Sahure built the royal cemetery at Abusir, from whose ruins much of the evidence for the character of life in Egypt and the royal courts in the Fifth Dynasty has been recovered. From the reliefs of the Sahure sun temples it is clear that Asiatics to the east of Egypt, the Badu of the Arabo-Palestinian deserts and their cousins inhabiting the eastern Egyptian desert, were now becoming increasingly troublesome. It was necessary for the king to take punitive action against them. But he also traded with the easterners, sending ships to Byblos and to the mysterious land of Punt.
One of the finest artefacts from Sahure’s reign, which shows the quality of work which could be produced almost as a matter of routine in the later Old Kingdom, is a group portraying the king in the company of a nome god, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. This has been described as provincial work, lacking the highest qualities. If this is so, it is a tribute to the master craftsmen of the Egyptian provinces: in fact, it is the equal of the very finest work which survives; only in Egyptian art criticism could the term ‘provincial’ be used pejoratively. Its massive quality is particularly notable, imparting a remarkable sense of strength and power to it. Several of the kings of the dynasty were to compound their names with the word ‘Nefer’ which means, variously, ‘good’, ‘vital’, ‘perfect’, as well as with the name of the sun god. From this time most of the names of Egyptian Kings are praise names of each king’s particular dynastic or personal divinity.
THE RECORDS OF LIVES FULFILLED: OFFICIALS, SCRIBES, ARTISTS, MUSICIANS, DOCTORS
The Egyptians, especially those living during the Old Kingdom, had a particular concern for the recording of a man’s career in the formal security of his tomb, which thus presented a sort of petrified obituary. There was a multiplicity of such appointments with which an ambitious official might be favoured during his lifetime: directorships of the royal administration, supervisory functions, inspectorates of outlying posts in the bureaucracy, temple ranks, and appointments at the court. Some of the most exalted appointments, those which were particularly identified with or brought the holder into personal contact with the king, tended to be honorific and ceremonial and were reserved largely for the high nobility. A king’s descendants would, in succeeding generations, tend to move down through the upper reaches of the bureaucracy as new generations, closer to each new monarch, filled the highest places. There must have been considerable sources of power in the awarding of office and its emoluments.
The special glory of the Fifth Dynasty must be the reliefs and the portraits of the kings, nobles, high officials and their families that the sculptors produced. Both these categories of works of art show subtle but distinct variations with the forms that preceded them. The reliefs are more intimate in the scenes which they depict, frequently humorous and often with elements of stylization and formality which are remarkable. This may be demonstrated by, for example, the papyrus screen which is laid down on some of the stone-cut reliefs of hunting in the marshes — a favourite subject which suggests that the Delta in northern Egypt was becoming a more familiar place for the nobility and king to visit, a consequence, in all probability, of an increasing ability to drain the marshes which would otherwise have been too waterlogged to allow for much settlement or penetration. These reliefs have something of the elegance and formality of Chinese painting.
The records of the careers of the quite ordinary men who achieved success in the service of the kings survive from this time. In several cases it is possible to trace a line of such successful men, forming a small dynasty of builders and architects, civil servants or the priests of a royal temple foundation. Many of the recitals of their services and the appreciation which they were accorded by the king reflect that complacency (some might say smugness) which seems to be fairly typical of the prosperous Egyptian of this period.
From the earliest days of the First Dynasty and from the first attempts at writing and the keeping of records the names and titles of officials and other, lesser folk have been preserved. The great offices of state, those associated with the king directly had their own considerable authority and antiquity reaching back, in all probability, to predynastic times. But even in these early days we read of specialization, of trades, the arts, medicine and the first appearance of professions, in the sense of avocations followed through a lifetime after some form of training or apprenticeship. That these were related either to the membership of the retinue of a king or great noble did not diminish the growing importance which the role of the artist, craftsman or artisan was acquiring.
In the First Dynasty, in the melancholy rolls of the sacrificed dead who were sent to accompany their masters (or mistresses) into the Afterlife, we learn of carpenters, sailors, shipwrights, musicians, hairdressers. In the later dynasties such people lived out their normal span and were to discharge their skills over a lifetime. This may have had a salutary consequence for in the Old Kingdom it is clear that many professions, crafts and trades were practiced in families, father to son, often over extended generations.
The profession of scribe was regarded most highly, not least by the scribes themselves. It seems likely that all the male members of the elite families were literate and in many cases the women were too. Literacy was a prerequisite in the royal service, the upper levels of the priesthood and in the government service. A boy who could read the hieroglyphs and write them skilfully — no mean task — could anticipate a lifetime’s employment and its rewards, not the least of which would be the respect, even the envy, of his fellows. The upper levels of the government service and the priesthood could be very valuable situations for individuals of application and enterprise. To be reasonably well placed meant that an office-holder man could benefit family and native village, all very properly.
Artists in every discipline — sculpture, painting, the carving of reliefs — were amongst the most favoured who particularly encouraged the retention of their practices in family groups. We know the names of many of them. Thus one Inkaf was the sculptor who worked on the tomb of the important
Fourth Dynasty queen, Meresankh III, the wife of King Khafre.7 Another Inkaf, a generation or so later, may have been the son or nephew of the elder Inkaf.8 A much valued artist was Niankhptah who worked for the great noble Ptahhotep in the Fifth Dynasty.9 Most unusually, Niankhptah was allowed to ‘sign’ the reliefs which he designed and of which he no doubt supervised the carving, in Ptahhotep’s handsome mastaba at Saqqara, which so vividly pictures life on a great estate at the height of the Old Kingdom’s prosperity. The reliefs include a self-portrait of Niankhptah accepting a drink from a boy attendant.
A very confident painter, Seni, was employed by the ruler of the ninth Upper Egyptian nome, the Panopolite, the capital of which was at Akhmim. He claimed that he himself had undertaken the decoration of at least two of the tombs cut into the rocks of a mountain at Hawawish, in which the princes of the nome were buried.10
Architects and those who were described by titles such as ‘Chief of All the Works of the King’ were, not surprisingly, highly regarded. In early times they were often the close relatives of the king himself but later men of a less exalted status who also undertook the supervision of the building of monuments, the building and restoration of temples and, a thriving industry, the building and decoration of the tombs of the great and of lesser dignitaries. One of the finest Old Kingdom statues, now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo,11 is of Ti, a high priest in the reign of King Niuserre. He was an important landowner and included the supervision of the funerary complexes devoted to the cults of dead kings. He was evidently able to command the service of the talents of the most skilled artists of the day, for his tomb is brilliantly decorated and he himself is immortalized in one of the most imposing statues surviving in Egypt from any period.
Nekhebu was such an architect who left an autobiographical inscription in which he emphasized his humble beginnings on the pathway to eventual eminence. The impression which he gives of a simple country boy made good is somewhat reduced by the knowledge that his father and grandfather were both Viziers, hence the most powerful men in the Dual Kingdom at the time.12 Nekhebu’s son was also a distinguished public servant. Altogether the family was an example of the dynasties of officials active over several generations.
A feature of life in Old Kingdom Egypt must have been the great festivals and public ceremonies involving the participation of the king. Many of these were extremely elaborate and required very considerable organization and the marshalling of large forces, of singers, musicians and dancers, in addition to the priests and officials who took part. Sneferunefer in the Fifth Dynasty was a professional musician from a family of musicians and he was responsible for the mounting of royal entertainments.13
Ka-Hay was a singer in the household of King Neferirkare in the Fifth Dynasty.14 The story of his son, which is recorded in considerable detail in their family tomb, will serve as an example of how a man of relatively modest origins who lived to become one of the ‘Great Ones’ (or very nearly) of Egypt in the Old Kingdom. Ka-Hay was a member of a family which had long provided musicians to the court to play and sing in the constant round of ceremonies and for the solace or delight of the king and his companions. Ka-Hay was evidently exceptionally gifted musically and his voice attracted the king’s notice. He became something of an intimate of the king and, to show him particular favour, the sovereign gave the order that Ka-Hay’s son should be educated with the royal children. For an Egyptian of modest origins this was roughly equivalent to his son being given a place at Eton, with the promise of a fellowship at a senior Oxford college, followed by entry into the upper ranks of the Treasury, the certainty of a peerage, and the affectionate familiarity of the royal family. Fortunate was the boy to whom such a prospect opened; the boy in this case, Ka-Hay’s son, was called Nefer.
The one essential element to Nefer’s success was that he should become the intimate friend of the king-to-be, the heir to the throne of Egypt, the prince, who in all probability was to reign as Niuserre. All was well; eventually Nefer was named Sole Companion to the king and was the perpetual recipient of his bounty. He progressed in the administration, becoming, eventually Overseer of the Court. It is estimated that he died around the year 2400 BC.
His tomb is a joyous celebration of his life and good fortune. Nefer did not forget his family in the days of his prosperity: when the king gave him his tomb, ‘the house of millions of years’, so that, as the inscriptions charmingly declare, ‘he might grow very beautifully old’,15 Nefer brought his family with him. Numerous adults were buried there, his wife and his father and mother, most of whom seem to have been singers. One of them was even a prophet of the goddess who had charge of ritual music.
The wall reliefs are still gaily painted, rich in colour. They are less sophisticated than the finest work of the time, a shade provincial, it must be admitted, but their charm is in no way diminished by their naivete. They show life continuing for ever on Nefer’s estates in Lower Egypt where the grape harvest is underway and a family pet, a handsome and vigorous cyno-cephalus baboon, himself helps the workers turn the wine press.16 In another scene the same baboon stands proudly on the prow of one of Nefer’s ships, which is being loaded for the journey to his estates in Upper Egypt, and directs the sailors loading the ship with imperious gestures, a magisterial baton de commandment gripped in his paw.17 We even see carpenters preparing Nefer’s sarcophagus, a handsome coffin made in the time-honoured style of a palatial building with recessed walls, a concept which had thus endured for the best part of a thousand years. Nowhere, in the whole of Egyptian art is the delight in life celebrated so joyfully as in Nefer’s tomb; nowhere, too is the humour of the Egyptians, a kindly and generous-hearted humour, so well recorded. An engaging feature of Nefer’s eternal mansion is that the workers on his estate, the fishermen, sailors, gardeners, and household servants are all named, so that they may share in their master’s immortality.
Nefer, his wife Khensuw, and their dog — one of the breed of prick-eared hunting hounds — watch all the activity with evident satisfaction.18 As is fitting for someone who, despite his eminence, was the scion of a family of musicians, Nefer has a small orchestra included amongst the amenities that he took with him into the tomb.19 All in all, his tomb portrays a late Old Kingdom idyll.
A greatly respected profession was that of medicine. Many doctors are known from the records of the Old Kingdom and it is remarkable that almost half the names of all doctors known from Ancient Egypt come the Old Kingdom period.20 This has to be regarded as a tribute to the quality of life in the early centuries of Egypt’s existence and it was one that was not to be replicated in other cultures for millennia to come. Not only was medical practice widespread it was also diverse and highly specialized. Every great household had its resident physician; in the royal households there are the names and descriptions of doctors who were apparently specialized in a variety of conditions which would be recognized today: Iny of the Fourth Dynasty, the Chief of Court Physicians, was a specialist in conditions of the abdomen and bowels and in the treatment of body fluids. He was honoured with burial at Giza, near the kings who were his patients.21 Other specialisms included ophthalmology, gastroenterolgy and proctology.22
Niankhsekhmet23 was favoured by his patient, King Sahure, who, at his request, gave him an inscribed ‘false door’ for his tomb. The king himself oversaw the carving of the inscription; it was painted blue. Niankhre,24 also of the Fifth Dynasty, was also Court Physician. He specialized in the treatment of scorpion stings, doubtless a skill which was frequently called upon.
The animals were also cared for in Old Kingdom Egypt and there was a recognized category of practitioners who were veterinarians. At a different level Peseshet was ‘Director of Female Physicians’,25 suggesting that there were specialists in gynaecological and related conditions and that there were women who were qualified to practice as doctors.
The work of medical specialists doubtless benefited from the work of the temple staff who specialized in mummification. This involved the complex dissection of the cadaver and much must have been learned about anatomy in the process. It is a remarkable fact that the processes of mummification in the Old Kingdom were much more successful than those of later periods.
An extraordinary survival of what is probably the finest mummy known from Egypt lies deep in a recess of a rock-cut shaft in the tomb of Nefer and Ka-Hay, described earlier. It is the mummy of a man, one of the very few known from the early period: it seems not to be the remains of Nefer, however, since a wooden box laid close to the body bears the name ‘Waty’. He lies on his back as though asleep, a sleek and well-fed gentleman, naked, lying as though taking his siesta.26 His body is perfect. Even the soft tissues of eyelids, lips, and genitals, for example, remain intact and unblemished. He has a small moustache; the outline of his mouth is full and firm. The body seems to have been wrapped in gossamer-fine linens, every part of it, and then bathed in some fine plaster-bearing liquid which when dry, shrank very slightly to provide a perfect outline for the body which was within it. The effect is miraculous.
One of the delights which most ancient Egypt can deliver to its devotees is that the lives of countless Egyptians, of all ranks and none, have been preserved and made available to subsequent generations. The Egyptians were concerned, as are all writers of autobiography, to give a good account of themselves and of the time in which they lived. As a result it is possible for someone living in the modern world to imagine with what confidence, with what certainty indeed, an Egyptian gentleman, a landowner perhaps or a high official of noble rank of the Fifth or Sixth Dynasties, looking out across his estate as evening came on, must have faced life. Order prevailed, the Two Lands were in equilibrium, and the king was secure at the centre of the universe. Not even the assurance of a landed gentleman in nineteenth-century England could quite have equalled it. The tranquillity and order of life in the Valley is demonstrated by the way in which the ordinary daily concerns of the people, the great ones as well as the simple, begin to predominate on the walls of the tombs.
World History
