CHAOS IN ANCIENT EGYPT
JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLOS
Uruguayan Institute of Egyptology
ABSTRACT - A very common concept in egyptology, often shown as opposed to maat, is
that of chaos. From a primeval 'chaotic' reality the creator god introduced order in nature
realizing the potential for being that was latent in the Nun.
When pharaohs came to rule Egypt as a unified country, the threat of chaos was always
there, trying to undo the order that the gods had conceived and that the kings were
supposed to uphold.
But what was considered chaos in ancient Egypt, both in nature and in human
communities, may have been just another form of order in which both, human and natural
order, can exist, as valid and viable and just, or perhaps more so, than the pharaonic
version.
Before getting into the different aspects of the above subject, I would like to
mention some concepts that may help visualize my perspective on this topic.
To the uneducated eye the natural world appears to be chaotic, unless we are
trained to detect the many nuances of life in its enormous variety of manifestations
and the complex relationships among all living beings, the multiple phenomena that
affect the earth, atmospheric, geological and others, it all appears as random
manifestations without any apparent order.
Nevertheless, as we delve deeper into this whole, we discover an order and a
balance, too complex to be readily noticed, that assures the relative stability of
reality in the short as well as in the long term1.
1
"Symmetry order is the unifying force in nature. It is the great attractor, the great point of balance
toward which all change naturally progresses. Symmetry order is the invisible backdrop, the blank
canvas, the board on which the game is played. Each imbalance exists timelessly embedded within
the universal balance of the whole, and in the passage of time imbalances naturally, or
probabilistically, evolve toward the native state of balance. Such is a universal principle nearly all
people recognize intuitively", G. Giorbran, The Two Opposing Types of Order in Nature, in
Everything Forever, Learning to See Timelessness, Seattle, 2007.
However, when this reality is wrongly portrayed by humans as ´chaotic´ in order to
justify changing it into some sort of artificial ´order´ conceived by us, the result in
the long run is a form of real chaos that alters the previous balance, disrupting the
natural course of events2.
The result often consists of extinction of species, deforestation, erosion, climate
change and other adverse phenomena that although presented as a form of new
´order´ and the result of civilized living, it is precisely the opposite, in which humans
introduce chaos in nature.
When discussing the meaning of chaos in ancient Egypt we must clearly
differentiate the concept of modern chaos theory3 and its pejorative use when it
involves calling as such a social or political arrangement supposedly in complete
disarray that is defined per se as evil.
We should also bear in mind that the definition of chaos, especially in a social or
political context, is usually a subjective notion that often reflects one perception of
order that rejects other arrangements as chaotic without any valid reason for doing
so.
2
"Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamical systems that are
highly sensitive to initial conditions. 'Chaos' is an interdisciplinary theory stating that within the
apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, constant
feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, self-organization, and reliance on programming at
the initial point known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions", G. Boeing, Chaos Theory and
the Logistic Map, Berkeley, 2015; "Chaos theory concerns deterministic systems whose behavior
can in principle be predicted. Chaotic systems are predictable for a while and then 'appear' to
become random. The amount of time that the behavior of a chaotic system can be effectively
predicted depends on three things: How much uncertainty can be tolerated in the forecast, how
accurately its current state can be measured, and a time scale depending on the dynamics of the
system, called the Lyapunov time", S. Strogatz, Sync:The Emerging Science of Spontaneous
Order, New York, 2003, pages 189-190; "Is the universe [left to itself] a chaotic mess? Or, is it
possible that there is much more order than we realize? The obvious answer to the second
question is a resounding yes ........... Instead, what Strogatz presents, through his personal scientific
experiences, is a contrasting point of view. Interactions between individuals -be they fireflies,
pendula, or people- can often lead to the emergence of coherent actions", G. Bard Ermentrout,
Review of Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, Notices of the AMS, Volume 51,
No. 3, 2004, 312-319.
3
"One side of the convergent paradigm of chaos theory and postmodernism incorporates the
concepts of subjectivity and multiplicity. Chaos theory indicates that between complete order and
total randomness exists an area of chaotic order, and equally, postmodernist thought suggests that
between binary oppositions of all sorts exist multiple points of view. In refuting the dichotomy of
order/disorder, chaos theory destabilises classical science’s grand narrative which through the
premise of scientific objectivity provides only one authoritative world view. Lyotard emphasises that
many local discourses cannot add up to one global discourse, and that global discourses, or grand
narratives, are simply unable to define a multiplicitous worldview. Chaos theory replaces the
worldview of classical science with a discontinuous, indeterminate worldview that is reflected in
postmodernist model of language", B. Ward, The Chaos of History: Notes Towards a Postmodernist
Historiography, Limina, Vol. 2, 1996, 10.
The motif of a perpetual struggle between order (rather a peculiar order conceived
by the ruler and the elite) and something called chaos that differed from their
worldview is present in many cultures over the millennia4.
In ancient Egypt the king was supposed to counter the forces of chaos and evil
(isfet) by achieving and bringing about maat, order, balance and justice to the
world5.
Whenever the king failed to carry out his royal duty, he was blamed for the
disasters that ensued and the Egyptians (read here the Egyptian elite) expected
the gods to restore the order he was supposed to uphold6.
It was a continuous struggle against chaos in which the cosmogonic forces were
unleashed to prevent disorder7.
The concept of Isfet, usually described as chaos, the opposite of maat8, is
interpreted in various ways by scholars, the dissolution of divine order in the world
4
J. Hinnells, ed., A Handbook of Ancient Religions, Cambridge, 2007, 79, 130, 183, 225, 240, 260,
407, 567.
5
"... jeder König schon mit seiner Thronbesteigung alle Chaosmächte überwunden und das Land in
den Urzustand des Heils zurückgeführt hat, in der sogar jeder Sonnenaufgang den Feind
niederwirft und die Schöpfung erneuert, lebt fortwährend im Heilszustand einer realisierten
Eschatologie", J. Assmann, Königsdogma und Heilserwartung, Politische und kultische
Chaosbeschreibungen in ägyptischen Texten in D. Hellholm, ed., Apocalypticism in the
Mediterranean World and the Near East, Tübingen, 1983, 346.
6
"The conception of royal fallibility established the major principle of historical causation. For
example, the biographical inscription of Somtutefnakht (30th dynasty) contains a definite implication
that the defeat of Nectanebo II by the Persians was the result of divine hostility. This, in its own
right, implies that Nectanebo himself was considered to have fallen from divine grace and was thus
a king not in harmony with the divine will. ............ The texts theme is that only those kings who live
in accordance with the will of the gods will prosper and it explains recent disasters in Egyptian
history as illustrations of this principle. Accordingly, he concept of royal dependence evolved into a
perception that the king could fail in the sight of heaven itself, and stand directly responsible for
periods of disasters. The divine king as the provider of good fortune for private individuals falls in
the background; gods not kings are addressed as the sole responsible entities for these fortunes",
R. Salim, Cultural Identity and Self-presentation in Ancient Egyptian Fictional Narratives, An
Intertextual Study of Narrative Motifs from the Middle Kingdom to the Roman Period, PhD Thesis,
Copenhagen, 2013, 58-59.
7
"In the context of the solar cult they are meant to assist the sun god and to strengthen the
cosmogonic energies in combatting the forces of evil and the drift towards chaos; in magical
contexts, however, they raise the cosmogonic forces against all kinds of mishap, which are such
´interpreted´ as manifestations of disorder", J. Assmann, Solar Discourse, Ancient Egyptian Ways
of Worldreading, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 68,
1994,122.
8
"La plupart des règles édictées en négatif dans la déclaration d’innocence ressortissent en fait à la
justice générale. Chacune des deux listes est introduite par une formule globale se référant à l’isfet
(qui est le contraire exact de la maât) ........ Le texte offre une description apocalyptique de l’Égypte
privée de son principe fondateur et régulateur et donc livrée par là même à l’emprise du principe
antinomique destructeur qui reçoit le nom générique d’isfet. Ainsi la maât est-elle définie à la fois
par son contenu et par son antonyme exact ......... Les conséquences du primat de l’isfet sont
innombrables. On assiste à un retournement total de la société suite à des catastrophes inédites",
B. Menu, Maât, ordre social et inégalités dans l’Égypte ancienne, Droit et cultures, 69, 2015, 51-73.
as well as the behaviour of the people who indulged in evil practices and as a
consequence of the intrusion of foreigners in Egypt, all which causes Re to
temporarily distance himself from such undesirable reality9.
Isfet coexisting with maat did not happen until well after creation, according to
ancient Egyptian texts, at the beginning there was no chaos, only divine order10.
The word isfet meaning chaos or chaotic behaviour has also been capriciously
interpreted as having other quite different meanings, such as a violation of the
creator god´s aim at all humans being equal.
But the text used to justify such a peregrine conclusion says nothing of the sort.
The god created all men as equal and then they disobeyed the god and did isfet,
but linking isfet with equality is an unwarranted jump. Those equal men did
something wrong (isfet), not necessarily meaning violating their condition of
equality.
Such illogical interpretations tend to obscure our understanding of what isfet really
was to the ancient Egyptians, who lived in a very unequal society without that
being considered a breach of maat11.
Isfet was also linked to some Egyptian gods like Seth and Sekhmet, the former
especially after his originally beneficial nature as an important god of a region of
Upper Egypt was transformed into an evil deity as the enemy of Osiris12.
9
"En déplorant, d’une part, l’attitude du peuple égyptien qui agit selon Isfet en commettant des
meurtres et, d’autre part, l’inobservance des coutumes funéraires, le texte témoigne de la
disparition des troisième et quatrième bonnes actions du dieu solaire, mentionnées dans la formule
1130 des Textes des Cercueils, relatives à l’interdiction de commettre le mal et à la pratique
obligatoire des rituels funéraires", L. Parys, Aux origines du chaos, Analyse du concept d’Isfet dans
la Prophétie de Néferty, BABELAO 7, 2018, 9, 10, 14.
10
"The presence of Isfet and of any of its manifestations (turmoil, confusion, noise, conflict, etc.) is
not to be found, according to he Pyramid Texts, until after creation was completely established", S.
ElSebaie, The Destiny of The World, A Study on the End of The Universe in The Light of Ancient
Egyptian Texts, Toronto, 2000, 32.
11
"One of these texts is Coffin Texts Spell 1130 which has unanimously and justly been recognized
as one of the fundamental texts of Egyptian philosophy. Here, the creator speaks, and he states
expressly, that, among other good deeds, he has created men equal to each other: ´I made
everyman equal to his fellow and I forbade them to do Isfet. But their hearts disobeyed what I had
said´. Isfet, as disobedience to equality, can only refer to inegality, created not by god but by the
disobedient heart of men", J. Assmann, State and Religion in the New Kingdom, in W. Simpson
(ed), Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3, 1989, 60-61.
Assmann also wrote in page 65: "Life, cosmic as well as social, is dependent on order. Order,
however, cannot generate and persist by itself. It has to be imposed from outside and constantly to
be defended against Isfet, a natural tendency towards chaos, disintegration and death which is
innate in man, society and nature", which is exactly the opposite of what modern chaos theory
establishes by detailed and thorough observation of the natural world.
12
"Sekhmet is automatically associated with destruction and chaos, as well as disease and
pestilence, thus making her an agent of isfet ........... Certain animals represent the threatening
powers of chaos while the hounds striking their prey represent the power of ma’at overcoming the
Another recent interpretation associates order and chaos to space and place, the
former being what is known with meaning and cultural familiarity while the latter
would be all that is strange, threatening and unfamiliar13.
According to other authors, order and chaos in ancient Egypt was the eternal
duality that in a dialectic relationship of conflict was renewed every day as in the
act of creation, a concept that supposed that there was a certain order that was
good and one of disorder that was evil, by definition, as a subjective perception
that was not supported except by a worldview that was accepted as the only valid
one14.
Yet other authors assign to this conflict between divine order and chaos a political
significance with certain cities and cult centres claiming to be pre-eminent in
reaffirming political authority15.
The blurred boundary between those two worlds, of order and chaos, was
inhabited by liminal beings (inaccurately but very popular and seductively) called
‘demons’ with ambiguous purposes16.
forces of isfet", L. Cessna, A Good Coming and a Bad Coming, The Dual Symbolic Roles of Mice in
Ancient Egyptian Representations, Vancouver, 2017, 45, 52.
13
"This study considers the ancient Egyptians to have had an especially clear ideology regarding
the perception of ‘space’ and ‘place’; the somewhat vague concepts of ma’at and isfet. Ma’at, it is
proposed here, constituted ‘place’ – the ordered world, a realm of meaning and cultural familiarity.
Isfet on the other hand constituted ‘space’ – an area of unknowing, threat and potential chaos.
Egyptian ideology necessitated a cultural familiarity with the surrounding environment, engendering
a landscape that was understood, known to the population that inhabited it and thus encultured. In a
place as dynamic as the Nile Valley this knowledge was something experienced and gained over
the course of daily life", C. Graves, The Oryx nome, An Egyptian cultural landscape of the Middle
Kingdom, Birmingham, UK, 2017, 29.
14
"Chaque aube marque donc le renouveau et l’acte répété de la création, la réaffirmation d’un
ordre cosmologique primordial. Si les récits de la création du monde varient selon les époques et
les régions, le dénominateur commun de la cosmogonie égyptienne est la 'préexistence de la Maât-
Vérité', au même titre que les forces du chaos (isfet en ancien égyptien), qui forment un
complément indissociable de l’ordre cosmologique. Celui-ci est 'zeitlos gleich den negativen
Potenzen des Chaos, die trotz beständiger Bekämpfung und Vernichtung unsterblich sind'.
L’essence même du monde repose ainsi sur 'a necessary dialectic built in the very structure of
being, i.e., a process of order and disorder, conflict and resolution", H. Decoeur, Maât, entre
cosmologie et mythe: le principe constitutionnel d’un État de racine chtonienne en ancienne Égypte,
R. J. T. 45, 2011, 355.
15
"The general framework of creation out of chaos, of order based on kingly rule, the centrality of
justice and truth, and the need to avoid disorder, social chaos and falsehood remained
fundamental. In general terms, maat is always in conflict with 'chaotic forces' (isfet), which are
always overcome. Such cosmological patterns could be used to emphasise the pre-eminence of
particular cities or temple complexes, which could therefore claim to be supreme cult centres and
unifiers of political authority, i.e. these centres could provide a 'centripetalising function", R.
Ferguson, The ancient Egyptian concept of Maat, Reflections on social justice and natural order,
CEWCES Research Papers, Paper 13, 2016, 31.
16
"Ancient Egyptian religion also relates the existence of demons to 'evil', which is believed to be
the realm of chaos outside the created. However, although this negative connotation cannot be
denied in light of the magical texts, the role of demons vis-à-vis the human world remains
Evil forces perpetually tried to upset the divinely sanctioned order and the king was
responsible for preserving it17.
The graphic expression of such royal duty in its aspect of subduing foreign
enemies can be truly disturbing18.
The efforts by the powers that be in ancient Egypt to give absolute validity to their
worldview went to such an extent as to render what they considered disorder
ridiculous by means of satirical graffiti, made by the privileged class of royal tomb
workmen, that reflected the prevalent views in which animals were portrayed in
unnatural roles as agents of disorder19.
Some authors validate the ancíent Egyptian concept of order versus chaos
considering the elite version as an absolute, ´what is right´, as if the worldview of
those ruling a society with an iron fist and with a very clear intention of perpetuating
themselves in a position of power could be taken at face value as a universally
valid concept20.
ambivalent and dependent on their specific context of appearance. In general, it can be stated that
demons always act on the borders between order and chaos, maat and isfet. Therefore, in order to
define the ancient Egyptian onception of demons, we may call them ‘religious frontier-striders’, in
reference to the apt German term Grenzgängerkonzepte. Some demons bring chaos into the
ordered world or act upon the world of the living by command of the divine (e.g., the 'wanderers'),
whereas others mediate between order and chaos or the sacred and the profane by protecting
liminal and sacred places on earth and in the netherworld from impurity (e.g., the 'guardians')", R.
Lucarelli, Demons (benevolent and malevolent), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010, 2.
17
E. Teeter, The Presentation of Maat, Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt, Chicago, 1997.
18
"The torturous and bizarre bindings that lie at the heart of this study are often ignored or
dismissed as a stereotyped reflection of the ideology of Order and Chaos. While the ideology is a
vital part of the equation, it not need be the terminus point for study. Torturous imagery is ever-
present, used nearly as often as more standard bindings, and should not be dismissed without first
examining its potential reflection of reality and its revelatory capacity concerning the mindset of the
Egyptians. While less explicit than Assyrian art with its fondness for impaling, decapitation, and
flaying, the brutal bindings in Egyptian sources at the very least speak to a civilization that on some
level valued the depiction of harsh treatment of prisoners of war. They are clearly excessively brutal
and discomfiting to behold", M. Janzen, The Iconography of Humiliation: The Depiction and
Treatment of Bound Foreigners in New Kingdom Egypt, PhD Thesis, Memphis, 2013, 308.
19
"In the social world the counter-image to that of maat is a time of troubles and chaos in the Two
Lands. This is usually associated with famine, political conflict, the closing of temples, failure to
carry out the cult, low Nile levels, invasion, and inversions of the social and ‘natural’ order. This
notion of inverted rightness can be seen through a counter-image to normal harmonious life found
in graffiti in the workmen's village near the Valley of Kings ........ The irony and humour of these
drawings precisely relies on what was thought to be unusual and notable. They are relatively rare in
Egyptian art, and seem to include elements of satire and irony, as well as erotic images. It is these
counter-images which deliver a strong reinforcement for the normative role of maat by providing a
direct commentary on how one should react when justice fails during periods of chaos and
disorder", R. Ferguson, The ancient Egyptian concept of Maat: Reflections on social justice and
natural order, CEWCES Research Papers, 13, 2016, 46-47.
20
"Egyptologists seem to assert with ma‘at, not a universal variation in local expressions of what is
right, but some essential quality unique to ancient Egypt. In place of a universal human quest for
right, they install without comparison one local answer. However, if every group or culture is defined
The voices of those ruled by an elite, always the vast majority in any human
society over the millennia, are ignored and arbitrarily considered as going along
with the established beliefs that sealed their fate.
But what also invalidates such a conception is that there is a natural order in the
world, among animals and humans, that may differ from what some would like to
see for their benefit, but that exists nevertheless.
We usually fail to perceive such an order that can only be appreciated on a large
scale in which all living beings take part and interact according to their nature and
relationship with the environment.
Often unable to see this big picture, the partial and small part we see appears to be
´chaotic´ and devoid of meaning, which makes it easier for those who wish to alter
nature and human societies to introduce changes that satisfy a certain agenda.
For instance, foreigners were represented in ancíent Egypt as forces of chaos and
as such, should be subjugated.
Also, certain periods of ancíent Egyptian history that deviated from the desirable
pattern were considered as ´chaotic´, although they were perfectly functioning
political realities that in time, were replaced by a return to pharaonic rule but in no
way consisting of a return from any chaos21.
It has happened countless times in human history that whenever a social or natural
order goes against the interests or desires of certain groups, it is described as
'chaotic' or being a form of 'anarchy' in order to justify steps taken to 'correct' it and
impose a more convenient arrangement.
In some cases in the egyptological literature the worldview of the elite is
considered as that of all Egyptians, as if the peasants or other labourers at the
bottom of the ancíent society shared with the pharaohs the same fear of what they
called chaos22.
by having its own sense of what is right and wrong, then ‘what is right’ would be a universal
property of human social being. Ma‘at should then be translated, ´(what is) right´, and studied
alongside every other social linguistic expression of the concept. In sum, Egyptological use of ma‘at
is antihistorical, separating Egypt from all other humans", S. Quirke, Exploring Religion in Ancient
Egypt, Chichester, 2015, 151.
21
A. Butner, The Rhetoric and the Reality: Egyptian Conceptions of Foreigners during the Middle
Kingdom (c. 2055-1650 BCE), Senior Thesis Projects, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2007, 1,
14, 36, 38.
22
"Así pues, creemos que existen suficientes elementos para suponer que -en conjunto- los
motivos representados en la paleta de Hieracómpolis pudieron constituir uno de los modos
elaborados por la iconografía de la tercera época de Nagada para expresar esa fuerza tan temida
por los egipcios: el caos", M. Campagno, Caos y Orden, Acerca de dos paletas del Predinástico
Tardío, Aula Orientalis 14, 1996, 155.
What most of us don't do when such claims are made is try to find out why a given
system is described as 'chaotic', whether it reflects a complete breakdown of any
sensible arrangement or it is merely described as such because it goes against
what some would like to see implemented.
Over the centuries such a justification has been at the root of all colonialist efforts
that strived to bring what was thought to be sensible law and order to 'chaotic,
backward' communities elsewhere and even within their own communities,
whenever situations differed from what those ruling them wanted to achieve for
their own benefit23.
In predynastic times in Egypt we can detect such attempts by depictions of orderly
rows of animals of the same species or even in, for example, the rock art, of rows
of different kinds of animals. 'Orderly' images that rarely or never occur in nature in
the wild but that in the archaeological record reveal the intention of certain
individuals to artificially impose such arrangements as proof of their god-given
great power24.
These scenes and others that have been described as ‘hunting’ and interpreted as
royal efforts to curb and counter chaos, as well as providing for the deceased,
neglect to mention another likely purpose, propaganda for the emerging hereditary
chiefs well before we can speak of any kings or royal intentions regarding nature25.
23
"Side by side with the ill-founded claims about socio-economic modernisation went the claims by
colonial apologists that European rule brought political upliftment and emancipation. One of the
long-standing arguments in this connection is that Africa was in chaos in the 19th century, and that
‘tribes’ like the Ngoni and the Yao and Samori’s sofas were killing left, right and centre", W. Rodney,
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London, 1973, 348; "There are many ways In which the
narrowing of the range of the international has taken place In many weak forms of anti-colonial and
liberal International law scholarship ...... the Invocation of images of chaos as a reflection of
nationalist separatism that is dangerous for world peace", J. Gathii, International Law and
Eurocentricity, European Journal of International Law 9, 1998, 191; "With regard to the production
of knowledge of Africa and its representation, the incompleteness of the decolonization struggle is
evident in the fact that Africa today remains widely associated with chaos, illness, and disorder - a
range of colonial stereotypes that say more about the seer (the West) than the seen (Africa)", N.
Creary, ed., African Intellectuals and Decolonization, Ohio University Research in International
Studies, Athens, 2012, 1.
24
J. J. Castillos, Semi-mythological heroes in early Egypt, Göttinger Miszellen 242, 2014, 5-12.
25
"Even though the animals were, in the end, certainly intended for consumption, the traditional
view of pharaonic hunting exclusively for the procurement of food (e.g., Vandier 1964, p. 787) has
been abandoned for some time (e.g., Staehelin 1978; Altenmüller 1980, 1989; Decker 1992).
Staehelin discussed the hunting scenes in the religious context of the tombs. The animals represent
the forces of chaos, to be destroyed in order to perpetuate life in the hereafter. The origin of the
hunting iconography is considered by Staehelin as royal, but during the Old Kingdom the royal
prototypes are integrated into the decorative schemes of non-royal elite tombs. Along the same
lines, Baines (1995, p. 111) considers the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic hunting scenes as
likely symbolising the maintenance of order and the containment of disorder. The 'order over chaos'
interpretation has meanwhile gained wide acceptance (e.g., Hendrickx 2006; Hendrickx &
Eyckerman 2010; Friedman et al. 2011; Raffaele 2010), and it is important to point out that this
does not necessarily contradict the idea of providing the deceased with game, but can be
complementary", S. Hendrickx, Hunting and social complexity in Predynastic Egypt, Bulletin des
Séances de l'Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, 2009, 12.
Such violations of the true natural order go as far as showing animals in the
decorated pottery and in the rock art, behaving in unnaturally submissive ways in
the vicinity of those powerful humans and may also explain their occasional
practice of keeping zoos with animals of several species with perhaps a similar
purpose, as we can see in predynastic Hierakonpolis26.
It was most likely all part of a plan to reinforce their status and persuade members
of their communities, beyond the stark reality of coercion, that they were born to
rule, humans and nature, supposedly in everybody's benefit27.
Little by little, such a concept developed into the more sophisticated creation of
maat, a perfect worldview that was as desirable as fragile, and had to be
maintained at all costs.
Should we today accept it at face value and treat it with the utmost respect,
elaborating on its ethical and religious value in multiple ways, as it is currently the
case in the literature, or should we expose it for what it most probably was, a
convoluted means to perpetuate the power of an elite with minimum internal
resistance?
Some contemporary interpretations of the ancíent reality attempt to justify it by
means of a supposed necessity of action ´from above´ to prevent a descent into
chaos28.
We tend to see ancient realities acording to our own prejudices. Those who accept
that there has always been inequality in human societies, even in those that
26
"A corral for the domestic stock has yet to be identified. Perhaps they were allowed to roam freely
in death as in life, while the wild animals were kept in a veritable zoo and buried within their eternal
cages. Each group, it seems, was accompanied by their respective human keepers (Tombs 17 and
34), with perhaps the master of the hounds laid to rest amongst his dogs in Tomb 14 ....... At this
point in our understanding it all seems to fit together very nicely as a microcosm of the royal palace,
with the positions held in life mirrored in death as they revolve around the ruler in Tomb 16, who
expressed his status in many ways", R. Friedman, A tour of the palace, Nekhen News 21, 2009, 6.
27
"The clear symbolic intent of those hunting scenes is also expressed through an absolute lack of
realism in the rendering of the action, which should include the capture and killing of the dangerous
animal, which are actually never shown. In a rock drawing from the Thebes region, for instance, a
single hunter lassos a desert animal with one hand while harpooning an hippopotamus with the
other. In the meantime he is also holding a mace and has his arms raised in a gesture of victory", I.
Incordino, Hunting at the time of the emergence of the Ancient Egyptian state, in I. Micheli, ed.,
Materiality and Identity, Selected papers from the proceedings of the ATrA Conferences of Naples
and Turin 2015, Trieste, 2016, 127.
28
"1. Life, cosmic as well as social, is dependent on order. Order, however, cannot generate and
persist by itself. It has to be imposed from outside and constantly to be defended against Isfet, a
natural tendency towards chaos, disintegration and death which is innate in man, society and
nature. This principle we have labelled as 'negative anthropo-/cosmology', 2. Negative anthropology
necessitates authoritative government imposing and maintaining order upon earth. Because it
cannot grow from 'below' it has to be installed from 'above'", J. Assmann, State and Religion in the
New Kingdom, in W. Simpson, ed., Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological
Studies 3, 1989, 65.
seemed not to be arranged that way, and therefore containing rich and poor, rulers
and ruled, often obscene differences in well-being seem natural and not to be
frowned upon, being the justified result of people's opportunities, abilities and
enterprise or the lack theoreof, like in the world today.
They often adopt a rather naive attitude that rejects the existence of ancient
propaganda in order to convey a perception of reality that suited certain groups
within a society or that religion could be used for political purposes, as it has
happened countless times in history29.
Others, shocked by oppression and injustice wherever it exists will probably see
the pharaonic society in quite a different light, condemn its very unfair structure and
reject attempts to whitewash it.
But regardless of our perspectives, it is fascinating to try to detect how things came
about by using the various kinds of scanty evidence that have come to light to see
the steps that took the ancient Egyptians from their early social arrangements to
later quite different ones and the ways in which the rulers tried to justify their place
in society claiming religious validity for their self-serving worldview30 .
29
"Of course, we are far from those explanations that suggest only propagandistic reasons (in the
modern sense of the concept) for the ruling class in the textual and iconographical sources. In the
same way, we do not agree with explanations based on some kind of elite class consciousness that
allowed for appropriations and manipulations of religion as a means of obtaining power, maintaining
political ties, or acquiring class prerogatives", R. Flammini, Ancient Core-periphery Interactions,
Lower Nubia during Middle Kingdom Egypt, ca 2050-1640 BC, Journal of World-Systems Research,
Volume XIV, Number 1, 2008, 63.
30
"Another characteristic of chiefdoms, underscored in the essays by Gellner and Ira Lapidus, is the
importance of religion to their maintenance. Religious ideology could enhance the legitimacy of the
ruler or chief by granting him religious or saintly authority; moreover, infused into the ideology of the
chiefdom, it could strengthen existing bonds between ruler and ruled and provide a raison d'être for
a chiefdom's expansion", P. Khoury and J. Kostiner, Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East,
Cambridge, 1987, 9; "The legitimation of authority and social order can take many forms. Claims to
military qualities or to a special relationship with the divine as the basis of political legitimacy are,
however, especially important, since a necessary corollary to political and social power is the belief
in the particular ability of the ruling elite to protect the community from external attack and to
maintain appropriate relations with the divine world", H. Whittaker, Reflections on the socio-political
function of Mycenaean religion, in R. Laffineur and R. Hägg, POTNIA, Deities and Religion in the
Aegean Bronze Age, 2001, 355; "The religious dimension of the most noble lineages was often
emphasized as the kinship element declined. Temples were usually the first massive examples of
large-scale coordinated effort, and the first rulers were often priest-kings derived directly from tribal
chieftains whose roles often mixed sacred and economic/political leadership. Early kings usually
claimed to rule by sacred right, and often to be gods themselves. Monumental religious architecture
develops to impressive heights as advanced chiefdoms evolve into states", P. Richerson, Principles
of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, 2001, Chapter 26, 488; "While the secular
character of Oaxaca’s social hierarchy is most prominent in residential architecture, household
activities, and burial practices, it is by no means disconnected from religious belief...... The strongly
economic character of social differentiation in Oaxaca is as clear as its reinforcement in ritual is
unmistakable. Hierarchy in Oaxaca has its center of gravity, and perhaps its origins, in the
economics of local communities, but it is clearly also strengthened through ritual, especially in its
supralocal projection", R. Drennan and C. Peterson, Patterned variation in prehistoric chiefdoms,
PNAS, Vol. 103, No. 11, 2006, 3964;"No matter what the degree and the quality of the interrelation
What we should perhaps try to avoid is to lend too much credibility to the
statements, justifications and validations of situations by ancíent people that should
be approached with a more critical perspective.
From the above we can conclude that chaos in ancient Egypt was a subjective
concept that reflected the reaction against any different social or natural order than
that desired by the elite at the time, that was arbitrarily labelled as ´chaotic´ in order
to justify its rejection as an evil and undesirable reality31.
between ritual and social or emotional realities, the concern of these approaches is essentially the
effect on ritual by the individual, social groups or the society. Within neo-functionalism, ritual may be
perceived as the cause of production and reproduction of social relations and cultural interactions
(Radcliffe- Brown 1945, 1964, Malinowski 1925, Rappaport 1968, Bell 1997:29-33). Within the
framework of these approaches, it is explained why ritual is practiced and what ritual does", V.
Koutrafouri, Ritual in Prehistory, Definition and Identification, Religious Insights in Early Prehistoric
Cyprus, PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, Volume I, 2008, 79; "Ritual practice is understood to
have a social role involved in the reproduction and renegotiation of social order (Braithwaite 1984,
93-110). Shanks and Tilley (1982, 133) encapsulate ritual as an ideological practice that legitimises
the social hierarchies", G. Woods, In the Beginning…, The Origins of Predynastic Religion, Volume
I: Text, PhD Thesis, Cardiff University, 2015, 61.
31
"According to royal doctrine, the king’s role as defender of Egypt (and the whole of creation)
involved the corresponding defeat of Egypt’s neighbors (who stood for chaos). To instill and foster a
sense of national identity, it suited the ruling elite –as leaders have discovered throughout history-
to cast all foreigners as the enemy ....... The xenophobic ideology masked the practical reality. This
should serve as a warning for the historian of ancient Egypt: from earliest times, the Egyptians were
adept at recording things as they wished them to be seen, not as they actually were", T. Wilkinson,
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, London, 2010, 59.
