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The Old Kingdom in Egypt

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The Old Kingdom in Egypt THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY THE OLD KINGDOM IN EGYPT BY W. STEVENSON SMITH REVISED EDITION OF VOLUMES I & II CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Ss. 6d. net; $1.75 In order to make this History available to readers as soon as possible, it will be issued, in the first instance, in fascicles. With some exceptions the fascicles will contain one chapter, but the order of publication will not correspond with the ultimate sequence of the chapters. In the volumes of the complete edition the pages will be renumbered and prefatory matter, maps, chronological tables and indexes will be included. The plates will be issued as a separate volume. I. E. S. EDWARDS C. J. GADD N. G. L. HAMMOND SYNOPSIS OF VOLUME I, CHAPTER XIV i. The Third Dynasty, p. 3. 11. The Fourth Dynasty, p. 18. 111. The Fifth Dynasty, p. 37. iv. The Sixth Dynasty, p. 47. v. The Seventh and Eighth Dynasties,/). 55. vi. Literature and Art, p. 58. Bibliography, p. 65. THE OLD KINGDOM IN EGYPT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD BY W. STEVENSON SMITH, PH.D. Curator of the Department of Egyptian Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. VOLUME I, CHAPTER XIV CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1962 ' ' PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W.I American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York 22, N.Y. West African Office: P.O. Box 33, Ibadan, Nigeria Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge (Brooke Grutchley, University Printer] CHAPTER XIV THE OLD KINGDOM IN EGYPT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD I. THE THIRD DYNASTY EARLY in the Third Dynasty, King Djoser employed the genius of his architect Imhotep to erect the first great building of stone, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. The name Djoser, written in a cartouche, has not been found in an inscription of the Old King- dom. On his own monuments the king writes his Horus-name, Netjerykhet. There is no doubt that these two names refer to the same man. The wall scribblings of the Eighteenth Dynasty visitors to the Step Pyramid refer to the temple of Djoser and both names occur, together with the name of Imhotep, in the Ptolemaic inscription, on the Island of Siheil near the First Cataract.1 The legendary character of Imhotep, who was revered centuries after his death as a demi-god, the builder of the temple of Edfu, the wise chancellor, architect and physician of Djoser,2 has now acquired reality through the discovery of his name on a statue-base of Netjerykhet in the excavations of the Step Pyramid.3 It is curious that modern research should, within a short space of time, have established the identity of both the wise men of whom centuries later the harper of King Inyotef sings: ' I have heard the sayings of Imhotep and Hordedef with whose words men speak so often. What are their habitations now? Their walls are destroyed, their habitations are no more, as if they had never been.4 The tomb of Hordedef, with the inscriptions in its chapel maliciously erased but still partly readable was found at Giza, east of the pyramid of his father Cheops, at a time when the excavation of the elaborate series of structures erected at Saqqara by Imhotep was still in progress.5 Netjerykhet Djoser remains the dominant figure in this period, but it can no longer be maintained confidently that he was the 1 §vi, 18, 31; §1, 2, passim; 30, 19; 31, n. 2 |1, 31, passim. 3 §1, 8, pl. 58. 4 §vi, 6, 132; 18, 467; §1, 20 192. * G, 36, vol. III, 49. 4 THE OLD KINGDOM IN EGYPT founder of the dynasty. He is connected with Khasekhemwy, the last king of the Second Dynasty, through Queen Nymaathap who has generally been accepted as the wife of Khasekhemwy and the mother of Djoser. It must be admitted that here and in other cases later in the Old Kingdom we do not understand clearly the factors governing a change of dynasty, although we follow the division into groups of kings which is indicated in the dynastic lists of the Ptolemaic writer Manetho. It now seems likely that Netjerykhet Djoser was preceded by Sanakhte as the first king of the Third Dynasty. It has been suggested1 that Sanakhte may have been an elder brother of Netjerykhet and that he began the flat-topped structure which was later developed into the Step Pyramid. It is also thought that Djoser may have buried Sanakhte in the most important of the galleries entered by eleven shafts which were cut in the rock on the east side of that building during an early stage of its construction. Six of these galleries were intended for the storage of equipment and two of them were completely filled with stone vessels, many of which bore inscrip- tions of kings of the First and Second Dynasties. None of these vessels, nor any of the stone vessel-fragments from the main part of the pyramid substructure, bore the names of Netjerykhet or Sanakhte. A mud sealing of Netjerykhet and one of Khasekhemwy were found in one of the eastern galleries, and a stone bowl with the name of Khasekhemwy came from the apartments under the southern enclosure wall. A handsome porphyry jar bore an inscription of the latter's predecessor, Khasekhem, which re- sembled the inscription on one of the jars which he had dedicated in the temple at Hierakonpolis.2 The impression of a seal of an official of Netjerykhet, possibly Imhotep, was rolled out along the plaster between the blocks of masonry lining gallery III, the proposed burial-place of Sanakhte. This evidence establishes that work was executed in these galleries by Djoser. Later tunnelling by thieves makes it impossible to be certain, however, whether gallery III could have been reached from gallery I which was the only one accessible by a supple- mentary sloping tunnel from outside the completed structure. All eleven shafts were blocked by the later stages of work on the pyramid. It should be remembered, also, that the only burial which has survived in the tombs I to V was that of a young boy and that the two well-preserved stone coffins and fragments of others from these galleries seem to have been intended for small 1 §1, 18, 376; 19, 17. 2 §1, 8, pls. 88-9; 17, vol. III, 6, 15, 20-2, 74, pl. xix, vol. iv, pl. 3, 19. THE THIRD DYNASTY 5 persons, either women or children.1 It is therefore questionable whether Sanakhte was buried here. Sanakhte has been equated with Nebka whose name precedes that of Djoser in two of the three lists of kings (the Turin Canon and the list in the Abydps Temple of Sethos I) compiled in the Nineteenth Dynasty. The third list, inscribed on the wall of a tomb at Saqqara and now in the Cairo Museum, omits the name. Unhappily little is preserved of the Third Dynasty section of royal annals inscribed on the Palermo Stone and its related fragments. Since this list was prepared in the Fifth Dynasty, it might have provided valuable evidence from records set down at a time nearer to the period in question.2 A recent reconstruction of the Annals attributes to Nebka the partly preserved portion of a reign in Register 5, hitherto assumed to be that of Khasekhemwy because of the mention of a copper statue of that king.3 However, the year after the eighth biennial count, which was the last complete year of the reign, is not easy to adjust to the nineteen years4 given to Nebka in the Turin Canon. One hesitates to accept without doubt such a long lapse of time between the death of Khasekhemwy and the accession of Djoser in view of the apparently close association between these two kings. Certainly the Turin Canon figure of twenty-seven years for Khasekhemwy cannot be made to agree with this portion of the Annals. It seems wiser in these circumstances to question this figure, as well as the nineteen years given to Nebka, and to accept the earlier theory that the Palermo Stone contains a record of the last years of Khasekhemwy and five years of a following reign which should be that of Nebka. The Cairo Stone no. I of the Annals, which continues (after a break) the records of the Palermo Stone, is almost entirely effaced in Register 5. No indication remains of the names of the kings or the lengths of their reigns. It is also far from certain that the reign of Sneferu occupied the whole of Register 6; nor does much survive of the records of Cheops and Redjedef which appear below this register on Cairo Stones nos. i and 3. The important fragments, Cairo nos. 2 and 4, deal also 1 |1, 17, vol. 1, 46 ff. 2 G, 3; 5; 9; 15; 39, passim. 3 G, 17, 80. See Plate Vol. 4 On a fragment assigned to this reign at University College, London, the first and second count are recorded in successive years. This would appear to make the year after the eighth count fifteen but the final incomplete year must be added and allowance made for the fact that under Djer and Semerkhet no census was taken in the accession year. Thus the reign may have lasted seventeen years or even eighteen if, as in the reign which follows in Register 5, no count was made until the third regnal year.
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