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The Coffin Texts and Democracy

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The Coffin Texts and Democracy chapter 3 The Coffin Texts and Democracy The origin of the term ‘democratization’ in Egyptological parlance goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was introduced within the broader framework of the study of the political history of the end of the Old Kingdom and of the First Intermediate Period. The expression has always astonished me, for although even today, it continues to have wide currency in studies of this period,1 it is quite evident that neither the late Old Kingdom, nor the First Intermediate Period, nor the Middle Kingdom, were in any sense democratic. In ancient Egypt, there never was an administrative system in which those in charge were controlled by the population. I should of course add that, when Egyptologists utilize the term ‘democratization,’ they never envisage such a political system. What they call ‘democratization’ is rather a socio-cultural trend of proliferation: privileges that had been reserved origi- nally for the king come within the reach of increasingly large segments of the population, in the end being adopted even by the lowermost social strata. The dissemination of the Coffin Texts is often understood from this perspec- tive. The idea is that, originally, the Pyramid Texts were strictly reserved for usage by the king, but that, in the form of the Coffin Texts, such texts were ‘usurped’ by the whole population. Several Egyptologists have recently opted for the somewhat weaker term ‘demotization’ to designate the phenomenon.2 According to a line of Egyptological thinking introduced in the early twenti- eth century, but still largely current today, this change took place roughly con- comitantly with the collapse of the Old Kingdom, and particularly during the 1 To my knowledge, the word appears for the first time in its ‘Egyptological’ sense in a study written by Moret and published in 1922 (in: Recueil dʼétudes égyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de J.-F. Champollion, p. 331–360). Some other examples: Bonnet, RÄRG, p. 347; Morenz, Ägyptische Religion, p. 58–59; Podeman Sørensen, in: The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 109–125; Assmann, Tod und Jenseits, p. 503; Ikram, Dodson, The Mummy in Ancient Egypt, p. 17; Richards, Society and Death, p. 8–9; Wasmuth, BiOr 63 [2006], col. 68; Labrousse, in: Ancient Memphis, p. 308; Allen, in: The Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology, p. 9–17. 2 For example Assmann, Maʿat, p. 114; 118; 119. Others do not even use a term for the phenom- enon, but implicitly subscribe to the theory (e.g. Borghouts, Book of the Dead [39], p. 57: “. the Coffin Texts, which are for general use . .”). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�74990_�05 the coffin texts and democracy 125 First Intermediate Period.3 The theory is currently somewhat less fashionable,4 and those who continue to use the term democratization often place it between quotation marks. Yet the ‘democratic hypothesis’ remains essentially undis- puted in mainstream Egyptology, witness, for example, the following remark by J. Assmann on the “demo(cra)tization of the image of the king at the end of the Old Kingdom and later”:5 Only with the theoretical and potential extension of this highly exclusive6 destiny in the hereafter to all Egyptians, the royal netherworld also expanded into an Elysiac netherworldly space. By consequence, the dis- tinction between the world of death and Elysium lost its political sense (the Elysium for the king, the world of death for the people).7 The Roots of the ‘Democratic Hypothesis’ I am inclined to situate the ‘prelude’ to the ‘democratic hypothesis’ in 1909, when A. H. Gardiner published his seminal edition of Papyrus Leiden 344 recto: the poem of Ipuwer.8 This document, dated to the nineteenth dynasty, is written in Middle Egyptian and transmits one of the best-known examples of Egyptian literary laments. In this text, Ipuwer describes a torn society. The traditional social hierarchy has broken down, peasants and servants usurping the position of those who used to be their masters. In these troubled times, the administration no longer functions. Laws are disregarded. No one pursues his 3 Fundamentally Moret, loc. cit.; Kees, Totenglauben, p. 160–229; Vandier, Religion, p. 86–87; Morenz, loc. cit.; see still, for example, Meeks, Favard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, p. 5. 4 See, e.g., the remarks by Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion, p. 155–158; Mathieu, in: Dʼun monde à lʼautre, p. 256–257. 5 “. die Demo(kra)tisierung dieses Königsbildes mit und nach dem Ende des Alten Reichs.” 6 I.e. ‘royal’ (H.W.). 7 Emphasis mine. “Erst mit der Ausweitung dieses hochexklusiven Jenseitsschicksals auf theoretisch und potentiell alle Ägypter weitete sich auch das königliche Jenseits zu einem elysischen Jenseitsraum. Damit verlor die Unterscheidung zwischen Todeswelt und Elysium ihren politischen Sinn (dem König das Elysium, den Menschen die Todeswelt);” Assmann, Tod und Jenseits, p. 503. 8 Gardiner, Admonitions. For a new edition of this text, with numerous corrections, see Enmarch, The Dialogue of Ipuwer..
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