The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  Finally the tipping point came. In 525, Cambyses had taken full advantage of the pharaoh’s death to launch his takeover of Egypt. Now the Egyptians returned the compliment. When news reached the delta in early 404 that the great king Darius II had died, Amenirdis promptly declared himself monarch. It was only a gesture, but it had the desired effect of galvanizing support across Egypt. By the end of 402, the fact of his kingship was recognized from the shores of the Mediterranean to the first cataract. A few waverers in the provinces continued to date official documents by the reign of the great king Artaxerxes II—hedging their bets—but the Persians had troubles of their own. An army of reconquest, assembled in Phoenicia to invade Egypt and restore order to the rebellious satrapy, had to be diverted at the last moment to deal with another secession in Cyprus. Having thus been spared a Persian onslaught, Amenirdis might have been expected to welcome the renegade Cypriot admiral when he sought refuge in Egypt. But instead of rolling out the red carpet for a fellow freedom fighter, Amenirdis had the admiral promptly assassinated. It was a characteristic display of Saite double-dealing.

  Despite such ruthlessness, Amenirdis did not long enjoy his newly won throne. By seizing power through cunning and brute force, he had stripped away any remaining mystique from the office of pharaoh, revealing the kingship for what it had become (or, behind the heavy veil of decorum and propaganda, had always been)—the preeminent political trophy. Scions of other powerful delta families soon took note. In October 399, a rival warlord from the city of Djedet staged his own coup, ousting Amenirdis and proclaiming a new dynasty.

  To mark this new beginning, Nayfaurud of Djedet consciously adopted the Horus name of Psamtek I, the most recent founder of a dynasty who had delivered Egypt from foreign rule. But there the comparison ended. Ever wary of Persian reprisals, Nayfaurud’s brief reign (399–393) was marked by feverish defensive activity. His most significant foreign policy was to cement an alliance with Sparta, sending grain and timber to assist the Spartan king Agesilaos in his Persian expedition.

  In 393, when Nayfaurud’s heir Hagar became king, a native-born son succeeded his father on the throne of Egypt for the first time in five generations. Despite having a name that meant “the Arab,” Hagar was proud of his Egyptian identity and was determined to fulfill the traditional obligations of monarchy. A favorite epithet at the start of his reign was “he who satisfies the gods.” But piety alone could not guarantee security. After barely a year of rule, the internecine rivalry between Egypt’s leading families struck again. This time, it was Hagar’s turn to be deposed, when a competitor usurped both the throne and the monuments of the fledgling dynasty.

  As the merry-go-round of pharaonic politics continued to spin, it was only another twelve months before Hagar won back his throne, proudly proclaiming that he was “repeating [his] appearance” as king. But it was a hollow boast. The monarchy had sunk to an all-time low. Devoid of respect and stripped of mystique, it was but a pale imitation of past pharaonic glories. Hagar managed to cling to power for another decade, but his ineffectual son (a second Nayfaurud) lasted barely sixteen weeks. In October 380, an army general from Tjebnetjer seized the throne. He represented the third delta family to rule Egypt in just two decades.

  However, Nakhtnebef (380–362) was a man in a different mold from his immediate predecessors. He had witnessed firsthand the recent bitter struggle between competing warlords, including “the disaster of the king who came before,”8 and understood better than most the throne’s vulnerability. As an army man, he knew that military might was a prerequisite for political power. Therefore, his number one priority, with the country living under the constant threat of Persian invasion, was to be a “mighty king who guards Egypt, a copper wall that protects Egypt.”9 But he also appreciated that force alone was not sufficient. Egyptian kingship had always worked best on a psychological level. Not for nothing did Nakhtnebef describe himself as a ruler “who cuts out the hearts of the treason-hearted.”10 If the monarchy were to be restored to a position of respect, it would need to project a traditional, uncompromising image to the country at large. So, hand in hand with the usual political maneuvering (such as assigning all the most influential positions in government to his relatives and trusted supporters), Nakhtnebef embarked upon the most ambitious temple building program the country had seen for eight hundred years. He wanted to demonstrate unequivocally that he was a pharaoh in the traditional mold. In the same vein, one of his very first acts as king was to assign one-tenth of the royal revenues collected at Naukratis—from customs dues on riverine imports and taxes levied on locally manufactured goods—to the temple of Neith at Sais. That achieved the twin aims of placating his Saite rivals while promoting his own credentials as a pious king. Further endowments followed, not least to the temple of Horus at Edfu. Nothing could be more appropriate than for the god’s earthly incarnation to give generously to his patron’s principal cult center.

  Nakhtnebef was not simply interested in buying credit in heaven. He also recognized that the temples controlled much of the country’s temporal wealth, agricultural land, mining rights, craft workshops, and trading agreements, and that investing in them was the surest way to boost the national economy. This, in turn, was the quickest and most effective method of generating surplus revenue with which to strengthen Egypt’s defensive capability, in the form of hired Greek mercenaries. So placating the gods and building up the army were two sides of the same coin. Yet it was a tricky balancing act. Milk the temples too eagerly, and they might come to resent being used as cash cows.

  A wise student of his country’s history, Nakhtnebef moved to avoid the dynastic strife of recent decades by resuscitating the ancient practice of co-regency, appointing his heir Djedher (365–360) as joint sovereign to ensure a smooth transition of power. However, the greatest threat to Djedher’s throne came not from internal rivals but from his own cavalier domestic and foreign policies. Sharing none of his father’s caution, he began his sole reign by setting out to seize Palestine and Phoenicia from the Persians. Perhaps he wished to recapture the glories of Egypt’s imperial past, or perhaps he felt the need to take the war to the enemy to justify his dynasty’s continued grip on power. Either way, it was a rash and foolish decision. Even though Persia was distracted by a satraps revolt in Asia Minor, it could hardly be expected to contemplate the loss of its Near Eastern possessions with equanimity. Moreover, the vast resources needed by Egypt to undertake a major military campaign risked putting an unbearable strain on the country’s still fragile economy. Djedher badly needed bullion to hire Greek mercenaries, and was persuaded that a windfall tax on the temples was the easiest way of filling the government’s coffers. Hence, alongside a tax on buildings, a poll tax, a purchase tax on commodities, and extra dues on shipping, Djedher moved to sequestrate temple property. It would have been difficult to conceive of a more unpopular set of policies. To make matters worse, the Spartan mercenaries hired with all this tax revenue—a thousand hoplite troops and thirty military advisers—came with their own officer, Egypt’s old ally Agesilaos. At the age of eighty-four, he was a veteran in every sense of the word, and he was not about to be palmed off with the command of a mercenary corps. Only command of the entire army would satisfy him. For Djedher, that meant shunting aside another Greek ally, the Athenian Chabrias, who had first been hired by Hagar in the 380s to oversee Egyptian defense policy. With Chabrias placed in charge of the navy, Agesilaos won control of the land forces. But the presence of three such large egos at the top of the chain of command threatened to destabilize the entire operation. With resentment in the country at large over the punitive taxes, an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia pervaded the expedition from the outset.

  The most vivid account of events surrounding Djedher’s ill-fated campaign of 360 is provided by an eyewitness, a snake doctor from the central delta by the name of Wennefer. Born fewer than ten miles from the dynastic capital of Tjebnetjer, Wennefer was just the sort of faithful follower favored
by Nakhtnebef and his regime. After early training in the local temple, Wennefer specialized in medicine and magic, and it was in this context that he came to Djedher’s attention. When the king decided to launch his campaign against Persia, Wennefer was entrusted with keeping the official war diary. Words had great magical potency in ancient Egypt, so this was a highly sensitive role for which an accomplished magician and archloyalist was the obvious choice. Yet no sooner had Wennefer set out with the king and the army on their march into Asia than a letter was delivered to the regent in Memphis implicating Wennefer in a plot. He was arrested, bound in copper chains, and taken back to Egypt to be interrogated in the regent’s presence. Like any successful official in fourth-century Egypt, Wennefer was adept at extricating himelf from compromising situations. Through some astute maneuvering, he emerged from his ordeal as a loyal confidant of the regent. He was given official protection and showered with gifts.

  In the meantime, before a shot had been fired, most of the army had begun to desert Djedher in favor of one of his young officers—no less a personage than Prince Nakhthorheb, Djedher’s own nephew and the Memphis regent’s son. Agesilaos the Spartan reveled in his role as kingmaker and threw his lot in with the prince, accompanying him back to Egypt in triumph, fighting off a challenger, and finally seeing him installed as pharaoh. For his pains, he received the princely sum of 230 silver talents—enough to bankroll five thousand mercenaries for a year—and headed home to Sparta.

  By contrast, Djedher, disgraced, deserted, and deposed, took the only option available and fled into the arms of the Persians, the very enemy he had been preparing to fight. Wennefer was promptly dispatched at the head of a naval task force to comb Asia and track down the traitor. Djedher was eventually located in Susa, and the Persians were only too glad to rid themselves of their unwelcome guest. Wennefer brought him home in chains, and was showered with gifts by a grateful king. In a time of political instability, it paid to be on the winning side.

  ANIMAL MAGIC

  EGYPT’S CAT-AND-MOUSE GAME WITH THE MIGHTY PERSIAN EMPIRE IN the fourth century determined not just its domestic and foreign policies, but also its national psychology. The ever present threat of reconquest and the constant need for defensive vigilance turned Egypt in on itself as it struggled to find the basis for a renewed sense of security. In a world of global forces, change, and uncertainty, the Egyptians looked increasingly to those traditions and values that defined them and set them apart from other cultures. The most enduring and distinctive feature of pharaonic civilization was its religion. Regarded with haughty disdain by the Greeks and with mystified detachment by the Persians, Egypt’s plethora of animal deities embodied the best native Egyptian values. Moreover, the gods represented age-old, unchanging forces that promised ultimate salvation, whatever the vicissitudes of real life: “Change and decay in all around I see; O thou who changest not, abide with me.”11

  Sacred animal cults had a long history in the Nile Valley—animals had been buried in funerary enclosures in the early Predynastic Period, and the Apis bull had been worshipped at Memphis since the foundation of the Egyptian state—but their rapid rise in popularity was a defining phenomenon of Egypt’s brief period of independence from Persian rule. And it led to some of the strangest practices ever witnessed in the land of the pharaohs.

  By the middle of the fourth century, animal cults were ubiquitous. There were sacred cats at Bast, sacred dogs and gazelles at Thebes, sacred bulls at Iunyt, sacred crocodiles at Shedyt, even sacred fish at Djedet. Each cult had its own temple and priesthood, and because of the system of rotation used for temple employees, this meant that a large proportion of the population shared in the wealth of a nationwide phenomenon. One of the greatest concentrations of animal cults was at Saqqara, burial place of kings and nobles since the dawn of history. By the reign of Nakhthorheb (360–343), Egypt’s dead elite found themselves joined in their subterranean world by a veritable menagerie of beasts, great and small.

  One of the most holy places on the Saqqara plateau was the Serapeum, where temples and workshops on the surface covered a vast underground catacomb for the Apis bulls. Nearby stood a further complex of temple, hypogeum, and administrative buildings serving the cult of the mother of Apis, a sacred cow worshipped as the incarnation of the goddess Isis. After its death, each successive cow was purified, embalmed, wrapped in linen bandages, and adorned with amulets before being interred in a subterranean vault that had taken up to two years to excavate from the living rock. The huge stone sarcophagus carved for every mother of Apis was so heavy that the team of thirty men required to haul it into place could command up to a month’s wages for ten days of backbreaking work.

  Beyond the catacombs for the sacred bulls and their mothers, there was a vast network of underground galleries for mummified baboons. Brought by river or sea all the way from sub-Saharan Africa (only a few were successfully bred in captivity), the apes were kept in a special compound inside the temple of Ptah at Memphis. There, they were worshipped as manifestations of Thoth, the god of wisdom, and embodiments of “the hearing ear” that acted as intermediary between people and the gods. Animals were thus the saints of ancient Egyptian religion. After death, each baboon was deified as Osiris and buried in a rectangular wooden box, which was placed in a niche cut into the rock walls of the subterranean vault. The niche was sealed with a limestone slab bearing the name of the baboon, its place of origin, and a prayer. A typical inscription read,

  May you be praised before Osiris, O you Osiris Marres the baboon. He was brought from the South. His salvation [that is, death] happened and he was placed in his coffin in the temple of Ptah.12

  Pilgrims came to Saqqara from far and wide seeking advice, insight into the future, cures for sickness, even success in court cases—all in the hope that Osiris the baboon would carry their supplication to the gods in return for a votive offering or for the pious act of mummifying and burying one of the sacred animals. The area thronged with fortune-tellers, interpreters of dreams, astrologers, soothsayers, and purveyors of magical amulets, plying their dubious trades among the countless worshippers. As for the myriad priests and embalmers, they also made a handsome living out of the pilgrims, especially as they often substituted cheaper, smaller monkeys for the rarer, more expensive baboons; because the animal was hidden beneath mummy wrappings, the purchaser could not tell the difference.

  Mummified falcons WERNER FORMAN ARCHIVE

  Perhaps the most extensive of all the animal cemeteries at Saqqara were the ibis galleries. Ibises, like baboons, were sacred to the god Thoth, and the desperate search for wisdom led the Egyptians to mummify and bury up to two million birds at Saqqara alone. Each ibis gallery measured thirty feet wide by thirty feet high, and was filled from floor to ceiling with neat stacks of pottery jars, each containing a mummified body part or an entire corpse of a sacred ibis. To keep pace with demand, ibises were bred on an industrial scale, on the shores of nearby Lake Abusir and at other farms throughout Egypt. At Khmun, the principal cult center of Thoth, a vast area was devoted to feeding the flocks of birds. When they died, even the tiniest parts of them—individual feathers, nest material, fragments of eggshell—were carefully gathered up for sale and burial. Indeed, the ibis priests would often bury the birds’ dead bodies in the ground to speed up decomposition, making it easier to separate individual bones and turn a quick profit. The use of turpentine, imported from Tyre, accelerated the process still further, but had the unfortunate side effect of scorching the bones inside the mummy package. But by then, the pilgrim had paid the fee and gone home.

  The final catacomb at Saqqara was devoted to falcons, sacred to the god Horus. Here, Egyptian ingenuity went a stage further. As well as dedicating mummified falcons, visitors could also purchase and donate Horus statuettes. The hollow base of the statuette, accessed through a sliding panel, could accommodate either an inducement—for example, a mummified scrap of shrew, by way of a snack for the falcon deity—or a prayer, written on a rol
l of papyrus. By packaging the prayer and offering together, the pilgrim could be sure of delivering request and payment at the same time, for added efficacy.

  As a solar deity, Horus enjoyed a special affinity with Thoth (associated with the moon), so ibises and falcons formed a natural pairing. But there was another, less subtle reason for the popularity of the falcon cult at Saqqara. The cult was actively encouraged and sponsored by the state. Not that the government was much interested in popular religion, but it was keen to promote the cult of the king. And according to ancient beliefs, the monarch was the earthly incarnation of Horus. More than that, Nakhthorheb’s very name alluded to the cult of Horus (“Horus of Hebyt is victorious”), so king and falcon were identified even more closely than usual. The cult of “Nakhthorheb the falcon” was fostered alongside the sacred animal cult, so that the two became virtually indistinguishable. It was a policy carefully calculated to harness popular religion in the service of the monarchy.

  Right from the beginning of his reign, Nakhthorheb recognized the power of beliefs and symbols to consolidate support for himself and his dynasty. One of his first orders to his loyal servant Wennefer was to restore the two-thousand-year-old mortuary cults of Sneferu and Djedefra, two kings from the height of the Pyramid Age. The propaganda value in reviving these institutions was considerable, since it publicly associated Egypt’s new ruler with two of his most illustrious predecessors. Beyond Memphis, too, Nakhthorheb indulged in a frenzy of building not seen since the reign of Ramesses II. Scarcely a temple in the country escaped some form of royal beautification. Nakhthorheb wanted to be regarded by his contemporaries as well as by posterity as a true pharaoh, not merely the latest in a long line of warlords that were here today, gone tomorrow. But there was also a hint of panic in his orgy of construction. He concentrated much of his effort on gateways and enclosure walls—the most vulnerable parts of temples—and seems to have felt an overriding need to protect Egypt’s sacred buildings from malign forces. In this respect, his religious policy was of a piece with his international agenda. Both were focused on safeguarding Egypt from the enemy.