Coping with Ethnicity in Pharaonic Egypt

By Juan Carlos Moreno García

Did ancient Egyptians care about ethnicity? Judging from the abundant texts and representations that have survived it seems that ethnicity mattered. Processions of foreigners carrying their tribute to the sovereign of Egypt stand out for their colourful characters dressed in distinctive non-Egyptian clothes and wearing unequivocal markers of their ethnic origins.

But the almost folkloric features they display in these representations conceal the fact that foreigners were often full members of Egyptian society, well integrated and fulfilling trades and activities even high-ranking offices, indistinguishable from their Egyptian fellow. In fact, were it not by their occasional description as aamu (Asiatic), nehesi (Nubian) or lie u (Libyan) in their own monuments, nothing in their looks, titles, names or cultural markers would reveal any particular ethnic identity.

Stereotypical representation of foreigners, tomb of Puyemre, Thebes, Dynasty 18. (Wikimedia Commons)

From an ideolog ic al point of view, the pharaonic culture set clear distinctions between Egypt and foreign territories, inc luding their respec tive lifest yles, values and beliefs. According to the ideal of maat (cosmic order), Pharaoh had the duty to fight and defeat foreigners (represented as the Nine Bows), which menaced the borders of Egypt, eager to invade and plunder it s wealth at the least opportunity.

Bronze Sphinx of Thutmose III, showing Pharaoh reclining on the Nine Bows. (Wikimedia Commons)

Tutankamun’s gold and leather sandals showing the Nine Bows. (https://egypt.blogcrib.com/2019/08/01/grandegyptianmuseumtutankha muns-sandals-3/)

Egyptian Execration Figurine from the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels (E.7465), showing stylized prisoner. (Wikimedia Commons)

However, things were not so simple in reality. Egypt was far from being the exclusive abode of high culture, social order and economic prosperity that pharaonic sources were so inclined to boast about, the model to be imitated. In fact, when regional rulers emerged in periods of political division, they frequently considered more favourable to invoke not a prest ig ious Eg ypt ian royal anc est ry but a f oreig n one. Hyksos king s def ining themselves not necessarily as pharaohs but as “rulers of foreign lands”, or regional princes calling themselves “Libyans” show in the end that ethnicity is always a cultural construct, an identity marker devoid of any “national” or biological essentialism fixed once and for ever, open therefore to continuous reinterpretation and re-elaboration.

Consider Maiherpri, a Nubian prince educated in Egypt with the royal children and buried in the Valley of the Kings. In his Book of the Dead, Maiherpri was represented as an Egyptian, and only his curly hair reveals that he was a Nubian.

Book of Dead of Maiherpri, 18th Dynasty. (Wikimedia Commons)

As for Heqanefer, an official coeval of Tutankhamun and buried at Toshka, in Nubia, he was depicted as an Egyptian in his tomb but as a dark skinned Nubian in the tomb of his superior, the Viceroy of Kush Amenhotep-Huy. Heqanefer represented as a Nubian in the tomb of Huy. (Wikimedia Commons)

Finally, Horimin, a “General of the Army in the Palace of the King”, who lived in the late Ramesside period, was represented in his tomb (TT 221) wearing perfectly a Egyptian dress and ornaments. Only his depiction in one scene bearing a beard and a feather suggests that he was, quite possibly, of Libyan origins.

When considered in a broad perspective, it appears that things hardly could have been different. Egypt was placed at a strategic geographical crossroads between Africa and the Near East, between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Commercial exchanges, flows of goods and ideas, diffusion of techniques and contacts between different peoples favoured the presence of foreign populations in the Nile Valley, where they left a durable influence. It may be significant that the lived experiences of cultural heroes such as Sinuhe, the Eloquent Peasant or Wenamun took place in exotic foreign and/or marginal settings.

In other cases, it was foreign fashion, literary motifs, military expertise or simply managerial skill that were easily integrated in Egyptian culture and society, thus challenging the monolithic views about contact with “inferior” peoples and territories so prevalent in official culture. This is particularly clear in the case of multicultural communities, which existed precisely to achieve particular goals in which the collaboration (and coexistence) of different peoples was indispensable for the crown.

Elephantine and Avaris/Pi-Ramesses are good examples. In the first case, Elephantine was a commercial hub and fluvial harbour from which ships and caravans were dispatched to Nubia.

Elephantine from the Nile. (https://www.needpix.com/photo/259533/nile- aswan-elephantine-desert-egypt-ship-sand-meditation-nature)

Among it s settlers one could find int erpret ers, soldiers, guides, merchants, and more, both of Egyptian and Nubian origin, as Nubians played a crucial role as mediators with the polities situated far beyond the southern Egyptian border. As for Avaris and Pi- Ramesses in the Delta, this area grew from a small locality settled with sailors, merchants, guides, and int erpret ers, founded by the pharaohs to provide the indispensable log ist ic s for land and maritime expeditions sent to the Levant, to a sizeable capital and one of the most import ant trade centres of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Map showing the location of Avaris.

The contact in the Nile Delta between different peoples finally crystallized during the early second millennium BCE with a distinctive culture that was neither Egyptian nor “Asiatic,” but which shared elements of both. Colonies of foreign traders operating there also left their traces, distinguishable for inst anc e in the form of “warrior tombs” or of burials of donkeys.

Tell el-Dab’a, warrior tomb. (https://homepage.univie.ac.at/elisabeth.trinkl/forum/forum0999/ 12tell.htm)

Fashion also makes it possible to distinguish areas in Avaris settled by Egyptians from zones where Asiatics prevailed: the latter, for example, used toggle pins in their woolly clothes that were lacking in areas inhabited by Egyptians. The occasional discovery of Nubian pottery also points to other actors present at Avaris, not necessarily mercenaries but merchants with their own interests and in contact with Nubia through the routes of the oases of the Western Desert and the Nile.

Colonies of foreign soldiers settled in Egypt provide other clues about the coexistence of different peoples. The inscriptions of some Nubian soldiers settled at Gebelein, sout h of Luxor, in the very late third millennium BCE show that they were conscious and proud of their Nubian roots.

Nubian mercenary buried at Gebelein (late third millennium BCE). (Wikimedia Commons)

But their activities and lifest yle (including the acquisition of land) were similar to that of their Egyptian neighbours, living in a community described as encompassing “it s Nubians as well as it s Upper Egyptians.” The Papyrus Wilbour, from the very lat e second millennium BCE, also mentions sherden officials who held substantial temple land and were part of loc al sub-elites, like Egyptian landholders.

Sherden warriors at the service of Rameses II. (Wikimedia Commons)

There is evidence that colonies of foreigners were historically important in the area of Fayyum and that in some cases they lived in specific types of settlements (a sort of enclosures) different from those inhabited by Egyptians: wenet in the sources of the early second millennium, seger in those of the late second millennium BCE. However, the papyri of Gebelein, from the middle of the third millennium BCE, also show that “nomads” also lived in Egyptian villages, whereas Pan-Grave cemeteries scattered in Upper and Middle Eg ypt during the first half of the second millennium BC reveal the persistence of marked cultural features and rites among other nomads who, apparently, chose to live at the margins of Egyptian communities.

These examples raise crucial questions about how ethnic identities can be identified and defined, as well as about the limits of using material culture to achieve this goal. It is possible to discern a gradation of possibilities, for example, officials, soldiers and priests proud of their Libyan ancestry while living a perfectly Egyptian life, judging from their own monuments, functions and representations. In other cases the presence of personal items related grooming and dress as well as commensality practices may be cultural behaviours rather than true ethnic markers. Finally, other peoples that frequented the Nile Valley chose to preserve very distinctive cultural identities. In any case, what is certain is that ethnicity in ancient Egypt cannot be reduced to stereotypical representations that aimed to reduce foreign populations to folkloric exotic characters, far from the real and durable influence they left in Egyptian society.

Juan Carlos Moreno García is Senior Researcher at the CNRS, University Paris- Sorbonne, France.