Fulfilment and decline
A consequence of the immense organization needed to build the pyramids, and the recruitment and training of the hosts of artists and craftsmen necessary to work on all the various divisions of the project, was that in the later decades of the Old Kingdom, when the king no longer absorbed most of the available labour and talent in the construction of his pyramid, a pool of highly skilled workers and craftsmen existed on which the nobles and indeed even the merely prosperous could draw to build and decorate monuments for themselves. This aspect of life in the Old Kingdom is reflected in the apparent ‘democratization’ of Egyptian religion, a phenomenon which has often been commented upon. The argument proceeds that first the king alone was guaranteed immortality; then his attendants, family, and most intimate courtiers were brought in the scope of the Afterlife by being buried close to him. It may seem a naive view for a sophisticated people, but there is little doubt that the fact that a minor self-made official or tradesman could afford to commission a handsome tomb led quite quickly to the insistence that such a tomb was worth commissioning and that the individual concerned could expect to enjoy an eternity once reserved exclusively for his betters. This was to lead ultimately to a sort of democratization of death and the loss of the primordial Egyptian attitude to the world beyond death. Later in the Old Kingdom we see the king himself acknowledging the change and giving his favoured courtiers ‘houses of millions of years’, tombs which were intended to serve as estates for eternity, comparable with the lands, herds and servants with which he would reward those who served him in their lifetimes.
THE OPERATIONS OF GOVERNMENT
There is little enough known of the ways in which the royal government of Egypt worked, how decisions were taken, to what extent projects were planned before being started, or how instructions were transmitted from the source to the place where the action was. It is evident that there must have
Been an orderly process for the consideration of affairs of state, for the recording of decisions and for the inspection and reporting of progress and results. No doubt some element of royal (or divine) whim played its part in advancing a particular idea or project, but generally speaking the quality of work which has survived from Old Kingdom Egypt is so exceptional that neither its planning nor its execution could have been left to chance. The Egyptian respect for order, for the interconnections which they saw existing between all things, animate and inanimate, would have tended towards seeking an assured structure lying beneath the projects which they undertook.
Many of the titles of senior officials of the earliest periods have been recorded. They suggest the complexity of a developed bureaucracy, the long usage of title which had become florid and orotund, and a clear recognition of how enthusiastically all officials (and no doubt others) respond to titles of honour.1 Thus there was ‘The Controller of the Two Thrones’, ‘He who is at the Head of the King’, ‘the Master of the Secrets of the Royal Decrees’, ‘He of the Curtain’, (a title which suggests an early form of intelligence gathering, or perhaps simple eavesdropping) in addition to the less specific ‘Sole Companion to the King’ and other marks of distinction which were evidence of the royal favour. There were offices called ‘The House of the Master of Largesse’, the base from which the royal bounty was distributed to those in need or to those whom the king wished to reward. There was even an ‘Overseer of the Foreign Country’. ‘Hereditary Prince’ was an important and ancient rank. It had its origins, rather surprisingly, in a term which meant ‘Mouth of the People’.
The collection and husbanding of the royal revenues by means of taxes levied on provinces, towns, individual landowners, and farmers was the responsibility of the Treasurers, of whom there were two, one for each kingdom. They worked from the White House in the case of the southern kingdom and from the Red House for the northern. Even in so practical a task as the control of the exchequer, the characteristic duality of Egypt was still maintained.
One of the sources of Egypt’s strength in remote antiquity was undoubtedly the king’s ability to identify able newcomers in his entourage, even in its humblest ranks and, even further, to encourage his nobles to watch out for exceptionally talented youngsters who, early on in their lives, could be singled out for the state’s service. The rewards were great for such men. In the Old Kingdom there existed an elaborate system of social dependency ranging from the king downwards. Officials and members of the great households were rewarded with gifts of jewellery and furniture, clothing, metal ware, vases, pottery, and land: first these descended from the King, then the recipients would be expected to pass on some part of their benefits to their dependants in turn. A similar process may be seen at work in Middle Eastern monarchies today.
Later in the Old Kingdom princes of the royal line do not seem generally to have occupied the highest offices. Presumably they represented a danger to the succession, as appears to have been demonstrated in the Fourth Dynasty; like the Tudors, the kings of Egypt tended to seek out and promote their own men who thus would look to them only as the source of favour and fortune.
World History
