Download Ancient Egypt A second civilization grew up in north

Ancient Egypt
A second civilization grew up in north-eastern Africa, along the Nile River. Egyptian
civilization, formed by 3000 B.C., benefited from trade and technological influence
from Mesopotamia, but it produced a quite different society and culture.
Because its values and its tightly knit political organization encouraged monumental
building, we know more about Egypt than about Mesopotamia, even though the
latter was in most respects more important and richer in subsequent heritage.
Egypt: Gift of the Nile
Egypt is literally "the gift of the Nile," as the ancient Greek historian Herodotus
observed. The Nile valley, extending 750 miles from the first cataract to the
Mediterranean, is a fertile oasis cut out of a limestone plateau.
Its soil was renewed annually by the rich silt deposited by the flood water of the
river that, unlike the unpredictable floods of Mesopotamia, rose and fell with
unusual precision.
The rise began early in July and continues until the banks were overrun, reaching
its crest in September. By the end of October the river was once more contained
within its banks.
Predynastic Egypt
By 4000 B.C. Neolithic villagers had begun to build dikes and a canal network to
control the Nile for irrigation. As population grew, a central authority was required
because this necessary work involved many communities.
Two distinct kingdoms emerged: Lower Egypt comprised the broad Nile delta north
of Memphis, while Upper Egypt extended southward along the narrow tent twentymile-wide valley as far as the first cataract at Syene (Aswan).
Each kingdom contained about a score of tribal districts, or nomes, which had
formerly been ruled by independent chieftains.
The Predynastic period ended soon after 3100 B.C. when Menes (also known as
Narmer), ruler of Upper Egypt, united the two kingdoms and founded the First
Dynasty with its capital at Memphis. As little is known of these first two dynasties,
the period is called Egypt's archaic age.
The Old Kingdom
The kings of the Third through the Sixth Dynasties - the period called the Old
Kingdom or Pyramid Age - firmly established order and stability and the essential
elements of Egyptian civilization.
The nobility lost its independence, and all power was centered in the king, or
pharaoh (Per-ao, "Great House"). The pharaoh was considered a god rather than
the human agent of a god, as was usual in Mesopotamia.
As the god of Egypt, the pharaoh owned all the land (although frequent grants
were made to temples and private
Persons) controlled the irrigation system, decided when the fields should be sown,
and received the surplus from the crops produced on the huge royal estates.
This surplus supported a large corps of specialists - administrators, priests,
scribes, artists, artisans, and merchants - who laboured in the service of the
pharaoh.
The people's welfare was thought to rest on absolute fidelity to the god-king. "If
you want to know what to do in life," advised one Egyptian writer, "cling to the
pharaoh and be loyal ...” As a consequence, Egyptians felt a sense of security that
was rare in Mesopotamia.
The belief that the pharaoh was a god led to the practice of mummification and
the construction of colossal tombs - the pyramids - to preserve the pharaoh's
embalmed body for eternity.
The ritual of mummification restored vigour and activity to the dead pharaoh; it
was his passport to eternity: "You live again, you live again forever, and here you
are young once more forever."
The pyramid tombs, in particular those of the Fourth Dynasty at Gizeh near
Memphis, which are the most celebrated of all ancient monuments, reflect the
great power and wealth of the Old Kingdom pharaohs.
Although pyramid construction provided employment during the four months of the
year when the land was flooded by the Nile, the Egyptian masses performed it
primarily as an act of faith in their god-king, on whom the security and prosperity
of Egypt depended.
Security and prosperity came to an end late in the Sixth Dynasty. The burden of
building and maintaining pyramid tombs for each new king exhausted the state.
The Nile floods failed and crops were diminished, yet taxes were increased. As the
state and its god-king lost credibility, royal tombs were plundered and government
files were thrown into the street.
The nobles assumed the prerogatives of the pharaohs, including the claim to
immortality, and the nomes again became independent.
For about a century and a half, known as the First Intermediate Period
(c. 2200-2050 B.C.), civil war raged among contenders for the throne. Outsiders
raided and infiltrated the land.
The lot of the common people became unbearable as they faced famine, robbery,
and oppression by petty tyrants. "All happiness has vanished," wrote a
contemporary. "I show you the land in turmoil ... Each man's heart is for himself ...
A man sits with his back turned, while one slays another." ^17
The Middle Kingdom, c. 2050-1800 B.C.
Egypt was rescued from anarchy by the pharaohs of the Eleventh and Twelfth
Dynasties, who reunited the country and ruled from Thebes. Stressing their role
as watchful shepherds of the people, the Middle Kingdom pharaohs promoted the
welfare of the downtrodden.
One of them claimed: "I gave to the destitute and brought up the orphan. I caused
him who was nothing to reach [his goal], like him who was [somebody]." ^18 No
longer was the nation's wealth expended on huge pyramids, but on public works.
The largest of these, a drainage and irrigation project in the marshy Fayum
district south of Memphis, resulted in the reclamation of 27,000 acres of arable
land. Moreover, a concession that has been called "the democratization of the
hereafter" gave the lower classes the right to have their bodies mummified and
thereby to enjoy immortality like the pharaohs and the nobility.
Following the Twelfth Dynasty, Egypt again was racked by civil war as provincial
governors fought for the pharaoh's throne. During this Second Intermediate
Period (c. 1800-1750 B.C.), the Hyksos, a mixed but preponderantly Semitic people,
invaded Egypt from Palestine about 1720 B.C.
They easily conquered the Delta and made the rest of Egypt tributary. It was
probably at this time that the Hebrew Joseph, who had risen to a high position
under a Hyksos king, invited his relatives to settle in the Delta ("the land of
Goshen") during a famine.
The New Kingdom or Empire, c. 1570-1090 B.C.
The Egyptians viewed the Hyksos conquest as a great humiliation imposed on them
by detestable barbarians. An aggressive nationalism emerged, promoted by the
native prince of Thebes who proclaimed: "No man can settle down, when despoiled
by the taxes of the Asiatics.
I will grapple with him that I may rip open his belly! My wish is to save Egypt and to
smite the Asiatics!" ^19
Adopting the new weapons introduced by their conquerors - the composite bow,
constructed of wood and horn, and the horse-drawn chariot - the Egyptians
expelled the Hyksos and pursued them into Palestine.
The pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who reunited Egypt and founded the new
Kingdom, made Palestine the nucleus of an Egyptian empire in western Asia.
[Footnote 19: John A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt, p. 164.]
The outstanding representative of the aggressive state that Egypt now became
was Thutmose III (1490-1435 B.C.). After inheriting the throne as a child,
Thutmose was shoved aside by his step-mother, Hatshepsut (1490-1469 B.C.), a
former concubine who acted as regent during his minority.
Supported by the powerful priests of the sun-god Amon, Hatshepsut proclaimed
herself "king." In many of her statues and reliefs she was portrayed wearing the
customary royal crown and helmets - sometimes even sporting the royal beard!
She employed all the customary royal titles with the exception of "Mighty Bull,"
which clearly was not appropriate for a woman who described herself as
"exceedingly good to look upon ...a beautiful maiden, fresh, serene of nature
...altogether divine."
When Hatshepsut died after twenty years of rule, Thutmose ordered her name
and inscriptions erased, her reliefs effaced, and her statues broken and thrown
into a quarry.
Then this "Napoleon of Egypt," as Thutmose III has been called, led his army on
seventeen campaigns as far as Syria, where he set up his boundary markers on the
banks of the Euphrates, called by the Egyptians "the river that runs backward."
Nubia and northern Sudan were also brought under his sway. Native princes of
Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria were left on their thrones, but their sons were
taken to Egypt as hostages.
Here they were brought up and, thoroughly Egyptianized, eventually sent home to
rule as loyal vassals. Thutmose III erected obelisks - tall, pointed shafts of stone
- to commemorate his reign and to record his wish that "his name might endure
throughout the future forever and ever."
Under Amenhotep III (c. 1402-1363 B.C.) the Egyptian Empire reached its peak.
Tribute flowed in from conquered lands; and Thebes, with its temples built for the
sun-god Amon east of the Nile at Luxor and Karnak, became the most magnificent
city in the world.
The Hittites and the rulers of Babylonia and Crete, among others, sent gifts,
including princesses for the pharaoh's harem. In return, they asked the pharaoh
"for gold, for gold is as common as dust in your land."
During the reign of the succeeding pharaoh, Amenhotep IV (1363-1347 B.C.),
however, the Empire went into sharp decline as the result of an internal struggle
between the pharaoh and the powerful and wealthy priests of the sun-god Amon,
the king of the gods.
The pharaoh undertook to revolutionize Egypt's religion by proclaiming the worship
of the sun's disk, Aton, in place of Amon and all the other deities.
Often called the first monotheist (although, as Aton's son, the pharaoh was also a
god), Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaton ("Devoted to Aton"), left Amon's
city to found a new capital (Akhetaton), and concentrated upon religious reform.
Most of Egypt's vassal princes in Asia defected when their appeals for aid against
invaders went unheeded.
Prominent among these invaders were groups of people called the Habiru, whose
possible identification with the Hebrews of the Old Testament has interested
modern scholars.
At home the Amon priesthood encouraged dissension. When Akhenaton died, his
nine-year-old brother, Tutankhamen ("King
Tut," c. 1347-1338 B.C.) - now remembered for his small but richly furnished tomb
discovered in 1922 - returned to the worship of Amon and to Thebes, where he
became a puppet of the priests of Amon.
At this point the generals of the army took control of Egypt.
One of the new army leaders founded the Nineteenth Dynasty (c. 1305-1200 B.C.),
which sought to re-establish Egyptian control over Palestine and Syria.
The result was a long struggle with the Hittites, who in the meantime had pushed
south from Asia Minor into Syria. This struggle reached a climax in the reign of
Ramses II (1290-1224 B.C.), the pharaoh of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt under
Moses.
Ramses II regained Palestine, but when he failed to dislodge the Hittites from
Syria, he agreed to a treaty. It’s strikingly modern character is revealed in clauses
providing for nonaggression, mutual assistance, and extradition of fugitives.
The long reign of Ramses II as Egypt's last period of national grandeur. The
number and size of Ramses' monuments rival those of the Pyramid Age.
Outstanding among them are the great Hypostyle Hall, built for Amon at Karnak,
and the temple at Abu Simbel, with its four colossal statues of Ramses, which has
now been raised to save it from inundation by the waters of the High Dam at
Aswan (Syene).
After Ramses II, royal authority gradually decayed as the power of the priests of
Amon rose.
Period of Decadence, 1090-332 B.C.
During the early part of the Period of Decadence the Amon priesthood at Thebes
became so strong that the high priest was able to found his own dynasty and to
rule over Upper Egypt.
At the same time, merchant princes set up a dynasty of their own in the Delta.
Libyans from the west moved into central Egypt, where in 940 B.C. they
established a dynasty whose founder, Shishak, was a contemporary of King Solomon
of Israel.
Two centuries later Egypt was conquered by the black Kushites of Nubia, who
established the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty and ruled from Napata, near the Fourth
Cataract. Kushite domination ended in 671 B.C., when the Assyrians of Mesopotamia
made Egypt a province of their empire.
The Egyptianized Kushite rulers transferred their capital southward to Meroe,
just above the Sixth Cataract. Here they recorded their royal annals in a script
based on Egyptian hieroglyphs, and when they died their bodies were mummified
and laid to rest in small replicas of the pyramid tombs of the Old Kingdom.
Egypt enjoyed a brief Indian summer of revived glory during the Twenty-Sixth
Dynasty (663-525 B.C.), which expelled the Assyrians with the aid of Greek
mercenaries.
The revival of ancient artistic and literary forms proved sterile, and after
attempts to regain Palestine failed, "the king of Egypt came not again any more out
of his land" (2 Kings 24:7).
Only the commercial policies of these rulers were successful. In about 600 B.C., to
facilitate trade, Pharaoh Necho ordered a canal dug between the Nile mouth and
the Red Sea (it was later completed by the Persians), and he commissioned a
Phoenician expedition, which circumnavigated Africa in three years - a feat not to
be duplicated until A.D. 1497 by the Portuguese.
The thirty Egyptian dynasties which had existed for nearly three thousand years
came to an end when Egypt passed under Persian rule in 525 B.C. Two hundred
years later this ancient land came within the domain of Alexander the Great.
Egyptian Society and Economy
Although most Egyptians were virtual serfs and subject to forced labour, class
stratification was not rigid, and people of merit could rise to a higher rank in the
service of the pharaoh.
The best avenue of advancement was education. The pharaoh's administration
needed many scribes, and young men were urged to attend a scribal school: "Be a
scribe, who is freed from forced labour, and protected from all work....,he directed
every work that is in this land."
Yet then as now the education of a young man was beset with pitfalls: "I am told
thou forsakest writing, that thou givest thyself up to pleasures;
thou goest from street to street, where it smelleth of beer, to destruction. Beer,
it scareth men from thee, it sendeth thy soul to perdition." ^20
[Footnote 20: Adolf Erman, The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, trans.
Aylward M. Blackman (London: Methuen & Co., 1927), pp. 190, 196, 197.]
Compared with their Greek and Roman successors, Egyptian women enjoyed
extraordinary freedom. Equality of the sexes in Egypt is reflected in statues and
paintings.
Wives of pharaohs and nobles are shown standing or sitting beside their husbands,
and little daughters are depicted with the same tenderness as little sons. The
right of succession to the throne was based on royal descent from the mother as
well as the father.
Marriages between brothers and sisters often took place within the ruling family
to assure the most divine strain and reduce the number of rival claimants to the
throne.
Business and legal documents show that women in general had rights to own, buy
and sell property without reliance on legal guardians, and to make wills and testify
in court. A few became scribes and members of the administration.
The economy of Egypt has been called "theocratic socialism" because the state, in
the person of the divine pharaoh, owned the land and monopolized commerce and
industry.
(Compare the role of temples in the collectivized economy of the Early Sumerian
period.) Because of the Nile and the proximity to the Mediterranean Red seas,
most of Egypt's trade was carried on by ships.
Boats plied regularly up and down the Nile, which, unlike the Tigris and the
Euphrates, is easily navigable in both directions up to the first cataract at Aswan
(Syene). The current carries ships downstream, and the prevailing north wind
enables them to sail upstream easily.
Trade reached its height during the Empire, when commerce traveled along four
main routes: the Nile River; the Red Sea, which was connected by caravan to the
Nile bend near Thebes; a caravan route to Mesopotamia and southern Syria; and
the Mediterranean Sea, connecting northern Syria, Cyprus, Crete, and Greece with
the delta of the Nile.
Egypt's indispensable imports were lumber, copper, tin, and olive oil, paid for with
gold from its rich mines, linens, wheat, and papyrus rolls the preferred writing
material of the ancient world. (Our word paper is derived from the Greek papyros.)
Egyptian Religion
During the Old Kingdom Egyptian religion had no strong ethical character. Relations
between humans and gods were based largely on material considerations, and the
gods were thought to reward those who brought them gifts of sacrifice.
But widespread suffering during the First Intermediate Period led to a revolution
in religious thought.
It was now believed that instead of sacrificial offerings the gods were interested
in good character and love for one's fellows: "More acceptable [to the gods] is the
character of one upright of heart than the ox of the evildoer....Give the love of
thyself to the whole world; a good character is a remembrance." ^21
[Footnote 21: From "The Instruction of Meri-ka-Re" in The Burden of Egypt, trans.
John A. Wilson, p. 120.]
Osiris, the mythical god of the Nile whose death and resurrection explained the
annual rise and fall of the river, became the center of Egypt's most popular
religious cult when the new emphasis on moral character was combined with the
supreme reward of an attractive afterlife.
"Do justice whilst thou endurest upon earth," people were told. "A man remains
over after death, and his deeds are placed beside him in heaps. However, existence
yonder is for eternity....He who reaches it without wrongdoing shall exist yonder
like a god."