The Old Kingdom was a period when a strong monarchic power, paternalistic and divine in essence, reigned over a territory whose resources were utilized for the maintenance of the palace, the development of an administration which was endlessly expanded and reorganized, and for the execution of ambitious architectural projects. Society, however, remained fundamentally rural, controlled only loosely by Memphite power except when a firmer hand was required for the fulfilment of the crown’s major projects (Moreno Garcia 2004: 41-75). During this era the monarch was certainly regarded as a god-king, a conceptualization of royal power which is demonstrated by the increasing gigantism of pyramid construction, the royal titulary,
Figure 4.1 The stele of Qahedjet. Courtesy the Louvre Museum.
The phraseology used for the king (Gundlach 1998), and the iconographic programme of royal funerary complexes (Hawass 1995: 249-53; Stockfisch 2003), although it must be conceded that, depending upon their location and their degree of ritualization, one encounters an entire spectrum of perceptions ranging from the divine to the human (Baines 1990a; 1995: 125-31, 143-52; 1997: 9-19; see also Moreno Garcia 2004: 163-66 and Kemp 2006: 78-110). The epithets ‘‘great god’’ and ‘‘perfect god’’ are frequently applied to the king from the Fourth Dynasty onwards; the first is an epithet shared with Horus of Behdet/Edfu, patron of the monarchy. Intimacy with the gods is specifically shown by scenes of divinities embracing or suckling the king in funerary complexes (Stockfisch 2003: 242-49, 386; Landgrafova 2006: 19-20). The first theme appears from the Third Dynasty, with the stele of Qahedjet showing the embrace of the king and Horus of Heliopolis, god-patron of the monarchy of whom the ruler is a double. The face of the king is turned towards that of the falcon, whose beak brushes the monarch’s nose: this intimacy has no equivalent in the representations of private individuals of the Old Kingdom, except between spouses, brothers, or parents and children, and it is precisely the same membership of the close family, in this case divine, that the Louvre monument certainly celebrates. A relief from the funerary temple of Pepi II, at the end of the Old Kingdom, picks up the same iconography. Another theme, this time with a female dimension, shows the king being suckled by a mother-goddess, e. g. Niuserre and the lioness Sekhmet in his funerary temple. The divine filiations of the monarch are also proclaimed by inscriptions. Djedefre, third king of the Fourth Dynasty, is described as ‘‘son of Re,’’ an epithet which was not yet prominent but would soon become an integral part of the royal titulary and later one of its two major elements, used to introduce the king’s personal name. Khafre, his successor, called himself ‘‘son of Wadjet,’’ the protective goddess of Lower Egypt, as well as ‘‘son of Ptah,’’ the Memphite creator-god (Dobrev 1993) whilst Teti, the founder of the Sixth Dynasty, described himself on his sarcophagus as ‘‘son of Nut,’’ the mother-goddess of the sky, a filiation intended to guarantee his celestial future. The Pyramid Texts, the first great corpus of funerary texts of Egypt, mainly drafted in the Fifth Dynasty and inscribed on the walls of royal burial chambers from the reign of Unis onwards, also proclaim these filiations and insist on an identification with the gods which goes as far as to describe the king as ‘‘Re himself,’’ the creator-god par excellence. Monumental pyramids, the pre-eminent Old Kingdom symbols of monarchy, were built exclusively for these rulers, absorbing human resources, materials, and financial assets in a national enterprise culminating in the giants of Giza (Lehner 1997; Hawass 2003).
World History
