Early Dynastic Egypt

by Toby A H Wilkinson

  Another informative source for Early Dynastic religious belief is the many personal names of the period that have survived in sealings and other inscriptions (cf. Hornung

  1983:44). Many of these names are theophorous (that is, they include the name of a deity as part of the personal name) and they provide some indication about which cults were popular in the first three dynasties—popular enough, at any rate, to be chosen by parents when naming a child. Moreover, at least 19 Early Dynastic names incorporate the word n r, ‘god’, referring to an unspecified deity; three female names use the feminine counterpart n rt, ‘goddess’ (Hornung 1983:44–9). Of course, in any particular community, ‘god’ or ‘goddess’, when unspecified, was probably understood as referring to the local deity. None the less, we should be careful of underestimating the sophistication of Egyptian theology. It seems clear that the general concept of the divine was already well established in the Early Dynastic period.

  The embodiment of divine attributes

  In religious iconography, the animal chosen to represent a particular deity or aspect of divinity was selected for the qualities (not necessarily beneficial) it embodied. Thus, the great wild cow of the marshes was regarded as an extremely dangerous animal but was also recognised to be aggressively protective towards its offspring. It therefore made an ideal image of protective maternal power, embodied in the early cow goddesses Bat and Hathor. A further idea in Egyptian magic and theology was ‘fighting like with like’. Hence, an animal which embodied a particular undesirable characteristic or whose behaviour adversely affected humans was chosen as the image of the deity to guard against such eventualities. For example, in the Predynastic period, when bodies were buried directly in shallow graves with relatively little protection, a common problem (and cause for concern) must have been the digging up of bodies, shortly after burial, by jackals and other wild dogs which lived on the margins of the cultivation. As a result, the jackal was chosen to represent the gods charged with protecting the dead in the necropolis, Khentiamentiu and Anubis (Pinch, personal communication 1995).

  Depiction of deities

  It has been suggested that Egyptian religion witnessed an evolution during the first two centuries of the third millennium BC, whereby deities were increasingly represented in human form rather than as animals or inanimate totems (Hornung 1983:105). However, the evidence from the Early Dynastic period seems to indicate a more complex situation, with theriomorphic (in animal form), anthropomorphic (in human form) and ‘mixed form’ deities all coexisting in religious iconography. Gods such as Anubis, Mafdet and Wepwawet were, in the Early Dynastic period, always depicted in animal form; Min and Ptah were worshipped in human form from the very beginning of Egyptian history. The figures of Bat at the top of the Narmer Palette represent an intermediate stage: although the heads have the ears and horns of a cow, the faces are human. The ‘mixed form’ so characteristic of Egyptian religion—whereby the deity was shown with a human body and an animal head—is not attested until the early Second Dynasty (Figure 8.1). Incised stone vessels of Hetepsekhemwy and Nebra from the Step Pyramid complex show the cat-headed Bastet standing before the king’s cartouche (Lacau and Lauer 1959: pl. 11 nos 57, 58), while sealings of Peribsen from later in the dynasty depict the god Ash with an animal head (Petrie 1901: pl. XXI.176). An undated but

  Figure 8.1 Depictions of deities. Early examples of the anthropomorphic form favoured for Egyptian deities in later periods: (1) an unidentified ram-headed deity from the side of a small, limestone, votive offering in the form of a carrying-chair; the provenance of the object is not known (now in the Kofler-Truniger Collection, Luzern) (after Schlögl 1978: pl. 81b); (2) the god Ash, shown on a seal-impression of Peribsen from Abydos (after Petrie 1901: pl. XXII.179); (3) the goddess Bastet, shown on an incised stone vessel from the Step Pyramid complex of Netjerikhet at Saqqara (after Lacau and Lauer 1959: pl. 11, no. 57). Not to same scale.

  clearly Early Dynastic votive offering in the form of a shrine (Schlögl 1978: pls 81a-c) shows two standing figures with ‘bird-like heads and ram’s horns’ (Hornung 1983:109). In religious texts, deities of ‘mixed form’ are not described until very late in pharaonic history. Such depictions were clearly an artistic convention, but may not have been a true reflection of how the Egyptians really conceived the appearance of their deities (Pinch, personal communication 1995). Indeed, the determinative used for the name of a god in Early Dynastic inscriptions is usually a simplified human figure (Hornung 1983:107). One theory holds that the artistic convention of animal-headed deities harks back to

  Predynastic cultic practices in which priests, wearing animal masks, officiated at religious ceremonies. This hypothesis receives some support from the Predynastic Two Dogs Palette’ which seems to show a man wearing a dog-like mask and tail performing rites in the midst of a hunt.

  Local and national deities

  Although most Egyptian gods and goddesses had primary cult centres and are thus ostensibly ‘local’ deities, some none the less appear to have enjoyed universal, national importance from the very beginning of Egyptian history. We may wonder whether gods such as Khnum and Thoth were in origin local deities or whether, being universal in origin, they subsequently adopted a particular locality as their main cult centre (cf. Hornung 1983:225). The term n r-nỉwtỉ, ‘local god’, is attested from the Early Dynastic period. A votive statuette of a cloaked anthropomorphic deity in a Swiss private collection (Kofler-Truniger Collection, Luzern) is identified by the inscription nỉwtỉ, ‘of the city’. Yet the occurrence of ‘local gods’ in the Pyramid Texts (for example, §891a)— which were a product of the royal court—indicates that these deities had a degree of national importance (Hornung 1983:73).

  It is important to distinguish between truly local deities, like Bastet and Nekhbet, and the local forms of universal gods such as Horus. The origins of gods like Horus of Nekhen, Horus of Letopolis and Horus the Behdetite are lost in prehistory. One possibility is that they represent an attempt by Egypt’s early rulers to integrate disparate centres into a more unified religious framework, local forms of a universal god adopting the heritage of local deities (Hornung 1983:73). Indeed, some have seen the emergence of the Egyptian pantheon at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period as resulting from the fusion of distinctive regional traditions, mirroring the process of political unification (Baines 1991:96). However, it is striking that the different deities attested at the beginning of the historic period occupy different niches and perform distinct roles in the overall field of human experience. If a pre-existing plethora of distinctive local deities was successfully moulded into a sophisticated and coherent pantheon, this would represent one of the most outstanding achievements of the Early Dynastic period: a theological unification as impressive as the political unification of the Two Lands. Alternatively, the different deities may not represent separate belief systems with local or regional origins (Quirke 1992:73). Rather, there may have been a unified religious tradition throughout the Nile valley during the fourth millennium BC, perhaps mirrored in the archaeological record by a unified material culture. If so, this tradition was already characterised by a pantheon of deities which together represented the full complexity of the Egyptians’ interaction with their environment. This hypothesis is succinctly summarised by Quirke:

  Despite the local voices for various deities, none of the different forms plays a role external to the pattern found in the pantheon that would be recognised throughout the country. Two forces are at work here, the need to mark off a distinctive form for specifically local worship as an expression of the local community, and the continued membership of a

  culture, a way of life, common to all living in the Nile Valley… The interplay of these forces produces the range of the Egyptian pantheon.

  (Quirke 1992:75)

  Cult practice

  Although we cannot hope to recover the nature of religious ritual, two particular aspects of cult practice are attested in Early Dynastic writte
n sources and a third can be demonstrated by the archaeological record. The first, human sacrifice, may represent a survival of prehistoric practice or alternatively an experiment in absolute power conducted by the first kings of a united Egypt. Although sparsely attested (perhaps reflecting its rarity), it may none the less have continued as a feature of cult practice right down to the Late Period. The second aspect, the role of divine images, seems to have been central to Early Dynastic religion, and was to remain an important component of temple ritual throughout Egyptian history. The same is true of the third aspect of cult practice, the presentation of votive offerings. In this case, the objects themselves have survived, although the forms of worship of which they represent the material component cannot be reconstructed with any certainty.

  Human sacrifice

  There is a limited amount of evidence to suggest that human sacrifice, in a cultic setting, was practised in the Predynastic period and at the very beginning of the Early Dynastic period (Figure 8.2), albeit, perhaps, on a small scale (cf. Shaw and Nicholson 1995:134). In common with other unusual aspects of Early Dynastic religion—most notably the reverence shown for the royal placenta—human sacrifice may have belonged to an ancient African substratum of Egyptian culture. We have seen in Chapter 7 that retainer sacrifice seems to have characterised royal burials of the late First Dynasty. As an exercise in absolute power, this particular practice was short-lived and is not attested in Egypt after the First Dynasty. The same does not, however, seem to be true of human sacrifice in a cultic sphere (contra Hoffman 1980:261). As Egypt’s early rulers formulated sophisticated mechanisms of authority, some older, more blatant practices seem to have been replaced; but there is evidence, both archaeological and epigraphic, for the continuation of ritual killings (Schulman 1988; Ritner 1993:162–3). Although interpretation of the sources is by no means straightforward, a possible distinction may be made between the First Dynasty examples, which suggest the killing of humans as sacrificial victims offered to the gods, and the later occurrences which seem to involve the ceremonial execution of criminals or enemy captives. These latter were apparently carried out in a sacred setting to invoke the supernatural powers in countering the forces of chaos (Willems 1990).

  Recent excavations at the Predynastic cemetery of Adaïma have revealed evidence of human sacrifice in burials of the Naqada II period. One body showed signs of the throat having been cut, followed by decapitation (Midant-Reynes et al. 1996:15). Ritual human sacrifice is depicted on a label of Aha from Abydos, and seems to be associated with the ‘fashioning’ of an ỉmỉ-wt fetish (Petrie 1901: pl. III.6). A kneeling figure plunges a sharp weapon into the chest of a prisoner whose hands are tied behind his back, observed by a

  standing figure of authority with a long staff. A bowl is placed between the assailant and the victim to catch the blood. A similar scene is depicted on a wooden label of Djer from Saqqara, this time associated with the fashioning and dedication of cultic totems (Emery 1961:59, fig. 21). Since there are no surviving textual references to a ceremony involving sacrifice of this kind, we cannot be sure of the context of the ritual.

  On the label of Aha, the scene of human sacrifice is associated with the fashioning of a falcon standard and an ỉmỉ-wt fetish. Both were representative of royal authority; the ỉmỉ- wt fetish was closely associated in later times with Anubis (see below). The religious ceremony associated with ritual killing on the Djer label appears to be more straightforward. It seems to depict the formal presentation of cultic objects to the king. Beneath the sign ms, ‘fashioning’, a line of men parades before the serekh of Djer (representing the person of the king), each carrying a different ‘totem’. These comprise, on the top register, a ladder-like object (perhaps symbolising the ladder, mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, by which the king ascended to the stars), a mummiform figure, a large catfish (which calls to mind the writing of Narmer’s Horus name), and a pelican. On the

  Figure 8.2 Human sacrifice. Iconographic evidence:

  a fragmentary label of Aha from Abydos, showing a bound prisoner being

  sacrificed; an officiant plunges a dagger into the prisoner’s breast, while a bowl stands between the two to catch the blood (after Petrie 1901: pl. III.6); (2) a wooden label of Djer from Saqqara, with an identical scene of prisoner sacrifice shown in the top right-hand corner (after Emery 1961:59, fig. 21). Not to same scale.

  second register figures bring a bull standard and a panelled rectangle, perhaps representing the royal serekh. The procession of totem-bearers on the top register is followed by a smaller figure carrying a spear.

  Divine images

  The principal goal of cult practice was to bridge the twin realms of the divine and the human and invoke the presence of the gods on earth in their divine images (Baines 1991:91; and see also Figure 8.3). The dedication of divine images and statues is well attested in Early Dynastic sources, particularly those dating to the First and Second Dynasties (cf. Logan 1990:62). The Egyptian word used to describe the action is ms, literally ‘to give birth to’ and hence ‘to fashion’. However, there is some debate about the precise meaning of the phrase in relation to divine images. Some scholars think that the activity thus recorded is the dedication of the image by the king to the god, rather than the manufacture of the image (which would not have been carried out by the king himself, though he would doubtless have commissioned the work). In dedicating the image, possibly by means of the ‘opening of the mouth ceremony’, the king would have given life to the statue, and the word ms may refer to this aspect of the event. Leaving aside the precise significance of the verb ms, there is no doubt that the commissioning and dedication of cult images was a major royal activity in the Early Dynastic period (F.D.Friedman 1995:35). In the annals of the Palermo Stone and its associated fragments, there are some 21 references to the fashioning of divine images in the first two dynasties (Redford 1986:89). Many First Dynasty labels also record the practice. The creation of cult statues validated the king’s own claim to divinity by reinforcing his position as theoretical high priest of every cult and his role as intermediary between gods and humans.

  The divine images dedicated by Early Dynastic kings were probably statuettes made from stone or precious metal. The Coptos colossi and a similar stone statue from the early temple at Hierakonpolis represent the earliest surviving cult images of anthropomorphic deities. A number of stone animal sculptures have also survived from the early dynasties, and these are generally assumed to have been cult statues of deities worshipped in animal form. They include a travertine baboon incised with the name of Narmer (perhaps the king who dedicated the image) (E.Schott 1969), a frog of the same material (Cooney and Simpson 1976), and a limestone hippopotamus (Koefoed-Petersen 1951:4, pl. 1). The Sixth Dynasty gold hawk from the temple of Horus at Hierakonpolis (Quibell and Green 1902: pl. XLVII) indicates that cult statues were also made of precious metals. Unsurprisingly, few have survived from antiquity. Cult statues were probably housed and

  transported in carrying-chairs (cf. Troy 1986:79–82). Small model carrying-chairs of glazed composition and stone have been found in deposits of early votive offerings (Kemp 1989:93, fig. 33); one of these models may represent the carrying-chair as a deity in its own right, named (r)p(y)t, ‘she of the carrying-chair’ (Troy 1986:80). The Scorpion macehead shows a number of figures on what appear to be sledges; these may also have been divine cult images (Roth 1993:39, n. 23; cf. Pinch 1993: pls 10, 21b, 24–5). Similar sledge-born figures are shown on a block from the Palace of Apries at Memphis which, although probably of Late Period date (contra Weill 1961:351), has important iconographic links with Early Dynastic religion (cf. Bietak 1994). Given the general conservatism of religious rituals, we may assume that cult statues were carried in procession, and that the appearances of divine

  Figure 8.3 Divine images. Representations of cult images from contemporary Early Dynastic sources: (1) female figure on a sledge, possibly a divine image, shown on the Scorpion macehead (after Spencer 1993:5
6, fig. 36); (2) female figure in a carrying-shrine, again plausibly identified as a divine image, shown on the Narmer macehead (after Quibell 1900: pl.

  XXVIB); (3) entry from the third register of the Palermo Stone, referring to a year (in the mid-First Dynasty) as ‘the year of dedicating (an image of the god) Sed’ (after Schäfer 1902: pl. I). Not to same scale.

  images in such circumstances were an important feature of Egyptian cult practice in the Early Dynastic period, as they were in the New Kingdom (Kemp 1989:185–8). The open plan characteristic of Early Dynastic provincial shrines may be as much practical as symbolic, designed to accommodate this particular aspect of cult practice (Roth 1993:39).