Beginnings

One of the most persistent Egyptian creation myths relates how at the beginning of all things was the sun, Ra. Ra scattered his semen and out of it sprang Shu, the god of dryness, and Tefnut, the goddess of humidity. Shu and Tefnut produced a new generation of gods, the sky goddess Nut and the earth god Geb. They in their turn gave birth to four children, Isis and Osiris, Seth and Nepthys. Isis and Osiris, husband and wife, became the first rulers of Egypt. However, Seth overthrew his brother, cutting him into pieces. Isis devotedly put him together again, adding a new penis (the original having been eaten by fish) with such success that she was able to conceive a son, Horus. She kept Horus hidden in the marshes until he was strong enough to overthrow Seth. Osiris meanwhile had become god of the underworld, where he acted as a symbol of rebirth. Seth continued in Egyptian mythology as a potential threat to order, while Horus remained as the protector of the earthly kings who were his successors. (See Richard Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, London and New York, 2003, for the details of the gods.)

This creation myth brought together several elements of early Egyptian history and beliefs. The ‘family’ was a composite one, made up of early gods from different cult centres along the Nile, while the conflict between Horus and Seth may well have echoed memories of a real struggle between two early states. It is a reminder that Egypt was not a natural unity. The country had two distinct ecologies. The valley was thin, often only a few kilometres wide in some areas, and stretching for 1,000 kilometres from the Nile Delta to the first cataract at Aswan. In the north, on the Delta, the river spread out over marshland and swamps that were rich in bird and animal life. There is no evidence that the Delta region actually ever formed an independent state, but there is increasing evidence of earlier cultures there to be found under depths of silt. The insistence that Egypt was made up of two distinct kingdoms, one in the north on the Delta, the other south along the valley, lasted in

Egyptian tradition long after the first unification in about 3000 Bc. They are represented as the lands of reeds, the valley, and the lands of papyrus, the Delta, with different crowns and protecting gods.

Perhaps the most important development in recent Egyptian archaeology is the gradual piecing together of a sequence to Egyptian history that extends it far back beyond the first unification. Before 5000 bc there was still rainfall in what is now desert and it was possible for semi-nomadic cattle herders to roam the expanses, seeking refuge at oases during the summer months. Just as Eridu seems to have become sacred as a result of its water source so there are sites such as Nabta Playa, a hundred kilometres to the west of Abu Simbel on an ancient trade route west. (A playa is a depression that fills with water.) This became a ceremonial centre, possibly as early as the fifth millennium bc, with Egypt’s first stone monuments, standing stones that may have been aligned with the stars, and a tradition of cattle sacrifice, the cattle being buried in ‘tombs’. One theory suggests that cattle were sacrificed each year as their owners gathered in thanksgiving at the water. As the desert dried the nomads were driven into the Nile valley and it may have been this major transition that encouraged intense competition between rival groups and the emergence of hierarchical societies that were able to hold their own against each other.