Agency in Ancient Writing

4. Agency in Death: Early Egyptian Writing from Mortuary Contexts

95 Writing is a way of communicating a variety of messages across boundaries. The most obvious of these boundaries are space and time. The ability to bridge these boundaries was undoubtedly a significant factor in the development of writing, but in the case of Egypt this model can be profitably expanded. In this chapter, I suggest that the mortuary context within which much early Egyptian writing is found indicates a further desire to communicate across the boundary between life and death to maintain the individuality, social position, and agency of certain dead individuals. That writing could function as a key ingredient in the continued functioning of the dead in Egyptian society is not a new suggestion, but that this might have been significant to the very development of writing has not been explored. The concept of an afterlife was of defining importance in ancient Egypt from prehistory throughout the pharaonic era; that it is today the most recognizable factor of Egyptian society is only partly the result of a differential preservation of evidence that has favored the mortuary sphere. The role of Egyptian writing in allowing the dead to access and enjoy this afterlife, as well as in mediating the relationship between the living and the dead, is clear from periods where F o u r Agency in Death Early Eg yptian Writing from Mortuary Contexts Laurel Bestock DOI: 10.5876/9781607321996.c04 96 Laurel Bestock writing was well developed. For instance, the relationship among the dead, living , and writing was enshrined in the standardized offering formula starting in the Old Kingdom. This formula, written in hieroglyphic on the offering area of a tomb, ensured perpetual offerings of tangible things, predominantly food and drink, for the deceased. The writing served both as a text to be recited by living offerers at the tomb and as an insurance policy: in the absence of physical offerings, the words themselves could ensure some level of provision for the dead (Collier and Manley 1998, 36). It is also significant that the formula itself explicitly links the deceased to the king; the formula itself starts with “an offering that the king gives.” A search for permanence beyond the threshold of death has also been seen as a principal motivation behind the development of autobiographical tomb inscriptions in the Old Kingdom, one important feature of which was again to stress the favor shown by the king to the deceased official (Baines 1983, 577). Both these genres had a long history in Egyptian mortuary practice, but there are echoes of related uses of Egyptian writing during earlier phases of its development. Although it is not clear that continual offerings were part of very early mortuary practice, maintaining both personal identity and social position, particularly in relation to the king, was an important factor in the location, architecture , and provisioning of tombs from at least the earliest period of Egyptian kingship, hundreds of years before the Old Kingdom. Writing, which was extremely restricted during this period, was another means of demonstrating and perpetuating both individuality and social relations; personal names and royal names are the two earliest types of writing in private elite tombs. This practice suggests that the need to balance individual personhood and social position in death was in place very early. Although this is clearest for private individuals in the First Dynasty, starting ca. 3000 BCE, it can be suggested with somewhat more caution for kings in earlier generations. This argument rests on the contexts as much as the content of early inscriptions. To show that specifically mortuary uses were fundamental in the early stages of Egyptian writing’s development, I will first present a brief discussion of the contexts within which early writing in Egypt has been found. Following this, I will lay out what I am not attempting to do in this discussion and define what I understand “writing” to be in these contexts. I will then turn to specific examples of inscriptions in mortuary contexts and how they allow us to see the continued agency of the dead. THE CONtEXtS OF EaRLY EGYPtIaN WRItING The formative stages of Egyptian writing in the last centuries of the fourth millennium BCE are best represented in mortuary contexts. Rock-cut inscriptions from the period are also increasingly well-known. Almost certainly, there 97 Agency in Death are extensive missing contexts, and as such, we remain unsure of the totality of writing’s uses...