Geography: The Black Land and the Red Land
Throughout Egyptian writing and religion, there is a strong preoccupation with the way the forces of harmony and justice (ma’at) are in constant conflict with the destructive powers of chaos and instability. This metaphysical construct of harmony constantly battling destruction was also reflected starkly and literally in the demarcation of the land itself. The area where the Nile flooded was called Kemet, or the Black Land, named after the residual, nutrient-rich mud spread over the landscape by the annual flooding. The four-month flooding season actually forced the People to travel by boat outside their homes, thanks to the rise in the water level.
Egyptian civilization clung closely to the part of the land nourished (exclusively) by the Nile floods. The region along the River allowed for agricultural cultivation and provided a constant bounty of water, fish, and plant life. In contrast, the area beyond the sustaining reach of the Nile—the Deshret, or Red Land—was considered hostile, sterile, and without a source of natural nourishment or the steadying hand of civilizing governance. A hapless traveler was simply and solely at the mercy of the unbridled forces of nature and the whims of the desert tribes.
Egypt’s geography also created a certain regional dichotomy, which may well have contributed to the country’s undulating political stability. The country divided quite naturally into an Upper and Lower Kingdom—which distinction corresponded, confusingly, to southern (Upper) Egypt and northern (Lower) Egypt. Instead of indicating relative latitude, the distinction was instead oriented to the directional flow of the Nile, which runs north from southern Egypt (the Upper Kingdom) toward the Nile Delta in northern Egypt (the Lower Kingdom). Not surprisingly, the two regions of this sizable country, parts of which were invariably separated from their king by quite some distance, routinely struggled to maintain their identity as one unified kingdom. The king’s double crown of red and white was itself a hopeful symbol of the two regions’ unity.
Time and All Eternity: Life and Afterlife in the Middle Kingdom
Along with political shifts and a sustaining, dualistic worldview, the Middle Kingdom saw important changes in the practice of religion. In the Egyptian (or Kemetian, if you like) worldview, kings were divine and directly connected with the gods. The king oversaw the law and order of the state and helped to maintain the delicate balance of ma’at so that interactions remained peaceful and relationships beneficial. He (or, in the occasional case of a ruling queen, she) also had the added benefit of divinity: the king was considered the son of the sun god Ra (“Son-of-Ra” was one of his titles) and was particularly associated with and protected by the hawk-headed god Horus, son of Isis and Osiris (themselves also children of Ra). Moreover, the king was believed to become fully divine after mortal life and was therefore buried with the necessary spells, rituals, and supplies to ensure a comfortable and successful transition into eternal life. The royal tombs were representative of the wealth and influence the king enjoyed during his lifetime and would continue to enjoy as a god.
During the Old Kingdom, only the king or nobles of great status seem to have had hopes of this glorious afterlife. At the very least, they were the only sort of people routinely buried with the necessary treasures and funeral texts—called the Pyramid Texts because of their exclusive appearance in aristocratic tombs—which contained a collection of the necessary rites, spells, and rituals for passage into the afterlife. However, after the collapse of the Old Kingdom and the proliferation of power into the hands of men besides the king, spiritual power seems to have experienced a similar democratic surge. The possibilities of immortality apparently began to extend to men and women besides the king and his relatives, and by the time of the Middle Kingdom, the chance at eternal life appears to have encompassed all men and women who could undertake the proper preparations and obtain the necessary spells and rituals.
This spread in religious ritual is evidenced by the spread of funeral texts and inscriptions once found almost exclusively within the royal pyramids. Copies of these religious rituals begin to appear in the tombs and among the personal possessions of nonaristocratic citizens and, to differentiate these records from the earlier Pyramid Texts, the Middle Kingdom funeral texts have consequently become known as Coffin Texts. By the New Kingdom, these collections of rituals and instructions proliferated into the myriad versions of what is now known as the Book of the Dead. Often kept as private documents that were then buried with their owners (though particular sections and spells also show up on tomb walls), the Book of the Dead and the preceding Coffin and Pyramid Texts all contain various assortments of instructions, spells, and rituals to aid the dead through the trials and impediments encountered between death and the entry into immortality and eternal life.
In the spirit of full anachronistic disclosure, the specific Breathings text quoted throughout the novel does not date to the Middle Kingdom. This particular document, which would have been used as a private ritual text by the original owner and buried with him at the time of death, comes from a later, likely New Kingdom, date. However, while the religious ritual of the Egyptians evolved to some degree over time, the essential ritual steps, whenever they were written down, appear to have remained relatively constant and uniformly old. Several spells from the Book of the Dead appear to date back to the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, meaning that the rituals were transmitted over hundreds or even thousands of years. Quoting this particular text is more like quoting from a twentieth-century publication of a collection of Shakespeare—the actual document is newer than its content and would be equally recognizable (or unrecognizable) to a reader in 1714 as in 2014.
However, even with the necessary rituals and preparations, immortality depended in large part on conforming one’s life to the principles of ma’at. Such conformity meant that a person lived properly, justly, and in harmony with one’s neighbors and the forces that govern the world. Amongst the spells in the Book of the Dead, which exist in various abbreviated or elongated forms, depending on the specific copy, there is a specific rite for successfully undergoing divine judgment, and the famous judgment scene gives us an explicit look into what such judgment entailed.
A soul’s heart was placed on a balance against an ostrich feather (a symbol of ma’at) in the presence of watchful gods, including the goddesses Isis and Nephtys, who helped prepare the soul for judgment. Sometimes, Osiris himself—the god of the underworld and a potent symbol of resurrection—was present as an onlooker. In fact, suppliants were explicitly identified by the name Osiris throughout the recitation of the funeral texts (as in “Osiris-[name]”), taking on the god’s identity in imitation of Osiris’s own successful passage through the underworld. If the heart of the suppliant balanced against the ma’at feather, the person would be revealed as one who had lived according to the precepts of ma’at and would be received into eternal life. If not, the unworthy heart would be devoured by a crouched, crocodile-headed beast named Ammit, and eternal life would be forfeit.
All things, in the Egyptian view, thus had spiritual undercurrents. While there was clearly an acknowledgment of both good and evil, such awareness does not appear to have carried over into creating alliances with one force over the other. The presence of all divinity saturated the everyday world, and the Egyptians conducted their daily lives in constant acknowledgment of ever-present spiritual forces (even Seth, the murderous brother of Osiris, had his own cultic following). The Egyptians therefore worshipped a great variety of gods and goddesses, who appear to have represented the various forces and aspects of the spiritual realities underlying everyday life. Many homes appear to have had small rooms where members of the household could engage in private worship, burning incense and keeping small statues of the gods they particularly wished to supplicate, such as those who oversaw fertility, childbirth, or domestic prosperity. Annual public festivals of worship and celebration similarly kept the Egyptians aware of both the community and the divinity that bound up their world.
Fu
rther underscoring the intermingling of religious and everyday life, the priesthood was not a full-time occupation until the New Kingdom. Men held professions outside their sacred work and would serve in the temples for only a certain amount of time (say, three months out of the year), rather than devoting themselves full-time to religious duties. They were required to shave their bodies and maintain a state of purity while serving in the temples, but they would return to their outside lives upon the completion of their service. Priestesses, too, were known to exist, though they appear to have served in different capacities and sometimes appear as sacred singers and dancers. The office of the high priests of the various religious orders (such as the high priest of Ra) were often political as well as religious positions. It would not have been unusual for men in significant political positions—like Potiphar and Joseph—to hold priesthood offices as well.
Culture: The People of Kemet and Deshret
Kemet
A multitude of other peoples lived beyond the boundaries of Egypt, including the Asiatic desert tribes and their Nubian neighbors. The Egyptian kings sent out expeditions both for diplomacy and for trade, and there were even mining operations stretching out into the Sinai for copper and turquoise. The average Egyptian, however, would likely have had little or no interaction with any of these foreign peoples. Foreigners would have come into Egypt primarily to trade (tourism was not yet in Egypt what it is now) or been brought in as slaves. Although there was apparently a great influx of captured Canaanite slaves during the Middle Kingdom (and the Canaanites primarily appear to have served as domestic servants), it would be a stretch to imagine the Middle Kingdom as particularly cosmopolitan.
However, the Middle Kingdom Egyptians would likely have been suspicious rather than hostile toward foreigners simply from lack of exposure. After all, it was not until the New Kingdom that Egypt began to take a deliberately militaristic attitude toward neighboring peoples. And throughout her remarkably long history—exceeding three thousand years of unbroken civilization—Egypt never became a mighty military empire in the model of the Assyrians, Babylonians, or Romans. Instead, the country and culture were, and essentially always remained, fundamentally peaceful, agricultural, and self-sustaining. In fact, this mighty agrarian empire far outlasted any of the other ancient powers in that region of the world by several thousand years. Not until the incursion of Alexander the Great (in the fourth century b.c.>) did Egypt fall permanently under foreign rule, and it was only following the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra (the queen who was the last of the Ptolemaic, or Greek, rulers) in 30 b.c. that Egypt was finally subsumed into the Roman Empire.
Along with being a remarkably stable civilization, ancient Egypt was also notably humane. The concept of ma’at—that difficult to define sense of social justice and harmony, if not righteousness—was the foundational philosophy of all interaction and law. Those with power were expected to advocate on behalf of the weak and the powerless, and rulers were expected to be law abiding and just. Even slaves, rather than being considered merely as chattels of their masters, were endowed with certain rights—including the ability to own and bequeath property, the option for male slaves to marry free-born women, and even the possibility of eventual freedom and citizenship.
Although they did not appear to hold many positions outside domestic life and they married early, usually as teenagers, Egyptian women possessed equal rights with Egyptian men. Women could own property, pursue legal action, instigate divorces, serve in the temples, and inherit the throne (although female rulers were far more rare than their male counterparts). Literacy was not widespread among men or women, but there is evidence that well-born women may have had the opportunity to be educated alongside their brothers. Marriages were rarely arranged, and couples were expected to be monogamous. Children were considered a great blessing, and infertility might result in taking another wife or slave-women to bear children in the wife’s place. Fidelity and marital happiness were considered natural and desirable, and adultery would have been considered a serious breach of ma’at and the social law of the land.
Add to their relatively humane worldview the details regarding dress and hygiene for both men and women—shaved bodies, frequent bathing, wigs and elaborate hair-styles, makeup, perfume, linen, and abundant jewelry—and you begin to get the sense that Kemet would have been an abrupt contrast with the world Joseph left behind.
Deshret
Indeed, in many ways, Judah’s world could not stand at greater contrast to his brother’s. Deshret, or the Red Land, was home to isolated and often warring tribes and scattered townships. Rather than being home to relatively peaceful and unified citizens of a highly bureaucratic and organized state, the Red Land presented a much starker picture of survival—tribal, often nomadic, and, within the scope of the Genesis narrative, saturated with both secular and sacred violence. Yet despite violence, violation, death, famine, and betrayal, Jacob and his family survived with tenacity, courage, and extraordinary spirit.
The absence of bureaucracy, of course, did not mean the native Canaanites were a people without order. There were towns and cities full of Canaanite inhabitants who led a much more settled life than the nomadic desert tribes and who have left to history their own collection of cultural relics. Indeed, many of the descendants of these people were still living in Canaan—Abraham’s promised land—when Jacob’s descendants (hereafter Israelites, as opposed to Canaanites) returned from their nearly five-century sojourn in Egypt. Much of the early history found in the book of Judges records the Israelites’ conflicts with these other native Canaanites, whom they were forbidden to marry or join and with whom they waged an incessant series of territorial and cultural battles.
Like the other Asiatic tribes and ancient powers, including the later Babylonians and Assyrians, the Canaanites worshipped multiple gods and goddesses. Several of these deities—such as the god Ba’al, who apparently liked human sacrifices, and his consort, the fertility goddess Astoreth—continue to show up quite late into Israelite history, even making an appearance in the clash between the much-later queen Jezebel and the Israelite prophet Elijah. As long as the two peoples lived alongside each other, the Canaanites’ enticing religious rites evidently remained a constant and alluring temptation for the chaste, monotheistic Israelites.
Religious, tribal, and family identities were all closely intertwined in the Israelite tradition; indeed, the violation of any one part of this composite identity could compromise the identity in its entirety. Like their Canaanite neighbors, the Israelites tended to be heavily patriarchal, with sons inheriting from their fathers and men standing at the head of the family. However, sons could also lose their spiritual and secular inheritance through violation of the tenets of the covenant. Marriages were to be undertaken exclusively with other inheritors of the Abrahamic covenant, though the early record indicates that such inheritance could come through birth or conversion (Dinah’s new husband, Shechem, was murdered after undergoing the ritual requirement of circumcision). To marry outside the covenant was one sure way to forfeit tribal and spiritual privileges, as well as one’s core identity, and to threaten all of one’s descendants with the forfeiture of their birthright as Abraham’s heirs.
The frequent incursion of non-Israelite women into Israelite history—including the wives of Joseph and Judah and several ancestors of the illustrious king David—remains, therefore, one of the most intriguing aspects of the record.
The Brothers
As the astute reader has also no doubt noticed, the rituals mentioned in the Breathings text (including the transference of breath, washing, ritual interaction with two distinct women, and Osiris’s eventual reunion with his father, Ra) align with notable harmony alongside the experiences of Joseph and Judah. Their experiences also align quite remarkably and in ways all recorded in Genesis. Indeed, the two brothers’ lives are inextricably intertwined. After all, it is Judah whose suggestion spares Joseph’s life and (albeit in the novel, inadvertently) sends him
on to Egypt, and it is Judah whose plea on behalf of the falsely accused Benjamin eventually reunites his long-lost brother with their family more than twenty years later. At the same time, the very different worlds that Joseph and Judah inhabit influence (at least within the novel) each brother’s engagement with the fundamental conflicts inherent in the larger world—good and evil, harmony and chaos, justice and corruption.
Egyptians and Israelites
The Israelite worldview was one in which mortal man was engaged in a constant struggle between personified forces of good and evil, symbolized in the story of the Garden of Eden. The world and all of its inhabitants were irretrievably broken, fallen from the presence of God without hope of return, save for the power of a single, personal, redeeming God who had power over the inevitable conditions of physical and spiritual death. And it was this God that the patriarch Abraham sought out and who, he taught, had opened his mind to visions and entered into a redemptive covenant with him and all of his descendants after him.
As part of this relationship, Abraham and his descendants practiced sacrifice—both literally, with the symbolic offering of animals, and figuratively, in obediently conforming lives and habits with divine will—as they sought atonement. This at-one-ment was literally a reunion with the divine, brought about by conforming one’s life to God’s teachings and thereby activating divine mercy and salvation. The definition of a life properly lived centered on cultivating this personal relationship, through obedience, between an individual and God. And despite the constant search for a promised land, there was not, in the lifetime of any of the Patriarchs, any true and lasting refuge in the world, aside from God—Abraham’s heirs were simply “strangers and sojourners” (Genesis 23:4) to the end.
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