, huts
Nekhbet, vulture goddess 57, 104, 108, 109n 127, 1 7 1 , 268; C-group cemeteries 127,
Nekhen 80, 262 171
Neolithic 20, 4 1 ; Palestine 23; Middle Nubia, Upper 123, 125, 134-5, 135-6, 254,
Neolithic 350 257, 266
Neolithic subpluvial 181 Nubia, Predynastic, Early Dynastic 51-63;
Nesuhor 'overseer of the gates of the Old Kingdom to Second Intermediate
southern foreign lands' 298, 333 Period 116, 1 2 1 , 125, 127, 130, 160-73,
Nepherites I, king (Mendesian, 29th Dynasty) 174, 154, 256, 258; New Kingdom
281, 341; Nepherites II (29th Dynasty) 183, 220; Late Period 285, 289, 345-6,
281 364
Nesu-menthu, general 143 'Nubian ancestry' (12th Dynasty) 79
Netjer-aperef, priest-official 108 Nubian archaeological aequence 352; Late
Neuserra, king (5th Dynasty) 146 Stone Age 179
Ni-ibu-nisut, priest 108 Nubian sandstone 40
Nika-ankh, family 105, 109 Nubian eastern desert 122
Nile floodplain 8, 10, 14, 16, 40, 68, 3 5 1 ; Nubkheperra Intef, king (17th Dynasty,
flood 9, 58, 75, 160, 179, 180 and n, Thebes) 160, i66n
1 8 1 - 2 , 326, 3 5 1 ; flood control 4 8 , 5 5 ; Nubret see Naqada
river communication 40, 55, 2 1 1 , 253 Nut, goddess 146
Nile, Canopic branch 302; Pelusaic branch Nutjeren (Nynetjer), king (2nd Dynasty) 70
330
Nile Valley 9, 16; peoples 1, 13, 1 1 6 , 1 1 7 ; oases 120, 1 2 1 , 123, 254, 345, 364; see also
water 316, 331 Kharga etc.
Nile—Red Sea area - gold 39; canal 330 'the Oasis' 130
Nimlot, governor 240 obelisks (Byblos) 146
Nitetis, ' princess' 297 observation posts 13 2
Nitocris, priestess of Amen-Ra 291, 293, 302, obsidian 146, 159
303, 327; Adoption Stele 2 9 1 - 2 , 293, occupation, foreign 195; see also Persia, etc.
315, 327, 334, 335, 363 occupational categories 192-3, 195
No (? = Thebaid) 336 Office of Government Labour 82
nomadic pastoralism 16; nomads, 'office i/c Asiatic troops' 15 5
semi-nomads 1 1 6 , 1 2 1 , 124, 159 officials, high 55, 56, 58, 60, 190, 223, 227,
nomes 108, 109, 110, 302, 334, 335, 363; 229; lesser 55, 56, 123, 193, 229;
nome-states 44; chief priests 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 , provincial 58, Late Period 292, 298,
1 1 5 ; nomarchs 108, 109, 1 1 0 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 , 332; estates 57, 325, 328
1 1 4 , 178, 506, 334 Old Testament 353, 360

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Olympias (wife of Philip of Macedon) 298 paramount chiefs, Kush 265

El-Omari 3, 6, 7, 12, 18, 33-5 pastoral economy 12, 4 3 ; camps 4 1 , 4 3 ;
Omdurman 4 1 , 63 pastoralists 43, 49, 63, 258
oracles 199, 218, 250, 358, 363 paternalism 337
Orontes, R. 37 payments in kind 328
Osiris, god 72, 220, 304, 3 1 5 ; peasantry 56, 81, 193, 195, 301, 3 1 0 ; see also
Osiris-Horus-Seth motif 73 cultivators
Osiris Hemag, Saite deity 321 pectorals 146
Osorkon I, king (22nd Dynasty) 235; Pediese, 'overseer of (river) harbours' see
Osorkon II (22nd Dynasty) 240 Petiese
ostraca 145, 146 Peftjuaneith, official 282, 298, 314, 334
ostrich 9, 20, 1 1 9 ; eggshell 1 1 8 Pekrur, Ma chief 246
overlord/vassal 15 8-9 Peloponnese 148
' overseer o f ' : ' all the priesthoods' 2 1 1 ; * the Penehasy, Viceroy of Kush, etc. 2 3 1 , 232,
armyofSatju' 126;'cattle' 214; 268
' commissions' 1 0 8 ; ' the farmlands' Pennut tomb, Aniba 174
332; 'foreign lands' 126; 'foreign penis sheaths 32
troops' 126; 'foreign troops of Satju' Vennisetum (millet) 16, 17
126; 'the gates of the Southern Foreign Pepy I, king (6th Dynasty) 80, 104, 105, 107,
lands' 3 3 3 ; ' g r a n a r i e s ' 2 1 4 , 2 1 8 ; 1 2 1 , 129, 142, 144, 146, I47n; Pepy II
'(river) harbours' 2 5 1 ; 'nomes of (6th Dynasty) 80, 94, 107 and n, 1 1 2 ,
Lower E g y p t ' n o n ; 'the oasis army' 129 and n, 136, 1 4 1 , 143, 146, 147n; cult
1 2 1 ; 'quarry w o r k ' 142; 'the six great and pyramid complex 72, 77n, 95, 96
mansions' 8 3 ; ' the Treasury' 334; Pepy-nakht 142n
Oxyrhynchite nome 302; Oxyrhynchus Peribsen, king (2nd Dynasty) (? = Sekhemib)
to sea 252 54, 57, 70
Perrot 31
P. Berlin ( = Berlin Leather roll) 7 4 , 296, Persia, Persians 190, 192, 253, 268-9,
346 287, 3 3 1 , 333, 340; threat 286, 287, 337;
P. Chicago 1 1 2 occupation 280, 287, 3 0 1 - 2 , 317, 3 3 1 ,
P. Rylands IX 282n, 308, 323, 332, 334, 336, 332, 359-60, 362; government 329, 336,
360 363; invasion 286, 297, 298; period
paintings, Kushite temples 166, 245 254, 294, 301, 305, 307, 3 1 5 , 344, 347
palace, royal 80, 87, 98, 185, 206, 216, 3 2 1 , Persian kings, royal family, aristocracy 280,
323, 324; palace economy, lands 325, 286, 293, 333; collaboration 363
328; administration 5 2 , 5 8 Petiese 'shipmaster' 2 5 0 - 1 , 284, 304, 305,
Palaeolithic, Upper 5, 6, 7, 170 308; Petiese II 304, 305; petition of
Palermo Stone 9, 44, 58, 6 1 , 66, 70, 82, 104, Petiese 284 and n, 302, 304-5, 307,
136, 147, 179, 353 336
Palestine 285, 338, 355, 356; Chalcolithic 38, petitions 84n
1 2 1 n , 138, 1 3 9 ; Early Bronze A g e 19, Petosiris, priest 306 and n, 307, 327
1 2 1 n , 138; 126, 32, 33, 34n, 1 3 9 ; n 60, Petubastis Cycle (tales) 360
139, 140, 156, 157n, 158; Neolithic, food Pharaoh - as priest 242-5, 288, 295, 303; as
production 18, 19, 22, 23 administrator 288, 295, 332; as soldier,
Palestine, cities 139, 142, 143-4, 147, 148; protector 288, 295; attitudes towards
Sinai 1 3 7 - 8 , 142, 143; relations with 281, 299, 348
Egypt 29,49, 143-4, 145, 1 5 7 - 8 , 166, Pharaonic times, civilization 1, 39, 50, 86,
255, 256; Retenu 138, 139n 1 1 6 , 179; court symbols see regalia
Palestine-Memphis route 246 Pharaohs, foreign 155, 297-8
palette, stone, slate 4, 27, 3 1 , 34, 37, 42, 44, Philae 293, 294
62, 65, 350 Philip II of Macedon 298
Pan-grave people, culture 170, 1 7 1 , 179, 1 8 1 , Philistia 285, 330, 338
254; cemeteries 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 170 Phoenicia, Phoenicians 284, 295, 330, 339,
Panehesy, viceroy of Kush 262 562
Pancium sp. 17 phylae 'watchers' (temple servants) 307
panther skins 270 Pi-Ramesse 213, 215, 2 3 1 , 235, 246
Papyrus Bulaq 78, 79, 128, 135, 1 7 1 Pi-Soped 246
Papyrus Sallier I 155, 173 Pi-yer fortress 274

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Piankh, High Priest of Amen, generalissimo presents (goodwill) 4 3 ; see also gifts
of Southern Egypt 204, 205 prices and wages 358
Piankh, son of Herihor 2 3 1 , 268 priests 108, 109, 192, 227, 263, 301-9, 3 1 1 ,
Piankhy, king (Kushite, 25 Dynasty) 243, 327, 3 6 1 ; priest-officials 105, 106, 108,
248, 269 109, 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 ; priest/army leaders 107;
pigs 17, 18, 19, 26; wild 10 Lower Egypt 92; Sneferu 95, 108; Teti
pilots 192 95, 1 1 0 and n
Pinudjem I (Third Intermediate Period) 240; princes 79; Crown Prince 207, 239; see also
Pinudjem II (21st Dynasty) 268 royal sons
pious foundations, trusts 81, 82, 83, 85, princesses 77 and n, 79, 239, 303 4, 335; see
105-6, 1 1 0 , 176; economic importance also Nitocris
107, 176; inheritance 106; statue cults prison register 83, 84; prison labour 83;
105, land 106 prisoners of war 315
pluralism (priests) 308 processional way 321
police 2 1 1 , 2 1 5 ; chief of police 2 1 7 property, property rights 214, 218, 313
polished celts 12 Prophecy of Neferty 75
political institutions, organization 48, 5 2 - 6 1 ; Proto-literate Period (Mesopotamia) 33, 37,
unification of Egypt 1 , 4 4 - 5 , 6 9 ; 39
dichotomy 1 1 7 ; political changes 185; provincial autonomy 83, 84, 103, 238, 250;
political life 3 5 7 provincial centres, capitals 2 1 3 , 2 1 4 ;
politico-theological dogma 45 provincial government 108, 2 1 1 ; governors
Poiycrates 342 108, 1 1 5 , 177, 1 8 1 ; nobility 1 9 2 , 2 3 8 ;
population 3, 20, 125 and n, 190, 299, 300, prosperity 109
357, 3 6 1 ; density 2 1 1 , 2 1 3 , 2 5 3 - 4 ; provisions, beef 508; beer 82, 90, 302, 308;
estimates 23, 51, 62, 103, 190; bread 28, 82, 90, 302, 308; cake 302;
movements, supposed 13, 352; pressure cattle 302; cheese 42, 64; corn 90;
z76 fruit, vegetables 327; geese 302, 308;
pot-marks 63-4 herbs 302; honey 42; meat 8 2 , 9 0 ;
Potter's Oracle 7 5 n milk 302; oil 42; wine 308
pottery, clay 33, 64; mass production 33, Psammetichus (later Psammetichus I),
63; technique, slow wheel 33 crown prince 246, 247
pottery, northern Egypt 2 1 , 22, 23, 24, 63, Psammetichus I, king (Saite, 26th Dynasty),
1 1 9 ; Upper Egypt 29, 34; Lower Nubia reunification, administration 245, 246,
40, 60, 127, 166, 170; Upper Nubia 163, 250-1, 282, 284, 309, 355; foreign
166; Khartoum/White Nile 16, 4 1 , 42, policy, trade 278, 289, 329, 338, 343,
63; Middle East 26, 60 345, 364; temples, statues 289-91, 293,
pottery decoration, incised 63, 1 1 8 , 127, 163, 302, 303, 3 1 5 ; Psammetichus II (Saite,
170; black-mouthed 42; black-topped 26th Dynasty) 252, 268, 281, 285, 292,
29; burnished 4 1 , 1 1 7 ; burnished, red 303, 329, 364; Nubian campaign 281,
slip 1 2 ; dotted wavy line 6; impressed 285, 346; Psammetichus III (Saite, 26th
and incised 1 1 7 ; orange-burnished 1 1 8 , Dynasty) 281, 286, 333
124; painted 17, 19, 32, 33, 62, 63; Psammuthis, king (Mendesian, 29th Dynasty)
polished black 1 3 ; ripple-burnished 29, 281
31, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 1 1 9 and n; undecorated 9
Psusennes* II, king (21st Dynasty) 240
pottery forms, bag shaped 22, beakers 166
Ptah, god 55, 66, 72, 196-7, 2 2 1 ; cult,
and n; bowls, cups 18, 29, 42, 62, 64,
priesthood 102, 238; at Memphis 293,
1 1 7 , 127, 170; closed forms 1; flat-based
302; at Mit Rahina 315
1 2 ; handles, ledge 32, 33, 42; handles,
Ptah-Hetep, vizier (5 th Dynasty) 76,
lug 32; lipped, spouted 24, 32; juglets
84n
161 and n, 171 and n
Ptolemaic Period 201, 254, 268, 269, 274,
pottery imports 26, 39, 42; Nubian, from
300, 330; Ptolemies 195; Ptolemy IV
Egypt 62, 1 2 7 ; imports imitated 32
269, 284
pottery sequence 4, 350
Ptores, 'the Southern Land' 335, 336
power, display 86, 87
Punt 124, 1 3 6 - 7 , 147, 183, 254, 257, 2 7 0 - 1 ,
precious, semi-precious stones 64, 1 1 2 , 144; 329, 330, 346, 359; people 270; boats
see also turquoise, lapis lazuli 270
Predynastic Period 1, 2, 3, 10, 1 3 - 4 3 , 349, purity, ritual 307, 308
350; late Predynastic 17, 22, 138, 349 push-planes 29

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pyramids 51, 53, 87, 95; cemeteries 86, 1 1 3 ; Re see Ra

complex 89, 92, 1 1 2 ; cults, statues 85, rebellion see revolts, rebellions
89-90, 92, 95, 149; temples 78, 85, 89, reciprocity 81, 313 and n, 337
95, 103; tombs 79, 159, 245; towns 92, Red Sea 2, 136, 137, 253, 254, 259, 270, 2 7 1 ,
94, 96, W 362; pirates 330; rifting 269
Pyramids, 'bent* 95, Great 77, 89; Step 4, Red Sea Hills 9, 30, 49, 121 and n, 254;
65;Userkaf 89; Napata 245; small 82, minerals 39, 49
149 Reddesiyeh
pyramid-building 87-9, 108, 1 1 0 regalia, court symbols, 166; ames sceptre 25;
Pyramid Texts 72, 76 beard, royal 289; bull's tail 289; crown,
blue 289; crown double (Upper and
Qaa, king (1st Dynasty) 70 Lower Egypt) 44, 70, 289; crown, red
Qasr el-Sahga 1 o4n, 170 (Lower Egypt) 49, 50; kilt, royal 289;
Qadan 42 nemes headdress 289; indigenous regalia
Qau 156; Qau el-Kebir 1 1 1 Wawat 266
El-Qaw 3 regicide, ritual 48
Qena 33; Qena/El-Quseir route 39 regnal year 82, 279
quarry sites, 104; quarries, quarrying 86, Reharakte, king of gods 197
122, 123, 159n; quarrying expedition reign-lengths 280, 282
1 1 1 , quarrymen 81 religious cults 2, see also under gods, temples;
quartz 65 beliefs 186, 3 1 7 , 347, 358; establishment
Qubbet el-Hawa 99 2 1 1 ; see also under priests, pious
queens 72, 79, 82, 239; Queen Merneith 52, foundations
65, 70 religious texts 2 , 1 8 6
Qustul 62 Reneb, king (2nd Dynasty) 70
resources, revenue 58, 82
R a / R e (sun god) 73, 104, 109, 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 153 retainers, royal 50, 52, 56; retainer sacrifice,
' R a of the foreign lands' 147n funerals, burials 52, 55, 56
Ra-em-ka, prince 78 retaining wall 36, 52
Ra-horakhty, god 146 Retenu (= Palestine) 1 4 1 , 159n;
race relations 3 6 1 ; racial characteristics 352 produce / tribute 15 9n
radiocarbon dating, calibration 7, i i 9 n , 551, revenue, royal 82-3, 206, 226; pious
353; radiocarbon dates, Egypt 6, 7 -8 foundations 80; revenue in kind 302
and n, 16, 22, 1 1 9 , 125 and n, 183-5 revolts, rebellions 286- 7, 3 1 7 , 338, 341, 342;
Nubia 4 1 , 125 and n Persian 541
raids 120, 124, 175 n Rhind mathematical papyrus 15 9n
rainfall patterns 19, 179; rainfall changes 9, rhinoceros 9, 2 5 7
40, 178-9, 3 5 1 ; Sahara 16 ripple-flaking (stone tools) 34
'rainmaker king' 48 ritual 72, 199
ram god (Mendes) 294 riverine resources 41
Ramesses I, king (19th Dynasty) 223, 224; El-Rizeikat area 131
Ramesses II 204, 2 1 5 , 218, 2 2 0 - 1 , 224, rock-art 1 1 7
293; Libya 120, 272; Eastern Desert, royal cities 215, 246; burials 36, 5 1 ; court
Nubia 260; Ramesses III 219, 224, 226, 5 1 ; domain 1 9 1 ; see also cemeteries;
229, 238, 304; assassination attempt 187, inscriptions 53, 57
223, 2 3 1 ; Asia 203, 222, 228; Libya royal monopoly 5 9; power 205, 221, 223
222, 2 3 1 , 272, 275, 277; Nubia etc. 260, royal family 52, 56, 57, 76-80, 82, 241, 242;
266; Ramesses IV 224, 225, 227; relatives 2 3 1 , 235, 238, 239, 240, 250;
Ramesses V 204, 226, 362; Ramesses VI Kushite 257; tombs 78
224, 226, 260; Ramesses V I I 224; royal ladies 78, 79, 82, 83
Ramesses VIII 224; Ramesses IX 96n, royal succession 57, 1 1 3 , 218, 223
224, 226, 2 3 1 , 232, 260; Ramesses X rulers, Predynastic 44
224, 229, 2 3 1 ; Ramesses XI 204, 224, * rulers of K u s h ' 257
226, 229, 2 3 1 , 232, 262, 268 rural life 51
Ramesseum 325; Ramesseum Dramatic Ruru 1 7 1 n
Papyrus 72
Ramesside period 96, 222, 358 Sabaloka, nr Khartoum 40
raw materials 253, 339, 357 sacrilege 160

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Saft el-Henna, Horus temple 294 seasonal occupation 22

Sahaba Formation, see Jebel Silsila Sebek, god 159n
Formation Sebek-khu 143
Sahara, less arid 9; Saharan influences 1 4 ; Sebek-nakht 1 1 2
people 43 Sebek-neferu, king (12th Dynasty) 150
Saharan sites 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 124 Sebennytos 249, 287; nome 302
Sahura, king (5th Dynasty) 77, 87, 1 0 5 n , Second Intermediate Period see under
123, 125, 136, 148 Intermediate Period
Sai Is. (= Shaat) i24n, 128, 130, 135, 168, Sed festival 48, 57, 1 8 1 , 242
255 sedentarism 1 5 , 16, 22, 32; sedentary
Sais 282, 298, 318, 362; gods, temples 292, communities 62, 204; semi-sedentary
293, 294, 297; Great Chiefdom,
227
kingdom 235, 242, 245, 246, 247;
Sedjefakara, king (13th Dynasty) 160
monuments 292; Neith, goddess of 57;
Sekenenra Ta'a II, king (17th Dynasty) 173
provincial centre 240; tombs 248
Seker, Feast of 90
Saite period 289, 296, 301, 309, 330, 338,
Sekhemib, king (2nd Dynasty) 70
340, 345, 360, 362; agriculture 326;
Sekhemra-khutawy Amenemhat Sebekhetep,
chronology 280, 288; Dynasty 245,
king (13 th Dynasty) 160
246; nome 302; officials 363; statues
Sekhemkara, vizier 77
189-91
Sako 173 Skehen (Ka), king (Predynastic) 46, 70
Sekhty (Djer), king (1st Dynasty) 70
sale documents 3 1 3
Sekem (? = Shechem) 143
El-Salhiya 157
Sekhmet, god 306
salt (as tribute) 331
' Semainean' 5
Samos 330, 342, 364
Semerhet, king (1st Dynasty) 70
Sanakht, king (3rd Dynasty) 141
semi-desert 254
sanctuary, Menkaura's temple 92, 94
semi-nomadic life 1 1 6 , 1 2 1 , 124, 159
Sankhkara Menthuhetep shrine 104
Semna (Second Cataract) 127, 1 3 2 , 160,
Saqqara 4, 54, 55, 56, 95, 109, 1 1 2 , 143, 149,
168n, 180 and n, 356; gorge 132, 1 3 4 ;
i66n; king-list 353; ostracon 3 1 5 ;
stelae 65 stele 3 29n
Saqqara North 362 Semna Despatches 13 5
Saras 123, i24n Sened, king (2nd Dynasty) 70
Satire of the Trades 81 Senmet (First Cataract) 13 5
Satju, prince 78, 126, 134 Senusret I, king (12th Dynasty) 79, 87, 104
Sauer 18 and n, i n , 129, 130; documents,
inscriptions 72, 106, 122, 123, 1 4 1 , 143;
satrap (governor) 333; Satrap Stele 298, 302
co-regency, Amenemhat I 79, 1 2 3 ; cult
savanna, Nubian 2 5 4
95; Senusret II (12th Dynasty) 75n, 79,
Sayala 62, 170
89, 92, 149; Senusret III 79, 92, i n ,
scarabs 146, 153, 157, 1 5 9 n , 1 6 1 , 163
122, 1 3 1 , 132, 143, 293, 295, 329n
schist 65, 66
Sepedher stele 1 6 1 , 162
scimitar (Byblos) 146
sequence dating 4, 5
Scorpion, king (Predynastic) 44, 46, 47, 50,
Serabit el-Khadem 1 9 1 , 1 9 4
70
Serapeum 294
scribes 67, 192, 227, 262, 301, 309, 3 1 1 , 334;
serekh 46, 47
scribal schools 75; Wawat 260; 'scribe
serfs 193, 301, 302, 510, 3 1 4 - 1 5 ; voluntary
of the accounts' 3 3 3 ; ' scribes of the
31n
Asiatics' 1 5 5 ; scribes of the prince
seriation 4
(Upper Egypt) 336; Persian 334; royal
serpent designs 37
scribes 334; scribes of the city 335,
Serra 123, 124n, 131
336; scribes of the nome 335
' Sesostris', king 316
sculpture 26, 63, 65, 94, 321
Setem-priest Khaemwose (tale) 293
Scythians 338
Seth, god 36, 46, 49, 57, 72, 157 8, 178, 197;
Sea Peoples, 'Foreign Peoples of the Sea' Seth name 57, 60
203, 204, 253 Sethe, K. 2, 44, 76n, 84n, 266
seals, seal impressions 56, 159, 160; sample Sethnakht 222
sealings 1 6 1 ; seals, mud 156, 1 6 1 , 163; Seti I, king (19th Dynasty) 224, 248, 260,
seal-bearers 5 7 272; Seti II (19th Dynasty) 223, 224

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settled life 126 stratification, divisions 27, 36, 48, 56,

settlement size 26; pattern 10, 96, 246- 9, 1 7 1 , 1 9 1 - 2 , 299-301, 350; upheaval 75,
266, 318, 358; Syria and Palestine 355; 115
sites 23, 125, 139, 187, 3 1 8 - 2 3 , 356; socio-economic system (Late Period) 279,
clearance 139, 1 4 1 ; nomenclature 213 288-318
Seuserenra Khyan, king (Hyksos) 159 solar worship, temple 89, 90, 175
Sewadjenra Nebiryaw, king (17th Dynasty, soldiers 50, 8 1 , 192, 1 9 3 ; Nubian 1 7 1 ;
Thebes) 160 foreign 250; see also mercenaries, troops,
Shaat (Sai Is.) 135 macbemoi
Shabako, king (25th Dynasty) 243 'sole companion', title 332
Esh-Shaheinab 19, 4 1 , 352 Soleb (= Khaemhet) 263
Shamarkian period 40; 'post-Shamarkian' 'Solutrean migration' 2
40 Somtutefnakht 284, 298, 299, 306, 308
share-cropping 310, 328 ' Son of R e ' ( Alara of Kush) 269
Sheb 1 1 9 ' soul-servants' 307
Shechem 143 South, relations 245-6; Southlands 2 1 1 , 257
sheep 17, 19, 2 1 , 29; sheep and goats 4 1 , south-west Asia 1, 4, 11-12, 17, 18, 37, 68;
277; herding 1 1 9 contact with Egypt 13, 27, 32, 37-9, 48,
sheet-flooding 23 5 5; see also Palestine, etc.
Shekelesh 46 Sparta 287, 310, 330, 340, 341, 342, 343
Sheikh Nabi Salah 139 Speos Artemidos inscription 15 5
shell 18, 29 sphinxes 144, 145, 155
shelters 23, 24, 36 spoons, ivory, bone 27, 64
Sherden 276 states 40, 44-5; state gods 50
Sheshi, king (Hyksos) statue cults, gods 6, 81, 85, 104-5 and
Shilluk (modem) 48 201, 303, 307; royal 76, 85, 92, 94, 98,
' Shipmasters' of Herakleopolis 284, 335 105, 1 4 1 , 155, 160, 289; private 105,
ships 37, 39, 166 1 4 1 , 144; provincial 103
Shoshenq I, king (21st Dynasty) 235, 242, statues, copper, precious metal 64, 104-5 and
268; Shoshenq II 240; Shoshenq III n; ivory 65; second-hand 1 6 6 , 1 6 7 ;
2 4 1 ; Shoshenq, Theban High Priest statue-making 6 1 , 104; wood 64
240; descendants 240 steatite 29, 30, 65
Shurafa 247 stelae 52, 65, 78n, 96, 104, 1 3 1 , 160, 161
Shuwet 242 stone-working 3 1 , 65, 68, 86; masonry,
Si-amen, tomb 317, 3i8n rough 1 1 9 ; stonework, reused 96, 104;
Siamun, king (21st Dynasty) 242, 269 see also under architecture; stone artifacts
sickle flints 22, 29 6, 22; vessels, vases 3 1 , 62, 65, 129
Sidon 339 storage jars 23, 24, 64; storage pits 24, 25;
silver 34, 146, 148; currency 38; silver-gold store rooms, royal tombs 52, 5 5
alloy 34 strategic motives 3 3 0 , 3 3 1 n
Sinai 26, 29, 33, 95, 1 2 1 n , 137-42, 226, 329; structures, rectangular 2 5; monumental 36
route, expeditions 18, 19, 54 subsistence pattern 20, 31, 4 2 - 3 ; S. W. Asia
Sinuhe, story 79, 143 1, 1 4 ; subsistence needs 227
Siptah, king (19th Dynasty) 223 subterranean dwellings 2 5; tomb chambers 5 5
sistrum 15 9n succession to office 57; to throne see royal
Siwa Oasis 317, 345; temple, oracle 297, succession
316, 345 Sudan 1 2 , 22, 63, 250, 252; southern 30;
skin clothing 29; see also leather Sudan Eritrea zone 136
slaves, slavery 92, 193, 301, 3 1 1 , 3 1 2 - 1 3 , 315, Suez Canal (modern) 1 3 7 ; Suez, gulf 330
3 6 1 ; slaves, Egyptian 315 Sumenu 15 9n
Smatawy (Somtus), god 308 Sumerian civilization 13
Smendes, king (21st Dynasty) 226, 2 3 1 , 232, sun god see R a / R e
240; dynasty 232 ' supervisor of copper workers' 1 3 1n
Sneferu, king (4th Dynasty) 76, 90, 95, 107, surplus, agricultural 175, 176, 1 8 1 ;
125, 147; cult 95 appropriation 349
Sobk, god 304 Susa I pottery 32; Susian motifs 37, 39
social change, development 34, 63, 185, 350; Syria 13, 19, 29, 60, 338, 355; relations with
institutions, organization 32, 38, 5 1 ; Egypt 1 3 7 , 138, 144, 145, 176

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taboos, religious 316 Teti-em-Saf 95; family 95 and n

Tachos/Taos, king (Sebennyte, 30th Teuzoi (= Elhibeh) 302, 305, 307, 308
Dynasty) 281, 302, 303, 309, 341, 342 Thebes 2 1 3 , 217, 234, 246-7, 302, 308;
Taharqa, king (25th Dynasty) 245 capital, court 82, 1 1 4 , 1 5 5 , 159, 1 7 1 ,
Takeloth I, king (Third Intermediate Period) 247; inscriptions 1 1 4 , 1 1 5 , 1 4 1 , 160;
240; Takeloth II 240 revolt 1 7 3 - 4 ; royal tombs 9 6 , 1 5 9 ,
Taklis 1 1 9 248; temple-state 282, 284, 303-4, 335;
Tanis (port of Pi-Ramesse) 235, 238, 240, Upper Egypt centre 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 , 178, 213,
241, 243, 246, 257, 258, 318, 321 214, 238, 240, 241, 2 5 1 - 2 ; western
Tanwetamani, king (25th Dynasty) 245, 246, Thebes 104, 1 0 8 n , 221
346 Theelus (Thessalus) 282
El-Tarif area 1 1 4 theology, theological legitimacy 7 1 - 6 , 77,
Tarkhan 4, 5 5 78
' Tasian' 5 Thera 148
taxes, taxation 82, 83, 216, 217, 227, 328, thermoluminescence dates 7, 185, 351
333. 334, 335, 3 3 6 ; in kind 5 1 , 5 8 , 6 1 ; Thinis, 238; Thinite nome 52, 1 1 4 ;
tax collection 7 1 , 214, 215, 226, 262; tax northwards 115
exemption 83, 85, 107, 302, 310, 3 1 1 Thoth, god 294
technology 1 1 , 1 7 - 1 8 , 30, 31, 86, 347, 357 Tibesti 22
Tefnakhte, king (24th Dynasty) 135, 242, Tigris-Euphrates 13, 175
243, 248 timber 60, 145, 147
Tell el-'Ajjul 139, 144; Tell el-'Ajjul-Tell titles 57, 58, 59, 72, 78, 80-1
Arad line 139, 141 Tjehenu (Libya) 120, 253, 272, 274, 278
Tell el-Amarna 216, 222 Tjemeh (western desert) 120, 253; Tjemehu
Tell Arad 139, 141 120, 129, 132, 134
Tell Basta 102-3, 104, 105 Tjetji 296-7
Tell ed-Dab'a 156, 157 and n, 158, 160, 356 Tjuk Libyans 274
Tell Defenneh (Daphnae) 323 Tod treasure 148
Tell E d f u see E d f u Tomas 126; Tomas-Toshka area 126
Tell Gath (S. Palestine) 60 Tombos 2 5 5
Tell Hizzin i28n, 144 tombs, royal 36, 49, 52, 60, 85, 176, 321,
Tell el-Milh 141 325; decorated rock 108, 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 ;
Tell Mor (part of Ashdod) 338 linings 52, 60, 64; mastaba 55, 108;
Tell el-Yahudiya 156, 1 5 7 ; ware 161 mud-brick 1 1 2 ; official, private 55, 81,
temple donations, grants 51, 60, 104, 105,
105, 106, 108, 1 1 0 , 1 1 2 , 176; paintings,
201, 202, 206, 292, 302, 307; economy, reliefs 36, 89; tomb models 36; tomb
'temple-days' 106, 286, 298, 325; robbery 229, 248
equipment 92; lake 3 2 1 ; mound 347; toponyms 254-5, 257, 259, 266
staff 90, 92, 106, 201, 306-7; towns 325 Toshka 123, 170
temples 6 0 - 1 , 85, 107, 109, 185, 197, 201, town governor 106, 1 1 2 ; town gods 249;
202, 320-1; provincial 85, 92, 93, 94, chief priests 1 1 0 , 1 1 4 , 115
95; Upper Egypt 36, 55, 92-5, 98-9, towns 40, 48, 103, 130, 213, 248, 318, 335,
104, 105, 106, 108, 2 1 7 ; Kush 166, 245; 3 56; town planning 323 ; town sites
Delta 104, 3 2 1 ; Fayum, oases 104, 345; 318, 362
see also under particular gods town wall 36, 98, 99, 298, 324; hieroglyph
temples, Greek 342; Mesopotamian 37 36
temples, mud-brick 102, 104; stone 66, 74, trade, Egypt 14, 87, 1 0 1 ; with eastern desert
187, 320 258; with Greek world 362; with
temple-building 120, 205, 225, 226, 248, Libya 276, 277; with Nubia 1 2 3 , 1 3 2 ,
292-3; royal visits 61 135, 167, 269; with Punt 269-70; with
tenant-farmers 193 S. W. Asia 38-9, 49, 69
Teneh 105 trade, entrepot, trading centre 26, 27, 33, 49,
Teresh 276 99, 1 3 5 ; trading middlemen 12 3
Teti, king (6th Dynasty) 95, 108, 1 1 2 ; trade, local 68, 127, 135, 139, 249
Teti Merenptah, minor deity 96; trade, long distance 26, 29-30, 48, 60;
objects 146 foreign 59-60, 123, 226; seaborne 60,
Teti, vizier 1 5 n 136; Mediterranean 246, 362; Red Sea
Teti, son of Pepy, ruler of Nefrusy 173 29, 58, 39, 284, 330, 346, 362

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 INDEX

trade goods, cattle 43, 135, 268; cloth 136; Ugaf see Khutawyra Ugaf
grain 14, 136, 249; pottery 168 Ugarit 144, 148
trade goods, luxury goods 329; oil 1 2 3 ; Ukma 134; Ukma West 168
incense 123, 135, 136, 270; ivory 53, Ullaza (Palestine) 146
61, 270; myrrh 329; olive oil 60; resin Umm 'Ebeideh (Siwa) temple 345
1 4 ; ; skins, panther, cheetah 45, 270; Umm el-Qaab area (Abydos) 52
timber 29, 123, 136, 226, 329; throwing Unas, king (Old Kingdom) 72; pyramid
sticks 123; wine 329; wood, cedar complex 96
226; wood, ebony 43, 61, 123, 132 Uni inscriptions 107, i22n, 142
trade goods, raw materials 63; electrum unification, Egypt 43-50, 55; united
136; gold 69, 1 3 ; , 136, 274, 349; silver Egyptian state 46-7, 5o, 57, 67; Saite
329; copper 1 3 9 ; trade beads 29; 282, 284, 285, 335
turquoise 139 Upe 143
trade relations, Greeks, Phoenicians 284 upper classes 50, 58, 63, 67; see also elite
trade routes 49, 2; 3; Arabia 330; Darb upper Egypt 10, 12, 1 , 21, 26, 49, 284, 350;
el-Arba'in 120, 128, 1 3 ; , 162, 167; burials 1, 23; control 289, 303, 3 3 ,
desert oases 120, 126, 254, 395; 336, 340; industries 3, 5, 27-39;
Egypt-Palestine 26, 338; Nubia 253; 326
sea 25 3, 339; Nile R. 63 'Upper and Lower E g y p t ' , king of 57, 72
traders, Egyptian 43 ; Greek 329; uraeus figures (Byblos) 146
Phoenician 529, 330; S.W. Asian urban development 5 0 - 1 , 70, 96-103,
39-40 137, 138, 185, 263, 358
trading colony (Kerma) 129; trading posts Uronarti (Nubia) 134, 136, 1 6 1 , 163
329, 347 Userkaf, king (5th Dynasty) 76, 105, 125,
traits, cultural 2, 3 148
transport 86, 325 Userkaf-ankh, official 110n
Treasury 82, 214; treasurer 215 usurpation 96, 250
triads, slate 94
tribute 226, 262, 265, 272, 331 Valley of the Kings 3 21
troops 209 see also army vases, ivory 27; stone 25, 27, 3 1 , 34
Tshetres 336 vassal rulers, Delta 158, 1 7 3 ; vassal states
Tukh 19 under Assyria 245, 250
Tuna el-Gebel 327 Vatican sculptures 289
Tyra 50 Viceroy of Kush 174, 209, 223, 2 3 1 , 259,
Turin king-list 44, 149, 153, 154, 156, 158, 260-2, 268
353 villages 22, 123, 137, 139, 1 7 1 , 2 1 3 - 1 4 , 318
turquoise 29, 30, 60, 64, 139, 1 4 1 , 142; mines viziers 77, 80, 82, 84, 85, 214, 215, 217, 238,
332; families 109, 1 1 2 , 154;
95
'Instructions' 76 and n, 84, 1 9 1 ;
turtle 3 5
'messengers' 1 9 1 , 2 1 5
Tutankhamen, king (18th Dynasty) 190, 221,
votive objects, Byblos 145
223, 260, 263
Tuthmosis I, king (18th Dynasty) 2 , 257,
wadis 9, 1 2 1 ; wadi farming 14, 24, 1 2 1 ;
262; Tuthmosis II 257; Tuthmosis III
wadi stream activity 179
174n, 204, 206, 2 1 8 - 1 9 , 226, 257, 270;
Wadi el-Allaqi 43, 1 1 8 , 122, 125, 126, 1 3 3 ,
story 293 and n, 330; Tuthmosis IV
258, 259; Wadi el-Allaqi Wadi Gabgaba
220, 259
118
' T u t i m a e u s k i n g (? 15 th Dynasty) 154
Wadi Ba'aba 141
Twosret, 'female king* 223
Wadi Gabgaba 122, 258
typhonic forces, beings 289, 297, 298
Wadi Gasus 137
Tyre 339
Wadi Hagar Shams 13 3
(Jadji (Djet), king (1st Dynasty) 70 Wadi Haifa 40, 62, 170
Uadjyt (Wadjet), goddess 57, 293; cult 104 Wadi Hammamat 27, 38, 39, 1 1 1 , 260, 317,
Uam 134 329
'Ubaid period (Mesopotamia) 53, 37 Wadi Hof 24
Udimu (Den), king (1st Dynasty) 70 Wadi Ho war 119n
Udjahorresnet inscription 294, 295, 297, 298, Wadi el-Hudi 122, 147, 148n
333 Wadi Kharit 141

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Wadi Maghara 141 wheat 17, 18, 28, 43, 52, 56, 327; club wheat
Wadi Mia 60 (Triticum compactum) 18
Wadi Natrun 54; wbyt village 213, village mayor 214
Wadi el-Qash 60 Wilbour papyrus 192, 227, 302, 310, 3 1 1 , 318
Wadi es-Sebua 1 2 0 , 1 7 1 windbreaks 23, 25, 30-1
Wadi Tumitat 330 wine 120; wine jars 62, 64
Wadjet, goddess see Uadjyt winged-disc 166
Wahankh Intef, king (1 ith Dynasty) 1 1 4 women, position of 312
and n wood 29-30, 1 2 3 ; pine 330; timber 339;
Wahibra Ibiyau, king (13th Dynasty) 149 wood-working 41
walls 5o, 9 5 , 104 and n, 248, 3 2 1 ; see also world-view 188-202, 349, 358
town walls writing 1, 37, 40, 56, 58-9, 67, 190;
war-galleys 347; war footing 200; war cuneiform 359; demotic 3 4 8 , 3 5 9 ;
leaders 206; warfare 330 hieroglyphic 3; 9
warrior groups (Saite) 300; warriors 301,
302, 309; see also machimoi xenophobia 316-17
' waters of R e ' (E. branch of Nile) 274 Xerxes, king (Persian, 27th Dynasty) 281, 298,
Wawat control 209, 257, 258, 260, 262, 263, 302
266; desert, gold 258, 259, 260; people
263, 265, 266, 270; relations with Egypt Yam (? = Irem) 126, 129, 135
126, 150, 134, 254, 25; Yapa-shemu-abi, prince of Byblos 146
web priests 306, 307, 308
Weng, king (2nd Dynasty) 70 Zaouyet um el-Rakham 275
Wepwawet 106 Zedekiah of Judah 339
Westcar Papyrus 77, 292, 293n Zer (Djer), king (1st Dynasty) 70
Western Sudan 8, 18 Zet (Djet), king (1st Dynasty) 70
wet-nurses, royal 217 zoomorphic palettes, vases 34

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