CHAPTER 6 The Fight against Wisdom and Power of the Matriarchal Primeval Culture
There was a Matriarchal Queenship for one or two Thousand Years before the first Kings
It is not without pride that today’s authors mention that a kingship had been in power in Egypt since prehistoric times. Archeologist Renée Friedman said: »Whilst the enduring achievements of the early Old Kingdom, the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx, symbolize for many the apogee of royal power, it has become increasingly clear that the roots of Egyptian kingships go back much further, into the Predynastic period. « (1994, p. 4 f) »From before ›history‹ began, Egyptian society centered on kingship«, also confirmed John R. Baines (cited by Toby Wilkinson 1999, p. 183).
»The Egyptian kingship was not a new emergence of high culture;
it had already been around since the Nagada I era. « (Toby Wilkinson)
But this was not a kingship but a queenship!
What the enthusiastic authors do not mention, there are – in contrast to the dynastic period of historical Egypt – no signs of violence or war in predynastic time. The world was peaceful and prosperous. However, this does not seem worth mentioning for Egyptologists. This shows the bias of patriarchal historiography, which of course also applies to Egyptology, which says: ›War has always existed, since the beginning of time‹. In the minds of patriarchal historians, a world without war, a kingdom without violence, a ›culture‹ without military is not possible. The prehistoric non–violence is not even mentioned by them. Perhaps therefore, this is not done on purpose, but because they cannot imagine it. Patriarchal indoctrination has blinded them (and all of us!) to facts that do not fit into the patriarchal scheme. We assume that it has always been as it is today, a patriarchal form of government with constant wars and constant violence. A female kingship, a royalty, with a queen at the head of the state is clearly provable.
The Red Crown ›Deshret‹
In Naqada, Upper Egypt, Flinders Petrie found the pottery shard of a vessel with the image of the Red Crown from the period between 4000 and 3800 or earlier.
The Red Crown, 4000–3800 (Amolean Mueseum. Oxford)
The artefact testifies that at least since 1000 years before the conquerors, the Red Crown was venerated by the indigenous population of Egypt, and probably it was the crown of the whole country and not just of Lower–Egypt as Egyptologists believe. Elise Baumgartel writes: »At Naqada, we find the first occurrence of Egypt’s most venerated royal insignia, namely the Red Crown. The early date [of Petri’s find] is noteworthy because it is in accordance with the position of the Red Crown in comparison with that of the White Crown. The Red Crown was always considered to be the most ancient and the most exalted, the one that was venerated as a Goddess. It has precedence over the White Crown. « (Baumgartel JEA 61, 1975) The symbolic term ›Deshret‹ stands in Egypt for life and for (menstrual) blood. It is now understandable why the Red ©rown has the shape of a blood–red vessel (or a throne). Both symbolize the woman’s body, ostracized as impure in patriarchy, the vessel of the embryo. The symbolism of the Red Crown is supplemented and reinforced with the spiral, the symbol for creation, life and death. We see why patriarchal men envied the women for their menstrual blood they demonized as ›unclean‹, repugnant; it testifies every lunar month that it is the woman who ›gives life‹. To avoid the memory of it, the Red Crown was sometimes euphemistically called ›the green‹. For Wilkinson, the shape of the crown is quite distinctive, »but again its symbolic meaning is unknown. «. (Wilkinson 1999, p. 192). Other Egyptologists have no explanation for this either.
Later on, the color red was associated with Seth, the local god of Naqada. But we have to note that Seth is the demonized and masculinized Red Goddess I–Set. I–Set/Isis inexplicably disappears for centuries at the beginning of the dynastic period and is replaced by the figure of the male Seth. I–Set/Isis was, like the condemned Seth, also based in Naqada and is of course identical to her. I–Set formed part of the Goddess triad, together with Nekbhet, the vulture–shaped Goddess of death and rebirth, who was based in Nekhen/Hierakonpolis, and with Neith, the primeval mother and creator of the world, the Wise Ancient Lady in the delta. Erik Hornung recognizes her political importance, he said: »Neith was clearly an important deity at the very beginning of the Early Dynastic period, with a dominant role at the royal court. « (Hornung, 1983)
The Goddess Neith was evidently believed to be parthenogenesis, i.e. the matriarchal egyptian women and men already knew about the frequent occurrence of single–sex reproduction in biology. »The phenomenon was first described by the Geneva biologist and Enlightenment philosopher Charles Bonnet in the 18th century. « (Wikipedia) Hans Bonnet writes in his article on the Goddess Neith: »As the deity of the beginning, Neith is beyond sex. In her, who ›created the seeds of gods and men‹ (Brugsch, Thes 684), the male and female forces are still not separated. As the Egyptians say, she is ›father of fathers and mother of mothers‹. « (Hans Bonnet ›Neith‹ 1971) Robert Schlichting writes: »As the primeval Goddess, Neith stands at the beginning of the world. She herself is uncreated and combines male and female characteristics. Out of herself she creates the gods, first the sun god. It bears the epithet (attribute) that emphasizes its primeval god characteristics: ›Father of Fathers, Mother of Mothers‹. In the late period, this trait came to the fore as the primordial Goddess, which gained additional importance due to her outstanding significance during the 26th Dynasty. « (Robert Schlichting ›Neith‹, LÄ, IV, p. 393 f) Nowhere was there a male God. Male gods were not yet invented.
Royal tombs in prehistoric cemeteries
Not only the Red Ccrown, but also other indications show that the earliest kingship was female. This reveals to us the very special characteristics of the royal predynastic tombs, which are among the authoritative testimonies of prehistoric queenship. We owe female and male Egyptologists and archaeologists around Flinders Petrie, the English pioneer of archeology and prejudice–free Egyptologist, an open view of the unusual and surprising, a view that was unfortunately later lost (see Chapter 1). Archaeologist Elise J. Baumgartel belongs to the group of unbiased scientists. She stated:
»During the Naqada I period [the latest at about 4000], the largest and most
important tombs belong to women. They contained more precious objects than
those of males. From this I infer a matriarchal society of which strong
remnants survive into historical times. « (Elise Baumgartel, JEA 1975, p. 30)
Unfortunately, Egyptologists also suppress this fact, for example Toby Wilkinson only writes: »An unbroken succession of elitist–royal tombs in Hierakonpolis could be discovered from the Nagada I period to the threshold of the 1st Dynasty. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 183) But women, matriarchal queens and their relatives and employees were buried in these elitist royal tombs. Women ran Egypt. The last ruling queens who still held the throne during the first dynasties at the transition from the matriarchal epoch to the dynastic time of the conquerors testify this. As Peter Kaplony said: »The feminine is a quantité négligeable (negligible quantity) in Egyptian script, you can forget that. « The ›quantité négligeable‹ take patriarchal men and some women who are compatible with patriarchy to heart and make their loyalty to patriarchal science clear by reducing the queens to a size appropriate for patriarchal machism. In his chronological overview Wilkinson only mentions the kings, he does not mention the queens to whom they owe the throne, they are obviously not worth mentioning for him, he has ›forgotten‹ them. (see Wilkinson 2012, p. 661)
The sovereignly ruling priestess–queens of the primordial Goddess Neith
were Neith–Hotep, Meryt–Neith, Her-Nneith and Wadjet
»Neith occurs as early as the Predynastic period, and was clearly an important deity at the very beginning of the Early Dynastic period, with a dominant role at the royal court. « (Hornung) Toby Wilkinson writes as an introduction to the ›biography‹ of the Goddess Neith, the ›great, wise old woman: »Neith was a warlike Goddess whose name perhaps means ›the terrifying one‹. « He attributes this to the fact that her symbol were the crossed arrows. »Neith is thus a common element in the theophorous names of Early Dynastic queens, notably Neith-Hotep (the wife of Narmer) Her-Neith (possibly a wife of Djet) and Mer-Neith (the mother of Den and regent during his minority). Personal names incorporating the name of Neith are also common amongst the retainers buried in the susdidiary graves surrounding the royal tombs at Abydos from the reign of Djer… « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 291). Calling the Great Goddess, the Goddess of war is one of the many crazy misinterpretations in Egyptology.
The arrows, the attributes of the Goddess Neith – also the ›Hemuset‹, the protective Goddesses who protect the newborn – are repeatedly interpreted as ›projectiles‹. Nevertheless, the statements by renowned scientists have long since created clarity. Henri Frankfort wrote (1951, p. 56): »The picture of the arrow does not reflect the idea of an arrow, but the term LIFE. « Wolfgang Helck confirmed Frankfort’s observation (ZÄS 79, 1954). He wrote, that »arrows symbolized nothing less than female creativity, her live giving power. He noted that the throne, the palace (Serekh) and arrows appear as female power in the early days, which is why they later become Goddesses at the time of the anthropomorphization of powers. (Helck 1971, p. 4) The Assyriologist Adam Falkenstein wrote as early as 1936 that TI, written with the sign of an arrow, means ›life‹ in Sumerian [›Archaische Texte aus Uruk‹ (Archaic texts from Uruk), Leipzig 1936].
Although the invaders seized the royal power after the warlike time of the conquest – the greed for power and the treasures of Egypt was the real reason for the conquest – reigning queens remained clearly visible during the first dynasties – and actually until the last reigning queen, Cleopatra, the actual holders of the throne. Because, as Flinders Petrie said: »It is very doubtful that a king could reign except as the husband of the heiress of the kingdom, the right to which descended in the female line. The law was passed on in the female line, as well as the other property. « (1896/1991, II, p. 183) Any man who married the queen became king, no matter who, or what he was and where he came from.
Royalty was transmitted in the Female Line
Most scholars since the time of world war two are patriarchal and sexist and not interessed in the live of Egyptian women. They are biased, ignorant or don’t want to see and admit, that status and importance were not granted to the queens by courtesy of men, or because they were allowed to be representatives of an underage king, as is often argued – on the contrary. As early Egyptologists noted – before fascist and sexist thinking clouded their brains –, the indigenous queens were compelled by forced marriage to ennoble the chiefs of the conquerors to become the first kings. Robert Briffault writes:
»The functions of royalty were transmitted in the female line. While every Egyptian
princess was born a queen and bore the titles of the office from the day of her birth,
a man only acquired them at his coronation, and could do so only by becoming the
consort of a royal princess. It was in the queen that mystic or divine virtue resided. «
Helmut Brunner confirms that even in later dynastic time many rulers of non–royal descent as Snofru, Amenemhet I, Thutmosis I, Eje, Haremhab, Ramesses I, Smendes, Psammetich I, were legitimized by marriage to a princess (LÄ, I, p. 14). The matrilinear lineage as a pehistoric tradition retained from the beginning of the patriarchal dynastic history of Egypt to the last queen, Cleopatra. Otto H. Muck leads »the strange legality of the succession and dynasty founding back to the most primeval. « Here, he writes »unmistakable maternity right–institutions have been preserved and mixed with later patriarchal laws. Under the law of the mother – according to the opinion of J. J. Bachofen – it was the precept that the succession to the throne was tied to the line of women and was passed on by the queen to her eldest or youngest daughter. Woman were the keeper and curator of the blood guidance; therefore, whether as queen or as hereditary princess, she did not only ›play a role‹, as Scharff formulated it; she lived the real (female) principal, and her chosen husband as regent was her ›arm‹. « (Muck 1958, p. 49) The king was merely the delegate, empowered by the queen. He embodied an outward appearing figure of representation – the usual matriarchal customary role of the man. From the original role of the representative, the patriarchal kings gradually raised their own importance and power by eliminating the queens during the 1. Dynastie. (see: SATI and the subsidiary tombs in Abydos, below).
Amazing parallels of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Iranian–
Elamite palace architecture in Prehistory
For a long time I had believed the often–confusing statements of experts and those who claimed that the impressive mudbrick palaces of Naqada and Saqqara were tombs of kings or, according to Emery, of queens of the First dynasty. I took over the thesis without questioning them and published them in my book from 2009. Only later did I realize that the claim that the niche–like large buildings were graves had never been challenged.
It was only the study of the Mesopotamian early period which opened my eyes and I discovered Henri Frankfort wrote already in 1941: »There is little doubt about the foreign origins of the palace–facade stile. The similarity between Mesopotamia and Egyptian mudbrick architecture is so close as to make their independent development highly unlikely. « (Frankfort 1941, p. 338) The similarity of the emblem of the temple facade and the monumental buildings in Egypt, Saqqara and Naqada and those in Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and in Susa in Iran (see the cylinder seals by M. P. Amiet 1980 in Chapter 4) is is actually striking.
The Serekh, the Palace Facade in Egypt
»A serekh was normally used as a royal crest, accentuating and honouring the name of the pharaoh. Its use can be dated back as early as the Gerzeh culture or earlier (c. 3400 BC Wikipedia). Helck recognizes that the ›Serekh‹ appeared in the early days of Egypt as a symbol of »female power. « (Helck 1971, p. 4) The Serekh is an important feminine element, which the conquerors adopted and modified it for their purposes. This is shown e.g. by the Narmer Palette. Narmer had the ›audacity‹ to adopt the female symbol to place his name in it.
Narmer used the serekh, as a frame for his name on the Narmer Palette
Emery points out an extremely important aspect, he realized: »The early representation of the Serekh palace design on the Narmer palette, shows that such buildings were in existence prior to the actual foundation of united Egypt. It is important to note that such a design was adopted by the Thinite kings [1st and 2nd Dynasty], a fact which brings into question the theory that this architecture belongs entirely to Lower Egypt. (Emery 1961, p. 178 f)
This is how conquerors of foreign countries usually proceed: they take over or remove important existing emblems, e.g. they are changing the country’s old flag and replacing it with their own. (Just think about the importance of the IS flag in Syria.) This is how the Horitic conquerors behaved in Egypt. They surmounted the female serekh usually by the figure of the falcon Horus. However, Elise J. Baumgartel, the reliable prehistorian, observed that Horus did not appear on the Serekh until near the end of the Naqada II period, and he was in close contact with the kings of the first dynasty, the Shemsu-Hor. (Baumgartel JEA 1975, p. 30 f)
The palace facade is a well–known symbol in Mesopotamia as well
Reconstruction of an early First Dynasty palace façade in Mesopotamia
(Iraq, Jemdet Nasr period (Emery 1961, p. 181)
The ›Serekh‹ in Egypt actually corresponds exactly with the palace facade in Sumer. It is a symbol of state power, much like the facade of the White House in Washington embodies that of the USA.
The architecture achieved »true monumentality with the sanctuary of the Goddess Inanna, later Ishtar, in the sacred district of Eanna in the city of Uruk. The niche architecture, which had its modest beginning in the middle stone copper age with the first cult building, experienced in the main building of Eanna »an increase that was not achieved again even in later historical times. « (Moortgat 1950, p. 222)
»Even today, the building of Uruk could still be counted among the most splendid
architectural works, if only it were better preserved«, writes the archaeologist
of the ancient near east Anton Moortgat.
Queen’s Residence, Seat of Government
and Temple of the Goddess INANNA of Uruk
Reconstructed palace and temple of the Goddess Inanna in Uruk. Second half of the fourth millennium, ca. 55 x 100 meters. (Drawing H. Schubert, after Hartmut Schmökel 1955)
The Assyriologist Sidney Smith emphasizes that the temple – since the Ubaid culture – has been the residence of the priestess–queen and both a cultural and economic center, official and government seat, center and organization of trade and administration of the country as well as of religious cult. And archeologist Hans J. Nissen confirms: »In the late Uruk period (approx. 3400 to 3300), Uruk could already look back on almost 1000 years of history. « (1998, p. 53)
As we saw on cylinder seals from Uruk and Susa in Chapter 4 (after M. P. Amiet 1980), there is clear evidence that part of the struggle of the conquerors was to raid the queens‘ palaces, to murder the captured women, and to set their palaces on fire. Emery noticed this in Egypt too. He writes: »The question of the destruction of the royal burials by fire is of particular interest. « (1961, p. 73) The reason for the destruction proves, this were: Not Tombs, but Residence, Seat of Government: Economic, Cultural and Religious Centers of the Queens.
I often asked why the countless Egyptologists were not interested in the current research of other scientists in other countries. »We have enough to do with Egypt«, an expert answered my question. The fact is, however, that there is a rivalry common to most men among the scientists of the Near East and Egypt, which is mainly expressed in the fact that they ignore each other and their research. The Near East archaeologist Hans J. Nissen writes what it is about:
»The treatment of ethnic questions – especially when it comes to prestigious
problems of how the origin of the early high culture was to be owed to which people – often also was influenced by emotional or ideological components. «
Queen’s Sesidence, seat of Government
and Temple of the Goddess NEITH in Egypt
Palace, residence and seat of government of Queen Meryt–Neith in Saqqara.
The resemblance to the palace in Uruk cannot be denied.
(Drawing by Jean– Philippe Lauer)
The archaeologists and ancient orientalists who worked in the south of the Mesopotamia and who had dealt with the prehistory of Mesopotamia never saw graves in the monumental buildings, as Egyptologists still do in Egypt. They assumed that these were temples of the Great Goddess Inanna, who was worshiped there. Some of them, for example Sidney Smith, saw not only the religious and cultic purpose of these buildings, but also the most important, the political and state–supporting part. However, most of them could not imagine that women were in charge of political and state leadership at the time.
Emery refers to the excavations in Mesopotamia and emphasizes: »The striking similarites of the recessed brick building with niche–facades in the two areas [Egypt and Mesopotamia] is too obvious to be ignored. « (1961, p. 177) However, the local archaeologists in southern Mesopotamia did not interpret them as graves, but recognized them as administrative residences, what Emery does not yet recognize in Egypt.
When in 1896 Jacques M. de Morgan (1857–1924) discovered the first huge construction with niche–facades of the First Dynasty near Nagada, a settlement and cemeterie north of Luxor, he attributed the substantial structure because of its impressive size to King Hor–Aha of the early dynastic period as his tomb. However, later research revealed that it was the construction of a woman, Queen Neith–Hotep. Emery notes: »The queens tomb is a magnificient monument with an over–all measurement of 53.4 by 26.7 meters. « (Emery 1961, p. 47) Peter H. Schulze wrote with admiration: »The tombs« of the queens were »much larger, better equipped and more modern in architecture than those of the kings of the same time. « (Schulze 1988, p. 206). The impressive, palace–like monumental buildings in brick architecture in Hierakonpolis and those of the queens Meryt–Neith, Neith–Hotep and Wadjet in Naqada und Saqqara were buildings of the residence of the queens and the official seat of the government, the state administration, the economic, cultural and religious center of a part of the land.
Wilkinson beliefs, that »the burial of Queen Neith Hotep (probably the mother of Aha), was the first substantial structure of the First Dynasty to be excavated in Egypt, and it demonstrated the scale of monumental architecture at the very beginning of Egyptian history. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 6). But, this is an error. In times of war – and these preceded the First Dynasty for more than 200 years – substantial cultural achievements were never created. The palatial buildings were still needed by the conquerors, which is why they survived the wars. They have been there a long time before. Emery noted:
»By the time of the foundation of the First Dynasty a fully developed
and elaborate brick architecture was flourishing. « (1961, p. 176)
Than Emery realized an absolutely stupefying fact: He found that these residences in Egypt, of which there still today huge wall remains, no longer existed at the end of the 2nd Dynasty. We can only assume that they had been razed in order to finally destroy the memory of the ruling queens.
The mistake that turned the monumental palace complexes into tombs became standard in Egyptology: However, archeologist and Egyptologist Michael Hoffman seems to have had a slight inkling that something was wrong and that this could not have been all. He writes: »The major construction project of each reign in the early Dynastic period seems to have been the royal mortuary complex. It not only served as the burial place of the ruler, but also ›advertised‹ and embodied the objectives of the state. A monumental tomb symbolised both political power and communal leadership. « (Hoffman 1980, p. 267+335) What he does not come up with, however, is that ›power and communal leadership‹ were not in the tombs, but in the palaces and these were in the hands of women, the queens. We can assume that the monumental buildings of the same type in Egypt served the same purpose as those in Mesopotamia and Elam. In fact, they were buildings of ›political power and communal leadership‹ of the QUEENS who ruled Egypt and Mesopotamia – and all the countries of the countries known at the time – before the conquest by Indo–European hordes!
Even the palace and temple residence of Meryt–Neith was erroneously assigned to a king. The wrong attribution to a king was repeated at the later residence of Queen Wadjet (the Cobra, Snacke, Goddess). Wadjet was probably the fourth queen of the first Dynasty. Queen Wadjets name appears on seals, tone vessels, wooden and ivory tablets and on the outstanding stela which was discovered in the real tomb at Abydos (s. unten). Queen Wadjet, high priestess of the Cobra Goddess Wadjet, was also a misunderstood single–ruling matriarchal queen. Her monumental palace is of similar size and architecture to that of Queen Merit–Neith, also in Sakkara, and of Queen Neith–Hotep in Nagada. The niche facade building made of dried mudbricks is 56.45 metres long and 25.45 metres wide and stood on a low platform. What stands out is that for the first time a wall enclosed a state building. Wallings always have a protective function and indicate a danger from outside, but the reasons for this, have not yet been recognized.
Queen’s Residence, Seat of Government
and Temple of Queen Wadjet
A Bucranian–altar with 300 clay–bovine–heads with real horns
surround the Palace of queen Wadjet in Saqqara. (Emery 1964, fig. 8).
The Egyptologists never questioned the attribution of this Palace to a king. Nevertheless, there are several indications that this, like the other palace buildings, is actually also the construction of a QUEEN. The ›Bucranians‹ clearly point to a female owner. Dorothy Cameron, who worked with James Mellart in Anatolian Çatalhöyük, detected the bucranium as a symbol of the uterus, of life and regeneration. The female symbol, representing the divine power of the female reproductive system. The cow’s head, the acquainted symbol of the uterus represents in Egypt a partial aspect of Goddess I–Seth/ISIS and is associated with the moon and menstruation. (see. Chapter 9: ›The Great–Goddess and the Sacred Celestial Cow‹) Some scholars prefer to call the bucranions ›bull heads‹, but they were exclusively associated with the cow and the cult of the moon Goddess. »The horns of the altar were usually attached to the cult images of the cow Goddess Hera, Astarte, Io, Isis or Hathor« (Ranke–Graves 1986, p. 200). We know from the Indo–European Zeus that he appropriated the old matriarchal bucranium symbol, transformed himself into a bull and gave birth to the Goddess Athena from his ›bull–head uterus‹.
Interestingly, the Temple residence of Queen Her-Neith had »a frieze of lions on the stone lintel although of crude execution, this is of interest, for it is the oldest example of constructional sculpture yet found in Egypt. « (Emery 1961, p. 169) The lioness as the sacred animal of the goddess is reminiscent of the lioness body of the Sphinx. Lioness, cow and sow are ancient matriarchal symbols of the goddess and stand for the reproductive power of the female body, for the childbearing, nurturing, caring mother and for strength, courage and dignity.
Another indication that the owner of the palace is a female person emerges from the various transcriptions of the name. Flinders Petrie writes: »Though the sign of this name [the erected Cobra] in later times is simply a Z, yet in early use it appears for the word Uazet [Isis] as in the Xth nome of Upper Egypt. It may be therfore, that this name was really Uazeti, the devotee of Uazet, the Delta Goddess UaZet. « (Petrie 1896/1991, I, p. 17) The name of Queen Wadjet is also given in other, often confusing transcriptions, e.g. as Z, Zet, Zit, Djet, Djit, Ua–Zit, Uadjit, Au–Set, Ua–Sit, UaZet, Wadjet, Wadjit; all inscriptions for the name of the Goddess ISIS. Sit / Set / Zit / Zet is still in today’s Egyptian–Arabic the term for ›woman‹ and at that time the honorable form of address for a lady, a high–ranking personality, a princess or queen and for the name of the country Goddess of Neolithic Egypt, I–Set / ISIS in her representation as Cobra. While the female T–ending is still present in most transcriptions, Egyptologists simply omit the T when writing Wadji and Uadji, making the name male and the queen king. In the Louvre in Paris, her stele is inscribed with ›Roi Wadji‹ (King Wadji). The elimination of the feminine occurred not only through expulsion and murder but also in language. Alan Gardiner noted »that the feminine ending -et, although still written, was already no longer spoken in the Old Kingdom – in Hebrew and Arabic a similar phenomenon can be observed. « (Alan Gardiner ›History of Ancient Egypt‹ 1965, p. XIII f) So today’s fight of patriarchal men against the inclusion of the female gender (gendering) in the German language is not new!
The Uraeus snake was considered a powerfull protectrice, as eternal and immortal and is always female and only associated with female deities. Later it was used as a general determinative for ›Goddess‹. The Goddess in her cobra form and the Goddess Nekhbet/Nekheb, in the form of a white vulture, both remained the crown and country Goddesses throughout the dynastic period – the ›Two Ladies‹, ›nbtj‹, who stayed the protectors of Egypt. They prevail, also against the male gods of the conquerors, the Horitic god of war Horus and a little later the patriarchal father god Ra of the Aryans.
The conquerors were not the builders of the queens‘ palaces, but their destroyers
The invaders were neither the clients nor the owners of the buildings, writes the archaeologist Emery: »At Sakkara it is certain that the great tombs [residences!] of the early First Dynasty were in complete ruin by the end of the second Dynasty. « (1961, p. 29) Men do not destroy their own prestige buildings. The monumental buildings that are believed to be the tombs of the queens represented the power of the matriarchal state as well as the temple of worship of the Goddess and were the residence of the priestess–queens. They must have been perceived as an annoying memory by the invaders; and they were symbols of the natives longing for the past time of the mothers, which is why they were destroyed. Many misjudgments arose and solidified themselves in Egyptology because today’s Egyptologists, not even patriarchal, were indoctrinated with conventional christian views. They cannot imagine that at first it was exclusively women, autonomous queens, who once ruled the countries – probably the completely known world at that time. The Egyptologists instructed in our patriarchal universities copy everything written by the traditional authorities. This also includes their misinterpretations, which are accepted unchecked out of respect and passed on uncritically. Nobody would argue that the huge complexes of Karnak and Luxor, which are misleadingly referred to as ›temples‹, were used purely for religious purposes. No, they were just like the monumental buildings that had mistakenly believed to be the tombs of the queens of the first dynasty. But when later the men were in power, the buildings were much more extensive palaces, residence of kings, administration of the country with enormous economic importance, dwellings of the royal family, of the court, the officials, the priests and the servants, and of course a small part was also a religious center in which ritual acts were performed.
»The conventional view serves to protect us from the
painful job of thinking. « (John Kenneth Galbraith)
The Queens were buried in Abydos
Three of the four known queens of the First Dynasty had been buried in the Umm El–Qa’ab royal cemetery at Abydos. Here was found the beautiful funerary stela of queen Wadjet.
Stele of queen Wadjet found in her tomb in Abydos, designated as the stele of ›Roi Wadjet‹ (Louvre, Paris)
What we see on the finely worked stela, is the Cobra Goddess Wadjet in the royal palace, the stylized depiction of the distinctive sign of royalty, the so–called Serekh. The uräus is a female symbol, representing female power and protection. Here she represents the royal person, and is dedicated to the late Queen. Was she, like all the queens before her, captured by the ›Shemsu–Hor? Above her, in a heraldic pose, oversized and triumphant, stands the Horus hawk of the conquerors. He seems to absolutely control and dominate the situation. The claim that a king identified himself with the female Cobra Goddess and given himself her name is absolutely unlikely. The few grave goods in the tomb, which were overlooked by the grave robbers, also speak for women: precious jewelry, a finely decorated comb, a hair braid, and woman’s toiletries. The extremely feminine grave goods are kept together with the historically important shred with the Red Crown (see below) in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Even Petrie must have had doubts about the attribution of the grave to a man. He writes: »Sealings of Djet (Wadjet) have given rise to the suggestion that it was constructed for Djet’s queen. An alternative explanation is that it belonged to Djet’s mother. « (Petrie 1907:5, pl. III A)
The beautiful funerary stela »may be considered the first great work of Egyptian art extant. It shows a perfection of design und artisanship, which was hardly excelled in later and more sophisticated times and is now one of the greatest treasures of the Egyptian collection in the Louvre. « (Emery 1961, p. 69 f) The stela is executed in perfect technique, a great work of art, for which there was no development in Egypt. It stems probably, like the stone vessels, the Narmer – and other Palettes – from the stonemason workshops of Aratta or from artists brought from there.
The Symbol–Significant Abydos –
A burial Place of the Matriarchal Primeval Culture
In the area of Abydos, the tombs of the First Dynasty follow directly those of the earlier richly endowed graves of women of Naqada I period from 4000 BC until the end of the predynastic period.
Abydos: The prehistoric cemetery of the matriarchal queens
»Abydos had been a burial ground for royalty since Naqada I times, points out Archaeologist B. J. Kemp, and: »The site was of great antiquity, and its ›ancient sanctity‹ would doubtlessly have conferred an added supernatural legitimacy upon those buried there. « (quoted by Wilkinson 1999, p. 231 f) Indeed, Abydos was a very special place and of ›ancient sanctity‹. The choice of location and its symbolism are decidedly feminine. The mountainous background of the cemetery is striking. The range of hills is severed with a rock cut that forms a prominent natural fissure. Here the symbolic entrance into the ›womb‹ of the Goddess and thus the place of rebirth can be assumed. Like the open thighs of Mother Earth, the scene invites the dead to enter the womb of the Great Goddess through the divine vulva, the gate of life, in preparation for rebirth. The Egyptians and Arabs knew the symbolism. The pass between two ridges is an Arabic description of the yoni/vulva and is called ›el feurdj‹, for passage, opening and crevice, for the ›Nut‹. (Camphausen 1999, p. 106) It is no coincidence that the queens‘ graves are ritually aligned in the direction of the Wadi entrance. In the area of Abydos, the tombs of the First Dynasty follow directly those of the earlier richly endowed graves of women of Naqada I period from 4000 BC until the end of the predynastic period. The first Indo–European conqueror kings legitimized their presence in Egypt by also letting themselves be buried here. Besides Abydos, the oldest tombs in Nekhen/Hierakonpolis, in Giza and in the ›Valley of the Queens‹ in Thebes West (Luxor) were places of pilgrimage and important royal necropolises at least a millennium before the conquest of Egypt by the Indo–Europeans. In these cemeteries we find an unbroken sequence of élite/royal tombs from the Naqada I period to the very threshold of the First Dynasty «, writes Wilkinson. (1999, p. 48) The Abydos cemetery was called ›Umm el–Qa’ab‹, ›Mother of the Pots‹, because a large number of pottery shards were found here. They must have symbolized the ›broken‹ life, death and its transition into new life. In the Greek city of Corfu, the Pagan, but now Christianized, custom has been preserved to this day: At Easter, clay jugs are thrown on the street, where they burst to celebrate spring and fertility.
All authors, with the exception of Elise Baumgartel, overlook or ignore the fact that women were buried in these richly equipped Predynastic graves. Women who were obviously important personalities with status, prestige, authority and power that means they were royal women. In addition, the tombs attest another important fact: Queenship began ›long before history‹: Most Egyptologist cannot imagine that women were in power long before the conquest of the ›Shemsu–Hor‹. So, even Michael Hoffman who friendly states and emphasizes the ever–recurring presence and importance of powerful women in »transmitting legitimacy or stabilize important political alliances «; he had not the idea that the here buried persons were women, queens. Queens were from time beginning the holders of the throne and more important than their husbands. They kept their position as bearers of the royal dignity clearly visible even in dynastic times. Hoffman writes: »The Queens of the early First Dynasty Merit–Neith and Neith–Hotep were followed in later dynasties by strong women like Tetisheri and Hatshepsut. It is likely that such periodic reemergence’s of powerful women throughout Egyptian history reflect not only occasionally strong and opportunistic personalities, but the existence of certain underlying social rules or alternatives such as matrilineal descent, which provided a convenient sanction for the explicit political prominence of women in ancient Egypt. « (Hoffman 1979, p. 351). »We shall have to consider the rules of succession to the throne of the Pharaohs «, says Anthropologist Robert Briffault.
Mut–Nesut is NOT the ›King’s Mother‹
Among the earliest sculptures found so far (by Willendorf, von Laussel, von Hohle Fels, etc.) there is not a single representation of the Goddess as a mother with a child. That changes with the conquests of the patriarchalized Indo–Europeans. After the conquest of Egypt, a son is imputed to Isis, the first male (War–!) God of the Horites, Horus, brought with them by the conquerors.
The hieroglyph of the ›mother of the country‹: Mut–Nesut
This obviously serves to legitimize and stabilize his presence in Egypt. He was assigned to the matriarchal Great Goddess in order to give the male sex more weight, or to give him a place in the religion of the Goddess, who until then had neither a son nor a daughter, but was revered as the mother of humankind. In Mesopotamia the great Goddess Tiamat/Tia Maat, die Mutter Göttin, also gets a son, Sin/Su–En/NeSu the Sumerian moon god (see Albright/Lambdin, 1970, p. 147). The most common name for the early ›god–kings‹ in Egypt is based on the name of the Sumerian moon god ›nesu‹; »Nesu means the king in general« (Budge); the feminine form is ›Nesut‹, the queen.. »The title appears about the same time as the Horus blacksmiths, the Shemsu–Hor. « (Kaiser ZÄS 86, 1961, p. 40). In dynastic times, queens are often called ›Mut–Nesut‹, royal mother, which is interpreted as ›mother of the king‹. The first syllable of the title Mut–Nesut ›Mut‹ is an obviously Indo–European name for mother. »We do not know anything about a predynastic occurrence of the nswt–title «, writes Elise Baumgartel (JEA 61, 1975, p. 31). The term ›Mut–Nesut‹ was first found in the first Dynasty under Queen Meryt–Neith on clay seals from her grave near Abydos. Moreover, this clearly shows that the translation as ›mother of the king‹ is a mistake, because Meryt–Neith was a reigning queen. She is not the mother of the king, but the mother of the land, the matriarchal, ruling queen. The US ethno–anthropologist Eva L.R. Meyerowitz confirmed through her research, the designation:
»Mut–nesut actually means queen – ›female king‹ not mother of the king. «
She is the ›mother of the country‹, the reigning queen. ›Mut–nesut–biti‹
is the name of the queen of both countries, of Upper and Lower Egypt.
»Mut–Nesut was the honor–title valid for queens and princesses due to their royal lineage of the mother’s side since birth. The king could not bequeath the royal dignity to his descendants unless they were also the descendants of the queen. « (Robert Briffault 1959, p. 359)
Queens stood as throne holders, as ›kingmakers‹ at the beginning
of every new dynasty of the Old Kingdom
The time from the Third Dynasty through to the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2686–2181 BC) is the Old Kingdom, when a solid connection seems to have endured from one dynasty to the next because of the feminine lineage. The women dynasty founder of the First Dynasty were, as we have seen, Neith–Hotep, followed by Meryt–Neith, Her–Neith and Wadjet. The Second Dynasty (c. 2890–2686 BC) »is most known for its last ruler, Khasekhemwy, but is otherwise one of the most obscure periods in Egyptian history. « (Wikipedia) We know of a king Nebra, but ›the wife of Nebra is unknown‹. Maybe the Cartouche name of Nebra in the Abydos King List (cartouche no. 10) can inspire us: It contains 3 (three) phally!
Cartouche of Nebra
The Third Dynasty founder was Queen Ni–maat–Hapj, entitled ›Mother of the King’s Children‹ and ›King’s Mother‹. »How the transition from the III to the IV Dynasty took place, is unknown to us in detail. It is only certain that this time once again a queen has played a role as a bearer of the royal tradition. It was the wife of Sneferu, Queen Hetepheres, to whom her husband owed the transfer of the royal power from the III Dynasty. « (Scharff, quoted by Muck 1958, p. 48) Peter Jánosi has his toil with it. He writes that Hetepheres II must have married a king »who raised her to the rank of a queen. « He does not seem to have acknowledged that it was the female heir to the throne who ›raised‹ a man to the rank of king. Queen Khentkaus is proven as the ancestress of the fifth dynasty and ›mother of two kings‹, Userkaf and Sahure (Otto, Saeculum 20, 1969, p. 400).
Erika Feucht also struggles with the importance of the queens. After indicating a number of confirming evidence for the maternal lineage of the throne, she warns: »We must be careful to see it as mother–right traits, rather as an attempt to maintain the continuity of the royal blood. « (LÄ, IV, p. 257) But let us not forget that the royal blood was preserved by the women. Feucht sees in the designation of the royal mother ›Mut–Nesut‹ merely »the recognition of intelligent women who made merit on the side of their (royal) husband for the country and exerted great influence on their sons. « (ibd.) For Feucht, the queens were merely »helping«, »representative« or »supportive«, which is obviously the expected opinion according to Egyptology.
Wilfried Seipel has his own trouble with the queens. He claims, of the fifteen as yet known so called ›royal mothers‹ of the early days and of the Old Kingdom, only three of them had a royal ancestry, and it can no longer be assumed that »the special significance of the royal mother, in the dynasty–history, would be her role as a mediator of royal legitimacy. « (Seipel LÄ, III, p. 538)
However, it cannot be denied that the man whom the heiress married became king, whether he was of royal or non–royal blood. For this reason, conquerors, immigrants, whites and other foreigners could marry into the ruling class and become king: Throne owner and heir were and remained the queens, »by marriage law, the king came to the throne. The origin of the king did not matter. He could belong to every stratum of society, but when he married the queen, he became king« (Cottrell 1956, p. 165). SHE crowned him, not the other way round. While the queens are devalued, kings, on the other hand, experience divine revaluation. Peter Kaplony asserts: »To the king, who bears a mundane birth name as a prince or man of civil origin, one gives a second, third, etc. name. These names demonstrate his divinity. « (LA, III, p. 641) While men became ›divine‹ only by name, women remained earthly, but after all, they were the ›kingmakers‹.
As the atrocities of the Narmer Palette document, there were brutal battles of conquest, the capture and forced marriage of the queens (see Chapter 4). After the massacre of the Egyptian population, Narmer the leader of the conquerors made himself the first king and founder of the first dynasty.
»Narmer married the princess Neithhotep of Naqada to solidify his rule and ally himself with Naqada’s ruling house. Narmer’s queen, Neithhotep, may have been the first female ruler in Egypt after his death«, wiegelt J. Mark ab. (Mark 2016). Vorurteile über Vorurteile. Neith Hotep was the legal ruler in her own right, and as such would have been the earliest known female monarch in historical time. She was the owner of the throne and only by marrying her, Narmer, was able to legitimize his position as king. That Narmer was an unpopular stranger, a brutal usurper of power, was evident from his grave. His tomb in Abydos, »is almost insignificant in comparison with that of queen Neith–Hotep at Negada« [which was not her tomb but her residenz, as will be seen below]. Emery concludes »that this was only the king’s southern tomb and that his real burial place still awaits discovery. « (Emery 1961, p, 47) It awaits ›discovery‹ to this day. The king after Narmer was Hor–Aha (the ›fighting hawk‹). He too, had to marry the Egyptian queen of his time to legalize his claim to the throne, the sovereignly reigning Queen Merit-Neith. Egyptologist Kurt Sethe emphasizes (1964, p. 29):
»Merit–Neith, according to the installation and equipment of her tomb,
must have taken a very special position; she would have been the mother
or wife of a king, and probably through her, the king attained the crown. «
The burials of the 1. Dynasty
»The Tomb of Queen Merit–Neith in Abydos is one of the largest and best–built in the concerning group«, writes Emery (1961, p. 66) When her tomb »at Abydos was excavated in 1900, Petrie found in it a large stela bearing the name of Meryet–Neit alone, not surrounded by the enclosure of the conventional hawk (Horus) name.
At that time – due to patriarchal jaundice – it was believed that Meryet–Neit was a king, but later research has shown the name to be that of a woman and, to judge by the richness of the burial, a queen. … From her name Meryet–Neit (Neith/Nit is victorious; written by Emery as Meryet–nit) we may judge that like Queen Neithotep, she was a princess [sic] of the North and therefore a powerful factor in the political balance. Following the unification, which at that early date of its inception must have been precarious, it was not only held together by right of conquest but also by matrimonial union. « (Emery 1961, p. 65+69) The tomb of Queen Merit Neith contained 41 subsidiary graves with the so called ›human sacrifice‹. Hor–Aha, the husband of Merit Neith was the first king who’s burial at Abydos is accompagnied by the murdered matriarchal royal household. »His tomb had three parallel rows of 36 subsidiary graves containing the skeletal remains of young males, none of whom was older than 20–25 years. This uniform age is a strong indication that they were all killed simultaneously, apparently by strangulation. « (van Dijk) »The graves of retainers, which accompany Aha’s tomb, appear as a new feature in royal mortuary provision, one that was to remain standard at Abydos throughout the First Dynasty. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 235)
The third King of the first Dynasty was Djer/Zer/Zar, the indoeuropean Tsar.
Plan of Zer’s Tomb in Abydos with more than 500 subsidiary burials, relatives and persons of the murdered court of the matriarchal queen. (After Emery 1961, p. 79)
»Zers tomb was surrounded by the graves of no fewer than 317 individuals, while a further 242 were found buried around his funerary enclosure, a total of 559 individuals, among whom were a considerable number of women. Many of these subsidiary graves were originally marked by simple tombstones inscribed with the names of their occupants, a further indication that these people were not just nameless slaves. « (van Dijk) Djer/Zer owed the throne to Queen Her-Neith.
Egyptologists belief erroneously that Zer’s successor was a King, Djet (Wadji), but we will see later, that this was a queen. Her tomb had 174 subsidiary burials. There are many other testimonies of murdered people in Abydos, Giza and Saqqara (see van Dijk)
A subsidiary burial of the First Dynasty (After Emery 1961)
It is striking that the dead in the side graves – all indigenous Egyptian women – were buried in an embryonic position in accordance with the matriarchal burial custom. Above all, they are disparagingly described as servants, retainers or slaves. As a reason for their murder, Egyptologists can think of nothing better than the assertion that they »would accompany their master or mistress into the afterlife to continue their service. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 375) Moreover, they did – in the eyes of prejudiced Egyptologists – of course, ›voluntarily‹.
These murders are trivialized and embellished as ›human sacrifices‹ and disguised and played down as a religious cult – a terrifying example of how patriarchal history is written.
SATI – the Murder of the Queens and their Entourage:
The End of Matriarchy
The archaeologist Guy Brunton points out that in Upper Egypt (Mostagedda and Matmar) in the Badarian period (approx. 5500–4000) no multiple burials could be found, and that these were extremely rare even in the predynastic period (›Matmar‹ 1948, Pp. 9 and 17). Then everything turned out differently: As we have seen, after the invasion and at the beginning of the dynastic period, the matriarchal queens and with them – their partner, the king, their children, their relatives, their faithful. Probably all educated women and men, intellectuals, artists, cultural workers, healers, doctors, surgeons, teachers, midwives, scribes, writers and the members of the central state administration of the temple complex – murdered at the death of the respective king They have been poisoned, beheaded, strangled, thrown cut, driven to suicide, or buried alive. Their skeletons were found – hundreds of times – in the so–called secondary graves of the kings of the first Dynasty of Egypt in Abydos and Saqqara. Adolf Erman believes »when it is said in the pyramid texts of the deceased king that he will take women away from their husbands at will, or when the burial of women in the royal tombs of the first dynasty reminds us of a time, when women had to follow the men into death. These are some remnants of crude customs, which, in historical times, have long since been overcome in Egypt«. Erman adds, however, somewhat uncertainly in a footer: »Or should we have to assume that the royal wives [or children!] of the 1st dynasty, who are buried next to the ruler as well as dogs and dwarfs, have followed him into death when he was buried? « (Erman 1984 (1923), p. 179)
The ›raw morals‹ have not been overcome in historical times,
as Erman believes, they came into being only then!
In the first Dynasty when the foreign kings feel established and secure enough, the family and the members of the royal court of matriarchal queens are ›sacrificed‹. ›Sacrifice‹ call Egyptologists the crimes and euphemize them as religious, but this people were merciless murdered or committed to suicide. Only the Queen or her daughter the heiress of the throne, stayed alive. Because a king could not rule without a queen. As Petrie said, »a king without a queen is not possible. «
The murder of a large number of people in early dynastic Egypt has been discovered in Abydos and Sakkara and in early dynastic Kerma in Sudan. Rosalie A. David writes: »In some complexes, subsidiary burials occur outside the enclosure wall the main tomb; rows of graves were built parallel to the sides of the mastaba and these contained the bodies of women and members of the lord’s household, buried to serve him in the next life. There is little doubt that these subordinates were buried at the time of the owner’s death, for in some examples at Abydos the superstructure was erected over both the main tomb and the subsidiary graves. Some of these burials represent the artisan class and they were interred in single oblong pits. The contracted body [in the embryonic position], wrapped in linen, lay inside a small wooden coffin. These servants may have taken poison or simply have allowed themselves to be buried alive at the same time of their master’s death. « (Rosalie A. David 1982, p. 34 f).
Most people have been killed at the death of the king. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that queen Her-Neith was buried during king Zer’s reign. (Emery 1961, p. 80) Wilkinson tries to explain Zer’s approach in a factual and unemotional manner. He writes: »This practice, which – no doubt for practical and economic reasons – was discontinued after the late First Dynasty, must have been a graphic illustration of the ultimative authority of the king. Not only during his earthly life but in the hereafter as well … Only the king, as a member of the divine sphere, was guaranteed an afterlife in the company of the gods, others might hope for some share. The kings of the First Dynasty chose to emphasise their unique status, and their separateness from the rest of humanity, by building their tombs in an isolated spot, surrounded in death only by their closest retainers. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 228 f.) Wilkinson is wrong, it was not his ›closest retainers‹ who were buried in the subsidiary graves, but rather the ›enemies‹ he hated, the relatives and the entourage of the matriarchal queen whom he got out of the way. Djer/Zer, the Tsar, husband of queen Her-Neith, must have been one of the most remorseless men, roustabout and went berserk. »Zer concerned himself largely with building palaces and military expansion and extended his rule through military campaigns in Nubia and Canaan. « (J. Mark 2016) This is also evidenced by the picture of a massacre on a rock carving in Nubia (see Chapter 5).
»Zer continued the Nubian wars of his precedessors and his armies penetrated as far south as the Second Cataract. Near Wadi–Halfa, on the west bank of the Nile, there is a rock inscription, which shows the Horus name of Zer. « (Emery 1961, p. 60)
The fourth king was the misunderstood Queen Wadjet, whom we discussed before. King Den–Udimu followed. Werner Kaiser found in the ›cult district of King Den–Udimu in Saqqara‹ 230 people who apparently died of non–natural death as this happened in Abydos (Kaiser MDAIK 46, 1985, p. 52).
Countless people fell to victim to the power–rage of the new masters, the ›Shemsu–Hor‹. Ignoring the brutality of kings is incredible. The crimes of the rulers are often diminished, beautified, transferred to higher spheres, lifted into a cultic–religious light or reduced to a ›primitive‹ African origin. The authors, who are absolutely identified with the criminal kings, are on their side. They do not realize, or do not want to see it, that in the time of the first patriarchal dynasties, the peaceful matriarchal structure was destroyed, the relatives of the queens, the educated level, the intellectuals, the priestesses, the teachers, writers, artists and the medically educated women were exterminated. What a counterfeited history. However, the authors believe their distorted stories themselves. This is the dramatic result of 5,000 years of patriarchal brainwashing.
The Sati murders were about asserting the repressive autocratic patriarchal power of the white conquerors and eliminating the matriarchal non–repressive authority of the black African indigens. It was murder, a heinous crime against humanity and lasted for mor than 200 long years. From the 2nd dynasty, Sati murders are more seldom; most members of the local indigenous queens had apparently been exterminated, silenced, or driven to flight.
George Andrew Reisner led in 1907 the first archaeological campaign to save a part of Nubian Culture from the construction of the first Aswan dam; an area between the 1st and 2nd Cataract from Aswan to Wadi Halfa. He released the graves of murdered women in Kerma. Michael A. Hoffman writes that the burial pits of Kerma in Lower Nubia were of the most striking examples of Sati ever found. »The location and various attitudes of the bodies show that they must have entered the grave alive on their own feet and taken their positions as they could find place … the movements exhibited are largely those of emotion at the prospect of death by burial under earth. The most common thing was for the person to bury the face in the hands. It was also not unusual for one hand to be over the face and the other pressed between the thighs. « (Reisner quoted by Hoffman 1979, p. 277 f) This is how Sati must have happened everywhere. Most striking is that Reisner describes his work in detail, openly and honestly and is affected by the suffering of these people, which we cannot find anywhere else. Reisner is appalled by the indescribable cruelty of the Egyptian conquerors towards the subjected Nubians, who witnessed cold–blooded barbarism, which included the strangulation or living burial of hundreds of their wives and servants (ZÄS 1914, p. 49). He continues: »No one of normal mentality who will read the detailed evidence in the description will escape the conviction that these extra bodies are the remains of persons who died in the places where we found their bones, and who had been in fact buried alive. « (Reisner 1923, cited in Heizer 1959, p. 108–110, Hoffman 1979, p. 277 f).
Only those who look back can understand the present world
The Trivializing and Denying of the Murders
Most Egyptologist play down the crimes of the Egyptian kings, their brutality, their cold–blooded cruelty. Hoffman writes: »The fact that sati acquires a brief period of popularity under the first two dynasties is best explained by the social and political innovations that accompanied the emergence of the state. In Egypt, the god king sponsored a number of experiments at this time in writing, religion, art and architecture, all calculated to legitimize and augment his political power as head of a newly unified state – the first of its kind. Most of the experiments were phenomenally successful. In the case of death monuments and the cult of the dead king, the monarchy developed a theme that dominated Egyptian world view for the next two or three millennia. Yet some experiments did not work so well! Human sacrifice never attained the scale reached in Shang China, early dynastic Ur, or Napatan Kerma, where early kings also experimented with the limits of power, and the custom of sati passed quickly from practice with the end of Egypt’s period of experimentation about 2700 B.C. It was a symbol of the transitionary process from prehistory to history, from small–scale chiefdom to a unified, totalitarian state. It was an aberration of power at a time when power was becoming the game everyone played. As such, it quickly fell into disuse once the rules of the game were firmly established after the passing of Khasehemui and the Second Dynasty. « (Hoffman 1979, p. 279) Often one might wonder whether authors were drugged, drunk or delirious to write something like this without any sympathy, without empathy for the victims. The view of the mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) also testifies to incredible cynicism and of racism. He calls Sati, a »time–honored custom of human sacrifice«. After reading George Reisner’s description of the murdered women of Kerma he explained that despite the signs of suffering, even panic, at the moment of suffocation the mental state of these people should not be measured by our standard: »For these victims were not individuals in the true sense; that is, they were not separate creatures that distinguished themselves from a class or group by an awareness of personal, individual destiny or personal, individual responsibility« (quoted by Daly 1986, p. 13). The philosopher Mary Daly, quoting Campbell’s words, notes in shock that she did not highlight any of the words in this quotation because otherwise she would have had to emphasize every word. »What is presented to us is not the untruth in the true sense of the word, but a partially suppressed truth that is overlooked by the reader, not perceived in its meaning, and left shelved. «
We can imagine the psychological consequences of this already consciously used war strategy against women: The traumatized people, intimidated by killings, deterred, demoralized and deprived of their hope, the queens could take over the leadership in the country after the death of the king, and carry on the old mother–right and the worship of the Great Goddess was thereby nullified.
The often–emphasized palliation that these people sacrificed themselves »voluntarily«, belittles the cruelty of the murders. They were undoubtedly driven to voluntary or involuntary suicide; whether by force or by pseudo–religious indoctrination and brainwash or psychic terror; no normal healthy human being ›allows himself‹ to be buried alive or to voluntarily take poison. Another suspicion is that they were strangled; in any case they did not have a chance of getting away alive. One way of warding off consternation is to claim that the graves of the victims were ›only‹ the burials of servants or slaves who followed their lord into the grave. (Altenmüller, LÄ, I, p. 745) Or they were ›female servants and other creatures, who accompanied‹ the Lord into the hereafter (Gardiner 1961, p. 409). However, Emery writes about these ›other creatures‹: »Most of these sacrificed persons were women and many had rough gravestones that bore their names. «
Grave steles of murdered women from the subsidiary graves of Abydos
It is absurd to suppose that servants or slaves are buried here in the royal burial place and received tombstones. These women were members of the Queen’s family and the sophisticated entourage, part of the intellectual elite of the queen and the priestesses of the Goddess.
The murdered women, who had a terrible death, have merely been ›subordinates‹ in patriarchal thinking… For example, Joyce Ann Tyldesley, British archaeologist and Egyptologist writes: »Small stone tablets on the side graves show that those who were chosen to be buried with the Pharaoh enjoyed great prestige. « Some of the grave steles »are illegible, 76 of them bear however, female epithets, so they were made for the burial of women. The skeletal remains show that most of these women were very young, but it was not found out how they died. The status of these women is unclear. A comparison with the impressive tombs of Neith–Hotep and Her-Neith suggests that they are not members of the royal family, « further continues Tyldesley. »Still, women were considered important enough to be buried next to Pharaoh. This was a great honor, as it enabled them to share the divine life after the Pharaoh’s death with him. « [Joyce Ann Tyldesley, ›Die Königinnen des Alten Ägypten – von den frühen Dynastien bis zum Tod Kleopatras‹ (The Queens of Ancient Egypt – from the early dynasties to the death of Cleopatra) 1996, p. 31] A cynicism that can hardly be surpassed. These women were very surely part of the queen’s royal family. It was probably relatives and the court, educated women, who were moved out of the way in order to destroy the matriarchy. The German Orientalist Gebhard J. Selz believes that these killings were ›state funerals‹ in the ›public interest‹. (Selz 2016, p. 46)
For many of the female and male Egyptians entombed in Saqqara or buried in the sand, was clear that in the holes they still must have moved in their death–struggle, before they suffocated. Most were no more than 20 years old, including thirteen children and twenty very young girls. Helck calls them ›lower–ranking workers and administrative employees‹ (Mainz 1992, p. 13 f). Hoffman also claims that the ancestral tombs in Abydos, according to archeologist George Andrew Reisner, did not belong to the great provincial nobility [of the new rulers!] but rather to lower–ranking court functionaries – including officers, members of the harem, servants, bodyguards, household officials, and service personnel (Hoffman 1979 p. 278 f). What a class conceit. However, how do the authors want to know? Interestingly enough, Hoffman remarks that at Cheops death (c. 2580) – i.e. hundreds of years later, only when patriarchal royalty was firmly established: »In no case it is argued that any of Khufu’s (Cheops) officials either voluntarily or forcibly committed suicide to accompany their master. «
Of course, the Egyptologists are embarrassed by the barbaric massacres of the glorified kings, which is why they are fine with any euphemism, belittling and every interpretation, however trivial. Wilkinson also tries to give a reasonably plausible but not very convincing explanation for the Sati massacre. He uncritically repeats what was already written by Hoffman, gives the whole thing a positive ›popular‹ touch and adopts the disguised and euphemistic explanation of ›innovation‹ and ›experiment‹. Moreover, he does not find a single word of dismay either. But these murders were a demonstration of the heinous power by the rulers over the lives and deaths of the female monarchs, their daughters, and their people. Their purpose is to destroy the hitherto respected supremacy of the queens, to replace the feminine succession with the male and to establish a totalitarian male royalty. There is a clear connection between the establishment of the male kingship at the beginning of the 3rd millennium and the murder of the women of the court at the death of the king. But this important fact has received little attention so far. The Egyptologists Dieter Arnold and Eric Hornung introduce the royal tombs of Abydos and Sakkara in the Encyclopedia of Egyptology, but do not even mention the murdered women in any way, they write: »So it seems that the king’s tighter royal court (which also includes dogs and dwarfs) is buried partly in Abydos, partly in Saqqara, while especially privileged members of the royal family receive a grave of royal extents in Saqqara. « (LÄ, III, p. 497) Just as refined Jan Assmann bypasses the crime. He writes in his historical overview of the cult of the dead and the belief in the dead: »The first two dynasties are the heyday of those practices and ideas based on the conception of the postmortem existence as a ›dwelling in the grave‹. The great graves of that time served, at the forefront, the task of housing the dead – kings and highest officials – not only with a vast abundance of supplies, food, furniture, weapons, and equipment but also with the servant staff. « (LÄ, VI, p. 663) Assmann baldly overlooks the fact that this ›heyday‹ caused a cruel death to the queens and countless people, especially women and their relatives. Alan Gardiner deeply regrets that we have more knowledge about the victims »who were at best subordinates«, and finds it »all the more painful that we know nothing specific about those, to whose glorification, were dedicated their lives« (Gardiner 1965, p. 456). It is striking that the authors in the description of the victims like to use the male form and mention the murdered women of the court, if at all, only in passing, in the same breath with dogs, weapons, supplies, dwarfs, officials, subordinates and servants. With this tactic, they divert attention from the many murders of women who accompany the dehumanized new rulers. »Dwarfs and dogs, who meet us here on the same level as the servants of the king«, on the other hand, were still »appreciated and respected even later«, writes Erik Hornung (1985, p. 49). It is also instructive what Hoffman tells us: The Sati murders were only perpetrated during a »short period« – but which lasted at least 400 years from 3100–2700. This would best be explained by »social and political innovations«, which accompanied the »critical emergency« of the state, as »experiments of the god–kings«, that »legitimized« their political power. He only wants to see the murders of women as a »symbol« of the transitional process from prehistory to history (Hoffman 1979 p. 278 f). These people however, did not pay the ›experiments of the god–kings‹ symbolically, but in true reality with their lives. A little naively E. A. Wallis Budge sees the reason for the murders of women in that, »the primitive Egyptians were convinced, every man, alive or dead, should have a woman and concubines. Therefore, on the death of a rich or important man, several women were killed so that their spirits would accompany him to the other world to satisfy his desires, just as their bodies had been available during his lifetime. « (Budge 1977, p. 25) But Budge’s conjecture is not only limited by his patriarchal view but on top of that incorrect. The original Egyptians, who are called ›primitive‹, knew no murder of a woman at the death of the ›husband‹; this ›custom‹ was brought by the conquerors and practiced exclusively by them. As the Sati murders in Mesopotamia show, the crime against women was certainly not of Egyptian origin.
The Murders of Women Expose the Myth that Men were ›Alway‹ in Power‹.
If so, the rulers would not have had to wrest power from women by force and murder. One could see that if historians would not simply deny this fact, such as Peter Kaplony, who writes without further explanation: »The assumption that the courtiers were killed at the death of the king (including the two queens) is improbable. « (Kaplony LÄ, I, p. 1110) Or Erik Hornung, who thinks, it has been supposed, »that these men, women, dwarfs, and dogs were forcibly murdered at the funeral of the king to accompany him to the regions of the hereafter. Because this custom is attested in early Mesopotamia, such an assumption is quite obvious, although it cannot be proved, and after the First Dynasty we do not find the slightest evidence of such human sacrifices at the royal funeral. « (Hornung 1985, p. 49)
Their murder had above all the aim to eliminate the hated, highly civilized, educated elite, the intellectual stratum and to destroy the previous righteous, balanced maternal order and virtues. The power of female primacy should be broken. And perhaps even more importantly, the murders of women have eliminated the Priestesses and followers of the Goddess religion. In the chaotic turmoil of conquest and war, the first male gods and the first male priests were ›installed‹ in Egypt. The conquerers intended the absolute destruction of the matriarchal society, its political, religious and social structure. And they succeeded. The warlike patriarchy became a world power. Patriarchal rulers are supported by the myths of patriarchal gods. They are used by rulers and clerics until today to control and limit the freedom of people by commandments, prohibitions, threats and the prospect of reward for good behavior. Especially women and their freedom, their intelligence and their bodies, have remained in the constant sights of patriarchal men.
»There seems to be nothing gods and men fear more
than the loss of control over women. « (Mary Daly)
Sati Murders are of Indo–European Origin
The murder of the matriarchal queens at the death of the Conqueror Kings is called ›Sati‹ or ›Suttee‹ became known through archaeological finds from many countries, always as an impact of the forcible conquistation and subjugation of the matriarchal societies through Indo–European hordes. The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas writes in her work on the study of the Indo–Europeans: »The first Kurgan wave in Eastern Central Europe around 4400 to 4300 and its effects« that the earliest evidence of widow murdering was found when prominent warrior burials appeared. «
»The custom of killing the wife or partner of the deceased and placing her in his grave, was practized back then. « Widow murdering is documented by grave finds from the same period in several areas. (Gimbutas 2000, p. 35) The Sati murders, a manifestation of power by the rulers over the life and death of the female monarchs and their daughters, the heir to the throne, have the purpose of destroying the supremacy of the tribal queens, which had been respected until then. In addition, a demonstration of destroying the matriarchal rule and leadership of the country, and of the female succession to replace the masculine and to establish a totalitarian, masculine royalty. The same happened after the conquests of the Indo–Europeans in early dynastic Mesopotamia and Egypt; in the early dynastic Sumerian Ur, in the early dynastic Kerma in Sudan and in the early dynastic Chinese Shang.
After the invasion of the Sumerians, Sati was also detected in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia (inter alia in Kish, Mari, Susa, Tepe Gawra, Ur and Uruk). The excavator of Tepe Gawra, the archaeologist A. J. Tobler, reports on numerous children and infants who had been sacrificed. In Ur and Kish, the royal dead man was brought to the grave in his full regalia by carriage or sled. Not only the draft animals but also the drivers, armed soldiers, courtiers, musicians and ladies of the harem were obliged to follow their ruler into the future world. (Gordon Childe 1958, p. 153)
SATI in Sumerian Ur
Leonard Woolley, the excavator of the royal tombs found during the excavations a cemetery with sixteen deep–set shaft graves of queens and kings. The cemetery belongs to the dynastic period around 2550. In the tomb of Queen Schubad/Puabi, whose tomb was discovered by Woolley in 1927/28, 65 women and men buried alive with the king. Woolley stated that Sati persisted in Sumer into the historical period of the third Dynasty of Ur.
»The silence of the literary texts stands in contradiction
to the archaeological findings. « (Leonard Woolley 1957, p. 76).
Reconstruction of a royal tomb in Ur, where the dead, entourage and animals
are sacrificed. (1st half of the of the 3rd millennium L. Woolley 1934, fig. 30)
Childe states that the cruel method was the same in Egypt and in the Mesopotamia – except that in Mesopotamia also horses and oxens were buried (Childe 1928/1958, p. 149). Does this eventually mean that these animals were sacrificial victims of the Indo–Europeans? Did cattle and horse not exist in Sumer and Egypt before the colonization? Did the conquerors bring both of them to Mesopotamia and Egypt? An interesting question, because cattle are believed to have spread from Central Asia. The question also arose regarding the horses that can be seen on the conqueror picture No. 100 by Hierakonpolis (see chapter 5).
In the conquered territories of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Sati was found among the Indo–European Kurgan peoples; most of these funerals not only cattle and horses but also contained skeletons of children. The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas sees in the murder of women a characteristic of patriarchal warrior priests who had subjugated the agricultural civilizations. She writes about the gruesome discoveries in the chief tombs of the Kurgan culture. »The bones of sacrificed women and children were usually found next to the skeleton of an exceptionally large, big–boned man, a practice that was apparently brought to Europe by the Indo–European Kurgan peoples. That these deaths coincidentally occurred at the same time«, writes Gimbutas, »can be excluded by the frequency of such multiple burials. « (Quoted by Eisler, 1987, p. 105 f)
The same brutal practices are a common feature of all three invasion waves in Europe; they are not confined to Eastern Europe. A German archaeologist found in 1951 in a cave in Bamberg the remains of 38 people. Only one skeleton came from a man. The remaining victims were 9 women, 28 children and adolescents aged between one and fourteen, who, to the judging of the shattered skeletons, had died a horrible death (Richardi 1977, p. 15). The skeletons are estimated to be about 5000 years old; can, therefore, be dated to the time after the second Indo–European wave of conquest (between 3500–3000) in Europe. Another find was discovered in the so–called Bull’s Cave in Moravia (Eastern European Moravia): »Inside the cave a nobly man had been burned on a chariot, and around him lay the skeletons of 41 people. Most of those sacrificed were women again. « (Richardi 1977, p. 22)
The queens are treated arrogantly by today’s scientists…
Before the upheaval the matriarchal leader of the land, the Queen, was unadorned named Set, according to the Upper–Egyptian Goddess I–Set, woman/lady (Budge 1920/1978, p. 391a). In the Lexicon of Egyptology, two of these earliest queens, who were indispensable for the founding of two first patriarchal Dynasties are mentioned only incidentally: Queen Neith–Hotep with 13 lines and 6 references and Queen Merit–Neith with 8 lines and 5 references (in comparison the ›fly‹ gets 36 lines and l5 hints and the ›bat‹ gets twice as many). Queens were altogether underestimated.
Concerning important women in the past arrogant sexist devaluations follow usually immediatly: According to Wilkinson, Meryt–Neith »must have occupied an unusually important position for her to have been granted the privilege of a tomb on the Umm El–Qa’ab … It seems virtually certain that Mernith acted as regent during Den’s minority. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 74)
Wilkinson accords Merit–Neith merely an interim regency during the minority of her son Den (Udimu) and he thinks that her important position is said to have derived from her position as mother of the future king. Yet the author has to admit that her regency testifies that »a woman held the reins of power«. But he devaluates her position immediately. »As de–facto–ruler of Egypt, Merneith seems to have been accorded a full royal mortuary complex at Abydos. « He attests her »the unique position of the former as queen regent, but not monarch in her own right. « (Wilkinson 1999, p. 74 f and 239). This is quite insolent and how does he know?
Erik Hornung claims: »In addition to the kings of the early days, a single woman received a royal funeral – Queen Meryt–Neith. She is the first of the important female figures who have repeatedly claimed royal rights in Egyptian history and, despite the male role of Pharaoh, acted like ruling kings. « (Hornung 1985, p. 49 f) Queen Meryt–Neith was, like her successor queen Her-Neith, a ruling queen, she too is hardly ever mentioned, or only as the ›wife of Djer/Zer‹ (the Tsar). »There is no doubt that she was buried during his reign. (Emery 1961, p. 80) About Queen Neith–Hotep Wolfgang Helck writes: »She was the Queen of Hor–Aha. Numerous objects and seal imprints with her name were found in the great tomb of Naqada as in the king–necropolis of Abydos. « (LÄ, IV, p. 394) A pretty nebulized statement. Neith–hotep was the queen of the country, not of her husband. Helck continues: »She may possibly have been regent for her grandson for a short time. « About her husband Hor–Aha – ›the fighting hawk‹ – Diodorus recounted that Egyptians first learned from Hor–Aha how to worship the gods and live in a civilzed manner [!] an echo perhaps of his pacification of the country after the long period of anarchy and carnage during the struggle of unification. « (Emery 1961, p. 52)
In addition to the Egyptologists already mentioned, more patriarchal biased authors have their trouble with queens. Pierre Montet says: »Yet they were not real queens in our present sense. For the titles, that were given to Pharaoh at the same time as the royal power, they were not qualified. « (Montet, 1970, p. 80) Or Wilfried Seipel: »Even the oldest documented titles of queens, which are to be assigned to two queens of King Djer/Zer, show the exclusive relation of the queen to her divine consort, present in many different manifestations. « (Seipel LÄ, III, p. 473) »Thereby is shown that the function and position of the queen are to be defined solely by the king. In the early days, and also in the Old Kingdom, the queen is fully attuned to the king«, means prejudiced Wilfried Seipel (LÄ, III, p. 464). What Seipel does not mention is that this queen, along with more than 500 members of her court, was murdered and buried with him when he died. That was scarcely voluntariness. His like–minded colleague Winfried Barta writes: »The role of the queen consists, in the essential, of being wife and king’s mother. « (LÄ, III, p. 489) These are the constant dreams of patriarchal men but certainly not facts.
Apart from the icons Hatshepsut, Nefertari, Nefertiti and Cleopatra little was known about the 3000–year history of the Egyptian queens. Defamation and Depreciation of powerful women are common in Egyptologie. But even the last sovereign queen Cleopatra (69–30), must have been a strong and interesting women and the only one in the »entire dynasty of the Ptolemies to speak the Egyptian language. Her intellectual interests spanned many areas … To her Roman contemporaries, however, she was a devious seductress obsessed with excessive ambition, whose intrigues had to be stopped at all costs. « (Holland 2008, p. 75) Worst of all, patriarchal demagogues had been looking for her supposedly extravagant love life: »Her enemies associate feminine free spirit with promiscuity. Therewith they did nothing else but to repeat the same old tiresome story all the time that a woman smart enough, to be able thinking on her own, could have no morality … But today you can see the obscenities with which her male contemporaries intended to vilify her, as what they are: pornographic fantasies that only unmask their male creators. Her cleverness and her charm, in the end, triumphed over all hostility. « (Holland, p. 76) Similarly, Hatshepsut was defamed. She had »snatched the power at herself«, was called a »throne–brigand«, »cunning, vindictive, and unscrupulous«, or she was villainized as in an »unfeminine king’s role« and »endangered the country with peace policy«! Even Breasted, the otherwise well–informed historian, describes Hatshepsut’s legitimate power–taking, as a »heinous deed«. Peter H. Schulze notes: »Sometimes we cannot avoid the impression that the confusing and incomplete archaeological and inscriptional findings would have found another interpretation if Hatshepsut had not been a woman. « (1988, p. 228) Henri Stierlin, apparently not exactly a friend of the queen and women, writes under the title ›Hatschepsut usurps the Pharaonic throne: Hatshepsut, »though only a woman«, relegates her nephew, »on the spot, to the subaltern position of a ›Prince Consort‹. During this usurpation of title and power, presumably, the Grand Vizier Senenmut, is helpful to the king’s daughter, more precisely, the woman. « (Stierlin 1988, p. 60) Because of Senenmut we can only assume that he was her partner and lover, but of her love life, however, nothing is known, Hatshepsut escaped at least the so popular pornographic defamation. Only with the royal mothers, one dealt respectfully at least to some extent.
»The heart, the seat of feeling, character, and sense,
comes according to ancient tradition from the mother. « (Erika Feucht)
It looks as if neither female nor male Egyptologists, neither Ancient–Orientalists nor followers of patriarchal religions can cope with the fact that there was for an immeasurably long time before the male–dominated ›High–Cultures‹, a matriarchal culture, a matriarchal religion, a Great Goddess and a women–led, peaceful and prosperous world. The old testimonies were eliminated, concealed and destroyed, the history of female values and merits suppressed, ridiculed or discredited as primitive and false. Nevertheless, whenever the patriarchal traditionalists believe they have finally made it and finally have peace, because grass has grown over the fact of the hidden matriarchy, a few camels (such as female and male humanists, feminists and matriarchal researchers) come and eat it off again.
Not a blatant break?
The murder of the matriarchal elite, testifies the atrociously perpetrated crimes of the first half of the third millennium at the beginning of the Bronze Age. However, science cannot »elicit anything from the texts that would indicate ethnically–related conflicts in the world of that time, despite diverse and detailed attempts«, believes the Ancient–Orientalist F. R. Kraus (quoted from Nissen 1998/99, p. 193). And Margueron maintains that »in the consequence of the non–written cultural strata there is no blatant break. « (Margueron 1970, p. 175) If not in (many) texts, then unbiased people can clearly identify the ›conflicts‹ in the pictures [cf. Chapter 4 and 5 Amiet ›La Glyptique mésopotamienne archaïque‹ (Archaic Mesopotamian Glyptic) 1980]. They testify the martial transition from matriarchy to patriarchy.
»There is nothing that gods and men seem to fear more than
the loss of control over women. « (Mary Daly)