Out of the Black Land

Afterword

On the State of Egyptology

A scholar, says poet A. E. Housman, is in the position of a donkey between two bales of hay who starves to death because it cannot make up its mind which bale to eat. Even though my friend Dennis Pryor says the natural position of a scholar is between two mutually antagonistic theories, I find the state of Egyptology unduly contradictory.

Consider the following, which confronted me just before I lost my temper with the whole thing. I am considering the position of scribes in the 18th Dynasty.

Barbara Mertz, author of Red Land, Black Land and a notable authority, says on p 134: ‘there were no little mud-brick schoolhouses in Egypt.’

Strouhal, also a notable authority and author of Life In Ancient Egypt, says on p 36 that there is evidence: of whole classes run for trainees…scribes…in the capital city of Thebes…(and) at the Ramasseum…and in later times…at other centres too.’

Now, although they may not have been made of mud-brick, they sound like schools to me.

Mertz adds, ‘girls were not taught.’ Strouhal retorts, ‘we know the princesses joined in (the classes) because one is portrayed with a writing tablet in her hand.’ Mertz says: ‘there were no schoolbooks;’ to which Strouhal replies: ‘the textbook was called Kemyt’.

Mertz says: ‘arithmetic was not taught’; but Strouhal states that: ‘the teaching (of mathematics) was limited to simple arithmetic and algebra which scribes might need…there were textbooks.’

Mertz says: ‘we do not know what age education began’; while Strouhal says without any qualification that: ‘schooling was from the age of five to eleven, though there was one scribe who was there when he was thirty.’

All this disagreement is on a relatively minor point. Both go on to quote extensively from the Satire of Trades, where a scribe urges his son to be a scribe and get a job where he can sit down. Both scholars agree on the palette, the pens, and the habit of learning to write on ostraca or on a plastered board which could be wiped clean—because these objects have been found in tombs.

What, I ask, is one to make of this? Strouhal and Mertz both sound authoritative, which is the habit of scholars. Both clearly have read widely and know their subject. But they can’t even agree on what age Egyptian scribes began their training; and this is repeated across the whole spectrum, from analysis of various hieroglyphics to the names of Gods and the outcome of wars and the dates of reigns.

To say that Egyptology is in a state which my mother would call ‘a dog’s breakfast’ is, in my view, to understate the case. I studied this area for some years. Then I travelled to Egypt to see it for myself. After a week of hard reading on my return, I was on the point of homicide; and if an Egyptian scholar had asked for my aid in extracting him/her from a deep pit it would have gone hard with them.

The other problem is that, much more than Greece or Rome, Egypt has been an ideal tabula scripta for each person to overwrite their particular religious—particularly religious—views upon.

Thus James Henry Breasted, the learned translator of every document in Ancient Egypt, except the ones I want—and who trained for the priesthood before being captured by Egypt—insists that Akhnaten was a secular pre-Christian saint because the cult of the Aten was an attempt at monotheism, and [unsaid] monotheism is good, solid and worthy; a real religion, while polytheism is crude, primitive and superstitious.

The utterly worthy and very learned Wallis-Budge, Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum and translator of hieroglyphics, wrote a long monograph on the subject, also insisting that the whole Egyptian culture was monotheist. This argument, though fascinating if that’s what interests you, has taken up an awful lot of scholarly capacity which could have been directed to finding out, for instance, what the calendar of festivals looked like; something which six month’s work could not do for me.

The Akhnaten/Nefertiti marriage has also attracted more past-life regressions and reincarnations than any other; and the general reader could easily sink into a wallow composed of new age air-headedness and 19th century religious intolerance if some sort of sceptical lifebelt was not available.

The prejudices of the writers seem much more to the fore than in, say Greek scholarship, which even so certainly had its debates. The arguments over Orphism, for instance, should not be attempted by the infirm or those susceptible to sudden shocks.

But most Greek scholars seem to have admitted that there was a strong homosexual element to life in ancient Greece, and have not been unbearably shocked by it. After all, it was Greece, and it was a long time ago, and chaps don’t have to behave like that now.

But when Akhnaten is suddenly seen without Nefertiti and in the company of his brother Smenkhare, who has been given the title of Great Royal Wife, and is pictured playing kitchy-coo on the Berlin Stele, it provokes indignation.

The ‘saint’ who made a brave attempt at a real religion could not possibly have been perverted! says a shocked and horrified Mertz. He couldn’t have had an endocrine disorder, impossible! He had six children! (I have an explanation for this) and in any case it is out of the question. Breasted and Strouhal agree with her.

I have never seen such a parlous state of scholarship. Surely there is nothing which is, per se, out of the question? What have these people been doing with their remarkable learning? What is wrong with Egyptology? The scholars can’t consider an ordinary case of transferred parenthood, and the wild edge are convinced that the pyramids came here from Mars.

Attitudes like these must have driven some fine fresh minds right out of their heads and into the latest discoveries in Anatolia, rather than take on Egyptian Scholarship. The rest belong to the Velikovsky/Ahmed Osman lunatic fringe. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between.

So, gentle reader, I have been forced to make Executive Decisions. I have based them not on anyone’s theories but on the papyri and the tomb inscriptions. As far as I can manage, the Egyptians speak in their own words. Where they were silent, I have supplied my own and if I have four contending theories as to what something means, I have picked the one I liked best.

I am quite probably wrong in some cases, but with the state of learning in this field, who could possibly prove me so?

On the Pathology of Akhnaten and Related Subjects

I don’t know what some historians think with (see previous remarks on the state of Egyptology) and I do not exempt myself from this criticism. Much study can send one mad, and much study on a small bit of a complex subject can render one bonkers faster than an indulgence in white crystalline powders of unknown origin.

The pathology of Akhnaten is a case in point. The depiction of the King grew progressively more grotesque with every passing year, as can be seen by comparing the early shabti of a plump boy with drooping breasts and a belly which overflows his cloth, with the full blown freak on the colossi in the Cairo museum. This is not a normal person. He has an exaggerated jaw, sloping, bulging eyes, a receding forehead, breasts, no visible penis or scrotum, and the fat distribution seen in such women as the author. He had classic childbearing hips, a belly which bulges and folds, and thick, heavy thighs.

There are some signs that this physique was adopted by courtiers for their own portraits—and this is not uncommon. There was, for example, a short-lived period in China where all the court ladies were fat, because the Dowager was fat (and they were very attractive, too) but this reverted to the Chinese ideal of a willowy beauty as soon as the Dowager departed the scene—but there are no ‘Akhnatens’ after Akhnaten is gone.

Two theories are extant: the general freedom of Amarna art produced mannerism; or the king had Frohlich’s syndrome, or some other endocrine disease, possibly caused by a pituitary tumour. The second has the advantage of combining with the first—the realism of Amarna art meant that the king was depicted as he was, i.e., deeply strange.

There is, as far as my untrained eye can discern, no mannerism in Amarna art beyond the freeing of the figure to be depicted face-onwards, the addition of many subjects which were not drawn before (like the lady throwing up at a party), and a certain fluency of drawing. Egyptian art was never realistic—consider the unpleasantness of meeting a man with two visible sideways shoulders and one leg perpetually advanced—but Akhnaten’s reign certainly loosened the style considerably.

I therefore was immediately drawn to the second theory—that there was something wrong with the king which was not wrong with other members of his immdediate family, as evidenced by the examination of their mummified bodies. There was nothing awry Akhnaten’s brothers, Smenkhare or Tutankhamen; or with his father Amenhotep III, afflicted with toothache as the poor man must have been.

We do not have Akhnaten’s body, so all this must be speculation.

However, the learned Cyril Aldred, author of Akhenaten Pharaoh of Egypt, has considered that Frohlich’s syndrome is the most reasonable explanation.

On p 104 he says: ‘Until recently it was possible to speculate that though the daughters of Nefert-iti were described as begotten of a King, it is by no means certain that the king was Akhnaten, particularly when Amenhotep III was alive two years after the youngest had been born…’

This entirely agrees with the theory at which I had independently arrived; and I was astonished to read Mr Aldred’s conclusion:

The discovery of damaged texts at Hermopolis…has made it reasonably clear that Akhnaten claimed responsibility at least for begetting the eldest daughter Meryt-Aten; and the presumption is that he is also the father of the other five daughters of Nefert-iti. If he is not, he cannot also be the father of the daughters of Meryt-Aten and Ankhes-en-pa-aten….[it might be argued that they are the children of Smenh-ka-re]… but it seems that both princesses bore children before Smenh-ka-Re could marry either of them. In that case the royal father of their children can only have been Akhnaten.

In that case the father can only be Akhnaten?

Historians are bound by the mores of their own time (as am I) but all of them assume that there must be some betrayal or deception if children are not fathered by the husband of the mother, because they lived in a biologically-limited society, when marital fidelity was fidelity and adultery was adultery.

In my time, when surrogate motherhood, reproductive technology and sperm banks exist, there need be no breach of marital faith if children are fathered or even mothered by someone other than the person who claims parenthood.

Akhnaten’s lack of ability to father children was dynastically disastrous and his own father—who had proved his fertility—might have considered it his duty to impregnate the Queen. In a more squeamish century, the Queen might have taken a secret lover to ensure the succession—as Queens have done in historical time.

In the Amarna dynasty, when all beliefs were up for grabs and the King believed in an immortal unknowable God, when Amenhotep III himself was the product of a divine birth, when the King believed that he was personally and by virtue of his deformities, growing into a God himself, would he not have claimed fatherhood of any child his wife and daughters bore? The daughters’ children would have been sired by someone in the Royal line, probably Smenkhare, but possibly a priest of the Aten. The child would be seen as a child of Aten, fountain of all fertility as Hapi, the God of the Nile whom Akhnaten strangely resembled.

Also, I have always been suspicious of anyone who proclaims so consistently that he is a family man.

Anyway, the fathering of her children by her father-in-law need not have interrupted Nefertiti’s relationship with her husband, any more than it destroys the amity of the couples who presently resort to IVF or sperm donation. The use of a donor does not mean that these children are any less their parent’s, or that they are loved any less than those born by the conventional method. Akhnaten and Nefertiti could have been blissfully happy together. By the pictures, they were.

Transliteration of Egyptian

This is really difficult. Ancient Egyptian is not the father of modern Arabic, so few useful comparisons can be drawn, unlike modern and ancient Greek or Latin and Italian. Like Hebrew, written Egyptian did not have vowels. Intelligent guesses can be made about vocalisation, but no one knows how it really would have sounded (though the Copts still speak an extensively modified version). It had also interesting dialectic points, like three versions of h. Much as I appreciate authenticity, I contemplated a few names in their direct transliterated form Smnk’r’ for Smenkhare, Nfrtyt3 for Nefertiti, Akhnaten is Gm.(t) p3-itn, for instance and decided that I would stick to a uniform spelling, using the system which employs an ‘e’ as a default vowel, even though this may occasionally be erroneous. I have thus used Amen instead of Amun. I have also used Maat for the Goddess of Truth rather than M’3t or Mut on purely euphonic grounds and to avoid confusing her with Mut the Mother of the Gods, wife of Amen-Re.

I have also not used the personal names of the Pharaohs but their reign names, simplifying the number of people the reader has to remember. Otherwise this would have borne a startling resemblance to one of those Russian epics where you encounter a character three times under different names and you can’t recall what a patronymic is, anyway.

Times

This is another problem, but I am boldly and with some justification assuming that the reign of Amenhotep III was about 1450 BC.

In the rest of the world at that time: Troy dominated the entrance to the Black Sea; cities were beginning to form in Greece, centring on Mycenae; Minos ruled the Aegean from Crete or Kriti; China went into the Bronze Age; and my ancestors in Wales were working on the perfect bronze arrowhead and trading in tin with Achaean adventurers. The Trojan war had not yet happened, nor any of the events from the Iliad or the Odyssey, but they were imminent. The world was about to change.

The Measurement of Time

The Ancient Egyptians divided the year into three seasons of four months each. They were Akhet—inundation; Peret—sprouting; and Shemu—harvest. Each month was composed of three ten-day weeks. One worked eight days and rested two (and from the Deir-el-Medina records, frequently made it a three day weekend). Lacking the right word, I have called these ten-day periods a decan, from the Greek.

Of course, this adds up, as alert mathematicians will have noticed, to 360 days. The extra five intercalary days—the epagomenae—were part of a rather large festival, the days on which one celebrated the birth of certain Gods: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nepthys, Neith.

The Egyptians loved a good festival and there seems to have been no lack of days of rejoicing, feasting and getting seriously drunk.

It was common for the calendar to get out of synch with the real world, but no one seems to have worried much, as long as the many festivals and the free beer arrived.

They were an admirably relaxed people in most matters.

Like the Roman hours, the day was divided into 12 hours of light and the night into 12 hours of darkness, measured by water clocks. In winter, of course, the night hours were longer than day hours, and vice versa in summer. The klepsydrae used to measure time were almost as accurate as the Chinese ones of the same date.

The hours seem to have had more of a religious or ritual use than an everyday one. Priests need to know when to change the God’s attendants and soldiers when to change guard. Peasants know when they can stop working and go home by the sun.

The Calendar

The year begins at Summer Solstice—the rising of Sothis/Isis/Sirius from 70 days absence in the underworld—and it is the occasion of the New Year Feast. It ends with the epagomenae.

AHKET: inundation/ flood

22 June-July Thoth New Year.

The Nile begins to rise.

Sothis rises 9th day; ‘eat fried fish at your door’ Festival of Hapi.

19th day Festival of Thoth.

July-August Paophi 19th day Opet Festival of Amen Re at Karnak & Luxor (at least a seven days festival, later extended to 22 days).

22nd day Festival of the Nativity of the Staff of the Sun.

The Nile is red.

August-September Hathor Amenhotep III’s Accession was the second day of Hathor.

The Nile becomes green and poisonous for a week, and drinking-water is stored until it becomes red again.

17th Festival of the Death of Osiris.

September-October Khoiak equinox

Birth of Osiris

18th to 30th Festival of the Opening of the Ways (sluices opened to flood inland plain)

PERET: spring/sprouting

October-November Tybi heb-sed (jubilee)

11th day Festival of the return of Isis from Phoenicia with the body of Osiris.

Ritual mating mystic marriage and, on the 19th day, hippo cakes for Horus’ victory over Set.

November-December Mechir Festival of Sekhet destroyer, the lioness in the mountains. Everyone drinks red beer in memory of salvation of humanity.

December-January Phamenoth

Sowing of seed in tears and mourning for the Feast of Dead Osiris Lamentation ‘come to thy house,’ branches of wormwood are carried, dogs lead the procession.

January-February Pharmuthi, Feast of Khons

Moonlight feasts, entry of Osiris into the moon.

SHEMU: harvest

February-March Pakhons, Festival of Rennutet (cobra lady) 19th Osiris is found.

March-April Paoni, Festival of Isis equinox 25th day feast of lights Fires in the streets because Sothis has sunk below horizon. Osiris in Field of Reeds.

April-May Ephipi Horus goes to Hathor, Feast of Apis (Osiris as bull) 7 days in Memphis: birthday of Horus’ eyes. Hot dry weather, khamsin.

May-June Mesor festivals first fruits (harvest) Grapes ripen; everyone gets thoroughly drunk. Very hot and dry.

EPAGOMENAE: the intercalary days

The five extra days of the calendar, are the birthdays of:

Osiris

Anubis/Horus

Set

This day is terribly unlucky and no one does anything on it, no contracts are signed and no work is done, especially by creators. A red-headed male child born on this day might well be killed. It was kept as a fast.

Isis

A very lucky day for weddings and births.

Nepthys

Also a lucky day for weddings.

The Gods

There are several trinities of gods, reflecting the thrifty way that the Egyptians never wasted a good deity but just incorporated them into the existing pantheon; a custom which the Romans later found useful.

When Upper (south) and Lower (north) Egypt joined, their gods were also combined; although the most important was always some form of the sun, Re (or Ra) or Amen; and, of course, briefly the Aten. Re could manifest in the form of a ram, a hawk or a dung-beetle.

Note also that nefer, the word for god, has no levels of importance; unlike the Hebrew scale of angels or the Christian’s ‘thrones dominations and powers.’ This makes it difficult to judge, just from the name, whether a nefer or nefert was a small local deity or a star in the state religion.

Iwnw or Heliopolitan Cosmogeny

Amen-Re began as Aten who emerged self-created from the primeval ocean Nun, took the form of the Bnbn—or the phoenix, a bi-sexual creature. It flew to the top of the Bennu stone, masturbated and from his swallowed sperm created Shu, god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of water/moisture/rain; who then produced Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky; who in turn gave birth to the sun or Amen-Re. This was the cosmogeny adopted at Thebes and Karnak and was as close as Egypt got to an official religion.

Heliopolitan/Theban Trinity

Amen Re: God of the sun (aka Amen Ra) is Khephri when a scarab beetle, and Harahkti when a hawk

Mut: Mother Goddess, vulture-headed wife of Amen

Khons: God of the moon and time, son of Amen and Mut

Children of Amen-Re and Mut

Tefnut: Goddess of water/wetness

Geb: God of the earth (only the Egyptians had a male earth god)

Nut: Goddess of the sky. Nut mates with Geb every night and gives birth to the sun.

Shu: God of air, he prises Geb and Nut apart and allows for day.

Children of Geb and Nut

Osiris: God of the dead and King of the Field of Reeds

Isis: Goddess of magic, women and fertitlity, wife of Osiris

Horus: The Hawk, the revenging son of Osiris and Isis

Set: The Destroyer, brother of Osiris and his murderer

Nepthys: Guardian lady, sister of Isis

Neith: Guardian of the dead, sister of Isis

Hathor: Goddess of beauty and love, sister of Isis, lover of Horus, depicted as a cow.

Lesser Gods

Thoth: The Scribe, ibis-headed God of wisdom and healing

Maat: Justice and Truth, who weighs all hearts against her feather

Opet: Hippopotamus-headed mother of Osiris

Ptah: The Creator who formed the world with words

Sekhmet: Warrior Goddess, lioness-headed wife of Ptah, mistress of epidemics, ‘spreader of terror’

Sobek: The crocodile god

Basht: Cat Goddess, mistress of erotic love (especially in Bubastis in the Nile Delta)

Edjo: The Cobra. She appears on the crown as a uraeus and protects the King.

Min: God of fertility, depicted with an erect phallus.

Wepwawet: The Wolf, avenger of Osiris

Anubis: God of embalmers, jackal-headed protector of the dead

Apep: The Great Serpent, foe of Amen-Re

Apis: The Bull, an aspect of Osiris

Hapi: grotesque male-female God of the Nile

Bes: God of childbirth and fun, a grinning ithyphallic dwarf

Memphis Cosmogeny

Ptah is identified as Nun, the primeval ocean, which produced Amen-Re and acted through thought and word to create the whole world and everything in it.

Ptah was called Lord of Truth but Memphis was less powerful than Thebes and so he only achieved a local popularity.

Memphite Trinity

Khnum: God of the Nile, the Potter who made humans on his wheel

Satis: Goddess of the Nile Floods, gazelle-headed wife of Khnum

Anukis: Goddess of the Nile, Daughter of Khnum and Satis

Hermopolitan Cosmogeny

This never caught on as a royal religion but involves a group of eight gods, or Ogdoad: Nun; Kuk, the god of darkness; Amen, ‘that which is hidden’; Huh, eternity.

Their female consorts have feminine versions of their names: Naunet, Hauhet, Kauket and Amaunet. The male gods had frog’s heads and the females had serpents; possibly reflecting the soggy nature of Hermopolis.

In the beginning the eight deities created and ruled the world; or in an alternative version it was laid as a world egg by an ibis, representing Thoth (though Thoth is usually male) and hatched to reveal the child Re, whose tears became humans.

***

This is only a partial list of the gods worshipped in Ancient Egypt. A full list can be found in any study of ancient Egyptian religion, though you must retain an open mind about how popular they were and where they originated.

I favour the accretion theory—that they were all local gods who remained known because they were written down, and remained in worship because they had temples which were perpetually endowed with taxes and staffed by priests and priestesses who were useful to their supporters, by being also doctors and scribes. There are a lot of other theories.

A survey of the number of religious beliefs which the average Egyptian could hold simultaneously will explain how King Akhnaten was able to grab hold of one aspect of Amen-Re and turn it into a solar cult with himself at the head of it.

It also explains why this was so desperately unpopular that no one mentioned his name for the next thousand years without calling him ‘The Traitor’ or ‘The Villain..

Akhnaten had tried to steal their gods and their afterlife from the common people, and this was unforgivable.

On Egyptian Customs

Herodotus—my favourite ancient historian—was wandering around Egypt in about 450 BC and had this to say about Egypt, in Book 2 of The Histories: (translation Aubrey de Selincourt)

I travelled to Memphis, Thebes and Heliopolis…and about Egypt I shall have a great deal more to relate because of the number of remarkable things which the country contains…

Not only is the Egyptian climate peculiar to that country, and the Nile different in behaviour from all other rivers, but the Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind. For instance, women attend market and are employed in trade, while men stay at home and do the weaving. In weaving the normal way is to work the threads of the weft upwards, but the Egyptians work them downwards.

Men in Egypt carry loads on their heads, and women on their shoulders; women pass water standing up, men sitting down. To ease themselves they go indoors, but eat outside in the streets, on the theory that what is unseemly but necessary should be done in private, and what is not unseemly should be done openly.

No woman holds priestly office…Elsewhere priests grow their hair long, in Egypt they shave their heads. In other nations people…mark mourning by cutting their hair, but the Egyptians mark a death by letting hair grow on head and chin.

Other men live on barley, but…in Egypt they make bread from spelt (wheat). Dough they knead with their feet, but clay with their hands.

They practice circumcision…Men in Egypt have two garments, women only one. The ordinary practice at sea is to fasten the sheets to ring-bolts fitted outboard; the Egyptians fit them inboard.

In writing or calculating instead of going, like the Greeks, from left to right, the Egyptians go from right to left and obstinately maintain that theirs is the dextrous method, ours being left-handed and awkward. They have two sorts of writing, the sacred and the common. They are religious to excess…

They wear linen clothes which they make a special point of continually washing. They bathe in cold water twice a day…they never eat cows, for they are sacred [to Hathor]… this is the reason why no Egyptian, man or woman, will kiss a Greek, or use a Greek knife, spit or cauldron, or even eat the flesh of a bull known to be clean, if it has been cut with a Greek knife.

I always felt that there was a sense of personal affront in his account of the Egyptians’ refusal to kiss Greeks, but otherwise the Father of History is pretty much spot on about Egypt.

Herodotus was an excellent observer, and many of the things he said, which have been discounted for centuries, turn out to be true.

Consider, for example, the recent discoveries of ancient graves in Northern Kazakhstan—made by the Centre for the Study of Eurasian Nomads—in which several women were buried with well-used weapons made to fit their hands, and some men were buried with cooking pots and children. They are quite likely to be Herodotus’ Amazons and he may have been right all along.

One can see from the tomb paintings that he was right about the way people carried loads; we know that each house of any pretension contained a lavatory, so they would have gone inside to excrete. I have myself seen present-day women pee quite respectably while standing up—so that too is possible. I have no information about men, however, because no Ancient Egyptian drew this act (possibly because it was ‘unseemly’).

Herodotus is right about barley being food for animals and wheat for humans, about kneading with the feet, and about men weaving—for the Satire of Trades is clear on this point.

As he was also correct about linen clothes, about circumcision and about writing, I am assuming that he was right about women attending market and trading; though all modern commentators reject this out of hand based on observations of both Copts and Arabs in present-day Egypt. Although even in modern Egypt, I might add, the people in any given souk are mostly women, though few of the traders are.

Herodotus was accurate about the process of mummification; but he was wrong about no women being priests. There have been many priestly offices held by women, including, for instance, the Chantress (Singer) of Amen at Thebes, who was ruler of her own kingdom at some times.

Based on similar ancient practice in other nearby lands, I have assumed that the priests of Isis were women, and that there were sacred prostitutes in the temple of Hathor. I might be wrong; but see my previous comments on the state of Egyptology. I am more likely to trust ancient practice in other places than a modern interpreter drawing parallels from their own entirely different culture, race and religion.

Sexuality & Marriage

There are few references to sexual sins in the confessions. One is required to say ‘I lay with no woman when she was a child’; and in one of the Maxims of Ptah-Hotep he tells his son not to ‘lie with a boy-priest (or boy-lover) because to satisfy his heart one must do such things as are not done.’ But the latter can be read as requiring his son not to get involved with the dangerous cult of Astarte, which could lose him his testicles.

Sodomy is depicted in paintings as something which occasionally happens at feasts and in the fields. So is ordinary sex. I am not even talking about the Turin Erotic Papyrus, where the ‘raise high the roofbeams’ massive phallus of the bald man would have qualified him for a great future in porn movies, out-doing Long Dong Silver of recent fame.

Before they married, Egyptians seem to have been able to mate as they liked, and this is borne out by shocked comments from all the ancient visitors. They were already shocked by the way the Egyptian women could go where they liked and lie with whoever they fancied. There is a considerable body of erotic verse by women, and I cannot dismiss all of it (as one writer has done) by assuming it was written by wishful-thinking men. It has a strong female feel to it; unlike, say, The Wife’s Lament in Anglo Saxon which was almost certainly written by a man. It is more like the verses of the troubarits in Provencal.

The only absolute duty one had in ancient Egypt was to marry and beget. After marriage both parties were supposed to be faithful to each other. No one has found a marriage ceremony, which in most cultures is a transference of property from father to husband; but the woman seems to have left her own home to live in her husband’s house.

Commonly she would have had a pre-nuptial agreement on which she could sue if the marriage broke down. Egyptian women had rights to two thirds of their property, a right to divorce, a right to own and run her own business and to will her property to whomever she pleased. She did not belong either to her husband or her father, but to herself; and what else can one require of a sensible system? No other ancient woman, except perhaps in Troy, had such freedom.

Burial Customs

One of the multitudinous problems which confronted me when considering the reign of Akhnaten was, if we have a king who believes in the ‘unknowable immortal’ Aten—who denies the worship of, and actively suppresses the worship of all other gods—what are we to make of the fact that all the royal personages buried during his reign, even at Amarna, were mummified in the usual way and laid in painted tombs with their furniture to await the afterlife?

The worship of the Aten precludes any other gods and also precludes an afterlife, because all that the spirit can hope for is union with godhead after a brief flirtation with reincarnation. That means no judgment, no weighing of the heart, no confession, no magic, and indeed, no Osiris, no Isis, and no Field of Reeds.

There are no intact royal burials from Akhnaten’s time, but we have the mummy of his brother Smenkhare who was certainly embalmed in the proper way. The burials of his father, his mother, his daughter and the officials from this time—though sacked by Horemheb and relocated and robbed—appear to have been done in the time-honoured fashion. Akhnaten may have modified the ritual and omitted portraits of the gods, but the bodies were still preserved as usual.

My friend Mark Deasey mentioned that in the North of England people who have been converted to Methodism for four generations still bury their dead by Quaker rites; and in Afro-American ritual, traces can be found of the African customs, remembered from the time before slavery. I suggest that burial is the most traditional of all rites, the one where most old religion and superstition attaches, because doing it wrongly may mean that the dead come back and tell you about it.

That means, logically, that the temples of Isis and Osiris must have remained and that the large funeral industry must have continued during the time of Akhnaten.

Watchers

I have translated these as Watchers, rather than Guardians, and they were the world’s first police force. They were responsible for the maintenance of public order; for the care of the vital dykes, walls and canals; and for any other duties, like guarding tombs and settling domestic disputes. They reported to the Mayor or Headman of the village, who in turn reported to a District Court, which reported to the Nomarch and thence, if it was a really hairy issue, to the Pharaoh’s judges.

In this it is remarkably similar to the Chinese system of District Magistrates who had their own staff for investigation, who reported to a District Court and thence to the Emperor’s High Court.

The Watchers, as an institution, lasted into Roman rule.

Nomes

These were the equivalent of states and everyone disagrees about how many there were. There were probably forty-two, although by Strabo’s time there seem to have been twenty-seven. My favourite source, Herodotus, writes of Nomes but does not say how many there were, which would indicate that he didn’t know. I find it hard to believe that he didn’t ask. He does say that the Labyrinth of Government contained twelve halls so there may have been twelve major divisions and sub-nomes as well.

Each Nome had its ruler, or Nomarch, who was usually the biggest landholder. All land in Egypt belonged to the king however; ever since the Age of Chaos when a number of warring Nomarchs reduced Egypt to ruin. After that, no man could own any land—but was allotted it by the king, who owned everything; although this modified freehold could be given, sold or willed.

Every Nome also had its attendant god. For instance, the Nome of Uast—which is Thebes—had, as its capital, Thebes (or Uast); its symbol, the Ram; and its God, Amen-Re.

The Nome of Set had as its capital, Shas-hetep; its symbol, the Black Dog; and its God, Khnem (Amen the father, a phallus).

A full list can be found in Strabo, though he is late; or Pliny, who is later. In the 18th Dynasty, there appear to have been ten Nomes in Upper Egypt, ten in the Delta, and seven in the Heptanomis in Nubia.

Tax & Labour Systems

All land belonged to the Pharaoh; the land title system was a lesser form of freehold (see above); and taxes were assessed on variable factors—the rise of the Nile flood, the fertility of a given field, and the previous history of the land.

The harvest was assessed by inspectors, the seed allotted on that basis, and the farmer left to get on with it. When the grain was harvested the tax was collected. If the farmer had not worked diligently, he owed labour to the state; unless he had a good reason—which included death of a son or parent and climatic factors.

Egyptians used few slaves; those they had were all captives of war; and the child of a slave was not necessarily a slave. Therefore, during the reigns of the belligerent kings, say Rameses II, Egypt had a lot of slaves; and in the reigns of the politically ingenious pharaohs, such as Amenhotep III, there were correspondingly fewer slaves.

Indentured labour—farmers who had not paid their tax and labour levied in something similar to the feudal corvee in Europe—had to be fed and cared for; and their services could not be either demanded during the farming season or kept beyond the dry season.

All those monuments which astound the beholder were built either by indentured or by hired labour, and not by slaves. The Romans also used soldiers, not slaves, to build all those roads which led to Rome and all those remarkable water systems. As the 20th Century has shown, slaves do not make good labour.

On Meteorites, Heliopolis & the Bnbn Bird

Have I mentioned that much study on Egyptology drives people insane? Nowhere is this more clear than in the subject of pyramids. One look at the astounding symmetry and telemetry of the pyramids has fine scientific minds talking about a pre-existing and possibly alien race which must have existed before 10,500 BC; because how otherwise could such simple people align these monuments perfectly on 30 degrees of latitude.

You see what I mean? I don’t know how they did it either; except that assuming ancient people were stupider than we are (because we are so terribly modern and have computers and technology) is foolish.

For this reason—but more so because they were built long before the time I am considering—I shall say no more at all about pyramids.

But the bnbn bird, on the other hand, is fascinating.

Every visitor to Egypt in the ancient times was told about the long-awaited bnbn—or benben—bird. The Greeks called this self-created, self-generating creature the Phoenix. It was later adopted into Christian iconography as a symbol of Christ and his resurrection.

The temple of the Phoenix at Karnak is an open space surrounded by massive walls. In it is the Bennu pillar—a pillar with a rounded top, later a stele with a rounded top,—on which the bnbn bird will perch when it returns to Karnak. Escorted by all the birds of the air, it will deliver its ‘parent’—a ball of myrrh and semen which produces the new Phoenix. (Squeamish later writers made the bird female and the ‘parent’ an egg, which is much more sanitary).

Then the bird will betake itself to its favourite date palm, make a nest of cinnamon, cassia and frankincense and sing its last song; after which it will summon fire, by cupping its wings, and burn away to ash. The new Phoenix, or the same one, will then fly from Karnak returning only to die, in the same way, after an interval variously described as anything between 500 to 12,000 years.

Tacitus, in his Annals, and agreeing with Herodotus, suggests that it came back to Karnak in AD 34 after 500 years; while Pliny, in Natural History says 1200 years. The best poem about it is by Lactantius, who describes, in gentle elegaics, its escort by the birds, its red and gold colouring and its final and glorious death: ipse quidem, sed non eadem quia et ipsa nec ipsa est, aeternam vitam mortis adepta bono—‘Because she is herself and not herself, gaining eternal life by the boon of death’.

I am, by the way, entirely convinced by Bauvel and Gilbert’s thesis of The Orion Mystery that the pyramids were aligned to the rising of Isis/Sothis/Sirius; and that the Egyptians were aware of the precession of the equinoxes.

This also solved a problem for me. In the remarkable book, Akhenaten: The Heretic King, Redford has shown that Nefertiti was repeatedly depicted as priestess to the Bennu/Benben/Phoenix bird in the form of a black stone—like the pyramid-capping stone in the Cairo museum. This is explained by the hypothesis that this was—like the ka’aba in Mecca—a meteorite, which flew like a firebird and left just a black iron egg behind; from which it would doubtless again arise.

The connection of the Queen to the cult is not obvious, but may be as I have hypothesised—that she signified the divine or cosmic womb, the womb of Isis seeded by Osiris/Orion, who gave birth to the Aten, the mystic unknowable God whose avatar was the disc of the Sun.

I am fairly sure that the Phoenix can be identified with Isis/Sothis/Sirius; and that possibly the interval of 1260 years—a Sothic cycle or Sirius year—regulates the return of the Phoenix.

However, the fact that the iconoclast monotheist Akhnaten has a whole wall and chamber at his new Aten In Splendour temple at Karnak devoted to Nefertiti as the head priestess of the bnbn cult is strange and to my mind must signify more than a desire to confer honour upon his wife. I have suggested some reasons why the King did this.

The Fate of…

Ankhesenamen

No one knows what happened to the sister/wife of Tutankhamen. If she was alive or present at the accession of Horemheb, he would certainly have married her. She did attempt to bring a prince of Assyria to marry her, and he met with a fatal termination of his matrimonial hopes somewhere on the border. Several writers have sentimentalised about her sad fate, notably Desroches-Noblecourt, who thinks that Ay is a good guy and Horemheb a cruel and brutal dictator. It occurred to me, however, that she might have decided to take some hand in her own fate before she expired of acute nomenclature.

Tutankhamen

The young Pharaoh’s mummified body has extensive damage, but it is now hard to tell if it is post or antemortem. If it was postmortem, then someone dropped the Divine Corpse down a lot of stairs.

Ay, who took over the rule of the Black Land, is the obvious suspect.

Mutnodjme

The accidental Queen of Egypt died in childbirth some years after the accession of Horemheb. He never remarried and had no children. After his death, the kingdom went to an old army commander, and thence to a new dynasty.

Horemheb

The warrior Pharaoh died peacefully after reigning for twenty-seven years. He had the temple of the Aten pulled down, and even the tombs of Huy and Ay looted of their treasures (though their bodies were not touched). Despite his bad press, I do see his point.

Horemheb was certainly not a tyrant and his reign smoothed away most of the problems created by the Amarna experiment. However, the kinglist puts him directly after Amenhotep III, giving him a reign of fifty years, and making the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb a real surprise because no one could identify him. Horemheb decided—or the later writers decided it for him—that the Amarna dynasty had been a mistake and that the Pharaoh who should have followed Amenhotep the Wise, was Horemheb; and therefore deleted all references to all of them.

I don’t think, as some writers have suggested, that Horemheb was a miser who robbed all the Amarna tombs for gold and who only missed Tutankhamen’s tomb because he couldn’t find it. He was at the funeral; he knew where it was. He merely pillaged the tombs of the pillagers; and since he spent most of his reign attempting to mend the damage they did to Egypt, one can see his point.

Ptah-hotep

The scribe was actually called Amenhopis but, for story I had to tell, I decided this would cause too many identification problems as I already had two Amenhoteps.

Ptah-hotep died at an advanced age and in honour. His tomb paintings—which rather stress Thoth god of scribes and the making and drinking of wine—also include a hut by the river with a dog on guard, and two men making love in the reeds.

***

The amount of research which this book entailed was much heavier than I expected, due to the aforementioned state of Egyptology.

I was surprised by the change in my attitude to the Egyptians. I began by thinking that they worshipped death, and ended by realising that they worshipped life.

Kerry Greenwood





Bibliography

Original Sources

Egyptian Rituals and Incantations translated by John A Wilson in ed James B Pritchard Ancient and Near Eastern Texts Relating to the New Testament 3rd Edition Princeton UP 1969

From The Literature of Ancient Egypt ed W.K. Simpson (New Haven) Yale University Press 1997

The Maxims of Ptah-hotep

The Prophecies of Neferti

The Instruction of Dua-Khety (The Satire on the Trades)

The Man Who Was Tired of Life

The Instruction of a Man for his Son

The Instruction of Amunnakhte

Medinet Habu Temple Calendar

Documents relating to the Amarna Dynasty and the accession of Horemheb

From Breasted James H Ancient Records of Egypt Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd London 1988

From the Papyrus of the Scribe Ani in The Book of the Dead translated by E.A. Wallis-Budge, Bell Publishing Company New York 1962

The Pyramid Text

The Book of Coming Forth By Day

The Book of Gates

The Amarna Letters translated by William L. Morgan from The Amarna Letters John Hopkins University Press Maryland 1992

Secondary Sources

Aldred, Cyril Akhenaten Pharaoh of Egypt Abacus Thames and Hudson London 1968

Andrews, Carol Egyptian Mummies British Museum London 1984

Bierbrier, Morris Tomb Builders of the Pharaoh British Museum London 1982

R. Bauvel and A. Gilbert The Orion Mystery Mandarin London 1995

Cott, Jonathan The Search For Omm Sety Arrow London 1989

Cottrell, L. The Secret of Tutankhamen’s Tomb Mayflower New York 1964

Cottrell, L. The Warrior Pharaohs Evans Bros. London 1968

David, Rosalie A. The Ancient Egyptians, Religious Belief and Practices Routledge and Kegan Paul London 1982

Desroches-Noblecourt, C. Tutankhamen Penguin London 1965

Desroches-Noblecourt, C. Life and Death of a Pharaoh Rainbird London 1963

Desroches-Noblecourt, C Temples de Nubie Des Tresors Menacés UNESCO Paris 1961

Duff, J. Wright and Arnold Minor Latin Poets (Lactantius) Heinemann London 1961

Edwards, I.E.S. The Pyramids of Egypt Pelican London 1947

Freed, Rita A. Egypt’s Golden Age Museum of Fine Arts Boston 1982

Grant, Joan Eyes of Horus Corgi London 1942

Gurney, O.R. The Hittites Pelican London 1966

James, T.G.H. Egyptian Painting British Museum London 1985

James, T.G.H. and Davies W.V. Egyptian Sculpture British Museum London 1983

Jenkins, Nancy The Boat Beneath The Pyramid Thames & Hudson London 1980

Kamil, Jill The Ancient Egyptians Wren Publishing London 1976

Lamy, Lucie New Light on Ancient Knowledge: Egyptian Mysteries Thames and Hudson London 1981

Laver, James Costume in Antiquity Thames & Hudson London 1964

Leavesley, J.H. Medical By-ways A.B.B. Books Sydney 1984

Malek, J. and Forman W. Echoes of the Ancient World Orbis Books London 1986

Mertz, Barbara Red Land, Black Land Hodder & Stoughton London 1966

Neubert, Otto Tutankhamun and the Valley of the Kings Mayflower London 1972

Norton, Andre Shadowhawk Harcourt Brace New York 1960

Oates, Joan Babylon Thames & Hudson London 1979

Osman, Ahmed Stranger in the Valley of the Kings Grafton London 1993

Redford, Donald B. Akhenaten: The Heretic King Princeton University Press published in Egypt by The American University Cairo Press Cairo 1992

Simpkins (series title, no authors given) The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut and The Temple of Karnak (guides bought in Egypt at site)

Strouhal, Eugen Life in Ancient Egypt Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1992

Tyldesley, Joyce Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt Viking London 1994

Velikovsky, I. Oedipus and Akhnaton Sidgwick and Jackson London 1978

Wallis-Budge, E.A. Egyptian Religion Routledge and Kegan Paul London (reprint) 1975

Wallis-Budge, E.A. The Gods of the Egyptians: Studies in Egyptian Mythology Dover New York 1969

Journal Articles

Aldred, Cyril ‘The Tomb of Akhenaten at Thebes’ in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 1957 p41

Botermans, Jack and ors Le Monde des Jeaux Société nouvelle des editions du chine, Amsterdam 1987

Gardiner, Sir Alan ‘The Coronation of King Haremhab’ Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 1953 13-31

Sandison, Dr A.T. ‘Analysis of Frolichs Syndrome and Akhenaten’ in Aldred, JEA op cit

Tait, John ‘Senet’ New Scientist 22/29 December 1990

Thibault, Daniel U. ‘Senet: The Game of Passing Through the Underworld’ in Tournaments Illuminated Autumn 1996 Issue 120 p16

Music

Music in the World of Islam 2. Lutes 4. Flutes and Trumpets and 5. Reeds and Bagpipes.

Tapes and recordings done by Jean Jenkins and Paul Olsen Tangent Records London 1972.