Lo, the Nobles Lament, the Poor Rejoice

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Daztur

In this period what were the provincial nobility like? Would there be any minor rural nobility about to give Nehesy headaches?

That's a good question. The sources I have on the Sixth Dynasty and the First Intermediate discuss how the nomarchs (the sepat-lords) became virtual independent rulers, but they don't mention anything about nobility below the nomarchs, or whether there was a further layer of quasi-feudal estates.

My impression - and I'd welcome being corrected if I'm wrong - was that the ancient Egyptian nobility, other than the nomarchs, were largely court bureaucrats who worked directly for the king. During periods of weak central rule, the nomarchs had their own courts and bureaucracies, and appointed village headmen, but didn't subdivide their territories into smaller feudal domains. It's also my understanding that the provinces were small enough for one lord to administer fairly easily - an Old Kingdom population of ~2 million divided by 42 nomes means less than 50,000 people on average per nome, with only the largest ones approaching 100,000, and the Nile makes it easy to get from one end of a province to the other. During the First Intermediate, I'd expect that the populations would be even less.

At least one source (with citation) indicates that the nomes weren't subdivided until the Middle Kingdom, and that this was done as a way of weakening the nomarchs by appointing sub-provincial prefects who reported directly to the throne. This of course wouldn't be the case during the First Intermediate, where the monarchy (to the extent it even existed) didn't have enough power to effectively control the provinces.

On the other hand, there were large temple estates in most if not all provinces, and I'd also guess that (a) many of the court bureaucrats would have rural seats, and (b) there would be other rural landholders with ties to the noble families who might control a few villages. Some of these might well object to the kenbet telling them what to do. Nehesy will also have to co-opt the provincial bureaucrats. And then, of course, there will be the internal politics of the kenbet itself. I'm certainly assuming that, at least at the beginning, his power isn't secure outside the city; note that he's mayor of Akhmim rather than lord of the Min nome, and note that his tomb inscription is about three parts propaganda.

Any further thoughts on this subject would be welcome.

[Daztur]

OK, trying to piece stuff together in my ignorance, we've got:
-Skill craftspeople (what appears to be the demographic base of the regime, at least for now).
-The dead nomarch's court (appears to have been shoved aside due to lack of a leader).
-Urban poor (seem to be following the lead of the craftspeople).
-Peasants (Nehesy still has to deal with them, would presumably outnumber the population of Akhmin by a good bit)
-People who boss around the peasants (village headmen, temple administrators, some kind of low level nobility (?), haven't been incorporated yet either, might be co-opted).

One thing that this system has going for it is that the rural population can get to Akhmin pretty easily for participating in government since the nome is small, the population density is pretty high by the standards of the time and you've got the Nile.

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Daztur

OK, trying to piece stuff together in my ignorance, we've got:

- [1] Skill craftspeople (what appears to be the demographic base of the regime, at least for now).
- [2] The dead nomarch's court (appears to have been shoved aside due to lack of a leader).
- [3] Urban poor (seem to be following the lead of the craftspeople).
- [4] Peasants (Nehesy still has to deal with them, would presumably outnumber the population of Akhmin by a good bit)
- [5] People who boss around the peasants (village headmen, temple administrators, some kind of low level nobility (?), haven't been incorporated yet either, might be co-opted).

[6] One thing that this system has going for it is that the rural population can get to Akhmin pretty easily for participating in government since the nome is small, the population density is pretty high by the standards of the time and you've got the Nile.

1. Right. The backbone of the new regime will be the people who are not poor but were previously shut out of the political elite - the craftsmen, skilled workers and small landowners.

2. Pretty much. Either they don't have a leader or, as with certain priests, they report to someone in another city outside easy communication. At the same time, Nehesy will need them to run the city. This group probably includes the only literate people in the province (literacy has been estimated at 1 percent during the Old Kingdom, and would only have declined after its fall), and if the kenbet doesn't co-opt them, then there will be nobody to keep records and accounts.

BTW, one side effect of the expansion of the political class will be an increase in hieratic literacy and an earlier development of demotic script, but that will take time.

3-4. The peasants definitely outnumber the city people. I'm assuming a population of about 3000-4000 for the city of Akhmim and maybe 35,000 to 40,000 for the province. During the Old Kingdom, the royal capital might have had 30,000 people, with provincial towns considerably smaller; the social collapse and lower agricultural yields of the First Intermediate would reduce the urban population even further. In any event, both the urban poor and the peasants will follow the lead of the skilled craftsmen and landowners for the time being - they don't have the administrative skills that a guildmaster would have, so they don't have the capacity to mount a political challenge.

5. These will be the main opposition if they aren't co-opted. I'm still not entirely sure, though, where the priesthoods fit in. The dominant priesthood in Akhmim is the Min cult, and if they don't support the government, then it's finished. But I assume they wouldn't be the only priests in town, and that at least a few of the other gods would have a presence. Presumably, in better times, those priests would report to a hierarchy in the city where their god's cult is centered, but I'm not sure how this would work in times of collapse, and how they would fit into the power structure. Again, any further thoughts would be welcome.

6. Yes, the ease of travel and communication within the province will enable it to follow the city-state model, which is the environment in which most (all?) early democracies developed. The nomes probably were predynastic city-states which were absorbed into the nascent Egyptian kingdom, and some of them will temporarily revert to that status for a while.

[Ganesha]

Fascinating, Jonathan, in every way. I don't know enough yet to comment intelligently, but what you've written so far looks brilliant. I look forward to enjoying this timeline as much as I'm enjoying Malê Rising.

Cheers,
Ganesha

[Faeelin]

heh, you know, I'm reminded of Judges, in the Old Testament.

"In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

[Hnau]

Great start! I like how you find interesting niches in history in which a Great Man could have risen to change everything and then exploit it. The best part is your great men invent bold new ideologies that changes not only geopolitics but the overall culture of humanity, which is much more fascinating.

In the relatively short time you've been here Jonathan you've given us some great content! I'm very pleased with your presence on the board.

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

heh, you know, I'm reminded of Judges, in the Old Testament.

"In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

The Book of Judges actually mentions the absence of a king quite a few times.

It was common during the Bronze Age to equate the lack of a king with anarchy - "A river without water, a forest without grass, a herd of cattle without a herdsman, is the land without a king." The notion that the absence of a king meant freedom was, in OTL, a much later one, beginning with the Iron Age republics.

In this timeline, the idea of kingship as tyranny will come into being somewhat earlier. But there will still be many who see the development of republican institutions as an absolute horror, a willful descent into anarchy. And as I've indicated before, even the Upper Egyptian nomes which form the cradle of republican politics will come to see democracy at the municipal and provincial level as an adjunct to divine monarchy at the imperial level. The Bronze Age conception of a republic will be quite different from the Iron Age one.

Originally Posted by Hnau

I like how you find interesting niches in history in which a Great Man could have risen to change everything and then exploit it. The best part is your great men invent bold new ideologies that changes not only geopolitics but the overall culture of humanity, which is much more fascinating.

I'm not sure I'd call Nehesy a Great Man, although he's certainly one who rose to the occasion. The next few updates will begin to involve other people and places, as the republican idea develops and mutates. But I do tend to prefer timelines that involve changes to the history of ideas as opposed to "empire X wins battle Y and conquers Z" - not that I have anything against the latter, which has many entertaining examples on this forum, but cultural and ideological timelines are more my style.

NikoZnate's "Realm of Millions of Years" also involves an idea, and is one of the best ancient Egyptian stories (alternate or not) that I've ever read. If you haven't read it, you should - you're in for a treat.

Anyway, I'm happy to be here, and hope I can entertain as much as I'm being entertained.

[Sam R.]

Jonathan's great men often aren't. They are the Roux, not the Marat.

Regarding the function of Kings. Kings have divine functions, related to the system of forced extraction from semi-independent economic production units. With the chaos of a failed system of Kingship, and the local failure of a local system of Kingship, the possibility of a production unit seizing control for itself is realised. Classically this happens (ha ha ha ha) in the classical Iron age, as localising economic tendencies in the new enhanced production systems take over.

Often this results in slave formation, who are the natural slaves of our Nomes? The unskilled? But they're part of the guild system generally, or the power structure of someone who is in the guild system. The agricultural labourers? The Nomes currently doesn't have the political-economic capacity to subjugate a vast rural hinterland. And in any case, enslavement within the community is often related to changed forces of production—emiseration and credit; rich gens, poor gens. No the local gens are unlikely to be enslaved.

I think that what is going to happen here is "headless Asiatic production" in the sense that the King's sacral role will be redefined to be completely unconnected with economic function. Tributaries will control their measure of tribute, and the King's capacity for making war will be wound back by lack of finance, but the King's tributary nomes will maintain a capacity for making war. If the Soviet Union was capitalism without capitalists, then this will be Asiatic production without a Divine-King.

Damn interesting.

Nomes do have an internal capacity for higher rates of urban production under citizen-production, but the issue is still agricultural production structures. For the urban population to swell it is going to require the enslavement of the countryside. I don't think the Nomes have this in them, so I think that until Iron hits, that this is still going to be the "Asiatic" mode, but with a vast redistribution of power from the Sacral-Monarchy towards the men-with-the-whips.

yours,
Sam R.

[Daztur]

Trying to think about how the rural population gets a slice of power, I'm deeply ignorant about ancient Egypt so I'm just casting around for other alternatives:
-They don't. The city shuts them out of power. Unlikely due to the urban centers being a lot smaller as a percentage of the total population than, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic etc. etc.
-Absentee landowners settle in the city and take part in the city kenbet. Seems since the kenbet is mostly skilled workers, not rentiers.
-Small villages with their own mini-governments ally with the city kenbet but don't get representatives on it (think the Athenian Empire writ very very small). Possible, but would seem to be a real hassle to organize.
-Representation within the town's institutions gets thrown open to anyone within reasonable travel distance with the urbanites running a lot of things day to day but with big issues drawing a bunch of people from the rural areas to show up and participate, kind of sort of like early Republican Rome...
-Some sort of hybrid of the above. A more modern system in which there's a nome kenbet and a city kenbet would seem to make more sense but you don't see stuff like that much in ancient times...
-Many other possibilities that I'm not thinking of.

[God-Eater of the Marshes]

Originally Posted by Daztur

-Some sort of hybrid of the above. A more modern system in which there's a nome kenbet and a city kenbet would seem to make more sense but you don't see stuff like that much in ancient times...

Actually this is kind of what happened in Ptolemaic and later Egypt where you had the gymnasial class ruling cities, and then the nomarch/pagarch ruling the nome/pagi.

[Daztur]

Originally Posted by God-Eater of the Marshes

Actually this is kind of what happened in Ptolemaic and later Egypt where you had the gymnasial class ruling cities, and then the nomarch/pagarch ruling the nome/pagi.

Yeah, in history you see a good bit of systems in which there's a non-republican leadership for a polity with some republican local (like some Medieval city governments) government. It's a lot rarer to see different levels of republican in the same polity (i.e. something like the Dutch Republican) what happens a lot more often is stuff like Athens or Rome or Venice in which one city's government and the government of the overall polity are one and the same. For example there wasn't a separate Roman city government and then another government for Latium etc. etc.

[NikoZnate]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

My impression - and I'd welcome being corrected if I'm wrong - was that the ancient Egyptian nobility, other than the nomarchs, were largely court bureaucrats who worked directly for the king.

You're correct, but you also mention this:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

On the other hand, there were large temple estates in most if not all provinces...

One mustn't forget that the priesthood that ran the large temple estates was also drawn from the hereditary nobility, which already had experience with landowning and administration. It was also not uncommon for there to be a degree of overlap between the spheres of influence of the nomarch and the temple administration within any given sepat, with various officials holding both religious and secular titles; bureaucrat and priest could be one and the same, and some priestly titles were almost completely bureaucratic in nature. I'm not sure how prevalent that is during the First Intermediate Period, but it may be something to consider.

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

NikoZnate's "Realm of Millions of Years" also involves an idea, and is one of the best ancient Egyptian stories (alternate or not) that I've ever read. If you haven't read it, you should - you're in for a treat.

Coming from as skilled a writer and alternate historian as yourself, that is high praise indeed! Thank you

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Sam R.

With the chaos of a failed system of Kingship, and the local failure of a local system of Kingship, the possibility of a production unit seizing control for itself is realised [...] Often this results in slave formation, who are the natural slaves of our Nomes? The unskilled? But they're part of the guild system generally, or the power structure of someone who is in the guild system. The agricultural labourers? The Nomes currently doesn't have the political-economic capacity to subjugate a vast rural hinterland. And in any case, enslavement within the community is often related to changed forces of production—emiseration and credit; rich gens, poor gens. No the local gens are unlikely to be enslaved.

I think that what is going to happen here is "headless Asiatic production" in the sense that the King's sacral role will be redefined to be completely unconnected with economic function. Tributaries will control their measure of tribute, and the King's capacity for making war will be wound back by lack of finance, but the King's tributary nomes will maintain a capacity for making war. If the Soviet Union was capitalism without capitalists, then this will be Asiatic production without a Divine-King.

Slavery in ancient Egypt was another funny thing - a matter of degrees. There were certainly chattel slaves (albeit more in the New Kingdom than the Old) and various forms of serfdom, but the dividing line between slaves and serfs, and for that matter nominally-free workers, was often blurred. Slaves were legal persons with some recourse to the courts; free men were liable to corvée labor on public works, including the occasional pyramid, for about a third of the year; so enslaving the peasants might not be worth the candle.

It would, of course, be possible to create a new system of slavery, or to expand the class of slaves. But since the labor will be needed by the city-state as a whole rather than any specific individual, there would be no need to do this. If the city needs to build irrigation works, it could still draft the peasants during the flood season. So this would return to your headless Asiatic production.

The corvée labor is likely to be used somewhat differently, though - a republican province won't build as much monumental architecture (although there will still be some, primarily in the religious sphere), and will devote more energy to true public works. So the people at the bottom would at least see a bit more return on their labor, and if some of the energy that would otherwise go to pyramids is devoted to building irrigation canals, the city might be able to increase its carrying capacity even without mass enslavement. There would be strict limits to this, and none of the provincial republics would be able to approach the size of Iron Age cities, but there might be some room for growth, especially as the ecological crisis recedes and the renewed Nile floods coincide with improved irrigation.

Originally Posted by Daztur

Trying to think about how the rural population gets a slice of power, I'm deeply ignorant about ancient Egypt so I'm just casting around for other alternatives [...]

-Small villages with their own mini-governments ally with the city kenbet but don't get representatives on it (think the Athenian Empire writ very very small). Possible, but would seem to be a real hassle to organize.

-Representation within the town's institutions gets thrown open to anyone within reasonable travel distance with the urbanites running a lot of things day to day but with big issues drawing a bunch of people from the rural areas to show up and participate, kind of sort of like early Republican Rome...

The current plan is for the latter to be the dominant model - for the province to be identified with its capital city even more than in OTL, and for the city government to effectively become the provincial government. It will mostly be a regime of the skilled craftsmen and scribes, but the rural landowners will be able to participate or send representatives. Most of the kenbets' sessions will be on holy days - they will have religious as well as administrative functions, because religion will still be closely connected to state affairs - which means that the meetings will take place at times when many of the rural people will be in town anyway.

There may also be village assemblies, which run their own affairs day to day but are subject to the urban assembly (less Athens than the Roman hinterland, though, as the villages will be subjects rather than nominally-independent allies).

Not all the republican provinces will work that way, though; I have one or two other models tentatively in mind, although this may change.

Originally Posted by God-Eater of the Marshes

Actually this is kind of what happened in Ptolemaic and later Egypt where you had the gymnasial class ruling cities, and then the nomarch/pagarch ruling the nome/pagi.

Originally Posted by Daztur

Yeah, in history you see a good bit of systems in which there's a non-republican leadership for a polity with some republican local (like some Medieval city governments) government.

You'll see this in Egypt as the warring states begin to consolidate - empires that include one or more republican provinces.

Originally Posted by NikoZnate

One mustn't forget that the priesthood that ran the large temple estates was also drawn from the hereditary nobility, which already had experience with landowning and administration. It was also not uncommon for there to be a degree of overlap between the spheres of influence of the nomarch and the temple administration within any given sepat, with various officials holding both religious and secular titles; bureaucrat and priest could be one and the same, and some priestly titles were almost completely bureaucratic in nature. I'm not sure how prevalent that is during the First Intermediate Period, but it may be something to consider.

In other words, as in most ancient cultures, there would be career priests on the one hand, and on the other hand, nobles who are priests in addition to all their other titles. And most of the high-ranking priests would probably belong to the latter group.

The priesthood will still have a major administrative role in this timeline, both because it will remain important to propitiate the gods and because the priests will have a great deal of knowledge and institutional memory. However, the upper priesthood may, in time, come to be drawn primarily from the craftsman and smallholder classes rather than from the traditional nobility - the regime will want to secure its influence over the religious establishment, and also to co-opt as many of the temple estates as possible.

Do you have any idea what would happen to the temple-estate administrators in a time of collapse - e.g., what would a priest of Amun do if communication with the cult center at Waset were cut off? Obviously, there's no problem for estates that are near the cult center, but would the far-flung ones essentially turn into family estates of whoever's in charge when the state comes crashing down, or would the cults try to maintain some kind of control across provincial borders? Maybe a combination of the two? I haven't been able to find any hard information on land ownership during the First Intermediate, so I'll probably have to make an educated guess - any ideas?

[Hnau]

Man, Jonathan, your description of a possible republican Egypt sounds awesome, I can't wait to see it develop in this timeline! I wonder how this would affect the world at large, introducing democracy two thousand years before OTL...

[Jonathan Edelstein]

From A Treasury of Kemet (NRM 749)

... The Tales of the Nubian, sometimes known as the Tales of the Animal Farm, dates from the early part of the First Transitional Period. The author, Hapuseneb, is believed to have been a scribe at the royal court at Henen-nesut, seat of the most powerful of the several dynasties competing for supremacy in Kemet at the time. His work is remarkable not only for being the earliest example of Kemetic narrative literature that has come down to us (although many later papyri are likely transcriptions of still older stories) but also for being one of the earliest known examples of political satire.

The work takes the form of several interconnected short stories; there were at least seven in the original papyrus, but only four complete stories and fragments of a fifth have survived. The setting is a farm in Upper Egypt, and the characters are the Nubian farmer (never named, and referred to only as "the Farmer" or "the Nubian") and his livestock.

In the first story, the Nubian commands his animals to dig agricultural canals. Rather than digging the ditches where they are told, each animal is convinced that he has a better place to dig them, and each starts work in his preferred location, claiming loudly that his plan and no other will bring the most water to the fields. When it becomes clear that none of the animals is listening to any other, they begin to fill in each other's trenches, each intent on forcing the others to see the justice of his plan. In the end, the fields are not irrigated and the crops wither in the harsh sun.

The second story begins on the morning of the following day, when the animals argue over which one of them the Nubian will sacrifice to propitiate the gods (or, as they put it, which one will plead the farm's case in "the kenbet of heaven"). The pig, the cow and the goat each contend that their life is the most valuable, boasting of their achievements in past seasons, the greatness they have brought to the fields and the charitable works they have done for lesser animals. Hours pass and none of them withdraw, at which point the Nubian suggests that the animals' council put the issue to a vote. The pig has the most supporters and, although the cow and goat warn that he is unclean, he is chosen as the sacrifice. The gods, offended by the sacrilegious offering, send a plague to ravage the farm.

The third story sees the animals trying to rebuild from starvation and disease, and quarreling over who will perform the necessary tasks. The donkey, speaking in the animals' council, declares that he has had enough of carrying heavy loads from place to place; from now on, he will swim in the duck-pond and the ducks will fetch the stones to build a new boundary wall. The ducks go to the quarry and, of course, are unable to lift even the smallest stone. The donkey shouts at them to work together, and calls for the rabbits and fish to help them, but the stones cannot be moved. Ultimately, the donkey allows the load to be put on his back, saying "must I really show you fools how this is done?"

Two fragmentary tales follow; one appears to involve an attempt to hitch the farmer to a plow, although not enough of either survives to be certain. The end of the cycle, though, is known: the Nubian and his livestock flee the destruction of the farm and invade a neighbor's land, intent on securing a new home for themselves. Seeing another farmer and his family at work in their fields, they attack without mercy, but Horus descends to vanquish the invaders, save the neighbors' lives and property, and reclaim the Nubians' farm for productive work.

Nearly all scholars agree that the Tales of the Nubian is an allegory of the republican government that arose in Akhmim just a few years before the papyrus was composed. The Nubian farmer is both a stand-in for the god Min, whose cult was centered at Akhmim and who is depicted as a black man, and a pun on the leader of the Akhmim kenbet, whose name - Nehesy - meant "Nubian." The caricatured debates, arguments over precedence, and topsy-turvy social roles are recognizable, and sometimes quite nuanced, references to the internal struggles that were taking place within the provincial republic at the time, pitting craftsmen against scribes and rural landholders, those who favored a single executive against those who preferred collective rule, and those who viewed the kenbet as a forum for policy debate against those who believed its only non-judicial role should be to elect an absolute leader. The recent discoveries at Akhmim and Edfu, which chronicle the formative years of the republics, definitively refute the earlier view that the Hapuseneb papyrus is simply a general lament against the chaos and privation of the First Transitional.

Opinion remains divided, however, as to whether the papyrus is a light-hearted lampoon of the republic or a work of propaganda against it. While the use of animals and some colloquialisms speaks in favor of the former interpretation, the weight of the evidence appears to support the latter. The characters are not drawn in a way that is calculated to make them appear funny or endearing. Instead, they commit multiple acts of sacrilege, profanation of ritual and destruction of irrigation works - which, in the parched environment of the First Transitional, was viewed as very close to the ultimate crime. Moreover, the appearance of Horus - representing both the physical king and the concept of kingship - to save the neighboring farm from the animal invasion is a clear indication that the Nubian's farm is an evil to be vanquished.

It is plain that Hapuseneb saw the Akhmim republic, and meant his readers to see it, with horror rather than amusement. To him, a country without a divine king - in other words, one in which the ruler is not the natural superior of the ruled, and in which the people see themselves as no better than he is - must necessarily be one in which the people accept no direction and spend their energies in futile competition. As such, projects like irrigation-works and religious rituals, which require many people to work together to effectuate a single plan, cannot be accomplished, and the only possible result is starvation and ruin. Moreover, the ruler himself must lose direction and vision when forced to contend against the people, as evidenced by the fact that the story's farmer is not given a name, which symbolizes his loss of humanity and descent to fellow-beasthood.

This interpretation also explains the final story, in which the Nubian and his animals appear as invaders. Unlike the other vignettes, this is not an allegory of Akhmim's politics, given that all the wars it fought during the first two decades of its existence were defensive. It only fits into the rest of the cycle if it is assumed - as Hapuseneb no doubt did - that republican government is itself an invasive organism which will destroy a well-ordered kingdom if not defeated. This view may well have been reinforced by the emergence of a second provincial republic at Edfu, where the city's kenbets overthrew a particularly oppressive overlord three years after Nehesy assumed Akhmim's mayoralty. The fact that the Edfu republic arose from a revolt, rather than simply the filling of a power vacuum, must have made republican ideology seem all the more dangerous. Certainly, this view was shared by many others at the time, with some kings and provincial rulers going so far as to excise the names of the rebellious provinces from monuments and public records.

But one cannot escape the feeling that Hapuseneb was reactionary even for his time. At several points in the story, he caricatures the idea of social justice - the notion that a ruler must justify himself with reference to good works - but this idea was already taking hold among kings and princes as well as mayors and members of kenbets. The very king that Hapuseneb served bragged in his tomb inscriptions of feeding the hungry and healing the sick, and the same boast was being made in the tombs of many other nobles. The concept of rulership was changing in response to the harsh conditions of the First Transitional, and the idea of the ruler as being divine simply because he was ruler was fading - something that, no doubt, made the republican concept even more frightening to those already in mourning for the old times...

[Sam R.]

Bloody awesome.

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

In the first story, the Nubian commands his animals to dig agricultural canals. Rather than digging the ditches where they are told, each animal is convinced that he has a better place to dig them, and each starts work in his preferred location, claiming loudly that his plan and no other will bring the most water to the fields. When it becomes clear that none of the animals is listening to any other, they begin to fill in each other's trenches, each intent on forcing the others to see the justice of his plan. In the end, the fields are not irrigated and the crops wither in the harsh sun.

I think the trench filling is propaganda rather than actuality, it is an allegorical structure which we shouldn't take as history. In particular the withering grain is clearly allegorical. Multiple projects, however, sounds actual.

The second story begins on the morning of the following day, when the animals argue over which one of them the Nubian will sacrifice to propitiate the gods (or, as they put it, which one will plead the farm's case in "the kenbet of heaven"). The pig, the cow and the goat each contend that their life is the most valuable, boasting of their achievements in past seasons, the greatness they have brought to the fields and the charitable works they have done for lesser animals. Hours pass and none of them withdraw, at which point the Nubian suggests that the animals' council put the issue to a vote. The pig has the most supporters and, although the cow and goat warn that he is unclean, he is chosen as the sacrifice. The gods, offended by the sacrilegious offering, send a plague to ravage the farm.

I don't know enough about the role of cows and goats. I suspect that goats represent outer rural interests, cows represent inner (developed) rural interests, and the pigs represent urban interests. Obviously from this tale we know the status of the rural semi-nobility semi-priesthood in the revolutionary state—debating but not controlling. All animals, however, describe themselves in terms of works conducted for others, a great sign. "Uncleanness" is interesting here, it may mean that the urban trades are being viewed by the rural elite as ritualistically _and_ politically false. Urban trades are predisposed to the production of luxury goods. The question may be settled in terms of canalisation and the construction of large stamped earth walls—if the pigs succeed, perhaps they will become less unclean. I'd also suggest that there are ritualistic elements here regarding cleanliness that will become more important later, particularly if the reporting blends sacral animals with class religious identification. The plague is probably real—plagues being a regular occurrence even with sacred kings.

The third story sees the animals trying to rebuild from starvation and disease, and quarreling over who will perform the necessary tasks. The donkey, speaking in the animals' council, declares that he has had enough of carrying heavy loads from place to place; from now on, he will swim in the duck-pond and the ducks will fetch the stones to build a new boundary wall. The ducks go to the quarry and, of course, are unable to lift even the smallest stone. The donkey shouts at them to work together, and calls for the rabbits and fish to help them, but the stones cannot be moved. Ultimately, the donkey allows the load to be put on his back, saying "must I really show you fools how this is done?"

The donkey is rather obviously the urban unskilled and semi-skilled labourers—rural periodic labourers would probably be oxen. The priests (ducks, rabbits and fish) being sent to gulag is a wonderful image. In particular I like the use of hunting animals to represent the priests. The leisure, wealth and access to community wealth (right to a limited resource) tied up with hunting in settled bronze age communities is wonderful. This made my day.

Two fragmentary tales follow

The plough tale seems to be land distribution related, an attempt to enslave the rural workers—possibly merely sacral enslavement, it is the hitching of a plough, not a permanent yoke... the combat is mere propaganda.

I don't know enough about the Gods to read the Priest-hoods gods here, but this is wonderful stuff.

Sam R.

[Kaiphranos]

Shades of Animal Farm...

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by Kaiphranos

Shades of Animal Farm...

Or Tales of it!

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Kaiphranos

Shades of Animal Farm...

Originally Posted by Shevek23

Or Tales of it!

I'll admit to being amused by the idea of this timeline's Animal Farm being (a) ancient Egyptian, and (b) a screed in favor of totalitarian divine monarchy.

Originally Posted by Sam R.

I think the trench filling is propaganda rather than actuality, it is an allegorical structure which we shouldn't take as history. In particular the withering grain is clearly allegorical. Multiple projects, however, sounds actual.

Correct. The multipolar politics of a republic mean that there will be various infrastructure projects going on at the same time - which will mean, in turn, that the government can't make a total commitment to a single, monumental project (such as a pyramid). The irrigation canals are an allegory for the religious life of the community as embodied in the king, and the trench-filling followed by withered grain symbolizes the failure to build religious megastructures and its attendant sacrifice of the kingdom's chance at an afterlife.

Of course, the kings themselves, such as they were, didn't have the capacity to build many pyramids during the First Intermediate - only a couple that date to that time have been discovered - but the idea of the people having a religious life only through the throne did still exist, especially among reactionaries like the Nubian Tales' "author."

Originally Posted by Sam R.

I don't know enough about the role of cows and goats. I suspect that goats represent outer rural interests, cows represent inner (developed) rural interests, and the pigs represent urban interests. Obviously from this tale we know the status of the rural semi-nobility semi-priesthood in the revolutionary state—debating but not controlling. All animals, however, describe themselves in terms of works conducted for others, a great sign. "Uncleanness" is interesting here, it may mean that the urban trades are being viewed by the rural elite as ritualistically _and_ politically false. Urban trades are predisposed to the production of luxury goods. The question may be settled in terms of canalisation and the construction of large stamped earth walls—if the pigs succeed, perhaps they will become less unclean. I'd also suggest that there are ritualistic elements here regarding cleanliness that will become more important later, particularly if the reporting blends sacral animals with class religious identification. The plague is probably real—plagues being a regular occurrence even with sacred kings.

Now here's where I look embarrassed and pretend that I actually meant all that stuff. Your interpretation is bloody brilliant. My conception of the pig's uncleanness was literal - pigs were considered ritually unclean by the Egyptian upper classes, and only the poor would eat them - and I meant the elevation of the pig as an allegory for the non-elite classes' assumption of both political and ritual roles above their historic station. The goat and cow were more traditional, and ritually clean, symbols of wealth, and were meant essentially as upper-class foils for the pig; I didn't conceive them as allegories of any particular branch of the upper class. (Note, also, that Hapuseneb conceives of the goat and cow as lowering themselves by seeking to justify their status with works rather than simply asserting their supremacy.)

As to whether the urban craftsmen and merchants would be considered unclean, ancient Egypt didn't, as far as I know, have a concept similar to the Chinese mandarinate where trade and physical work were considered demeaning. On the other hand, some sectors of the Egyptian elite, including parts of the priesthood, might develop such notions in reaction to the rise of republicanism, which has its root in that very class and is seen as ritually offensive. You've given me a good deal to think about.

And yes, the plague is real.

Originally Posted by Sam R.

The donkey is rather obviously the urban unskilled and semi-skilled labourers—rural periodic labourers would probably be oxen. The priests (ducks, rabbits and fish) being sent to gulag is a wonderful image. In particular I like the use of hunting animals to represent the priests. The leisure, wealth and access to community wealth (right to a limited resource) tied up with hunting in settled bronze age communities is wonderful. This made my day.

I can be somewhat less embarrassed here; I did intend the donkey to represent the workers (and more generally the lowly) and the ducks, rabbits and fish to represent the nobility and priesthood. Hapuseneb's theme in this story was how republicanism leads the new class to insist on both taking unsuitable roles and assigning unsuitable roles to others. The fact that the "noble" animals are game animals, however - and that their use is, as such, a symbol of luxury - didn't occur to me. But again, your interpretation is bloody brilliant, and I'm going to adopt it.

("And that's the secret of literary success," I say pompously: "to write stories that can be understood on more levels than even the author intends.")

Originally Posted by Sam R.

The plough tale seems to be land distribution related, an attempt to enslave the rural workers—possibly merely sacral enslavement, it is the hitching of a plough, not a permanent yoke... the combat is mere propaganda.

The combat is, as stated above, propaganda: the victory of the king, and the concept of kingship, over the republic. It's the farmer - the leader/god figure - being hitched to the plow, though, so that story hints at sacral enslavement of the rulers by the new class.

[NikoZnate]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

In other words, as in most ancient cultures, there would be career priests on the one hand, and on the other hand, nobles who are priests in addition to all their other titles. And most of the high-ranking priests would probably belong to the latter group.

The priesthood will still have a major administrative role in this timeline, both because it will remain important to propitiate the gods and because the priests will have a great deal of knowledge and institutional memory. However, the upper priesthood may, in time, come to be drawn primarily from the craftsman and smallholder classes rather than from the traditional nobility - the regime will want to secure its influence over the religious establishment, and also to co-opt as many of the temple estates as possible.

Do you have any idea what would happen to the temple-estate administrators in a time of collapse - e.g., what would a priest of Amun do if communication with the cult center at Waset were cut off? Obviously, there's no problem for estates that are near the cult center, but would the far-flung ones essentially turn into family estates of whoever's in charge when the state comes crashing down, or would the cults try to maintain some kind of control across provincial borders? Maybe a combination of the two? I haven't been able to find any hard information on land ownership during the First Intermediate, so I'll probably have to make an educated guess - any ideas?

Well, the best OTL parallel would be the behaviour of the Cult of Amun during the Third Intermediate Period. My understanding of that situation is that the priesthood in Waset seized de facto (and in some cases ALSO de jure) authority and essentially ruled Upper Egypt as a theocracy. Meanwhile, Libyan dynasties were ruling out of Djanet (primarily) in the delta, and while the kings would occasionally pay lip service to the cult centre in Waset, they would simultaneously try to boost the prestige of Djanet in order to elevate that city to the top position in the Cult of Amun (largely by building/embellishing temples and awarding titles and estates to the local priests).

It's possible that in TTL something similar could happen. Local kings could nod ceremonially to the old cult centres while all the while attempting to undermine them. Local temples in seput outside the control of cult centres would likely act as autonomous entities in practice, while still pretending that the old centres still hold transcendent authority. In republican areas, however, it could go either way. The local temples might go the aforementioned route, or they might fall entirely in line with the local government and come to be ruled by a kenbet of priests promoting "religion for the public, by the public", or something of the sort.

Anyway, superb update, Jonathan. Hapuseneb may be a stuffy, old guard reactionary, but he certainly knows how to write an entertaining and nuanced allegory. The fact that Horus was the one coming down and smashing the Nubian and his invading animals raised my eyebrows when I first read it, and then you were kind enough to confirm my suspicions in the analysis

By the way, is the use of Arabic site names intentional for the sake of familiarity? The Egyptian name for Akhmim was actually Khent-Min, and likewise the ancient name of Edfu was actually Beh(e)det. It just seems odd to mix modern names in with the ancient Mennufer/Men-nefer, Waset, and Henen-nesut.