Pyramid builders of ancient egypt
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| Pyramid |
Most studies of ancient Egyptian
history cover the period from c.
3100 BC down to the conquest of
the country by the Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, in
332 BC. However, the so-called Predynastic Period (5000 BC—c.
3100 BC) laid the foundations for much of the subsequent
history, and the Graeco-Roman Period (332 BC—AD 641) illustrated the final
decline and disappearance of many of those beliefs and
representations that we would describe as ‘ancient Egyptian’.
In the
Palaeolithic Period, the Nile valley was virtually
uninhabitable either because for
three months of every year it was
under water, or because it
was otherwise covered with thick vegetation and
supported teeming wildlife. The earliest inhabitants were
hunters who lived on the desert spurs and made forays into the valley to
pursue their game.
However, as the floor
of the valley became drier, the people
began to move down
and to live together in settlements. Some time between
5200 BC and 4000 BC farming developed, and the
people began to support themselves by
growing grain, domesticating animals, and continuing to
pursue, increasingly infrequently, the wild animals. Although these peoples
fall into two broad geographical groups—one in the Delta
and one in the Nile Valley—there are
general features and patterns of development which,
as Neolithic communities, they have in common. Much of
our present knowledge of this era has been
obtained from the remarkable discoveries and pioneering studies of William
Flinders Petrie, the excavator of Kahun, and, with subsequent
research, it has been possible to establish, for Upper Egypt, a
well-established chronological sequence of divisions within the
Predynastic Period, which lead up to the 1st Dynasty (c.
3100 BC). These are known as the Tasian, Badarian, Nagada I and
Nagada II periods. In the Tasian and Badarian periods, the people
practised mixed farming but still lived mainly on the desert spurs overlooking
the Valley. However, in the Nagada I period, they settled
along the Valley in fairly isolated communities.
By the Nagada II period, there was increased contact with other parts of
the Near East, and gradually, villages and towns
in the north and south of Egypt developed into two distinct
kingdoms, one in the Delta, known as the ‘Red Land’, and one in Upper Egypt,
known as the ‘White Land’. Each had its own
king, who was the most powerful of the
local chieftains in the area. It was the unification by a southern ruler
of these two kingdoms—the ‘Two Lands’—in c. 3100 BC that
ushered in the historical period, with the establishment of
the 1st Dynasty. The growing political awareness and development in
these predynastic times was mirrored in a major advancement
in the technological, artistic and religious spheres,
and the artefacts, especially the painted pottery
and metalwork, show an increasing ability to handle materials.
However, it was the
unification of Egypt by King Menes who
became the first king of the 1st
Dynasty that marks the beginning of Egyptian history. The basis of our
chronology for the historical period (c. 3100–332 BC) rests upon the work of
Manetho, a learned priest who lived in the reigns of the
first two Ptolemaic rulers of
Egypt (323–245 BC). He wrote a
history of Egypt (in Greek) around
250 BC and prepared a chronicle
of Egyptian rulers, dividing them into thirty-one dynasties. There seems to be
no clear-cut definition of a dynasty. Although some contain rulers related
to each other by family ties, and the end of a dynasty can be marked by a
change of family (brought about by the end of one line, or by wilful seizure of
power by another faction), in other cases, family groups span more than
one dynasty and the change of dynasty was brought about
peacefully.
Modern research has shown that
Manetho’s record (preserved
imperfectly in the writings of
the Jewish historian Josephus (AD
79) and of a Christian
chronographer, Sextus Julius Africanus (early third century AD) is not
always entirely accurate. However, as a member of the priesthood,
he undoubtedly had access to original source material in
the ancient King Lists and records kept in
the temples, and his work remains the
basis of our chronology. Today, his dynasties are usually
grouped together by Egyptologists into a number of major periods,
distinguished by political, social and religious developments.
Thus, we find that the Archaic Period (1st and 2nd Dynasties)
is followed by the Old Kingdom (3rd to 6th Dynasties). This is followed by the
First Intermediate Period (7th to llth
Dynasties), and then the Middle Kingdom (12th Dynasty).
The Second Intermediate Period (13th to 17th
Dynasties) leads on to the New Kingdom (18th to
20th Dynasties), which in turn gives way to the Third
Intermediate Period (21st to 25th Dynasties). The
Late Period (26th to 31st Dynasties) is followed by the Graeco-Roman
Period. The three greatest periods were the
Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, which were interspersed
by times of internal dissension. The story of
Kahun falls into the Middle Kingdom (1991–1786 BC), although some
of the threads must be traced to the preceding and subsequent periods.
King Menes and
his immediate successors established the foundations of a stable
and unified kingdom. Untroubled by any major internal or
external conflicts, Egypt, during the Archaic Period, was
able to develop technological skills which were to lead to
the great advances of the Old Kingdom. Central to their
beliefs was the idea that the dead, in preparation for an
afterlife, needed a tomb (a ‘house’ for eternity), and food, clothing,
furniture, and other essential equipment. It was also necessary for the
body
of the deceased to be
preserved in as lifelike a state as possible, to enable his spirit to re-enter
the body and to partake of the essence of the food offerings either
placed in the tomb or subsequently brought to the
associated funerary chapel by the dead person’s relatives.
At first, such elaborate
funerary preparations were only made
for the king,
and his great courtiers. Other people were simply
buried in the sand in shallow graves, surrounded
by their few personal possessions. However, the funerary preparations of
the few, and especially of the king, were so important that considerable
resources were devoted to achieving secure and increasingly
elaborate burial places. The technical advances made in Egypt at this
early period were primarily directed to this end, and
only gradually filtered through to benefit the burials at other levels of
society, and also the general conditions of daily existence.
Thus in the earliest
dynasties, we see the development of a type of
tomb which is known today as a ‘mastaba’, because its superstructure
resembles the shape of a bench, for which ‘mastaba’ is the modern Arabic word.
From the 1st Dynasty onwards, kings and nobles were buried
in mastabas, in the substructure below ground. Built
of mud-brick, the superstructure was rectangular and
divided internally into many cells or chambers, in which the domestic
and other equipment for the next life was stored. This
structure was almost certainly regarded as a house, embodying the same
elements as a dwelling for the living, but to be occupied by the
dead owner’s spirit. The substructure incorporated the burial
pit and was theoretically protected from robbers and animals by the
superstructure. However, the mastaba afforded only
ineffectual protection for the body, and in
the 2nd and 3rd Dynasties the storage area was transferred
below ground, and the superstructure was built of stone rubble,
faced with brick. This again failed to defeat the
tomb-robbers, but although the mastaba continued to be used for nobles,
by the beginning of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians had
developed for the king the most spectacular place of
burial—the Pyramid.
The pyramid, as
an architectural concept, seems to have
developed out of the mastaba,
and although Pyramids were also, built in later periods, they most
perfectly signify the wealth, single- mindedness and religious beliefs of
the period of their creation— the Old Kingdom.
For some, the Old Kingdom symbolises
the Egyptian civilisation at its zenith, when many artistic and
architectural forms are seen in their first flowering. It is
certainly true that, in this period, the Egyptians perhaps
held the clearest idea of their collective destiny and focussed
upon one main objective—the building and
completion of a monumental burial place for their king,
which would withstand the ravages of time and robbery, which
would facilitate the god-king’s safe passage into
eternity, and thus, vicariously, would ensure survival beyond death for
all his subjects.
This common goal welded
together, in religious and political
unity, a country which,
geographically, was difficult to rule. It also inspired great advances in
technology and artistic expression, and indeed, few if
any of the later periods produced such originality.
King Zoser of the 3rd Dynasty was the first ruler to be buried in
a Pyramid. Apparently designed by his architect, Imhotep,
it took the form of a stepped structure in
six stages, representing, it has been argued, a series of mastabas
of decreasing size, piled upon each other. This pyramid was
only the central feature of a large funerary complex,
with temples and other buildings where the king’s cult could be
performed after the burial.
Zoser’s Step Pyramid, the first
large-scale stone building in the
world, introduced a series of
pyramids which continued to be raised during the Old and
Middle Kingdoms. Altogether, about
80 were built in the Nile
Valley, mainly in the north and, in the
Middle Kingdom, in
the Fayoum. From the Step Pyramid, the builders
attempted to create a true Pyramid, and although some of
their less successful attempts can still be seen in the transitional pyramids
at Medum and Dahshur, by the 4th Dynasty, they
had mastered the necessary techniques.
At Giza, strung along the
plateau, are the three most celebrated
pyramids, built for the
rulers Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus. The famous Sphinx stands closely
associated with the Pyramid of Chephren, and, surrounded by a vast
cemetery of mastabas once occupied by the families and courtiers of these
kings, the pyramids form the centre of an extensive mortuary area