February 24-26: Old Kingdom II

QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION ON FRIDAY

Class on Friday will consist of an active discussion portion during which all students will be asked to participate in answering the following questions and any others that you might have - which you should post here to the wiki. I have posted some questions here, but these are not all encompassing! If you are reading and you think of questions add them here so that we might be able to discuss them in class.

Posted at Feb 24/2010 07:55PM:
JuliaTroche: For all of these questions think SPECIFICALLY about SPECIFIC texts which you are reading (page number references even!). I would recommend for every text addressing the questions listed below under "generally." For the questions I have listed under "specifically", and for the other questions which will surely be added by your fellow students and the other graduate students I would not be overwhelmed feeling as though you need page number references for EVERY question. However, it would be wise to feel competent enough in the TOPICS of the questions to engage in discussion AND I would strongly advice to pick a few questions for which you delve into a little deeper so that you can talk confidently on some questions at least.

--GENERALLY-- While you read I think it is imperative to ask yourself three key questions, for EACH text: 1. WHO is writing this? 2. WHO is the audience, for whom is this text intended (this does not always have to only include the living aka the dead and gods can be audience too!)? 3. what is the CONTEXT of the text? Is is in public view? Is it inscribed stone? Is it papyrus?

Concurrently it is important to be thinking about what is the content of the text? Who are the main actors in the text? Is there an obvious agenda being pushed? Can we categorize the text into a genre? (one could even argue about the validity of the genres, but it is still helpful to mentally categorize the texts because that is the way our minds work and it can help us figure out the context and function of a text. However, be careful not to let a genre be a impenetrable wall separating texts. Many texts contain elements of multiple genres within them!)

--SPECIFICALLY-- In the case of tomb biographies (also called 'autobiographies') how literal can we take the claims made in them? Did every tomb owner who claimed to feed the hungry ACTUALLY give food to the hungry? Is the purpose here to relate actual events or to relate a characterization of oneself?

It is easy for us to recognize a text as ritual and/or religious and therefore we immediate raise caution when reading the text because its main purpose is obviously not historical accuracy. However, what cautions do we need to take when reading an administrative text - or do we need to take any cautions at all? Can we trust administrative texts as possessing greater 'historical truths' than religious texts (aka Does the Palermo Stone or a Royal Decree carry more weight when trying to reconstruct history than a temple text like the festival offering calendar or a biography which is set in a ritualized tomb context?)?

Amanda:

1. What can tomb biographies tell us about the nature of kingship in the Old Kingdom? How does the king relate to these "private" individuals and how is it manifest in what is included in each biography? What common threads can be seen in the tomb biographies and how do offerings function in these texts? What can these tell us about what was important to an Egyptian living in the Old Kingdom (in either life or death) and how they wanted to be remembered?

2. How much truth can we glean from the description of king's exploits in lists such as the Palermo Stone? When considering this, think about the authors and the intended audiences of these lists, and how these factors often determined what was included in such lists. For those who have had other Egyptian history or art classes, what motifs continue into later period?

3. What makes a text an "administrative text? What kind of information is found in such texts and what does it tell us about the running of the state during the Old Kingdom? What was the relationship between these various bureaucrats with each other and with the king? What can be said about religious practices in the Old Kingdom when considering these and the festival texts?

Posted at Feb 24/2010 10:19PM:
Edward Kelting: Text 227's specificity seems to suggest greater historical accuracy than the other more formulaic biographies. How does this story--in which Rewer is pardoned for interrupting a ceremony and inadvertently touching the king--function in a funerary context? How is Rewer--or the scribe who wrote it--presenting this interaction with the king? Is it presented in his tomb solely because the king wished it to be so, or does it serve to show some form of closeness to the king? More generally, how does this narrative alter other forms of evidence for ritualistic modes of interaction between the king and his administration?

Posted at Feb 25/2010 09:44PM:
Julie Pridham: Inscription B from the sun temple of Niuserre employs the phrase, “fashioning and opening the mouth in the House of Gold of (statues of) Re and Hathor (Strudwick p. 90).” The actions implied in the statement most likely refer to daily cult rituals which involved a priest dressing, anointing, feeding, etc. the cult statue of a god. Since the statue was considered to BE the god, such rituals were vital to the functions of the cult and the religion, tying back to the sense of balancing Ma’at. The phrase, “fashioning and opening of the mouth in the House of Gold of (statues of) X,” is also used in several instances within the Palermo Stone. In the cases Sahure (see p. 71) and Neferirkare (see p. 73) this phrase is used in reference to statues of the king. Can this fact be used as evidence of the king being a god in life? If so, how is it impacted by considering the audiences of first the sun temple and second the Palermo Stone?

Posted at Feb 25/2010 09:51PM:
Oren Siegel: I find it particularly interesting that text 256 closes with Weni mentioning how he is “imakhu in the eyes of Osiris.” The problematic term “the democratization of the afterlife” is usually mentioned in the context of the Middle Kingdom and the emergence of coffin texts, but are there elements of this phenomenon already in the Late 6th dynasty tomb biographies? More broadly, are there differences between the gods that are mentioned in biographical texts versus those in royal decrees or inscriptions, and if so, what are they?

Posted at Feb 25/2010 11:07PM:
Anqi Zhang:

I find the Festival Offering Calender for the sun Temple of Niuserre interesting. First of all, it mentions a lot of Ancient Egyptian measuring units and I wonder if we actually have archaeological evidence to tell how much each is. And secondly, the numbers are so specific but how valid are they? Would the number be exaggerated? Did the king give offerings only as a state duty or did he also give offerings to make a wish for himself?

Posted at Feb 26/2010 12:14AM:
Katherine Davis: I noticed when reading the royal decrees is that they are in the format of letters, addressed to specific people, who are instructed to do or not do various things. What does this say about the administrative system? Who was directly responsible for ensuring the king's orders were carried out, especially when multiple people of varying ranks (i.e. both a vizier and a more minor official)? and in a larger sense, to what degree is all royal speech a decree, simply by virtue of coming from the king?

Posted at Feb 26/2010 02:56AM:
Kathryn Howley: Something that struck me about some of the biographies was the motif of the 'self-made man': how much does this reflect reality? For example, in text 198, Ankhmeryremeryptah claims to have been plucked from obscurity as 'one of many' builders by the king. And yet later he tells us that his brother is 'overseer of works'. So it seems unlikely that the tomb owner has been successful completely on his own merits without the benefits of birth and influence. Why does he want to give the illusion of humble origins? But in 256 Weni lists all his promotions over time, so should we assume that it was possible and even normal to work one's way up the ranks?

Places where the king is quoted: e.g. 232, 241. Usually in letters. Should we imagine that these quotations derive from an original document? How much do they resemble the original source? How much input would the king have had into writing such letters?

Use of 1st and 3rd person: most biographies written in the 1st person, but Rewer (227) is in the 3rd person (i.e. 'Rewer did this' rather than 'I did this'). I wonder if there is a specific reason for this, more examples etc?

In general, the biographies seem obsessed with the king. True, the king is mentioned for the purpose of making the tomb owner sound good, but it could also be argued that the only way the tomb owners could measure their self-worth and success was through the medium of the king. It seems very unusual to me that this should be stressed in a funerary context- or is this only modern society's obsession with individualism influencing me?