Temporal and Spatial Structure of Tomb Images of Egypt

Temporal and Spatial Structure of Tomb Images

The images in the tombs of the Old Kingdom set out to portray the existence of the deceased in the hereafter and their content is ordered accordingly. Because the afterlife was conceived in more or less the same way for all non-royal persons, the range of images found in the tombs of viziers, high state officials, court singers, royal hairdressers, and tradesmen does not differ greatly. The most important difference lay in their execution, which took into account the size of the tomb and the availability of the wall surfaces; this depended ultimately on the financial means of the deceased.

The wall surfaces of an Old Kingdom chapel intended for a planned series of images were composed down to the last detail. The wall was organized into sections and these sections linked with one another. The most important element for ordering the entire structure of the wall was the horizontal register. A wall area had several registers, generally of the same height. The horizontal registers were framed at the side by a long rectangular field, the height of the entire wall. This contains the enormous image of the deceased that bracketed the registers oriented toward it. The registers show individual scenes that can be arranged into groups or series. Depending on the availability of space to be decorated the depiction could be either detailed or brief:
The scenes could be portrayed in abridged form or long narrative sequences.

While the image of the deceased does not occupy any definable time frame, the time sequence of registers is so arranged that the earlier event is at the top while the later one is in a lower register. Good examples of temporal ordering are to be found in images of agricultural labor. The scenes are linked in the same order as the seasons; plowing, sowing, stamping in of the seed, harvesting, threshing, filling of the storehouses, and calculating the yield of the harvest are all depicted one after the other. The sequence concludes with images showing the further processing of grain into bread and beer. A similar temporal order can be seen in images of cattle-rearing where one continuous chain of events is portrayed in a single register: a bull mounts a co a calf is born, the cow is milked and calves are raised. A somewhat shorter series can be seen for the production of wine where individual events extend from harvesting to the wine-pressing through to the filling of wine barrels.

Most image sequences express the spatial as well as the temporal dimension. In images of farming, depictions of labor in the fields are followed by those of work in barns or storehouses. Similar relationships can be found where fishing and fowling with a throwing net are depicted; rural scenes are combined with those occurring in other contexts.

Occasionally the temporal and spatial dimensions overlap. In depictions of hunting in the desert, the prey is sometimes desert animals and sometimes that of the steppes. These animals are shown copulating and then giving birth. Similar displacements of time and space occur in boat journeys. In images of a river boat journey, the deceased appears as the passenger of a sailing ship in the same frame and at the same time as he is shown as the passenger of a galley.

Funerary Repast Scene and False Door In Egypt Art

Funerary Repast Scene and False Door

The earliest examples of the adornment of a tomb chapel come from the end of the Third and the beginning of the Fourth Dynasties. Initially, interrelated scenes are still lacking, a few pictorial themes being indicated in key scenes. The oldest and most important example of this kind is the funerary repast scene that appears on the outside of the tomb, at first on a sacrificial plaque or slab and later in association with the false door of the tomb.

The early type of funerary repast scene depicts the deceased to the left of a table covered with bread. He or she reaches out with the right hand to the bread loaves spread out on the table and lays the left hand on his or her breast. The scene contains all the important information needed for its function. Inscriptions of names and titles make the necessary statements about the status of the deceased during his or her life. The funerary repast scene refers to the function of the tomb as the eternal dwelling place of the deceased. Its images and texts tell us about the quality of the offerings made since it lists by name the sacrifices placed on the table and distinguishes between these according to type and number. This depiction was standardized at an early date and established, in a legally binding way, just which offerings were to be brought to the deceased.

The funerary repast scene forms the departure point for the entire wall decoration of the tomb chapel. Out of concern that the items listed in the funerary repast scene, which were required daily, might arrive too late or, at some time in the future, cease altogether, their continued provision was guaranteed by means of magical images. These include pictures of defiles of offering bearers as well as other images showing the production of gifts intended as offerings.

Depictions of offerings and their presentation by mortuary priests were originally found on the false door itself and were therefore directly related to the funerary repast scene. From there, however, they spread on to the surrounding walls of the tomb chapel until, finally, they fill up the entire cult chamber. The range of images of the early chapels therefore consists mainly of defiles of offering bearers and images of the sacrifice of cattle. In hindsight, the depictions in the early chapels can be seen to be representations of the items contained in the lists of the funerary repast scene. The essential role of these images lay in ensuring the continued production of offerings intended for sacrifice.

The production of sacrificial offerings transformed into images and their presentation refers to actions carried out in this life on behalf of the deceased in the next life. Series of images portraying the existence and social role of the deceased in the next life appear with increasing frequency in the Fifth Dynasty and are placed on an equal footing beside images that ensure the provision of offerings to him. The new images then set the tone for the type of images in the cult chamber. Pictorial cycles of agriculture and livestock prove particularly useful for the extension of the pictorial program because their output in the shape of bread and beer or in the form of animals for slaughter can be sacrificed to the tomb owner. Images of craftsmanship fulfill a similar function. These show the production of objects that, in the end, will be used for the construction of tombs.

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The cemeteries of the Old Kingdom (2700—2200 BC) in Giza, Abusir. Saqqara, and Dahshur are but parts of a single, great royal cemetery at Memphis where high officials of the Old Kingdom were interred next to their kings. They are home-to--tomb structures characteristic of the Old Kingdom. In the provinces tombs of a similar size only appear toward the end of the Old Kingdom, from around 2200 BC. While royal tombs developed into the pyramid, the tomb architecture of officialdom retained the form of the mastaba. But here, too, stone building techniques began to take on new dimensions at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (2640 BC); the first nonroyal tombs in stone replaced funerary complexes constructed from mudbrick. In spite of the new construction techniques, however, the basic conception of the tomb changed little from the old mudbrick methods. The tomb continued to have two main areas, one above ground and the other below The subterranean area was at first the more important one. It contained the burial chamber with an intricately fashioned sarcophagus of stone for the body of the deceased. In some tombs the exterior of these sarcophagi were formed like a palace (niche) facade. It seems likely that the person buried in it was to be identified as the inhabitant of a palace and this type of adornment indicated his personal rank.

At first, the sarcophagus below ground was surrounded by stored provisions. These were not intended for direct consumption by the dead but were to serve as reserves for eternity. Daily needs were met by the mortuary cult whose priests carried out their rites in the upper part of the tomb. Offerings were placed at a sacrificial site and taken up by the soul of the deceased. This cult site was marked by a “false door, which from the time of Cheops was protected by a tomb chapel that fronted the main structure. The walls of this tomb chapel were adorned with illustrations and texts whose primary representation was the deceased. He or she was shown either engaging in certain activities or as the focus of the actions of others. The individual nature of the scenes is evident from inscriptions containing the names and titles of the tomb owner.

Tomb decoration depicted themes suited to the deceased’s status. At the center of these were images of daily life. Because life in the hereafter was thought of in much the same way as mortal life, these images are uniquely able to depict the type of afterlife that the deceased imagined awaited him.

Further development of the range of images led to an increase in those depictions that applied themes from this life to the hereafter. The greater range of pictorial themes meant a greater need for rooms and wall space. This development temporarily came to an end with the tomb of the vizier Mereruka in Saqqara at the onset of the Sixth Dynasty around 2330 BC. The superstructure of his tomb consisted of a funerary palace of thirty-two decorated rooms, twenty-one of which, were intended for Mereruka, six for his wife and five for his son Meriteti.

From the second half of the Old Kingdom, decorated tombs had long since ceased to be the privilege of the upper class of the court. Monumental tomb structures arose in the provinces on the model of the capital’s necropolis. Because geography did not always allow for the building of a mastaba, tomb chapels were often designed as rock-cut tombs.

The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

At 73.5 m long and over 20 m high the Great Sphinx is the most immense sculpture ever made by man. It shows a being that is part—lion and part—man, a creature metamorphosed into a divine being by the combined strength of a powerful wild animal and the intelligence of a human ruler. Earlier two—dimensional images of this creature as a griffin show it in action destroying the enemy. In the sculpture this power is tamed, controlled by human intelligence, and it has transformed into a divine, magisterial calm. Even if one agrees today that the Sphinx is a work of the Fourth Dynasty, the attribution to either Cheops, Djedefre or Chephren remains a matter of dispute. So far there is no inscriptional evidence that clearly names any of these three kings as the statue’s creator. The mention made of Chephren on the sphinx stela of Thutmosis IV (Eighteenth Dynasty) was, first of all, made a good thousand years later and, secondly, stands today out of context: in light of a similar text on the sphinx stela of Amenophis II it should probably be explained as “resting place/horizon of Cheops and of Chephren,” in other words the necropolis of Giza. A small, unique stela from the time of Ramesses of an “excellent scribe Monthu-her” bears the earliest image of the two pyramids, of Cheops and Chephren, with the Sphinx correctly shown in front of the Pyramid of Cheops. The area in which the Sphinx stands was undoubtedly ground quarried for stone to build the Cheops pyramid. Yet even this point is not unequivocal evidence that Cheops constructed the Sphinx.

Some reevaluations and an analysis of stylistic criteria can take us further. After Snefru in Dahshui it was Cheops in Giza whose designs and achievements are ultimately the finest. His pyramids, his temple, and even his statues, as surviving fragments show, are at once innovative and supreme achievements. He is the great originatoi the sun god; his sons follow him. He is therefore the most obvious candidate to be the inventor of the form of the Sphinx. The layout of the entire plateau argues for this interpretation. The causeway of Chephren takes account in its slanting course of something earlier, something important that already stood there; from the situation as it stands this can only have been the Sphinx. Stylistic considerations also point indisputedly toward Cheops. The overall form of the Sphinx’s face is broad, almost square. On the other hand the features of Chephren were long, noticeably narrower, the chin almost pointed. The Sphinx has the earlier, fully pleated type of nemes headcloth as does the head fragment of a statue of Cheops in The Metropolitan Museum, and still no band in the form of a raised hem over the brow. This is the norm from Djedefre onward. Under Chephren only the lappets of the nemes headcloth are pleated and never the hood. The side wings of the Sphinx’s nemes headcloth are deeply hollowed, but with Chephren hardly at all. With Chephren the headcloth corners curl up, but they do not do so with the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has a uraeus cobra placed on the lower edge of the headcloth and in contrast to those of Chephren and Mycerinus it shows high relief with naturalistic detailing of the serpent’s neck and the scales of its hood. The eyebrows of the Sphinx bulge powerfully forward, and they are pitched high and slope down toward the temples. The eyes are deep-set, but strongly modeled. They are large and wide open, to which perhaps the monumentality of the head owes something. These wide- open eyes are absolutely typical of sculpted heads from the time of Cheops. The ears are fundamentally different from those of the statue of Chephren. The ears of the Sphinx are very broad and folded forward, those of Chephren elongated and situated closer to the temples.

A decisive criterion is the absence of a beard. Since the Sphinx has no indications of hair on its chin, there certainly would not have been one in the Old Kingdom. The god’s beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and it also included a platform, which was adorned with a royal figure of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The small ivory statuette of Cheops does not have a beard, nor do the heads attributed to him (Brooklyn 46.167 and Berlin 14396), or the relief images. Whereas the kings of the Fourth Dynasty that follow — Djedefre, Chephren, and Mycerinus — all wear the ceremonial beard in relief and in modeled form. Therefore all evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx, like the great pyramids, is an original creation of Cheops.

Complexes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (Egypt Arts)

Complexes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties

The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Dynasties passed peacefully, as is indicated by the biographies of high officials, which provide valuable historical sources. The few inscriptions do not reveal whether Khentkaus, mother of the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahure, and Neferirkare, was the wife or daughter of Shepseskaf last king of the Fourth Dynasty. Shepseskaf did not build a pyramid, but rather a huge stone mastaba at south Saqqara. It would be unwise to conclude from this that there were political or religious conflicts, for Shepseskaf had decreed the enactment of the mortuary cult, with offerings at the pyramids of his predecessors. The form of Shepseskaf’s name cannot be distinguished from that of Userkaf the first king of the Fifth Dynasty, who again chose the pyramid form for his tomb.

The shift of importance from pyramid to mortuary temple, which had established itself with Mycerinus, became the norm in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. The pyramids, which the kings of these dynasties constructed at Abusir and later at Saqqara, were considerably smaller, while the mortuary temples grew in size. The temples absorbed the entire east side of the pyramid. In this period there is hardly any further alteration in the architecture into an open temple for worship and an intimate temple for offerings, where the deceased king would receive the daily gifts in the company of the gods. The interior walls were richly painted with scenes on every surface. These showed the king’s entry in the world of the gods, his rebirth through the heavenly goddesses, his triumph over the chaotic world beyond Egypt’s borders and the daily gifts of offerings.

Administrative documents from the mortuary temples at Abusir tell us in detail about the bureaucracy that organized the supply and distribution of the considerable quantities of the offerings, from which the staff and priests ultimately lived, as in fact did the entire population of the pyramid town. The focal point of the pyramid town was the valley temple, whence the causeway ascended to the pyramid temple. In the valley temple the deceased king was also worshipped as a local divinity.

The offerings came first from the shrines of the sun god, temples that from the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty were built next to each of the royal mortuary complexes in the area of Abusir. These are “mortuary temples” for the daily setting of the sun god in the west. Architecturally they indeed resemble a royal mortuary temple, with a broad offering court, the main feature of which, however, was an obelisk, raised on a podium, in place of a pyramid. The offering was placed here first for the sun god, and then was taken to the royal mortuary temples in a kind of cult procession. We can conclude from the reliefs in the solar temples that the offerings made there to the sun god ensured the continuing cycle of rebirth of the world order.

The custom of building a new shrine to the sun god each time was abandoned at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, but this hardly represents a departure from the worship of the sun god Re that dominated Egyptian theology. The kings’ names provide evidence here: they are all supplemented with “Re” and “Son of Re.” But in the Sixth Dynasty there seems to have been a growing interest in the cult of Osiris and the concept of the afterlife in the underworld. This is not reflected in the architecture, but all the more in the pyramid texts that first appear at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, and in the prayers and wishes of private people. However, pyramid and temple architecture freezes into the pattern and scale found in the Fifth Dynasty.

Yet it would be wrong to speak of a decline. The pyramids and temples of Kings Teti, Pepi I and Pepi II are technically perfect constructions, maintaining in their scale and proportions the standards of the Fifth Dynasty.

The causes of the end of the Old Kingdom are certainly not to be found in the exhaustion of the state and its resources through excessive pyramid building. The decline of the Old Kingdom began with the disintegration of the central administration during the exceptionally long reign of Pepi II. After his mortuary complex was completed the country lay idle for decades. During these years the provincial governors discovered that they could maintain their administration and rule without royal command and they became more or less independent. Thus the central administration was cut off from the resources of the provinces.

The construction of the pyramids was a moment that united belief in the person of the king and in the role of kingship, as well as an opportunity for individuals to progress through their own ability and be assured of a safe life both in society and in the afterlife. One can best compare the building of the pyramids with the construction of the great cathedrals in European cities of the Middle Ages, which were the work of religious urban communities on a scale similar to the pyramids, the product of a state united by religion. The cathedrals are the gathering places for a community of believers for common prayer and a common cult, the hope and preparation for salvation in the afterlife. The pyramid complexes are comparable to the extent that they ensured an afterlife for the people through the person of the king and his mortuary cult.

One could go so far as to compare the cult of the deified king in his pyramid complex, and here especially in the valley temple, with the cult of the saints to whom a cathedral is consecrated. Just as the saints share through their devotion in God’s heavenly life after death, and the congregations strive to achieve the same through prayer good deeds, and offerings, so the king’s ascent into heaven and his union with the sun god ensures that his devout subjects will be able to share in the eternal afterlife. The intermediary role that the king had in the daily cult in this life, between the gods and the world order, is the same role he fulfills in the afterlife. The differences between the king’s heavenly afterlife and that of his subjects in the “beautiful west” may seem great to us; yet in reality they are just a projection into the future existence of the divisions that exist in this world.


The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

At 73.5 m long and over 20 m high the Great Sphinx is the most immense sculpture ever made by man. It shows a being that is part-lion and part-man, a creature metamorphosed into a divine being by the combined strength of a powerful wild animal and the intelligence of a human ruler. Earlier two-dimensional images of this creature as a griffin show it in action destroying the enemy. In the sculpture this power is tamed, controlled by human intelligence, and it has transformed into a divine, magisterial calm. Even if one agrees today that the Sphinx is a work of the Fourth Dynasty, the attribution to either Cheops, Djedefre or Chephren remains a matter of dispute. So far there is no inscriptional evidence that clearly names any of these three kings as the statue’s creator. The mention made of Chephren on the sphinx stela of Thutmosis IV (Eighteenth Dynasty) was, first of all, made a good thousand years later and, secondly, stands today out of context: in light of a similar text on the sphinx stela of Amenophis II it should probably be explained as “resting place/horizon of Cheops and of Chephren,” in other words the necropolis of Giza. A small, unique stela from the time of Ramesses of an “excellent scribe Monthu-her” bears the earliest image of the two pyramids, of Cheops and Chephren, with the Sphinx correctly shown in front of the Pyramid of Cheops. The area in which the Sphinx stands was undoubtedly ground quarried for stone to build the Cheops pyramid. Yet even this point is not unequivocal evidence that Cheops constructed the Sphinx.

Some reevaluations and an analysis of stylistic criteria can take us further. After Snefru in Dahshur, it was Cheops in Giza whose designs and achievements are ultimately the finest. His pyramids, his temple, and even his statues, as surviving fragments shox are at once innovative and supreme achievements. He is the great originator, the sun god; his sons follow him. He is therefore the most obvious candidate to be the inventor of the form of the Sphinx. The layout of the entire plateau argues for this interpretation. The causeway of Chephren takes account in its slanting course of something earlier, something important that already stood there; from the situation as it stands this can only have been the Sphinx. Stylistic considerations also point indisputedly toward Cheops. The overall form of the Sphinx’s face is broad, almost square. On the other hand the features of Chephren were long, noticeably narrower the chin almost pointed. The Sphinx has the earliei fully pleated type of nemes headcloth as does the head fragment of a statue of Cheops in The Metropolitan Museum, and still no band in the form of a raised hem over the brow This is the norm from Djedefre onward. Under Chephren only the lappets of the nemes headcloth are pleated and never the hood. The side wings of the Sphinx’s nemes headcloth are deeply hollowed, but with Chephren hardly at all. With Chephren the headcloth corners curl up, but they do not do so with the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has a uraeus cobra placed on the lower edge of the headcloth and in contrast to those of Chephren and Mycerinus it shows high relief with naturalistic detailing of the serpent’s neck and the scales of its hood. The eyebrows of the Sphinx bulge powerfully forward, and they are pitched high and slope down toward the temples. The eyes are deep—set, but strongly modeled. They are large and wide open, to which perhaps the monumentality of the head owes something. These wide- open eyes are absolutely typical of sculpted heads from the time of Cheops. The ears are fundamentally different from those of the statue of Chephren. The ears of the Sphinx are very broad and folded forward, those of Chephren elongated and situated closer to the temples.

A decisive criterion is the absence of a beard. Since the Sphinx has no indications of hair on its chin, there certainly would not have been one in the Old Kingdom. The god’s beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and it also included a platform, which was adorned with a royal figure of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The small ivory statuette of Cheops does not have a beard, nor do the heads attributed to him (Brooklyn 46.167 and Berlin 14396), or the relief images. Whereas the kings of the Fourth Dynasty that follow — Djedefre, Chephren, and Mycerinus — all wear the ceremonial beard in relief and in modeled form. Therefore all evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx, like the great pyramids, is an original creation of Cheops.

Cult and Pyramid Construction after Cheops

Cult and Pyramid Construction after Cheops

Never before or afterward in Egyptian history are the claims of divine kingship so powerfully expressed. That this could be completed in the twenty-three to twenty-six, or more likely thirty, years of his reign, is the result of the remarkable training of the managers, architects, and workers engaged in undertakings that had continued for half a century. This enabled the participants to accomplish astonishing achievements: the hollowing-out of rock beds to distances of 100 m; the preparation and storage of incredibly heavy stones to provide a constant supply for the teams of workers; the design of ramps and transport routes that cost a minimum in time and materials and which still did not hinder the continuing process of surveying as the pyramids rose upwards. The details of how this was done are still largely unknown, although recent research into pyramid building using models by the German Archeological Institute in Cairo (DAT) has resulted in small initial ramps that could later be adapted. Although mention is still made of hundreds of thousands of workers, slaves, and bonded laborers, it is clear that the narrow building sites did not leave sufficient room for such large numbers of people. Our calculations suggest a number of workers not exceeding 20,000—25,000: quarrymen and stonemasons, sappers and carriers, bricklayers and plasterers, suppliers and servers of food, and then many engineers and architects. With the estimated total population of Egypt at around two million people, their numbers would have lain just below one percent of people who spent the whole year round building the pyramids. The main population of the country was hardly affected by the pyramid-building program. Even the costs and material assets for the building and its teams of workers remain within reason with this percentage.

A new class of men and their families, professional members of the court, administrators, and craftsmen, occupied the towns that surrounded the palace and pyramids. They were employed as priests and officers of the mortuary temple. It is these people who shaped the state, and enabled it to achieve ever greater accomplishments.

For a better understanding of the pyramids we must distance ourselves once and for all from the positivist viewpoint of the nineteenth century, and remember that the construction of the pyramids, the layout of the tomb chambers and the form and size of the mortuary temple were determined by religious ceremonies and the needs of the cult and by nothing else. The burial chamber system inside the pyramid and the form of the mortuary temple outside are interrelated. A complicated arrangement of the burial chambers corresponds to simple architecture in the mortuary temple and vice versa. The size of a pyramid is in no way a measure of the power and position of its builder. So for example, Djedefre, the son and successor of Cheops, began building his pyramid on a much smaller scale, but in such a commanding position at Abu Roash (north of Giza) that it dominates the landscape because of its location in just the same way that Cheops’ pyramid does at Giza. Although unfinished, the mortuary temple of Djedefre was nevertheless adorned with many statues of the king of the highest quality.
This can be demonstrated more clearly by example of the complexes of Chephren and Mycerinus. Chephren was one of Cheops’ younger sons, and he came to the throne unexpectedly early after the death of his brother Djedefre. His pyramid was intended to equal the height of that of his father, which he achieved in fact through the choice of a slightly higher site and a steeper angle of slope. The system of chambers is so unusually simple that in the 1960s serious (but unsuccessful) attempts were made using the most modern scientific equipment to locate additional rooms. On the other hand, his pyramid temple and valley temple were very lavishly constructed.

In contrast, the burial chamber system in the considerably smaller pyramid of his son Mycerinus is characterized by an extraordinary succession of rooms that can only be compared with those in the Pyramid of Cheops. The chambers in the Mycerinus pyramid lead down into the solid rock, unlike those in the Cheops pyramid. But the mortuary temple of Mycerinus resembles that of Cheops in being dominated by a wide open court closed to the west by a chapel for offerings to the dead. Between Chephren and Mycerinus fits the four-year reign of Baka (Bikheris), one of Djedefre’s sons, who planned and started work on a large pyramid in Zawiyet el-Aryan.

The Pyramid of Cheops -Wonder of the Ancient World

The Pyramid of Cheops — Wonder of the Ancient World

Snefru’s son and successor thus benefited from the best examples he could have in order to plan an even more ambitious pyramid for his own tomb. In order to avoid another ruined building he settled on a solid rock foundation, which he found in a commanding position on the ridge above what is now Giza. The new royal palace was erected to the east.

The perfection of the proportions and construction of the superstructure exactly matches the planning of the system of corridors and chambers inside. To the present day, scholars have tried in a broadly positive spirit to attribute the pyramid’s three chambers to three successive changes in the design. But it does not do justice to the architects who designed and executed this unique building so perfectly to suggest that, in the essential element of the pyramid’s construction, that is the system of tomb chambers, they had proceeded without concept or design. Against this view is a conclusive argument in that the exterior construction and the layout of the chamber system work in perfect accord, and that neither inside nor out is there any suggestion of a change of plan. Recent research has shown that since the Thinite era royal tombs have had not just a single burial chamber but a series of three rooms or spaces, whose function has so far been only partially understood. Recently this realization has also provided evidence against pyramid mysticism, an epidemic of which is breaking out again, which suggests that hidden secrets, or even further treasure chambers, the “chambers of knowledge,” were built into the chamber system of the pyramid of Cheops.

The upper granite burial chamber stands more or less isolated in the interior of the pyramid. Five relief chambers with granite beams weighing up to forty tons served to relieve the pressure. The uppermost has a gabled roof of magnificent limestone blocks that rest on the stones of the core construction. In the relief chambers are to be found various pieces of graffiti by construction workers that name Cheops, the only authentic evidence of the builder found in this pyramid. From the middle of the south and north walls of the burial chamber — and in the same way from the middle chamber — mock corridors lead toward the southern and northern skies. They provide a direct route up to heaven for the deceased king’s soul. Previously these had been seen as ventilation shafts or telescopes for observing the skies. But it is certain that these corridors were originally sealed off and could only have served for the flight to heaven of the deceased king’s soul.

It is characteristic of the conservative beliefs of the ancient Egyptians that alongside the predominant theology centered on worship of the sun, older ideas about an underworld afterlife in the depths of the earth were tolerated. This “chthonic” (underworldly) aspect is manifested in the rock chamber cut 30 m deep into the solid ground underneath. The corridor on the east side of the rock chamber, which would have led to a southern tomb underneath the pyramid, was never completed, which is why Cheops later built a small southern pyramid on the southeast corner of his pyramid enclosure, only discovered and excavated a few years ago. The middle chamber has a statue niche on the east side for a ka statue of the king and, like the granite chamber has mock corridors leading to heaven. This chamber cannot ever have served as an actual burial chamber since it was not provided with a stone sarcophagus or a magical sealing by portcullises (stone plugs released from above in the entrance corridors). Through the inclusion of a closed cult area in the body of the pyramid, the precinct outside was reduced to the mortuary temple, of which today only the basalt paving remains. From the pattern of markings in the paving it can be seen that the temple once consisted of a broad court surrounded by columns and a chapel for mortuary offerings. Also added late, and only after the south tomb in the rock beneath the pyramid had been abandoned, was a small cult pyramid in the southeast corner of the complex. Fragments of statues of limestone and other stones are evidence of its rich decoration. The necropolis was planned just as precisely and carefully as the pyramid complex itself. Five shafts in the rock to the east and south of the pyramid once contained funerary barques — not solar barques — for Cheops. Both of the shafts to the south were originally found sealed. The eastern shaft contained a royal ship complete with rudder and rigging, broken into over 1,200 pieces. Now reassembled, it measures 43.40 m long. The other barque burial has not yet been opened, although recently video images were taken through a bore hole that show that the ship it contains has been badly damaged by conditions underground. Undoubtedly both ships provided transport for the king while he was alive and were to be at his disposal in the afterlife. These are not the only ships found in this way. As early as the First and Second Dynasties, kings were provided with ships for the afterlife. To the east also lie three small pyramids, one to the king’s mother Hetepheres, main consort of Snefru, who outlived him and died in her son’s palace at Giza and was buried there; and the others to the two main queens, Meretites and Henutsen, mothers of Cheops’ sons and successors, Djedefre and Chephren. The illegitimate sons and daughters of the king were given huge, solid double mastabas to the east of the queens’ pyramids. High court officials, the architects and even prince Hemiunu, the influential building manager of the pyramids, were given tombs in the west cemetery.

The king himself was involved in the form of the tomb chapels and their decoration, which is limited to scenes of the most important offerings. These form a unique representation in monumental form of state and society, in the strict hierarchies of the royal court and in the imaginary world of the king’s afterlife, in order that they might forever serve him. They are also recipients of royal largesse and offerings from the central royal mortuary temple.

We know as little about the person of Cheops as we do of other kings of the Old Kingdom. The critique of his reign and achievements handed down by Herodotus is a purely Greek reaction to architecture that towers above everything on a human scale, and which for a Greek could only signal mortal hubris. That he was Snefru’s son, we know only from the chance find of tomb equipment of his mother Hetepheres in a shaft burial at Giza. When she died, the queen was initially buried in this shaft tomb, while her pyramid, the northernmost of the queens’ pyramids, was being completed to the east of the pyramid of Cheops. Cheops is one of the younger generation of Snefru’s sons and was probably born when Dahshur was in the middle of its building program, which would mean that he came to the throne when he was about 25—30 years old. By this time, his older brothers the princes Nefermaat and Rahotep, who were the architects of the pyramids at Meidum and Dahshur, were already dead.

The Reign of Snefru

The Reign of Snefru

The Pyramid Age begins around 2640 BC, with the long reign of Snefru, first king of the Fourth Dynasty; this was the most magnificent and magical period of Egyptian culture. In addition to architecture, the arts of relief sculpture and painting reach their absolute high points. Moreover, in the natural sciences and medicine, the foundations of
knowledge and practice were laid that would remain valid for centuries, right into the Greek era. The belief in the sun god Re, creator of all things, dominated Egyptian religion, ethics, state, and society, which became open and receptive to those with the skills to work on great projects. These individuals formed the new class of “scribes” who were
trained in the practical and theoretical management of the state. This group admitted princes alongside those who had risen by their merits. As guarantor of this system, the sun god Re gives power to the king, whose divinity consisted not in himself; but in his role as ruler. He is the “benign God,” the god of the necropolis that it is his task to construct. Snefru’s Horus name means “Lord of the world order,” a title that later applies only to the sun god Re. Snefru’s son Cheops identified himself with the sun god to such an extent in his pyramid complex and tomb that his sons and successors referred to themselves by the new royal title, “Son of Re.”

Contemporary sources for Snefru’s ancestry and character are rare. His mother Meresankh was probably a secondary queen of Huni, last king of the Third Dynasty, but the male ancestors of kings of the Old Kingdom are never mentioned directly because the king is by nature of divine parentage.
Besides his large pyramid structures, the principal achievements of the reign of Snefru were the campaigns in Nubia and Libya that brought substantial booty in both cattle and men. These were settled in thirty-five new royal estates in the Faiyum and in the Delta. Additional achievements that can be linked to this period include the construction of a new royal palace, possibly near Dahshur, with tall gateways of cedar wood, intensive ship building, the manufacture of life-sized royal statues in copper and gold, and an extremely large wooden harp.
Astonishingly, the building of the pyramids is not mentioned in contemporary documents, although it must have been the main event that took place during a king’s reign. The building of a pyramid, along with the temple ceremonies, the performance of daily rituals that guaranteed the rising and setting of the sun, the passage of the seasons and the arrival of the Nile floods, is such a fundamental part of the king’s natural lifetime task that it hardly needed mentioning. Besides, Snefru was without doubt the most impressive builder of the ancient world, constructing three large and two smaller pyramids in his long reign, using more than 3.6 million cubic metres of stone: one million more than his son Cheops used in his Great Pyramid at Giza. Nonetheless he is known in Egyptian tradition as a good, indeed excellent king, who addressed his subordinates, according to folk tales, as “friend” or even “brother.”

The shape of the pyramid complex changed, under the influence of sun worship, from being a north—south-oriented rectangle into a square east—west complex, directed towards the rising sun. The east- west siting emphasizes a new element in the layout of the pyramid complex: the long causeway. It leads from the east, the land of the living, up to the pyramid tomb, ending at the mortuary temple that from this time onwards lies to the east of the pyramid. The entrance gate to the causeway develops into a valley temple, cult center of the pyramid town, in which the goddess Hathor and the king were worshipped as local deities.


The Pyramids of Snefru

Snefru built his first two pyramids, still in the form of step pyramids, at Meidum. A small, solid step pyramid formed a towering landmark above his palace at Seila, on the eastern edge of the Faiyum. His first full pyramid complex, 10 km to the east, includes a huge step pyramid, which was enlarged in a second building phase to the tremendous height of 85 m, and still dominates the view of the Nile Valley. Toward the end of his long reign Snefru “modernized” this pyramid, changing its form into that of a true pyramid.
Just as the form of the step pyramid had its roots in the preceding Third Dynasty, there were other innovations influenced by the orientation of the pyramid complex toward the sun’s course, mentioned above, and in the system of tomb chambers. Among the cult buildings of the new pyramid complex the only reminders of the Djoser complex are the mortuary temple and the south tomb, which was constructed like the king’s tomb as a small step pyramid directly to the south of the main pyramid. Certainly there is no true mortuary temple in Meidum, since the king was not to be buried there, but to the east of the pyramid lies a stela shrine with two stelae, which replace and physically represent the king. The tomb chamber system in the pyramid also differs from those of the Third Dynasty. The tomb chamber is no longer sunk deep into the subterranean shaft, but lies raised above the rock in the body of the pyramid. The entrance, or exit, on the other hand lies on the north side from now on, and remains in this position throughout the Old Kingdom. Through the tomb corridor leading up from the rock deep underground, the king would ascend to the everlasting stars in the northern sky, in order to meet the sun god in his barque there. The beginnings of a three-chamber system can be seen in the tombs of the First Dynasty: a tomb chamber proper, as well as two subsidiary chambers, which initially served to store the most important offerings for the deceased king. In the tomb of Djoser, the ante- and side-chambers were already conceived as having a religious function. Thus the ascent to the stars begins from the antechamber, and it is for this reason that the portcullis stones are decorated with stars. The eastern galleries of the “blue chambers” are the model palace for the afterlife. In the Fourth Dynasty the horizontal arrangement of the chambers is replaced by a vertical system, of which the Pyramid of Cheops provides the ultimate example.

At Meidum a trend was set by laying out a royal cemetery in regular rows to the northeast of the pyramids with the double mastabas of Snefru’s Sons and their wives. A huge single mastaba stands right by the northeast corner of the pyramid complex and thus in an important position. This was apparently built in a hurry and contains the burial of a nameless prince, probably the crown prince who died young in the early years of Snefru’s reign. We can only speculate as to the reasons why in the fifteenth year of his reign Snefru should have abandoned his palace and the nearly complete pyramid at Meidum, and begun again nearly 50 km north, building a palace and a pyramid near Dahshur. Possibly it proved difficult to control the colonization of the Nile Delta and the trade routes from far away Middle Egypt. The new site near Dahshur, on the other hand, was very convenient. A natural basin for the harbor ensured the development of the region. To the east a trade route led to Sinai, and a wadi led to the western oases, and to the Faiyum. Conveniently sited limestone quarries for building material lay on both sides of the Nile.

A new opportunity was found for the now-idle workers and specialists in a bold undertaking that was to build a towering pyramid without steps, and with a gradient almost as steep as that of the stepped pyramid, to the extraordinary height of about 150 m.

It needs emphasizing here that the development from a step pyramid to the pure geometrical form of the pyramid proper is absolutely not inevitable. None of the other ancient cultures that built step pyramids made this advance. The progression from assembling step- shaped masses to form an artificial hill to the abstract geometrical form of the pyramid is a remarkable intellectual achievement that was the result of an extraordinary and unique gamble in the time of Snefru. Bold improvements were also made in the tomb chambers in the new pyramid, which because of its present form is known as the “Bent Pyramid.” These were to have corbelled vaults, conceived at Meidum and perfected here, up to a height of 15 m. The ensuing alterations necessitated by subsidence and damage during construction resulted in a chamber system in this pyramid that is extraordinarily complicated and difficult to follow.

According to earlier religious descriptions of the king’s afterlife, this took place deep in the underworld. For this reason the lowest of the three tomb chambers had to lie deep into the rock, as in the tomb of Djoser. The upward slope of the tomb corridor is also determined by the requirement for an undeviating passage up to the circumpolar stars. It therefore needed to begin deep in the rock below ground in order to lead to the desired exit, a short distance up the north face of the pyramid. The middle chamber is connected with the king’s ascent to heaven, which is in turn represented by the tomb chamber above, although the ascent also actually lies in the direction followed by the tomb corridor.

In order to facilitate the excavation of a shaft of about 7 by 7 m and
22.5 m deep, a layer of marl and slate was put down first as at Saqqara.
However, this was not adequate to support the weight of the stones.
As the pyramid grew upward sizeable cracks appeared in the three
chambers and in the corridor, and initially it was felt sufficient to repair these by filling. It became clear very quickly, however, that both the lower chambers and the entrance corridor were seriously damaged and could not be saved by any further alterations. Eventually all attempts at repair — even giving up the lower chamber and reducing the pyramid’s angle of slope—proved useless. After fifteen years of building work the boldest of all pyramid projects had to be abandoned. Snefru began work on building a third pyramid.

The step pyramid at Meidum was modernized at the same time, and altered into a true pyramid. For the third of Snefru’s great pyramids, the “Red Pyramid” at north Dahshur, the ground underneath was probably first tested, and the area increased to 220 m along the sides, and it was decided to employ a flatter angle of slope (45 The method of building in layers, which in the construction of a true pyramid brought no economy of labor, was rejected and replaced by horizontal courses of stone. After the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren, the “Red Pyramid” is still the third largest, reaching 105 m in height. Everything about this building contributes to a harmonious, reserved and majestic effect. The system of chambers is also harmonious and easy to follow because they are laid out one behind the other. They are set only just below ground, and reached by an exit in the north wall nearly 30 m above ground, something that must have greatly inconvenienced the introduction of the funeral ceremony and the final blocking off of the corridor.

The foundations of a hastily completed mortuary temple in front of the east side of the pyramid, and the sad remains of a mummified corpse that were found in the tomb chamber, suggest that Snefru was eventually buried in this pyramid. The princes and princesses of the last years of Snefru’s reign are buried in great stone mastabas in the eastern area in front of the two pyramids at Dahshur. These are massive rectangles of stone with smooth exterior walls. Only the east side seems originally to have had two niches, the more southerly of which bore the names of the deceased and perhaps a false door panel. In a small court to the front were possibly displayed two stelae with names and titles. Even the principal queen of this period, probably queen Hetepheres, had only a modest undecorated mastaba. She was, however, not buried in Dahshur but later in Giza, in her son Cheops’
cemetery.

Under Snefru a period of construction lasting nearly fifty years brought remarkable advances in building techniques: in masonry, tunneling, the transport of stone and in structural engineering. The bitter experience of catastrophic collapse due to unstable ground led to extreme caution in the choice of sites. The organization and logistics of a building site profited from the experience of twice relocating the pyramid-building towns. The need for building materials, special types of stone, wood and copper for tools and equipment stimulated expeditions and trade with countries to the north. This brought greater awareness of the surrounding area. The civil service also grew in experience through its varied tasks and became an efficient instrument of central government.

Royal Tombs from the Age of the Pyramids

Royal Tombs from the Age of the Pyramids

Until recently the transition from the Thinite era to the Old Kingdom seemed to have been marked by distinct political changes, and to have been a cultural turning point. However, new research into the tombs in the cemeteries of Abydos and Saqqara shows us that there was neither a dynastic change nor a cultural breakthrough. It appears from seal impressions that Djoser, first king of the Third Dynasty, brought provisions for and sealed up the tomb in Abydos of Khasekhemui, the last king of the Second Dynasty. Several kings from the beginning of the Second Dynasty had already sited their tombs — spacious galleried complexes with massive superstructures in the central area of Saqqara, the royal cemetery of the Third Dynasty. Khasekhemui — Djoser’s father or father-in-law — seems to have had both a large tomb at Abydos and an enormous gallery tomb in the form of a “Buto-type” mastaba in Saqqara. The troubling tendency for single rulers to have two or more tombs is encountered frequently in Egyptian history, and it cannot be satisfactorily explained by interpretations of some of these structures as cenotaphs, or memorials.

For the ancient Egyptians the preservation of the entire body was undoubtedly an essential and fundamental condition for life after death. Besides this there were, early on, other ritual totems for preserving the deceased king’s physical presence and spirituality. These are, in order of importance: the portrait statue, the royal stela, and the royal tomb. These various images and different homes for the deceased king — mummy, statue, stela, pyramid, and tomb — were first brought together in monumental architectural form in about 2680 BC in the tomb precinct ofDjoser, constructed in view of the royal palace.

To this extent the reign of Djoser marks an important watershed, the start of a magical period, in which Egypt emerges from its dark early history, and the brilliance of the Old Kingdom begins: the Age of the Pyramids. This is how the Egyptians themselves saw it, and in Pjoser’s reign they recognized a real beginning, a new era, although the ancient Egyptian view of life was in fact cyclical rather than historical. It was seen as a succession of recurring events, as in nature, structured by annual festivals and the royal jubilees.

In one of the few pseudo-historical documents from ancient Egypt, known as the “Turin Royal Papyrus,” from the beginning of the Nine-teenth Dynasty — a list of kings with their dates — the name of Djoser is given special emphasis by the addition of a brief summary. That Djoser should be valued and honored in this way thousands of years later stems not, interestingly enough, from the political union or pacification of the country, or from foreign conquests, but from the fact that he was regarded as the initiator of monumental stone architecture, a role that historically he shares with his son and chief architect Imhotep.

Rough blocks of stone were occasionally employed in and on tombs of the Archaic Period, but Djoser and Imhotep discovered worked stone as a building material and with it created the first monumental architecture, buildings whose forms and symbols gave shape to the state of Egypt. In the stone buildings and courts, which were now “everlasting” thanks to the material, the idea was that the deified king should continue to celebrate, as was his lifetime role as ruler, the rituals and cult practices that ensured the preservation of the world order established by the gods. With death and deification this became his eternal task. Each king therefore had to construct his own tomb precinct and his own pyramid as palace for the next world, and as representation of the eternal Egypt of the afterlife.

This remarkable representation in stone of a state philosophy did not come about suddenly or arise out of nothing. By the reign of Djoser, Egypt had existed as a single country for several hundred years. With unification the old nomadic ways of the leading Upper Egyptian tribes of the First Dynasty were intermingled with the more settled, architectural culture of the peoples of the Delta region.

The different cultural traditions and contrasting geographical realities found their expression in funerary architecture. In the relatively narrow river valley of Upper Egypt the tombs lie mainly on the edge of the desert on either side of the Nile, protected from the annual floods. The earliest are shallow grave pits with a sand tumulus that rises just above the level of the desert. By contrast, the tombs of the earliest ruling class of the more urban state of Lower Egypt could only be built on the higher ground of inhabited sand banks, and deep shafts were ruled out due to the level of groundwater. The tomb was protected by its superstructure. From this feature developed a form of house-tomb with exterior walls decorated with niches, the “Buto-type” mastaba.

It can be shown that this type of tomb first appeared in a princely burial in Naqada and in the large niche mastabas at Saqqara from the beginning of the First Dynasty, which appear there suddenly in the reign of Hor Aha. These are refined tomb buildings of the Lower Egyptian house-tomb type, with massive, virtually solid superstructures, up to 50 m or 100 Egyptian cubits long, 15—20 m or 30—40 cubits wide, and over 5 m or 10 cubits high. Their whitewashed facades, punctuated by niches, were a magnificent display of royal presence above the northern cliffs of Saqqara. If they were not royal tombs or cenotaphs, then they were surely the tomb buildings of queens and the highest princes, impressive power architecture of the ruling dynasty.


The Mortuary Complex of Djoser

Before Djoser’s mortuary complex there were differences in use of space between the Upper Egyptian royal tombs of Abydos and those in the Lower Egyptian royal cemetery. Djoser took forms that had developed in the separate regions through geographical and cultural differences, and combined them harmoniously in one complex and in a single tomb building. Superficially, it was dominated by the form and arrangement of palace tombs of the “Buto-type” mastaba. Thus far, scholars have sought to explain the origins of the Djoser precinct by a very abstract concept, namely as a construction that combines the two types that had existed alongside one another in Abydos for generations: the valley complex and the so-called tumuli of Abydos. However, since it became known that the Abydos royal tombs were not in fact burial mounds of any substantial height, but were covered by no more than a rather unattractive sand bank barely rising above the desert, this theory has become distinctly questionable. Far more likely is that in the construction of the Djoser complex, nearby tomb buildings in the royal cemetery of Saqqara, the “Buto-type” mastabas of the First and Second Dynasties, were used as a model. Although we know little about the character of Djoser from contemporary sources — the only reliable information we possess are his buildings, his statue, and the reliefs depicting him — it seems nevertheless possible that he was responsible for the innovative concept of royal palace for the afterlife. He would have been supported by his kindred spirit, the architect Imhotep.

Recent experimental research into the layout of the building has shown that the tomb precinct was not originally conceived on such a gigantic and all-encompassing scale, but that it grew over a period of more than twenty years in several building phases, with alterations to the layout. At first the complex was to have been about half its size, extending 300 m from north to south, and 113 m east to west, but with the actual architectural elements already laid out and partially completed. The elements built in the first stage of construction included the 10.5 m-high stone enclosure wall with niched panels, the royal tomb with a mortuary temple to the north, the south tomb above the southern enclosure wall with a chapel, the facade of which has a distinctive frieze of uraeus cobras, the great ceremonial court between these two tomb buildings and the small ceremonial court in the eastern part. An important distinction between this and earlier royal tombs is the relatively precise orientation of the whole site to the four cardinals (the four compass points); the variation from the north—south axis, as it was then, was no more than 3°. The boundaries were marked by tall stelae bearing the names of Djoser and his queens, with the protective figure of the mortuary god Anubis. The superstructure of the king’s tomb was planned from the very beginning as a three-tiered step mastaba that, like the south tomb, was oriented east—west; this had the effect of enclosing the great ceremonial courts to the south and north between the high buildings. Only in a second construction phase, when the three-tiered mastaba with the king’s tomb and the south tomb were already nearly complete, was the superstructure of the mastaba converted into a stepped pyramid. In one of the earliest phases this was to consist of four tiers. This plan, as one can see on the east side where the structure lies open, did not develop beyond the first two tiers of the mastaba, at which point it was decided to extend the structure in breadth and height into a six-tiered pyramid 62.5 m in height.

The alteration of the step mastaba into a stepped pyramid gave the king’s tomb its exceptional prominence within the entire tomb complex. In contrast, the shape of the south tomb remained as an elongated east—west-oriented mastaba, only just rising above the south perimeter wall. The presence of two tombs in one precinct with largely identical underground structures is one of the unexplained peculiarities of the Djoser complex. The fact that this double pattern carries on in the southern pyramids of later pyramid precincts does not simplify interpretation. Both burial chambers are built from large granite blocks at the bottom of a 28 m-deep shaft. Because of its internal dimensions, only the granite chamber under the north tomb can have served as a burial place. Various objects were discovered there in the last century including the gilded skullcap of Djoser. The tomb chamber of the south tomb, on the other hand, was too small; it was empty and without trace of a burial. Most likely that chamber contained a transportable, gilded wooden statue that was regarded as equivalent in importance to the body of the deceased king. Nevertheless, the south tomb, which was found empty, was sealed in a similar manner to the tomb underneath the pyramid where the king’s body was buried. The entrance to the granite chamber was through a round opening, which was sealed from above by a granite plug weighing several tons, and which must have been suspended in the antechamber up until the burial. The burial chambers are connected by a system of underground galleries that served to store the enormous quantities of provisions for the afterlife. On the east side of the shafts of both tombs a second system of galleries branches off to form a rectangular gallery around a section of solid rock. The walls of the galleries were decorated with blue-green glazed tiles.

A series of eleven shafts on the east side of the step mastaba led 30 m deep into galleries underneath the king’s tomb. The royal family would have been interred in these, although only the five northernmost galleries were found to have been lined with stone or wood; several alabaster sarcophaguses were found for the burial of children, but no queen. The six southern galleries, on the other hand, were filled with incredible numbers (approximately 40,000) of stone vessels of varying shapes and containing a variety of different materials, among which were a number of vases bearing the names of kings of the First and Second Dynasties.

The raising up and widening of the original step mastaba into a six-tiered pyramid meant increasing the size of the ground plan and building over the mortuary temple to the north of the pyramid, and over the passageway into the tomb. To build a new mortuary temple in appropriate proportions, the complex had to be extended to the north and a court was needed for the delivery of offerings and provisions. A monumental altar, on which the offerings were brought each day to be consecrated, dominates the new north court. The entrance to the mortuary temple and the offerings place was guarded by a small chapel, leaning against the north side of the pyramid, known as the serdcth. In this building was found the only surviving life-size statue of Djoser, which is an impressive image of the inaccessibility and divine dignity of the king in his afterlife.

When the complex was enlarged it took in on the west side an elongated structure that was hitherto regarded as a magazine, though this is very probably the Lower Egyptian tomb of Khasekhemui, last king of the Second Dynasty. The inclusion of this structure demonstrates the idiosyncrasies of Djoser and Imhotep in their design. The Djoser complex is not merely a model of the royal palace, as was previously assumed, but a representation in stone of Egypt in the afterlife. The south and north tombs are symbols for the royal cemetery of Abydos as well as of the Lower Egyptian palace. They are the religious centers of the royal cult. The south court that they enclose and the chapels of the small ceremonial court in the eastern section represent the land of Egypt and its shrines, the world of the living, which is the setting for the eternal cult ceremonies of the king. The north court symbolizes the wealthy marshes of the Delta, standing metaphorically for the offering place of the northern heaven; the western area with the elongated niche tomb symbolizes the “holy realm,” the world of the dead. This stone image of Egypt in the afterlife is surrounded by a tall enclosure wall, which protects it from the chaos of the unordered world. This wall has as many as 15 gateways, yet only one functions as an entrance. Through its precise orientation to the north, following the course of the Nile, the complex is linked to the axis of the world, whose pole is the pyramid with the royal tomb, the palace of eternity.

This impressive invention of an everlasting Egypt in the afterlife developed gradually over a long period of construction. For the time being it must remain an open question whether the mere nineteen years given as the reign of Djoser in the “Turin Royal Papyrus” would have been sufficient to achieve this, or whether we need to double his years, which would be quite consistent with Old Kingdom ways of counting.

Djoser ‘s Successors

None of Djoser’s successors from the Third Dynasty completed his own tomb. Yet they made advances in construction techniques and brought clarity to the division of the underground magazines. The number of the courts was reduced, and they attempted to construct higher step pyramids. The mortuary complex of Djoser’s son or grandson, Sekhemket, was first discovered in the 1950s at Saqqara, to the southwest of the Djoser complex. The tomb chamber contained a coffin that was apparently closed though empty, and which had probably been robbed in antiquity. Another, very much eroded step pyramid from the Third Dynasty stands 10 km further north, in Zawiyet el-Aryan. Huni, the last king of the dynasty, built a series of small, solid, step pyramids from Elephantine in the south to Athribis in the Delta; not pyramids with tombs, but royal monuments, as if they were towers for his palaces. His actual burial place has not yet been found. It is sometimes claimed that Huni began the step pyramid of Meidum, and that Snefru, first king of the Fourth Dynasty, completed it for him, although this thesis is no longer tenable. Huni’s presence is not documented there. His tomb must have been in the region of Saqqara, where high officials of his time were buried. Besides this we can tell from graffiti on buildings and from inscriptions that during the Old and Middle Kingdoms no king finished a pyramid for his predecessor or took it over for himself.

The Political History of the Third to Eighth Dynasties

The Political History of the Third to Eighth Dynasties

At the end of the Thinite Period (the First and Second Dynasties),
which concluded the early history of Egypt, the country’s political and economic center was finally fixed in the Memphis area. The distinguishing outward mark of the Old Kingdom (Third to Sixth Dynasties) consists of the gigantic pyramid tombs of its kings, appearing to defy time and decay. With some justice, the Old Kingdom may be called the age of the pyramids. However, behind the monumental stature of the pyramids themselves, suggesting the idea of huge power apparently concentrated solely on the person of the king, stands the will of an elite surrounding him. The prevailing economic system of the Old Kingdom was expressed in these buildings and the necropolises and pyramid towns attached to them. The striving for continued existence in the afterlife made provision for all members of the state community in this life and the next a necessity, and the king was at the center of this system of provision. He had power over the country, its inhabitants and its produce. He delegated that power to his officials, who in their turn were responsible for the people and property entrusted
to their care. In the form of so-called “endowments to the dead,” the
powers thus delegated made provision in the immaterial world for the
deceased official, and material provision for those to whom his funerary cult was entrusted. At the same time, all subjects had a part in the provision made by the royal funerary cult. Step by step, and parallel to the growing number of institutionalized cults in the country, such provision, at first limited to the capital, came to include the inhabitants of distant provinces. Extensive economic and religious developments lie behind the volume of building and the changes in the planning and location of the pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom.

The Person of the Pharaoh in the Old Kingdom

The few available written sources for the early Old Kingdom do not
enable us to draw any conclusions about the individual characteristics
of the various kings. Later tradition portrayed some rulers, like Snefru, as good and others, like Cheops, as bad and cruel. These attributions need be taken no more seriously than similar evaluations in our own time. The queens were initially members of the royal house them- selves; only in the later Old Kingdom were wives taken from the class of officials. Some of them assumed the responsibility for rule, since they ensured the succession.
The Development of Internal Policy in the Old Kingdom

The concentration of officials around the king was connected with the
extension of the royal funerary complex. Provincial chieftains were
replaced by civil servants sent out from the capital and controlled by
it. Royal domains set up in the provinces — small economic units such as craft workshops, farming settlements, and fishing villages — delivered their products directly to the capital. The administrative regions were systematically organized. At the end of the Third Dynasty, under Pharaoh Huni, and the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Snefru, the construction throughout the country of small cult pyramids, not divided into chambers, was connected with these new royal domains: this is how the cult presence of the ruler was transferred to the provinces. The first provincial temples were dedicated under Mycerinus, and an increasing number of royal endowments was made available to the sacred complexes there.

During the Fourth Dynasty the army was commanded by royal princes. They led quarrying expeditions and supervised garrisons posted in the south (Elephantine) and the east (Heliopolis, Bubastis, the “Gate of Imhotep” where the trade route to Palestine began). Initially, the viziers who dispensed justice at this period were also drawn from their ranks. The kings of the Fifth Dynasty, descended from a family living north of Giza, concentrated on building temples to the sun, and the volume of complexes devoted to the cult of the dead at Abusir was considerably reduced. These building complexes were now economically supported by the sun temples. Decentralization of the administration increased; even the viziers no longer had to be of princely rank. With Pharaoh Unas (ca. 2360 BC), a new family, perhaps from the Delta, came to power in unknown circumstances. The building of sun temples abruptly ceased, and the pyramid complex of Abusir was abandoned in favor of Saqqara. Now that the new god of the dead, Osiris, guaranteed religious transfiguration and provision for humanity, it was possible for an official to be interred outside the capital, in the provinces. Provincial administrative centres flourished. Abydos, the main center of the cult of Osiris, became the seat of the governor of Upper Egypt; the royal temple of Osiris—Khontamenti was fortified by royal decree.

Crucial reforms were carried out during the extremely long reign of Pepi II. The seat of the governor of Upper Egypt changed several times. Coptos, with its temple of Min, gained importance, and Thebes became the administrative center of the south. However, internal power struggles and murder at court (briefly placing one Nitocris, sister of Pepi II, on the throne in 2218 BC) destroyed the infrastructure of the country and its supply network. The rulers who succeeded each other in Memphis in a series of brief reigns faced chaos in Upper Egypt: the region was splintering into several small, warring principalities. It was only with difficulty that the rulers in Memphis succeeded in restoring an administrative system that was generally acceptable to all parties. Nonetheless, the Memphite rulers were soon replaced by princes from Herakleopolis at the point of entrance to the Faiyum.
The Development of Foreign Policy in the Old Kingdom
Egypt had no external threats to fear during the Old Kingdom. However; n was well aware of the activities of the princes of the Nubian and south Palestinian regions, and kept a close watch on them. The annual festival rite in which the pharaoh repeated the ritual conquest of his enemies from all four quarters of the earth was a metaphorical way of asserting the superiority of the inhabitants of the Nile Valley. Potential enemies were magically destroyed by the ritual smashing of clay figurines. The purpose of foreign relations was to secure the trade routes and the necessary imports of raw materials. The increase in the building activities of the kings led to greater exploitation of sources of raw materials both at home and abroad, for instance the quarrying of calcite alabaster in Central Egypt, graywacke in the eastern desert at Wadi Hammamat, and basalt at Gebel Qatrani north of Lake Qarun in the Faiyum.

At the beginning of the Old Kingdom, probably under Djoser, copper mining was resumed in Wadi Maghara in the Sinai. The mining of its byproduct, turquoise, at Serabit el-Khadim must have begun not long after this time. Military control of the bedouin of the Sinai was a prerequisite of the industry.

Traditionally, timber for building was brought to Egypt from the harbors of the Levant, particularly Byblos. The construction of the necessary transport ships is repeatedly mentioned in the Egyptian annals. Numerous Egyptian items inscribed with royal names and donated to the temple of the Near Eastern goddess Baalat at Bvblos,
linked here with the Egyptian goddess Hathor, indicate peaceful trade
relations with that city. Egyptian objects have also been found at the
trading center of Ebla (Tell Mardikh). Representations of stags and
bears in royal mortuary temples of the Fifth Dynasty suggest gifts from foreign countries. A delivery of incense from Punt, somewhere in present-day Somalia or Eritrea, is mentioned for the first time in the reign of Sahura (ca. 2490 BC). Military actions were also frequently undertaken to secure trade interests.

Toward the end of the Fifth Dynasty, tomb decoration begins to
show scenes depicting the conquest of Asiatic cities, seagoing vessels
with Asiatic crews, and nomads of emaciated appearance. It is difficult to imagine that actual events such as battles in southern Palestine lay behind these subjects. Under Pepi I, however, at the beginning of the Sixth Dynasty, an attempt was made to extend Egyptian control to that area. Egyptian armies conducted several campaigns against bedouin “sand dwellers,” and went as far as a mountain they called “Nose of the Gazelle,” probably Mount Carmel in Palestine.

There was a campaign on a smaller scale against Libyan tribes in
the reign of Snefru (ca. 2620 BC), in which 1,100 prisoners were taken. The trade routes in the south and in the western oasis were again threatened by armed Libyan raiders around 400 years later. As a result, an Egyptian “controller of oases” was specially stationed in Dakhla.

Also in Snefru’s reign, at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, the
records mention Egyptian campaigns in the south. Some 20,000 soldiers invaded Lower Nubia, stealing cattle and allegedly taking 17,000 prisoners in one campaign, and 7,000 more in another; the captives were put to work as laborers or auxiliary police. However, the large number of soldiers deployed casts light on the Egyptian plan to keep soldiers permanently stationed in the south and to build new fortresses, for instance at Buhen. This policy meant that the trade routes, the stone quarries and gold supplies from Wadi Allaqi in the eastern desert, and the quarries of hard stone in the west, could all be supervised.

Under Pharaoh Izezi (ca. 2405—2367 BC) there is evidence for the
first time of an expedition going even farther south. Bartered trade products such as skins, ivory, and incense — and a dancing dwarf for the royal residence — probably came from the land of Yam in the Dongola basin. Caravan leaders from Elephantine ventured on this dangerous journey through the desert with the aid of native bedouin, interpreters, and soldiers. The route that could be traveled by donkey was known as the Oasis Road. By way of Bahriya, Dakhla and the small oases of Kurkur, Selima, and Dungul, it led to the region south of the third cataract.

The princes of Lower Nubia, themselves threatened by bedouin
raids, basically supported Egyptian policy, and even supplied contingents of men for the campaigns in Asia at the beginning of the Sixth Dynasty. The threat to the trade routes increased only toward the end of the Sixth Dynasty. Under Pepi II, there was further fighting against intruders in Lower Nubia, and three expeditions to Yam were undertaken. A series of reports gives a clear idea of these eventful journeys. One expedition leader had to bring home to Elephantine the body of his father, who had died in southern Egypt, and the bedouin killed another expedition leader who was building ships by the Red Sea. As a result, trade with the interior of Africa soon ceased entirely.

The Culture of the Elite at the Capital

The Culture of the Elite at the Capital

The lavish nature of the grave goods preserved at Saqqara casts light on this group’s lifestyle, a way of life very different indeed from that of the majority of Egyptians. They include furnishings and utensils of ivory and fine woods, ornamented with delicate carving, stone vessels in ornate forms, items sometimes elaborately constructed from parts consisting of various different materials. Large numbers of ceramic storage vessels to hold food suggest a life of luxury. These items bring to light for the first time the living conditions of the elite at the capital, and it was from those conditions that the culture of the Old Kingdom would spring.

Even more important in the context of funerary architecture is the development of major art forms. The thematic patterns and iconographic conventions of canonical art had already taken broad shape in the period of the unification of the two lands. At the time, as in the prehistoric period, pictorial design featured on everyday utensils, although some works already approached monumental form. The temple statues of Coptos pointed the way to the major artistic genres of a later date, and the process was greatly accelerated in the Early Dynastic period. Freestanding tomb stelae and stelae on false doors, as well as funerary statues, not only gave rise to important genres in the visual arts but defined their function and the situations in which they would be employed.

The Internal Structure of the State

The social structure of the early period, first perceptible in the tombs of the elite, and the elite culture expressing itself in those tombs, was based on an advanced state organization evident chiefly in the activities of the administration.

The first factor to be mentioned here is the development of the
hieroglyphic script. We now know that markings incised and inscribed in ink on vessels go back at least to the Naqada III Period, and related labeling systems would continue in dynastic times side by side with hieroglyphic script. Independent in its origin, the form of its signs, and its systematic structure, Egyptian hieroglyphic script must be recognized as standing apart from other early scripts. The oldest sphere in which it and its earlier forms were used was the administration. Names of goods, information about their quality, dimensions, and quantity, names of institutions, the names and titles of officials, and so on could all be set down in writing, creating documentary records of economic circumstances and institutional structures. Through the new medium, information could be stored and passed on, so that economic transactions were no longer restricted by the limitations of personal memory and direct communication.

At about the same time, however, the possibilities of the script were also being employed in art. Here it was used to identify people, places and situations, and again, consequently, only a few nouns were noted down, the great majority of them names. Consecutive narrative texts describing events or complex circumstances were not written down until the time of the Old Kingdom.

The oldest papyrus roll dates from the First Dynasty, so even then there was nothing to prevent the composition of long documents. Unfortunately no one wrote on this roll. All we have are notes made by the officials themselves on labels, inscriptions, and seal impressions. A description of the nature and origin of the goods was inadequate for labeling foodstuffs: the date had to be recorded as well, and it is here that we find the first evidence of dating years. At first they were not counted but named individually by reference to particular events, especially rituals and festivals.

Among these rituals the so-called Followers of Horus, a ceremony held every other year, is particularly important. It was soon linked with a “count,” and sometimes the subject of such a count is more precisely defined, being described as the “count of gold and fields” or the “count of cattle and small creatures.” It is therefore assumed that this was a countrywide census for tax purposes. These counting periods were renumbered within each king’s reign, beginning with the number one. During the period of the Old Kingdom this led to the usual later method of dating by the years of the royal reigns. The impressions on vessel seals and the clay seals on bags, boxes, and doors are another important source for our knowledge of the organization of the early state economy. They name the institutions concerned, the royal central estate with its sub-sections, storehouses and workshops, and the administrative officials responsible. From such data we can reconstruct the picture of a palace economy built up around the royal court, organizing agriculture, crafts, and trade. There does not seem to have been an administrative system covering the entire country at this time.

We can only form a very tentative idea of the officials of this period, but the available evidence indicates that the holders of the highest positions were indeed to be found within the palace administration.

Foreign Policy

It becomes particularly clear in the field of foreign relations that the First Dynasty had ushered in a new period. Extensive and frequent exchanges with neighboring countries, particularly Nubia and Pales-tine, can be traced far back into prehistory, when contact areas were created in border regions where Egyptian and non-Egyptian settlements overlapped. We can conclude that there was an open trading system from the distribution of imported and exported goods, particularly as it can be studied in the Nubian area.

The First Dynasty brought with it fundamental change. Monuments dating from the unification of the two lands already record warlike confrontations with neighboring peoples, and the year names of the First Dynasty, as they have come down to us in the annals and on labels, repeatedly mention such conflicts. A First Dynasty Egyptian rock carving far to the south, near the second cataract, shows that they were more than merely border disputes. The issue was not the conquest of foreign territory, but the assertion of Egypt’s economic interests and trade, and the plundering of the resources of neighboring countries.

The formation of the state had given Egypt new opportunities and a new radius of political action. The Egyptians could equip expeditions in the grand style, could engage in expensive intermediary trade, and could promote their interests within a wide geographical area. They were in a position to assert themselves in armed conflict against attacks by local groups. In addition, Egyptian policies now emanated from an area within clearly defined territorial boundaries. The addition of a fortress to Elephantine, the island settlement at Aswan by the first cataract, made it Egypt’s southernmost border town.

These developments had unwelcome consequences for the peoples of the neighboring countries. In Lower Nubia, exchange with Egypt had been an important factor of cultural ecology. The native settlement system of Lower Nubia collapsed with the advent of the First Dynasty, and the local population was forced into a nomadic existence. As a result, the development of Nubian chieftainships, which had run parallel to the rise of the Egyptian state up to this time, was nipped in the bud.

Egypt had thus risen to a unique position of dominance above the peoples surrounding it. As a great power surrounded by tribes, it was always easily able to claim unrestricted preeminence, and there is no doubt that this is where the roots of the calm self-assurance of pharaonic culture lay.

The Second Dynasty

The First Dynasty lasted about 175 years. Almost another 150 years were to pass before the Old Kingdom began. This Second Dynasty period saw the far-reaching transition from the oldest form of the archaic state to the structures of the first flowering of the pharaonic kingdom. Unfortunately, we have very little clear knowledge about these processes.

The tombs of the first three kings of the Second Dynasty were built in Saqqara. The first ruler, Hetepsekhemui, founded a royal cemetery there south of the later pyramid complex of Djoser, and therefore also some distance south of the necropolis contaihing the great niche tombs of the First Dynasty. The shortage of space in the necropolis made such a move essential.

Only the subterranean portion of Hetepsekhemui’s tomb complex has been preserved, but even so it is impressive. A number of long storage galleries branch off from a long central corridor which is entered by way of a ramp from the north and eventually leads past a number of barriers in the form of stone slabs to the king’s burial chamber. This is a new design. Its purpose was to provide room for an extensive quantity of grave goods including furniture, tableware, and provisions, in fact a complete household that was buried with the deceased. The old concept of the grave as the home of the dead has never been taken so literally. The same concept, although not on such a grand scale, is echoed in the tombs of the highest social class, but the idea is clearly fading in the Third Dynasty. We do not know what the superstructure erected over this tomb looked like, but everything suggests that it would have been a huge mastaba, possibly ornamented with niches. And we have a name stela of the king’s successor, similar to those erected at the royal tombs of Abydos. The tomb to which this particular stela refers has not been discovered, but another gallery tomb, next to Hetepsekhemui’s, was built for the third ruler, Nynetjer.

During the reign of this early Second Dynasty ruler, the royal necropolis in Abydos was abandoned, significantly indicating that the kings were part of the upper stratum of the aristocracy of the capital, and the connection with the origins of kingship in distant Upper Egypt, now becoming more and more of a provincial backwatei was losing its importance. Subsequently, however, two kings, Peribsen and Khasekhemui, once again favored the old Upper Egyptian sites for their monuments. In his titulatory on the palace facade in the “Horus name,” King Peribsen also replaced the Horus falcon by the animal appropriate to the god Seth, whose cult was based in Ombos (also known as Naqada), the central settlement of prehistoric Upper Egypt. Other kings are known only from their names in inscriptions on stone vessels from Lower Egyptian sites, or simply from the later King Lists. Here we face the difficult question of how to allot the different names making up ancient Egyptian royal titularies to the individual rulers. The evidence as a whole has led to the conclusion that the kingdom split into Upper and Lower Egyptian parts again during the second half of the Second Dynasty period. This may be so, but it has to be admitted that the political circumstances of the situation remain entirely unknown.

Both kings, Peribsen and Khasekhemui, built their tomb complexes at Abydos. By situating their tombs in the old royal cemetery of the First Dynasty, and laying out huge walled ritual precincts (“valley precincts” or “forts,” as they were called because of their appearance, still massive today although the term itself is inaccurate), they emphasized a direct link with the old tradition of Abydos.

The ground plan of the tomb complexes, however, makes it clear that they were structurally influenced by the gallery tombs of Saqqara. They too surround the king’s burial chamber with storage areas branching off from a corridor, although in the loose desert soil here the entire complex had to be built of brick inside a single sunken pit, while at Saqqara the corridors and galleries could be cut directly out of the local schist stone. A crucial factor in this formal relationship is the fact that the “Upper Egyptian” kings of the Second Dynasty were from the upper classes of Memphis, and by no means represent the revival of an unbroken local Thinite tradition. Khasekhemui is also represented by important monuments in Hierakonpolis. He had monumental buildings erected in the temple of Horus there, and blocks from a gateway bearing relief work that is stylistically very much attuned to the canonical art of the Old Kingdom have been preserved. A number of valuable votive offerings also demonstrates the importance ascribed to the shrine by this ruler who originally also called himself Khasekhem. Khasekhemui had another ritual precinct constructed outside the town of Hierakonpolis, in the style of the valley precincts of Abydos, and they too had stone blocks decorated with relief work. Besides this king’s monuments, there are other indications that the main features of the art of the Old Kingdom were taking shape during the Second Dynasty. Two blocks with relief work from the Temple of Hathor at Gebelein (between Hierakonpolis and Thebes) are notable monuments of this period, and it was a long time before anything equivalent appears in Upper Egypt. In the aristocratic cemeteries of the Memphite area, relief work slabs showing the deceased seated at the funerary repast also make their first appearance. These slabs were set in the masonry “false doors” in the cult areas of the tombs, with inscriptions identifying the names and titles of the owner of the tomb and the ritual situation it was to serve. They were the germ from which the profuse pictorial ornamentation of the tomb complexes of great men in the Old Kingdom were to develop.

The relationship between Upper and Lower Egypt in the second half of the Second Dynasty is unclear. We do know that King Peribsen was also honored by a funerary cult in Saqqara (although the date of the establishment of this cult is not known for certain), and the existence of a tomb in Saqqara for Khasekhemui has also been postulated. It was in his reign at the latest that the relationship between the two parts of the country was troubled by disputes and led to war. His votive offerings in the temple at Hierakonpolis include large stone vases with inscriptions describing a year as “Battle, defeat of Lower Egypt,” and then the symbol for the “Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.” Even clearer is the evidence provided by the statues of Khasekhemui from the same temple. Paradoxically, the phase of Upper Egypt’s dominance came irrevocably to an end with the victory of Upper Egypt over its Lower Egyptian enemies, as recorded in the friezes on the statuary plinths. The royal cemetery of Abydos was abandoned; however, the withdrawal of the kings from their ancestral place of origin in this brought the establishment of an administrative center for Upper Egypt whose special position can be traced throughout the entire Old Kingdom period. As with the founding of the First Dynasty, and as would be the case many times in the future, the impetus for the creation of a unified Egyptian state came from Upper Egypt, but structurally the north always had the upper hand. And although the origin of the Egyptian state lay in the policies of the Thinite dynasties, the development and evolution of that state was to be shaped by Memphite influence.