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Isolated from neighbors by the vast deserts, Khem was essentially a narrow
ribbon of life-giving fertile mud from which a thriving culture reaped its
harvests from 3000 BC to the 4th century AD almost uninterrupted. Pharaoh was
its god and ruler, its laws and customs dictated by Ma'at, and its traditions
sustained by a deeply intrenched belief that they had been set down by the gods
at the beginning of time and must be preserved forever. The concept of progress
was foreign to these people; they rejoiced in the neverending cycles of life
and death, flood, harvest, and fallow season, and the whole natural world which
they portrayed vividly in their art.
The Predynastic Period saw nomadic hunting bands gradually settle on the banks
of the river and turn to agriculture, by about 4000 B.C. The religion of this
period was one of local gods and spirits, a heavy veneration of Mut the great
Mother, and an emphasis on animal totems which gradually became personified as
animal-headed gods.
Local chiefdoms and cities were finally united in 3000 B.C. by the
semi-legendary Pharaoh Narmer, first ruler of the Two Lands: the long narrow
strip of green land between harsh deserts known as Upper Egypt (upriver), and
the wide fertile marshes of the delta in Lower Egypt. Subsequent early
dynasties of this Old Kingdom were the pyramid builders and the creators of the
sphinx, all great edifices built to guard and house the spirits of the dead
Pharaohs who were worshipped as the living incarnations of Heru. The Great
Pyramid of Djoser's fame was almost secondary to its architect, Imhotep, later
worshipped as the first to bring the mathematics, sciences, and magic of Tehuti
to the world. The capital of the country during this period was at Memphis,
city of Heru, on the boundary between the delta and Upper Egypt. Sun temples
open to the sky were erected for worship.
The First Intermediate Period (2134-2040) was a time of unrest and anarchy.
During this time, the dead became identified with Ausar, and there evolved the
concept of the ba, the human-headed phoenix form in which the soul could travel
the spirit paths to the Duat. The story of the Duat, the judgement of the
Heart, and the paradisical afterlife became a focus of art and story.
It was followed by the Middle Kingdom, a time of literature and prosperity,
when the Pharaoh's civil service of regional rulers called nomarchs
regulated, stockpiled, and distributed the harvests brought into the royal
granaries. Pyramids continued to be built, and burial practices once reserved
for the good god Pharaoh alone were adapted by most of the upper class, so that
now anyone, not just Pharaoh, might reach the Duat with proper spells and
funerary equipment. Amun, god of Thebes, began to replace the old god Ra as
supreme ruler.
The Second Intermediate Period (1640-1532) was precipitated by conquest, when
the nomadic Hyksos from western Asia set themselves up as Pharaohs and brought
Khem into contact with foreign ideas, technology, and customs. Set became
equated with the Hyksos and ever more reviled. Some trace of their warlike tradition
remained after they were driven out by the first Pharaohs of the New Kingdom,
again from Thebes, whose long dynasties were dedicated to foreign conquest and
trade, and reaping the rich bounty which resulted.
Several Ramses (named Menerptah in Egyptian) and Thutmoses were famous rulers
of this dynasty. The Theban supreme god Amun became the national god, and his
temple at Karnak was lavishly supported by every Pharaoh such that its priests
became powerful national figures. The royal family briefly tried to wrest power
from the priests of Amun and other gods by setting up Aten as the one true god,
under the direction of the "mad" Pharaoh Akhenaten (14th century B.C.) who
temporarily moved the capital into the desert, but this experiment was quickly
abandoned and repressed. Hatshepsut, "His Majesty Herself", was another famous
ruler in this period who seized power while serving as regent for her young
nephew.
This was when Pharaohs and aristocrats turned to the Valley of Kings to build
tombs for themselves in the mysterious desert canyons on the west bank of
Thebes. Tut-ankh-amun's tomb was only the least of many. The famous artisan
village of Deir el-Medina in the edge of the desert, provided with food and
water brought in on foot, shows at least one settlement of literate artists and
priests who tended the tombs and the spirits of the dead. In this period as before, the
incredibly strung-out country was united by the strength of the south, where
the desert lay close at hand and the Nile's narrow boundary of fields were all
that defined life from death.
The Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and passwords to help the deceased
get through the spirit paths to the afterlife, became the most vital piece of
equipment for burial, and its chapters were inscribed on walls, mummy
wrappings, or large scarabs.
Weak rulers and foreign wars gradually creeping closer to home began to erode
the Ramses' power by the 20th dynasty (12th century B.C.), the same time that
the Homeric world of Greece were being invaded by the mysterious sea peoples
and the Dorians who plunged the area into a long Dark Age. Upper and Lower
Egypt broke apart, with separate Pharaohs in Memphis and Thebes. The people began to seek other gods for their prayers, since the divine Pharaohs and the national god Amun appeared to be on the wane. Animals began
to be worshipped in their own right, not just as messengers and aspects of
god. The city of Bubastis was formed around a temple to the cat goddess.
Partly through Greek and other foreign influence, people resorted more and more to the
spells, hexes, curses, potions and cures made "Egyptian magic" famous.
Foreigners from the south or from Mesopotamia ruled several dynasties, down to
the 6th century when the Persian Empire scooped up Khem. They in turn fell to
the army of Alexander in 332 B.C., and his lieutenants, the Ptolemies, started
a Greek dynasty which guided Egypt into its new role as breadbasket of the
Mediterranean and a nexus for Greek and Egyptian culture and scholarship. The
libraries at Alexandria were created and sponsored by these Pharaohs as a place
of scholarship and research in science and literature under the patronage of
Greek and Egyptian gods. Aset/Isis, revered for both magic and motherly compassion, spread her cult beyond the confines of Egypt and merged somewhat with Eleusinian Demeter. Side by side with advanced medicine, literature, and
science, Egyptian astrology and magic continued to thrive among the common
population.
Rome took the reigns in 30 B.C., imposing government and customs from above,
but never wiping out the old religion. That truly came during the tumultuous
fifth century A.D., when ascetic, militant, and xenophobic Christian sects of
monks burned the libraries and old temples, killed the heretical scholars, and
threw out Roman rule. Civil strife between the populations of Christians,
Jews, Greeks and Egyptians brought anarchy to the area for centuries, until
finally, in the 7th century, the Muslims conquered the land truly called Egypt
now, and held and molded it throughout the middle ages.