The Cult of Amun

In the epic rivalry between ancient Egypt and Nubia, one god had enduring appeal

By Daniel Weiss

In its 3,000-year history as a state, ancient Egypt had a complicated, constantly changing set of relations with neighboring powers. With the Libyans to the west and the Babylonians, Hittites, Assyrians, and Persians to the northeast, Egypt by turns waged war, forged treaties, and engaged in mutually beneficial trade. But Egypt’s most important and enduring relationship was, arguably, with its neighbor to the south, Nubia, which occupied a region that is now in Sudan. The two cultures were connected by the Nile River, whose annual flooding made civilization possible in an otherwise harsh desert environment. Through their shared history, Egyptians and Nubians also came to worship the same chief god, Amun, who was closely allied with kingship and played an important role as the two civilizations vied for supremacy.

During its Middle and New Kingdoms, which spanned the second millennium B.C., Egypt pushed its way into Nubia, ultimately conquering and making it a colonial province. The Egyptians were drawn by the land’s rich store of natural resources, including ebony, ivory, animal skins, and, most importantly, gold. As they expanded their control of Nubia, the Egyptians built a number of temples to Amun, the largest of which stood at the foot of a holy mountain called Jebel Barkal. This the Egyptians declared to be the god’s southern home, thereby conceptualizing Egypt and Nubia as a unified whole and justifying their rule of both. After Egypt’s New Kingdom collapsed around 1069 B.C., the kingdom of Kush rose in Nubia, with its court based in Napata, the town adjacent to Jebel Barkal. The Egyptian colonizers may have been gone, but their religious legacy lived on, as the Kushite rulers were by this time fervently devoted to Amun. Just as the Egyptians had used the god to validate their conquest of Nubia, the Kushites now returned the favor. During a period of discord in Egypt, the Kushite king Piye first secured Amun’s northern home, in Karnak, Egypt. Then, claiming to act on the god’s behalf to restore unified control of Nubia and Egypt, he conquered the rest of Egypt and, in 728 B.C., became the first in a line of Kushite pharaohs who ruled Egypt for around 70 years.

Legend of the Sesostris Canal

There is no historical evidence for the existence of the ancient Sesostris Canal that was once said to link the Nile to the Red Sea, writes Al-Sayed Mahfouz

During media discussions of the new Suez Canal project that is to be built in parallel to the existing canal in the east of the country, many references were made to an ancient canal that the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Sesostris is said to have dug to link the Nile with the Red Sea. Many take the existence of this canal as a historical fact, when its existence has never been proved, however.

According to legend, Sesostris III, the fifth pharoah of the twelfth dynasty, connected the now extinct Pelusiac Branch of the Nile with the Red Sea by a canal. This story is mentioned in many books on the period, and a section of the new Suez Museum has even been set aside to this alleged canal. But the story is false.

The tendency to offer legend as fact in some Egyptian museums is deplorable and even laughable. Another example of this tendency is the so-called mummy of Hatshepsut, currently in display in the Egyptian Museum, which has not been irrefutably linked to the ancient queen.
Those who wish to learn more about the Sesostris Canal can refer to an excellent Arabic-language essay written by the late professor Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Halim, “The Nile-Red Sea Canal called the Sesostris Canal,” in which he examines, and refutes, the story.

The legend started with the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who attributed the digging of the canal to the pharaoh Nkhaw in 610 BCE, saying that it was left incomplete. But archaeological work conducted near Suez and the Bitter Lakes have produced no traces of habitation connected with the Middle Kingdom, during which Sesostris reportedly dug the said canal.

The Nile: Downriver through Egypt's Past and Present by Toby Wilkinson

By Farah Nayeri 21 March 2014

It is the longest river in the world -- stretching 6,650 kilometers through the continent of Africa -- and without it, one of the world's greatest civilizations would never have existed. As Toby Wilkinson writes in his new book, "Egypt is the Nile, the Nile Egypt."

Wilkinson, an Egyptologist from Cambridge University, has produced a fluidly written book that blends contemporary description with digestible doses of history and anecdote from the time of the Pharaohs to the present day. The book is made timely by a reference to recent events: the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, and the election and subsequent removal of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, described as Egypt's first democratically elected leader in 5,000 years. Though Egypt has "a past longer than most countries," writes Wilkinson, "its future has never looked less certain." As ever, the Nile "will be a vital reassurance."

The Nile has certainly been nurturing Egyptians since the beginning of time, and attracting innumerable non-Egyptians, too. Though the river covers less than one-twentieth of the country's surface area, it sustains more than 96 percent of the population. Once Egypt becomes a fashionable travel destination in the 19th century, adventurous Europeans  -- including Florence Nightingale  -- make the trip downriver on dual-masted house-boats known as dahabiya, which are charming, if occasionally vermin-infested. The river is thought to have such miraculous powers that credulous Europeans hoping for twins or sextuplets pay dearly for a jar of its water.

Polish scientists will examine how climate changed in Egypt thousands of years ago

Polish scientists want to examine how climate changed in the Nile delta over the millennia. Head of the pioneering program that will also involve researchers from Egypt and China, is Prof. Leszek Marks of the Faculty of Geology, University of Warsaw.

Group of researchers have just returned from reconnaissance expedition to the Egyptian Nile delta. During the three-year Nile Climate Change Project (NCCP) they will prepare the reconstruction of climate changes in the region over the millennia.

 

"We will drill a series of 40 meters deep wells near the lakes Mariut, El Brolus and El Manzija in the northern part of the Nile delta and Lake Karun (Birkat Qaroun) in the Fayum Oasis. We will obtain lake sediment core samples and subject them to lithological, palaeo-climatic, palaeo-ecological and chronostratigraphic analysis "- told PAP project coordinator, Dr. Fabian Welc from the Institute of Archaeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.

 

Scientists are interested in the changes that have occurred during the Holocene. This geological epoch began shortly after the end of the last ice age, about 11.5 thousand years ago. The project will reconstruct a scenario of climate change at the local (Egypt) and regional (north-east Africa) scale. Researchers will reconcile the results with each phase of the development of civilization of ancient Egypt, especially in the context of sudden and catastrophic climate fluctuations. 

Cemetery Reveals Baby-Making Season in Ancient Egypt

by Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 16 May 2013

The peak period for baby-making sex in ancient Egypt was in July and August, when the weather was at its hottest.

Researchers made this discovery at a cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt whose burials date back around 1,800 years. The oasis is located about 450 miles (720 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. The people buried in the cemetery lived in the ancient town of Kellis, with a population of at least several thousand. These people lived at a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, when Christianity was spreading but also when traditional Egyptian religious beliefs were still strong.

So far, researchers have uncovered 765 graves, including the remains of 124 individuals that date to between 18 weeks and 45 weeks after conception. The excellent preservation let researchers date the age of the remains at death. The researchers could also pinpoint month of death, as the graves were oriented toward the rising sun, something that changes predictably throughout the year.

The results, combined with other information, suggested the peak period for births at the site was in March and April, and the peak period for conceptions was in July and August, when temperatures at the Dakhleh Oasis can easily reach more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

Solved: Riddle of ancient Nile kingdom's longevity

(Phys.org) —Researchers have solved the riddle of how one of Africa's greatest civilisations survived a catastrophic drought which wiped out other famous dynasties. Geomorphologists and dating specialists from The Universities of Aberystwyth, Manchester, and Adelaide say that it was the River Nile which made life viable for the renowned Kerma kingdom, in what is now northern Sudan.

Kerma was the first Bronze Age kingdom in Africa outside Egypt.

Their analysis of three ancient river channels where the Nile once flowed shows, for the first time, that its floods weren't too low or too high to sustain life between 2,500 BC and 1,500 BC, when Kerma flourished and was a major rival to its more famous neighbour downstream.

They also show that the thousand year civilisation came to end when the Nile's flood levels were not high enough and a major channel system dried out - though an invasion by resurgent Egyptians was the final cause of Kerma's demise.

Downstream in Egypt, a catastrophic 30 year drought 4,200 years ago, which produced low Nile floods, created chaos in the old kingdom for at least a century.

Other civilisations in the near east and Mesopotamia were also severely hit by this drought.
The team's findings, funded by the Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS) and the Australian Research Council, are published in the journal Geology.

Professor Mark Macklin from The University of Aberystwyth said: "This work is the most comprehensive and robustly dated archaeological and palaeoenvironmental dataset yet compiled for the desert Nile.

Luxor: Rediscover Egypt’s jewel of the Nile

A closer look at one of the most attractive tourist destinations

By Sarah Loat

As the searing heat of the Egyptian sun releases its grip on Luxor a little, now is the perfect season to venture back to the beginning of time.

Post-revolutionary Luxor has been hit hard. This ancient capital of Egypt has been left bereft of tourists and the economy is struggling. Little else has changed; the temples still stand as they have for millennia and the Nile still enchants.

All the reasons why Luxor has attracted tourists for centuries and why it should definitely be on your bucket list – never has there been a better time to get a reduced-rate hotel room, from back packer’s lodges up to 5 star luxury. And Luxor needs you now!

The city is a treasure trove of ancient Egyptian wonder and has some of the world’s most awe-inspiring sights. Luxor has, somewhat unfairly, built a reputation for being the hassle capital of Egypt. It is true, it can be intimidating to have feluccas and caleche rides and West Bank tours thrust at you, seemingly by every person you pass in the street. But greet them with humour and politeness and remember, they are only trying to make a living.

Searching for the Venice of the Nile

by 27 March 2012 by Jo Marchant, Luxor, Egypt

I'M KNEELING in a narrow strip of green fields that separates the Nile river from Egypt's western desert, watching Angus Graham and his team hammer what look like huge metal tent pegs into the ground. A few fields away, the ruined columns of the Ramesseum, mortuary temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II, rise above the wheat, overlooked by the amber cliffs that hide the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

This area is dotted with some of the world's most impressive ancient remains, including the awesome Colossi of Memnon. But Graham, a field director for the Egypt Exploration Society in London, is interested in what's still hidden underground.

His tent pegs are actually probes that send weak electrical pulses into the ground to measure the earth's resistance. Called electrical resistivity tomography, the method can distinguish between bedrock (very resistant), waterlogged sediments (low resistance) and archaeological deposits (somewhere in between).

The hope is that by repeating the measurements throughout the Luxor area the team will see how Egypt's pharaohs engineered this landscape on a breathtaking scale, turning their capital, Thebes, into an ancient Venice.

Together with British, Egyptian and French colleagues, Graham is looking for ancient water channels. Texts and pictures from nearby temples and tombs suggest that sites on both sides of the Nile were connected by canals and navigable by boat. Descriptions of the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, for example, state that statues of gods were taken by barge from the temple complex at Karnak on the east bank to visit the dead kings at their mortuary temples on the west bank.

These descriptions have never been tested, and Graham wants hard evidence. If the waterways existed, did they operate all year round or just during flood season? Were they also used to transport supplies, including the immense stones used to build the temples?

The Fall of the Egyptian Old Kingdom

By Professor Fekri Hassan

End of a dynasty

Nothing prepared Egypt for the eclipse of royal power and poverty that came after Pepy II (Neferkare). He had ruled for more than 90 years (2246 - 2152 BC) as the fourth king of the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Within the span of 20 years, fragmentary records indicate that no less than 18 kings and possibly one queen ascended the throne with nominal control over the country. This was the entire length of the 7th and 8th Dynasties (2150 - 2134 BC). In the last few years of the 6th Dynasty, the erosion of power of the centralized state was offset by that of provincial governors and officials who became hereditary holders of their posts and treated their regions as their own property.

Egypt, to be sure, survived the disastrous collapse of the monarchy. Within a century, Egyptians had re-invented centralized government. They refurbished the image of kings so that they were not merely rulers by virtue of their divine descent but more importantly had to uphold order and justice, care for the dispossessed and show mercy and compassion. The crisis that shook Egyptian society thus heralded the most dramatic transformation in the royal institution, which was destined never to be separated from this social function.

The crisis not only reformed the monarchy but also instilled the spirit of social justice and laid the foundation for mercy and compassion as fundamental virtues. It was these concepts that were later to infuse Christianity and Islam. It was these same concepts that eventually led to the overthrowing of monarchs who repeatedly usurped their powers and denied people their religious rights.

Egyptology

September 10, 2011 By Alfred Jones

Once I was asked, “Why is it referred to as Egyptology, indicating that it is to be studies along with scientific subjects?” To answer this question, we must go back to the year l798 when Napoleon attempted to invade Egypt. His expedition, ill advised as it was from the military standpoint, had the long range effect of politically awaking Egypt and setting in motion a scientific examination of its antiquities that continued to this day. He had taken one hundred and seventy five scholars to study and record every aspect of Egypt that could be brought under the microscope of those who wanted to know more about it in as great a depth as possible.

Not only did he bring some of France’s greatest authorities on such subjects as astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, hierology, history, various technicians, painters, poets and a copy of every book he could find in France that contained information about the Nile Valley. He brought crates of scientific apparatus and measuring instruments.

Long after Napoleon gave up his military interest in Egypt and returned to France, the army of scholars remained in Egypt and continued to study, to measure and to record their findings. He was able to create a world wide interest in Egypt and after the other Europeans became interested in Egypt, there was a host of adventurers as well as scholars who descended upon Egypt and remain there to this day.