Reviews

046

From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt

Donald B. Redford
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 218 PP., $44.95

Only recently have scholars begun to see Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period (1075–715 B.C.) and dynasties 21–30 (1075–343 B.C.) as worthy of serious attention.

This late period in Egyptian history has traditionally been viewed as a time of artistic and cultural decline—a time in which the high pharaonic civilization gradually came to a close. We are now learning, however, that Egypt of the first millennium B.C. was a more interesting place than we thought. Recent archaeological discoveries have shown, for instance, that Egypt’s art and material culture flourished during the 25th Dynasty (715–657 B.C.), when Egypt was ruled by “black” Nubian rulers from the south. In fact, the Nubians’ penchant for older forms of art and funerary ritual inaugurated a kind of Egyptian Renaissance that was extremely fertile and invigorating.

By the end of the Third Intermediate Period, before the Nubian invasion, Egypt had become severely weakened. It had lost its influence in Syria-Palestine, and it no longer controlled Nubia on its southern border. Egypt was largely ruled by several competing dynasts from Libya, who had filled the power vacuum created by the collapse of the New Kingdom (1539–1075 B.C.). True to their tribal cultural background, these Libyan rulers had managed to divide the land into small fiefdoms. At Tanis, Leontopolis and Bubastis (all on the Nile Delta), several royal houses had sprung up, with each claiming sole kingship of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt, but having little effective power outside the boundaries of their small fiefdoms.

This was the state of affairs when the Nubians invaded Egypt in the mid-eighth century B.C. At least that’s the story propagated on official Nubian monuments, such as the victory stela erected at the Nubian site of Gebel Barkal (with copies placed at Karnak and Memphis) by the Nubian warrior and king Piankh/Piye (750–715 B.C.).

The Nubians viewed their invasion of Egypt as an attempt to rid the land of the “impious” Libyans. Adherents to Egypt’s millennia-old Amun religion, the Nubians considered themselves as restorers of maat (justice, order, global harmony) who would re-unite the land and re-establish a strong and peaceful realm.

Donald Redford’s From Slave to Pharaoh presents a lively account of this period of Nubian rule during Egypt’s 25th Dynasty. Although Redford is careful to state that his book “is not a history of Nubia and the Sudan in antiquity, still less a history of Egypto-Nubian relations up to the seventh century B.C.,” he does place this episode of Egyptian history within the broader historical context of previous Egyptian-Nubian cultural contacts, devoting more than a third of his book to Egyptian-Nubian relations during the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom and the intervening Intermediate periods.

Redford then describes the political and military history of Egypt immediately prior to the Nubian invasion of Egypt. This material and his chronicle of the Nubian invasions provide the background 047necessary to appreciate the Egyptian administrative and military institutions that arose under the so-called Black Pharaohs.

In the book’s penultimate chapter, “Thebes under the Twenty-fifth Dynasty,” Redford presents the results of his own excavations at East Karnak. With its many photos, drawings and site plans, this chapter provides new and interesting information on middle-class domestic structures in the Theban area during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. (though this technical chapter will be difficult for the general reader).

From Slave to Pharaoh makes for a lively read, primarily because of Redford’s emphatic and passionate writing style. The uniformed reader, however, should be warned not to accept all of Redford’s value judgments as established fact. Redford characterizes later forms of Nubian art, for example, as “bastardized and degenerate,” which is his personal opinion (however informed) and does not represent a consensus of Egyptologists.

Redford’s discussion of the various functionaries associated with the estate of the Divine Worshiper is similarly tainted by his own view of the institution of the God’s Wife. In the two centuries spanning the period from 740 to 525 B.C., a group of five women held the title of God’s Wife (or Divine Consort) and Divine Worshiper successively. All five women were royal princesses, daughters of the reigning kings. These women appear in ritual scenes that were previously preserved for the king only. Many of the rituals they were shown as participating in were part of the legitimating process of kingship. In addition, numerous officials and artisans were associated with the estate of the Divine Worshiper. Because very few historical documents survive from this period, the extant iconographical evidence has become a major source of information for our understanding of the institution of the Divine Worshiper. Yet Redford ignores the iconography 048of the God’s Wife in his discussion of the institution, writing that “this ÔPrincess Court’ was more theme park than City Hall.”

Although some of the more intriguing questions posed by Redford never get answered (for example, “How were the dark-skinned Nubians and Sudanese blacks perceived and treated by the Egyptians?”), this book will provide the lay reader with a lively introduction to this little-known period of Egyptian history. The 50 pages of notes at the end of the book are a valuable resource for further reading and research and will be useful to both the devoted student and lay person alike.

From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt