Rags and Tatters
HEttobo-rus was told in Egypt that the Pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid probably soon after 2600 BC was a wicked ruler who compelled the people `to labour, one and all, in his service. . . . It took ten years' oppression of the people'- 400.000 men a year working in three-month relays—to make the causeway and platform, and another twenty years for the pyramid itself. And no wonder : human muscles were the source of power and the casing-blocks averaged two and a half tons each. Sir Flinders Petrie estimated that a gang of eight men could handle each block (and that Herodotus' 400.000 should be reduced to 100,000), but, from the point of view of the utilisa- tion of labour, that is the lower limit.. In a tomb of the next millennium, for example, there is a scene showing the transport of a colossal alabaster statue, weighing perhaps sixty tons, tied on a sledge drawn by 172 men.
That scene is not reproduced in either book under review. There is no particular reason why Si: Alan Gardiner should have done so, but in Mr. Aldred's volume its absence is revealing (even if not deliberate). The latter dismisses Herodotus in this way: The dragomans' stories of the building of the Giza pyramids. current by the time Herodotus visited them. and the biased Biblical accounts of Israel in bondage, haVe promoted the popular idea that Ancient Egypt was inhabited by an oppressed people toiling under privileged task- masters. The impression we get from thc monu- ments is altogether different.
I wish I knew what 'impression' the monuments are supposed to give. On this subject, as on others, Mr. Aldred produces nothing but some vague phrases, such as 'it did sometimes happen that men were pushed too hard,' some confused (and equally vague) generalisations in which slaves and serfs are treated'as identical, and stuff like this:
There were also feast-days when it was not propitious to work : and • always the peasant had the time and spirit to sing his work-songs as he drove his team round the threshing-floor.
Obviously it was exceedingly difficult to com- press the whole of ancient Egyptian history into the small frame of the 'Ancient Peoples and Places' series; obviously, too. compression cannot justify such poor history. One must regret that Mr. Aldred did not restrict himself to the material remains, as some other authors in the series have done, rather than attempt what the blurb-writer calls (with compItte misunderstand- ing of the phrase) a 'sociological approach.' No country is harder to understand than ancient Egypt. 'What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history,' writes Sir Alan Gardiner from sixty years of experience, is merely a collection of rags and tatters.' There are several reasons for this, and his fourth chapter, 'The Foundations and Nature of Egyptian History,' lays them out as clearly as one could wish.
It may be, as Mr. Aldred claims, that Egypt's 'ancient memorials far outnumber those of the other nations of AntiqUity.' but they are remark- ably dumb on many subjects and one-sided and unreliable on others. Most of the finds, Sir Alan notes, have an 'overwhelmingly funerary
character'; the royal statuary and narratives alike present a consistently (and consistently false) 'unruffled' appearance; everything has an unparalleled 'conservatism of expression' which occasionally leads to 'downright falsification.' In 3,000 years only one Pharaoh revealed any in- dividuality or personality whatever (until mum- mified). That was Akhenaten (more familiar in the spelling Ikhnaton), who had himself sculpted in undisguised ugliness and effeminacy—which would be wonder enough—and who devoted the very few years of his reign, about 1350 ac., en- tirely to the struggle to impose a strict mono- theism on his realm. The often observed psalm- like quality of his hymns, written in that particu- lar period, make him a major figure not only in Egyptian history but in the history of ancient religions generally.
Sir Alan is repelled by Akhenaten. But he gives him such due as he can, delighting in the oppor- tunity for once to have more than rags and tatters at his disposal, His book is deliberately entitled Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction, not A History of Egypt. What he has written is a leisurely account of what we can know about the political framework of Egyptian history, which means, above all, about the Pharaohs and their works; and of how we have come to know what little we do, in other words, how and when the more important discoveries were made (monumental or documentary), what they say, and what new light, if any, they throw. It is all presented with an authority which cannot be surpassed by any living Egyptologist, with notable frankness, and with a detached enthusiasm and old-world charm which reflect the long life of a scholar whose vocation has at the same time been his hobby.
M. I. FINLEY
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