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Ancient
Egypt by Sjef Willockx |
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Now we come to the “pièce de résistance”: an attempt to identify the Two Land’s heraldic plants - the plants which, in symbolic pictorial groups (primarily in the Sma Tawy vignette), represent Lower and Upper Egypt. Let us begin with papyrus. What proof do we actually have, that the Lower Egyptian emblem plant was in fact papyrus? After all, there is not much similarity between the actual papyrus plant, and its (presumed) rendering in the arts. In Old Kingdom mastabas, we see the landscape of the Delta depicted as characterized by large areas of aquatic vegetation. The plants in question rise straight from the water, with high, unarticulated stems. We see these plants being harvested as raw material for the production of all sorts of things: rafts, small boats, ropes, sails - and a writing material. Of that writing material, huge quantities have been preserved, and these have been conclusively identified as papyrus. We can therefore be certain that those tall plants in the Delta landscapes are papyrus plants - even if their flowers are not true to nature.The next step is to link the plants of the Delta landscapes to those of the Sma Tawy vignettes. For this, we turn to the script. In section 7: “Lotus and papyrus as hieroglyphs”, we saw this table:
It follows from the context, that these signs are
meant as pictures of papyrus. And
yes:
their flowers closely resemble those of the mastaba depictions - and
those of the Sma Tawy vignette. Moreover, sign M15 is the preferred
format for the heraldic plant on the head of the personification of
Lower Egypt. For the emblem plant of Upper Egypt, our problems multiply. Let us begin with a recapitulation of what we have seen so far (in sections 21 and 24).
*): Assembled from parts of the original design: see section 21.No matter how we look at these - as different plants, or as different renderings of one plant - it´s an amazing situation. For the Egyptians to be inconsistent in an area so close to the core of their views is just absolutely flabbergasting. Yet there is no sense in denying it. We can not even work out a hypothesis of gradual evolution, for Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III, both present in the table above with different species, belong to the same part of the 18th dynasty. However, considering how different the actual papyrus flower is from its traditional rendering in art, we should not dismiss any option too quickly…Let’s take a closer look now at each type in turn.Type 1: the flowering sedge
Adjib: Left-right reversed. In modern Egyptological literature, there is not much opposition against the identification of Type 1 as a “flowering sedge”. This does however not mean that its identity is an open and shut case. On the contrary: as we have seen in section 8 “The sedge”, there are some 5,000 different species of sedges.We might as well be blunt about it: to definitively identify the plant of Type 1 is just impossible. Its depictions are simply not detailed enough.
If we isolate just these two, and put them side by side, this is what we get:
If we ignore the bending over of Type 3, they are not all that different. Could it perhaps be, that these two are actually one?Of Type 2, I am only aware of one example: the Sma Tawy on the seated statues of Chefren from his mortuary temple at Gizeh, now in the Cairo museum. A similar form from the Old Kingdom (if not actually the same, in a more detailed rendering), is identified by Schäfer as “bindweed” (Schäfer 20).Type 3 is again a form of which I only know one example. I found it in Blumen, page 145. The text describes the plant form as “an Palmwedeln orientiert” (“related to palm leaves”), and suggests that there are more examples like it - all from before the New Kingdom.If we insert just one stalk of it in our earlier row of “flowering sedges”, it actually does not really look out of place:
The Middle Kingdom version could just possibly represent another approach to the same species. It may have been an attempt to create a more stylized version of the flowering sedge, better adapted to the monumental (comparable to the adaptation of the rendering of papyrus: see section 7).In which case we could end up with Types 1, 2 and 3 being identical…
This is the most disputed one. Traditionally, it is called a lotus. This tradition can be traced back to the Greeks. As we saw in section 1, Herodotus describes the water lilies of Egypt, and gives as their name "lotus". Linking the name of the lotus to the heraldic plant of Upper Egypt may then have been brought about by the earliest generation of Egyptologists, in the 19th century. Early Egyptology was heavily influenced by the materials from Ptolemaic and Roman temples. In these temples, we find many mentions of lotus and papyrus together. See e.g. the following text in the temple of Esna, from the time of the Roman emperor Claudius:
Or this one in the temple of Philae, time of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II: shine with the Green [= papyrus]. Younger examples exist too, like this one from Medinet Habu (Ramesses III): s and papyrus. Or younger still, from the Coffin Texts (I, 269):papyrus and rushes, In all these texts, the word for "lotus" is written with its full name (sSn) and/or its depicting hieroglyph M9, so there is no doubt what plant is being referred to. But in none of these texts is there a reference to the Two Lands: there are no mentions here of the heraldic plants of Upper and Lower Egypt. Still, texts like these over and over again mention lotus and papyrus together. And in the pictorial record, lotus and papyrus are also frequently depicted side by side (see e.g. the relief from Deir el-Bahri, reproduced in section 10: “Lotus and papyrus in arts and architecture”). From all these instances, it would almost seem inevitable that any plant shown next to papyrus is a lotus. This may have prompted the notion, that the heraldic plant shown next to papyrus was in fact a lotus (sSn). Most ominously though, there is no contemporary textual evidence in which the heraldic plant of Upper Egypt is ever called a lotus (sSn).
Actually, the term “lily” is as imprecise as the term “lotus”: it is yet again a name used for more than one genus. The so-called “true” lilies are the species (some 80-100 in total) of the genus Lilium of the family of Liliaceae. Several other plants have however also been called a lily - such as the water lilies, which some call a lotus… And so we have made a full circle. These problems find their origin in the pre-scientific naming of species. Before Linnaeus, people labeled plants - as well as animals - purely on outward, superficial characteristics, without much concern for a proper taxonomic classification.Some doubt about the traditional identification of Type 4 as a lotus is however justified. Its shape differs considerably from the customary depictions of the lotus on tomb and temple reliefs.
The lotus shapes employed in the pictorial arts were too complex for use as a hieroglyph. That is why in the script simpler forms were used. In section 9: “The names of lotus and papyrus in hieroglyphs”, we saw that some of these were modeled on the white lotus, while others resemble the blue lotus. The latter category looks a lot like Type 4:
Below is a table that summarizes, for papyrus and lotus, the various shapes and forms.
This is how things may have unfolded. When, around 3,000 BC, the people of Upper Egypt were in the process of conquering the Delta, it occurred to them that the papyrus plant was so characteristic for this region that it could stand for it as its a symbol, or emblem. This was the origin of papyrus as heraldic plant of Lower Egypt. In the archeological evidence, an initial phase in which the link between papyrus and Lower Egypt existed alone, is not attested. Which does not mean that there never was such a time: it may have lasted very briefly. In any event, it was soon decided that Upper Egypt also needed an emblem plant, or heraldic plant, of its own: for reasons of symmetry, or politics, or both. This secondary approach automatically made the choice for any species as heraldic plant for Upper Egypt to some extent arbitrary. And it may well be that, in the minds of the ancient Egyptians, there never was any plant at all that was as characteristic for Upper Egypt as papyrus was for Lower Egypt. As a result, there always stayed some room for developments, even in an area as sacrosanct as that of the symbolism of the Two Lands. The first emblem plant of Upper Egypt was Type 1, the flowering sedge: in use as early as the 1st dynasty. It had one weakness though: it was not much use in sculpting. So, while the flowering sedge remained uncontested as Upper Egypt’s heraldic plant in the script, an alternative was sought for monumental applications. During the Old and Middle Kingdom, there were experiments with a more stylized rendering of the flowering sedge (Types 2 & 3). As early as the 5th dynasty however, we already encounter the lotus in a Sma Tawy of king Niuserre. In the end, this became the preferred type for Upper Egypt’s heraldic plant in monumental uses.
In the
script however, the flowering sedge always remained the sign denoting
Upper Egypt. This kept its position alive as the original one, the
primeval one. And it seems no coincidence that precisely Hatshepsut used
it in her mortuary temple, as we have seen. To the lady-king, stressing
the authenticity of her rule was always a major concern, and any link to
tradition could be helpful in this regard.
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All materials on this site are protected by copyright. All copyright by Sjef Willockx, unless otherwise indicated. |
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