Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [32]
While some scholars have questioned whether the Egyptian rulers were actually considered divine from earliest times, it is clear that these kings ruled the first nation-state as the political, military, and religious leaders. It is also clear from the earliest known tombs of these kings that the king was seen as the mediator between his people and the powers of the afterworld, and that the state religion gave legitimacy to the political order. Other documents and artifacts from this very early time show that another significant human invention was securely in place, too—taxes!
The priesthood existed to serve both the deities and the king, who was considered the chief priest of Egypt. The temple complexes run by Egypt’s priests were in many ways equivalent to the medieval cathedral towns of Europe. They were not visited on a once-a-week basis or occasional holiday, but were the economic and social center of Egyptian life. As in feudal Europe, most of Egypt’s land was in the hands of king and priests. The temples collected and distributed the bounty of Egypt and supported entire populations of civil servants, scribes, craftsmen, and artisans. They collected taxes on behalf of the king—they were the instruments of state power. In one census taken in the time of Ramses III, the two great temples in Thebes employed ninety thousand workmen, owned five hundred thousand head of cattle, four hundred orchards, and eighty ships.
After the earliest dynasties, Egyptian history has been traditionally divided into three major periods, known as the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, interrupted sporadically by stretches of social upheaval or foreign rule known as “intermediate periods.”* In spite of these interruptions, occasional periods of foreign control and occasional breakdowns in order, Egyptian life maintained its fundamental sense of order and stability with remarkable longevity.
The Old Kingdom, or the Pyramid Age, began in 2686 BCE and continued for some five hundred years until 2160 BCE. As the name obviously suggests, the period is famed for the construction of the first massive pyramids. During the Old Kingdom, the king’s absolute power was solidified, based on the belief in his divinity, his role as chief priest, and his control of the priesthood, and the promise that only the king would spend eternity with the gods, where he would continue to maintain the cosmic order that blessed Egypt with such plenty. To maintain the status quo, the king wielded unquestioned power. One stunning example of both the stability and total control can be seen in one of the Old Kingdom rulers, Pepy II, who took the throne at age six and ruled for ninety-four years.
The Old Kingdom went into decline and was followed by an unsettled century, called the First Intermediate Period, in which power shifted away from Memphis to Herakleopolis. This time of unrest and disorder was later believed to be a time when the gods withdrew their blessings from Egypt. A new generation of Upper Kingdom rulers restored national order during the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE). This was a four-hundred-year period of peace and prosperity, during which the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty conquered neighboring Nubia (modern Sudan) and began to expand Egypt’s trade with Palestine and Syria in southwestern Asia and the advanced Minoan civilization, based on Crete. Often described as a “Renaissance” period in Egypt, the Middle Kingdom saw Egyptian art, architecture, and religion reach new heights. With this exposure to other surrounding cultures, historian Gae Callender explains, “The Middle Kingdom was an age of tremendous invention, great vision, and colossal projects, yet there was also careful and elegant attention to detail in the creation of the smallest items of everyday use and decoration. This more human scale is present in the pervading sense that individual humans