This grain came from the temple magazines which had been filled by the harvest of the Common.
In order to make it possible to draw up a budget, the yield per acre was estimated, account being taken of whether the land was good and arable, newly reclaimed, swampy, or distant from water. The monthly allowances of functionaries were listed, as were the monthly supplies to brewery, bakery, and kitchen, and the tasks allotted to the guilds of craftsmen, shepherds, fishermen; and other specialized workers were also listed in monthly quotas. All these documents were signed by the sangu and the nubanda. But the absence of money made simplification imperative, since the accounts recorded a continual intake of all kinds of goods, and the outflow of similarly varied stores, in the form of rations, sacrifices, materials for repairs, goods for trade, and so on—which were not reduced to a common standard of value. It would have been impossible to budget from month to month and from year to year unless the book-keeping had been adapted to a somewhat simple scheme with fixed ratios prevailing throughout. The schematic character of the temple accounts can be seen in the one instance which we quoted above: the fodder for the sowing oxen was precisely the same quantity as that used for seed. The span used to break the ground received precisely twice the amount allotted to the span following after with the seed funnel. Similar simple ratios were used for valuations: one gur of barley was reckoned equivalent to one gin of silver; one gur of barley was likewise charged as rent for one gan of land. It is obvious that such equations reduced the innumerable calculations of the temple book-keeping to manageable proportions. But it is likewise obvious that these simplified and rigid scales never corresponded to the actual values of goods or services. The margin cannot have worked consistently to the detriment of the people, for then the system would have collapsed. Consequently, the margin must have been disadvantageous to the temple economy which could well afford it and which was, in a way, the property of the people as a whole. When in bad years deliveries of certain goods fell short of the quantities due each month to the temple magazines, debts arose and were duly booked and were expected, ultimately, to be paid off. But, on the whole, the organization of the temple economy aimed at simplicity rather than efficiency; and in the Sumerian city, although it was a “planned society,” men found considerable scope for private enterprise.
The margin between the schematic values used in dealings with the temple and the actual yield of fields, flocks, and workshops must have given opportunities for some accumulation of private wealth and hence for barter. Craftsmen could utilize their special skills for private commissions as long as they used materials not supplied by the temple magazines. The shepherd could dispose of any increase in his flock beyond the statutory figure; the fisherman could dispose of the remainder of his catch after delivering to the temple his monthly quota. If, therefore, “the people of the god X”—the temple community—can be said to have lived under a system of theocratic socialism, we must add that this planned economy formed a hard core which was surrounded by an ample fringe of private enterprise that remained free.[111]
That the accumulation of private wealth was accepted by the community as a matter of course is shown by the rule that a proportion of the rent of uru-lal land had to be paid in silver and not in produce. Moreover, the variety of imported articles testifies to the scope left to barter. It is true that the import and export trade was again organized at the centre. Merchants travelled abroad to obtain stones, gold, silver, copper, lead, wood, and aromatics for the temple. In exchange they could offer grain, dates, onions, and similar produce. But their best opportunities were offered by the produce, not of the rich Mesopotamian soil, but of the skill of the people. Manufactured goods sent abroad included, above all (and at all times), textiles—woollen clothing, hangings, and carpets—and also, to judge by the wide distribution of Sumerian types of tools, weapons, and jewellery, metal objects fashioned in the Plain from imported materials. The merchant in those early days was concerned exclusively with export and import. He did not conduct trade among members of his own community; he exchanged locally finished goods for products of other cities in the Plain or of foreign countries like Elam. It is significant that in return for his effort he received an allotment of land—certain proof that he was in the service of the community. Moreover, he had the use of a team of donkeys belonging to the temple, no doubt in view of his travels (Fig. 20). It seems likely enough that the merchants found opportunities for private trade on the side, and it remains uncertain to what extent they supplied directly the imported articles found in houses. In excavations, for instance, handmills consisting of flat stones with roundish grinders were found in every house. Yet the hard volcanic stones used for them must all have been imported. In the private tombs of the end of the Protoliterate period lead tumblers and stone vases are common. At Khafajah copper vessels, and stands for stone food dishes, or drinking cups, or lamps, are found in graves of the Second Early Dynastic period. The somewhat later cemeteries at Kish and Ur show even greater luxury and refinement. There were found copper mirrors; copper and gold toilet sets—tweezers, a toothpick, and an ear-scoop, fastened on a ring and carried in a small conical case; pins of copper or silver with round lapis lazuli heads; beads and animal pendants of alabaster, carnelian, and lapis lazuli, and other semi-precious stones. The silversmith knew how to make filigrain pendants and girdle clasps, and even fine-linked chains.
Most of these articles were, of course, luxuries. In matters of dwelling, food, and clothing, the country was self-supporting. The houses were built of sun-dried bricks and make an entirely unpretentious impression. They do not show a regular system of planning. Rooms were fitted together as the available plot allowed. Doors were low and arched; one had to stoop to pass from one room to another. Windows were small and high up in the walls and fitted with wooden bars or with screens of baked clay. But the ruins of mud brick do not give a fair impression of the setting in which these people lived. We must imagine the floors covered with smooth, clean rush mats, the walls and benches with gaily coloured rugs and blankets.
The people wore a shawl-like dress, wound round the waist, sometimes with one end pulled round the back and forward over the left shoulder (Fig. 21). It is rendered on the monuments in a manner which suggests sheep or goatskin, but this may be a ceremonial dress only, for it is certain that textiles were worn and they are depicted from the middle of the third millennium onward.
Thus the actual remains found in the excavations demonstrate that the temple community did not impose as rigid a form of life on its members as our description may have suggested; and the texts, in proving the existence of private property and trade, corroborate the elasticity of the system. We know, moreover, that it was able to bear the strain of hard times; for it has been calculated[112] that the temple received a great deal more grain from the nigenna land and as rent than was normally needed. The accumulated reserves were made available in an emergency—a better safeguard of the people’s food supply than reliance on individual providence might have been. It seems also that the temple supplied rations during the interval between sowing time and harvest, when stores were low.[113]
The accounts of the temple do not differentiate between its role as central store of the community and its religious function; goods withdrawn for sacrifices are treated exactly like those serving for rations. The distinction in function was apparently not made. The temple community was a religious institution regulating the social life of the community, and the two aspects which we distinguish were apparently experienced as one and indivisible.
The temple community seems not, however, to have been a political institution. The oldest such institutions of which traces have yet been recognized[114] show the same equalitarian spirit as the organization of the religious community. Political authority seems originally to have rested with the citizens; sovereign power under the city god lay in an assembly—presumably consisting of all free males—guided by a group of elders who seem, moreover, to have been in charge of current affairs. Since the terms for “assembly” and “elders” occur already in the Protoliterate tablets, we can surmise that these peculiar political institutions existed as long as the cities themselves.
It is well to recognize the extraordinary character of this urban form of political organization. It represents in the highest degree the intensified self-consciousness and self-assertion which we recognized as distinctive of the innovations of the Protoliterate period. It is a man-made institution overriding the natural and primordial division of society in families and clans. It asserts that habitat, not kinship, determines one’s affinities. The city, moreover, does not recognize outside authority. It may be subjected by a neighbour or a ruler; but its loyalty cannot be won by force, for its sovereignty rests with the assembly of its citizens. Thus, the early Mesopotamian cities resembled those of Greece, of the Hanseatic League, of Renaissance Italy, in many respects. In all these cases we meet local autonomy, the assumption that every citizen is concerned with the common weal, and a small group of influential men who deal with current affairs and sometimes impose an oppressive oligarchy upon the mass of the people.
We do not know whether oligarchic rule ever became a Mesopotamian institution. Our Protoliterate sources are too scanty to disclose gradations of power within the existing framework. And in Early Dynastic times, when the texts became plentiful, the framework had collapsed and the old institutions were no more than ghostlike survivals of the past. But it was single rule rather than oligarchy which had supplanted the assembly.
The reason for the change is clear; the equalitarian assembly possessed the disadvantages of freedom to an uncommon degree. Subjection to the will of the majority, as expressed in a vote, was unknown. The assembly continued deliberation under the guidance of the elders until practical unanimity was reached. This might be the result of true agreement, or of mass emotion, or due to a prudent concurrence of the opponents with a line of action advocated by a powerful group. In any case, it was not easily attained; and in an emergency when quick decision and purposeful action was required, the Mesopotamian city, like the Roman republic, put itself into the hands of a dictator. In Sumer he was called lugal, which means “great man” and is habitually translated “king.”[115]
Kingship was a bala, a “reversion,” or “return to origin.” In other words, the kingly office had a limited tenure; at the end of the emergency authority reverted to the assembly. But, in practice, the threat of an emergency was never absent once the cities flourished and increased in number. Contiguous fields, questions of drainage and irrigation, the safeguarding of supplies by procuring safety of transit—all these might become matters of dispute between neighbouring cities. We can follow through five or six generations a futile and destructive war between Umma and Lagash with a few fields of arable land as the stakes. Under such conditions the kingship seems to have become permanent in certain cities.
Elsewhere the concentrated authority called for by the dangers to which the community was frequently exposed was conferred upon leaders who held important permanent offices. Some of these were exalted enough to enable their holders, when emergencies arose, to exercise power similar to that of the lugal. The sangu or nubanda in the temple of the city god was the administrative leader of the most important temple community in the city. For him to become the political leader of the city was perfectly feasible, but in such a case the official who had usurped the prerogatives of a ruler assumed, instead of the secular title lugal, a title emphasizing his dependence on the city god and proclaiming, by implication, the god’s agreement with his rule. This title was ensi, best translated as “governor” (viz. of the god).
Whether lugal or ensi, the city ruler in Mesopotamia did not derive his position from any innate superiority or right of birth. He acted either on behalf of the assembly, or as steward of the real sovereign, the city god. In theology, personal rule was sanctioned by a doctrine of divine election which remained the foundation of kingship down to the end of the Assyrian empire. Divine approval could be withdrawn at any time, and the formation of a dynasty, the succession of the son to the throne of the father, although known already in Early Dynastic times, had no basis in the theory of kingship but was interpreted in each case as a sign of favour bestowed by the gods. These limiting conceptions of the monarchy reflect the preponderant influence of the city in Mesopotamian thought. Monarchy remained a problematical institution and failed, therefore, to become an instrument of unity as it did in Egypt. It carried in some degree the taint of usurpation, especially in early times.
The task of the ensi in the main was to co-ordinate the temple communities within the city. To each he assigned a share in the common tasks on buildings, canals, and dikes. These corvées were then divided among the guilds and individual members of a community by its sangu or nubanda. The ensi dealt, furthermore, with matters of defence and trade, in other words, with foreign affairs. The professional soldiers were under his direct and personal command and formed an important source of his power within the city. Like every other citizen, he received an allotment for his sustenance; but his fields were part of the Common and were cultivated by the people as part of their communal task. Here, again, was an opportunity for abuse of power. Moreover, it became customary to acknowledge the ensi’s exalted position by offering him presents on the festivals of the gods. He also took a fee for making legal decisions or decreeing a divorce, and imposed certain taxes. While he administered the main temple of the city, he appointed members of his family to head other temple communities.
Although the assembly seems not to have been superseded entirely, the effective power of the ensi was preponderant; and what had been the original strength of Sumerian society, its integration with the temple organization, became its weakness when the leaders of the temple communities utilized the need for leadership, which the growth of the cities called forth, to oppress the people. We know, for instance, that one ensi sequestered fields assigned to him on the Common and used them to build up an independent “estate of the palace,” modelled on that of the temple. The tablets from Fara show how varied an assortment of people had become directly dependent upon the ensi: scribes, chamberlains, heralds, pages, cupbearers, butlers, cooks, musicians, and all kinds of craftsmen.[116] An equalitarian society had been thoroughly transformed, and the power assumed by the ruler was reflected in the presumptions and extortions of his officials. In fact, the Early Dynastic period ends, in Lagash, in an abortive attempt to move against the current and restore the theocratic form of its ideal prototype to Sumerian society. An ensi, called Urukagina, states that he “contracted with the god Ningirsu (the city god of Lagash) that he would not deliver up the orphan and the widow to the powerful man.”[117] He also put a stop to specific abuses: “he took the ships away from the master of the boatmen; he took the sheep and asses away from the head-herdsman.... He took away from the heralds the tribute which the sangus paid to the palace.” These “changes,” and many like them, listed in the so-called reform texts, mean that the prerogatives usurped by the foremen and officials were abolished and that these rights were vested once more exclusively in the temple as a vital organ of the community.
Urukagina also ended abuses introduced by his own predecessors; he forbade, to use his own words, “that oxen of the god plough the onion plot of the ensi.” He lowered the fees for interments and for prayer services. He vindicated the right of the lowly man to his property:
When a good donkey has been born to a royal soldier (?), and his foreman has said to him, “I will buy it from thee”—if he then lets him buy—he shall say: “Weigh out unto me silver as much as is pleasing to my heart.” And if he does not let him buy, the foreman shall not molest him.
It is, of course, possible to suppose that Urukagina, by curbing the power of prominent people, was trying, not only to restore the temple communities to their original purity, but also to win the support of the common people for himself. In any case, factors outside his control interfered with his plans. He was attacked by the ruler of the neighbouring city of Umma and destroyed.
The abuses Urukagina tried to abolish were, in essence, those which vitiate the realization of any political ideal. Weaknesses peculiar to Mesopotamia, however, became clear when serious attempts were made to establish a unified state comprising all the separate cities. This change was attempted by Sargon of Akkad and his successors (Fig. 22).[118] Sargon had been a high official under a king of Kish, and about 2340 B.C. he founded a city of his own, Akkad. He defeated Lugalzaggesi, the conqueror of Urukagina, and other city rulers who opposed him, until he was paramount throughout the country. Similar successes had been achieved before his time, but they had always been short-lived. And while Sargon’s rise to power conformed entirely to the older pattern, a piecemeal subjection of other cities, he struck out a new course in consolidating his position. This time the state survived its founder for several generations. The novelty of his approach may be due to the fact that he represented a northern element in the Mesopotamian population which now became dominant for the first time. This is indicated by the inscriptions: royal inscriptions and many business documents began to be written in the Semitic language which is called Akkadian. This change, in particular, is responsible for the opinion held by some scholars that the rise of Sargon represents a foreign conquest;[119] and it is true that the language points to the middle Euphrates and adjoining territories as its country of origin. But this region had been permeated by Mesopotamian culture for centuries, and people from that quarter cannot be called foreigners in the ordinary sense of the word. Already in Protoliterate times Sumerian civilization had moved northwards along the two rivers, as the Al Ubaid culture (probably also Sumerian) had done in prehistoric times. As Roman influence in barbaric Europe can be traced by means of coins, the influence of Protoliterate Mesopotamia throughout the ancient Near East can be traced by the distinctive cylinder seals of the period. They are found as far to the north as Troy, as far to the south as Upper Egypt, as far to the east as middle, or even north-east Persia.[120] At Brak, on the Khabur in northern Syria, 500 miles north of Erech, has been discovered a temple built on the plan of those in the south, containing similar objects and decorated with cone mosaics.[121] Later, in Early Dynastic times, Ishtar temples at Mari on the Euphrates and at Assur on the Tigris were equipped with statues of Sumerian style, representing men in Sumerian dress.[122] Thus it is obvious that there existed along the two great rivers a cultural continuum within which people could move without creating a disturbance in the fabric of civilization. And the change of language to which we have referred, points to a gradual but continuous drift of people towards the south, as if the cultural influences emanating from Sumer attracted those who had come under its spell. Evidence of this movement is contained in Early Dynastic inscriptions. The thoroughly Sumerianized people of Mari, who had adopted the Sumerian script, inscribed their statues in Akkadian. The same seems to have happened at Khafajah near Baghdad. At Kish, a little farther to the south, the population seems to have been bilingual.[123]
These observations in the field of language are valuable pointers; there may have been other, intangible, differences between the northern and the southern elements in the population of Mesopotamia, differences which would distinguish two strains with distinct cultural traditions. And although the old view that the accession of Sargon of Akkad represents a foreign conquest is untenable, his reign truly marks a new beginning. In the arts a new spirit finds magnificent expression, and in statecraft an entirely new attempt is made to create a political unity which would comprise the city states but surpass their scope, and which had no precedent in the past.[124] The house of Sargon appears as a succession of rulers consistently claiming kingship over the whole land; and it is possible that their political ideal was not unrelated with the fact that they were free, as their predecessors were not, from the traditional viewpoint which grasped political problems exclusively in terms of the city. For among most semitic-speaking people kinship provides the supreme bond. It is possible that the Akkadian-speaking inhabitants of middle and northern Mesopotamia had always acknowledged loyalties which went beyond the city proper. In Sumer there is no sign of the existence of such loyalties, nor was there a political institution which over-arched the sovereignty of the separate cities. But of Sargon a chronicle reports: “He settled his palace folk for thirty-three miles and reigned over the people of all lands.”[125] The first part of this entry suggests that Sargon allotted parts of lands of temple communities to his own followers, thus overriding the age-old local basis of land rights. No conqueror could rely on the loyalty of the defeated cities, and it seems as if Sargon built up a personal following, perhaps exploiting kinship ties in the wide sense of tribal loyalty. Under his grandson Naramsin, governors of cities styled themselves “slave of the king.”
Sargon also seems to have made a bid for the loyalty of the common people. This appears from a change in the formula for oaths.[126] The name of the king could now be invoked alongside the gods. This had a definite practical significance: if an agreement thus sworn to was broken, or if perjury was committed, the king was involved and would make it his business to uphold the right of the injured party. This was of the utmost importance, for the judge had originally been merely an arbitrator, whose main task was the reconciliation or satisfying of both parties. He had had no power to enforce his decisions; and if a man without personal prestige did not have a powerful patron to “overshadow him,”[127] there was little chance of his finding satisfaction in court. The new oath formula put the king in the position of the patron of all who swore by his name; in practice he constituted a court of appeal for the whole land, independent of the cities—a step of the greatest importance in the development of Mesopotamian law and society. Another step towards unification of the country was the introduction of a uniform calendar. Hitherto each city had had its own, with its own month names and festivals. Finally, the existence of a single monarch, who styled himself “King of the Four Quarters of the World,” served as a perpetual remainder of the unity of the state.[128]
If pressure from the outside world could be relied upon to bring about national unity, Mesopotamia would no doubt have become a single state on the lines laid down by the kings of Akkad. For the country was at all times exposed to great dangers. Civilized and prosperous, but lacking natural boundaries, it tempted mountaineers and steppe dwellers with the possibilities of easy loot. Raids could be dealt with by the cities, but the large-scale invasions, which recurred every few centuries, required a strong central government to be repelled. The safeguarding of the trade routes, too, went beyond the competence of individual cities, and one would expect them to have co-operated in a national effort. Indeed, we find an epic, “The King of Battle,” which describes how Sargon of Akkad, at the request of Mesopotamian merchants trading in Anatolia, went there with an army to champion their cause. The story may well reflect an actual occurrence, for Sargon’s grandson, Naramsin, built a strong castle at Brak on the Khabur, and the lumber used in its construction included not only poplar and plane, but also ash, elm, oak, and pine, which must have been imported.[129] The Akkadian kings thus undertook a task which occupied all succeeding rulers of the land. Even in the first millennium, the annual sweep of the Assyrian army up into the mountains of Armenia and down towards the west was a sustained and systematic attempt to keep the mountaineers in check; for, with the unlimited possibilities of retreat into their remote valleys, it was impossible to subject them permanently. From Sargon of Akkad on, kings knew that it was necessary to maintain a unified and centralized state; it was necessary to dominate the borderlands sufficiently to meet aggression there; in short, imperialism was the only guarantee of peace.
One would expect to find the people rallying to the new order imposed by the Akkadian kings, especially since a feeling of national coherence did exist. The Sumerians had a phrase, “the black-headed people,” to designate themselves as an ethnic unit; and the gods Enlil and Anu, among others, were worshipped throughout the land. But this feeling had never found expression in a political form; it remained without effect, it seems, on the country’s history. The particularism of the cities was never overcome. At each new accession of a king in Akkad, the land rose in revolt. Far from rallying against the barbarians, the people attempted to revert to the local autonomy which had been the rule before the rise of Sargon. Similar conditions persisted throughout the country’s history. For example, the discoveries at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna) illustrate the prevalence of local over national considerations. The ruler of that city collaborated with the Amorites who ravaged the country after the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur; the barbarians were tolerated, and perhaps even assisted in their attacks on neighbouring towns, which were incorporated into the state of Eshnunna after the Amorites had looted them.[130]
Under the Akkadian kings the tragic pattern of Mesopotamia’s history became visible. About 2180 B.C. their dynasty collapsed under the onslaught of the Guti from the Zagros Mountains. Combined invasions of Elamites and Amorites ended the empire of the Third Dynasty of Ur in 2025 B.C. The invasions of Hittites and Kassites ended the empire of Hammurabi’s dynasty in 1595 B.C. The invasion of the Medes destroyed the Assyrian empire (611 B.C.). The attack of Cyrus the Persian ended Neo-Babylonian rule (539 B.C.).
The absence of safety and stability in the political field is entirely in keeping with the prevailing mood of the country. Mesopotamia achieved her triumphs in an atmosphere of deep disquiet. The spirit pervading her most important writings is one of disbelief in man’s ability to achieve lasting happiness. Salvation might be experienced emotionally in the annual festivals of the gods, but was not a postulate of theology.
The ancient Egyptians said that Menes, who first ruled at This,[131] brought the whole of the land under his control. They designated him as the first king of a first dynasty and thus unequivocally marked the unification of their land as the beginning of their history. If we allow for the telescoping of events by which tradition often credits a single person with the achievements of two or more generations, we may say that archaeological discoveries have corroborated this tradition. The establishment of the single monarchy appears, indeed, as the political aspect of the birth of Egyptian civilization.
We possess contemporary monuments on which two Upper Egyptian kings—“Scorpion”[132] and Narmer—record their conquests in the north country. A votive macehead (Fig. 26) shows the earlier of the two—Scorpion—at the opening of a canal. He wears the tall white crown which in historical times symbolized dominion over Upper Egypt. Above this main scene appear emblems of divinities placed on standards which serve as gallows to rekhyt birds; these birds, in all probability, designate inhabitants of Lower Egypt.[133] Scorpion seems to have subjected the whole Nile valley, for his monuments have been found as far north as the quarries of Turah, near Cairo.
Narmer, however, extended his power even over the marshlands of the Delta and appears, therefore, as the true prototype of the legendary Menes. Among several monuments of his which have been preserved, a large votive palette of slate (Figs. 27, 28) is the most important. It seems to be a concrete record of the unification of Egypt or, at least, of an important stage in its realization. On one side, Narmer, wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, destroys a chieftain of the northern marshes. On the other side, the king, now wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, inspects a number of beheaded enemies. Thus Narmer is shown as the first “Lord of the Two Lands.”
But it would be a mistake to read the Narmer palette as a mere tale of conquest. The “unification of the Two Lands” was, to the Egyptians, not only the beginning of their history, but also the manifestation of a preordained order which extended far beyond the political sphere and bound society and nature in an indestructible harmony. Of this order Pharaoh was the champion. Throughout historical times the texts proclaimed this conviction, and pictorial art expressed it by great compositions in which the towering figure of the king destroys, single-handed, the misguided wretches who have sided with chaos in opposing Pharaoh’s regimen. It is significant that this aspect of Pharaoh’s power should be expressed in art for the first time in the reign of Narmer.[134]
To appreciate the novelty of the design of the Narmer palette, we must investigate its antecedents. Material and shape proclaim it as a specimen of a common type of toilet article: throughout predynastic times slate palettes (Fig. 4) had been used for the grinding of a green powder which, put on the lids, protected the eyes against glare and infection. On the Narmer palette, too, a round space is set aside for this purpose, even though the size of the object seems to preclude actual use. Now palettes, as well as combs, knife-handles, and so on, had been embellished with reliefs during the last phase of the predynastic period. Among such decorated objects, two treat new subjects. The first, an ivory knife-handle found at Gebel el Arak in Upper Egypt (Figs. 23, 24), shows, on one side, the pursuit of game, a motif which recurs on other objects of the same age; on the other side is depicted a battle. The second, the Hunters’ palette (Fig. 25), shows two groups of men who have joined forces in an attempt to destroy lions, perhaps because these infested wasteland which had to be reclaimed. The two groups are identified by standards carried in their midst.
The battle scene and the hunting scene are without parallels in predynastic times. But they are likewise unconnected with later Egyptian art. Their novelty consists in the rendering of communal action, their un-Egyptian character in the manner of that rendering. Both knife-handle and palette present a faithful record of the actual course of events: groups of men are engaged in combat or move together towards game. We must suppose that some of the figures stand for leaders or chieftains, but there is nothing by which we can identify them. Each scene shows the melee characteristic of the occasion. But to the Egyptian of historical times such a veristic rendering was totally unacceptable. It hid the true significance of occurrences by merely rendering their outward appearance. However large the masses that moved in battle, built temples or pyramids, went into the deserts to quarry stone or mine gold, they were moved by the will of their divine ruler. Art was adequate to its purpose only if it stressed this fact. It did so by using, throughout two and a half millennia, variants of Narmer’s composition. Note that on the macehead of Scorpion, the classical Egyptian viewpoint is not yet rendered in its purity: men are shown to assist the ruler;[135] and the strangled rekhyt-birds swing from the standards of the gods. On some other fragments which antedate Narmer[136] the divine standards are provided with hands to show their active participation in a ruler’s victory. But on the Narmer palette, as on all monuments of historical times, Pharaoh acts alone. The standards of the gods have become adjuncts to his progress (Fig. 28), and men are merely followers; no act of theirs can be significant beside his own.
If the characteristic Egyptian conception of kingship first received pictorial expression under Narmer, it found its first literary embodiment in a famous text which, from internal evidence, must likewise be assigned to the formative years of Egypt.[137] This is the so-called Memphite Theology. The lasting value of the theory of kingship which it expounded is shown by the fact that the only copy now extant was made as late as the reign of king Shabaka in the eighth century B.C. Moreover, it relates the theory with an act of Menes, the founding of Memphis. The text concerns us, therefore, because of the date of its inception; the act which it presupposes; and the interpretation which it offers.
The significance of the age of our text is evident. In view of the overriding importance of the institution of kingship for Egyptian society, the formulation of a theory of kingship at the very beginning of the monarchy aptly illustrates the emergence of the “form” of Egyptian civilization at that critical time.
Reference to the founding of Memphis is made in our text by implication: its tenor is to emphasize the profound significance of the city. Thus the content corroborates the linguistic evidence for an early date of the document, since a trustworthy tradition, preserved by Herodotus, ascribed the founding of Memphis to Menes. The text expounds the theology of the new foundation. Of the actual course of events the following account survived into Greek times: it was believed that Menes threw up a dike across the western part of the valley north of the Fayum, thus compelling a branch of the Nile to rejoin the main stream, and reclaiming fifty miles of valley. On the newly won land he then founded a royal castle, a little to the south of modern Cairo. It was called “The White Walls,” and thus characterized as an Upper Egyptian foundation—for white was the colour of the mother-goddess Nekhbet, the protectress of Upper Egypt and of the king’s house. But the new settlement was not really a capital of the united country. The successors of Menes in the First and Second dynasties did not even reside there. They seem to have maintained their residence at This and were buried in neighbouring Abydos,[138] within the district whence their ancestors had come. Memphis was originally—and remained for fifteen hundred years almost exclusively (see pp. 97 f.)—a sacred city, the locus where events of unparalleled importance for the Egyptian commonwealth had taken place. The Memphite Theology deals precisely with these events.
We have elsewhere attempted to elucidate the text, which is too abstruse to be discussed here.[139] It translates history into mythology and purports to reveal thereby the transcendent significance of Menes’ achievement. Later generations acknowledged the validity of these early teachings by their deeds: each new king came to Memphis to celebrate the “Union of the Two Lands” and to perform the “Circuit of the White Wall,” as Menes was thought to have done when he had constructed his royal castle.[140]
The state which Menes created was habitually referred to as “The Two Lands,” a designation apt to be misunderstood; we meet here—as so often in Egypt—a term with cosmological rather than political connotations. We have shown elsewhere[141] that the dualistic mould of the “Kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt” satisfied the Egyptian mode of thought which conceived totality as an equilibrium of opposites. A meaningful symmetry was imposed upon the unified land, but it had no basis in fact, for Scorpion and Narmer conquered the north piecemeal, as far as we know. Nor is there any sign of resentment against the north. On the contrary, northerners were found among the highest in the land: two queens of the First Dynasty reveal a Delta origin by their names, and officials of that dynasty, buried near their royal masters at Abydos, exemplify the Lower Egyptian physical type.[142]
The outside world did not challenge the exalted view of their state which the Egyptians entertained. None of their neighbours threatened the safety of “The Two Lands”; all of them disposed of natural resources which seemed predestined to be offered as tribute to the divine ruler of Egypt. We have seen that the southern littoral of the Mediterranean was not a desert in antiquity. Narmer’s successors had to consolidate their northern frontiers even though they prevailed with ease over the neighbouring populations. Some had to fight the Libyans in the west. At the malachite mines in Sinai, Semerkhet recorded his victory over the local Bedouin on a rock-stela repeating the main motif of Narmer’s palette. Another king of the First Dynasty had an ivory gaming piece engraved with the picture of a bound Syrian captive. The roofing beams of the royal tombs at Abydos consist of coniferous wood imported from the Lebanon. Jugs of Syrian and Palestinian manufacture have been found in these tombs and in those of dignitaries buried at Saqqara: they probably served as containers of olive oil. Gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, and ebony came through Nubia from inner Africa.
However, in this phase of Egyptian civilization, signs of contact with a yet more distant region are also found. They differ in character from those we have just mentioned. Libya, Sinai, and Syria supplied the Nile valley with much-needed raw materials; but Sumer supplied ideas. Imported Mesopotamian cylinder seals have been found in Egypt, and the same odd form of seal was adopted in Egypt. The earliest Egyptian brick buildings resemble the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia in all significant matters of technique. Egyptian art—even in the Narmer palette—used Mesopotamian motifs. Even writing seems to have been due to the stimulus derived from acquaintance with Mesopotamian writing of the end of the Protoliterate period.
We have dealt with these matters in an Appendix. For although it is certain that contact between the two great centres of the Near East took place, it did not affect the social and political sphere with which we are concerned here. In fact, if we look back over the evidence presented in this chapter, the autochthonous character of the Egyptian development is unmistakable. The basic structure of the society which emerged was the direct opposite of that which came into being in Mesopotamia. In Egypt the great change did not lead to a concentration of social activity in urban centres. It is true that there were cities in Egypt, but, with the single exception of the capital, these were no more than market towns for the countryside. Paradoxically enough, the capital was less permanent than the towns in the provinces, for in principle it served for only a single reign. Each pharaoh took up residence near the site chosen for his tomb, where, during the best part of his lifetime, the work on the pyramid and its temple continued, while the government functioned in the neighbouring city. But after his death the place was abandoned to the priests and officials who maintained his cult and managed his mortuary estate, unless the new king decided to continue in residence because the adjoining desert offered a suitable site for his own tomb. Until the middle of the second millennium B.C. (when Thebes assumed a metropolitan character) there was no truly permanent capital in Egypt, a situation which clearly demonstrates the insignificant role played by the concept of the city in the political thought of the Egyptians.[143] In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, even the most powerful rulers of the land styled themselves rulers of cities and functioned as such, in Akkad or Ur, in Babylon or in Assur.
The contrast in social structure and the divergent conceptions of kingship can be seen as correlated. The city as the ultimate form of political organization is inconceivable without a ruler who remains potentially one among many; conversely, absolute power entails a unified realm. We did, therefore, not lose sight of our theme when we discussed in this chapter the origin of the myths and rites of kingship under Menes; nor is it due to the accident of discovery that we studied the birth of Egyptian civilization with the aid of royal monuments. For Pharaoh symbolized the community in its temporal and transcendent aspects, and, for the Egyptians, civilized life gravitated around the divine king.
Our discussion of the rise of the monarchical society of Egypt must now be complemented by a concrete description. The administration of the country[144] functioned on the strength of delegated royal power. Pharaoh was the living fount of law, governing by decrees which were formulated as inspired decisions.[145] In early times the government assumed a somewhat patriarchal character. Sons and other close relatives of Pharaoh acted as his principal advisors and aids. Distant relatives and descendants of past rulers were found in minor government posts. At first no single minister stood between the king and the various branches of the administration. There was no Grand Vizier. Under the Fourth Dynasty, however, the vizierate was introduced as the apex of the bureaucracy; but it was, at first, occupied by a prince of royal blood.
Even in later times the king reserved certain prerogatives, such as the imposition of the death penalty and of mutilations; and the vizier had an audience each morning to report on the state of the land. Nevertheless, the vizier’s power of initiative was very great. He was Chief Justice, Head of the Archives, and, in fact, of every government department. His messengers travelled through the country carrying his orders to the local administrators and reporting back to him on the conditions they observed. One of his designations was “to whom is reported all that is and is not.” In view of the overwhelming importance of agriculture for the state, every transaction involving land had to be registered at the Vizier’s office. After the Sixth Dynasty the vizier was, probably for practical reasons, “Mayor of the Town,” that is, head and military governor of the royal residence.
The administration which functioned under the vizier was divided into several departments. First among these was the Exchequer, headed by the “Treasurer of the god (i.e. king).” This was the central depot for all imposts and duties owed to the state. In view of the ideal form of the Dual Monarchy it was called “The Two White Houses,” but in practice there was no division. It had branches with storehouses throughout the country where the dues were collected and from where the central treasury was supplied. The administration was highly centralized; and the Treasurer was responsible, not only for the collection and disposal of the native produce paid in as taxes, but also for the royal expeditions which, as we shall see, brought new materials such as copper, malachite, wood, or gold, from abroad. Therefore he sometimes bore the title “general” or “admiral” and had troops and ships at his disposal.
The second important government department was the Ministry of Agriculture, in which a “Chief of the Fields” dealt with purely agricultural matters, while a “Master of (the King’s) Largesse” was concerned with everything pertaining to livestock.
These government departments were not rigidly separated, and an administrative career was likely to take a man through all of them, as well as through the local administration. Promising young men, or sons of those whom the king trusted or favoured, were educated at court, and then acquired administrative experience by passing through a succession of posts which they filled with the assistance of knowledgeable scribes of the relevant departments. Methen (Fourth Dynasty) was a Royal Kinsman who acted successively as Scribe of the Exchequer, apparently also as Physician, then as District Chief, Judge, Supervisor of all the flax of the king, to end as nomarch or ruler of a province. In this last function he administered three provinces in succession—which proves that the administration was independent of local worthies. At the end of the Old Kingdom the nomarchs had achieved some sort of permanence by regularly obtaining their offices for their sons as their successors, and so they developed into a landed gentry. At first, however, they were royal officials who were moved from one post to another, who had no pretence to independence and no local ties. Their affinities and interests—as those of all officials—were with the court; and Methen remained until the end “Master of the King’s Hunt,” a purely courtly function.
Neither the several departments of the government nor the central and local administrations were clearly delimited, and their province remained ill-defined until the end. It has been pointed out, for instance,[146] that, under the New Kingdom, tribute from abroad could be received upon arrival in Egypt by the “Treasurer of the god” as head of the Exchequer, by the “Supervisor of the Treasury,” his subordinate, by lower officials of the Exchequer, by the vizier, by high military commanders, or by the chief priest of Amon. This fluidity of competence is simply due to the fact that all authority was delegated royal power and hence comprehensive in its very nature. There was similarly a vagueness of demarcation between the central and the local authorities; and when Seti I (Nineteenth Dynasty) issued a decree commanding that the temple of Abydos should receive its shipments of gold from Nubia without being subject to tolls and other dues normally levied from ships in transit, he had to address his decree to twelve different classes of officials, starting with the vizier and so down to “the mayors and the controllers of camps in Upper and Lower Egypt ... every inspector belonging to the king’s estate and every person sent on a mission to Nubia.”[147] For local officers, no less than those of the central government, represented Pharaoh. A nomarch of the Fifth Dynasty, Nesutnefer,[148] is marked by his titles as “Leader of the Land (i.e. province),” which probably meant that he was the head of the provincial administration in all its branches. He was “Chief of Fortifications,” which meant that he was head of the police as well as responsible for the guarding of the frontiers of his province against desert tribes. He was “Ruler of the King’s People,” namely, of the serfs and tenants, bailiffs and stewards, craftsmen, scribes, fishermen, and so on, who were employed on the royal domains within his province, whether they were free or bond. Finally, he was called “Chief of Commands,” which meant that orders from the king or the vizier went to him and that he was responsible for their being carried out in his province.