The ancient Egyptians said that Menes, who first ruled at This,[131]
brought the whole of the land under his control. They designated him as
the first king of a first dynasty and thus unequivocally marked the
unification of their land as the beginning of their history. If we allow
for the telescoping of events by which tradition often credits a single
person with the achievements of two or more generations, we may say that
archaeological discoveries have corroborated this tradition. The
establishment of the single monarchy appears, indeed, as the political
aspect of the birth of Egyptian civilization.
We possess contemporary monuments on which two Upper Egyptian
kings—“Scorpion”[132] and Narmer—record their conquests in the north
country. A votive macehead (Fig. 26) shows the earlier of the
two—Scorpion—at the opening of a canal. He wears the tall white crown
which in historical times symbolized dominion over Upper Egypt. Above
this main scene appear emblems of divinities placed on standards which
serve as gallows to _rekhyt_ birds; these birds, in all probability,
designate inhabitants of Lower Egypt.[133] Scorpion seems to have
subjected the whole Nile valley, for his monuments have been found as
far north as the quarries of Turah, near Cairo.
Narmer, however, extended his power even over the marshlands of the
Delta and appears, therefore, as the true prototype of the legendary
Menes. Among several monuments of his which have been preserved, a large
votive palette of slate (Figs. 27, 28) is the most important. It seems
to be a concrete record of the unification of Egypt or, at least, of an
important stage in its realization. On one side, Narmer, wearing the
crown of Upper Egypt, destroys a chieftain of the northern marshes. On
the other side, the king, now wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, inspects
a number of beheaded enemies. Thus Narmer is shown as the first “Lord of
the Two Lands.”
But it would be a mistake to read the Narmer palette as a mere tale of
conquest. The “unification of the Two Lands” was, to the Egyptians, not
only the beginning of their history, but also the manifestation of a
preordained order which extended far beyond the political sphere and
bound society and nature in an indestructible harmony. Of this order
Pharaoh was the champion. Throughout historical times the texts
proclaimed this conviction, and pictorial art expressed it by great
compositions in which the towering figure of the king destroys,
single-handed, the misguided wretches who have sided with chaos in
opposing Pharaoh’s regimen. It is significant that this aspect of
Pharaoh’s power should be expressed in art for the first time in the
reign of Narmer.[134]
To appreciate the novelty of the design of the Narmer palette, we must
investigate its antecedents. Material and shape proclaim it as a
specimen of a common type of toilet article: throughout predynastic
times slate palettes (Fig. 4) had been used for the grinding of a green
powder which, put on the lids, protected the eyes against glare and
infection. On the Narmer palette, too, a round space is set aside for
this purpose, even though the size of the object seems to preclude
actual use. Now palettes, as well as combs, knife-handles, and so on,
had been embellished with reliefs during the last phase of the
predynastic period. Among such decorated objects, two treat new
subjects. The first, an ivory knife-handle found at Gebel el Arak in
Upper Egypt (Figs. 23, 24), shows, on one side, the pursuit of game, a
motif which recurs on other objects of the same age; on the other side
is depicted a battle. The second, the Hunters’ palette (Fig. 25), shows
two groups of men who have joined forces in an attempt to destroy lions,
perhaps because these infested wasteland which had to be reclaimed. The
two groups are identified by standards carried in their midst.
The battle scene and the hunting scene are without parallels in
predynastic times. But they are likewise unconnected with later Egyptian
art. Their novelty consists in the rendering of communal action, their
un-Egyptian character in the manner of that rendering. Both knife-handle
and palette present a faithful record of the actual course of events:
groups of men are engaged in combat or move together towards game. We
must suppose that some of the figures stand for leaders or chieftains,
but there is nothing by which we can identify them. Each scene shows the
melee characteristic of the occasion. But to the Egyptian of historical
times such a veristic rendering was totally unacceptable. It hid the
true significance of occurrences by merely rendering their outward
appearance. However large the masses that moved in battle, built temples
or pyramids, went into the deserts to quarry stone or mine gold, they
were moved by the will of their divine ruler. Art was adequate to its
purpose only if it stressed this fact. It did so by using, throughout
two and a half millennia, variants of Narmer’s composition. Note that on
the macehead of Scorpion, the classical Egyptian viewpoint is not yet
rendered in its purity: men are shown to assist the ruler;[135] and the
strangled _rekhyt_-birds swing from the standards of the gods. On some
other fragments which antedate Narmer[136] the divine standards are
provided with hands to show their active participation in a ruler’s
victory. But on the Narmer palette, as on all monuments of historical
times, Pharaoh acts alone. The standards of the gods have become
adjuncts to his progress (Fig. 28), and men are merely followers; no act
of theirs can be significant beside his own.
If the characteristic Egyptian conception of kingship first received
pictorial expression under Narmer, it found its first literary
embodiment in a famous text which, from internal evidence, must likewise
be assigned to the formative years of Egypt.[137] This is the so-called
Memphite Theology. The lasting value of the theory of kingship which it
expounded is shown by the fact that the only copy now extant was made as
late as the reign of king Shabaka in the eighth century B.C. Moreover,
it relates the theory with an act of Menes, the founding of Memphis. The
text concerns us, therefore, because of the date of its inception; the
act which it presupposes; and the interpretation which it offers.
The significance of the age of our text is evident. In view of the
overriding importance of the institution of kingship for Egyptian
society, the formulation of a theory of kingship at the very beginning
of the monarchy aptly illustrates the emergence of the “form” of
Egyptian civilization at that critical time.
Reference to the founding of Memphis is made in our text by implication:
its tenor is to emphasize the profound significance of the city. Thus
the content corroborates the linguistic evidence for an early date of
the document, since a trustworthy tradition, preserved by Herodotus,
ascribed the founding of Memphis to Menes. The text expounds the
theology of the new foundation. Of the actual course of events the
following account survived into Greek times: it was believed that Menes
threw up a dike across the western part of the valley north of the
Fayum, thus compelling a branch of the Nile to rejoin the main stream,
and reclaiming fifty miles of valley. On the newly won land he then
founded a royal castle, a little to the south of modern Cairo. It was
called “The White Walls,” and thus characterized as an Upper Egyptian
foundation—for white was the colour of the mother-goddess Nekhbet, the
protectress of Upper Egypt and of the king’s house. But the new
settlement was not really a capital of the united country. The
successors of Menes in the First and Second dynasties did not even
reside there. They seem to have maintained their residence at This and
were buried in neighbouring Abydos,[138] within the district whence
their ancestors had come. Memphis was originally—and remained for
fifteen hundred years almost exclusively (see pp. 97 f.)—a sacred city,
the locus where events of unparalleled importance for the Egyptian
commonwealth had taken place. The Memphite Theology deals precisely with
these events.
We have elsewhere attempted to elucidate the text, which is too abstruse
to be discussed here.[139] It translates history into mythology and
purports to reveal thereby the transcendent significance of Menes’
achievement. Later generations acknowledged the validity of these early
teachings by their deeds: each new king came to Memphis to celebrate the
“Union of the Two Lands” and to perform the “Circuit of the White Wall,”
as Menes was thought to have done when he had constructed his royal
castle.[140]
The state which Menes created was habitually referred to as “The Two
Lands,” a designation apt to be misunderstood; we meet here—as so often
in Egypt—a term with cosmological rather than political connotations. We
have shown elsewhere[141] that the dualistic mould of the “Kingdom of
Upper and Lower Egypt” satisfied the Egyptian mode of thought which
conceived totality as an equilibrium of opposites. A meaningful symmetry
was imposed upon the unified land, but it had no basis in fact, for
Scorpion and Narmer conquered the north piecemeal, as far as we know.
Nor is there any sign of resentment against the north. On the contrary,
northerners were found among the highest in the land: two queens of the
First Dynasty reveal a Delta origin by their names, and officials of
that dynasty, buried near their royal masters at Abydos, exemplify the
Lower Egyptian physical type.[142]
The outside world did not challenge the exalted view of their state
which the Egyptians entertained. None of their neighbours threatened the
safety of “The Two Lands”; all of them disposed of natural resources
which seemed predestined to be offered as tribute to the divine ruler of
Egypt. We have seen that the southern littoral of the Mediterranean was
not a desert in antiquity. Narmer’s successors had to consolidate their
northern frontiers even though they prevailed with ease over the
neighbouring populations. Some had to fight the Libyans in the west. At
the malachite mines in Sinai, Semerkhet recorded his victory over the
local Bedouin on a rock-stela repeating the main motif of Narmer’s
palette. Another king of the First Dynasty had an ivory gaming piece
engraved with the picture of a bound Syrian captive. The roofing beams
of the royal tombs at Abydos consist of coniferous wood imported from
the Lebanon. Jugs of Syrian and Palestinian manufacture have been found
in these tombs and in those of dignitaries buried at Saqqara: they
probably served as containers of olive oil. Gold, ivory, ostrich
feathers, and ebony came through Nubia from inner Africa.
However, in this phase of Egyptian civilization, signs of contact with a
yet more distant region are also found. They differ in character from
those we have just mentioned. Libya, Sinai, and Syria supplied the Nile
valley with much-needed raw materials; but Sumer supplied ideas.
Imported Mesopotamian cylinder seals have been found in Egypt, and the
same odd form of seal was adopted in Egypt. The earliest Egyptian brick
buildings resemble the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia in all
significant matters of technique. Egyptian art—even in the Narmer
palette—used Mesopotamian motifs. Even writing seems to have been due to
the stimulus derived from acquaintance with Mesopotamian writing of the
end of the Protoliterate period.
We have dealt with these matters in an Appendix. For although it is
certain that contact between the two great centres of the Near East took
place, it did not affect the social and political sphere with which we
are concerned here. In fact, if we look back over the evidence presented
in this chapter, the autochthonous character of the Egyptian development
is unmistakable. The basic structure of the society which emerged was
the direct opposite of that which came into being in Mesopotamia. In
Egypt the great change did not lead to a concentration of social
activity in urban centres. It is true that there were cities in Egypt,
but, with the single exception of the capital, these were no more than
market towns for the countryside. Paradoxically enough, the capital was
less permanent than the towns in the provinces, for in principle it
served for only a single reign. Each pharaoh took up residence near the
site chosen for his tomb, where, during the best part of his lifetime,
the work on the pyramid and its temple continued, while the government
functioned in the neighbouring city. But after his death the place was
abandoned to the priests and officials who maintained his cult and
managed his mortuary estate, unless the new king decided to continue in
residence because the adjoining desert offered a suitable site for his
own tomb. Until the middle of the second millennium B.C. (when Thebes
assumed a metropolitan character) there was no truly permanent capital
in Egypt, a situation which clearly demonstrates the insignificant role
played by the concept of the city in the political thought of the
Egyptians.[143] In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, even the most
powerful rulers of the land styled themselves rulers of cities and
functioned as such, in Akkad or Ur, in Babylon or in Assur.
The contrast in social structure and the divergent conceptions of
kingship can be seen as correlated. The city as the ultimate form of
political organization is inconceivable without a ruler who remains
potentially one among many; conversely, absolute power entails a unified
realm. We did, therefore, not lose sight of our theme when we discussed
in this chapter the origin of the myths and rites of kingship under
Menes; nor is it due to the accident of discovery that we studied the
birth of Egyptian civilization with the aid of royal monuments. For
Pharaoh symbolized the community in its temporal and transcendent
aspects, and, for the Egyptians, civilized life gravitated around the
divine king.
Our discussion of the rise of the monarchical society of Egypt must now
be complemented by a concrete description. The administration of the
country[144] functioned on the strength of delegated royal power.
Pharaoh was the living fount of law, governing by decrees which were
formulated as inspired decisions.[145] In early times the government
assumed a somewhat patriarchal character. Sons and other close relatives
of Pharaoh acted as his principal advisors and aids. Distant relatives
and descendants of past rulers were found in minor government posts. At
first no single minister stood between the king and the various branches
of the administration. There was no Grand Vizier. Under the Fourth
Dynasty, however, the vizierate was introduced as the apex of the
bureaucracy; but it was, at first, occupied by a prince of royal blood.
Even in later times the king reserved certain prerogatives, such as the
imposition of the death penalty and of mutilations; and the vizier had
an audience each morning to report on the state of the land.
Nevertheless, the vizier’s power of initiative was very great. He was
Chief Justice, Head of the Archives, and, in fact, of every government
department. His messengers travelled through the country carrying his
orders to the local administrators and reporting back to him on the
conditions they observed. One of his designations was “to whom is
reported all that is and is not.” In view of the overwhelming importance
of agriculture for the state, every transaction involving land had to be
registered at the Vizier’s office. After the Sixth Dynasty the vizier
was, probably for practical reasons, “Mayor of the Town,” that is, head
and military governor of the royal residence.
The administration which functioned under the vizier was divided into
several departments. First among these was the Exchequer, headed by the
“Treasurer of the god (_i.e._ king).” This was the central depot for all
imposts and duties owed to the state. In view of the ideal form of the
Dual Monarchy it was called “The Two White Houses,” but in practice
there was no division. It had branches with storehouses throughout the
country where the dues were collected and from where the central
treasury was supplied. The administration was highly centralized; and
the Treasurer was responsible, not only for the collection and disposal
of the native produce paid in as taxes, but also for the royal
expeditions which, as we shall see, brought new materials such as
copper, malachite, wood, or gold, from abroad. Therefore he sometimes
bore the title “general” or “admiral” and had troops and ships at his
disposal.
The second important government department was the Ministry of
Agriculture, in which a “Chief of the Fields” dealt with purely
agricultural matters, while a “Master of (the King’s) Largesse” was
concerned with everything pertaining to livestock.
These government departments were not rigidly separated, and an
administrative career was likely to take a man through all of them, as
well as through the local administration. Promising young men, or sons
of those whom the king trusted or favoured, were educated at court, and
then acquired administrative experience by passing through a succession
of posts which they filled with the assistance of knowledgeable scribes
of the relevant departments. Methen (Fourth Dynasty) was a Royal Kinsman
who acted successively as Scribe of the Exchequer, apparently also as
Physician, then as District Chief, Judge, Supervisor of all the flax of
the king, to end as nomarch or ruler of a province. In this last
function he administered three provinces in succession—which proves that
the administration was independent of local worthies. At the end of the
Old Kingdom the nomarchs had achieved some sort of permanence by
regularly obtaining their offices for their sons as their successors,
and so they developed into a landed gentry. At first, however, they were
royal officials who were moved from one post to another, who had no
pretence to independence and no local ties. Their affinities and
interests—as those of all officials—were with the court; and Methen
remained until the end “Master of the King’s Hunt,” a purely courtly
function.
Neither the several departments of the government nor the central and
local administrations were clearly delimited, and their province
remained ill-defined until the end. It has been pointed out, for
instance,[146] that, under the New Kingdom, tribute from abroad could be
received upon arrival in Egypt by the “Treasurer of the god” as head of
the Exchequer, by the “Supervisor of the Treasury,” his subordinate, by
lower officials of the Exchequer, by the vizier, by high military
commanders, or by the chief priest of Amon. This fluidity of competence
is simply due to the fact that all authority was delegated royal power
and hence comprehensive in its very nature. There was similarly a
vagueness of demarcation between the central and the local authorities;
and when Seti I (Nineteenth Dynasty) issued a decree commanding that the
temple of Abydos should receive its shipments of gold from Nubia without
being subject to tolls and other dues normally levied from ships in
transit, he had to address his decree to twelve different classes of
officials, starting with the vizier and so down to “the mayors and the
controllers of camps in Upper and Lower Egypt ... every inspector
belonging to the king’s estate and every person sent on a mission to
Nubia.”[147] For local officers, no less than those of the central
government, represented Pharaoh. A nomarch of the Fifth Dynasty,
Nesutnefer,[148] is marked by his titles as “Leader of the Land (_i.e._
province),” which probably meant that he was the head of the provincial
administration in all its branches. He was “Chief of Fortifications,”
which meant that he was head of the police as well as responsible for
the guarding of the frontiers of his province against desert tribes. He
was “Ruler of the King’s People,” namely, of the serfs and tenants,
bailiffs and stewards, craftsmen, scribes, fishermen, and so on, who
were employed on the royal domains within his province, whether they
were free or bond. Finally, he was called “Chief of Commands,” which
meant that orders from the king or the vizier went to him and that he
was responsible for their being carried out in his province.
In the nomarchs we find an element most dangerous to the unity of the
state. Under the Old Kingdom there was, at first, no question of any
power opposing the king. Nesutnefer, whose office we have just
described, was twice transferred to another province. But the kings
rewarded their faithful servants with gifts of land; and, at the same
time, officials pressed for hereditary appointments. Officially this
claim was never admitted, but in practice there was an advantage in
letting a son succeed his father, since the loyalty of the incumbent of
an office was then ensured and his successor was certain to receive most
careful professional training. However, the two tendencies together
changed the relation between the great officials and the king in the
course of time. Hereditary offices and property turned the officials
into landed proprietors who were no longer entirely dependent upon their
function at court,[149] although, as long as the central power remained
strong, Pharaoh could cancel all rights to land or to office at any
time. Nevertheless, when the central administration collapsed completely
at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, the hereditary landowners were in a
position to assume responsibility for the maintenance of rule and order
in their districts. The manors of their estates were turned into
miniature courts. This situation flouted every native theory and
practice of government, and it did not outlast the period of confusion.
The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty restored centralized government.
It is possible to gain a clear idea of the mentality of the Egyptian
official, since many texts define the norms of his behaviour. The ideal
official was “the silent man,” who is respectful of established
authority and just, since _maat_ (which means truth, justice, rightness)
is part of that world order of which his royal master is the champion.
The “silent man”[150] is, therefore, not the meek sufferer, but the
wise, self-possessed, well-adapted man, modest and self-effacing up to a
point, but deliberate and firm in the awareness that he is thoroughly in
harmony with the world in which he lives.
We cannot draw a corresponding picture of the common people of Egypt.
Since they were illiterate, they are known to us only in descriptions of
peasant life from the schools of scribes; and these are tendentious,
singing the advantages of a “soft” job as an encouragement to the pupils
involved in the arduous task of mastering the script. Notwithstanding
the smug complacency of these texts and the evident satisfaction which
the writers found in parodying every employment other than their own,
the section dealing with the peasantry is worth quoting since it
pictures well enough the farmer’s lot under inefficient or corrupt
administrators:
Remember you not the condition of the cultivator faced with the
registering of the harvest tax, when the snake has carried off half
the corn and the hippopotamus has devoured the rest? The mice abound
in the fields. The locusts descend. The cattle devour. The sparrows
bring disaster upon the cultivator. The remainder that is on the
threshing floor is at an end, it falls to the thieves. The value of
the hired cattle (?) is lost. The yoke of oxen has died while
threshing and ploughing.
And now the scribe lands on the river bank and is about to register
the harvest tax. The janitors carry staves and the Nubians (policemen)
rods of palm, and they say, “Hand over the corn,” though there is
none. The cultivator is beaten all over, he is bound and thrown into
the well, soused, and dipped head downwards. His wife has been bound
in his presence, his children are in fetters. His neighbours abandon
him and are fled.[151]
If such brutality had been the rule, it is clear that Egyptian society
could not have survived. Agriculturalists are inevitably the prey of
occasional calamities because they are dependent on weather and water.
But if disasters follow one another frequently without relief, or if
oppression by those in power exceeds a certain limit, there is no
inducement for the peasant to continue his labours at all. He takes to
flight or to revolt. We have seen why the texts used in the scribal
schools emphasized the shadow-side of the peasant’s lot. Moreover, we
should remember that the humdrum normal life of the rural population
offered no interest to the _literati_. The elementary satisfactions of a
life wedded to nature, its crafty game of hiding assets from the
bureaucrats, its tough endurance of injustice, the latent power of its
indispensability—all these did not supply the scribal schools with
material for the florid compositions which were their pride.
It was otherwise with the sculptors and painters. These men, charged
with depicting on the walls of the great tombs the various rural
activities from which the sustenance of the owner, in the next world, as
in this, derived,[152] rendered these with the liveliest interest. Their
work (Figs. 29, 30) presents to us a gay, light-hearted people,
resembling in many respects the modern fellahin who similarly live on
the verge of poverty under hardship and oppression. In the tombs we see
fishermen and herdsmen at their tasks, joking with one another (the
words are sometimes rendered over their images). Harvesters move in a
row, rhythmically swinging their sickles to the tune of a song which is
accompanied by a man with a long reed pipe (Fig. 29).[153] Women bring
food to their menfolk; two little girls squabble, while a third draws a
thorn from the foot of her friend; a shepherd dozes under a tree, his
dog asleep beside him (Fig. 30);[154] another herdsman refreshes himself
from a goatskin bottle.
None of these people was free; not a single Egyptian was, in our sense
of the word, free. No individual could call in question a hierarchy of
authority which culminated in a living god. But it must not be forgotten
that the reverse of freedom, isolation of the individual with or without
“inalienable rights,” was likewise lacking in Egypt. And servitude loses
much of its sting if authority rests with those to whom faith has
attributed the power of safeguarding the existence of society. Moreover,
if it was true that all were at the disposal of the divine ruler and his
officials, it was also true that even the lowliest might appeal to
him[155] and claim what was “right”—_maat_ (justice, right, and
truth)—by which the ruler and the other gods were said to live and which
informed, or was supposed to inform, his functionaries.
There were no castes, and men of simple origin might rise to the highest
posts. The life-story of one Uni under three successive kings of the
Sixth Dynasty shows that even lower officials, without influential
relations, could rise to the highest offices once their ability and
integrity had been recognized. The talented and industrious were not
frustrated by a rigid class distinction or by a colour bar. A Nubian,
frankly calling himself Panehsi, “the Nubian,” or “negro,” might be
found in the highest places. The educated men were assigned by Pharaoh
to whatever offices he thought fit. The common people were mostly tied
to the land which they tilled for their own living and for the
maintenance of the state. We do not know whether or not they were serfs.
We do know that they had to turn in a considerable proportion of their
produce as taxes and that they were liable to _corvée_. A proportion of
the young men of all villages and estates was levied for the army, which
was really a militia, but functioned much more frequently as a labour
corps, available for all kinds of public works. It was this “army” which
was sent on quarrying and mining expeditions, which dug the canals and
built the temples and the royal tombs. If additional labour was needed
to undertake special tasks or to expedite those in hand, the population
at large could be drafted. For instance, the number of men required for
the building of pyramids ran into many thousands, and it is likely that
the stone-cutters and their crews of unskilled helpers worked
continuously in the quarries, the masons and their navvies on the site,
but that during the inundation special levies were drafted to transport
the stone from Tura, on the east bank, to Gizeh or Saqqara on the west
bank of the Nile. For this purpose it was convenient that in summer,
when the arable land was flooded, all agricultural labour came to a
standstill, and the water covering the fields facilitated transport to
the very foot of the desert plateau.[156]
We have some evidence of the life which these labourers lived. Three
places are known where workmen were housed. Near the pyramid of Chephren
at Gizeh there are, around a court, extensive barracks consisting of
ninety-one galleries, each 88 feet long, 9½ feet wide, and 7 feet high.
Petrie estimated that these could house 4000 men. Near the pyramid of
Senusert II at Lahun there is a walled town covering an area 900 by 1200
feet. And at Tell el Amarna, near the northern group of rock tombs, is a
walled village measuring only 210 by 210 feet (Fig. 31).[157] Its layout
is dreary, with identical houses built back to back along straight
streets. Each house consists of a court serving for kitchen and
workshop, a central room as living-room, and two little bedrooms at the
back. The enclosure wall has but one gate, opening on a square where the
men no doubt mustered before being marched off to work. At one end of
the square there is a larger house for the foreman or commandant.
Described in this way the settlement makes the impression of a penal
colony. But when one visits the site or reads the excavation report with
some care, that impression changes. One is struck by the variations
which one observes in going from house to house. Although the plans are
identical, the tenants had made many changes to suit their individual
needs and predilections. The internal arrangements are hardly ever the
same. The objects found in the houses also show considerable variety and
do not suggest penury or gloom. In one room was discovered a gay,
painted frieze of dancing figures of the god Bes, the popular genius of
music and love. One gets a distinct impression at the site that lack of
freedom neither interfered with the home life of these workers nor
destroyed their gaiety.
Abuses naturally existed. Royal decrees granting freedom from _corvée_,
or levy, to the personnel of certain shrines explicitly protected these
men against removal to other parts of the country, and show incidentally
that common folk were exposed to this hazard. The small man was
dependent on the protection of a man of influence whose client he might
become if he was not already his serf. At this distance of time we
cannot distinguish grades of servitude. It has been suggested that the
best land of the large estates was worked with serfs while the less
productive fields were let out to peasants who paid a fixed rent in
produce; but the categories are not clearly distinguishable. Slaves,
however, as distinct from serfs, did not play an important part in the
economy of Egypt. It is doubtful whether they were kept in any numbers
at all before the New Kingdom.[158] At that time the Syrian campaigns
resulted in large numbers of captives who were used on royal and temple
domains and in stone quarries. In earlier times captive Nubians may have
been employed occasionally, but such isolated slaves served in families
or at court as domestics, entertainers, dancers, or musicians and lived
(one suspects) very much like the other servants. It has been pointed
out[159] that the successful growing of grain requires a personal
interest on the part of the cultivator, which slave labour lacks.
The craftsmen, too, were usually serving some great lord. Large numbers
were employed by the king. We know, in fact, that the country was
drained of talent for the benefit of the royal residence. The graves at
Qau el Kebir—a cemetery in Middle Egypt used throughout the third
millennium—show the scantiest equipment, and that of the poorest quality
of craftsmanship, during the flourishing period of the Old Kingdom when
the pyramids were being built. When the central government had collapsed
in the First Intermediate period, both the quality and the intrinsic
value of the grave goods at Qau increased greatly. When craftsmen worked
for the court, it is almost certain that they, too, were not free agents
selling their wares or their services where they pleased. But we must,
once more, guard against exaggerating their lot; they were not slaves.
We happen, for instance, to know something of the extensive linen
factories of Pharaoh. Under the Sixth Dynasty a royal weaving
establishment in the north was under the management of one Seneb, a
dwarf who, having worked himself up from the ranks, married a woman of
the class of “Royal Kinsman” and could afford to build himself a fine
tomb at Gizeh, from which we get our information.[160] One of the scenes
in this tomb depicts the giving of rewards to Seneb’s subordinates;[161]
they receive headbands and necklaces, and this is significant, for these
ornaments resemble in form the “gold” with which Pharaoh honoured
officials of special merit. Let us assume that the jewellery with which
the weavers were rewarded was less costly and consisted of bronze and
fayence. It is nevertheless clear that the award was by no means a
payment but a kind of gift which it was an honour to receive. Now it is
noteworthy that the recipients depicted in Seneb’s tomb are not all
overseers and foremen, but also men and women who are merely mentioned
by name, without title, and who therefore must be assumed to be simple
weavers.
Craftsmen also worked for officials and on the large estates which came
into being towards the end of the Old Kingdom. Such estates, like the
royal domains, and the temple estates of later times, were
self-sufficient economic units. Each had its own wharves, for
instance,[162] where Nile boats were built and repaired. These served
not only as ferries, but for every trip of any length which the owner
had to undertake and for the shipment of grain, cattle, and other dues
to the magazines of the Exchequer. They were used, furthermore, for
shipments of supplies to the funerary establishments of past members of
the family who might be buried near Memphis in a royal cemetery. When
the weakening of the central power, to which we have referred, and the
concurrent rise of a landed gentry, made it more and more customary for
high officials to be buried in rock-cut tombs near their estates in the
provinces, the equipment of these tombs was supplied by masons,
cabinet-makers, jewellers, and so on, employed on the estate. There
were, moreover, hunters, who not only killed game, but caught it to be
fattened for the table; several kinds of antelopes, cranes, and even
hyenas were treated in this way. Fishermen and fowlers were also
employed, for wild geese and duck, fattened in the barnyard, were
consumed in large numbers. Fish was dried and kept, but it was probably
largely used as rations for labourers.
As regards the cultivators, whether they worked for a private estate,
for a temple, or on a royal domain, they had to pay imposts of many
kinds, and the hamlets and villages were collectively responsible in the
person of their head man; this worthy had to produce the stipulated
amounts on the day of reckoning or he risked a beating. The craftsmen,
too, were organized in groups of five or ten men under a foreman who
received their rations of food, clothing, and raw materials and was
responsible for their work. Similar groups of men, working in shifts of
one month, functioned as “hour priests” in the temples and funerary
chapels. When they took over, their foremen received the inventory and
were responsible for its proper maintenance.
The material basis of the Egyptian commonwealth was agriculture,
regulated by the unaltering rhythm of the inundation. The names of the
three seasons (of four months each) which the Egyptians distinguished
were “Inundation” (middle of July to middle November), “Coming Forth”
(of the seeds, or possibly of the land from the inundation, from middle
November to middle March), and “Drought.” The conditions prevailing in
prehistoric times, described in the second chapter, were not materially
altered during the Old Kingdom. Land had to be reclaimed from the
marshes. We have seen that the first king, Menes, undertook such work on
a considerable scale. But the more the valley was drained, the more the
need arose to distribute the inundation water so that it reached all the
fields. From the beginning of the First Dynasty annual records of the
height of the Nile were kept; their purpose can only have been to
provide a basis for an estimate of its extent and thereby of the
probable yield of the harvest. The digging of canals and the building of
dikes was normally done by the central government, but there are some
indications that the king encouraged the nomarchs to reclaim land by
granting them the new fields which they then were allowed to settle with
people from their estates. In the First Intermediate period when each
nomarch had to take care of his area as best he could, one of them
records:
I stocked villages in this nome that were enfeebled with cattle and
men of other nomes, and those who had been serfs elsewhere I made rank
as notables.[163]
The annual inundation with its fertilizing deposit of silt made manuring
and rotation of crops unnecessary. The tax records distinguish between
low land, which was regularly inundated, and high land, which came under
water only when the flood was high. This land was used for grazing or
truck gardening. The bulk of the arable land was left soft by the
retreating inundation and could be worked with primitive wooden hoes and
ploughs. Animals, mostly sheep, were used to tread in the seed, and this
had to be done speedily after the land had emerged but before it became
hard and dry. Six-rowed barley and emmer wheat were the main crops.
Lettuce, onions, beans, and lentils were, in antiquity as now, important
secondary products. Ricinus plants were grown for oil, and flax for
linen.
When the grain had grown to a certain height, surveyors measured it to
assess it for taxation on an estimated yield (Fig. 30). It was harvested
with sickles, threshed on a circular threshing floor by asses (and later
by cattle) who trod out the kernels. As a rule, women did the winnowing
by throwing the grain up in a winnowing basket. After that it was stored
in barns or in beehive-shaped silos, and the portion due to the king or
to the estate-owner was handed over. Large estates, including the royal
domains and the temples, had reserves to supplement bad harvests.
Seed-corn was lent to the tenants, and teams of oxen and asses for
ploughing or carrying were lent or let out, too. There are records of
great landowners relieving tenants who could not meet their obligations
in difficult years.
But not only the grain harvest was taxed. There was a tax on canals and
ponds, on trees and wells. The produce of the home industries and of the
spare-time occupations of the people were taxed: they had to turn over
some of their textiles, leatherwork, honey, oil, wine, vegetables, some
of the catch of the fowler and fisherman, some of the increase of the
shepherd’s flock. Genesis xlvii. 24 states that one-fifth of all produce
was owed to the government; this may or may not be correct; it is not
improbable. Certain people were liable to pay fixed quantities of
produce, irrespective of yield.
Again, it is necessary to correct our first reaction to a description of
these conditions. In Egypt personal enterprise was made subsidiary to
the performance of public duties; and it would seem that under normal
conditions sufficient scope for private initiative, in production and in
barter, remained. The contents of graves which are best, perhaps, called
lower middle class (since of the poorest people no trace survives) show
as much. It is likewise revealing that during Egypt’s long history no
attempts to overthrow the existing order were made. This shows that the
Egyptian experiment of organizing a rural community was, on the whole,
successful. The obligation to hand over part of every kind of produce
may seem pettifogging to us. But money was unknown; the state could
function only if it disposed of all kinds of articles to supply those
who were in its service. If officials abused their power and oppressed
the people, the peasants had an effective weapon at their disposal: they
fled. This was a catastrophe for their owner since he remained liable
for the normal dues on his land, which now lay deserted. The case is
concisely put in a letter written by a steward to his master who was
responsible for the management of a certain royal domain:
Another communication for my Lord’s good pleasure, to the effect that
two of the field labourers of the _mine_ land of Pharaoh which is
under my Lord’s authority, have fled before the face of the
stable-master Neferhotep, he having beaten them. And now, look, the
fields of the _mine_ land of Pharaoh which are under my Lord’s
authority are abandoned and there is no one to till them. This letter
is for my Lord’s information.[164]
A somewhat patriarchal relationship between master and men persists in
many rural districts of old countries even to-day. A certain amount of
arbitrariness, even of despotism, is taken for granted in the great; it
is their privilege, but only if it is counterbalanced by a sense of
responsibility for the land and for those who till it.
We may, therefore, accept as inherently probable such statements as the
following, made by an Upper Egyptian nomarch who had taken matters in
his own hands in the First Intermediate period.
I was one who computed (carefully) the consumption of Lower Egyptian
grain.... I made a canal for this town when Upper Egypt was in a bad
way, and one did not see any water.... I made high fields into marsh,
I made the Nile inundate wasteland.... Whoever needed water got Nile
water as he desired.... I was great in Lower Egyptian grain (barley)
when the country was in tribulation. I was the one who fed the town
with measure and bushel. I made the small man and his wife carry away
Lower Egyptian grain and (likewise) the widow and her son. I had all
imposts reduced which I found registered (as arrears) from the time of
my father.[165]
Another nomarch, at Crocodilopolis in Upper Egypt, south of Thebes,
reports:
I fed the “island in the river” (Crocodilopolis) during years of
drought when 400 men were (in penury) there. I did not take away a
man’s daughter nor his field. I acquired ten flocks of goats with
people to take care of them, two herds of cattle and one of asses. I
bred small livestock. I obtained thirty boats of one kind and thirty
of another and brought Upper Egyptian grain to Hermonthis and Asphynis
after Crocodilopolis was taken care of. The nome of Thebes came
upstream (_i.e._ to obtain grain from me), but Crocodilopolis never
sent downstream nor upstream (for grain) to another nome.[166]
The last inscription makes much of livestock, and stock-breeding was
next in importance to agriculture. We have seen that a special official,
“The Master of the King’s Largesse,” was in charge of its supervision.
In antiquity, in contrast with now, plenty of marshland was available
for grazing in the valley, and the large herds were also sent to the
Delta in spring to graze. One official of the Sixth Dynasty lists 1000
head of cattle, 760 asses, 2200 goats, and nearly 1000 sheep as his own.
Trade played a subordinate part in the internal economy of the country.
There was, naturally, a great deal of barter between individuals. There
were markets where food, especially garden produce, or birds netted in
the fields, or fish, were exchanged for tools or sandals or
walking-sticks, necklaces, textiles or oils—luxuries or articles which,
although issued by the estate office, might not, in quantity or quality,
suit everyone. Barter in the market-place allowed a man to adjust his
share in various goods to his own particular taste or to dispose of
catches or produce obtained on the side. These markets are sometimes
depicted in the tombs, and we know that already, in the Old Kingdom,
pieces of metal served as standards of value. An important object was
said to be worth so and so many rings. In the New Kingdom this system
was simplified, and the value of an object was said to be so much weight
(deben) of gold, silver, or copper. In the New Kingdom, too, the closer
contact with Syria made more imported articles available for the market
trade. A tomb-painting shows a Phoenician ship just made fast at the
quay of Thebes. Some of the crew have gone ashore and approach booths
where sandals, linen, fruits, and vegetables can be exchanged for a jug
of Syrian oil or wine. This type of trade remained, however, purely
marginal to the economy of Egypt. Neither the home-grown staple products
nor the main imports were distributed through the markets. We do not
meet the word “merchant” until the second millennium B.C., when it
designates the official of a temple privileged to trade abroad.
Raw materials which Egypt lacked were procured through royal
expeditions, organized by the Exchequer (which included among its
personnel interpreters to assist the commanders in various foreign
countries).[167] These expeditions were of two types. In Nubia, the
eastern and western desert, and in Sinai, the nomad tribes and poor
peasants could not oppose the Egyptians in any way at all. The army came
and took what it needed. On quarrying and mining expeditions the
military component of the expedition was no more than an armed escort,
while the bulk of the “army” (as it was called) consisted of navvies to
assist a core of trained stone-cutters or miners.
Another type of expedition was required to obtain wood from the Lebanon
and frankincense and myrrh from Punt, the Somali coast. These lands were
outside the sphere of Egyptian military influence, and the native rulers
could ask for a price. This was offered in the form of royal presents to
favourite vassals, and their products were listed as tribute. In reality
there was an exchange; some splendid and extremely costly Egyptian
jewellery, inscribed with the names of Pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty,
has been found in tombs of the local princes of Byblos at the foot of
the Lebanon. Coniferous roofing beams in the tombs of the First Egyptian
Dynasty and a record of a sea expedition of Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty
prove the great age of this lumber trade with the Levant. And from a
late period we have the following list of objects which an Egyptian
envoy—Wenamon—offered in exchange for wood from the Lebanon:
Five gold and five silver vessels; ten garments of royal linen; ten
pieces of other linen; five hundred pieces of fine paper; five hundred
cattle skins; five hundred ropes; twenty bags of lentils; thirty
baskets of fish.
The Phoenician export included, besides wood, oil, wine, resin, and
ivory.
It has been said that Pharaoh was the only wholesale merchant in Egypt
and that foreign trade was a royal monopoly. But the implication of
profit-making and exploitation is inappropriate. It was merely due to
the complete consistency with which the Egyptians had organized their
community as a centralized monarchy that they supplied themselves with
the foreign materials of which they stood in need by means of royal
expeditions. It is curious evidence of the practical effectiveness of
Pharaonic rule that the absolute monarchy of Egypt did supply essential
commodities, whether imported or produced at home, to the people as a
whole in sufficient quantities; the distribution took place “from
above,” the king making gifts and allotments to his officials who in
turn rewarded their retainers and so down the social scale. And in the
First Intermediate period, when royal power suffered an eclipse, the
texts contain a complaint that there is no wood available for the making
of coffins.
Whatever aspect of Egyptian society we have scrutinized, we have found
Pharaoh at the centre. Yet nothing would be more misleading than to
picture the Egyptians in abject submission to their absolute ruler.
Their state can be described as “a self-directed organism held together
by a common regard for customary rights and obligations.”[168] Their
polity was not imposed but evolved from immemorial predilections, and
was adhered to, without protest, for almost three thousand years.
Similar predilections have, in fact, maintained the institution of
divine kingship among Africans related to the ancient Egyptians down to
our own days. It was good, not evil; it gave a sense of security which
the Asiatic contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians totally lacked. If a
god had consented to guide the nation, society held a pledge that the
unaccountable forces of nature would be well disposed and bring
prosperity and peace. Nor does the Egyptian view lack ethical content.
Truth, justice, were “that by which the gods live,” an essential element
in the established order. Hence Pharaoh’s rule was not tyranny, nor his
service slavery.
APPENDIX
The Influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt Towards the End of the Fourth
Millennium B.C.[169]
The problem to which we turn now has been discussed intermittently for
the last fifty years, but in the earlier discussions preconceived ideas
played a considerable part. For while it is admitted that intercourse
stimulates individuals, it is often believed that granting foreign
influence to have affected a people is derogatory. The essential
difference between mechanical copying and creative borrowing, between a
slavish dependence on foreign examples and a free selection of congenial
material, is entirely overlooked. Another circumstance, too, has
militated against an unbiased weighing of the evidence. When our
knowledge of the ancient Near East was fragmentary, it was habitual to
explain changes in terms of conquest and immigration from some
hypothetical, as yet unknown, region; but the extensive explorations
which took place between the two world wars have discredited this type
of explanation, and the supposed homelands of the newcomers proved, in
cultural matters, to have been peripheral dependencies of the two great
centres in Egypt and Mesopotamia. These, on the other hand, were seen to
have been unusually resistant to foreign influence and capable of
imposing conformity upon all comers.[170]
Our increased knowledge has thus induced an unwillingness to appeal to
foreign influence or migrations as explanations of cultural changes.
Now, however, the opposite viewpoint receives exaggerated emphasis, and
we find students proudly proclaiming their ignorance of anthropology and
emphasizing, without a critical examination of all the facts, the
autonomy and self-containedness of the great cultural centres of the
Near East.
Evidence obtained in the decade before the Second World War allows us,
however, to solve the problem, at least as far as it concerns the
formative phase of Egyptian civilization. For the discovery in
Mesopotamia of remains of the Protoliterate period revealed the source
from which curious and passing features of Egyptian culture in late
predynastic and protodynastic times were obviously derived.
The strongest evidence of this contact between Mesopotamia and Egypt is
supplied by three cylinder seals shown by their very material and by
their designs to have been made in Mesopotamia during the second half of
the Protoliterate period (Figs. 33, 34), but found in Egypt. One was
excavated at Naqada (Fig. 32), in a Gerzean grave; and the same origin
is probable for the other two.[171] These importations were not without
consequence: from the beginning of the First Dynasty the cylinder seal
was adopted in Egypt and made at once in considerable quantities. Since
it is an odd form for a seal, used only in countries in contact with
Mesopotamia, and since one of the Mesopotamian cylinders was found in
Egypt in a context just ante-dating the earliest native seals, it would
be perverse to deny that the Egyptians followed the Mesopotamian
example. But it is quite characteristic for them that they exploited the
new suggestion with the greatest freedom. They even used engraved
cylinders for a purpose for which there is no Mesopotamian prototype:
some of these objects, found in the graves of the First Dynasty, are not
seals at all but funerary amulets showing the dead man at the table
(Figs. 37, 38, 39).[172] In addition, the Egyptians used cylinders as
seals, but they very rarely covered them with pictorial designs. They
engraved upon them the names and titles of officials written in
hieroglyphs (Figs. 35, 36). In Mesopotamia the earliest cylinders (Figs.
14-16, 42, 44) bear designs, not inscriptions; inscribed seals are
unknown before the second Early Dynastic period, and then even the
inscribed examples always bear a design as their distinctive feature.
Moreover, the early Egyptian seals are usually made of wood, a material
not used in Mesopotamia, as far as we know. Since, on the other hand,
the cylinder was better adapted to the sealing of merchandise and clay
tablets than to that of documents on papyrus, it was replaced in Egypt
during the Middle Kingdom by the stamp seal in the shape of a scarab.
The Egyptians, therefore, in no way copied slavishly the Mesopotamian
invention, but adapted it to their own needs until such a time as they
had discovered a more suitable form of seal.
In the field of art a somewhat similar development can be observed.[173]
We can distinguish two groups of phenomena: motifs are taken over from
Mesopotamian monuments of the Protoliterate period, or Egyptian motifs
are composed in a manner which is, to judge by later usage, un-Egyptian
and can be understood as a passing influence of Mesopotamian style. The
most striking example of the copying of an alien, Mesopotamian, motif,
is the group of the man dominating two lions on the Gebel el Arak
knife-handle (Fig. 23). Such groups are common at all times in
Mesopotamia but exceedingly rare in Egypt. And in the present case the
derivation cannot be doubted: the hero between the lions copies in every
detail of his appearance—his garment, his beard, his hair, wound round
his head and bound up in a chignon at the back—the often recurring
figure of the “leader” or king depicted on a granite stela from Erech
and on numerous seals (Figs. 15, 44). Even the style of the figure, the
way in which the muscles in the legs are rendered, for instance, is
entirely un-Egyptian, as a comparison with the figures on the other face
of the knife-handle (Fig. 24) shows.
Other motifs on palettes and knife-handles likewise have Mesopotamian
prototypes. The serpent-necked lions or panthers on the Narmer palette
(Fig. 28) recur, identically intertwined, on seals of the early and late
Protoliterate period (Fig. 16). Winged griffins (Fig. 40)[174] and
intertwined snakes (Fig. 41)[175] are also at home in Mesopotamia from
the Protoliterate period onwards and put in a passing appearance in
Egypt.
Antithetical groups[176] and the carnivore attacking an impassive prey
(Figs. 23, 40), are examples of Egyptian designs composed in an
un-Egyptian manner.[177] We may even formulate the way in which they are
un-Egyptian: they share with the group of the hero dominating two lions,
the intertwined snakes and lions, and the serpent-necked panthers a
pronouncedly unrealistic character. Animal forms are, in all these
instances, used to produce a decorative design; they are subjected to a
purely aesthetic purpose. And though the Egyptians eventually used plant
motifs in such a fashion, they never again so employed animal or human
figures. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, imagination and design
usually prevailed over probability or nature.[178] Hence we see, once
again, that the Egyptians experimented with Mesopotamian inventions
during the formative phase of their civilization but soon rejected what
was uncongenial.
There remain two fields in which Mesopotamian examples have produced
results more important than those we have discussed so far. They are
architecture and writing. With the First Dynasty, monumental brick
architecture makes its appearance in a form, both as regards material
and plan, which recalls the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia.[179]
It is a moot point whether bricks were made in Egypt in prehistoric
times. In Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor (Mersin) they were used on
a great scale from the Al Ubaid period onwards, and were known even
earlier. In Egypt a few bricks have been found in prehistoric context,
but not actually in walls, and whether they were used for buildings may
well be doubted, since in Nubia, where prehistoric culture continued to
flourish even after the accession of Menes, bricks were used only at a
later date. Moreover, a design on the Hunters’ Palette (Fig. 25), and
hieroglyphs representing traditional palaces and shrines, indicate that
predynastic public buildings were made of wood and matting, or perhaps
of wattle and daub. It is likely that the palaces and other important
buildings of the First Dynasty were still made of those materials.[180]
But in this dynasty highly sophisticated brick architecture is suddenly
used in the construction of graves.
In Egypt secular buildings were at all times less permanent than tombs
and temples. When, from the Third Dynasty onwards, these were built of
stone, houses and palaces were still built of brick. And this
distinction holds good for all subsequent periods. Under the First
Dynasty, when brick architecture came into its own, this new and more
permanent architecture was used, at first, for the royal tombs which
were decorated with buttresses and recesses on all four sides (Figs. 46,
47, 50). This ornamentation was achieved, in some cases (Fig. 46),[181]
by the use of two kinds of bricks—large ones for the core of the
building and smaller ones for the recessing. These small bricks are of a
size and shape peculiar, in Mesopotamia, to the latter half of the
Protoliterate period and were used in an identical fashion, three rows
of stretchers alternating as a rule with one row of headers.[182] The
recesses and buttresses duplicate exactly the recessing of Protoliterate
temples. Other technical details—the manner in which a plinth or
platform is constructed (Fig. 47),[183] the use of short timbers
inserted horizontally as the strengthening in the niches (Figs. 49,
50)—likewise reflect Mesopotamian usages of the Protoliterate period
(Fig. 48).[184] In Mesopotamia the whole method of recessed brick
building can be seen to come into being, starting with the temples at
Eridu and Tepe Gawra of the Al Ubaid period (when the buttresses, widely
spaced, seem merely to strengthen the walls), until, in the
Protoliterate age (Fig. 45), the exact degree of complexity was reached
with which brick building appears under the First Egyptian Dynasty,
unheralded, and yet with every refinement of which the material is
capable. Contemporary but simplified renderings of these buildings on
Protoliterate cylinder seals in Mesopotamia resemble those on First
Dynasty monuments in Egypt (Figs. 42, 43, 44).[185] There are
differences, too, which indicate that the Mesopotamian renderings were
not copied in Egypt, but that the Egyptian and Mesopotamian renderings
are abbreviations of buildings which themselves were closely alike. The
towers appearing on the Stele of Djet (Fig. 43) are found in the later
part of the Protoliterate period (Fig. 42 right). Entrance towers with
straight sides were, since Early Dynastic times, in use in Mesopotamia
but not in Egypt, where the pylon with a pronounced batter was
developed.
In view of this great variety of detailed resemblances there can be no
reasonable doubt that the earliest monumental brick architecture of
Egypt was inspired by that of Mesopotamia where it had a long previous
history. In conclusion, it is worth notice that the architectural forms
used in Mesopotamia for temples were applied in Egypt to royal tombs and
royal castles.[186] But then, Pharaoh—in life and in death—was a god.
Stone architecture, so characteristic for Egypt in historical times,
replaced bricks in the royal tombs from the Third Dynasty onward.
We must turn, finally, to the invention of hieroglyphic writing. It is a
moot point whether it first appears on the macehead of Scorpion (Fig.
26), or whether the two signs on the Hunters’ palette (Fig. 25) must
count as writing. These cannot be read, although they may mean “shrine
of (the earth-god) Akeru,” for this name is written with the double
forequartered animal in the pyramid texts. Whether this palette or the
Scorpion mace is the first inscribed monument, the appearance of writing
falls within a period in which Mesopotamian influence has been proved to
exist.
It has been customary to postulate prehistoric antecedents for the
Egyptian script, but this hypothesis has nothing in its favour.[187] In
the annals of the kingdom (which happen to survive in a version of the
Fifth Dynasty), events are recorded only from the First Dynasty onwards,
a fact suggesting that no written records of earlier times existed. Only
some names of prehistoric Chieftains were still known and entered in the
annals as “kings” preceding Menes.[188]
But the writing which appeared without antecedents at the beginning of
the First Dynasty was by no means primitive. It has, in fact, a complex
structure. It includes three different classes of signs: ideograms,
phonetic signs, and determinatives.[189] This is precisely the same
state of complexity which had been reached in Mesopotamia at an advanced
stage of the Protoliterate period. There, however, a more primitive
stage is known in the earliest tablets, which used only ideograms. To
deny, therefore, that Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems of writing are
related amounts to maintaining that Egypt invented independently a
complex and not very consistent system at the very moment of being
influenced in its art and architecture by Mesopotamia where a precisely
similar system had just been developed from a more primitive stage. To
state this view is, of course, to reject it.
But, again, the Egyptians did not copy the Mesopotamian system
slavishly; they were merely stimulated to develop a script of their own,
once the notion that language could be rendered graphically had been
conveyed. The writing signs—the “hieroglyphs”—which they invented have
nothing at all in common with the Mesopotamian signs. They depict
Egyptian objects; they depict them faithfully; and they remain to the
end exact pictures in the majority of cases. In Mesopotamia the tendency
to use abstract symbols was strong from the beginning, and prevailed at
an early date. And before the middle of the third millennium even the
pictograms had lost all trace of semblance to the objects they
originally rendered (Fig. 13). This contrast between the Egyptian and
Mesopotamian scripts undoubtedly has a twofold cause. The Egyptians
always loved the pictorial rather than the abstract and had a strong
inclination towards the concrete. This tendency (which also prevented
them from distorting animal forms for the sake of ornamental schemes)
made them adopt and retain minute images as writing signs. But, in the
second place, writing was at first used in Egypt for a purpose different
from that to which the Mesopotamians put it. In Mesopotamia writing was
invented to serve the practical needs of administration. In Egypt it was
used, at first, as an element of monumental art, in the form of legends
added to reliefs (Figs. 26, 27, 28).
The legends fixed the identity of the figures in the reliefs which could
be made explicit only by the adding of names and titles. But once
writing was introduced, it was—in Egypt also—used for practical
purposes; and this required a shorter and more cursive script. In the
tomb of Djet, the fourth king of the First Dynasty, a note in cursive
script has been discovered;[190] and it has been pointed out[191] that
documents must have been in common use in the Second Dynasty since the
sign of the papyrus roll, tied up and sealed, is used from then on. For
monumental inscriptions, however, the pictorial hieroglyphs were used
even under the Roman emperors.
In view of the doubt which persists in many quarters, it seems worth
while to represent the evidence for Mesopotamian influence in Egypt at
about 3000 B.C.—excluding writing—in a table which shows that we are
confronted, not by a few random resemblances, but by a group of related
phenomena. And this is, in fact, corroborated by the observation that
the foreign features in Egypt all derive from one and the same phase of
Mesopotamian civilization, namely, the later part of the Protoliterate
period.[192] Now this phase (formerly called after Jamdat Nasr)
represents an age of expansion: a richly equipped temple was built at
Brak in Northern Syria (see above, p. 84); Mesopotamian tablets were
found not only at Susa in Elam but at Sialk near Kashan in Central
Persia (Fig. 51); and Mesopotamian cylinders were found, not only at the
places mentioned just now, but as far afield as Cappadocia and Troy. At
a time when Mesopotamian influence radiated in all directions it was but
natural that it should touch Egypt also. Thus the traces of Mesopotamian
arts and crafts which we find in pre- and protodynastic Egypt represent
but one more manifestation of the expansion of Mesopotamia during the
latter part of the Protoliterate period.