Djer’s reign marks the further consolidation of Thinite rule over the Valley; if later legend is to be believed it was a time when the sciences flourished, for Djer was commemorated, far into Egyptian history, as a great physician. It is curious that a ruler of such superlative power as the king of Egypt should be remembered as practicing a calling that was certainly not so highly regarded in antiquity as it is today. However, Djer’s writings on anatomy and the treatment of diseases were said still to be in circulation in late antiquity, nearly three thousand years after his lifetime. One of his prescriptions, incidentally, was said to be for strengthening the hair, suggesting that incipient baldness was a concern to the people of Egypt five thousand years ago, as much as it is to modern man. It is perhaps not without significance that what has been hailed as the oldest surviving toupee was found in a predynastic burial at Hierakonpolis.32
One of the few documents to survive from the early First Dynasty, and which comes from Djer’s reign, casts a more equivocal light on the king’s reputation as a healer, at least if the general interpretation of one part of it is correct. The document in question is an ivory label from Saqqara.33 It is in three registers and seems to depict some important state or religious ceremony. A proud hawk, surmounting the serekh on which the king’s name is blazoned, stands at the end of the first register. Towards him advance little figures carrying offerings, including a ladder, whilst a mummy or perhaps a statue follows it. Other bearers bring a fish, a bird, and a great ceremonial spear to the falcon: at the end of the register however, a more sinister scene seems to be enacted. Two figures face each other and one seems to be plunging a knife into the other’s breast; he holds ready a vessel, of a typically elegant First Dynasty form, in which, presumably, he will catch his victim’s blood.
Figure 5.5 This wooden label shows what appears to be a scene of human sacrifice or ritual murder, which is being enacted in the upper right-hand corner of the first register. A bound and kneeling captive is about to receive a knife-thrust, whilst his assailant holds a beaker in which presumably the captive’s blood will be caught. The issue of human sacrifice in the First Dynasty is difficult to reconcile with the Egyptians’ generally benign commitment to the prolongation of life, rather than its arbitrary, even if ceremonial termination.
Source: the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photograph John G. Ross.
It seems certain that what is shown here is a rite of human sacrifice; there are other similar representations of the same ritual. There is little doubt that the passive figure in this strange and rather chilling little drama is a victim, for his arms appear to be drawn back in the manner which always represents a pinioned prisoner in Egyptian iconography. The ladder which appears in the first register was an important and probably a primitive element in Egyptian ritual; it conveyed the rather obvious idea of the king mounting to the stars. The spear, too, was an immensely ancient component in the cults associated with the early kingship and with the mythology attending the origins of the Egyptian state.34
The reign of Djer was remarkable for the rapid advance of all the arts of civilization. By a singular chance a cache of jewels was found by Petrie in the king’s tomb at Abydos still adorning a human arm, wrapped in linen, which had been cut from the mummified body and thrust into a cranny in the tomb’s walls.35 A rich hoard of copper vessels, tools, and weapons was found in a monument from Djer’s reign at Saqqara, together with a superb gold-handled knife, evidence of the sumptuousness of the accoutrements of the king’s ministers and the opulence of his court.
More retainers were despatched on the king’s death. These, fortunate or unfortunate according to the point of view taken of their selection to join their royal master, included Bekh, whose name was inscribed on two copper axes and also on an ivory label, where it was associated with the king’s name, suggesting that he may have enjoyed some special status. Another of Djer’s retainers apparently sacrificed was Kahotep; he too had his name inscribed on a copper axe, a very distinctive artefact cast with side-lugs, a form which Petrie believed did not otherwise appear in Egypt until several hundred years later.36
The burials of retainers or, as Petrie would have it, of ‘courtiers’ around Djer’s tomb are vividly illustrated in Petrie’s report. In one case at least the photograph of a burial is alarming, apparently showing the occupant of the tomb struggling to climb out of it. It is usually asserted that the victims of this custom went willingly to their deaths or were drugged before burial. This comforting view does not appear to apply to the occupant of Grave no. 537, who seems to be desperately attempting to climb out of his tomb.
World History
