Think Like an Egyptian (15 page)

Increasingly the evidence points to the fact that, in these later periods, the large enclosure walls that dotted the Nile floodplain surrounded and protected the temple which lay alongside the unwalled city. These temple enclosure walls also embraced, however, the residences of the leading citizens and their personal assets, which might include their stables (see no. 94, “Sacred”). These later temple enclosures were, on Egypt’s flat plain, each town’s citadel.

 

 

 

 

Show archaeologists a mound rising unexpectedly from the ground and they will think, “ancient site?” Places long settled become mounds simply because, in the past, as dust and rubbish accumulated in the streets of towns and cities, the ground level gradually rose, and people often rebuilt their houses over the ruins of the old. When Egypt was mapped in 1798, by surveyors accompanying Napoleon’s armies, grass-covered earthy mounds, sometimes hundreds of meters long, dotted the Egyptian landscape, each one containing a layered history of habitation. Some still survive, but mostly beneath the modern towns of Egypt’s burgeoning population. They were a feature of the ancient landscape, too. A surveyor who made a record of farmlands in the reign of Rameses V made frequent use of local landmarks, and among them were mounds.

Drawing upon a different tradition of knowledge, Egyptians also believed mounds to hold ancient secrets. Mounds on the floodplain could be places where the gods first made their home and set about the task of creation. The library of the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu included a “specification of the mounds of the first primeval age,” which would have been an annotated list of the sacred places—later chosen as the temple sites. Traces in the foundations suggest some were built on artificial mounds. This architectural ritual had a counterpart in mounds built over the burial chambers of tombs in the early dynasties. The square flat-topped construction concealed within the Step Pyramid of King Djoser at Sakkara is perhaps the most elaborate example.

Three small triangles representing trees sit above the hieroglyph. Although the word for “mound,”
(
3t
) yat, could mean a ruin, which would naturally support vegetation, the trees also symbolized the reemergent life that grew out of the entombed body of the god Osiris. In his story of murder and resurrection the Egyptians saw hope of their own resurrection after death. The link between temple mounds and Osiris grew to be ubiquitous. Each nome in Egypt contained its own tree-covered mound in recognition of this spiritual belief. The concept inspired a remarkable piece of architecture (known as the Osireion) at Abydos, a desert site in Upper Egypt where the tomb of Osiris was thought to be. In the grounds of his temple, King Seti I (1294-1279 BC) built an artificial tree-covered mound beneath which, in a great chamber cut into the desert, lay a place of burial. It had the form of an island surrounded by a moat—a channel kept filled with water from an underground conduit—re-creating the primeval mound where life had first appeared.

 

 

 

 

The daily passage of the sun and nightly rotation of the stars gave the Egyptians an east and a west, and the course of the Nile a south and a north. Ancient Egyptians” overall sense of orientation was similar to ours, except that they positioned their viewpoint as if they were facing toward the south (see no. 43, “Boat”), so that the word for “west” was also that for “right hand.”

Lying west of Egypt was a foreign land of desert and oases where dwelled a traditional enemy of Egypt, the Libyans, whom the Egyptians typecast as wearing a single ostrich feather in their hair. After successful large-scale immigration in the late New Kingdom (c. 1200-1000 BC), the Libyans became Egypt’s ruling elite for several generations. They provided the kings of the 22nd Dynasty, adapting themselves to Egyptian ways, although we have no testimony as to what native Egyptians thought of this.

The west also had a mythical existence. It was the realm of the dead, where the imaginary “Field of Offerings” was to be found. Mourners who dragged funeral sledges would cry, “To the West, to the West, the sweet land of life!” It was presided over by the “Foremost of the Westerners,” a jackal-god preeminent at Abydos in the Old Kingdom, who later (by the early Middle Kingdom, c. 2050 BC) developed into an epithet for the great king of the dead, Osiris (see no. 39, “Jackal”).

The hieroglyph for the west shows a standard with a rounded top from which two ribbons hang and to which is fixed, at a slight angle, the same ostrich feather as adorns the heads of Libyans. The practice of making standards of this kind began in the prehistoric period, as we know from pictures of them on pottery jars and other objects. This was so long in the past for the Egyptians of the historic periods that, if one were able now to ask them what meaning lay behind these standards and this hieroglyph in particular, it is quite likely that they would either not know or would give an answer that was not historically accurate. In standing for the realm of the dead as well as for the west, generally the hieroglyph was incorporated into the symbolism of resurrection. It could be interpreted as a goddess, wearing the standard like a crown, who welcomes the dead.

In prehistoric times the dead were normally laid on their left side, knees flexed toward the chest, and with their head to the south. In this position the dead faced the west. During the Old Kingdom, however, the body position gradually changed. Laying out the dead prone and on their backs was preferred (the model for this was the mummified body of Osiris), with their head to the north. Coffins were decorated with a pair of eyes toward the head end, but facing east, the direction of the rising sun. The rich variety of the Egyptians” beliefs, which were never codified into a single system, left them with many choices, and it is hard for us to say why one burial method was preferred over another.

 

 

 

 

The Egyptians believed that the ideal location for a cemetery lay in the western desert, a place of haunting emptiness, where it was easier to imagine a spirit world and where the jackals lived. One word,
smyt
(
semit
), meant both “cemetery” and “desert.” The hieroglyph chosen here,
, writes the commonest word for cemetery, which means literally “god’s portion.” It combines a picture of the desert hillside (see no. 2, “Desert”) with the hieroglyph that writes the word “to be divine” (see no. 93, “Divine”). For those in the Nile Delta, however, and even for many who lived in the valley itself, the cemetery was a patch of uncultivated ground not far outside the town and not necessarily on the west side. In parts of Egypt, cliffs on the eastern side of the river were more easily carved into rock tombs, and the famous tombs at Beni Hasan are a testimony to this pragmatic choice.

Officials—local community leaders and provincial governors—were a small but significant portion of ancient Egyptian society who administered the country on behalf of the king (see no. 80, “Official”). Many inherited a place in a family tomb, but a man setting out to make a mark for himself was likely to want to make his own tomb. This would have involved decisions with a lifetime of implications. Did a man see himself as primarily a courtier and so seek to place his tomb in the cemetery close to a royal residence city, even beside the tomb of his king, or did his heart remain with his birthplace in a country town where perhaps the bulk of his estates lay and where his tomb would become a local landmark?