Those ancient Egyptian tenderhearts

There is a tendency of regarding the ancient Egyptians as an enlightened people: wise, quiet, peaceful, restrained.

The murals and reliefs in ancient Egyptian tombs show us an harmonious existence, full of tranquility, almost serene. The tomb owner quietly looks on while his workers diligently go about their business: sowing and harvesting, tending cattle, collecting fruits and pressing grapes. With his family, he calmly moves about in the marshes: boating, spearing fish, and hunting with the throwing stick. When night falls, he entertains his guests: they are all dressed up and beautiful, enjoying the scent of lotus flowers while they listen to music, and watch the dancers. Everyone and everything behaves in these pictures. Even nature itself shows an orderly face: gardens and agriculture to the left, wildlife and hunting to the right. Everybody is cool, calm and collected: only in the ranks of boatmen, some innocent frolicking is going on.

And in the temples, between king and gods, it’s all love-and-peace: placid, gentle faces, and tender embraces. All the gods and goddesses have come, to offer the king their support: Horus gives him life, Ptah embraces him, Thoth allots him millions of years, and Hathor suckles him. In return, the grateful king spends offerings of all kinds for them: all sorts of meat, bread and fruit; water, wine, milk and honey, incense and flowers: all things good and pure.

So this is the orderly life of a lofty, civilized people: all is well, all is just, all is peaceful, composed and tranquil.
Or is it?

To a considerable extend, we are victims of a meticulous, deliberate and determined propaganda. All these pictures are true – in the sense that they tell nothing but the truth. That is their strength, the innate reason for their inordinate effectiveness: they show us a life that can truly be, a life that is perfect, yet attainable, like the ads in a glossy magazine. But they do not give the whole truth. They purposefully leave out anything and everything that is less then perfect.
Although there is not much rain in Egypt, clouds are a regular phenomenon. But by looking at the pictures that the Egyptians painted, we could never tell this. In point of fact: it struck me as quite a surprise, when I finally visited the land for the first time. The Egyptian draughtsman were capable naturalists, as we can tell from their vivid depictions of animals. They would not have had any difficulty in sketching a sky with clouds – but they never once did so. A sky with clouds is second to one without, and they sought only the best, only the perfect.

We call it "propaganda", for that’s what it is: it shows unequivocally from its relentless consistency. But propaganda is aimed at an audience. Who could be that audience inside a totally dark, locked and sealed tomb? Or in the impenetrable darkness of the temples, high on the inner walls, architraves and ceilings, deep in shaded recesses, hardly visible in the fluttering light of a single torch in the shrine of the god?
We might conjecture that, inside the tomb, the deceased was the audience. Or in the temples, the gods. But it is much more simple then this: this propaganda didn’t need an audience at all.
In the primitive world view, everything that is, is effective. These depictions were effective all by themselves. They could and would exert influence, even without being seen, without ever being looked at. They would help to bring about all that they so admirably portrayed: an ideal world, a world of harmony, peace and happiness: a paradise. Nature itself was the "audience".
That we can see these pictures is a mishap: we were never meant to. We are unintentional victims of a propaganda, that was never aimed at us.

Paradise could be pictured, but that didn’t mean the ancient Egyptians lived in it. The actual world they inhabited had its part of violence, bloodshed and brutality all right. And it really isn’t that difficult to find, either. Perhaps we are victims of wishful thinking as much as of propaganda...

We will take a look at some examples from the following terrains:

• warfare,

• dispensing justice,

• the economy,

• and mythology.

Warfare, by its very nature, is a brutal business. In ancient Egypt, is wasn’t any different from anywhere (or any when) else.
Let us begin with the beginning: the Narmer Palette. Here, we see king Narmer, wearing the Red Crown, inspecting his slain enemies. Their heads and penises are cut off, and laid between their legs. The fact that their hands are tied behind their backs shows, that these were not casualties from the battlefield: they have been executed this way.
One may of course assume that this was just something during Egypt’s initial, formative period – a period in which not yet all remnants of savagery had been eradicated. But the extensive pictorial record of warfare during the New Kingdom proves otherwise.
In the New Kingdom depictions of battle, the contrast between Egyptians and foreigners is always striking. The Egyptian army is advancing orderly but vigorously, while the enemy is routed, fleeing in chaos, head over heels, pierced by his Majesty’s arrows, succumbing in pain and misery.
Later on, the captives are brought before the king: imploring, beseeching, bent deep to the ground, raising their arms in supplication, faces twisted in anguish, begging for their lives. Meanwhile, their guards – no more then one per ten: that’s all it takes – confidently stride forward, hailing that beneficent god that is their king.
And later still, we see at least some of the captive’s final hour: as the king ritually bashes their brains out, right in front of the temple walls that carry these reliefs.
Those temple walls also show up scenes of giant heaps of cut off hands, and equally large heaps of cut off penises. That hands were cut of to substantiate the number of slain enemies is also attested in writing. The soldier Ahmose, son of Abana (17^th -18^th dynasty) mentions it several times. An example from the period of the expulsion of the Hyksos:

Then Sharpen was besieged for three years. His majesty despoiled it and I brought spoil from it: two women and a hand. Then the gold of valor was given me, and my captives were given to me as slaves.

And from a Nubian campaign:

His majesty made a great slaughter among them [the Nubians], and I brought spoil from there: two living men and three hands. Then I was rewarded with gold once again, and two female slaves were given to me. (AEL-I, 13)

There was probably a rule that only the left or right hands could be used, to prevent double cashing.
As far as I know, proof for the cutting off of penises for the same purpose is confined to the reliefs. Perhaps it served as a less fraud-sensitive alternative for cutting off hands. After all, women have hands, too.

Amenhotep II recorded on several stelae the following event from one of his Syrian campaigns. The translation is from Breasted, slightly modified.

When his majesty returned [from the campaign], his heart full of joy for his father Amun, he slew with his own weapon the seven princes, who had been in the land of Tikshi, and who had been placed head downward at the prow of his majesty’s barge, the name of which was: "Amenhotep II is the Establisher of the Two Lands". One hanged six of these men before the wall of Thebes, and their hands also. Then the other one was taken up-river to Nubia and hanged on the wall of Napata, to proclaim the victories of his majesty, forever and ever in all lands and countries of the black man.

So these seven princes were first brought from Syria to Thebes, a distance from 1.000 kilometers, hanging head down from the prow of the king’s ship. He then killed them personally, probably before the walls of the temple of Karnak. Six of the seven were hanged right there, along with their cut-off hands, while the corpse of the seventh was taken another 1.000 kilometers south to Napata, deep into Africa. Just imagine the brutality of that statement: "Look, this is what I did at the other side of the earth! You can hide nowhere from my wrath!"

Dispensing justice

On the walls of the tomb of Mereruka (6^th dynasty), right amidst those peaceful pictures from the countryside, we see how disobedient peasants are brought before their lord, to hear justice. Whatever they did, it sufficed for conviction. They are lashed to a whipping post, and beaten with a stick.

Papyrus Westcar, dating from the Hyksos Period, gives us some interesting Tales of Wonder, that are supposed to have transpired during the 4^th dynasty. One of these is about a magician, who finds out that his wife is having an affair. Most of the story is about how the magician deals with his rival. It involves a crocodile of wax that changes into a live croc, catching and drowning him. The fate of the unfaithful wife is then mentioned in the most casual way: she is brought before the king, who has her burned at the stake. So much for women’s rights in ancient Egypt...

The economy

In the tale of the Eloquent Peasant, we learn that it was quite customary for an owner of serfs, to punish severely whoever would trade with an outsider (AEL-I, 171, note 9). From the context, it is clear that the serfs in question were Egyptians, so the status of not being free (either as slave or serf) was not confined to foreign captives. And "a good beating" was considered a proper treatment for those who were not free, whenever they stepped out of line.

In the granite quarries of Aswan, we find narrow trenches that were cut into the bedrock, to set free the large sarcophagi and obelisks. These trenches were made, banging balls of diorite (about 20 cm across) on the granite. Diorite is even harder then granite, so with every thud of these balls a few splinters of granite would flake off. On the bottom of the trenches, a series of circular depressions can still be seen (usually in two rows), showing where the balls were banged down.
It must have taken months to extract a sarcophagus from the rock in this way. Hatshepsut boasts that it took "her" only 7 months to quarry and fetch the two giant obelisks that she had erected in Karnak (AEL-I, 28).
We do not know for certain who were manning these quarries. Perhaps they were criminals, perhaps prisoners of war. If however we try to picture their fate – doing this hard, numbing labor, choking in the heat and dust – we can hardly evade the notion that this was forced-labor of the worst kind: using up people as a commodity. Those who supervised it were no better then the wardens of the Gulag archipelago.

Mythology

One of the major Egyptian myths is that of the struggles between Horus and Seth. It seems that originally, there were two different myths. One was about two contenders: brothers that forever fought with one another (Horus and Seth). The other was about a son (Horus) who had to fight his uncle (Seth) for his rightful heritage after the demise of his father (Osiris). During the dynastic period, both stories were amalgamated into a group of myths around Horus and Seth.
The story about the two brothers was closely related to the phases of the moon. The moon, beautiful and serene, harbored a magnificent, potent power. Still, it was threatened in a monthly cycle: waning to disappearance, and then waxing again to full bloom. There had to be another power then: unseen, but almost as powerful as the moon. Almost, for the moon returned every time.
Clues were sought to identify this mysterious power’s workings elsewhere, too. They were found in phenomena that were forceful, brutal and aggressive – but that did ultimately not prevail: the desert, rainstorms, and the foreign lands. Such then became the domain of the god Seth. And Horus, his eternal opponent, became associated with the moon.
The struggles between Horus and Seth were merciless. At one point, Seth tore out one of Horus’ eyes. Horus ripped off Seth’s testicles. Later, both were restored by Thoth.

Seth was as closely associated with kingship as Horus. From the 2^nd dynasty, we have serekhs adorned with the "Seth-animal", right along those with the falcon of Horus. And in the later New Kingdom, Seth was one of four figurehead gods of the Egyptians hosts (the others being Ptah, Amun and Re). So for all his redoubtable strength, he was not vile. He epitomized strife, forcefulness and even brutality, but he was not a demon. Although the Egyptians celebrated Harmony (Maat) as the supreme principle of creation (comparable with the status of Love in Christianity), they recognized the value of strength, as well as the inevitability of conflict.

In the Netherworld Books of the later New Kingdom, we find a very illuminating picture of Seth’s position. We see him standing at the prow of Re’s Night Bark, acting as his champion, defending him against the demon Apep. While Seth’s monthly victory over the moon was just a display of sound and healthy conflict, Apep sought to destroy the sun god. So Seth fought Apep, every night, with all his might and strength, in a bitter raging war. And when the sun rose again in the morning sky, it was Seth who had saved the day.

Horus, Seth and Apep: it’s the Good, the Strong and the Evil.

Contemporaries

The Near Eastern contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians were not nearly so involved in presenting embellished pictures of their lives as the Egyptians. When we look into their records, we have no trouble whatsoever finding heaps of savagery. Let’s take a look at some easily accessible examples, from the Bible.

First one that speaks about the Babylonians.

2 Kings, Chapter 25:

5: But the army of the Chaldeans [the Babylonians] pursued the king [Zedekiah, king of Israel], and overtook him in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him.
6: Then they captured the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, who passed sentence upon him.
7: They slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in fetters, and took him to Babylon.

But the Israelites themselves were no pussycats either. Check out the following little collection of niceties:

1 Kings, Chapter 15.

28: So Baasha killed him [Nadab the son of Jeroboam, king of Israel] in the third year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his stead.
29: And as soon as he was king, he killed all the house of Jeroboam; he left to the house of Jeroboam not one that breathed, until he had destroyed it, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite.

1 Kings, Chapter 16.

8: In the twenty-sixth year of Asa king of Judah, Elah the son of Baasha began to reign over Israel in Tirzah, and reigned two years.
9: But his servant Zimri, commander of half his chariots, conspired against him. When he was at Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza, who was over the household in Tirzah,
10: Zimri came in and struck him down and killed him, in the twenty-seventh year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his stead.
11: When he began to reign, as soon as he had seated himself on his throne, he killed all the house of Baasha; he did not leave him a single male of his kinsmen or his friends.
12: Thus Zimri destroyed all the house of Baasha, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke against Baasha by Jehu the prophet.

2 Kings, Chapter 10.

6: Then he [Jehu, king of Israel] wrote to them [the rulers of Samaria] a second letter, saying, "If you are on my side, and if you are ready to obey me, take the heads of your master's sons, and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow at this time." Now the king's sons, seventy persons, were with the great men of the city, who were bringing them up.
7: And when the letter came to them, they took the king's sons, and slew them, seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him at Jezreel.

2 Kings, Chapter 15.

16: At that time Menahem [king of Israel] sacked Tappuah and all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah on; because they did not open it to him, therefore he sacked it, and he ripped up all the women in it who were with child.

The totally dispassionate, matter-of-fact style of these accounts is as gruesome as their content.

If we take into account, that the pictorial record of the AE’s was biased, and that the written sources allude to fair quantities of barbarism, then the tentative conclusion that they were no better then their contemporaries, such as typified by the above examples, lies close at hand.

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