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.