Historical and Archaeological Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Culture: Religious Ideas and Ritual Practice in Middle Kingdom Elite Cemeteries

401 Pages·2014·6.79 MB·English

by  Harco Willems

Historical and Archaeological Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Culture
Culture and History of the
Ancient Near East
Founding Editor
M.H.E. Weippert
Editor-in-Chief
Jonathan Stökl
Editors
Eckart Frahm
W. Randall Garr
Baruch Halpern
Theo P.J. van den Hout
Leslie Anne Warden
Irene J. Winter

VOLUME 73
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/chan
Historical and Archaeological
Aspects of Egyptian
Funerary Culture
Religious Ideas and Ritual Practice in
Middle Kingdom Elite Cemeteries
By
Harco Willems
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Original Title: Les textes des sarcophages et la démocratie ©2008 Librairie Cybele, Paris France.
Published with permission of Librairie Cybele.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Willems, Harco.
 [Textes des sarcophages et la démocratie. English]
 Historical and archaeological aspects of Egyptian funerary culture : religious ideas and ritual practice in
Middle Kingdom elite cemeteries / by Harco Willems.
  pages cm. — (Culture and history of the ancient Near East, ISSN 1566-2055 ; volume 73)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-27498-3 (hardback : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27499-0 (e-book)
1. Coffin texts. 2. Egypt—Antiquities. 3. Egypt—History—Middle Kingdom, ca. 2180–ca. 1551 B.C.
4. Egypt—Religious life and customs. 5. Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient—Egypt. 6. Cemeteries—
Egypt—History—To 1500. 7. Tombs—Social aspects—Egypt—History—To 1500. 8. Elite (Social
sciences)—Egypt—History—To 1500. 9. Democratization—Egypt—History—To 1500. I. Title.
 PJ1554.W55513 2014
 893’.1—dc23
2014010878
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issn 1566-2055
isbn 978 90 04 27498 3 (hardback)
isbn 978 90 04 27499 0 (e-book)
Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
Preface  vii
Note to the Reader  x
Introduction  1
1 Nomarchal Culture: Political, Administrative, Social, and Religious
Aspects  4
The Origin of the Nomes  5
The Nomes during the Fifth Dynasty  23
Nome Administration under the Sixth Dynasty  28
Regional Administration during the First Intermediate Period and the
Middle Kingdom  33
The Nomarch Title in Egyptian and in Egyptology  53
2 A Middle Kingdom Nomarchal Cemetery: Dayr al-Barshā  59
The 2006 Excavations in Zone 10  73
The Early Middle Kingdom Nomarchal Cemetery in Zone 2  76
1. The Evidence of the Shaft Types  77
2. The Debate on the Date of the Nehri Graffiti (once more)  79
3. The Ahanakht I Tomb Group  87
The Ritual Landscape of Dayr al-Barshā  98
3 The Coffin Texts and Democracy  124
The Roots of the ‘Democratic Hypothesis’  125
Transformations of the Funerary Equipment during the First Intermediate
Period and the Middle Kingdom  135
A Demographic Perspective on the Coffin Texts  140
Quantification of the Decorated Coffins from Dayr al-Barshā  146
Quantification of the Decorated Coffins from Banī Ḥasan  154
Quantification of the Decorated Coffins from Asyūṭ  156
The Uneven Distribution of the Coffin Texts  158
The Geographic Distribution of the Coffin Texts  165
Saqqāra and Abū Ṣīr  168
Thebes and al-Lisht  172
Middle Egypt  176
The Coffin Texts and Funerary Religion in Nomarchal Key Sites  177
vi contents
A Hypothesis on the Meaning of the Coffin Texts  182
The Letters to the Dead  184
Coffin Texts Spells 131–146  185
Coffin Texts Spell 149  186
Coffin Texts Spells 30–41  187
Coffin Texts Spell 312  190
A First Conclusion  192
The Case of Heqata  193
The Case of the Coffins of the Mid-Twelfth Dynasty  195
Conclusion  199
Family Life in the Middle Kingdom  201
The Coffin Texts and the Nomarchs’ Courts  206
Owners of ‘Text Coffins’ and Users of Coffin Texts  211
The ‘Bottom-up’ Proliferation of Funerary Customs  219
Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Coffin Texts  225
Concordance to the Sigla of Coffin Texts Manuscripts and Middle
Kingdom Coffins  230
Bibliography  316
Plates  351
Index  365
Preface
The present volume is a translated and thoroughly reworked version of a book I pub-
lished in 2008 under the title Les Textes des Sarcophages et la démocratie. Éléments
d’une histoire culturelle du Moyen Empire égyptien. This earlier edition was based on
four lectures I presented in May 2006 at the invitation by Christiane Zivie-Coche at the
École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences religieuses in Paris. I take this
occasion once more to thank her for her hospitality.
For several years before my temporary appointment at the ÉPHE, I had already been
pondering the idea to write a book on the Middle Kingdom nomarchs, but I had never
really found the time to embark in earnest on this project. The need to organize my
thoughts for the lecture series was therefore a useful preliminary step towards this
planned volume. During my stay in Paris, Christiane moreover asked me to publish my
lectures as a monograph to be published by Cybèle. This proved to be a breakthrough,
for, based on the French text I already had prepared for my lectures, I was able to write
within a year the book that I had had in mind for so long. My gratitude to Christiane
Zivie-Coche is therefore great, and this not only in a professional sense. I cherish the
recollection of the cups of coffee we drank before my weekly lectures in Le Sorbon, and
of the wonderful meals we had in Christiane’s apartment or in some Parisian restau-
rants. The conversations we had during these encounters were not only most enter-
taining, but also helped me to develop some ideas that were still only in an embryonic
state. Thus, the pages devoted to the “demography of the Coffin Texts,” which are
essential to this book, really derive from some ideas casually advanced by Christiane.
This volume has a long history, bringing together an assemblage of several initially
quite unconnected ideas I developed since the late 1980s. The first chapter has its
roots in a lecture I delivered in a course series entitled “Samfund og historie,” which
I taught in 1995 during a guest professorship I held at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute of
the University of Copenhagen. The second chapter presents some of the recent results
(2002–2012) of the excavations I direct in the Dayr al-Barshā region.1
The central hypothesis presented in the third chapter was publicly presented for
the first time during the conference “Textes des Pyramides et Textes des Sarcophages,”
which Bernard Mathieu organized between 24 and 26 September 2001 at the IFAO in
1 I have to express my gratitude for the financial support of the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds
of the University of Leuven and the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek―Vlaanderen.
Other research was funded by subvention by the Nationale Bank van België (2006), a federal
project funded by the Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO), a Marie-Curie Fellowship sponsored
by the EU, and private sponsorship. I also have to thank the many team members who, over
the years, have participated in the field work in Middle Egypt.
viii preface
Cairo.2 A very preliminary version of the main lines of the argument presented below
was first published in the article “Het nomarchaat als politieke, sociale en religieuze
factor in de Egyptische provincie,” Phoenix 46.2 (2000), p. 72–104.
Soon after the publication of the French edition of this book, several authors used
or commented upon the ideas I propounded there. Here I have to mention in particu-
lar an article by Mark Smith and another by Harold Hays.3 Both agree with the pres-
ent author that the idea of a so-called “democratization of the Afterlife” is entirely
unfounded. However, there is a difference of approach between the account I wrote in
2008 and theirs. My study was intended as a criticism of the old theory that the Coffin
Texts were degenerated Pyramid Texts that developed after the Old Kingdom, and that
this development amounted to a popularization of these ancient royal texts. Therefore,
my account focused on the assessment of post-Old Kingdom evidence. Hays and
Smith, however, argue that Old Kingdom evidence exists demonstrating that private
persons already used texts akin to the Pyramid Texts at that time.
I accept their accounts (partially in the case of Smith) as valuable additions to the
debate, but contra Smith, I fail to see any fundamental contradiction between the two
approaches. Rather, both address parts of a wider, related issue.
I had already reacted to Smith’s somewhat exaggerated account in a still unpub-
lished article when Thomas Schneider provided me with some corrections and addi-
tions to my account of the role of Hermann Kees in the formulation and dissemination
of the “democratic hypothesis.” Later, when we met for the first time during a confer-
ence in Basel, Schneider kindly proposed to me to have my book published in English
in the CHAN series. I am most grateful for this offer, not only because this helps to
disseminate my ideas among a non-French-speaking audience, but also because it
gave me an early opportunity to reconsider my thoughts in the light of recent develop-
ments in Egyptology.
In all, the bibliography has increased by about 30%, mainly on the basis of the most
recent literature. I have personally translated the text into English. Having to do so is
(after some grudges at the beginning) something I am grateful for. A translator would
have been obliged to adhere as closely as possible to my original text. However, in the
present case, the translator being identical to the author, a less respectful attitude
could be observed with regard to the original text. Many parts were in fact completely
rewritten. This has in several cases led to fresh insights, in other cases to the reinforce-
ment (and, occasionally, rejection) of my earlier ideas. However, on the whole, I believe
that my earlier account, enriched by novel insights, still stands.
2 For reasons of time, I was unable to publish my lecture in the congress proceedings.
3 Smith, s.v. Democratization of the Afterlife, in: UEE; Hays, in: Old Kingdom, New Perspectives,
p. 115–130.
preface ix
The work on the translation took almost as much time as writing the original ver-
sion had. This time investment would not have been possible without the support of
the Gutenberg Forschungskolleg of the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, which
generously funded a research fellowship on my behalf from April 2012 until March
2013. I express my sincere gratitude to Tanja Pommerening and Ulli Verhoeven for sup-
porting the application for this fellowship, besides for their friendship during my stay
in Mainz.
I am grateful to Thomas Schneider for accepting my translated book in the CHAN
series. My English was corrected by Troy L. Sagrillo, whom I thank for not only for his
usual thoroughness, but also for the suggestions he made to help improve the content
of my text. I also express my thanks to Marleen De Meyer and Wouter Claes for their
help with some illustrations.
The previous version of this book was dedicated to the late Jac. J. Janssen. Certainly
my exposure as a student to his (then) unorthodox Egyptological interests have greatly
contributed to who I am now as a scholar. The present, reworked version I dedicate to
the late Samīr Anīs, whom I am proud to call a friend. Without his staunch support as
a General Director of Antiquities in Middle Egypt, some of the results reported upon in
this volume could not have been attained. I greatly miss him.
Mainz, 7 November 2012