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Tomb reveals Ancient Egypt’s humiliating secret Our correspondent reports on how details of crushing defeat by another Nile superpower were kept hidden
By Dalya Alberge ANCIENT Egyptians “airbrushed” out of history one of their most humiliating defeats in battle, academics believe. In what the British Museum described as the discovery of a lifetime, a 3,500-year-old inscription shows that the Sudanese kingdom of Kush came close to destroying its northern neighbour. The revelation is contained in 22 lines of sophisticated hieroglyphics deciphered by Egyptologists from the British Museum and Egypt after their discovery in February in a richly decorated tomb at El Kab, near Thebes, in Upper Egypt.
Vivian Davies, Keeper of the museum’s Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, said: “In many ways this is the discovery of a lifetime, one that changes the textbooks. We’re absolutely staggered by it.”
The inscription details previously unknown important battles unprecedented “since the time of the god” — the beginning of time. Experts now believe that the humiliation of defeat was one that the Ancient Egyptians preferred to omit from their historical accounts.
Contemporary Egyptian descriptions had led historians to assume that the kingdom of Kush was a weak and barbaric neighbouring state for hundreds of years, although it boasted a complex society with vast resources of gold dominating the principal trade routes into the heart of Africa. It did eventually conquer Egypt, in the 8th century BC.
Mr Davies, who headed the joint British Museum and Egyptian archaeological team, said: “Now it is clear that Kush was a superpower which had the capacity to invade Egypt. It was a huge invasion, one that stirred up the entire region, a momentous event that is previously undocumented.
“They swept over the mountains, over the Nile, without limit. This is the first time we’ve got evidence. Far from Egypt being the supreme power of the Nile Valley, clearly Kush was at that time.
“Had they stayed to occupy Egypt, the Kushites might have eliminated it. That’s how close Egypt came to extinction. But the Egyptians were resilient enough to survive, and shortly afterwards inaugurated the great imperial age known as the New Kingdom. The Kushites weren’t interested in occupation. They went raiding for precious objects, a symbol of domination. They did a lot of damage.”
The inscription was found between two internal chambers in a rock-cut tomb that was covered in soot and dirt. It appeared gradually as the grime was removed.
Mr Davies said: “I thought it would be a religious text, but it turned out to be historical. Gradually, a real narrative emerged, a brand new text inscribed in red paint, reading from right to left.”
The tomb belonged to Sobeknakht, a Governor of El Kab, an important provincial capital during the latter part of the 17th Dynasty (about 1575-1550BC).
The inscription describes a ferocious invasion of Egypt by armies from Kush and its allies from the south, including the land of Punt, on the southern coast of the Red Sea. It says that vast territories were affected and describes Sobeknakht’s heroic role in organising a counter-attack.
The text takes the form of an address to the living by Sobeknakht: “Listen you, who are alive upon earth . . . Kush came . . . aroused along his length, he having stirred up the tribes of Wawat . . . the land of Punt and the Medjaw. . .” It describes the decisive role played by “the might of the great one, Nekhbet”, the vulture-goddess of El Kab, as “strong of heart against the Nubians, who were burnt through fire”, while the “chief of the nomads fell through the blast of her flame”.
The discovery explains why Egyptian treasures, including statues, stelae and an elegant alabaster vessel found in the royal tomb at Kerma, were buried in Kushite tombs: they were war trophies.
Mr Davies said: “That has never been properly explained before. Now it makes sense. It’s the key that unlocks the information. Now we know they were looted trophies, symbols of these kings’ power over the Egyptians. Each of the four main kings of Kush brought back looted treasures.”
The alabaster vessel is contemporary with the latter part of the 17th Dynasty. It bears a funerary text “for the spirit of the Governor, Hereditary Prince of Nekheb, Sobek- nakht”. Now it is clear that it was looted from Sobeknakht’s tomb, or an associated workshop, by the Kushite forces and taken back to Kerma, where it was buried in the precincts of the tomb of the Kushite king who had led or inspired the invasion.
The El Kab tomb was looted long ago, probably in antiquity. There is more to investigate at the enormous site and the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt is now making such work a priority.
Rich pickings from ebony and ivory
Kush was a vast territory spanning modern-day northern Sudan. Ruled by kings who were buried with large quantities of luxury goods, including jewellery and inlaid furniture, it had complex political and religious institutions.
The economy was based on trading in ivory, ebony and incense, as well as slaves. Its skilled craftsmen left behind some of the finest ceramics produced in the ancient world.
The independent kingdom of Kush arose during the 8th century BC. The native kings laid claim to the Egyptian throne, declaring themselves the true heirs of Thutmose III and other great pharaonic ancestors. Under the leadership of King Piye (c747-716BC), they conquered Egypt, ruling as its 25th Dynasty.
The reign of King Taharqo (690-664BC) was a high point of the Kushite empire. He erected imposing temples, shrines and statues throughout the Nile Valley. His pyramid, the largest of the Kushite examples, soared to more than 48m (160ft).
Over 4,000 years interaction between the empires was inevitable. While they had different funerary practices at the time of the El Kab inscription — the Egyptians had tombs and pyramids while the Kushites preferred tumuli (grave mounds) — the Kushites went on to build pyramids and mummify their dead.
In return, the Egyptians were particularly influenced by Kushite jewellery design.
quote:Tomb reveals Ancient Egypt’s humiliating secret
The Beja are good fighters the AE would have been no match to them. Smart move by Kush to mobilize the nomads of the nile valley. Reminds me of when the Mahdi of Sudan mobilized the ferecious Beja clans in his war against the British.
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During the 19th century boom in Egyptian archaeology the tomb of Elkab's 17th-dynasty governor Sobeknakht was discovered. Though its whereabouts were published it was subsequently neglected. Until recently it continued to sit undisturbed upon the cliffs overlooking the Nile south of Luxor, accrued grime and soot obscuring many of its internal inscriptions. Only this year have the tomb's soiled walls been cleaned to reveal an inscription relating a hitherto unknown Kushite raid upon Egypt that has been abuzz with superlatives and speculation among Egyptologists.
Earlier this year a number of British and Egyptian conservators under the aegis of the British Museum began work at the tomb in response to concerns about its deteriorating condition. In the process of cleaning the walls between the tomb's inner and outer chambers they stumbled upon an inscription believed to be the first evidence of a huge attack from the south on Elkab and Egypt by the Kingdom of Kush and its allies from the land of Punt, during the 17th dynasty (1575-1525 BC). The newly discovered inscription is a biographical text painted in 22 horizontal red hieroglyphic lines that narrate the Kushite attack on Egypt and Sobeknakht's successful counter- attack that expelled the invaders. "It is a very important military and religious inscription that was previously unknown," Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told Al Ahram Weekly and asserted that it is the most significant piece to emerge about the 17th dynasty since the famous Kamose stella, now on display at the Luxor museum.
Though Egyptologists had known that tension existed between the Kingdom of Kush, which lay along the Nile in present-day southern Sudan, and Egypt during the period in question, they had no evidence of the kind of clash reported by the inscription.
"This is completely unparalleled," affirmed Vivian Davies, who headed the mission, in an interview from London with the Weekly. Davies initially assumed that the inscription was a religious text because it was near the burial shaft where the spirit of the dead rose to begin its spiritual life. However, as conservators continued to clean the inscription it was clear that it was not a routine funerary text but a biographical text chronicling events from the life of the tomb's owner Sobeknakht.
The text recounts his role in the crisis, from his command to strengthen the defences of Elkab to his mustering of a force to combat the Nubians to his successful counter-attack southwards which destroyed an enemy force through the aid of Elkab's vulture-goddess Nekhbet. The inscription ends with an account of celebration in the presence of the Egyptian king, who is not identified by name, and of the temple of Nekhbet's endowment with a sacred boat.
Evidence corroborating the general scheme of these events have also recently been found in Sudan, where archchaeologists discovered a vessel that was once in Sobeknakht's tomb. Davies stated that this vessel proves that during the invasion Sobeknakht's tomb was already prepared for the old governor's death. Relatedly, early studies on the inscription revealed that it was a late addition to the tomb, as it was painted in red on the outer chamber, which, according to the Ancient Egyptian taboo, made it untouchable. Davies added that as the tomb's decorations were completely finished by the time of the Kushite attack the corridor between the two chambers was the only space left to record such an event.
Davies is not alone in his feeling that the inscription forces a reconsideration of Egyptian history. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the supreme council of antiquities (SCA), stated that it sheds new light on the extent of Egypt's vulnerability during that period, when the native Upper-Egyptian 17th dynasty centred in Thebes was engaged in a war of independence against the Lower-Egyptian Hyksos who were based in Avaris in the Nile Delta.
"It was a pincer movements on Egypt," Hawass told the Weekly. He said that success by either Kush or Hyksos would have changed the face of Egypt, even up to the present day. Mamdouh El-Damadi, the director general of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, also emphasised how important the inscription is for understanding Kushite ambitions in Egypt. Davies chimed in on this point in stating, "We always thought that the Hyksos were the greatest of Egypt's enemy but Kush was as well." The defeat of the Kush-led invasion represented in Sobeknakht's tomb may come to be interpreted a critical event in Egypt's subsequent defeat of the Hyksos and expansion of its nascent empire into Palestine and Sudan.
The dramatic nature of this discovery begs the question of what revived interest in a site that was catalogued over a century ago and then essentially ignored.
Two years ago, as part of the Egypt and Sudan Department of the British Museum's substantial archaeological programme covering Nile Valley sites and monuments threatened by modern development or in dire need of conservation, Sobeknakht's tomb was finally put on a scientific agenda. Its inclusion in this programme is due to its distressing material condition and its status as the only surviving tomb datable to this crucial transitional period in Egypt's history.
"For us the tomb was like a patient in dire need of urgent care," said Lameya El-Hadidi, one of two Egyptian conservators on the British Museum team. After difficulties finding a solution that would clean the walls without damaging the inscriptions, the team finally settled on small pieces of cotton dampened with distilled water as the best option. However, El-Hadidi explained that the tomb was suffering from not only the accumulation of grime and soot but also from bat waste and bee hives. Among the other obstacles to the tomb's conservation were poor lighting and ventilation, with the effect of the latter being that the conservators were forced to breathe foul air peppered with dust and bat excrement. However, the fruits harvested of this labour went beyond the discovery of the inscription discussed above.
El-Hadidi confirmed that, "what made us put behind our fatigue was the beautiful illustrations that appeared piece by piece while cleaning."
Scenes featuring Sobeknakht with his children and wife were among the iconic ornamentation found. A number of monkeys, some in symbolically erotic poses, are also engraved on the tomb's walls.
A particularly striking scene shows monkeys sitting on the offering table eating the deceased's food.
"It is a cheeky scene," Davies told the Weekly, suggesting that the tomb's artist had a unique sense of humour.
quote:The Beja are good fighters the AE would have been no match to them. Smart move by Kush to mobilize the nomads of the nile valley. Reminds me of when the Mahdi of Sudan mobilized the ferecious Beja clans in his war against the British.
True. The Bejas are very ferocious and skilled in combat. Bejas have long mastered the skill in using their "Sef" {Swords}.
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quote:Needless to say it is indeed interesting that Punt even joined in the battle.
Considering how highly the Egyptions spoke of punt people it is very much so interesting how they joined in on the invasion.
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Yes, that's what is so fascinating about it, that Punt the supposed "land of gods" joined kushites in it's huge invasion on Egypt. Also this happened in the 17th dynasty way before Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty conducted her expeditions towards "The land of gods". Shouldn't the AE's atleast have been bitter instead of further glorifying Punt during the 18th dynasty?
Maybe this invasion force did succeed afterall and the 18th dynasty who glorified them and also look quite upper Egyptian(Tutankhamon, Akhenaten, Hatshepsut etc) were the established dynasty of this invasion. Just my two cents and thoughts.
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quote:Originally posted by Yonis2: Yes, that's what is so fascinating about it, that Punt the supposed "land of gods" joined kushites in it's huge invasion on Egypt. Also this happened in the 17th dynasty way before Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty conducted her expeditions towards "The land of gods". Shouldn't the AE's atleast have been bitter instead of further glorifying Punt during the 18th dynasty?
Maybe this invasion force did succeed afterall and the 18th dynasty who glorified them and also look quite upper Egyptian(Tutankhamon, Akhenaten, Hatshepsut etc) were the established dynasty of this invasion. Just my two cents and thoughts.
Im suprised myself, I though Punt was an ally of Egypt.
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I think Yonis has something. Maybe it is also of no coincidence that thne later dynasty also changed huge dynamics of Ancient Egypt starting with the gods Akhenaten - anyone?
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What choice would Pwanit have when the super power Kush "enlisted" all surrounding countries into its campaign and Egypt was nowhere near to Punt to offer it any aid in defense against Kush? And that's if it felt about Egypt the way Egypt felt about it which I don't definitely know whether it did or did not. Does anyone know for sure?
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