Early Dynastic Egypt

by Toby A H Wilkinson

  SCORPION

  The frequent occurrence of the scorpion motif in royal contexts of the late Predynastic period (notably a rock-cut inscription at Gebel Sheikh Suleiman) makes it likely that the animal held a special cultic significance for Egypt’s rulers during the period of state formation. It may have been a potent symbol of royal aggression. The relief decoration of a stone vase from the temple at Hierakonpolis includes scorpions, whilst model scorpions of glazed composition and stone have been found in a number of early votive deposits, notably Hierakonpolis itself (Quibell 1900: pls XVIII.15, 16, XX.10, XXII.4). On the northernmost relief panel beneath the Step Pyramid, a scorpion is depicted behind the king, presumably in a protective position. The attributes of the scorpion defy explanation, particularly the cylinder seals with which it appears to be equipped (F.D.Friedman 1995:19 fig. 12, 21, n. 107, cf. 38 fig. 23). The scorpion standing on a ring depicted on the stela of Merka—from tomb S3505 at North Saqqara, dating to the reign of Qaa (Emery 1958: pl. 39)—has been interpreted as the earliest attestation of the scorpion goddess Selket/Serket (von Känel 1984; followed by Shaw and Nicholson 1995:262). However, given the similarities between the Merka scorpion and examples on the Netjerikhet relief panels, the identification of the First Dynasty scorpion as an unnamed cultic object seems more plausible, especially as Selket is not attested by name until the Pyramid Texts of the late Fifth Dynasty.

  URAEUS

  The earliest representation of the royal uraeus adorning the brow of the king is on an ivory label of Den from Abydos showing the king smiting a foreign captive. The Wepwawet standard which accompanies the king also has a uraeus in front of the jackal deity (Johnson 1990:40). (Note, however, that the authenticity of this label has been questioned [Johnson 1990:6]. If it is not genuine, the earliest definite occurrence of the uraeus would be in the rock-cut scene of Netjerikhet in the Wadi Maghara, Sinai [Gardiner and Peet 1952: pl. I, 1955].)

  Summary list of deities and cult objects attested in the Early Dynastic period

  Anti, Anubis, Apis (Hap), Ash, Bastet, Bat/Hathor, Deshret (the red crown), Geb, Harsaphes, Hedjet (the white crown), Hedjwer, Heqet, Horus, Iat/Iamet, Isis (?), Khentiamentiu, Khnum, Mafdet, Mehit, Min, Neith, Nekhbet, Osiris (?), Ptah, Ra (?), Satet (?), Sed, Seshat, Seth, Shu (?), Sobek, Sokar (?), Sopdu, Thoth, Wadjet, Wepwawet, hippopotamus, pelican, royal placenta (?), scorpion, uraeus.

  Religious festivals

  The eponymous event chosen to identify a particular regnal year in the Early Dynastic royal annals was often a religious festival, suggesting both that such festivals were common at this period and that they were of great importance in the life of the court (cf. Emery 1961:127). Apart from festivals of kingship, like the Sed-festival and coronation

  rituals, five other festivals are attested. Two of them are known from later periods, whilst the precise significance of the other three eludes us.

  The running of the Apis bull

  The running of the Apis bull took place at Memphis. The festival is recorded in regnal year x+12 of Den, year 2 of Semerkhet, and in two years (x+4 and x+10) of Ninetjer’s reign. In addition, the running of the Apis is shown on a sealing of Den, and is recorded on two year labels of Qaa from Abydos. The event could evidently take place more than once in a reign, since the fourth register of the Palermo Stone records the second occasion of the running of the Apis.

  t

  The Palermo Stone records this obscure festival as the principal event of Den’s regnal year x+5. It was also celebrated in year x+14 of Ninetjer, and may perhaps have been connected in some way with the goddess Nekhbet, who is also mentioned for this year. The Djet festival seems to have been a recurrent event, since the second occasion of its celebration is recorded in the annals.

  dw3-Hr-pt

  The adoration of the celestial Horus’ is another obscure festival mentioned in the royal annals for year x+8 of the reign of Ninetjer.

  The festival of Sokar (?)

  A label of Qaa from Abydos records the third occasion of a festival involving a divine bark (Dreyer et al. 1996:75), a celebration also attested on the Palermo Stone in year 5 of an unidentified First Dynasty king, year x+6 of Den, and years x+6 and x+12 of Ninetjer (see Figure 8.7). In later times, the most prominent festival involving a divine bark was that of Sokar, god of the Memphite necropolis. A stone, perhaps a cultic image of the deity, was ‘dragged across the fields in a barque [sic] fixed to a sledge’ (Lurker 1980:113). A relief fragment from the Step Pyramid complex which shows the king pulling a bark may depict the same festival (Firth and Quibell 1935, II: pl. 109.1; W.S.Smith 1949:137). The festival mentioned on the Palermo Stone was first read as the ‘Festival of Sokar’ by Schäfer (1902), and this interpretation has been widely accepted. However, the form of the bark shown on the Palermo Stone is not the characteristic Henu-bark associated with Sokar (Anthes 1957:78). Rather, it belongs to a group of divine barks which includes the Maaty-bark and the šms-Hr-boat of the king. None the less, the Pyramid Texts make an explicit connection between Sokar and the Maaty-bark, so the festival recorded in the annals may indeed be a festival of Sokar (Gaballa and Kitchen 1969:14). In the reign of Ninetjer, the Sokar festival seems to have been celebrated at regular intervals of six years (but note O’Mara 1996:204). In subsequent dynasties, the festival may have become annual, since its celebration was no longer a

  distinctive enough event to be used for dating purposes (Gaballa and Kitchen 1969:15– 17).

  The earliest depiction of a bark resembling the Henu-bark of Sokar appears on the Naqada label of Aha. However, the boat, shown in the first register, appears to sail on water, unlike the Sokar-bark which was drawn on a sledge. The device representing the king’s name which appears behind the boat holds a hoe; this group of signs may record an agricultural rite, perhaps ‘ancestral to (or related to) the later h bs-t3 and performed by the king at a Sokar festival’ (Gaballa and Kitchen 1969:18).

  dšr

  Another festival in which a boat played a major role was the otherwise unknown dšr- festival (the name is followed by a boat determinative). This is recorded just once, in an entry on the Palermo Stone corresponding to the early First Dynasty. The frequent depiction of boats on contemporary labels emphasises the importance of boats and/or a riverine setting for Early Dynastic rituals. This is not surprising in a country where the river was the principal geographical feature, source of life, means of transport and artery of communication.

  Figure 8.7 Festivals involving a divine bark. Several important religious festivals seem to have involved a sacred boat: (1) entry from the second register of the Palermo Stone,

  referring to a year in the early First Dynasty as ‘the year of the second occasion of the Djet-festival’; the hieroglyphic determinative suggests that this festival involved a boat (after Schäfer 1902: pl. I); (2) ivory year label of Semerkhet from Abydos, referring to the regular royal progress by boat (the ‘following of Horus’) and another ritual denoted by a divine boat (bottom right- hand corner) (after Petrie 1900: pl.

  XVII.26); (3) a relief block from the Step Pyramid complex of Netjerikhet showing the king dragging a boat, perhaps during the Sokar festival (after Firth and Quibell 1935, II: pl. 109.1). Not to same scale.

  SHRINES

  Upper Egyptian and Lower Egyptian architectural styles

  The earliest shrines must have been light-weight structures, built from wooden posts and reed matting. This became fossilised as the ‘ideal type’ for temple architecture, and as such was repeated in the more permanent medium of stone throughout Egyptian history until the very end of pharaonic civilisation (Kemp 1989:91–105). An actual example of such a building has been excavated on the low desert at Hierakonpolis, the post-holes demarcating an irregular, oval-shaped enclosure (R.Friedman 1996). The temple seems to have been provided with flag-poles, confirming the accuracy of representations on early labels and seal-impressions (for example, Petrie 1901: pls IIIA.5, X.2). The latter typically show shrines of the ‘Sarifenbau’ type; tha
t is, reed structures resembling those built by the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq up to modern times (Petrie 1901: pl. XVI.114, 116, 117; Kuhlmann 1996). In Egyptian texts from the Third Dynasty onwards, a shrine of this form is used as the determinative for pr-wr, the ancestral and archetypal shrine of Upper Egypt (Arnold 1982). By contrast, the Lower Egyptian shrine, the pr-nw or pr- n r, is depicted as a more solid construction with a rounded or pitched roof. Examples of both types may be seen, translated into stone, lining the Sed-festival court of Netjerikhet’s Step Pyramid complex. The origin of the two distinctive types of architecture is lost in the mists of time. The post-and-matting temple excavated at Hierakonpolis seems to prove the existence of shrines of classic Upper Egyptian type in Predynastic Upper Egypt, while the Narmer macehead and early First Dynasty labels depict shrines of the Lower Egyptian type in a probable Lower Egyptian context. So, the iconographic distinction between Upper and Lower Egyptian shrine types may have some basis in prehistory, rather than merely reflecting the Egyptian obsession with duality.

  State versus local temples

  The few Early Dynastic shrines and temples that have survived and been excavated seem to be distinguished as state or local shrines by their architecture and decoration (or lack of decoration).

  Kemp (1989) has classified Egyptian temples according to the ‘formality’ of their architecture; that is, how far their design corresponds to the ideal of temple architecture propounded by the royal court. The local shrines at Elephantine and Medamud are described as ‘pre-formal’ and are characterised by their ‘openness’. They may be compared with the iconographic evidence from early inscriptions which ‘suggests that the barriers at the temple entrance were largely symbolic: only a small picket gate was shown in front of archaic temples’ (Roth 1993:39). As we have seen, an open plan may have suited the nature of early cultic activity, which seems to have put great emphasis on the carrying of divine standards and cult statues in procession. Only when provincial temples were rebuilt by the state at the end of the Old Kingdom did their architecture become ‘formal’, reflecting the stylistic dictates of the court.

  O’Connor (1992) has put forward an alternative hypothesis; that is, that at least some Early Dynastic provincial temples were large and formal structures, the result of court initiatives. He argues that the chief Old Kingdom temple at sites such as Medamud, Elephantine, Hierakonpolis and Abydos has not yet been located and excavated; and that the temples at these sites discussed by Kemp, characterised as ‘pre-formal’, are minor, peripheral establishments (O’Connor 1992:84, 89). However, this argument seems difficult to sustain, since extensive excavation on the island of Elephantine has markedly failed to produce any evidence for another temple of the Early Dynastic period or Old Kingdom besides the local shrine of Satet (Seidlmayer 1996b: 116–17). Here, then, and probably at other sites as well, ‘the negative evidence for state sponsored temple construction…is very real’ (Seidlmayer 1996b: 118).

  Temples in the provinces which show signs of state activity or royal involvement seem, on the whole, to be confined to sites connected with the emergence and ideology of kingship or sites with royal residences nearby (Seidlmayer 1996b: 116). Moreover, royal interest in selected provincial shrines seems to have been confined to the First and Second Dynasties (Seidlmayer 1996b: 118–19). In the Third Dynasty, there seems to have been almost no court involvement outside important state cult centres like Heliopolis (although it must be acknowledged that the Third Dynasty represents a relatively short period of time, and that our evidence for internal developments is sparse). Together with the royal funerary establishments, state shrines in the provinces seem to have formed elements in a network of Early Dynastic court culture. They bound the provinces to the central administration both ideologically and economically, and in this respect may be seen as an early example of the administrative apparatus employed so effectively in Old Kingdom Egypt and New Kingdom Nubia. On the other hand, ‘the role of the local cults as foci of personal loyalty and as an expression of the collective identity of the local communities must be regarded as a genuine element of Egyptian provincial

  culture’ (Seidlmayer 1996b: 118).

  Local temples and shrines seem to have been devoid of relief decoration. They were probably built entirely from mudbrick, the monumental use of stone apparently being a royal monopoly in the Early Dynastic period. By contrast, temples founded or ‘usurped’ by the state were either entirely stone built, or, more commonly, embellished with stone

  elements. These were carved with relief scenes depicting the rituals of kingship, especially temple foundation ceremonies and the Sed-festival. This essential difference between local and state temples has been summarised as follows:

  Evidently, state interests were pursued independently, without acknowledging the temples in their role as indigenous organisational and ideological nuclei of the local communities, and these shrines were not the places the kings chose to display their relationship to the local gods as a tenet basic to their ruling ideology. Consequently, it was felt unnecessary to adorn the provincial sanctuaries with carved and inscribed architectural elements which would have offered the possibility to express such a doctrine in visible and lasting form.

  (Seidlmayer 1996b:119)

  Temple building

  An entry on the Palermo Stone for the reign of Den records the erection ( h ) of an unspecified temple (hwt-n r), whilst a label of Qaa from Abydos (Dreyer et al. 1996:75) is unique amongst year labels of the First Dynasty in that it mentions a building project: the foundation of a building called q3w-n rw. The annals suggest that the foundation of a new religious building usually comprised a more elaborate sequence of events. Three different ceremonies—perhaps stages in the process—are recorded on the Palermo Stone for the same temple swt-n rw, ‘thrones of the gods’, during the reign of Den. The first ceremony seems to have been designated by the word h3, perhaps indicating the initial decision to found a new temple and perhaps the first planning phase (Erman and Grapow 1929:8, definition 4). However, the main Cairo fragment of the royal annals seems to challenge this interpretation since it apparently records a second ‘planning’ of the same building smr-n rw in the one reign. The term h3 may instead refer to a ritual circuit of the building, performed by the king (Gaballa and Kitchen 1969:15; F.D.Friedman 1995:14). The annals also record the crucial ceremony of p -šs, ‘stretching the cord’, which is customarily shown in temple foundation scenes, such as the relief block from the Early Dynastic temple at Gebelein and the door-jamb of Khasekhemwy from Hierakonpolis. The stretching of the cord represented the formal laying out of the temple, and accompanied the sanctification of the land on which the temple was to be built. A subsequent phase, wpt-š, ‘opening of the (sacred) lake’, is recorded for the temple ‘thrones of the gods’. For this building, the three ceremonies are recorded for consecutive years. This indicates, perhaps, that the temple was not a particularly large one, since the construction of a major building might be expected to have taken considerably longer. Apparently, it was not necessary to accomplish (or to record) all three ceremonies for every new temple. Early in the First Dynasty, only one ceremony (h3) is mentioned for a temple called smr-n rw, ‘companion of the gods’, whilst in the early Third Dynasty the stretching of the cord seems to have been the initial ceremony in the foundation of the temple qbh-n rw, ‘refreshment of the gods’.

  Early Dynastic shrines

  The evidence for early temples is both epigraphic and archaeological (Figure 8.8). Two distinct religious precincts at Buto, a complex with palm trees and the shrine of b wt, are well attested in Early Dynastic inscriptions—and throughout Egyptian history—but have not been located at the site itself. Excavations in the main temple area have not, so far, revealed any material older than the New Kingdom. Likewise, the important shrine of Neith at Saïs is known to have existed in the Early Dynastic period but still awaits discovery and excavation. Some early provincial shrines, like those at Tell Ibrahim Awad, Badari, Armant and
Elephantine, do not merit a mention in the written record but are known through their surviving archaeological remains, which indicate very modest structures (Kemp 1995:688). In the case of important cult centres such as Heliopolis, Abydos and Hierakonpolis, discoveries through excavation have confirmed the epigraphic evidence for the importance of these sites at an early period of Egyptian history.

  Elephantine

  ‘Elephantine is the only site in Egypt where, thanks to a lucky combination of circumstances, the development of a provincial sanctuary can be followed from protodynastic times onwards’ (Seidlmayer 1996b: 115). The earliest shrine on the island of Elephantine has been uniquely preserved, thanks to its unusual location. It was situated in a natural niche between a group of large boulders, to the north of the early settlement. Successive rebuildings and enlargements required more space, and so filled in the site of the early shrine, building over the top of the boulders. The structure of the Early Dynastic temple and many of the votive objects deposited there survived (Dreyer 1986; Kemp 1989:69–74). The first structure to be built comprised two small mudbrick chambers, which appear to have been designed to protect and shield the sanctuary holding the cult image. This was presumably housed at the very back of the niche, directly between two of the boulders. In front of these two small rooms, a courtyard, possibly roofed, was created by enclosing the space with further brick walls (Kemp 1989:70, fig. 23). Although Predynastic pottery was found within the shrine, the small mudbrick buildings which formed the earliest shrine seem to date to the Early Dynastic period (Kemp 1989:69). During the first half of the First Dynasty, modifications to the adjacent fortress impinged directly upon the shrine, restricting the space in the forecourt. As a result, the entrance to the shrine had to be moved to the north. A subsequent strengthening of the fortified wall further reduced the area of the shrine forecourt. Indeed, the actions of the Early Dynastic state showed wilful disregard for local religious practices, and the community shrine was entirely neglected by the court in favour of a royal cult installation on the southern part of the island (Seidlmayer 1996b: 115). Towards the end of the Second Dynasty, the expansion of the town led to the abandonment of the inner fortifications. This allowed the shrine to expand once again, regaining its former extent. Further expansion of the sacred enclosure took place during the Third Dynasty and early Old Kingdom (Kaiser et al. 1988:135–82; Ziermann 1993).