In addition to the choice of site for the royal cemetery, the maintenance of the funerary cult can also be used to establish the existence of genuine ‘‘dynastic’’ affinities. In theory, each new sovereign should look after the burial of his predecessor, finish his tomb and his cultic installations, if necessary, and endow his cult with land, personnel, and priests. It is clear that these arrangements were determined by a ruler while he was still alive. The tomb construction site was inaugurated at the beginning of a reign, as the annals attest: the choice of site for the complex from year 1 for Shepseskaf; the endowment of the complex in their first years for Userkaf and Sahure, including foreign prisoners (Wilkinson 2000: 150-1, 164-5, 217-18; Altenmuller 1995; Baud & Dobrev 1995: 32-3). The date marks found in the pyramids also show this, for example, the first census for Neferefre and the year after the first census for Djedefre (in the descending passage of the pyramid). The cult itself was set up during the lifetime of the monarch, at least in the palace and doubtless in provisional structures on the pyramid site. It was left to the successor to finalize these arrangements not only in order to legitimize the change of sovereign, but also to guarantee the proper functioning of the world itself. That is doubtless the spirit of the decree (very fragmentary) which Shepseskaf issued for Menkaure containing arrangements made at the beginning of his reign for food offerings to the dead monarch; the same king also completed his predecessor’s complex (Goedicke 1976: 16-20; Strudwick 2005: 97-8). A king in the position of Niuserre had to bear a particularly heavy burden in this respect: he had to build almost the entire mortuary temple of his elder brother Neferefre, who died prematurely at the age of about 20, after reigning for one or two years; his pyramid, however, remained essentially as it was at his death, its height greatly reduced and converted into a mastaba. Niuserre also laid out the complex of his mother Khentkawes II, where, this time, he completed the pyramid construction, building having been interrupted by the death of the royal spouse Neferirkare (Verner 1995: 45; 2006: 101-6).
The obligations of the reigning king extended, therefore, to the maintenance of the cult of earlier monarchs, but this, given the frailty of human memory, was destined to live on at a much reduced level. It must be conceded that the fully ‘‘Pharaonic’’ arrangements made by each king to ensure his survival in the hereafter swallowed up astronomical quantities of bread, beer, various foods, and thousands of head of cattle to fulfil the complete liturgical calendar and to maintain the substantial staff of the pyramid complex (Helck 1977; Strudwick 2005: 86-91), and this could not be replicated at the same high level without ruining the country - the dynastic gods in the great temples also enjoyed similar lavish provision. The papyrus archives of Abusir, which relate to the maintenance of the cults of Neferirkare, Neferefre, and the royal mother Khentkawes II by their various successors from Niuserre to Unis (Posener-Krieger 1976; Posener-Krieger in Verner 1995:133-42; Verner, Vymazalova & Posener-Krieger 2006), bear witness to the fulfilment of these royal obligations, as is confirmed by the numerous clay sealings bearing the names of these monarchs which provide evidence of provisioning and inspections in these temples. More rarely, this preoccupation also manifests itself in the unusual addition of effigies of provider-kings installed in a predecessor’s space, as with two statues, one ofKhafre (in gneiss: unpublished) and the other of Menkaure (possibly in diorite: Dobrev 1997), set up in the temple of Djedefre at Abu Rawash. The titles of private individuals also demonstrate this concern with cultic permanence: titles like ‘‘priest (hem-netjer) of king x’’ are still attested for centuries after the demise of the revered sovereign (e. g. Snefru or Unis, Wilding 1969; Altenmuller 1973; Malek2000). This phenomenon is seen again, for example, among the ordinary khentiu-she servants of the cult, organized into a veritable community which lasted for generations in the environs of a funerary complex (Roth A. M. 1995: 40-3).
By triangulating this varied body of evidence it becomes possible to establish the basic trends in this context, and these trends confirm the ancient perception of dynastic divisions. Whilst the cult of the ‘‘kings of Giza’’ (Fourth Dynasty) seems to have been vigorously maintained for the whole of the Old Kingdom, this was not the case for that of Djedefre at Abu Rawash (Marchand & Baud 1996), or for that of Snefru at Meidum and perhaps Dahshur, where the necropoleis show little activity in the Fifth Dynasty (Alexanian & Seidlmayer 2000: 296-8; Alexanian et al. 2006, necropolis DAM8; el-Ghandour & Alexanian 2006). The fate of the ‘‘monarchs of Abusir’’ (a large part of the Fifth Dynasty) was badly affected by the advent of the Sixth Dynasty with the cults markedly declining from the time of Unis and practically ceasing under Teti. The cult of the royal mother Khentkawes II and that of her son Neferefre provide a good illustration of this: from Djedkare to Teti, we can detect on site the occupation of ancient cultic space by polluting workshops or priests' homes, then the closure of progressively more numerous chambers and finally the cessation of activities (Verner 1995: 130-1; Verner, Vymazalova & Posener-Krieger 2006: 330-5). On the other hand, at the same time, the kings of the Sixth Dynasty are unstinting in pious acts on behalf of the sovereigns of the Fourth: immunity decrees by Pepi I for the two complexes of Snefru at Dahshur, by Merenre (?) and by Pepi II for Menkaure at Giza (Goedicke 1976: 55-80, 148-54; Strudwick 2005: 103-7); the construction of a funerary chapel in the ruins of an enclosure adjacent to the temple of Djedefre at Abu Rawash (dated by pottery to this period, Valloggia 2001: 238); the renewed appointment of priests for the cult of these kings, in particular Snefru, whose posthumous glory was destined even to run through the First Intermediate Period (Wildung 1969: 105-51; Malek 2000). Mutatis mutandis the same story emerges from the remarkable discovery of two statues in the rock-cut sanctuary of the Saqqara West hill which strikingly reinforce this special relationship between the Sixth and the Fourth Dynasties: a great lion-goddess is shown framed by two sovereigns represented as children, Khufu on one side and Pepi I on the other, the latter having had his image added to the original work (Yoshimura, Kawai & Kashiwagi 2005: 392-4). The symmetry created thereby ensures that Pepi I acquired the status of a child-king protected by a mother shared with Khufu. This remodelling of statues, like the insertion of a chapel at Abu Rawash and the royal decrees mentioned above, bear witness, well before the great enterprise of restoration in the Memphite necropoleis by Khaemwaset under Ramesses II, to works carried out by the Sixth Dynasty in the funerary complexes of the kings of the Fourth and other cultic structures. It, therefore, seems that the kings of the Sixth Dynasty, as well as their high elite (Baud 1999: 328-9), already looked back with nostalgia at the past grandeur of Snefru and his lineage, turning their backs on their immediate predecessors of the Fifth Dynasty. The reasons for this escape us, but they were still theoretically obliged to maintain their cult. The upshot of all this is that, while kingship continues to show its constants, dynasties succeed each other but do not resemble each other, and this phenomenon imparts to each a unique character which we can attempt to make out by combining the data of political, social, and cultural history.
World History
