Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [47]
Arkell’s theory is not accepted by most scholars, but I like it. Since the location of Yam is one of those subjects that worries me almost as much as the problem of Hetepheres, I had hoped, a few years back, that we might find some clues during the extensive survey of Nubia that accompanied the construction of the second Aswan Dam. The news of the dam prompted a flurry of activity in Lower Nubia, whose sites would be threatened by rising water. The temple of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II, was the most publicized of the endangered temples; a truly monumental project cut it free of the rock in which it had been built and raised it high atop the cliffs, to a new position. But the publicity given Abu Simbel overshadowed a far more impressive accomplishment—the wholehearted, worldwide response to an appeal by UNESCO for aid in saving the less spectacular Nubian remains. Over twenty nations, from Argentina to Yugoslavia, sent teams to work in Nubia. There was a certain amount of bickering, naturally. But as an example of what can be accomplished when people turn their energies to preserving instead of destroying, the Nubian campaign was an inspiration. Many smaller temples were dismantled and moved, dozens of cemeteries, town sites, temples, and churches were excavated and recorded.
However, they didn’t really settle the location of Yam.
The little boy who wrote with such rapture about a dwarf to play with could not have been much of an administrator at first. The country was controlled by Pepi II’s mother and her brother Djau, prince of Thinis. But the fiction of divine rule was maintained; the bronzed explorer-counts of Elephantine, and the proud princes of other nomes, reported to their child-king and received his orders with becoming humility.
Prince Djau was not a wicked uncle. He administered the kingdom ably and cherished his small nephew with such care that Pepi II reached his majority and lived on…and on…and on! He ruled for over ninety years, the longest reign attributed to a king of Egypt. Hence he must have reached the century mark, or near it, before he died.
Pepi might have said, with far more truth than Louis XV, “After me, the deluge.” For when he died, the whole vigorous, complex, coherent structure of the united kingdom of Egypt fell in ruins, and a time of anarchy ensued. We have noted the beginning of the trend; a strong ruler cannot permit equally strong subordinates, and even at the beginning of Pepi’s reign his barons had taken unto themselves a degree of independence that contrasted ironically with the lip ser vice paid to the power of the god-king. During the years of Pepi’s young manhood, the central power was in good hands. But for the last thirty or forty years of his reign, the hands grew more and more palsied with age.
This is, of course, an oversimplification. Many other factors might have contributed to the decline of the dynasty—a series of low Niles, resulting in drought and famine, for example. The dire results of natural disasters are sometimes unrecorded and underestimated, but they have certainly played a role throughout history. Plagues such as the Black Death decimated Europe during the Middle Ages; it is likely that equivalent epidemics occurred in ancient times, although we seldom find them recorded.
The last kings of the Sixth Dynasty are little known. One of them was a woman; any man, including Manetho, could tell you that this was a bad sign. If it were not for a reference to this lady, whose Greek name was Nitokris, in the Turin Papyrus, I would be inclined to suspect her of being as apocryphal as are the stories the Greeks collected about her. “She was the noblest and loveliest of the women of her time, of fair complexion, the builder of the Third Pyramid,” said Manetho romantically. Herodotus adds a melodramatic story, which tells how she avenged the murder of her brother by inviting