One has to appreciate the neatness with which the Ancient Egyptians divided up their calendar: they recognised twelve months of thirty days each (each month having three ten-day weeks). A keen mathematician will notice that gives us a total of 360 days, five days short of the 365 (and then some) that the earth takes to go around the sun. (The Ancient Egyptians dealt with the “and then some” in different ways in different periods, but for our purposes let’s imagine our planet revolves neatly every 365 days). So what did they do with those five extra days, which we’re currently living through?

If you’re reading this on 27th July, then the old year ended yesterday and we are currently in the “Days Before the Year” - five days that exist outside of traditional time, yet which herald the new year.

Sopdet, the Star Goddess

The Ancient Egyptians identified the five ‘extra days’ in their calendar with the birthdays of the gods, Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys, in that order. As the night following Nephthys’ birthday came to an end, Sirius would appear briefly on the Eastern Horizon before the sunrise. Prior to this, the star would have been invisible for seventy days, its rising obscured by the light of the sun. This event probably became auspicious to the Ancient Egyptians because Sirius’ rising usually coincided with the beginning of the Nile floods. They were well aware that the floods brought fertility to the land and the people were utterly dependent upon them for the following year’s harvest. Low floods or no floods could potentially mean a famine was coming.

It’s no surprise then that Sirius became associated with the flood. To the Egyptians, she was the goddess, Sopdet, or Sothis to the Ancient Greeks. We know little about her nature. Only that she was the star and, as such, was associated with rebirth, renewed life and with time itself. She is mentioned as far back as the Pyramid Texts and some scholars suggest she may have been revered as early as the First Dynasty. In time, she came to have a divine family; her consort was the constellation of Orion, known to the Egyptians as the god, Sah, and together they had a son, Sopedu (the male form of her name). In later times, Sopdet, Sah and Sopedu came to be associated with Isis, Osiris and Horus respectively. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Sopdet was a very ancient goddess.

Star worship is one of the very oldest strands of Ancient Egyptian religion and it is present in the Pyramid Texts in which the king, reborn amongst the gods, becomes a star in the night’s sky. A myriad of tombs, both royal and civilian, have ceilings decorated with bold five-pointed stars.

On the day Sirius appears once more in the East, she is followed immediately by the dawn. Although her son, Sopedu, was associated most frequently with the Eastern horizon and lands to the east, rather than with the sun itself, one can recognise, inherent within Sopdet, the attributes of a sky goddess giving birth to the dawn.

For the Ancient Egyptians, every dawn could be considered the moment of creation. With the new year, this idea intensified. The cycle of the seasons had been completed; the world was waiting to be reborn. “Sep tepi” was the Ancient Egyptian word for creation, “the First Time.”

The Days Before the Year

If the New Year is “Sep Tepi” what then are we to make of the five extra days that fall between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one?

As the birthdays of some of the most important gods in the Egyptian pantheon, these days were considered a part of the festival calendar and likely each had their own rituals and celebrations. They are essentially days that occur before creation itself, existing entirely outside of ordinary time. According to a Ramesside Papyrus (Papyrus Leiden) that treats these epagomenal days, they were also a time fraught with existential threat.

The threat of time itself stopping existed at the heart of Egyptian thought. The serpent, Apophis, well-known from later texts, threatens the universe when it tries to eat the sun. That isn’t simply a cute story - if Apophis were to consume the sun, time would stop, which in turn meant that existence itself would stop. A similar fear is attested much earlier on, in a New Kingdom text, in a slightly less dramatic form, when the writer fears that Ra’s barque will ‘become trapped on a sand-bank’. No need for a malevolent serpent here, but the fear remains the same: if the sun stops moving, time ceases, and existence ends. So it is no wonder that the days that exist outside of time are both sacred and frightening.

Those of you well-versed in Egyptian myth may however have noticed that the arrival of these five gods, Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys, on the five epagomenal days, does not fit with the Egyptian creation stories we regularly cite. The most well-known, the Heliopolitan creation myth, describes the creation of the Ennead, Egypt’s first nine gods. They are Atum, the creator, Shu (light-filled air), Tefnut (moisture-filled air), Geb (the earth), Nut (the sky), and then four more anthropomorphic deities, Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys, who become the first royal family. Note that the first five gods map out a creation schema: first light and air, then earth and sky — the creation of the universe itself — then the latter four gods, the firstborn and his wife/sister, and the younger brother and his wife/sister, populate that universe.

Peculiarly, the gods whose birthdays fall on the five epagomenal days do not fit the Heliopolitan pattern. They arrive in a different order. Moreover, they do not even make neat husband-wife pairs. Nor are they obviously in birth order unless we allow that Horus is a middle brother of three.

The Horus of the epagomenal days is, of course, Horus the Elder (not the child, Horus born of Isis) and, in some ancient texts he can be read as the brother, rather than the son, of Osiris. However, Osiris, Horus and Seth are never (to my knowledge) presented as three brothers from oldest to youngest. Except in the calendar…which makes me think we are dealing with a slightly different myth. Perhaps even a different creation schema, not to be confused with that of the Heliopolitan ennead.

Divine Building Blocks

So if we set aside the Heliopolitan myth and treat the arrival of the five gods of the epagomenal days as stages in the act of creation, what do we have? Do they complement one another? Does their order have a meaning?

Osiris is mostly understood to be the god of the dead. He is the deceased king reborn into the Underworld. We usually consider Horus to be his son and heir by his sister-wife Isis.

Usually, when the Egyptians drew out the divine families, husbands always came before wives, and parents always came before children. Again, the order of the epagomenal days bucks this trend. If Horus’ day follows Osiris because Horus is his son, then we should have expected Isis to come before Horus.

However, Osiris and Horus have layers of symbolism that stretch beyond their identification with the dead and living kings respectively. If we look at Chapter Seventeen of the Book of the Dead, which is itself based on more ancient verses from the Coffin Texts and Pyramid Texts, we see that the living and dead kings are associated with time itself.

The Ancient Egyptian concept of time was dualistic — a difficult idea for us to get our heads around, but for them, there were two kinds of time running at (for want of a better phrase) the same time. The first of these was “djet”, eternal, linear time, usually translated from the texts as “eternity”. This is the time in which the dead were thought to exist, unchanging. But it was also the time in which the great monuments existed, the pyramids and tombs and the mortuary temples whose names translate from the Ancient Egyptian as “temples of millions of years. Things do not alter or erode in djet-time, they simply exist. The second kind of time was “enheh” or “neheh” time (depending on where you feel like inserting the vowels); this was cyclical time and it was ever-moving and ever-changing. It was there in the cycling of the sun and the seasons, in humanity who would change and grow and die, in the harvest and comings and goings of the flood. “Enheh” time is often translated as “perpetuity”.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, Osiris and Horus (or Ra-Horakhty) are associated, in Chapter Seventeen of the Book of the Dead, with “djet” and “enheh” respectively.

Thus perhaps the births of these gods on the first and second epagomenal days should be seen not simply as their coming into the world and populating it, in the way that they do in the Heliopolitan creation myth, but perhaps they are literally the embodiments of time coming into existence. On the first day: eternity. On the second: the cycles of the days and the seasons.

The third epagomenal day, the birthday of Seth, is considered the most inauspicious. Plutarch describes a story around it in which he arrives on the third day, not by a natural birth, but because he has ripped his way out of his mother’s side. Although Seth became much maligned in later periods of Egyptian culture, he was considered a necessary and invaluable part of the pantheon, but also recognisably a threat. His appearance on the third day then is perhaps not a surprise. With Osiris and Horus in existence, time has been set in motion — order, Maat, has been established. What can come next except its antithesis: chaos?

Isis and Nephthys, whose birthdays fall on Days Four and Five, rarely appeared as individual deities in early Egyptian thought. It was only from the New Kingdom onwards that Isis really began to outshine her sister. As the mother of Horus, she grew in prominence, becoming associated with the protection of children, and thus gaining her reputation for powerful healing magic. In the Pyramid Texts, although she is Horus’ mother, she almost always appears in a pair with Nephthys and they, together, protect the kings. Again, it seems not too much of a stretch to imagine that these two goddesses arrive as a pair, as forces that restore and maintain the order that Seth has threatened.

The Five Days Before Creation

Take all of this with a pinch of salt if you will. It is not explicitly written down by the Ancient Egyptians, and as the Egyptologist Barry Kemp once said, if we study Egyptian religion we are always at risk of reading into the texts something that the Egyptians themselves did not recognise. However, personally, I think it is worth the risk if it deepens our understanding and curiosity for the culture. Therefore I lay out a potential schema of creation based on the epagomenal days:

Osiris’ birthday: Eternal time comes into existence.

Horus’ birthday: Cyclical time comes into existence.

Seth’s birthday: Disorder comes into existence.

Isis and Nephthys’ birthdays: The dual forces that protect against disorder come into existence.

That night, just before dawn, Sirius rises and births the sun. Time, as we know it, begins - happy new year.

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The epagomenal days this year, based on Sirius’ appearance in Memphis (Cairo) are as follows:

27th July - Osiris’ birthday

28th July - Horus’ birthday

29th July - Seth’s birthday

30th July - Isis’ birthday

31st July - Nephthys’ birthday

1st August - “Wep Renpet,” the ‘opening of the year’

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I’m staying in a wonderful little boutique hotel called Meka Guest House, run by Meka and Hollie, a five minute walk from the Giza Pyramids. I managed to wake up much later than intended, but that’s what happens when you’re still on UK time. So while it was a respectable 8am in the UK, it was actually 10am here and I was rather horrified to think I had slept through breakfast. To my delight, Meka appeared a short while later with filled pita breads and a bowl of grapes, and I spent the greater part of the day chatting with him and Hollie about the finer details of Akhenaten’s reign, the nature of Egyptian gods, and the Book of the Dead. As you do. All accompanied by copious amounts of coffee.

This afternoon, having found my way to an ATM and stocked up on some local currency, I explored the area a little with a destination in mind recommended by Hollie and Meka, called Rockna Cafe. There’s a number of restaurants in the area that jack their prices up, knowing they’ll get tourist custom anyway because of the pyramid views, but Rockna has very fair prices (and fantastic views - all the upcoming photos were taken from there). This being Egypt, I made a fair few friends along the way (shout out to Omar who wanted me to visit his perfume shop but also gave good directions, Adam who wanted me to visit his cafe and whose directions always pointed back to his cafe, Ade who could have been no more than eleven but knew a lot of lines from ‘Only Fools and Horses’, Abir and Shehed who took my photo in the cafe, and finally Ismail who helped me cross a busy road).

The view was magnificent.

The cafe looks due west across the Giza Plateau, so you can see, from left to right, the pyramids of Menkaure, Khafre and Khufu. Once the sun started coming down though, I knew I was going to have to stay for the sunset, since I realise, in all my years of visiting, I’ve never watched a sunset over the pyramids.

When it was built, Khufu called his pyramid “The Horizon of Khufu.” The horizon, in Ancient Egyptian religion, was a liminal space in which the deceased king would join with the gods. His soul would be transformed into its divine form, the akh, and from thence, he would be equal with the gods. The Egyptian word for horizon is, in fact, “akhet”, the ‘place of akh’. “Akh”, as well as being the ultimate divine form into which the dead are reborn, can also mean “magically effective” or “magically powerful” or, if you like “divinely powerful” since religion and magic were not such separate entities in Egyptian thought. “Akh” furthermore has associations with light and radiance, leading scholar, Miriam Lichtheim to translate the word “akhet” as ‘light-land’. This is all to say: there is not a simple one-word translation for “akhet”, but for simplicity’s sake, we use ‘horizon.’ It is the place of rebirth into a divine form.

The hieroglyph for “akhet” is this:

With that in mind, let’s check out the sunset over Giza…

No need to look for fantastical astronomical alignments. No need to try and find another culture from 10,000BC. Sometimes, you just have to look. The Egyptians used the landscape, the earth and sky themselves, as their canvas - to write the word “horizon” on a cosmic scale.

I’m not offering this as an explanation of why they built pyramids. There is a huge amount of scholarship on the subject. But I am saying that me, being able to see this today, was not an accident.

(At least, I highly doubt they built two pyramids this way and then noticed they’d spelled “horizon”, because that would be one hell of a coincidence.)

I love that, over four and a half thousand years ago, the word “akhet” was written by the earth and sky, and I can come here and still see it being written again and again.

Let me begin by saying that if you were to ask me my opinion on Ashrafian’s theory, I would answer with a bemused shrug. There are certain interpretations of archaeological evidence that are resistant to investigation because there is so little evidence that could ever be uncovered that would prove or disprove them, and Ashrafian’s theory sits neatly within this category. Of course, these Pharaohs could have had epilepsy, but as a neurological condition, the physical and biological evidence has long since vanished from the archaeological record. Ashrafian’s theory relies on the Pharaohs’ early ages at death, alongside accounts that sound like visionary or ecstatic experiences. For example, Thutmose IV, in his ‘dream stela’ - an inscription erected between the front legs of the sphinx - described falling asleep beside the monument and dreaming that it told him he would become king if he cleared away the sand that covered it. Akhenaten’s reforms, at least on the surface, also appear rooted in religion and it has long been suggested he might have had a religious or revelatory experiences in relation to his god, the Aten. HisAten cult focussed upon light as the source of all divinity, and temporal lobe epilepsy is very often reactive to light. Coincidence? Ashrafian thinks not. The trouble is, all of this evidence is circumstantial. The average age of death, across all extant Pharaonic mummies, has been calculated at just twenty-six years old, suggesting that the monarchs of the Eighteenth Dynasty were not, in fact, the outliers that Ashrafian would have us believe. Accounts of the ‘boy king’ Tutankhamun gloss over the fact that many Pharaohs would have taken the throne in their childhood or early teen years and no one is positing epilepsy as a hypothesis across the board. The role of god-king, as untouchable as it may have appeared from the outside, was clearly not one immune to risk and may even have invited it. In terms of compelling evidence, the ectstatic and visionary experiences of the kings also rest on shaky ground. Both the Dream Stela and Akhenaten’s reforms could have been political moves couched in religious iconography. Thutmose IV used his dream of the sphinx to justify his accession to the throne. Akhenaten used his cult of the Aten to divert control of resources away from powerful priesthoods back to the royal court. Secondary nails in the coffin of the theory are hammered home when you consider that not all epilepsy presents as ectstatic and religious experience at all and, moreover, there is very little evidence that the condition is inherited.

The joy of writing historical fiction however is that it allows you to run with a theory no matter how flimsy its foundations, and by this point, I was already at the brink of the rabbit-hole. I found myself asking, where would we find epilepsy in the archaeological record?

Across the net, many charity sites devoted to the treatment of epilepsy incorporate a potted history of the disease and, almost without fail, they point to historical evidence from Ancient Egypt. In particular, I found several claims that the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus described seizures, yet upon closer inspection, this does not appear true. So far as I can tell, the referenced text describes a head injury. Physician-priests, while probing the area, discovered a connection between manipulating the patient’s brain and his violent shuddering. The word used can be translated as ‘shiver’ or ‘tremble.’ The assertion (on several websites) that priests made the connection between this and grand mal epileptic seizures, thereby concluding epilepsy was neurological, is purely hypothetical and not testified in the archaeological record. While the Egyptians had extraordinary medical knowledge, they did not draw distinct differences between the physical and supernatural origins of diseases. The idea that they could conclude something was merely neurological appears to overlook their understanding of all kinds of disease. It was, for example, a standard medical practice to burn foul-smelling incense in order to chase away bad spirits, even in cases where a priest had established a physical cause for ill health. Medicine and magic intertwined to complement one another.

Advanced medical treatments, such as physical surgeries, were undertaken in Ancient Egypt by priests known as sunu- or sau-priests, essentially highly trained doctors whose knowledge would have extended across a broad spectrum of disciplines. As priests, they were thoroughly integrated into the Egyptian clergy. Certain deities, such as Sekhmet, Hathor and Serket, were explicitly associated with medicine and could be called upon for healing. Hence, treatments tended to be accompanied by religious rituals, prayers and hymns. Such priests also tended to be thoroughly versed in the use of herbs, spices and other ingredients to form poultices, unguents and medicines that were dissolved in beer, wine, water or milk for drinking. The Edwin Smith Papyrus lists 48 cases these priests might encounter in their work, ranging from gynaecological issues to violent traumatic injuries and it tells the doctor how to respond to each. They are divided into three categories: injuries to be treated, meaning that the patient could reasonably expect to recover; injuries to be contended with, meaning those that the priest might be able to help with even if the final outcome remained uncertain, and injuries not to be treated, presumably the least desirable prognosis.

Although the verb for ‘shiver’ or ‘tremble’ occurs quite frequently throughout Egyptian medical papyrus, there is no explicit description that lends itself entirely to epileptic seizure. The strongest evidence for early observations of the illness come instead from Mesopotamia, where one text, possibly dating back as far as 2000BC describes, in detail, a patient brought before an exorcist, “His neck turns left, his hands and feet are tense and his eyes wide open, and from his mouth froth is flowing without his having any consciousness.” The illness is one that the exorcist is able to identify – antasubbû. This tells us two things: assuming this was epilepsy, it was a known condition, and it was already being associated with malevolent spirits. This understanding continued all the way through into Ancient Greece. By 400BC, epilepsy had become known as the Sacred Disease and was still attributed to spirits or the divine. Another, albeit less certain attestation appears in Egypt, at the temple of Esna, dating to around the second century BC. Texts there proscribe entry to the temple by those people who are “possessed of malevolent power”. According to Egyptologist Serge Sauneron, this may well have been a description of epilepsy, which suggests that, by this time, the illness was accompanied by religious stigma.

As an able-bodied woman, writing a character with a disability comes with no small share of challenges. Indeed, there are some who say it is not my place at all. However, I wholeheartedly believe that writing different perspectives, if approached with respect and a mind open to learning and listening, fosters compassion and an ability to see the world through others’ eyes – skills that our society sorely needs. Approaching epilepsy in ancient historical fiction meant that I was always going to walk a fine line between depicting the superstition and fear that would have abounded in Ancient Egypt, while avoiding perpetuating modern stigma and stereotypes. (I am seeking sensitivity readers to see if I have fully succeeded in walking that line).

I began by following the writers’ adage that, if I am writing a minority to which I do not belong, that I should not make the story about that. However, within a short time, I discovered naturally that severe untreated epilepsy, particularly when associated with cultural stigma, could not be glossed over as a secondary characteristic. As the character developed, so too did an understanding of how formative a role such a disability would play in his life. It would be inauthentic to try and sidestep that. Perhaps I am too politically aware (or woke?), but a big step was simply to allow the illness to become central without getting too hung up on the broader political implications for me, as a writer, not sharing that illness. All of which is probably a long way of saying, gods, I am so sorry if I have got it wrong, but it was not for want of overthinking this to hell and back!

All of this however led me down a separate, but related rabbit-hole (by this point, I was probably in a veritable warren). It was clear to me that the strength of Ashrafian’s paper lay not in his conclusions, but rather in his treatment of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun because, in his paper, he lays out an extraordinarily comprehensive table of every single diagnosis they have ever been given. And that was fascinating. The disconcerting changes that Akhenaten made to Egypt’s artistic style have often led people to seek physical evidence his body matched the strangely distorted colossi from his East Karnak Temple. He has been diagnosed with Marfan’s Syndrome, Fröhlich’s Syndrome and hermaphroditism amongst a myriad of others. Tutankhamun’s list of supposed physical abnormalities includes scoliosis, club foot, a pronounced overbite, a cleft palate, and a similar multitude of illnesses including recurring malaria and sickle cell anaemia. It is suggested he would have been frail, frequently bedridden and, when he did walk, would have relied upon aids and walking sticks. Many of his genetic abnormalities have been attributed to inbreeding, but even this has received pushback in recent years. One thing we tend to forget is that serious genetic conditions, in Ancient Egypt, would likely have led to premature death – not just young death but death in infancy or even in utero. Lack of modern medicine would have quickly culled the gene pool so that the extremes of inbreeding would have cancelled themselves out, leaving only the more sturdy genetic profiles to persist. Tutankhamun would not have been immune to its effects, but he is also not likely to have been affected by its most extreme conditions.’

Perhaps my most fascinating takeaway is how quick we have been to treat Akhenaten and Tutankhamun as ‘the other.’ As soon as one diagnosis is discarded, we reach for another. And it is hard to tell whether we are actively seeking to raise them up on pedestals or tear them down in an attempt to disprove their godhoods.

But I’ll finish with a personal anecdote. In working on my novel, I needed to come up with suitable medicines for epilepsy that might have been used in New Kingdom Ancient Egypt. There are no records of such medicines, so I used sources such as the Ebers Papyrus, which records various medical ingredients and their uses. I came up with a list including blue lotus, poppy seed and belladonna as sedatives, and olive and willow as painkillers.

Later, I stumbled upon a description of the garlands of fresh fruit and flowers placed around Tutankhamun’s neck for his funeral and a chill ran through me: blue lotus, poppy and belladonna, olive and willow.

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References:

• The Edwin Smith Papyrus

• The Ebers Papyrus

• The Lahun Papyrus

• Ashrafian, Hutan, “Familial Epilepsy in the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty” in Epilpsy Behav. 2012 Sep.

• Sauneron, Serge, “The Priests of Ancient Egypt”, Cornell University Press, published 2000

• Partridge, Robert B, “Faces of Pharaohs”, Stacey International, published 1994

• Daras, Michael, Papakostas. George and Tuchman, L Ian J, “Epilepsy in the Ancient World” in J Hist Neurosci (1994): 3, 233-236

• Magiorkinis, Emmanouil, Sidiropoulou, Kalliopi and Diamantis, Aristidis, “Hallmarks in the History of Epilepsy” in Epilepsy and Behavior Vol. 17 Iss 1 Jan 2010 103-108

A key to understanding Ancient Egyptian religion is to understand that it does not follow standard logic, meaning that - in a break from our modern binary way of thinking - amongst Egypt’s gods, something could be both x and not-x. A goddess could be both a woman and a cow. The sun can be both a boat and a womb. This is very hard for modern readers to get their heads around; we have been taught to appreciate clarity and clarity includes logical, rational thinking. However, in Egyptian thought, clarity is secondary to the magical power of the written word, and that power was increased by layering symbols one upon another. And ‘symbol’ is perhaps the wrong word because it is actually identity that is layered. Let us take that example of the sun as a boat (well, as a god riding in a boat). The solar barque and the gods therein are not symbolic of the sun; they are the sun. The sun is also a womb passing through the body of Nut, the sky. The womb is again, not a symbol; it is what the sun is. It is both of these at once.

Now, during a festival like Opet, when a statue of Amun was carried between the temples of Luxor and Karnak, part of its journey was on water, mimicking the sun crossing the sky. When this occurred, the sun and the festival boat were one, in much the same way as womb, boat and sun-disc were one. This was vital to the essence of Egyptian magic. Once the festival boat was identified with the sun, the actions of the priests therein, ceased to be mere mortal activities; they become effective on a cosmic level. They became responsible for hauling the sun itself across the sky. They became responsible for the continuation of time itself.

This is sympathetic magic on a grand scale and it was essential to the Egyptians’ understanding of their universe. One thing was identified as another (sun and boat, in this instance) and then the one that could be manipulated by humans (the boat) was used to draw the mortal world into a grand cosmic ritual. In this way, humanity was elevated to be a part of the gods’ divine plan for the universe, to take an active part in the cycles of the cosmos.

And all of this is to come back to the point I made in the first line of this article: to understand Egyptian religion we must accept that something can be two different things at the same time. The Underworld is a case in point.

By the third dynasty, a clear ‘state’ religion had begun to develop in Egypt, based on the sky. It focused on the stars, moon and most importantly, the sun. Architectural elements in the pyramids that align with the stars (yes, some parts do; no, that doesn’t mean there were aliens) suggest that the deceased king was expected to join the stars and this would later be confirmed by written spells in the Pyramid Texts. A later addition to Egyptian cosmogony however came in the form of the god, Osiris. He was a fascinating addition to the pantheon, later identified as one of the great grandsons of the sun-god. He was a harvest god, a god who died so that the land might live and be fertile. It was this aspect that made him a suitable model for the death of kings and thus it came about that, from roughly the fourth dynasty onwards, every king was identified, in death, as Osiris.

However, this appears to have fundamentally altered the nature of the Underworld. As a harvest god, Osiris was naturally associated with the earth. His death and decay flowed into the earth, giving it life. These ideas leant themselves well to death rituals that focussed upon burial within that earth, and so the idea of an Underworld developed, with tombs understood as passages that would take the dead into a cthonic realm populated by the gods. However, this did not mean that the Egyptians dispensed with the idea that their kings joined the stars. On the contrary, they would now do both. They would be, at once, drawn into the Underworld and lifted into the sky.

It is no coincidence then that Ani’s papyrus begins with a hymn to the sun, which is followed immediately by a hymn to Osiris. He is actively acknowledging the two facets of the afterlife world into which he will now journey.

As before, I’ll analyse the hymn line by line. I have made my own translation but have worked closely with Faulkner’s.

The Hymn to Osiris

In praise of Osiris, the beautiful being, the great god in the heart of Thinis, Lord of Perpetuity and Eternity whose lifetime lasts for millions of years, eldest son

At once, we are aware of the complementarity implied by these two hymns following on from one another. The gods too have complementary roles. Ra/Horus is the divine king of the living world. Osiris is king of the dead. They are also each associated with different concepts of time: Ra is cyclical time, the revolution of the days, months and seasons; Osiris is eternal, unchanging time. These are known, in Egyptian, as enheh and djet, usually translated as “perpetuity and eternity” respectively. Time and existence are deeply bound up in the Egyptian psyche, so these gods each represent one of the two modes of existence and, taken together, they represent the totality of existence.

“Beautiful Being”, wennefer, is not always translated and is sometimes treated as a secondary name for Osiris rather than a description or title.

Thinis was the first capital of Egypt in early dynastic times. Osiris’ title, “Lord of Thinis” may associate him with the first king of Egypt.

Of Nut, begotten of Geb, heir and Lord of the Wereret Crown, whose white crown is tall, sovereign of all gods and men.

Like Ra, Osiris is a son of Nut and a divine king. The similarities are such that Ra and Osiris are almost two sides of the same god, but in Egyptian texts, they never occur in syncretism. Their union occurs only once per night and results in mutual regeneration.

The Wereret Crown is the White Crown of Upper Egypt.

He has received the crook and flail and the office of his forefathers. In the desert, his heart is full of gladness because his son has been established upon his throne.

Osiris is established as king, but in contrast with Horus, he is king of the dead. Hence he is in the desert, while Horus is on the throne in Egypt – a throne that Osiris has recently bequeathed him. The desert, here, probably represents the land of the dead. Even the glyph it is written with depicts the Western Mountains, associated with death and sunset.

The Egyptian has here switched from referring to Osiris in the third person to referring to him in the second person. This can sound quite strange in translation, so I’ve maintained the third person format.

He arises as sovereign, as Lord of Busiris and Ruler of Abydos. He maintains the Two Lands as

Busiris (modern Abusir) and Abydos are the two cult centres of Osiris.

Unlike Ra, Osiris has thus far been associated with three sites in the world of the living – real places. In contrast, Ra, in his hymn, was only associated with semi-mythical places such as Manu.

A place for all who are proclaimed “true of voice” in his presence. He is Lord to the Limit. All that exists comes before him in his name,

“Lord to the Limit” is a literal translation. A lot of translators simply render this as “Lord of All.”

The Land To Which All In Existence Comes. He rallies the Two Lands, according to Maat, in his name, Sokar.

A common formula in Ancient Egyptian funerary texts is “x god does y in his name of” and there follows a name or title with which the god might be addressed.

Maat is the order or balance within the universe, so the author is going out of the way to establish that if Osiris is rallying or marshalling troops, it is for a just cause and not senseless violence.

Sokar is a funerary deity usually shown as a mummiform hawk. He is associated with cemeteries as their guardian. His appearing here as a facet of Osiris is apt in that they are both guardians of the dead.

His power is expansive and his form is intimidating in his name, Osiris. He crosses the extent of eternity in his name, Beautiful Being.

“Eternity” is here the word enheh, which is more usually translated “perpetuity”, but “eternity” makes for a more comfortable translation here.

Hail to you, king of kings, Lord of lords, ruler of rulers, you who seized the Two Lands while you were still in the womb of your mother, Nut. You rule

The silent lands. Your body is gold. Your head is blue. You wear turquoise on your arms. You offer support to millions.

“The silent lands” are the lands of the dead.

Here, Osiris is described in a manner typical of one who died and been transfigured into a god (the goal of mummification). It is said that the flesh becomes gold, hence his golden body; the hair becomes lapis lazuli, hence his blue head, and turquoise may well be suitable attire because it is a stone associated with Hathor, a goddess of the dead.

The direct translation says that “Osiris is a pillar to millions”, but when the Egyptians called someone a pillar they were referring to their role in supporting others, similar to our modern phrase “a pillar of society.”

You are broad of breast, beautiful of face, and blessed within your land. You grant magic to those in the sky and power to those on earth. You proclaim those in the cemeteries to be “true of voice.” You ferry

Akh is a very specific kind of magic, perhaps best translated as “transfigurational power”, which is attained only after someone has passed through the trials of the underworld and has been reborn as a divinity. It is sometimes translated as “effectivenes” in an attempt to portray how the deceased is effective and has power in every situation they encounter. It is the power to effect change. In contrast, was is an earthly power, often associated with control over others or over a situation.

The living souls of the blessed dead to Busiris

And you sail the newly reborn to Abydos

Osiris’ journey across a very real Egypt parallels Ra’s journey through the sky. Abusir (Busiris) is in Lower Egypt and Abydos is in Upper Egypt.

The “newly reborn” are shown as a heron with the determinatives for mankind, suggesting that what is being referred to are human spirits with the qualities of a heron. The specific heron shown is the benu-bird, which, in myth, is associated with the sun and was one of the first beings to come into creation. It thus has associations with birth and rebirth and became the mythic prototype of the phoenix. Instead of translating the word directly as “herons”, I chose the phrase “newly reborn” to highlight that it is this quality in the spirits that is being referred to when they are described in the form of herons.

That they may emerge without hindrance from every gate

In the Duat. You give me

As in the previous hymn to Ra, an emphasis is placed on the deceased’s freedom to travel, to emerge and return to the Duat.

The Duat is often considered to be the Underworld, although it is written with a star hieroglyph, explicitly associating it with the night’s sky. Dua is also the word for praise, so a more direct translation might be “the place of praise”. It is the land of the gods and the dead. For most Egyptologists, it is a familiar enough word that it doesn’t need translation.

Bread and incense from the House of Pure Waters

And offerings from Heliopolis. My place

And again, as in the Hymn to Ra, Ani petitions the god to grant him the offerings that will sustain his spirit after death. As has been the case throughout this hymn, he makes reference to actual places. Although the location of the “House of Pure Waters” has been lost, it is juxtaposed with Heliopolis, which is a suburb of modern Cairo. Heliopolis was a centre for the cult of Ra.

Is established in the Field of Reeds

The literal translation is something along the lines of “my toes are firm in the Field of Reeds”, but I have adjusted this for ease of reading.

In these hymns to Ra and Osiris, we see the dual nature of the Underworld. Both are concerned with the deceased’s journey to the land of the dead, but Ra’s journey takes place explicitly in the sky culminating with sunset in the horizon. In contrast, Osiris, also travelling by boat, appears to sail along the Nile, the land of Egypt itself having taken on the mythic qualities of a divine world. Within this sacred Egypt are retained the various cult centres of the gods, but there are also the Duat and the Field of Reeds, which appear to have the same function as Ra’s horizon, being the place to which the god (and the dead) are ultimately headed.

Where barley and emmer grow. For the spirit of

The field of reeds is frequently considered an idealised form of Egypt itself and is shown in tombs as a landscape filled with golden barley growing as tall as the labourers who harvest it.

The Osiris scribe, Ani.

The hymn finishes at the mention of barley and emmer, and is rounded off by the familiar rubric that dedicates it to Ani.

Summary

Although the Hymn to Osiris lacks the tripartite scheme of the Hymn to Ra, which I translated previously, it nevertheless has some parallels. Following the opening statement of the previous hymn, “Praise to Ra”, it establishes Ra’s role as king and divine creator of the world. In this Hymn to Osiris, the titles and names that follow “Praise to Osiris” serve the same function. They establish Osiris role and identity. Osiris is portrayed as a more earthly king than Ra. His realm is Egypt and not the sky, and his powers are associated with government and rule. Following the phrase “Hail to you”, in both hymns, Ani addresses the gods directly. While the hymn to Ra goes into depth, recording the journey of the sun-god and inserting Ani into that journey, Osiris’ hymn feels far more truncated. It lists the various things that Ani will receive from Osiris, but less importance is placed upon Ani being a part of his entourage or sharing in his fate. You may recall that these elements were emphasised in Ani’s relationship with Ra. In contrast, Osiris grants Ani offerings and the ability to traverse the underworld, but remains detached and distant from him.

Today, we look at Amun, the invisible king, and the god who resided in human hearts.

From Humble Beginnings…

Amun, first appears, in writing and art, as one of a group of eight gods that existed before creation.

These were the Hermopolitan Ogdoad (ogdoad, meaning a group of eight). Hermopolis is the Greek name for an Egyptian town called Khemenu, meaning the town ‘of the Eight’ and these eight gods were divided up into male-female pairs, with each pair representing an aspect of the primordial world before creation. Nun and Naunet were the primordial ocean, an undivided and unbounded, formless sea; Heh and Hehet represented infinity; Kek and Keket were darkness, and Amun and Amunet were hiddenness.

These were hardly deities in the way that we understand them. They were the attributes of a universe before creation. Egypt had numerous creation myths that developed in different parts of the country, but Hermopolis’ myth fits in rather neatly before any of the others. After all, it concerns a formless universe, at a time before any major creator-gods had come into existence. Perhaps because of this, the Hermopolitan myth endured alongside later ones. It became ‘the prequel’ to creation. Hence, if we were to outline a more general understanding of the narrative, we might say that it was from these eight deities of the primordial abyss that an egg or, in some versions, a mound emerged. Then from the mound a lotus grew, and from the lotus, the sun-god, Ra, was born (the Heliopolitan version of the myth). It was Rawho would go on to birth or create all the other gods.

In this story, Amun is one of the most ancient gods, but - as one of eight - his nature is not fleshed out and we see him, not as an individual but as one amongst many. The Eight are cthonic deities, meaning that they associated with darkness, the night sky, the underworld and death. Amun’s name means, literally, “hidden.”

It is somewhat mysterious then that, of these eight, Amun seems to have been singled out for an extraordinary rise to power, and when he next appears, it is in an entirely altered form. No longer cthonic, he emerges as a solar deity - one of light and life.

The Rising Sun-God and the Ancient Harvest God

When King Ahmose united Egypt after the Second Intermediate Period, he moved its seat of power to Thebes and established his local god, Amun as its patron deity.

As part of his ascent to become head of the pantheon, Amun was syncretised with the sun-god, becoming almost ubiquitously, Amun-Ra. He appeared now, not with a snake or frog’s head, but rather as a young man, striding forth, in the peak of physical fitness; his skin was blue or green, and on his head, he wore a crown with two vast plumes.

This headdress perhaps references his old identity as ‘the hidden one’. Many scholars think that he is the force behind the wind, which though it could not itself be perceived, could yet be seen in the ruffling of feathers and the movement of flags and sails. Gone from the picture was his old consort, Amunet. She was replaced instead by the goddess, Mut, shown as a human queen.

Mut, whose name means “mother” was a separate deity in her own right. Depictions of her date from the Middle Kingdom, when she was often paired with an ancient fertility god, Min. When she became Amun’s consort, he appears too to have taken on the attributes of her old husband, and is depicted frequently in Karnak as an ithyphallic deity (meaning that he appears with an erect penis, as if ready for sexual intercourse).

Min was an ancient fertility god whose sexuality was deeply linked to Egypt’s harvest and Nile floods. He was a cthonic deity and thus, when combined with Amun, reinstated some of the latter’s more cthonic traits. Amun-Min is shown in mummiform, his legs bound tightly together. His realm is the darkness of the underworld.

By syncretising (combining) with these two very different deities, Ra and Min, Amun was able to combine all of their traits. He became the king of the gods par excellence. He was the divine equivalent, to the gods, as Pharaoh was to mankind - a leader to which all others bowed.

King of Karnak

Amun’s cult centre was the vast and sprawling temple of Karnak, already five centuries old by the height of the New Kingdom. This temple would have been less recognisible to us as a temple and more akin to a small city in its own right. It owned land, trained up its own army, and employed thousands of men and women to serve the priests and gods.

Perhaps this is why Akhenaten’s dramatic religious reforms, in the Eighteenth Dynasty, targeted Amun amongst all the gods. Akhenaten even changed his name, dispensing with his birth name, Amenhotep, because it included a reference to ‘Amun.’ It is theorised that Amun’s priesthood had become powerful enough to rival the king. Akhenaten raised up his own god, Aten, as a rival and later a replacement to Amun. Whether Akhenaten was divinely inspired or was merely framing politics with religion, we may never know, but his actions certainly undermined the all-powerful priesthood based in Karnak Temple.

A God of Hearts

The idea that we hold God in our hearts feels like a very modern one, but it may surprise you to learn that it’s an idea that dates back to at least the late New Kingdom when people began to talk about Amun being ‘in their hearts.’

Jan Assmann has studied the effects of Akhenaten’s reforms on the nature of Egyptian religion in the New Kingdom and concluded that they had a profound and lasting effect on the way people approached the gods. Since the worship of Amun seems to have been effectively prohibited in Akhenaten’s reign, it is thought that a more general form of ‘personal religion’ began to develop. While Egypt had always had a domestic religion and personal household shrines that existed alongside state religion, never before had a state god been forced into the sphere of purely personal (and perhaps at times secret) worship.

After Akhenaten’s reign, Aten fell out of favour and Amun was restored, but his new cult showed innovations never before seen in the Egyptian record. People appeared to believe that Amun could personally hear their prayers, understand their thoughts, interact with them and dwell in their hearts. They erected personal prayer stelae, often decorated with ears to suggest the god was listening to them directly. The state priesthood was no longer a necessary intermediary.

Assmann also noted that people began to pray to a generic ‘God’ that did not always need to be named. In many cases, it went without saying that this was Amun. At other times, ‘god’ (in Egyptian, netcher) seemed to incorporate the idea of all the gods, all that was divine.

 Amun is certainly one of the heavyweights of the Egyptian pantheon, incorporating the nature of many gods within his own and ultimately becoming a ubiquitous and ever-present, invisible, personal god for the people of Egypt.

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Part 2 - The Role of Pharaoh

Just over 5000 years ago, evidence suggests that the land we now call Egypt was in the throes of war. An archaeological deposit from ancient Nekhen, not far from modern day Aswan, brought to light the earliest images of Egyptian Pharaohs wearing both the red crown of Lower Egypt (the Nile delta) and the white crown of Upper Egypt (the southern desert); they dated from approximately 3100BCE. These objects, the Scorpion macehead and the Narmer palette, represent the first historical depictions of a king ruling over all of Egypt. It is from them that we date the dynastic period of Egyptian history.

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The Ferocious Catfish

In 1894, James Quibell was excavating a site called Hierakonpolis, a seat of government for Ancient Egypt’s pre-dynastic rulers. There, he discovered a large tablet in the form of a cosmetic palette. On both sides, a king was depicted, identified by hieroglyphs reading ‘Narmer’ (translated broadly as ‘the Ferocious Catfish’). But one thing stood out and still stands out about this palette, something which makes it one of the most important discoveries ever made in Egypt. That is, on one side, King Narmer wears the Red Crown of Lower Egypt; on the other, he wears the White Crown of Upper Egypt. This is our first definitive evidence of a Pharaoh ruling over all of Egypt.

The Narmer Palette has allowed us to date the beginning of Pharaonic civilization to approximately 3100BCE. While copies of it are displayed in museums all over the world, I last saw the original palette when I was in Cairo in 2023, and it always feels like meeting a celebrity!

Something delightful about the representation of Narmer is how familiar it is. We see similar representations of Pharaohs across 3000 years of Egyptian civilization. If you have ever visited Karnak, your guide has probably taken you to see the vast relief of King Ramesses II smiting his enemies. Just like Narmer, he stands with feet wide apart, reaching down to grip his enemies by their hair; his other arm is raised, weapon in hand.

Egyptian civilization did not erupt out of nowhere. Its imagery and ideals had already found a foothold, even before the founding of a unified Egypt. Art was not, in these times, valued as a creative act, but it was a component of magic. Thus, if a Pharaoh is shown, carved into stone, smiting his enemies, the imagery confers upon him that power for all eternity. It is perhaps no wonder that the same scene recurs again and again. It is being used as a magical tool to ensure that the same power is retained across reigns and dynasties.

Yet the question still remains - who was Narmer?

The Warrior-Pharaoh

On the Narmer Mace-head, another artefact associated with the early Pharaoh, he is shown enthroned, apparently receiving tribute in the form of animals, weaponry and at least one bound captive. Immediately before the seated monarch is an enigmatic figure whose features lack the detail necessary for identification. They kneel before him on a covered dais.

Narmer was likely a war-like king. Violence was probably a necessary part of ruling a unified Egypt. However, numerous artefacts have been discovered in southern Israel that bear his name, suggesting he may have ventured beyond Egypt’s traditional borders in search of conquest.

Subjugation of the enemy was one of his favourite themes. On one side of the Narmer Palette, he is shown with a mace raised in one hand, about to cleave the skull of an enemy captive. On the other side, he is shown examining lines of decapitated bodies and, at the base of the palette, a bull (which is probably the king in animal form) tramples a rival as it breaks through a city wall. The Narmer Mace-head is itself a weapon of war, although it is unfeasibly large to have been carried into battle. It was likely a decorative or ritual item, but an unmistakable symbol of violence and brutality.

Yet some suggest that the figure seated before the king is his bride. If this is the case, it may show a political and diplomatic marriage – an act of peace rather than war.

Queen Neithhotep

The tomb of Queen Neithhotep was a remarkable find. Located about 20km north of Luxor, it was a traditional mastaba (bench-like) tomb with a niched façade, clearly created for someone of great wealth and importance. Given the number of artefacts found therein with the names of Narmer and his successor, Hor-Aha, it became clear that this Neithhotep was likely his wife and queen, and mother to his heir. It has even been suggested that Neithhotep may have ruled in her own right, although others have pointed to there being a stronger case for her as regent.

Neithhotep’s name derives from that of the goddess, Neith, an ancient warrior-like goddess. She was associated with hunting as well as with the creation of the world and mankind. The centre for Neith’s worship was Sais, in Lower Egypt. If Neithhotep hailed from Lower Egypt, then her marriage to an Upper Egyptian king bears all the hallmarks of a political union.

Neithhotep outlived her husband and was almost certainly regent to her son, Hor-Aha and perhaps to his son, Djer. In later years, she may have gone on to marry her husband’s vizier, Rekhit, as he is later shown caretaking her estates, having retired from office.

Whether she was the first female Pharaoh or a devoted queen and regent, we may never know, but she was certainly a powerful figure within Ancient Egypt’s founding family.

Narmer’s Gods

Bearing in mind that Narmer’s reign marks the beginning of Egyptian civilization, it is interesting to note which gods are already present in his iconography. On the Narmer Palette, we see a falcon, likely Horus, associated with the king and borne on standards by his attendants. Hierakonpolis, where the palette was found, was ancient Nekhen, a focal point for worship of Horus. Narmer hailing from this area may explain why Horus became the god of kings for the next three millennia.

Amongst the standards borne by Narmer’s attendants is one showing a wolf or jackal. This is likely a predecessor to the jackal and wolf gods later associated with Ancient Egyptian cemeteries – Wepwawet and the more famous, Anubis.

Finally, at the top of the palette, we see cows with human facial features. These are thought to be images of the cow goddess, Bat, who would later merge with and develop into the cow goddess and sometimes-mother, sometimes-consort of Horus, Hathor – a goddess of motherhood, household, medicine, music and wine.

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The iconography of the Narmer Palette - https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/987945001

King Narmer - https://www.thecollector.com/narmer-first-egyptian-pharaoh/

The Narmer Mace-head - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer_Macehead

Queen Neithhotep - https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/neithhotep/

Queen Neithhotep’s Tomb - https://garstangmuseum.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/neith-hotep-of-naqada-queen-consort-or-first-female-pharaoh/

Gods on the Narmer Palette - https://www.egypttoursportal.com/en-gb/narmer-palette/

It’s a scene that is entirely unattested in any other royal tomb.

In this Glimpses of Ancient Egypt series I look at artefacts and art that speak to us from the past, not necessarily of the idealised images that the Pharaohs wanted us to see, but rather of the personal, the intimate and the human side of their lives.

What does this painting show us? It is, after all, a fairly idealised image. The king appears to be in the prime of his life, muscular, athletic and excelling in his sport. But to understand its significance, perhaps we need to understand a little more about the context in which it was painted.

MASTER OF HORSE

Who was Ay?

Undoubtedly he is one of the most enigmatic figures of Egypt’s Amarna Period, a time when Egypt’s people and priests were compelled, by Pharaoh Akhenaten, to set aside their thousands of gods, and focus on just one, the Aten – the disc of the sun.

Ay was Vizier to Akhenaten, but he appears in the archaeological record before that, in the reign of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten’s father. Ay would go on to survive through one of the most tumultuous decades of Egypt’s history, outliving Akhenaten and two, if not three, subsequent Pharaohs: Smenkhkare, Nefertiti and Tutankhamun. Not only did Ay survive and retain his place in government, but he went on to take the very crown of Egypt, becoming Pharaoh himself after Tutankhamun’s death. As such, he negotiated the abundant, peaceful rule of Amenhotep III; the religious revolution of his son; the controversy of a possible female Pharaoh in the figure of Nefertiti, and then swift religious back-peddling, in the time of Tutankhamun. It is hard not to conclude that, to maintain power through such ideological meanderings, he must have been playing a very careful game.

Ay first shows up, in history, as Pharaoh’s Master of Horse, meaning he was a commander of the royal elite chariotry. Towards the end of the reign of Amenhotep III, he also took the title Royal Fan-Bearer on the Right Hand of the King. While this may have involved literal fan-bearing in a formal or ritual context, it points, more saliently, to his being a close confidante of the king. These two titles were likely inherited from his father. As such, it has been suggested that Ay’s father was a man called Yuya.

Yuya held both military and priestly positions, associated with the god, Montu, in Akhmim in the south of Egypt. His name and that of his wife – Thuya – are unusual, suggesting that they may have been of foreign extraction. They are definitively identified as the parents of a priest, Anen, and of Tiye, Amenhotep III’s queen. Since she was not of royal blood, and potentially had foreign ancestry, Tiye’s marriage to Amenhotep III was likely controversial and he seems to have justified it by celebrating her as much as he could, issuing souvenir scarabs that announced the wedding and lauded her parentage.

If we are correct in assuming that Ay’s father was Yuya, then he was the Queen’s brother and Pharaoh’s brother-in-law.

GOD’S FATHER

During Akhenaten’s reign, Ay was promoted to Vizier. He married a priestess, Tey, who was wetnurse to Nefertiti. Tey was Ay’s second wife and some have speculated that Nefertiti was therefore his daughter. They point to Tey’s role as evidence that she may have been a step-mother to Nefertiti (perhaps following the death of Ay’s first wife). They also point to a title that Ay took in later life, “God’s Father”. This title would usually be used by the father of a Pharaoh. Since Nefertiti married Akhenaten, some have suggested Ay used it to show that he was father-in-law to the king. Others have suggested that Nefertiti became a Pharaoh in her own right after her husband’s death, hence the title’s traditional meaning would have applied to Ay.

If these familial relations have been correctly deduced, then during Akhenaten’s reign, Ay was uncle and father-in-law to the king as well as the wielder of supreme secular and governmental power in his role as vizier.

In Tutankhamun’s tomb, Ay is depicted wearing a leopardskin associated with the highest ranks of the priesthood. He is shown carrying out the Opening of the Mouth ritual, for the boy-king, a rite that was reserved for the Pharaoh’s son and heir. Tutankhamun however had no sons. Ay stepping in and undertaking the ceremony was a means for him to legitimise himself in a new role – as king of Egypt.

THREE MILLENNIA OF ACCUSATIONS

Bob Brier’s “The Murder of Tutankhamun” is a fantastic page-turner, as far as archaeology books go, and sets out a gripping narrative. I read it when I was still relatively new to Egyptology and it cemented in my mind the notion that Tutankhamun was murdered by Ay. Brier stands by the idea that the boy-king was a victim of foul play, despite its having been shown that he was not – as Brier initially suggested – killed by a blow to the head.

So was Ay really the villain?

Some of the evidence doesn’t look too good for him! Tutankhamun had, it seems, chosen an heir: a military man called Horemheb who had risen to become the Commander of Egypt’s Armies. Ay was crowned while Horemheb was still on campaign. He must have acted quickly and slipped into the throne while his rival was busy. It also makes the timing of Tutankhamun’s death seem awfully convenient.

Moreover, Ay may have sought to legitimise his reign through marrying…his own granddaughter. Although there are alternative interpretations, many speculate that one of the ‘Amarna letters’, (royal correspondences written in cuneiform) refers to Ay. It is a plea from Tutankhamun’s wife and sister, Ankhesenamun, that she not have to marry a “servant of mine.” The servant in question may have been her grandfather, Ay who, at the time, would have been beneath her in rank.

It might seem strange that Ay, who must have been old, by Egyptian standards, would have rushed to take the throne. However, it is clear that he very quickly named his own successor – his son, Nakhtmin.

Would Ay have killed his own grandson, Tutankhamun, in order to place Nakhtmin on the throne? Perhaps.

Perhaps he felt betrayed when Tutankhamun chose Horemheb as his successor, a man unrelated to the dynasty. Perhaps Ay had assumed that, without another heir, the throne would automatically go to his son. Nakhtmin was, after all, (if we are correct in our family tree) a blood relative of Tutankhamun’s, whilst Horemheb appeared to be little more than a friend and colleague of the young Pharaoh.

Perhaps. Perhaps.

Or perhaps it was Horemheb who orchestrated Tutankhamun’s death, having pulled strings to be proclaimed heir. Perhaps Ay was protecting the dynasty he had spent his life serving. Perhaps he briefly shielded the throne from a usurper.

We’ll never know. On the whole, we see only what we are meant to see. Idealised images of strong leaders, always young, always strong, never flawed.

THE MAN WHO HUNTS DUCKS

…All of which brings me back to this painting.

Ay artfully navigated the changing tides of Egyptian religion. In Akhenaten’s reign, he had a tomb built for himself in the new capital, Akhetaten. Its iconography fully reflected the cult of Akhenaten’s new god. In it, the king and queen were shown worshipping the Aten and a copy of the famous ‘Hymn to the Aten’ was inscribed on the walls. It described Aten as the ‘sole god’.

It’s surprising then that, in Tutankhamun’s reign, Ay appears to have been amongst those who hurriedly restored the old gods to their former glory.

On the outside, at least, his loyalties seem to have gone to the highest bidder. He worked in his own self-interest. It was probably only by doing so that he was able to ride out the storm of Akhenaten’s religious revolution.

Arguably though, Ay’s final resting place, now known as WV23 (tomb 23 in the Western Valley) tells a different story.

Its walls are decorated with the same gold-yellow paint as was used in Tutankhamun’s tomb, conjuring the idea of an afterlife suffused with the light of Egypt’s solar gods. Ay is shown joining them as they sail across the sky in the sun-barque. He is protected by the goddesses, Isis and Nephthys.

The scene that shows him hunting in the marshes though – that is new. It’s different. It’s not a part of traditional royal iconography.

Although this scene does not appear in his tomb in Amarna, it has nevertheless been speculated that it is a nod to Akhenaten’s religion. Royal iconography in Akhenaten’s city focussed not on the afterlife but rather upon daily life under Pharaoh’s rule: the city, the river, gardens and temples.

Is it possible that Ay was bringing a little bit of Akhenaten’s religion with him into his tomb. By the time of his death, Akhenaten had likely already been labelled a heretic, so perhaps he had to be subtle: no open references to the Aten, no great hymn written out on the wall; just a little nod to a different kind of afterlife.

Or perhaps it has another meaning altogether, one that is arguably even more surprising…

You see, hunting scenes like this do not appear in any royal tombs, but they do appear in non-royal tombs. In fact, they are commonplace in non-royal tombs.

This man who rose up the ranks of government, who oversaw the turbulence of Akhenaten’s rule and restored the old gods, and who ultimately took the throne for himself, yet commisioned, for his tomb, an artwork suited to a man of lowly birth.

And this is why I’ve chosen to highlight this painting. There is something painfully intimate about it. It can be read, not just as an admission that Ay was not born into royalty, but as an embrace of his origins. Despite everything, this was still who he was – a man of common birth…

…who just happened to become Pharaoh.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the life and times of Ay. If you did, please consider subscribing. It’s less than the price of a cup of coffee and I’ll send you more Pharaonic goodness! If you choose an unpaid subscription though, I will still be happy and you’ll get all the free stuff.

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What’s in a name?

Naming a character is a serious part of fiction-writing. It’s hard to conclude that the identities of characters like Indiana Jones or Albus Dumbledore are not, in some way, bound up with their names. As a writer, you are advised not to have two or more major character names that start with the same letter. Even better if you can use names of different lengths or different numbers of syllables. It helps the reader differentiate. And whatever you do, don’t make a character’s name difficult to pronounce. Oh, and for the love of God, don’t give two characters the same name.

Great, I thought, as I gazed at my cast-list – a list of names I had not chosen. Because I was writing historical fiction. My characters had once existed. They already had names. Inconvenient ones…

Ay

Amenhotep (the father)

Amenhotep (the son)

Amenhotep (the friend)

“Ay”, pronounced ‘eye’ is, if you read it aloud, simply the first person pronoun. I never found an easy way around that one, so it had to stay. Those Amenhoteps though, they needed to go. I didn’t think “Amenhotep” was too hard to pronounce, but it felt clunky, a solid four syllables that didn’t roll easily off the English tongue.

Thus began my search for historically accurate Ancient Egyptian nicknames.

Amenhotep

I’ve had this novel sitting around for years and my quest for nicknames was always at the back of my mind, which means that I noted them as and when I encountered them. What I did not do, unfortunately, was note where I found them and I hesitated, when it came to writing this article because I realised it would lack references. In a way, it’s interesting that, when I did encounter nicknames (or shortenings of names) it was never in papers that dealt with Ancient Egyptian names! It was almost always only mentioned in passing, in the context of a different field of interest. All that said, I decided that I would write this anyway, even without the references, because although it hurts my little academic heart that I’ve lost them, I realise this is not an academic paper (and should not be treated as such), but also – it’s just too interesting not to relate to you.

My lead character is the man who will become Pharaoh Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten. When we first meet him though, he is still a prince and not even next in line to the throne.

I fairly quickly decided to call him Ameny. It’s a name that is attested from the Middle Kingdom onwards. In the Twelfth Dynasty, the name Amenemhat was shortened to Ameny. Men would explicitly state on their tombs that they were “Amenemhat, known as Ameny” and the name was still popular in the Eighteenth Dynasty (when my book is set). At this time, a series of kings named Amenhotep took the throne. It is not too much of a stretch to imagine that a lot of the men called Ameny might have been shortening the name, Amenhotep, particularly because the Egyptians loved to name their kids after Pharaoh.

Another shortening of Amenhotep is frequently attested to in the Eighteenth Dynasty: Huy. It’s not immediately clear why “Amenhotep” would become “Huy” but I think it’s safe to suggest that it must come from the ‘hotep’. Studies into the phonetic pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian suggest that ‘hotep’ may have been pronounced a little like ‘hootpu.’ With that in mind, perhaps Huy is not such a strange nickname.

This suggests that “Amenhotep” could be shortened in more than one way, rather like our name, Elizabeth, which can be shortened to Liz or Beth or even Liza or Eliza.

Smenkhkare

Later in these books, my protagonist, Ameny, will go on to have two sons, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun. (Spoilers – but then again history itself is the spoiler!)

I found a stela to a man called Smen from the same dynasty. Although it is nowhere suggested that his name was a shortening of Smenkhkare, it made me think that “Smen”, even if it is a standalone name, would have made an acceptable shortening.

Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun proved harder. The name is made up of three elements –“tut”, meaning ‘image’; “ankh”, meaning , ‘life’, and ‘amun’, which is the name of the god. I must admit, shortening it to “Tut” has always been a bugbear of mine, particularly as there is no historical evidence for “Tut” as a nickname or indeed a standalone name. I was never able to find evidence for how the boy-king might have shortened his name. However, I did find a shortening for a name with the same structure. (I beg forgiveness now because I don’t recall what the name actually was, but it took the form xxx-ankh-xxx). This man shortened his name to Ankhu. Of course, we will never know the truth, but based on this I am inclined to think that Tutankhamun may not have been King Tut. He may have been King Ankhu – to his friends, of course!

Ramesses

Finally, I’ll finish with a nickname for a later Pharaoh, one who will not be appearing in this book, but whose name is no doubt known to you – Ramesses II. That is, Ramesses the Great. (In Egyptian, Ramessu). His nickname was Sessi!

I found this not only delightful, but also rather interesting, since most of the nicknames we’ve looked at (perhaps with the exception of Huy) incorporate full words – Ameny clearly comes from the name of the god. “Ankhu” includes the word, ‘Ankh,’ meaning life, and “Smen” is the verb ‘to establish’. However, the name Sessi, takes the s from the end of the word ‘mes’ (meaning ‘child’ or ‘born of’) and combines it with the s from the beginning of the word ‘su’, meaning ‘him.’  Add an ‘ee’ sound on the end, and we get Sessi.

It seems that, like us, the Ancient Egyptians often added ‘ee’ to create a satisfactory nickname. Compare Ameny and Sessi to, for example, Sammy or Chrissie.

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My apologies again that this comes to you as a series of observations made over years rather than a study with any academic rigour, but I hope you’ve found it as fascinating as I have and I would love it if you could add to my growing stockpile of Ancient Egyptian nicknames.

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The Hieroglyphic script just looks so enticing, doesn’t it? Intricate images of people, birds, beetles and plants mixed in amongst more enigmatic symbols. Did you know that ‘Hieroglyphics’ is a misnomer? The script is Hieroglyphic, singular, and the individual characters are hieroglyphs. So you cannot claim you read Hiroglyphics (with the s) any more than you could claim to read Greeks. A great little fact if you feel the need to be a pedant in your local museum.

By far the most substantial part of the script is phonetic – each glyph can stand for one, two, three, or occasionally four sounds. Others stand for whole words. And then there are a subset of glyphs that are silent, which we call ‘determinatives.’ They both determine the previous word’s meaning and terminate the word. So they play a similar role to the space that we leave between words in showing us where one word ends and another begins. But they do more than a blank space. They actually tell us what the word was about. Hence, the word ‘cat’ will terminate with a picture of a cat; if I write my name, I will finish it with a picture of a woman, and so on.

I offer this brief outline of the way the language works in order to dispel an astonishingly prevalent and persistent myth that the glyphs can be read a bit like tarot cards – that you can just impose your own meaning on them because they are ‘only symbolic.’ They’re not. As much as the Egyptians enjoyed symbolism, word play and the layering of meanings, the language they developed was very precise.

You can pick up translations of Ancient Egyptian texts from most good bookstores. If you’re interested in an overview, I highly recommend the three volumes of Miriam Lichtheim’s work in which she translates important texts from across the entire span of Egyptian civilization.

Beyond Egyptology, the extent and variety of Ancient Egyptian literary work is often unknown or overlooked. You hear a lot about the Pyramid Texts or the Book of the Dead, and perhaps historical accounts, such as that of the Battle of Kadesh. But how many out there are aware of the works of fiction, like the Tale of Two Brothers, the story of Sinuhe, or the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant? What about the Wisdom and Teaching texts? These are long treatises that outline Ancient Egyptian attitudes to morality, duty and society. And many of them are much more accessible than the Book of the Dead, which is, after all, a deeply complex religious text aimed at people who already know and understand the Egyptian religion.

When it comes to the Book of the Dead, I usually suggest to my students to avoid the editions translated by Budge. Our understanding of the language has moved on so much since Budge’s time that his versions now include a host of inaccuracies. By far my favourite translation is that of Faulkner, and if you can find the edition with commentaries by Ogden Goelet then you have stumbled upon a goldmine of information.

In my translations, I have leant heavily on Faulkner, not just to help me with some of the grammar, but also because the copy of his work I have is accompanied by facsimiles, so I am able to read directly from the original papyrus, accompanied by his translations beneath.

And so it is my great pleasure to introduce you to the Hymn to the Sun, as it appears in the Book of the Dead belonging to a man called Ani.

Ani was a scribe in either the late Eighteenth or early Nineteenth Dynasty. He was a man of high status, the Ancient Egyptian elite, as is evidenced by his titles as well as the quality of his Book of the Dead. His papyrus scroll begins with a hymn to the sun god, Ra.

The Hymn to Ra

In praise of Ra…

In Ancient Egyptian, this phrase is Dua Ra. Dua translates directly as “to praise”, hence I’ve translated it as “in praise of Ra”, but I have also seen it translated as “hymn to Ra” or “Adoration of Ra” as it is essentially the title of the text that follows.

…when he shines in the Eastern horizon of the sky…

That the hymn is addressed to Ra when he is in the Eastern horizon suggests it is to be sung or spoken at sunrise, although the events it goes on to describe encompass the movement of the sun throughout the whole day.

…by the Osiris scribe, he who pleases all the gods, Ani.

Ani’s name and titles are preceded by “Osiris”, the god of the dead who is reborn in the afterlife and serves as a model for the deceased’s resurrection. By identifying himself with Osiris, Ani is ensuring that he too will be reborn, following the same model.

Ani says…

The speaker here is Ani (or potentially a priest speaking on his behalf).

Hail unto you who are come as Khepri – Khepri, creator of the gods. You rise and you shine

The speaker addresses the sun, not as Ra, but in one of its forms/manifestations. In this case, the sun is manifested as Khepri, the scarab beetle. Khepri derives his name from the very word for “forms”, “manifestations” or “transformations” – kheperu. Khepri is most often associated with the rising sun. Given the etymology of his name, he encapsulates the potential within the newly born sun – the great many things that it may do or become. Given that this is the start of the hymn, it makes sense that the sun is addressed in the form that it takes at its rising.

On the back of your mother. You are come as the divine king. You make your mother, Nut raise her arms in greeting.

The word I have translated here as “back” is pesed and it translates more directly as “spine”. The straight course of the sun across the sky can be seen as his travelling the length of his mother’s spine. His mother is Nut, the sky goddess. He travels through her body at night and across it in the day.

You are received into Manu.

Now we have skipped to the end of the day because Ra is being received by Manu. Manu refers to the Western Mountains, the visible manifestation of the land of the dead. These mountains can be seen all along the Nile Valley, and the Valley of the Kings, as well as many other graveyards, are located within them. Here they are treated as a liminal space between the world of the living and that of the dead.

 You are embraced by Maat in all seasons. You grant power, true strength…

The embrace of Maat and the greeting of Nut are complementary images. The hieroglyph for “embrace” shows hands that are raised to receive the partner. It is no accident that Maat is usually considered to be a daughter of Ra. Hence Ra is effectively passing from one goddess to another. He is born from his mother in the Eastern horizon and embraced by his daughter in the West. The term “embrace” often had sexual connotations, and this joining together of god and goddess was considered to be a potent moment. The unity results in rebirth, healing and rejuvenation for the sun-god. This is true of both the mother-son unity, from which Ra emerges in the East, and the father-daughter unity, into which he is received in the West. We can assume that the power, strength and magic granted to Ani comes forth from this union.

And the ability, for this living soul…

When Ani speaks of coming forth as a living soul, the word for “soul” here is ba. The Egyptians believed the soul had many parts. The ba is perhaps closest to our own idea of a soul. It retained the character and memories of the deceased.…

… to see Horakhty.

Horakhty is a god whose name means “Horus of the Two Horizons”. He too is a form of the sun-god, but as Horus he is associated with divine earthly rule, the Pharaoh and the world of the living. He is the form of the sun-god most often seen travelling across the sky in the daytime.

All this is granted to the spirit of the Osiris scribe, Ani, proclaimed ‘true of voice’ before Osiris.

“Proclaimed true of voice before Osiris” is an epithet referring to the judgement of the deceased after death, when their heart is weighed in a balance against the feather of truth. At judgement, Ani would be asked to deny forty-two different sins, or indiscretions if you would prefer a word with less modern religious baggage. If these denials were true, he would be proclaimed “true of voice” and it would mean he would be judged virtuous and allowed to proceed into the underworld. In most funerary texts, the deceased frequently uses the epithet “true of voice” after their name to denote their success in navigating the underworld, but it also serves as a reminder to the living that this person is dead, functioning in a similar way to the modern “R.I.P”.

Ani says…

Again, Ani is supposedly speaking here.

 O, all you gods of the soul-house…

The soul-house is an offering table in the form of a house that would have been placed either in the tomb or on the outside of the tomb as a marker. Passers-by and mortuary priests could have made offerings there to the deceased’s spirit. “Spirit” is a translation of the word ka, which is another part of the Ancient Egyptian concept of the soul. The ka is always shown as two hands outstretched to receive offerings and it is perhaps best thought of as the essence or life force of the person. It does not appear to retain their qualities after death, but it must be sustained by offerings or the deceased risks fading away into non-existence.

 …judges from the sky and from the land who act according to Maat - may you make offerings for the spirit of Ani: offerings of food and fowl.

Here, Ani has the audacity to ask, not humans, but the gods themselves to make offerings to him that will sustain his ka. And not just any gods – he asks the very gods who have judged him to be true of voice.

Unique Tatenen…

Next, Ani petitions the god, Tatenen, to join him in praising Ra. Tatenen is a god associated with the primordial waters before creation. In later periods, his identity became merged with that of Ptah, another creator god. Ani addresses him as “unique”, a sobriquet often associated with the idea of a single god from which the many emerge. Hence, in turning to the “one” god, Tatenen, who came before all others, Ani is effectively addressing the totality of all the gods. He is about to go on to describe sunrise, which is itself associated with beginnings and with creation itself, so in some ways, Ani is addressing the potentiality of all the gods that exist before creation and, by describing the sunrise, he is about to bring them into creation.

Creator of mankind and of the gods in the south, north, west and east, may you praise Ra, Lord of the sky

Ani invites all of creation, human and divine, to take part in this hymn.

When he arises as sovereign. May Ra be granted life, prosperity and health.

“May he be granted life, prosperity and health” is, in actuality, shortened in the text to simply “life, prosperity, health.” This is such a commonly used phrase that it would likely have gone unnoticed/unread by the Ancient Egyptians. It serves exactly the same function as “may peace be upon him” spoke after the name of Mohammed. And just as that is shortened to “p.b.u.h” in many texts, so Egyptologists sometimes shorten “life, prosperity, health” to “l.p.h.” It is a term of respect, which usually followed the name or titles of a king.

He is the creator of the gods and they praise him…

It may seem strange that Ani addressed Tatenen as “the creator” and then, very quickly, also calls Ra “the creator.” Occasionally such parallel uses of a phrase would suggest we identify the gods with one another, but in this context, it seems more likely that two different kinds of creation are being referenced. Tatenen, as the primordial waters, contains every god and every human and every thing in the world in potentia, and it is from him that they emerge. In contrast, Ra effects creation because it is through his rising that time itself begins. Thisis an act of creation that allows all the rest of creation to take place.

 …when he appears in his beautiful…

“Beautiful” is written with the word nefer, which has a broader meaning than simply aesthetic beauty. It was associated with light and radiance, and also with moral virtue.

… form.

The word used for “form” here is not kheper, but tut. Tut has a different meaning to kheper. Kheper translates best as “manifestation”, since the god takes on both the appearance and the character and qualities of whichever kheper they appear as. Tut is more often translated as “image” and refers most specifically to the outward appearance of the god, the “shape” that they take. Tut also has associations with the idea of perfection, so one can assume that, when it is used, the form of the god should be considered perfect and praiseworthy. There is no such thing as a bad tut!

He rises in the day-barque.

While Nut, the sky, is considered to be a goddess, her body was often thought to be a tract of water. The sky, after all, is blue, like water, and it is from the sky that rain falls, albeit only occasionally in Egypt. Therefore, when the gods traversed the sky, they are often shown doing so in boats. Specifically, it was believed that they had a day-barque and a night-barque.

Those above and below praise him. Thoth and Maat keep his records every day.

The exact translation of Thoth and Maat’s actions is that they “write to him” or “write for him” “every day.” However, such a direct translation makes it sound as if they were writing letters to him! In fact, Thoth and Maat were record-keepers (as were most scribes at the time), not story tellers, and their job would have been to keep track of time as well as to record the deeds and lifetimes of the deceased. They are both heavily involved with the judgement of the deceased after death: Thoth is responsible for the scales themselves, while Maat is an embodiment of the feather against which the deceased’s heart is weighed.

His enemy is thrown into the fire.

As a part of the sun-god’s journey across the sky every day, he confront and defeat his enemies. It is hard to say exactly when this was thought to occur in the day, as the events of these skirmishes, when described in texts, are often directly followed by references to sunset. However, we also know that the Egyptians considered noon to be a perilous time of day because the sun, at its zenith, briefly hangs in the sky before making its downward journey. This was thought to be a moment when time itself was in danger of stopping. It should be borne in mind that it is this fate that the enemies of the sun-god seek to fulfil – the disruption or destruction of time itself and therefore the end of existence in any meaningful sense.

The rebels have been felled and Ra has bound their arms and restricted their movements. These impotent children

The words for “enemies” and “rebels” are all written with serpents as determinatives. However, the scribe has kindly slashed his pen through each of the serpents’ coils, effectively “cutting it into pieces”. Such small magical actions were taken by the scribes to ensure that the enemies being described would be rendered harmless.

Are no more. The house of the sovereign is in festival. Voices are raised in celebration in the great throne room.

Here, Ra is being explicitly identified as a king amongst the gods, since he has both a palace and a throne room.

The gods are rejoicing because they have seen Ra rise and flood the land with his radiance.

The majesty of this god proceeds until he has entered the land of Manu, a land that is brightened by his daily birth. Thus he completes the day, so that it now becomes yesterday.

When Ra rises in the east he floods the land of the living “with his radiance.” Complementing this, at his setting in the land of the living, there comes a new sunrise in the land of the dead, and Manu “is brightened by his daily birth.”

Ra pleases me when I see his beauty.

This part of the hymn addresses Ra as -ek, meaning “you”, although I have continued to call him “he” since the abrupt change from third person to second person comes across as awkward in translation. However, it is worth noting that the hymn now takes on a very personal tone. Ani has suddenly stopped speaking about the gods in general and is now talking about himself. He speaks in the first person and addresses the sun-god directly as “you.”

Today I leave this land.

When Ani talks about leaving the land, he is talking about his own death.

I smite the enemy. I drive away

Ani hopes to take his place in the sun-god’s boat and join him in protecting Egypt (and all of time and existence) from her enemies.

The rebels. I destroy Apophis when he acts.

Apophis is probably the most well-known enemy of Ra. He is a giant serpent, which – if given the opportunity- will swallow the sun.

I see the fish of Abydos at the moment it comes into being and I see the fish of Inet…

The fish of Abydos and the fish of Inet are two guardians who travel with Ra’s boat. They are associated with the goddesses, Isis and Hathor respectively. Pairs of goddesses as protectrices are a common theme throughout the Book of the Dead and both Ra and Osiris are commonly accompanied by the sisters, Isis and Nephthys, sometimes shown as two women and sometimes described as “the two kites” when they appear in bird form. The sacred fish appear to be another manifestation of these feminine guardians. Isis is often associated with birth and rebirth, as the mother of Horus and the goddess who resurrected her husband, Osiris. In contrast, Hathor is associated with the land of the dead; she is a goddess who has dominion over the Western Mountains and the land of the dead. Thus the fish of Abydos and the fish of Inet complement each other. One theory is that the fish of Abydos refers to the fish that consumed Osiris’ phallus. The city of Abydos was, after all, the cult centre for Osiris’ worship. Therefore, the “moment it comes into being” may refer to the moment in which it ate his body part and thus became imbued with divine power.

Along its way. I have seen Horus there, piloting his vessel with Thoth and Maat to either side of him.

Horus is usually associated with the living king. In the Old Kingdom, only the king would complete this journey with the sun into the afterlife. However, by Ani’s time, all people were considered eligible to sail with the gods. However, it is in keeping with this more ancient myth that Horus would take a prominent role in the journey.

He gives the bow warp of the night-barque and the stern-warp of the day-barque to them. I see the sun disc and I behold the moon; they rise every day.

Again, we find ourselves presented with complementary pairs: the bow warp and the stern warp; the day barque and the night barque; the sun disc and the moon. Day and night, as well as referring to literal day and night, refer to life and death. The coming together of the day and night barques represents another instant of union, which as we have seen, can be considered to bring about regeneration and resurrection. Hence, as the boats are tied together, so Ani’s soul is probably rejuvenated and reborn in the horizon. It¡s a moment of transformation and transfiguration: day into night, and life into death and rebirth.

My soul goes forth to travel

To every place it wishes.

Part of the purpose of the Book of the Dead was to grant the deceased freedom in the next world. In contrast to a corpse, which is static and unmoving, the reborn deceased was considered to be consistently able to travel and almost always in motion. This establishes that the deceased is living and animate and not dead and unmoving.

My name is spoken

At the offering table.

When the living made offerings for the deceased and spoke prayers for them (eg “my name is called”), these acts sustained and nourished the ka of the deceased.

Horus gives

Me bread, just as he does his followers.

A throne is prepared for me

Here, even the king (or the god of the king), Horus, makes offerings to Ani. Again, this connects Ani’s process of regeneration and rebirth to the more ancient idea that it was only the king who partook in this transformation. This idea, dating from the Old Kingdom, also included the notion that others might gain life after death if they were loyal followers of the king. Hence Ani is hedging his bets by depicting himself both as someone undergoing rebirth with Horus, and as a loyal follower of rebirth who might be granted that rebirth because of his loyalty.

In his boat on this day when

He completes his journey across the sky. I enter into

“He” is, in the original text, described as “he who is foremost amongst the gods” or more literally “the foremost god”. This title could refer here to either Horus or Ra or both, since they have both been identified as the pilot and/or captain of the barques that travel across the sky. Both are solar gods, so Horus can also be considered a facet of Ra. It seems unnecessary to differentiate them at this point since they both serve the same function and, for smooth reading, I’ve truncated this simply to ‘“he”.

The presence of Osiris in the land

Of all those proclaimed “true of voice”.

And here, Ani’s final destination is explicitly stated to be the land of the dead. That is, the land of all those who have passed the trials of the underworld and now live in the presence of Osiris, the king of the dead.

This hymn is for the spirit of Osiris Ani.

The hymn can be considered completed at the phrase “true of voice” because “for the spirit of” and then the deceased’s name, is a standard rubric that appears at the end of a prayer or spell.

Summary

Ani’s hymn to the sun ultimately takes on a tripartite scheme. At first, creation is mentioned, which is the ultimate birth and beginning of all things. Next, the daily cycle of the sun-god is described. This is, in many ways, a daily act of creation, with dawn and sunrise explicitly compared to the original act of creation. Finally, Ani himself directly and personally addresses the gods, explaining to them how he will be a part of this cycle and will thus be regenerated and reborn each day with them. In this way, a recital of the hymn is an act of magic because it inserts Ani into the solar narrative as it is being said or sung.

For more articles on Ancient Egypt, please subscribe. In addition to FREE articles and newsletters, paid subscribers will receive a serialisation of my non-fiction work focused on the cult of the Aten in New Kingdom Egypt. And you will have bought the author a cup of coffee, which she greatly appreciates.

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 References

Faulkner, R, (translation), 1994. Commentaries by O.Goelet and preface by C. Andrews. The Egyptian Book of the Dead The Book of Going Forth by Day. Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press, 1998 edition

Lichtheim, M, 1973. Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. USA. University of California Press, 1997 edition

Lichtheim, M, 1973. Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume II: The New Kingdom. USA. University of California Press, 1997 edition

Lichtheim, M, 1973. Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume III: The Late Period. USA. University of California Press, 1997 edition

https://archive.org/details/TheEgyptianBookOfTheDead

https://historicaleve.com/papyrus-of-ani-book-of-the-dead/

In today’s article, we look at the twin lions of the horizon, guardians of time itself.

Twin Gods

Some of the earliest motifs we find in Ancient Egyptian art are of animals shown in symmetrical opposition to one another. Often they are restrained, at arms length, by a man who stands between them, or held back by their captors. Examples can be found in the ‘painted tomb’, number 100, at Hierakonpolis, and on the later Palette of Narmer, where two serpopards (big cats with snake-like necks) seem to be controlled by human handlers.

In later dynasties, this motif was refined into the symbol of a unified Egypt, showing two gods facing one another over the hieroglyph for ‘unity’, bound by the stems of the lotus and papyrus. These plants represented the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. Often the two gods shown were Horus and Seth, or Horus and Thoth (the latter being a ‘safe’ alternative to depicting the more dangerous, Seth), but the motif is occasionally shown with identical gods on either side; for example, the Nile deity, Hapi.

In all of these examples, the two gods, cast in symmetrical opposition to one another, face inwards. Yet as this motif developed, so did another, showing mirror-images of animals facing away from each other. Thus we find early dynastic examples of cosmetic palettes (often flat depictions of animals in silhouette) showing creatures appearing to have two heads. Whether these were actually two-headed animals is a point of contention; they could perhaps be seen as a pair of animals, shown in silhouette.

And this brings us neatly to today’s god, Aker. It has been reported that this god was first depicted on a cosmetic palette in the tomb of Pharaoh Djer, fourth king of the First Dynasty. I’ve tried, but have not been able to locate this object or find an image of it. However, depictions of Aker were more widespread by the Middle Kingdom. He was frequently shown as a deity with two heads sharing one body. The heads faced outwards, as if guarding against external threat. The body was always that of a recumbent lion. Occasionally, one god became two. Sometimes, he was shown as two lions. Occasionally, he was two sphinxes, with lion bodies and the heads of men. This strange and relatively obscure god is otherwise known as Ruty, ‘The Two Lions.’

The Guardians of Time

Aker is depicted in the tomb of Pharaoh Thutmose III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, not as a lion, but as a mound of earth with the head of a man. In Egyptian spirituality, the mound of earth is significant as it was believed that the first god emerged from just such a mound, at creation, pushing its way out of the primordial waters. Aker then is an Earth god, a god that is physically embodied by the Earth and its formations. This is an idea given further weight by his name being written with the determinative for ‘earth’. In hieroglyphic, determinative signs were non-phonetic (unspoken) signs that tell you something about the meaning of the word. In this case, Aker is being directly identified with the earth and its features e.g. mounds, mountains etc.

The images in Thutmose III’s tomb are from a corpus of texts known as the Amduat, ‘Within the Underworld’, which describe the journey of the sun through the various hours of the night. The Egyptians saw time itself as brought about by the cycling of the sun. Whereas we, with an understanding of the universe beyond our own solar system, might be able to conceive of time existing without our sun, for the Egyptians it emanated from the sun itself and was inseparable from it. Their greatest fear was that the sun would cease to sail across the sky and as a result, time would stop, and existence would cease.

One of the most famous images of Aker comes from the Book of the Dead belonging to a man called Ani. It’s a document that was written in the late Eighteenth or early Nineteeth Dynasty and, in it, Aker is shown as two lions, facing away from each other. Their spotted coats suggest they are Barbary lions, a species now sadly extinct. Between them is the hieroglyph for ‘horizon.’ They are labelled Tomorrow, duau and Yesterday, sef.

The accompanying text is Chapter Seventeen of the Book of the Dead, an ancient spell with precedents in the Pyramid and Coffin Texts. It describes the deceased’s resurrection upon receiving the Eye of Horus - a reference to the myth of Osiris.

Osiris’ story formed the template for everything an Egyptian man or woman expected to happen to them after death. In the narrative, Osiris is resurrected by his wife, Isis. The Eye of Horus appears later in the tale when Osiris’ son, Horus, is fighting his uncle Seth for the throne and receives an injury to his eye. He is healed when the Eye is returned to him. However, far earlier references to the Eye in the Pyramid Texts deviate from this narrative and instead describe Horus either feeding the Eye to his father or otherwise uniting it with his father’s body. The result is that life, or perhaps specifically consciousness and sight, are returned to the deceased.

This ancient version of events is the one described in Chapter Seventeen, in which the Eye is a facet of the Sun-god, which Horus brings to Osiris, to effect his resurrection. The text accompanying the image of Aker reads:

To me belongs yesterday; I know tomorrow.

As for yesterday, that is Osiris. As for tomorrow, that is Ra…

Here we see the symmetry of Aker mirrored by complementary pairings in the text: yesterday and tomorrow; Osiris and Ra; death and life. The coming together of opposing forces, their unification, brings about something more than the sum of its parts. In this case, resurrection and rejuvenation.

Identified as ‘tomorrow’ and ‘yesterday’, Aker is explicitly connected to the concept of time. The horizon, which the two lions guard, is the boundary between the past and the present. It is, after all, the point at which the sun sets and rises, thereby turning yesterday into today. As such, the two lions are not only standing guard at the deceased’s moment of resurrection; they are also keeping watch over time itself.

The Lion of the Horizon

In the tomb of Ramesses VI, a ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty, we see Aker depicted as a two headed sphinx with a shared lion body.

It is hard not to be reminded of the Sphinx at Giza. It may be that Khafre’s sphinx was indeed a depiction of Aker, standing guard over the rebirth of the Pharaohs in their pyramid-tombs. Certainly, by the late New Kingdom, the Sphinx was known as the ‘Lion of the Horizon’ a near-explicit identification with Aker.

The horizon held great significance for the Egyptians. Not only was it the boundary between yesterday and tomorrow, but it was also the place where the sun entered and exited the Underworld. Thus it was the point at which life became death, and death became life - a magical, liminal space in which anything and everything could be transformed.

The Egyptian word for ‘horizon’ was akhet, taken from the root akh. Akh is a very difficult concept to translate. To give you an idea, dependent on context, it is sometimes translated as ‘effective,’ ‘divine,’ ‘light-filled’, ‘magic’, ‘transfigured’, ‘radiant’ or ‘powerful’. As a noun, it describes a spirit which, after death, has attained all these qualities - a state to which the deceased aspires. The t in akhet changes the meaning; it becomes a noun describing a place. Although akhet is most frequently translated as ‘horizon’, scholar Miriam Lichtheim, for example, chooses to render it as ‘Light-Land’ in her translations. It is a light-filled place in which the deceased expects to be transfigured into something akin to a divinity. And it is this process, and this sacred land, which Aker guards.

In summary then, Aker is protective god associated with the geographical and physical horizon, which he guards and embodies. As such, he protects the deceased as they undergo their transformation into divine spirits, ready for the next world. He also protects time itself, and thus all of existence, by overseeing the sun’s transition from day to night, life to death, and then from night to day - death to life.

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References:

Predynastic palettes - http://www.francescoraffaele.com/egypt/thesyra/palettes.html

Aker (general) - http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/aker/

The Papyrus of Ani - Goelet, Dr. Ogden, Faulkner, Dr. Raymond and Andrews, Carol, “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”, Chronicle Books, San Francisco (1994)

The Amduat - https://egypt-museum.com/amduat-of-tanetshedkhons

The horizon in Egyptian literature - Lichtheim, Marian, “Ancient Egyptian Literature” (3 volumes), University of California Press, (1975)

Insights into the Class Spectrum of Ancient Egypt

This week an exhibition, ‘Made in Egypt’ opened at the renowned Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, which focuses not on Egypt’s treasures themselves, but on the artists and artisans who made them. Arguably, it’s a welcome break from the West’s obsession with treasures and royalty.

Running from 3rd October 2025 to 12th April 2026, it looks set to offer visitors a compelling insight into the lives of the ‘ordinary’ people…Except, of course, they weren’t quite so ordinary. True, they were not royals, but the artists of Egypt were still an elite class. This is something we occasionally see glossed over when people talk of them. Take, for example, the so-called ‘Workers’ Village’ of Deir el Medina, which once housed the artists and tomb-builders for the Valley of the Kings - by dubbing it a ‘Workers’ Village’, we imagine a town inhabited by the labouring classes, but these were men (yes, they were, for the most part, men) of at least the upper middle classes. They were state-sponsored artists, supported and paid for by the government, and thus significantly removed from the farmers and labourers who grew crops, brewed beer and wove for their own survival (these latter two activities, in fact, were largely undertaken by women). Most of the work that would have filled the average Egyptian’s daylight hours would have been done for these artisans by others, freeing up their time to create the beautiful images we now see on tomb walls.

Where the Cambridge exhibition will shine is in highlighting both the creativity of individuals within the historical record, and the limitations placed on them by Egypt’s conservative and formal art style. Highlights include the gorgeous sculpted head of a princess from the Amarna Period, on loan from the Berlin Museum. It’s one of a very few items for which we know the name of the artist: the sculptor, Thutmose.

However, if even these elite artisans are all too lowly for you, fear not, for there is treasure and royalty aplenty if you fancy a trip to Rome. The Scuderie del Quirinale in Italy’s capital will be hosting the ‘Treasures of the Pharaohs’ exhibition from 24th October 2025 to 3rd May 2026. It is set to showcase 130 artefacts on loan from some of the biggest museums in Egypt, including the Egyptian Museum, the Grand Egyptian Museum and Luxor Museum. Highlights look set to include an intricate necklace of golden flies, made for Queen Ahhotep; the extraordinarily famous and beautifully preserved triads of Pharaoh Menkaure, which show him sculpted with a variety of gods and goddesses, and the sarcophagus of New Kingdom Queen, Tiye, the grandmother of Tutankhamun.

The exhibition also promises to showcase artefacts from recent excavations from the Golden City of the Aten on Luxor’s West Bank for the very first time.

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Catch Them Before They’re Gone - Amenemope and Khentika

We wake up to terrible news reports every day, so I probably shouldn’t let the fate of a couple of archaeological objects upset me. And yet, these stories always get to me.

When a bracelet belonging to Pharaoh Amenemope went missing from a safe in a restoration laboratory in Cairo Museum, the Egyptian media were quick to ensure that the piece became ‘too hot to handle.’ It’s the only way really - you hope that some soul recognises the object before it reaches the illegal antiquities market and makes its way out of the country. Unfortunately though, this strategy can backfire, resulting in the destruction of the item before it can travel far. This was the fate of Amenemope’s gold bracelet, which was sold to a gold jeweller for the (not even very princely) sum of £2750. It was then quickly offloaded to a foundry worker and melted down. Four people have been arrested and have admitted to the crime.

In more bad news, it has been reported that a painting has gone missing from the tomb of Khentika in Saqqara.

I did a bit of sleuthing and, what is being described by media outlets as a ‘limestone painting’ actually appears more likely to be a relief sculpture of Khentika painting.

If I’m correct, then the image may well have been painted but is not itself a painting. In the scene, Khentika is seated on a stool, painting images of Egypt’s seasons. The purpose of such a scene is not immediately clear: it may be that we are simply being granted an insight into Khentika’s leisure activities, as a hobbyist painter, or it may be that his act serves a magical purpose, ensuring that each of the seasons will take on the idealised features captured in his painting - a mild summer, a fertile inundation, and a good harvest. And again, if I have correctly identified this wall relief, I’m sad to say that pictures like this may be all we have left of it.

For context, Amenemope was a Pharaoh of the Twenty-First Dynasty (around 1000BC) when Egypt was essentially a theocracy. He was a High Priest of Amun, and although his own tomb was robbed in antiquity, he was reburied in his father’s tomb in Tanis, which remained intact until its discovery in the twentieth century.

In contrast, Khentika was a vizier in the reigns of Pharaohs Teti and Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty (around 2300BC). The stolen relief comes from his Mastaba tomb in Saqqara. And if you need a little something to make him feel more human to you - he rarely went by Khentika, preferring his nickname, Ikhekhi.

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Walking the Pyramids

The GEM Walkway has just opened in Giza. Known as the ‘Tourist Walkway’ or ‘Tourist Promenade,’ it stretches for nearly a kilometre and a half between the new Grand Egyptian Museum and the Giza Pyramids.

When I first saw this, my initial reaction was, ‘Oh no, have they learnt nothing?’ It reminded me of Luxor’s Avenue of Sphinxes, which was opened in 2021. The Avenue of Sphinxes is, in fact, the processional route used, in ancient times, to carry the barques of the gods between Luxor and Karnak Temples. I was able to walk it for the first time in 2023, and it was a deeply humbling experience, walking in the footprints of Ancient Egypt’s priesthood, but for many tourists who don’t understand its significance (and for a few who do) it is nearly a mile of unchanging ancient roadway - without shade. And it’s the latter which is a problem. Most tourists are less concerned with the avenue’s spiritual significance and more concerned about whether the journey is made easier by a nice, air-conditioned bus, thank you very much. The avenue has pulled in far fewer tourists than expected. As you can see, my father and I had it to ourselves in April 2023 and, while I prefer this to its being lined by vendors, I feel sorry for the city’s tourist trade.

So when I saw the GEM Walkway with its distinct lack of cover, I was concerned that we may either see crowds of tourists wilting in the desert heat or, more likely, a wildly expensive, unused walkway. Of course, it is a modern construction and the Avenue of Sphinxes is ancient, but they have done well in blending the new architecture with the existing landscape. In the Old Kingdom, Giza would have been peppered with processional routes and causeways linking the Pharaoh’s mortuary temples to their pyramids.

I am pleased to report however that, if tourists don’t intend to fry themselves along its one kilometre of open pavement, the GEM Walkway has been constructed for the use of electric vehicles and a shuttle is planned for anyone not wishing to walk. I wish it every success.

Pyramids Made by Water

Our second pyramid-based story this month looks at a new theory put forward by engineer, Xavier Landreau, which suggests that Pharaoh Djoser’s Step Pyramid was built using hydraulics.

At first it looked as if this might be one of those quack theories, which would at some point involve extraterrestrial interference, but I’m delighted to say that the paper is a fascinating read. It does not, at any point, claim that all pyramids were built with hydraulics, and nor does it fall back on alien invasion. In fact, it looks at the physics behind two shafts in the Step Pyramid which may have functioned as a hydraulic lifting system for the limestone blocks.

Xavier Landreau’s paper begins with an investigation into the purpose of Gisr el-Mudir, a mysterious structure to the west of the Step Pyramid known as the Great Enclosure. He posits that it may have been a combination of a dam and a filtration system, with water from the Abusir plateau being filtered through layers of coarse material to make it sediment-free. This distilled water, he suggests, may have been channelled into chambers beneath Djoser’s pyramid, to two shafts used as hydraulic lifts. The stones, weighing 300kg each, could have been floated on rafts constructed from up to a ton of wood. Granite plugs would have been used to hold the water in check when it was not needed, and the levels could have been controlled.

It’s a controversial theory, but not one we need to dismiss out of hand. After all, we know that the Egyptians had centuries of boat-building and irrigation channel construction under their belts by this period. They were experts on using water to support their way of life.

We’ll add it to the ever expanding list of ways in which pyramids might have been built.

Time for Something Magnificent

We’ll end on a positive note. This week, the tomb of Amenhotep III was opened to the public for the first time in twenty years. The tomb, WV22, is located in the Western Valley, a little off the beaten track for most tourists unless they have made the effort to reach the final resting place of Pharaoh Ay - the only other tomb open in the valley.

For two decades, teams of archaeologists have worked to stabilise and preserve the tomb, including meticulously piecing back together the lid of Amenhotep III’s sarcophagus, which was, at one point, in over 200 pieces.

Amenhotep III, otherwise known as Amenhotep the Magnificent, ruled during Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty. His forty year reign marked a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity, with very little conflict. He funnelled his resources into vast building projects, such as his mortuary temple at Kom el-Hettan (best known for the Colossi of Memnon), his jubilee palace in Malqata (now largely destroyed) with its vast pleasure lake and harbour, and the compact but beautiful Luxor Temple. He was the father of Pharaoh Akhenaten, and grandfather of Tutankhamun.

Alongside scenes from the Amduat, his tomb displays beautifully preserved images of the king encountering the gods of the Underworld: Hathor, Osiris, Maat and Anubis - all against a blue background reminiscent of the tomb of King Horemheb. In the burial chamber, Pharaoh was laid to rest under a blue sky painted with multitudes of yellow stars.

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Made in Egypt at the Fitzwilliam Museum

• Https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/plan-your-visit/exhibitions/made-in-egypt

• Https://theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/oct/02/made-in-ancient-egypt-review-the-fitzwilliam-museum-cambridge-leonardo

Treasures of the Pharaohs at the Scuderie del Quirinale

• Https://singerpalacehotel.com/event/treasures-of-the-pharaohs

• Https://www.turismoroma.it/en/events/treasures-pharaohs

The bracelet of Amenemope

• Https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kw8dwy4dro

• Https://egypt-museum.com/mask-of-amenemope

Khentika Paints the Seasons

• Https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/pharaonic-painting-missing-from-famed-saqqara-necropolis-says/

• Https://ia803101.us.archive.org/30/items/ASE-EEF30/30%20James%2C%20TGH%20-%20The%20Mastaba%20of%20Kehntika%20called%20Ikhekhi%20%281953%29.pdf

• Https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000297

GEM Walkway

• Https://parametric-architecture.com/grand-egyptian-museum-walkway/

Water-Built Pyramids

• Https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306690

• Https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/article/2024/10/11/did-ancient-builders-use-hydraulic-engineering-to-build-step-pyramids

Tomb of Amenhotep III

• Https://news.artnet.com/art-world/egypt-pharaoh-amenhotep-iii-tomb-reopen-2696769

Part 1

Tutankhamun. Nefertiti. There are certain names that have come down to us from ancient history, which are so familiar they transcend culture and country. The boy king. The beautiful queen. Yet how much do we really know of the times they lived in?

When we talk about Ancient Egypt, we may be quick to picture Tutankhamun’s golden funerary mask, inlaid with bands of semi-precious lapis lazuli. It is a touchstone, in our modern era, that has become iconic, not just of his reign, but of an entire culture, one that spanned millennia. Yet behind the mask was a young man who died before his time, at just eighteen or nineteen years old. As much as his image springs easily into our mind’s eye, we will never know his hopes or passions, or the moments that broke him apart, shaped him or took his breath away.

That he, and everyone else who lived at the time, had such moments is however all but indisputable. The human brain has not changed much in the last forty thousand years, and so those living just over three thousand years ago presumably had the same capacity for thought, emotion and experience as we do. That they viewed and even conceptualised the world around them in wildly different ways to us is highly likely, yet we are bound across millennia by common experiences: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. They interacted with the world through bodies not unlike our own. They loved, and wrote poetry espousing their feelings. They marvelled at sunrises and sunsets. They laboured and grew tired. The universality of human experience is something that connects us across time.

If pseudo-archaeological theories paint the Ancient Egyptians as so alien to us that their achievements can be passed off as extraterrestrial, then they do so at the expense of the most exciting part of Archaeology: the magic of looking at the world through others’ eyes and in doing so, coming to understand how limited and timebound our own understanding of it is. Study of ancient cultures opens our minds to the many possible ways humans can conceive of and organise the world around them; how concepts like truth, reality, morality – even time itself – can vary by place and epoch. And in reaching such a conclusion, perhaps we can all become more empathetic towards the multitude of cultures that exist in our world right now.

Big changes, after all, have small beginnings.

This could serve as a rubric for the rest of our work, since ‘change’ is a theme that will run throughout. The aforementioned icons of Ancient Egyptian culture, Tutankhamun and Nefertiti, both lived in a time of profound change, known to modernity as the Amarna Period. It is ironic perhaps that they have become the figureheads of all that Egypt means to us when, as we shall see, the time in which they lived was one of the least traditional periods in all of Egyptian history.

[This article continues behind a paywall, but don’t worry, I write about Amarna, the Pyramid Texts and the Book of the Dead, all for FREE, so please subscribe if you want more content like this, or sign up as a paid subscriber if you feel like buying me a coffee each month. I will be eternally grateful. Moreover I’ll run round the room shrieking with excitement].

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Yes, you may have seen it reported that we have just discovered a new Rosetta Stone. I don’t like to be the one to disappoint, but our newspapers and websites do love a headline that compares discoveries to something both well-known and extraordinary. What would they do without Tutankhamun’s to or the Rosetta Stone? But let’s talk about what was actually discovered.

This month it was announced, by the Minister for Tourism and Antiquities, that archaeologists working for the Supreme Council of Antiquities had dug up a copy of the Canopus Decree. The earliest version of this decree was actually found in 1866 and it was a truly groundbreaking discovery then because, like the Rosetta Stone, it was written in three scripts: Hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek. It filled in a lot of the gaps in translation that, at the time, the Rosetta Stone could not.

The decree, released by Pharaoh Ptolemy III in 238BCE, details the outcomes from an assembly of priests who had gathered to discuss governmental changes. Amongst the usual extollings of Pharaoh and his Queen Berenice, it outlined changes to the national calendar and the implementation of new festivals.

We now have six copies of this decree. This latest comes from Tell el Fara’in - ancient Buto - in present day El-Housseiniya, Sharquia, in the Eastern Delta. Buto was the ancient cult centre of the cobra goddess, Wadjet, herald of Lower Egypt. This latest version of the decree probably can’t clamber onto the same pedestal as the Rosetta Stone though, since it is written only in Hieroglyphic. It does however represent one of the most complete versions ever discovered.

Grand Opening of GEM

The long-awaited, ever-delayed opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum has been announced (again), this time for the 1st November this year. I’m not sure if this is the closest we’ve ever got to the date without it being put back again, but needless to say - exciting times!

In case you wonder why I’m at a point of I-won’t-believe-it-til-I-see-it, the construction of GEM was announced back in 1992, and the first foundation stone was laid, with ceremony, ten years later, in 2002. In 2005, construction began in earnest, but due to the country’s many political struggles, was subject to numerous delays. The museum’s opening was first announced for 2020. Then covid hit, so it was delayed until 2021. The collections weren’t ready however and the country was still recovering from the pandemic, so it was delayed again until ‘the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023.’ When these dates floated past, the opening was moved to the ‘end of 2023.’ Construction had, by now, finished. 2023 loped by and the it was announced that the museum would open in May 2024. This fluttered by quietly and another announcement emerged - October 2024. It opened! Well, not entirely. A trial opening. The full opening was scheduled for July of this year. Then war in Israel /Palestine wrecked both the tourist trade and general morale, so the opening was rescheduled again, for 1st November.

The museum is currently in a ‘soft opening’ phase with some of the halls and the grand stairwell (as well as the shops and cafes) open to the public. It will close again on the 15th October, in readiness for a spectacular ceremony on the 1st November. This will only be open to specially invited guests, but the museum itself should be fully opened to the public on 4th November (yes, the 103rd anniversary of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb).

Amongst the things that should be on any egyptophile’s bucket-list are the 5398 objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb that will finally all be displayed together (minus those that have crept into foreign collections), and the solar barques of Khufu, which were previously shown in the boat museum at the Giza Pyramids. If you’ve not seen them, they are breathtaking.

Meanwhile, the Pharaohs themselves will not be travelling to GEM. They are on display in the mummy hall in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, which opened in 2021. It’s not often on tourist itineraries, but is a must of you want to meet the kings face to face (literally).

If you’re stuck at home for all the celebrations however, fear not! The Egyptian government have just signed a deal with TikTok to ensure that the grand opening will be live-streamed across the world!

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The Ancient Egyptians loved their dualities!

Perhaps that is why the term most frequently used for their country was ‘Tawy’, which means ‘The Two Lands.’

There is no need to explain what these two lands were because it can refer to any and all of the dualities referred to above.

I begin with this explanation because understanding the nature of Pharaonic Egypt relies on our understanding its self-definition. For the Ancient Egyptians, ‘Egypt’ came into existence when the Two Lands were unified. This moment was given form, in the Egyptian psyche, through the myth of Horus and Seth. In it, Horus, the rightful heir to the throne, defeats his usurping uncle, Seth, to take back the land. It may be that there were once two opposing factions who identified themselves with these gods. If so, the legend might have developed from memories of an ancient battle. Or it may simply be that years of provincial fighting were simplified into a foundational national myth. Either way, for the next three thousand years, the Pharaohs would use the symbol of ‘unity’ as a motif in their art, in their temples, in their palaces and on their thrones.

The ‘sema-tawy’ (‘Unification of the Two Lands’) symbol is made up of the hieroglyph of a windpipe, bound by stems of papyrus and lotus. The windpipe is the phonetic sign for ‘sema’, which translates as ‘unification’, while the papyrus and lotus are heraldic symbols. The papyrus represents Lower Egypt (the north) and the lotus, Upper Egypt (the south). The symbol is usually flanked by two gods. Traditionally, they are Horus and Seth, although various symmetrical combinations appear. A frequently used pairing are Horus and Thoth, in which Thoth stands in as a ‘safer’ version of the more dangerous storm and chaos god, Seth.

Pharaoh is ‘Lord of the Two Lands.’

So to find the first Pharaoh, we have to find the first king to unite the Two Lands…

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Between 1897 and 1898, archaeologists Quibell and Petrie excavated a site called Nekhen. About 100 miles south of Luxor, this was one of the most powerful proto-states in predynastic Egypt. Nekhen was associated with the falcon god, Horus. Within its bounds, they discovered numerous tombs belonging to provincial rulers as well as a Predynastic temple to Horus.

Unfortunately, the exact find-spots of many objects were not recorded. One of these has proved to be amongst the most important discoveries in Egyptology. It is known as the Scorpion Mace-head.

The mace-head is far too large to have been of practical use, meaning that it was a symbolic weapon only and was likely used for decorative or ritual purposes. It is carved in shallow raised relief and depicts a ruler, clearly wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt. Beside him are a rosette and a small picture of a scorpion, thought to be his name. A later Egyptian word for ‘scorpion’ was ‘serek’ or ‘selk’, but since we have no phonetic information from this early in the dynastic timeline, we usually simply call him King Scorpion.

This King Scorpion is actually Scorpion II, as an earlier ruler of the same name was later discovered. However, this Scorpion is the first contender for the title of Pharaoh, the first potential king of a unified Egypt.

On the mace-head, Scorpion is depicted holding a hoe, about to break the soil before him. Behind him are rows of divine standards, showing some of the earliest gods of the Egyptian pantheon: Horus, Seth, Anubis/Wepwawet and Min. From these standards hang lapwing birds and bows.

The lapwing would later come to represent the people of Egypt; the bows would represent the enemies of Egypt from the north.

On the back of the mace-head is a second scene. Although it is too damaged for us to be sure, some scholars believe it depicts the same king wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.

So how do we go from this to recognition of Scorpion as the first Pharaoh of Egypt?

If the second scene were not damaged, then we could perhaps be certain. After all, we would have our first historical depiction of a king wearing both crowns. Unfortunately, the damage leaves everything open to interpretation.

Later Egyptians would identify their first Pharaoh as Menes, but the name Menes doesn’t appear in predynastic times, so we are left searching through the names that do. Based upon the mace-head’s discovery, in a temple cache in Nekhen, it likely dates to around 3100BCE, a date which ties in to the myth of Menes founding of Egypt. Moreover, the designs on the mace-head seem to point to Scorpion’s conquest of numerous provinces. Each of lapwing standards may symbolise a part of Egypt. The bows are an even more interesting addition. If he was fighting enemies in the north, was he engaged in a battle to take power over Lower Egypt?

The first time we find an artefact showing a king wearing the Two Crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt, it is a king called Narmer. This has led to three possible interpretations of the Scorpion Mace-head.

In the first, there is no such person as King Scorpion. This theory rests on the idea that Narmer and Scorpion (and Menes) were the same person. Supporters of this interpretation point to iconographic similarities between the two kings. The mace-head and a palette depicting Narmer wearing the Two Crowns may even have been carved by the same artist - they show similar motifs and themes. If this is the case, then Scorpion may be another name for Narmer or simply one of his titles. Furthermore no tomb has been discovered yet for Scorpion. There are contenders, but no definitive identification has been made.

In a second theory, Scorpion is the king who began the battle for the unification of Egypt, and Narmer is the king who achieved it. After all, we only have definitive evidence of Scorpion wearing the crown of Upper Egypt. In this interpretation, the standards bearing bows and lapwings still represent conquest of numerous provinces, but not yet the complete unification of the Two Lands.

In our final theory, Scorpion is indeed the first Pharaoh. That broken portion of the mace-head would have shown him wearing the Red Crown and we would be in no doubt of his role as unifier. In this interpretation, the events depicted on the mace-head are perhaps a celebration of his conquest, a ceremonial breaking of the ground that he has taken from his enemies.

I leave it up to you to decide! Scorpion was, in any case, a prominent ruler and warrior at the very end of the predynastic era, and the beginning of Pharaonic, dynastic Egypt.

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“Yes, wonderful things,” he said.

Words which have resonated throughout history. I’ve come to love them because, for me, they sum up perfectly what had lain for so long in darkness. More importantly, Carter’s response, if the story is to be believed, doesn’t mention wealth or gold. He responded with that most human of emotions: wonder.

Ancient Egypt seduced me in much the same way. It was the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb that really got me hooked and I’ve always felt a little guilty about that. It feels a little ‘mainstream.’ Like, perhaps I should have fallen in love with an obscure hieratic tablet from the Seventh Dynasty, and that would have made me one of the cool kids. But I remember coming out of the Tutankhamun rooms in the Egyptian Museum, blown away by what I had just seen, and asking the tour guide if the Egyptians had any of that stuff while they were alive. I believed that what I had just seen had been crafted exclusively for the dead.

I now know that not to be the case. A large number of items were made exclusively for the tomb, but many others were items Tutankhamun owned when he was alive and others still were copies of items used by the living. Daily life seeping over into the land of the dead: clothes, jewellery and walking sticks, chariots and vessels for perfume, make up and libations.

What had captured me was the sheer beauty of it all. The Ancient Egyptians had made their world beautiful.

(I mean, sure, that’s easy when you’re Pharaoh and have the entire nation at your beck and call, but still…)

In terms of evolution, the human brain has not changed much in the past forty thousand years, meaning that, in all probability, human beings have had the same capacity for thought and emotion we do now, for the past forty millennia. What elicits, in us, a sense of wonder probably had a similar effect on the Ancient Egyptians of Tutankhamun’s time. If Tutankhamun’s funerary procession displayed just a fraction of the wealth that travelled with him to the world of the dead, then one can imagine the awe it would have inspired in the non-royals who watched it pass.

We also catch a glimpse of Tutankhamun himself behind the mask of perfection that was so carefully created. The Egyptians were good at propaganda, but we find walking sticks with signs of wear. Opinion varies as to whether the king suffered from a disability that would have meant he needed these as walking aids or whether they were simply symbols of royal office. Sandals too, that have been worn down by frequent use. We find vessels once filled with sweet white wine – a new-fangled concoction in a time when red wine was the norm. But perhaps he had developed a taste for this new and exotic drink.

What about the dagger in Tutankhamun’s tomb forged of iron from a meteorite? I’ve seen it suggested on some less savoury sites that this is surely evidence he was either an alien or had contact with them! Please. He was a teenage boy. Show me one teenage boy who doesn’t want a dagger made of a meteorite.

The passion that I have for Ancient Egypt then does not come exclusively from how beautiful the culture was, but rather from the instances in which we glimpse real life and real people intersecting with that culture. In each of this series of essays, I want to highlight the humanity behind archaeological artefacts that might otherwise seem strange to us, a bit dry or even boring. But understanding their context can completely change the way we perceive them.

So I’ll begin with Tutankhamun’s daughters.

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Discovered in a box in the king’s tomb were the mummified bodies of two babies. Both were girls. Studies have confirmed that Tutankhamun was their father and their mother was probably the mummy found in tomb KV21 in the Valley of the Kings which has been tentatively identified as his wife, Ankhesenamun.

The babies were both stillborn. The smaller appears to be of 24 weeks gestation, the larger, 36 weeks. The box they were found in was decorated with images of the jackal god, Anubis. And the children therein are named simply “Osiris.” Osiris was the god of the dead, but his name was also used as a title after someone had died. Thus for example, a man called Ani is called “Osiris Ani” throughout his personalised Book of the Dead. That the children do not appear to have been named is in keeping with a tradition that saw children named only after two weeks (twenty days in Egypt). One can hypothesise that infant mortality rates were high enough that it was perhaps only after such a delay that parents felt confident their child had survived the rigours of birth. Their naming ceremony would then have become their very first rite of passage.

These foetuses are two of a small handful found in the Valley of the Kings, suggesting that it was not uncommon for stillborn royal babies to be buried with their parents. While occasionally seen in non-royal graves, this practice seems to stand alongside another, which saw stillborns buried within the foundations of a house. This is a practice that has survived, in some cultures, through into modern times, where the belief is that a stillborn child’s spirit, if kept close, will be reborn in the next baby in the family. This offers us perhaps another reason why the children are unnamed – they might have needed to wait until they were born again to receive their true name.

What beliefs Tutankhamun had around his daughters’ deaths are unknown, but the lengths to which someone went to have their tiny bodies mummified, suggests they were important to him. Perhaps it is no wonder. He was only a child when he became king and was surrounded by a cadre of powerful men, such as his vizier, Ay, and his military commander, Horemheb, all of whom might have thought themselves bettter candidates for the throne. He and his sisters were the last of their dynasty, so one important way to consolidate his rule and ensure he could not be ousted was to produce offspring.

In Ancient Egypt, the throne was passed from a father to his oldest surviving son. This may not have always happened, but it was a model set forth in the myth of Osiris and Isis and the ascent of their son, Horus to the throne. If a son was the “eldest” this tended to legitimise their claim. Tutankhamun was his father’s eldest and only surviving son. He may have once had an older brother, Smenkkhare, although records of him are scarce and, if he ruled at all as Pharaoh, it was probably only as a junior co-regent to their father, Akhenaten.

To add to the precariousness of Tutankhamun’s position, his father, Akhenaten, had been widely condemned as a heretic. Akhenaten appears to have closed Egypt’s temples and corralled his people into the worship of a single god over and above Egypt’s thousand-strong pantheon. His rule would, in later years, be considered a stain on the Egyptian record, worthy of damnatio memoriae- the removal of all trace of his name from state records.

Producing an heir must have ranked high among Tutankhamun’s priorities.

The Ancient Egyptians did not understand the genetic implications of incest. While it is widely known now that it could cause genetic abnormalities that would become magnified across generations, all they saw was the purity of a bloodline and the need to conform to social stipulations that insisted a woman wed above her rank. For the sisters of Pharaoh, the only man who outranked them was their brother. Hence, brother-sister marriage became common in the royal family.

Ankhesenamun, Tutankhamun’s wife, was probably also his half-sister. (I say probably because this is not supported by the DNA evidence, which surprisingly seems to show the KV21 mummy – thought to be Ankhesenamun- with a different set of parents to Tutankhamun).

Where the modern world would understand that foetal abnormalities and genetic issues across generations could be caused by these incestuous practices, the Ancient Egyptians likely only saw the inexplicable decline of a dynasty as fate struck them down with more and more debilitating illnesses.

Recent studies of Tutankhamun’s daughters have, interestingly, not found any genetic malformations. Initially, they were widely reported as having genetic anomalies in their bone structure, but it now seems that any abnormalities were caused by post-mortem damage to the bodies, whether at the time of mummification or in the intervening 3000 years. Whether there were disabilities or illnesses no longer detectable will likely never be known. Although mummification preserves the body, it does not always preserve DNA in a way that is useful to us.

Even if we leave aside the personal tragedy of stillbirth though – here are two babies that stand as testament to a family’s last, desperate attempts to save their dynasty. Each pregnancy would have brought hope, and each death would have come as another nail in the proverbial coffin, even if that coffin were made of solid gold.

Tutankhamun’s daughters offer us a glimpse into the human beings behind the gold and the treasure, into their hopes and dreams and personal tragedies.

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https://tutankhamunsworld101.weebly.com/golden-chariot.html

https://www.nilemagazine.com.au/2016-february/2016/2/6/tutankhamuns-walking-stick

https://arce.org/resource/tutankhamuns-sticks/

https://www.astronomy.com/science/a-new-origin-story-for-king-tuts-meteorite-dagger/

https://ajronline.org/doi/10.2214/AJR.11.6837

https://africame.factsanddetails.com/article/entry-1057.html

https://allthatsinteresting.com/ankhesenamun

From floor to ceiling, the walls are covered with columns of writing. These days I use the light from my mobile phone to see them. Just a few years ago, it was always wise to carry a torch with you around Egypt. You never knew, after all, when you’d be crawling through a tunnel or over a pit trap in a tomb.

Many people wonder why the kings of the Fourth Dynasty - Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure - left the rooms inside their pyramids bare. In contrast, the by the end of the Fifth Dynasty, texts were plastered over every available surface in a king’s pyramid. This is one of the pieces of ‘evidence’ sometimes presented to suggest that the Giza Pyramids were made by aliens. (Khufu would be turning his grave at the thought - if that grave hadn’t been looted several millennia ago and since turned into the world’s most famous tourist attraction).

The truth is, the Giza Pyramids were not a strange aberration. The first pyramids were never intended to contain texts. The Pyramid Texts were an invention of the Fifth Dynasty and they were to change the face of Egyptian religion forever.

Over the course of the Fourth and Fifth dynasties, Egyptian religion developed with a focus on the rebirth of the king. In some ways, Pharaoh was a messianic figure: the fate of all who died rested upon his shoulders. After death, he had to be resurrected as one of the gods in order for all of the dead to follow in his footsteps and attain an afterlife. He did this by ascending, in spiritual form, to the sky. From there, he would travel with the sun and the stars and eventually be reborn in the horizon. In life, he was identified with Horus, the king of the living. In death, he became Osiris, king of the dead.

This is a bland simplification of the religion of the time, but for now it should suffice to ensure an understanding of how important it was that the king gain eternal life.

Initially, Pharaoh sought to guarantee his post-mortem existence by building the most magnificent tomb he could. The first pyramid was stepped. Built by King Djoser, it would have functioned as a literal ‘stairway to heaven.’ Later tombs took the form of ‘true’ pyramids with smooth walls of polished limestone. Even so, their purpose remained the same.

The pyramid however was just one part of Pharaoh’s ascent to heaven. He also relied on rites and rituals carried out by his priests. As time went on, focus began to gradually move away from the form of the tomb, turning instead to ensuring that every magic spell, rite and ritual, was performed properly. Pharaoh began to funnel his resources away from vast architectural projects into their associated temples where priests would perform his cult.

It was in the reign of Unas that, for the first time, a Pharaoh decided these rites must be written down. If they were set in stone, they could essentially be performed for eternity.

And so, the Pyramid Texts were born.

They are the oldest compendium of religious texts known to man.

The Pyramid Texts were not like the Bible, Torah or Q’uran. There were no stories in them: no narratives, no histories and no moral teachings. They were instead a practical set of rituals designed to ensure Pharaoh’s safe passage to the next world. If religious myths are referenced, they are never laid out as a narrative. Instead, the original reader would have already been aware of the stories behind now-obscure references to myth. It may be that these rituals were based on a treasure trove of oral tradition now lost to time.

In later dynasties, some myths were written down as narrative tales, but others sadly are doomed to remain inaccessible to modern readers.

The Pyramid Texts were originally numbered by the archaeologist and linguist, Kurt Sethe, but their numbering has since been tweaked by some of the most famous names in Egyptology: James Allen and Raymond Faulkner amongst them. The numbers refer to individual spells or ‘utterances’, a reminder that these were probably once incantations to be spoken aloud. Some come with instructions, such as ‘present food and water,’ hence the widespread belief that they describe rituals performed for the deceased king.

When numbering the texts, scholars have tended to work from the interior to the exterior of the tomb, so the first Pyramid Texts, in most translations, are those found in or on the king’s sarcophagus; we then move on to the walls of his tomb chamber, and then on to the walls of surrounding chambers. In this series of articles, I will be using, as a reference, Faulkner’s 1910 translations and will attempt to offer commentary and guidance where I can. You can follow along here.

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Before I draw this introductory article to a close though, I’d like to offer some brief thoughts on the relevance of the Pyramid Texts in the modern world.

Cultures across space and time, including our own, have always struggled with how to handle death. The Stone Age saw many practising collective burials: bodies and bones buried or stored together. Effectively, in such cultures, if people were perceived as individuals in life then, at death, they were returned to an undifferentiated collective. However, some cultures, like Egypt, sought to protect personhood as someone transitioned from life to death. They saw, in the process of death and decay, a dissolution of the self. To avoid that, they developed practical processes that would prevent a corpse’s decay – mummification. This kept a person’s body intact. To ensure that personhood and self also remained, they developed rites and rituals that effected a person’s rebirth. Essentially, in order for someone to ‘survive’ death, they had to be reborn and restored, and joined with the divine so that they could never again be at risk of death and dissolution.

And this is relevant because it’s exactly what we do today, when we have a funeral. These days, in the Western word, we are not so concerned with protecting the body, but after someone’s death, we write a eulogy or an obituary and we tell each other stories of who they were. We essentially, define and outline the person, reconstructing who they were, often within a chapel or space designed specifically for that purpose. And it is through that reconstruction of a person’s identity that we allow them to live on after their death.

So we’re not so different – us and the Ancient Egyptians.

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This forthcoming series of essays is going to focus on the Pyramid Texts in relation to the Egyptian conception of self, and the ways that they, like us, protected and maintained a person’s identity after their death.

https://talesfromthetwolands.org/2020/03/01/pyramid-texts/

https://oi-idb-static.uchicago.edu/multimedia/301963/PT%20I%20(Introduction).pdf

Faulkner, R.O (1910) The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Clarendon Press, Oxford

https://archive.org/details/ancientegyptianp0000raym

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It’s empty. A swathe of white sand, with low, rambling cliffs to the east and the bright green fields, which line the Nile, to the west. We have acquired six armed men: a small militia, accompanying my mother and I, but there are no other visitors today and the soldiers all seem rather pleased to have someone to protect. This is Tell el Amarna in Middle Egypt, and it’s 2004. I’m here because I’m writing a thesis on this strip of land. Well, technically, I’m writing it on a city that once stood here.

We climb a bleached stone walkway towards the cliffs. It’s been built because, as anyone who has tried can tell you, climbing uphill through sand is hell.

Shouting and consternation: our militia herd us off of the walkway. My understanding of their Arabic isn’t good enough for me to fathom why, but in due course, we start climbing again, and one of the men explains to me in broken English that they had stumbled upon a cobra.

In Ancient Egypt, protective goddesses were often envisioned as cobras who would spit flames at enemies of the king.

It’s a reminder of just how inhospitable this landscape is to human habitation – how inhospitable it always was. And how odd it would be to choose to leave behind the rest of civilization and come and live out here. Yet before us, in the cliffs, a vast carving describes exactly that choice, made by Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century BCE, when he moved Egypt’s capital away from long-established Thebes, to this empty, dusty plain.

It was just one of a series of changes that Akhenaten made to Egyptian society that, thousands of years later, still leave people debating his motivations.

The carving explains that he founded the city of Akhetaten here.

‘Akhetaten’ means “the horizon of Aten.” In Egyptian mythology, the horizon was of immense importance; it is the point where the human world and the divine world meet. In death, one is said to travel ‘beyond the horizon’, and it is within the horizon itself that the dead are reborn amongst the gods.

Akhenaten dedicated his new city to his god, Aten, and moved literally thousands of people away from the old capital to this dusty, desolate plain. Yet if this seems eccentric it pales in comparison with Akhenaten’s other demands, because he insisted that Egypt cease to worship its thousands of gods and instead worship only his Aten.

When archaeologists (largely, white Christian men – this is relevant) uncovered Akhenaten’s religion in the late nineteenth century, there was something of an uproar. They saw, in his beliefs, a reflection of their own. Here was somebody who, in the midst of a polytheistic culture, appeared to have adopted monotheism for the first time in recorded history.

Writing in 1905, James Henry Breasted claimed that Akhenaten ”recognised clearly the power and, to a surprising extent, the beneficence of God.” And in 1910, Arthur Weigall painted him as a misunderstood religious visionary, in a text that drew many comparisons between Akhenaten and biblical prophets:

In an age of superstition, and in a land where the grossest polytheism reigned absolutely supreme, Akhenaten evolved a monotheistic religion second only to Christianity itsel in purity of tone. He was the first hman being to understand rightly the meaning of divinity.

In the view of Sigmund Freud, Akhenaten should be identified with Moses, since they must have both been espousing monotheism at the same time in history. Later, Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, Akhenaten: Dweller in Peace is fairly explicit in its comparisons between Akhenaten’s cult of the Aten and modern Islam.

All of these interpretations have led archaeologist Dominic Montserrat to compare Akhenaten to a mirror; Akhenaten has always been a reflection of the beliefs of the people who have studied him: Christian, Jewish, Muslim. He is a fanatic or a visionary depending upon their feelings towards religion. He is a prophet. Or he is a dictator.

But there is one thing that he never seems to be…

Egyptian.

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Please don’t misinterpret me. No scholar has ever denied that Akhenaten was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. And yet, all interpretations rely upon us perceiving Akhenaten as a man outside of his time. They draw so heavily on comparisons with modern ideas that he may as well be a time-traveller! And the period in which his religion held sway, now known as the Amarna Period, is far too often treated as a glitch in the historical record, a weird convulsion of modernity in the midst of the ancient world.

And it’s not fair.

It’s not fair because this perspective is born out of a tendency to treat Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs as primitive versus more ‘modern’ and enlightened monotheistic religions. Yet Akhenaten was born and raised in a culture with its own identity and character. Egypt’s civilization had already existed for nearly two millennia by the time he was born. It was steeped in tradition. To treat Ancient Egyptian culture as primitive and Akhenaten’s religion as enlightened is to entirely miss the point: Akhenaten’s religion was Egyptian, entirely and unashamedly. And it had its roots planted firmly in the culture in which he was raised and educated.

Instead of treating the Amarna Period as an aberration I want to see it as an opportunity to better understand the culture it grew out of.

Akhenaten was an iconoclast. There is no doubt about that. He changed art, language, religion, government, funerary ritual, fashion…Yet the seeds for the changes he made were likely sown before his rise to power. Hence, his religion offers an unparalleled insight into the culture of New Kingdom Egypt and the ways in which it could be deliberately shaped and manipulated for both religious and political ends.

And that is why, in 2004, I was standing at the site of Akhenaten’s Horizon of the Aten, gazing at his own description of his city:

“This is the whole of Akhetaten. It belongs to my father, the living Ra-Horakhty, rejoicing in what is right, in his name as Shu, which is in the sun-disk, given life forever and eternity: the cliffs, the mountains, the marshes, the new fields, the high ground, the added fields, the fields with water, the landing stages, the riverbanks, the people, the herds, the thickets; everything that the sun-disk my father causes to grow, for ever and eternity.” (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/amarna/boundary.html)

The Aten was a sun-god, a facet of Ra, and Akhenaten explicitly identifies him with a fusion of Ra and Horus, the falcon god of Pharaohs. He is also identified with Shu, a god of dry, light-filled air. When Aten is depicted, he is shown as the sun-disc from which rays of light extend, each one ending in a hand that reaches out towards Pharaoh and his family.

Over twenty years on, I am still glad that, in my studies, I focussed on ‘rehabilitating’ Akhenaten’s religion back into Egyptian culture. I came away with a first class Masters degree and a scholarship award. Yet I have also always been a storyteller, and a part of me longed to tell the story of this time period.

Many books have been set in the Amarna Period. Often they take a character who looks on from the sidelines at the unfolding events of Akhenaten’s reign. Sometimes they are a fictional creation, like Mahfouz’s Meriamun who narrates Dweller in Truth or Rahotep in Nick Drake’s series. At other times they are a historical figure, like Mutnodjmet in Michelle Moran’s Nefertiti, or Mahu in Paul Doherty’s The Horus Killings.

Yet I wanted, and still want, to tell a story from Akhenaten’s point of view, with a focus on what could have influenced and inspired him. Since then, my text has grown to have several point of view characters, all of them pivotal historical figures in the period. In a way, I suppose it’s riskier and makes the whole story more vulnerable to being debunked by future evidence. But you know what? It’s fun. And these people have been living rent free in my head for the greater part of my life.

I am currently two books in to what will become a series of four (if all goes to plan).

By necessity, historical fiction involves a flight of fantasy, and it’s an opportunity to do all the things I couldn’t in my Masters degree, such as guess at personal motivations and embellish characters’ personalities.

I realised, when I began, that there are so many gaps in our knowledge I would have to make decisions, at times, based on very scant evidence. The academic urge to justify every twist and turn is strong, yet I would probably end up with an Afterword much longer than the book.

Hence I have joined Substack.

Here, I hope to share my research as well as the choices I’ve made as I’ve written these books.

Ancient Egypt, and in particular, the Amarna Period, is my passion and my obsession. If you would like to come along for the ride, and maybe learn something along the way, please subscribe. I’ll be posting weekly.

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