Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

---

Jaromir Molek, a Czech, received his PhD in Egyptology from Charles University in Prague. But since 1971, while based at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, he has taken part in the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society in Memphis. Molek's book In the Shadow of the Pyramids, published by the American University in Cairo Press, is about Egypt during the Old Kingdom (2658-2135 BC) -- when ancient Egyptian civilisation achieved its first flowering.

The 500 years discussed saw the creation of the institutions and beliefs that were to dominate later periods of Egyptian civilisation. For many the tombs, statues and pyramids of the old Kingdom have come to epitomise the whole of ancient Egypt. Most books on Egypt are based on the description of these monuments, but Molek's approach is different. He presents the Old Kingdom society as it appeared to the Egyptians themselves. He discusses the ideological and economic factors which moulded everyday life, and perceptively illuminates the ideas and attitudes which pervaded Old Kingdom society.

In his prologue, Molek says that the ancient Egyptians did not record history for its own sake and our knowledge is, therefore, based on as it were the raw material of their lives and on texts which were composed for other purposes, yet the Egyptians, continues the author, were not oblivious of their past.

The outsider's initial impression of ancient Egypt induces a definite culture shock. It is very unfamiliar and this is nothing new. When Herodotus first visited Egypt, he also had a culture shock. He wrote, "In Egypt women go to market and sell the produce while the men remain at home weaving; and their weaving technique involves pushing down the web, which in other countries is pushed upwards. Egyptian men carry loads on their heads, the women on their shoulders. For writing and for counting, the Greeks move their hands from left to right, the Egyptians from right to left."

The development of ancient Egypt can be followed in detail through written records over the unparalleled artefacts for even longer. Yet in spite of this certain things remain unchanged, almost permanent. Egypt's ideological and political concepts seem to have been remarkably imperious to change.

Egyptian art of all periods strikes us by the peculiarity of its forms of expression and apparent rigidity of conventions. The principles of the hieroglyphic system of writing endured little affected to the end of the Predynastic Period, around 3000 BC, to its last recorded instance in the Temple of Philae as late as AD 394.

In eight chapters -- with a prologue and a epilogue -- the author traces life in the Old Kingdom, which had lasted over 500 years. He starts with "The Beginnings" and concludes with "The Collapse", giving us, in between, details of the art, economy, society and state, the gods and tombs.

Ancient Egyptian civilisation owed its existence to the unique combination of physical conditions found in the north-eastern corner of the African continent from 10,000 BC. It was the Black Land (Kemey), as it was called by its inhabitants, a narrow strip of extremely fertile dark soil deposited by the Nile.

Egypt depended on the Nile, and the Nile, as the author says, is very predictable; the relationship between man and river was so delicately balanced and his dependence on it so complete that any deviation from the usual timetable and its normal volume of water had very serious consequences.

In a chapter called "Gathering Pace", the author discusses the creation of a unified Egyptian state, which, in turn, introduced a new ideological framework and a new political organisation. Although the main material situation of the majority of Egyptians did not change, yet there was a definite change in society. Centralised government brought a degree of safety and political stability. During that period art and industry flourished, craftsmen and artists had easier access to raw materials, and a larger market was created.