The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (64 page)

FIGURE 58
   Egypt’s first kingdom was created by the gradual unification of formerly independent societies. First came the unification of the territories of Hierakonpolis, Naqada, and This in Upper Egypt. Next came the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, leading to Dynasty 0. On this map, dashed lines surround some of the best-known territories involved in this process. (The distance from Ma’adi to Aswan is 430 miles.)

Naqada appears to have been the first to reach its peak—5,400 to 5,200 years ago it was likely the most powerful of the three societies. At the same time the defensive wall in Naqada’s south town may reflect concern over aggressive neighbors like Hierakonpolis. Those fears may have been well founded, for Hierakonpolis does seem to have outstripped Naqada approximately 5,200 to 5,000 years ago.

Archaeologists Michael Hoffman, Hany Hamroush, and Ralph Allen studied the region of Hierakonpolis and presented a step-by-step scenario for its rise to prominence. The scenario covers an area of 56 square miles surrounding Kom el-Ahmar, the sprawling archaeological site that once was Hierakonpolis.

After centuries of slow colonization by farmers, the area studied by Hoffman’s team underwent a period of rapid growth. Between 5,700 and 5,400 years ago an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people occupied nine settlements in the area.

The bulk of the population lived at the town of Hierakonpolis itself, which overlooked an alluvial floodplain six miles long and up to two miles wide. This town had the largest and most richly furnished tombs in the area. Under the patronage of their chiefs, the craftspeople of Hierakonpolis produced maceheads for elite warriors, plum-colored pottery, stone vases, flint daggers, cosmetic palettes, linen textiles, and lots of beer. Although thousands of domestic animals were raised at Hierakonpolis, a microscopic analysis of its coprolites, or desiccated human feces, reveals that commoners’ meals consisted mainly of cereals. The evidence, in other words, suggests a society in which elite families had greater access to meat.

Between 5,500 and 5,200 years ago the leaders of Hierakonpolis were concentrating their followers into fewer—but larger and more defensible—settlements. This change probably reflects increased competition with neighbors such as Naqada.

Early in this period Hierakonpolis built a temple 42 feet on a side, equipped with a large, oval courtyard. The presence of wine jars from the Southern Levant indicates that the temple staff was importing wine, which the Egyptians appreciated but did not have the proper climate to produce. Among the creatures sacrificed by the priests of Hierakonpolis were cattle, sheep, goats, Nile crocodiles, turtles, and fish. Unfortunately, we know little about the ritual structures that preceded the first Egyptian temples.

Late in this period the leaders of Hierakonpolis ordered the building of a mud-brick defensive wall. Like the early rulers of Monte Albán, they were now ready to expand against their neighbors. It would seem that their first move was to take over the territories controlled by Naqada and This, unifying Upper Egypt into a first-generation kingdom. That kingdom was so powerful that its next step was to move against Lower Egypt, creating an even larger state.

We suspect that the unification of Egypt was a process that took centuries and proceeded step-by-step. Unfortunately, because of the large area involved, we cannot yet see the details of the process. We must infer what happened by combining bits of archaeological data from several different places.

Hoffman’s team believes that Hierakonpolis achieved supremacy between 5,200 and 5,100 years ago. During that period it continued to grow, building large palaces and temples at Hierakonpolis itself and establishing an isolated royal cemetery in the desert. Such a royal
necropolis,
or “city of the dead,” suggests that the hereditary elite of Hierakonpolis belonged not simply to an elite lineage but to a separate social stratum. The precedent had been established, in other words, for later royal cemeteries like those in the Valley of the Kings.

In 1898, long before Hoffman’s survey, archaeologists James Quibell and Frederick Green discovered a broken limestone macehead at Hierakonpolis. Carved on the macehead was a scene showing a ruler digging an irrigation canal. Since it is doubtful that rulers performed such manual labor, the scene is presumed to be symbolic. Most interesting is the fact that the ruler’s hieroglyphic name is given as “Rosette Scorpion.”

Might this “Scorpion King” be buried at Hierakonpolis? The site has produced a number of royal tombs, but none can be linked to Rosette Scorpion. Perhaps the most elegant was Tomb 11, which measured 16 by 8 feet. This tomb included a wooden bed whose legs ended in bull’s feet; ornaments of gold, silver, copper, carnelian, garnet, turquoise, and lapis lazuli; carvings of ivory; and pottery effigies of humans and animals.

Complicating our search for the elusive Scorpion King is another tomb at Abydos, in the downstream territory once headed by This. Known as Tomb U-j, it was made of mud brick and measured 29 by 23 feet; its wooden roof beams have been dated to 5,150 years ago. Tomb U-j had a large chamber for the coffin and 11 smaller rooms for the burial offerings. Excavator Günter Dreyer believes that this tomb may be a smaller version of the palatial residence that the ruler had occupied during his life. He had been supplied with an ivory shepherd’s crook, a symbol both of political authority and of the pastoral legacy of some of his subjects.

We know what some of this ruler’s priorities were, because his offerings included numerous jars of locally made beer and 700 jars of wine from the Southern Levant. One remarkable discovery in Tomb U-j was a series of ivory tags, each with a hole drilled in it so that it could be attached to a funerary offering. The hieroglyphs on these tags indicate the names of the places from which the offerings had come. They also provide the name “Scorpion.”

Who was the Scorpion buried at Abydos? Was he the same Scorpion mentioned on the macehead at Hierakonpolis? Was he the ruler who unified Upper Egypt? Does he belong to history, legend, or both?

The Palette of Narmer

In addition to the Scorpion macehead, Quibell and Green found a unique siltstone cosmetic palette at Hierakonpolis. The palette was two feet long and shaped like a warrior’s shield (
Figure 59
). On both sides of the palette we see the hieroglyphic name of the ruler, placed within the rectangular symbol for “palace.” The stone carvers used rebus writing for his name, combining the glyphs for “fish”
(nr)
and “chisel”
(mr).
Since Egyptian writing lacked vowels, readers of the text would have supplied them; when we do so, his name becomes “Narmer.”

To understand the scenes on the Narmer palette, we must consider the later symbolism of Egypt. The Upper Egyptian ruler wore a white crown and was referred to as
nswt,
“the sedge ruler.” Upper Egypt was symbolized by the lotus; its patron deity was Nekbet, the vulture goddess; its paramount center was Hierakonpolis. The Lower Egyptian ruler wore a red crown and was referred to as
bity,
“the bee ruler.” Lower Egypt was symbolized by the papyrus, a sedge growing in the delta marshes; its patron deity was Wadjet, the cobra goddess; its paramount center was Buto.

On one side of the palette from Hierakonpolis we see Narmer grasping a captive by the hair, preparing to crack his skull with a mace. A servant stands behind him, carrying the ruler’s sandals and water jar. Below the ruler are two sprawling enemies. Near his face is a falcon, standing on the papyrus symbol for Lower Egypt and holding a captive by a cord through his nose. Narmer wears the white crown of Upper Egypt.

On the opposite side of the palette Narmer wears the red crown of Lower Egypt. Still accompanied by his sandal bearer, he inspects the scene of a battle. That scene includes ten decapitated enemies, laid out with their heads between their ankles. Elsewhere on this side of the palette a bull is depicted battering down the walls of a fortified town. The town is identified by the hieroglyph
sh,
thought to be a reference to the Southern Levant.

We cannot date either the Narmer palette or the Scorpion macehead because they were found in a cache of objects that were heirlooms from an earlier era. The Narmer palette suggests that the Egyptians themselves considered the unification of Egypt to have involved bloodshed. First, a ruler from Upper Egypt conquered the delta; once in charge of the delta, he expanded into the Southern Levant.

FIGURE 59.
   Two sides of a carved cosmetic palette, found more than a century ago at Hierakonpolis. Both sides show a ruler whose hieroglyphic name would have been pronounced “Narmer.” On the left we see Narmer, wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, seizing a captive by the hair. On the right, wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt, he inspects a battlefield where ten bound and decapitated enemies lie with their heads between their feet. These scenes are thought to symbolize the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.

There is independent confirmation of Egypt’s expansion into the Southern Levant. According to Thomas Levy and David Alon, Egyptian pottery bearing the hieroglyphic name Narmer has been found at archaeological sites along the border between Judea and the Negev. The Egyptian presence in the Southern Levant may have lasted only 50 to 100 years, however; after that, the settlements in the Levant fortified themselves and defended their autonomy.

Dynasty 0

The first-generation Egyptian state was clearly a monarchy—and an individualizing monarchy at that. Unfortunately, the earliest monarchs were shadowy figures, part history and part legend. Egyptologists consider 3100
B.C.
to be an educated guess for the date by which Egypt was unified.

That date would presumably mark the beginning of Egypt’s first royal dynasty, which moved its capital to Memphis near the head of the Nile delta. Now that the Egyptian state stretched from the First Cataract to the Southern Levant, Hierakonpolis lay too far to the south to serve as its capital. Once the capital had moved to Memphis, Hierakonpolis declined in importance but continued to serve as a provincial center for Upper Egypt.

For years it was assumed that King Narmer was the founder of Dynasty 1. Increasingly, however, there are hints that there may have been an even earlier, semilegendary set of rulers, including the mysterious Scorpion King. This possibility has forced Egyptologists to propose a Dynasty 0. The Egyptians of Dynasty 0 show us many behaviors typical of later dynasties. Their rituals included burying wild animals such as hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and baboons. Like the people of Nabta Playa, they also buried domestic cattle.

As early as 3100
B.C.
, some of the scenes painted on Egyptian pottery show boats rowed by more than a dozen oarsmen. Some of these boats feature an individual seated under a sunshade in a kind of cabin. The implication is that early rulers made journeys up and down the Nile, visiting other nobles or checking up on the officials who ran the provinces of their kingdom.

Dynasties 1–30

Little by little the rulers of Egypt emerged from legend and into the archives of history. Perhaps the first historian to divide the Egyptian kings into dynasties was Manetho, a priest of the third century
B.C.
He coined the term
dynasty
to refer to a multigenerational sequence of kings related by common descent. Each break between dynasties provided an opportunity to move the capital or add new territory. Sometimes, however, the new ruler proved weaker than the old. The result was a series of cycles similar to those seen in rank societies.

The Egyptian state, as we have seen, was created by unifying a number of formerly autonomous territories. These territories became the
hesps,
or administrative districts, of the Egyptian state. Upper Egypt was divided into 22 hesps, Lower Egypt into 20. Each hesp (or
nome,
as a hesp was called by Greek historians) had a governor who was supposed to be loyal to the king. Under strong kings, governors were more subservient; under weak kings, they exercised more autonomy. Such cycles of strength and weakness probably characterized most long-lived states. They directly affected the levels of inequality between kings and their governors.