Think Like an Egyptian (17 page)

 

 

 

 

Prominent among Egyptian images of death is a doglike animal, often called Anubis. But at Abydos, a holy site on the desert edge in Upper Egypt, the animal is called “The Foremost of the Westerners” (
Khenty-amentiu
). “Jackal” is a modern translation, but Egyptian images merged the characteristics of jackals, dogs, and foxes. All scavenge on the desert margins, are frequently nocturnal, and must in the past have found convenient homes in the deserted cemeteries. Jackals also emit an unearthly howling cry.

Anubis was a central figure in the Egyptian afterlife. He assisted Osiris in the Hall of Judgment to which the dead would first be conducted. He presided over the process of mummification, being often called “the one in the place of embalming.” And as a recumbent canine, sometimes colored black, he guarded the tomb.

Egyptians were impressed by jackals” navigational skills over desert tracks. In mythology a group of four towed the heavenly barque of the sun-god. The city of Asyut was the cult center for yet another canine god called Wep-wawet, whose name means “Opener of the Ways.” The main festival at Abydos saw a procession set out across the desert from the temple to the tomb of Osiris, at its head an image of Wep-wawet to “open the way.” People set up small memorial stones in the adjacent desert, some carved with short prayers and even tiny windows, which express a wish to see Wep-wawet and his procession.

 

 

 

 

Although the river Nile provided a fine means of travel from one part of the country to another, many journeys were made by land either on foot or on the back of a donkey, in a carrying chair or even by a wheeled vehicle. One hieroglyph depicts a length of road or track with borders on which grow trees or clumps of vegetation. It writes the word
w3t
(
wat
), which means both the “road” on which one treads and the “way” of doing something. To “open a way” is similar to the English “make one’s way.” It has the added meaning of removing obstacles from one’s path, rather like the English “make way for,” and was associated with the god Wep-wawet, “opener of the ways.”

We know almost nothing of land routes within ancient Egypt. We can assume that dirt tracks linked towns and villages, but whether kings initiated a road system, especially in later centuries when horse and chariot were common, we cannot tell. A picture of land travel and its dangers is provided by the story of a poor countryman, named Khun-anup, making his long way to market with his laden donkey. He takes a path between the riverbank and a field of barley. An unscrupulous agent of a rich man lays a linen cloth across the path. While the poor countryman protests at the blocking of his way, his donkey turns his head and eats a little of the barley, providing the agent with the excuse he was seeking to confiscate the donkey.

For those who traveled long distances on land, were there hostels where they could stay the night? A manual of advice by the sage Ankhsheshonk (late 1st millennium BC) argues against simply knocking on people’s doors: “Do not stay on the road till evening, saying ‘I am sure of the houses.’ You do not know the hearts of their inhabitants.”

 

 

 

 

One will look in vain for a hieroglyph of a camel. Camels were latecomers to Egypt and were apparently not used even by the Egyptians” desert neighbors. The donkey was the universal beast of burden, carrying loads on tracks between villages and fields, and on long journeys outside Egypt. The big landowners kept them by the hundred. Around 2250 BC an expedition leader, Harkhuf, based at Aswan, recorded his return from a trading mission to Nubia. With him were 300 donkeys laden with exotic goods.

The stubbornness of donkeys was as evident to ancient Egyptians as it is to us today. To express what they saw as the donkey’s malign character, Egyptians associated the donkey with the god Seth and sometimes wrote the word with the special determinative of Seth,
(
a’a,
perhaps in imitation of a donkey’s bray).

Donkeys were equally at home in Palestine, and a surviving Egyptian picture shows a tribal leader riding one. For a time in the late Middle Kingdom and in the subsequent century when northern Egypt was ruled by Palestinian kings called the Hyksos (see no. 2, “Desert”), Palestinian families made their homes in the eastern delta. Beside their tombs they cut separate pits for the burial of donkeys and also sheep, a custom they had brought with them. It is probable that the animals were sacrificed at the time of burial.

 

 

 

 

The earliest evidence of the wheel in Egypt is found in pictures of siege warfare in the 6th Dynasty and 1st Intermediate Period (c. 2300/2050 BC), where wheels are seen fixed to the bottom of a scaling ladder or a siege tower. Evidence of the wheel is so rare that we do not even know what word ancient Egyptians used for “wheel” prior to the New Kingdom. We cannot judge, therefore, how widespread wheeled transport was. In the New Kingdom, when the evidence increases a little, both spoked and solid wheels appear in pictures and models of four- and six-wheeled wagons, the former sometimes used to bear coffins. It was presumably on vehicles of this kind that King Tuthmosis III transported his fleet of riverboats across Syria for a campaign on the river Euphrates against the kingdom of Mitanni, a remarkable feat only briefly mentioned in his annals.

By the beginning of the New Kingdom the Egyptians had adopted the two-wheeled chariot from their Near Eastern neighbors, whose better equipped armies the Egyptians now faced up to more determinedly than before. They needed two horses, one on either side of a central pole, and to maintain stability over rough ground, they had their lightly built wheels widely set on a long axle. The chariot became the key instrument of warfare and symbolized the vigor and bravery of the king (and his courtiers) both in hunting and in warfare.

To possess a chariot was to join a social elite. The upkeep of horses and chariots needed specialist support. Their introduction and use gave rise to a whole new professional group, the “stable masters,” a new technical vocabulary, and the development of skills needed to build and maintain the ancient equivalent of our racing car.

 

 

 

 

Ease of transport along the Nile encouraged Egypt to develop into an integrated society. Officials of the Pharaoh constantly traveled between the court and the provinces carrying detailed instructions and reports, controlling the country and its resources. Most people did not have to travel very far to catch a boat. Even today the edge of the floodplain in Upper Egypt is never more than 20 kilometers from the river, and in ancient times this would have been less, with many of the towns and cities close to the riverbank. In the delta the Nile conveniently divided into several branches (now reduced to two), which brought many cities on that broad flat plain within reach of water transport. Boats and barges carried farmers and kings, armies and scribes, the annual harvest, and giant loads of stone. The Colossi of Memnon, each one 18 meters high and made from a single block of a particularly dense stone, quartzite, must have been floated down to Thebes on immense barges from the quarries 200 kilometers to the south. Rich men owned many boats, for fishing, for pleasure, for carrying their harvest, and for journeying longer distances, with separate boats for servants and for a traveling kitchen.

Full-sized boats were buried beside the pyramids of kings for use in special journeys after death. One, 43.3 meters long, was discovered dismantled in a pit beside the Great Pyramid and is now reassembled in an adjacent museum. It was not built with a keel or with the use of nails. The hull kept its shape because the timbers were lashed to one another and to supporting wooden frames using thick cables of plant fiber. Part of the deck is covered with a long enclosed cabin kept cool by means of a second, outer wooden roof supported on numerous slender poles.