The Mother's Brother in Ancient Egypt Author(s): Edmund Leach Source: RAIN, No. 15 (Aug., 1976), pp.

19-21 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032614 Accessed: 28/05/2010 18:35
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rai. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RAIN.

http://www.jstor.org

men listed in lines 5-6 obviously acted as witnessesof the transaction.Nonetheless, the text is not a legal contractin our sense,as the witnessesdid not sign the document.It is rathera privatenotice for Penpyom,the buyer of the jar of fat. If in the futurethere were any questioning of the validityof the transactionhe would be able to quote in court the exact 'price',that is, the commoditieshe to Hay, as well as the names of delivered the personswho could bear witness to it. As regards the prices themselves,the jarmentionedhere (called3cc) is obviously a verylargeone, since we know fromother texts that the price of fat was not especiallyhigh, while 31 dbn is quite a largeamount of 'money', equivalent to the value of a good donkey and considerably more than that of an ordinary coffln or bed. No written record wouldhave been made for a small quantity of fat. The price, however,was not Wehappen to possess four abnormal. othermentions of similar jars of fat, all of which cost 30 dbn. It is a matter of chancethat in this case the price was 1 dbn more, due to the 'prices'of the bronzewash-basin and the other vessel (also certainlyof bronze). Each objectwas valuedindividually,and it had to be accepted as an item in the deal by the other party. Seller and buyer were more interestedin the commodities than in their ratherabstractprices. In this instancethe value of the objects offered and accepted in exchangefor the jar of fat could be establishedfairly exactly: the bronze vesselshad only to be weighed,their weight being the same as their price. In other instancesthe price of commoditieswere more or less traditional,as in the case of basketry, mentionedabove. The main factor in the transactionwas that both seller and buyerwanted these particular objects, and valuingthem was only a way of ensuringthat the exchangedid not bringexcessivegain to one of them. Thismeansthat the seller of the fat in our example,althoughhe received 31 dbn insteadof the usual 30, cannot be said to have made a 'profit';at least, that would not be the Egyptianview. In general,it appearsthat 'profit' in our sense playedhardlyany part in these transactions- unless one understands by 'profit'the fact that both parties acquiredobjects they wanted to possess.Usuallyit was almost impossible to establisha precisevalue. Even in our examplethe 'prices'of the vessels arenot very accurate,for it seems unlikelythat they weighedexactly 19 and 12 dbn respectively.Fractionsof dbn were obviously disregarded. And what could have been the exact value of a coffin in a society where the time needed to make it could not be measuredmore than very roughly and had hardlyany value at all, while the rawmaterialwas in many instances almost valuelessand in others providedby the government?Tradition and the craftsman's pridein his product were thereforewhat governedthe generallyacceptedprices. I have dwelt on this point at some length becauseit illustratesso well the

he

Mother's n Ancent
God, the Motherof God (God, the Motherof God) but also daughter, sister of God)
r

Brother Egypt
Godthe Father

Godthe Son )g (Godthe Father) ) r+

(Godthe Son)

Figre 1 I

As ProfessorBaineshas made clearin his Introduction,I am the Joker in this pack. It is clearly foolhardy for a social anthropologistto ventureinto territory governedby such specialisederudition. By virtue of bibliographic advicewhich I receivedfrom ProfessorBainesand from ProfessorJ. Gwyn Griffithsmy ignorance of the immediatelyrelevantliteratureis not quite as profound as it might otherwise have been but, even so, whateverI may think I know about Ancient Egyptian history and mythology I have learnt only by absorptionfrom second and third hand sources.Moreover,since the professional experts do not agreeamongthemselves, the anthropologist,as commentaattitude not only of the inhabitantsof this particular village,but certainlyof ancient Egypt as a whole, in economic matters.For the majorityof the population the economy was one of subsistence, and villagesprovidedthemselveswith almost all they needed for their daily life. In such circumstances there is generallylittle room for a 'market'in the economic sense, and 'makinga profit' was not the drivingforce of the economy. However,the settlement of the necropolisworkmenconstitutes a special case, as its inhabitantsdid not produce their own food. They belongedentirely to the 'redistribution' sphere,in which the king (the state) collected a portion of the country'sproductsin orderto redistribute them amonghis direct servants. Most of these were state officials, priests, soldiersetc., but they also includedthe buildersof the pyramidsin the Old Kingdomand the necropolisworkmen discussedhere. As yet, little is known of the details of the system, and the only element in it from which our documentation is fairly abundantis Deir elMedfna.On the one hand, the community was exceptional as comparedwith the majorityof the population, while on the other hand, the largenumberof documentsfound there gives us a fairly clearpictureof the way in which the Egyptiansthought about economic matters. J. J. Janssen

tor, is in a difficult position. After some unsuccessfulexperimentationin more conventionalmodes of scholarlypresentation I have decided to presentmy argumentwith the absoluteminimum of direct referenceto egyptological sourcesand commentaries.However,at the end of this paper I have appended a short list of fairly recent sourcesall of which are lavishlyequippedwith scholarly footnotes. This should providemy critics with all the technicalammunition they may need to take my argumentto
pieces.

II Fig. 1 illustrates,in schematicform, a generaltheologicalpropositionwhich

References Cernk, J. 1951, Catalogue des ostraca hieratiques non-litteraires de Deir el-M,dineh 5. Cairo: I.F.A.O. = I.F.A.O., Documents de fouilles 7. &ernk, J. 1973, A Community of Workmenat Thebes in the Ramesside Period. Cairo: I.F.A.O. = I.F.A.O., Bibl. d'Etude 50. Crawford, D. 1971, Kerkeosiris: an Egyptian Village in the Ptolemaic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. = Cambridge Classical Studies. General Bibliography For the remains of Deir el-Medina see the excavation report by Bernard Bruyere, Rapport sur les fouilles de Deir el Medineh (1934-1 935) 3, Le village, les d&harges publiques, la station de repos du col de la Vallee desRois (Fouilles de l'I.F.A.O. 16 Cairo 1939). General books on the economy of ancient Egypt are as yet very rare. The most important is the recent study by Wolfgang Helck, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des alten Agypten im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend vor Chr. (Handbuch der Orientalistik 1.1.5, Leiden: Brill 1975). For a quite different approach see J. J. Janssen, 'Prolegomena to the Study of Egypt's Economic History during the New Kingdom', Studien zur altigyptischen Kultur 3 (1975) 127-85. The economy of the village and in particular the prices of commodities have been studied by the present author in Commodity Prices from the Ramessid Period. An Economic Study of the Village of Necropolis Workmen at Thebes (Leiden: Brill 1975). Translations of economic texts from the New Kingdom as a whole are given by Wolfgang Helck in the series Materialien zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Neuen Reiches (6 vols., Akademie der Wiss. und der Literatur., Abh. der Geistes- und Sozialwiss. K1. 1960. 10-11, 1962. 2-3, 1964. 4, 1969. 4, 13, Wiesbaden: Steiner 1961-9, Indices by Inge Hofmann, 1970). Translations of texts from Deir el-Medlna, mostly about legal matters, but including sale transactions and similar material, may be found in Schafik Allam, Hieratische Ostraka und Papyri aus der Ramessidenzeit (Tubingen: published by the author 1973).

19

providedan importantareaof controversy duringthe early centuriesof Christianity. The same propositionis implicit in a varietyof well known non-Christian mythologicalsystems includingthose relatingto giva, Aiyanarand Parvatiin Indiaand Osiris,Horusand Isis in Ancient Egypt. If total Deity is conceived of as a bisexualtriad - God the Father,God the Son, and God the 'Motherof God' - but the theology insists that God the Father and God the Son have been consubstantial-coeternal from the beginning,then the system by which God the Father'begets'God the Son throughthe body of the Motherof God replicatesitself indefinitely, so that the Motherof God is also the Spouse of God, the Sister of God, and even the Daughterof God. In Ancient Egypt the institution of DivineKingshipassociatedwith 'positional succession'- the system whereby a holder of office becomes absorbedin that office' - gavemanifestexpression to just such a mythology. The legitimacy of the reigningking dependedupon the principlethat he was both the living 'son' of his dead predecessorand also of the immediatedivinereincarnation his dead predecessor.Correspondingly, the QueenMother,i.e. the principalwidow of the formerking, was simultaneously both the 'mother'of the reigningking and his 'wife'. At certainstagesduringthe course of its long but erraticdevelopment,the mythology of Osiris,Horusand Isis 'mapped'this relationshipbetween religiousideology and reallife politics very closely. The reigningKingwas Horus,the deceasedKingwas Osiris,the QueenMotherwas Isis. But since Osiris and Horusare two personsbut one god, (in that living Horusin due course becomes dead Osiris)the half-sisterprincipalQueen of the livingKingwas also, like the QueenMother,potential Isis. III Weneed not concern ourselveshere with all the ramifyingelaborationsof the mythology but certain Osiris-Horus-Isis details which are implicit in the genealogical schemashown in Fig. 2 are very

I I
C/)
-

I~
(structural structural

The dead

HORLJS The living King

opposition: alliance)

Figure 2

pairOsiris/ relevant.The sibling-spouse Isis is matchedby anothersibling-spouse pair Seth/Nephthys and all four are immediatesiblingsto one characters another.Nephthys is a consistently shadowy characterwho is, in some respects,

from variousperiodsin Egyptianhistory a double of Isis. By contrast, Seth on the but mostly in fragmentary form. The on the other one hand and Osiris-Horus particularstory that I shall now discuss are consistentlypolarised.In the best is nearlycomplete. It is a seemingly known story Seth is the murdererof seculardocumentwritten in hieratic Osiris. At an abstractlevel of exegesismany of script and datingfrom the Ramessid the associatedstories make consistent sense period (i.e. New Kingdom 1150 B.C. or later). The Document, which is known as is treated as a if the dyad Osiris-Horus PapyrusChesterBeatty I, was first symbol for 'legitimateorder'and Seth publishedin 1931 with an Englishtransas a symbol for 'illegitimateconfusion'. lation by Sir Alan Gardiner. Therehave From anotherpoint of view, Horusis been subsequenttranslationsin German, Lord of the livinghere-and-now as Frenchand Englishand severalcomcomparedwith Osirisas Lord of the mentaries.The general'plot' of the story underworldLandof the Dead. In that is an elaborationof the motif of the context Seth becomes the storm on the ShabakaStone text which I have outlined horizon, the Lord of the ambiguous above. Osirisis alreadydead though he areabetwixt and between. continues to exist off stage as King of But in this paperI am specially conthe Underworld.Horusand Seth are portion of this cernedwith a particular contendingfor the succession.The arbiters mythology which first appears,much garbled,in lines 7-18 of the Shabakastone of the matter are againthe Ennead,here under the chairmanship of the sun-god in the BritishMuseum.The stone itself Re-Atum.The contestantsplead for dates only from the 8th CenturyB.C. but the text may belong to the Old justice before the Court,but details of the pleadingsare interspersed with Kingdom. details of the individualcontests between In this story Horusand Seth have quarrelledover the succession.The Court Horusand Seth who repeatedly'agree to have a battle' ratherin the mannerof of the Nine Gods (the Ennead)under the Tweedledumand Tweedledee.The presidencyof Geb, the All Father, first contests take a variety of forms;most of settles the quarrelby makingHorus them involve trickery;there aremarked King of Lower Egypt and Seth King of elements of scatologicalobscenity. In UpperEgypt and dividingthe two lands. each of the individualcontests Horusis Then the judgementis revisedand the the victor, but then the battle startsup whole inheritanceis given to Horus. again.The violence is extreme;at one Laterthe text refersto the 'house of Ptah', 'that means Horusand Seth, point in imitation of an ancient story so concerninga strugglebetween a Falcon pacified and united. They fraternised as to cease quarrelling . . .' (Horus)and a Bull (Seth), Horustears off Seth's testicles and Seth tears out In its originalcontext at Memphis Horus'eyes; yet there is something the story had political implications,for artificialabout the struggle,as if neither Memphis,which is specified as a Royal protagonistwas altogetherserious. City, stood on the boundarybetween Indeed severalof the contests have Upperand LowerEgypt. But even in of ritualised much later times the King carriedthe preciselythe characteristics farce which anthropologists have long double title. He was not just 'Horus' recognisedas the hallmarksof a joking but 'Horusand Seth'. relationship: The older interpretationsof this text in terms of conjecturalhistory are unconFor example: vincingbut this much at least is certain. Therewas a very ancient traditionof a 1. Seth challengesHorusto a rowing quarrelbetween Seth and Horusover the match, but says that the boats must issue of succession.In this ancient tradibe of stone. Horuscheats by making tion the final rulingof the Enneadin an ordinaryboat and pretendingthat resulted Horus in favourof fraternisation it conforms to the rules. Seth then between Horusand Seth. arrives with his stone boat which all the the stories together Taking sinks. then turnshimself into a Seth mythology as a whole fits tolerablywell hippopotamusand attacksHorusin with the following rathermundane his boat. Horusarmshimself with his explanation.If Osirisis to Seth as Order spearand is about to kill off Seth is to Confusionthen the death of a reignbut desists at the requestof the gods. representedas ing King is appropriately 'the murderof Osirisby Seth'. The 2. Seth pretendsto Horusthat all the interregnum period before the new hostilities are over so the pair sleep regimebecame fully establishedwould together as friends.Seth then makes then be a period of strugglebetween a homosexual attack on Horus.Horus legitimateorderand illegitimateconfumanagesto preservehis virginityby sion, that is 'a strugglebetween Horus catchingSeth's semen in his hand. He and Seth'. The establishmentof the new shows the semen to Isis (?? a complex regimewould be 'the triumphof Horus suggestionof incestuousintent). over Seth and the bindingof Seth in Isis cuts off Horus'contaminated chains'.But in that case why should hand which falls into an irrigation Horusand Seth finally be seen as allies ditch. Then, in collusion with Horus, and close friends? Isis plans reprisals.She masturbates Horusand spreadsHorus'semen on the lettuces which constitute Seth's IV food. Seth eats the lettuces and Manytales concerningthe conflicts becomes pregnantwith Horus'semen. between Seth on the one hand and Osiris Seth summonsHorusto the Courtof and Horuson the other have survived the Gods wherehe declaresthlathe .

20

has demonstrated his dominanceover Horusby treatinghim 'as a man treatsa woman'. Horusdenies the accusation.Thoth, as Clerkof the Court,calls upon Seth's semen to declareits whereabouts.Seth's semen answers from the ditch. Thoth then makesa similarcall to Horus'semen and, after some argument,a golden disc (the moon) bursts from Seth's shoulder.Thoth promptly appropriates the symbol as his own, but Horusis declaredthe winner of that particular roundof the ongoingbattle. However,at the end of the day there is a sort of anticlimax.On the instruction of the Presidentof the CourtIsis brings in Seth manacled'as a prisoner'. 'SaidAtum to him: Why do you not allowyourselvesto be judged, but usurpfor yourself the office of Horus? SaidSeth to him: On the contrary my good Lord. Let Horus,son of Isis, be summonedand be awarded the office of his father Osiris'. So it is Seth ratherthan Atum who is the King-maker! V As can be seen from Fig. 2 Seth's ambiguouskin relationshipto Horusis, amongother things, that of mother's brotherand at severalpoints in our text he is so described.On the basis of this referenceto the 'avunculate', some egyptologistshave suggestedthat the storiesof the conflict between Seth and Horusrepresentsome kind of hangover from matriarchy or at least from matrilineal succession(e.g. Kohler(1972) p. 19, footnote 1, and Clark(1959). The latter flatly assertsthat 'the crux of the matteris that The GreatQuarrel is a clashbetween two systems of inheritance'). It seemsunlikely that any properlyqualifiedsocial anthropologist would now want to interpretthe evidencein this way; the whole ideology in termsof which the stories are couched appearsto be unambiguously patrilineal. Admittedlythe avunculateis still a source of anthropological controversybut to me it suggestsinstitutions of privileged familiarityandjoking relationshiprather than matrfliny(cf. Radcliffe-Brown (1952)). In the technicaljargonof social anthropologya 'jokingrelationship'is one in which the structurallyimplied obligationsexisting between two members of a system are self-contradictory. For exampleit may be that because two individuals A and B are membersof opposed groupsthere is a structural expectation that they will show hostility towardsone another,but becausethey are membersof alliedgroupsthey have an obligationto be friendly towardsone another.Or againbecauseA and B are of differentgenerations,B being senior to A, A should show respect for B, but becauseB must be contrastedwith some other seniorindividualC, the convention becomes invertedand A is expected to show exaggerated disrespectfor B. The outcome of such contradictionsis that violent aggressive behaviourtowards equals or extremeinsultingbehaviour towardsseniorsis interpretedas a

My egyptologicalacquaintances in demonstrationof friendshipand social fact tell me that there is no known solidarity! evidence that Egyptiansocial customs The anthropological literatureon either duringthe New Kingdomor at 'jokingrelationships'is very large,and any other date expressedsocial solidarity relationshipsof this kind are not conby means of the paradoxicalbehaviours fined to any one type of society or to which anthropologists any one type of relationship; categoriseas but many of the textbook examplesrelateto privilegedfamiliarityandjoking relationship, but perhapsthey might look societies in which the 'joking'is between againat the data. It seems to me that brothers-in-law or between mother's the story known as the Tale of the Two brotherand sister'sson and the envelopBrothers,part of which contains a motif ing society is one in which rules of very similarto that of the Biblicalstory of patrilinealsuccessionapply. The question thus ariseswhetherthe Joseph and Potiphar'swife, might be a good place to start. author of P. ChesterBeatty I might not have been familiarwith a real life social Edmund Leach institution involving'joking" behaviour of this generaltype. In that case the 1. For elaboration of the concept of positional implicationsof the repetitivecontests succession see especially Cunnison (1959), between Seth and Horuswould be index references to 'succession, positional' and 'perpetual kinship'. Cunnison summarises the somewhat different from what they have Luapula institution thus: (p. 98) 'individuals hitherto been taken to be by orthodox (may be considered) not as persons but as the egyptologists. holders of names, positions and offices. Each This suggestioncannot be advanced man has a name. On his death the name subsists as an attribute or possession of the lineage. with any great confidence, becausewhen After a while the lineage finds a member to the principleof positional successionis succeed to the name. The member is then the appliedto the kinshipconformations embodiment of two positions and holds two indicatedin the schemaof Figs 1 and 2, names, his own original one and the one he inherits. Of these the inherited overrides the the individualrelationshipsbecome original name and position, because it is highly ambiguous.Dependingupon which either of a senior generation, or else it is senior position is given weight the relationship in the same generation ( a senior never succeeds between Seth and Horuscan be either a junior). Children in these terms are children mother's brotherto sister'sson or father's of a position rather than an individual . .. the successor becomes a husband to the wife and brotherto brother'sson or elder brother a father to the children of the deceased . . . the to youngerbrother.The Egyptianterm successor adopts the persona of his dead sn can carryany of these meanings kinsman'. The titles and mythological identifications (cf. Kohler 1972), so that exact relationassociated with the Egyptian kingship were ships can be defilned with certainty only transmitted from office holder to office holder when there is some furtherfactor to in a manner very similar to this. limit the field of choice. In P. Chester Beatty I itself, the readeris offered the alternativeof viewingHorusas Seth's References Clark, R. T. Rundle, 1959, Myth and Symbol sister'sson or as-hisyoungerbrother.
in A ncient Egypt, London: Thames and Hudson. Cunnison, Ian, 1959, The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, Manchester: Manchester U.P. Gardiner, Alan H., 1931, The Library of A Chester Beatty: Description of a hieratic papyrus ... (The Chester Beatty Papyri No. 1), Privately printed, London: Oxford University Press. Griffiths, J. Gwyn, 1960, The Conflict of Horus and Seth from Egyptian and Cla.ssical Sources, Liverpool U.P. = Liverpool monographs in Archaeology and Oriental Studies. Griffiths, J. Gwyn, 1966, The Origins of Osiris, Berlin: Hessling = Munchner Agyptologische Studien 9. Jacobsohn, H., 1939 (reprinted 1955), Die dogmatische Stellung des Kbnigs in der Theologie der alten Agypter. Gluckstadt, etc.: Augustin. = Agyptologische Forschungen 8. Kohler, U., 1972, Einige Uberlegungen zu den verwandschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen Horus und Seth im Pap. Chester Beatty No. 1. Gottinger Miszellen. G6ttingen. 1:17-20. Otto, E., 1969, Legitimation des Herrschens im pharaonischen Agypten. Saeculum. Freiburg - Munchen. 20:385411. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 1952, Structure and function in primitive society. Essays and addresses. London: Cohen and West. W. K. (ed.), 1973, The literature of Sinmpson, ancient Egypt, 2nd ed. New Haven-London: Yale U.P. Spiegel, J., 1937, Die Erzahlung vom Streite des Horus und Seth in Pap. Beatty 1 als Literaturwerk. Gluckstadt, etc.: Augustin. = Leipziger Agyptologische Studien 9. te Velde, H., 196 7, Seth, god of confusion. Leiden: Brill. = Probleme der Agyptologie 6. Wente, E. F., 1973, The contendings of Horus and Seth [translation of P. Chester Beatty I], in Simpson (1973: 108-26).

VI Although the theme of P. ChesterBeatty I derivesfrom Ancient Egyptianmythology, the style of the document is not serious.It readsas if it were an Egyptian Iliad edited by an EgyptianAristophanes. The gods of the Enneadare slightly comic characters who exhibit markedpersonal prejudice.The Presidentof the Court (Re-Atum)is sulky and ineffective but on the side of Seth. Thoth, who is master of ceremoniesand clerk of the Court,is all for law and orderand consistently on the side of Horus.Most of the other named characters keep changingsides. Even Isis who, as mother/wife of Horus/ Osiris,is usually on the side of Horus, is persuadedat one criticalpoint that her sisterly duty to her brotherSeth is greaterthan her duty to a 'stranger' (i.e. to Osiris/Horus consideredas affines). In other words the theme of ambiguityof obligationand especiallyof the ambiguity of kinshipobligatio.n is recurrentthroughout the whole story and is not confined to the particularcase of Horusversus Seth. Since P. ChesterBeatty I readsas if it were a tale told to amusea secular audience,one must suppose that the authorhad in mind an audiencewho would recognisethe jokes. This suggests that in his representation of ambiguous kinshipbehaviourhe was drawingon real life experience.

21