As ever, still insufficiently explored in Egyptology, the question remains whether surviving written sources apply to all, most, or some people in Egypt (3000-525 Bc). Feminist writing helps to overturn assumptions in this area, and archaeological theory and methods provide possible broader approaches. How we prioritize sources may depend on whether we are interested in how people treat one another or how they say they should. Writings could be considered the most direct evidence for ethics as statements by (at least some) people in a society on good behavior. For ethics as good or bad behavior in practice, other archaeological material may be the primary sources. The historian of ethics would then look at differences in sizes of houses and quality of clothing, food, and furnishings across the society studied. Condition of bodies and their treatment and arrangement in cemeteries might offer most direct contact with past patterns of social and individual behavior.
In this chapter, I address both approaches to ethics, drawing on three broad sets of sources: (1) the archaeological record across cemeteries and dwellings, as reflection of how people may have treated one another (continuing the discussion of human identity in Chapter 2); (2) direct written evidence on how people treated one another (legal documents); and (3) the indirect written evidence, that is, on how people said people should be treated (autobiographical inscriptions and literary manuscripts with teachings and laments).
Damage as mirror of (In)justice Violence and peace: bodily evidence
For past generations, preserved bodies offer the most direct evidence for the way people treat one another, though they reveal the results, not the context of action. Recurrent injuries might derive from activity by institution or state, between groups at war, or social custom. As the recorders of human remains were particularly interested in unusual cases, in pathologies, we might expect reasonable prospects for a paleopathology of social life, including such issues as the presence or absence of conflict or domestic violence. Unfortunately, as noted in Chapter 2, too few cemeteries have been excavated and recorded in sufficient detail to write a social history for Egypt at any period down to the twentieth century. Unwrappings or CAT scans of mummified individuals record the presence or absence of a particular condition in single bodies, but only study of larger groups can show whether the condition occurred often or rarely and so begin to show social impact and reaction in those individual lives. Several hundred bodies were selectively recorded and preserved from fourth-millennium bc Upper Egypt (Naqada, 266 at Nag ed-Deir) and Fayoum-Memphis cemeteries of around 3000 BC (Tarkhan) and 600-300 BC (Giza, dating and range highly uncertain). In 1907, ahead of constructing the first Aswan Dam, rescue excavations in the Nubian-Egyptian border zone south of Aswan yielded 6000 burials dated 4000 BC to ad 500 (Jones 1908; summary in Nunn 1996, 177). More recent published reports on larger numbers of individuals also come from the borders of the time-space block “ancient Egypt,” where we might expect
Particularly strong mixture of peoples and social practice: the First Cataract region on its southern border (900, multiperiod, Rosing 1990) and its northeastern fringe, Tell el-Daba' on the east bank of the east Nile Delta branch (257, mid-second millennium Bc, Winkler and Wilfing 1991).
Despite valuable detail, these excavations exclude patterns of living across most of the regions of Egypt (3000-525 Bc). Marginal time-space scope may be compounded by modern cultural bias. Studies of human remains by specialists outside Egypt may introduce unconsciously external standards; the farther a study from date and place of excavation, the less a researcher may have access to limiting factors in sample preserved and methods used. Research is needed into different patterns of ageing according to ancient climate and diet but also the impact of our own cultures of knowledge production. As yet, published accounts on individual and social violence lie in a vacuum, unable to provide any regional or national picture within the “ancient Egypt” frame.
Continuing excavation with full publication and critical review promises to improve our understanding. Recent excavations at Akhetaten include recovery of over 200 bodies, offering new pictures of life at the city in the fourteenth century BC. Initial reports suggest, as elsewhere, an average lifespan of thirty to forty years, with challenging life conditions, compared by the researchers with Arctic living (Kemp 2010, 2011). Healed wounds on many bodies indicated severe impact of heavy manual labor, in part interpreted, cautiously, as possible result of beating to punish but not disable. Among dietary problems, one-third of adults suffered severe tooth decay. In the current production of archaeological knowledge in Egypt, many interpretations arise out of encounters between past material and a scientific research culture embedded in north European and Euro-American expectations. Like the evidence of ancient writing (particularly the Teaching of Khety, see section “Literary Teachings”), the results could be read productively from different modern environments, including more than one social background.
World History
