Early Dynastic private tombs
Private tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasties are the most important source of evidence for Early Dynastic society because excavations of contemporary settlements are limited. Cemeteries with Early Dynastic graves are distributed throughout Egypt, mostly at desert-edge locations, although increasing archaeological activity in the Delta has revealed new sites, such as Minshat Abu Omar. Non-royal Early Dynastic cemeteries usually contain a wide range of burials, from the high status tombs of local officials to the simple graves of the ordinary people. Exceptions are the cemeteries of court retainers surrounding the royal tombs and funerary palaces at Abydos (which clearly form a special class), and the exclusively elite cemeteries in the Memphite region, which served the highest state officials. The most important elite cemetery is at North Saqqara, which contains an uninterrupted sequence of burials spanning the 1st Dynasty, as well as a large number of 2nd and 3rd Dynasty tombs. On the opposite bank of the Nile, the vast Early Dynastic cemetery at Helwan, containing over 10,000 tombs, served as the main burial ground for the officials and inhabitants of Memphis.
Within the Early Dynastic period a clear sequence of development in tomb architecture is seen. The main factor affecting the design of a tomb was the wealth of its owner. Modifications and innovations were introduced first in royal and elite burials, and were subsequently adopted by the other sectors of the population. From the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, elite tombs were characterized by a large mudbrick superstructure called a mastaba, with exterior walls decorated with recessed niches. This style of architecture, known as “palace fagade,” is thought to have imitated the external appearance of the royal palace. The fagade of the tomb superstructure was plastered, and the niches were painted with elaborate patterns, imitating woven mats. During the early 1st Dynasty, the burial chamber was a shallow pit roofed with wood. It was surrounded by mudbrick storerooms, which housed some of the grave goods. Further storerooms were located in the superstructure, which was divided up by cross-walls. Access to the burial chamber must have been difficult, and the superstructure could not have been completed until after the interment. Later, during the reign of Den, an entrance stairway to the burial chamber, starting outside the superstructure, was introduced. The resulting threat to security was addressed by blocking the stairs at intervals with large limestone slabs (portcullis).
Toward the end of the 1st Dynasty, tomb design underwent major changes, including the adoption of an L-shaped plan for the entrance stairway. Tomb robbing probably inspired the tendency to dig tombs more deeply. The focus of the tomb shifted toward the substructure, and the storerooms adjoining the burial chamber housed all the grave goods. Consequently, the above-ground mastaba was built as a solid mass of mudbrick and rubble. The niched exterior largely disappeared, to be replaced by plain walls with an offering niche, called a “false door,” at either end of the east fagade. The southern niche was the more important one, and later became the focus of the mortuary cult.
From the beginning of the 2nd Dynasty, tombs in the Memphite necropolis, where the limestone strata are near the surface, were hewn in the rock. Access was by a stairway, and the tomb was covered by a mudbrick mastaba. Outside the Memphite region, where the geology was less favorable for rock-cut tombs, the older, partially excavated mudbrick constructions continued to be built. In the 2nd Dynasty the tomb appears to have been conceived as a house for the deceased, and the burial chamber was divided by mudbrick walls into a suite of rooms. The coffin was placed on a raised platform in the “bedroom” and some tombs were even provided with a replica lavatory. Later in the 2nd Dynasty a longitudinal layout was gradually adopted for tombs, with subsidiary chambers, often in pairs, opening off the central corridor.
Burials of lower-ranking officials and members of local elites (represented, for example, at Naga ed-Deir in Upper Egypt) generally followed the same sequence of development, though tombs were smaller. With fewer grave goods, there was never any need for a hollow superstructure divided into storerooms.
Royal retainers and craftsmen were generally buried in simple mudbrick-lined rectangular pits, covered with a low, vaulted superstructure. A false door at the southern end of the eastern face was introduced in the middle of the 1st Dynasty. In the 2nd Dynasty, simple shaft tombs (a vertical shaft leading to a single, rock-cut chamber) were the norm for lower status officials.
The graves of the vast majority of the population showed little change from the Predynastic period. The body might be wrapped in a cloth or animal skin, or simply placed directly in a rectangular or oval pit, cut in the surface gravel. Some pits were divided into two chambers, a larger one for the actual burial and a smaller one for pottery. After the pit had been roofed with a mat or wooden planks, the excavated gravel was heaped up in a mound to cover the grave. Toward the end of the 1st Dynasty, pits lined with mudbricks became increasingly common, but otherwise, the simplest graves changed little throughout the Early Dynastic period.
Although the basic design of tombs varied little between different regions of the country, the local geology had some effect on construction techniques. Thus the availability of good-quality limestone in the Memphite area encouraged the early use of stone. Some of the 1st Dynasty tombs at Helwan show extensive use of stone for portcullis blocks, roofing slabs and the lining of the burial chamber.
Early Dynastic tombs were furnished with a wide variety of grave goods. The sumptuous burial equipment of the elite tombs at North Saqqara included numerous stone vessels. Some tombs had stone vessels which had probably been deliberately smashed, as part of the funerary ritual. Many artifacts from the North Saqqara tombs appear to have been produced in the same royal workshops which supplied the king’s tomb. They include fine wooden furniture, games, jewelry, chests of linen garments, copper vessels and tools, and flint tools. The most important supplies were of food and drink, to provide sustenance for the tomb owner in the afterlife. The provisions commonly included large joints of meat, loaves of bread, jars of cheese and rows of so-called “wine jars.” Some high status burials were provided with a funerary meal, laid out on ceramic and stone plates next to the coffin. Poorer graves merely contained some jars of provisions and a few additional offerings, such as toilet implements or the occasional stone vessel.
Some 1st Dynasty elite tombs also included the burial of a wooden boat, placed in a shallow trench next to the tomb and covered with a layer of mudbricks. Boat burials have been found at Abu Roash, North Saqqara and Helwan, and suggest that beliefs about the afterlife already incorporated the notion of a celestial journey.
First Dynasty tombs of courtiers, particularly at Abydos, were often marked by a limestone stela with the name, and sometimes the titles, of the deceased. In the 2nd Dynasty a feature of many officials’ burials at Helwan was a “ceiling stela.” This stela showed the name, titles and a representation of the tomb owner. Some of the earliest examples of the well-known offering formula are preserved on such stelae.
Irrespective of status, the deceased was buried in a contracted position. The orientation of the body varied and probably depended upon the direction from which offerings would be brought. Although true mummification had not yet been developed in the Early Dynastic period, attempts were made to preserve the body, or at least its appearance. In some 2nd Dynasty burials at North Saqqara the features of the deceased were carefully modeled in linen bandages, soaked in a resinous substance. Wooden coffins are attested from the early 1st Dynasty in high status burials, but by the 2nd Dynasty they had been adopted by all classes.
Edfu
The town of Edfu (24°59′ N, 32°52′ E) is located on the west bank of the Nile River, between Luxor to the north and Aswan to the south (about 100km from each). In Graeco-Roman times it was called Apollinopolis Magna, the local god Horus being identified with the Greek god Apollo. The modern Arabic name Edfu is a direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian name Djeba, (Etbo, in Coptic). Edfu was an important regional center since the Old Kingdom. This is partly due to the large area of fertile land belonging to the town, and partly to the fact that Edfu was situated near the former frontier between Egypt and Nubia. Edfu was a starting point for desert routes leading to the Kharga Oasis in the west, and to the mines of the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coast in the east.
No remains go back beyond the 5th Dynasty, but at least toward the end of the Old Kingdom, Edfu was the capital of Nome II of Upper Egypt. The most ancient Edfu cemetery, comprising the mastabas of the Old Kingdom as well as later tombs, covers the area southwest of the precinct of the great temple of Horus. One of the mastabas belonged to Isi who was the “great chief of the Nome (of Edfu)” early in the 6th Dynasty. Later, in the Middle Kingdom, Isi became a local saint and was worshipped under the title “living god.” Before the beginning of the New Kingdom, the necropolis was transferred to Hager Edfu, a place about 4km to the west, and finally in the Late period to Nag’ el-Hassaya, 12km to the south, the whole area being called Behedet. Some ruins of the ancient town rise at a distance of about 150m west of the great temple of Horus. They form an artificial hill (in Arabic, tell) consisting of the usual debris of a permanently inhabited human settlement. In this western part of Tell Edfu, excavations were carried out in the first decades of the twentieth century. A resumption of the excavations would likely achieve good results, but would encounter difficulties because the eastern part of the ancient town lies under the modern habitations of Edfu. There are, however, plans to evacuate the people living near the eastern enclosure wall in order to be able to start excavations in this area.
Close to the eastern tower of the pylon (the monumental gate) of the great temple the remains of another pylon have been unearthed. It dates from the Ramesside period and, though having a different orientation, it perhaps formed part of one of the predecessors of the extant great temple of Edfu. This temple precinct was comprised of many buildings, first of all the main temple within its own enclosure wall made of stone, and further subsidiary temples, smaller chapels, workshops, storehouses and dwellings. Most of them have been destroyed completely or lie beneath the houses of the present town. This is also true of the sacred lake and the slaughterhouse, which were located east of the great temple. South of the temple are the ruins of the so-called mammisi, or birthhouse, a temple in which the birth of the god Harsomtus was celebrated. The scanty architectural remains east of the mammisi probably belong to the temple of the sacred falcon. The most important building at Edfu is the temple of the god Horus Behedeti, lord of Edfu. Its excellent state of preservation is partly due to the fact that most of it was buried under sand before about 1860. In that year the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette ordered it to be cleared of the sand, rubbish and mudbrick houses that had been built against its enclosure wall, in the court and even on its spacious roof.
The most sacred part of the Horus temple is the granite shrine (naos) which gave shelter to the main statue of Horus Behedeti, located near the rear wall of the sanctuary. Eight chapels open off the corridor that leads around the sanctuary; probably most of them lodged the statues of the major gods and goddesses of Egypt, who formed the divine following of Horus Behedeti; others were used for special religious rites. In front of the sanctuary there is an antechamber. East of the antechamber, a small sacrificial court gives access to the w’bt, or “pure place,” where the statues of the deities were anointed and dressed, where they received their crowns and amulets before leaving the interior of the temple and gaining its roof, on the occasion of special festivals. To the west of the antechamber is a small room dedicated to the god Min. The next main chamber toward the exit is the hall of the offering tables; on each side of it there is an approach to one of the staircases leading to the temple roof. Next follows the inner hypostyle hall, the roof of which is supported by twelve columns with rich floral capitals. The adjoining side chambers to the east served as access to the inner passage round the temple and as a treasury for precious metals and stones. The adjacent chambers to the west are the so-called “laboratory” for the sacred oils and ointments, and the “Nile-chamber” where the sacred water was poured into a basin after it had been brought from the nilometer, situated outside the girdle-wall. The main fabric of the temple ends with the outer hypostyle hall; the twelve columns inside are the highest of the whole temple (12.5m). In the eastern part of its fagade the library has been installed in a small chamber; two catalogs are inscribed on the walls giving the titles of the books (scrolls) that were preserved in two niches. The small chamber in the western part of the fagade was dedicated to the consecration of the priest who performed the religious rites on behalf of the king. The main entrance of the pronaos opens to a large court, surrounded on three sides by a covered colonnade of thirty-two columns. To the south the court is limited by the mighty pylon, the towers of which are more than 35m high. The girdle-wall having a height of about 10m abuts against the towers of the pylon (circa 137x47m).
A lengthy inscription on the outer face of the girdle-wall (a text-band circa 300m in length) gives details concerning the names and functions of the different halls and chambers of the temple. This inscription not only gives an account of the entire building, but also relates the history of its construction. The temple was begun on August 23, 237 BC by Ptolemy III and completed on December 5, 57 BC under the rule of Ptolemy XII.
The inscriptions of the temple of Edfu were published by Emile Chassinat in eight volumes, amounting to about 3,000 pages altogether. They contain an enormous amount of information on many different subjects. For instance, one long sequence of texts and ritual scenes accurately lists the estates of the temple, which extended over 180km between Aswan and Thebes. On the walls of the “laboratory” we can read the exact prescriptions for making the sacred oils and ointments. The jambs of some of the doorways bear inscriptions that reveal the moral obligations of the priesthood. Many texts on the inner face of the girdle-wall treat the creation of the world which emerged from the primeval waters at the very spot that would become Edfu; the world and all the things and creatures on it were the emanation of “Horus Behedeti, the great god, the lord of the Sky,” forming a part of his body. About 2,000 ritual scenes show the king offering to the gods in order to obtain from them what Egypt needed for the maintenace of life. Other texts deal with the daily ritual, festivals and the complex theology of Edfu.
The lords of Edfu were Horus Behedeti, his divine consort Hathor of Dendera and their son Harsomtus. Besides them many other deities were venerated, for instance Isis, Nephthys and Osiris, Re, Ptah, Khonsu, Min, Khnum and Mehit, and there was even a cult for the royal ancestors. In Egypt many Horus-gods were worshipped. The specific Horus of Edfu was Horus-Re, often represented as a winged sun-disk or as a winged scarab. Being the divine archetype of terrestrial kingship, he defended Egypt against all kinds of foes. The embodiment of his enemies was the god Seth, and many scenes in the temple of Edfu show Horus killing Seth, the latter appearing in the shape of a crocodile, a hippopotamus or a donkey.
The daily ritual in the temple started with a morning song that was sung in front of the sanctuary. In several stanzas all the members of the god’s body are woken, as well as his insignia, his throne and finally even the halls, chambers and columns of the temple. Then the sanctuary and the shrine were opened. Incense and fresh water were offered to Horus, religious rites were performed and the god received his offering meal. The ritual was repeated twice in the course of the day, probably in an abbreviated form. In the evening the doors of the shrine were closed and sealed. On festival days the religious ritual was more extensive.
One of the most important festivals commemorated the victory of Horus over Seth. Here, an analogy is drawn between this victory and the annual coming north of the sun until the summer solstice. Each year on the occasion of the Festival of Behedet, Hathor traveled from Dendera to Edfu. This feast lasted for fourteen days; during that period Horus and Hathor visited the tombs of the ancestor-gods situated in the necropolis of Behedet and performed all the necessary rites before these gods who were believed to guarantee the annual regeneration of the world. Two other important festivals were the yearly coronation of the sacred falcon and the festival of the New Year, when the statues of the deities were carried out of the interior of the temple up to the roof in order to expose them to the vivifying rays of the sun god Re.
Egyptian (language), decipherment of
Few triumphs of human ingenuity capture the imagination as much as the decipherment of hieroglyphic writing in 1822. The decipherment came in the wake of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (1798-1801). While working on a fort near Rosetta in 1799, soldiers found a stone slab inscribed with three scripts: Greek at the bottom and two undeciphered scripts, hieroglyphic proper and demotic, at the top and in the center. From its discovery to the watershed developments of 1822, the Rosetta Stone formed the focus of all efforts at decipherment, even if it did not provide the final clues. Yet as the beacon of incentive, it has appropriately become the symbol of the decipherment.
The process leading to the decipherment is complex. With hindsight, occasional correct insights can be isolated, but many are lucky guesses. Many others are mixed with false views. Above all, a plausible assumption is not proof. Three scholars whose contributions deserve mention with respect to the decipherment of Egyptian are Silvestre de Sacy, Johan Akerblad and Thomas Young.
Three definitions of the decipherment are possible. In the broadest sense, the decipherment involves the recovery of: (1) the Egyptian language (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic); (2) three scripts (hieroglyphic proper and two cursive derivatives, hieratic and demotic); and (3) the system of hieroglyphic writing. In this sense, the decipherment is still ongoing.
In another definition, the decipherment involves (3) only: recovering the hieroglyphic script as a system of putting language into writing. Two steps can be distinguished in this second definition. The second of these two steps is the pivotal insight by Jean-Frangois Champollion on the morning of September 14 1822. This second step by itself is the decipherment in the third, narrowest, sense.
Champollion was in two respects well prepared for the task of decipherment. He had a thorough knowledge of Coptic, a language which was generally thought to be later Egyptian. By 1821, he was also convinced of what had been suspected before, that the three hieroglyphic scripts were basically the same. Finding the key to one would result in the decipherment of all three.
Decipherment of the alphabet (spring and summer 1822)
When one faces an unknown language in an unknown script, one first looks for words of which both meaning and sound are known to obtain a sense of how the script represents the language. But this may seem like putting the cart before the horse. Yet hieroglyphic inscriptions do, in fact, contain such words, the names of Greek and Roman kings and emperors who had ruled over Egypt and were known from classical sources. Since names such as Alexander, Cleopatra and Caesar could not be translated, it was reasonable to assume that hieroglyphic writing would present them roughly as pronounced in Greek. Foreign names could therefore offer a point of departure.
In comparing what seemed to be the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Champollion observed that the first hieroglyph in Ptolemy was the same as the fifth in Cleopatra and could therefore be identified as the hieroglyph expressing the sound “p.” Then he noted that the fourth hieroglyph in Ptolemy was the same as the second in Cleopatra. By repeating this matching procedure with several names, Champollion reconstructed a fairly complete alphabet, first in demotic and a little later also in hieroglyphic proper.
In retrospect, the recovery of the alphabet was possible due to the coincidence of three facts: (1) hieroglyphic texts contained names known from non-hieroglyphic sources; (2) these names were spelled phonetically or alphabetically; and (3) the alphabet played a crucial role in hieroglyphic writing of all times. These three facts are independent from one another.
The alphabet had now been deciphered. This discovery was communicated to the French Academy in the famous “Letter to M.Dacier,” which is often referred to as the Magna Carta of the decipherment. However, it contains only the first step of two steps. After all, the Egyptian alphabet might have been used only to spell foreign names. The crucial second step, which constitutes the decipherment in its narrowest definition, followed in 1822.
Mixed character of the hieroglyphic script
Champollion had not had access to many texts from before the Ptolemaic period when, on the morning of September 14 1822, he received copies of inscriptions from the famous rock temple at Abu Simbel, built in the thirteenth century BC. In one of the cartouches, he saw the royal name The sign depicting a folded cloth, represented s in his alphabet. This gave “?-?-s-s.” Turning his attention to the sun disk at the beginning, he had the good fortune of thinking of the Coptic word for “sun”: re. This provisionally gave “Re-?-s-s.” Next, “Ramesses” came to mind, a royal name often mentioned in Greek sources. If slftVwas Ramesses, what about ft, a sign now known to depict three animal skins tied together? Tentatively proceeding on this path, Champollion recalled two things. First, on the basis of relative location, it had been established that the group Ifi! occurs on the Rosetta Stone in the word for “birthday.” Second, in Coptic, “birthday” is “day of mise,” that is, “day of giving birth.” On the basis of these two observations, combined with the knowledge that is s. Iflf could be identified with the two sounds ms. It was then only logical to identify flwith m. However, llMs a biliteral sound sign for m+s. Hieroglyphs representing sequences of two consonants were discovered only in 1837, after Champollion’s death, by Richard Lepsius. But in the meantime, Champollion’s erroneous assumption that hieroglyphs like l^and &were homonyms posed no significant obstacle to reading texts because the value of the signs representing two consonants is often specified by other hieroglyphs referring to one consonant, a phenomenon known as phonetic complementation. In other words, it does not make much difference whether one reads Ift as m+s=ms or as ms+s=ms. However, the many homon;yms result in an improbably high number of alphabetic signs. Which alphabet has about 130 signs? This problem was used as an argument against Champollion’s system. Lepsius’s discovery of biliteral sound signs and the principle of phonetic complementation did much to remove any lingering doubts about the validity of Champollion’s decipherment.
On September 14 1822, Champollion became certain not only that his alphabet was valid for all of Egyptian history and that Egyptian was related to Coptic, but above all that the hieroglyphic script was a mixed system. It consists of both meaning signs and phonograms. This may have been suspected before, but providing positive proof by means of concrete and indisputable examples is another matter. The name “Ramesses” remains an excellent illustration. The first part is written with the meaning sign The second part is written with the sound signs A and 1.
This discovery was only the beginning of the decipherment in the broad sense. Champollion proceeded quickly. His alphabet allowed him to identify the sounds of many words in any text. Since many Egyptian words are preserved in Coptic, he could rely on his knowledge of this stage of the language to match sound sequences with Coptic words, often successfully. He read hieroglyphic texts in Coptic fashion, as it were, and even transcribed them in Coptic characters. This path could obviously be followed only with words written mainly with sound signs. But for words written with meaning signs and determinatives, there was help of another kind. Meaning signs and determinatives depict what they mean. One can derive the rough meaning of a word from the picture with which it is written. But what about the sounds? If the word happened to be preserved in Coptic and one happened to have chosen the correct Coptic word, one was lucky. There was otherwise no way of establishing the sounds of a word positively until a variant writing containing sound signs emerged. Such variant writings are often found in the earliest hieroglyphic texts, many of which were discovered only decades later.
When the sounds of a word were not known with certainty, Champollion used the sounds of the Coptic word with the same meaning. For example, the sign ^represents desert hills and is used to write the word for “foreign land.” Champollion used the sounds of the Coptic word for “earth, land” to transcribe to* “foreign land,” namely kah. Now we know that ^”foreign land” is to be read as khaset. Likewise, Champollion did not read “house” as pr, because no spelling such as ■a.rTI(;j – r) was known to him.
Instead, he used the Coptic word, which sounds somewhat like ay in the English “way.” Champollion therefore deciphered quite a few words in meaning only.
Because of the precipitation of insights, September 14 1822 is the pivotal date in the decipherment of hieroglyphic writing. It is now regarded as the birthday of modern Egyptology.
