The mysterious civilization of the Nile Valley has fascinated people for more than one millennium - the Romans were the first Egyptians. Egyptian plots and motives are used by a wide variety of cultures. And, of course, the inventions of artists and writers often turn out to be very far from the actual ideas of scientists.
Let's list a few of the most common misconceptions about ancient Egypt and, along with it, about Egyptologists.
THE GREAT EXODUS
The average modern European has some understanding of biblical history. In particular, he is aware that the Jews suffered for many years in Egyptian captivity, where they were terribly exploited. “Therefore, the Egyptians with cruelty forced the children of Israel to work and made their life bitter from hard work on clay and bricks” (Ex. 1: 13-14).
Making bricks (the process itself is drawn in the lower left corner). Tomb of the Vizier Rehmir.
However, if you read the Egyptian sources, it becomes quite obvious that mixing clay with straw to make bricks is the easiest physical work that, in principle, a person could be offered. Certainly easier than cutting giant stone blocks, for example. It turns out awkwardly.
And in general, in ancient Egyptian sources there is absolutely no mention of the exodus of the Jews, the so-called. “The executions of the Egyptians”, the governor of the king Joseph, etc. Yes, in these legends there are distant echoes of what happened in the Middle East in the II-I millennia BC, but this is a distorted, and sometimes completely incorrect echo. It must be taken critically, fortunately, that quite a lot was written about it in Russian in the XX century - the same academician M. A. Korostovtsev. The fashion for religiosity (distinguished from faith) today often gives rise to monstrous ignorance, aggressive and stubborn.
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FIRST MYTH. ANCIENT HYPETIC LANGUAGE
It simply doesn't exist. And it never existed.
No, the ancient Egyptians certainly spoke and wrote in some common dialect. But … when? The first text known to us, from which the history of the Egyptian state is counted, dates back to the XXXII century BC. And the culture that we call ancient Egyptian ceases to exist in the fourth century AD. And even in the seventh, according to some scientists. In total, we have at least three and a half thousand years of history, during which any language and even writing will change beyond recognition. Therefore, Egyptologists distinguish at least the Middle Egyptian language, the New Egyptian language, the late Egyptian language, or even something narrower like the language of the Pyramid Texts. Long-term study of any of these languages does not at all guarantee understanding of any other.
Therefore, when literary or cinematographic archaeologists famously read any ancient Egyptian text “from sight”, this is very little like the truth. Including because in the modern world there is not a single person who would freely read any of the dead Egyptian languages. Any “reading” is actually painstaking deciphering, guesses by context, comparative analysis of several texts of the same period … One single text can be studied for many years - and still doubt the meaning of individual words and even sentences.
Usually, in order to revive or, conversely, to put a mummy to rest, you need to cast a spell in ancient Egyptian. Aloud. Any real Egyptologist would have failed here, since we have no idea about Egyptian phonetics. The approximate sound of some phonemes has been restored from modern Coptic words (Coptic is a direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian languages), from Greek names written in Egyptian signs (let's not say that the phonetics of ancient Greek is also very conditional), but … true, all this concerns only consonants because the vowels in the Semitic languages, to which the Egyptian belongs, are not written. For convenience, the sound "e" is inserted between the consonants (the so-called "school reading"), and all this has very little to do with the real sound. It turns out especially cutewhen the author emphasizes the need for correct pronunciation of all sounds, as, for example, in Robin Lafever's charming series about the girl Theodosia.
And it should also be borne in mind that an archaeologist and a linguist-Egyptologist are generally different professions, of which the first is much more romantic and therefore is more often found in literature. An archaeologist is certainly not obliged to read ancient Egyptian fluently.
The librarian and semi-literate adventurer read the hieroglyphs with interest. A still from the film "The Mummy". 1999 year.
Little things
• Horses in Egypt appeared very late, sometime in the 17th century BC. The Egyptians did not ride horseback and, apparently, did not even perceive the horse as a separate living creature - they gave a personal name not to the horse, but to the entire chariot team.
• The word "Pharaoh", which took root as a designation of the Egyptian king, was never an official title, but rather served as a euphemism, and came into use very late, in the middle of the first millennium BC. Therefore, some "Pharaoh Cheops" is a gross anachronism.
• Most Egyptian texts mention beer as one of the staple foods. Therefore, the characters of novels about ancient Egypt constantly drink beer, and the Carlsberg company even released ale "according to an ancient Egyptian recipe." If we take a real ancient Egyptian recipe, it turns out that the word "beer" once translated the name of something like a liquid porridge made from coarse grains. So this "beer" was really eaten, including by children. Although, of course, alcoholic beverages existed in ancient Egypt.
Burial mask of Tutankhamun. Striped scarf - a headdress that belongs exclusively to the king. And you shouldn't dress every hero in it.
MYTH TWO. THE PYRAMIDS BUILT SLAVES
In the fifth grade of the Soviet and post-Soviet schools, we were all told that the pyramids were built by thousands and even millions of disenfranchised and oppressed slaves. This myth is very tenacious, but very local, which existed only in the Soviet Union. It was allegedly invented in the late 1930s to validate Marx's theory of formations. In 1938, slavery in ancient Egypt was mentioned in the "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", and somehow there were no alternative opinions.
The pyramids were built by the free citizens of Egypt, the so-called "hemu nisut", "royal people". In free time from agricultural work. Almost the entire population of the country belonged to this social stratum, they worked in the royal, temple and large private estates - and then they fed from the treasury (that is, they received a kind of salary). Or they worked on their own land and then fed themselves. Due to the peculiarities of the Egyptian climate, cultivation of the land takes very little time, and the rest of the time there seems to be nothing to pay the farmers "wages" for. Therefore, they were transferred to the construction of irrigation structures or royal tombs. Or something else. By the way, judging by the garbage found at the pyramid of Cheops in the ancient settlement of builders, the "royal people" also ate like a king.
In the fifth grade of the Soviet and post-Soviet schools, we were all told that the pyramids were built by thousands and even millions of disenfranchised and oppressed slaves. This myth is very tenacious, but very local, which existed only in the Soviet Union. It was invented by the personal order of Comrade Stalin in the late 1930s to confirm Marx's theory of formations. In 1938, slavery in ancient Egypt was mentioned in the "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", and somehow there were no alternative opinions.
The pyramids were built by the free citizens of Egypt, the so-called "hemu nisut", "royal people". In free time from agricultural work. Almost the entire population of the country belonged to this social stratum, they worked in the royal, temple and large private estates - and then they fed from the treasury (that is, they received a kind of salary). Or they worked on their own land and then fed themselves. Due to the peculiarities of the Egyptian climate, cultivation of the land takes very little time, and the rest of the time there seems to be nothing to pay the farmers "wages" for. Therefore, they were transferred to the construction of irrigation structures or royal tombs. Or something else. By the way, judging by the garbage found at the pyramid of Cheops in the ancient settlement of builders, the "royal people" also ate like a king.
Building a pyramid. Foreground is an overseer with a whip (by the way, dressed in a royal headdress).
In fact, slavery in Egypt, of course, existed. But not at all on such a gigantic scale as we used to think. For example, in one of the inscriptions of Thutmose III it is mentioned that he brought about three hundred slaves from the war. Three hundred. And Thutmose III is one of the greatest conquerors of human history in general. If such a modest number of enslaved enemies were recorded in the annals as a huge achievement, what kind of thousands and millions of slaves can we talk about? Another example is a nobleman, in whose household several hundred “hemu” worked, boasting that he had bought one slave. And this despite the fact that the slaves were not so expensive - for example, a text has been preserved in which a woman named Iri-Nofret buys a young Syrian girl for the equivalent of about 400 grams of silver. Hence, slavery was simply very rare.
And after one and a half thousand years, in the era of the New Kingdom, the builders of royal tombs generally became one of the most respected people in Egypt. They lived in a special village not far from the tsar's necropolis and did not hesitate to organize strikes if they ceased to arrange remuneration for their work. Agree, it's strange to expect this from a slave.
MYTH THREE. THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOH
The vast majority of films about mummies and Egyptologists, from the classic "Mummy" in 1932 to the recently released "Pyramid", were shot according to approximately the same script. Archaeologists come to excavations in Egypt and accidentally find an unknown tomb of the pharaoh or, at worst, a priest (by the way, this plot move is just more or less plausible). In the tomb there is always a fat mummy, which after a while suddenly comes to life and begins to kill stupid people who disturbed her peace. Usually, traps are still involved in the process, with which any self-respecting cinematic tomb is stuffed to the brim. In the end, the mummy is either shot / burned / somehow destroyed physically, or incapacitated by ancient Egyptian witchcraft and put back in the coffin (often before the second series).
Boris Karloff as the first living mummy in history.
It should be noted that one of the mummies of the pharaohs still came to life. A little bit. It was in the thirties of the XX century, and it was the mummy of Ramses II, one of the most famous Egyptian kings. The mummy was exhibited in the Cairo Museum, and one fine summer evening she suddenly raised her hand in front of visitors and even, they say, broke glass.
That was the end of it.
In all likelihood, the matter is in the reaction of the embalming composition to high temperature or simply in a strong drop in humidity, which caused the reduction of overdried tissues, but the impressions of all the witnesses were clearly unforgettable.
And the mummy still lives with a raised hand.
The second popular motive regarding the opened tombs is the "Curse of the Pharaohs", which supposedly befalls anyone who breaks the peace of the dead king. The most famous case is the curse of Tutankhamun, in whose tomb a tablet was allegedly found with the inscription "Death with light steps will overtake everyone who disturb the peace of the Pharaoh." The curse manifested itself in the fact that within about a year and a half, six people who took part in the opening of the tomb died from supposedly natural causes. The secretary, for example. Or an Egyptian prince attending a press conference in honor of this event. Howard Carter, the main tomb robber, lived another sixteen years, by the way. But other cases are “known” as well - for example, in 1993, the royal tomb was opened, in which the inscription “The great goddess Hathor will punish everyone twice,who dares to defile this grave. " Shortly thereafter, the excavation leader suffered a heart attack.
The main problem with the "curse of the pharaohs" - apart from the fact that these versions do not stand up to criticism from the point of view of logic - is that there was no concept of "curse" per se in Egyptian magical and religious practice. There were magical ways of calming, say, a wife's lover, but this rite required physical contact with a person. And the Egyptians did not know how to conduct any magic "fire across the squares" and did not see any sense in it. The same applies to the reviving mummies. The Egyptians, in principle, did not understand the idea of reviving the dead and did not distract them from the most important posthumous life. They never returned the dead even in fairy tales, did not turn to them for advice, did not see the dead in a dream (extensive dream books have survived, but this motive is not mentioned there even once). And they certainly would not have cast a spell on the deceased king,obliging him to get up after three thousand years and start killing.
It is also worth noting that most of the tombs, both royal and private, were repeatedly opened by the Egyptians themselves. And if ordinary people were punished for this (well, a criminal offense in general, and court records have been preserved), then the tsars who open the tombs of their predecessors, there was nothing for it.
And this was done for a variety of purposes: from a banal robbery (for example, the king could well have taken from the tomb of his unloved grandfather the carved stone slabs with which the walls were decorated, slightly tinted and put into his own tomb) to reburial in accordance with new religious trends. Or does the curse of the pharaohs not apply to the pharaohs?
THE ROYAL NAME
In novels about ancient Egypt, even written by professional Egyptologists (“Warda” by Georg Ebers, for example), the heroes usually call the king the way we are used to from history books. Ramses II, for example, or Pepi I.
Approximately one-fifth of the name of Queen Hatshepsut.
In fact, this naming is modern, introduced only for the convenience of scientists. Each king bore a total of five names - personal, throne, chorus. gold and "the name of two mistresses", that is, the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt. Thus, some Thutmose III was actually called Kanekhet-haime-Uaset, the Choir in the Gold of Djoser-how. Two mistresses of Uakhnesit, king and sovereign Menkheperra, son of Ra Thutmose. And his subjects spoke of him as His Majesty Mencheperr. And this throne name was practically unique and did not need numbering.
As for traps in tombs, the most common in cinematography are the following: sudden spraying of sulfuric acid, self-arrows in the walls, a falling ceiling or floor falling into the void (usually you need to step on the wrong tiles for this) and the sudden flooding of all passages in the pyramid. There are also carnivorous scarabs, statues that come to life, and more. Even if we do not count the fact that crossbows were invented much later, scarabs do not eat fresh meat, and there are no turbulent rivers in the Sahara, the reality is simple and boring: not a single trap has yet been found in any of the tomb we know. With one small exception - in the late period, a deep steep well was carved in front of the burial chamber in the royal tombs carved into the rocks. Always in the same place. Perhaps he had a ritual significance, and perhapsreally saved from robbers.
But usually the corridors and passages leading to the sarcophagus were simply walled up tightly.
MONEY-MONEY-MONEY
Money did not exist in ancient Egypt either. More precisely, the Egyptians came up with the idea of making silver, copper and gold a kind of universal equivalent, but the metal did not participate directly in trade. There was a measure of weight called "deben", the size of which changed over several thousand years from 13.5 grams to about 90 grams. Deben was conventionally divided into twelve "whales".
The contracts of sale and purchase, preserved in abundance, are drawn up something like this: “This is the price I gave for the thing: a shroud of thin linen worth five whales of silver, a piece of flax worth three whales of silver and one third, a bronze vessel worth eighteen debens silver, ten linen shirts worth four debens of silver, a pot of honey worth five whales of silver, twenty-three debens, one whale and one-third of silver. That is, in fact, there was a natural exchange.
And coins appeared only at the end of the sixth century BC.
MYTH FOURTH. ENOUGH TO CONSIDER THE Murals
Horrible mistakes in depicting and describing ancient Egyptian life are often made by just those authors who carefully studied the sources and studied many Egyptian pictures. Well, for example, everyone knows that the ancient Egyptians wore white loincloths, right?
Here are just ninety percent of the images we know - frescoes from tombs. If everything is much better with the texts (textbooks on a variety of disciplines, and judicial archives, and personal correspondence, and business records have been preserved), then we were not lucky with the fine arts. It would seem that the tombs depict the most ordinary life: field work, hunting, holidays, dinners … Take information and rejoice. But if you think about it (or at least read the experts who have already thought), it becomes clear that not this world, but the other world, is being painted on the walls of tombs. Where everything will be about the same, of course, but much better and a little different.
A figurine in ritual white clothes and a figurine in real, dyed clothes.
In particular, in the next world they dress completely differently. In reality, walking on the equator in rags that do not cover your shoulders is very stupid (the Egyptians were not black), and going out into the field in white is even more stupid. In addition, all the clothes found during the excavations are colored.
In general, any household testimony from the tombs should be treated with caution. For example, on the heads of many women, small cones of unknown purpose are depicted. Connoisseurs-amateurs confidently say that these cones were made of fragrant oils or wax, during the evening they slowly melted and smelled pleasantly. Science, unlike amateurs, has not the slightest idea about this, although this version was put forward on a par with many others.
In fact, the recipe for creating plus or minus authentic texts and other works about ancient Egypt is simple. Yes, of course, due to the fact that this period has been studied quite well, a lot of information about it belongs to the “everyone knows” category. Over the past couple of centuries, the ancient Egyptian culture has become fashionable more than once, and the fashionable is always simplified to the point of impossibility, not to say "made primitive." Therefore, one should not buy into the deceptive wealth of information in the head of any fan of Brendan Fraser, it is better to contact James Fraser or one of his colleagues - after all, there are many scientific and popular scientific works on Ancient Egypt, and reading them is no less interesting than watching films about the living mummies.
FIFTH MYTH. THE SPHINX'S NOSE STEALED BY NAPOLEON
The Sphinx (translated from Greek - "strangler") is a mythological creature with the head of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird. As you may have noticed, his giant 6,500-year-old statue near the Egyptian pyramids is noseless. For many centuries, the fact that the nose of the Sphinx was deliberately beaten off for some special reason, was accused of different armies and individuals - the British, Germans, Arabs. However, it is still customary to shift the blame to Napoleon.
Almost none of these accusations are grounded. In fact, the only one who can be confidently said that he really did damage to the Sphinx was the Sufi fanatic Muhammad Saim al-Dah, who was beaten to death by the locals for vandalism in 1378.
The British and German armies that visited Egypt during both world wars are not to blame: there are photographs of the Sphinx without a nose, dated 1886.
As for Napoleon, sketches with the noseless Sphinx, made by European travelers in 1737, thirty-two years before the birth of the future French emperor, have been preserved. When the twenty-nine-year-old general first laid eyes on the ancient statue, it probably hadn't had a nose for hundreds of years.
Napoleon's campaign in Egypt was intended to disrupt English ties with India. The French army fought two major battles in this country: the Battle of the Pyramids (which, by the way, did not take place at the Pyramids at all) and the Battle of the Nile (which had nothing to do with the Nile). Together with an army of 55,000, Napoleon brought in 155 civilian specialists - the so-called savants (Scientists; prominent specialists in any field (fr.)). This was the first professional archaeological expedition to Egypt.
When Nelson sank Napoleon's fleet, the emperor returned to France, abandoning both the army and the "scientists" who continued to work without their leader. The result was a scholarly work called Description de I'Egypte (French) - the first accurate picture of the country that reached Europe.
Nevertheless, despite all these facts, Egyptian guides still tell numerous crowds of tourists that Napoleon stole the nose from the Sphinx and transported it to the Louvre in Paris.
The most plausible reason for the lack of such an important organ in the Sphinx is the 6,000 years of exposure to wind and weather conditions on soft limestone.
MYTH SIX. CLEOPATRA
In the modern world, Cleopatra is perceived by us as a beautiful, seductive woman, whose beauty has been and will be praised. From Shakespeare to director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the myth of this woman's magical attractiveness has become increasingly standardized in the minds of the masses. However, if we look at the Roman coins depicting the last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra VII, we will see that this woman had more masculine features: a protruding chin, a long nose, thin lips … This can hardly be called the ideal of beauty. But on the other hand, this did not prevent her from having a sharp mind and charisma. They, in turn, destroy the myth of the tragic death of Cleopatra, because in fact, before committing suicide, she tested many different poisons on the prisoners in order to die painlessly and quickly.
MYTH SEVEN. LOST IN THE PYRAMID SANDS
This is a familiar look to everyone. One gets the impression that the pyramids are lost somewhere far away in the desert, covered by sands, and to get to them, you need to make a long trek on camels.
Let's see how things really are.
Giza is the modern name for the large necropolis in Cairo, covering approximately 2000 sq. m.
The third place in terms of population after Cairo and Alexandria is occupied by this city, which is home to more than 900 thousand inhabitants. In fact, Giza merges with Cairo. The famous Egyptian pyramids are located here: Cheops, Khafre, Mikeren and the Great Sphinx.
Not so long ago - just over a century ago - only the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, cultivating irrigation fields, knew the backwater road to the pyramids. Today, the pyramids of Giza are the center of attraction for tourists, the number of which is increasing every year. The fields around the ancient ritual structures began to be built up with shops, cafes, restaurants and nightclubs, but local authorities do not show much discontent about this, because tourism is one of the important items of the Egyptian budget.
And this is how this place looked in 1904: