Wadi Tumilat
The Wadi Tumilat today is a narrow, intensively cultivated valley, some 52km long, but only 2-6km wide, leading eastward from the town of Abassa to Ismailia and the shores of Lake Timsah. It is one of the two main overland routes leading from the Nile Delta to the Sinai and western Asia, and is heavily traversed today. Geologically, it is the ancient bed of a large Pleistocene river down-cutting through earlier Plio-Pleistocene deltaic sands and gravels, which today form the northern portions of the Eastern Desert. The Wadi is bounded on the north by the Tell el-Kebir island, a turtleback of deltaic sands and gravels, and on the south by a line of sand dunes bounding the northern edge of flat level desert.
Rainfall in the Wadi Tumilat is sparse and erratic, insufficient to sustain settled occupation. Ordinary Nile floods regularly reached the western section of the Wadi, which was bounded by a large natural dike, the Ras el-Wadi, in the region of Tell er-Retabah and the modern Qassassin. Only exceptionally high Niles reached the central and eastern sections of the Wadi, replenishing Lake Timsah to the east and the many small lakes in the central section of the Wadi. As a consequence, the western end of the Wadi (about 24km) was more heavily alluviated, and had more arable land. The depressed central region of the Wadi probably contained a perennial marshy lake sustained by the yearly Nile flood. Economic activities may have included farming, grazing, hunting and fishing in and around the lake.
During much of antiquity, the Wadi Tumilat appears to have been largely deserted. Settled occupation from the Middle Kingdom (?) onward is attested only at Tell er-Retabah, located on high ground at roughly the Wadi’s midpoint; this site may have been the "Walls of the Ruler" mentioned in the texts Sinuhe and the Prophecy of Neferti. The only two periods in which the Wadi was intensively occupied were the Second Intermediate Period, when there was a considerable Asiatic (Hyksos) presence in the middle section of the Wadi, and the Late period, i.e. the later Saite through early Roman periods. Neko II of the 26th Dynasty initiated the great sea-level canal linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, a project successively given renewed effort by Darius the Great, Ptolemy II and Trajan.
In the New Kingdom, the written evidence indicates that the Wadi Tumilat belonged to a military zone, known as Tjeku (Ttw). Both the orthography of the word and the context of the references imply that Tjeku was a district rather than a town, although its specific boundaries cannot be determined. The early occurrences of Tjeku all carry the throw-stick and hill country determinatives, rather than the city determinative. Identification of particular fortifications mentioned in the New Kingdom texts with archaeological sites is difficult. The one exception is the "Fortress of Merneptah-Content-with-Truth" of Papyrus Anastasi VI, which Redford has equated with Tell er-Retabah. The archaeological data indicate the presence of a major stronghold at Retabah during late New Kingdom times, and little or no occupation elsewhere in the Wadi. Inscribed blocks from an Atum temple were found by Flinders Petrie at Tell er-Retabah virtually at the surface of a site known to be deeply stratified. It is almost certain that, like other Atum-related Ramesside material found in the Wadi, these blocks were imported following the building of the transit canal, possibly even as late as the Ptolemaic period.
With the founding of the transit canal and of Tell el-Maskhuta in the reign of Neko II, it appears that the designation "Per-Atum Tjeku" was simply moved eastward from Retabah, which underwent a severe reduction in size and influence at this time. Thus, the monumental Pithom Stela of Ptolemy II, found by Naville at Tell el-Maskhuta, records the building (more accurately the rebuilding) of a temple to Atum in Tjeku; this claim has been borne out by modern excavation. The stela identifies the region as belonging to Nome VIII of Lower Egypt.
Possible connections with the biblical narrative of the sojourn in Egypt (Genesis 45 to Exodus 15), traditions of an early sea-level canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by way of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile and the Wadi Tumilat, and the striking visual evidence of the remains of an ancient canal running the length of the Wadi early attracted the attention of the French Expedition and subsequent engineers, scholars, explorers and excavators. Captivated by the dream of building a canal joining the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Napoleon Bonaparte rode through the Wadi and the Isthmus of Suez during the winter of 1798-9 to see for himself the spoilbanks of this ancient achievement. Faulty calculations of sea levels forced the cancellation of these plans, but when de Lessups and the Suez Canal Company began work a half century later, the first order of business was the construction of a sweet-water canal carrying the water of the Nile through the Wadi Tumilat and down to the Red Sea. This canal provided fresh water for the work effort and for the towns of Ismailia and Suez, as well as revivifying the large-scale agricultural reclamation projects initiated by Mohammed Ali in the Wadi Tumilat some fifteen years after the French Expedition. This sweet-water canal today forms the basis for the agricultural wealth of the region.
Inspired by the goal of providing a firm archaeological grounding for the biblical traditions, the newly-formed (1882) Egypt Exploration Society commissioned the Swiss philologist Edouard Naville to undertake excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta (1883). Tell el-Maskhuta lies some 15km west of Ismailia and was the site of significant discoveries of Ramesside statuary and other antiquities by the engineers of the Suez Canal Company. These excavations uncovered the remains of massive, deeply-founded storehouses, "said by a visitor to have been made with bricks without straw." Not unnaturally, given the large number of Ramesside monuments found at the site, these storehouses were attributed to the Ramesside period. Also found were a large enclosure wall, an immediately adjacent Roman town, a badly ruined temple, the Pithom Stela of Ptolemy II, and two Latin inscriptions mentioning Ero, which Naville equated with Heroonopolis. The connection between these ruins and the biblical text was apparently assured by the Septuagintal substitution of "Heroonopolis in the land of Ramesses" for the Hebrew Goshen, as the place where Joseph goes to meet his father (Genesis 46:28).
In 1905 W.M.Flinders Petrie excavated at Tell er-Retabah, discovering additional Ramesside material, including an architectural fagade of Ramesses II with an inscription to Atum, Lord of Tjeku, and a reused portion of the doorjamb of a tomb, also mentioning Tjeku. On this evidence, Petrie suggested the identification of Tell er-Retabah with the biblical city of Ramesses, and the identification of Tell el-Maskhuta with Pithom. Sir Alan Gardiner contested Petrie’s identifications, maintaining that Retabah must be Pithom/Heroonopolis, and that Tell el-Maskhuta must be the fortress of Tjeku, standing in the midst of the district of Tjeku. In the absence of further evidence, scholars largely chose sides based on personal inclination.
In 1930, a team from the German Institute in Cairo conducted a survey of the Wadi Tumilat, still remembered in 1981 by some residents of the Wadi. This expedition’s expertise centered on the classical remains, and the results were both error-prone and of little lasting interest. A number of occupation sites were identified and mapped, and a limited number of surface materials were published. Recent work has not sustained their identification of Old Kingdom pottery at Tell er-Retabah and Tell Samud. With the exception of Inspector Abed el-Haq’s discovery of a series of Hyksos tombs at Tell es-Sahaba, and some exploratory work by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization at Tell el-Maskhuta, interest in the Wadi prior to 1977 continued to be focused around its possible biblical connections.
In 1977, the team of John S.Holladay, Jr., Michael Coogan and Edward Campbell conducted a one week survey in the Wadi Tumilat. Military security limited this survey to the sites of Tell el-Maskhuta, Tell es-Sahaba (a natural formation), Tell er-Retabah and Tell el-Gebel. On the basis of surface collections of diagnostic sherds, the team quickly established (a) that there were no significant New Kingdom remains at Tell el-Maskhuta, and (b) that major occupational remains at Maskhuta began with the late Saite period and continued until some time in the early Roman period. Tell el-Gebel appeared to be largely of the Roman period. Of the four sites, only Tell er-Retabah had occupational remains from the later New Kingdom. Subsequent discoveries confirmed initial tentative identification of Second Intermediate Period (Hyksos) material in surface collections from both Tell el-Maskhuta and Tell er-Retabah.
Multi-disciplinary stratigraphic excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta by a team headed by John S. Holladay of the University of Toronto (1978-85) confirmed and extended the conclusions of the initial site survey. They established the framework of a locally based ceramic chronology encompassing part of the Second Intermediate Period, and the period circa 610 BC to the third or fourth century AD, with a possible gap in the fourth century BC and a longer gap spanning the first century BC through the first century AD. This stratigraphically based chronology made practicable a systematic survey of the entire Wadi Tumilat, co-directed by Carol A. Redmount and John S.Holladay, in which thirty-five sites of archaeological significance within the Wadi were identified.
Three large tells or occupation mounds exist in the Wadi Tumilat at the sites of Tell el-Maskhuta, Tell er-Retabah and Tell Shaqafiya. Aside from the University of Toronto excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta, the Egyptian Antiquities Organization has worked at this site. Tell er-Retabah has been investigated by Hans Goedicke of Johns Hopkins University and by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. Philip Hammond of the University of Utah has conducted excavations at Tell el-Shaqafiya in the western portion of the Wadi. Tell el-Shaqafiya and the later occupation levels at Tell el-Maskhuta were intimately bound up with the operation of the sea-level canal. Tell er-Ratabah was a major government outpost in the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period, and again in the late 29th-30th Dynasties and later.
Nine of the ten medium or small tells in the Wadi Tumilat are in the western division of the Wadi. These are the sites of Tell el-Kebir, Tell el-Ku’a, Tell el-Niweiri, Tell Samud, Tell el-Hatab, Saiyid el-Shafi’i, Tell el-Gebel, el-Abbasa and el-Ahawashma". A number of other sites consisting of large and small sherd scatters may be non-sedentary campsite locations. Most of these are located in the central division of the Wadi, probably because of the small lakes in this region. Only Tell el-Niweiri, now destroyed by development, yielded some Predynastic material.
The results of the 1983 Wadi Tumilat Survey are summarized in Table 4, giving site distribution by Wadi division and major archaeological periods. Most sites had archaeological remains from several archaeological periods. Given that the western portion of the western division was the agriculturally favored part of the Wadi, it is undoubtedly significant that few Second Intermediate Period sites were located there. For the Saite period, the distribution is related to servicing the needs of the sea-level transit canal. Large-scale agricultural development of the area started in the Persian period and peaked in the Ptolemaic and early Roman eras.
Wine making
Wine was far more a luxury in ancient Egypt than the staple beer. In tomb and temple scenes it was offered to the gods and kings. At bacchanals of both religious and secular nature wine (or beer) was consumed, while the sober scribes made admonitions against excess.
Wine was made from grapes, figs, dates, pomegranates or other fruits. Grapes in particular require more water and care than do the grains from which beer and bread were made. The earliest evidence of grapes are pips from Predynastic features at el-Omari and Hierakonpolis. This evidence is roughly contemporary with grape pips found at Huma (Syria), and somewhat earlier than a residue from wine in a jar from Godin Tepe (Iran). An Egyptian generic term for wine was irp.
Named vineyards (such as "The Enclosure of the Beverage of the Body of Horus") and vintages are known from 1st Dynasty records. Sealed wine jars were recovered from the Early Dynastic tombs at Saqqara as well as from later contexts. Details of wine making are depicted in tomb scenes from the Old Kingdom onward.
Grapes were trodden in great vats, from which the juice flowed through a spout. The lees that remained were squeezed in cloth bags tied to poles and twisted to extract any remaining juice. The juice was filtered through cloth into large fermentation jars and eventually siphoned or decanted into wine jars of various sizes and shapes for storage or consumption. These were stoppered with clay, which was impressed with indications of vintage, quality and ownership. Fermentation was still active by the time of this transfer, as wine jars were often vented through small holes.
Table 4 Site distribution in the Wadi Tumilat by wadi division
|
Wadi Division |
II Int. Period |
New Kingdom |
Saite |
Saite/-Persian |
Persian |
Ptolemaic/ Roman |
Roman/ Coptic |
Islamic |
|
Isthmus |
- |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
|
Eastern |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
5 |
2 |
3 |
|
Central |
14 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
19 |
11 |
4 |
|
Western |
7 |
- |
2 |
2 |
5 |
15 |
8 |
6 |
Some wines were blended to taste at the time of consumption. Only the best vintages were exported beyond the region in which they were made. By Graeco-Roman times it appears that a taste for wine had trickled down to the masses, and cheap vintages were available.
Writing, invention and early development
Egyptian writing appeared first in the late fourth millennium BC, and evolved until the earliest continuous written language was recorded in the late 2nd or early 3rd Dynasty. During this long period, writing was a very limited instrument. It was used both for administration and in artistic display, but it may not even have been considered that it could provide a medium for writing down communications in full linguistic form. This restricted form of writing was a vital means for communication and display within the elite, but probably not beyond it. Administration, writing and representational art were three central and interlinked resources of the newly formed state.
Origins
The precise date of origin of Egyptian writing is uncertain. The earliest recognizable writing from a secure archaeological context is on tags originally attached to grave goods in the royal Tomb U-j at Abydos and on pottery from the same tomb. This material may be up to two centuries earlier than the 1st Dynasty, and is significantly older than the nearby tombs of kings of Dynasty 0 in Cemetery B, which lead directly into the 1st Dynasty. Tomb U-j is unlikely to contain the earliest writing that existed, which will probably never be recovered. Its system, although very limited, appears well formed and its repertoire of signs includes the royal throne and palace fagade, symbols of kingship that come into their own later.
The Tomb U-j material is not a simple precursor of the notations of royal names preserved on potsherds, fragments of stone vases, and decorated schist palettes which are known from Dynasty 0. Most of these take the form of the Horus name, a falcon surmounting a rectangle representing the royal palace compound, within which was inscribed a variable element that was the name adopted by a king when he came to the throne. At least four pre-1st Dynasty kings can be identified from Horus names, and probably more. Although the readings of their names are uncertain, the script was quite developed; words were encoded both in logographic form—with a single sign writing a complete word—and phonetically, with several signs recording individual phonemes or pairs of phonemes. By the early 1st Dynasty, almost all the uniconsonantal signs are attested, as well as the use of classifiers or determinatives, so that the writing system was in essence fully formed even though a very limited range of material was written. The language of the script was always Egyptian.
It is often assumed that Egyptian writing was invented under a stimulus of the Mesopotamian writing system, developed in the late fourth millennium BC, that might have come at the time of the short-lived Uruk Culture expansion into Syria. A variety of artistic and architectural evidence for contact between Mesopotamia and late Predynastic Egypt has been found, but none of it can be dated precisely in relation to Tomb U-j. Moreover, the Egyptian writing system is different from the Mesopotamian and must have been developed independently. The possibility of "stimulus diffusion" from Mesopotamia remains, but the influence cannot have gone beyond the transmission of an idea.
A second point of contrast with Mesopotamia is in uses of writing. The earliest Egyptian writing consists of inscribed tags, ink notations on pottery, again principally from the royal cemetery at Abydos, and hieroglyphs incorporated into artistic compositions, of which the chief clear examples are such pieces as the Narmer Palette, which is probably more than a century later than Tomb U-j. Thus, while administrative uses of writing appear to have come at the beginning—examples from the Abydos tombs include such notations as "produce of Lower Egypt"—the system was integrated fully into pictorial representation. An intermediate, emblematic mode of representation in which symbols, including hieroglyphs, were shown in action also evolved before the 1st Dynasty. These three modes together formed a powerful artistic complex that endured as long as Egyptian civilization.
Egyptian writing does not seem to have been invented in order to record "history," but was used both for administration and more generally for display. Very soon after its invention, the ideological aspect of writing had become extremely important, and early evidence is all from royal contexts and usages. With its limited capacity to convey linguistic messages but great symbolic potential, writing was vital in the administrative and ideological consolidation of the unified polity of Egypt. Whereas many scholars have sought historical information in the hieroglyphs on such monuments as the Narmer Palette, these may not record specific exploits as much as expressing general aspirations and conformity to norms of rulership through apparently specific references.
Usage in the 1st-2nd Dynasties
Representation and writing crystalized and drew together around the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, when the artistic principles of register composition were also elaborated, the whole forming a stable system which changed little for two centuries, and whose maintenance must have absorbed a large amount of resources. Writing already divided into hieroglyphs, used in artistic compositions, and cursive forms used for administration and mostly written in ink; these latter are the forerunners of the hieratic script.
Many inscribed artifacts are preserved from the first two Dynasties, the most numerous categories being cylinder seals and sealings, cursive annotations on pottery, and tags originally attached to tomb equipment, especially of the 1st Dynasty kings. Continuous language was still not recorded, but the verb form of the narrative infinitive appears and may well represent a semi-linguistic construct devised for notation in a limited writing system, rather than a form transferred from the spoken language.
The tags attest indirectly to a related reform around the beginning of the 1st Dynasty in which year names of kings were introduced for dating purposes. Years were named after salient events and a record kept of their order and identification. This record, often termed the annals, survived into the 5th Dynasty (and probably beyond into the Middle Kingdom). It is known from the fragmentary basalt slab called the Palermo Stone, and is probably an ancestor of the modern counting of dynasties. Together with the tags, the Palermo Stone attests both to the year names themselves and to an expanding record of events that went beyond the narrowly functional. Many years are named after rituals.
The tags give a fuller record of year names than the Palermo Stone and exhibit a different principle of organization. Until the Middle Kingdom, most writing was arranged either in vertical columns or in tabular form, but the tags are organized in horizontal lines. The lines are essentially pictorial in layout, and hieroglyphs are sometimes present at a miniature scale or only partially integrated into the design. This linear organization shows that the tags are elaborate semi-pictorial equivalents for the vertically written notations on the Palermo Stone, rather than identical records; they are probably ceremonial in intent, and so do not indicate how year names were used on normal administrative documents. Necropolis sealings found at Abydos contain enumerations of rulers from Narmer to the end of the 1st Dynasty and thus show the use of writing for a condensation of "history" as well as for the "annals."
How extensively writing was used for administration is uncertain. Papyrus rolls were invented by the middle of the 1st Dynasty and possibly earlier, so that a suitable surface for large documents was available, but the only papyrus preserved from the period is a small uninscribed roll found in a fine inlaid box in the mid-1st Dynasty tomb of a high official. This attests to the prestige of papyrus, but the material may or may not have been in everyday use at that date. The earliest preserved inscribed papyri are administrative rolls perhaps of the late 4th Dynasty from Gebelein. These clearly belong to a longstanding tradition.
Early administrative documents were probably tables, ledgers, and lists accompanying deliveries. Because continuous language was not written, letters may not have existed. Documents would have needed an oral context to be fully comprehensible. Writing was therefore an aid to personal contact rather than an impersonal replacement for it. Evidence for the use of writing in administration derives more from the titles of officials and the naming of government institutions on sealings and tags than from documents written in those institutions, which do not survive. The administration was quite well developed, with separate departments for different categories of materials and activities. Most sealings were applied to jars and probably to other types of containers, and thus were guarantees of the integrity and ownership of what was delivered. At the same time they no doubt marked the prestige of the owner and of the product.
Writing in early Egypt was integrated with the ruling group. Almost all preserved material comes from cemeteries and relates to the small elite of high officials and their subordinates. It does not allow us to say whether writing was widespread in the whole country, but it is safe to assume that literacy was extremely limited. As in later times, the leading members of society held administrative office. Their seals, which disseminated one of the main uses of writing, were important badges of office marking delegated royal power, often through royal names inscribed on them. By the 3rd Dynasty, the connections between administrative power and the status of scribes were depicted explicitly in the pictorial representations and titularies of such high officials as Hesire. Another usage of writing that points to its significance is on small artifacts, such as metal vases and ivories, dedicated as votive offerings in temples or deposited in tombs. Inscribed stone vases of the first two Dynasties, many of which appear to have been used in the cult of the gods, were deposited in large quantities beneath the Step Pyramid of Zoser in the 3rd Dynasty.
Despite writing’s very high status, most larger inscribed monuments of the first two Dynasties are unimpressive. Non-royal stelae with figures of the deceased are known from Abydos, where those from subsidiary tombs surrounding the royal monuments are particularly poorly worked, and from Helwan and Saqqara. A few have elaborate titularies and some include offering lists, which were the essential focus of interest in a mortuary context. The lists, which became vastly extended in the Old Kingdom, are in a sense the original form of Egyptian "literature," a written form conveying culturally significant material in the form writing could then record. Contrasting with the non-royal stelae are the royal stelae from Abydos and probably Saqqara, whose sole decoration is the king’s Horus name. The finest monuments may have been temple reliefs, of which fragments are known from Hierakonpolis (reign of Khasekhem; end of the 2nd Dynasty), and from Gebelein.
Further development of the system
Around the late 2nd Dynasty and lasting into the 3rd, there was a reform of writing which regularized sign forms, reduced the number of different signs, and led to a greatly increased use of writing in works of art (and probably in administration). The most important change appears to have been the encoding of continuous language. Perhaps the earliest preserved full sentence in Egyptian is on a seal of the reign of peribson late in the 2nd Dynasty. Within a generation or two, the design of temple reliefs was perfected to include speeches of deities to the king in which they vouchsafed to him gifts of life, long duration on the throne, and power. The presentation of titularies on early 3rd Dynasty non-royal monuments approaches the standard and style of classical Old Kingdom writing. Thus, available evidence suggests that the hieroglyphic writing system was improved for purposes of high culture and display rather than for administration; but the latter no doubt also exploited such developments.
Writing, reading and schooling
What is known about reading, writing and schooling in ancient Egypt comes primarily from copies of texts on papyri and ostraca (potsherds and flakes or pieces of limestone which provided an inexpensive surface for writing and drawing). These texts were used in schools as exercises with the double purpose of providing examples of writing to be copied while also including instructional or edifying contents. Already in the Old Kingdom Egypt had a very large bureaucracy with many positions that required scribal training. Who was chosen for schooling is not clear, though presumably a father’s position frequently had influence on that of his son, so many would have learned from their fathers or followed the same course of training. Instructions from father to son perhaps developed out of autobiographical texts, often inscribed on funerary stelae. This genre of instructional literature provided guidance in social behavior, ranging from good manners or etiquette to clearly moral pronouncements, from very general rules for success to specific behavior to be copied or avoided. While some of these instructions were put in the mouths of famous men, they evidently were most frequently collected from different sources and could have been valuable regardless of the bureaucratic level. Although surviving copies are in Middle Egyptian and from the Middle Kingdom and later, several texts are attributed to Old Kingdom viziers (such as Ptahhotep and Kagemni) and a priestly prince named Hordedef.
A significant variation in the traditional instruction seems to have originated in the Heracleopolitan period (9th-10th Dynasties), or at least it was attributed to an unfortunate king from Heracleopolis who lived during the First Intermediate Period, following the collapse of the Old Kingdom. In this Instruction for King Merikare, the father advises his son not only concerning those things that he should do but also about what he should not do, with himself as a bad example of a man, even a king, facing divine retribution for allowing his soldiers to sack an ancient cemetery. The text is elegant with a high moral tone stressing fear of god (Re), who is described as being omniscient and just, who discerns between those righteous of heart and hypocrites. It is indeed an edifying work based on an authentic historical event, and would certainly have made an impression on the young scribes copying it in school. Another "royal" instruction, this one known to have been composed by a scribe named Khety, also has a historical setting, and is actually used to explain the assassination of King Amenemhat I, the supposed author. Here the tone is not so moral or ethical, but the young heir apparent is warned that even a king must be on guard at all times. Senusret I, the son and successor of the assassinated king, likely had this ex-post facto last will and testament composed to enhance his own reputation and provide at least a partial account of what must have been a serious dynastic crisis. This poorly written propaganda piece obviously was successful, as it remained one of the most popular school texts for at least 700 years.
In addition to the many other school texts of instructions, stories, lamentations and complaints, copied formerly or as actual school writing exercises (and numerous copies, often abbreviated from memory), there are also a number of texts with a purely pedagogic purpose. The so-called Satire on the Trades by the same scribe, Khety, was written to make any other occupation than the scribal profession appear absolutely revolting and obviously undesirable. Besides avoiding all the dangers of the other professions satirized, the student who becomes a scribe is told that he will be his own boss. This work also survives in hundreds of partial copies, but apparently needed reinforcing by other texts warning school boys to avoid beer "halls," and threatening beatings with aphorisms like "a boy’s ears are on his back." Some of the texts were even used to lure students to become teachers, describing the rewards of the profession as having a fine villa on the river with an abundance of fowl and cattle at hand.
Another type of classroom text that was instructive was the sample letter. All of these demonstrate the formal aspects of letter writing, some to superiors and others to inferiors, but some of these were also descriptive of situations likely to be encountered or were accounting procedures that would be useful in the students’ future professions. One specific example by a supposed manure shoveler goes on for twenty-eight pages telling the addressee how stupid he is, incapable of dealing with all the problems and identities the writer lists. Obviously, there is much here that the young scribes had to absorb to avoid such ridicule. This satirical letter also contained mathematical problems involving logistics and geography.
What follows, however, is a list of names—sun, moon, planets, stars, types of land and waterways, geographical locations, and occupations. This list of common and proper nouns has considerable logic in its arrangement, but, unless the students or teacher had some elaboration in mind, however brief, it would be far from complete in itself.
While the principal deity associated with wisdom and writing is the moon god, Thoth, there is also a goddess, Seshat, whose patronage is more clearly limited to writing. Generally those who had learned to read and write included officials, priests, physicians, teachers, some military scribes, butlers, draftsmen and ordinary workmen. Some workmen clearly wrote letters to their wives without going through the intermediary step of employing professional scribes for writing and reading them. Some women were proud enough of their literacy that they had scribal equipment included in their tomb portraits, and the title "scribess" is known. Graffiti left in many out of the way places presupposed that their finders would be able to read them, and numerous inscribed temples, tombs and stelae would indicate that more than a few people would have understood at least some of what was written. Letters to the dead may have been optimistic, but are so intimate and non-professional in appearance that they had to be authentic jottings of those who considered this the best way to express themselves.
There were certainly both palace and temple schools in ancient Egypt, but how many and how large or precisely where they were located is not known. There may have been village schools, but local scribes could also have taught apprentices or others eager to learn. An early reference to a scribe who took his own son "to the Residence [palace] to place him in the school of writings among the children of the magistrates, the most eminent men of the Residence" occurs at the beginning of Khety’s Satire on the Trades. A high priest of Amen in the Ramesside period (19th-20th Dynasties), Bakenkhonsu, recorded going to school at age five and studying for twelve years in the writing school of the temple of the goddess, "Lady of Heaven."
There are references to show that in the schools students read aloud as well as copied texts to practice writing, and also did calculations. For their practice pieces they used wooden tablets covered with gesso or limestone pieces cut in a similar shape, and they worked with reed brushes and ink made from soot. The types of errors encountered in manuscripts would indicate that some scribes copied from texts that they occasionally misread, and others may have misunderstood what they heard dictated to them.
Corrections found in manuscripts indicate that they were sometimes collated either by the copyist himself or by a teacher.
A bureaucracy the size of Egypt’s required a core of educated people. Whether high ranking or not, those who were schooled were among the elite and had potential for advancement. The schools do not seem to have changed much over the historically well-known periods, and even the texts used were remarkably consistent for probably a millennium. This means that when their spoken language had changed markedly, the texts they were using in school in the later periods were practically in a foreign language.
Zawiyet el-Aryan
Zawiyet el-Aryan is a village on the west bank of the Nile about 6km south of the Giza pyramids (29°57′ N, 31°09′ E). In its vicinity are the remains of tombs dating from the 1st Dynasty, the New Kingdom, and Roman times. Its principal monuments are two pyramids, generally known as the Layer Pyramid and the Unfinished Pyramid.
The Layer Pyramid dates to the 3rd Dynasty, and is the more southerly of the two pyramids. It was explored by J.S.Perring in 1837, Gaston Maspero in 1885, Jacques de Morgan in 1896, and Alessandro Barsanti in 1900. In 1842 Richard Lepsius assigned number XIV to this pyramid. More thorough studies were done by G.A.Reisner and C.S.Fisher in 1910-1 for Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The Layer Pyramid is a stepped pyramid measuring 83.8m sq. at the base, and its present height is about 18m. This pyramid was probably never finished. If completed, it would have consisted of five or six steps about 40m high. Its thirteen or possibly fourteen upright layers of small stone blocks, quarried locally, slope inward at an angle of 68-70° toward a square brick nucleus. Each layer is about 2.6m thick.
Steep stairs, excavated in the bedrock 12m outside of the northeast corner of the pyramid, end in a tunnel 36m in length, which leads to a square pit 20m deep. At the bottom of the pit are two entrances to corridors, the one to the south having a second flight of stairs and ending at the burial chamber 24m below ground and under the center of the pyramid. The burial chamber measures 3.6m north-south, 2.65m east-west, and is 3m high. The second entrance opens northward onto a short passage which connects it with a gallery 120m long, 1.4m wide and 1.8m high. At its eastern and western ends are extensions, both about 38m long, leading southward. Thirty-two cells, all about 5m in length and 1.6m in width, were hollowed at equal intervals apart in the rock of the inner wall of the gallery; they are all oriented toward the pyramid. Like the burial chamber, all these cells were empty when Barsanti first entered the pyramid.
Excavation has not yielded any evidence that the pyramid had a fine limestone casing, and this seems unlikely. A suggestion that some mudbricks found on the superstructure were remnants of a brick casing is not convincing, and the bricks were probably relics of a construction ramp. Reisner’s search for a mortuary temple on the east side was unsuccessful, perhaps because it may lie on the north side, like the mortuary temples of Zoser and Sekhemkhet. Reisner found a mudbrick building in the expected position north of the pyramid with stone bowls bearing the name of Khaba, the successor of Sekhemkhet. Khaba, better known by the name of Huni, was probably the king for whom the pyramid was built.
The Unfinished Pyramid is 1.5km north of the Layer Pyramid. Commonly called "Shughul Iskandar" (the "Work of Alexander"), this pyramid probably dates to the late 4th Dynasty. The builder’s name was written in ink on some of the stone blocks, but it is uncertain whether it is to be read Nebka or Bikka. (Manetho includes a king named Bicheris, the Greek form of Bikka, in the second half of the 4th Dynasty.) He may have been a son of Djedefre, and his short reign probably fell between the reigns of Djedefre and Khafre.
Barsanti excavated at the Unfinished Pyramid for the Egyptian Antiquities Service intermittently between 1904 and 1912, and G.A.Reisner excavated there for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1910-11. V.Maragioglio and C.Rinaldi published a survey of the pyramid in 1970.
Except for some huge limestone blocks, which formed part of what was possibly the only course laid, nothing of the superstructure has been preserved. Barsanti estimated that the base of the pyramid measured 200m north-south and 180m east-west. It seems unlikely, however, that it would not have had a square base, and the estimate of Maragioglio and Rinaldi that its dimensions were between 209m (400 cubits) sq. and 213.2m (410 cubits) sq. is more probable. Traces of an enclosure wall 2.1m thick have been found.
What can now be seen is a rectangular shaft, 21m deep, 25m east-west and 11.7m north-south, and an open trench 6.35m wide, which slopes down from the north, joining the base of the shaft at a point just east of the middle of its north side. Both the shaft and the trench were hewn in the rock. The slope of the trench is broken by two almost flat stretches, one about halfway from the top and the other at the bottom. Between the level sections are two parallel flights of stairs which were cut in the rock. They are separated by a raised, flat-topped ramp, 0.9m wide, and are bounded at the outer sides by two similar but narrower ramps also cut in the rock.
Owing to the poor quality of the rock at the intended level for the base of the shaft, it was deepened by 4.5m and refilled with four layers of granite and limestone blocks, with the top layer entirely of granite except for a limestone skirting. One block of granite on the west side was hollowed to become the form of an oval sarcophagus, 2.5m long and 1.05m deep, on which a granite lid was laid and fastened with mortar. When it was opened, there was nothing inside except traces of a black deposit which had left a stain about 2cm deep.
The very wide trench was designed to provide enough space for dragging the massive floor blocks—some weighing 8,000kg—and the sarcophagus lid to the shaft. The steps in the steeper part of the trench gave the workmen a firmer foothold. A similar trench, in which an inner corridor had been built, was cut for the pyramid of Djedefre at Abu Roash. No doubt it was intended to construct such an inner corridor in this trench.
