PTOLEMY I SOTER (367/6 – 282 BC)

 I find the career of the eponymous founder of the dynasty which bears his name an extremely interesting personality, particularly when viewed through the lens of ancient Egypt. There a tradition maintains that Ptolemy was a son of Philip born to one of his many loves so that he came to be regarded as Alexander’s half-brother. The friendship between the two apparently so disturbed Philip that he was exiled, doubtless because Philip feared that the recognized abilities of the ten-year older Ptolemy might be advantageously utilized by Alexander to Philip’s detriment. Upon Philip’s death, however, Ptolemy was recalled at the insistence of Alexander himself who bestowed upon him dignified court titles. He served Alexander well, fighting with distinction during the campaigns, which, with hindsight, justified the meaning of his Greek name, Ptolemaios, “war-like.”

 Ptolemy, perhaps like Julius Caesar, was not only a warrior but was also an astute politician, as we will see, and an author. He described the campaigns in an account which, alas, has not survived, but is either quoted or referenced by subsequent ancient historians, particularly Arrian (about AD 86-160) in his Anabasis of Alexander, and described as one of the most accurate, objective accounts ever-penned on the subject.

The political acumen of Ptolemy is perhaps best exemplified by the results of his participation in the events which occurred after the death of Alexander the Great at Babylon in June 323 BC. It soon became evident to all that no single member of Alexander’s entourage would emerge as his sole successor. The most powerful among these individuals, collectively termed the Diadiochi, “the Heirs,” intrigued to obtain parts of the empire as their own kingdoms. Ptolemy was involved in the plotting and instrumental in determining that division as the clever allocation of  Egypt to himself so clearly reveals. At the same time, Philip Arrhidaeus, the  (some maintain mentally-challenged) half brother of Alexander, was charged with the funeral arrangements which took almost two years to complete. The body of the hero was mummified in accordance with Egyptian practice, an elaborate hearse was designed and constructed, and plans were set into motion to convey the body in a cortege throughout the lands the hero had conquered so that all could pay their final respects before the planned interment was performed, arguably in a dynastic vault at Aegae, Greece. The cortege, moving westward, was hijacked by Ptolemy who seized the body of Alexander and conveyed it to Memphis, the administrative center of Egypt and location of Ptolemy’s royal palace. Ptolemy reverentially erected a tomb at Saqqara, the traditional, millennia-old necropolis of Memphis, in which the body of Alexander was initially laid to rest.

Whenever I am asked about the location of the tomb of Alexander the Great, I invariably ask, “which tomb?,” because there was more than one. I can, however, point to an area in which his first tomb, the one at Saqqara, was doubtless located. It has been suggested, and I would whole-heartedly agree, that the often overlooked semi-circle of poets and philosophers, sculpted in friable Egyptian limestone and now irreversibly effaced, which is presently within an orchestra-like concrete dome in the vicinity of the tourists’ path to the sepulchers of the Apis Bulls marks the area in general in which this tomb was located. This monument, conspicuous because of its totally Hellenic style, stands in marked contrast to all of the pharaonica in the area. Each of the individuals depicted in those statues resonate with associations of Alexander from Homer, whose Achilles in the Iliad  served as his avatar, to Pindar, whose house he spared when he sacked Greek Thebes.

At about this same time, according to the information contained on the Stela of the Satrap, the Persian noun for governor, in which capacity Ptolemy asserted he was ruling, he repatriated statues and temple scrolls which the Persian king Cambyses had apparently removed as examples of  trophy art during his conquest of Egypt between 525-522 BC.

Political attempts to challenge Ptolemy failed because he initially maintained with a straight face that he was merely ruling as the satrap of the province of Egypt for members of Alexander’s immediate family, until each in turn died, either naturally or by foul-play, by November 305 BC. In that year, Ptolemy took the unprecedented step of proclaiming himself pharaoh of Egypt, thereby inaugurating the Macedonian Greek dynasty whose members were to rule for almost three centuries until the death by suicide of his last descendant, Cleopatra VII, in 30 BC.

Military action against Ptolemy by the any of the Diadiochi proved futile, particularly the one concerted attempt in 321 BC when his opponents were stymied by both natural and artificial obstacles from gaining access to valley of the Nile. So ensconced had Ptolemy become that a persistent legend arose equating possession of the body of Alexander the Great with the sovereignty of Egypt. His body became a touch-stone which is the reason it was so ardently visited by any number of subsequent emperors of Rome.

Ptolemy proved to be an astute administrator. In addition to appointing Greeks to high bureaucratic positions, he followed the lead of Alexander the Great and likewise permitted Persians as well as Egyptians to remain in positions of authority within Egypt provided they demonstrated their unfailing allegiance to him. He did little to alter the nome, or provincial, administration of Egypt, so that Egypt’s pharaonic institutions continued to function unchanged. His name in Egyptian and his titulary were composed in concert with Egypt’s learned priestly-scribes who employed the same writing for his prenomen written with the first cartouche as that used earlier for Alexander the Great. By his second regnal year he was styled in Demotic, “the protector,” providing the equivalent, “Soter,” his Greek epithet.

His positive interaction with the Egyptian priesthood was furthered by his renovations of Egyptian temples. Although these architectural programs are not on the monumental scale of those of some of his successors, an inventory of his name preserved at these sites indicates that his architectural program effected virtually every major temple throughout the entire land. In this regard it is interesting to note his activities at Karnak between Pylons 8 and 9, where the foundations of an exterior wall composed of re-used talatat from the Amarna Period were replaced with sandstone blocks usurped by his agents from an unknown structure of post-Ramesside date. The artistic style of the relief decoration associated with these architectural programs reveals that the craftsmen in his employ perpetuated the style of the immediately preceding pharaonic dynasties, as is evident if one compares images inscribed in his name from Iseion in the Delta or from the Chapel of Thoth, now in Hildesheim, from Tuna el-Gebal with relief inscribed with the names of Nectanebo II of Dynasty XXX.

 In addition to his financial support of these Egyptian institutions, Ptolemy I Soter, as he is now universally known, was doubtless responsible for sowing the seeds of what was to grow into the famous Library and Mouseion at Alexandria. He seems to be the individual responsible for acquiring the private library of Aristotle, which formed the core collection of the Library’s holdings. In this endeavor he seems to have engaged the services of Demetrius of Phaleron, a suburb of the city of Athens. Realizing the need for providing his immigrant Greek entourage with an understanding of the country they were now administrating, Ptolemy commissioned the Egyptian priest Manetho from the Delta city of Sebennytos to compose a history of his country in Greek.

Toward the end of his life, Ptolemy elected to avoid a dynastic crisis by appointing his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, to share the throne as his co-regent. Well into his 80s, Ptolemy died, peacefully, in his own bed, the only Diadioch to have lived to such a ripe age and the only one not to have had his life taken by foul-play.

Ptolemy II Philadelphus honored his father by instituting a great festival at Alexandria in which the cult of Ptolemy I Soter was established. He had, like Alexander before him, become posthumously deified. That cult was long-lived. Ptolemy I Soter was in fact the only male member of his dynasty whose cult was celebrated well into Roman times of the second century AD at a time when the cults of all the other male members ceased to be observed in the principal cities of Upper Egypt.

Robert Steven Bianchi

Holiday, FL

USA

Dr Robert Steven Bianchi is an independent scholar who serves as the chief curator for the Ancient Egyptian Museum Shibuya [Tokyo] and as the curator responsible for ancient art in the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art. He is internationally recognized as a consult because of his specialization in ancient art and aesthetics, is extensively published, and has been featured in almost 80 telecasts worldwide.

Two are masterpieces ranking among the greatest in art history. The discovery transforms our understanding of Egypt and Africa in the ancient world. Nubia was important to Egypt’seconomy from early times because the requirements of a highly developed civilisation demanded raw materials and minerals that were unavailable in Egypt. They were imported from many sources, including the agriculturally impoverished land of Nubia, between Egypt’s southern border at Aswan and Sudan, in exchange for grain, oil and honey. In the Middle Kingdom, between2133 and 1786BCE,  Egypt colonised
Nubia  as far as the Second Cataract,where powerful pharaohs built a series of impenetrable fortresses.

Each was defended by a massive mud-brick wall and was surrounded by dry moats and walls with bastions and loopholes for archers. Through its domination of Nubia, Egypt was assured of the produce from this great gold and copper-producing country and was also in an ideal position to trade for other prized commodities. Generation after generation of Egyptian soldiers and settlers lived in or around the fortress  towns that bore names like “Warding off the Bows” and “Curbing of Foreign Lands”. The people of these lands were the vigorous and courageous Medjay of Kush (Sudan), who strongly resisted Egyptian occupation of Nubia and were finally suppressed by Pharaoh Senusert III. During the Hyksos occupation many of the
 fortresses were burnt or abandoned, but the leaders of the New Kingdom (1567 to 1080BCE) again turned their attention to Nubia and Kush, and established a trading post in Kerma. The first excavations carried out there by George Reisner of Harvard University  between 1913 and1915, he  regarded the site from a colonial perspective – a mighty state occupying and exploiting backward and  impoverished peoples.

Since 1973, however, excavations carried out by Charles Bonnet and his team have provided an Afrocentric take on ancient history, enabling scholars to face questions that have previously been overlooked. Their main goal was to reconstruct the evolution of society from the last hunter-gatherers up to the emergence of the civilisation of Kerma,the capital of the first Kingdom of Kush, whose peoples lived on the edge of theEgyptian empire and who were already in contact with the populations of central Africa and the Red Sea coast.

Far from being destitute, this population was well aware of the requirements of the pharaonic civilisation and of the advantages of trade. While allowing Egyptians to satisfy their mineral requirements, they themselves acted as entrepreneurs, opening up markets in Sudan and facilitating trade in precious items, including ivory, diorite, gold and supervised shipments to the north. They developed a protected area, a central city, where spacious homes were built for the dignitaries who monitored the trade in merchandise from far-off lands,and they protected their storage areas and administrative buildings with buttressed walls and rectangular and semi-circular bastions, even moats.Within this protected area, the team unearthed a palace and religious sanctuary as well as about 200 houses. The palace evolved from a large, round building about 12m in diameter to a rectangular structure more than four times as large. The Kushite king’s audience chamber (rebuilt at least 10times on the same spot) bears no resemblance to any Egyptian building.

On the contrary, most ancient architecture of Kerma clearly revealed roots in an African heritage, both in construction techniques and the
materials used. Indeed, the king’s chamber might be seen as a prototype for the large princely and royal huts discovered in Africa south of
the Sahara in the last 100 years. It was within a temple compound,then known as Pnubs (literally “the cityof the jujube tree”),  that Bonnet
 and his team found the cache containing monumental black granite statues, magnificently sculptured and excellently preserved.

They portray five pharaonic rulers including Taharqa and Tantamani, the last members of Egypt’s Kushite dynasty,  powerful leaders from
modern-day Sudan who governed a combined kingdom of Egypt and Nubia, an empire stretching from the Delta to the upper reaches of the  Nile. It was an era of pharaonic history that has been categorised as a period of decline, but which was, in fact, a renaissance. Under the last of the Ramesside pharaohs, about 1000BCE,  the country fell increasingly under the control of the priests of Amun. As their power grew, they demanded blind conformity to a system that gave them control and wealth, and a struggle for power ensued.

The internal disorder was such that Hrihor,  High Priest of Amun, was able to usurp the throne and the country became divided; a local dynasty in Tanis ruled the Delta, and Hrihor UpperEgypt. The latter declared himself Viceroy of Kush. Meanwhile, a powerful Kushite chieftain named Alara – who was credited by his descendants with the foundation of a line of distinguished
kings – instigated an active policy of territorial expansion. One of the most famous of this line was Piye (Piankhi),who erected a granite stela in the temple at Kerma describing Egypt’s decline and political breakdown due to disputes among its princes.

 He records how his army marched northward into Egypt, fought battles with Tefnakht, ruler of Sais, and his allies, and that one by one he gained control of the cities until the whole country was under his control. Piankhi did not come to Egypt as an invader but as a liberator; he felt bound to free the country from decline. Having seized the ancient religious capital of Thebes, he marched on the state capital of Memphis where he stormed the fortifications. Tefnakht, anticipating the attack, had heightened and reinforced the battlements, but he neglected the east side of the city which was protected by flood waters. The  Egyptian fleet floated high enough to fasten the bow ropes, and it was here that Piankhi struck.

He captured Tefnakht’s fleet and combined it with his own, using it as a landing base. His army surged over the ramparts, and within the city walls a great slaughter ensued. The  inhabitants were finally forced to repudiate Tefnakht and recognise Piankhi, a black man, as king. In a demonstration of respect and protection Piankhi made offerings to temples and other sanctuaries in the city before returning to Kush, where he died, only to be succeeded by an equally powerful leader — his brother Shabako, it being the custom in Kush for brothers of a ruler to have priority over sons in succession. Shabako succeeded in uniting Egypt and Nubia under his rule in 747BCE, becoming the first Kushite king of both Upper and Lower Egypt.
Internal stability returned. Trade and commerce were revived, and grand temples were built in which the pharaohs were portrayed as black,
adorned in Egyptian royal costume and the Double Crown of Upper and LowerEgypt. They adopted the burial rites of the pharaohs, but retained
their Nubian names.

How long Kushites might have remained on the throne of a united Egypt and Nubia, is difficult to say, because the Assyrians marched on the Delta in 671BCE and, although Shabako’s younger brother Taharqa made plans to meet his rival, his forces – composed of local militia and recruits from the Nile Delta – was no match for the mighty Esarhaddon. The black pharaohs were finally vanquished in 656BCE and withdrew to a new capital at Napata, south of Kerma. About 600BCE, when this was no longer considered safe, or suitable for the expanding economy, they transferred the capital to Meroe (Shendi) on the east side of the Nile between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts. In this newly chosen location,  rich in mineral wealth (especially iron ore and wood for iron-smelting), a new and distinctly African culture developed. While African, it was at once a continuation of the Egyptian-influenced Napatan culture, and its main phases of the development rival the great
ancient civilisations.

The significance of the discovery in Kerma, and of monumental granite statues of such African kings as Taharqa and Tanutamun, reveal them as tough individuals with strong features and powerful bodies. Such able leaders ruled pharaonic Egypt for half a century.And when they were driven out by the Assyrians and withdrew to their own land, their leaders continued a policyof expansion through  northern Sudan and Upper Nubia. Once-powerful Egypt succumbed to two Persian invasions (in 525 and 345BCE), while the Meroitic Empire  flourished. By the reign in Egypt of Ptolemy IV (222 to 204BCE), King Argamanic of Kush controlled the Nile to within sight of Elephantine Island on Egypt’s southern border.

SHEMU October 2009

Earl L. Ertman

Several writers have discussed the jewelry found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun ¹ as well as the pectoral under review that was found in a chest in the tomb’s Treasury. Among the treasures from this tomb are a variety of rings and pectorals. One of the many beautiful pectoral examples illustrates both solar and lunar symbolism. (Cairo Museum no. 61884 ).² (pl. I ) The design of this piece is rather crowded when compared to surviving examples from the Middle Kingdom in which the ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ areas are more balanced.³  Thc craftsman who fashioned this piece was interested in including the appropriate symbolism and not producing a balanced and effective design that modern viewers might favor.

 Many times elements coalesce in Egyptian art and that occurs here also with symbols of the sun god (the scarab and the falcon) combining to create the hybrid form of a scarab with beetle forelegs and falcon wings, tail and rear legs. Two uraei wearing sun disks are placed frontally on the bark of the moon, above the outstretched forelegs of the scarab. These are common elements found in many of Tutankhamen’s individual pieces of jewelry. Another pair of uraei, this time placed in profile in the design, flanking the falcon legs which hold plants of Upper and Lower Egypt are also common elements seen in this king’s objects. These four uraei have their inlays formed in the champlevé manner with areas hollowed out (recessed) in which the colored inlays of glass or stone are placed.

Writers commenting on the central scarab call it chalcedony. More recent analysis suggests that the material of this beetle is actually Libyan Desert glass formed from a meteorite impact in the desert. ⁴   Elsewhere on this object the feathers that cover the wings and tail of this hybrid scarab/falcon are formed with gold cloisonné’s, small strips of metal soldered to the flat surfaces of the curved out-spread wings ⁵ and tail shapes forming receptacles or compartments into which the small pieces of colored stone and glass were placed in imitation of feather-patterns. The talons of this hybrid hold symbols of a lotus and lily, symbolic of the original northern and southern kingdoms plus shen signs that stand for eternity, infinity and/or protection.

 The upper portion of this pectoral contains a stylized bark on which a wadjet (or wedjat) eye, the eye of the god Horus, is found centrally placed. When this eye symbol is created facing to the left it is identified as the left eye of Horus and is associated with the moon. Other lunar related elements are placed directly above this eye. The moon disk, made of silver (or electrum) reflecting the coloration of the moon at night, with its supporting crescent shape in gold, has three important golden figures soldered to its surface. The ibis-headed figure at the left is the god Thoth, the god of writing, who is associated with the moon. He wears a disk and crescent symbol of the moon.

 In the center of this design is the King, Tutankhamun, also wearing a disk and crescent above his khepresh crown, a most unusual and atypical element for a king to wear. The king holds the symbols of his office, the scepter and flail, carried by kings for centuries, in his right hand and these implements rest against his shoulder. The figure on the right is the god Re-Herakhty who wears a sun disk for his obvious association to the sun. The sun and the moon are thus incorporated into this triad with King Tutankhamun shown as a lunar god in this instance by the moon symbols above his crown. I have been interested in the symbolism applied here for sometime and I have noted symbolic references to the moon in other pieces of Tutankhamun’s jewelry. The reasons for this change and addition in subject matter at this particular time in Dynasty Eighteen as well as how this iconography should be interpreted requires much more investigation.

Although I have recorded examples and have been studying this phenomena for sometime, none of my thoughts on the possibilities for this added lunar symbolism have been published, but Erik Hornung and Elisabeth Staehelin, have made suggestions in print that include some of my conclusions. Their words provide some insight into this question. These writers cite a group statue from Faras where the king is named, “ He who is fully reborn every month” which they indicate is a reference to the king’s “moon-like” identity. Further, they indicate, “Thus, in both image and word, the king is ascribed divine status, uniting and embodying sun and moon together, and it is through this quality that in the beyond he is ensured regeneration every day and every month.”  ⁶   Beside the pectoral which is the focus of this research there are other examples cited by these authors which include Tutankhamun’s  throne name (prenomen) showing a winged scarab supporting a crescent moon and lunar disk. ⁷

I have recorded other examples, first pectorals then a ring that were not mentioned elsewhere that emphasize the moon or the moon in combination with the sun.  A pectoral revealing signs of wear, found in the Treasury (Cario J. d’E. 61897) shows a disk and crescent moon on a night bark. ⁸ Another pectoral (Cairo J. d’E. 61900), ⁹ with three scarabs each providing a ‘loose’ writing of Tutankhamun’s prenomen with the plural strokes omitted (probably making the design more effective, but that was not of importance to the craftsman who fashioned it).  It was found around the king’s neck in his wrappings indicating its importance. The two outer scarabs each support a sun disk while the center scarab (Cairo J.d’E. 61885) ¹⁰ features two moons and a rising sun. The latter held by the fore legs of a centrally placed scarab supporting this sun disk in its fore legs and a shen sign in its rear legs. Flanking the central scarab are two baboons frequently associated with the raising sun. Somewhat unusual is the fact that each wears a moon and crescent on their heads.

The last pectoral(Cairo J. d’E. 61887) 11 to be noted is another scarab that is read as the king’s prenomen including the plural strokes absent in a previous example …. except that it supports the moon and a crescent rather than the sun, thus providing a lunar meaning.

Rings also display the presence of lunar elements A double ring of the god Thoth (Cairo J. d’E. 62437) ¹² illustrates a baboon on the left bezel wearing a moon disk and crescent. On the right bezel the god Thoth in the guise of an Ibid-headed figure is also wearing a moon disk and crescent. Another ring (Cairo J.d’E. 62450) with the sun bark as the central image according to James, ¹³ has baboons adoring a disk and crescent in their bark that relates to the moon in the view of this writer.

       The frequent incorporation of the disk and crescent of the moon in the jewelry of King Tutankhamun as well as a representation of this king wearing these symbols, implying that he is a lunar deity, reveal a change in thought and iconography in Tutankhamun’s reign. More will surely be revealed through further study.

 Notes

1.       Among many see, C. Desroches-Noblecourt, Life and Death of a Pharaoh Tutankhamun (New York, 1963); C. Aldred, Jewels of the Pharaohs, Egyptian Jewelry of the Dynastic Period (New York, 1971); A. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptian Jewellery (London,1971); [I. E. S. Edwaards,] Treasures of Tutankhamun (London, 1972 ) and (New York, 1976); C. Andrews, Ancient Egyptian Jewelry (New York, 1991);  T. G. H. James, Tutankhamun, The Eternal Splendor of the Boy Pharaoh (Cairo, 2000) and E. Hornung and E. Staehelin in A. Wiese and A. Brodbeck eds, Tutankhamun,The Golden Beyond. Tomb Treasures from the Valley of the Kings (Basel, 2004), pp. 81-2.

2.       Among many illustrations see, James, pp. 230-1 Andrews, pl. 20; Aldred, pl. 106.

3.     As examples see, A. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptian Jewellery (London, 1971), pls. I and II (from the reigns of Sesostris II and III respectively); XVII, A, reign of Seaostris III. See also C. Aldred, Jewels of the Pharaohs (New York, New York, 1971), pls. 33, 41, among others.

4.       Conversions with George Johnson have indicated the material from which this scarab was undoubtedly made.

5.     For the types of winged scarabs including those used during the reign of King Tutankhamun see, E.  L. Ertman,       “ Types of Winged Scarabs: Tutankhamun’s use of H -winged scarabs” in, M. Eldamaty and M. Trad, eds. Egyptian Museum Collections around the World, vol. 1 (Cairo, 2002), pp. 333-343, especially the chart on 343

6.     A. Wiese and A. Brodbeck eds, Tutankhamun, The Golden Beyond. Tomb Treasures from the Valley of the Kings (Basel, 2004), pp. 81-2.

7.       Ibid., Wiese and Brodbeck, fig. 57 and T. G. H. James, Tutankhamun The Eternal Splendor of the Boy Pharaoh (Cairo, 2000),  p. 234 (Cairo J. d’E.61890), and a cartouche of Tutankhamun’s cartouche supporting a moon and crescent, flanked by uraei wearing sun disks, (Wiese and Brodbeck, fig. 58, Cairo no. unknown).

8.     James, pp. 210-11.

9.     Ibid ., p. 215.

10.   Ibid., pp. 216-7.

11.   Ibid., p. 218.

12.   Ibid., p. 250.

13.   Ibid., pp. 252-3

January 2009

 By Marianne Luban

 When Thutmose III, finally freed of the shadow of his aunt in the 22nd year of his unusual reign, decided to march east on his first Levantine campaign, there were some things to take into consideration.  According to the annals of the pharaoh, there were 330 princes rebellious toward the Egyptian empire waiting for him in Asia, each with his own army.  The one who had actually consolidated the empire was Thutmose’s grand-sire, Aakheperkare Thutmose I, and so the grandson doubtless felt it his duty to maintain his inheritance.  But there was another factor at play as well.  Menkheperre Thutmose was fully aware that the Canaanite petty rulers knew that he had been second to a woman for nearly two decades and probably considered him a weakling on account of it.  Now was the time to dispel that misconception of his true nature once and for all.  Thutmose was resolved to do battle with those princes, if necessary, besiege their walled cities, for certain, but that required the mustering of a great force of his own.

 Ancient Egypt of the New Kingdom did not have a standing army.  It was drawn from the citizenry, primarily the peasants since most of the nation was devoted to agriculture.  But the farmers could only leave their fields at certain times of the year.  The optimal time was when the harvesting of the crops was completed in the spring and there was nothing to do but wait out the scorching summer until the inundation arrived and receded to allow for fall planting.  In other words, the main crops of Egypt, the wheat and the barley, matured during the winter season of Peret or “the coming forth”.  Bread was the staple of the Egyptian diet. 

 In the era of Menkheperre Thutmose III, the months of the civil calendar did not have names, only numbers from one to twelve.  Much later, names were derived from the main feast days of each month.  Even in more modern times, the farmers said, “Baramhat [Phamenoth], go to the field and fetch.”  This means that in this month, which ideally runs through part of April, the harvest is in full swing.  Then came the saying, “Barmuda [Pharmouti], pound with the rod”, April/May being the time for threshing.  By May/June there is nothing left in the field and that’s why one declared, “Bashans [Pakhons] sweeps the field entirely.”  So the sayings remained, but the civil months were only in their proper season for limited times in pharaonic history as their calendar did not employ leap years and therefore wandered through the three naturally-occurring seasons of Egypt, Inundation, Winter and Summer.  Only after another 1,460 years did the civil calendar and these seasons synchronize fully once again and the sighting of the star, Sirius [spdt] occurred on New Year’s Day, the beginning of the month of Thaout.  This astral sign was the harbinger of the season of the flood and was sighted around July 18 by the Julian calendar.

 But there was yet another consideration–the harvest in the Levant.  One could take advantage of that, were one to arrive in time.  The Canaanite harvest was slightly behind that of Egypt and the cereal crops there could be seized as booty, not to mention the newly-trod wine, if one was victorious and could wait until September for the grapes to mature.  After that, hauling back the goods to Egypt, which could include pomegranates, figs, and olives, the pharaoh’s army returned to their villages to tend to the sowing of the fields.  Therefore, without any other indications, we can already surmise what time of the year it was by more modern calendars when Thutmose set out with his army.  However, it so happens that his annals give the itinerary and they say that Thutmose and his forces found themselves at the fortress of  Djaru/Sile [the place at the gateway to Egypt where one collected the weapons of war] on the “4th month of the second season, day 25″.  That would have been April 20th in 1482 BCE–according to the Julian calendar–later to be known as the month of Pharmouti.  Why I choose the year 1482 for Year 22 in the reign of Thutmose III will soon become apparent but it is already manifest that, by now, the citizen soldiers had already completed their harvest task. 

 In the first month of the 3rd season [which is Shomu], Day 4, the Egyptian calendar turned to Year 23 because it was the anniversary of the accession of the pharaoh to the kingship–but, of course, it is still 1482 by the Julian calendar.  Later, the first month of Shomu would be called Pakhons, after the moon god, Khonsu.  On Day 21 of Pakhons, Thutmose appeared at dawn to address the troops and then set off in a golden chariot to engage the enemy at a place called Megiddo in Canaan.  Thus began a siege of the walled city that lasted seven months.  Day 21 of Pakhons was May 16 by the Julian calendar.  It was also the “feast of the new moon”.  The term used for the “true new moon” was “psDntiw mAaty”.  According to the Egyptians, the moon, “the ruler of the stars”, was conceived on a day of the month known as the “psDntiw” and was not born until the following day–or night.  That means that the “psDntiw” was the new moon [or “no moon”, in reality] prior to the sighting of the first sliver of its waxing. In fact, May 16, 1482 BC appears to be the date of the new moon by the lunar phase’s retroactive calculator. 

 The new moon would appear on 21 Pakhons in 25-year increments, but I believe that 1507 BCE might be too early for Year 23 of Thutmose III.  Regardless, the dates 1507 May 22,
1482 May 16, 1457 May 9 all seem not unreasonable, but it becomes clear that the higher the date, the more time the Egyptians had to finish their own harvest in the month of Pharmouti.  However, agriculturally speaking, the middle date allows the army not to miss the Canaanite cereal harvest, as well.  Had these crops been taken from the fields surrounding Megiddo by the time Thutmose arrived, the siege of the city might have lasted longer than seven months.  But, as it turned out, many of the shut up people emerged from hunger to be taken captive and the Egyptians claimed to have carried off “207, 300 [+x] sacks of wheat, apart from that cut as forage by his majesty’s army” – with the rest of the considerable spoils of war.

April 2009

The Society hosted Dr. Zahi Hawass,  Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in South Africa on a short lecture tour – visiting Johannesburg where he gave a lecture on Monday 14th August 2006 at the Great Hall of  the University of the Witwatersrand with Egyptian Ambassador Mona Omar in attendance. Unfortunately problems with publicity resulted in a smaller attendance at Wits than expected. The subject of the lecture was  The Mysteries of the Pyramids. Dr. Hawass also gave a question and answer session to students at Wits University who took advantage of this unique opportunity of meeting the most famous Egyptologist in the world today.

Accompanied by Acting Chairman Jean Smith and Peter Mulder, Dr. Zahi Hawass arrived in Cape Town on Tuesday 15th August where he stayed at the Cape Grace Hotel at the Waterfront. Two lectures were given at the Baxter Concert Hall on 16th and 17th August with Cape Town City Mayor, Helen Zille as guest of honour.  On both occasions the Concert Hall was sold out with many people turned away. Following the first lecture a “Meet & Greet” event was arranged for guests and TESSA members. Many took the opportunity to have books by him duly autographed.

During his Cape Town stay, Dr. Hawass visited the University of Stellenbosch where he talked to students and enjoyed the hospitality of the university and that of Professors Sakkie Cornelius and Johann Cook.  The TESSA Committee ensured that Dr. Hawass saw as much as possible of Cape Town during his short visit.  He visited Cape Point, ascended Table Mountain by the cable car and was well entertained at various dinners where his exuberance and enthusiasm for Cape Town were well noted.  Dr. Hawass suggested that he would like to return to Cape Town and there is the hope and expectation that he will indeed do so.  We truly look forward to that.

Corporate member Egypt Today CC, plus EgyptAir and Marcus Brewster Publicity sponsored part of the costs and kind donations were  received from Mike & Shirley  Beaumont, Debbie Blinkhorn, Anlen Boshoff, Dr. Rob Brown, Colin & Marian Cohen and Norma Harris.

The entire project was co-ordinated  meticulously by Jane Mulder, assisted by her sub-committee – Peter Mulder, Nerine & Thomas Dorman and Robin Hammond.  Well done everyone and especially Jane Mulder. – Brava!

The Society has completed its first decade having achieved national and international visibility in line with the objectives of the Society to foster an  appreciation and understanding of ancient Egypt. There are few societies in Cape Town, perhaps even in South Africa, that are as active as ours – with a strong membership and attendance at meetings, financially secure and with excellent facilities. Members have access to a superb free specialised lending and reference library, regular meetings and lectures, national and international visibility with an unsurpassable record of world-ranking lecturers like Dr. Kent Weeks, Prof. Mostafa el Abbadi and the redoubtable Dr. Zahi Hawass. TESSA also has the benefit of superb local lecturers and some are shown in photographs in the special commemorative edition of SHEMU.

In the words of H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, wife of the President of Egypt and Chair of the Board of Trustees of Bibliotheca Alexandrina: “The goal of this enormous project is to honour the past, to celebrate the present and to invent the Future . . . The role of the library is to promote dialogue of cultures specifically in the fields of knowledge, science, culture, art . . . a centre of excellence in research and documentation, and a source of pride for Egypt and the entire world”.

With these words ringing through the halls of the resurrected Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Dr. Peter Lor, National Librarian, National Library of South Africa, presented the opening address of ALEXANDRIA IN CAPE TOWN in the Baxter Concert Hall on Friday 12 April 2002.

Dr. Lor pointed out the positive cultural relationship established between South Africa and Egypt since the 1990′s and that the new library would serve to close the gaps created between peoples and their cultures over a span of many centuries. Chief guest speaker Professor Mostafa El Abbadi from the University of Alexandria was introduced by Dr. Lor and then presented the first paper of the five he was due to deliver over the two days. For convenience, the five papers presented by Professor El Abbadi will be covered first in this review..

Alexandria – “The Greatest Emporium in the Inhabited World”

Professor Dr. El Abbadi, an impeccable figure of elegance and charm, the moving “spirit” behind the re-establishing of the great library, told his audience that when first approached by the TESSA Chairman, Keith Grenville, to visit Cape Town, the prospect of such a journey appeared to be “an attempt of the impossible”. However, thanks to the persistent enterprise of Keith and his team, the “impossible” became the “possible”. The lecture covered the very beginnings of the harbour on the pre-Alexandrian site; the founding of this great city in 326 B.C. as an international centre and how it became the greatest trading centre of the world by 26 BC, when under Roman dominance, it controlled the sea route to India.

On the Transmittance of Egyptian Learning into Greek: 2nd Lecture.

Dr. Mostafa divided this huge dimension of learning between these two great peoples through the evolution of time into three phases: the first phase covered the significance of the ancient Nile flow – “the giver of life”. The second phase gave rise to uncovering the mysteries of the heavens which lead to the science of Astronomy and Time Measurement. The third phase uncovered the instruments of astronomy – technology. At this point, we as modern-day man of the 21st century, could only agree that whatever seems “amazing” in our world today, we owe to the incredible thirst for knowledge about our universe by the men of these ancient nations.

Alexander, the Egyptian Pharaoh: Lecture 3

What inspires greatness in man? Is it his own natural vision or an insatiable drive; or is it a birthright? According to the legend of the Alexander Romance, Alexander’s mother, Queen Olympias, consorted with an Egyptian magician/priest who appeared to her as the god Amun. She gave birth to a son who was to become one of the greatest Greek leaders of ancient time and was proclaimed “divine” pharaoh. His legacy of vision and courage has remained part of Greek/Egyptian history since his death in 324 BC.

The Alexandria Library, Past and Present: Lecture 4.

Professor El Abbadi modestly and briefly mentioned how he conceived the idea exactly thirty years ago of daring to imagine that the great ancient Library of Alexandria should be revived in modern times with similar aims and objectives.

It was the most inspiring and enriching lecture for me. The ancient library, established by Ptolemy I (Soter) in 288 BC, came alive and before me appeared the scholars from all over the known world speaking in their many different tongues on so many diverse subjects. Over 700,000 scrolls to pour over! Literary giants such as Plato and Aristotle, Aristarchus – the first to proclaim that the earth revolves around the sun; Hipparchus – the first to measure the solar year; Euclid – the father of geometry; Archimedes – the greatest mathematician; Callimachus – poet and the father of “Library Science” – the methodical cataloguing of books by topic and author. There was also the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek making it accessible to all learned people. This was the greatness of the Hellenistic culture and civilization with the city of Alexandria as its centre. The inevitable question remains: was Alexandrian culture and scholarship Greek or Egyptian? There is no doubt that both peoples should be proud of this timeless legacy.

Underwater Archaeology in Alexandria and Abou-Kir: Lecture 5.

The exciting underwater discoveries originated by amateur enterprise has attained official recognition in Egypt. The lecture examined the explorations undertaken illustrated with photographs of sculpture, jewellery, coins and artefacts found beneath the water. The future prospects of this comparatively new branch of archaeology has enormous potential.

An Egyptian image of Alexandria: special guest lecturer Professor Azza Kararah.

Professor Kararah’s mesmerising dramatic skill held us captivated as she gave a personal rendition of The Downfall of Cleopatra by Ahmed Shawqi (1869 – 1932), the “prince of poets” of the Arab world. This dramatic piece, written as a verse-play, shows the influence of Shakespeare whom the dramatist greatly admired.

The second piece, Miramar by Nobel Prize winning author Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt’s most highly acclaimed novelist, is set in a pensione on the Mediterranean sea front. It captures the Neapolitan nature of Alexandria in the 1960s – a turbulent political time and the writer shows great compassion as the characters face their dilemmas.

Professor Dereck Sparks (University of Cape Town) delivered a paper Alexandria – a bridge between East and West and illustrated a wealth of scientific inventions and accomplishments enabling scientific development during a rich period of history.

Stellenbosch University was well represented. Professor Sakkie Cornelius delivered a colourful and visually exciting view of The Many Faces of Cleopatra from Alexandria to Cyberspace. This informative lecture was well received at the end of the first day.

Also from Stellenbosch University was Professor Johann Cook’s The Alexandrian Origins of the Septuagint. This fascinating account of the translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch text into Greek was punctuated with examples of the development of the language. Professor Cook, with his customary energy, returned to the platform on the second day of the seminar with some details of the creation of the Coptic language in his paper Egyptian Coptic Culture.

Professor Anthony Humphreys (University of the Western Cape) delivered a very interesting and detailed paper Cleopatra: The Woman and her World which looked beyond the mythology of this extraordinary person and at the political pressures placed on her by the Roman empire.

A fascinating demo-lecture was presented by Dr. Barry Smith on the organ in the Concert Hall. He discussed the origins of the organ which was first invented as a “Hydraulis” by the engineer Ctesibius during the 3rd century. BC.

This truly memorable and enriching symposium, moderated throughout by Society Chairman Keith Grenville, was the strongest and most authoritative academic platform focused entirely on Egypt ever presented in South Africa – a mighty feather in the cap of The Egyptian Society of South Africa.

On September 5th 2000, Dr. Kent Weeks and his wife Susan arrived at Cape Town International Airport  for their first visit to South Africa and a 10-day National Lecture Tour arranged by the Executive Committee of The Egyptian Society of SA with the assistance of generous sponsors and benefactors.

As a national society with international recognition it was time for us to ‘test the waters’ with this style of lecture tour by a world-renowned Egyptologist. Our objective was accomplished with a total of 6 lectures delivered country-wide by Dr. Kent Weeks. The first lecture at the University of Cape Town swiftly sold out and Kent Weeks willingly agreed to deliver a repeat lecture the same evening. The second lecture was very well attended. Subsequent lectures were enthusiastically received at the Universities of Stellenbosch, Natal, Witwatersrand and Pretoria. The success of the project was enhanced by wide radio coverage with Kent Weeks being interviewed on local and national radio, some press coverage, and culminating with a television interview on M-Net’s Carte Blanche on Sunday 10 September, accompanied by excellent visual material and presented by Ruda Landman.

In his lecture, entitled The Lost Tomb, Kent Weeks briefly covered the history of exploration in Egypt, with the plunder, exploitation, destruction of valuable papyri, artefacts and other excesses, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. The presentation continued with details of the appalling threat to the existence of tombs and monuments by modern farming methods, the rising water table, pollution and the damaging effects of tourism and its development. Aware of this massive threat to the 6 square kilometre Theban necropolis and the need for a dependable and comprehensive atlas of this World Heritage Site, Kent Weeks founded the Theban Mapping Project (TMP) in 1978. The lecture then moved to the discovery by Dr. Weeks and his team of the lost tomb of the sons of Ramesses II (KV5) and his eventual breakthrough into areas of the tomb hitherto unknown and unrecorded since antiquity. It was from this point that he led the audience through a series of photographs showing the gradual and methodical exploration of the tomb, the painstaking excavation and conservation, the retrieval of items of jewellery, pottery, and painted fragments of limestone plaster. Finally, he spoke of the mummy of a royal male with arms crossed in the Osiris position found with three other skulls lying in a pit near the entrance to the tomb. It is supposed the mummy remains had been dragged to the entrance by tomb robbers in antiquity to search in the light for associated gold items. Having said that work in the tomb has revealed 150 chambers, Kent Weeks confidently prophesied that the number of chambers will increase to 200 by the end of the April 2001 excavation season. Undoubtedly the largest tomb ever found in Egypt, KV5 represents a unique royal family mausoleum which will continue to be excavated for many years to come and is likely to throw light on many aspects of the lives of Ramesses II, his sons and the New Kingdom period. Kent Weeks finished his lecture with a CD-ROM presentation showing an impressive example of the planned Theban necropolis database, comprehensive search and visual facilities to be available on a CD-ROM at a later date.

Susan Weeks accompanied her husband throughout the South African tour. She is an integral member of his team in Egypt, specialising in pottery. Her art work illustrates her husband’s book The Lost Tomb which was on sale at all lecture venues.

Their first day in a very wet Cape Town was spent entirely with live and recorded radio interviews, newspaper and a television interviews. Unfortunately, the hectic schedule allowed very little time for sightseeing but meals were taken at carefully chosen venues affording some impression of each of the cities. A short tour of the Cape Town area and peninsula, the drive to Stellenbosch and a free day in that area gave our guests a feeling of the Cape. In Durban a visit to the Valley of a Thousand Hills and the city environs, with lunch at Umhlanga was appreciated and then in Johannesburg a meeting with Professor Phillip Tobias and a private viewing of the Taung skull followed by a visit to the Sterkfontein caves proved to be a highlight of their short visit.

The Egyptian Society is delighted to have presented Kent Weeks in South Africa – a man whose name is as synonymous with KV5 as Howard Carter’s is with KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun.

One aspect of Egyptology that has always caused me slight irritation – and probably many others too, is the continuing confusion over royal names, with one (mainly American) school of thought preferring to call the builder of the Great Pyramid “Khufu”, whilst the other (mainly British) preferring “Cheops”, and so on throughout all the major dynasties. The Khufu school, as one might call it, will refer to a certain 18th dynasty pharaoh as “Amonhotep”, whilst the Cheops school will call the same man “Amenophis”.

The trouble arises because, in most cases, we cannot know how the Egyptians pronounced their names, or  in fact, most of the words in their language. They did not leave us any helpful vowel sounds in hieroglyphic.  A great deal of detective work over the years has only made things more difficult – and we have been driven to various devices to make Egyptian words pronounceable at all; for example, inserting the modern “e” sound where the vowel-sound is unknown.

Sir Alan H. Gardiner tackles the problem head-on in his large and authoritative Egyptian Grammar stating, “Egyptology has … been committed to the classical royal names Menes, Cheops, and Mycerinus; and it is therefore quite reasonable to add to the number Ammenemes, for Imm-m-het, Sesostris for S-n-Wsret, … Ramesses for R’-ms-sw, etc.” Gardiner was British, and it’s the British who have traditionally been ‘committed’ to that approach.  He goes on to describe the difficulties that arise when we try different ways of transliterating Egyptian. Seeing how French and German Egyptologists can differ (not to mention Italian and Polish) one can see that he has a point. At least with the Greek-style  names left to us by Herodotus and Manetho there is some measure of agreement about who we are referring to.

However, many Egyptologists feel that the Greek names are far too removed from the Egyptian original – that even if we cannot be precisely on target with a pronunciation, we should at least try to get as close as we can. Take one example; “Ramesses” in the British tradition is a useful, pronounceable version of a name that  may, I emphasize “may”, have been pronounced “Ria-ma-sse-zu” – and that is how the contemporary Babylonians (who did leave us some guidance to their pronunciation) referred to him. The British version is more convenient – even to the Americans – and is unlikely to give way to a more accurate spelling.

My own preference has always been “Amunhotep” rather than “Amenophis”, and “Amunemhet” rather than “Ammenemes”.  I realise that even with Amunhotep there can be several versions, such as “Amonhotep”, and even “Amonhatpe”. Nevertheless, I feel somewhat closer to the man when using a “near-miss” version than when using what I might almost call a “cop-out” version taken from the Greeks.

It is useful to remember that among both schools of Egyptology there is general agreement that the names of ordinary non-royal Egyptians are usually written in the “Khufu” style, thus keeping the “Cheops” style for kings.  This is a handy way of distinguishing them when dealing with periods when many royal and non-royal people carried the same name. Not everyone called Charles is a Prince of Wales!

A last niggling thought: is Cheops pronounced “Chee-ops” or “Kee-ops”?

The fate of the original Great Library of Alexandria is shrouded in mystery. It was built during the reign of Ptolemy Soter, one of the Greek Ptolemies who ruled Egypt for the last 300 years of the first millennium BC. The library is said to have contained more than 500,000 texts from through-out the known world. After 245 BC, 120,000 scrolls were catalogued by Calimachus of Cyrene, who became librarian that year. Among the library’s alumni can be included Euclid, Archimedes, Philo, Plotinus and Plato. According to Seneca, Julius Caesar inadvertently set alight a book storage depot close to Alexandria harbour when he was under siege by Cleopatra’s brother Achilleas in the city in 47 BC. It is said he did not deliberately set the library ablaze, and the book store did not contain more than a fraction of the library collection.

Roman Emperor Theodosius I, in 385 AD, outlawed all teaching centres run by pagan philosophers causing the ancient library to be taken over by the Bishops of Alexandria who used the facilities to train aspirant priests in rhetoric and logic. The “Bishop’s School” was dissolved in 641 AD when Egypt was conquered by the Muslims. A fire broke out during the battle for the city – the conquering general is said to have ordered the rescue of the books coupled with instructions to destroy any that contradicted the Koran.

Fire was a common danger in ancient cities and the Alexandria library was threatened more than once. In additional to 641 AD, there were fires in the 300’s and 400’s when Alexandrian Christians rioted in response to theological arguments. Following each damaging fire before 641, the persons responsible for the library would have been able to replace the losses to a certain extent. There were, after all, other libraries in the Greek-speaking world.

Out of the ashes, the modern library grows – , when complete in late 2000, it will look magnificent on the 63,000 square metre site. The size of the bookshelves is the basic unit of the entire design, with the size of books therefore the basic unit of the building. The circular 10 storey building (32 metres), suggesting the disc of the sun, tilts forward at an angle of 20 degrees towards the sea to the north with the front part sunk below ground level. To the south, a windowless back wall of red granite from Upper Egypt will carry representative inscriptions in the varied scripts of the region. An imaginative use of light, facilitated by a complex arrangement of skylights which form the disk-like roof, will provide natural light at the same time deflecting the harsh Egyptian sun.

The future is symbolized by the two-thirds of the building that is above ground level, consigning the past 2,000 years to below ground.   An assorted array of letters and symbols from all languages will be carved into a rough-hewn wall encircling the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The budget for the project is $167 million from the Egyptian government, UNESCO and other subscribers.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s $1.5m annual book budget is intended to lead to the creation of a collection numbering 8 million books by 2002, along with up to 4,000 newspapers and periodicals, 50,000 manuscripts and rare books, as well as 50,000 maps. Alongside the traditional collection, the library intends to amass up to 250,000 audio and audio-visual aids, as well as establishing links to overseas computer databases and permanent internet access.

The library is envisaged as a resource centre for the study of Mediterranean civilization and, like its famous ancestor, the library will be connected to a complex of scholarly facilities and museums.  It is situated on the Corniche, near the city centre and the University of Alexandria’s arts faculty, close to the presumed site of the original library. The team of young Norwegian architects won an architectural competition with their earthquake-proof building, have also included in the complex a science museum, a calligraphy museum, a planetarium, a school of information science, exhibition areas and auditoria, a restoration and conservation laboratory and employment for a staff of 400.