Ancient Egypt
Elements of its Cultural History

  by Sjef Willockx

  
 


22. The significance of the Sma Tawy vignette


We may well wonder why the Sma Tawy vignette was so often depicted as if relating to the present. In theory, the act of uniting the Two Lands had occurred only once: at the beginning of the 1st dynasty. In reality, they were re-united again at the beginning of the Middle and the New Kingdom, but in practice, we see every individual king claiming that he united the Two Lands. This is particularly striking in the 5th dynasty annals of the Palermo Stone, where every first year of a new reign is called: “Year of uniting the Two Lands” (see the previous section).

Precisely this stressing of the repetition of the event reveals its purpose. During the coronation ceremonies, the new king magically repeated the act of the legendary king Menes: uniting the Two Lands for the first time. By repeating the act of the first unification of the land, he magically restored its original result: an era of bliss and happiness. That’s why each new king’s coronation was heralded all over the country as the beginning of a new age of contentment, after an imaginary period of darkness and distress. See e.g. this passage from the Pyramid Texts (Pyr. 1775):

The sky is at peace, the earth is in joy, for they have heard that the king will set Right in the place of Wrong!

The supposed dark era preceding the new king’s reign was of course the no less blissful reign of his beloved father. Portraying the past as a period of unrule and chaos only served as a magic leverage to further enhance the desired effect, namely, to secure a happy, blissful reign under the new king. 

It is worth noting that the use of the heraldic plants in the Sma Tawy vignette demonstrates that the ceremony is about the unification of the Two Lands, not the Two Kingdoms. Although the king is always portrayed as king of both kingdoms, it is never the kingdoms that are shown to be merged. Only the Lands are merged. This agrees with the earlier mentioned assumption (see section 15) that there in fact never was a Lower Egyptian Kingdom. There only was an Upper Egyptian Kingdom which slowly, bit by bit, conquered Lower Egypt.


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