Sometimes called the “Age of the Pyramids,” the Old Kingdom consists of the 3rd through 6th Dynasties. The two large pyramids at Giza (belonging to Khufu and his son Khafra) are enormously impressive monuments, representing the highly effective organization of the state: to engineer and design the monuments; plan and organize work programs of great complexity; marshal the goods and materials required; and feed, clothe, and house thousands of workmen. Such accomplishments, symbolized in the royal pyramid, represent the great capabilities of the Old Kingdom state, and are the most visible evidence of the ideological significance of the mortuary cult and the king’s role in it.
Box 6-A Egyptian kingship: names/titles, symbols, crowns, and regalia
The concept of a dual monarchy and kingdom is seen from Early Dynastic times onward: the king was ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt. Perhaps the most prominent symbol of the dual monarchy is the Double Crown, consisting of the White Crown of Upper Egypt and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, which the king is shown wearing together. Another important symbol of the two kingdoms is found on the king’s throne, where a stylized (lotus?) flower and papyrus stalk are bound together, such as carved on the famous statue of Khafra in the Cairo Museum. Although there is no evidence of two separate kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt in Predynastic times that would have been unified to form the Early Dynastic state, the ideology of a dual monarchy was fundamental to Egyptian kingship.
The earliest format in which the king’s name appeared is the serekh (see Figure 5.8), possibly the design of a niched palace gateway above which is the Horus falcon.
Within the serekh the individual king’s name is written in hieroglyphs, and the whole forms the Horus name. The Horus name is the first of five royal titles/names that were in use by the 5th Dynasty. The second title is the (He of the) Two Ladies, representing the king as manifesting, and under the protection of, the goddesses Nekhbet of Elkab and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and Wadjet of Buto in Lower Egypt. The third title is the Horus of Gold, with the Horus falcon above the hieroglyphic sign for gold. The last king of the 3rd Dynasty, Huni, was the first ruler whose name regularly appeared in a cartouche, which is an oval design formed by a rope that is tied at the bottom. The cartouche was used for the king’s fourth (throne) title/name, and fifth (birth) title/name. The throne title (which came before the birth name in the 1s* Dynasty) is often translated as “He of the Sedge and Bee,” with the sedge plant(?) symbolic of Upper Egypt and the bee symbolic of Lower Egypt. The throne name, often referred to by Egyptologists as the “prenomen,” was assumed at accession. The fifth title (which came before the throne name in the 4th Dynasty, but by the Middle Kingdom was written along with the king’s birth name) is Son of Ra. The name given to the king at birth, called the “nomen,” is the one that is usually used by historians in king lists.
Aside from the White and Red Crowns, other crowns/headdresses were reserved for the king, as symbols of his position and authority. The nemes headdress, such as Khafra wears in his seated statue, was made of cloth, tied in back with lappets hanging down on the shoulders. From the Middle Kingdom onward the nemes headdress was the most important item of royal regalia. In the New Kingdom, when Egypt controlled an empire abroad, kings are often depicted in battle and otherwise wearing the Blue Crown, a kind of high cap decorated with circle designs.
Other symbols of royal authority include the was scepter, with a curved prong at the bottom, which in reliefs was held by the king and deities. Two other royal
Figure 6.1 Cartouche of Khufu
Scepters, the shepherd’s crook (heqa) and flail, are perhaps most famously seen on the three coffins of Tutankhamen. Also on these coffins the king wears the nemes headdress with symbols of the Two Ladies centered above his forehead (the vulture of the goddess Nekhbet and the cobra of the goddess Wadjet). On some statues of Tutankhamen, such as the two which guarded the entrance to the burial chamber, the king wears the nemes headdress with a single cobra, the uraeus, above his forehead. The uraeus was symbolic of the power of the eye of the sun god Ra.
Central to the political organization of the Old Kingdom was the institution of kingship (see Box 6-A). The state was probably run by royal decree, which guided bureaucrats in government operations. Palaces have not been recovered by archaeology, and the pyramid complex is the most striking form of royal monumental architecture in the Old Kingdom. From the 4th Dynasty onward, the royal mortuary complex consisted not only of the walled pyramid-tomb, but also subsidiary pyramids and a complex of temples connected by a causeway.
Monumental evidence of the role of the king is supported by textual evidence. The king was believed to be the son of the sun-god Ra, the most important state deity in the Old Kingdom. Beginning with Radjedef (who succeeded Khufu), “son of Ra” appears in royal titles, and in the 5th Dynasty kings built sun temple complexes in addition to their pyramid complexes. In the later Pyramid Texts the dead king becomes Osiris, the father of Horus the living king, and in his rebirth he is Ra in a cosmic afterlife.
Kingship was also legitimized by the all-encompassing ethical concept of ma’at, which was sometimes personified as a goddess. It was the king’s duty to guarantee ma’at - an earthly order, which included the annual flooding of the Nile and the agricultural cycle, and the cosmic order of the gods, in which the king was the sole intermediary for his subjects. Often translated as “truth” or “justice,” ma’at is known from the 2nd/3rd Dynasties onward. Beginning in the 4th Dynasty it is found in royal names and epithets, and became
Map 6.1 Sites in Egypt, Nubia, and the Sinai during the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period
Associated with the role of the king and royal ideology. Ma’at also justified the ideology of an unchanging social order that was highly stratified, which is clearly demonstrated in the tombs and titles of the Old Kingdom.
The Old Kingdom state was a long-lived one, with no fundamental disruptions for more than 500 years, and faced no serious external threats. Most of the population were peasant farmers living in rural communities. With the materials that sustained life available locally, farmers were basically self-sufficient, but they also probably bartered handicrafts and foodstuffs in local markets. How extensive a system of local markets and non-elite craft production was cannot be determined, but many tomb goods in provincial cemeteries were probably produced locally - and local exchange may have been considerable.
Except for the capital of Memphis, Old Kingdom Egypt was not a state with large urban centers. Memphis was the seat of the royal court and central government, headed by a vizier with executive, fiscal, and judicial duties. It is unlikely that Memphis was a densely populated, walled city as in contemporaneous Sumer, but its spatial organization is unknown. In the low desert beyond the floodplain and city were the cemeteries, for government officials and the king, who may have had a residence near the construction site of his pyramid.
Throughout the country were provincial administrative centers. These were not large urban communities, but were occupied mainly by officials, lower ranking administrative personnel, and probably some craftsmen. Many administrative centers arose in Early Dynastic times, with the system becoming increasingly organized for state affairs in the early Old Kingdom, as large-scale royal work projects (i. e., pyramid complexes) required more and more resources in the Memphis area. In the later Old Kingdom, provinces were governed by increasingly powerful heads. Local cult centers in the provinces, mainly constructed in mud-brick with some stone elements, such as columns, were relatively small and insignificant compared to the temples associated with royal pyramids in the Memphis area. Typical of such a provincial center may be the Old Kingdom town of Nekhen (Hierakonpolis). It was a walled town, ca. 200 meters x 300 meters in area (6 ha), within which were mud-brick buildings, and a walled temple enclosure.
Workers were not slaves, but were conscripted for state projects, as one kind of payment of taxes to the state (corvee labor). A large work force to construct the Giza pyramids would have required a large town to house them. But Mark Lehner’s excavations at Giza suggest a more complex arrangement, with up to 2,000 laborers sleeping in long narrow “dormitories” to the southeast of the pyramid construction site. They were fed bread produced in nearby bakeries and probably worked in short rotations, while their foremen lived in proper house structures. A larger town, possibly for a permanent work force, was located to the east.
A major segment of the Old Kingdom economy was state controlled, through land ownership (which could also be revoked), taxation, redistribution, and organization of long-distance trade and mining/quarrying. Three types of land ownership are known: land owned directly by the crown, land owned by cults (mortuary cults of kings and individuals, and the cults of deities), and land owned by private individuals (the produce of which was taxed). In the Early Dynastic Period and early Old Kingdom the crown established its control of much of the land in Egypt by founding agricultural and cattle estates, such as those listed for one year of Sneferu’s reign (4th Dynasty) in the Palermo Stone. This may have been some type of internal colonization, but how it was actually accomplished is not known, given that much land was probably already owned by individuals or controlled by collective groups. But there was probably also uncultivated land available for reclamation by the crown.
In the Old Kingdom the largest mortuary cults were for the royal pyramid temples, where the king’s statues were daily purified, dressed, and given various offerings and libations by living persons. The daily temple ritual had to be performed and much incense was burned. Special feast days were also celebrated. There is evidence of communities whose sole purpose was the perpetual service and operation of the cult. The various personnel of mortuary cults were supported by donations of agricultural land, many of which were tax exempt, on which commodities were produced. At least 38 estates in both Upper and Lower Egypt are known from reliefs in the Dahshur valley temple of Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid, built at the beginning of the 4th Dynasty. Commodities from the estates owned by a royal mortuary cult could also be shared in a complex division - with the palace, cult temple(s), and a number of private mortuary cults, as a papyrus from the pyramid temple of Neferirkara (5th Dynasty) documents. Some temple personnel were full-time, including an overseer, some priests (who performed purification ceremonies and read the daily ritual), as well as scribes, artisans, and servants/workmen in the pyramid town. Many priests served part-time on a rotating basis, a system which went back at least to the beginning of the Dynastic period and by the late Old Kingdom had become fairly complex. These priests would serve typically for one in ten months, so rations of commodities from cults’ estates were redistributed to a large number of people.
Food (bread, beer, cereal, and sometimes meat) and cloth were redistributed to officials and workers of the state, but beyond this was a system of royal reward, an important part of the economy that also sustained loyalty to the crown. The king not only gave land to private individuals (which was frequently used to support their mortuary cults), but officials were also rewarded with beautiful craft goods, such as jewelry and furniture, produced by highly skilled artisans working for the court. Such luxury goods depended on long-distance trade with southwest Asia and Punt, and mining and quarrying expeditions in the Sinai and Eastern Desert, which were controlled by the state. Exotic raw materials (gold, turquoise, elephant ivory, ebony, cedar for coffins, etc.) were obtained on these expeditions, the scale of which depended on state (and not private) organization and logistics. Thus officials not only depended on the state for their subsistence, but also for much of their material wealth in highly desired luxury craft goods.
While many such craft goods would have been enjoyed in life, some were also placed in tombs - and went out of circulation in the economy. Although the massive burial of grave goods in the Early Dynastic Period does not seem to have characterized burials in the Old Kingdom (as known from the few found intact), funeral ceremonies may have resulted in much destruction of wealth. Thus funeral and tomb provisioning was directly connected to the state economy, including long-distance trade and mining/quarrying expeditions, and crafts produced from the imported materials. In the 4th Dynasty, there is evidence of state workshops for craft goods near the Giza pyramids (for stone carving and copper production, but also pottery kilns), but these goods may have been produced mainly for royal consumption and use by pyramid workers.
The non-royal mortuary cult was also connected to the state ideologically, in beliefs concerning the king. Inscriptions of the “offering formula” (hetep di nesu) in private tombs begin with the clause “an offering which the king gives to Osiris. . . of bread, beer, clothing, stone vessels, meat and fowl, and all good things. . .” Thus beliefs of individuals concerning death and providing for the afterlife were associated with the king (and gifts recycled from the gods), and the tomb itself could also be a royal gift. An earthly and cosmic order in which the king was central (especially concerning the afterlife of all of his subjects) legitimized his socio-political role in Egypt - and consequently his economic control over vast resources.
World History
