Tag: Egyptians

Insatiable in their lust for knowledge, the practitioners of magic yearned to see beyond the tangible world, to learn the secret laws that governed the fates of souls and nations. In every age, scholars sought to piece together fragments of these hidden truths, and to grant themselves a kind of immortality by preserving their hard-won discoveries for adepts as yet unborn.

Their messages took different forms. Fragile baked-clay tablets bore cuneiform impressions made with reed pens when the clay was new and soft. Carved hieroglyphic charms were sealed in the changeless air of Pharaohs’ underground tombs. Shreds of papyrus lay deep under hot sands that over the centuries crept whispering away, revealing the scrolls finally to the eyes of mystified herdsmen. Tall sentinel stones inscribed with spidery runes wept with the gentle rain that soaked the hillsides where they stood. Heavy volumes with black-lettered pages were chained out of sight in monastic libraries. Encapsulated in silent characters, the words waited, charged with arcane powers.

To those adventurers who would crack their codes, the chroniclers passed on a caveat: The secrets of the universe were not lightly disclosed, any unworthy soul who probed too deep risked an unspeakable fate. Yet the lure of knowledge often overcame the dictates of caution.

— The Secret Arts, Chapter 1

The [ancient Egyptian] kings had to take their army out every year to punish those who had rebelled and to intimidate those who had not. They trained their heirs to shoot the bow and work the chariot, to become the foremost warrior of Egypt, to command the army, and the professional officer corps. During campaigning season the kings were absent from Egypt and they depended upon their queens (who had the authority to rule but who could not supplant the king) to supervise the vizier and break him if he appeared to be a threat to the king. This system worked as long as the king was strong enough to check the power of vizier, queen, and priest.

— With Arrow, Sword, and Spear, p. 23

It is true that in the private sphere many Egyptian magical practices were associated with standard life-crises, such as the dangers of childbirth, or with sudden disasters, such as an accident or an infectious disease. Magic may be a form of “crisis management”, but it was not only resorted to when a crisis had already happened. A high proportion of Egyptian magic was prophylactic. It aimed to prevent trouble by setting up a magical defence system for an individual, a group or a place.

— Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, p. 14

The appeal of magic was twofold: it identified the cause of your troubles and it promised hope in even the most desperate situation. Magic was described by Malinowski as ritualized optimism. In the sense that it satisfied the participants, Egyptian magic worked. Protective magic presumably gave people the comfort of believing that they had taken all possible precautions. This may have made tragedies such as the death of a child a little easier to bear.

— Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, p. 16

In myth, the gods are more vulnerable. They are subject to passions and emotions, they quarrel, fight, and even die. This vulnerability was largely taboo in Egyptian art. The power of words and images was greatly increased when they were carved in stone to last for eternity. A terrible event, such as the murder of the good god Osiris, was too dangerous to show. Portraying even a temporary triumph for the forces of evil or chaos might empower them to act in the world.

— Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, p. 18

Alchemy is very old. Ancient Egyptian texts talk of techniques of distillation and metallurgy as mystical processes. Greek myths such as the quest for the Golden Fleece can be seen to have an alchemical layer of meaning, and Fludd, Boehme and others have interpreted Genesis in the same alchemical terms.

A quick survey of alchemical texts ancient and modern shows that alchemy, like the [Kabbalah], is a very broad church. If there is one great mysterious ‘Work’, it is approached via a remarkable variety of codes and symbols. In some cases the Work involves Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, in others roses, stars, the philosopher’s stone, salamanders, toads, crows, nets, the marriage bed, and astrological symbols such as the fish and the lion.

There are obvious geographical variations. Chinese alchemy seems less about the quest for gold and more about a quest for the elixir of life, for longevity, even immortality. Alchemy also seems to change through the ages. In the third century [C.E.] the alchemist [Zosimos] wrote that ‘the symbol of the chymic art—gold—comes forth from creation for those who rescue and purify the divine soul chained in the elements’. In early Arab texts the Work involves manipulations of these same Four Elements, but in European alchemy, rooted in the Middle Ages and flowering in the seventeenth century [C.E.], a mysterious fifth element, the Quintessence, comes to the fore.

If we begin to look for unifying principles, we can see immediately that there are prescribed lengths of time or numbers of repetitions for the various operations, the distilling, the applying of gentle heat and so on.

There are obvious parallels, then, with meditative practice and this suggests immediately that these alchemical terms may be descriptions of subjective states of consciousness rather than the sort of chemical operations that might be performed in a laboratory.

— The Secret History of the World, pp. 338-40

In [ancient] Egypt, magic and religion enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Rituals which would count as magic under [Sir James] Frazer‘s definition, were more commonly performed by priests than by any other group…. Magicians are often said to be distinguishable from priests because they have clients instead of a congregation, and because they are not expected to exercise any moral authority. However, this description would also cover most ancient Egyptian priests, who were paid specialists in ritual rather than moral teachers. The theory that magic is always unorthodox and subversive, part of a religious and political counterculture, does not seem to apply in Egypt where ritual magic was practised on behalf of the state for at least three thousand years.

— Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, p. 12

Ancient peoples were deeply religious. In the Bronze Age, for example, Hittite and Egyptian accounts regularly give the gods a role in military campaigns. No Hittite scribe would think of recording a victory without thanking the gods for having marched in front of the army and thereby having granted the king success. No ambassador would swear to abide by a treaty unless an assembly of the various gods had witnessed it. In his poem about the battle of Qadesh (1274 [B.C.E.]), Pharaoh Rameses II declares that the god Amun spoke to him and sent him forward.

Even in the rationalistic heyday of classical Greece—and later—gods and heroes were commonly seen in the heat of battle. Sometimes their mere presence provided encouragement to the soldiers. At other times, divinities gave specific military advice. And sometimes they even fought! At the decisive battles of Marathon (490 [B.C.E.]), Salamis (480 [B.C.E.]), Aegospotami (405 [B.C.E.]), and Leuctra (371 [B.C.E.]), for example, contemporaries thought the gods and heroes took part.

— Barry Strauss, The Trojan War, pp. 74-75

Whether or not warfare was essential to the rise of the state, the rise of the state certainly marked a decisive break in the history of warfare—the most important turning point until the gunpowder revolution in early modern Europe, which brought with it a still more potent form of political and military centralization. The cultural balance of power, in which most human societies had been trapped for thousands of years, was replaced by the political balance of power, which has endured to the present day. The cultural trap had loopholes: People could escape from it by “forgetting” about their grievances when “remembering” them would have been inconvenient, by ritualization, by arbitrating their disputes, by moving away. But there was no escape from the political trap, except in circumstances of unusual geographical isolation like those of Old Kingdom Egypt. The political type of warfare, heretofore an occasional and not particularly successful experiment in human history, now broke free of all constraints. War ceased to be an ancient ritual of earth and became a struggle for power and wealth between ruling groups claiming descent from the gods. They began the progressive elimination of primitive societies and primitive ways of war, a process that today is practically completed.

The sheer scale and pervasiveness of warfare in early states justifies these conclusions about its central importance. All early states had standing armies, all were expansionist, and all engaged in chronic interstate warfare that resulted in fewer and fewer states. In Egypt, with its extremely circumscribed geography, the process resulted almost at once in the unification of the Nile Valley under a single ruler, whose theocratic functions thereafter overshadowed his military functions. In Iraq, much less circumscribed and divided among many powerful city-states, the process of unification took longer and was never permanently successful, and the militaristic character of the state became much more pronounced. Not until the twenty-fourth century [B.C.E.] did Sargon of Akkad unite all the cities of the plain into the first hegemonic empire.

— Doyne Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare, pp. 37-38

Emphasis mine.

For centuries in Egypt there had been no true currency with which to buy and sell goods. Most markets operated on a barter-and-exchange system. For very large-scale transactions it was possible to pay in gold or other precious metals, but the idea of coinage was still relatively new. True monetary economies had emerged in the city-states of the Mediterranean beginning around 650 [B.C.E.], probably first in Lydia, whose later King Croesus had made himself a byword for fabulous wealth. Ptolemy I had made some attempts to follow suit, issuing coins called staters just as Alexander had, but outside Alexandria these were as much demonstrations of royal power as they were useful coins. His son, however, now massively extended this scheme with the creation of a state-run banking system with local branches throughout the towns and villages of the country, all reporting back to the central bank in Alexandria. From these banks a coin-based currency was introduced, backed up by a system of written “bills of exchange”—promissory letters which could be exchanged for real money, or, as we would call them, banknotes. The entire rural economy was to be centered on these local branches, which provided the capital—seed grain and tools—that the farmers needed. They also provided massive state-aided infrastructural schemes such as the creation of a reservoir in the Southern Fayyum oasis which held 360 million cubic yards of water and irrigated 60 square miles of arable land. This was not pure largesse, however. Nearly all the grain produced by farmers was taken into the royal treasury in the form of tax. More land under cultivation meant more grain, and more grain meant more money in the Alexandrian coffers.

The driving force behind this economy was, of course, the immense quantity of grain produced in the Nile Valley. The annual flooding of the Nile, which ran through an almost rainless desert, made this the most productive agricultural land in the known world, where the sun always shone on the crops, but never dried their roots. Such valuable land was largely owned by the crown or the temples and leased to farmers, who were free men and women who often used slave labor to maintain their estates. Such estates produced a vast surplus, much of which the state took. Yet Ptolemy’s system also allowed for a degree of individual enterprise, as banks could handle private financial transactions, provide loans, and broker deals.

Whatever capital was left could be spent in the thriving open markets. Traditionally Egyptians had acquired the necessities of life they couldn’t produce for themselves by direct barter—effectively swapping a loaf for a pint of milk. The Greek immigrants, however, greatly encouraged the development of markets throughout the whole country. These were often held in the precincts of temples, and records exist of the temple taxes levied on the traders. In the town of Oxyrhynchus, for example, had you taken a stroll into the courtyard of the temple of Serapis on market day, a chaotic vista would have opened up as you passed through the first pylon. That day the peace of the temple would have been shattered by the cries of stallholders, all hoping to relieve you of some of the coins in your pocket. Here the local farmers and traders sold local vegetables, wood, olives, rushes, bread, fruit, wool yarn, and plaited garlands from wooden stands, each of which had been licensed (for a fee) by the temple. Among the crowd you might pick out the priests of Serapis, moving between the stalls, checking their goods and imposing the appropriate import duty on everything from olives, dates, cucumbers, squashes, beans, spices, and rock salt to pottery, green fodder, wood, and dung. The throng would also have attracted other traders offering more sophisticated wares, from the bulk grain dealers looking to turn a profit back in Alexandria, to the tailors, leather embroiderers, tinsmiths, butchers, and brothel keepers who always gravitated toward a crowd.

— The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, pp. 77-78

Throughout the period of Abbasid glory in Baghdad (750-861 [C.E.]), the priceless oriental trade from India and China to Byzantium and Europe has passed up the Persian Gulf and through Baghdad to northern Syria. But the administration of Ibn Tulun in Egypt was so just and conditions in Iraq were so chaotic, that the merchants who handled the oriental trade decided to switch their route from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and Egypt. This was the beginning of the rise of Egypt and the decline of Iraq.

— Soldiers of Fortune, p. 24

As the size of armies and the scope of battles increased, ancient armies had to master the task of logistically supporting these armies in the field. The logistical feats of ancient armies were often more difficult and often achieved more proficiently than in armies of the nineteenth century [C.E.], when the railroad, mass production of weapons, standard packaging, and tinned and condensed food made the problem of supply considerably easier. The need to support armies in the field for months, sometimes years, was a function of the rise of the imperium. Armies now had to conduct combat operations over far wider areas for longer periods than ever before.

Changes in the composition of military forces also added to the logistics burden. The development of the chariot required that the Egyptian forces maintain repair depots and special mobile repair battalions to ensure that the machines remained functional on the march. The Assyrian invention of large cavalry squadrons brought into existence a special branch of the logistics train to ensure that the army could secure, breed, train, and deploy large numbers of horses to support these new forces. This special logistics branch, the musarkisus, was able to obtain and process 3,000 horses a month for the Assyrian army. It was not until the time of Napoleon that Western armies could once again equal this logistical feat. The integration of chariots with cavalry also forced the Assyrian army to become the first to learn how to sustain 2 types of transport. Advances in siegecraft required that armies transport siege towers and engines within their baggage train, and artillery, introduced under the Greeks and brought to perfection under the Romans, added yet another requirement to transport catapults and shot. The need to manufacture, issue, and repair the new iron weapons in unprecedented numbers required yet more innovations in logistics. In the Assyrian army the production and storage of weapons became a central feature of the army’s logistical structure. A single weapons room in Sargon’s palace at Dur-Sharrukin contained 200 tons of iron weapons, and similar weapons warehouses were scattered throughout the empire. Of all the achievements of the ancient armies, those in the area of logistics often remain the most unappreciated by modern military planners.

— From Sumer To Rome, pp. 22-23

The Ayoubids had introduced…a feudal system that dominated Egypt…for six hundred years and vitally affected the social conditions, arts, literature, and material aspect of Cairo…. Slavery in the East is no disgrace; on the contrary, the relationship ranks far above mere hired service. The slave is regarded almost as a son.

— Soldiers of Fortune, p. 43