The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  On the evening of November 28, a matter of hours before the press were due to arrive, Carter and his three trusted companions slipped away from the crowds and entered the tomb once more. His instinct told him that the black-skinned guardian figures framing the right-hand wall of the antechamber had to indicate the location of the burial chamber. The plaster wall behind them confirmed as much. Once again Carter made a small hole in the plaster wall, at ground level, just big enough to squeeze through, and with an electric flashlight this time instead of a candle, he crawled through the opening. Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn followed; Callender, being a little too portly, stayed behind. The three inside found themselves face-to-face with an enormous gilded shrine that filled the room. Opening its doors revealed a second shrine nested within the first … then a third, and a fourth shrine concealing the stone sarcophagus. Now Carter knew for certain: the king’s burial lay within, having been undisturbed for thirty-three centuries. After squeezing back out into the antechamber, Carter hastily, and rather clumsily, disguised his unauthorized break-in with a basket and a bundle of reeds. For another three months, no one else would see what Carter, Carnarvon, and Lady Evelyn had seen.

  The public unveiling of Tutankhamun’s tomb made newspaper headlines around the world on November 30, 1922, capturing the public’s imagination and generating a wave of popular interest in the treasures of the pharaohs. But there was more to come. The official opening of the burial chamber on February 16, 1923, was followed a year later by the lifting of the one-and-a-quarter-ton lid from the king’s immense stone sarcophagus—a feat expertly accomplished by Callender with his engineering background. Inside the sarcophagus, there were yet more layers protecting the pharaoh’s body: three nested coffins, to complement the four gilded shrines. The two outer coffins were of gilded wood, but the third, innermost coffin was of solid gold. Inside each coffin there were amulets and ritual objects, all of which had to be carefully documented and removed before the next layer could be examined. The whole process, from lifting the lid of the sarcophagus to opening the third coffin, took more than eighteen months. Finally, on October 28, 1925, nearly three years after the discovery of the tomb and two years after Carnarvon’s untimely death (not from the pharaoh’s curse but from blood poisoning), the moment was at hand to reveal the boy king’s mummified remains. Using an elaborate system of pulleys, the lid of the innermost coffin was raised by its original handles. Inside lay the royal mummy, caked in embalming unguents that had blackened with age. Standing out from this tarry mess, and covering the king’s face, was a magnificent funerary mask of beaten gold in the image of the young monarch. Above his brow were the vulture and cobra goddesses, and around his neck was a broad collar of inlaid glass and semiprecious stones. Carter and Tutankhamun had come face-to-face at last.

  Howard Carter cleaning Tutankhamun’s second coffin.

  © GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

  The mask of Tutankhamun is perhaps the most splendid artifact ever recovered from an ancient civilization. It dazzles us today as it did those who first beheld it in modern times, almost a century ago. During the 1960s and ’70s, it formed the highlight of the traveling Tutankhamun exhibition, drawing crowds of millions around the world, from Vancouver to Tokyo. Although I was too young to visit the show when it came to London, the book published to accompany the exhibition was my first introduction to the exotic world of ancient Egypt. I remember reading the book on the landing at home, at age six, marveling at the jewels, the gold, the strange names of kings and gods. The treasures of Tutankhamun planted a seed in my mind that was to grow and flourish in later years. But the ground had already been prepared. A year earlier, at the age of five, while leafing through the pages of my first childhood encyclopedia, I had noticed an entry illustrating different writing systems. Never mind the Greek, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese scripts: it was the Egyptian hieroglyphics that captured my imagination. The book gave only a few signs, but they were enough to allow me to work out how to write my own name. Hieroglyphs and Tutankhamun set me on the path to becoming an Egyptologist.

  Indeed, writing and kingship were the twin cornerstones of pharaonic civilization, the defining characteristics that set it apart from other ancient cultures. Despite the efforts of archaeologists to uncover the rubbish dumps and workshops that would reveal the daily lives of ordinary citizens, it is the abundant written record and the imposing edifices left behind by the pharaohs that continue to dominate our view of ancient Egyptian history. In the face of such powerful testimonies, perhaps it is not surprising that we are inclined to take the texts and monuments at face value. And yet the dazzling treasures of the pharaohs should not blind us to a more complex truth. Despite its spectacular monuments, magnificent works of art, and lasting cultural achievements, ancient Egypt had a darker side.

  The first pharaohs understood the extraordinary power of ideology—and of its visual counterpart, iconography—to unite a disparate people and bind them in loyalty to the state. Egypt’s earliest kings formulated and harnessed the tools of leadership that are still with us: elaborate trappings of office and carefully choreographed public appearances to set the ruler apart from the populace; pomp and spectacle on grand state occasions to reinforce bonds of loyalty; patriotic fervor expressed orally and visually. But the pharaohs and their advisers knew equally well that their grip on power could be maintained just as effectively by other, less benign means: political propaganda, an ideology of xenophobia, close surveillance of the population, and brutal repression of dissent.

  In studying ancient Egypt for more than twenty years, I have grown increasingly uneasy about the subject of my research. Scholars and enthusiasts alike are inclined to look at pharaonic culture with misty-eyed reverence. We marvel at the pyramids, without stopping to think too much about the political system that made them possible. We take vicarious pleasure in the pharaohs’ military victories—Thutmose III at the Battle of Megiddo, Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh—without pausing too long to reflect on the brutality of warfare in the ancient world. We thrill at the weirdness of the heretic king Akhenaten and all his works, but do not question what it is like to live under a despotic, fanatical ruler (despite the modern parallels, such as in North Korea, that fill our television screens). Evidence for the darker side of pharaonic civilization is not lacking. From human sacrifice in the First Dynasty to a peasants’ revolt under the Ptolemies, ancient Egypt was a society in which the relationship between the king and his subjects was based on coercion and fear, not love and admiration—where royal power was absolute, and life was cheap. The aim of this book is to give a fuller and more balanced picture of ancient Egyptian civilization than is often found in the pages of scholarly or popular works. I have set out to reveal both the highs and the lows, the successes and the failures, the boldness and the brutality that characterized life under the pharaohs.

  The history of the Nile Valley lays bare the relationship between rulers and the ruled—a relationship that has proved stubbornly immutable across centuries and cultures. The ancient Egyptians invented the concept of the nation-state that still dominates our planet, five thousand years later. The Egyptians’ creation was remarkable, not only for its impact, but also for its longevity: the pharaonic state, as originally conceived, lasted for three millennia. (By comparison, Rome barely managed one millennium, while Western culture has yet to survive two.) A key reason for this remarkable survival is that the philosophical and political framework first developed at the birth of ancient Egypt was so well attuned to the national psyche that it remained the archetypal pattern of government for the next one hundred generations. Despite prolonged periods of political fragmentation, decentralization, and unrest, pharaonic rule remained a powerful ideal. A political creed that harnesses itself to a national myth can embed itself very deeply in the human consciousness.

  It is extremely difficult to engage with a culture so remote in time and place from our own. Ancient Egypt was a sparsely populated tribal society.
Its polytheistic religion, its premonetary economy, the low rate of literacy, and the ideological dominance of divine kingship—all these defining characteristics are utterly alien to contemporary Western observers, myself included. As well as a familiarity with two centuries of scholarship, the study of ancient Egypt thus requires a huge leap of imagination. And yet, our common humanity offers a way in. In the careers of ancient Egypt’s rulers, we see the motives that drive ambitious men and women revealed in the pages of history for the very first time. The study of ancient Egyptian civilization likewise exposes the devices by which people have been organized, cajoled, dominated, and subjugated down to the present day. And with the benefit of hindsight, we can see in the self-confidence of pharaonic culture the seeds of its own destruction.

  The rise and fall of ancient Egypt holds lessons for us all.

  THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA ARE THE DEFINING SYMBOL OF ANCIENT Egypt. In historical terms, they mark the first great flowering of pharaonic culture, the Old Kingdom. Yet the pyramids and the sophisticated culture they represent did not spring into existence fully formed without a long period of gestation. The origins and early development of civilization in Egypt can be traced back to at least two thousand years before the pyramids, to the country’s remote prehistoric past.

  Over a period of many centuries, communities living in the fertile Nile Valley and the dry grasslands to the east and west developed the main cornerstones of Egyptian culture, their distinctive outlook shaped by their unique natural environment. As competing territories were forged, through trade and conquest, into the world’s first nation-state, the pace of social development accelerated, and by the advent of Egypt’s first dynasty of kings, all the main elements were in place.

  The subsequent eight centuries witnessed the emergence of a great civilization, and its fullest expression is in those most iconic of monuments on the Giza plateau. Yet, as the Egyptians themselves knew only too well, order and chaos were constant bedfellows. As quickly as it had blossomed, the overstretched state withered under pressures at home and abroad, bringing the Old Kingdom to an inglorious end.

  Part I of this book charts this first rise and fall of ancient Egypt, from its extraordinary birth to its cultural zenith at the height of the Pyramid Age, and its subsequent decline—the first of many such cycles in the long history of the pharaohs. If there is one defining feature of this period, it is the ideology of divine kingship. The promulgation of a belief in a monarch with divine authority was the most significant achievement of Egypt’s early rulers. The belief embedded itself in the Egyptian consciousness so deeply that it remained the only acceptable form of government for the next three thousand years. For sheer longevity, this type of monarchy ranks as the greatest political and religious system the world has ever known. The belief in this system was expressed through art, writing, ceremony, and, above all, architecture, such expression providing both the inspiration and the justification for massive royal tombs.

  The officials who served the king and whose administrative genius built the pyramids left their own monuments, too, their lavishly decorated sepulchres a testament to the sophistication and resources of the court. But there was also a darker side to royal government. The appropriation of land, forced labor, a scant regard for human life—these were characteristics of the Pyramid Age as much as grandiose architecture was. The ruthless exploitation of Egypt’s natural and human resources was a prerequisite for achieving the state’s wider ambitions, and it set the scene for the following centuries of pharaonic rule. While kings ruled by divine right, the rights of their subjects interested them little. This would be an abiding theme in the history of ancient Egypt.

  CHAPTER 1

  IN THE BEGINNING

  THE FIRST KING OF EGYPT

  IN A TALL GLASS CASE IN THE ENTRANCE HALL OF THE EGYPTIAN Museum in Cairo stands an ancient slab of fine-grained greenish-black stone, about two feet high and no more than an inch thick. Shaped like a shield, it is carved on both sides in low relief. The scenes, though still crisp, are difficult to make out in the diffuse, hazy light that filters down through the dusty glazed dome in the museum ceiling. Most visitors barely give this strange object a second glance as they head straight for the golden riches of Tutankhamun on the floor above. Yet this modest piece of stone is one of the most important documents to survive from ancient Egypt. Its place of honor at the entrance to the Egyptian Museum, the world’s greatest treasure-house of pharaonic culture, underlines its significance. This stone is the object that marks the very beginning of ancient Egyptian history.

  The Narmer Palette, as it is known to Egyptologists, has become an icon of early Egypt, but the circumstances of its discovery are clouded with uncertainty. In the winter of A.D. 1897–1898, the British archaeologists James Quibell and Frederick Green were in the far south of Egypt, excavating at the ancient site of Nekhen (modern Kom el-Ahmar), the “city of the falcon” (classical Hierakonpolis). The nineteenth century was still the era of treasure seeking, and Quibell and Green, though more scientific in their approach than many of their contemporaries, were not immune from the pressure to discover fine objects to satisfy their sponsors back home. So, having chosen to excavate at Nekhen, a site eroded by countless centuries and largely devoid of major standing monuments, they decided to focus their attentions on the ruins of the local temple. Though small and unimpressive by comparison with the great sanctuaries of Thebes, this was no ordinary provincial shrine. Since the dawn of history, it had been dedicated to the celebration of Egyptian kingship. The local falcon god of Nekhen, Horus, was the patron deity of the Egyptian monarchy. Might the temple, therefore, yield a royal treasure?

  The two men worked away, and their initial results were disappointing: stretches of mud brick wall; the remains of a mound, faced in stone; a few worn and broken statues. Nothing spectacular. The next area to be investigated lay in front of the mound, but here the archaeologists encountered only a thick layer of clay that resisted systematic excavation. The city of the falcon seemed determined to keep its secrets. But then, as Quibell and Green struggled their way through the clay layer, they came upon a scatter of discarded ritual objects, a motley collection of sacred paraphernalia that had been gathered up and buried by the temple priests some time in the remote past. There was no gold, but the “Main Deposit”—as the archaeologists optimistically called it—did contain some interesting and unusual finds. Chief among them was a carved slab of stone.

  There was no doubt about what sort of object they had found. A shallow, circular well in the middle of one side showed it to be a palette, a grindstone for mixing pigments. But this was no workaday tool for preparing cosmetics. The elaborate and detailed scenes decorating both sides showed that it had been commissioned for a much loftier purpose, to celebrate the achievements of a glorious king. Beneath the benign gaze of two cow goddesses, a representation of the monarch himself—shown in the age-old pose of an Egyptian ruler, smiting his enemy with a mace—dominated one side of the palette. The archaeologists wondered who he was and when he had reigned. Two hieroglyphs, contained within a small rectangular panel at the very top of the palette, seemed to provide the answer, spelling out the monarch’s name: a catfish (“nar” in the Egyptian language) and a chisel (“mer”)—Narmer. Here was a king previously unknown to history. Moreover, the style of the carvings on the Narmer Palette pointed to a very early date. Subsequent research showed that Narmer was not just an early king; he was the very first ruler of a united Egypt. He came to the throne around 2950, the first king of the First Dynasty. In the mud of Nekhen, Quibell and Green had stumbled upon ancient Egypt’s founding monument.

  The Narmer Palette WERNER FORMAN ARCHIVE

  While Narmer may be the first historical king, he is not the beginning of Egypt’s story. The decoration of his famous palette shows the art of the Egyptian royal court and the iconography of kingship already in their classical forms. However, some of the palette’s stranger motifs, such as the intertwined beasts with long ser
pentine necks and the bull trampling the walls of an enemy fortress, hark back to a remote prehistoric past. On his great commemorative palette, Narmer was explicitly acknowledging that the cornerstones of Egyptian civilization had been laid long before his own time.

  THE DESERT BLOOMS

  AS THE NARMER PALETTE DEMONSTRATES ON A SMALL SCALE AND FOR an early date, the Egyptians achieved a mastery of stone carving unsurpassed in the ancient, or modern, world. Diverse and abundant raw materials within Egypt’s borders combined with great technical accomplishment to give the Egyptians a highly distinctive medium for asserting their cultural identity. Stone also had the advantage of permanence, and Egyptian monuments were consciously designed to last for eternity. The origin of this obsession with monumentality was in the Western Desert, near the modern border between Egypt and Sudan. The remote spot is known to archaeologists as Nabta Playa. Today, a paved main road carves through the desert only a mile or two away, bringing construction traffic to Egypt’s New Valley project. But until very recently, Nabta Playa was as far away from civilization as it was possible to get. Its main distinction was as a pit stop on the cross-country route between the desert springs of Bir Kiseiba and the shores of Lake Nasser. The flat bed of an ancient, dried-up lake—or playa—together with a nearby sandy ridge, certainly make Nabta an ideal spot for an overnight camp. There is, however, much more to the site than a casual first glance would suggest. Scattered throughout the landscape are large stones—not naturally occurring boulders but megaliths that had been hauled from some distance away and set up at key points around the edge of the playa. Some stand in splendid isolation, as sentinels on the horizon; others form a linear alignment. Most remarkable of all, on a slight elevation a series of stones has been set out in a circle, with pairs of uprights facing each other. Two pairs are aligned north to south, while two more point toward the midsummer sunrise.