Lives of the Ancient Egyptians, page 28
Having come to the throne as a usurper, Ahmose II took steps to entrench his family’s position. He had his daughter Nitiqret (II) appointed heir to the incumbent God’s Wife of Amun, while his son Psamtik was designated heir apparent. Two further children, Pase-nenkhonsu and Ahmose, seemed destined to perpetuate the dynasty. But it was not to be. Far to the east, Cyrus II (‘the Great’) had united the Medes and Persians in 550 BC and proceeded to conquer Babylon eleven years later, defeating its last king, Belsharusur (Belshazzar) – who did, indeed, fail to see the writing on the wall. Sweeping on westwards, Cyrus added the Greek states of Asia Minor to his expanding empire, and became the sole great power of the Levant. By 530 BC or thereabouts, the Persian army was in Egypt’s back yard, waiting for any sign of weakness to attack.
The constant threat of Persian invasion overshadowed Ahmose II’s last years as king. His personal determination, strength of character and astute diplomatic alliances succeeded in keeping the enemy at bay for a time. But at the moment of his death, the Persians invaded, led by their new king Cambyses. Ahmose’s son, Psamtik III, was sadly unequal to the task of defending his inheritance, and Egypt swiftly capitulated. The age-old office of God’s Wife of Amun was terminated. The rest of Ahmose’s family either fled or were killed. The fate of Ahmose himself is also a mystery. He had presumably prepared a tomb for himself within the precincts of the temple at Sais, but it has never been found. His reputation was to rest, not on a lavish burial or magnificent monument, but on his achievement in maintaining Egyptian independence against all the odds.
93 | Wadjhorresnet
ADMIRAL WHO COLLABORATED WITH THE PERSIANS
When the Persian general Cambyses invaded Egypt in 525 BC, deposed the weak and ineffectual king Psamtik III, and absorbed Egypt into an expanding Persian empire, the land of the pharaohs found itself politically subordinate to a radically different culture. The response of the Egyptian elite to this unprecedented challenge is graphically illustrated by the life of Wadjhorresnet. The ultimate pragmatist (some would say collaborator), he chose not to fight the Persian invaders but to win them over to his – and Egypt’s – way of doing things, by a combination of loyalty and persuasion.
Wadjhorresnet came from the northwestern Delta city of Sais, which was the ancient cult centre of the warrior goddess Neith, and the home and power-base of the 26th (Saite) Dynasty. His father was a priest in the local temple, and Wadjhorresnet’s own devotion to Neith was to be one of the driving forces of his life. He first achieved high office in the reign of Ahmose (no. 92) and, like his king, carved out a successful career in the military, reaching the exalted rank of Admiral of the Fleet. Little is known of Wadjhorresnet’s naval activities, but under Ahmose’s ephemeral successor, Psamtik III, they must have included battles against the Persians.
When the invasion came, the Egyptians reacted with horror. Wadjhorresnet himself described the Persian conquest in graphic terms as ‘the monstrous cataclysm which happened in the entire land’. He boasted of having saved his city from the worst effects of the invasion, but it is equally clear that he did so not by resistance, but by collaboration with the Persians. Egypt’s new ruler, Cambyses, lost no time in appointing Wadjhorresnet to high civilian office, making him a companion (interestingly, a traditional Egyptian rank denoting a member of the monarch’s inner circle) and Controller of the Palace. Cambyses had evidently decided to retain the services of Egyptian officials who were willing to work with the new regime, while making sure that military power was firmly in loyal Persian hands. Wadjhorresnet could not have hoped to remain a high-ranking naval officer, but his leadership skills were clearly recognized and directed anew.
He set about using his influence to try and safeguard the traditions of his homeland. As personnel officer at the royal court, Wadjhorresnet took care to appoint new staff members from the ranks of the Egyptian nobility, thus ensuring cultural continuity at the centre of political power. When he gained further promotion, to the sensitive post of Chief Physician, he took it upon himself to go one stage further and convert the Persian conqueror into a model Egyptian pharaoh. He was especially concerned to protect his city and its temple from depredation and ruin, so he petitioned Cambyses to have foreigners expelled from the precinct of Neith at Sais so that it could be restored to its former state. For his part, Cambyses obviously recognized the political advantages of being seen to act as a model pharaoh, so he agreed to Wadjhorresnet’s request and subsequently honoured the cult of Neith with a royal visit. Wadjhorresnet’s lobbying, combined with pragmatism on both sides, saved the day for Sais.
Under Cambyses’ successor, Darius I, Wadjhorresnet remained a key player at court. He was summoned by the Persian king to distant Susa, at the heart of the Persian empire, before being sent back to Egypt to restore its temples. Wadjhorresnet paid particular attention to the House of Life (temple scriptorium) at Sais, since this was the institution which, above all others, preserved and transmitted Egyptian religious and cultural traditions from one generation to another. Wadjhorresnet was ensuring not only the immediate survival of his local temple, but the long-term survival of his national identity.
It is entirely fitting that his lasting memorial, a statue inscribed with an account of his remarkable career, should have been set up in the temple of Neith. His hope was that his goddess would guarantee him eternal life. He had already repaid the compliment.
94 | Wennefer (Onnofri)
SNAKE DOCTOR AND POLITICAL SURVIVOR
Wennefer was a medical specialist, practised in the treatment of snake bites and scorpion stings. Exotic as his profession may have been, he could not have predicted that his life would involve extraordinary twists and turns of fate, mirroring Egypt’s political travails in the second half of the 30th Dynasty.
Wennefer was born in the central Delta town of Behbeit el-Hagar (ancient Hebyt), in the twelfth Lower Egyptian nome (province). The provincial capital, Samannud (ancient Tjebnutjer), was less than 16 km (10 miles) away, and had only recently been propelled from regional to national importance after a local man, Nakhtnebef (Nectanebo I), had come to power as pharaoh and founder of a new dynasty (the 30th). Wennefer therefore grew up in the heartland of the new royal family, and this accident of geography and history influenced his later life profoundly.
Initially, however, he seemed destined to follow in his father’s footsteps with employment in the local temple. Here he seems to have developed a more specialist interest in magic/medicine (the two were effectively indivisible in ancient Egypt). As Director of the wab-Priests of Sekhmet in Hetepet, he would have been involved in carrying out ritual sacrifices.
Sacred office and secular responsibility often went hand in hand in ancient Egypt. This was certainly the case for Wennefer who, in 362/361 BC, received his first royal commands, one religious, one administrative. His sacred task was to oversee the lavish funeral of the Apis bull and the search for its successor. On the secular side, his mission was no less important. When the satraps of the Asiatic coast revolted against their Persian overlords, the Egyptian king, Djedher (Teos), decided to take advantage of the situation and go to war himself against the Persian ruler Artaxerxes II; Wennefer was put in charge of keeping the expedition’s official record. In a society where the written record carried enormous symbolic and religious weight, this was a highly significant appointment. It shows that Wennefer was already a trusted member of the dynasty’s inner circle.
But events soon took a more sinister turn. Djedher marched with his army towards Asia to engage the Persian forces. No sooner had the king left Egypt than a letter was delivered to the ruler governing the country in Djedher’s absence, implicating Wennefer in a plot. He was arrested, bound in copper chains, and taken into the ruler’s presence, and interrogated. By some stroke of luck or guile, Wennefer not only escaped punishment but also turned the situation to his advantage. The details are sketchy, but he emerged from the interrogation as a loyal confidant of the ruler (just as he had been of the king), given official protection and showered with gifts. He was even entrusted with a diplomatic mission of the greatest sensitivity, to sail to Asia at the head of a flotilla of transport ships and warships in order to find Djedher. Wennefer tracked the king down at Susa, before being sent back to Egypt.
On his arrival, Wennefer was welcomed and embraced by the Egyptian ruler’s messenger; the two men spent the whole day together, with Wennefer recounting the details of his journey. Indeed, he became one of the closest and most loyal followers of the new king, Nakhthorheb (no. 95). On his monarch’s behalf, Wennefer restored the mortuary cults of two kings from distant antiquity: Sneferu and Djedefra of the 4th Dynasty. For the 30th Dynasty and its supporters, the propaganda value in restoring these cults was obvious: it associated the new royal family with two of the most illustrious kings from the Pyramid Age.
Wennefer’s reward for helping to legitimize Nakhthorheb’s accession included a host of honorific titles, lucrative benefices in a number of Delta towns, and the privilege of a tomb near the Serapeum at Saqqara. His funerary monument was impressive indeed: with an avenue of sphinxes leading to a pylon gateway, a four-columned hypostyle hall and three small chapels, it was a veritable temple in miniature. Inside the burial-chamber, his final resting-place was a diorite sarcophagus; his grave goods included eighty-two servant statuettes of faience.
In the central chapel of his temple-tomb, Wennefer had himself depicted resplendent in a large surcoat and a fringed Persian-style scarf, the characteristic costume of the 30th Dynasty elite. From relatively humble beginnings, he had acquired prominence, prestige and wealth through a combination of luck, astute manoeuvring, and hedging his bets at a time of great political uncertainty. His career had taken him from a town in the Delta to the heart of the Persian empire and back again: an extraordinary journey for a doctor of snake bites and scorpion stings.
95 | Nakhthorheb (Nectanebo II)
EGYPT’S LAST NATIVE RULER
The clash between the Greek world and the Persian empire, which formed the backdrop to the story of Wennefer (no. 94), also provided the context for the last native-born Egyptian to rule the Nile Valley until modern times. Nakhthorheb, better known as Nectanebo II, was the great-nephew of the founder of the 30th Dynasty, Nakhtnebef. He was still a young man, serving in the Egyptian army on campaign in Phoenicia, when Spartan mercenaries deposed his uncle, King Djedher, and installed Nakhthorheb in his place. The ousted monarch fled into the arms of Egypt’s arch-enemy, Artaxerxes II of Persia, a desperate and fateful move that would ultimately spell the end of Egyptian independence.
The army returned to Egypt, but Nakhthorheb did not exactly receive a hero’s welcome. He was besieged at Tanis by the prince of Mendes, a serious rival for the throne, and only saved by the military intervention of Agesilaos, the king of Sparta who had promoted Nakhthorheb’s candidature in the first place. The young pharaoh must have realized the precariousness of his position, so he set about winning support from the most influential bodies in the land, the priesthoods of the great temples. The best way of doing this was to carry out the traditional kingly duty of embellishing and magnifying the homes of the gods (and, not incidentally, the wealth of their priests). Nakhthorheb’s programme embraced additions to many of the existing cult centres, and the construction of an entirely new temple to Isis at Behbeit el-Hagar in the Delta. Statues of previous 30th Dynasty rulers were set up in sanctuaries throughout Egypt, and Nakhthorheb himself used sculpture to associate himself closely with Horus, the traditional god of kingship. Under the king’s patronage, the arts and literature flourished, and Egyptian culture enjoyed something of a renaissance.
But indulging Egypt’s sense of national identity could not mask the stark reality of the country’s diminished power in the Near East, nor could it keep at bay the forces that sought to snuff out Egyptian sovereignty. The first challenge came in 351 BC, just a decade into Nakhthorheb’s reign. The Persians, no doubt egged on by the exiled Djedher, attempted to invade Egypt. Nakhthorheb’s forces prevailed, but this victory bred in the king an unwarranted and dangerous complacency. Thinking himself equal to any opposition, he neglected to make treaties with the Greeks and other regional powers. It was a fatal mistake. Seven years later, the Persians returned, this time led from the front by their great king Artaxerxes III. They massed at the fortified Delta city of Pelusium, facing Nakhthorheb’s army of 100,000 men. Numbers alone, however, were not enough to save the Egyptians. The Persian forces captured Pelusium and pressed on to the capital, Memphis. Accepting the inevitable, Nakhthorheb fled the country.
His fate is unknown. He may have gone to Nubia, where pharaonic culture had implanted itself and would survive many more centuries. A more tantalizing possibility, reflected in medieval myth, is that he found his way to the court of Philip of Macedon, Persia’s main adversary, there to attract the attentions of Philip’s wife Olympias, and so father Alexander the Great. Such a story is impossible to verify, and perhaps unlikely, but it is a fact that Alexander and the Ptolemies honoured Nakhthorheb’s memory and built shrines for his cult.
A more certain, though less edifying, fate awaited the unused stone sarcophagus of Egypt’s last native pharaoh: it found its way to Alexandria and was used as a water-tank for public ablutions.
96 | Sematawytefnakht (II)
EYEWITNESS OF ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST
With the long lens of history, the Persian invasion of 341 BC seems like a cataclysmic event, for it brought to an abrupt end the pattern of pharaonic government that had served ancient Egypt for a period of nearly 3,000 years. However, the events of the mid-fourth century BC may not have appeared as traumatic to those who lived through them. That, at least, is the impression given by one man who not only survived the Persian invasion and its aftermath, but evidently prospered under successive regimes.
Sematawytefnakht, like his namesake of three centuries earlier (no. 91), came from Herakleopolis (ancient Hnes) in Middle Egypt. He was named after one of the local gods, Sematawy (‘He who unites the Two Lands’), whose sanctuary lay inside the town of Herakleopolis. The chief local deity, however, was the ram-god Herishef. Sematawytefnakht’s devotion to this latter god ran as a continuous thread throughout his life.
He began his career in the reign of Nakhthorheb (no. 95), and witnessed at first hand the Persian invasion. Although he later described this as a disaster, at the time he showed no hesitation in making his peace and ingratiating himself with the Persian ruler, Artaxerxes III. Indeed, Sematawytefnakht was appointed Chief Priest of Sekhmet: in effect, royal physician. In this capacity, Sematawytefnakht took his place at the heart of Artaxerxes III’s court and accompanied his master back to Persia. From this vantage point, only a few years later, he witnessed the defeat of Artaxerxes’ successor, Darius III, by the forces of Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Once again, Sematawytefnakht found himself caught up in major events; once again, he escaped unscathed. He attributed his good fortune to the benevolent protection of his god Herishef:
‘You protected me in the combat of the Greeks
When you repulsed those of Asia.
They slew a million at my sides
And no one raised an arm against me.’
Without doubt, good luck and political adroitness also played their part.
Sematawytefnakht’s gleeful description of the Persian defeat seems curiously at odds with his personal advancement under Persian rule; but he was ever the loyal servant of those in power, and under Macedonian rule it would have been extremely unwise to express anything other than deep hostility to the memory of the Persians.
For much of the Egyptian population, who had suffered privations and brutality under Persian rule, Alexander the Great was welcomed as a liberator. Sematawytefnakht, too, saw the way the wind was blowing, and decided to return to Egypt. He reached his home town safe and sound, his head ‘not robbed of a hair’. By the end of his career, he had accumulated a dazzling array of honours and offices. Besides royal physician, he was also Supervisor of the Riverbank; priest of the gods of the Oryx-nome (province); priest of Horus, lord of Hebnu; and priest of Sematawy, the god after whom he had been named. So, in his own words, he ended his life ‘blessed by his lord, revered in his nome’.
Above all, Sematawytefnakht was a survivor. History may dub him a collaborator, but he was content to ascribe his good fortune to his god:
‘As my beginning was good through you,
So have you made my end complete.
You gave me a long lifetime in gladness.’
97 | Padiusir (Petosiris)
DEVOTED SERVANT OF HIS LOCAL GOD
While some Egyptians, like Sematawytefnakht (no. 96), may have actively collaborated with the Persian conquerors, others, particularly in the provinces, evidently hunkered down, continued with normal life as far as possible, and quietly maintained native traditions in steely defiance of the foreign invaders. One such was Padiusir (Petosiris in Greek) of Hermopolis, known to his friends as Ankhefenkhons.
