Episode 008 The Middle Kingdom Mariners When we left off, the Old Kingdom had collapsed and the First Intermediate Period had begun. There is little maritime-related evidence from this period, but let’s take a brief look at the synopsis of events from the First Intermediate Period and we’ll get a good idea why there isn’t much in the way of maritime evidence. Following Pepi II’s death there was a drought, the Nubians waged a war to gain their independence from Egyptian control, and the Egyptian government had become highly unstable because of Pepi’s long reign. All these circumstances culminated in a long dispute over succession to the throne. The seventh and eighth dynasties were periods of relative impotence for the pharaohs. Only one of them managed to hold on to the throne for longer than a year, and that same pharaoh, Ibi, was the only one who managed to complete a monument in his honor. Far had the pharaohs fallen from the decadence of the Old Kingdom. After the 8th dynasty, Egypt reverted back to the regional power bases that had been the main players before Narmer originally unified Upper and Lower Egypt. Those who controlled Lower Egypt were loosely confederated under the leadership of a ruler from the town of Herakleopolis and are considered to be the start of the 10th dynasty. The 11th dynasty though was partially concurrent with the 10th, and was made up of rival rulers who controlled Upper Egypt, with their overlord exercising his control from the province of Thebes. As I said earlier, we don’t have much evidence of maritime matters from the First Intermediate Period, but this period came to an end when a Theban ruler named Mentuhotep II emerged victorious from a civil war. After leading the Theban provinces to victory against Herakleopolis, Mentuhotep II began consolidating his power over both Upper and Lower Egypt, effectively reunifying Egypt and ushering in the Middle Kingdom. As we transition into the maritime history of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, we’ll take a look at archaeological evidence and the ancient depictions of boats as we have been doing thus far, but one thing that sets the Middle Kingdom apart is the rise of literature as an art form. While artifacts and depictions give us good insight into the technicalities of maritime history, literary works such as the ‘Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor’ give us some of our earliest glimpses into the imaginations of ancient Egyptian sailors and the everyday citizens who wondered what lay outside the Nile Valley. Episode 008 1 In today’s episode, we’re going to look at a few artifacts from the Middle Kingdom and then one literary piece that relates to maritime history. First, a landmark early in the Middle Kingdom concerns an explorer named Hannu. He was the first to reopen the trade routes with both Libya and the land of Punt after pharaoh Mentuhotep III ordered him to take ships from the Nile and make the trek over 100 miles east across the wadi that led to the shores of the Red Sea. The following inscription, found inscribed on the rocky walls of Wadi Hammamat, reveals Hannu’s pride at having fulfilled the pharaoh’s orders and having defeated his opposition along the way: His holiness sent me to dispatch a ship to Punt to bring for him fresh myrrh from the sheiks over the Red Land, by reason of the fear of him in the highlands. Then I went forth from Koptos upon the road, which his majesty commanded me. There was with me an army of the South; . every office of the king's house, those who were in town and field, united, came after me. The army—I cleared the way before, overthrowing those hostile toward the king, the hunters and the children of the highlands were posted as the protection of my limbs. Every official body of his majesty was placed under my authority. They reported messengers to me, as one alone commanding, to whom many hearken. I went forth with an army of 3,000 men. I made the road a river, and the Red Land (desert) a stretch of field, for I gave a leathern bottle, a carrying pole, 2 jars of water and 20 loaves to each one among them every day. The asses were laden with sandals ……… Now, I made 12 wells in the bush, and two wells in Idehet, 20 square cubits in one, and 31 square cubits in the other. I made another in Iheteb, 20 by 20 cubits on each side ……… Then I reached the (Red) Sea; then I made this ship, and I dispatched it with everything, when I had made for it a great oblation of cattle, bulls and ibexes. Now, after my return from the (Red) Sea, I executed the command of his majesty, and I brought for him all the gifts, which I had found in the regions of God's-Land. I returned through the valley of Hammamat, I brought for him august blocks for statues belonging to the temple. Never was brought down the like thereof for the king's court; never was done the like of this by any king's-confidant sent out since the time of the god. I did this for the majesty of my lord because he so much loved me ….' Episode 008 2 Aside from the significance of the fact that Hannu reopened some of the important trade routes to Egypt’s east, trade routes that had been significant during the Old Kingdom, there’s also an interesting line from the inscription that may allude to something that we’ve already mentioned. The line where Hannu states that he “made the road a river” has been seen as possibly alluding to the Egyptian practice of building their seagoing vessels in the Nile Valley and then disassembling them, carrying them east across the wadi of their choice, and reassembling them for use on the Red Sea. If this is indeed the idea that Hannu intended to convey by that line, it’s an apt turn of phrase that captures the commercial functions of roadways, both on solid ground and in the water. A rock inscription from Wadi Hammamat (possibly the inscription left by Hannu). Before we jump over to another of our main items for today’s episode, let’s take a minute to look at a debate about an event that may or may not have occurred during a timeframe near Hannu’s expedition at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom began somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 BC, give or take. If we assume that Hannu did indeed conduct his expeditions during the reign of Mentuhotep III, then that places their occurrence somewhere near 1950 BC. Our debated event is claimed by the famous Greek geographer/historian Strabo to have occurred during the reign of Senusret III, a pharaoh who reigned in the latter half of the 1800s BC, well into the 12th dynasty. Episode 008 3 In his ‘Geographica', Strabo claims that Senusret III oversaw the cutting of a canal that connected the northern part of the Nile River with the Red Sea. This canal would in classical times become known as the ‘Canal of the Pharaohs,’ and the benefit of such a canal is obvious, as it would eliminate the need for overland caravans to haul goods the distance from the Red Sea to the Nile. What is more, we have a great deal of evidence to suggest that there was indeed a canal between the two bodies of water in the vicinity that Strabo claimed it to have been located. The main problem though is not whether the canal existed but when it was first dug in way that fully connected the Red Sea with the Nile. While Strabo claims the 19th century BC for its construction, Herodotus instead claims that the canal wasn’t fully constructed until the 6th century BC when pharaoh Nekau II oversaw its creation. While it would be interesting to claim such an early date for the construction of an ancient precursor of the Suez canal, the preponderance of the evidence indicates that the canal wasn’t constructed in full until the 6th century BC, if even that early. Herodotus does indeed recognize the fact that Senusret III constructed canals, but he implies that these canals were smaller offshoots of the Nile for local purposes, rather than one gargantuan project to radically alter the way Egypt communed with the Red Sea. Debate still continues about when exactly the ‘Canal of the Pharaohs’ was first completed, and some maintain that it was never fully finished until the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty. In the end, regardless of whether Senusret did or didn’t actually complete the canal our next item for today gives us a unique perspective on Egypt’s connection with the Red Sea and the land of Punt that we’ve encountered on several occasions now. The ‘Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor’ is generally seen as being the oldest written shipwreck narrative. It’s ostensibly the account of a shipwreck survivor, and although it reveals a little more about how Egypt viewed the mythical or not-so-mythical land of Punt, and it gives us one of the earliest examples of sailor’s being able to forecast the weather at sea, the contents of the tale also veer off into the realm of the fantastical and make us have to look for the line between reality and fantasy.