Out of the Black Land (50 page)

I have also not used the personal names of the Pharaohs but their reign names, simplifying the number of people the reader has to remember. Otherwise this would have borne a startling resemblance to one of those Russian epics where you encounter a character three times under different names and you can’t recall what a patronymic is, anyway.

Times

This is another problem, but I am boldly and with some justification assuming that the reign of Amenhotep III was about 1450
BC.

In the rest of the world at that time: Troy dominated the entrance to the Black Sea; cities were beginning to form in Greece, centring on Mycenae; Minos ruled the Aegean from Crete or Kriti; China went into the Bronze Age; and my ancestors in Wales were working on the perfect bronze arrowhead and trading in tin with Achaean adventurers. The Trojan war had not yet happened, nor any of the events from the
Iliad
or the
Odyssey
, but they were imminent. The world was about to change.

The Measurement of Time

The Ancient Egyptians divided the year into three seasons of four months each. They were
Akhet
—inundation;
Peret
—sprouting; and
Shemu
—harvest. Each month was composed of three ten-day weeks. One worked eight days and rested two (and from the Deir-el-Medina records, frequently made it a three day weekend). Lacking the right word, I have called these ten-day periods a
decan
, from the Greek.

Of course, this adds up, as alert mathematicians will have noticed, to 360 days. The extra five intercalary days—the
epagomenae
—were part of a rather large festival, the days on which one celebrated the birth of certain Gods: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nepthys, Neith.

The Egyptians loved a good festival and there seems to have been no lack of days of rejoicing, feasting and getting seriously drunk.

It was common for the calendar to get out of synch with the real world, but no one seems to have worried much, as long as the many festivals and the free beer arrived.

They were an admirably relaxed people in most matters.

Like the Roman hours, the day was divided into 12 hours of light and the night into 12 hours of darkness, measured by water clocks. In winter, of course, the night hours were longer than day hours, and vice versa in summer. The klepsydrae used to measure time were almost as accurate as the Chinese ones of the same date.

The hours seem to have had more of a religious or ritual use than an everyday one. Priests need to know when to change the God’s attendants and soldiers when to change guard. Peasants know when they can stop working and go home by the sun.

The Calendar

The year begins at Summer Solstice—the rising of Sothis/Isis/Sirius from 70 days absence in the underworld—and it is the occasion of the New Year Feast. It ends with the epagomenae.

A
HKET:
inundation/ flood

22 June-July
Thoth
New Year.

The Nile begins to rise.

Sothis rises 9th day; ‘eat fried fish at your door’
Festival of Hapi
.

19th day
Festival of Thoth
.

July-August Paophi 19th day
Opet Festival
of Amen Re at Karnak & Luxor (at least a seven days festival, later extended to 22 days).

22nd day
Festival of the Nativity of the Staff of the Sun
.

The Nile is red.

August-September
Hathor
Amenhotep III’s Accession was the second day of Hathor.

The Nile becomes green and poisonous for a week, and drinking-water is stored until it becomes red again.

17th
Festival of the Death of Osiris
.

September-October
Khoiak
equinox

Birth of Osiris

18th to 30th
Festival of the Opening of the Ways
(sluices opened to flood inland plain)

P
ERET:
spring/sprouting

October-November
Tybi heb-sed
(jubilee)

11th day
Festival of the return of Isis
from Phoenicia with the body of Osiris.

Ritual mating mystic marriage and, on the 19th day, hippo cakes for Horus’ victory over Set.

November-December Mechir
Festival of Sekhet
destroyer, the lioness in the mountains. Everyone drinks red beer in memory of salvation of humanity.

December-January
Phamenoth

Sowing of seed in tears and mourning for the
Feast of Dead Osiris
Lamentation ‘come to thy house,’ branches of wormwood are carried, dogs lead the procession.

January-February
Pharmuthi, Feast of Khons

Moonlight feasts, entry of Osiris into the moon.

S
HEMU:
harvest

February-March
Pakhons, Festival of Rennutet
(cobra lady) 19th Osiris is found.

March-April
Paoni, Festival of Isis
equinox 25th day feast of lights Fires in the streets because Sothis has sunk below horizon. Osiris in Field of Reeds.

April-May
Ephipi
Horus goes to Hathor,
Feast of Apis
(Osiris as bull) 7 days in Memphis: birthday of Horus’ eyes. Hot dry weather, khamsin.

May-June
Mesor festivals
first fruits (harvest) Grapes ripen; everyone gets thoroughly drunk. Very hot and dry.

E
PAGOMENAE:
the intercalary days

The five extra days of the calendar, are the birthdays of:

Osiris

Anubis/Horus

Set

This day is terribly unlucky and no one does anything on it, no contracts are signed and no work is done, especially by creators. A red-headed male child born on this day might well be killed. It was kept as a fast.

Isis

A very lucky day for weddings and births.

Nepthys

Also a lucky day for weddings.

The Gods

There are several trinities of gods, reflecting the thrifty way that the Egyptians never wasted a good deity but just incorporated them into the existing pantheon; a custom which the Romans later found useful.

When Upper (south) and Lower (north) Egypt joined, their gods were also combined; although the most important was always some form of the sun, Re (or Ra) or Amen; and, of course, briefly the Aten. Re could manifest in the form of a ram, a hawk or a dung-beetle.

Note also that
nefer
, the word for god, has no levels of importance; unlike the Hebrew scale of angels or the Christian’s ‘thrones dominations and powers.’ This makes it difficult to judge, just from the name, whether a
nefer
or
nefert
was a small local deity or a star in the state religion.

Iwnw or Heliopolitan Cosmogeny

Amen-Re began as Aten who emerged self-created from the primeval ocean Nun, took the form of the Bnbn—or the phoenix, a bi-sexual creature. It flew to the top of the Bennu stone, masturbated and from his swallowed sperm created Shu, god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of water/moisture/rain; who then produced Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky; who in turn gave birth to the sun or Amen-Re. This was the cosmogeny adopted at Thebes and Karnak and was as close as Egypt got to an official religion.

Heliopolitan/Theban Trinity

Amen Re: God of the sun (aka Amen Ra) is Khephri when a scarab beetle, and Harahkti when a hawk

Mut: Mother Goddess, vulture-headed wife of Amen

Khons: God of the moon and time, son of Amen and Mut

Children of Amen-Re and Mut

Tefnut: Goddess of water/wetness

Geb: God of the earth (only the Egyptians had a male earth god)

Nut: Goddess of the sky. Nut mates with Geb every night and gives birth to the sun.

Shu: God of air, he prises Geb and Nut apart and allows for day.

Children of Geb and Nut

Osiris: God of the dead and King of the Field of Reeds

Isis: Goddess of magic, women and fertitlity, wife of Osiris

Horus: The Hawk, the revenging son of Osiris and Isis

Set: The Destroyer, brother of Osiris and his murderer

Nepthys: Guardian lady, sister of Isis

Neith: Guardian of the dead, sister of Isis

Hathor: Goddess of beauty and love, sister of Isis, lover of Horus, depicted as a cow.

Lesser Gods

Thoth: The Scribe, ibis-headed God of wisdom and healing

Maat: Justice and Truth, who weighs all hearts against her feather

Opet: Hippopotamus-headed mother of Osiris

Ptah: The Creator who formed the world with words

Sekhmet: Warrior Goddess, lioness-headed wife of Ptah, mistress of epidemics, ‘spreader of terror’

Sobek: The crocodile god

Basht: Cat Goddess, mistress of erotic love (especially in Bubastis in the Nile Delta)

Edjo: The Cobra. She appears on the crown as a uraeus and protects the King.

Min: God of fertility, depicted with an erect phallus.

Wepwawet: The Wolf, avenger of Osiris

Anubis: God of embalmers, jackal-headed protector of the dead

Apep: The Great Serpent, foe of Amen-Re

Apis: The Bull, an aspect of Osiris

Hapi: grotesque male-female God of the Nile

Bes: God of childbirth and fun, a grinning ithyphallic dwarf

Memphis Cosmogeny

Ptah is identified as Nun, the primeval ocean, which produced Amen-Re and acted through thought and word to create the whole world and everything in it.

Ptah was called Lord of Truth but Memphis was less powerful than Thebes and so he only achieved a local popularity.

Memphite Trinity

Khnum: God of the Nile, the Potter who made humans on his wheel

Satis: Goddess of the Nile Floods, gazelle-headed wife of Khnum

Anukis: Goddess of the Nile, Daughter of Khnum and Satis

Hermopolitan Cosmogeny

This never caught on as a royal religion but involves a group of eight gods, or Ogdoad: Nun; Kuk, the god of darkness; Amen, ‘that which is hidden’; Huh, eternity.

Their female consorts have feminine versions of their names: Naunet, Hauhet, Kauket and Amaunet. The male gods had frog’s heads and the females had serpents; possibly reflecting the soggy nature of Hermopolis.

In the beginning the eight deities created and ruled the world; or in an alternative version it was laid as a world egg by an ibis, representing Thoth (though Thoth is usually male) and hatched to reveal the child Re, whose tears became humans.