Death by Fire in Ancient Egypt Anthony Leahy Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 27, No. 2. (1984), pp. 199-206. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4995%281984%2927%3A2%3C199%3ADBFIAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient is currently published by BRILL.
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Journal of the Economic and Social Histosy of the Orient, Vol. X X V I I , Part I1
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DEATH BY FIRE IN ANCIENT EGYPT In a recent survey entitled "The Treatment of Criminals in Ancient Egypt through the New Kingdom"'), David Lorton has argued that "the only form of death penalty that we know of was impalement" (p. 51). In reaching this conclusion, he considers, inter alia, a number of passages which seem to refer to death by fire. In his discussion of the fate of the adulterous woman in Pap. Westcar, he diverges significantly from the traditional view that the woman was burnt2) by translating rdi St rn as a reference to "branding .. . or, less likely perhaps, torture" (p. 15). In support of this, Lorton adduces a passage in a stela from Abydos, which bears the cartouches of Neferhotep 13),as proof of the existence of branding as part of a punishment for crime in ancient Egypt4). The stela forbids burial, or even trespass, in a sacred part of the necropolis5), specifying as the penalty for anyone committing the latter offence br. q w ) wbd. t(w).f, which Lorton translates as "one shall brand him' ' , adding that "the mention of branding ... clearly implies reduction to unfree status" (p. 18). His translation and conclusion both invite comment since, having thus disposed of two apparently explicit references to death by fire as a capital punishment, Lorton is able to dismiss a Ramesside ostracon of similar import ( 0 . Nash 2) with the words "The text seems to state literally that they will be thrown into the fire, but such a penalty would fall entirely outside the bounds of the patterns of criminal punishment established by a study of the entire c o r p ~ s " ~ ) . In support of his rendering of wbd in the Neferhotep inscription as "brand", Lorton quotes the translation of Breasted, who is said to have "pointed to the attestation of wbd in the Ramesside period in reference to branding'''). O n examination, however, this "Ramesside" parallel (not so called by Breasted) turns out to be part of the Twenty-second Dynasty "Chronicle" of Prince Osorkons). Furthermore, wdb does not occur in the passage quoted by Breasted which has, in any case, nothing at all to do with brandingg). It does not, therefore, provide a parallel for a translation of wbd as "brand"lO), and thus no support for Lorton's translation of Pap. Westcar can be derived from the Neferhotep stela. In both cases, the traditional translation of "burn" should be retained. It is not my intention to pursue the question of branding as a concomitant of imprisonment or loss of freedom. Suffice it to say that the only branding scenes we possess depict foreign captives being registered on their arrival in Egypt or at the institution to which they had been allotted, and there is as yet little evidence that it was part of the ordinary criminal procedure"). The main concern of this note is Lorton's implicit contention that burning as a capital punishment is not attested in ancient Egypt, or at least not before the end of the Twentieth Dynasty. Quite apart from the texts already mentioned, there is evidence from the New Kingdom which merits consideration (see below, n. 39), and, in excluding the period after the New Kingdom, a body of material which is in some vital respects richer than that available for the two previous millennia is neglected. The extent of its relevance to earlier Egyptian society is rarely easy to assess, but it cannot simply be ignored. In some aspects of law, there was demonstrably little significant change between the New Kingdom and the
200
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Ptolemaic period12), and it might be argued that, in so far as generalisation is permisible, the presumption ought to be one of relevance until proven otherwise. References to death by fire in a variety of contexts have been collected by De Meulenaere and Hornung'3), and it would serve no purpose to catalogue them again here, but I would like to draw attention to one particular aspect of the problem, for which a text from the temple at Philae provides an excellent starting-point. An address to Osiris reads: di.k Bkw-ib ms_dn nsw r 'b n Mwt _hrsnwt.s sbr. n. k. Snyw hm.f, "May you place the rebels, the king's anathema, on the brazier of Mut, who is under her brother, after you have overthrown the enemies of His Majesty""). H3kw-ib and Sntyw, if not exactly synonymous, are evidently descriptions of the same peoplei5), and it is clear that death by fire is envisaged as a punishment for rebels after their defeat. The possibility of remote allusion to actual rebellion here is intriguing but cannot be clarified without a more detailed knowledge than we currently possess of the influence exercised by Ptolemaic and Roman rulers on the composition of temple inscriptionsI6). That the concept is not a purely mythological one is evident from the much more worldly "Instruction of Ankhsheshonq". In the preamble, which explains how Ankhsheshonq came to be in prison, it is related how those associates of the author who schemed against Pharaoh suffered the fate of being placed upon "the brazier" (p3 Ch)'7).An as yet unpublished demotic story recounts an essentially similar episode, although apparently as an integral part of the tale rather than merely by way of introductionla). The papyrus is unfortunately fragmentary, but one passage cites a royal order to put someone, probably a Prophet of Horus, lord of Letopolis, together with his family and associates, on the brazier (P3 'h). It is not certain what the crime was or whether the punishment was actually carried out, but, as in "Ankhsheshonq", the execution episode is incidental, and likely to reflect the custom of the day. The use of the definite article in the two stories implies that the punishment was familiar to their audienceIg), and the combined testimony of these diverse texts may be taken as proof that death by burning was well-known to Egyptians in the latter half of the first millennium B.C., and that it seems to have been regarded as particularly appropriate to treason. It is important to note that these two demotic literary texts, despite the late date of the surviving mss. 20), reflect a wholly Egyptian milieu. All the characters are Egyptian, and, whoever the unnamed Pharaohs of these tales may be, they are not Ptolemies. The Saqqara papyrus is earlier as a manuscript than the extant copy of "Ankhsheshonq", but each must derive its inspiration from at least as far back as the Thirtieth Dynasty, and perhaps much earlier, as does the Pedubast cyclez1). This does not necessarily help to determine their dates of composition, since one can envisage them being written in a mood of nostalgia for a lost past, or as a nationalist rejection of the unpleasant fact of foreign sovereigntyz2);the crucial point for the present purpose is that the society and customs which they depict are distinctively Egyptian. The same association between rebellion and death by fire can be seen in two earlier instances. The well-known crux in the narrative of prince Osorkon, whatever its precise significance (see below), undoubtedly refers to the burning of Theban rebels. The method of execution is not explicit, "each man being burned in the place of his crime", but the double reference to 'hw, "braziers", by way of simile in the same passage points to one akin to that of the texts discussed abovez3).
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20 1
The crime in this case was ostensibly or theologically against Amun; in reality, the price to be paid for unsuccessful rebellion against Osorkon himself, the King's eldest son and principal representative in Upper Egypt. The fact that he was also High Priest of Amun doubtless facilitated representation of the resistance as opposition to the godz4). A second, slightly later, parallel is provided by Manetho's story of the burning alive of Bocchoris by Shabako. This is baldly related in both versions of SyncellusZ5),but it has generally been accepted at face valuez6).Shabako's invasion of Egypt in c. 712 B.C. was accompanied by the suppression, at least temporarily, of any widespread claims to kingship on the part of the Twenty-second, Twentythird and Twenty-fourth Dynasties, if not of the dynastic lines themselves27). In these circumstances, the execution of the figurehead of resistance to the Kushites would be entirely comprehensible, and pragmatically, as a response to Tefnakht's rejection of the authority of Piye, a political necessity. Tefnakht, Bocchoris' predecessor at SaisZB), had taken an oath of allegiance to Piye after the latter's campaign in his year 2OZ9), and had subsequently broken it by proclaiming himself king30). In succeeding Tefnakht, Bocchoris had compounded the offence, since the vassal treaty which one may assume accompanied the oath was probably binding on descendants3'), and he was therefore a subject in revolt against his overlord. Such attempts to overthrow the established political order, embodied in the person of the king, echoed parallel mythological assaults on Maat, and especially the rebellion of Seth against the legitimate rule of Osiris. The destruction by fire of the latter's enemies can be traced back to the Coffin Texts and is a recurrent theme in the theological literature of the New Kingdom and after3z).It is prominent in late accounts of the proscription of Seth, epitomised in a text recently published by G ~ y o n ~in~ which ), the gods place the "Ba" of Seth on "the great brazier of the rebellious" (
