Part One: ‘Imhotep’, was it a name or a title?
by
Damien F. Mackey
“And two millennia later, other rulers, different people, raised [Imhotep]
to the rank of a deity: in the era of the Ptolemies, the Greeks … revered him
as the god of medicine on a par with their “native” Asclepius.”
Alexandra Malenko
Even a year ago I would not seriously have queried the historical reality of Imhotep. As far as I was concerned, the genius Imhotep of Egypt’s so-called Third Dynasty was the clear candidate for the biblical Joseph, son of Jacob, who had saved Egypt from a seven-year Famine.
Did not Imhotep do the very same on behalf of his ruler (Pharaoh, as we say), Netjerikhet (Djoser, or Zoser)?
Thus we read, in part, in Netjerikhet’s (Neterkhet’s) celebrated Sehel Famine Stela:
Year 18 of Horus: Neterkhet; the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Neterkhet; Two Ladies: Neterkhet; Gold-Horus: Djoser; under the Count, Prince, Governor of the domains of the South, Chief of the Nubians in Yebu, Mesir. There was brought to him this royal decree. To let you know:
I was in mourning on my throne,
Those of the palace were in grief,
My heart was in great affliction,
Because Hapy had failed to come in time
In a period of seven years.
Grain was scant,
Kernels were dried up,
Scarce was every kind of food.
Every man robbed his twin,
Those who entered did not go.
Children cried,
Youngsters fell,
The hearts of the old were grieving;
Legs drawn up, they hugged the ground,
Their arms clasped about them.
Courtiers were needy,
Temples were shut,
Shrines covered with dust,
Everyone was in distress.
I directed my heart to turn to the past,
I consulted one of the staff of the Ibis,
The chief lector-priest of Imhotep,
Son of Ptah South-of-his-Wall:
“In which place is Hapy born?
Which is the town of the Sinuous one?
Which god dwells there?
That he might join with me.”
He stood: “I shall go to Mansion-of-the-Net,
It is designed to support a man in his deeds;
I shall enter the House of Life,
Unroll the Souls of Re,
I shall be guided by them.”
He departed, he returned to me quickly,
He let me know the flow of Hapy,
His shores and all the things they contain.
He disclosed to me the hidden wonders,
To which the ancestors had made their way,
And no king had equaled them since.
He said to me:
“There is a town in the midst of the deep,
Surrounded by Hapy, Yebu by name;
It is first of the first,
First nome to Wawat,
Earthly elevation, celestial hill,
Seat of Re when he prepares
To give life to every face.
Its temple’s name is ‘Joy-of-life,’
‘Twin Caverns’ is the water’s name,
They are the breasts that nourish all.
….
The important point to be noted is that this is a late inscription, thought to date to Egypt’s Ptolemaïc period, more than two millennia after the era to which it alludes.
The following article by Alexandra Malenko, whilst presenting a typical, and most favourable view of Imhotep, includes sufficient precautionary comments to rein in any excess enthusiasm, e.g. “the myth created by the directors”, “great unknown”, “the world had forgot about him”, “what is fiction or exaggeration”, etc.:
IMHOTEP: Leonardo da Vinci from the banks of the Nile
Even when there were no pyramids in Egypt, the legend said that he was great and powerful, he was the first who erected such a miracle in the sands. During the time of Cleopatra, he was revered as a wise and a skillful healer, during the reign of the Ptolemies, in the so-called Hellenistic period in the history of Egypt, he was worshiped as a deity. But here’s the trick: the name of Imhotep is well known to us, but not from scientific works, rather from entertainment films.
Great power of cinema! This art is capable of distorting and altering everything, shown on the screen is so easy to believe, and the myth created by the directors is so difficult to collapse… Through the efforts of Hollywood masters, Imhotep is known to the broad masses for the film The Mummy, its numerous remarks and remakes. And whether it is Imhotep performed by Boris Karloff or Arnold Vosloo, the film image is incredibly far from the truth.
THE GREAT UNKNOWN
Imhotep (his name in translation means “the one who walks in peace”) lived in the 27th century BC [sic]. He was a healer and an architect, an inventor, a genius of his time and a polymath, as the ancient Greeks called such unique ones, Leonardo da Vinci of the Ancient World. During his long life, Imhotep served three pharaohs. His extraordinary talents were revealed during the first ruler of the Third Dynasty, Djoser.
And two millennia later, other rulers, different people, raised him to the rank of a deity: in the era of the Ptolemies, the Greeks – the inhabitants of Egypt – revered him as the god of medicine on a par with their “native” Asclepius. According to some testimonies, the cult of Imhotep lasted until the appearance of Christianity and Islam in Egypt.
With the arrival of the dominant religions, his temples were destroyed, most of the works were lost. Until the nineteenth century, until researchers began to decipher hieroglyphic texts, the world had forgot about him. But the very first mentions of an outstanding scientist of the Ancient World stunned Egyptologists.
In 1926, during the excavation of the Djoser pyramid, archaeologists discovered a statue dated to the years when Imhotep hypothetically lived. On the basis of the statue, after the name of the pharaoh, the name of Imhotep was written and a list of titles was given: the keeper of the treasury of the king in Lower Egypt, the ruler of a large palace, the first after the king in Lower Egypt, the priest of Heliopolis, the architect, the carver of precious vases…
For one person, the title of chati would be enough – this position in modern gradation can be equated with the post of prime minister. Chati was in charge of political and economic issues, was involved in the formation of the budget, made current executive decisions… But Imhotep was also a priest, therefore he had many responsibilities outside the palace. As a priest of the god Ra, the god of sun, he traveled extensively in Upper and Lower Egypt, taught the people the wisdom set forth in the sacred texts.
WHO IS YOUR LORD?
Pharaoh Djoser has been ruling Egypt for over twenty years. In the first years of his reign, he conquered the Sinai Peninsula and from that campaign brought rich trophies, in particular a lot of copper and turquoise – both were a kind of strategic raw materials for Egypt, had a high price.
Djoser wisely disposed of the conquests: he used them in the improvement of the palace and the construction of his own tomb. His second campaign was directed to the south, he reached the sixth rapids of the Nile, conquered Northern Nubia and ordered the construction of a fortification wall to protect the southern borders of his possessions at the first rapids of the Nile.
The palace of Pharaoh Djoser was located in Memphis – the capital of Lower Egypt, located next to Saqqara. The palace was the center of the capital. Numerous craftsmen and artisans settled around it, in particular, architects, stone carvers, sculptors… Among the architects, as the researchers believe, Imhotep originated.
For some time he was probably a scribe, then he ran the “office” under the pharaoh.
Not everyone knew how to read and write in Ancient Egypt. The scribes were both the chroniclers of the pharaoh, and legislators, and jurists; it largely depended on them how the state would function. It is not difficult to assess whether Imhotep achieved great success as a scribe: in the later periods of the Egyptian kingdom, the scribes revered him as the patron saint of their craft, honored him on a par with the god of wisdom Thoth. Both in sculptures and on bas-reliefs, he is invariably depicted with an open scroll in his hands – a symbol of knowledge and wisdom.
STROKES TO PORTRAIT
It is not yet possible to reconstruct the path of Imhotep’s ascent exactly. The most generous source of information about his life – the burial complex in Saqqara, designed and built by him, has not yet given scientists exhaustive answers.
But if the assumption of the researchers is true that the great polymath of antiquity did not come from the most noble family, then it is obvious that he made a remarkable career at court solely thanks to his talents.
It is impossible to say with certainty what Imhotep looked like. Found painted and sculptural images do not allow to recreate the portrait of the ancient sage. Determine how tall he was, what build, what facial features he had, would allow the study of the remains. But the tomb of Imhotep has not yet been found.
Although, as it is known from ancient texts, in the old days thousands of sufferers came to his tomb – to worship him as the god of healing, to ask for healing, and at the same time for wisdom and perseverance. There is only an assumption that the tomb of Imhotep was built in Saqqara – not far from the pyramid of his master, Pharaoh Djoser, and the magnificent buildings that have glorified him for centuries.
ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE
The tombs of the pharaohs of the Early and Ancient Kingdoms were mastabas – low trapezoidal structures made of stone. This tradition was changed by Imhotep. For Pharaoh Djoser, he designed something unprecedented – he installed three proportionally decreasing scales on top of each other and built a pyramid.
It was the first pyramid, the largest and most amazing structure of its time. The stepped edges of the pyramid climbed stairs to the sun, to the sky, to the gods – such a bright symbolism could not remain unnoticed. This invention for many centuries determined the direction of development of the architecture of Ancient Egypt.
Djoser’s pyramid looked impressive inside too. A vertical tunnel led to the burial chamber, located at a depth of 28 meters. To get into the main room, one had to overcome a five-kilometer labyrinth that looped between small rooms and hiding places, crossed the passage halls and rested against blank walls.
Archaeologists discovered this miracle of architecture only in the twentieth century. The walls of the burial chambers (and in the pyramid of Djoser, built as a family tomb, there were several of them) were decorated with blue and emerald tiles, which are perfectly preserved. Alas, there were no valuables in the tomb: the robbers had time to work hard.
Most of the finds during the reign of Djoser (and the time of Imhotep’s works) were discovered by the French archaeologist and Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer. He devoted more than 75 years to the study of antiquities in the sands of Egypt, from the 1920s to 2001. It was he who found the step pyramid of Djoser buried in the sands, was the first to describe it, and investigated its amazing layout.
He also restored the burial complex built around the stepped pyramid – another architectural creation of Imhotep. This complex is another testament to the extraordinary genius of the ancient polymath.
It is interesting that the burial complex of Djoser was built not of clay bricks, but of stone, of limestone. But the main thing: in the construction of this building, Imhotep was the first to use a hitherto unseen form – vertical columns. He did not dare to leave them unsupported, they protrude from the walls, but it was also a revolutionary step.
THE GOD OF HEALING
Many researchers reasonably consider Imhotep the founder of modern medicine. He was one of the first to consider diseases and the healing process not as punishment or mercy of the gods, but as natural processes, and began to apply methods of treatment not related to religious rituals. Until now, no sources have been found that would confirm that Imhotep was a healer. It can be argued that his ideas contributed to the development of medical science.
Imhotep’s teachings are retold in a text known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus, dated around 1500 BC. The ancient scientist knew methods of treating over 200 diseases, including a method for treating inflammation of the appendix and arthritis, he knew the healing properties of many plants and natural products.
Guided by his instructions, the Egyptians consumed a lot of honey – a product with pronounced bactericidal properties, they also used honey to heal wounds.
However, it should be noted that even before the birth of Imhotep, from about 2750 BC., Egyptian doctors knew human anatomy well. They knew how to do a kind of neurosurgical operations, and very successful. Obviously, they received extensive knowledge about the structure of man through mummification. During this complex procedure, the internal organs were removed from the body, inquiring minds had the opportunity to examine them well, study, and comprehend the principles of their work.
The Egyptians believed that the heart is at the center of a network of channels through which blood, air and semen are carried to different parts of the body. The ancient physicians also knew that proper nutrition and adherence to the rules of hygiene create a reliable barrier to many diseases.
One of the first medical recommendations was a ban on the consumption of raw fish and pork. However, in the matter of healing, the help of the gods was useful. During the treatment procedures, prayers were certainly read and special rituals were performed. There was some practical sense in it as well, because confidence in a favorable outcome of the disease is already a small victory over it.
Imhotep, it seems, was, as they would say today, the popularizer of medical science, as a result, the fame of the great healer deservedly went to him. Temples were erected to him in Thebes and Memphis, people were ready to go half the world to worship him.
It was then that thousands of statues of Imhotep were created: it was believed that everyone who possessed such a thing was under his patronage. At the same time, scientists believe, incredible stories about the great genius of the wise priest and chati were born: as if he cured Pharaoh Djoser of blindness, saved the kingdom from a seven-year drought, and defeated the great famine in the country.
What is true in these retellings, and what is fiction or exaggeration, scientists are not ready to answer unequivocally. Time will tell, because excavations in Saqqara continue, the sands, albeit reluctantly, reveal ancient secrets. Perhaps it is there, on the plateau in the Nile Valley, that the solution to the nature of human genius will be found.
[End of quote]
I commenced this present article by writing:
Even a year ago I would not seriously have queried the historical reality of Imhotep. As far as I was concerned, the genius Imhotep of Egypt’s so-called Third Dynasty was the clear candidate for the biblical Joseph, son of Jacob, who had saved Egypt from a seven-year Famine.
Did not Imhotep do the very same on behalf of his ruler … Netjerikhet …?
Joseph as Imhotep was, for me, a given, and I, consequently, was critical of certain conservative revisionists – albeit very good ones – who could not see this, and who had, as a result – by confusing Joseph with Moses in Egyptian history, as I thought – made quite impossible a full-scale revision of ancient Egypt against the Bible.
And so I wrote to this effect on various occasions:
If any revisionist historian had placed himself in a good position, chronologically, to identify in the Egyptian records the patriarch Joseph, then it was Dr. Donovan Courville, who had, in The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, I and II (1971), proposed that Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms were contemporaneous. That radical move on his part might have enabled Courville to bring the likeliest candidate for Joseph, the Vizier Imhotep of the Third Dynasty, into close proximity with the Twelfth Dynasty – the dynasty that revisionists most favour for the era of Moses.
Courville, however, who did not consider Imhotep for Joseph, selected instead for his identification of this great biblical Patriarch another significant official, Mentuhotep, vizier to pharaoh Sesostris I, the second king of Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty.
And very good revisionists have followed Courville in his choice of Mentuhotep for Joseph.
With my own system, though, favouring (i) Imhotep for Joseph; (ii) Amenemes [Amenemhet] I for the “new king” of Exodus 1:8; and (iii) Amenemes I’s successor, Sesostris I, for the pharaoh from whom Moses fled (as recalled in the semi-legendary “The Story of Sinuhe”), then Mentuhotep of this era must now loom large as a candidate for the Egyptianised Moses. ….
What I just wrote above may still fully apply chronologically speaking.
The difference now, however, is that I would not embrace ‘Imhotep’ so uncritically.
And here is why:
Only when Brenton Minge’s book, Pharaoh’s Evidence. Egypt’s Stunning Witness to Joseph and Exodus (2013), arrived for me to review did I begin to question, not only Imhotep as Joseph, but even the very historical existence of Imhotep.
Brenton Minge, who holds to a conspiracy theory view that Imhotep was a made-up imitation of the real Joseph, begins his Chapter 4: Was Imhotep … Joseph? with what has already been noted above about Imhotep – those late sources (p. 45):
The problem, in historical terms, is that while Imhotep is placed around 2650 BC … his cult, or even any remembrance of him, only made its first appearance more than a millennium later. Imhotep authority Dietrich Wildung points out that, before then, “We have no clear records that Imhotep was remembered, much less venerated, for the thousand years after his death until the beginning of the New Kingdom” (emphasis added). …. Hence the Encyclopedia of Ancient History’s observation that his first claim to “deity” was in the “Late Period” (ie., around 712-332 BC) … effectively representing a 2,000-year “deity” silence from his claimed time to his earliest statue! ….
On pp. 46-47, Brenton Minge will present one of his crucial arguments, that the word imhotep on the base of king Netjerikhet’s statue is not a name at all, but a title, and that the actual name of the title-holder has been carefully erased. He writes:
Background
In 1926, excavations at Sakkara’s Step Pyramid uncovered the base of pharaoh Netjerikhet’s statue, bearing the insignia of both the king and, as is presumed, Imhotep. Concerning the latter it reads (reading right to left):
“Chancellor of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, first after the King, Administrator of the great palace, Director of public works, Overseer of the seers [of On], Imhotep the Architect, the Builder …” … (continuing, but broken off – see below left).
For an officeholder to appear beside his king on an Egyptian royal statue is otherwise unheard of …. Yet here the full blaze of Pharaonic glory includes the architect, side by side with his Pharaoh – a truly remarkable honour.
But what of the name Imhotep itself? For two reasons, it is submitted that this was not the name of the person being honoured, but part of his titles.
- “Imhotep” literally comes from two words: im, meaning “overseer” (as still reflected in the Arabic imam), and hotep, meaning “peaceful”, or “blessed”, as in the Field of Hotep, or “Field of the Blessed”. With the variant imy, im occurs in more than 70 Egyptian administrative titles of the Old Kingdom … always containing a meaning closer to “overseer”/ “director”. Hence “Im-hotep” (often formerly spelt with a hyphen) … would seem as much of an administrative title as all the others in the inscription, effectively meaning “overseer who comes in peace”, or, more concisely, “blessed overseer”.
- The inscription is unfinished, with the end part (at left) being conspicuously broken off. Yet the end, according to Egyptian protocol, is precisely where the proper name belongs, as Battiscombe Gunn – later Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford – observed:
“Egyptian titles never follow the name of their holder, but only precede it. …”.
That is, THE PROPER NAME ALWAYS COMES AT THE END, AFTER THE TITLES. Therefore “blessed overseer”, by virtue of its placement as much as its wording, cannot be a name, but only a descriptive “job title”, since there is clearly more to go! The description is manifestly unfinished. As Professor R.J. Forbes, of the University of Amsterdam, observed, “Only in the case of gods do the titles follow the name, never in the case of human beings” … (recalling from the encyclopaedia above, that Imhotep’s first claim to “deity” was still millennia away).
So it would seem that, assuming the inscription is authentic, this endearing title (“blessed overseer”/ “overseer of peace”) was effectively later lifted from it, and reprocessed as a proper name with a life of its own. “A later tradition”, writes The Oxford Classical Dictionary (without taking our view), “identified Imhotep … as the architect”. …. Yet it could just as readily be referring to Joseph himself, the true and known “blessed overseer” of Egypt under his king (with his Egyptian name skilfully removed at the end; see Genesis 41:45; 45:26).
[End of quotes]
On the matter of Pharaoh, I will note here two other of Brenton Minge’s views.
He takes the name Zoser, or Djoser, as being a late addition, and so we find him often writing (e.g. p. 17): “… Netjerikhet (later called Djoser) …”.
And:
Contrary to the standard opinion, that the ancient Egyptians began to use the title, “Pharaoh”, only in the New Kingdom era, which would mean that the use of the word in the Book of Genesis is anachronistic, Brenton will argue that the term Pharaoh was an old usage.
To simplify it here (Minge, p. 80):
PHARAOH: Where is the word?
For two centuries Egyptology has effectively asked the question, “Where is the title ‘Pharaoh’ in the Old and Middle Kingdoms of Egypt?” Given our insistence that Joseph and Israel’s subsequent sojourn belong in this very period (ie., dynasties 3 through to early 13), and the frequent Bible use of “Pharaoh” with them, it is incumbent on us to be able to address that question.
Surprisingly though it may seem, the answer is actually staring us in the face. This is in the form of the Old and Middle Kingdom serekh, the distinctively royal rectangle accompanied by the royal falcon Horus … representing the royal palace, or “house” of the king. Just as America’s White House, though technically a building, has come to also represent the actual person of the President, so it was with Pharaoh. As Miroslav Verner notes … the royal “Residence” could equally have the Old Kingdom meaning of “building”, or “the ruler himself”. ….
[End of quotes]
Part Two:
Part Two: Old Egypt’s abundant preparations for the Famine
Here I am totally dependent upon the brilliant research into the subject as I find it most skilfully rendered in Brenton Minge’s book (already referred to above), Pharaoh’s Evidence. Egypt’s Stunning Witness to Joseph and Exodus (2013, unpublished).
Chapter 1: The Great Famine
P. 3:
Documented Nile failure and regional impact
According to J-D Stanley and others, there was such a major Old Kingdom failure of Egypt’s River Nile that even “the Lake Victoria outflow ceased for a short period”. …. This must have been a catastrophic cessation of the Nile’s principal source. Though only brief in historical terms (“a short period”), such was the drought’s impact that even in the lush Nile Valley itself sand dunes appeared … while sediment cores of the fertile Faiyum reveal “severe low Nile flood discharge:…..
To this day archaeologists speak of the “Old Kingdom drought” that resulted in a “catastrophic decline in the Nile flows”, reflecting Josephus’ summary of the seven-year famine that “neither did the river overflow the ground”… (i.e., there was no annual inundation). ….
Pp. 5-6:
“World’s oldest large dam”
Disastrous though it was for other nations, the seven-year drought was met by an Egypt that was fully prepared. The remains of a sizeable dam not far from Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis (which was itself built next to the river Nile) are consistent with this preparedness. The Garawi ravine dam (also called Sadd el-Kafara) is described as “the world’s oldest large dam” in the specialist publication Dams. …. While modest by modern standards, relative to its time it was originally a trailblazing 118.7 m (390 ft) high, and with a 98 m (320 ft) thick wall at base that still extends some 113 m (370 ft) in its length today. …. The surviving wall height, though much diminished, still represents “one of the oldest and greatest known dams” in historical terms, as Alper Baba and colleagues observe. ….
Significantly the dam is dated to the Old Kingdom’s “Third Dynasty”, as Schutz, Seidel and Strauss-Seeber note. …. This is the dynasty of the famed seven-year famine that befell Egypt during the reign of king Netjerikhet. Thus the official website of the Egypt State Information Service, under its “Netjerikhet (Djoser) [sic]” entry, declares that “Egypt experienced a seven-year famine during Djoser’s reign” (emphasis added). …
Used only briefly
Modern engineers who have studied the dam note how well constructed it was, “exceed[ing] by far the minimum values … specified for today’s standards” (emphasis added), as Garbrecht states. …. Yet they also note the obvious haste with which it was constructed. A History of Dams author Norman Smith says that the ancient engineer “was in a great hurry to put the dam to work”. …. But why, unless he was aware of a pressing impending need for its precious water?
In spite of this haste in construction, the dam was only used for a short time – a “few years at the very most”, as Smith observes of its tell-tale absence of sedimentation.
“Of one thing we can be certain, however; the dam was only in use for a very short time. … [D]ams always act as traps for silt … behind the remains of the Sadd el-Kafara there is no evidence of siltation at all, indicating that the reservoir must have had a life of a few years at the very most”. ….
That such a dam should ever have been built at all, and particularly not far from the river Nile, has long been a mystery. The traditional explanation for its construction – that it was to mitigate flash floods – borders on the comical, when it is recalled that the rainfall for the area averages 18 mil. (0.7 of one inch) … per year! Similarly unconvincing is the explanation for its brief usage – that it prematurely “collapsed” (hardly likely, given the acknowledged strength and stability of its construction, with its safety standards “exceed[ing] by far” today’s minimum requirements). ….
Yet against the backdrop of Joseph’s famine preparations, the dam is just what we might expect. G.W. Murray’s question, asked soon after World War II, as to “why the ancient Egyptians would have wanted to store so great a body of water apparently in a hurry”… receives a perfectly reasonable answer that squares with all four aspects of the evidence:
- It was built hastily, because of the known countdown to the drought
- It was built not far from the Nile, so it could readily be filled in the good inundation years with an abundant supply of water
- It was situated near Memphis, to drought-proof Egypt’s ancient capital
- It was used, if at all, for only a “few years at the very most, because the drought, though bitter, was also relatively brief – limited to the “seven years” as revealed by God to Joseph.
In short, this “stupendous dam”… as scientists Christina De La Rocha and Daniel Conley describe it, was effectively an additional form of drought “insurance”, taken out, like all insurance, before the event. In this case an event of which Joseph alone, initially, among all the nations, had prior knowledge. ….
Pp. 11-15:
Chapter 2
Joseph’s supergranaries
Near the Step Pyramid at Sakkara, royal cemetery to ancient Memphis, is a vast stone enclosure. Now mostly covered by sand, its distinct rectangular outline is still visible from space … and has been partly excavated. Gisr el-Mudir (“Enclosure of the Boss”) … is enormous – a massive 615 m x 400 m (some 2,000 ft x 1,300 ft) internally … and surrounded by a 15 m (50 ft) thick wall … stretching some two kilometres (1. 25 miles). For perspective, its cavernous hulk could have accommodated more than thirty Tokyo Olympic stadium fields within its near-25 hectares (almost 60 acres), surrounded by a high wall some four times the width of the Great Wall of China at its top!
Mystery
Used by Allied troops during World War II for training, the Great Enclosure (as the Gisr is also called) has long been shrouded in mystery. As Egyptologists Vivian Davies and Renee Friedman observe:
“First noted in the nineteenth century, the full extent of this enclosure was not appreciated until aerial photographs in the 1920’s revealed it to be enormous, and it has intrigued Egyptologists ever since …. However, the excavation of such an immense complex, its walls stretching to the horizon, is a task only slightly less daunting than building it in the first place …”. (Emphasis added). ….
… for all its massive size, the Great Enclosure is astonishingly empty, containing nothing of any structural significance. “No build structure is apparent”, declared site supervisor Ana Tavares. Likewise team leader, surveyor Ian Mathieson:
“The one major discovery was that there was no large structure or feature within the Gisr el-Mudir. The high resolution of the survey has ensured that no feature of any size would be missed”. (Emphasis added). ….
Thus the Polish archaeological team at Sakkara concluded, concerning this “mysterious structure, gigantic in size, the outlines of which are visible today”, that desite the best scientific efforts , “[t]he recent studies carried out by the Scottish mission directed by Ian Mathieson (1927-2010) have not solved the mystery of this unique monument”. ….
…
“Shon Yusef”
Far from being alone, Gisr el-Mudir is just one of a number of similar “supersized” enclosures that are (or till recently were) found in Egypt – from the Delta in the north to Nekhen/Hierakonpolis in the south. Of these, three stand out in terms of their sheer size and the massive thickness of their walls – Gisr el-Mudir itself, Shunet es Zebib at Abydos, and Shon Yusef near Sais in the western Delta. Not that they are all there were, but that they are all which remain, after millennia or weathering and pillage.
The latter, Shon Ysuef (meaning, literally, “Joseph’s Granary”), is especially deserving of mention, as its size rivalled that of the Great Enclosure. When the French Inspector of Antiquities, Georges Foucart, visited there in 1892 and 1894, he marvelled at the “vaste rectangle”, as it still then was – a mud-brick enclosure some 800 metres long, whose massive wall was still mostly intact, in parts up to 11 metres high. Throughout the region, as Foucart reported, the enclosure was known as the granary of Jospeh ….
…. Yet, as with Gisr el-Mudir, Shon Yusef was empty and lacking any structure within. Concerning the removal of its wall bricks, Labib Habachi noted that “no trace of any building was found”. …. This is the story of all the great enclosures under consideration. While subsequent buildings were certainly, in some cases, added, these were invariably indicated by their askew alignment – a sign that they were not part of the original structure. In terms of their original function, the Great Enclosures demonstrably had nothing inside!
Storage challenge
Could it be that these vast enclosures really were some of Joseph’s great granaries? That immense storage facilities of some kind were required for the enormous grain reserves laid up by Joseph is clear from the Biblical record:
“Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure”. (Gen. 41:49; NIV).
No doubt Egypt’s normal granaries – usually identifiable by their distinctive arched roofs – were also employed. But they were generally of a small to medium size, and would have been inadequate for the protracted and widespread famine to come. This was a challenge of an altogether different order, requiring grain-holding facilities to match (“huge quantities … like the sand of the sea … so much … stopped keeping records … beyond measure“).
Interestingly, before the advent of modern grain silos in the mid-19th century, one of the methods for storing grain in much of the world was in outside pits and trenches, protected from the elements and rats by straw, sand and even ash. Of the fertile Carpathian Basin region of Europe, for eample, Ivan Balassa and Gyula Ortutay write that “The pit (verem) is one of the most general forms of grain storage … The seed kept in it for years, sometimes for decades”. ….
They were “forts”
One view is that the enclosures were forts, or military compunds, because such ancient fortifications nearly always included a large perimeter wall. The differences between known Egyptian fortresses and what we find in the enclosures, however, are striking.
THE WALLS THEMSELVES. There is an absence, in the enclosure walls, of any distinctive military features like wall slits for archers, projecting galleries for dropping rocks, internal passages for movement of troops, parapets and towers for strategic advantage, spurs for raining down fire on the enemy, and ditch remains – originally filled with crocodiles. …. The “closest” they come is in their palace facade design, which appears to have been a feature of all of them, and for which, we believe, there is a more obvious explanation.
INTERNALLY. Similarly absent from all the structures is the hallmark of every true fort – the internal grid segmentation into barracks, armoury, officers’ quarters, storage rooms, workshops, etc. There is no hint of this in any of the enclosures, prompting Friedman – a specialist in Hierakonpolis excavations – to observe of that site:
“Although it continues to be called a ‘fort’, as it was first described, this structure certainly had no military function” (emphasis added). ….
SITUATION. An absolute requirement for any military fortress is ground elevation, because of the obvious strategic advantage that this confers. The very opposite is the situation of the great enclosures. Nabil Swelim draws attention to the “low ground … on which they are built” …. Foucart’s Shon Yusef inspection … “[t]he interior space was notably lower than the surrounding fields so that water filled it most of the year”. …. This consideration alone precludes any fort view.
Thus the obervation of Barry Kemp, professor emeritus of Egyptology at Cambridge University, concerning Abydos can equally be applied to all the great empty closures:
“In the case of the ‘forts’ it is in any case unlikely that they were ever intended to be militarily effective or even inhabited”. ….
They were “funerary” structures
Given the historic Egyptian association with pyramids, one might think that the enclosures may have contained, in each case, a pyramid. But there is a total absence of any pyramid indicators. Massive ground disturbance, stone foundations and structural remains – without which a pyramid or even a large tomb would not have been possible – are all conspicuously missing. Thus the Museums of Scotland team concluded of Gisr el-Mudir that there is “no indication of … a pyramid complex” …. Siegel likewis states of it that:
“No evidence for an internal monument or complex comparable to a Step Pyramid or mastaba was uncovered over the course of geophysical surveys of the site”. ….
Concerning the Abydos enclosure the story is the same, as a New York University press release says of Shunet es Zebib:
“Hundreds of later tombs and burials surround it, coming right up to its outer wall, but the enclosure itself was left sacrosanct” (emphasis added). ….
Even Swelim, who favoured a “funerary” interpretation for Gisr el-Mudir, himself acknowledged that “Attempts … to unearth a central structure have been made in vain [just like the] tomb that is absent at Shunet El Zebib and the Hieraconpolis Open Court”. …. And again,
“the Open Courts [i.e.., enclosures] are found at Hieraconpolis and Saqqara but their tombs have not hitherto been found”. ….
They were “palaces” or “temples”
Another suggestion is that the enclosures may have been palace or temple compounds. But if so, where are the relevant remains? Even the satellite data confirm, as historian Elaine Sullivan observes … that Gisr el-Mudir and its neighbouring ‘L-shaped’ enclosure remains are “seemingly without interior architecture”. ….
This is highlighted by the demonstrable haste of the enclosures’ workmanship, showing that they were built for function, not beauty. At Hierakonpolis, a “downhill” slope of almost a metre was tolerated in the enclosure walls … which would have been unthinkable in any complex prepared for either a palace or a temple!
At Sakkara’s Gisr el-Mudir this haste of construction is most apparent. At the site surveyors observe, the enclosure reveals
“… roughly-built, coursed rubble masonry … blocks which are laid out less regularly… rough masonry … roughly coursed masonry …”, with “the excess mortar dripping down copiously …”. ….
Or again,
“The facing blocks consist of undressed pieces of limestone, variable in size, though cut roughly to the same width (25 – 30 cm), the quality of which is poorer than Tura limestone”. ….
Compare this with the superb masonry of the neighbouring Step Pyramid compound. Such is the contrast that the sort of rough blocks which served as mere fill in that complex, were used for external wall facings at Gisr el-Mudir! ….
Pp. 16-20:
The local history
It is significant that two of the enclosures – Shon Yusef and Shunet es Zebib – still contain the word “shunet” (“shon” being a variant form, from the consonantal sounds common to both, shn). That this reflects very ancient usage is confirmed by the fact that shunet is the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic word for “granary”. Budge’s Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary renders it
“Shnu-t….granary”.
the first and only listed meaning. …. To this day Shuna is the Egyptian Coptic word for granary, as noted by former Harvard Arabic specialist Wilson Bishai: Shuna, ‘store house for grains’ ….
Thus Foucart had no hesitation in rendering Shon Yusef as “storehouse of Joseph” in 1894, reflecting the local belief that the vast enclosure was Joseph’s Delta storehouse for the grain. “The tradition is constant throughout the region”, he says in translation, that “this place was … the granary of abundance at the time of the legendary Joseph” ….
The same “shunet” meaning is directly associated with Shunet es Zebib at Abydos. Not only is “granary” (shunet) part of the actual name, but the “storehouse” memory likewise survives in its local history:
“Local legend has it”, observes Sharp, “that it was built by Joseph for storing the harvest in the seven years of famine recounted in Genesis”. ….
Davies and Friedman, too, similarly note the local tradition that it “was one of the granaries that Joseph used for storing the harvest against the seven lean yearsa”. …. Reflecting this are the prolific Shunet above-ground mummies of ibis/akh birds – shown in a subseqent chapter to be a distinctive icon of Joseph in his public office. As Laurel Bestock … reports on the Brown University Abydos Project:
“… the Shunet ez-Zebib, has many places where torpedo-shaped jars full of ibises were laid out singly or in sometimes large groups… .. Ibises are the most common animal mummies at Abydos”. ….
Though from later times, this unusual phenomenon (also in abundance at Sakkara’s Serapeum) is consistent with the above-noted historical memory of both Joseph’s name and the Shunet’s granary function. So, too, are the royal seals from there bearing the name of the famed third dynasty king Netjerikhet (later called Djoser) … identified as the only pharaoh in Egypt’s history directly associated with a seven-year famine. One of these royal seals has, alongside Netjerikhet’s name, a “food storehouse” description …. This plainly identifies both the owner (“Netjerikhet”) and the function (“food storehouse”) of the shunets – similar Netjerikhet identifications having also been found at Hierakonpolis.
Thus Nabil Swelim had no hesitation in assigning the largest surviving enclosure, Sakkara’s Gisr el-Mudir, to Netjerikhet’s third dynasty … also reflecting the third dynasty pottery earlier found there. The name of Netjerikhet’s presumed father, Khasekhemwy, also occurs at two of the four enclosures (Abydos and Hierakonpolis), just as do both names at Khasekhemwy’s Abydos tomb. …. But the bottom line is that the enclosure shunets – by definition, by local tradition, by historical mementos, and by sheer emptiness – on every indicator were granaries.
The grain “sea”
We have, in the striking Aberdeen relief 1553, an example of the extraordinary thickness and height of Egyptian grain in a bumper Old Kingdom year, prompting Galal Sharawi and Yvonne Harpur to specifically note the remarkable “size and rendering of the grain heads”. …. Irrespective of its precise Old Kingdom placement, the relief clearly shows the enormous grain yields of just one Nile Valley/Delta harvest. … the Nile soil’s prolific fertility actually produced “several harvest a year”. [Gutgesell]
Buttressed walls
A most remarkable feature of the inner wall at Gisr el-Mudir is the direction of its buttressing, or reinforcing. It is clearly designed to strenghen the wall the “wrong” way – against pressure from within the Great Enclosure! The following simplifies illustration, adapted from Mathieson and colleagues … highlight this.
[JEA 83 (1997)]
….
…. Ian Mathieson comments on this: The roughly-dressed [inner wall] facing blocks which batter at approximtely seven degrees towards the centre of the wall are supported from behind by further undressed blocks set in fine sand, forming a buttress to the facing [i.e., inner] … wall”. …. Thus the entire wall is described as “pylon-shaped” … not unlike dam walls which are built with a wider base to withstand the internal pressure.
….
“In the cities”
A distinguishing feature common to all the known great enclosures is their city-based location. Concerning Abydos, Korean and Egyptian researchers noted that the city was “only a few hundred yards NE of Shunet El-Zebib”. …. As Sais, Shon Yusef was close to one of ancient Egypt’s eight major population centres. Nekhen/Hierakonpolis was a city well-known for its antiquity, while at Memphis, the capital, Gisr el-Mudir was barely two kilometres (1.3 miles) from the city heart as the crow flies. ….
Such placement is consistent with the stated location of Joseph’s granaries “in the cities”:
“And let them … store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities” (Gen. 41:35). And again, “So he … [Joseph] laid up the food in the cities …” (Gen. 41:48)
Palermo Stone
If an accepted reading of the Palermo Stone is correct, we even have a confirmation of the enclosure building programme from the annals of Egypt. By general consensus, the Stone is speaking in the relevant section of Netjerikhet’s year 4. …. It records, as Egyptologist Francesco Raffaele translates:
“… Stretching the ropes for the Qbh Ntrw (foundation of the eastern enclosure, sic)” Recto (front), register 5. ….
“Stretching the ropes” was the stock Egyptian equivalent of our “laying the foundation stone”. i.e., commencing a building construction – the ancient Greek writer Democritus observing that surveyors in Egypt were called “rope-stretchers”. Whether Raffaele’s “eastern enclosure” applies to Gisr el-Mudir itself, or to its apparent twin (the L-shaped relic just to the east still faintly discernible), is inconsequential if both, as would appear, served the same purpose (Egyptologists and architects Maragioglio and Rinaldi regarded them as originally of the same massive size …). Thus Andrzej Cwiek, in his doctoral dissertation … observes of the above qbh ntrw that “the two monuments were related”, concluding that the “Archaeologically established sequence Khasekhemui-Netjerykhet finds thus its confirmation in the annals (emphasis added). ….
From the Palermo Stone itself, therefore, it would appear that construction work commenced on the great enclosures in Netjerikhet year 4, But this, by our view, represents the beginning of Joseph’s famine preparations, meaning the famine itself must have concluded in Netjerikhet’s year 18 (4 + 7 + 7).
Precisely this is what we find in the Sehel Island Famine Stela, which famously notes the seven-year famine’s conclusion in “year 18, Horus Netjer[i]khet” … explicitly denoting Netjerikhet, and not some unidentified later king at the time of the stela’s carving. The years following the Palermo entry have been broken off, so there is no way of determining what the Nile inundation readings following the final complete year (“3 cubits, 3 palms, 2 fingers” … around 2 m) might have been. But even if only average, as this year was (recalling that the annual readings were taken at the very start of the year, in the first season called “Inundation” – likely before Joseph’s arrival on the scene), that presents no difficulty. The seven years of abundance preceding the famine need not necessarily have come from ultra-high flood levels (lest the supposed inundation god Hapy get the glory), but from an intensification of the normal fertility ….
….
Chain of evidence
We thus have a chain of evidence consistently pointing to Egypt’s “surviving” empty walled enclosures at Sakkara, at Sais, at Abydos, and at Hierakonpolis – as having been Joseph’s granaries. Representatively their shon/shunet “granary” names, their local Joseph history, their “wrong-way” buttressed walls, their near “city” locations, their vast “sea” size, their “food storehouse” seal and their stark emptiness, all point irresistibly to no less. So, too, does their distinctive “palace facade” wall design, confirming that it was “under the authority of Pharaoh”, that their grain sea was stored. (Gen. 41:35,49), as well as the universal attestation of Egyptian history that Netjerikhet was that Pharaoh. Likewise the corroborative evidence from Diodorus of a near-worldwide drought event during which Egypt alone was in a position to export “an abundance of grain”, the fourteen flat-hulled Abydos barges “moored” next to the Shunet granary, and the Palermo Stone’s “year 4” commencement of the great enclosure, perfectly fitting the Sehel Stelsa’s “year 18 Netjerikhet” conclusion of the great famine 14 years later.
Pp. 26-36:
Chapter 3
The Step Pyramid’s witness
A monumental reply
…
Here, to the exclusion of all else except for the carved relief panels ascribed to king Netjerikhet, stand six large, chiselled “barns or storehouses”, as the excavators call them. …. These are not mythical “provisions” for the royal afterlife, being literally rock-hard, dummy granaries only. Rather, by their carefully carved facades of barns, storehouses and imitation grain sheaves, it is as if they are pointing, on the two magisterial walls representing the king, to the defining event of his reign. ….
Consistent with this, and the supergranary identification of the neighbouring Great Enclosure, is their remarkably matching configuration …. Their distinctive five-sided perimeters are essentially identical, reflecting an unmistakable architectural “relationship”, as Nabil Swelim called it, that “cannot be accidental”. ….
Thus Toby Wilkinson observes in the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology that
“the Gisr el-Mudir, including its architecture and construction, provides the context for the design and execution of the Step Pyramid”. ….
….
Great courts
Central to this “context” and “relationship” between the world’s two reputedly oldest stone monuments are their great rectangular “courts”, or enclosures. As Oren Siegel observes,
“it is clear that stone enclosure walls (or at least massive walls clad in Tura limestone) were conceived of as integral parts of these monuments” (emphasis added). ….
Florence Dunn Friedman even descibes the entire Step Pyramid complex as a “great broad court” …. That is, an enclosure writ large – even down to the niched palace-facade walls and five-sided rectangle of the Great Southern Court. Indeed, “rectangular storage chmbers” actually became Egypt’s “most iconic granary models”, as Martina Bardonova observes … also noting that in the famous Meketra granary model “The model granary is made up of open space” (emphasis added). ….
Barry Kemp likewise notes that “The Meketra model is also represented as being open to the sky, and Winlock, in publishing it, quoted modern practice to support this” (emphasis added). …. Thus the open “courts”, or enclosures, were no ornamental afterthought, but fundamental to the architecture of the whole Step Pyramid complex – a fact confirmed by the two-metre thick compacted pebble and sand base of the above Great Southern Court itself.
Literally “wall-to-wall”
But what, as enclosures, were they sumboloically meant to “enclose”? Cecil Firth and J.E. Quibell – Step Pyramid excavators from the 1920’s, along with later Sakkara legend J.-P. Lauer – found by the northern court wall a
“double row of granaries … once filled with barley, as was the gallery itself. The barley had become a light, feathery powder in which we sank above the ankles. From it a considerable quantity, several gallons, of dark brown grain was collected, and a score of more or less complete bearded ears … in two places the name of Neterkhet (sic) [was] clearly legible”. ….
…
… as Step Pyramid researcher Tatjana Beuthe says, they were “found to store grain, fruit, and possibly bread”. … So, at least on initial indications, they would seem to hve been modelling granaries, or, in sum, a granary. And not just half-heartedly, but on a literally wall-to-wall grand scale!
….
Grain milling querns
Two distinctive south court “B-shaped” markers, as Firth and Quibell describe them, are noted by the same excavators. …. They are still there – one intact in its base, the other mostly rubble – and have long eluded any plausible attempt at explanation. Yet their identical shape is found in the standard Egyptian baker’s “quern”, or milling stone, used for grinding grain. Kemp decribes one, in Maketra’s model bakery, as
“having the plan of a letter ‘B’ … the coarse flour and husks fell into the little trough … of the other half of the ‘B'” (emphasis added). ….
This is the very shape exhibited in the Great South Court structures ….
Recalling that “the grinding of cereals using a saddle quern”, as grains researcher Delwen Samuel notes, was “the ancient Egyptian method of processing grain into flour” … these Great South Court structures can only be modelling Egyptian bread-making.
“Barn” fronts
… the barn fronts depicted under the complex call for further comment. Concerning the first set of three, directly under the pyramid, the excavators observe:
“In the southern end of this wall are the three stelae with portraits of the king in low relief; in the northern, three stela-like panels which may, we would suggest, be intended for the fronts of barns or storehouses”. ….
Likewise with the second set, uunder the South Tomb. Quibell is so struck by their quasi-realism that he comments:
“I woud suggest that they may be barns … not thought of as a mere surface ornament but as solid buildings, for in the narrow corridor 12 metres to the west the other ends of them appear”. ….
This goes beyond mere artistic decoration. These “barns or storehouses”, though only dummy in nature, represented actual storage “buildings” all of “12 metres” in length. Alongside the only two sets of panels purporting to portray the Step Pyramid’s owner, are these large scenes carved in stone – not of battles or triumphs, but of “fronts of barns or storehouses”, and “barns … not a mere surface ornament, but as solid buildings”!
Likewise with the three buidlings termed by the excvators the “Princesses” group, just north-east of the actual pyramid. Rejecting a tomb explanation as inprobable, Quibell observes:
“May they not rather … represent the same type of barn or storehouse of which the arched panels in the decorated chambers of the south tomb give the end view?” ….
Thus we have, in three braces of three, the depiction of no less than nine large “barn or storehouse” rock facades in or under the Step Pyramid compound.
Model granaries and bakeries
….
… the so-called “Heb Sed” court buildings, long taken to represent “shrines” and “chapels”, are more naturally understood as model granaries and imitations bakeries. For one, they nearly all carry the trademark arched granary roof, identical to the later rounded roofs of the Ramesseum granaries at Thebes. Like the Ramesseum granaries, they also stand side by side in rows – 12 in one row, 13 in the other (compare the identical 12/13 split in two of the facing granary rows of the Ramesseum). …. Their roofs, too, are painted in the identical red to that of the “dull red bread-baking pottery” which was standard in Egyptian bakeries … while their parallel alignment recalls the known “bakers’ street” practice of the ancients. ….
Were they really chapels or shrines, it would represent a massing of “cellular” worship centres without parallel in Egyptian history. Yet in both the Ramesseum granaries, and the royal Amarna bakeries, this is the very architecture that confronts us. At the latter it was effectively a “Bakers’ Row”, with Kemp describing them as “bakeries … in the form of repeated cellular units” … exactly what we have here! (Cf. the “bakers’ street” of Jeremiah’s time, Jer. 37:21). As we know from the 3rd dynasty tomb of the official Hebaseker, where at least 20 granaries are depicted side by side … such cellular storage was certainly practised in 3rd dynasty granary construction.
Imitation baking ovens
S0, too, with the “curious little cupbords” … as the excavators describe them, found in the same walls, and in the “Princess Tomb” area north of them. They are usually comprised of “small square niches with curved … roofs”, plus an “open dummy door” … hence their quaint “little cupboards” description. ….
More realistically, they recall the standard box oven which was one of the designs for ancient baking. At Amarna, for example, the kitchen ovens of the workers’ village, as found by their excavators Peet and Woolley, revealed that
“A common form of hearth was the box-hearth …. Sometimes a hearth so constructed was vaulted over in brick and so transformed into a baking oven, more like the army field-bakery”. ….
Or again: “… the box hearth was originaly a vaulted oven” … (speaking of no. 1 Main Street, Amarna), as confirmed by the smoke-blackened wall above it.
Thus the Step Pyramid “little cupboards” strikingly resemble the well-preserved baking oven from Pompeii’s 79 AD destruction, even down to its curved top, built-in wall construction, and box design. ….
Confirming this replica baking oven significance are the high, distinctly chimney-shaped “fluted columns” … with their large, drilled holes at the top. A mystery by any other interpretation, they suddenly make sense when seen as dummy chimney “exhausts” for these mock ovens. Egyptian baking has been called a “smoky process” … and the ash-covered oven room of an excavated Giza bakery shows this. …. Yet here these tapered columns, each crowned by two or three conspicuous holes, ornately helmeted, show how the smoke problem was managed by the Egyptians, especially when the bread-making represented was on a large scale.
This in turn explains the two distinctive shapes of “wrong-way” stairs leading up to some of the same west “Heb Sed” buildings. Described by Quibell as “peculiar … with low risers and treads sloping donward” … they immediately have meaning when seen in terms of their hieroglyphic significance. The first step, described as “cushion-like” in form, resembles the rounded bread hieroglyph (Gardiner X4 and N18), while the steps above it are of the downward-sloping half loaf symbol (X7). …. Treacherous for walking up or down (which they obviously were not meant for), they make perfect symbols for an imitation bakery entrance!
Decorative sheaves and bun-top roofing
A common sight throughout the complex is that of decorative harvest sheaves. Concerning one section the excavators write: “In the tiled underground chambers … perhaps running the whole length of the short end of the building, was a number of small sheaves …”. …. Of all the design patterns that could have been chosen, an entire wall is given up to “sheaves”!
Reflecting this is the conical Djed glyph, meaning “stability”, and held by Firth and Quibell to be “no doubt derived from sheaves” …. These Djed “sheaves” signs are not found before the third dynasty. Yet here, in the Step Pyramid, they are everywhere – sometimes up to 54 in one room! …. They even form the main boundary marker design (the other being a rounded “loaf” top), and are a common decoration in doorway arches ….
Similarly widespread is the rounded roof design of much of the complex – what Quibell calls its “barrel-topped buildings”. …. Such a labour intensive design is not common in ancient Egyptian roofs, as we see from the flat and soft inverted “V” shaped roofs of Amenhotep’s surviving Malkata residence (resembling modern roofs). ….Why, then, the pervasive rounded roofs – and all of them in stone – that we find here?
A clue lies in the known rounded roof design of Egyptian silos and granaries. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture describes them, under its entry Grain store, silo, “from the Old Kingdom onwards, as long, vaulted chambers in parallel rows”. …. Thus, as Gardiner acknowledges, “the actual granaries were dome-shaped”. …. Representing the raised top of baked bread and buns, such “vaulted” granaries are most apparent, as we have seen, in the long arched roofs of the Ramesseum granary, and the royal Amarna bakeries. Yet here, in the Netjerikhet complex, they are all around us – in the rounded roofing of the north “Princess Chapel”, the rounded roofing of the south “Princess Chapel”, the rounded roofing of the right “Sed shrines”, the rounded roofing of the left “Sed shrines”, and the rounded roofing of the South Tomb. Even of the top of the king’s underground tomb, the excavators themselves write: “[The] burial place of the Pharaoh … consists of a long superstructure 85 metres in length, with a rounded top carved with fine white limestone” (emphasis added). …. Could anything more resemble a gigantic bread loaf?
“Storehouse” moat
What can account for this architectural preoccupation, seemingly at every turn, with depicting “granaries” and “barns”, “sheaves” and “storehouses” – to use the excavators’ own words? While some other Egyptian tombs may have contained stores for the “afterlife”, nowhere was the granary symbolism nearly as pervasive or multiform as we see here. Even more so considering that the theme was pursued, in the main, with replica rather than real facilities. It almost looks like a benign conspiracy of evidence to help us see the point!
Proof that this was deliberately intended comes in the very configuration of the Step Pyramid complex. One of the hieroglyphic signs for a large storage enclosure is the five-sided open rectangle wsht
…
which Gardiner’s Sign-List (O15) calls a “walled enclosure”. …. Significantly it contains, within its depiction of an open rectangular wall, both the basket symbol (W10) and the bread symbol (XI), leaving no doubt as to its food storage function ….
Only in recent times has it been confirmed that a vast, wsht-shaped lined moat – some 40 metres wide and over 20 metres deep – originally surrounded the entire Step Pyramid complex. Extending, as noted above, all of 2.5 km/1.5 miles …. the moat is noted by Andrzej Cwiek … :
“The existence of the Dry Moat … has been confirmed …. It cannot predate Netjerikhet”. ….
….
… the overall structure of the entire Step Pyramid complex – from its outer perimeter moat, to its great court, to several “shrine” tunnels, to some of its subterranean passages – is stamped with the distinctive wsht enclosure hieroglyph, representing a metaphor in stone for a walled storehouse. This is the identical configuration to the neighbouring supergranary of Gisr el-Mudir!
Chapter 6: Joseph’s canal and character
P. 75:
The extraordinary impact of Joseph upon Egypt continues down to the present, in the form of Bahr Yusef, or Joseph’s Canal. According to a recent Japanese reclamation project of Bahr Yusef, even today the canal irrigates “11 percent of [Egypt’s] total cultivated land …”.
….
…. Xiaofeng Liu observes that “In c. 2300 the canal connecting the Nile and Lake Moeris was deepened and widened to form what is now known as Bahr Yusef”. …. The dating aside, there is noting to question in such a combination of natural topography and human intervention. Thus the Oxford Atlas of the World similarly calls Bahr Yusef a “principal canal” … the very word “canal”, by definition, denoting an at least substantially constructed waterway. ….
P. 76:
So how old is it?
From the inscriptional evidence of the third dynasty, we know that a distinctive “canal” made a sudden appearance in the hieroglyphic record during that dynasty. …. This was no ordinary canal, as indicated by its designation as the “Great Canal” (mer wer). …. Such a term shows that it was largely an engineered construction, since under no circumstances could a natural waterway have been called “great”” by comparison with the mighty Nile. Confirming that this Great Canal was one and the same as Joseph’s Canal is the ancient city of Gurob, situated next to Bahr Yusef, where Joseph’s Canal turns into the Faiyum. The ancient name of the city is known to have been Great Canal … (Mer-wer) – obviously mirroring the canal on which it was situated, i.e., Bahr Yusef. ….
Pp. 77-78:
“Waterway of Joseph”
Accordingly the BBC declares of Bahr Yusef that
“We do now that between 1850 and 1650 BCE a canal was built to keep the branches of the Nile permanently open, enabling water to fill Lake Quaran and keep the [Faiyum] land fertile. This canal was so effective that it still successfully functions today…[F]or thousands of years it has only been known by one name. In Arabic it’s the Bahr Yusef. This translates into English as The Waterway of Joseph. Could this canal have been built by a certain prime Minister called Joseph? Was this Prime Minister the son of….Jacob” (Emphasis added). ….
The dating, though only approximate, is not far off. Clearly the evidence is in, and it is overwhelming. From ancient attestation, to regional recognition, to pyramid harbours, to dynastic fit, to its very name, Bahr Yusef can only be Joseph’s canal. Logically it follows that the pyramids visited each year at Giza by millions, while not remotely needing to have been built by Joseph, were nevertheless enabled in their construction by his already existing canal.
Once generally dismissed by Egyptologists, it is now more widely recognized that Joseph’s Canal was indeed the Old Kingdom “waterway along the western desert edge to the sides of the royal funerary complexes”, which Andrzej Cwiek describes … Miroslav Verner maintains, and Georges Goyon observes. Without, again, any necessarily taking our view, their collective take on the evidence seems confirmed by a series of drill cores and trenches from the late 1980’s which revealed, as Mark Lehner notes, “a Nile channel that ran about 200 to 300 m east of the [greater pyramid] site at Giza…[which] must have served as part of a major inland port at the centre of the Egyptian state” (emphasis added). ….
This is breathtaking stuff. No wonder that the ancient historian Pompeius Trogus … expressly wrote that “Joseph…was eminently skilled in prodigies”. …. No wonder, too, that Joseph was held in such awe in the ancient world that his distinctive Step Pyramid design was imitated, at least conceptually, as far afield as China … in the East, and the Americas in the West.
Pp. 86-87:
Unique Step Pyramid relationship. Joseph’s building genius behind the Step Pyramid has already been established (see chs. 3 and 4). Yet the Buried Pyramid shows a remarkable relationship to it. The respective palace-facade walls of both complexes are of “exactly the same design”, their bastions of the “same measurements”, and their ingresses of “equal spaces”, as Goneim notes . …. Even the massive lengths of the respective enclosures are identical … a correspondence that can only be accounted for by deliberate (and likely common) architectural design!
Both pyramids also share the identical accretion layer construction … (where the layers rest, as it were, slopingly on each other, rather than horizontally as with fourth dynasty pyramids and onwards). Both, too, are step pyramids – a similar distinctive of the third dynasty. Likewise both are the only pyramid complexes with an extensive north court/south court arrangement. In fact, here the massive c. 187 x 187m square north court is doubly accentuated, being raised six metres above the rest of the complex, and then “surrounded by an embankment wall … with bastions”, as Swelim observes, exactly like the [outside] wall of the Complex of Netjerykhet””. …. This represents a literal status “elevation” of the courts, clearly highlighting that the great enclosures were of supreme importance in the public service of the Buried Pyramid’s owner (as suggested also by the tomb’s placement alongside the Gisr el Mudir great enclosure).
A similar parallel (recalling Firth and Quibell’s dummy underground “barns or storehouses” of the Step Pyramid next door) … is the vast granary-lookalike architecture of the underground Buried Pyramid. As noted by Martina Bardonova in her doctoral dissertation, “Grain Storage in Ancient Egypt”,
“More resembling to a kind of storage complex are the rows of storerooms in the U-shaped corridors in the substructure of Sekhemkhet’s … pyramid” (emphasis added). ….
Another indicator is the substantial Step Pyramid “boundary marker” fragment that was embedded in the Buried Pyramid’s wall during construction. …. This confirms that it was built after the Netjerikhet complex, but is clearly related to it, all the more as the piece bore part of Netjerikhet’s royal serekh.
Also noteworthy is the striking “sheaf” configuration of the entrance. …. It reveals the same bundled grain shape found throughout the Step Pyramid. …. A similar “sheaf” top also occurs in the entrance to that monument’s South Tomb.
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Pp. 87-88:
Studied understatement. For all the similarities between the two monuments, no attempt was made by the owner of the Buried Pyramid to rival or upstage the Netjerikhet complex. Its width is awkwardly – almost painfully – narrower than that of the Step Pyramid complex, as the plan shows. The layout, too, seems frugal by comparison, as reflected in the relative slimness of the limestone facing on its walls. Goneim observes that, though clearly built after the Step Pyramid, as its superior masonry and larger stones confirm … yet
“the fine limestone was employed much more thriftily in the casing: the thickness of the fine limestone in [Netjerikhet’s] wall varies between 2.30m. and 4.70m., while in the new [i.e., Buried Pyramid] wall it is reduced to the breadth of one course, i.e., 30-35cm.”….
This is a huge difference. It means that the Buried Pyramid’s walls were between seven and fifteen times thinner than the Step Pyramid’s, not overall, but at the quality end of their limestone casing. Yet as its pyramid base reminds us – at c. 120 m x 120 m, even slightly larger than the Step Pyramid’s c. 125 m x 110 m – it must have been purpose-built for a very famous individual.
Why this architectural self-effacement? Even the site itself was understated in relation to the Netjerikhet complex, being behind it and lacking any of its commanding natural advantages. Positionally, it is almost “shy”. Add to this the already mentioned fact that it was built partly overlapping a natural ditch or ravine within the Sakkara plateau, It was, as Goneim describes it, in the
“south-east corner of the great depression which lies to the south-west of [Netjerikhet’s] enclosure”. Here, he says, “the depression is very low. This accounts for the fact that the new monument was built on a high platform …”. …
Compare this with the superior ground elevation of the Step Pyramid which, at 55 metres (c. 180 ft) … is described by Firth and Quibell as “the highest at Saqqara”. …. If the Buried Pyramid was the king’s tomb that its conventional attribution holds, why – as Verner asks – was it “so remote that the pyramid would be almost invisible from the Nile Valley”? …. Swelim likewise is surprised that the owner “did not build his complex more easterly of the idea was to build imposing monuments to be seen from Memphis”. … Yet if the whole purpose of the ‘inferior’ situation was to remind posterity that the tomb was NOT a king, then its low topography was perfectly chosen.
Joseph and Moses impacted Egypt 