Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [44]
Hippopotami and crocodile
The Sixth Dynasty began with a king we know as Teti and gathered steam under his son, the competent and powerful Pepi I. Externally, the picture has the same unity and solidarity that we saw under the mighty monarchs of the Fourth Dynasty. Pepi’s officials paid him proper homage, carving his picture on the walls of their tombs and bragging about royal favors received. But there is a difference. The tombs of the nobles no longer huddled around the pyramid of their royal master; they were built in the capitals of the provinces, or nomes, which their owners eventually ruled as semi-independent princes. We might compare the situation, superficially, to the Feudal Age of Western culture. When a strong king held the throne of Egypt he could control his ambitious underlings. But when a weak monarch wore the Red and White Crowns—then woe to the throne of Horus!
The most interesting of the local princes were the lords of Elephantine, an island located at the region of modern Aswan. Here ended the land of Egypt and here began Nubia; here also was the first of six cataracts, which interrupted navigation to the south. The granite quarries at Aswan are now a tourist spectacle; they contain the skeleton form of what would have been the tallest obelisk ever erected, if the great spire had ever been cut from its rocky bed. Aswan granite was highly prized for statues and for building; it was brought by barge all the way downriver to Memphis.
The island of Elephantine is in the middle of the river, but the tombs of the men who ruled this frontier post were cut into the western desert cliffs. They look to the south, to Nubia, as the fortresses of the Lords of the Welsh Marches faced the direction from which danger would come. Nubia had long been a source of interest to the adventurous, or greedy, Egyptians. There were expeditions to the area as early as the First Dynasty. The A-group people disappeared during that period and were replaced in Lower Nubia (remember, that’s the northern part) by what may be signs of Egyptian settlement. These lasted no longer than the Fifth Dynasty, if they were there at all, and the next settlements in the area belonged to a culture called the C-group. What about the B-group? Nobody believes in it anymore. To put it in more pedantic terms, the scanty materials once assigned to this culture do not represent a “homogeneous phase.”
The C-group people (I do wish someone would give them a more descriptive name) were tough customers, but Egypt wanted gold, and Nubia had a lot of it; and Elephantine was the “Door of the South.” Beyond that door lay other countries which had even more to offer than did Nubia. From the farther Sudan came ebony, ivory, gold, ostrich feathers; somewhere to the south was the mysterious, half-legendary land of Punt, God’s Land, which supplied myrrh and spices and other precious things.
The first of the great barons of the Door of the South was named Uni, whose career began under Teti and continued under Pepi I and his son Mernere. One of Uni’s duties was to oversee the working of the granite quarries, but his primary function was to protect the southern boundaries and to keep the region peaceful so that trade could be carried on without hindrance. So well did he accomplish this that he was able to quarry the granite for the royal sarcophagus with “only one warship”! The boast speaks volumes about the dangers of working in that area.
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