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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Five - January / February 2001

The King and his Court

It is during the Old Kingdom that the court surrounding the king emerges from the mists of predynastic obscurity and individuals have the opportunity to convey something of their personality, ambitions and status too. 

It is often written that the individuals who were buried in the tombs of the nobles at Saqqara and elsewhere in the Old Kingdom were restricted to those whom the King permitted to share his afterlife.  None-the-less, since they chose to depict their families and servants and something of their own lives on the tomb walls of their "homes for eternity" it is inevitable that we should learn more about the ordinary people of Egypt during this period too.

In the tomb of Mereruka at Saqqara, for instance, there are images of life in the women's quarter of a nobleman's house, children dancing and playing games, and scenes of hunting and agriculture as well as the more formal images and statuary required for a man of his status. The physician and dentist Hesy-Re, it has been said, shows the care-worn features of a man of responsibility. Subsequent issues of AE magazine will carry more stories and features of Old Kingdom life.

The Naming of Kings

The phrase “The King of Egypt” still has charisma. “Pharaoh”, with its convoluted history, bears even more.  Both suggest unrivalled power, divine connections and absolute earthly authority. 

The enduring image of earliest dynastic times is the striding image of a high-crowned king (usually Narmer, credited with the final unification of Egypt), grasping a subservient captive by the hair before despatching him with mace or club. The figure dominates not only other human beings, but also the landscape of Egypt. The plant and animal life of the Nile Valley now represent an extension of his power. The king is Egypt.

“In Egypt the name of a thing or person did more than express identity, it incorporated identity,” writes Stephen Quirke (Who Were the Pharaohs? 1990). This magical power of names is reiterated throughout Egyptian history at all levels of society. It stands to reason that within the names and titles of the king of Egypt would be the greatest expression of power, and that they would also contain real elements of the Egyptian landscape. We can speak of symbolism in Egyptian representations; but that is the distinguishing modern mind at work. There is nothing to suggest that the Egyptians distinguished between symbolic and real qualities in such a way, and plenty to suggest that they didn’t.

Knowing the names of such early kings makes a perceptible difference to an individual’s view of history, and makes links with the past less tenuous. Imagine, for example, how a view of British prehistory would change if it became history by knowing the name of the king of the region around Stonehenge when the monument was built. Names do have power.

Elsewhere in this issue of Ancient Egypt, there is a report on some of the earliest forms of writing from the royal burial grounds at Abydos (“Scorpion plaque might give clues to Egypt’s earliest history” by Claudia Haj Ali). With regard to recording the names of the kings of Egypt, early in history recognisable formulae emerged.

The kings of Dynasties I to III recorded their Horus names – the name they took on acceding to the throne of Egypt – in rectangular frames known as serekhs. Each of these was surmounted by an image of the royal hawk, Horus. (At least two of the kings of the second dynasty took names incorporating that of the god Seth, in one case included with Horus.) The earliest kings carried on the tradition of burial in the late predynastic burial ground at Abydos; and then, with a desire to have representation in the north of Egypt as well, even after death, the kings began to exploit the idea of burials – or commemorative monu­ments, depending on interpretation – at sites such as Saqqara as well.

As time went by, a five name formula for Egypt’s living ruler emerged; he was not only the Horus king, but also “He of the Two Ladies” of the cities of Buto in the north and El Kab in the south, Wadjet the Cobra being the goddess of the former and Nekhbet the vulture the goddess of the latter. He was also “The Golden Horus” and “Lord of the Sedge and Bee”, symbolic not only of Upper and Lower Egypt, but also, many commentators believe, of an appreciation of duality in Egyptian religious thought. All these elements, Quirke believes, are present in very early times in Egypt and subsequently became formal written titles.

Finally, the king was “Son of Ra”, and it is this title which has come, perhaps unjustifiably, to be the one that in many ways has taken the popular imagination.

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