THE THIRD DYNASTY

Innovation

It is difficult to exaggerate the achievements of the Early Dynastic kings of Egypt and their ministers. They were true innovators, creating new forms, processes, techniques, and concepts in virtually every department of life. The extent of what they achieved is not only itself astonishing; apart from the degree of originality required to conceive and set into practice an entire concept of the management of human society, it is bewildering to consider the degree of organization which must have gone into the planning and management of the projects which they achieved. Later on, in the time of the great pyramid builders now approaching, huge projects of design, construction and decoration became almost commonplace. But even in the earliest times the control of the royal enterprises must have been exceptionally complex and, like virtually everything else in Egypt, without obvious precedent, as much as in their use of materials and in the forms which they created.

The reigns of the kings of the Early Dynastic period introduce an entirely new dimension into human experience through the deployment of exceptional creative talent, the management of great and complex resources and an abundance of materials expended on the invention of more and more elaborate funerary monuments. This process culminated in the lifetime of King Netjerykhet (long known by the name Djoser, though it only appears in texts dating from hundreds of years after the king’s lifetime) for whom the Step Pyramid complex, that non-pareil of all ancient architecture, was raised at Saqqara.

Without the achievements of this probable first king of the Third Dynasty and the genius of his minister, Imhotep, the triumphs of the kings of the middle centuries of the third millennium in Egypt which are forever commemorated by the towering monuments built on the low sandstone plateau at Giza, would have been impossible. The key to the advances of the Pyramid Age lies in the keeping of the preceding dynasty, the technological strides which were then accomplished bearing comparison only with those of the present day.

The third millennium might better be called the Age of Extravagant and

Complex Funerary Monuments, not a term which rolls lightly off the tongue perhaps, but one which is certainly more pertinent to the character of the time than is a simple identification with metal. If the culmination of this curious obsession with great tombs appears to be represented by the pyramids, they are in fact only one form of monument designed to provide an eternal living place for the great dead.

For reasons which are still very largely obscure peoples with no apparent contact with each other, separated by enormous distances and with totally unrelated cultural traditions began early in the third millennium to build more and more complex structures in which to house the remains of their chiefs and kings and, increasingly, a substantial part of the community’s movable wealth. Often these monuments were enclosed in mounds, or were themselves mound-like in structure, though built of stone. In the history of human obsessions the practice represents a curious chapter. From the Orkney islands in the most remote north-west, across Europe, around the Mediterranean through Egypt and Mesopotamia, down the coastlands and islands of the Arabian Gulf, in Oman and away into the Indian subcontinent and beyond, even to China, elaborate tombs of this type were constructed at this time. In the Arabian Gulf, for example, an extraordinary concentration of mound burials is to be found on the principal Bahrain island where it is estimated that some two hundred thousand tumuli were to be seen thirty years ago, the vast majority dating from the late third to the early second millennia.1 Examples of similar mound fields can be found in eastern Arabia: Oman has its own, even earlier type of mound, constructed often from finely made ashlar blocks of brilliant white limestone.2 This phenomenon of recurring forms of funerary monument over so widespread a geographical and chronological range is another confirmation of the belief, enunciated particularly by C. G. Jung, that the archetypes repeat themselves in the productions of all peoples, at all times.

THE ACCESSION OF NETJERYKHET

It was not until the beginning of the Third Dynasty, around 2680 BC, that the titanic complex that was intended to preserve for all eternity the body of the first king of the dynasty, the Golden Horus Nejterykhet, was suddenly to appear on the Saqqara escarpment, built entirely of stone, on a scale never before contemplated on the face of the earth. The accession of Netjerykhet to the thrones of Egypt was an event of profound importance; he was the first king to assume that most splendid of all royal titles, ‘The Golden Horus’. The Third Dynasty seems to have been connected linearly with the Second; it is generally thought that the great Khasekhemwy left as heiress to his state a daughter or granddaughter. She was the mother of Netjerykhet and was venerated in later times as the ancestress of the Third Dynasty.

For a number of reasons the accession of Netjerykhet marked a new turn in the destiny of Egypt. First, it inaugurated a long sequence of prosperity and tranquillity. Though the reign of Khasekhemwy was recorded as a time of reconciliation and unity it was only in Netjerykhet’s time that the resources of the state could be so organized to permit the undertaking of public works of such positively titanic proportions. These great enterprises allowed for the employment of workers and craftsmen on an immense scale. With them came an increasing liberation of the Egyptian creative genius, permitting the thresholds of the arts to be pushed further and further out from their original planes in the centuries which were to follow. Architecture on a monumental scale became a preoccupation of the state which was to endure to the present day; it had its beginnings in Netjerykhet’s time.

For the first time, too, individuals other than the kings begin to be identifiable. Imhotep is unquestionably the most notable, the supreme genius of the Egyptian creative experience, but others, though lesser men begin to emerge in all departments of life and activity, to take on clear and often engaging shapes and even make known their names.

Thus as our field of vision of Egypt opens out at this time, around the twenty-seventh century BC, we come to see more clearly the role played by ordinary men and women in the state. The Third Dynasty itself was a relatively brief interlude, seventy years or so in duration; the amazing burst of creative energy which marked Netjerykhet’s reign and the genius of Imhotep could hardly be expected to be long sustained at the same level of productivity. However, the arts of sculpture and the making of large-scale statuary developed steadily; technique also advanced, in some cases very remarkably. For example, the manufacture of plywood is first detected in the Third Dynasty, and the means of the cutting of large stone blocks for architectural projects became better understood, leading the way to the building feats of the Fourth Dynasty. The arts of the metal smith and the jeweller also become more and more specialized and refined.

The central and most important feature of the complex of monumental buildings on the escarpment at Saqqara, not far from the mastaba tombs of the great nobles of the First Dynasty, was the ziggurat-like stepped pyramid, six platforms placed one upon the other, making a stairway to the heavens. Beneath this monument the mummy of the king was buried in a deep pink-granite chamber, sunk into the rock. The rooms which abut the actual burial chamber are decorated with tiles of an exquisite blue faience, some showing the king, attended by the canine god Wepwawet, in the celebration of the rituals which by this time hedged the divine sovereign about, determining his every action as much in death as in life. The tiles, in a material whose colour and finish was always to be one of the glories of Egyptian art, show the king as a young and vigorous man running in a ritual race as part of the great cycle of ceremonies associated with the

Heb-Sed festival which itself recalled the events of his coronation; others reproduce, in exquisite detail, the hangings of the palace walls in which he passed his earthly existence.

The Netjerykhet complex is unique. It is effectively without precedent, not merely in Egypt but in the entire world. For centuries its high white limestone curtain walls and the elegant, superbly proportioned kiosks, magazines, and shrines which were built within the walls made it the most remarkable building in the world; perhaps indeed it remains the most remarkable ever built. This mighty structure is constructed with an assurance and a mastery that is breathtaking.

The supreme achievement of the Third Dynasty of Egyptian kings was to preside over the transition from mud-brick architecture to large-scale building in stone. The site at Saqqara has been very extensively restored by the dedicated work of French archaeologists, over the past seventy years.3 But even the knowledge that most of what is to be seen today, other than the compelling stepped tower of the pyramid itself, is the product of such restoration cannot diminish the grandeur of the concept or the brilliance of its execution.