EGYPT

Farming and matriarchy​

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Five thousand three hundred years ago sand dunes were spreading in northern Africa, and great regions of northern Africa were becoming increasingly dry and slowly turning into desert.  As northern Africa became drier, herbivores could find nothing to eat there during the dry season, but could still find grass growing in oases and in the Nile Delta -- these places were watered throughout the year by springs or by the never-failing Nile.  Hunter-gatherers and cattle herders moved into those well-watered places along with grazing animals.

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Nomads who wandered through the region sometimes carried seeds of domesticated grasses from the Middle East and planted them in well-watered places, and this was the beginning of farming in Egypt as Egyptian women acquired the seeds and replanted them.

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The farmers of the Egyptian Delta were not ruled by warriors, as were many villages and cities of the Middle East.  Rather, the earliest Egyptian societies were egalitarian -- until elite classes took over later on.

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Households were also increasingly ruled by women, because women were the breadwinners.  They not only sowed and reaped crops, but they mostly took care of livestock that provided their families with meat and milk.  The men of the Delta were pretty much useless.

Cattle herding in the Sahara and the Sahel

By contrast, the Sahara region to the west was a man's world.  During periods when rainfall increased in the Sahara, people sometimes moved cattle into those newly green regions and herded them about there, and the cattle were owned by the men who herded them. Since cattle were the basis of wealth, men tended to rule the societies of those nomads.

As the Sahara became increasingly dry, the cattle herders of the Sahara moved south into the Sahel, and their descendants are still there, many of them still herding about the Fulani-Sudanese cattle that have descended from cattle that had earlier been herded about in the Sahara region.

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Farmers in the Nile Valley

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Large areas in the Nile Valley were flooded annually by overflow of the Nile.  When the water receded, the ground was damp and rich with silt that had been deposited over a period of thousands of years.  This was perfect for planting domesticated crops:  grain. lentils and other crops that had been domesticated in the Middle East and then further domesticated in the Delta region and in oases.

But people also need meat and fat, and unlike in the oases and in the Delta region people could not live year-round near the fields where they grew their crops and where their animals had to graze.  Instead, they built their dwellings away from the river so they wouldn't be inundated by the annual floods, and the cattle were owned communally so the could more efficiently herded or transported away from the river when the annual floods came.

Land was also communally owned, because all traces of the boundaries between the fields were erased by the annual floods.  The land therefore had to be resurveyed and again divided into family plots. and cattle were distributed for slaughter to the same extended families -- all by priest-employees who were under the supervision of the elites, which were generally matriarchal due to the fact that women had always gathered while men had hunted.  (But the men could no longer hunt.)

This elite-led culture originated at the city of Naqada in the Nile Valley and spread to the north and south from there -- north to the Delta and to the Mediterranean Sea and south until it clashed with the male-oriented cattle-herding culture of Lower Nubia, which lay between the first and second cataracts.  A red crown that identified the wearer as feminine (primarily by the spiral curl that stuck out at the top) was generally adopted by local rulers.  This red crown might have been the inspiration for the white crown that was adopted by Nubian rulers, because the design of the red crown, particularly the curl that sprouted from its top (most likely a copper wire that was bent into a spiral).  The spiral was a female symbol, so the crown represented femininity and the feminine spirit of the wearer.

The crown of Osiris

The white crown was sometimes shaped instead like the head of an erect penis, and a small blob was added at the peak of the crown that resembled a blob of semen sprouting from the penis.  Moreover, two feathers were often drawn along the sides in such a way that they resembled the exposed underside of the foreskin.  This crown emphasized the great power of the wearer, and it was worn by Osiris, who was the god of the underworld.

As archaeologists surveyed the banks of the Nile to make sure that no archaeological treasures were  destroyed by construction of the Aswan High Dam they discovered, expertly carved onto a rock along the riverbank, a picture of a boat plying the river, and barely visible through a window in the cabin could be seen the powerful god Osiris (who claims a person's soul after death) calmly sitting inside the cabin,  This piece of rock art may have been propaganda to dissuade Nubian activists or thieves from attacking Egyptian boats as they traveled along the Nile.

The Gender Wars and aftermath

In any event, as a gender war broke out in Lower Nubia and spread down the Nile Valley toward the Delta region, a less powerful version of the white crown, where the penis was not erect, was adopted by the male rulers that replaced female rulers of city states along the Nile River.  (This was the crown that was usually worn by the rulers of Nubia, also; they wore the more powerful version only when they needed to take the guise of Osiris in order to gain his extra power.)

But male victory in the Gender Wars didn't mark the end of dissention in the Nile Valley.    When male rulers emerged victorious, they turned their armies on each other, aiming to enlarge their territories.

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Palettes for painting the face and body

Like most modern women of the Western world, Egyptians (men and women) spread various pigments on their faces and bodies to highlight features like eyes and lips, but unlike American women they didn't have ready-made mixtures like lipsticks and eye liner to spread on their faces; they had to pulverize and mix the pigments themselves.  Wealthy Egyptians used expensive slate palettes (made of slate) incised with pictures and various designs for this purpose, while other Egyptians used cheaper alternatives.

The pictures carved into the palettes often depicted scenes from Egyptian life which tell us something about early Egyptian society.  For instance, when a man and his wife (or a woman and her husband) were depicted on a palette, the wife would invariably be depicted with her arm across her husband's shoulders or back, indicating possession.  (This is the opposite of our own society.)

The Palette of Narmer

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A ruler by the name of Narmer, or alternatively as Menes, eventually emerged victorious in the power struggles among the city states of the Nile Valley.  His realm included the entire Nile Valley, exclusive of the Delta region, and his quest to extend his rule to the Delta region is depicted on the Palette of Narmer, which incidentally depicts his animus toward female rulers who stood in his way.

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On this small, carefully crafted slab of stone he is shown holding the very long hair of a very tiny severed head and flinging the head around.  The hair is very long and the head is very tiny because this enemy is female, and the female is further dehumanized by hiding her face.

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Narmer is shown barefoot on the Palette because he and his army had to walk through soggy fields while they were fighting in the Delta.  A servant walks behind him, carrying his sandals.

It is doubtful that Lower Egypt was subdued in a single stroke.  More likely, the Delta region had to be invaded again and again (by successive Pharoah rulers).  Menes knew that subjugation of the Delta Region had barely begun, and this is graphically illustrated by Narmer's gesture of flinging about the severed head.

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Narmer is pictured on the Palette wearing two crowns:  He wore the white crown but alongside it he wore the red crown, which males had not previously wanted to wear.  This obviously indicated that he ruled both the Nile Valley and the Delta region, which he did not.

Wearing two crowns was awkward, so a new royal crown was invented which combined features of the white and red crowns, but only one or two women wore that and other crowns that identified herself as Pharoah, until the coming of Alexander the Great and the ascension of the Ptolemies, such as the famous Cleopatra, to royal status in Egypt -- several Cleopatras called themselves Pharoah and wore the royal crowns of Egypt.

Pharoah could not easily rejected those crowns that he or she didn't like, because wearing the various crowns signified entry into the Pharoah's body of the divine spirits that were represented by those crowns.  For instance, if a Pharoah felt that he needed the extra forcefulness that was represented by Osiris, or if ceremony demanded it, the Pharoah needed to wear the crown of Osiris, which incidentally was worn with a stylized false beard made of copper -- the male Pharoahs were all clean-shaven, and of course the female Pharoahs also wore no beards, except for the false beard of Osiris.

The early Egyptian crowns, at least, were all light-weight affairs consisting of a wire frame covered with cloth -- unlike the royal crowns of Europe, which were heavy and uncomfortable.  It was fortunate that they were light weight and comfortable, because the Pharoah often needed to spend a considerable amount of time wearing a crown, in order to acquire the power and authority that was represented by the crown.

War and peace

It is probably not proper to call Narmer a Pharoah, although he is sometimes referred to as the first of the Pharoahs.  He was simply a military commander who established suzerainty over a number of powerful cities in Upper Egypt and invaded Lower Egypt.  He and his direct descendants in the First Dynasty chose to be buried at Abydos, although their real power base was probably further south.  It is interesting to note that in spite of Narmer's strongly patriarchal bias, the First Dynasty included at least two queens.  They probably ruled in the place of heirs to the throne who were not yet old enough to rule on their own behalf.  One of these queens actually made it onto king lists, no doubt because her son felt that she belonged there.

These early rulers of Egypt could only maintain and extend their power by means of war or the threat of war.  They did not have integrated communication system by which they could directly maintain control over such a great domain, but successive kings and successive dynasties must have gradually developed institutions that enabled a degree of direct control over Egypt.

As the Delta region and the fertile oases came under direct control of the Pharoahs another problem arose:  In spite of being governed by a patriarchal or military administration, Egypt was matriarchal in its social structure, in that women generally ruled the affairs of the family, such as collection of rents and the hiring of servants.  This was particularly true in the case of farmers, because women planted the grass seeds, gathered and processed the harvest, and cooked the family meals, and this left little for men to do.  The result for men was boredom, and this led to conspiracies that were hatched in temples, followed by raids on neighboring communities.

As Pharoahs brought all of Egypt under their direct control, they no longer needed such large armies, and the resulting unemployment of young men made the problem worse.  The solution was massive building projects that utilized manpower to quarry giant blocks of stone and to pile them into great pyramids that served as burial places for the rulers of Egypt.

Foreigners, remilitarization of Egypt, political corruption and Semitic rulers

The period of prosperity came to an end when the climate changed and began to vacillate.  During dry conditions that affected North Africa and the Levant, strangers migrated into the Nile Delta, which was still well watered by the more consistent flow of the Nile.  The newcomers came into conflict with Egyptian farmers in the Delta region, and this caused the remilitarization of Egypt.  Corruption became rife in both Upper and Lower Egypt as various cliques jockeyed for power, using military power to support various candidates for the Egyptian throne, and Egypt split into two parts, with rival Pharoahs ruling in Upper and Lower Egypt.  Pharoahs succeeded each other in rapid succession in both Upper and Lower Egypt, and this left an opening for relative newcomers to Egypt, mostly Semites from the Levant, to seize power in Lower Egypt.  The Semitic rulers of Lower Egypt were known as the Hyksos.

The accession of a Semitic dynasty to the throne of Egypt encouraged still more people to come into Egypt from the Levant.  Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, could have been among this new wave of immigrants.

Egyptians remembered the Hyksos as oppressors, and saw their period of rule as a disaster, but the Hyksos had had a much greater knowledge about the outside world than had their Egyptian predecessors, and they brought many new things to Egypt -- including horses and chariots, which later Egyptian Pharoahs used to good effect as a kind of early pony express. that improved communication in their great domain.  The later Pharoahs copied the Hyksos practice of establishing diplomatic contacts with the outside world, and then sent armies abroad, collected tribute, and became rich.  This new period of prosperity is known to Egyptologists as the New Kingdom.

The Hyksos held onto power in Egypt for about a hundred years, in spite of the fact that they lacked a powerful ideology to support their rule, such as the ideology of war that had supported the expansion of Yamnaya-related peoples.  But Semites of the Middle East did later develop three powerful ideologies that are still playing powerful roles in the world today:  Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

A dead Egyptian prince

A Pharoah of the New Kingdom, or perhaps the priests who lived off the largesse of ordinary Egyptians who worshipped at the temples, decided that there were too many strangers in Egypt who worshipped their own God rather than the Egyptian gods, and did not come to the temples.  The Pharoah therefore decreed that the firstborn of each Semitic family should be killed in order to reduce the Hebrew population.  (I call them Hebrews because that is the name by which some of their descendants came to be known.)

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One day a Hebrew infant, wrapped in a cloth of Hebrew design and placed in a basket by a desperate mother broke through the defenses surrounding the royal family by floating into some reeds where it was found by a Pharoah's daughter.  For whatever reason, the male child was was adopted by the royal family, perhaps as a replacement for a stillborn child.  All went well until Prince Thutmose revealed to somebody that he considered himself to be a Hebrew.

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The Pharoah, when he was informed of this, must have confronted the prince, his daughter and his wife.  A decision was reached -- the young man should be exiled -- and the family went into mourning, as if the Prince had died.

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Prince Thutmose, of course, was Moses.  The Pharoah's daughter would not have given the foundling a Hebrew name, even though he had been wrapped in cloth of Hebrew design.  Rather, she had given him an Egyptian name; "Moses" is clearly a part of that Egyptian name.

Ironically, the Pharoah himself had been circumcised, as were almost all Egyptians who belonged to the elite, whereas Hebrews were not generally circumcised at that time, despite God's command to Abraham that his progeny should be circumcised.

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A Hebrew on the throne or a heretic?

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Upon the "death" of Prince Thutmose, a younger brother became Crown Prince of Egypt.  While Prince Thutmose had been a skilled chariot driver, Amenhotep, his younger brother, was a cripple because of a genetically caused deformity, possibly as a result of inbreeding in the royal family that was intended to strengthen the legitimacy of claimant to the throne relative to those outside the immediate family.

After ascending the throne of Egypt (where he sat in a slouched position, possibly due to a missing lower rib) Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaten and decreed that people should worship a god by the name of Aten, or Ra-Amun, above all other gods.  His decision to do this was most likely prompted by his mother, Kiya, who was a devotee of many unconventional religious beliefs.

Akhenaten's decree threw the priesthood into a tizzy because it discouraged people from visiting the temples of the many Egyptian deities and donating to the temples that employed the priests.

Tutankhamun

When Akhenaten died, he was succeeded by his son, Tutankhamun, who had even more severe deformities than his father:  In addition to lacking a rib on one side of his body he had a club foot, a cleft palette and necrosis of his left foot.  Moreover, in the course of his short life he contracted malaria multiple times.

Tutankhamun ascended the throne when he was eight or nine, and he died when he was about eighteen, most likely of malaria.

Nefertiti's tomb

placenobody could claim the throne as Pharoah until that was done.

This spoiled Ay's plan

But Ay was still unable to hold onto the throne, because Ankhesenamun outranked him.  Ankhesenamun, Tutankhamun's wife and consort ascended the throne pending marriage to an eligible consort who could rule as Pharoah.  She then sent a clay-tablet letter to the Hittite ruler, telling him that marrying an Egyptian "servant" was repugnant to her and asking him to send one of his sons to Egypt so that she could marry him.  The son of the Hittite ruler would then be Pharoah, supposedly ruling alongside herself as co-ruler.

Accordingly, the Hittite ruler sent one of his sons -- by the name of Mursili -- to Egypt.

Ay's conspiracy

Ay then prevailed upon Horemheb to allow the assassination of Mursili -- Horemheb effectively controlled the movements and operations of most Egyptian armies and would have to deal with the consequences, so his acquiescence was vital.  As it turned out Horemheb gave his consent, the Hittite ruler grieved, and the two great powers went to war with each other.

In Horemheb's defense, he was between a rock and a hard place:  Military leaders are disposable, but Pharoahs are not.  If Mursili were to ascend the throne of Egypt he might very well feel that as Pharoah he needed to replace senior commander with those whose loyalty could be assured, and the best way to do that might be to have men such as Horemheb executed along with their family members and supporters.

In any event, Mursili was killed and Ankhesenamun ultimately chose to take the easy way out by not disputing Ay's ascension to the throne of Egypt as Pharoah.  Ay had a short reign, during which his own son died, and the throne passed to Horemheb.  When Horemheb died the throne of Egypt lapsed.  This signaled the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty and released Moses from his vow not to return to Egypt.

Inheritance in Egyptian society

Egypt, even in later times, retained features of the earliest agricultural societies.  For instance, land rights, wealth, power and even kingship passed primarily along female lines of descent and the throne passed to Ay only because of his marriage to a Great Royal Queen whose inheritance was the primary basis for his claim to the throne.  The throne lapsed after Ay died because his son, who was also a sone of a Great Royal Queen predeceased him.  (His son's death is suspicious because no record of it has been found and his tomb has also not been found.)

In any event, when Moses heard that the throne of Egypt was vacant he returned to Egypt.