ANCIENT
EGYPT
The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley
The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley |
|
Did the centralised bureaucracy of ancient Egypt,
with its intensive record-keeping and kingly focus, offer little opportunity for
individual 'empire-building' even on a very minor scale?.Perhaps the lifestyle
of Neb Re, complete with luxury items such as bath and pedestal toilet, casts
light on an enterprising official of the Ramesside period, as Dr Steven Snape
explains. Photography by Dr Susanna Thomas We know the names of more private individuals from
Ancient Egypt than from any civilisation before classical Greece and Rome. Many
of these names come from stelae, statues or tombs – monumental objects with an
essentially private purpose. By contrast, very few non-royal Egyptians could
make a substantial, acknowledged impact on major public buildings; this was a
privilege and responsibility of the king. 'Illicit' representations of private
individuals on the walls of royal buildings – such as Senenmut at Deir el-Bahri
– are rare enough to excite comment.
However, beyond the Nile Valley and Delta rather more
possibilities existed for an enterprising official to make his mark. In Nubia,
for instance, we can sec monuments erected by the Viceroy Setau for Ramesses II,
but prominently featuring Setau himself. But, although a posting to the colonies
might give an Egyptian official rather more opportunities for self-promotion
than at home, there were, obviously, limits to how far one could go in
effectively usurping the predominant position of the king. The most distant posting known to us in Egypt's New
Kingdom empire was the fortress of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham, on the Mediterranean
coast 300 km west of Alexandria. Here a fortress-town of 20,000 sq.m. in area
and with walls 5 m. thick, guarded Egypt's maritime trade routes from Crete and
kept a close eye on truculent local Libyan nomads. This fortress, excavated
since 1994 by the University of Liverpool, seems to have been founded in, and
abandoned during or shortly after the reign of Ramesses II. So far the Liverpool team has re-excavated and
planned a small, well-built, but sadly uninscribed temple, which was first dug
up by the Egyptian archaeologist Labib Habachi in the 1950's. We have also
worked on the main northern gate of the site -also first noted by Habachi –
which, with massive stone-clad mudbrick towers, makes clear the very serious
nature of the fort's military defences. A major new discovery was the excavation
over a number of seasons of a series of mud-brick storerooms, each 16 metres
long by 3 metres wide, and arranged in a row immediately to the north of the
temple. The discovery within one of these magazines of a
series of complete pottery storage vessels of a variety of types from around the
Eastern Mediterranean (such as stirrup jar and Canaanite amphorae) confirmed
Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham's role as an important trading post of the Late Bronze
Age. A more recent development has been the discovery, in
the south-east corner of the fortress, of a major domestic area made up of a
series of small houses and communal ovens. This, we assume, is where the garrison of the
fortress actually lived, and excavation in this area is a major planned activity
for the next few seasons. Work in this area will, we hope, give us detailed
information on what life was like for an ordinary soldier in a New Kingdom
fortress, and may help us determine with greater precision the exact size of the
garrison which, on present evidence, we believe to be over 500 men. But what do we know of the man in charge of this
major outpost of Egyptian power? Since 1994 the excavations of the Liverpool
team have revealed in several parts of the site a number of monuments naming
Neb-Re, who is titled 'Overseer of Foreign Lands' and 'Overseer of Troops'; in
effect, Commandant of the Fort. The first place we came across this character was on
the limestone doorways of the nine magazines. The lintels of all nine doorways
bear the cartouche of Ramesscs II, but the lintel from the central magazine,
Number 5, also shows the double mirror-image of the kneeling figure of Neb-Re
with hands raised in adoration if his mentor's name, in a manner well-attested
in Nubia. We also found similar cartouche-adoring lintels in
the so-called 'South Building'. This is a unique structure which may, at
different times, have served as a place of worship for non-Egyptians (it now
contains standing stones over 2 metres in height) and/or Neb-Re's residence (one
room containing both bath and pedestal toilet). In addition to the
cartouche-lintels we also found two different door lintels in the building, both
of which show Neb-Re seated next to a woman (probably to be identified as his
wife) called Mery-Ptah ('Beloved of the god Ptah'). Although broken, these
lintels also show a male figure offering to the couple, and the accompanying
text is the htp di nrem formula, which
is usually associated with mortuary monuments such as stelae and tombs.
There is at least one further question Why was one of
the Neb-Re and Mery-Ptah lintels deliberately reused, face-down, as a doorstep
in a remodelling of the rear part of the South Building? Part of the answer
might come from the most significant discovery of the excavations of 2000, a
season in which we were greatly assisted by our Egyptian colleagues Inspector
Osama Salam and Director Adl es-Said, and were honoured by a visit by His
Excellency Professor Gaballa A. Gaballa. This discovery was a new, though small
and mostly destroyed, temple. This building was discovered by chance during what
was intended to be a small test-trench to discover what had happened to the
temple’s missing pylon – if it ever existed. We now know the answer to that question – the pylon
was probably made partly or entirely of stone which was removed by stone robbers
in the Roman Period. But this trench also revealed something the stone robbers
had missed, most of a comparatively tiny (about 10 x 5 metres) temple of small
local stone, with two courtyards in front of a group of three small rooms –
presumably sanctuaries – at the rear of the temple. The southernmost of these sanctuaries was found to
contain a cache of limestone monuments of startlingly fine quality, especially
considering how far from Egypt itself they had been brought. This group included
two large stelae, a naos with integral figures of Ptah and Sekhmet and, most
remarkable of all, a magnificent 2/3 life-size statue of Neb-Re himself carrying
a standard topped with the head of the goddess Sekhmet who, along with her
divine husband Ptah, seems to have been a local favourite at ZUR. Indeed, the
small 'new' temple had inscribed sanctuary doorways naming these two deities. We know that the statue belonged to the fort's
commandant because of his name and titles inscribed on the back pillar. However, they only exist as faint traces since a
deliberate attempt was made to chisel out the ownership of the statue. In fact
the base of the statue, and its apron, had their hieroglyphs careful excised.
But apart from this careful selection of hieroglyphs to be removed, the statue
itself was not damaged in any way; only a small number of repairable breakages
on the right-hand side of the figure suggest accidental knocks during or after
the process of manoeuvring the statue into the sanctuary – most of the broken
pieces were recovered during excavation and returned to the statue. It is easy to see why the statue itself was not
attacked; it is a very fine piece indeed, comparable with the best work of the
late Eighteenth Dynasty rather than the poor quality of private statuary which
typifies most of the Ramesside Period, and is perhaps further evidence for
thinking that the fortress was founded early in the reign of Ramesses II. The
rather lengthy text on the sides and rear of the back pillar make clear Neb-Re's
personal agenda as a builder and warrior for Ramesses II, but with little
personal information on his own family origins. This intriguing evidence of attempted name-removal
was added to by the stelae, the naos, and indeed the temple itself. On all of
these monuments the name of Neb-Re had been deliberately attacked; on all of
these monuments some of the figures showing Neb-Re in the act of worship had
also been carefully chiselled. The crammed nature of the sanctuary, and the fact
that the high-quality monuments within it were not destroyed, suggests that they
had been deliberately stored there, awaiting re-inscription by a new 'owner' who
never arrived. What does all this tell us? It is difficult to be certain, and future excavation may reveal more, but it seems more than likely that, for some reason, Neb-Re fell into disgrace and became a non-person. Whether this happened after his death or as part of an official purge we do not yet know. However, through the work of the Liverpool Expedition Neb-Re has emerged after 3,200 years as, if not the king, then at least the overseer of Egypt’s wild frontier. |
|
Return to Home
with questions or comments about Ancient Egypt Magazine. or for sales, subscriptions, back numbers and advertising |
These
two blocks suggest a whole range of intriguing possibilities. Did Neb-Re build a
tomb at Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham because he expected to be buried there, in 'his'
fortress? Was he in fact buried there? Did his wife, Mery-Ptah, also live in the
fortress and, if so, what does that tell us about the length of Neb-Re's tour of
duty in the Western Desert? Is his wife's name significant – is it a
coincidence that she is named after one of the most important gods worshipped at
ZUR or was she, perhaps, a local girl with an unpronounceable Libyan name who
was renamed in honour of the fort's patron deity when she married Neb-Re.? Were
marriages, or other liaisons, common between Egyptian soldiers and Libyan girls?
What, on a more general level, were relations between soldiers and locals really
like? All of these questions remain unanswered. Perhaps some of them never can
be answered. But they all form part of the ongoing research work of the
Liverpool team.
e- mail to: