The Nile

by Toby Wilkinson

  It consists of a row of little huts, facing east and constructed of grey mud bricks and the roughest thatch. At the top, on a levelled terrace, is the common room with narrow open slits for windows, and the extreme distinction of having two wooden doors and a short flight of plank steps before it … We sit on empty boxes to discuss our meals. The dining room is floored with sand. It is an oblong room and down its centre is a rough trestle table. The boards are somewhat warped and stained, and on them range the bowls of food or opened tins, covered with dishes or saucers to exclude the dust.9

  The contrast with today’s excavations in the royal burial ground of Abydos could not be greater. Since the 1970s, the concession has been held by the German Archaeological Institute, which, at least before German reunification and the euro crisis, was funded on a generous scale by the German Foreign Office. When I visited the excavations, I was immediately impressed by the four-wheel-drive Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen in which the archaeologists zoomed about the low desert, from one dig site to another. Petrie, one instintively feels, would have walked or ridden on a donkey. At the excavations themselves, the scene was much as it would have been in Petrie’s day, or at any other dig in Egypt during the last century and a half: long lines of workers carrying baskets of spoil on their heads, an Egyptian site foreman watching over the digging, supervised in turn by one of the Western archaeologists. But, back at the dig-house for lunch, it was another world, one that Petrie (or, for that matter, many English teams working in Egypt today) would scarcely have recognised. Within the compound, a series of rooms and work areas surrounded a shady courtyard with flowering shrubs. The rooms themselves had doors and glass in the windows, not to mention the latest computer equipment. But the dining room was the real pièce de résistance: a grand, domed room, whitewashed inside and out, with a large dining table in the centre. Lunch (three courses, including, I remember, sautéed courgettes as the vegetable accompaniment) was served by waiters—not quite from silver salvers, but not far off. After lunch, visitors were taken up to the roof terrace to examine the latest finds (in this case, the wine jars from tomb U-j) and admire the view over the low desert to the Shunet ez-Zebib and, beyond it, the cultivation. Archaeology in the Nile Valley is not all threadbare blankets and corned beef.

  Impressive as they are, the tombs, funerary enclosures and boat burials of Abydos, beside the bare fact of their existence, tell us little if anything about the sort of afterlife envisaged by Egypt’s earliest rulers. Was it a continuation of earthly life, with all the pageantry of the royal court? Or a cosmic journey across the heavens in the company of the gods? Or something else entirely, involving a descent into the underworld? We cannot say. Even the later pyramids, some of which are inscribed with religious texts, do not give a clear picture of the afterlife. Only at the end of the Pyramid Age, as the rigid distinctions between royal and private were falling away, did a definitive concept of the hereafter emerge throughout the Nile Valley. At the heart of this new model afterlife was a dead king, Osiris, who, in his underworld realm, was transformed into the king of the dead. He was known as the Great God. Having achieved resurrection himself, his rejuvenating power brought his followers to a glorious rebirth. He was associated with the fertile Nile silt that the inundation deposited each year, bringing new life to the fields; with the sprouting grain that grew tall and fed Egypt; with water and vegetation, both vital to survival. And, above all, with Abydos. For most of its history, Abydos has been shaped by the cult of Osiris.

  One of Amélineau’s most important discoveries—indeed, perhaps his only real achievement at Abydos—was the very tomb that ancient Egyptian priests had identified as the burial-place of Osiris. Of course, it was nothing of the sort. It was, in fact, the tomb of King Djer, the third monarch of the First Dynasty, who reigned over the Nile Valley around 2900 BC. But, by the Middle Kingdom, when the cult of Osiris was at its most popular, the tomb was already one thousand years old, and was known to have belonged to a king from remotest antiquity. It might just as well have been built for a mythical god-king from the dawn of time. So Djer’s burial was reconstructed, provided with a stone funeral bier, and promoted as a place of pilgrimage. Throngs of worshippers from all over Egypt came to present offerings at the tomb of Osiris, for century after century. The votive pottery they left behind, now smashed into fragments, gives the early royal necropolis its descriptive Arabic moniker, Umm el-Qaab, “mother of pots.”

  The prominence of Abydos in the religious life of Egypt from the Middle Kingdom onwards was no historical accident. It was due as much to political calculation as to ancient sanctity. Abydos had been a key battleground in the civil war between the Thebans and their adversaries in the years following the collapse of the Old Kingdom. Intef II had made the capture of Abydos and its surrounding region a strategic priority. But, in the bitter fighting, the temple and other holy places had been damaged, and this desecration was laid at the feet of the Thebans’ rivals as a great act of shame. In the retrospective account written by the Theban victors, the defeat of the northern kings was presented as an act of divine retribution for their failure to protect the sanctity of Abydos. To press the point home, the Theban kings who ruled Egypt after its reunification lavished patronage on the temple of Osiris at Abydos, beautifying it and transforming it into a focus for national pilgrimage. In this way, they could present themselves as pious monarchs, their power-grab as divinely sanctioned.

  In this new context, the Umm el-Qaab and adjacent areas, in addition to the year-round visits of pilgrims, also played host to an annual festival of Osiris, at which the myth of his life, death and rebirth was celebrated in grand fashion. The so-called “Mysteries of Osiris” comprised a highly charged set of processions and tableaux, led by priests and accompanied by myriad followers in a state of religious excitement. (A modern comparison would be some of the Shi’ite festivals as celebrated in Iran.) The Mysteries of Osiris took place annually at Abydos from the beginning of the second millennium BC into the Roman period—a span of two thousand years—yet there are few accounts of the proceedings, because of their secret, taboo nature. The best report we have is a veiled account written by an eyewitness, the man moreover who was put in charge of organising the festival during the reign of Senusret III, around 1820 BC. Ikhernofret was so proud of his achievement—“I did all that His Majesty commanded in executing my lord’s command for his father Osiris”10—that he could not resist noting certain highlights of the festivities in his autobiographical inscription.

  The drama seems to have unfolded in three acts, reflecting the three phases of Osiris’ life (kingship, death and resurrection). First, the cult image of the god appeared, to signify his status as a living ruler. One of the temple priests—or, on occasions, a visiting dignitary such as Ikhernofret, acting as the king’s personal representative—took the role of the jackal god Wepwawet, “the opener of the ways,” walking at the front of the procession as the herald of Osiris. He may even have worn a jackal mask. The second and central element in the drama recalled the god’s death and funeral. A “great following” escorted the cult image, enclosed in a special barque-shrine, as it was born on the shoulders of priests from the temple to the Umm el-Qaab. En route, ritualised attacks on the god’s shrine were staged to represent the struggle between good and evil. The attackers were repulsed by other participants, taking the role of the god’s defenders. For all its sacred imagery, this mock-battle could at times turn nasty, resulting in serious injuries. In the heat, agitation and ecstasy, zeal could easily turn to violence. The third and final act of the Mysteries was Osiris’ rebirth and triumphant return to his temple. His cult image was taken back to the sanctuary, purified and adorned. The ceremonies over, the crowds dispersed and normality returned to Abydos for another year.

  The central valley which divides the early royal cemetery in two was especially sacred since it formed the main processional route for the Mysteries. This was both a blessing and a curse. So powerful was the symbolism of the Osiri
s mysteries that participation, whether in person or vicariously, became a lifetime goal for ancient Egyptians. The easiest option for most people was attendance by proxy, in the form of a cenotaph or stela with their name on it set up along the route of the procession. As a result, the edges of the sacred way, known as the “Terrace of the Great God,” became crammed with memorials, large and small, up to five or six deep. Eventually, a royal decree had to be issued to forbid monuments encroaching on the processional route, and laying down heavy penalties for transgression. Copies of the decree were set up on granite slabs at key points around the cemetery. Sometimes, even in Egypt, mystical fervour could go too far.

  EVEN AFTER the official closure of Egypt’s pagan temples in AD 392, Abydos retained a cult place for one of the traditional household deities, the god Bes, into the fifth century. But, with the spread of Christianity, the sacred places were gradually abandoned. Most were left to the encroaching sand. A few, including the “tomb of Osiris,” were singled out for targeted iconoclasm. The vandals do not seem to have appreciated the irony: destroying the images and cult centre of one resurrected lord in the name of another. Despite the change of religion, the spirit of the place that had given Abydos its ancient sanctity seems to have survived, and the region once famed for Osiris-worship became a major centre for Christ-worship in the first and second centuries AD.

  Today, the visitor travelling to Abydos by road from Luxor or Qena, along the west bank of the Nile, passes through Nag Hammadi—an undistinguished Upper Egyptian town, save for the enormous Coptic monastery on its outskirts. Once surrounded by desert, the better for solitary contemplation, the complex of buildings is now surrounded by fields, thanks to the greening of the desert made possible by the Nag Hammadi barrage. This was built by British contractors at the end of the 1920s, the last of the main Nile barrages. It incorporates a lock big enough for ships to turn around in, and 100 sluices, sufficient to irrigate some 650,000 acres of land. Perennial irrigation has brought greater prosperity to Nag Hammadi, even as the rising water table and increased salinity associated with it threaten the area’s ancient remains—Coptic as well as pharaonic.

  It is therefore fortunate that the most remarkable discovery of antiquities in the region occurred before the greening of the desert had really started to accelerate. In December 1945, much of the world was preoccupied with rebuilding homes and lives shattered by six years of war. This accident of timing prevented the discovery from reaching a wider audience. Subsequent political interference, litigation and scholarly rivalry meant that full publication was only achieved in 1977. Now that the story can be fully told, the objects found over six decades ago near Nag Hammadi are nothing short of explosive.

  A local man called Muhammad Ali al-Samman and his brothers had saddled their camels and gone out to the cliffside behind the town, Gebel el-Tarif, to dig for sebakh—the decayed remains of ancient mud-brick buildings that make for excellent fertiliser. Digging around a large boulder, Muhammad hit a pottery jar almost three feet high. His initial reaction was one of caution and fear: belief in jinns (troublesome spirits) was and is alive in the Egyptian countryside, and a large jar was considered just the sort of dwelling place such beings might favour. (Think of the story of Aladdin’s lamp.) But, as with the tomb robbers of old, greed soon trumped superstition, and Muhammad smashed open the jar hoping to see the glint of gold. Imagine his disappointment when, instead of coins or jewellery, he found only a collection of thirteen old papyrus books, bound in leather. He returned home with his sebakh and his strange find, before unceremoniously dumping the books and the sheets of loose papyrus next to the bread oven—where much of it was subsequently used as a handy store of kindling by his mother.

  All would have been lost for ever were it not for a blood feud that engulfed the al-Samman family. (Feuds are still a common occurrence in the villages around Abydos.) Muhammad’s father was murdered, and his sons took their revenge on the assailant. Fearing that the police would come calling and that the discovery of a heap of old books would get him into further trouble, Muhammad asked the local priest to take them for safe keeping. A local history teacher then saw one of the books and suspected it might be worth something, so sent it to Cairo for expert evaluation. The answer came back: the old manuscripts were indeed rare and valuable. They were quickly sold on the illicit antiquities market in Cairo. Again, they might have disappeared for ever, but for the eagle-eyed authorities who noticed the sale and moved to buy back or confiscate the books. A large part of one had already been spirited away to America, but the rest were seized and deposited in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

  What had been saved for the nation—and for scholarship—was nothing less than a collection of fifty-two texts from the early days of Christianity. Written in Coptic in the fourth century AD, they were translations of older Greek works dating back to the second century. And they were no ordinary biblical manuscripts. They included poems, myths and instructions for mystical practice. More controversial still are the non-canonical gospels, books with names like the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel to the Egyptians and the Secret Book of James. The Gospel of Thomas was written only thirty to eighty years later than the canonical gospels but preserves sayings perhaps even older than the New Testament tradition. It opens with the words, “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down.”11 The Secret Book of John promises to reveal “mysteries” and “things hidden in silence.”12

  The secret words offer a radically different view of Christianity, and of Christ’s teachings. For example, the Gospel of Philip states that “the companion of the [Saviour is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]”;13 other verses discount the Virgin Birth and bodily resurrection as naive misunderstandings. The Testimony of Truth tells the story of the Garden of Eden from the viewpoint of the serpent—who is regarded not as the embodiment of evil, but the bringer of divine wisdom, teaching Adam and Eve to stand up to an oppressive, jealous God and discover the truth for themselves.

  Most shocking of all to the scholars and religious authorities versed in the canonical Christian tradition was a particularly mysterious text with the opaque title Thunder, Perfect Mind, which includes the following poem spoken by God:

  For I am the first and the last.

  I am the honoured one and the scorned one.

  I am the whore and the holy one.

  I am the wife and the virgin …

  I am the barren one, and many are her sons …

  I am the silence that is incomprehensible …

  I am the utterance of my name.14

  The belief in God as Father and Mother—echoing the male and female principles central to ancient Egyptian theology—was commonplace among certain branches of the early church, notably the community in Upper Egypt. Emile Amélineau, in his doctoral thesis on the origins of Egyptian Christianity, had argued for a major influence of ancient Egyptian religion (which he called “paganism”). Throughout his career, his primary goal had been to find new evidence for the earliest religious concepts, and he devoted himself to studying Coptic manuscripts, not just in the libraries of Europe, but also in monasteries throughout Egypt. It is not certain if he visited the monastery of Nag Hammadi, but, given its proximity to his excavations at Abydos, it seems very likely. If only he had known that the greatest insights into early Egyptian Christianity lay buried just a few hundred yards away!

  The writers of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts are today known as Gnostics—those claiming privileged insight. They asserted the identity of the divine and the human, advocated self-knowledge as the path to enlightenment, and regarded Jesus as a spiritual guide rather than the risen Lord. All in all, there are enough similarities with Buddhism to suggest that Gnostic Christianity may have been influenced by Indian beliefs as well as by Egyptian paganism. The Gnostic Gospels, as the Nag Hammadi books have come to be known, demonstrate the diversity of early
Christian theology, and offer an intriguing, alternative vision for how the religion might have developed.

  But this very diversity of belief and practice represented the gravest threat to the survival of Christianity in its early years. To avoid it disappearing along with the myriad of rival cults, the church fathers (and they were, indeed, mostly men) took drastic steps. They set out to create an institutional framework for Christianity—a church—that would provide for communal worship and uniform instruction to the faithful. Upper Egypt, where the traditions of asceticism, eremitism and self-discovery were especially strong, posed a particular challenge. Only by suppressing Gnosticism and its associated practices (focussed on the individual) could the orthodox leaders establish a communal church with the strength of a mass movement. One Christian tradition had to be sacrificed so that the religion as a whole might survive.

  Starting in the mid second century AD, the Gnostic Gospels were denounced as heretical, and copies were systematically seized and burned in communities throughout Egypt. In Nag Hammadi, a believer in these mystical texts—possibly a monk from the nearby monastery—took a collection of the banned manuscripts and hid them from certain destruction. He put them in a jar, took them out into the desert, and buried them at the foot of the escarpment—where they remained, through the Arab conquest and the coming of Islam, until they were discovered by Muhammad Ali al-Samman nearly sixteen hundred years later.

  Egyptian monasticism survived the purge, but in a cenobitic (communal) form, and within the organisational structures of the church. In AD 451, little more than a century after the Theban St. Pachomius founded his first cenobitic monasteries in Upper Egypt, the whole Egyptian church split from Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism over an obscure doctrinal dispute concerning the nature of Christ. Whereas Orthodoxy asserted that Christ had two natures (divine and human), the Egyptian (Coptic) church held to its monophysite belief that Christ had but one composite nature, incorporating both divine and human aspects. Despite the iconoclasm directed by Copts against the religious imagery and monuments of their pharaonic forebears, the defining belief of Coptic theology has been passed straight down from the ancient Egyptian theology of divine kingship, in which the king was both god and man in one person. In one tantalising respect, therefore, a Coptic service is not a million miles away from the ancient Festival of the Sanctuary. And a Coptic service is the only place where you can still hear the word for God, pnoute, uttered in the language of the pharaohs.