A Secret History of Egypt

By Asher Benowitz

Outside Memphis, courtiers established households and built temples dedicated to the royal cult in the provinces. This was not a new phenomenon. Sneferu's reign saw the creation of six statues of the King for various shrines and the construction of a line of small pyramids along the lower valley of the Nile. One of the provincial monuments had a royal statue and a table of offerings nearby, while another stood next to a scribal office in charge of state contracts.

Those modest arrangements suggest that, during the era of the colossal pyramids, such provincial cults had served as points for the supply of provisions and materials to the pyramid makers and the living court at Memphis, as some rare surviving reliefs from the same period indicate that provinces maintained similar royal cults within the temples at Memphis.

Abusir and Saqqara's local temples and shrines were of a different order. Shrines and temples were dedicated to the royal cult, and some state gods continuously observed the royal cult throughout the kingdom. The King issued a decree for the inspector of priests of the God Min in Coptos, a modern town in Upper Egypt, and for all the dependents and possessions of Min's estate, his functionaries, and his entourage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ASHER BENOWITZ
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224396481

Asher Benowitz

Born in Poland to Jewish Parents, he has long been fascinated with All things Middle East.

Book preview

SNEFERU’S REIGN

Outside Memphis, courtiers established households and built temples dedicated to the royal cult in the provinces. This was not a new phenomenon. Sneferu's reign saw the creation of six statues of the King for various shrines and the construction of a line of small pyramids along the lower valley of the Nile. One of the provincial monuments had a royal statue and a table of offerings nearby, while another stood next to a scribal office in charge of state contracts.

Those modest arrangements suggest that, during the era of the colossal pyramids, such provincial cults had served as points for the supply of provisions and materials to the pyramid makers and the living court at Memphis, as some rare surviving reliefs from the same period indicate that provinces maintained similar royal cults within the temples at Memphis.

Abusir and Saqqara's local temples and shrines were of a different order. Shrines and temples were dedicated to the royal cult, and some state gods continuously observed the royal cult throughout the kingdom. The King issued a decree for the inspector of priests of the God Min in Coptos, a modern town in Upper Egypt, and for all the dependents and possessions of Min's estate, his functionaries, and his entourage.

Their Majesty forbids their assignment to the royal works, the cattle or donkey pastures, other animals, the guards, or any other royal duties or tithings. As a matter of principle, King Neferkare [Pepi II] has renewed their exemption from such work. Anyone who sets them to work would be committing rebellion!

Neferkare, the King of the Valley and Delta, whose reign may last forever, erected this document in stone at the temple of Min in Coptos of the Coptite region so the functionaries of that region would see it and not take these priests away to work elsewhere. The King himself sealed the document.

Excavations revealed plans for three local temples in the Old Kingdom. Tell Ibrahim Awad, in the Nile Delta, and Abydos and Hierakonpolis, in Upper Egypt, have three identical shrines. Drawn around the shrine of Hierakonpolis, a 'C' signifies the archaeological site on which the later temple stood. Mud brick served as the construction material for all three shrines and yielded impressive quantities of well-made artifacts, with the shrine of Hierakonpolis, in particular, holding a magnificent golden hawk in its central shrine, among several other treasures. Shrine, among several other treasures.

There may have been more shrines than the number of surviving remains suggests. Over the next millennia, many of these modest structures underwent elaborate overbuilding, resulting in the emergence of some of the most celebrated Egyptian temples, whose inscriptions occasionally recount their humble beginnings.

However, the later kings did not greatly favor Hierakonpolis, one of the earliest settlement centers in the lower Nile Valley. This led to a considerable clutter of archaic objects in its clustered shrines, such as Narmer's palette. Consequently, the later Old Kingdom monarchs preserved a unique collection of ancient artifacts in the late 1890s by building and furnishing a local shrine within the prehistoric compound.

Archaeologists also uncovered the remains of a fine four-square local shrine of the later Old Kingdom, at whose center they discovered the golden head of a hawk that once topped a wooden cult image. A carnelian eye in the golden bird's darkly shining eyes gives it an unearthly spark of life in its original position within a narrow mud-brick sanctum. Near this shrine, we discovered two exquisite life-sized copper statues, one named King Pepi I in its inscription and the other nameless but identifiable by its iconography as a royal child. These royal images, like their counterparts within Memphite temples or even the figure of the living King within his palace, must have been the focus of regular rituals. Among the oldest life-size metal sculptures in the world, these two sculptures are considered masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art. However, they still have some