But in the early part of the New Kingdom the God’s Wife and the Divine Adoratrice were two separate offices within the temple hierarchy at Karnak, which can cause some confusion when exploring the history of these unique institutions.  This article will endeavor to disentangle this relationship as we seek to understand what these two offices were and how they came to be merged into a single position, or at least a single career track.

Note:  At the end of the last article in this series, The God’s Wives of Amun – Royal Women and Power Politics in the Eighteenth Dynasty, I said that this article would also cover the details of the Donation Stele and exactly what was endowed to the House of the Adoratrice.  After some revision it became clear that these were two separate articles.  The properties of the House of the Adoratrice will be explored in Part 2: The Demesne of the God’s Wife.  This present article will focus on the parallel development of the God’s Wife and the Divine Adoratrice, as well as the House of the Adoratrice as an institution.

At first it seems a little convoluted.  During the New Kingdom Period, the God’s Wife (Hemet Netjer) and the Divine Adoratrice (Duat Netjer) were two different positions within the temple hierarchy.  But the House of the Adoratrice (Per Duat) was not the estate of the Divine Adoratrice, who had no estate of her own, it was instead the estate of the God’s Wife.  That is sort of like calling Buckingham Palace the house of the Prime Minister while only allowing the Queen to live there!

To make matters even more confusing, while the offices of God’s Wife and Divine Adoratrice were two separate offices, they could be held by the same person—sometimes the God’s Wife was also a Divine Adoratrice.  At other times she seems to have started off as a Divine Adoratrice, only to become the God’s Wife later, a sort of God’s Wife in-training.

But sense can be made of all of this if we keep in mind that the periods of evolution (and de-evolution) of the offices of God’s Wife and Divine Adoratrice are tied to the changing statuses of women in ancient Egypt.  When the social status of women improved, their positions within the ecclesiastical hierarchy became more specialized and empowered.  When their status diminished their titles became more generalized and their duties less prestigious. 

The House of the Adoratrice and the wealth and influence that came with it was a means for royal women to act with some autonomy and exert some influence over religious and political matters.  Women were able to possess property in ancient Egypt, and royal women possessed wealth of their own.  And as we shall see, women were able to hold religious offices at different times.  But it is not until the God’s Wife of Amun and the House of the Adoratrice that women held both wealth and political and religious power at the same time, independent of the temple and palace.

As later pharaohs attempt to curb this power, the status of the God’s Wife as High Priestess and consort to Amun becomes secondary to her status as the mother and wife of the king.  In other words, as the status of women diminishes, the God’s Wife is no longer defined in terms of her office and influence, but rather in terms of her relationship to the pharaoh.    

Of course, the story of the God’s Wives of Amun cannot be reduced simply to gender politics, and ultimately the convergence of God’s Wife and Divine Adoratrice into a single office is not a sign of a loss of power, but instead marks a phase when the office becomes second only to the pharaoh.  But keeping the subplot of gender politics in mind makes the rest of the story, and the motivations of some of the players, a lot easier to follow.

Holy Women from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom

Egyptian temples were not simply religious institutions, they were also the local cultural center, the community college, the office of social services, and the court of law.  As such, they employed a very large staff with a wide variety of non-priestly jobs.  Written and visual accounts of temple life show that women filled many of these roles from the earliest days of Egypt’s history.

A Fourth Dynasty princess and priestess named Nefertiabet making offerings (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

At least as early as the Old Kingdom Period there were women who also held clerical positions within the temples, although usually as priestesses of female deities, particularly Hathor and Neith.  Richard H. Wilkinson observes that there were some notable exceptions to this rule—occasionally royal women were known to have held positions as priestesses in temples of Thoth and Ptah and within the funerary cults of kings, and may have performed the same duties as the male priests (P. 93). 

Beginning late in the First Intermediate Period and early in the Middle Kingdom Period we begin to see more specialized roles for women in temples.  As we discussed in The God’s Wives of Amun – Royal Women and Power Politics in the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Tenth Dynasty saw the emergence of the position of God’s Wife in temples where particular deities were venerated as creator gods.  The God’s Wives of this period were non-royal women, which indicates that this improved status reached beyond the royalty, extending at least as far as noblewomen. 

Other titles for women within the temple hierarchy begin to appear at this time as well, such as Watcher of the God (Wereshy-Netjer) and wabet, the female counterpart of the wab priests.  Wab priests carried out various tasks such as purifications, overseeing the lay-staff, and carrying the ceremonial barque which housed the statue of the god.  The wabet priestesses were probably not given this latter task, but would have held influential positions in the middle management of the temple.

By the Twelfth Dynasty even the Priestesses of Hathor seem to disappear (Photo by Guillaume Blanchard)

But as the Middle Kingdom approaches the Second Intermediate Period, the role of women in religion begins a gradual decline.  It would be a mistake to attribute this to general instability, as Egypt remained pretty stable throughout the Twelfth and even Thirteenth Dynasties.  But by the middle of the Twelfth Dynasty even the Priestesses of Hathor, an ancient and well-established institution, had practically disappeared. 

Wilkinson suggest this may have been due in part to changing attitudes regarding childbirth and menstruation as being “impure,” but notes that it could just as easily reflect general societal changes during that time (p. 93).  Either way, the loss of status was reflected in the virtual disappearance of female titles in temple administration during the Second Intermediate Period.  Specific titles for women in the temples were largely replaced with the catchall of shemayet—chantress (Wilkinson, pp. 93-4).

The Divine Adoratrice and God’s Wife of Amun in the New Kingdom

Pharaoh Ahmose I, the Great Reformer (Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts)

With Ahmose I’s restoration (and reformation) of the institution of the God’s Wife at the beginning of the New Kingdom we see a triumphant return of women to professional religious life.  This elevation in status again reached beyond royal women and extended to noblewomen.  There was an increasing revival of specialized roles for women in temple functions, and one of the new titles was that of Divine Adoratrice.  According to Anneke Bart, 

The divine adoratrix was a priestess ranking slightly below the God’s Wife and she may have served as a deputy or stand in for the God’s Wife…The position of divine adoratrix could be held by non-royal women as well.  (Ancient Egypt:  God’s Wife of Amun)

Reproduction of a tomb painting of the Divine Adoratrice Seniseneb (Painting by Norman de Garis Davies, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

While this may indicate a change in status for upper-class women, it should not be viewed independently as evidence that the lot of women in general had improved.  While not necessarily of royal blood, the Divine Adoratrices were high-ranking temple officers and invariably came from influential families usually associated with the temple.  An Adoratrice named Seniseneb, for example, was the daughter of Hapuseneb, a High Priest of Amun and vizier of Hatshepsut.  Another Eighteenth Dynasty Adoratrice, Maetka, was the wife of the Head Goldsmith of Amun (Bart, God’s Wife of Amun).  

Other temples and deities had Divine Adoratrices of their own, also drawn from the ranks of the religious and political nobility. One such noblewoman was Hui, an Adoratrice of the gods Atum and Re (as well as Amun), and the mother of Merytre-Hatshepsut, herself a God’s Wife of Amun and the queen of Thutmose III (Bryan, 2003, p. 6; 2000, p. 248).  Another was Tey, who was an Adoratrice of Min and may have been a wife of Pharaoh Ay (Dodson and Hilton, p. 151-3; 157).

Do not call me queen—Pharaoh (formerly God’s Wife) Hatshepsut (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

During the second half of the Eighteenth Dynasty the pharaohs sought to put limitations on the office of the God’s Wife, most likely in response to Hatshepsut, who had utilized the authority and wealth that came with the position and its estate to support her ascent to pharaohood.  By the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, pharaohs were choosing their wives outside of the royal line and the position of God’s Wife disappears altogether for several generations.

The absence of [royal] wives might be considered a conscious rejection of the dynastic role played by princesses as queens and ‘god’s wives of Amun’ from the establishment of the dynasty through to the reign of Hatshepsut.  Perhaps Thutmose III and Amenhotep II now realized that queens like Hatshepsut, who represented the dynastic family, could be dangerous if they were too wealthy and powerful.  (Bryan, 2000, p. 253).

Regardless of what the underlying motivation may have been, the last clearly attested God’s Wife from the Eighteenth Dynasty is Tia’a, the mother of Thutmose IV.

It is unclear if other female positions within the temple hierarchy suffered a comparable loss of prestige, although the position of Divine Adoratrice does seem to have remained active.  The aforementioned Adoratrice Maetka held office during the reign of Amenhotep III, even though the office of God’s Wife was apparently vacant.  Lacking the power of the God’s Wife, the Adoratrices may have simply not posed enough of a threat to warrant the unwelcome attention of the pharaoh.

God’s Wife and Queen, Mut-Tuya (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

The Eighteenth Dynasty comes to a close with the death of Pharaoh Horemheb, who dies without a blood-heir.  The throne goes to Horemheb’s vizier, Ramesses I, whose short reign marks the beginning of a new dynasty and what is called the Ramesside Period, which spans the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties.  The Nineteenth Dynasty also sees the return of a clearly attested God’s Wife of Amun—Sitre, Ramesses I’s Great Royal Wife and the mother of Pharaoh Seti I.  Seti’s own wife and mother of Ramesses II, Mut-Tuya, likewise becomes a God’s Wife of Amun.

The Ramesside Years and the Third Intermediate Period

Queen Duatentopet, Divine Adoratrice, but not God’s Wife (Drawing by Lepsius Denkmahler)

The offices of God’s Wife and Divine Adoratrice seem to have remained separate institutions throughout the Ramesside Period.  Queen Duatentopet, wife of Ramesses IV and mother of Ramesses V, held the title of Adoratrice but is nowhere attributed with the title of God’s Wife.  On the other hand, a daughter of Ramesses VI, Iset, is attested as an Adoratrice on a stele from Coptos and as a God’s Wife on a block from the Karnak temple complex (See Bart, God’s Wife of Amun).  This seems to indicate that the two offices were still distinct from one another.

Iset was followed as God’s Wife by Tyti, believed to have been the queen of Ramesses X.  Tyti did not hold the title of Divine Adoratrice, which also seems to indicate that the two offices had not yet become fused into one.  But changes were underway that would once again affect the status of the God’s Wife, and which would eventually lead to a redefinition of the Divine Adoratrice as well. 

The hawkish young Ramesses II—great at leading armies, not so great with the royal budget (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

During the early Nineteenth Dynasty the Ramesside Pharaohs enjoyed a continuation of the stability and prosperity established by the Thutmosid kings of the Eighteenth.  But military campaigns, particularly those of Ramesses II, would take their toll on the royal coffers, and midway through the dynasty rivalry between Pharaoh Merneptah’s sons, Amenmesse and Seti II, would have a destabilizing effect on Egyptian politics.  The royal intrigues carried over into the Twentieth Dynasty, where drought and famine conspired to make a bad situation intolerable. 

The internecine conflict which defined the latter part of the Ramesside Period, along with corruption and a general lack of confidence in royal leadership, brought an end to the New Kingdom.  On the death of Ramesses XI the kingdom again fell into factions and Egypt entered its Third Intermediate Period.  While not as tumultuous as the previous Intermediate Periods, Egypt at the beginning of the First Millennium BC was a nation divided. 

Pharaoh Pinedjem I (Photo by Lamerie)

As authority at the capital in Memphis collapsed, a member of one of the powerful noble families of the Delta Region, Smendes, proclaimed a new ruling house.  The Twenty-First Dynasty, based at Tanis, would assume control of Lower (northern) Egypt.  Meanwhile, the current High Priest of Amun, Pinedjem I, would use the influence of his office to declare himself ruler of Upper (southern) Egypt, establishing a sort of theocracy based at Thebes.

Relations between the two ruling factions were actually highly integrated early in the Third Intermediate Period.  Pinedjem I was not entirely without a connection to the previous dynasty, having married a daughter of Pharaoh Ramesses XI named Henuttawy.  Smendes I likewise married a daughter of Ramesses XI, Tentamun, making the two kings brothers-in-law via the royal house.  Psusennes I, the third pharaoh to sit on the throne at Tanis, was actually the son of the Theban ruler Pinedjem and his wife.

Divine Adoratrice and God’s Wife, Maatkare (Drawing by Lepsius Denkmahler)

On proclaiming himself Pharaoh of Upper Egypt, Pinedjem I named his daughter, Maatkare, God’s Wife of Amun and Divine Adoratrice.  While it is not certain that this was the point where the two offices merged into one, all clearly attested God’s Wives following Maatkare also held the title of Adoratrice.  It is also during the tenure of Maatkare that the tradition of the God’s Wife remaining celibate and “adopting” her successor began.  Although the God’s Wife and Adoratrice Iset had never married, her successor Tyti did, so celibacy as a requirement does not seem to begin until Maatkare.

The celibacy requirement undoubtedly had religious significance, but very likely served a political purpose as well.  As we saw in The Rise of Thebes, The Rise of Amun, one way Ahmose I controlled access to the royal throne was by prohibiting royal princesses from marrying anyone except their brothers, thus preventing anyone from marrying into the line of succession.  Celibacy would have certainly achieved the same result.  As Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson observe regarding the God’s Wives of this period:

She was barred from marriage, remaining a virgin; therefore she had to adopt the daughter of the next king as heiress to her office.  In this way the king sought to ensure that he always held power in Thebes and also prevented elder daughters from aiding rival claimants to the throne.  (p. 113)

Princess Henuttawy, adopted by Maatkare to succeed her as Adoratrice and God’s Wife (Drawing by Lepsius Denkmahler)

As mentioned above, another link with the succession of pharaohs was the practice of the God’s Wife adopting a daughter of the future king as her own successor.  As with both celibacy and royal intrafamilial marriages (which sounds so much more polite than incest), the practice of adopting the next God’s Wife from within the royal lineage kept power consolidated to the immediate family of the king.  These adoptions became increasingly important as having a daughter in the position of God’s Wife of Amun became associated with the king’s legitimacy.

As for the merging of the offices of the Divine Adoratrice and the God’s Wife, one possible explanation is that the adopted successor may have been called the Adoratrice while in a sort of apprenticeship to the current God’s Wife.  This would mean that the two positions were not technically the same post, but it would explain why all God’s Wives after Maatkare also held the title of Adoratrice.  To explore this possibility, let’s take a brief jump ahead to the Late Kingdom Period.

Synthesis via Adoption?  The Late Kingdom Period

Pharaoh Psamtik I, from the tomb of Pabasa (Photo by Neithsabes)

Pharaoh Psamtik I, the first king of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, was in many ways the Ahmose of the Late Kingdom Period.  He even had a Kamose-like forerunner, Necho I, who is sometimes credited with being the first king of the new dynasty.  A delta king from the Saite line of nobles, Psamtik reunited Egypt after the Third Intermediate Period by peacefully reclaiming Thebes and declaring independence from the Assyrians.

Also like Ahmose, Psamtik erected a stele that was similar in function to the Donation Stele, called the Adoption Stele.  At the time when Psamtik re-annexed Thebes, a God’s Wife of the previous ruling dynasty named Shepenwepet II was still in office.  Complicating matters further, Shepenwepet had already adopted a successor—Amenirdis II—who held the title of Adoratrice apparently as an indicator of her status as the heir apparent to Shepenwepet’s office. 

Princess Nitocris, from the tomb of Pabasa (Photo by Neithsabes)

In the Adoption Stele, Psamtik lays out the conditions under which his own daughter, Nitocris, was to be adopted into the line of God’s Wives.  Rather than depose Amenirdis, the new pharaoh worked within the existing system to introduce his daughter into the fold.

Now indeed I heard that a king’s daughter is there, the Horus high of crowns, the good god [Pharaoh Taharqa, father of Amenirdis II], true of voice, whom he gave to his sister [God’s Wife Shepenwepet II] to be her eldest daughter [i.e., her adopted heir to the position of God’s Wife] and who is there as Divine Adoratrice.  I will not do, namely, what is not to be done, removing an heir from his [in this case “his” refers to the Adoratrice Amenirdis II] throne, since I am a king who loves just order (Ma’at)…Now then I will give her [his daughter, Nitocris] to her [Adoratrice Amenirdis II] as an eldest daughter [i.e., adopted heir] like she was made for the sister of her father [God’s Wife Shepenwepet II].  (Bryan, 2003, p. 8, bracketed statements are my additions)

Shepenwepet II, the Nubian God’s Wife when Thebes surrendered to Psamtik I (Photo by Néfermaât)

This is not really as complex as it sounds.  When Thebes, previously under the control of the Nubian Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, surrendered to King Psamtik I, there was a Nubian God’s Wife named Shepenwepet already in place.  Shepenwepet had already adopted Amenirdis as her heir, and as such, Amenirdis held the title of Divine Adoratrice.  When Shepenwepet died or stepped down, Amenirdis would then become God’s Wife, and would then adopt an heir of her own who would become the Divine Adoratrice.

As part of legitimizing his claim as pharaoh, Psamtik wanted to install his own daughter, Nitocris, as the God’s Wife of Amun, but as “a king who loves just order,” he promised in the Adoption Stele to not remove the current God’s Wife or her heir from office, instead offering Nitocris to be adopted by Amenirdis as her own heir and Adoratrice.  Thus, the line to God’s Wife becomes Shepenwepet II to Amenirdis II, then Amenirdis II to Nitocris.

One thing that we can draw from all of this is that, at least at the time of the Adoption Stele, it seems that the Divine Adoratrice may have been a title associated with the adopted heir of the current God’s Wife.  From this perspective it might be more accurate to say that rather than merging into a single position, the Divine Adoratrice and God’s Wife had been combined into a single career track.  But even this would not be entirely correct, as full-fledged God’s Wives were sometimes referred to as the Adoratrice. 

Both possibilities are not mutually exclusive—the adopted God’s-Wives-in-training may have been called Adoratrices, and upon becoming full-fledged God’s Wives may have employed both titles interchangeably.  What is undeniable is that by the Late Kingdom Period there were no Divine Adoratrices who did not go on to become the God’s Wife.  In this sense, the two titles became inseparable, whether synonymous or not.

We can also see from the Adoption Stele that Psamtik understood the significance of having a daughter in the post of God’s Wife.  Since the God’s Wife adopted as her successor the daughter of the future king, the lineage of God’s Wives should logically reflect the royal line.  Although Psamtik was already king, and had chosen not to usurp the existing line of God’s Wives, he wanted assurances that his daughter would become a God’s Wife of Amun in her turn. 

While it could be argued that Psamtik was driven more by the symbolic importance of Nitocris becoming a God’s Wife than by any social status women may have held, he at least respected the office itself, as evidenced by his decision to have his daughter adopted into the line.  Rather than “do that which is not to be done,” removing the legitimate claimant to the position of God’s Wife, Psamtik played by the rules.

In the next article, House of the Adoratrice Part 2:  Demesne of the God’s Wife, we will take our closest look yet at the Donation Stele as we pay a visit to the Court of Pharaoh Ahmose on the auspicious occasion of the purchase of the office of the Second Priesthood of Amun for his wife, Ahmose-Nefertari, who was already the God’s Wife.  We will conduct a detailed inventory of the stele and put the wealth and influence of the House of the Adoratrice into context before looking at each Eighteenth Dynasty God’s Wife of Amun individually.

Works Cited

Bart, Anneke.  Online:  Ancient Egypt:  God’s Wife of Amun.

Bryan, Betsy.  “The Eighteenth Dynasty before the Amarna Period.”  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.  218-271.

—–  “Property and the God’s Wives of Amun.”  Paper from the conference “Women and Property,” organized and collected by Deborah Lyons and Raymond Westbrook.  Boston:  Harvard U, Ctr for Hellenic Stds, 2003.  Available for download here.

Dodson, Aidan, and Dyan Hilton.  The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.

Shaw, Ian, and Paul T. Nicholson.  The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt.  London: Harry N. Abrams, 2003.

Wilkinson, Richard H.  The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt.  New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Photo “Egypte louvre 011” by Guillaume Blanchard is used in accordance with the Creative Commons 1.0 Generic License.  Photo “Pinedjem I – 221511956_38f5635ff2_b” by Lamerie is used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License.  Photos “AhmoseI-StatueHead MetropolitanMuseum” by Keith Schengili-Roberts and “Shepenwepet II” by Néfermaât are used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.5 Generic License.  Photos “Psammetique_Ier_TPabasa” and “Nitocris_Ier_TPabasa” by Neithsabes are in the public domain, as are the illustrations “maatkare 03082480”, “Duatentopet”, and “Henuttawy” by  Lepsius Denkmahler.  “Adoratrice Seniseneb,” a reproduction of a tomb painting by Norman de Garis Davies, is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is used in accordance with the Fair Use doctrine—all rights reserved.  Photos “Neferetiabet”,   “colossal head of Hatshepsut”, “08 Ramesses II and Horus”, “Queen Mut-Tuya”, and “Thutmose iii B” are by Jon Bodsworth and have been kindly released to the public domain.

Lost Egypt:  Ancient Secrets, Modern Science

Lost Egypt:  Ancient Secrets, Modern Science

Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

1600 Gendy St.

Fort Worth, TX 76107

October 24, 2010 through January 2, 2011

Admission: Adults $14.00, children (2-12) and seniors (60+) $10.00, museum members no charge.

Lost Egypt:  Ancient Secrets, Modern Science focuses on showing young people (although there is plenty for curious or career-oriented adults) the diversity of Egyptological work, ranging from archaeologists and engineers to technicians and forensics experts.  The goal of the exhibit is to spark interest and awareness by showing “how archaeologists use modern science and technology to uncover and understand the ancient civilization of Egypt.”

In addition to simulations and recreations, Lost Egypt will feature life-sized X-Rays of human and animal mummies, facial reconstructions, and a life-sized rapid prototype “unwrapping” of a mummy using CT scans.  There is also a rapid prototype tour of the skull of Djedhor’s mummy.

In addition to the forensics and reconstructions there will be plenty of authentic ancient Egyptian artifacts, including an actual human mummy and a mummified cat and ibis.  Visitors will be treated to artifacts on loan from The Brooklyn Museum and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.  The exhibit also includes photographic displays of fieldwork in progress and video interviews with experts such as Dr. Sarah Parcak, Dr. Salima Ikram, and Dr. Mark Lehner.

Lost Egypt:  Ancient Secrets, Modern Science was produced by the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) at Columbus.  For more information about the exhibit see Fort Worth Museum:  Unearth the Mysteries of Egypt in LOST EGYPT.  To download an exhibit walk-through from COSI, click this link.

If you plan to visit this exhibit, please share your experience and impressions with Em Hotep’s readers in the Comments section below!

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

The purpose of these imaginary missives from the desk of the Overseer of All the King’s Works is to give the reader an idea of the amount of planning, materials, and manpower involved not only in building the Great Pyramid, but in preparation for the work itself.  There were mines and quarries to be opened, a fully functional workers’ city to be constructed, and an entire nation to be mobilized.

In many ways this is a re-introduction to the Hemienu to Houdin series, but it is also intended to be a stand-alone monologic narrative (fancy-speak for letters from just one person that tell a story) of how Hemienu initiated the project that would occupy all of Egypt for more than two decades.  Methods and materials, labor and logistics, tools and tasks, they are all here for your evaluation, along with a short annotated bibliography at the end.

Note:  The names used, with the exception of the Grand Vizier himself, are invented but not without some forethought (the Overseer of the Expedition to the Sinai to open the copper mines, for instance, is named Biah-Ahky, which translates to copper miner), and the titles and positions they hold do have their historical counterparts. 

Letter 1:  The Selection of the Building Site

From the Greatest of the Five of the House of Thoth, Chief Justice, Grand Vizier and Overseer of All the King’s Works, Hemienu, Holder of the King’s Seal, to the overseers, administrators, and nomarchs of the Two Lands:  Life, Prosperity, Health!

All of Upper and Lower Egypt Rejoice!  A place has been chosen for the pyramid complex of our pharaoh, Khufu, May He Live!  May He Prosper!  May He Be Healthy!  The pyramid where our king shall rest in body will be called Akhet Khufu—Khufu on the Horizon.

Hemienu and his entourage would have sailed the Nile in a more luxuriously appointed barge than this one, from the tomb of Vizier Mereruka, but the scale was probably about the same (Photo by Keith Payne)

Many of you have travelled with me the length of the Nile and have surveyed numerous sites, providing good counsel.  Many days and nights have we held court on the land and on my barge, and many passionate cases have been tendered.  Your service to our king will be remembered by all people, for all time.

I have decided against Saqqara and Dashur and have chosen instead the site in the north, at Rostau.  

I have good reasons for this choice.  First, there is a vast quantity of good yellow limestone there from which to build the inner structures of the pyramid and temples.  Second, there is a gentle slope which begins in the low area, suitable for a quay, and which connects the best location for the main quarry to the top of the plateau.  A donkey released at the summit will follow this same natural ramp down to an easy path to the Nile.  Donkeys have uncanny judgment in these matters and we should heed his guidance.

Of equal consideration are the plateau’s qualities of expanse and orientation.  It is an elevated plane with room enough for at least three, possibly more, large pyramids and numerous precincts for cemeteries.  Its elevation and orientation will make these monuments visible from Saqqara and Dashur and provide a desirable view when approached from the capital at Memphis.  In particular, I have decided upon the site that we identified as the lesser quarry, on the northeast extreme of the plateau.  This location is not the highest, but I have good reasons for this choice as well. 

The Pyramids of Abu Sir and Giza as viewed from Saqqara (Photo by Gaspa)

By constructing the first pyramid at the northeast corner, the natural ramp formed by the slope is left open to allow future building projects on the plateau.  Building on the highest point first would block access to the northeast corner.  To make the best use of the space, the plateau should be developed in the northeast first, with successive pharaohs building their pyramids along a southwest trajectory.  This will assure that the natural ramp remains open to future construction on the summit.

Building the pyramid within the lesser quarry is advantageous in other ways as well, not the least of which is 147 setat of limestone that needn’t be transported once cut.  Another advantage is the lay of the land, which slopes upward to the west.  When the outline of the pyramid is leveled, the elevated section inside the perimeter will be left intact.  By shaping this hill to fit within the construction, one tenth of the pyramid’s core will already be complete.

The main quarry at the bottom of the slope holds another 176 setat of good limestone, which together with the northeast quarry will provide more than enough blocks to construct the greatest pyramid complex ever built. 

All of Upper and Lower Egypt:  Unite for our pharaoh, Son of Re, Khufu, May He Live!  May He Prosper!  May He Be Healthy!

Letter 2:  Expedition to Open the Sinai Copper Mines

To Iahbty-Semyt, Administrator of the Eastern Desert, and to Biah-Ahky, Overseer of the Expedition to Sinai, Peace upon your goings!

There can be no doubt, Khufu on the Horizon is the greatest project ever undertaken by the people of Egypt, but this great work will require more resources than we have on hand.  There is enough copper for chisels and other tools to begin operations, but as work progresses we will have need of much more than we have now.  By way of investment, I have apportioned such supplies as you will require to lead a mining expedition to the Sinai.

Copper picks, saws, and drilling tubes have been made available, along with the powdered quartzite needed to make the drills and saws cut.  I call this an investment because these resources are in need all throughout Egypt as the great work begins.  In return, the pharaoh will need 840,000 deben of processed copper over the course of your operations.  Your work will be hard, but your afterlife will hold every luxury.

To avoid the transport of unnecessary waste materials, all smelting will take place at the mines.  You will be provided with mud brick to build the kilns and granite pounders for crushing the ore.  Moulds will be provided for pouring the copper into 50 deben ingots.  A supply train will make regular deliveries of wood for the kilns and will return with your finished ingots.

The number of donkeys and carts, baskets, and other equipment required has been left to your expert discretion, you need only inform the Overseer of Provisions of your needs.  A company of soldiers will be attached to your expedition to protect you in your journey, and will remain with you throughout operations to defend against the wild people of the desert.

The tools and methods used by these New Kingdom metal workers to smelt ore were largely the same as those used by Hemienu's workers (Graphic by Achille-Constant-Theodore Emile Prisse d'Avennes)

For this expedition you will select fifty of your best miners, no slaves or prisoners.  Your route will take you across the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea, where ships will bear you to the Sinai.  From there you will continue on donkey to the Plains of Markha and the mines at Wadi Maghara, where the greenest veins of ore—the easiest to smelt—are to be found. 

If in the course of your work turquoise is discovered and may be extracted with ease, please do so, but not at the expense of mining the ore.

In addition to reopening the copper mines at Wadi Maghara, you are to assemble missions to Sewew and the Faiyum to cull the dolerite which is abundant in those lands, and which is vital to the operation of the granite quarry at Aswan. 

It is imperative that your expeditions depart as soon as your equipment, supplies, and provisions may be gathered.  The quarries at Rostau and Tura require more copper as soon as you can deliver it, and the work at Aswan must not be delayed if the granite is to be delivered on schedule. 

May Isis watch over you.

Letter 3: Recruitment of the Unskilled and Semi-Skilled Labor Force

To Ahwet-Tepey, Administrator of the Corvée, Life and Peace!

An important task is given you, for you are my eyes and voice throughout the Two Lands.  You are to send recruiters to every nome, from Theb-Ka in the Delta to Ta-Seti at Aswan.  These recruiters will identify those men whose privilege will be to pay their bak debt working to raise Khufu on the Horizon from the Plateau of Rostau.  All the strongest men of the realm are summoned to pit their endurance and athleticism against one another for the glory of the king and the honor of their towns and families!

These recruiters will arrange the schedule of rotation and provide the men with their work assignments.  Men will be needed for the quarries at Aswan and Tura, as well as the main quarry at Rostau and the lesser quarry where the pyramid will be raised.  Men will also be needed to provide supporting services to the great work, both at home and in the quarries.

There will be jobs for hearty men of few skills who will work under direct supervision.  For these jobs select men who are stout of body and spirited in nature.  These men they will be working in teams with others from their families and villages, competing in their labor with men from all over Egypt for glory and honor.  Tell these men they will travel, gain experience and character, and will come to be all they are capable of being.  And they will eat better every day in service to the king than they do on festival days at home!

When selecting these men bear in mind the sort of labor they will be doing.  Their backs will move the levers that free the blocks in the quarries, pull the laden sleds, and load, unload, and arrange the great blocks of Khufu on the Horizon. Their arms will clear the debris and bust rocks for filler material.  They will grind gypsum and pour mortar.  Their legs will carry water for the work, wood for the fires, and tools to and from the sharpeners and the stonecutters.  They will work in quarries, on docks, and on the pyramid itself.

Teams from the corvée pulling a colossal statue on a great sled. Most of the stone moved throughout Giza would have been on much smaller sleds, but the granite beams quarried at Aswan would have been pulled on sleds not unlike this one (Drawn by Faucher-Gudin)

Of course, some men will need to remain behind on their farms to do their part for Khufu on the Horizon.  These men will till the earth, fish the Nile, and tend their flocks and herds as they have always done.  Their bak debt will be paid on hooves, in barrels, and in grain sacks.  Cattle and goats, and the drovers to deliver them.  Fish and fowl.  Emmer and Barley, garlic and leeks.  Onions, radishes, cucumbers, dates, honey, and figs.  Salt and herbs.  All for the glory of Egypt, all for the glory of the Pharaoh, all for the sake of Ma’at!

Your recruiters must also seek men with useful talents or the ability to learn quickly.  Unlike the unskilled men, who will be constantly told come here and go there, these men will have regular assignments such as positioning levers, rough shaping stone, and sharpening tools.  They will operate machines which have been designed to lift and turn the laden sleds.  They will cook the meals in the barracks and assist the bakers and brewers. 

A Young brewery worker from the Old Kingdom (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

These are coveted positions to which they will return for their season of bak labor year after year, with prospects for advancement.  They are opportunities to learn a trade, and a clever man may find himself apprenticed to a master.  For this reason your recruiters should know that bribes and nepotism will not be tolerated.  Any man who corrupts this great work will find himself and his family made destitute, his lands seized, and his place in the afterlife forfeit.

Your men need not worry about skilled artisans and craftsmen, as these will be recruited by their nomarchs and overseers.  Your recruiters need only concern themselves with mobilizing the main body of the corvée to the pharaoh’s service. 

Arrange shifts and rotations of the corvée, send the right workers where they are needed most, and coordinate with the Royal Treasury and the Overseer of Provisions to assure that the granaries and storehouses remain stocked.

It is important for your men to work with haste, but of especial importance that those who will be recruiting from Lower Egypt, particularly the nomes of Khensu, Ka-Khem, Heq-At, and lower Aneb-Hetch—those nomes closest to Rostau—immediately send workers to the plateau to begin construction of the city where the permanent residents and rotating labor force will dwell. 

This city will grow over time, but even in Year One there will be need for barracks, granaries, bakeries, breweries, and other facilities necessary to support the great work.

I wish you peace!  May you live, prosper, and be healthy!

Letter 4:  Recruitment of the Skilled Labor Force

To the Nomarchs and Overseers of Upper and Lower Egypt—Life, Prosperity, and Health!

Let word go out to all nomes and territories—men and women of wisdom and ability, your skills are required at the main site and in the quarries for Khufu on the Horizon! 

The mudbrick buildings and narrow streets of the workers’ city (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes)

To all the nomarchs:  send proclamations throughout your domains saying that Pharaoh Khufu (May He Live!  May He Prosper!  May He be Healthy!) requires the immediate services of skilled tradesmen of all professions!

Potters, weavers, metallurgists and smiths, woodworkers, carpenters, drovers, millers, butchers, bakers, and brewers–come to Rostau to serve your bak debt.  If you choose to remain, opportunities abound for you to make your fortunes.  There will be commerce and industry the year round.

A worker’s city is to be constructed at Rostau straight away—barracks, administrative buildings, granaries, bakeries, breweries, work yards, smithies, and foundries.  There will be permanent dwellings for those who bring their families to settle, and your king encourages this heartily!  Already the workers gather to build this city, to labor in the quarry, and to cut the foundations for Khufu on the Horizon!  Those craftsmen and artisans who are first to arrive will have the most desirable jobs, the finest housing, the best in all things!

Mudbrick was used for the worker’s city because there was a need to build as quickly and cheaply as possible (Graphic by Achille-Constant-Theodore Emile Prisse d'Avennes)

To Sha-Asha, the Overseer of Craftsmen, there is immediate need at Rostau for journeymen of all professions—mudbrick makers, thatchers, carpenters, wood workers, potters, smiths, rope makers and weavers.  There is need in the quarries for men skilled in the working of copper and the making of tools.  Everywhere there is demand for basket makers.  There are ships to be built and sails to be made.  All sons and daughters of Egypt owe bak, but those who have a trade can truly better their lives.  

To Henem-Meha, Overseer of the King’s Quarries and Inspector of Masons, there is need at Rostau to build containment walls for the workers’ city, to construct a quay at the foot of the plateau, and to pave the access road from the quay to the northeast quarry.  There will also be need for a canal to be dug from the Nile to the quay, a distance of more than half an iter.  Plan for the canal to be at least 12,380 cubits in length and wide and deep enough to support a barge carrying granite beams equal in weight to well over 2 million deben of copper.

In addition, operations are to commence at the quarry at Tura, eight miles upstream from Rostau, from which the fine white limestone for the pyramid and temple facings will be cut and dressed.  Work is also to begin at the granite quarry at Aswan.

There is need in all places for surveyors, stone cutters, breakers and ledgemen, masons, dredgers, drillers, pounders, and grinders.  Your teams will be provided with related specialists, such as carpenters and smiths, as they require.  The unskilled and semi-skilled help are being dispatched.

To Qai-Sesh, Magistrate, Overseer of the Scribes, and Overseer of the Priests of Re, to you I bid Life, Prosperity, and Health!  In all work centers, but especially at Rostau, there is need of architects and master surveyors, engineers, overseers of labor, priests to advise and bless construction and to sanctify grounds, astrologers, lawyers, physicians and herbalists, counters and inspectors, logisticians, provisioners, and scribes of all varieties.

With all haste let word go out!  As the Nile rises in Akhet, let all Egypt rise to the great work of Khufu on the Horizon!  As the crops emerge in Peret, let the wise and skilled of Upper and Lower Egypt emerge and come forth to the pharaoh’s service!  As grain is harvested in Shemu, nomarchs and overseers:  gather the bounty of Egypt’s craftsmen, artisans, and experts in all things!

Letter Five:  The Opening of the Quarry at Tura

To Iner-Sedjenajeninmer, Quarry Master and Overseer of the Expedition at Tura, Long Life!

Soon the professional craftsmen, semi-skilled workmen, and main force of no less than 500 men will begin arriving at Tura for the commencement of work.  The luminous white limestone of Tura shines in the sun like the surface of the Nile, unlike the dull and course yellow limestone of Rostau. 

For this reason the Tura limestone will be the finished outer facing of Khufu on the Horizon, as well as the mortuary and valley temples, ka and queens’ pyramids, and the finished causeway.  All of Khufu’s (Life!  Prosperity!  Health!) pyramid complex will shine like a diadem on the brow of Isis!

But those who say take leisure, that the outer casing stones will not be needed until the core is erected, are in serious error and know nothing of what my father Snefru (May He Have Life in the East!) achieved.  If the outer surface of a smooth-sided pyramid is not laid first, the corners will not meet at the top.  Small errors at the beginning grow to colossal failures in the end.  The angle and its maintenance are determined by the surface, not the core.  For these reasons, the limestone of Tura will be needed before the first course of Khufu on the Horizon can be laid.

This copper adze would have been used in woodwork, but the copper chisels used in the quarries and at the pyramid site would have looked similar (Original photo by Jon Bodsworth)

This need is compounded by the qualities of the limestone of Tura.  The limestone you will be working with is soft when it is first quarried and cuts easily in straight lines.  This makes extraction, precise shaping, and polishing very easy. 

But as soon as the surfaces are exposed to the air they begin to calcify and form a hard shell.  This increases their durability, but means that all shaping and polishing must be completed at the quarry before they are ever shipped.  This means, of course, that some blocks will sustain damage in transport, but these can be easily patched and mortared.

Dressing the blocks will require a high degree of exactitude.  To finish the stone before the surface hardens the workers will need to move fast.  You will be provided with enough copper to assure that as each chisel dulls there will be another to replace it.  Runners will be in constant motion, carrying away dulled tools and returning with sharpened ones.  Each tool will have to be reheated to be sharpened, so other runners will keep the fire of the smithies stoked.  Coordination of your workforce will be essential.

Cubit measuring rods such as these from the Eighteenth Dynasty tomb of Aperia would have been common tools in the quarries and at the pyramid construction site (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

As the blocks are cut, they must each be lined up side by side exactly as they will be installed on the pyramid.  Once the face is cut to a perfect angle of 14/11 seked, the angle of the pyramid, it must be polished with quartzite powder.  To assure an ideal fit, a toothless copper saw with quartzite grit will need to be passed between each block to perfect their sides to their one another.  

Each block will be numbered to ensure that it is placed correctly when installed.  By installing the outer layer of Tura limestone first, the surveyors and architects will be able to observe that all the angles are correct, which if your work is exact, they will be.  With the facing stones in place, a supporting layer of well calibrated Rostau limestone forty cubits thick will be erected behind them.  The internal ramp will be built into this sturdy layer.  The rough core filling, as well as all chambers, passageways, and some machinery necessary for construction, will be contained behind the support layer.

Building from within—Workers lever one of the Tura limestone blocks into place. Also depicted is the 20 meter-thick layer of local limestone which supported the internal ramp. Some of the rough core is represented in the upper-right corner (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes)

Course by course, this is how Khufu on the Horizon will come into being.  Iner-Sedjenajeninmer, you have been chosen to oversee the work at Tura because of your qualifications, and the pharaoh is counting on you.  As you cut, shape, and perfect each numbered course of blocks, you will be essentially building the pyramid first at Tura and then shipping it to Rostau.  The rest of the pyramid will be built within what you provide.  It is imperative that you know this.  Great will be your reward, and you will dwell with the pharaoh forever.  Friend of the King, go in peace!

Letter Six:  The Opening of the Quarry at Aswan

To Emratab-Neb, Quarry Master and Overseer of the Expedition to Aswan, Prosperity!

A workforce of no less than 500 men, including quarry workers, supportive staff, and all manner of experts has been dispatched to Aswan.  Although we will not have need for granite until Year Twelve, work must begin immediately.  The qualities of the stone and the logistics required to deliver it to Rostau will make your work slow and tedious and even more reliant on the seasons than other quarry work.  Rest assured, all of these difficulties have been resolved, but your mastery and patience will be demanded in equal measure.  The pharaoh asks much of you, and great will be the glory.

An Aswan granite quarry at the site of the Unfinished Obelisk (Photo by Joe Pyrek)

The granite you will be quarrying is too hard for chisels, so expect a minimum of copper to be rationed to your operation.  Instead you will be receiving large quantities of dolerite, which is harder than the granite of Aswan.  Wooden wedges driven into natural cracks and those opened with dolerite mallets can be soaked with water, causing them to expand and free the stone.  Once extracted, the granite can be shaped into great beams with dolerite pounders.

A spherical dolerite pounder left behind in the Great Pyramid. These pounders were harder than the Aswan granite, which couldn’t be shaped with copper tools (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

Dolerite is being collected by missions dispatched to Sewew and the Faiyum for that purpose.   Additionally, teams have been sent forth to the cataracts, where the Nile gives up dolerite shaped into spheres.  These special pounders will allow your most expert stone cutters to shape the hard granite into the specific forms needed for the great work.

These great beams will weigh up to 2 million deben [around 60 tons], some of them possibly more.  They will be used to protect vulnerable chambers within the pyramid, to bear and direct the pressure of incredible amounts of weight, and to span wide reaches with minimal support, where limestone would crack under its own mass.  They will likewise be used for structural purposes in the temples connected to Khufu on the Horizon.

You will have to quarry, shape, and ship more than 118 million deben [3,500 tons, give or take] of granite from Aswan before this great work is done, more than has been used in the entirety of Egypt’s past.  The beams will make the twenty-day journey down the Nile on mighty barges.  An expedition has been sent to Lebanon to acquire cedar for the manufacture of these barges, and the Overseer of Shipwrights and Chandlers, who has already begun work on the lesser barges for the Tura limestone, has the plans for these vessels at the ready.

Along with the other experts being sent to Aswan, you will receive a team of dredgers who will oversee the digging of trenches in the flood lands during the season of Shemu, when the plains are dry.  These trenches will be deep enough to hold the barges so that their decks are level with the land.  As granite beams are completed they will be loaded onto great sleds, wood for which is also being procured from Lebanon, and these sleds will be towed onto the barges and left there.  When the plains flood in the season of Akhet, the barges will be lifted by the Nile and carried to Rostau on the rapid currents of the inundation.

Granite beams lined up on the King’s Chamber level of the pyramid (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systems)

As you can see, you will need every day of the following twelve years to maintain the schedule required by the construction.  The quarrying will be slow, and the dressing of the stone many times more so.  Beams should be shipped in the Akhet immediately following their completion, to be stored on site at Rostau. 

The center of all this effort, the primary reason for the great work, is the 10 by 20 cubits chamber in which the king’s body will rest.  Everything else, from the bottom of the causeway to the tip of pyramidion, is there to physically and spiritually support that sacred space. 

The granite beams you will be sending to the plateau are what make this sacred space possible.  Without them, the great work will fail.  You labor for the king, for Ma’at, and for the glory of all Egypt. 

Cut-away view of the King’s Chamber with its granite support beams. The physics required in constructing the 10 by 20 cubits burial chamber with its flat ceiling guided nearly every other decision made by Hemienu (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes)

Annotated Bibliography

• Brier, Bob, and Jean-Pierre Houdin. The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man’s Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Mystery. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

In this paradigm-shifter, Jean-Pierre Houdin and Bob Brier introduce M. Houdin’s theories about the construction of the Great Pyramid.  Written for a general audience, but without skimming over details or dumbing down the material, The Secret of the Great Pyramid is a detailed explanation of the internal ramp theory and the physical and circumstantial evidence in support of it.

The Secret of the Great Pyramid accomplishes the delightful achievement of being a book that is equally at home in your Works Cited page and your beach bag.  But don’t confuse its mass appeal with being light on scholarship.  I do not use the words paradigm-shifter lightly–Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work takes us around the corner and into the next phase of understanding how the monuments of the Memphis Necropolis, from Saqqara to Giza, were constructed, and The Secret of the Great Pyramid is your introduction to the future of comprehending the past.  A strong endorsement, I know..  And I stand behind every word!

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Pyramid site selection (pp. 58-78); details of the Tura limestone (pp. 67-72); the granite quarry at Aswan (pp. 67-69); the workers’ city (pp. 64-66); logistics (pp. 70-1); Sinai mining operations (pp. 71-2).

• Hitchins, Derek K.  The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook.  Self-published via Lulu, 2010.

In The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook, Derek K. Hitchins sets out to explain how these massive national building projects were carried out in terms of systems engineering.  Hitchins brings his experience as an engineer to the task of exploring the history of pyramid development, logistics, and how the process of problem resolution utilized existing technologies and methods as well as led to new ones.

Hitchins is effective in debunking the construction theories involving external ramps only (pp. 141-5), but does not address the possibility of an internal ramp, much less a combined solution of an internal and external ramp.  He favors what he calls “rocking methods” (pp. 146-48), which involves balancing the stones on two facing wedges and inserting planks beneath each wedge while the block is “rocked” onto the other, thus raising the stone step by step. 

While this method could certainly work in raising individual blocks, and was possibly used in certain applications, compared to the internal ramp theory it seems to this writer to be tedious and impractical.  Hitchins is an expert in systems engineering and the Gentle Reader is encouraged to evaluate his arguments for him/herself.  But in the writing of this article, The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook was most useful in describing the corvée and the division of labor.

The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook is well written and presented in a textbook-style, with ample photographs and illustrations.  The material can be fairly technical at times, and general readers may find it more useful as a reference work, as opposed to something you will read from cover to cover.  While I do not agree with all of Hitchins’ conclusions, I found the book to be incredibly informative and packed with useful data and information. 

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  The corvée and labor organization (pp. 9-12, 123-26. 138-41); logistics and feeding the workforce (pp. 117-21); Khufu’s Pyramid in general (pp. 39-45).

• Houdin, Jean-Pierre.  Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed.  Giza:  Abydos Pub., 2010.

In Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed, Jean-Pierre Houdin expands on the materiel introduced in The Secret of the Great Pyramid, going into much greater detail regarding how all of the elements of both his theory and the pyramid itself fit together into a cohesive whole.  While still a highly readable work, Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed delves further into Hemienu’s simple solutions for the complex problems posed by the Great Work of building Khufu on the Horizon. 

Nearly every page is beautifully illustrated by the aesthetically pleasing and intricately detailed computer graphics produced by M. Houdin and Dassault Systemes (some of which appear in this article), who have graciously supported Jean-Pierre in every aspect of his work.  Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed leaves—literally—no stone unturned in showing how the Great Pyramid was constructed using tools and techniques known to have been in use during the period in question.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Details of the Tura limestone (p. 17); tools and logistics (pp. 19-21); requirements for the King’s Chamber (pp. 29, 53); building from within (pp. 33-35); pyramid site selection (p. 43); the corvée and workers’ city (pp. 45-47).

• Lehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Mark Lehner’s magnum opus of all things pyramidical, The Complete Pyramids covers the history and development not only of the pyramids themselves, but of the people who have studied them.  From the first instance of stacking one mastaba on top of another to the pyramids of Late Antiquity, Lehner explicates the design, function, and evolution of these complex tombs and “resurrection machines.”

The Complete Pyramids predates the publication of Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work by a couple of years, so the internal ramp theory gets a grand total of one paragraph (p. 216) and is limited to the theories proposed by Dieter Arnold.  However, for his detailed treatment of the individual pyramids, the people who built them, and the tools they used, Lehner’s Complete Pyramids is required reading for every Egyptologist, amateur and professional alike. 

Heavily illustrated and presented in textbook format, The Complete Pyramids is as accessible to laypersons as it is useful to experts, which is to say, very.  Again, I have to admit my biases in favor of Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work as being the most thorough and up to date treatment of pyramid construction, but it is difficult to fully appreciate the achievements of the latter without understanding the historical and cultural context which Lehner gives to the subject. 

As always, the Gentle Reader is encouraged to explore these books first hand and with a joyous heart and an open mind reach his or her own conclusions—and reading The Complete Pyramids is a joy.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Khufu’s Pyramid in general (pp. 108-19); pyramid site selection (pp. 12-13); the Giza Plateau (pp. 106-07); logistics (pp. 202-05); quarries (pp. 206-07); tools (210-11); the corvée (pp. 224-25); the workers’ city (pp. 230-33, 238-39); feeding the workforce (236-37).

• Lehner, Mark.  Et al.  AERAgram:  The Official Newsletter of Ancient Egypt Research Associates.  Vol. 1-10.

The Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) is the organization founded in 1985 by Mark Lehner and Matthew McCauley for the purpose of funding and facilitating the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, and extension of Lehner’s work with the Great Sphinx.  AERA’s primary focus in the last decade has been the excavation and analysis of the pyramid workers’ city at Giza.

AERAgram is the newsletter and biannual report of the work at the site and has been extremely valuable in understanding the corvée and the bak system, as well as how the various social strata of the pyramid city worked and lived.  All ten volumes of AERAgram, which are available in pdf format from the official AERA website, were consulted in writing this article.

• Siliotti, Alberto. Guide to the Pyramids of Egypt. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997.

Alberto Siliotti’s Guide to the Pyramids of Egypt is an excellent introductory-level encyclopedia of pyramids, with hundreds of photographs, maps, and diagrams.  Siliotti’s large-format book has entries on all of the major pyramids and necropolises, with details of the temples and complexes associated with them.

While the photography provides a veritable tour of the architecture and landscape, I found the site and structure maps especially useful.  While clearly an entry level book, its thoroughness and layout makes it a handy reference for Egypt aficionados of all varieties.  This is one of those coffee table books you often see on the bargain tables and in the remainder bins, and if you come across a copy you will not regret picking it up.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Khufu’s Pyramid in general (pp. 48-53); the Giza Plateau (pp. 46-7); tools and construction (pp. 40-4); workers’ city (p. 45).

• Wilkinson, A. H. Toby.  Early Dynastic Egypt.  New York:  Routledge, 1999.

Early Dynastic Egypt explores how government and the world’s first bureaucracy developed in the earliest phase of Old Kingdom Period of Egypt, from Dynasties Zero to Three.  In this heavily researched work (nearly every paragraph in this book has at least one citation!), author Toby A. H. Wilkinson delves into the subjects of administration, foreign relations, and the establishment of urban centers with the thoroughness of a master who knows his subject and sincerely wants you to know it as well.

Wilkinson provides individual mini-biographies for every Egyptian ruler from the unnamed kings of Dynasty 0 through to Huni and Qahedjet.  The section on the establishment of authority (pp. 92-279) explains in detail how the royal administration developed, from the petty nobility to the creation of the vizier, and the growth (by necessity) of a complex system of titles and functionaries. 

Although the timeframe of Early Dynastic Egypt (just barely) predates the subject of this article, it was an invaluable resource in understanding the foundations of the political system and hierarchy in which Hemienu operated and how it was vital to mobilizing the nation toward the singular goal of building Khufu’s Pyramid.   It has been stated that while the Egyptians built the pyramids, the pyramids built Egypt.  In other words, the national political system emerged from the process of organizing the great work of pyramid construction.  Toby Wilkinson shows that the roots of the nation-state of Egypt actually reach considerably further back than the Fourth Dynasty.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Administration and royal titles (pp. 92-126); Sinai mining operations (pp. 121-22; 139-46); mines and quarries in general (144-45); development of the corvée (pp. 94-95, 120); the institution of the vizier (116-118); administration of royal building projects (pp. 113-14).

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Graphics “Workers’ city”, “Building from within”, Granite beams qued”, and “King’s chamber” by Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes are copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systems and are used with their kind permission—all rights reserved.  Graphic “Contour Map of the Giza Plateau” by Jean-Pierre Houdin/Albert Ranson is copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin and Albert Ranson and is used with their kind permission—all rights reserved.  Photographs “The Pyramids of Dashur and Giza as viewed from Saqqara” by Gaspa, and “Aswan granite quarry” by Joe Pyrek are used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.  Photographs  “Dolerite Sphere”, “Cubit measuring rods”, “Old kingdom figure showing beer making”, “Basalt drill core”, and “Copper adze” by Jon Bodsworth have been kindly released by Mr. Bodsworth to the public domain.  Drawings “Stone-cutters finishing the dressing of limestone blocks”, “Colossal statue being dragged on a sled”, and “Measuring wheat and depositing it in the granaries“ drawn by Faucher-Gudin (Maspero, Gaston. History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria. Vol. II, Part A. London: Grolier Society), courtesy of Project Gutenberg, and plates “Metal workers” and “Mudbrick makers”, by Achille-Constant-Theodore Emile Prisse d’Avennes (Atlas de I’Histoire de I’Art Egyptien, d’apres les monuments, depuis les temps les plus reculesjusqu’d la domination romains, 1877), are in the public domain as their copyrights have expired.

The lectures will include an overview of the Franklin Institute exhibit, the origins of Egyptology as a discipline, and burial practices during the Ptolemainc Period.

For details, visit nj: Camden County College to host free lecture series on Cleopatra

We are pleased to announce that CRE XII will be held from Wednesday 23^rd – Saturday 26^th March 2011 at Durham University, UK.

We invite papers from researchers across the world studying Egypt and the Sudan, from Palaeolithic to Islamic studies. The aim of this year’s conference is to shed light on the multidisciplinary nature of the field of Egyptology. Researchers from all disciplines that are directly engaged with ancient Egypt or using it as a comparative study are highly encouraged to participate.

Themes might include but are not restricted to…

Themes might include but are not restricted to:

• Art History
• Burial Customs
• Commerce and Economy
• Cross-Cultural Interaction
• Current Fieldwork
• Ethnic Archaeology
• Identity and Self-presentation
• Linguistics
• Material Culture
• Power and Influence
• Reception
• Religion

Contributions to the conference can be submitted in one of the following forms:

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With Amun now the King of the Gods, his earthly consort came into her own wealth and authority in a way that would ultimately shatter the glass ceiling of Egyptian politics, at least for a while…

When studying religious and political institutions in ancient Egypt, very rarely can we point to a specific person, time, and place and say “that is where it all began.”  The God’s Wife of Amun is unique in that aspect.  True, the genesis of the title and its original purpose are lost in the murky traditions of overlapping and often contradictory provincial religions.  And true, we are not 100% certain of who the first royal God’s Wife may have been.  But there are some things we do know.

We know, for instance, that the office of God’s Wife of Amun underwent a complete restructuring in the early years of the New Kingdom, when it was endowed with wealth and status that elevated it to one of the most powerful institutions in ancient Egypt.  We know the individual who set these changes in motion was none other than Ahmose I, Hero of Thebes and Champion of Amun.  And we know that the first person to hold the reinvented office was his queen, Ahmose-Nefertari.

As with both Thebes and Amun, the story of the God’s Wife is a tale of upward mobility.  Just as Thebes began as a backwater county seat, and Amun began as an abstract creative principle, the God’s Wife started out as just one character in a cast of many in the creation dramas of Egypt’s temples.  But also like her patron city, which rose to become the capital of all Egypt, and her divine consort, who was raised to the status of King of the Gods, the God’s Wife of Amun became the quintessential case study in power politics.

Before we look at what the title of God’s Wife came to entail under the auspices of Pharaoh Ahmose, let’s first look at what it meant in its more humble years.  The details are scanty, but there is enough to lay a foundation that will enable us to place her in her historical, religious, and political contexts.

God’s Wives in the Middle Kingdom

The first mention of God’s Wives occurs in the Middle Kingdom Period, particularly in the Tenth and Twelfth Dynasties.  Although they were not royal women, having a daughter or wife who was a God’s Wife, Divine Adoratrice, or temple musician or chantresses was a sign of prestige.  The daughters of priests, relatives of the royal family, and influential nobles and courtiers were prime candidates for these posts.  Offices of this type were often exchanged for favors and were part of the capital with which the temple bartered.

A priest leading a procession of temple chantresses (Photo by vxla)

God’s Wives during the Middle Kingdom were an order of priestesses who performed special rites associated with their patron deity’s role in creation.  In addition to the God’s Wives of Amun, who was worshipped almost exclusively at Thebes at this time, there were God’s Wives of Ptah, the creator god revered at Memphis, and God’s Wives of Min, also a god of fertility and creation.  As with Ptah and Min, Amun was associated mostly with his role as creator during the Middle Kingdom Period, and the God’s Wives were just part of the temple staffs rather than a specific person associated only with the cult of Amun.

Twosret, a God’s Wife from the Nineteenth Dynasty, playing sistrums for Amun (Photo by John D. Croft)

Specific details of the God’s Wives duties and functions are practically non-existent, but based on what we know from other aspects of temple liturgy and ritual we can make some pretty informed guesses.  Just from her role as the wife of the creator god, we can logically presume that she would have symbolically performed the role of consort in the act of creation.  The later God’s Wives of Amun, for example, would dance and play the sistrum before the god’s statue to arouse him to the act of creation.

God’s Wives probably carried out other duties such as singing hymns and presenting food offerings before the god.  Chanters and musicians were ubiquitous to religious processions, and God’s Wives undoubtedly participated in these public and private aspects of worship.  During the New Kingdom Period the God’s Wife of Amun assumed many of the duties of the High Priest, but there is no evidence to conclude that her station was so elevated during the earlier years. 

Musicians and chanters in adoration of Montu, from a Middle Kingdom temple at Madu, near Luxor

God’s Wives in the Second Intermediate Period

It is not entirely clear whether or not there were God’s Wives during the Second Intermediate Period, as there are no attestations that date from that time.  This was during the era of the Hyksos occupation, and the office may have been altered or phased out in many places.  But if it survived anywhere, it would make sense that it would have survived at Thebes, where native Egyptian traditions were maintained by the local nobility.  There is some evidence that this may have been the case. 

A scene from Khabekhnet’s tomb depicting his mummification (Photo by Helmut Satzinger, courtesy of Lenka and Andy Peacock)

The suggestion that there may have been God’s Wives during the Second Intermediate Period comes from a scene in the tomb of Khabekhnet, a Nineteenth Dynasty artisan who was himself a tomb worker in the Theban Necropolis. 

One of the privileges of being a royal tomb worker was that you had the tools and skills to craft for yourself a tomb fit for a king.  Khabekhnet left a beautifully decorated tomb in which he pays homage to deceased members of the royal family, who frequently had local cults in which they were revered as gods. 

Four God’s Wives from the Tomb of Khabekhnet—Are two from the Second Intermediate Period?

One scene in Khabekhnet’s tomb depicts four royal women whom he calls God’s Wives.  One is named Kamose, thought to refer to a known Eighteenth Dynasty God’s Wife named Sitkamose, whom we will examine in depth later in this series.  Another name is illegible.  But the other two, Sit-ir-bau and Ta-khered-qa, may have lived during the latter years of the Second Intermediate Period, and do not appear on lists of God’s Wives from the Eighteenth Dynasty (See Anneke Bart, Ancient Egypt:  God’s Wife of Amun).  Could they have been God’s Wives—royal God’s Wives no less—from the Seventeenth Dynasty?

This comes with the caveat that Khabekhnet lived during the reign of Ramesses II, some 250-300 years after the time in question.  It was also not unusual for the title of God’s Wife of Amun to be conferred posthumously, although this was typically done by pharaohs and had to do with exalting their mothers and legitimizing their own succession.  But this fragment of evidence hints that the office of God’s Wife may have been reformed rather than revived, and keeping the position active may have been another way in which Thebes remained faithful to Amun during the occupation.

Reformation:  God’s Wives at the Dawn of the New Kingdom

The woman who would be king—Hatshepsut (Photo by Keith Payne)

Beginning with the New Kingdom Period the office of God’s Wife of Amun becomes something entirely different from anything that had ever existed before.  Ultimately, her authority will surpass that of the High Priest of Amun (Taylor, p. 338) and will come close to that of the pharaoh himself (p. 360).  These particular developments did not occur until the Third Intermediate Period, but even as early as the New Kingdom her power was such that a particularly determined God’s Wife used her influence to actually become a pharaoh.  More about her later.

Many lists of God’s Wives of Amun place Ahmose I’s mother, the celebrated Queen Ahhotep I, as the first royal woman to hold the office.  But as with Sit-ir-bau and Ta-khered-qa, there is a lack of corroborating evidence from Ahhotep’s lifetime attributing the title to her, which calls into question whether she ever actually held the position.  In fact, the only place where she is called a God’s Wife is in the inscriptions on the lid of her coffin.

The first royal woman we can say with near certainty was a God’s Wife of Amun was Ahmose’s queen, Ahmose-Nefertari.  With Nefertari we have not only an abundance of attributions from her lifetime, we have the actual legal document that confers upon her the newly reconstituted office and all rights, privileges and properties contained therein.  For these details we shall resume with the story of the Hero of Thebes and the founding of the New Kingdom.

Ahmose I:  Hero, Champion, and Benefactor

Champion of Amun, Hero of Thebes—Pharaoh Ahmose I (Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts)

AhmoseOur story picks up after Ahmose I’s defeat of the Hyksos and their allies, and the corralling of the remaining dissidents.  As detailed in The Rise of Thebes, The Rise of Amun, Ahmose then began a program of construction and restoration funded by the opening of trade routes with Syria and copper mines in the Sinai, not to mention the gold that came out of Nubia.  The newly-founded Eighteenth Dynasty was cash rich and well-placed to repair the misfortunes war had inflicted on Thebes.

The specifics of Ahmose’s reconstruction of Thebes, as well as his investments in the Temple of Amun at Karnak, are provided by three stelae recovered from the temple complex. 

The stelae appear to chronicle a devastating flood and Ahmose’s response, although reading between the lines leaves the impression that the flood may have been a cover story to excuse the destitution of the temple following the wars.  But flood or no flood, the picture that emerges is one of the Estate of Amun desperate for a benefactor and a pharaoh willing to open the coffers.

The first stele, discovered at the Third Pylon at Karnak, is called the Tempest Stele.  It describes a catastrophic storm sent to punish Thebes for her neglect of one of Amun’s major statues, and details Ahmose’s expenditures in repairing the tombs, temples, and pyramids that were damaged. 

Based on how the king’s name appears on the stele, it is believed that it dates from before his twenty-second regnal year (Claude Vandersleyden, as cited by The Thera Foundation:  “A Storm in Egypt during the Reign of Ahmose”). 

It has been proposed that the storm described in the Tempest Stele was the result of a volcanic eruption that destroyed the Aegean island of Thera (also called Santorini), which is believed to have occurred early in Ahmose I’s reign.

Since the stele was erected to commemorate the repairs at Thebes, some time must have elapsed between the storm itself and the erection of the stele upon completion of the repairs. If the storm attested by the stele was caused by the Thera eruption, a date in the reign of Ahmose before year 22 would support the traditional chronology…”  (Source) 

Ritual objects such as this solid gold bowl from the tomb of Djehuty, an Eighteenth Dynasty General, may have been handed over to fund the war during the Third Intermediate Period (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

Another stele, discovered at the Eighth Pylon and which we will call (unofficially!) the Benefactor Stele, dates from the eighteenth year of Ahmose’s reign and again describes the king’s magnanimity regarding the Estate of Amun.  Of particular interest is the nature of his gifts, which included items such as gold and silver ritual vessels and jewelry that, on the one hand, would have been important to the functioning of the temple, but on the other hand would have been valuable to support the war effort.

The objects donated by the king to Karnak are the most essential cult furniture, and their dedication may indicate that the temple was utterly without precious metal objects at this point.  It is impossible to say whether this would have been due to the action of a great storm, as the king asserts in the Tempest Stele, but temple cult objects…might also have been important financial resources for the Thebans during the arduous years of the Seventeenth Dynasty.  (Bryan, 2000, p. 221)

Ahmose I makes an offering to Amun in a scene from the Donation Stele

The third stele, also discovered at the base of the Third Pylon, is called the Donation Stele.  Again we have an account of the pharaoh’s largess, but this time there is a clearly stated quid pro quo.  Ahmose is not just making a donation, he is actually purchasing something, a temple position called the “second priesthood of Amun,” which is to be granted to his wife, Ahmose-Nefertari.  The queen had already been installed as the God’s Wife by this time, making this in effect a conjoining of two previously separate offices within the temple hierarchy.

The fact that Ahmose-Nefertari was already the God’s Wife raises its own set of questions, since it is not known when she was conferred the title, only that it was not simultaneous with the creation of the New and Improved God’s Wife, as detailed in the Donation Stele.  If Nefertari came to the office completely independent of its amalgamation with the second priesthood of Amun, then there is no reason to presume that she was the first royal woman to hold the title.  Perhaps there were God’s Wives during the Second Intermediate Period after all, and Ahmose-Nefertari was simply the next in line.

But the Donation Stele does not just combine two offices, it lays out the schema for a new institution that was a lot more than the sum of its original parts.  Recall that Ahmose was the same tactician who defeated the Hyksos by superior planning.  He took advantage of the seasonal floods, bypassed the targets that were braced for his attack and seized strategic positions that cut Avaris off from both assistance and escape.  If anything, the Donation Stele reflects a similar amount of forethought and nothing, including having the queen already installed as God’s Wife, should be considered superfluous. 

From the Law Offices of Ahmose & Co.:  The Donation Stele

The Donation Stele describes not only the fusion of the God’s Wife and the second priesthood, it also details the endowment of an estate attached to the new office that was separate and independent of both the Priesthood of Amun and the pharaoh himself. 

These assets, called the House, or Estate, of the Adoratrice (not to be confused with the Divine Adoratrice, a distinction which we will explore in the very near future), along with the office itself were the domain of the God’s Wife, to be passed on as she saw fit, to whom she saw fit, without interference.  The ancient contract is very clear on this matter:

Done in the presence of [the council?] of the lands of the city and the servants of the temple of Amun.  What was said in the majesty of the palace, (life!, prosperity!, health!), in… [saying]: …[I have given] the office of the second priest of Amun to the god’s wife, great royal wife, she united to the beauty of the white crown, Ahmose-Nefertary, may she live!…

I have given to her male and female servants, and four hundred oipe of barley and six arouras of inundated land as an excess over the 1,010 shenau.  Her office will be at the value of 600 shenau.  The office is completed for her, it being endowed…

Then the majesty of this god said: “I am her protector.  A challenge to her shall not occur forever by any king who shall arise in the following of future generations.  But only the god’s wife Nefertary.  It belongs to her from son to son forever and ever in accordance with her office of god’s wife.  There is not one who shall say, ‘Except for me’. There is not another who can speak.”  (Bryan, 2003, pp. 3-4)

The final paragraph leaves no doubt as to the intent of the contract—the combined office of God’s Wife and second priesthood belonged to Nefertari and could not be touched by any present or future king, period.  To add extra weight, the paragraph comes in the form of an oracle from Amun himself:  “Then the majesty of this god said…”  The stele also contains a very specific legal proviso which guaranteed her right to name her successor, and that this right would carry over, with all other rights and properties, to that successor.

The clauses pertaining to heirship were drafted under the aegis of a legal device known as imyt per, which was a means of “transferring property outside the normal lines of inheritance” (Bryan, 2003, p. 4).  Imty per allowed a benefactor to transfer property while still living or as part of a will, and contained stipulations that nullified traditional inheritance.  So instead of following convention and going to her eldest son, all properties of the God’s Wife associated with her title went to a successor of her choosing.  Imty per also allowed her to confer her title and properties while she still lived and could personally see her succession through.

Ahmose-Nefertari—First New Kingdom God’s Wife of Amun and possibly the most powerful woman in human history up to that point.

At this point it would be fair to ask regarding this unprecedented compact, cui bono?  It would be noble to think that after the example set by his own mother, Ahhotep, Matriarch of the Revolution, that Ahmose was merely assuring that there would always be a female sovereign to check the power of kings and priests.  Another somewhat less noble but more probable motive was the projection of royal authority into the temple hierarchy that the office provided.  But these two motives are not mutually exclusive, as Bryan notes:

The king was able to purchase the second most important priesthood and further endow its title holder in concert with the position of god’s wife. This not only assured the god’s wife direct involvement in the Amun priesthood, but it also guaranteed a similar connection for the king who sponsored the god’s wife.  (2003, p. 5)

Ahmose had restored wealth and dignity to the Estate of Amun and in so doing had secured for his dynasty the gratitude of the priesthood and an implicit and explicit covenant with Amun.  But the combining of the God’s Wife with the second most powerful office of the temple, the second priesthood, and endowing the new office with an estate which guaranteed independence from priest and potentate alike, assured that at least some royal women would have a voice of their own in how the politics and religion of the New Kingdom unfolded.

Many of Ahmose I’s reforms would be watered down in the coming decades, but his intent was clear—he sought to create a sovereign office for the queen and her heirs which carried its own inherent spiritual and secular leverage.  Regardless of ulterior motives, not the least of which were the obvious implications of being able to say that your mother had coupled with the King of the Gods, the liberties bequeathed on the God’s Wife of Amun by the Donation Stele are undeniable.

In the next installment of this series, The House of the Adoratrice:  Demesne of the God’s Wife of Amun, we will take a specific look at what properties and privileges the Donation Stele granted to the office of the God’s Wife and how they constituted a sort kingdom within the kingdom.  We will also examine what her duties and functions were within the temple, and how these related to another position of power for women within the Estate of Amun, the Divine Adoratrice.

Works Cited

Bart, Anneke.  Online:  Ancient Egypt:  God’s Wife of Amun.

Bryan, Betsy.  “The Eighteenth Dynasty before the Amarna Period.”  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.  218-271.

—–  “Property and the God’s Wives of Amun.”  Paper from the conference “Women and Property,” organized and collected by Deborah Lyons and Raymond Westbrook.  Boston:  Harvard U, Ctr for Hellenic Std, 2003.  Available for download here.

Davis, E.N.  Online:  The Thera Foundation:  A Storm in Egypt during the Reign of Ahmose.  1990.

Taylor, John.  “The Third Intermediate Period.”  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.  330-368.

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Images “Min” and “Ptah”, based on originals by Jeff Dahl, and photograph “Twosret” by John D. Croft are used in acordance with the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.  Photograph “Temple Chantresses” by vxla is used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License.  Photo “AhmoseI-StatueHead MetropolitanMuseum” by Keith Schengili-Roberts is used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.5 Generic License.   Photographs “Ahmose Nefertari” and “Medamoud (Medu) Procession” are in the public domain, as is “Four God’s Wives from tomb of Khabekhnet” by Lepsius (See also Anneke Bart, God’s Wife of Amun).  Photographs “Gold Bowl”, and “Judgment papyrus of Hunefer” (which was sampled for the “Ahmose & Co.” graphic) are by Jon Bodsworth, who has kindly released them to the public domain.  Photo “Tomb scene from Khabekhnet” by Helmut Satzinger is provided courtesy of Lenka and Andy Peacock.

This account of the ascent of Thebes and the god Amun sets the background for a series that will investigate an order of female pontiffs called the God’s Wives of Amun and how these tributaries converge into the ethos, or pathos, of the Heretic King, Akhenaten.   

The Rise of Thebes, the Rise of Amun

To understand how the office of the God’s Wife of Amun was transformed from an order of temple functionaries into a female pontiff with her own domain and retinue we must first understand the interconnectedness between the rise of both the Theban nobility and the god Amun to national significance.  Like the God’s Wife herself, it is a tale of the rise from obscurity to supremacy.   

Prior to the Middle Kingdom Period, Thebes was simply the capital of Waset, the fourth nome of Upper Egypt.  It was a quiet little backwater township of little significance until the closing years of the First Intermediate Period, when the foundations of the Eleventh Dynasty were laid.   

The First Intermediate Period

The First Intermediate Period was a miserable time for Egypt, when drought spread famine and disease, and the lack of a central government fomented civil unrest.  The land was divided into three kingdoms with ineffective and bickering local administrators based at Memphis, Herakleopolis, and Thebes.  But an ambitious Waset nomarch (governor of a nome) would set in motion a series of changes that would lay the course for Thebes’ transformation into the capital of all Egypt.   

The consolidation of power in Thebes began when a nomarch named Intef “the Great” combined the office of governor with that of “overseer of priests,” to which he added “great overlord of Upper Egypt.”  Such lofty claims of station were far from unique during the First Intermediate Period, but there is evidence that Intef’s claim was not your typical blustering.    

Since an inscription referring to this Intef was found in the cemetery of Dendera (the capital of the sixth nome of Upper Egypt), it seems fair to assume that his authority was recognized far beyond the confines of his native province.”  (Seidlmayer, p. 133) 

  

Pharaoh Intef II (Photo by David Liam Moran)

 Intef the Great would not be recognized as a king in the regular sense, but his successor, Mentuhotep I, would be posthumously ascribed pharaohood and is credited with founding the Eleventh Dynasty.  A series of three rulers would follow who would carry Intef’s name, but it is during the fifty-year reign of the second of these, appropriately named Intef II, that the new dynasty really begins to assert itself militarily. 

Intef II launched a northward expansion that captured Abydos, the real seat of power in Upper Egypt, and pressed into Wadkhet, the tenth nome of Upper Egypt.  This campaign was Intef II’s fait accompli and the beginning of the end for the Tenth Dynasty, based at Herakleopolis.  As Stephan Seidlmayer observes:    

This constituted a policy of open hostility against the Herakleopolitan kings, and for several decades war was to be waged intermittently in the stretch of land between Abydos and Asyut.  (p. 135)      

Pharaoh Mentuhotep II

But once the Thebans had wrested control of Abydos from the Herakleopolitans, the die was cast.  When Asyut finally succumbed to Intef II’s grandson, Mentuhotep II, the Herakleopolitans lost their primary base in Upper Egypt.  Provinces that had been loyal to Herakleopolis had no desire to face down the victorious Thebans, opting to join them instead.  

Mentuhotep II then set his sights on Herakleopolis, taking the old capital of Memphis as well.  With the Tenth Dynasty out of business and all of Lower Egypt under his control, Mentuhotep II became the first Theban pharaoh to rule all of Egypt.  Thus began the Middle Kingdom Period.   

 The Middle Kingdom

Rather than move the capital back to Memphis, Mentuhotep II transformed the minor city of Thebes into the capital, and this promotion extended to the local gods as well.  The patron god of Thebes at this time was Montu, a warrior god who was said to possess soldiers on the battlefield, and Mentuhotep II’s namesake—Montu is Content.   

But Montu’s winter of discontent was on the horizon.  

Before the Middle Kingdom Period Amun was a lesser deity, little more than an Old Kingdom god who had found his way into the Theban pantheon.  His earliest known appearance is in the Pyramid Texts of the Fifth Dynasty where he is a primeval creative principle and protector of the king.  

But by the time of the Eleventh Dynasty he had his own temple at Karnak and had become more defined and human-like, gaining a consort in Mother Mut, who had her own adjacent temple precinct.   

From this point forward Amun grows in significance both locally and nationally.  Montu would remain a defender of Thebes, but with the tumultuous First Intermediate Period over and prosperity on the rise, Amun found increasing resonance with the Egyptian people.  The hard times had passed and people identified more with the fatherly and benevolent Amun than the hawkish Montu.  

Not all of Amun’s competition was local, and he found himself in a sort of turtle vs. hare contest with the god Osiris, with the latter seeming to own the race during the Middle Kingdom.  This was due in part to the “democratization of mummification.”  As Gae Callender notes, 

Another religious development of the Middle Kingdom was the idea that all people (not just the king) had a ba, or spiritual force (p. 180).  

With an afterlife to contemplate, the Egyptian people found new veneration for the Great God of the Necropolis.  

But as important as the afterlife was to the Egyptian people, Amun was increasingly viewed as the primary god of the living.  In an inscription in the Jubilee Chapel of Senusret I at Karnak, dating from the Twelfth Dynasty, Amun is already referred to as the King of the Gods.  By the time of the New Kingdom his primacy will be unchallenged (with a notable exception during the Amarna Period).  But Egypt was about to face a new period of adversity, one from which Amun would emerge supreme.   

The Second Intermediate Period

The Thirteenth Dynasty began peacefully enough, but after a long period of slowly losing its grip on the provinces and a multitude of pharaohs with short reigns, the old Theban nobility found themselves in a crisis of succession.  The death of Pharaoh Merneferre Ay left a vacuum, with no single king laying claim to both Upper and Lower Egypt.  The Middle Kingdom Period collapsed and Egypt fell again into decentralization and fragmentation.    

Provincial rulers in the Eastern Delta took this opportunity to found their own dynasty, the Fourteenth, centered mainly on Sais and Avaris.  But disorganized and divided, they proved to be the lesser problem.   An even greater peril to Egypt’s sovereignty would rise up from the Delta and Eastern Desert to form its own dynasty, the Fifteenth.   

Called the Hyksos by the Greeks, from the Egyptian hekau khasut (“rulers of/from foreign countries”), this new threat made Avaris their own and pushed at least as far south as Memphis, seizing control of Lower Egypt.  As if to set the tone for their future relations with the old nobility, the Hyksos stole the pyramidion (capstone) from Merneferre Ay’s pyramid and carted it off to Avaris as a trophy (Bourriau, p. 196).    

But there was an even more direct attack on the Theban nobility.  At the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty, Pharaoh Amenemhat I had moved the capital from Thebes to Itjtawy, the location of which has not yet been discovered, but was close to Memphis and the foreign troubles which were beginning to manifest even then (Callender, p. 158).  With their capital sacked and Lower Egypt in the hands of the Hyksos, Thebes again became the seat of power for the remnants of the Thirteenth Dynasty.   

Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Dynasty proved unable to form a cohesive union of their own.  After as many as 76 kings in less than 125 years, they either joined or were subjugated by the Hyksos.  Although the Saite nobility would eventually earn their own legends during the Third Intermediate and Late Kingdom Periods, for now they bowed to the foreign power seated at Avaris.    

As for the Thebans, they had also organized into a new dynasty.  The Sixteenth Dynasty was long thought to be foreign vassals of the Hyksos, but the work of Egyptologist Kim Ryholt indicates this may not be the case.  Dr. Ryholt’s recent work with the list of pharaohs known as the Turin Canon suggests that as many as fifteen kings of the Sixteenth Dynasty had ruled from Thebes (Bourriau, p. 203)   

One of these kings, Iykhernefert Neferhotep, had a stele erected which clearly showed his affiliation with Thebes and the gods sacred to her.  According to Janine Bourriau:   

Neferhotep is shown protected by the gods Amun and Montu and by a goddess personifying the city of Thebes itself.  She appears armed with a scimitar, bow, and arrows.  (P. 203)   

From this description we may assume that the Thebans meant business, although Bourriau points out that we don’t know if this business was with the Hyksos and their lackeys or with rivals closer to home (pp. 203-4).  But from the Sixteenth Dynasty nobles a new line of rulers would emerge that would become the scourge of the Hyksos.   

Pharaoh Rahotep was probably the first king of the Seventeenth Dynasty (although some lists attest Intef V first, then Rahotep) and with him and his successor, Sobekemsaf I, we see a return of expenditures on civic projects.  Some temple restorations and quarry expeditions were conducted which, while modest by Middle Kingdom standards, nonetheless showed enough local stability to be concerned with something other than conflict and display a return of confidence (Bourriau, p. 205).   

This stability seems to have stemmed in part from a cooling off period between the Thebans and the Hyksos, wherein the former were treated as subjects by the latter.  But to the same degree that security was reestablished in Upper Egypt, resentment against the Hyksos seems to have grown as well.  As relations became increasingly strained war seemed inevitable.  It is unclear exactly what led to the initial bloodshed, but it seems to have involved… noisy hippopotami.   

Scarab with Apepi's cartouche (Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts)

The story comes to us by way of a text known as Papyrus Sallier .  The crux of the story is that Apepi, the king of the Hyksos, sent a messenger to Seqenenre Tao II, the Theban king, ordering him to control the hippo population in a canal to the east of Thebes because: 

They don’t let sleep come to me either in the daytime or the night, for the noise of them is in his citizens’ ears.  (For a full translation, see Pharaonic Egypt:  The Quarrel of Apophis and Sekenenre). 

After an initial period of shock and insult, Seqenenre replied that he would look into it, but somewhere along the way diplomacy broke down.  Perhaps the Theban king was insulted at being sent on such an errand by the Hyksos king.   

Apepi’s patron god was Set, and hippos were sacred to Set.  Perhaps, either unintentionally or by design, Seqenenre’s manner of removing the animals was not to Apepi’s liking.  Perhaps, either unintentionally or by design, Apepi had presented Seqenenre with a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.     

The battered head of Seqenenre Tao II

Regardless of how it happened, the quarrel descended into an all out war that Seqenenre Tao II took serious enough to personally lead his troops into battle.  This did not go as well as he had hoped.  His mummy reveals a number of mortal wounds to his head, at least one of which was probably inflicted in combat, but there is disagreement as to whether he died on the battlefield or was assassinated while recovering (See The Theban Mummy Project:  Seqnenre-Taa II).  

Far from breaking their spirit, the death of Seqenenre Tao II galvanized the Thebans against the Hyksos and hostilities escalated under the rule of his successor, Kamose ‘the Brave.’  Kamose spent a short but eventful three years as regent of Upper Egypt, doing his best to avenge Seqenenre and push the Hyksos out.  His success is debatable, but the insults of the Hyksos, perceived and actual, were answered in kind.   

Pharaoh Kamose (Photo by Kurohito)

Kamose made fierce advances against the occupiers, plundering Hyksos ships and towns as he sailed north along the Nile, and punishing the Kush in the south for their collusion with the enemy.  He ignored a peace treaty drafted by Apepi and instead pushed his troops to the edge of the northern capital.  Kamose never seized Avaris, but did his best to humiliate the Hyksos king while encamped at the edge of the city:  

 Then follows the traditional boastful speech to Apepi: ‘Behold, I am drinking of the wine of your vineyards…I am hacking up your place of residence, cutting down your trees’, and a list of the plunder he was carrying away.  (Bourriau, p. 212).  

Second Stele of Kamose, describing his campaign against Apepi (Photo by Kurohito)

Cut off from his southern allies, Apepi wisely assessed his situation and chose to settle for a stalemate rather than clash with the haughty young king.  For his part, Kamose eventually declared victory and withdrew back to Thebes and to a hero’s welcome.  But as history would have it, the stalemate would prove final.  Within a few years both Kamose and Apepi would be dead with neither having won a decisive victory against the other.  

 King Apepi was succeeded by Khamudi, Pharaoh Kamose by Ahmose I.  Ahmose I was too young to assume the responsibilities of kingship, so his mother, Ahhotep I, stepped up as regent.  Seqenenre Tao II’s widow exhibited as much vigor as her husband, acting as both ruler and commander-in-chief.  She held the pact together, quelling or expelling rebellious elements and maintaining a decade-long détente with Khamudi while Ahmose I came of age.  

Pharaoh Ahmose I (Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts)

But the cessation of hostilities would not last, and on assumption of his sole rulership, Ahmose I initiated the final drive against the Hyksos.  Some sources place the date in Ahmose I’s eleventh regnal year, while others contend it was Khamudi’s eleventh year, but either way it was roughly a decade after the deaths of Apepi and Seqenenre Tao II.

Seqenenre’s heir would not only finish the work of his predecessors, he would found one of the most celebrated dynasties of Egypt and help establish Amun as King of the Gods.   

The New Kingdom

Ahmose defeating the Hyksos

It is not certain what prompted Ahmose I to launch his campaign against Khamudi other than a general desire to expel the Hyksos from Egypt.  No specific event seems to precipitate his decision to go on the offense, and the level of strategy he employed argues against a heated reaction to some slight.  Ahmose I initiated a well-planned assault aimed at isolating Avaris, driving out the occupiers, and sweeping up behind them.   

Ahmose I’s assault on Lower Egypt was in many ways the opposite of Kamose’s, which had the feel of a war of opportunity with no real forethought.  Rather than plundering his way down to Avaris and laying siege with no thought given to what next, Ahmose’s fleet sailed past Memphis and seized Heliopolis.  This was in July, ahead of the inundation of the Nile.  He then bivouacked there for three months, waiting out the flood season.   

In mid-October, with the waters of the Nile back within her banks, Ahmose I took his fleet north, this time bypassing Avaris to attack Tjaru.  Tjaru was the gateway to the Sinai, an important fortress along the Horus Road that connected Egypt to the East.  By controlling access to the Horus Road, Ahmose I deprived the Hyksos of any aid Canaan and Palestine might have sent, and likewise prevented any large-scale retreat across the Sinai.   

With Avaris sealed off at Tjaru and Heliopolis, Ahmose I was ready to lay siege to the Hyksos capital.  The account of one of Ahmose I’s top soldiers, also named Ahmose (son of Ebana), details an initial battle followed by a protracted siege and numerous skirmishes on land and water.  Khamudi had taken advantage of the years of relative peace to fortify the city and her walls which frustrated Ahmose’s attempts to enter the city.   

From better days--Bronze dagger with Apepi's name (Photo by Udimu)

But while the city had grown strong during the decade between Kamose and Ahmose I, the Hyksos military had grown weak in a way that left them vulnerable in battle.  During the Second Intermediate Period both the Egyptians and the Hyksos used weapons made of a tin and bronze alloy.  By the time of the battle with Ahmose I, the Hyksos had begun using unalloyed copper for their weapons, which looked attractive but did not hold as good an edge as the tin bronze, which the Thebans had retained (Bourriau, p. 124).   

The superior defenses of the Hyksos and the superior weapons of the Thebans seem to have cancelled each other out, and the long siege may have compelled Ahmose I to offer terms to the Hyksos.  According to Josephus’ version of Manetho’s account of the siege, Ahmose I and Khamudi negotiated a surrender that allowed the Hyksos to depart peacefully, with the same terms being extended to Memphis.   

Evidence from Avaris itself tends to confirm this picture of mass exodus rather than slaughter after Ahmose’s victory.  A clear cultural break is visible between the latest Hyksos stratum and that of the earliest Eighteenth Dynasty all over the site, largely because of the appearance of a new ceramic repertoire.  The same phenomenon appears also at Memphis.  (Bourriau, p. 214)   

In other words, the Hyksos left and took what they could carry with them, with no signs of a Theban coup de grâce, and no signs of a mixed Egyptian/Hyksos populace after the siege.  As the Hyksos departed Ahmose I seems to have followed them into Palestine, not in pursuit, but rather as more of a land grab.  With the Hyksos out of power he probably found their allied towns easy picking, and pushed as far east as Sharuhen before turning his attention back to internal affairs.   

Ahmose I next took his fleet south to the second cataract to finish off the Nubians who had allied with the Hyksos, after which there were two small uprisings he had to put down.  The first came from a Nubian leader named Aata who was launching raids from the north.  Aata and his men were most likely remnants of the Nubians the Hyksos had employed to defend Memphis and Avaris, doing what recently unemployed soldiers tended to do—loot.  The second was an Egyptian named Teti-an, who led his own band of disenfranchised malcontents.   

With the land once again reunited under a Theban crown, Ahmose I then concerned himself with healing the kingdom.  He launched a program of temple building and restoration after reopening the quarries at Tura.  He also reopened the copper mines at Sinai and the trade routes with the Syrians.  Having Nubia under his control also meant gold was again flowing into the royal coffers.    

The future of the dynasty--Ahmose Nefertari and Amenhotep I

On the political front, Ahmose I was planning for the future of his dynasty.  Following in the footsteps of Seqenenre Tao II, Ahmose I laid out a plan whereby access to the throne would be limited to his immediate family and their offspring.  This was achieved by refusing to allow royal princesses to marry anyone other than their royal brothers.  Kings were free to marry whoever they wished, but this system of interfamilial marriage for daughters meant nobody could marry their way to the throne.   

Ahmose I’s plan of insulating the throne via incest would last no more than a few generations, but another of his institutions would survive well into the Late Period—the God’s Wife of Amun.  Thebes had remained true to Amun after the Middle Kingdom collapsed, calling upon his protection throughout the occupation and resistance, and tying their dynasty to his favor as the New Kingdom was born.    

Amun - King of the Gods

In the eyes of Egypt, Amun had rewarded Thebes with victory, he had become the god of the oppressed, the god of the underdog, the god of the people.  There would still be a place for Montu in the pantheon, but from the Eighteenth Dynasty forward, Amun in one form or another would remain King of the Gods.   

There was, of course, an exception.  But we are still a while off from dealing with him.   

Next in this series:  The God’s Wives of Amun – Royal Women and Power Politics in the Eighteenth Dynasty

Works Cited

Bourriau, Janine.  ”The Second Intermediate Period.”  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.  184-217.   

Callender, Gae.  ”The Middle Kingdom Renaissance.”  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.  148-83.   

Miller, Wm. Max.  Online:  The Theban Mummy Project:  Seqnenre-Taa II   

Seidlmayer, Stephan.  ”The First Intermediate Period.”  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.  118-47.   

Wente, Edward F., trans.  “The Quarrel of Apophis and Sekenenre.”  The Literature of Ancient Egypt.  New Haven and London:  Yale UP, 1973.  77.  Online:  Pharaonic Egypt:  The Quarrel of Apophis and Sekenenre   

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.   

Photographs “AhmoseI-StatueHead MetropolitanMuseum” and “ScarabBearingNameOfApophis MuseumOfFineArtsBoston” by Keith Schengili-Roberts are used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.5 Generic License.  Photographs “Funerary stele of Intef II” by David Liam Moran.  Photographs “dagger with Apepi’s name” by Udimu, and “2e-stele-Kamose” and “Sarcophage-Kamose” by Kurohito are used in accordance with the GNU Free Documentation License.  The original graphics “Montu”,  “Amun”, “Mut”, “Osiris”, and “Set” are by Jeff Dahl and were altered and used by Keith Payne in accordance with the GNU Free Documentation License.  Photographs “Mentuhotep II”, “Sequenre tao”, “Ahmose-Nefertari I”, “Amun”, and “ahmosedefeatingHyksos” are in the public domain.

Food and fun, work and play, you will be surprised by how much remains the same.  Summary, analysis, and some really cool video clips wait inside!

The Hidden History of Egypt is presented by Terry Jones, with Egyptologist and fellow Brit, Dr. Joann Fletcher serving as his guide and advisor.  It was written by Terry Jones, Alan Ereira, and Phil Grabsky, and was directed and produced by Phil Grabsky, in conjunction with Seventh Art Productions, for the Discovery Channel (original air date—January 20, 2002).

In The Hidden History of Egypt, comedian, philosopher, and social commentator Terry Jones seeks to uncover the mysteries of one of ancient Egypt’s most secretive orders—the everyday man and woman.  With all the attention given to celebrity mummies, touring treasure troves, and custody battles over “stolen” artifacts, it’s easy to forget about the people who paid the taxes, crafted the treasures, and built the monuments, which Terry Jones dismisses as the “funeral arrangements for some crazed megalomaniac.” 

But this documentary doesn’t rely solely on ancient chronicles to bring the citizens of Dynastic Egypt to life (although there is certainly plenty of that as well).  Instead, Mr. Jones asserts that in many ways life in Egypt remains unchanged, and to get an idea of how the average ancient Egyptian lived, one needn’t look further than how ordinary Egyptians live today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To assist him in this undertaking, Mr. Jones enlists the expertise of Dr. Joann Fletcher to act as his (and our) guide.  The mix is a good one and it is clear the Mr. Jones and Dr. Fletcher are genuinely enjoying their tour of ancient and modern Egypt.  Dr. Fletcher is equally at home in the field and in the Egyptian social milieu, and Mr. Jones’ natural wit—in all senses of the word—is both entertaining and thought provoking in equal measure.   

The video opens with scenes of modern agrarian life and Dr. Fletcher’s observation that one of the key similarities between the ancient and the modern Egyptians is their spirit of cooperation.  Neighbors help neighbors with planting and harvesting, building houses and maintaining common resources, and putting on social events and celebrations, just as they have always done. 

The collective activities of average individuals working together toward common goals is a recurring theme throughout the video, and  Dr. Fletcher points out that it is this communal character that transformed the Giza Plateau into the Sphinx, the temples, and the pyramids.

This leads into a montage of clips of ancient builders that seems to have been culled from classic movies and outdated documentaries showing slaves and citizens-in-duress toiling under threat of the pharaoh’s whip.  Fortunately Terry counters this with the radical notion that the pyramid builders were not slaves, but free people working in a collaborative effort (for more on this, see Who Built the Pyramids? Part 1: The Lost City of the Pyramid Builders, here on Em Hotep).

In order to get a more realistic depiction of how the ordinary ancient Egyptian spent a typical day at work, we begin at Saqqara with a visit to the tomb of Ti “the Rich.”  Ti was an important Fifth Dynasty court official whose rather large estate employed an equally large workforce.  Apparently Ti was given to wandering his grounds and eavesdropping on his employees, and many of the rather mundane interactions he observed found their way onto the walls of his tomb.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Actually, tomb scenes depicting average people going about the business of their average days are not all that unusual in Egypt, as the ideal afterlife was basically a continuation of an ideal life.   These portrayals provide us with a detailed look at ancient life, which this documentary makes good use of by interjecting clips of modern Egyptians conducting the same activities in much the same way.

 Another example visited by The Hidden History of Egypt is the tomb of master craftsman Sennedjem at Deir el-Medina, a sort of up-scale village adjacent to the Valley of the Kings where the builders of the royal tombs dwelt.  Like Ti, Sennedjem had his tomb decorated with scenes of how he envisioned his afterlife, which included working in his garden with his wife.  Again we see video clips of modern Egyptians doing the same work with the same tools.

We then take a walk down into Deir el-Medina for a tour of Sennedjem’s house.  Dr. Fletcher explains the architecture of the house and shows evidence of how the furniture was arranged, food and water were stored, and how and where the family would have slept.  This is followed by a trip to a modern working-class Egyptian house where we see how little things have changed in 4,500 years, from the architecture down to the furniture.

The Hidden History of Egypt stands apart from other Egyptological documentaries in its ability to get its point across without the use of reenactments and computer animations.  Not that there is anything wrong with reenactments and animations per se, it’s just that this documentary doesn’t need them.  The juxtaposition of ancient artistic renderings with modern video footage and comparing ancient sites to currently occupied spaces leaves little doubt that the secret lives of ordinary ancient Egyptians are not so secret after all.  They are still going on every day throughout Egypt.

The video turns next to comparing the ancient and modern palates with a trip to the suq.  Winding our way through the marketplace we again find that the Egyptians have found little need for change.  But the scenes of beer and winemaking and the baking of bread are interrupted when Terry and Joann arrive at a tailor where they commission a kilt and robe ensemble for Terry based on an ancient pattern provided by Joann.

While the tailor weaves his ancient magic, we resume our culinary comparison with a trip to the village of Gurna, located across the Nile from Luxor, not far from Sennedjem’s house.  Over a lunch of beer and a variety of breads, Dr. Fletcher explains that bread and beer were the fuel that powered the pyramid builders.  Unlike our modern lackluster bread, the fare of the ancient Egyptians provided the calories needed to put in a hard day of cutting stone and dragging blocks.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The documentary provides another interesting example of the ancient surviving into the modern with a discussion of how the ancient Egyptian language was kept alive by, of all institutions, the Coptic Church.  When the Roman Emperor Theodosius banned pagan temples, the video explains, his edict had the collateral effect of closing the schools, libraries, medical centers, and legal courts of Egypt.  All civil life was tied to the temples, and when they closed they took with them the written, and eventually the spoken, language.

But just as the Catholic Church preserved Latin, the Coptic Church retained a distant linguistic cousin of ancient Egyptian as the official language of the liturgy.  Terry Jones points out that modern Coptic is probably as distinct from ancient Egyptian as modern English is from Anglo Saxon, but it was sufficient to help with decoding the hieroglyphs after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799.

The Hidden History of Egypt makes other comparisons between ancient and modern Egyptians, and modernity does not necessarily always come out on top.  In one segment we learn that the engineers who moved the colossal temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel were not able to reassemble it with the same precision as the ancients, and in another segment we find that women in ancient Egypt had superior rights and equality to much of the world today. 

And the Monty Python alumnus has his trademark moments of humor, such as when he dons his ancient Egyptian kilt and robe, along with traditional makeup and a stylish (by Old Kingdom standards) wig, for a walk around the modern streets.  Judging from the reactions he gets, some things have clearly changed over the millennia.

But The Hidden History of Egypt is by no means cheeky, it easily stands toe to toe with the best Egyptological documentaries.  The humor is functional in supporting the thesis that not only have the tools and trades of the ancients survived the ages, the sometimes quirky and sometimes sublime character of the Egyptian people endures to this day.  Mr. Jones concludes that while the pharaohs and their riches have been preserved as public property in the world’s museums,

Perhaps the real immortality is to be found among ordinary men and women, living lives that have changed very little since the days of the pharaohs.  Perhaps the hidden history ancient Egypt has been here all along, under our noses.

After viewing The Hidden History of Egypt, I am inclined to agree.

See Also

• Hemienu to Houdin: Building A Great Pyramid – Introduction
• Coptic Cairo: A Complex Design of Many Parts
• Dance of the Ancient and the Modern: The Streets of Cairo

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

The clips “Intro”, “In the Tomb of Ti”, and “Lunch with Sennedjem”, are taken from the Discovery Channel video “The Hidden History of Egypt,” copyright by the Discovery Channel, 2002, all rights reserved.  These clips and the related still images are used in accordance with the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act in that they are used for purposes of education and critique.  The fair use clause provides that the reviewer has the right to use as much of an original work as they need to in order to put it under some kind of scrutiny, so long as the reviewer analyzes, comments on, or responds to the work itself, and such use does not satisfy the consumer’s need or desire for the original.

An architect among archaeologists, Jean-Pierre will be addressing the French Institute of Eastern Archaeology, and his documentary film, Kheops Révélé, will kick off the festival.

This Sunday (May 2, 2010), Jean-Pierre Houdin will be the Guest of Honor on the opening night of a week-long archaeological film festival organized by the French Center for Culture and Cooperation (CFCC) at Mounira, Cairo.  The festival, which runs from May 2 through May 6, is part of the CFCC’s Year of Science and Technology, and is presented in partnership with the Cairo-based French Institute of Eastern Archaeology (Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale—IFAO) and the  Center for Alexandrian Studies (Center d’Etudes Alexandrines—CEAlex).

The festival opens with the documentary Kheops Révélé, which was directed by Florence Tran and produced by Gedeon Programmes and Dassault Systèmes.  The film details Jean-Pierre’s work with the Pyramid of Khufu and his internal ramp theory, which is also the subject of the on-going (and soon to be resumed!) Em Hotep series Hemienu to Houdin.

According to the brochure, the film challenges the assumptions of previous theories of how the Pyramid of Khufu was constructed by “proposing [Jean-Pierre’s] idea that the pyramid was built from the inside out… A brilliant hunch he confirms with the help of the latest 3D technology from Dassault Systèmes.”  The film treats us to Jean-Pierre’s remarkable 3D animations which not only demonstrate how his theory works, but how it addresses questions that have remained unanswered for millennia and explains the functions of puzzling features, such as the Grand Gallery and the small enigmatic “tunnels” leading out of various points in the structure.

The brochure goes on to point out that Kheops Révélé is regularly presented at the prestigious La Géode at Paris and has already been seen by over 30,000 school children.

Jean-Pierre’s work with Dassault Systèmes has opened a new world for both experiential 3D simulation and archaeology, as evidenced by the recently announced partnership between Peter Der Manuelian of the Giza Archives Project, and Dassault’s Mehdi Tayoubi, who is also one of Jean-Pierre’s collaborators on Project Khufu. 

This latest honor signals that M. Houdin’s work continues to garner support in the field of Egyptology, and that the official excuses for not allowing him to put his theories to a more direct empirical test are looking increasingly threadbare. 

See Also

• Giza 3D: The Giza Archives Project Partners With Dassault Systèmes to Put You in a Tomb!
• Mark Rose: Jean-Pierre Houdin Should be Allowed to Test His Internal Ramp Theory
• Jean-Pierre Houdin’s Work With the Great Pyramid of Khufu Subject of New Documentary

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Cover art and DVD menu from Kheops révélé, are provided courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systèmes, all rights reserved.    

From scanning the landscape to crawling down into ancient tombs, you are there, dude.

Peter Der Manuelian is the Director of the Giza Archives Project, an international endeavor that combines the 45-year Harvard University—Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition (1902—1947) with ongoing archaeological projects in order to create a “central Giza repository for world scholarship.” 

Deterioration of tomb wall statues just from 1927 to present day (Courtesy of Boston MFA External Relations Department)

Prompted by the on-going deterioration of the art and monuments of the Giza Plateau, the Giza Archives Project seeks to preserve Egypt’s legacy by advancing scholarship through international cooperation, exploring new means of analysis and presentation, and using cutting-edge technology to bring the people, places, and artifacts of the Giza Plateau to all interested persons.   

Along with partners from Berkeley, Berlin, Cairo, Hildesheim, Leipzig, Philadelphia, Turin, and Vienna, Der Manuelian has been bringing the world’s finest museums and Egyptological work to classrooms, libraries, and desktops around the world.  But with the addition of Dassault Systèmes’ Mehdi Tayoubi, the Giza Archives Project takes you as close as you can possibly get to the plateau without actually being there.

Em Hotep readers may not be familiar with Tayoubi by name, but you are certainly familiar with his work.  Along with fellow Dassault Systèmes wizard Richard Breitner, Tayoubi helped bring Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work with Khufu’s Pyramid to three dimensions in Khufu Revealed.  Clips of Dassault’s renderings of Jean-Pierre’s work were featured in National Geographic’s Unlocking the Great Pyramid, and have been circulating around the internet for several years.

Now Tayoubi and Der Manuelian are teaming up to bring you Giza 3D, an immersive experience which brings the power of industrial 3D technology to the Giza Archives Project.  But this venture is more than just video game-style eye candy.  The Giza Archives Project is already the most exhaustive collection of information and images related to the Giza Plateau.  This new collaboration will combine Der Manuelian’s archaeological data with the same tools Dassault Systèmes employs to help built modern architectural and engineering wonders to create a virtual environment that transforms “old archives to real-time 3D.”

Speaking of the collaboration, its kinship to Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work, and the scope of the project, the Dassault Systèmes’ press release states:

This partnership is a logical continuation of projects initiated by Dassault Systèmes three years ago around the pyramid of Khufu. “The content of the Giza Archives Project is an important new resource in the field of Egyptology. Peter Der Manuelian follows in the footsteps of George Reisner, contributing daily with his team to ensure the digital preservation of Humanity’s historical heritage,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, Interactive Strategy Director at Dassault Systèmes. “We will imagine new forms of interactivity, collaboration and innovation around this data for the worlds of education, research and for the general public thanks to experiential 3D.”  (Source:  Dassault Systèmes and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Announce a Strategic Partnership in the Domains of 3D Archaeological Content)

And lest the reader think we have heard the last of Dassault Systèmes and Project Khufu, guess again.  Although everyone associated with the next chapter of Project Khufu is remaining tight-lipped for now, I have it on Very Good Authority that Project Khufu and Giza 3D are both advancing on their own parallel trajectories, and we will be hearing very exciting news about both in the coming months.

For more coverage, please visit my good friends Vincent Brown, “The 3D Giza Plateau & Virtual Archaeology,” and Marc Chartier, “Partenariat Dassault Systèmes/Museum of Fine Arts de Boston : quand la 3D revisite le plateau de Guizeh” (in French).

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Photo of tomb wall statues courtesy of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Giza Archives General info Packet, which can be downloaded here.