Above all, this was the time when humans learnt to write down their knowledge, their myths and their history, so that all these new wonders could be passed on to other people they would never meet.
It was possibly the time of greatest change that humanity has known.
NOTES ON THE TEXT
Cats: Wildcats were probably first domesticated in Egypt about six thousand years ago, to help control mice and rats. These wildcats were much larger than today’s house cats. They replaced the earlier pest control species—ferrets, one of the earliest domesticated animals.
Cubit: About half a metre.
Donkeys: The donkeys in this book were really wild asses, or onagers. I have used the word ‘donkey’ because it’s more familiar.
Wild asses were possibly first domesticated near Sumer. Early carts and perhaps chariots were used in Ur too, long before horses were tamed in that area. Chariots, carts and riding didn’t really catch on until horses were domesticated. This happened around 3500 BCE, but far from the Middle East, probably by herders in what’s now the Ukraine, who had already been riding reindeer and using them to pull sleighs, but started to use horses instead. The idea of riding and taming horses spread via horse-riding nomads from the high steppelands of central Asia into central and western Europe and then down into the Middle East between 3000 and 2000 BCE.
Ka’naan: This was later to become the holy land of the Israelites. The ancient Egyptians used the word ka’naan or kan’an to refer to merchants, or traders.
Medicine: Quite a few ancient Egyptian medical documents survive. The ancient Egyptians and Sumerians had skilled doctors, though many illnesses were treated with spells and prayers too. They used plants like poppy, garlic, chamomile, artemisia, deadly nightshade, camphor, caraway, frankincense, myrrh, saffron, spearmint, turmeric, henna, lavender, gum Arabic and rose oil to stop pain or cure or prevent diseases. Often medicines were mixed with vinegar, flour, egg white or milk and applied to the patient’s shaved head. Other treatments were given through the mouth or nose or other bodily openings.
Some ancient Egyptians, like Narmer and Nitho, lived well into their sixties. But ordinary workers were lucky to live more than thirty-five years, and water-borne diseases from the River and parasites from animals were common. Many people also suffered from breathing difficulties such as the sand cough, caused by the clouds of irritating dust and sand from the desert. Eye diseases were common too, but the eye cosmetics used by wealthy people may have helped prevent them.
Narmer: Narmer (also known as Menes, a name used by later historians, or Aha or Catfish), the king who unified Egypt into one great kingdom, his brother Hawk, his father King Scorpion and his wife and queen Nithotep were real people, though little is known about them. Some theories say that Menes, Narmer and Aha were two or even three kings, not one. But most accept that these were three different names for the one king, since ancient Egyptian kings took new titles when they ascended the throne. And all agree that he was—or they were—the first of the pharaohs.
We know nothing about Narmer’s early life before he became pharaoh. I invented the crocodile attack, though Narmer did seem to have a reverence for crocodiles. But there is no evidence that he was ever crippled.
Much of what we do know about Narmer comes from the Narmer Palette. A palette was a big plate or dish used for mixing cosmetics. This one was placed in Narmer’s tomb as a record of his great deeds as king—mostly his military victories. Archaeologists still haven’t been able to translate much of it. Perhaps it never will be translated, and we will never know the meaning of some of those ancient symbols, or the names of the cities that Narmer conquered.
Narmer founded the city of Crocodopolis, and dammed the Nile to build the city of Memphis, twentyeight kilometres south of modern-day Cairo on an island on the Nile River, which he made his capital.
Narmer’s kingdom eventually extended from the delta to the first cataract on the Nile, and he sent ambassadors to Ka’naan (the Biblical land of Canaan) and Phoenicia. (See the map on page iv.) The land along the Nile was divided into districts ruled by governors, appointed by Narmer, who also collected taxes and were in charge of draining and irrigating the fields with canals and maintaining the dykes that protected orchards and houses.
Narmer had two wives, Queen Berenib or Bener-ib, and Nithotep, or Neithotepe, who was the mother of Narmer’s only son and heir, Djer. After Narmer died, Nithotep became regent until Djer came of age and could rule Egypt alone. Narmer died when he was sixty-three years old after being attacked either by wild dogs and crocodiles or by a hippopotamus.
Nitho: We don’t know where Nithotep came from, or anything else about her. It’s sometimes thought that she might have been a princess from the delta whom Narmer married to ally himself with that area. But there’s no evidence for that. She must have been a strong woman to rule the new empire by herself after Narmer’s death. Her tomb is at Naqada.
Pharaoh: The word ‘pharaoh’ (which means ‘great house’) wasn’t used until about 1458 BCE. But as it was used for so long as the title of the Egyptian great kings, I’ve used it in this book.
Pillows: The Egyptians used headrests made of stone, ivory or wood instead of pillows, as some African peoples still do today. The headrests may have had cushions on them too, but we don’t know for sure.
Punt: The land of Punt is mentioned often in ancient Egyptian papyrus, but no one really knows where it was, or when trading between the two countries began. It was probably on the Red Sea in eastern Africa, possibly south of Nubia. One likely area is modern-day Ethiopia, which is where I decided to locate it in the map on page iv. Eritrea and Somalia are also possibilities.
There is a famous account of a trading mission to Punt in the time of Queen Hatshepsut (Fifteenth Dynasty, or mid-1400s BCE). I have taken the items offered to the Trader in Punt from the record of trading goods in Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri. No one knows, though, what khesyt wood is, or where green gold comes from. But the colour of gold ore varies in different parts of the world, as natural gold is always alloyed, or mixed, with other minerals, usually silver. But sometimes it appears dark red, orange, or the classic ‘gold’ we imagine it to always be.
There are legends that the Queen of Sheba—who visited King Solomon in the Bible—may have come from Punt, or that Punt was a nation ruled by women, like the Amazons in Greek mythology.
The River: The people of ancient Egypt simply called the Nile ‘the River’. It was the only one in their world, and needed no other name. The ancient Egyptians even referred to themselves as ‘Black Landers’ after the black silt from the River.
Seasons in ancient Egypt and Ur: The people of both ancient Egypt and Ur based their seasons on what needed to be done on their farms.
Ancient Egypt had three seasons of four months each. Each month contained thirty days, which is the time it takes for the moon to go from ‘new moon’ to ‘full moon’ and back again. There was the Season of Flood or Inundation (Akhet), from midsummer to autumn, when the far-off snows melted and their water surged down the Nile. Then there was the Season of Emergence (Proyet), when new shoots emerged from the rich new mud that the River had brought. This was from autumn to winter. Then there was the Season of Harvest, or summer (Shomu), which lasted from our February to our June. There were also five extra days each year for feasting.
Ur’s calendar was based on when their rivers flooded too, and what needed to be done on their farms. Their most important celebrations were the autumn and spring equinoxes. Winter was their most important growing season, as in Egypt, and the autumn equinox was the beginning of their farming year. Spring to summer was the time when the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flooded. (Their floodwaters didn’t have as far to come as the Nile did.) The canals filled with water, and the fields were flooded to remove excess salt and to bring new fertile silt. Autumn was the time of ploughing, and winter was the time for sowing and growing crops. Harvest began in spring, before the floods
, and grain and straw were cut, threshed and stored throughout summer.
Sumer: Sumer was the area near the Persian Gulf between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. It was part of the ‘fertile crescent’, where the first grains were grown and where farming began, ten to twelve thousand years ago, after the last Ice Age. (Farming developed independently in Southeast Asia, India and Pakistan, and South America.)
The Sumerians arrived in about 4000 BCE and took the land from the people already there. At the time when this book is set there were at least twelve independent city states, including Ur, Uruk, Kish and Lagash.
The great civilisation of Sumer probably influenced ancient Egypt greatly. But Egypt’s writing, dress, ideas of kingship, administration, theories of astronomy, their detailed sky charts and many other achievements were still very much their own. The Sumerians invented wooden wheels, ploughs and oars for their ships. And in this book the Trader brings his ‘trader’s language’ to Egypt, a system of writing known as cuneiform (from the Latin word cuneus, meaning ‘wedge’), consisting of wedge-shaped counting marks made on clay tablets. In fact the earliest writing ever found is Egyptian, from over five thousand years ago, though it’s possible that still earlier writing will eventually be found somewhere else. We may never know where many ideas originated.
Sumerian gods: Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of fertility, love, wisdom and war. She was the daughter of the sky god An and the moon god Nan. Nanna was the creator of the universe, and both male and female at the same time.
Thinis: We know very little about Thinis—not even exactly where it was. We do know that it was somewhere in Upper Egypt, probably on the western bank of the Nile, with a graveyard on the other side, and that it was where Narmer came from and where his father ruled.
We don’t know how large it was either. I’ve assumed it had one or two thousand people, but I may be way off the mark. There is some evidence that there were 120,000 men (women and children weren’t counted) living in the land that Narmer eventually controlled.
Tigris and Euphrates: These are the rivers’ Greek names, as well as their modern names. But I have used them because they’re easier for modern readers.
Trade: Few ancient Egyptians travelled much; most never even left their district. But we know there was trade with Sumer, as well as with Ka’naan, where early Egyptian pottery has been found, and that lapis lazuli may have come from as far away as modern Pakistan. Recent satellite photography has found traces of ancient dirt roads across the fertile plains of modern-day northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey. These ancient highways show us that even five thousand years ago people traded from town to town. Smaller roads were probably used by farmers and herders to take their produce to the towns and their animals to new pasture.
Ur: The town of Ur was in what’s now southern Iraq, west of the Euphrates River. It was one of the world’s first cities.
People lived in Ur from about 5000 BCE. It would have been a tiny farming village to begin with, then, as the area grew drier and people learnt how to dig canals to bring water to their fields from the rivers, the town would have become larger and larger, supporting potters and merchants and other trades. Back in Narmer’s time Ur was much closer to the sea that it is now (the Persian Gulf has shrunk), so it was an excellent trading base before roads crossed the lands. Merchants like the Trader could travel up and down the rivers or across the sea, though there were trading routes overland as well.
No one really knows how many people lived in Ur in Narmer’s day, but one estimate is about 24,000. It was a great city at that time, but probably reached its greatest glory from about 2600 BCE, when the kings of Ur became rulers of all Sumer, through to the reign of King Ur-Nammu (2112–2094 BCE), who gave the world the first written code of laws. By then Ur contained around 65,000 people and was probably the largest city in the world. In this era grand temples like the Great Ziggurat were built, and glorious palaces. Ur may also have been the original home of the biblical Abraham.
In about 1950 BC Ur was conquered by the Elamites, and later by the Babylonians. As the land around it dried up and the sea receded, in about 500 BCE, Ur was abandoned. The town was slowly covered by sand, though travellers reported finding ancient bricks and other relics there. Archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum, led by Sir Leonard Woolley, began to excavate it in the 1920s, uncovering rich tombs and jewels, and the remains of the palaces and the Ziggurat.
There has never been a modern town at Ur. Saddam Hussein established a military base near there, and for a while it was impossible for tourists to go there for security reasons.
Viziers: The word ‘vizier’ is Turkish, and from a much later date than Narmer’s Egypt, but I’ve used it as it best expresses the function of the king’s chief assistant. In Narmer’s time the vizier was always a member of the royal family.
Wadi: Gully.
Wheels: The first wheels were developed in Mesopotamia about 3500 BCE. Even the great Incan, Aztec, Mayan, Chinese and Indus civilisations didn’t know about the wheel till the knowledge was brought from the Middle East and Europe. The earliest carts and chariots were probably very clumsy, with the wheels attached to the axles. (Most of today’s wheels have ball bearings, so they don’t need a rotating shaft, just two little steel rings with steel balls encased between them. Wheels with ball bearings turn faster and much more easily than ancient Sumer’s wheels did.) The early Sumerians were probably the first people to use wheels to make pots as well. Wheels may have been used in Egypt from Narmer’s time onward, possibly an indication of trade with Mesopotamia.
Wild animals: Many animals were found along the Nile in Narmer’s day that have long since almost or completely vanished from the area: hippos, crocodiles, scorpions, cobras, ostriches, wolves, antelopes, gazelles, lions, panthers and huge flocks of quail, as well as an enormous variety of water birds.
LIFE IN NARMER’S EGYPT
Most of what we know about ‘ancient Egypt’ comes from a much later time. But the Narmer Palette, a mace and jar seals that have Narmer’s name on them, and a painted ivory label in Nithotep’s tomb all give many clues as to the way people lived so far back in history. (Many of the hieroglyphs from Narmer’s time haven’t been translated yet. We may never know what they say.)
We do know that history was being written down, possibly for the first time. The scribes, or writers, used a mix of ideograms—small pictures—and phonetic symbols, which stand for certain sounds. All our writing today is phonetic; our letters stand for sounds, not things. But when scribes wanted to write Narmer’s name, for example, they drew a small fish called a ‘nar’ and put it over a chisel, pronounced ‘mer’.
Most people in Narmer’s time were farmers, but hunting and fishing were also important. Wild animals were hunted both for sport and meat, and also to stop animals like hippos from damaging the crops. There were specialist craft workers too. Potters painted and decorated their pots, or carved them with pictures of animals or abstract designs. Other pots were left unglazed so that moisture would seep slowly out of them, which helped keep the milk, beer or water inside cool. Furniture was beautiful as well as useful. There were jewellers and craftsmen who made fine combs, statues of ivory and beautiful furniture. Long before most of the rest of the world, the ancient Egyptians were trying to create things that were lovely, as well as useful.
There were stone workers, too, who made sharp stone blades, axes and stone tools, as well as metal workers using copper and the newly invented and much harder bronze. Most knives and tools were still made of stone, especially those used by poorer people, right up until Roman times. Needles were made from bone, and later bronze.
Houses were mostly rectangular and made of mud bricks, though probably some poorer homes were made of reeds covered in clay. Mud was hauled up from the Nile and mixed with the chaff or straw left after grain had been threshed. The bricks were then shaped in wooden forms and dried in the sun. It rarely rained along the Nile, and the hard br
icks lasted well.
A typical house had two to four rooms, a courtyard or flat roof for cooking, with a dirt floor baked so hard by the sun that it could be swept regularly, and a cellar to store things. Dishes and clothes were usually taken to the river to be cleaned.
Rich people had much bigger houses, but they were still made of mud brick, with rooms arranged around courtyards. The floors in most houses were made of packed earth, though richer houses had tiles.
Even in those days, long before the pyramids, Egyptians were digging great tombs for their dead, with underground rooms furnished with everything the dead person had used when they were alive. People took all their belongings with them into the grave because they expected to be reborn in the Afterlife in exactly the same form as they had during their lifetime. A king would be a king, a priest a priest. Poor labourers might only have a hole in the ground as a tomb, but even they were given a crust of bread to hold in their hand to take into the Afterlife. The classic bandagewrapped mummies were from a much later time, between about 1085 BCE and 945 BCE. But it’s likely that the Egyptians of Narmer’s time also embalmed their dead, covering their bodies in resin before they were buried.
Farming
While food and other goods could be bought at markets, for reliable fresh food—and home-grown luxury fruits and vegetables—you needed your own farm. Nearly every house had its own vegetable garden and lily pond. Most houses had an orchard too, with mud walls to keep out floodwaters, and depressions around each tree to hold water, which was usually brought to the tree in a large wooden bucket.
Pharaoh Page 19
