EGYPTS LEGACY
Egypts Legacy explores the majesty of ancient Egyptian history from 300030 BC. Beginning with a chronological outline of the main events, it goes on to explain the importance of the dissemination of Egyptian history in the west.
The books unique approach is based on the Jungian idea that certain psychological drives, known as archetypes, lie dormant in our shared unconscious. Michael Rice argues that characteristic Egyptian institutions such as the nation-state and an omnipotent, isolated god are powerful and complex archetypes. They are fundamental in the unconsciousness of western civilizations, and their influence shows itself as these civilizations attempt to give them form.
Persuasive, imaginative and thought-provoking, Michael Rices work offers stimulating insights for students, scholars and all those who are interested in the history of Ancient Egypt.
Michael Rice is also the author of Egypts Making (2nd edition Routledge 2003). He has published extensively on the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt and the near East. He is particularly interested in the origins of complex societies, and has established museums throughout the Arabian peninsula states.
First published 1997
This paperback edition published 2003
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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1997, 2003 Michael Rice
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
ISBN 0-203-48667-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-57017-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-26876-1 (pbk)
ISBN 0-415-15779-X (hbk)
The Beautiful God,
Lord of the Two Lands,
Lord of Diadems,
Neb-Kheperu-Ra,
Tutankhamun,
Given Life for Ever,
Who opened my ears and my eyes.
PREFACE
It may very well be asked, Why another history of Ancient Egypt and why should this author think himself competent to write it? Having asked the questions myself, I will attempt to answer them and, in doing so, try to give some justification for the book which is before you.
It was suggested to me that I should write a history of Egypt, following the kindly reception which was given to my earlier book Egypts Making, which reviewed the origins of the Egyptian state and which was published in 1990. That book attempted to bring together the currently available material on the earliest phases of Egyptian history, a period which has always particularly interested me.
Egypts Making was, I think, unusual in that it attempted to interweave some of the insights which C.G.Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, brought to the study of Egypt in ancient times. As I wrote the book I became more and more convinced of the validity of applying many of the concepts which Jung developed, although they were primarily conceived in terms of the analysis of individuals, to the study of the development of the Egyptian state, in the time of its beginnings and its first brilliant flowering.
I am aware, of course, that Jungs reputation in some intellectual circles has undergone a degree of eclipse. This is perhaps inevitable for one who was so multi-talented and who, particularly in his later years, often relied as much on intuition and inspiration as on analysis. It is also true that many of his most telling insights about the origin of societies came from the briefest acquaintance with people whom he would regard as primitive the African tribes, the Pueblo Indians, for examplebut nonetheless such insights are powerful and, I believe, entirely valid in the study of man as a social animal, endowed with the equivocal gift of consciousness.
Egypts Making drew attention to the quality, often disparaged, of early Egyptian technology and, in particular, emphasised the importance of stellar observations in the principal cults which emerged in the Nile Valley around the beginning of Egyptian history. It also attempted to set Egypt into the broader context of the ancient Near East, a consideration which has not always carried weight amongst some Egyptologists and other writers on the antiquity of Egypt who have preferred, not altogether unreasonably, to concentrate their analyses of the unique achievement of Egypt within its own frontiers.
When I came to writing Egypts Legacy I decided that there was little point simply in trying to write another history of Egypt. There is no shortage of excellent, up-to-date surveys of Egypts history, many written by scholars far better qualified than I to record the minutiae as much as the great events of that rich inheritance. I decided therefore to write a history of the Two Kingdoms which would offer the outlines of the principal events and the main personalities involved but which would be written from a particular standpoint which has for long interested me.
I have been fortunate in that I have been able to indulge a lifetimes fascination for ancient Egypt in generous measure, for I have spent much of my professional life in Egypt and in lands peripheral to it. Viewing Egypt therefore from both the north and east, as it were, I have been able to meditate above all else on why Egypt has been so important a country for so very long.
This is the issue which Egypts Legacy particularly explores. It is subtitled The Archetypes of Western Civilisation 300030 BC because in considering the course of Egypts history it examines what I believe to be the psychological imperatives which underlay and indeed largely determined the principal events in that history which in turn seem to have first given expression to the most familiar components of what we have come generally to regard as civilisation. Egypts supreme legacy to the world which came after it was the identification and naming of the archetypes which I believe sprang from the Nile Valley peoples collective unconscious.
One of C.G.Jungs most compelling insights was the realisation that the collective unconscious is common to all men, in all times, everywhere in the world. The study of mythology from around the world and the great mass of anthropological evidence drawn from complex societies as much as from those which Jung, with no sense of political correctness, would have classified as primitive, gives irrefutable support to this contention. The acknowledgment of the common psychic inheritance of mankind is deeply exciting for it allows us to begin to comprehend the motivations of the series of mythically-based belief systems which have so bemused our unfortunate species, blessed and cursed, in equal measure, as it sometimes seems, with that faculty of consciousness.
If this principle be accepted, namely that it is possible to begin to understand the psychological imperatives which have driven humankind as a whole throughout its history, then it follows that the same principle can with advantage be applied to the study of history, the record of human societies and the acts of men considered collectively. Obviously historical circumstances, environmental factors and the conditioning applied to individuals (when they can be identified) by all societies will affect particular cases but in broad outline the principle will remain secure. What originated as a system for analysing the psychoses of individuals can be applied, with appropriate reservations, to the study of the group and hence of societies, considered in relation to their historical experience. The role of the group in determining essential behavioural characteristics is clear: given the common psychological inheritance of mankind it could not be otherwise.
