A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [32]
If you want to investigate the Egypt of the pharaohs, the British Museum gives you a spectacular range of choices – monumental sculptures, painted mummy cases, and much more – but I’ve chosen an object that came quite literally from the mud of the Nile. It’s made from a tusk of a hippo, and it belonged to one of Egypt’s first pharaohs – King Den. Perversely for an object that’s going to let us explore power on a massive scale, it is tiny.
It is about 5 centimetres (2 inches) square, it’s very thin, and it looks and feels a bit like a modern-day business card. In fact, it’s a label that was once attached to a pair of shoes. We know this because on one side is a picture of those shoes. This little ivory plaque is a name tag for an Egyptian pharaoh, made to accompany him as he set off to the afterlife, a label which would identify him to those he met. Through it, we’re immediately close to these first kings of Egypt – rulers, around 3000 BC, of a new kind of civilization that would produce some of the greatest monumental art and architecture ever made.
The nearest modern equivalent I can think of to this label is the ID card that people working in an office now have to wear round their necks to get past the security check – though it’s not immediately clear who was meant to read these Egyptian labels, whether they’re aimed at the gods of the afterlife or perhaps ghostly servants who might not know their way around. The images themselves are made by scratching into the ivory and then rubbing a black resin into the incisions, making a wonderful contrast between the black of the design and the cream of the ivory.
Before the first pharaohs, Egypt was a divided country, split between the east–west coastal strip of the Nile Delta, facing the Mediterranean, and the north–south string of settlements along the river itself. With the Nile flooding every year, harvests were plentiful, so there was enough food for a rapidly growing population and, frequently, surplus to trade with. But there was absolutely no extra fertile land beyond the flooding area, and as a result the ever more numerous people fought bitterly over the limited amount of land. Conflict followed conflict, with the people from the Delta eventually being conquered by the people from the south just before 3000 BC. This united Egypt was one of the earliest societies that we can think of as a state in the modern sense, and, as one of its earliest leaders, King Den had to address all the problems of control and coordination that a modern state has to confront today.
Engraved on the back of the label is a pair of sandals
You might not expect to discover how he did this from the label on his shoes, but Den’s sandals were no ordinary shoes. They were high-status items, and the Keeper of the Sandals was one of the high court officials. It’s not so surprising, then, that on the back of the label we have a clear statement of how this pharaoh exercised power; nor, perhaps, that the model which evolved in Den’s Egypt 5,000 years ago resonates uncannily around the world to this day.
On the other side of the label is an image of the owner of the sandals, dressed in a royal headdress with a mace in one hand and a whip in the other. King Den stands in combat, authoritatively smiting an enemy who cowers at his feet. Of course, the first thing we look for is his sandals but, disappointingly, he’s barefoot.
This little label is the first image of a ruler in this history of humanity. It’s striking, perhaps a bit disheartening, that, right at the beginning, the ruler wants to be shown as commander-in-chief, conquering his foe. This is how, from earliest times, power has been projected through images, and there’s something disturbingly familiar