In the years which have passed since Egypt’s Making was first published (1990) the study of the early periods of Egypt’s history has made a number of significant advances. Many of the accepted verities which applied then have now been revised, in some cases drastically; much new information has come to light, demanding the reappraisal of previous, staunchly held convictions.
These considerations led to the conclusion that a revised edition of the book should be undertaken. It has been in print continuously since its first publication and, broadly, seems to have stood the test of time. Its survival has been gratifying, the more so since it was avowedly not put forward as a work with scholarly pretensions.
Books seem sometimes to get themselves written because there is something in the air which makes their production especially timely. I wrote Egypt’s Making primarily because I was deeply interested in the influences which led to Egypt becoming the first nation-state in the history of the world. At the time there seemed to be little readily accessible information available to the reasonably well-informed but non-professional reader who might wish to acquire it. M. A. Hoffman’s brilliant Egypt before the Pharaohs went some way towards providing the sort of thing that I wanted; from an earlier generation W. B. Emery’s Archaic Egypt had for long been virtually the only popular publication in the English language which dealt with Egypt’s origins since the seminal series of monographs produced, year in, year out, by the indefatigable William Matthew Flinders Petrie at the turn of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth.
Petrie’s excavations remained of fundamental importance, though many of his conclusions were no longer valid, but inevitably such works were dated. Emery’s work was particularly significant though some of his conclusions are no longer sustained, but it is the record of a most singular achievement by a scholar who in his time opened up an awareness of an epoch which was otherwise hopelessly obscure. I would not presume to thrust myself into their company (though I knew Emery slightly and he was always invariably kind) but I thought that it would be agreeable and perhaps rewarding to look at the issues involved and to see what I might make of them.
Then there was the particular perspective from which I had come to view Egypt in the course of the several decades of my professional life which has been involved with the archaeology of the Arabian peninsula and the Arabian Gulf, through the establishment of learned journals on the archaeology of the region,1 the organization of Departments of Antiquities2 and the creation of museums, thirteen in all, throughout the Arabian peninsular states.3 This work had made me deeply aware of the importance of recognizing the common or related experience of the cultures of the ancient Near East as a whole. I became especially interested in the evidence of the influence of early western Asiatic cultures, of Sumer and Elam (southern Mesopotamia and south western Iran respectively), on the nascent culture of the Nile Valley.
These and similar themes seemed suddenly to seize the interest of scholars in the field. Books and studies began to appear reviewing the origins of the Egyptian state and, with the arrival of Arabian archaeology as a discrete discipline, a process which had only begun in the 1960s and 1970s and in which I had played a minor part, attention was occasionally focused on the interconnections between Mesopotamia, Elam and early Egypt. My book happened to arrive at the same time and without doubt profited by the coincidence.
The upshot of this process has been, in large part, effectively the rewriting of Egypt’s Making. I have attempted to bring up to date the contents of the book and to introduce much of the new material which has become available over the interval between its original writing and the publication of this edition. I have been immeasurably helped by the books on this period of Egyptian history which have appeared during the past decade. I have made some reparation for the use which I have made of them in the Acknowledgements which follow these introductory pages.
Perhaps because of the influence of this most benign civilization, Egyptologists tend to be courteous, sympathetic people, on whom the benevolence of the civilization has rubbed off. It cannot always have been easy: for some bizarre reason, which I no more understand now than when I drew attention to the phenomenon in Egypt’s Making, the study of ancient Egypt does attract some very strange people, all of them with very firmly held opinions of an often peculiar character, on the irrefutable correctness of which they insist vociferously, in ever larger, more densely argued volumes.
Why Egyptology should attract this fringe of committed eccentrics is not clear to me, but it has always been so, at least since the seventeenth century when the Great Pyramid started to feature in the writings of European travellers, many of whom began to weave fantasies about its construction and purpose. It must be very tiresome for professional Egyptologists to be told emphatically and often not very politely, that they have got it all wrong, it being the basis of their professional training which they are sternly abjured to throw aside and are roundly condemned for not doing so. Most of the more sophisticated members of the profession seem generally able to rise above the flood of argument which might seem likely to engulf those of lesser calibre. However, some of the smaller fry, perhaps less confident of their own status and reputations, have a tendency to respond like the lesser clergy in the late Middle Ages, faced with heretical opinions. ‘Anathema, anathema’ they cry, to any who will listen.
It is difficult now to write an overview of the development of Egypt’s early civilization and not to notice some of the more sensational issues which have caught the attention of many Egyptophiles and of the producers of the more vividly devised television programmes. That there are many anomalies in the evidence of all great ancient societies, and in none more so than in Egypt, is beyond question. What is less defensible is to seize on an anomaly — signs of degradation of the stone from which the Sphinx is built, the age and purpose of the Giza Pyramids and, one of my own favourites, the puzzling way in which the granite facing stones are overlaid on the Valley Temple of Khafre — and then to pile fantasy upon hypothesis.
Because so many of the lay public and practitioners of other scientific and academic disciplines are now exposed to such a welter of information (of one sort and another) on matters which touch Egyptology it does not serve the study well simply to attempt to brush away any expression of interest, even if it may be judged misguided, without giving it the courtesy of a considered reply. It is not enough to say that all Egyptologists know that the Giza pyramids were tombs when clearly a great many people (not, I hasten to say, myself) think otherwise.
But there are two aspects of Egypt’s early history which have become increasingly important to me over the years, which are reflected in this revised text. First, there is my unbounded admiration for the political sophistication which the founders of the Egyptian state displayed, from the very beginning of their program to create a unified political construct in the Nile Valley. This entailed ensuring the acceptance of a common cultural identity along the length of the Valley, eventually extending from the first cataract to the Mediterranean. It required the creation and acceptance of institutions and systems of social organization from south to north. It demanded a complex bureaucracy and a system of government which in essence would have been recognizable in most developed regions of the world in the first half of the twentieth century. It revealed a sensitive understanding of the balance necessary for all rulers to achieve between coercion, persuasion and reconciliation. Having some modest experience of the ways of government in the Near and Middle East and an abiding interest in the vagaries of politics and politicians, this aspect of Egypt’s emergence as a nation-state, often taken for granted requires, I believe, recognition and respect which it is only now achieving.
It has been interesting to observe what appears to have been a shift in the attitudes of scholars — and others — to aspects of the early centuries of Egypt’s existence as a nation-state. For a long time there have been a number of unassailable, unarguable truths asserted about such matters as the age of the pyramids and Sphinx and the methods which were used to construct them. Gradually, however, some of the most firmly held opinions have begun to be conditioned as new researches (and new researchers) appear on the Egyptological scene.
One of the most interesting is the gradual replacement of the esoteric explanation of the wonders of Ancient Egypt by a more thorough and, it might be said, often a more objective examination of the physical and material evidence of the construction of the monuments. A product of this process has been an increasing respect for the skills of Egyptian craftsmen in the Early Dynastic period and the early years of the Old Kingdom. To focus on the technology of Ancient Egypt and bring to its study the benefits of modern technology and research is certain to produce answers to some of the questions which baffle Egyptologists and technically-minded observers alike.
An effect of a slightly different slant being brought to a familiar field of study is the question of the extent of the Egyptians’ use of stone in their early (i. e. pre-Old Kingdom) architecture. The conventional view has long been that only in the Third Dynasty did the use of stone achieve monumental proportions, signalled by the astonishing splendour and the inherent technology of the Step Pyramid complex. Nothing can detract from the magnificence of that achievement but it is now clear that stone was more generally employed, in the Second Dynasty for example and at Helwan at an even earlier time, in the First Dynasty. These factors and the discovery of monumentally worked stone blocks, set up in an astronomical alignment in the desert far to the south of Egypt and dating from the seventh millennium BC, have demanded a revision of past attitudes and the recognition that Egypt’s millennia-long involvement with the crafting of monumental stonework is of far greater antiquity than was originally believed. From this one realization will stem a realignment of many beliefs about the beginnings of the civilization of Ancient Egypt.
This having been said, it must be acknowledged that it would be perverse to write about the monuments on the plateau at Giza and ignore the controversies which have sprung up around them in recent years.4 Controversy and the pyramids and Sphinx are no strangers to each other; monuments which have attracted so much wonder over the centuries similarly have attracted speculation of all sorts, from considered scientific appraisal to more imaginative, even fervid fancies. In brief, the propositions which have been advanced about the structures and purpose of the Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure pyramids and the other major constructions linked with them, spatially and in likely purpose, may be summarized as follows:
There is no direct evidence that the three pyramids were built by or for the three kings with whose names they are associated, though a tradition that they were so associated in New Kingdom times at least is witnessed by an inscription of Amenhotep II;
There is no firm evidence that the pyramid identified with Khufu was intended as his or anyone else’s tomb;
The layout of the three pyramids on the plateau replicate the distribution of the three stars in Orion’s Belt in the constellation Orionis and the relationship of these stars to the Milky Way replicates the relationship of the three pyramids to the River Nile;
The date at which the pyramids were first planned, if not in part built, was greatly earlier than the conventional date of their (final) construction in the second half of the third millennium BC;
The Sphinx, as noted earlier, appears to display signs of weathering which can only be the result of heavy and persistent rainfall over an extended time-scale, a climatic event which could not have occurred in the past seven thousand years of hyperaridity;
The Valley Temple associated with the Causeway and pyramid of King Khafre represents a style of building unlike any other in Egypt except ‘the Tomb of Osiris’, conventionally associated with King Seti I and both should be recognized as originating from a much earlier time.
The principal contention of the proponents of what has come to be called, often disparagingly, ‘alternative Egyptology’ is that the Giza monuments are relics of a lost civilization, considerably older than the dates conventionally attributed to them.5 Thus the Sphinx has been accorded a pedigree which, on the estimate of the distinguished geologist who has examined the evidence of weathering, would have its construction dated to 7000—5000 BC, an estimate considered conservative by some, who would set its construction back still further, to c.10500bc, on the basis of supposed astronomical computations.
Later studies,6 taking into account that there was heavy and protracted rain in northern Upper Egypt throughout much of the fourth millennium, have proposed that this could explain the degradation visible today in the architecture of the Sphinx. This view would also lend support to the contention that the Sphinx and other of the Giza monuments should be attributed to the Early Dynastic period, thus being dated to several hundred years before their conventional dating, though eschewing the more extravagant dates which have been proposed for them.
The two ‘ventilation shafts’ of the pyramid traditionally identified with King Khufu are said to be aligned with the constellation of Orion and with d Canis Major (Sirius), which were associated with Osiris and Isis respectively. Robotic investigation of one of the shafts has revealed a limestone plug with two copper insets, in the upper reaches of the shaft.7 Further investigation of this phenomenon by the German engineer whose robot-mounted camera made the discovery was forbidden by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, until late in 2002. A much heralded breaching of the limestone plug was broadcast to a large international audience, in a television program sponsored by National Geographic.
It was, as most cynical observers had already forecast, an anti-climax of an appropriately monumental order. Behind the plug, once optimistically described as a door, was simply a small, empty space.
The proposal that the three pyramids were aligned with the three stars in Orion’s Belt seemed plausible and initially attracted support from orthodox Egyptologists. That terrestrial monuments should mimic the heavenly bodies seemed quite acceptable in the light of the Egyptians’ skill in employing stellar alignments to orient large structures like the pyramids themselves as well as their evident enthusiasm for stellar associations in the early centuries of the Dual Kingdom. The general proposition, ‘As Above, so Below’ was one which had a special appeal to the people of Ancient Egypt. However, subsequent workings of the calculations involved have set doubt on the projections of the relative position of Menkaure, which is out of alignment with its two colleagues and does not align with the star Mintaka (8 Orionis), the third of the stars in Orion’s Belt either.8
As to the purpose for which the pyramids were built, there is no dispute that those pyramids which are thought to have preceded the supposed date of the construction of the Giza group, Netjerykhet’s (in the past, more generally known as Djoser) Step Pyramid and those of his successors and the Maidum pyramid of Sneferu were intended as tombs, as were those of the later kings of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. There is plenty of evidence that in the later periods of history the Egyptians associated the three pyramids with the three kings. This of course proves nothing more than that they did so but the record of the Egyptians’ assessment of their own past should never be lightly dismissed.
The Valley Temple of King Khafre, described above, does appear to be architecturally anomalous. The raising of the great monoliths which are part of its internal structure, some of them said to weigh two hundred tons, represents a formidable logistical and engineering task. Whilst the skill of Egyptian engineers is confirmed by the presence of countless great monuments, the question of the manipulation of Khafre’s lintels, all two hundred tons of them, requires an explanation. Their presence is one of the genuine mysteries of the Giza plateau. No explanation so far advanced, including the suggestion that the Egyptians were able to lift exceptionally heavy weights by the application of sonics, has been found convincing.
The evidence of the degradation of the limestone underlay of the Valley Temple’s exterior walls must be presumed to have taken a significant period of time, which implies that the present granite casing may have been imposed on a long-standing structure which, like the Sphinx, is taken to have been degraded by the action of heavy and consistent rainfall.9 This does not explain why the under surface of the granite casing was apparently cut and shaped to butt on to the degraded sandstone, rather than the other way about, which would certainly have been easier to achieve.
That there are considerable anomalies in the architecture and likely age of the Giza monuments is indisputable. Giza is not unique in this; there are aspects of the architecture and construction of the great European cathedrals which are still baffling. That such anomalies indicate the intervention of refugees from Atlantis, extraterrestrials from wherever or the existence of a lost high culture from Neolithic times, is much less certain, to express one’s doubts no more forcefully.
The search for explanations alternative to accepted scholarship is always rewarding for those who exist happily in the margins of an otherwise unexceptionable discipline and such indulgence will obviously continue. Exasperating though it must be for professionals, it is a perfectly proper activity for those who believe that they have a point of view to express and convictions to defend. Simply to attempt to silence them by ridicule rather than by burning at the stake is unlikely to be any more successful than were past attempts to stamp out heresy. The time must surely be approaching when some sort of international project to examine the anomalous areas should be invoked, if only to define the present extent — or limits — of Egyptology.
That the ancients were capable of extraordinary achievements in remote times is undoubted. Archaeology, though it insists on its essentially scientific basis is fundamentally humanist, concerned to erect the least improbable hypothesis from a multitude of inexactitudes. Egypt is not the only land whose archaeology is as rich in anomalies as it is in treasures of the human spirit; it is simply that there is more of everything there and more of its remains inspire wonder. Yet consider an artefact from another, totally remote and different culture and from a vastly more distant time than any work from Egypt, the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel,10 a site in central Germany, a land whose past could hardly be compared with that of Egypt. The Lion-Man is a superbly carved figure in mammoth ivory, approximately ten inches high, intricate and subtle in craftsmanship and decoration. It has been securely dated, according to its excavators, to thirty two thousand years before the present. What sort of culture was abroad in Germany in Aurigna-cian times which could produce an artefact of this quality? Such a dating and such an artefact makes even a twelve thousand year-old Sphinx seem parvenu. All that is certain is that Egypt is full of wonders and she will continue to astonish, Atlanteans and extraterrestrials notwithstanding.
Revising a book like Egypt’s Making provides an opportunity to do what all writers long to do; alter, correct, rephrase or otherwise amend what is enshrined in naked print. The new material which I have added is largely drawn from the published reports of scholars, to whose work I am deeply grateful. Readers of the original edition will see that I have excised the Appendix which dealt with the Pharaoh Hound, the putative living descendant of the ancient Egyptian hunting hound. This is because at the time of writing this Preface I am working on a book length study of this intriguing and enigmatic animal. The format of this edition is somewhat different from that of the earlier, in an endeavour to achieve clarity. It falls into two parts; the first containing the primarily historical material, the second more discursive reviews of the Egyptians’ interesting preoccupation with the east and with islands, and then the application of some of C. G. Jung’s concepts to the understanding of the ancient Egyptian psyche.
At the end of the preface to the first edition I wrote ‘Ancient Egypt is at its most compelling in the wonders that it reveals and the directness with which its people — craftsmen as well as kings — can speak to us today. If we listen we may learn, before it is entirely too late’. I see no reason to amend that view.
Michael Rice Odsey, Cambridgeshire
World History
