Egyptian Archaeology

Willeke Wendrich, Willeke Wendrich

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444359336
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Egyptian Archaeology explores ancient Egypt using a uniquely archaeological approach, drawing on original research to both synthesize and challenge existing scholarship.

• Written by leading Egyptologists, based on original research and fieldwork
• Illustrates how practical research is a vital component of any theory-based discussion about the ancient world
• Examines the cultural and historical processes of ancient Egypt from a global perspective
• Visually engaging with over 80 illustrations
• Chapters explore fundamental issues and themes, but focus on specific periods and key archaeological sites

1

Egyptian Archaeology From Text to Context

Willeke Wendrich

The Egyptian archaeological record, with its almost intact temples, vividly decorated tombs, relatively undisturbed desert sites, and incredible preservation of organic materials, makes for an embarrassment of riches.The effect of this was that until recently Egyptian archaeologists felt that this wealth of information simply spoke for itself.Wood, papyrus, textiles, basketry, leather, zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains were recovered without difficulty.The uniqueness of their preservation was often not even recognized and exploited, because these organic materials represented only a fraction of an impressive material culture, and an equally impressive textual record.No need was felt for an approach that would explicate research questions, and provide a theoretical framework to enhance our knowledge.Consequently, very few publications on Egyptian archaeology specifically mention method or theory.In the 1960s and 1970s, while much of world archaeology was participating in, or at least aware of, the debates, Egyptian archaeology was ancillary to Egyptology (Andrén 1998:37–38).In both scholarly and popular publications one encounters unspecified claims phrased as “archaeology has shown that ….” The misunderstanding here is, of course, that archaeology is not capable of “showing” something.It is the careful weighing of information, and the explication of how data are collected and taken to relate to the research question and theoretical context, which contributes to our knowledge.This naïve take on what archaeology is, and how it relates to our (re)construction of the past, was an effect of Egyptology’s focus on textual sources, while archaeology’s task was to provide illustrations or support for the texts.

Even today some Egyptologists question how archaeological theory would improve our understanding of the ancient Egyptian culture, while the question should of course be turned around: how flawed is our understanding without theory? Every archaeologist works from assumptions, concepts, and a knowledge base which has been built up during years of training, experience, growing insights, and perceptions, both related and unrelated to the academic world.Theory is the explication–in the sense of rendering explicit–the mutual agreement and sharing of these concepts, in order to not only record, but also interpret remnants of the past.Theory enables us to observe more than the obvious and allows us to go beyond the anecdotal, based on unsystematic examples, without a methodical incorporation of the ancient and modern context.At the same time theory prevents simplified, naïve conclusions, and by explicating our assumptions and methods, we render our work open to criticism.

In fact every archaeologist uses theory, but often this is an implicit or even subconscious process.Phenomena are explained and “facts” are seen in the light of particular ideas, or discourses, which are all-encompassing to the point that they are never questioned.Several examples from the late nineteenth–and early twentieth-century work of Petrie, Reisner, and Caton Thompson serve to illustrate this.

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) was ahead of his time in his interest in the material culture of daily life, and his meticulous excavation and recording methods.He excavated sites dating to the Predynastic and the Greco-Roman periods, and anything in between.His explanations of the cultural development of ancient Egypt, however, followed the trends of the time.Based on Darwin’s theory, archaeologists developed an evolutionary approach, which made a developmental distinction between races and cultures.Famous Egyptologists such as Lepsius, Reisner, and also Petrie were strongly influenced by this deterministic evolutionary approach.Lepsius divided the population of Africa into distinct, separately evolved Hamitic and Negroid populations, which translated into a division into Negroids and Caucasians, with the former being considered an “inert” race, while the cultural impetus came from the latter (Trigger 2006:202).Based on this division, Petrie claimed that the pyramids could not have been built by people stemming from the African Neolithic.He, and others, surmised a “Dynastic Race,” a distinct group which migrated from the Near East, and replaced the Predynastic population of Egypt.This explanation of cultural change was based on two concurrent theoretical premises: first that the ancient African “inert” race was not capable of rapid improvement, and secondly that cultural changes were the effect of migration, rather than local developments.Many others adhered to similar theories, and as recently as the 1960s the transition from Predynastic to Dynastic Egypt was characterized as follows: “Authorities are divided in their opinions as to the reason for this sudden cultural advance, but it would seem probable that the principal cause was the incursion of a new people into the Nile Valley” (Emery 1961:38).Reisner’s writings are blatantly racist:

The social mingling of the three races, the Egyptian, the Nubian, and the negro in one community, would naturally be supposed to have a marked cultural effect on the community.The most obvious result in all such cases is of course the production of offspring of mixed blood who do not inherit the mental qualities of the highest race, in this case the Egyptian.(Reisner 1923:556)

The explicit judgment of ethnic groups goes hand in hand with implicit suppositions about gender, when he continues the previous statement with: “But a portion of the offspring will perpetuate the qualities, physical and mental, of the male parent, and thus the highest race will not necessarily disappear, even after some generations” (Reisner 1923:556).

Others, who did not adhere to racist theories, nevertheless were children of their time and the then current paradigm.Gertrude Caton Thompson (1888–1985) started working with Petrie in 1921.She had received archaeological training in London, after having experienced the joy and excitement of prehistoric archaeology at a Neolithic excavation in France during two holiday periods.In Egypt she was one of the few archaeologists concentrating on survey work and the study of lithic assemblages, and consequently she discovered the late Neolithic settlement of Hammamiya.In 1923 she started working in the Fayum, excavating several Neolithic sites located in the desert north of Lake Qarun, and recording activity areas at two different elevations, related to a series of ancient lake level variations.She worked together with the geologist Elinor Gardner, who meticulously plotted the ancient shore lines and the elevations at which the cultural remains were found.It was clear that the lake level, at present at 44 m below sea level, had been 46–56 m higher in the past.Shore lines were found at around 2–4 and 10–12 m above sea level.Caton Thompson surmised that this enormous ancient lake had gradually diminished in size.She remarked as noteworthy that the oldest culture, the Fayum A, found at the highest level, was more advanced than the Fayum B culture, which was found in relation to the 2–4 m shore line and thus had to be later in date.Her explanation of cultural change by population movements and replacements, rather than internal developments, was typical for the time (Trigger 2006:207).This presupposition led her to suggest that the primitive Fayum B people overran, or conquered, the more advanced Fayum A population, destroying the more advanced knowledge of the Fayum A in their wake (Caton Thompson and Gardner 1934; Wendrich 2008).Later research by Wendorf and Schild (1976) established that the lake level changes were much more complicated than suggested by Caton Thompson and Gardner, and, supported by radiocarbon dates, they recognized that the “primitive” Fayum B culture actually appeared to be almost 800 years older than the Neolithic, pottery–producing Fayum A culture.Caton Thompson was an excellent archaeologist, whose fieldwork, methods, and publications were ahead of her time.She recorded the observations on the ground precisely, but failed to account for her premises by implicitly accepting two theories: first that the lake diminished in size over time, and second that changes in the material culture implied an influx of a different cultural group.The use of theory gave her observations a greater explanatory power, but resulted in incorrect conclusions.

In 1929 Caton Thompson was faced with an extreme example of irrational archaeological explanation, based on racist theory.She was asked to research the stone monuments of Greater Zimbabwe, an archaeological and political minefield.Based on similar arguments as outlined above, it had been maintained that the impressive stone monuments of Greater Zimbabwe must have been built by a non-African population.This fitted the need of the white population to negate the occurrence of a local ancient civilization.It was suggested, based on no archaeological information whatsoever, that the stone structures had been built by King Salomo, or the Queen of Sheba, in any case a “race” that had crossed the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula to Africa.Level-headed Caton Thompson studied the stratigraphy and published a report which unequivocally stated that the Greater Zimbabwe monuments had been built by a local Bantu population, and were a few centuries, rather than a few millennia, old (Caton Thompson 1931, 1983; Wendrich 2008).

In these examples theory functions as the overarching principle, the main ideas which lead to a particular explanation or interpretation of the data, and at the same time determine the method used and type of data collected.Studying the development of Egyptian archaeology shows that we can discern two main aspects which dictate changes in approach over time: the relation between theory and data, and the shift in research questions and interests.

Although Herodotus’ characterization of Egypt as the gift of the river (Book II, 5) is often quoted, a much later standard work that not only enhanced, but radically changed the understanding of the Nile as central to Egyptian civilization was Karl Butzer’s Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt (1976).In his introduction, Butzer explicitly states that he has taken an ecological perspective and he defines the purpose of his study to be an examination of “the emergence of a floodplain civilization in the Egyptian Nile Valley, viewed as a test case of man–land relationships” (1976:2).The book highlights environmental parameters, technological developments, and settlement patterns.This was a new approach to Egyptian archaeology, dominated by publications of excavated sites, richly illustrated, but often merely descriptive.Discussions of broader archaeological issues were rare.A successful attempt to incorporate archaeology into an overview of Egyptian history, while emphasizing the social and economic aspects, rather than the “traditional” historical narrative that concentrates on the king, chronology, and religion, was Ancient Egypt: A Social History (Trigger et al.1983).This book meticulously referenced the archaeological reports on which the authors’ descriptions were based.Their purpose was to stress a continuous development through time, an approach contrary to a tendency among Egyptologists to admire ancient Egypt, but despise the contemporary country and its inhabitants.In his seminal work Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, Kemp (2006) goes further, and attempts to tease out the ancient Egyptian attitudes and ways of thinking.His emphasis is on material culture, on the meaning it carries, and on how in ancient Egypt material, textual, and visual culture were continually reinterpreted.Kemp characterizes his efforts as the creation of an imaginary world, a marquee in the wind, pegged to the ground through the use of references to the extensive Egyptological literature (2006:3).His is a mildly relativist approach, allowing for multiple alternative explanations or narrations, but based on an enormous amount of archaeological material and a deep knowledge of the literature.In fact, his approach is well in keeping with the ancient Egyptian attitude to reality, which encompassed a firm belief in order, defined differently in various contexts or periods, and an enormous flexibility in allowing non-harmonized parallel truths.

Relativism is often criticized as leading to unsubstantiated speculation, with as a main argument that interpretations based on speculation “become conduits through which all sorts of unexamined prejudices and personal biases are introduced into archaeology.They ignore the alternative course of remaining silent regarding matters that are unknowable”(Trigger 2006:518).Reflecting Wittgenstein’s seventh position (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen”, in Ogden’s translation: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”[Biletzki and Matar 2009]), Trigger criticized the construction of insufficiently supported interpretations.Wittgenstein’s position, however, focused not on archaeology, but on belief systems dealing, for instance, with ideas about, and beliefs in, the afterlife.It is a reaction against both unfounded theories on supernatural phenomena and the scientific optimism of the late nineteenth century that everything will be explained by rational scientific means.One can, however, certainly speak about all aspects related to archaeology that could potentially be known.Not the personal biases of researchers are a threat to scholarship, but the presentation of those biases as an objective account. Archaeology from an explicit and methodical bias, on the other hand, has proven to provide important insights.The development and increased acceptance of gender theory has clarified that certain points of view have been systematically excluded from the archaeological interpretation (Wilfong, this volume).In the early days, when gender theory was not an accepted approach, groups of scholars and the approach itself have been actively and sometimes viciously attacked as non-scientific.A similar argument can be made for the discussion around multivocality.Granting a voice to individuals or groups whose participation has been actively prevented enables an open debate on personal or political interests, which are always an integral part of archaeology (Meskell 1998; Reid 2002; Wendrich in press).The local population, New Age devotees, school children, and tourists have their own perspectives and interests (see my Epilogue to the volume).This is not the same, however, as accepting every opinion as equally valid in a scholarly or scientific context and debate.Instead archaeologists who give serious attention to multivocality recognize that academic endeavors are one among several ways of considering ancient remains, and are not isolated, but firmly embedded in society.For archaeological work that takes place outside the country of origin of the researcher, and Egyptology is an excellent example, archeologists are embedded in their academic surrounding, their home, and their host societies.

In Egypt the integration of scientific research methods has developed in the last century.A shift in focus from architecture to stratigraphy marks this development most clearly.Multi-disciplinary excavation and survey projects which use sound stratigraphical excavation methods, and scientific study of context, soil, objects, animal bones, human bones, and botanical materials, have become the standard.The publications, however, for the most part have been descriptive.It is not until quite recently that publications have explicitly stated that the excavation of a cemetery has as its objective the understanding of social stratification or the gender-related division of labor (Wilfong, this volume).

The reinterpretation of materials and assemblages that were excavated over a century ago, and are often part of badly provenanced museum collections, has shown real promise as well.Good examples are David Wengrow’s overview of prehistoric and Predynastic Egypt (2006), and Lynn Meskell’s work on Deir el-Medina (1999, 2002, 2004).The Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–395 CE), much like the Late Period (Wilson, this volume) long considered as “un-Egyptian” and an age of decline “after the pharaohs,” has recently been reflected on in a number of thought-provoking publications.An increased interest in cultural diversity, the problematic issue of ethnicity, and the expression of identity in the material culture has resulted in several recent books which advocate a new approach to the archaeological materials, but also a new understanding of ancient textual accounts (Johnson 1992; Riggs 2005; Vasunia 2001; see also Grajetzki and my chapter on “identity and personhood” in this volume).These tend to gravitate towards the Greco-Roman period because of the fascinating Egyptian–Hellenistic interaction.This is a relatively recent period, and many excavations of cemeteries, temples, and settlement sites have yielded Greco-Roman material overlying the remains of earlier periods.Yet most of the contributors to this volume only refer to the Greco-Roman period in passing.This was an explicit editorial choice because this period displays enormous breaks in tradition.Where change in the earlier periods was always couched to resemble a continuation of age-old traditions, developments in the Greco-Roman period merely pay lip service to such conventions.

Stressing the role of archaeology in understanding ancient Egypt is of urgent importance to correct several biases which are the result of the overwhelming presence of the textual and visual record on the walls of temples and tombs, as well as in scholarship.The idea that Egyptian Pharaonic culture suddenly “emerged,” a perception that gave rise to the racist theories outlined above, is untenable when studying the archaeology rather than the written sources (Hendrickx et al., this volume).The development of writing should be put in the context of increased craft specialization, economic changes, and state formation (Köhler, this volume).The official textual sources are colored by the state ideology, they represent only the upper levels of Egyptian society, and they operate in a different time frame than the archaeological record.The image that comes to the fore from the textual sources is a well-balanced, homogeneous, society that is characterized by continuity of thought, habits, and interhuman relations.Egyptologists have taken this imagery at face value and tried to find explanations for such a level of stagnation by suggesting that there is a relation between the cognitive structure of Egypt’s ancient inhabitants and its geographical location and natural circumstances (e.g.Grimal 1992:17).The explanation of Egypt’s perceived homogeneous and unique character has thus often been sought in its landscape, or topographic circumstances.The Egyptian natural borders are the steep rocky Eastern Desert, rich in copper and turquoise in the Sinai, gold in the south, and hard decorative stones in the center; then the impenetrable Western desert, dotted with a few oases, but a landscape exactly as one imagines the Sahara–a bare, arid limestone plateau with large sandy dunes; and finally the marshes in the northern Delta, which forced the people to live on geziras or turtlebacks, islands of Pleistocene sands embedded in a thick layer of fluvial deposits and surrounded by water during the months of the Nile inundation.Even the topographical organization was dictated by the Nile: the dead were buried at the dry top of the islands; the living stayed as close as they could near the water, so that the remains of their settlements gradually were buried under the yearly addition of a thick layer of Nile silt.Egypt’s southern border was protected by the First Cataract, rapids in the Nile which formed because the river had to find its way through a threshold of hard pink granite, rather than the Nubian sandstone in the south, or the limestone north of Esna.Even though the inhabitants of Elephantine were well aware that the Nile arrived at the First Cataract from further south, the turbulent waters were considered the source of the Nile.The inundation provided temporal regularity, which was expressed in the three seasons of four months each: Akhet, the inundation, from August through November, which each year brought not only water to the parched land, but also a thick layer of fertile black Nile silt;Peret the growing season from December through March; and Shemu, the period of drought when the ground cracked open and aired through, from April through July.Thus pointing at the natural circumstances, Pharaonic Egypt has been represented as an isolated country, a self-sufficient kingdom that looked inwards, was never faced with a complete occupation by foreigners, and therefore had no need to change in reaction to external factors.

How realistic is this image of an isolated, calm, and orderly life, protected by impenetrable borders and regulated by the Nile inundation? It was the ideal, certainly, but probably one that reflected a situation that was strived for, rather than one that was commonly present. The seemingly impenetrable mountainous Eastern Desert has been an access route from the Neolithic period onward: the desert track to the Red Sea where we have evidence for shipping from at least the Middle Kingdom onwards. The Sahara was a fully inhabited region in the late Holocene (Hendrickx et al., this volume), and after gradual desiccation it still was a regularly traveled region to and from the Oases, but also along ancient tracks to the plains and Nuba mountains in the south. The Nile branches in the Delta were convenient inroads for ships from the Mediterranean, which could pass the marshy region along well-traveled channels to inland harbor towns, such as Buto, Avaris, and Tanis. The regions of Wawat (Lower Nubia) and Kush (Upper Nubia) to the south of the First Cataract were involved in a constant cultural exchange with Egypt, and in many periods of its history Egypt tried successfully to have direct political control over extensive areas that were the source for important prestige goods such as gold, ostrich feathers, elephant tusks, leopard skins, and ebony.

The tension between ideal and reality found an expression in Egypt’s religion. Apart from an emphasis on the afterlife (Taylor, this volume), the most important concept is that of maat, which stands for order or justice and is visualized as a feather, or a goddess with a feather on her head. It is the king’s duty to uphold maat and to abhor and subdue isfet, social chaos. Maat encompasses more, however, than the opposite of isfet. It is the cosmic order, the very fabric of which earthly life and the afterlife are integral parts (Richards, this volume). The cosmic order can only be maintained by a constant renewal and re-creation. To the modern reader this forms a potential tension field, between stability and renewal, continuity and change. The emphasis on rebirth and rejuvenation is, however, focused not on change, but on the repeated re-creation of an existing state of affairs. It represents a sense of time depth, in which generation follows upon generation. Through Egyptian history one can follow the traces of ancient Egyptians being fascinated and in awe of that time depth of their own culture. In the New Kingdom period, around 1350 BCE, a visitor left a graffito on a wall of one of the chapels of the 3rd-Dynasty complex of Djoser, dated to approximately 2650 BCE, to express his admiration for the great accomplishments of previous generations (Firth et al. 1935; Fischer-Elfert 2003). A good illustration that ancient history was of importance and carried the weight of authority is the Memphite theology, found on a stela dated to the rule of Shabaka (c. 690–664 BCE) which literally claims to be a copy of an old worm-eaten papyrus (Lichtheim 1980:5). The deep sense of the importance of forebears and of tradition translated into a creative reinterpretation of what went before. Presented as being rooted in age-old wisdom, upon closer inspection many traditions appear to show a definite development from, or even complete breach with, the past (Kemp 2006:160; Wegner, this volume).

Likewise, the writing of historical accounts, or more precisely the composition of annals, was an ideological endeavor which had a very specific purpose. It was the task of the king to uphold maat, maintain order in Egypt and actively fight chaos, represented by the foreign lands surrounding Egypt. The king of Egypt had to be victorious in order to ensure that order. Perhaps the best example of what we would consider a falsification of history is the account of the Battle of Qadesh between Egypt and the Hittites during the reign of Ramesses II (c. 1279–1213). Presented as a victory on several temple walls, comparison with contemporary ...