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aboutanancientenquiry · 3 years ago

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The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt (IV)

Roberto B. Gozzoli The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt during the First Millennium BC (ca. 1070-180 BC). Trends and Perspectives, Golden House Publications, 2006, GHP Egyptology 5 (excerpts from the Introduction)

“Owning some ideas to Assmann’s studies, my research focused on the first millennium BC historical sources, an interest that dates back to the times of my BA and MPhil dissertations.57 Despite new publications of some texts have appeared in the last twenty years, complemented by literary, philological or grammatical studies, any historiographic approach to them is yet missing.58 Moreover, I felt that a comprehensive study of historical writing in Egypt during the first millennium BC was lacking. Chronologically, my upper limit of the material studied is set up at the fall of the New Kingdom; while the lower limit reaches the reign of Ptolemy V. The upper date is a sort of a natural delimiter in Egyptology. The lower one instead should be considered with more flexibility. While trends in early Ptolemaic royal texts were a target for the research, the analysis of how the past is dealt in the apocalyptic literature and in the stories, which follow earlier traditions but are known from later manuscripts made me trespass that border, in order to give a comprehensive view of the entire genre.

The material here studied is essentially divided in two parts, one called royal inscriptions and the other (Hi)stories. The royal inscriptions include almost any text of the period from the Libyan Period till the first two centuries of Ptolemaic domination. Some exclusion has been done, but is generally confined to very fragmentary texts. Within the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic Period, priestly decrees are also included. Such addition is entirely due to the fact that those decrees continue themes that are already part of the royal inscriptions. From a methodological point of view, starting from the study of the royal military texts as done by Spalinger, I tried to divide the structure of the text as belonging to a codified genre from the historical contents present in them.59

In some cases, the presence of parallels for a text is eased by its belonging to a specific group of inscriptions, triumphal texts, iw.tw reports, inundation inscriptions and so forth. The concordance of parallels and textual classes demonstrates the existence of what I call an internal intertextuality, nothing particularly surprising for texts that show high degrees of codification. For my point of view, however, the presence of an external intertextuality is more significant, as it demonstrates the conscious usage of similar phrases and concept in texts of different genre.60 Discovering models and intertextuality also favoured the interpretative process,why a text assumed a certain code, and the eventual ideology behind it.61

While the royal inscriptions are a class by their own, the second part, (Hi)stories, is devoted to Herodotus (chapter 5), Manetho (chapter 6), stories (chapter 7) and apocalyptic literature (chapter 8). The topics are certainly more variegated than the first part, but the main of aim of research is substantially the same for the four chapters. In this case, it focuses on the importance of the past in Egypt, how ancient Egyptians dealt with and exploited it during the first millennium. Assmann aimed to find the traces of earlier events in later Egyptian history. Like him, my intention is of identifying those traces during the first millennium BC.

At the same time, I wanted to go a step further: as historical information “in Greek style” did not exist in Egypt, such (hi)stories are an important part of any narrative relative to historical or pseudo-historical characters. While the ways those tales are preserved is not part of my research, it is the process of selecting the events narrated for those characters which particularly attracts me, as it implies the existence of an “agenda”. Such agenda elaborates historical or pseudo historical information for specific intentions. As most of the information is essentially pseudo-historical, the label originates from this notion. As it will be seen in the due course, this process exploits famous names of “historical” pharaohs, Sesostris,Thutmose III and Ramesses II. Those pharaohs are inserted in narratives completely unrelated to the periods they lived, but explainable for the first millennium BC situation, when the relative stories were invented.

In the specificity of each chapter, for Herodotus, attention has been devoted on what his Egyptian sources wanted to highlight of Egyptian history, and where his king list was derived from. In this case, the work by Lloyd has been considered as the fundamental reference for the analysis.62 As it will be seen, the information relative to Egyptian history of the proper historical chapters in Herodotus (II, 99-182) diverges in quality. Herodotus partially transforms the information his Egyptian sources had given to him, therefore the view of how Egyptian used their past is partially blurred. However, as the historian from Halicarnassus is obliged to follow what his informers say –a statement that will be proved in the due course- almost any historical material which he presents can be used in order to reconstruct the objective of such a narrative from an ancient Egyptian point of view.

The process used for Herodotus has been in large part similar for Manetho: my interest was centred where his historical work originated from, whether or not there were Egyptian and/or foreign earlier models and what sort of historicalinformation was available to him at the time of writing. Thus, what earlier historians, Herodotus and others from the earlier Hellenistic Period (Hecataeus of Abdera for Egypt and Berossus for Mesopotamia) had said, and whether influences are present in Manetho’s historical work. Moreover, Manetho’s history did not reach the modern reader in its complete form, but only as transmitted by later authors. This requires filtering the historical information in order to discern what Manetho might have said from what may be later additions. Out of scholarly honesty and anticipating some of my interpretations about his Aegyptiaca, I believe that most of the survived text comes from Manetho’s original, with some later interpolations and embellishments here and there.

Delving into scholarly literature, I discovered that the importance of the cultural background in Manetho’s history was already considered by Struve, in a neglected study published in Russian.63 In my research, dates and royal names are fundamental in order to use as proof of the accuracy of Manetho’s sources for his history. Therefore, an appropriate appendix has been given at the end of this book. But I have to refer to Helck, Redford, Krauss and von Beckerath for anyone really interested about the intricacies of Egyptian chronology and identification of royal names.64

The seventh chapter is an assortment of stories, pseudo-epigraphs such as the Bakhtan and Famine stelae, also including the Shabaqo Stone and demotic stories (Drunken Amasis, Setne I and II, Pedubastis cycle). For the scope of my research, two different paths are followed. Placing the story in its historical context is the first objective. My preposition however was of sorting out from the story itself what the scribe aimed from writing a certain document mentioning specific historical characters. Introducing some of the contents present in this book, in the story of Neferkare and Sasenet for example, I considered important to understand whether there was a particular reason to have the New Kingdom text copied again during a later (Nubian) period.65

The use and peruse of history is also the target of the last chapter. The Demotic Chronicle exploits the past in order to explain the present conditions. Moreover, the Apocalyptic Literature and its end of the world hopes to resurrect the old good –and gone – values has led me to inquire who was the original king expected to come and save his people.

At this point, some of the readers can note that private biographies are not part of this work, in spite of the fact they are mentioned at the beginnings of this introduction as historical sources. Reasons of space have prevented me to include them here; a detailed work about biographies during the first millennium BC will have occupied an entire monograph just by its own.66 Asking for leniency, as very small excuse I can say that the private biographies of any period as historical sources will be part of a future work. Another point is certainly that as the original quest was about how much the historical texts are “historical”, it was not my intention to build a social history. How various classes related each other sometime appear here and there, but there are inserted in a broader historical discourse. Finally, the problem of who is the audience of the royal texts, an aspect deeply linked to the concept of “propaganda” itself, is completely disregarded. Yet as partial justification, a research relative to the concept of hierarchy of and access to the knowledge is one of the future projects.”

On line source with the entirety of the thesis https://href.li/?https://www.academia.edu/359798/The_Writing_of_History_in_Ancient_Egypt_during_the_First_Millennium_BC_ca_1070_180_BC_Trends_and_Perspectives

I think that Herodotus has the merit that he was the first person to write a comprehensive account of the ancient Egyptian civilization and more particularly a continuous history of Egypt, as part of his history of the rise of the Persian Empire and of the Greco-Persian wars. Moreover, I think that it is now generally accepted that he did a real investigation in Egypt and he used Egyptian priests as sources, as the excerpts of the thesis of Roberto Gozzoli that I have reproduced show. Of course, as Pr. Gozzoli says, the historical part of Herodotus’ Book II (on Egypt) is of unequal value. On the one hand, despite some flaws from a modern point of view, his account of the Saite period is reliable and remains a main source for this period of the Egyptian history. On the other hand, his account of the pre-Saite period is schematic and interwoven with tales, the persons of the rulers presented in it are often confused, and it contains some important factual errors and omissions, although it is not totally devoid of value (the first pharaoh -Min- is identified correctly, all periods of the Egyptian history are represented, except the Hyksos, what the pharohs do according to it correspond to the traditional functions of the Egyptian kingship, the memory of a female ruler and of a period in which the temples had been closed is preserved, the description of the building of the pyramids is rational and preserves the memory of the role of the use of forced labor and of oppressive policies in it). But Herodotus expresses himself his scepticism about what his Egyptian sources had told him about the pre-Saite period, although of course he did not have the time and the means to check the narrative of the Egyptian priests. Perhaps more importantly, as R. Gozzoli’s text shows, although of course the Egyptian material is partially transformed in the transition from the Egyptian sources to Herodotus, the testimony of the latter is very important for the reconstruction of the historical consciousness of the Egyptians of the Late Period.

#ancient egypt #egyptology #history #herodotus #roberto b. gozzoli

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