10 The reconstructed ‘White Chapel’ of Senwosret I from the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak, near Luxor. Limestone. 12th Dynasty.
Appreciating the fundamental relationship between art and offerings helps to explain the character of many, if not most, ancient Egyptian monuments and the artworks associated with them. To take an example from the long centuries between Narmer and Ramesses II, the beautiful ‘White Chapel’ was erected in the temple at Karnak for the ‘tail festival’ of Senwosret I (c. 1920–c. 1875 BC). Like Narmer’s palette, it was discovered by archaeologists after being broken up in ancient times to make way for new building. Accordingly, though its original location is not known, the reconstructed chapel is effectively the oldest part of the grand temple of Amun-Ra still standing [10].
10 The reconstructed ‘White Chapel’ of Senwosret I from the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak, near Luxor. Limestone. 12th Dynasty.
Despite its elegant proportions, the limestone chapel is a simple truncated cube, with a 6.5-metre (21 feet 3 inches) square base. Four rows of four rectangular pillars form the principal structure, and those round the outside are connected by a stone rail except where a pair of ramps forms the entrance and exit to the raised interior. In other words, there is a designated walkway straight through the middle of the chapel, though the whole building is carved with exquisite decoration. The fine decorative work is closely comparable to the best contemporary monuments elsewhere in Egypt, which no doubt confirms that the king had first call on the most skilled artists available. The scenes round the outside of the chapel have been worked in sunk relief, which ensures the cutting can be seen as internal shadows in the bright intensity of the Egyptian sunlight. By contrast, the interior decoration is worked in a high raised relief, which remains visible however the shadows edge across the interior surfaces throughout the course of the day.
Of course, ‘White Chapel’ is a modern tag: its ancient name was ‘Horus’ place of raising the crown’, which not only associates the king with Horus once more but also identifies the chapel principally with the king, rather than Amun-Ra, the god of the temple. Perhaps Senwosret I sat on his throne here during the ‘tail festival’, waiting for a procession of Amun-Ra to leave the main temple. Perhaps he was first crowned here, who knows? However, a granite altar was added to the centre by a later king in Senwosret’s dynasty, so the chapel undoubtedly remained in use beyond its first festival. Which raises the question, what was it used for?
11 Detail of a doorway of the ‘White Chapel’ [10] showing the king, together with a personification or statue of his spirit (identified by his Horus name), entering the presence of the cult statue of Amun-Ra.
In profile, the White Chapel is reminiscent of the gods’ kiosk shown in Sety I’s wall relief at Abydos (p. 17), and the images on the pillars present the chapel as the same kind of meeting place. As though we are being allowed a glimpse of what went on here, Senwosret I is led by different gods into the presence of Amun-Ra, who is shown at the top of one ramp waiting to greet the king [11]. The king makes the expected offerings to various gods, and receives life and authority in exchange. Occasionally even connected episodes of activity are implied in the art while moving from one pillar to the next, as when the king is ‘offering the cake’ in one scene and nearby is ‘crumbling the cake’.
In what sense is this a meeting place? First, the tell-tale ramps are indicative of a procession, and one doorway even illustrates a statue of the king on a sledge in procession. The structure of the chapel allows us to appreciate how statues on sledges or other vehicles (typically, in fact, boats slung on carrying poles) were dragged or carried up the central ramp by priests using the flanking steps. Eventually they would exit by the far ramp without needing to turn round or negotiate corners. The later granite altar is marked for the holiest statue of Amun-Ra, brought out of the main temple during the king’s ‘tail festival’ and other processions. As the stand’s size indicates, such statues were not massive but small wooden carvings, kept inside a gilded wooden box. Presumably the holiest statue of Amun-Ra at Karnak took the arresting form illustrated on the pillars, that of a man holding his erect penis. Although most of the decoration shows Amun-Ra, with his high twin plumes, in standard ‘human’ form greeting the king and speaking, occasionally he too is illustrated as a statue in the control of priests. In other words, the encounter between the king and Amun-Ra, as human onlookers might have seen it with their eyes, involved a wooden statue and the king – or even two statues. Nonetheless, the artist has illustrated not the sight but the meaning of the encounter, which is the loving welcome of a divine father for his royal son.
Today the area around the central shrine at Karnak is essentially decorated with scenes and monuments from the reign of Thutmose III (c. 1479–c. 1425 BC), erected as part of the building work during which the White Chapel was pulled down in the first place. However, several of Thutmose’s monuments exemplify the same encounter between king and god by quoting the very words of Amun-Ra to the pharaoh:
Welcome to me, and rejoice to see my perfection, my son and my protector, Menkheperra [= Thutmose III], living for all time. I light up for love of you, and my wish is fulfilled in your perfect visits to my estate. My arms enfold your body with protection and life. How nice is your amulet against my breast, when I hold you in my sanctuary.
Modern minds are bound to be sceptical of such matters, but in this ancient account the divine father hugs his royal son so tightly the king’s pectoral amulet presses into him.
The palaces of kings
At Karnak, Amun-Ra welcomes his royal son to what is a god’s house. We might suppose that the pharaohs too lived, as well as conducted their ceremonies, among such grandiose settings. However, as we know, stone monuments are their offerings to the gods. In fact, surprisingly little in the way of statues or monumental art originated in the living spaces or working areas associated with kings of Egypt, still less (if any) in the public spaces of towns and villages. Most of what we know about their palaces is a matter of texts and ‘dirt’ archaeology rather than art history, and even the rare glimpses we do get in pictures emphasize a functional, working environment. In fact, the king of Egypt must have spent much of his time travelling from temple to temple, celebrating festival after festival, away from whichever grand residences he might have had. Akhenaten (c. 1353–c. 1336 BC), son and successor of Amenhotep III, recorded at Akhetaten a visit to a new city where he stayed ‘in the matting tent made for his person’. (‘His person’ is the traditional euphemism for the physical presence of the pharaoh.) A walled encampment built for his father outside Thebes was obviously a substantial settlement but also relied on tented accommodation for some of the king’s followers at least. Presumably, the king often made do with sleeping near the moorings or even on board the royal ‘falcon boat’, in which he was seen to travel like the falcon-god Horus (see [57]).
Nonetheless, archaeologists have excavated a handful of settlements directly associated with the accommodation of the royal family and the king’s palace officials, though they are mostly from the New Kingdom and mostly at Thebes. Such ‘palaces’ were built principally using mud brick, timber and other organic materials, rather than stone. In addition, they were generally too small to accommodate a large community for long periods, so must have been used for limited times and particular purposes. Some would have been occupied only during certain festivals, including those known to have been built specifically for a given king’s ‘tail festival’, while others were occupied by specific groups, such as the principal queen and her followers. Of course, still others must have been occupied at times for the purposes of government, whether the king were present or not. More to the point, most (perhaps all?) of the known palaces were initially developed as an element within a temple complex, or else added to an older temple site. One such was Giza, where several palaces grew up during the 18th Dynasty, more than 1,000 years after the Great Pyramid and Great Sphinx were first erected there during the 4th Dynasty. Likewise, such evidence as has survived from the Old Kingdom, including the extensive settlement at the Heit el-Ghurob (Wall of the Crow) in Giza, indicates that already back then the palace community moved through various residences, with different buildings of different layouts and sizes dotted in and around the royal temple complexes (see pp. 70–73). Like the White Chapel, but on a larger scale, palaces provided first and foremost for the king’s attendance at the gods’ festivals, and let him both see and be seen during ceremonies.
12 Scene from a decorated floor in the palace at Malqata, showing water fowl in the marshes (see [78]). Painted plaster. 0.52 m (20½ in.) high. 18th Dynasty.
13 Scene from a decorated bench in the palace at Malqata, showing a bull leaping in the marshes (see [77]). Painted plaster. 0.50 m (20 in.) high. 18th Dynasty.
Where fragments of palace decoration have survived, they share common themes with the decoration of temples. ‘Smiting scenes’, like the one on Narmer’s palette, were painted on pillars at Memphis in the palace of Merenptah (c. 1213–c. 1203 BC), son and successor of Ramesses II. More generally we find familiar scenes of the king in the company of gods, while bound foreigners on brightly glazed floor-tiles [14] are obviously counterparts to the enemies inscribed beneath the feet of the enthroned Ramesses II (see p. 19). The tiles were laid to form specific walkways through the palace chambers so the king would tread on enemies as he went, adhering to the ancient template of kingship and art established by Narmer. Elsewhere, as in a palace of Amenhotep III at Malqata near Thebes, we glimpse delicate fragments of plaster brightly painted with water-fowl or calves at large in the marshes, which may seem suitably bucolic for a relaxed domestic setting [12, 13]. No doubt they were intended to create an attractive, restful environment and they are certainly colourful, but they are also themes otherwise common in funerary art and temple decoration, and serve to connect the remaining traces of palace decoration with the world of art we see in temples and tombs (see pp. 124–27). Consequently, the king is not only a central subject in the art of ancient Egypt – because he was central to the practice of offering to the gods – but he also lived and conducted his daily business in buildings adorned with the same images, and presumably the same ideas. To put this another way, perhaps we should recognize that the pharaoh built for the gods a monumental stone interpretation, or counterpart, of the perishable, organic art and architecture he occupied in life.
14 Floor-tiles from the palace of Ramesses III at Tell el-Yahudiya, with stereotyped representations of the traditional enemies of the pharaoh. Glazed composition. 19th Dynasty.
The tombs of kings
There is a final point to make regarding the relationship between the monuments of gods and the earthly residences of kings. From the beginning of history there was a place where the king too was accommodated in a stone-built monument. This was his tomb. At the king’s tomb we find the crux of his relationship with the land of Egypt as much as with the gods, and also, throughout the pharaonic era, another prolific context for art. In life, the upkeep of the palace – the king, his family and officials – fell on the local districts of Egypt as a sort of common national activity. Another common activity came in the form of offerings for the festivals of the gods. For example, the exterior decoration of the White Chapel on two sides is actually a written inventory of the agricultural potential of each of the districts of Egypt, while the other two sides have corresponding pictures of the fertility of Egyptian agricultural land. In other words, offerings made by the king at the White Chapel represented the common wealth of the nation. The same common purpose is evident in the tombs of even the earliest kings, which were filled with huge quantities of offerings of many kinds – furniture, clothing, foods, wines and beers, oils and ointments – often labelled as contributions from named officials or estates around the country, thereby revealing the great congregation of production as well as labour involved in the interment of a king.
The cemetery of the earliest kings takes us back to Abydos but out in the desert, away from the main temple of Osiris, towards a far valley where the Sun sets in a natural gash through the western cliffs. The tombs here were built, using mud brick, imported timber and monumental stone, round a vast chamber (or multiple chambers) excavated from the rock floor [15]. Here the actual interment and offerings would be deposited, before being covered, probably with a solid, rectangular tumulus with an elaborate internal structure but no chambers as such. Such solid tumuli with a rectangular plan are usually referred to as mastabas, from an Arabic word for a plain bench. The whole site of the tomb was enclosed by a wall.
The best-preserved examples indicate that the royal tombs at Abydos had the same general form as the early temple of Horus at Hieraconpolis where the Narmer palette was discovered. Although the original form of the temple has been much obscured by later development, its distinctive features were a rectangular wall enclosing a massive, mud-brick-lined mound, on top of which the early shrines developed. As we have seen, to be king in ancient Egypt was a sacred office insofar as a king exercised ‘all authority’ given to him by the gods, which he reciprocated by making offerings and building monuments as well as by governance. Hence he was the sole source of earthly authority at the heart of a regime encompassing the entire land and all its temples. The authority of other priests and officials was delegated from this spiritual centre, and they were empowered by enacting the king’s will. Consequently, the graves of many of these priests and officials also surround the king’s person in death, in what will be another template for future behaviour (see Chapter 9). The fifth king, Den, had about 136 such graves in the immediate vicinity of his tomb, while the third king, Djer, had more than 300 burials round him.
In the courtyard of the king’s tomb, in front of the tumulus, a pair of free-standing stone markers, or stelae, simply stated his name [16]. These are among the earliest examples of the formal name identifying the king with Horus, as though each mortal king were a new incarnation of Horus, and the ‘Horus-name’ would now be used by every pharaoh, virtually without exception, across more than 3,000 years. Typically the name is written within a graphic enclosure called, in Ancient Egyptian, the serekh, perhaps meaning ‘he who is made known’. The serekh is a representation of the palace as well as the temple of Horus, and on top perches the oversized falcon, watching for even the tiniest disturbance in a field of wheat, which would be his signal to strike and kill. In Ancient Egyptian the name Horus means ‘the one above’, a name consistent both with the highest authority in the land and also the coruscating, soaring falcon. According to the serekh the king is a heavenly presence within the earthly palace – the magnificent predator, by turns serene and vicious. Such is the oldest statement of the king of Egypt – a monumental palace marked for the divine falcon in death, surrounded by the offerings of his land, and the graves of his priests and officials.
15 Partially reconstructed burial chamber in the tomb of Den, cut 6 m (19 ft 8 in.) into the desert and exposed by the total loss of the covering tumulus [see also 23]. The floor was originally paved with red and black granite. Umm el-Qaab, west of Abydos. 15 × 9 m (49 ft 2½ in. × 29 ft 6 in.). 1st Dynasty.
16 Inscription at the top of a stela showing the king’s Horus name written within the serekh, surmounted by the god Horus. One of a pair from the tomb of king Djet, west of Abydos. Limestone relief. 0.65 m (2 ft 1½ in.) wide. 1st Dynasty.
Still, there is more, because the royal tombs did not stand alone at Abydos. Opposite the entrance to the main temple of Osiris, at sites much more convenient to visit than the remote royal tombs, are their monumental counterparts [17]. Not much of these ‘other’ buildings has survived apart from their once massive mud-brick enclosure walls, which have the distinctive niched appearance characteristic of both palace walls and the serekh of the royal Horus-names [18]. However, the best-preserved example, built at the end of the 2nd Dynasty for Khasekhemwy, has a once-impressive gate-complex leading into a grand courtyard, where the pitiful remains of what was once another tumulus stand at the north end. In other words, Khasekhemwy’s temple has the same general form as the temple of Horus and, therefore, as the royal tombs. Analogy with later practice suggests that these counterpart buildings are mortuary temples, that is, temples intended for ongoing – probably daily – offerings for the spirit of each dead king.
Just outside the wall on the east side of Khasekhemwy’s temple, at least fourteen full-size boats had been buried in a row in brick-lined pits [19]. In a sense, boats epitomize the peripatetic nature of the king’s earthly office, and conversely the unity of the kingdom brought together by the king’s travelling. Moreover, because the River Nile was the pre-eminent Egyptian highway, most journeys, literal or metaphorical, were evoked in art as boat journeys, so in a funerary context boats may symbolize both the king’s leadership through life and the journey everyone must take to follow him into the next life. Be that as it may, in artistic terms boats certainly evoke the festivals of gods and one specific image well known from later days: the image of the Sun forever sailing the heavens in the cycle of day and night, life and death, beginning and end (see Chapter 11).
17 Mud-brick enclosure wall and outer perimeter wall of the mortuary temple of king Khasekhemwy, beside the main temple of Osiris at Abydos. 137 × 77 m (450 × 253 ft). 2nd Dynasty.
18 Detail of the northeast of the enclosure wall in [17] showing niched panelling consistent with the serekh in [16].
Osiris, Isis and Horus
The relevance of the Sun-god’s endless sailing is inextricable from Abydos as the location of the royal tombs because both lead us to the well-known myth of Osiris. Every ancient Egyptian account of the origin of the world begins from the belief that there is a Creator, who brought the world into being intentionally. The Creator himself is given countless names across the numerous shrines and temples of the land, and in art the intense Egyptian Sun (or Ra) is frequently used as a symbol of his overwhelming presence within the created world. Equally, however, he may simply be named Atum, literally ‘he who is not’ – that is, the one who is present without ‘being’ because the very possibility of anything ‘being’ depends upon him and begins with him. According to an account of Creation ascribed to the Old Kingdom and consistent with the oldest religious texts from Egypt – though sadly none has survived from as early as the 1st or 2nd Dynasty – Atum’s original act of Creation was to speak the names Shu (‘light’ or ‘energy’) and Tefnet (‘matter’). Hence the world comes about through the physical interaction of Shu and Tefnet, first of all taking the form of the sky arching over the earth to create the arena for our lives [20]. Meanwhile, the Creator sails in the firmament of ‘Potential’ (in Ancient Egyptian, nun), defining the form and the limit of the world. Everything we know and experience emerges from Potential in accordance with forms and principles intended by the Creator, so ‘what comes from the heart takes the shape of Atum, and what comes from the tongue takes the shape of Atum’. To put this another way, our own intentions flourish or fail to the extent to which they conform to reality as it is intended, not as we prefer it to be (see p. 277).
19 View of the excavations that revealed fourteen burials of boats, each 18–21 m (59–69 ft) long, on the eastern side of the mortuary temple of king Khasekhemwy. 2nd Dynasty or earlier.
Now, the very first child of the earth (Geb) and the sky (Nut), hence the first creature of our world, was Osiris himself, who had two defining characteristics: first, he was a king, and second, he was mortal. The presence of a king before there was anyone to rule emphasizes that the world is governed by elemental principles, which precede humanity and include authority and morality as surely as they include space, time and gravity. Nonetheless, Osiris was murdered and dismembered by a second child, his unruly and ambitious brother, Seth. Their sister, Isis, bound Osiris’ fractured body with linen, buried him at Abydos as a king, and breathed new life into him. Thus the first mortal to die became the first to be born into the next life, which is termed ‘Adoration’ (duat) – the same condition in which the gods of the temples necessarily exist when we bring them offerings.
Death was doubly defeated in this mythological account when the faithful Isis was able to conceive Osiris’ son, Horus. As such, the template for the legitimate transfer of royal authority was set at the beginning of the world, when, according to the same account of Creation, ‘Osiris became as the earth in a palace’ and ‘his son, Horus, appeared as king’. In mythological terms, Horus grew up to vanquish Seth and reconcile whichever violence or rebellion may seek to transgress the elemental principles of the world (see p. 285); then ‘a reed and a papyrus-flower were placed on the double doors of the temple of Ptah, which mean Horus and Seth pacified and united’. In historical terms, every pharaoh stood in this line of succession, and his authority was spiritual and universal rather than the temporal authority of a political leader (in modern terms, the pharaoh was more akin to Pope than President). Mythologically, Horus of Hieraconpolis was son and successor of Osiris of Abydos; historically, the new king buried his predecessor in a tomb, which was a monumental interpretation of his palace, and provided offerings for the late king as he would for a god. This too became one more template for pharaonic conduct until the throne of Egypt was handed to the Roman emperors some 3,000 years later.
20 Illustration from a Book of the Dead showing the god Shu, with upraised arms, forming the vault of the sky over the earth. The formless space beyond is populated with the souls or ‘forces’ of the gods and the dead. 47 cm (1 ft 6½ in.) high. 21st Dynasty.
Masterpiece
Label from the tomb of Den, the fourth king of Egypt
This slice of ebony, just 5.5 centimetres (2 inches) high, once labelled a jar of oil deposited in the tomb of Den, so the hole at top right is for a linen tie. Den was only the fourth king of Egypt after Narmer, but the scale of his burial at Abydos and the wealth of offerings there and in the tombs of his officials are duly impressive. Meanwhile the composition on this label offers a miniature encapsulation of pharaonic rule, along with another early example of artistic themes and techniques that will go on to be used repeatedly throughout the pharaonic era.
Chief among those techniques is laying out the whole composition plainly, dividing the pictorial information into separate sections, if need be, so that nothing is obscured from plain sight across the two-dimensional surface. The curved device at the right edge of the composition 
(but reversed because we are reading from right to left) is a hieroglyph marking one year in a reign. Accordingly each scene on the label may be a statement of a different event in a single year, which together may stand as historical illustrations of the king’s authority – as well as perhaps recording the vintage of the jar’s contents. The whole is divided into two main areas by a vertical line down the centre, though this division is obscured at the top of the composition, where a depiction of the king on his throne sitting prominently alongside his Horus-name, written in the usual serekh enclosure, immediately identifies the subject.
The area to the right of the central line has been divided into three horizontal registers, mostly occupied with scenes known from many later examples. In the top register, the pharaoh sits in a kiosk with a stepped entrance, like that of the White Chapel. He has both the crowns worn by Narmer, but here they are shown together as a ‘double-crown’. Another typical technique of the artist is repeating the subject in the same scene. Hence, in front of the kiosk the king is running round two groups of three stelae or markers, which symbolize the boundaries of his domain. At first glance we may doubt that the king could be watching and running as well, but the ‘runner’ is still holding the flail and still wearing the double-crown. While running he is (appropriately) stripped down to a kilt, whereas he seems to be wrapped in a full-length cloak on the throne (see p. 130). This scene is an illustration of the king during the actual ‘tail festival’, and the narrative juxtaposition of episodes speaks to the meaning of this crucial event.
In the central register, the king stands slightly left of centre wearing a crown and holding his crook and flail in one hand, but also manipulating a digging implement in the other to perform an agricultural ceremony beside the dykes of a named settlement. The inscription says he is dredging irrigation canals to promote the crops. Behind him is the title of the god of a local temple, which may well be the king’s own mortuary temple at Abydos. The broken bottom register (or possibly two registers) seems to be an inventory of some kind, perhaps lists of produce or of victories, both subjects known in these very early royal artworks.
22 View across the tomb of king Den showing the outlines of some of the 136 surrounding tombs. West of Abydos. The entire complex measures about 53 × 40 m (173 ft 10½ in. × 131 ft 3 in.). 1st Dynasty.
To the left of the central line is a statement of the jar’s original contents, namely finest quality ‘Libyan oil’ made from the newest growth on a named estate in the royal domain. Such oil was used in purification ceremonies, so had a funerary significance as well as being part of an elegant toilet routine. The donor is named as the ‘king’s seal-bearer’, Hmaka. While it may be unexpected to see a king performing agricultural ceremonies, here Hmaka is also given the title ‘canal-cutter’, which is well known among other early officials of Egypt. The royal officials formed such a small community that one of only a handful of grand tombs of this early date to have survived elsewhere at Abydos is the very tomb of this Hmaka himself (see pp. 146–47).
