For the next 200 years (c.1985-1795 Bc) Egypt enjoyed a period of equilibrium.
The Middle Kingdom appears in its propaganda as one of the great periods of Egyptian history. At the beginning of the period the tombs of the provincial governors, the nomarchs (and their coffins, in particular), are among the finest in existence. The walls are covered with scenes of hunting, fishing, and the harvesting of abundant crops that they hope to enjoy in their afterlife while the tombs themselves are fronted by pillared faqades and placed higher on the hillsides than those of more lowly officials.
Yet lurking behind the serene faqade is the ruthless determination of the kings to keep order. As time progresses the ranking of tombs becomes less obvious and the number of smaller ones increases. In contrast the presence of royal monuments asserts itself. This reassertion of royal authority is shown by the extension of monumental building by kings such as Senusret (ruled c.1956-1911 Bc) in all the major cult centres of the land—the king is, in fact, challenging the power of local temple elites by overshadowing their buildings with his. There was much closer control of the local nomarchs by state officials and nomarchs were given specific responsibilities, defending a border or leading an expedition overseas, which emphasized their position as servants of the king. While they were away on duty, their local power bases withered and so the authority of the kings increased.
The kings of the Middle Kingdom imposed their influence well beyond the traditional boundaries of Egypt. They controlled Nubia more effectively than ever before, notably during the reign of Senusret III (1870-1831 Bc) when an interlocking series of forts and a surveillance system were put in place. They opened up new areas of cultivation in the Fayum, a large oasis area to the west of the river, through an impressive system of dikes and canals. They made the first significant contacts with Asia and the east through expeditions by boat and overland across the Sinai desert. The most important trading centre was Byblos, on the coast of Lebanon, from where cedarwood and resin (used in embalming) were shipped to Egypt. The contacts were so intensive that the local rulers at Byblos adopted Egyptian titles and used hieroglyphs. However, many texts show a distinct hostility towards Asians in general—Senusret describes himself as ‘the throat-slitter of Asia’ and the story of
Joseph’s brothers selling him as a slave to an Egyptian master (Genesis 37: 28-36) rings true. There were also some trading contacts with Crete. It would be wrong, however, to overstate Egyptian influence in this period. There is virtually no evidence in the archaeological record of influences from further overseas, while among the records preserved in the great archive at Mari on the Upper Euphrates (destroyed about 1760 bc see p. 30 above) there is not even a mention of Egypt.
The administrative elite of the Middle Kingdom reached an impressive standard of efficiency. Slackness was not tolerated. Officials were expected to be versatile, at one moment leading an army, the next organizing an expedition to bring back stone from a desert quarry, and then administering justice in a courtroom. There was meticulous supervision by the state over every aspect of life. The carpenters in the royal boatyard recorded the movements of even planks and goatskins. The forts on the Nubian border, hundreds of kilometres from the capital, were garrisoned and fed. When workmen had to be assembled to build a pyramid for king Senusret II between the Nile and the Fayum at Kahun, an artificial town was built which could house 9,000 of them, complete with their stores.
The rulers of the Middle Kingdom evolved an ideology that underpinned their rule. It centred on the concept of maat, harmony achieved through justice and right living. (Maat was personified as a goddess.) The kings claimed that their duty was to act with restraint so as to preserve the balanced relationship between ruler and gods on which maat depended. One text put it as follows: the king is on earth ‘for ever and ever, judging humanity and propitiating the gods, and setting order [maat] in place of disorder. He gives offerings to the gods and mortuary offerings to the spirits of the blessed dead.’ This involved generosity and forgiveness. A famous story is that of Sinuhe, a minor official in the retinue of Senusret I. Sinuhe has fled Egypt, fearful of the king’s anger after some minor incident, and taken refuge in Syria. Years later he is nostalgic for home. He returns to Egypt to throw himself on the mercy of the king and is pardoned and allowed to live with the royal family again and even enjoy a tomb near the king. Such was the image the kings were pleased to portray. Their statues have moved away from the purely monumental to allow hints of their individuality to emerge through the conventional poses. Even here, however, one can sense the absolute power of the kings. Statues of Senusret III portray the conventional image of youth and virility but expressed in a gaze of stern implacability.
Officials collaborated in maintaining the image of a regime committed to moderation and justice. Texts survive in which fathers preach to their sons:
Do not bring down the men of the magistrates’ court or incite the just men to rebel. Do not pay too much attention to him clad in shining garments, and have regard for him who is shabbily dressed. Do not accept the reward of the powerful man or persecute the weak for him.
Some of this so-called ‘Wisdom Literature’ may date from before the Middle Kingdom, but it reflects the ethical spirit of this age.
Similar ideas are reflected in the ‘Tale of the Eloquent Peasant’, one of the most popular texts of the Middle Kingdom. A peasant is on his way with his loaded
Donkeys from the Delta to the Nile valley. He is waylaid by a covetous landowner who tricks him into leading his donkeys over his barley. When one of the donkeys eats a mouthful of barley, the landowner triumphantly confiscates the animal. The rest of the story is taken up with the peasant’s search for justice, which he achieves after long-winded displays of eloquence in front of the local magistrate. In a nice touch, the peasant is fed a daily ration while his case is being heard. At the same time his wife is also secretly sent provisions. Despite the enormous persistence required from the wronged peasant, the lesson is that the state will uphold justice and even support the oppressed during their ordeals.
Writing was fundamental to the status of the administrator. ‘Be a scribe. Your limbs will be sleek, your hands will grow soft. You will go forth in white clothes honoured with courtiers saluting you,’ was the advice given in a Middle Kingdom text, The Satire of Trades, which ridiculed all other occupations. The process of learning was a long one—twelve years according to a later Egyptian text. There were many hundreds of signs to learn and, like the calligraphy of Japan and China, the lettering of hieroglyphs became an art form in itself.
Hieroglyphs were a formal script used mainly for carving sacred texts on stone. At their simplest level individual hieroglyphs were pictures of what the scribe wanted to express, a figure of a man for a man, a pyramid for a pyramid (picto-grams). The sound of the pictogram could be used also as a syllable in a longer word. The mace was h(e)dj, and so the pictogram for a mace was used whenever the sound ‘hedj’ appeared as a syllable in a word. Some hieroglyphs were used to represent single consonants but the script itself had no vowels. In fact, the symbol for mace was used to express not only the sound ‘hedj’, but the sound and words represented in ‘hadj’, ‘hidj’, ‘hodj’, and ‘hudj’. Extra hieroglyphs often had to be added to make it clear what actual word was being expressed. A mace with a necklace after it, for instance, represented ‘silver’. Pictograms could also represent abstract concepts. A papyrus roll stood for writing. The hieroglyph for ‘to travel south’, against the current of the Nile, was a boat with a sail, while that for ‘to travel north’, with the current, was a boat with an oar and its sail down. (See Mark Collier and Bill Manley, How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs, London, 1998.)
For the day-to-day administrative and legal texts that formed the bulk of Egyptian written material, scribes used the hieratic script. Hieratic was a form of shorthand in which the most common hieroglyphic symbols were abbreviated. As time went on it became more and more condensed, in effect a different script from hieroglyphs altogether. Many of the texts were inscribed on papyrus, made from the stem of a marsh plant that was cut into strips that were then pasted together to form a smooth surface. Each sheet measured about 48 x 43 centimetres and could be joined with others in rolls of up to 40 metres. Writing was with a reed, using black carbon with important words highlighted in red ochre.
Texts from the Middle Kingdom suggest a love of learning for its own sake. One father, Kheti, from a humble background himself, talks to his son. ‘I shall make you love writing more than your mother—I shall present its beauties to you. Now, it is greater than any trade—there is not its like in the land.’ The Middle Kingdom was
Seen as the classical age of literature, and its most celebrated stories, such as the two outlined above, were copied and recopied by later generations. Literary texts were, however, only a small part of the total output of administrative documents, medical treatises, funerary inscriptions, and accounts of religious ritual that have also survived.
Another major cultural achievement of the Middle Kingdom was its jewellery. Jewellery had many functions. It served as a sign of status and wealth as well as of royal approval. The king would make presentations to favoured courtiers in a tradition that has lasted to present times. The Order of the Royal Collar, given for bravery in battle, is found as early as the Old Kingdom. Jewellery was also assumed to have magical properties, helping to ward off evil spirits and disease. Certain stones, turquoise and lapis lazuli, for instance, had particular significance. The master craftsmen of the Middle Kingdom have left marvellous examples of crowns and pectorals from the tombs of royal women. Their speciality was cloisonne work, the inlay of precious stones within a gold frame.
From earliest times the framework of order and a shared sense of community was maintained by religion. The Egyptians were sensitive to the complexity of spiritual forces and the need to propitiate those gods who could protect them against disorder, destruction, or everyday misfortune. The coherence of religious belief was maintained by absorbing gods into a family and conflict could be rationalized through myths of inter-god conflict such as that between Osiris, Horus, and Seth. The threat of political disunity could be neutralized by merging gods, Ra from Heliopolis in the north with Amun from Thebes further south, for instance. Spiritual forces were represented in human or animal form. Ra is hawk-headed (a hawk soars upwards to the sun) with a sun-disc on his head; Thoth, the god of wisdom, with an ibis head and a scribe’s tools in his hand. Seth was always presented as a mischievous creature with a long snout and a forked tail.
At the level of popular religious belief the Middle Kingdom is the period of Osiris. His story, his death and suffering, and rebirth as a saviour who welcomes those who have lived by his rules to another world, is grounded in the ancient ritual of annual renewal found in many other cultures. By the Middle Kingdom the main shrine to Osiris was at Abydos, where tradition had it that his body was reassembled after its mutilation by Seth (see earlier, p. 38). In tomb paintings the body of the deceased is often portrayed visiting Abydos before its final burial. It became the custom for visitors to the cemetery to build a small chapel or cenotaph to act as a permanent memorial for the giver and each year Egyptians flocked to the shrine for a re-enactment of the myths of his rebirth. The celebrations re-enacted a ‘funeral, during which his coffin was assailed by his ‘enemies, followed by a rebirth and a triumphal return of his cult statue to his temple.
Osiris judges each soul as it comes to him after death. In the texts that explain what is required of a good man, there is the same emphasis on moderation and harmony with the natural world. The deceased promises that he has not killed, fornicated, offended the gods, that he has not taken milk from children, dammed up flowing water, or taken herds from their pastures. It is an attractive code of life,
Clearly stated and easily followed by those determined to do so. Reward lies in a joyful and bountiful afterlife, punishment by the gobbling up of the soul and oblivion. There is no threat of eternal punishment as in later less generous religious traditions and no sense of an ‘original sin’ that diverts the soul towards committing evil.
In every society there is a yawning gap between its ideals and the actual achievements. Whatever their protestations, there is no doubt that the rulers of the Middle Kingdom were formidable men unwilling to brook any opposition to their rule. The only words which have come to us are those of the elite, perhaps 1 per cent of the population, those who would have most benefited from a period of strong government, or who would have been conditioned to accept its ideology. It is known that the middle and lower classes were enlisted to undertake fixed tasks, service in the army or labour, with those attempting to evade service being sent to remote parts of the empire or to work in the stone quarries. Little is known of the mass of peasantry and even less of those peoples such as the Nubians who were colonized during this period, although it is clear that punitive expeditions into Nubia were brutal. However, there is no doubt that the Middle Kingdom does represent one of the pinnacles of Egyptian civilization. After the megalomania of the Fourth Dynasty, there is something refreshing about the more human scale of life in these centuries. In the words of Gae Callender, it was ‘an age of tremendous invention, great vision and colossal projects, yet there was also careful and elegant attention to detail in the creation of the smallest items of everyday use and decoration’. It is this combination that attracts.
World History
