City of the Ram-Man: The Story of Ancient Mendes

By Donald B. Redford

A richly illustrated history that sheds light on ancient Egypt across the millennia

In this richly illustrated book, renowned archaeologist Donald Redford draws on the latest discoveries—including many of his own—to tell the story of the ancient Egyptian city of Mendes, home of the mysterious cult of the "fornicating ram who mounts the beauties." Excavation by Redford and his colleagues over the past two decades has cast a flood of light on this strange center of worship and political power located in the Nile Delta. A sweeping chronological account filled with photographs, drawings, and informative sidebars, City of the Ram-Man is the first history of Mendes written for general readers.

Founded in the remote prehistoric past, inhabited continuously for 5,000 years, and abandoned only in the first-century BC, Mendes is a microcosm of ancient Egyptian history. City of the Ram-Man tells the city's full story—from its founding, through its development of a great society and its brief period as the capital of Egypt, up to its final decline. Central to the story is millennia of worship dedicated to the lascivious ram-god. The book describes the discoveries of the great temple of the ram and the "Mansion of the Rams," where the embalmed bodies of the avatars of the god were buried. It also discusses ancient Greek reports that these ram-gods occasionally ritually fornicated with women.

Vividly written and informed throughout by Redford's intimate knowledge of the remains of Mendes, City of the Ram-Man is a unique account of a long-lost monument of Egyptian history, religion, and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781400834556

Book preview

City of the Ram-Man

Figure 0.1. Map of Egypt.

City of the

Ram-Man

THE STORY OF

ANCIENT MENDES

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Donald B. Redford

Princeton University Press

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright © 2010 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Redford, Donald B.

City of the Ram-man : the story of ancient Mendes / Donald B. Redford.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14226-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Mendes (Extinct city)—History. 2. Mendes (Extinct city)—Religious life and customs. 3. Rams—Symbolic aspects—Egypt—Mendes (Extinct city) 4. Mythology, Egyptian—Egypt—Mendes (Extinct city) 5. Mendes (Extinct city)—Antiquities. 6. Excavations (Archaeology)—Egypt—Mendes (Extinct city) 7. Egypt—History—To 332 B.C. I. Title.

DT73.M54R43 2010

932—dc22 2009021605

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

press.princeton.edu

eISBN: 978-1-400-83455-6

R0

Contents

List of Illustrations  vii

List of Sidebars  xiii

Preface  xv

Introduction  xvii

List of Abbreviations  xxi

Chapter One The Beginnings   1

Chapter Two The Advent of Horus   8

Chapter Three In the Time of the Residence   18

Chapter Four The Collapse   42

Chapter Five The Mysterious Centuries: The Middle Kingdom   58

Chapter Six Mendes under the Empire Pharaohs   67

Chapter Seven The Great Chiefs of the Meshwesh   95

Chapter Eight Egypt in the Time of Troubles   111

Chapter Nine The Ram, Lord of Djedet   124

Chapter Ten The Saite Revival   138

Chapter Eleven Mendes, the Capital of Egypt   144

Chapter Twelve The Great Disaster   179

Chapter Thirteen Dusk and Darkness: The End of Mendes   188

Notes and Further Readings  211

Index  231

Illustrations

0.1.Map of Egypt.

0.2.The outer (eastern) harbor looking east at dawn.

1.1.Putative distribution of the Predynastic levees of the Mendesian branch of the Nile.

1.2.Excavating at Buto, 1968, illustrating the major problem that arises if the water table is high at a site.

1.3.The lush environs of Ἁnepat, which arguably occasioned the name.

1.4.Lower Egypt, the Land of the Flood, as it was in Greco-Roman times.

1.5.S(h)erakhu, lordly, uplifted (building).

2.1.Map of the central and northeast Delta.

2.2.Map of the Near East in the late Naqada II–III (Gerzean) period.

2.3.Decoration on a Naqada II pot.

2.4.Heraldic devices conveying symbols of power.

2.5.Standards of the Mendesian township.

2.6.Tableau depicting King Den’s outstanding deed of smiting the east.

3.1.Section through Excavation Unit AJ-A Extension, facing south.

3.2.Silos beginning to emerge.

3.3.Silos of Phase V (AJ-A Extension).

3.4.Silos and rectilinear buildings of Phase VI (AJ-A Extension).

3.5.Sealings from AJ-A Extension.

3.6a–3.6k.Old Kingdom pottery from Unit AJ-A.

3.7a–3.7d.Shrines of the Archaic Period.

3.8a–3.8b.A semicircular silo of late Old Kingdom date. The same silo under excavation (AJ-A Extension, locus 100).

3.9.Ceramic contents of the silo.

3.10.Plan of the silo.

3.11.Structure at the southwest corner of the Old Kingdom temple enclosure.

3.12.Holding area for containers of foodstuffs.

3.13.The Old Kingdom temple and adjacent mastabas.

3.14.Limestone mastaba of Ishtef-Tety.

3.15.False door of Nefer-shu-ba, 6th Dynasty.

3.16.Ἁnzata, the shepherd, of Busiris.

3.17.Osiris.

3.18.Plan of the Old Kingdom city in the late third millennium B.C.

3.19.Plan of Unit AJ-A, due west of the Old Kingdom temple podium.

3.20–3.21.The initial sondage, undertaken in 1996, to uncover the pre-Ramesside levels.

3.22.The mud-brick podium on which sat the temple of the Old Kingdom.

3.23.The northern façade of the podium.

4.1.Sealing of an official (name lost) of Pepy II.

4.2.View looking south of the bastion.

4.3.Section through the bastion, facing south.

4.4.Bricks, fired in the conflagration.

4.5–4.6.Multipurpose mixing vats.

4.7.Body of an old woman.

4.8.Two men under a collapsed wall.

4.9.Fallen sub-adult, sprawled in front of the bastion.

4.10.Bodies of man and pig.

4.11.Clusters of bodies in the depression along the central axis.

4.12.Plan of Unit AJ-E/F, showing the larger of two mud-brick mastabas.

4.13.Unit AJ-E/F under excavation.

4.14.Vaulted tomb with part of the plaster removed.

4.15.Unit AJ-E; vaulted tomb with superstructure removed.

4.16.Unit AJ-F. Bronze mirror found over the face of a woman in an intrusive burial (early First Intermediate Period).

4.17.Unit T-A, facing south (First Intermediate Period).

4.18.Secondary use of T-A vaults.

4.19–4.21.Pottery from the T-A vaults.

4.22.Cleaning a multiple burial under a single mat, Unit AJ-E.

5.1.Surviving wall of the Middle Kingdom temple.

5.2.Chambers (perhaps magazines) along the south side of the Middle Kingdom temple.

5.3.First Intermediate Period bread-pot, with whitewashed exterior.

5.4a–5.4c.Pottery from the chambers on the south side of the temple.

5.5.Map of Egypt, illustrating the Second Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom.

6.1.Ethnic groups of the Egyptian empire.

6.2.Map illustrating Egypt’s African empire in the New Kingdom.

6.3.Western balk of excavation Unit AJ-A Extension.

6.4.The Temple of the Ram-god at its greatest extent.

6.5.East reveal of the easternmost aperture through the Thutmosid façade.

6.6.Reconstruction of east reveal.

6.7.Conjectural restoration of the temple of Ba-neb-djed.

6.8.Section through the foundation trench of the first pylon.

6.9.Pylon block with part of the name of Merenptah.

6.10.Foundation trench of the eastern lateral wall of the first court.

6.11a–6.11b.Gate of the Second Pylon under excavation.

6.12.Jamb of the postern gate.

6.13.Part of the reveal of the gate of the Second Pylon.

6.14.Foundation deposit of Merenptah.

6.15.Vessels from the foundation deposit.

6.16.Stone brick from the foundation deposit.

6.17.Haunch of beef as a sacrifice under the deposit, in situ.

6.18a–6.18b.Bricks of Thutmose III, laid ceremoniously across the foundation trench.

6.19a–6.19b.Sections through Excavation Unit AL-I, trenches I and II.

6.20.Section through Unit AL-I, trench III facing south.

6.21.New Kingdom temenos wall, cut away by the Nektanebo foundation trench.

6.22.Votive vessels in situ.

6.23.20th Dynasty wine-jars.

6.24a–6.24b.Fish-stelae.

6.25.Fragment of hieratic stela of Neb-ma’a-re.

6.26.Late Helladic IIIc strainer spout beer-jar, with Cypriot overtones.

7.1.Sardonians (Shardana) from the west coast of Asia Minor.

7.2.Libyan tribesmen, as depicted in the tomb of Ramesses III.

7.3a–7.3d.The ruins of Tanis.

7.4.Sheshonq I from a relief on the Bubastite portal, Karnak.

7.5.Map showing the position of Mendes, Thmuis, and Hermopolis Parva.

7.6.A Great Chief of the Me(shwesh) offers the field.

7.7.Excavation Unit HF, south of the temple.

7.8.Excavation of the Libyan Palace (mound AK-E).

7.9.Doorjamb from the palace, showing the head of a Great Chief of the Me(shwesh).

7.10.Rendering of the Libyan Palace and the temple.

8.1.Amun crowns his Divine Worshiper.

8.2a.The Divine Worshiper Shepenwepet II.

8.2b.The Divine Worshiper Amenirdis I.

8.3.A Kushite king libates to Amun.

8.4.Nine Egyptian potentates do obeisance to Piankhy.

8.5.Taharqa, shown in typical Nubian cap with double uraeus.

8.6.The eastern Nile Delta, showing the disposition of border forts.

9.1a–9.1e.The roofs of three of the four naoi unearthed in the central temple.

9.2.Hathor capital with abacus from a pier in the mammisi at Mendes.

9.3.A prophet of the Ram and lector priest, Smendes, burns incense to his lord.

9.4.Three priestesses (from the Hieroglyphic Papyrus from Tanis).

9.5.Bronze figurine of Osiris; surface find at Tel er-Rub’a.

9.6.Figure of Harpokrates, Horus-the-Child; surface find, Tel er-Rub’a.

9.7.Faïence aegis of the feline goddess, probably Bast.

9.8.Figure of Ba-neb-djed, the fornicating ram who mounts the beauties.

9.9.Arsaphes-re Ba-neb-djed, after a figure in the Book of the Fayum.

9.10.Amun-re identified as Khnum-re, Lord of the Cataract, after a figure in the Book of the Fayum.

9.11.Amun-re, Lord of the Lagoon, after a figure in the Book of the Fayum.

10.1.East gate of the fortress of Pelusium (late Byzantine period).

11.1.Shawabti fragments of the deputy high priest of the Ram, Ny-su-ba-neb-djed.

11.2.Head of royal statuette, probably a likeness of Neferites I, from his tomb at Mendes.

11.3.Fragment of a stela found in the debris of Neferites’ tomb, showing a kneeling king worshiping the Ram.

11.4.Plan of the city of Mendes at its greatest extent (fourth century B.C.).

11.5.Phoenician torpedo jars from the northwestern harbor.

11.6.Eastern face of the Nektanebo temenos wall in the vicinity of Neferites’ tomb.

11.7a–11.7b.Views of the Nektanebo wall at the point of an inset.

11.8.Figurine of the god Shu with arms raised to hold up the sky.

11.9.Pottery drain at the bottom of the foundation sand in the court of the temple; Saite period.

11.10.Fine sand as foundations for the renovated temple of the Saite period.

11.11a–11.11b.Section through the Saite foundation sand, showing the slots.

11.12.Limestone fragment from the upper part of a wall in the inner part of the central temple.

11.13a–11.13b.Quartzite dado of alternating nomen-cum-prenomen of King Akoris.

11.14a–11.14b.Views of the single surviving naos of an original four that stood in the southernmost court of the Saite temple.

11.15a–11.15b.View of the south side of the cut where the southeastern postern gate of the naos-court once stood.

11.16.The earlier (Old or Middle Kingdom) wall of small bricks through which the Saite engineers cut.

11.17.Mud-brick foundation of the southern gate of the naos-court.

11.18.Excavation plan of the Mansion of the Rams.

11.19.The columned(?) hall at the start of excavations.

11.20.Mud-brick vaults of two preserved cubicles beginning to appear in excavation.

11.21.Reconstruction of the Mansion of the Rams, facing east.

11.22.Alternate reconstruction of the western approach.

11.23.Foundations of the northwest corner of the installation.

11.24.A sarcophagus still resting in its cubicle.

11.25.The variety of shapes and types of stone assumed by the sarcophagi.

11.26.Miniature Lower Egyptian type of shrine.

11.27.Miniature column capital, of a type known in the 30th Dynasty.

11.28.Plan of the hall in Field T where, possibly, the diorite sarcophagi were housed.

11.29.Reused New Kingdom sarcophagus.

11.30.Plan of Neferites I’s tomb.

11.31.The sarcophagus of Neferites I before excavation.

11.32.The burial chamber of Neferites I, viewed from the east.

11.33.Fragment of limestone relief showing the horn of the avatar of the Ram known as the living soul of Re.

11.34.The Ram, the Lord of Djedet.

11.35.Plumes and sun-disc surmounting the vertical, alternating cartouches of Neferites I.

11.36.Vulture goddess, with khu-fan in her claw, extending her wings above the king.

11.37.The night-barque of the sun, with names of part of the crew.

11.38.Head of a priest.

11.39.Architrave with the epithet Beloved of the Gods, one of the appellatives of Neferites I.

11.40.Pilaster(?) fragment with the epithet Founder of the Two Lands, one of the appellatives of Neferites I.

11.41.So-called Sacred Lake, southeast of the main temple.

11.42.Samian amphora, c. 575 B.C.

11.43.East Greek ware, fifth to fourth century B.C., from the great harbor.

11.44.Basket-handle jars from the great harbor.

12.1.Nektanebo I in red crown of Lower Egypt.

12.2a–12.2b.Six falls of fragments from the destruction of Neferites I’s tomb.

12.3.Section drawing through the destruction debris of Neferites’ tomb.

13.1.Section through the burial chamber of Neferites I, facing north.

13.2.Statue of Philip Arrhidaeus as it appeared in excavation.

13.3a–13.3c.Views of the kneeling statue.

13.4.Facsimile of the inscription of the back-pillar.

13.5.Inner, western face of the Ptolemaic temenos wall.

13.6.Vessels from the foundation trench of the present temenos wall.

13.7.Outer glacis of the Ptolemaic temenos (T1), facing south.

13.8a–13.8b.Early Ptolemaic coinage from the harbor.

13.9a–13.9c.Demotic ostraca from the harbor.

13.10.Terra cotta figurines from the inner harbor.

13.11.Corner of Roman building constructed of field brick.

13.12.Cache of Roman pottery.

13.13.Amphorae in the depinto style, of sixth to seventh century date.

13.14.Fragments of a limestone sarcophagus used to block up the entry in Christian times.

Sidebars

1.1 The Chief Brings Verdure

2.1 The Uruk Phenomenon

2.2 Yellow Face, King of the Baboons

3.1 Domestic Arrangements to the Cemetery

3.2 False Door of the Priest Nefer-shu-ba

3.3 Mendes in the Pyramid Texts

3.4 Osiris and the Deceased in Mendes

3.5 Osiris and Life

4.1 A Royal Decree of Exemption

4.2 Occupation at Mendes at the Close of the Old Kingdom

4.3 From the Instruction for King Merikare (c. 2070 B.C.)

5.1 Prophecy of the Coming of Amenemhet I

6.1 Statue Inscription of Ibaba

6.2 Sety, as Vizier, Visits Seth, Lord of Avaris

7.1 The Libyan Menace

7.2 Hit-Men and Anarchy: Pharaoh Derided

7.3 The Tribulations of One Caught in the Civil War

7.4 Favors to a Mendesian in Royal Service

7.5 Land Donation

8.1 Tefnakhte

8.2 Revere Amun!

8.3 Pharaoh Piankhy on the Uncouth Libyans, c. 720 B.C.

8.4 Shabaka Conquers His Enemies

8.5 The Kings of Egypt

8.6 The Prowess of the Kushite Troops

9.1 Provisions for Sacred Animal Burials (Djed-Hor)

9.2 To the Ram Deceased

9.3 The Mysterious Link: Osiris and the Fornicating Ram

11.1 An Egyptian General Still Functioning under Darius I (519 B.C.)

11.2 Shawabti of King Neferites (from His Tomb at Mendes)

11.3 Nektanebo’s Self-Laudation

11.4 Mendesian Perfume

11.5 Ny-su-ba-neb-djed

11.6 A Saite Worthy Honors the Ram

13.1 The Gods Return!

13.2 Ptolemy II, Son of the Ram

13.3 The Cult Gazetteer of Mendes

13.4 A Greek Banker and the Perfume of Mendes

13.5 An Egyptian Boy Makes Good under the Ptolemies

13.6 The Mendesian Branch

Preface

The present work is an attempt to set on record in readable form the interpreted results of a century and a half of investigation of the site of Tel er-Rub’a/Mendes. Until the early 1960s these investigations involved the desultory visits and/ or treasure-hunting of individuals whose names would best be forgotten. Only beginning in 1963 was formal excavation undertaken, first by New York University (1963–80) and then by a consortium made up of a team from the University of Washington, the University of Illinois, and the Pennsylvania State University (1990 to the present). The work is by no means finished and, judging from the results so far, it is altogether likely that discoveries, some of a sensational nature, will be made in the future. What has already been found, however, has cast such a flood of light on the history of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean that it is high time to set it forth for the predilection of layman, student, and scholar.

Many people placed me in their debt in the writing and production of this book. Of these the late Bernard Bothmer and Professor Herman de Meulenaere must be mentioned first. They both encouraged me from the first expression of interest I divulged in the site. Equal encouragement and offers of help came from two close friends, Christine Liliquist and Richard Fazzini, both of whom had accompanied the New York University expedition under Donald Hansen in the 1960s. With colleagues Robert Wenke and Douglas Brewer we enjoyed close collaboration in the early seasons, and one hopes their work is not completed. Without the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt the expedition could have neither started nor sustained itself, and thanks are due the chairman, Dr. Zahi Hawass, Mansura director Naguib Nour, and Chief Inspector Salim el-Boghdadi. Over the years we have been privileged to play host to a number of distinguished visitors, including Ambassador Michael Bell of Canada, Manfred Bietak of the Austrian mission to Tell ed’Dab’a, Gregory Mumford and his team to Tell Tebilla, and Terry Waltz of the American Research Center in Egypt, to name but a few. All were generous with comments and useful advice. Last but not least, the indefatigable field staff is to be acknowledged as perhaps the key element in turning the Mendes expedition into an unqualified success.

The following contributed directly to the present volume: Keith Meikle, Susan Redford (plans), Tracy Butler, Patrick Carstens, Sandy Nesbitt, David George (photographs), Rupert Nesbitt, Troy Sagrillo, Heather Evans, and Stephanie Palumbo (artwork). Isometric renderings were done by the author, and Kyle Long edited the manuscript. Unless otherwise stated, the translations of Egyptian texts are those of the author.

The notes and suggested readings gathered at the end of the book are not intended to be exhaustive but to provide a sort of Einleitung for the interested reader. Colleagues may well detect gaps they think ought to have been filled. The author tenders his regrets.

Introduction

Anyone who has not visited Mendes cannot appreciate the wonder of approaching from the south or west and seeing the vast, low mound arise on the horizon out of the flat Delta landscape. Before 1900 a visit often took on an eerie aspect in that, because of the proximity of the flat Daqahlieh plain, the approach was often of necessity by boat. Even today, when the fields are flooded for the rice planting, Mendes again becomes an island, and it takes little imagination to visualize the marshes of old.

Yet, for those visiting the site in July or August, another unexpected experience awaits. Arising at dawn the traveler finds him- or herself engulfed in thick fog. Heavy moisture drips like rain from indistinct tree shapes, mere silhouettes in the mist. Donkeys and humans go haltingly, unsure of the terrain, swallowed up as they perceive themselves to be in a mantle of grey darkness. All things, even those which are normally comfortingly familiar, are completely hidden from the gaze of animal or man. And the fog is everywhere; it never ends, it is infinite. Worst of all, perhaps, one cannot help but go astray, for sense of direction is stifled: the fog is directionless. And always there is the croaking of frogs! Only when the sun mounts high in the sky does this mantle of unknowing begin to draw back: gradually the mists retreat before the heat, and the ordered world begins to appear. Such is the daily act of creation during the summer at Mendes.

Modern times have come to Tel er-Rub’a and its environs, but the site and its satellite villages still lie off the beaten track. Reflections of an agricultural past are seen from time to time. Fishermen abound on the banks of local canals, and the schilby-fish, misrepresented as a dolphin, lives in garden statuary. On our first visit to Mendes our progress on the last kilometer was impeded because of a strange procession in the dust of an August afternoon: a seemingly endless flock of well-fed sheep, led by an enormous ram, was shuffling slowly westward along the road.

The city whose ruins one sees today owes its size and general configuration to the activity of a relatively late period, from approximately 540 to 350 B.C., and would have differed markedly from the New or Old Kingdom settlement. Although excavation has not yet tapped prehistoric levels of the fourth millennium B.C., it is highly likely that the shape of the first habitation differed yet again, and in many respects, from what was to follow in the 1st Dynasty. Coring has suggested that the earliest occupation was a modest affair, established on levees left by the meandering Mendesian branch of the Nile. The evidence of toponymy makes it tempting to identify a substantial segment of the earliest population with a West Semitic–speaking element, with demographic ties northeastward along the Levantine coast. It is one of these groups that the first chapter imagines trekking into the Nile Delta in the late fourth millennium B.C. and settling on the site that was to become Mendes. To enhance verisimilitude and depict a culture on the threshold of its historic evolution, the conceit of translating familiar place-names rather than transliterating them has been adopted in the early chapters.

Figures 0.2. The outer (eastern) harbor looking east at dawn on a foggy day in July.

While Mendes does not mirror, nor even broadly illustrate, the conventional history of Egypt, the longevity of occupation on the site, spanning as it does over four thousand years, provides a useful gauge against which any period of Egypt’s long past may be measured. To the extent that the prosperity of the city appears directly linked to the strength of discharge of the Mendesian branch, one might view that gauge as a sure indicator of the ecology of northeast Africa at any given time. Unexpectedly, through archaeological investigation, certain periods in the city’s history have turned Mendes into a virtual type site for interests sometimes broader than those of Egyptology. One might mention the prosperity of the site during the third millennium, which has left four meters of stratified deposition; the destruction and massacre at the close of the 6th Dynasty; the evidence of international trade with the eastern Mediterranean; the violence which attended the Persian occupation of 343 B.C.; and the papyrological evidence for town layout and distribution of economy during the Roman period.

What makes Mendes an important source for evidence on ancient Egyptian history and society is not the city’s strategic, cultic, or political importance but the fact that over 80 percent of the original settlement has physically survived. Whereas neighboring cities of comparable size, such as Busiris and Sebennytos, are now either under a modern city (the latter) or have become farmland (the former), Mendes has remained largely intact and inviolate. Drawing from both archaeological and textual evidence, and with the advantages just adumbrated, I shall now attempt to tell Mendes’ story.

Abbreviations

City of the Ram-Man

Chapter One

The Beginnings

Just when it seemed the taste of death had entered their mouths, they were across. A dark band of vegetation in the distance rose before them, and a slight cooling of the air signaled the presence of water. Though strength had all but failed, hearts now revived and the pace quickened: there was life by the river.

Although this was their first passage, others had described the route for them. And no one had underestimated the rigors of the crossing. Nine days of waterless desert, the undulating dunes, the stony path, the adders and scorpions—the facts had been known to them before they set out. But still they came as others of their community had done before. Some had sickened, a few had died; the flocks had thinned, thieves had robbed them. And now the god had proven faithful and their salvation drew nigh. All knew that they would never be in want again.

By sunset they had come to a river. The current was sluggish and the banks thinly lined with herbage. The flocks drank greedily; the men waded and washed. Tents were pitched and a frugal repast enjoyed. When the sun went down the star-filled desert sky showed that the course of the river was leading southwest. No human beings presented themselves at the encampment, and the wild animals stayed far away from the fires. The families could sleep at their ease.

Beyond the river the clansmen found themselves in a new world. Papyrus marshes closed in around them, restricting the paths and concealing the firm ground. Flatness and wateriness replaced the dry undulations of the desert, confusing their depth perception and their ability to detect motion from afar. More upsetting and disconcerting, simply because it was unexpected, was the mist. Each morning thick, milky walls of fog arose everywhere, drenching the skin and disorienting the vision. The fog made it hard to breathe, and even animal life seemed to stop for a while. It was as though the landscape was each morning thrust backward in time to that remote primordial moment, before shape, before limit, before motion, when all that was was part of all that was not. Gradually, as the sun rose, the mists burned off. First the tops of the reeds and papyri would appear out of the gloom, then muddy protuberances; and finally living things would begin to move. The newcomers called the marsh *Laḫaḫta, the Watery Place. Fish and fowl abounded everywhere in it, and fishhook and throw-stick made it easy to live.

But the clansmen did not stay in the Watery Place: preferable terrain offered a domicile beyond the marsh. On the south side another river, flowing from the south, debouched into the bog; and a mere two days’ trek to the west an even greater waterway ran north directly into the sea. The tract of land watered by these two rivers exceeded anything the weary travelers had ever seen for its verdure. Green pastures and