Antiquity

Norman F. Cantor

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062444615
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

"With his characteristic eloquence and lucid insights... Cantor offers a splendid and accessible portrait of the cultures of the ancient world."— Publishers Weekly

Bestselling author Norman Cantor delivers this compact but magisterial survey of the ancient world—from the birth of Sumerian civilization around 3500 B.C. in the Tigris-Euphrates valley (present-day Iraq) to the fall of the Roman Empire in A.D. 476. He covers such subjects as Classical Greece, Judaism, the founding of Christianity, and the triumph and decline of Rome.

In this fascinating and comprehensive analysis, Cantor explores social and cultural history, as well as the political and economic aspects of his narrative. He explains leading themes in religion and philosophy and discusses the environment, population, and public health. With his signature authority and insight, he highlights in Antiquity the great books and ideas of antiquity that continue to influence culture today.

Two

SOCIETIES AND CULTURES

CHAPTER NINE

Egypt

The center of Egyptian life, geographically and in a broader cultural sense, was the Nile River, which, in prehistoric times, formed a valley running north from the mountains of Ethiopia across the Egyptian desert to the Mediterranean Sea. Near its mouth, it dropped the silt that, in the course of centuries, formed its broad, fertile delta. As it crosses the delta, the Nile becomes a myriad of smaller rivers before it flows finally into the eastern Mediterranean.

Toward the end of the fourth millennium B.C., the Egyptians, already a homogeneous cultural group, came down from the hills bordering the Nile to farm the fertile land along the river. Their dikes transformed the marshes along the river into fertile fields, and their small villages took form on higher ground near these fields. Then as now, every summer the Nile overflowed its banks, submerging the fields. When the river receded in the fall, it left a deposit of fertile silt carried down from the mountains, and crops were sown in the rich brown fields. It almost never rains in Egypt, so the success of the harvest has always depended mainly on the timing and magnitude of the Nile flood. If the flood is too small, there is no crop; if it rises too high, it drowns the fields and destroys the crops.

Egyptian society and government were molded by the river and the desert. The fertile strips of land along the river were bordered by the desert, and while the fields watered by the Nile normally yielded a very rich harvest capable of sustaining a large population, the desert boundaries placed an absolute limit on the amount of land available. From its beginning, Egypt was a densely settled agricultural community. Its soil was rich, and because farming necessarily ceased during the months of the annual inundation, its people were not forced to toil endlessly in order to survive. The peasant farmers could support a wealthy aristocracy without suffering extreme privation, and an important segment of the population was able to devote a substantial amount of time to nonagricultural pursuits. In short, for most of its long history, Egyptian civilization was wealthy and comfortable.

Egypt’s fundamental unity was founded on its natural desert barriers, which eliminated fear of invasion while they limited expansion. Only in the extreme south and in the area of the delta was Egypt open to the outside world. The Nile was a natural highway for the maintenance of communications within the country. Every settlement constructed its own wharf and boats. Land travel was restricted to the dikes bordering the fields—it was considered a crime to travel across the waters that blanketed the fertile land.

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In prehistoric times, the local communities in Egypt were united into two kingdoms: upper Egypt, which extended down the Nile valley, and lower Egypt, centered in the delta region. About 3100 B.C., the first pharaoh united upper and lower Egypt into one kingdom, and their unification marks the beginning of the truly creative period of Egyptian civilization. Except for a few brief interludes, the pharaohs and the unity of the two kingdoms shaped the basic form of the Egyptian state for the next three thousand years. Historians have designated the history of the united Egyptian Kingdom (down to about 2200 B.C.) the period of the “Old Kingdom.”

The identity of the first pharaoh is not known—there is no real evidence of the existence of the legendary Menes—but whatever his name, he established his palace on the Nile at Memphis, just south of the point where the river flows into the delta. This first pharaoh was regarded by his countrymen not merely as a great political figure or a great warrior but rather as a god whose rule over Egypt was part of the divine ordering of the universe. An explanation of the pharaoh’s position is found in the legend called the Memphite Theology, which describes the accession of the pharaoh as part of the creation of the world. The earliest extant document that contains this legend dates from about 800 B.C., but we know that by then it had been handed down for countless centuries. According to the myth set forth in this account, the earth was created as the land arose from the primeval waters, a scene that was re-created each year for the Egyptians as their land rose from the waters of the Nile inundation. The earth god, Ptah, created the world and the gods that were an inseparable part of it—Re, the sun god, and Hapi, the god of the Nile, among others. Horus and Seth, respectively the good son and the evil brother of Osiris, the god-king of the dead, competed for dominion over Egypt, and Horus was the victor. Thus, whoever was pharaoh was identified with Horus, as the living king of Egypt. When the pharaoh died, he became Osiris, king of the underworld, and his son, in turn, became Horus, the son of Osiris and, consequently, the legitimate ruler of the living.

Every aspect of life in Egypt was under the control of the pharaoh. His word was not merely a command; the Memphite Theology calls it an “authoritative utterance”—the very word of the pharaoh transformed whatever he spoke into authority. The ordering of society was thus a part of the eternal and divine order. The person of the pharaoh was the embodiment of the world order, and his dominion existed not only in life but in the afterlife, the divine life that was a continuation of earthly existence.

The pyramids of Egypt are the clearest expression of the beliefs held in the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Since Memphis was the permanent capital of Egypt, the royal cemeteries were built as close as possible to that city. However, as the best sites were used up, the pharaohs were forced to move farther south. This meant that the palace of the king was often far from the city so that he could supervise the work on his tomb, which continued throughout his lifetime. When a pharaoh died, his successor might choose to build his pyramid in the same area or, if the most favorable sites were taken, he might move the court to a new spot. Memphis remained the seat of government, but the king might be as far away as the location of his tomb demanded.

The pyramid was the eternal abode of the king in the afterlife. Its exterior was formed of precisely fitted stones, while the inside was a labyrinth of passages with a central resting place for the pharaoh, whose body was preserved. Surrounding the pyramid were the tombs of the nobility, who hoped to continue their earthly relationship with the pharaoh after death. The tombs were decorated with scenes illustrating all phases of life, which, in this way, could be carried over into the afterlife. Temples were built in the cities and in the pyramid complex; they were intended to supply the pharaoh after death with the goods he would need in the next world. The spirits of the dead, usually in the form of birds, were believed to flit through the air in the vicinity of the tomb.

The earliest pharaohs ruled the kingdom through an administrative system that was both complex and efficient. All decisions, at least in theory, came from the pharaoh. In the Old Kingdom, the pharaoh usually filled administrative posts with members of the royal family, but this became increasingly difficult and was no longer the rule after the Fourth Dynasty. All land was owned by the pharaoh, who each year distributed seed and equipment to the farmers and then took a fixed proportion of the crop. He was responsible for all public works, including the building of dikes and temples, and for external trade and warfare. It is assumed that the pharaoh led the army to the eastern coastal regions of the Mediterranean, bringing back timber, metal, and other goods, which were then distributed down the hierarchy of Egyptian society, but we do not have positive evidence of these expeditions until after 1500 B.C. There was no money economy in Egypt, and all exchange of goods was carried out by barter. Each citizen paid a tax in kind of everything he produced, and the wealth of the pharaoh thus consisted of the grain, livestock, and other goods that he took as taxes. He also received metals and other goods as tribute or in trade from abroad.

The word of the pharaoh was the source of right and justice in the land, so the judicial system consisted not of a code of law but of the decision in each case handed down by the pharaoh through his courts. The ideal of the exercise of authority was expressed in the word Maat, which meant truth, justice, and order in the world. This ideal formed the basis of the moral authority of the state. The word of the pharaoh was Maat.

Egyptian society was, above all, an agricultural order. True cities never developed, and thus—in contrast to Mesopotamia—the city had no central place in Egyptian society. The exchange of goods was an aspect of the administration of the kingdom rather than the activity of a distinct social and economic class. The social order was seen as merely one part of the unchanging order of the world, and in it, each person had his place. Egyptian society rested on a peasant base, whose members acted at times as artisans, soldiers, and laborers on public works. The great mass of the peasant population provided the wealth that supported the royalty and nobility, who occupied themselves engineering the great pyramids and furnishing them in a manner fit for a god. Exploitation of the peasant was limited by his essential role. In spite of the heavy fixed tax on land, and his subjugation and exploitation, the peasant, for most of Egyptian history, cooperated with rather than resisted the exercise of hierarchical power.

The actual government of the kingdom was carried on by the bureaucracy, which rapidly grew to extend beyond the ranks of the royal family. At first, it consisted of servants appointed at the pharaoh’s pleasure and constantly transferred by him from job to job, but soon it was transformed into a hereditary class. Often its members were rewarded with gifts of land from the pharaoh; these gifts allowed the nobility to establish power in local areas. A peasant might work the land of a great man, of the pharaoh, or of a temple.

The multiplicity of temples gave rise to a priestly class, which also eventually became hereditary. Offerings to the gods, which comprised the revenue of the priests, enabled the temples to become a major political force in the state. During the Old Kingdom, the priestly class formed a harmonious part of the pharaoh’s order, but, later in Egyptian history, it successfully challenged and put a rein on his unlimited authority.

During the Old Kingdom, Egyptian society rapidly evolved a culture whose basic tenets endured throughout Egyptian history. The central concern of Egyptian art, literature, and architecture was the divine world order—the pharaoh and the gods, who were essentially one and the same. To the Egyptians, that divine order was eternal and unchanging, but it did not rest on a coherent and defined system of belief. The same god might be seen one time as the sky, another time as a bird; he might have a mythical mother, yet it might be said that he gave birth to himself; the sky could be both a cow and a goddess. The Egyptians did not think in chronological or logical terms but pictured the same phenomenon in a number of different ways.

For the Egyptian, the divine and natural orders were one. The dead pharaoh in his tomb was fed by offerings of food brought to him from his temple and by the pictures and images of food that decorated his tomb. Often the deceased had a statue of a man in his tomb so that if there was work to be done in the afterworld, the figure represented by the statue would do it for him. The reality of symbols also played an important part in ritual. A ritual act was not a symbol of the event it re-created; it was the event.

Because the Egyptians had no feeling that events of the moment were transitory, they viewed the present as eternal. The world was static; what seemed like change was only recurrence of the eternal order. Thus, Egyptian literature does not contain careful records of the deeds, or distinctive characteristics of the pharaohs. Rather they are portrayed as the divine ideal, always just, wise, bold, strong, and victorious. Neither did artists depict events to be remembered for their uniqueness; instead they tried to show the typical and ideal. The aim of the artist was to portray the eternal nature of his subject, independent of time and space, and this aim eventually crystallized into a set of stylistic formulas. Each figure was painted partly in profile, partly in frontal view; an event was portrayed not pictorially but symbolically, in several different ways in the same work. The pharaoh was always larger than the other characters, because he was more important. One part of a scene, whether in a painting, a relief, or a carved palette, could be upright, with other parts perpendicular to it. The static quality of Egyptian art was heightened by the absence of perspective.

Morality was viewed by the Egyptians not as the assertion of self against the world but rather as the individual search for harmony with the eternal order. The ideal man of the Old Kingdom was the aggressive man who was effective within the system, without flamboyance and without fear. The Egyptians had no concept of altruism or self-sacrifice. The ideal of Maat meant truth, justice, and order, but it also meant “what is advantageous.” Public officials were urged to be honest because honesty was efficient. The young scribe was urged to work hard because the life of a scribe was the best life in society. The Egyptian was free to seek out a place in a benevolent world order, but he was not to disrupt it by either nonconformity or self-abnegation.

The Egyptian language was written with a hieroglyphic script; it was pictorial rather than syllabic. In its earliest form, it allowed the expression of the concrete more naturally than of the abstract. The genius of the Egyptians was expressed in the solution of practical problems rather than in sophisticated theoretical advances. Mathematics was used to predict the time of the annual Nile inundation as well as to figure the dimensions of stones for the pyramids, and although the Egyptians did not use the zero or complex fractions, they were able to make these calculations with almost incredible precision. In the field of medicine, the Egyptians recognized the importance of the heart, and they treated ailments like broken bones as natural phenomena rather than the irremedial work of the gods. Their advances in medicine, however, as well as in other areas of science, were limited to their attempts to solve the problems confronting them. They did not attempt to probe into the realm of theory.

History for the Egyptians was the cyclic recurrence of the elements of the divine eternal order. Just as the land was reborn each year, so the pharaoh who died and became Osiris was reborn in Horus, his son and successor. The passage of time was marked by the succession of pharaohs, who were grouped into dynasties and numbered.

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Although the Egyptians viewed their history as fundamentally unchanging, in fact, the position of the pharaoh had declined by the end of the Sixth Dynasty, about 2200 B.C. The following two centuries constituted a hiatus in the traditional power of the pharaoh. As the local power of the nobles grew, they were able to ignore the pharaoh’s authority, and Egypt was broken up into local domains under control of the nobility. The nobility usurped not only the power of the pharaoh but his image as well. As early as the Sixth Dynasty, nobles began to build their tombs in their local districts instead of clinging to sites at the foot of the pharaoh’s pyramid, even arrogating to themselves the power to become gods after death.

This period of political chaos was also marked by social change. The class structure became much more fluid; one writer lamented that the man who once had nothing now had wealth and power, while the man who once was great now was reduced to destitution. The concept of the afterlife was finally enlarged to such a degree that anyone who could afford the proper mortuary care could be assured of a blissful afterlife as a god. The word Maat came more and more to stand for a kind of social justice and to represent the demand that society give every man his due.

By about 2000 B.C. the pharaoh was again able to unite the kingdom. To some extent this unity was a façade behind which the old quarrels and internal struggles continued, but gradually the pharaoh once more became the effective center of the state. His recovered supremacy, however, was that of the first among equals; his unique position had been weakened. Nevertheless, he was able to reassert his predominance in the afterlife, a renewed authority attested to by the decrease in the relative size of the tombs of local magnates.

The Egyptian state itself increased in size and power. Regular mining and quarrying expeditions were sent over long distances by land and sea. Egypt expanded territorially to the south, where political conditions were unstable. The state of the Middle Kingdom, from about 2000 B.C. to about 1800 B.C., was powerful, unified, and aggressive.

About 1800 B.C., the ambitious expansion of the state gave way to disaster when Egypt succumbed to the rule of the Hyksos, a group of Semitic warriors from western Asia. The Hyksos were not a unified nation but a loose gathering of various tribal and ethnic groups who established themselves in heavily fortified settlements in the delta region. From these strongholds they held sway over Egypt, collecting taxes while allowing the pharaoh to remain the nominal ruler of Egy...