In the inscriptions on the walls of Ankhtifi’s tomb, the king is mentioned only once in a short label appended to one of the wall paintings; ‘May Homs grant a (good) Nile flood to his son Neferkara.’ It is significant that in this instance an appeal is being made to the king in his sacred role as a mediator between human society and the forces of nature. His political role, however, has evidently been taken over by other authorities:
The god Horus fetched me to the nome of Edfu for life, prosperity and health to reestablish it... In fact, Horus wished to re-establish it, and therefore he fetched me to re-establish it. I found the domain of (the administrator) Khuu like a swampy estate Neglected by its keeper, in a condition of civil strife and under the lead of a wretch. Now I caused a man to embrace (even) those who had killed his father or brother in order to re-establish the nome of Edfu.
In Ankhtifi’s texts, it is not the king but Horus, the god of Edfu, who appears as the supreme authority guiding political action. This concept is not unique in First Intermediate Period inscriptions. Even the reunification of Egypt under Mentuhotep II (2055-2004 bc) was described in similar terms as a result of intervention by Montu, the great god of the Theban nome: ‘A good beginning came about when Montu gave both lands to King Nebhepetra (Mentuhotep II)’ (on the Abydos stele of an overseer of the treasury, Meru in the time of Mentuhotep II).
This ideology rested on solid foundations, given that local rulers usually acted as ‘overseers of priests’, which secured them a privileged role in the cult of the gods. Ankhtifi himself is depicted in a scene in his tomb supervising one of the great festivals of his local god Hemen, and the earliest mention of the temple of Amun of Karnak derives from a stele of a Theban overseer of priests who claims to have taken care of it in years of famine.
From earliest times, provincial temples were both administrative centres and foci of the personal loyalty of the local population, and it seems likely that the priesthoods attached to these temples formed the core group of an early provincial elite. In a way, provincial cults may be understood as symbolic representations of collective identity. Therefore, during the First Intermediate Period, god and town often appear side by side in phrases referring to social embeddedness. People say, ‘I was one beloved by his town and praised by his god’, and curses directed against transgressors threaten that ‘his local god shall despise him and his townspeople (or sometimes “his family group”) shall despise him’. By integrating their personal authority with that wielded by the local cults, provincial magnates therefore managed to link their power with one of the moral foundations of local society.
The intriguing subject matter of Ankhtifi’s inscription should, however, not be allowed to eclipse its merits as literature. It is a composition of unusual brilliance, abounding in original and striking expressions. Similar qualities may be found in the painted decoration of his tomb and indeed generally in the art of Upper Egypt during the First Intermediate Period. The Upper Egyptian painters of this time no longer conformed to Old Kingdom court conventions. Their style is angular, even bizarre at times, and boldly expressive. Having freed themselves from outdated models, they created a whole range of new scenes: files Of soldiers and hunters, mercenaries engaged in battle, and religious festivals. In addition, they introduced new pictures of everyday occupations, such as spinning and weaving, and updated age-old scenes to tie in with the latest cultural and technological developments. Far from being a period of cultural decline, these turbulent years witnessed an upsurge of outstanding creativity, adapting and developing the existing media of literary and pictorial expression to correspond to a new range of social experiences.
This process of change also indicates that the elite of the First Intermediate Period felt the need to communicate new social developments; when government could no longer rely on the simple imposition of power, its foundations had to be made explicit. Ankhtifi’s text may, therefore, be read as a speech concerning the necessity of government and the benefits of strong rule. It is also notable how closely these ideals—to which Ankhtifi so persuasively appeals—link up with the underpinnings of local social organization and provincial traditions.
World History
