Walk With an Egyptian

The trouble with ancient Egyptian history is quantity. There is too much of it and too little of it.

It’s hard to get your head around how much history we’re talking about. Egypt had dynasties that lasted longer that the whole history of the United States. The English monarchy stretches back over a thousand years, and is still only a fraction of pharaonic history. From the assassination of Julius Caesar to next Tuesday would count as only about two thirds of ancient Egypt. From the earliest kings to the end of the late period, we’re looking at about 3000 years of history.

You’ll read that Set, for example, was an evil god. And a hero god. The mother of Isis is Hathor. And Nut. Bast is Bastet. She is a lioness. And a kitty. She is a goddess of perfumes. Except when she isn’t. She is also the goddess Wadjet. So is Mut, who is also Bast.

Confused? Of course. Egyptian religion was by no means static, and with all that time things changed a lot. Different parts of the land might have different views of the same gods or even different gods at the same time, and these differences would work themselves out, blending and merging, one set of ideas replacing another, all while the Nile rose and fell.

And while the Nile rose and fell wars were fought, dynasties came and went, priestly orders became rich and powerful and lost power and wealth. Crops were gathered, records were kept, justice was dispensed, grain was stored, taxes were levied, poems were written, bread was baked, pyramids and temples were built, paper was made, beer was brewed, crypts were excavated, walls were painted, herds were fed, people lived their lives, died, and were entombed.

Here’s the part about there being too little history. While all this was going on no one thought to stop and write down all the details. What were the lives of the people like? How did they live? What did they think? Who were they?

I just stumbled across a book in the Royal Library that answers some of these questions. John Romer’s Ancient Lives is a history of one village that existed near the city of Thebes, from about 1300 to about 1050 BC. This was a special village. It’s citizens were artisans, architects, laborers, and scribes. This was the village of the royal tomb makers.

We’re not talking about pyramids here. It had been centuries since anyone had made one of those. Pyramids were as distant to them as Shakespeare, the Reformation, and the Ming Dynasty are to us. Egyptians of this period buried their kings in a royal valley. It was the job of the villagers to dig out the crypts and prepare them for their eventual inhabitants.

The village was a remarkable place, filled with all kinds of people, educated scribes and hearty laborers, their wives, children, and parents. They worked, played, fought, prayed, made works of surpassing beauty, committed crimes, got rich, got poor, and generally lived. And like all living things, the village eventually died, leaving some of the records of the scribes, the things that they built, the foundations of their houses, and the detritus of their lives.

It is from these little things that Romer pieces together the lives of the tomb builders. A mention by a scribe here, a bit of graffiti there, an inscription in this tomb, a mention in that royal record, these are the puzzle parts that come together to tell the story of real people of long ago. The reader meets scribes, apprentices, and foremen, cops and politicians, all sorts of regular folks. We get to know their names, know how they lived, what they ate, what made them happy and who they were feuding with. We see how big changes that make it into history books affected the lives of the people.

The period covered includes some of the most remarkable events in the history of the little village. We see the good times, when the royal commissions poured in. We see the busy times, when pharaoh after pharaoh died young, and the tomb-makers had to scramble to make the partly completed places ready. Romer tells us about the lean times that culminated in what may be the first strike in the history of labor. He tells us about the bad times, when the tomb makers became some of the earliest tomb looters, and how the justice system of the time dealt with it.

It’s a magic act that Romer performs here. An alchemy of impressive scholarship and good writing that bring the ancient dead back to life. A used copy can be had for pretty short money. More that worth it.