Considering the lack of data concerning the Dynastic history of the Herakleopolitan rulers, it seems all the more important to investigate whether the Herakleopolitan kingdom can be regarded as a distinctive social and cultural entity. Turning to the archaeological evidence, we should focus attention on the core areas of the Herakleopolitan kingdom: the Memphite and Faiyum regions. From an archaeological point of view, southern Middle Egypt was effectively an Upper Egyptian region.
In the north, we face a twofold problem. The available sources of evidence do not form a rich and coherent historical framework like the data from Upper Egypt; it is, therefore, exceedingly difficult to establish a sound archaeological sequence. Furthermore, there are no key groups of material that can be firmly dated in dynastic terms. It, therefore, often remains doubtful as to which monuments are to be assigned to the Herakleopolitan period proper, and which, in fact, derive only from the time after the reunification of the country and the early Middle Kingdom.
In many respects, the development of the archaeological material in the north follows the same course as in Upper Egypt. For instance, wooden models of servants and workshops, cartonnage masks, and extensive family tombs all appear in both areas, and burial customs are in general largely the same. For some classes of artefacts, such as stone vessels and button seal amulets, the north and the south evidently drew on the same models. Judging from the archaeological material, the communities making up Herakleopolitan society seem to have undergone similar patterns of social and cultural development to the rest of the country.
Important differences, however, must not be overlooked. The development of the shapes of pottery vessels, for example, follows an entirely different course in the north. Here, the age-old ovoid pattern was not abandoned as it was in the south. Rather, a series of very special types of slender ovoid jars, often with pointed bases and quite peculiar cylindrical or funnel-shaped necks, emerged. The morphological patterns developed in the north during the First Intermediate Period evidently adhered much more closely to Old JCingdom tradition.
Even in the Herakleopolitan kingdom, however, the elite culture in the style of the Old Kingdom aristocracy did not survive. The social profile of the occupants of the ancient court cemeteries in the Memphite region therefore changed fundamentally. To earlier Egyptologists, who used to rely for their standards of judgement entirely on comparison with Old Kingdom court culture, this seemed to indicate dramatic events. Set against a broader background, however, it is clear that we are simply witnessing the change from very extraordinary conditions to a phase of comparative normality, when the Memphite necropoleis became similar to the cemeteries of provincial towns. Certainly, when Memphis lost its dominant status at the end of the Old Kingdom, this must undoubtedly have entailed severe changes in the living conditions of its inhabitants. But the archaeological record from the Memphite cemeteries cannot be construed as evidence for a social revolution or a civil war after the demise of the Old Kingdom.
At several important sites—Saqqara, Heliopolis, and Herakleopolis Magna—small mastaba-tombs incorporating decorated offering chapels and false-door stelae are attested, thus allowing the style of Herakleopolitan art to be assessed. Old Kingdom tradition looms large. Ritual scenes and scenes of daily life, the arrangement of the decoration, and the style of carving closely follow Old Kingdom patterns—but everything is in miniature. Here, in the Memphite region and its surroundings, where the monuments of Egypt’s glorious past were available for ready inspection and where its workshop traditions had been entrenched for centuries, the legacy of the Old Kingdom was not to be forgotten.
The full range of situations in which these traditions were exercised during the First Intermediate Period probably escapes us because of the state of archaeological research at the end of the twentieth century. Immediately after the reunification of the country, however, the nth Dynasty King Nebhepetra Mentuhotep II was able to draw on the expertise of Memphite artists and stonemasons for the construction and the embellishment of his funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri. It is in his reign that we witness the sudden reappearance of a level of expertise that had not been attested since the pyramids of the Old Kingdom.
World History
