Early Dynastic Egypt (42 page)

Den adopted this secondary name following a military success against the inhabitants of the Sinai, recorded on the ivory label from Abydos (Godron 1990:180).

The
nswt-bỉty-nbty
name of Den’s successor, the Horus Anedjib, is curious and quite impenetrable:
mr-p-bỉ3
. For many years, the
nswt-bỉty-nbty
name of Semerkhet likewise defied interpretation; but it has now been shown to read
ỉrỉ-n r,
‘guardian of the god’. If the
nbty
element is interpreted as forming part of the name, rather than another title, then the name should read
ỉrỉ-nbty,
‘guardian of the Two Ladies’ (Quirke 1990:23). The name expresses the close relationship between the king and the divine sphere. It also conveys something of the tension inherent in the ideology of divine kingship: the king is separate from the rest of humanity, the interlocutor between people and gods, indeed the gods’ representative on earth; but he is still not quite one of the gods, possessing only ‘limited divinity’ (Quirke 1990:11). It is the royal
ka,
the divine essence incarnate in the king, which passes unchanged from generation to generation; the king himself cannot escape death. Finally, the
nswt-bỉty-nbty
name of Hetepsekhemwy (
htp
) is merely an abbreviation of his Horus name.

The gold sign and ring of eternity

Perhaps the most difficult title to interpret satisfactorily is the one which first appears in the Old Kingdom but which clearly has antecedents in the Early Dynastic period. This is the ‘Golden Horus’ title (cf. S.Schott 1956:68–73), written with a figure of the god Horus surmounting the hieroglyph for ‘gold’
(nbw).
The title seems to have expressed the divinity of the king since, according to Egyptian mythology, the gods’ bodies were made of gold. The immunity of this metal from tarnishing, combined with its obvious solar connotations, was no doubt the underlying reason for this association (Quirke 1990:11). To the Egyptian mind, with its propensity for seeking multiple and intertwined meanings, the ‘Golden Horus’ title may have had a further significance. The ancient name of Naqada, the cult centre of the god Seth, was Nubt, meaning ‘golden (city)’; Seth himself was often described as
nbwty,
‘the one of Nubt’ or ‘the golden one’. The image of the Horus falcon surmounting the sign for gold may have had the added symbolism of Horus conquering Seth. The title may therefore have expressed the role of the king as champion of Maat and defender of the cosmic order against the forces of chaos.

A fragmentary inscription from the tomb of Den at Abydos shows the king’s
serekh
juxtaposed with a vertical group of three signs: a cobra, the gold sign and a ring (Spencer 1993:87, fig. 66). A similar combination of the gold sign and ring occurs in the titulary of Netjerikhet (Lauer 1939: pl. XVI.1–2; S.Schott 1956:63). A stone vessel fragment of Khasekhemwy from Abydos shows the group
nbw t s
in place of the customary
nbwy htp ỉm=f
. The group may, perhaps, be interpreted as the king’s ‘gold name’. On the Palermo Stone and its associated fragments, it appears that a cartouche and a phrase incorporating the gold sign regularly formed part of the royal titulary, coming between the Horus name of the king and the name of his mother (S.Schott 1956:71). The entries for Djer, Semerkhet and Ninetjer all show this feature. It may be that the name in the cartouche, at this period and in the reign of Sneferu, is in fact the ‘gold name’ (S.Schott 1956:71).

The ring (
šn
) symbolises eternity, and was later elongated to form the cartouche that enclosed the king’s birth name (Müller-Winkler 1984). It seems to stress the permanence

of Egyptian kingship, the immutability of an institution which was characterised as part of a divinely ordained cosmic order. The earliest cartouche occurs on a fragmentary sealing of the Horus Sanakht from Beit Khallaf (Garstang 1902: pl. XIX.7; Seidlmayer 1996b: pl. 23). Sanakht was probably the penultimate king of the Third Dynasty, and the introduction of the cartouche as a frame enclosing a royal name may have been an innovation of his reign. Although in earlier times the ring seems to have been associated with the king’s ‘gold name’, on the sealing of Sanakht it is likely that the elongated ring—in other words the cartouche—encloses the king’s
nswt-bỉty
name. Certainly, all the examples of a cartouche from the following reign contain the king’s
nswt-bỉty
name. Indeed, this element of the royal titulary seems to have come to prominence at the end of the Third Dynasty.

ROYAL RITUALS AND FESTIVALS: CELEBRATIONS OF KINGSHIP

One of the most enduring ways of reinforcing rule—from the earliest states to the modern world—is through carefully stage-managed ceremonies. The ruler is presented to his people, or a select group of them, in a setting which emphasises his authority, both political and supernatural. This is particularly true of ancient Egypt, where ‘kingship is ritual’ (Baines 1995:130). The celebration of periodic festivals not only gave a sense of order and routine to the ritual life of the country, it also guaranteed the institution of kingship regular exposure in a court-controlled setting.

Egypt’s Early Dynastic rulers instituted a number of rituals and festivals designed to promote the position of the king and of kingship at the very centre of Egyptian society. The iconography of the Narmer macehead suggests that many aspects of royal ritual and ideology had already been established by the beginning of the First Dynasty. Others may have been innovations of later reigns. All were assimilated into a body of tradition which was presented as eternal and unchanging. The various celebrations took place throughout a king’s reign, beginning at his accession and coronation. Regular ritual appearances reinforced his divine status, whilst the legitimacy and efficacy of his rule were renewed later in his reign during the complex Sed-festival.

The accession and coronation

The death of a king was a time of great cosmic danger, since the forces of disorder (both supernatural and human) might take advantage of the transition to disrupt the established order. Whilst in the Middle and New Kingdoms the institution of
co-regency
ensured a smooth succession and reduced the potential for dynastic intrigue, no such mechanism seems to have existed in earlier periods. Certainly, there are hints from the Fourth Dynasty that the succession was not always trouble free. The existence of several royal princes, each with his own powerful position in the administration, must have presented great opportunities for political manoeuvring. As one might expect, the evidence for such events is very limited. None the less, there are intimations of struggle surrounding the succession at certain points in the Early Dynastic period. An ephemeral ruler, perhaps a usurper, called Sneferka is attested at the end of the First Dynasty; the sequence of kings

in the middle of the Second Dynasty is still not firmly established, and there may have been a contest for power between two royal factions.

If Egypt was vulnerable to political upheaval at the death of a king, the supernatural dangers were equally great. Since the king was the defender of created order and the conqueror of the forces of chaos, his death represented the temporary victory of those same malign powers. Without its champion, Egypt was in mortal danger from supernatural forces of evil. Hence, the accession of a new king was accompanied by a series of rituals, designed to restore Maat and to reassert Egypt’s place at the centre of the cosmos. The ceremonies surrounding a change of reign may be divided into two quite separate events: the accession and the coronation.

According to later sources, the proclamation of a new king—in other words, his accession to the throne—took place at the ideologically propitious moment of sunrise. The dawn of a new day, marking the defeat of darkness by the forces of light, and the rebirth of creation, was an appropriate metaphor for the beginning of a new reign, with its parallel connotations (Frankfort 1948:148). Indeed, the same verb (
h ỉ
) was used by the Egyptians to denote both the rising of the sun and the public appearance of the king. We have no direct evidence of accession rituals, but we may assume that they were characterised by great solemnity.

By contrast, there is limited evidence for the various ceremonies which marked the coronation of the king. Only after he had completed the necessary ritual acts, on a favourable day in the calendar, was the king possessed of all his powers, and was Egypt once again under the guidance of a divine authority. It is likely that the coronation ceremonies were scheduled for one of the days in the year which marked new beginnings (Frankfort 1948:104): the first day of the season of winter, when the Nile floodwaters began to recede; the summer and winter solstices; the spring and autumn equinoxes; or New Year’s Day itself. In the Early Dynastic period the coronation seems to have consisted of two distinct ceremonies, each of which embodied one of the roles of kingship. Recorded on the Palermo Stone at the beginning of each new reign, these ceremonies were the ritual reunification of the Two Lands and the circuit of the wall at Memphis.

Uniting Upper and Lower Egypt

The precise rituals which characterised the event are not attested. Indeed, ‘uniting Upper arid Lower Egypt’ may represent nothing more than a formal statement of the primary role of the king: the binding force at the centre of Egyptian society. (One interpretation of the Narmer Palette is that it represents this ceremony [Millet 1990:59].)

The circuit of the wall

The second component of the coronation ceremony involved the king performing a circuit of the wall at Memphis. According to tradition, Memphis—
ỉnb h
, ‘the white wall’, in Egyptian—had been founded by Menes as his new capital. The city, which was the principal seat of government, stood at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, and therefore signified the king’s dominion over the Two Lands. By striding or running around the perimeter of the royal capital, the new king asserted his territorial authority

and took symbolic possession of his realm and its royal administration. In its emphasis on the territorial aspect of the king’s authority, the ‘circuit of the wall’ was thus akin to one of the main rituals of the Sed-festival (see below).

The appearance of the king

A ceremony which took place at the coronation of at least one Early Dynastic king (probably Netjerikhet) was the ritual ‘appearance of the dual king’
(h t nswt-bỉty).
In contrast to the ‘unification of the Two Lands’ and the ‘circuit of the wall’, the ritual appearance of the king was not restricted to his coronation, but took place at other times during a reign. The appearance of the king apparently took one of three forms: the
h t nswt,
‘appearance of the king as
nswt
’, the
h t bỉty,
‘appearance of the king as
bỉty
’, or the combined version
h t nswt-bỉty,
‘appearance of the dual king (
nswt-bỉty
)’. We cannot be sure of the ideological difference between these three types of royal appearance. Probably the aspect of kingship being emphasised dictated the name and form of the ceremony, although a geographical distinction cannot be excluded entirely, since one of the characteristics of Egyptian thought was to find multiple meanings in a single word or concept. Given the hints of internal unrest during the middle of Ninetjer’s reign, in particular the apparent attack on two (Lower Egyptian?) localities in year 13, the king’s subsequent three appearances as
bỉty
may have been intended to deliver a political message about the extent of his authority.

The ritual appearance of the king would have involved him appearing in public in a carefully managed setting. For the
h t bỉty
the king would appear in the red crown, for the
h t nswt
he would wear the white crown, and for the combined ceremony the double crown would be worn. It is significant in this respect that the earliest occurrence of the
h t nswt-bỉt
y is an entry on the Palermo Stone which probably falls during the reign of Den. As we have seen, the double crown may have been an innovation of Den’s reign, and the combined ritual appearance of the king may have been instituted at the same time. However, the earlier, separate ceremonies were not abandoned altogether: nine years after his appearance as dual king, Den celebrated a ritual appearance as
bỉty
. This entry on the Palermo Stone is the earliest attestation of the
h t bỉty
ceremony; the
h t nswt
is first recorded somewhat earlier, on the preceding register of the Palermo Stone which may correspond to the reign of Djer.

The ‘appearance of the king as
nswt
’ is attested only twice on the annals of the Palermo Stone. In both cases, the ceremony seems to have taken place in the king’s seventh regnal year. This may be a coincidence, or it may be significant. It is possible that the
h t nswt
occurred mainly in the early part of a reign. Unfortunately, so little is known about the ceremony that it is impossible to gauge its true importance to the institution of kingship. The ‘appearance of the king as
bỉty
’ was celebrated more frequently during the Early Dynastic period. It is possible that the ceremony depicted on the Narmer macehead is the
h t bỉty
(Millet 1990:56). This ritual is attested once during the reign of Den, and no less than four times under Ninetjer. After the latter king’s fifteenth year on the throne, he seems to have celebrated the
h t bỉty
every other year. The combined ceremony, instituted in the reign of Den, seems to have replaced the two separate ceremonies towards the end of the Second Dynasty. Thus, the lowest register of the Palermo Stone, probably corresponding to the early part of the Third Dynasty, records