Huni and Qahedjet
With the last king of the Third Dynasty, we stand on the threshold of the Old Kingdom. Just as the reign of Khasekhemwy at the end of the Second Dynasty marks something of a turning-point, so does the reign of Huni at the end of the Third Dynasty. Substantial construction projects and the possible restructuring of regional administration paved the way for the frenzy of pyramid building characteristic of the Fourth Dynasty. However, we still know comparatively little about the king who presided over these achievements. The Turin Canon records a reign-length of twenty-four years for Huni. A shorter reign would seem unlikely, given the scale of his completed building projects.
Huni is attested on contemporary monuments by his nswt-bỉty name, written in a cartouche. Alternative readings have been suggested (for example, Goedicke 1956b); but
in the absence of an agreed transliteration, the name recorded in the later king lists, Huni, has been adopted by Egyptologists, even though it probably represents a corruption of the original. Huni’s position as last king of the Third Dynasty and Sneferu’s immediate predecessor is confirmed both by Papyrus Prisse (Jéquier 1911; Gardiner 1946) and by the autobiographical inscription in the tomb of Metjen at Saqqara (Goedicke 1966).
The most impressive monument which can be attributed to Huni directly is the small granite step pyramid on the island of Elephantine. This is now recognised as the provenance of a granite cone, bearing the inscription sšd Hwnỉ, ‘Diadem of Huni’, followed by the determinative of a palace. The cone suggests that Huni built a palace or building associated with the royal cult on the island (Seidlmayer 1996a, 1996b). Other small step pyramids, similar in size and construction to the Elephantine monument, have been identified at sites throughout Egypt (Dreyer and Kaiser 1980; Edwards 1993): Seila in the Fayum (Lesko 1988); Zawiyet el-Meitin in Middle Egypt; south Abydos (Dreyer and Swelim 1982); Tukh near Naqada; el-Kula near Hierakonpolis; and south Edfu. On the basis of the Elephantine monument, all but the Seila pyramid have been dated to the reign of Huni; excavations have shown that the Seila pyramid was built by his successor, Sneferu (Edwards 1993:69). The function of the small step pyramids has been hotly debated (Seidlmayer 1996a). It is probable that stone was reserved for royal building projects at this period, and the pyramids may have served as territorial markers, perhaps associated with cult places of the king or royal estates (there was an administrative building attached to the pyramid at Elephantine). The distribution of the monuments suggests that there was one pyramid for each nome, at least in southern Upper Egypt; and it is tempting to link their construction with the reorganisation of provincial government posited for Huni’s reign.
The pyramid at Maidum has been attributed to Huni, despite Middle and New Kingdom graffiti from the site which credit Sneferu with its construction. It is possible that Sneferu only finished the monument, converting it into a true pyramid (but note Edwards 1993:93). If the initial stage of the Maidum pyramid was not intended as Huni’s funerary monument the location of his tomb remains a mystery. It may have been at Saqqara, but the only obvious location—the unexcavated Ptahhotep enclosure to the west of the Netjerikhet complex—lacks any substructure, making it highly unlikely that it represents an unfinished step pyramid complex. One suggestion is that the construction of a series of small step pyramids may, in some way, have lessened the importance attached to the principal royal monument, the king’s tomb. According to this view, the absence of a pyramid securely datable to the reign of Huni may be no coincidence (Seidlmayer 1996a: 210–11). An estate of Huni is listed on the Palermo Stone in the reign of the Fifth Dynasty King Neferirkara (Schäfer 1902:40); this indicates that the memory of Huni was still revered, and at least one of his foundations still in existence, a century-and-a-half after his death.
Until some thirty years ago, the four Horus names discussed above (Netjerikhet, Sekhemkhet, Sanakht and Khaba) were the only ones attested on monuments of the Third Dynasty. Then, in the late 1960s, an unprovenanced limestone stela was purchased by the Louvre, inscribed for a king with the previously unknown Horus name Qahedjet (Vandier 1968). The iconography of the stela is of great significance for Egyptian art history, since it shows the earliest representation of a god (in this case Horus) embracing the king. The style is very reminiscent of the relief panels from the Step Pyramid of Netjerikhet; on
stylistic grounds, therefore, the stela may be placed close in time to the reign of Netjerikhet. However, the execution of the carving is superior to the Netjerikhet relief panels, and the more developed iconography of the Qahedjet stela tends to favour a date towards the end of the Third Dynasty. The precise identification of the Horus Qahedjet is impossible without further epigraphic evidence, but the scholar who published the Louvre stela favours Huni in preference to the shadowy Nebka (especially if the latter is equated with the Horus Sanakht).
Irrespective of whether the Qahedjet stela was carved for Huni or for one of his predecessors, the achievements of Huni’s reign are impressive, and clearly set the scene for the great flourishing of Egyptian court culture in the Old Kingdom. The structure of provincial government recorded in the tomb of Metjen probably marks a decisive break from the Early Dynastic past, and presages the absolute central control of manpower and resources reflected in the pyramid building of the Fourth Dynasty. Thus, with the reign of Huni, the formative period of Egyptian civilisation comes to an end.
PART II
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AUTHORITY
CHAPTER FOUR ADMINISTRATION
INTRODUCTION
An analysis of Early Dynastic administration highlights the achievement of Egypt’s early kings in fashioning a system of rule that was to survive for three thousand years. The word ‘administration’ can be used in two senses: the entirety of the state apparatus of government, and the more detailed system of recording and distribution employed by it (Husson and Valbelle 1992:44). This chapter will seek to investigate both aspects, presenting the evidence for the various institutions of government, their organisation, operations and personnel. The section at the end of the chapter gives outlines of some individual careers of Early Dynastic high officials, in order to illustrate the possibilities of advancement within the ranks of the government.
While several authors have written about the administrative apparatus of the Old Kingdom and later periods (for example, Helck 1954; Strudwick 1985), to date ‘no systematic analysis of the political organization of the Early Dynastic period has yet been attempted’ (Trigger et al. 1983:56). There are several reasons for this, primarily the difficulties in deciphering the earliest stage of the Egyptian script (Kahl 1994), coupled with the paucity and imbalance of the available evidence. Important contributions have been made to our understanding of early seal-impressions and the institutions and offices to which they refer (Kaplony 1963); autobiographical tomb inscriptions from the late Third Dynasty have likewise been analysed, shedding light on administrative organisation at the end of the Early Dynastic period (Junker 1939; Goedicke 1966); and individual studies have examined the origins of particular administrative mechanisms, such as phyles (Roth 1991) and the nome system (Martin-Pardey 1976). But it seems no attempt has been made to combine all the evidence from the first three dynasties in a coherent account of the early development of Egyptian administration. As we shall see, the evidence is patchy and partial; but the administration itself may not have been thorough or all-embracing (Malek 1986:35). By taking an inclusive approach to all the potential sources, something of the nature of Early Dynastic government, its structure and priorities, can be discerned. This is an important goal, for it was under the kings of the first three dynasties that the administrative mechanisms that were to characterise the Old Kingdom were first developed. The solutions adopted by Egypt’s early rulers to the problems of political and economic control laid the foundations for the governmental apparatus of the mature Egyptian state.
The source material and its limitations
Any investigation into the structure of the
Early Dynastic administration depends to a great extent upon the numerous seal-impressions recovered from royal and private tombs of the period. For the First Dynasty, these are supplemented by inscribed labels—of wood, bone or ivory—originally attached to various commodities. Private stelae from First Dynasty graves at Abydos and Saqqara record the occasional official title, or longer
sequences of titles in the case of two stelae from the reign of Qaa. Many of the stone vessels found beneath the Step Pyramid bear incised or painted inscriptions which convey significant information about administrative activities. The majority of the inscribed vessels have been plausibly dated to the Second Dynasty, hence plugging what otherwise would be a serious gap in the evidence for early administration. From the very end of the Third Dynasty, the tomb inscriptions of Metjen, Akhetaa and Pehernefer provide detailed accounts of the careers of three professional administrators.
Although the different categories of source material span most of the Early Dynastic period, they are very uneven and give only partial insights into the administrative apparatus of the first three dynasties (Malek 1986:35). Seal-impressions are an invaluable source of information about early Egypt. Indeed, without an analysis of the inscriptions they provide, no comprehensive history of the Early Dynastic period could be written (Kaplony 1963, I: 3). Nevertheless, they provide only a partial glimpse of government activities. Seal-impressions represent the surviving physical traces of administrative acts involving officials of the central government, so it is not surprising that indications of provincial administration are almost entirely lacking (Martin-Pardey 1976:34). Instead, the seal-impressions from royal and élite tombs are primarily concerned with the provisioning of the tomb in question. Hence, most of the titles preserved on these sealings refer to the administration of royal estates and foundations (Martin-Pardey 1976:35)— which provided the income for maintaining mortuary cults, in the form of agricultural produce—and of the various departments of the royal treasury, which was the central institution responsible for collecting and redistributing such produce. Much can be learned about the development and administration of economic institutions during the course of the first two dynasties; but seal-impressions afford almost no information about other branches of the administration. We are largely ignorant about the early development of the mechanisms of political (as opposed to economic) control (Trigger et al. 1983:56). In particular, the surviving sources tell us nothing about military control, the specifically coercive face of political authority which was an important aspect of Egyptian government in later periods (cf. O’Connor, in Trigger et al. 1983:215). As we shall see in Chapter 6, the iconography of early kingship stressed the coercive power of the ruler. Moreover, the message of early royal artefacts such as the Scorpion macehead seems to have been directed as much towards the subject population of Egypt (rh yt) as the king’s foreign enemies. We may infer that the authority of the Early Dynastic state was bolstered by a degree of military might, but in the absence of any contemporary evidence this must remain no more than an educated guess.
The source material changes markedly in the Third Dynasty. Very few seal- impressions have survived from tombs constructed after the reign of Netjerikhet. The practice of furnishing burials with large numbers of sealed commodities seems to have died out early in the Third Dynasty. Instead, a tomb was provided with an offering-stela depicting the items considered necessary to sustain the deceased in the afterlife. Tombs of high officials began to be inscribed with biographical texts, several of which, from the end of the Third Dynasty, illuminate both economic and provincial administration. The private stelae of the Early Dynastic period usually bear few titles. Exceptions are two stelae from the reign of Qaa, inscribed for the high officials Sabef and Merka, which preserve a range of titles associated with the court. Taken together with occasional references on seal-impressions, these stelae provide much of our information about the
structure of the royal household. The inscribed stone vessels from beneath the Step Pyramid comprise a rich and varied source of Early Dynastic titles, including religious, administrative and economic offices. Because they date mostly from the Second and Third Dynasties, they cannot be used reliably to illuminate the workings of the administration in earlier periods. This is a general problem with the source material for Early Dynastic administration: although the evidence as a whole covers many branches of government, the chronological spread is very uneven, making general trends in administrative development difficult to deduce. The following picture of the administration over the whole course of the Early Dynastic period therefore relies on a certain amount of extrapolation and informed guesswork, based upon the fragments of information available.
Origins
Some time around 3100 BC, Egyptians found themselves under the control of a single, unified government, presided over by a king claiming divine authority. The various political groupings of the Predynastic period had coalesced during the period of state formation, leaving the ruler of This as king of the Two Lands. Administration was now conducted on a national scale, bringing with it advantages as well as constraints. The burden of taxation imposed by the court may have exceeded that levied by provincial rulers, and corvée labour for royal building projects may have made increasing demands on the rural population. But in return, a centralised administration provided a stabilising influence and, critically, a guarantee of emergency relief in times of famine through the maintenance of central stocks of grain (O’Connor 1972:99).
Though the impact of political decisions was now felt country-wide, the existence of a bureaucratic apparatus was by no means a new phenomenon. The invention of writing in the late Predynastic period was undoubtedly a result of the need for detailed accounting and record-keeping (Postgate et al. 1995), as the courts of Upper Egypt intensified their involvement in specialised craft production and foreign trade. The continuities between late Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt in other spheres—such as material culture and kingship ideology—make it likely that at least some of the institutions of the Early Dynastic administration were inherited (Roth 1991:1–2). Indeed, the sealings from Abydos tomb B2 and the accompanying pit B0 which mention the office of nbỉ (Kaiser and Dreyer 1982:231 fig. 9; Dreyer et al. 1996:49)—connected with managing the produce of royal domains—indicate that some of the characteristics of Early Dynastic administration were already in existence towards the end of the Predynastic period.
It has been suggested that the system of government, during the first two dynasties at least, ‘kept many of its Predynastic trappings’ (Hoffman 1980:348). In particular, the composition of the court—the highest officials surrounding the king—is likely to have been based on family ties and bonds of kinship (Hoffman 1980:325), reflecting the social organisation of the late Predynastic period (Roth 1991:216). However, it must be admitted that there is little explicit evidence for the operation of a strongly kinship-based system in ancient Egypt. The mortuary record of the late Predynastic period suggests a society which was already highly structured (though not necessarily along kinship lines), and the evidence for kinship as a major factor in the government of Early Dynastic Egypt is largely architectural: the use of ‘palace facade’ decoration on the tombs of high
officials at North Saqqara. It is generally assumed that in the First Dynasty many, if not all, of the most senior administrators were royal relatives, but this cannot be established beyond doubt.
The reign of Netjerikhet at the beginning of the Third Dynasty appears to have been marked by the establishment of a more structured administration, comprising different departments each with its own bureaucracy. For the first time, all the branches of government may have been brought together in one location, at Memphis (Helck 1954:132). The reforms may have been designed to improve efficiency, not least in the area of levying taxation. An efficient bureaucracy and an uninterrupted flow of income into government coffers would certainly have been pre-requisites for the construction of the king’s Step Pyramid complex which
represented an unprecedented mobilisation of manpower and resources. The administrative changes brought about at this time are reflected, above all, in the appearance of the office of vizier. The vizier was in charge of the entire apparatus of government and was personally responsible to the king. To indicate his rank, the vizier adopted old courtly titles such as ỉrỉ-p t. Indeed, titles which, in earlier periods, had distinguished the officials in the personal service of the king now became mere ranking titles.
The priorities of Early Dynastic administration
If we follow the modern assumption that all states are motivated, if not by self-interest then at least by an institutional instinct for self-survival, and apply this to the early Egyptian state, the priorities of Early Dynastic administration become clearer. As we have seen in Chapter 2, the very process of state formation seems to have been driven—at least in part – by the desire, on the part of Upper Egypt’s rulers, to gain and then control access to trade routes with lands to the north and south. Prestige commodities from Syria- Palestine—and, to a lesser extent, from Nubia—were not simply coveted by the princelings of Upper Egypt, they were necessary for the conspicuous consumption which proclaimed and maintained the power of the ruling élites. It seems to have been Lower Egypt’s close contacts with the Near East, coupled perhaps with its abundant and fertile agricultural land, that made it the object of Upper Egyptian expansionism during the period of state formation. Once the rulers of the Thinite region had established themselves as sovereigns of the entire country—reigning as kings of the First Dynasty— their priorities need not have changed dramatically. With the trade networks and economic resources of the whole of Egypt now at their command, the opportunities for conspicuous consumption were greater than ever. The central theme of this book is the supreme achievement of Egypt’s early rulers in creating mechanisms of rule which were to survive, virtually unchanged, for the next three thousand years. These mechanisms— economic, political and ideological—enabled the king and his court to go on doing what they had done before the unification of Egypt: exercising authority and commissioning grandiose projects to emphasise that authority. At its most basic level, political power depends upon economic control. A guaranteed income from taxation is also a prerequisite for supporting specialist craftsmen and undertaking major construction projects. The economy, then, emerges as the central concern of the Early Dynastic administration, for without adequate command of Egypt’s economic resources, the state simply could not function. Hence, the annals make frequent reference to surveys of Egypt’s resources,
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