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.