THE PURSUIT OF THE DIVINE

Egyptian artists, craftsmen — call them what you will — who were employed on the building of tombs and palaces, on the decoration of their interiors, the making of their furnishings, the design and management of their structures, were all engaged in processes which are recognizable today and to which are attributed specific designations. It is certainly true that their motivation may be qualitatively different from their modern successors, closer to the medieval craftsman who only was seen to have produced a sublime work of art in the eyes of subsequent generations. Yet the kings, queens and great nobles of Egypt, even in its earliest days, cosseted and honoured men of talent who produced those artefacts which today are hailed as great works of art. It may be that the argument of their motivation is futile; it is by their works that we may judge them.

Whether, amongst the migrants who drifted into the Valley in the early centuries of the processes which ultimately provided the basis of the population of historic Egypt, there were those who possessed such skills, we cannot know, though the evidence of the people who manipulated and set into position the megaliths with such astronomical precision at Nabta in the deserts in the far south must be remembered. There must also have been some from the western Sahara who knew of the traditions of rock paintings which are so improbable and so splendid a legacy from these artistically talented cattle-herders, whose work was once thought to be inspired by Egyptian original until it was realized that they dated from a thousand years before the foundation of the Egyptian state.1 However it may have been; much of Egypt’s enduring celebrity is the consequence of the work of those who practiced their skills in material and enduring form.

That the earliest extensive repertory of the work of hunters seeking to express some innate yearning or merely to fill an idle hour, is to be found inscribed, pecked, or engraved on countless rock surfaces is not without significance. The rock surfaces of the Egyptian deserts, particularly the eastern desert, provided a limitless canvas, the exploitation of which clearly proved irresistible to the herdsman or his companions, as it did in the Sahara or in the wastes of western Arabia.

The Egyptian was entirely at home in working with living rock faces, from the beginning of the fourth millennium BC, at the latest. The rock art of the ancient Near East is the most extensive and certainly the most informative documentary source surviving of the life of the people of the hunting bands in their transition from the ancient transhumant to a more settled way of life. Rock drawings reveal much about hunting, ritual, the dance, costume, and the way of life of the desert people who produced them and the fauna with which they shared their lives.

In Egypt the densest distribution of rock drawings is in the south, reaching down into Nubia. The great eastern desert wadi system, centred on the Wadi Hammamat and its tributaries, is exceptionally richly provided with elaborate and often highly skillful representations of men, animals, boats, and formal inscriptions from at least the late fourth millennium (perhaps earlier still) down to Roman and later times. It is particularly in the southern eastern desert regions that the drawings which supposedly mark the progress of shipborne travellers from Mesopotamia are to be found, which will be described further below.

The drawings (they are more strictly-speaking engravings) are generally incised or pecked onto the relatively smooth and often friable surface of the rocks which border the desert tracks, or on the shaded overhangs of outcrops which have always provided shelter during the fiercest heat of the day. Low hills are sometimes favoured; often a remote chasm or defile will be selected as the site of an outpouring of creative endeavour, in such cases giving the area the character of a sanctuary or sacred place. The work ranges from the simple doodlings of untalented individuals, through erotic representations of occasionally quite inventive versatility, to productions of a high, startling artistic quality. The quite exceptional quantity of drawings in the Sahara, Egypt and Arabia, executed over many millennia, suggests nothing so much as a significant population of artists dedicated to the exercise of their art; they are not to be dismissed as merely the products of desert ennui, a filling in of the empty hours of a drowsy, sun-drenched afternoon. The rock-art of all these regions is the product of the unconscious, seeking expression and release.

The scenes which appear on the Egyptian rock surfaces reveal many elements of continuity between the late Neolithic period, to which the early works belong and the long sequence of royal rule which was to follow them. Although Egyptian rock art shares traditions with both the Sahara and Arabia even at its earliest it is recognizably Egyptian, powerful and assured in technique and content. Egyptian rock art is of vital importance in providing insights into a society which was preliterate, of which they are the only surviving record.

The rock art of ancient Egypt is so extensive a documentary phenomenon, especially in the deserts of the south east of the country that it was soon identified by Egyptologists as demanding study. In his early exploration of the southern parts of the Valley, Petrie compiled records of the principal graphic themes that he encountered. Other travellers followed him, Arthur Weigall2 before the First World War and, perhaps the best known of all the recorders of Egyptian rock-art, Hans Winkler, published immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War in two handsome volumes.3 The sites which he described, illustrated by many admirable photographs, are situated between Qena and Aswan, a region which is particularly rich in rock art sites.

Winkler believed that he could detect various categories of the work of the differing groups who inhabited the regions he examined or who passed through them. To one of these he gave the name ‘Eastern Invaders’, immigrants whom he identified especially by the representations of boats of a type which he recognized as Mesopotamian.

Winkler’s work drew attention to the frequency with which large sailing craft and rowing craft were depicted in remote desert locations, often far from the river. Initially, Egyptological opinion found it difficult to account for this occurrence and it was an appreciable time before scholarly consideration came to be given to what was, certainly, a puzzling phenomenon.

It is possible that some of the scenes engraved on the rock walls may have a ritual significance. The animal cults which are so powerful a part of later Egyptian ritual and belief obviously had their origins here and there are some scenes which seem to represent sacrifices in the course of the hunt or in preparation for it.

The publication of Winkler’s volumes was followed quite speedily by that of a British scholar, J. H. Dunbar, who surveyed sites in Lower Nubia4 in the 1920s and 1930s. He was particularly interested in the depictions of the dogs which accompanied the hunters and he makes the observation that the dog is absent from those scenes in which elephant appear. He suggested that this may be because the elephant had already withdrawn from this part of the Valley before the dog arrived.5 This is inherently improbable however, and it will be seen to be unlikely in the light of evidence recovered from Hierakonpolis (see 85 below). A important survey was carried out in the 1970s by Gerald Fuchs in the region of the Wadi Barramiyya, close to a major trading route which in ancient times led to the gold mines which supplied much of that precious metal for the temples and palaces.6 Amongst the many arresting images which he recorded was a falcon, in the position adopted by the Horus falcon surmounting the serekh, the sacred heraldic device adopted by the First Dynasty kings.7

In recent years, another well focused series of expeditions to the eastern desert, under the style ‘The Followers of Horus’ (led by David Rohl) have revisited some of Winkler’s sites and reviewed his work.8 Many of the sites have been lost over the intervening sixty years and more; the expeditions have, however, identified others, several of which are of particular

Figure 3.1 The rock drawings of southern Upper Egypt are often of great complexity and vivacity. They show many episodes of contact with high-prowed boats, frequently with large numbers of oarsmen and featuring tall, warrior or divine figures with high plumed headdresses. Such boats are customarily described as ‘Mesopotamian'.

One of the most celebrated rock drawings, from Wadi Abu Markab el-Nes, which was first identified by Hans Winkler before the Second World War. The two towering figures in the high-prowed boat and their smaller companions have excited much speculation over the years. The tall figures may be divine. To the right another figure, with an elaborate headdress, appears to be holding a rope attached to the boat in which the dominant figures stand.

Importance. The region in which the rock-art is located was somewhat more benign climatically in the predynastic period and would have been able to support both animal and human life. It was good hunting country, hence the concentration of rock art in what is now a particularly desolate region. One image recorded by this expedition at Wadi Mineh (North) is of a boat of ‘Mesopotamian type’ with a falcon standing in the prow of the vessel.9 This image, like that recorded by Fuchs, is of considerable significance for it is obviously suggestive of the badge of the prince who was to claim the sovereignty of the Valley and whose symbol was the falcon. What a Horus falcon was doing standing on the prow of a Mesopotamian vessel, is another matter entirely.

Many of the sites which Winkler found which picture the high-prowed Mesopotamian-type boats also include mysterious standing figures, generally of superhuman scale, sometimes nude, sometimes wearing what appear to be short tunics or long caftan-like robes. Frequently they have plumes or

Figure 3.2 A remarkable carving on a rock face in the Wadi Adab, which appears to represent an ancient Mesopotamian solar symbol, an attribute of the god Uttu who, in later times, was recognised as the sun-god of the Sumerians.

The half-disc in the crescent at the top of the engraving is known in Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium. It is a pictograph, the form of epigraphy which preceded Sumerian cuneiform; it represents the word ‘sun'.

Taken with the Falcon, the symbol of the Egyptian divine kingship depicted on the prow of a ‘Mesopotamian' vessel, found in Wadi Mineh (South) it suggests a notable Mesopotamian contact with southern Upper Egypt in late predynastic

Times.

Feathers in their hair; by their size, markedly greater than their presumably human companions they are variously described as ‘chiefs’ or divine beings. In one scene, in the Wadi Barramiyya, two of these enigmatic figures, wearing double plumes, stand beside a high-prowed boat, a horned animal, and hunting dogs, attended by a small hunter with a single plume or feather in his hair.10

A particularly important concentration of rock art is to be found in western Arabia. It is very widespread; some of it is also extremely early, with the representations of large, standing warriors, for example, having been dated to the fifth millennium BC.11 The Arabian rock carvings provide evid-

Figure 3.3 A very large ship, with a central cabin or shrine, with many oarsmen indicated by the vertical lines on the boat’s deck. One large figure, wearing a high-plumed headdress points forward; it is suggested by the Eastern Desert Survey Report that this gesture signifies ‘Westwards’. Wadi el-Barramiya.

Source: all references are from D. Rohl (ed.) The Followers of Horus Eastern Desert Survey Report Volume One (ISIS 2000) and the photographs are by D. Rohl, by whose permission they are reproduced here.

Ence of the desiccation of the peninsula and the effect which this had on the previously abundant herds of wild cattle on which the hunters preyed.

Many of the themes found repeatedly in the work of Egyptian rock artists are present in that of their contemporaries in southwestern and western Arabia, in Iran and later in Oman, though in the case of the Iranian examples such correspondences tend to be found in glyptic art and in the decoration of pottery rather than in rock drawings. These common themes include the warrior with a feathered headdress, the buckler with handles projecting from its ends, the lyre, the bucranium (very widespread, in all forms), and a dagger with a lunate pommel, which is also found in Egypt during the First Dynasty.

In the plastic arts, Egyptian potters and vase makers excelled early in the history of settled communities in the Valley. Reference has already been made to the pottery of the earliest cultures in the southern Valley and though pottery-making was always one of the subtlest of Egyptian crafts, stone was the medium with which the craftsman came to feel most assured and in which his genius in the early centuries was most richly demonstrated. Egypt is exceptionally well-provided with fine stone of all colours and compositions, ranging from soft, almost plastic stones like the chlorites, to the hardest diorites and granites. All of these were used in predynastic times but the finest stone vessels appear in the First Dynasty. These are the outstanding products of all Egyptian craftsmanship in the making of small artefacts; for technical skill and sheer mastery of form their work in stone is unparalleled. There was a long tradition of working in stone, which had its roots in Upper Egypt.

Figure 3.4 That boats were of great symbolic importance to the earliest inhabitants of Upper Egypt is shown by this predynastic model of a man lying in a foetal position in a coracle-like vessel, surely one of the most poignant images from this early period, conveying a deep sense of desolation. As was probably the case here, the boat was frequently used to represent the transit of the dead to the Afterlife. Naqada I, probably from Middle Egypt.

Source: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden. 71962/12.1

From the earliest times the Egyptian artist demonstrated a characteristic which was wholly typical, the ability to produce works with the immediacy and impact of a sketch, in plastic materials, or even in those less tractable. A little figure lying in the bottom of a pottery boat, a form of coracle, conveys a poignant sense of isolation, even of desolation, is a simple work of great power. It is said to come from the early predynastic period, but is quite without precedent in Egypt.12 It suggests the mythical perception of the boat as the means of transit between the worlds, of the living and the dead, a convention which endured in Egypt for many centuries, which will be encountered in many forms. Some Old Kingdom reliefs, though they are carved in stone, have this same quality, to a quite remarkable extent, of instant recognition as this little model.

In Old Kingdom times, the owners of the great tombs took pleasure in surrounding themselves with scenes which recalled the crafts and skills of the workers on their estates. A pair of swinging weights, the management of which must have demanded considerable skill, provided the power source for the cutting of stone vessels. All vases made in this way show signs of drilling, unless the regular rings left by the drills have been pared away. What is difficult to understand however, is how the craftsmen were able to exert regular pressure under the shoulders of a narrow-mouthed bowl or how they were able to cut away, with perfect regularity, the interior of a bowl made from a friable substance such as schist or greywacke. The point has been made before that the walls of many Egyptian vessels are so fine and so regular that no deviation from a perfect circle can be detected in their shape, nor is any variation in the often exceptional thinness of the vessel’s walls to be found.

Egyptian stone vessels of the early periods come in an immense variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny cosmetic jars to large pots for the preservation of oil, wine, or grain. The best are exquisitely proportioned and some of the most sumptuous, presumably those destined for royal use or for presentation to the king or the gods, are decorated with gold; this custom is particularly associated with the late predynastic period and the First Dynasty, though King Khasekhemwy in the Second Dynasty also had vessels mounted with gold fittings; the embellishment of these vessels might be thought to have become a trifle precious. The gold ornamentation imitates the cloth that might have been placed over the vessel’s mouth and the strings that tied it on.

Sometimes the early masons and workers in stone display an exuberance quite un-Egyptian in the marrying of one stone with another, often with effects which are not altogether fortunate. An example of this practice is a stone cup or goblet from the early First Dynasty Queen Herneith’s Saqqara tomb (S 3057).13 Its body is made from a dark and elegant schist, mounted on a foot made of a particularly vibrant pink stone. This form of the goblet was to survive until later in the dynasty although such later examples seem generally to have been made sometimes in copper, but when stone is used, schist for example, or a fine brecciated limestone, the form looks altogether happier.