Cycles and Eternities: Renaissance from an Egyptological Perspective

Abstract

In popular discourse, the idea of ‘renaissance’ is rarely associated with Ancient Egypt, but one has to wonder why. Throughout its long history, the land of the Pharaohs underwent a series of transformations, with centralised kingdoms repeatedly disintegrating into a patchwork of regional polities and then being ‘reborn’ several centuries later under unified rule. The reasons for these transformations, and subsequent revivals, were much the same as those we face now: climate change, war, and mass migration. To survive for as long as it did, the Egyptian state frequently had to reinvent itself—and this required an ideology to underpin the reinvention.

With this in mind, Ancient Egyptian culture developed a sophisticated concept of rebirth at the level of both the state and the individual. With the accession of every new Pharaoh, a renewed incarnation of the god of kingship, Horus, was seen as taking the throne. On the individual level, each mortal was guaranteed a renaissance of their own in the afterlife if certain conditions were met, which people were encouraged to work hard to meet. Existence was thus seen as both a progression of events going forward and a cycle of perpetual renewal. Indeed, the vocabulary of the Egyptian language itself has distinct words for linear and cyclical time: it acknowledges that all things grew older, but also that all things recycle themselves, as epitomised by the daily spectacle of sunrise and sunset. As we confront the challenges of renewal and transformation in our own societies, this article hopes to add perspective by tapping into the wisdom of a people who were already theorising these same topics four millennia ago—and drawing conclusions which may prove surprisingly useful today.

Introduction—Why does renaissance matter to Egyptology?

Renaissance and Egyptology seem at first sight to be unlikely bedfellows—in fact, in the popular imagination one might be more inclined to construe them as close to polar opposites. The term ‘renaissance’ carries in its very name connotations of the new and the renewed, whereas Ancient Egypt, at least as far as modern audiences are concerned, does not. This prevalent view is summed up perhaps most effectively by Daniel J Boorstin, an eminent American historian and former Librarian of Congress: describing the Ancient Egyptians, he claimed that ‘for three thousand years their sculpture showed less change than modern European sculpture in a decade’, characterising their culture as a ‘changeless rhythm of daily life’ entirely dominated by Pharaoh, the ‘unchanging god’.[1] The archetypal symbol of Ancient Egypt in popular culture, the pyramid, has long been seen as eternal and static, encapsulated by the medieval Arab proverb ‘Man fears Time, but Time fears the Pyramids’. Professional Egyptologists too have been eager to stress the significance of the pyramids’ enduring appeal—and that of Egyptian material culture more broadly—for the development of their discipline and sustained public interest in it.[2] And yet, a contrasting trend is also present: that of analysing Ancient Egypt as a dynamic system undergoing repeated cycles of change, in line with how the Egyptians themselves perceived their culture.

The historical case for ‘renaissance’ in Ancient Egypt

At the most basic level, ‘renaissance’ is an appropriate word to deploy in studies of Ancient Egyptian history because the Egyptians themselves used it. The term wehem mesut—literally ‘repeating of births’ was an established feature of the Egyptian language denoting a return to what was perceived as good social and political order after a period of chaos.[3] This reflected a key trend in Ancient Egyptian history throughout the Pharaonic period, which was marked by repeated cycles of political centralisation and fragmentation.[4] The first such cycle began with the formation of the very first unitary Egyptian state in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3000-2686BCE), which gradually evolved into the highly centralised Old Kingdom (2686-2160BCE). This time, best known today for grandiose and extremely expensive royal construction projects such as the Giza Pyramids, ultimately proved both politically and economically unsustainable. A series of weak rulers failed to exercise effective control over the country’s regional centres, while these centres came to realise the potential economic benefits of seceding from the unitary state. The situation was exacerbated by climate change leading to low Nile floods and greater aridification of the surrounding Nile valley.[5] As a result, the Old Kingdom crumbled, ushering in a period with no universally recognised Pharaoh: the First Intermediate Period (2160-2055BCE).

The second cycle then began, centralisation being restored once more with the advent of the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650BCE). Among the first Pharaohs of this newly reunified polity was Amenemhat I (r. 1985-1956BCE), in whose reign the concept of ‘repeating of births’ was explicitly included in the royal titulary as one of the King’s names.[6] This reign saw the consolidation of state administration around a single royal court once again, with this ‘renaissance’ cemented by the return of the capital to the city of Memphis, the traditional seat of Pharaonic government in the Old Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom would go on become what is widely accepted as the classical age of Egyptian literature and also saw Egypt develop imperial ambitions in Nubia and the Levant on a hitherto unprecedented scale. However, it too eventually succumbed to forces of decentralisation, driven on this occasion by vast population movements from the Levant into northern Egypt.[7] These immigrant communities, collectively known today as the Hyksos, were eventually able to set up their own state in the Nile Delta that was independent of indigenous Egyptian government in the south, leading to another period of fragmentation: the Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550BCE).

The third cycle, marking another ‘renaissance’ of the unitary Egyptian state, emerged out of the warfare between the Hyksos and indigenous Egyptian populations that characterised the Second Intermediate Period. It gave rise to the New Kingdom (1550-1069BCE), arguably the most famous historical period of Egyptian history among today’s public. With the Hyksos driven out or subsumed into indigenous communities, Egypt once more coalesced around a single Pharaoh. This was the age of Tutankhamun (r. 1336-1327BCE) and the Valley of the Kings, the epoch of Ramesses II (r. 1279-1213BCE) and the apogee of Egyptian imperialism, far outstripping even the heights of the earlier Middle Kingdom.[8] However, cracks within the system eventually emerged, with court factionalism, incursions from the west and south by Libyan and Nubian forces, and food shortages all contributing to a growing sense that by the twelfth century BCE Egypt was again on the decline.[9] This in turn meant the idea of ‘repeating of births’ once again sprang to the forefront, being officially made the name of a new era during the turbulent and politically unstable reign of Ramesses XI (r. 1099-1069BCE).[10] Ultimately, these efforts to give new life to the New Kingdom did not prove successful and fragmentation returned with the onset of the Third Intermediate Period (1069-664BCE), but the ill-fated efforts of Ramesses XI and his government do at least point to the ongoing ideological relevance of ‘renaissance’ as a concept.

Moving on to the first millennium BCE, new political realities meant that the language of renaissance changed somewhat, as the Egyptian state would never again be reconstituted on the same territorial scale, but the general idea of rebirth after a period of hardship—and, at times, even existential crisis—emerged stronger than ever before. This is evidenced by a strong tradition of oracular literature, works such as the Demotic Chronicle, the Dream of Nectanebo, and ultimately the early Roman-era Egyptian texts known as the Oracle of the Lamb and the Oracle of the Potter.[11] All of these highlight the challenges first millennium BCE Egypt faced in view of its occupation by one foreign power after another: Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and finally Romans. However, the Oracles—which typically purport to be the recorded utterances of divinely-inspired prophets—all conclude with a promise of the Egyptian state being reborn under a future ruler who will take the country to a destiny greater than at any time in the past. While such hopes were not borne out by events, they nonetheless serve as a testament to the enduring appeal of ‘renaissance’ as an idea in the Egyptian public consciousness.

The ‘renaissance’ of the individual and the divine in Ancient Egyptian thought

Set against this backdrop of the state repeatedly reinventing and recreating itself—or at least trying to—are various Egyptian beliefs on how mortal individuals and deities might themselves go through a ‘renaissance’ of their own.[12] The most famous of these is undoubtedly the Ancient Egyptian conceptualisation of the afterlife. Egypt was the first civilisation in the world to produce a detailed set of writings on what happens beyond the grave and how a new beginning may be achieved after the ultimate point of destruction: death. Starting with the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom,[13] through the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom,[14] and culminating in New Kingdom’s Book of the Dead,[15] the Egyptians developed an increasingly sophisticated theology on reanimation in the next life. In its canonical form, this involved the inert dead body, preserved as a mummy, regaining vitality after the heart of the deceased had been judged and found worthy by the divine assessors of the Hall of Two Truths—symbolised by the weighing of the heart against the Feather of Truth (Maat).[16] With this test overcome, the deceased could enter the lush ‘field of reeds’ that represented the Egyptian afterlife.[17]

Parallels with this story of reanimation are visible in a range of other Egyptian beliefs. Osiris, the chief chthonic deity, was believed to have originated as Egypt’s first King in this existence, but was thought to have transmuted himself into an afterlife ruler after his death. Having been murdered, cut into pieces, and dispersed—hence becoming deprived not only of life but also of physical form—Osiris was nonetheless put back together again and arose in a new life.[18] Those who died subsequently could then merge with him after their own passing, thereby partaking in the original reanimation.[19] Meanwhile, back in the world of the living, it would fall to the son of Osiris, Horus, to initiate renewal and lead the next generation. It is, therefore, unsurprising that this regenerative Horus identity was bestowed on each new King, every incoming ruler explicitly named as the living incarnation of that god as part of the royal titulary.[20]

However, the Osiris mythology went far beyond offering ‘renaissance’ for individuals and the King. It was also connected to an even more fundamental cycle of cosmic renewal—that of the sun and its god Re, threatened with final destruction daily after sunset by a cosmic serpent but nonetheless reborn every day after a perilous journey through the Twelve Hours of the Night.[21] Each night Re was thought to descend into the afterlife to physically unite into one body with Osiris, thereby obtaining the power necessary for his own resurrection as the rising sun.[22] Going back to the individual, we can see that the rebirth of each person relies on essentially the same mechanism as the rebirth of the sun: entry into the afterlife (death), merging with Osiris who had overcome death, and emerging afresh in a new existence. In such a theological setting, the rising of the sun every morning would have brought considerable comfort; here was highly visible evidence of a solar ‘renaissance’, a recurring sign that people too could be reborn.

Indeed, so profound was the Ancient Egyptian focus on cycles of rebirth that it was even reflected in how they conceptualised time itself. Jan Assmann has demonstrated that the term used to denote cyclical time, neheh, differed to the term used for the unending progression of time, djet.[23] The conventional expression denoting ‘for all eternity’, typically used on tomb inscriptions, invoked both these concepts: its literal reading, r neheh hena djet (‘for cyclical time together with unending time’), underlined the nature of existence as both cyclical and linear at once.[24] The Egyptians clearly recognised that time was passing and that, among other things, they themselves were getting older, but parallel to this they could see cycles of renewal all around them: whether the daily cycle of the sun, the centuries-long cycles of fragmentation and reunification in Egyptian history, or religious beliefs around Osiris and their own eventual rebirth. No doubt the cyclical nature of the annual Nile flood, so central to Egyptian agriculture, would have further consolidated this focus on different types of renewal as part of day-to-day lived experience.[25]

Lessons from Ancient Egypt: ‘Renaissance’ as a way of living

To the Ancient Egyptians, ‘renaissance’ was not an abstract concept associated with a particular historical epoch or artistic tradition, but rather a way of living, something fundamental to existence itself on the level of gods, people, and the state. There was an acknowledgement that everything had to end—and that at times such endings could be brutal—but there was also immense confidence that everything could be reborn too. No destruction was seen as permanent.

In our world today, we could draw considerable benefit from similar lines of thinking. This is because, at least at first sight, our situation seems fairly bleak: there is no shortage of apocalyptic news, ranging from the impending and seemingly inevitable threat of global climate catastrophe to growing concerns about nuclear war. All this is set against the backdrop of a mental health crisis among the young and a cost of care crisis among the old, unprecedented levels of irregular and dangerous migration, and generally declining living standards among vast tranches of the population with no obvious solution. This looks like a recipe for a disaster every bit as frightening as anything the Egyptians could envisage in their own oracular tradition, but, unlike the Egyptians, our own society does not seem to share their optimism in expecting renewal. This tendency towards demoralisation is a cause for concern, not least due to its potential capacity to breed resignation and inaction.

Clearly, none of this should be interpreted as a call for us to wholeheartedly embrace Ancient Egyptian beliefs—relying on a new ‘renaissance’, in an act of blind faith, to simply come along automatically and solve all our problems as a matter of course is obviously not a viable strategy. However, paying more attention to the renewable elements of our own lives—and in particular what we can do both as individuals and as a society to bring about instances of ‘renaissance’ great and small—would be far more meaningful. As we go about recycling plastic, rebalancing the carbon cycle, or recalibrating European and global security, we could do a lot worse than contemplate the Egyptian notion of neheh—the cyclical time that allows things to start over again even as the arrow of time, djet, presses on. Such a way of thinking proved helpful to the Egyptians over three millennia, so perhaps it can help us too. There certainly seems to be no harm in giving it a go.

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Alex Loktionov

Alex Loktionov is an Egyptologist. He is a Fellow of Christ’s College and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Egyptology at the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies at HSE University, Moscow. He is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s College, London.

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[1] Daniel J Boorstin, The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (Random House 1992) 153.

[2] Examples are numerous. For the pyramids specifically, see for instance Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, Giza and the Pyramids (Thames and Hudson 2017) 80-107; Miroslav Verner, The Pyramids: The Archaeology and History of Egypt’s Iconic Monuments (American University in Cairo Press 2020). For other examples, see for instance Edna R Russman, Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum (British Museum Press 2001); Pierre Montet, L’Égypte éternelle (Marabout 1964).

[3] Jacobus van Dijk, ‘The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom’ in Ian Shaw (ed), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press 2000) 309. For more detailed surveys of Egyptological sources mentioning this term, see Andrzej Niwinski, ‘Les pèriodes whm mswt dans l’histoire de l’Égypte’ (1996) 136 Bulletin de la Société Française d’Égyptologie 5-26; Rolf Gundlach, ‘Wiederholung der Geburt’ (1986) 6 Lexikon der Ägyptologie 1261-4.

[4] For a helpful summary of key political, social, and economic developments across the entire Pharaonic period, the standard reference work remains Ian Shaw (ed), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press 2000). The chronology given in that book serves as the basis for dates in the present article. For more detailed chapters on practices in specific periods, as well as extensive further references, see Juan Carlos Moreno García (ed), Ancient Egyptian Administration (Brill 2013).

[5] The literature on climate change at the end of the Old Kingdom is sizable. See for instance Fabian Welc and Leszek Marks, ‘Climate change at the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt around 4200 BP: New geoarchaeological evidence’ (2014) 324 Quaternary International 124-33; more recently Judith Bunbury, The Nile and Ancient Egypt (Cambridge University Press 2019) 63-76.

[6] For more on this, see Dorothea Arnold, ‘Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes’ (1991) 26 Metropolitan Museum Journal 18.

[7] For more on these population movements and associated questions of identity and social perception, see Danielle Candelora, Redefining the Hyksos: Immigration and Identity Negotiation in the Second Intermediate Period (UCLA PhD Dissertation 2020) <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/01d9d70t> accessed 10 August 2023.

[8] For the latest study of Egypt as an empire in this period, see Ellen Morris, Ancient Egyptian Imperialism (Wiley-Blackwell 2018) 117-252.

[9] For a convenient brief overview of these processes, see van Dijk (n 3) 305-9.

[10] For a concise recent treatment of developments in the reign of Ramesses XI, see Kathlyn Cooney, ‘The New Kingdom of Egypt under the Ramesside Dynasty’ in Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and Daniel Potts (eds), The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Vol. III: From the Hyksos to the Late Second Millennium BC (Oxford University Press 2022) 337-41.

[11] For summaries of all of these and further literature, see Alexandre Loktionov, ‘Egyptian Oracles and the Afterlife’ in Hilary Marlow, Karla Pollmann, and Helen van Noorden (eds), Eschatology in Antiquity (Routledge 2021) 51-7.

[12] The distinction between the mortal and the divine individual was notoriously blurred in Ancient Egypt. As will be shown, this makes ‘renaissance’ concepts equally applicable to both. For a useful introduction to the nature of the divine in Ancient Egypt and the relationship between gods and mortals, see Richard Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames and Hudson 2003) 26-35.

[13] A convenient edition is James Allen (ed), The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Society of Biblical Literature 2005).

[14] These represent a vast corpus of literature pertaining to survival and transformation in the afterlife—see Adriaan de Buck and Alan Gardiner (eds), The Egyptian Coffin Texts, 7 vols (University of Chicago Press 1935-1961).

[15] Raymond Faulkner (ed), The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (British Museum Press 2010).

[16] This theology is stated in Book of the Dead Spells 30B and 125—see ibid 27-34.

[17] For more on the terminology and imagery of the ‘field of reeds’, see Dieter Mueller, ‘An Early Egyptian Guide to the Hereafter’ (1972) 58 Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 99-125.

[18] The canonical version of this myth is preserved in Plutarch’s Moralia. See <http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/moralia/isis_and_osiris*/a.html> (accessed 10 August 2023).

[19] The deceased is called ‘the Osiris N’ throughout the Book of the Dead—see Faulkner (n 15).

[20] For a study of the royal titulary and a comprehensive set of accompanying royal names, see Ronald Leprohon, The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary (Society of Biblical Literature 2013).

[21] For full details on this set of beliefs, see Erik Hornung and Theodor Abt (eds), The Egyptian Amduat: The Book of the Hidden Chamber (David Warburton tr, Living Human Heritage Publications 2007). In this story, the sun god Re overcomes a new challenge in every hour of the night, until he is eventually reborn on the eastern horizon in the morning.

[22] For more on Osiris-Re syncretism and the associated iconography, see Wilkinson (n 12) 35, 120.

[23] Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt (Metropolitan Books 2002) 18.

[24] For a very recent and extremely comprehensive study of neheh and djet and their full range of uses in Egyptian texts, see Steven Gregory, Tutankhamun Knew the Names of the Two Great Gods: d̠t and nḥḥ as Fundamental Concepts of Pharaonic Ideology (Archaeopress 2022).

[25] The Nile flood and the mud it brought was also explicitly associated with Osiris—see Wilkinson (n 12) 122.