Hie ro g lyp hi hic c Eg yp tia n La ngua g e a nd Liter Litera a tur ture e in the Midd le Kingd Kingdo om Sec ond Ed ition tion
Dani Da nie el L L.. Se Se ld e n
PARERGON
Senusret enusret III wear wea ring the Red C rown ow n of Lower Low er Egyp Egyptt and the White White C rown of Uppe r Egypt Egypt
8wA-1tj —Instructio Instructions ns of 8wA-1tj
Daniel L. Selden ©2015
2
PARERGON
Senusret enusret III wear wea ring the Red C rown ow n of Lower Low er Egyp Egyptt and the White White C rown of Uppe r Egypt Egypt
8wA-1tj —Instructio Instructions ns of 8wA-1tj
Daniel L. Selden ©2015
2
Parergon
G . B. Piran Piranesi esi,, Divers (1769) Diversii man iere d 'ado rnare i ca mm ini (1769) Parergon: Some thing thing subo rdina te or a c c essory to the main subjec t. Henc e more ge nerally: ornamenta l ad dition, embe llis llishment” hment” — O ED
Even what we c all “ac c essories” ories” (pa (pa rerga rerga ), i.e., those things things that do no t belong to a c omp lete presenta presenta tion of the the subjec subjec t interna internall lly y as co nstit nstituti utive ve p arts, arts, but only o nly externally externally as ad ditions that a ugment ugme nt the satis satisfac fac tion of tas ta ste [G eschma c k], do so only by their form; as, for example, the borders of pictures, or the vestments on statues, or the porticos around palatial buildings. But But if the a c c essory [Zierat] do es not itself itself enter into the c omp osition osition of the b ea utiful utiful form, it it is, is, like like gil g ilde de d frame frame s, affixed only to win approval for the painting through its charm [Reiz]; it is then called “decoration” [Schmuck], which introduces a rupture [Abbruch] with authentic beauty. — I. Kant, Kritik lytik de s Sc höne n § 14 Kritik d e r Urte Urte ils ilskra ft , Ana lytik The The violenc violenc e of the framing framing multi multiplies plies.. It be gins by enc losin losing g the theory of the aestheti aesthetic c in a theory of the the be autiful, autiful, the latter in a theo ry of taste, taste, and the theory of taste taste in a theory of judgme nt. These are dec de c isions isions that could c ould b e c alled external: external: the the de limit limitation ation has enormous c onseque nc es, but at this this price a c ertain internal internal cohe c oherence rence c a n be save save d. The same does not apply for another gesture of framing which, by introducing the border, does violence to the inside of the system ystem and a nd twis tw ists ts its prope pro pe r a rtic rticula ulations tions out ou t of sha shape pe . This must therefo re be the ge sture of pri p rima mary ry interest to us if we are a re seeki ee king ng a rigo rigo rous grasp of the matter. J J . Derri Derrida da , “Pa “Parer rergo go n,” La v é — ritée n p e int ure , p. 81
PARERGON
Detail of Front side panel of outer coffin of Djehutynakht M iddle idd le Kingd om Late Dynas Dyna sty 11 – Earl Ea rly y Dynas Dyna sty 12, 12, 2010 2010 – 1961 1961 BC BC E Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ii
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
—Ruins Egyptology, Sayyid Quṭ b, and the Logic of the Luxor Massacre Miṣr means a dividing line between two things. – Ibn – Ibn Qutaybah ad‐D īnawar ī
Today the discipline of Egyptology thrives interstitially, filling the lacunae in a dialogue between the deaf. The increasingly virulent assaults on the antiquities of Egypt, now carried out with accelerating frequency on ancient artifacts across the Middle East—from Afghanistan to Egypt—provides the occasion for a more historical and less fanatical response to this recurring pattern of attack. Here, then, are two narratives that speak past one another across the millenni‐ um and half that separates the historical constellation of their respective speech genres—the quo‐ tidian seriality of late twentieth‐century American news coverage and the poetic inimitability (i jā jāz) of the Glorious Qur´ān: `
Rajab 17, 1418 AH: Six gunmen from the Vanguards of Conquest (Talā Talā i al‐ al‐Fatḥ), an organization of anti‐government activists, massacred sixty‐two tourists at Deir el‐Baḥri, an archaeological site and major tourist attraction across the Nile River from Luxor, Egypt (Fig. 1). Armed with automatic firearms and knives, the six assailants were disguised as members of the security forces. They descended on the mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at around 8:45 AM and killed two armed guards at the site. With the tourists trapped inside the temple, the killing went on systematically for forty‐five minutes, during which time many of the bodies, the bodies, especially those of women, were mutilated with machetes. They used both guns and butcher knives. A note praising Islām was found inside one of the disemboweled tourists.1 ´ `
In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate: God promised to those who who believe believe and do deeds of righteousness that they will have forgiveness and a great reward. But those who disbelieve and deny our signs (ā yā yāt)—these are the companions of Hellfire [Qur´ān 5:9‐10]. Fir awn, Hāmān and their forces stood among the corrupt. So Fir awn said, “Council, I know of no god for you apart from me. Hāmān, kindle a fire for me over the clay and build and build me a towering edifice (ṣarḥ) so that I may climb to the god of Mūsa (ilahi to be a liar” [Q 28:38]. So we barred we barred Fir awn from the path and Mū Mūsa), sa), for I consider him to be reduced his works to rubble (tabā tabāb) [Q 40:37]. We made them a thing of the past and an exemplar (mathā mathāl) for people of the future [Q 43:56].2 `
`
`
Cf. “70 Die in an Attack at an Egyptian Temple,” The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/ 18/world/70‐die‐in‐attack‐at‐egypt‐temple.html. Retrieved 8‐27‐14. Wikipedia: s.v. “Luxor Massacre”. 1
of Everyday Fear. Min‐ Compare T. L. Dumn, “Telefear: Watching War News” in B. Masumi, The Politics of Everyday neapolis, 1993: 307‐22, with S. Vasalou, “The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur´an: General Trajectories of Qur´anic Studies 4.2 (2002), 23‐53. and Individual Approaches, Journal of Qur 2
iii
PARERGON
Fig. 1. Deir‐el‐Baḥr ī Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut of Hatshepsut Thebes Site of the of the “Luxor Massacre”
iv
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
The story of Fir`awn and Hāmān, whose details figure remain scattered over several suwar [sing. sūrah] of the Qur ān, constitutes one of the principal proof texts that justify—for some Muslims, at least, if not necessarily the majority—the massacre at 9sr-Dsr.w (M. Eg.: “Holy of Holies”) as something more than just another random terrorist attack. The Qur ānic tale centers on a double typological displacement, syncretizing various versions of Genesis, Exodus, and Esther that cir‐ culated throughout the Late Antique world not only in Arabic, but also in Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge`ez, Pārs īg, and Greek—which makes this a particularly rich, as well as complex, instance of the literary phenomenon that Geza Vermes has termed “rewritten Bible.” In the first place, the Qur ān relocates the story of the Tower of Babel from Shin ār (Babylonia) to Miṣr (Egypt). Here Fir awn—which sometimes figures as a title, at others a com‐ posite figure that condenses all the kings of Egypt into one—has his vizier Hāmān construct for him a ṣarḥ ( ) made out of bricks (later Islāmic commentators gloss this as a “tower” [mijdal]), which collapses almost as soon as it is built: “God struck at the foundations of their building and, from above, the roof fell down upon them and whence this doom had overcome them, they knew not” [Q 16:23]. Late antique Jewish commentary on the Tower of Babel, as well as rabbinic dis‐ cussions of Pharaohʹs architectural ambitions, provide the background that facilitated the fusion of these two episodes in the Qur´ān: ´
´
´
`
`
Nimrôd stood first among the leaders of the corrupt, whose iniquity and godlessness came to a cimax in the building of the Tower of Babel. His councilors had proposed the plan of erecting the tower and Nimrôd agreed to execute this plan in the plain of Shin ār. This enterprise was an outright rebellion against God, with three sorts rebels among the builders. The first party said: “Let us ascend to heaven and wage warfare against Him.” The second party said: “Let us ascend to heaven, set up idols, and pay worship to them there .” And the third party said: “Let us ascend to heaven and destroy Him with our bows and arrows.” They never slackened in their work, and from the dizzying height they constantly shot arrows toward heaven which, returning, appeared to be covered with blood. They were thus fortified in their delusion and cried, “We have slain all who are in heaven.” Thereupon God turned to the seventy angels who encompass his throne and said, “Come, let us go down and there confound their language that they may not under‐ stand one anotherʹs speech.” So it happened and from that moment no one knew what the other said. As for the unfinished tower, a part sank into the earth and another part was consumed by fire. Only one third of it remained standing: whoever passes by it forgets all that he knows.3 `
The councilors and elders of Egypt came to Pharaoh and said, “See, the people of the chil‐ dren of Israel have become stronger and mightier than we. Therefore, give us council as to what to do with them so that we can gradually destroy them, lest they become too numerous in our land.” Pharaoh responded to the elders as follows: “This is the plan that I advise regarding the children of Israel from which I will not waver. Pitom and Ra amsēs `
3
L. Ginzberg, The Legend of the Jews , trans. H. Szold, 7 vols. (Baltimore, 1998): 1:177, 179‐80; condensed. v
PARERGON
are cities not fortified for battle. Thus, it is in our interest to arm them. So go, deal cun‐ ningly with the children of Israel. Proclaim in Egypt and Goshen: “The king has com‐ manded us to build Pitom and Ra amsēs and to fortify them for battle. Those who agree to construct with us shall have their pay given to them daily at the Kingʹs order.ʹ” So the elders, the councilors, and the whole of Egypt did according to the word while the chil‐ dren of Israel continued to work, receiving their daily wages as usual, since some Egyp‐ tians were still laboring with them. After a time, however, all the Egyptians had with‐ drawn and, turning against them, they became officers and taskmasters over Israel. Then they refrained from giving them their wages. By these and other ruses, the Egyptians succeeded in overmastering the Israelites, and once they had them in their power, they treated them with undisguised brutality. In the end, the building of Pitom and Ra`amsēs turned out to be of no advantage to the Egyptians either, for scarcely were the structures completed when they collapsed or were swallowed whole by the earth.4 `
The late Rabbinic Midrash on Exodus ( [11th – 12th century CE]) adds the following de‐ tails: “Pitom and Ra amsē s. Rav and Shmuēl. The first said that Pitom was the cityʹs real name and the reason why it was called Ra amsēs was because each portion as it was built crashed (mitrosē s). The other maintained that its real name was Ra amsēs, and the reason that it was called Pitom was because the “mouth of the deep” ( pi tě hôm) swallowed them one by one” (1.10). Early Muslim commentators recognized that the Qur ān conspicuously conflates what both the Hebrew Bible and the Rabbinic tradition had considered two distinct and largely unre‐ lated tales. Effectively, across several of its suwar , the Qur ān folds the story of Nimrôdʹs idolatry into Fir awnʹs construction of what the Qur ān no longer specifies as several cities but rather as a single ṣarḥ , that is, a monumental edifice. The principal point of tangency, then, that allows the first tale to stand in for the second is the theme of construction coupled with collapse: both Nim‐ rôdʹs tower and Fir awnʹs ṣarḥ fall, only to sink—partially, at least—into the ground. By contrast, most secular European scholars, who in general reject the revelatory nature of the Qur ān, con‐ tinue to credit this sort of narrative “bungling” to Muḥammad who out of his supposed ignorance “failed” to keep his Bible stories straight. So Ludovico Marracci, Confessor to Pope Innocent XI (1611‐89 CE), Professor of Arabic at La Sapienza, Rome, and the first to translate the entire Qur ān into Latin, comments on these passages: `
`
`
´
´
`
´
`
´
´
Mahumet has mixed up Sacred Stories. He maintained that Pharaoh ordered the construc‐ tion of a lofty tower from the top of which he could see the God of Moses which, if accurate would be inferior to him. There is no doubt that Mahumet borrowed the story of this tower from the story of the Tower of Babel. It is certain that in the Sacred Scriptures there is no such story that is related to Pharaoh.5
4
Ibid. 2:246‐49; condensed. Targum Neofiti I to Exodus identifies the two cities at as Tanis and Pelusion.
L. Marracci, Alcorani textus universus ex correctioribus Arabum exemplaribus. Padua, 1698: 526 n. 1. For more recent accounting, see http://www.1000mistakes.com/1000mistakes; retrieved 9‐1‐14. 5
vi
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
What escapes Marracci here, as well as the long line of Western critics who have followed in his wake, is that narrative conflations of this type constitute one of the hallmarks of late antique Levantine‐Mediterranean letters and as such constitute part of the “horizon of expectation” for the reception of the Qur ān. Where the “miracle” (mu jazah) of the Qur ān lies, then, is precisely here: in the deftness with which each sūrah weaves its source materials together, as well as in the economy of its literary, philosophical, and religious allusions, all of which each sūrah recasts into internally rhymed prose (saj ), as—for example—in the creed: lā ilāha illā‐llāh (“There is no god but God”). This constitutes the context into which the Qur ān introduces the rhetoric of its own inimitability: “If you doubt any part of what we have given from on high, step by step, upon our servant, then produce a sūrah of similar merit, and call upon anyone else but God to bear witness for you if what you say is true!” [Q 2:23]. The Qur ān at no point denies its connections to other literatures of the Late Antique, such as the Alexander Romance or the tale of the Seven Sleepers: it only claims to have no rivals. The second tale that the Qur ān links to the story of Fir`awn comes from the Book of Estēr which in Late Antiquity circulated in various different versions: the Hebrew mĕ gillāh (“scroll”), multiple (re)compositions in Greek, plus at least two Aramaic targumim—to say nothing of its translation into Coptic, Syriac, Latin, Ge ez, and Arabic. Jewish and Christian tradition both hold that Nimrôd oversaw the building of the Tower at Babel, but in the Qur ān—which never mentions Nimrôd—it is Hāmān whom Fir awn calls upon to build his ṣarḥ. The Qur ān plucks the name of Fir awnʹs architect directly out of Estēr, in which Hāmān figures as the vizier to Aḥašweroš, the king ( melek) of Iran. Not only does Hāmān use his office to persecute the Persian Jews: eventually, he persuades the king to exterminate all Israelites living within the bounds of his domain which, according to the Hebrew Bible, stretched “from India to Ethiopia” [Est. 1:1]. Now Estēr— Aḥašwerošʹs queen—was unbeknownst to him herself a Jewess, a fact that she reveals to the king only at the eleventh hour, just in time to foil Hāmānʹs plot. Estēr thereby saves Godʹs “holy people” ( am qādôš ), while Aḥašweroš has Hāmān hung for treason. In Rabbinic literature, therefore, Hāmān figures as the archetypal adversary of the “children of Israel.” In the Talmud Bavli, for example, Rav Matna elicits a graphic pun that lies concealed in the Hebrew text: “Where is there a reference to Hāmān in the Tôrâh?—ʹIs it from the tree . . .?ʹ ( )” [bḤullin 139b]. Matna alludes here to the passage in Genesis where Yahweh questions Adam as to whether he tasted the fruit of the forbidden tree [Gen. 3:11]. The three consonants that make up Hāmānʹs name (h‐m‐n: ) also occur here in precisely this same order, to form the question, albeit based on different morphology and syntax: “Is it from?” ( ). According to Matna, this implicitly associates Aḥašwerošʹs genocidal vizier with manʹs original transgression against God, where the tree also serves to foreshadow Hāmānʹs death. Similarly Tractate Sotaḥ 9b likens Hāmān to the serpent that tempted Eve, while Rava remarks at bMĕgillāh 13b: “No one knew evil speech (lāšôn rā āh) better than Hāmān.” By associating Fir awn directly with Hāmān, then, the Qur ān points out that these two arch‐adversaries of the Jews remain essentially compact—two miscreants with the same agenda: they both conspire to annihilate the “children of Israel” (Banū Isrā ī l), to which the Muslim com‐ munity (ummah) has now become the appointed heir. Just as the Qur ān recalls, “O Children of Israel, remember the favor that I bestowed upon you and that I preferred you over all other worlds” [Q 2:47], so it addresses the followers of Muḥammad: “You are the best of the nations ´
`
´
`
´
´
´
´
´
´
`
´
`
`
´
´
´
´
´
´
`
´
´
`
`
´
´
´
vii
PARERGON
raised up for men; you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong” [Q 3:110]. The ṣarḥ that Fir awn has Hāmān build, then, functions as an allegory of those who have “evoked Godʹs anger and gone astray” [Q 1:7]: just as in the Classical Egyptian expression oAj sA “tall‐ backed” (i.e., “arrogant”), so height here becomes a metaphor for pride. Thus, Fir awnʹs tower aims not only to show the Egyptians that he is as “lofty” as the god of Mūsa, but also that they neither have nor need any god(s) other than himself. So the world historian Abū Ja afar Muḥammad b. Jar īr al‐ Ṭabar ī (224 – 310 AH) records the following exchange in his T ārī kh al‐rusul wa‐ l‐mulūk: “Gabriel said: ʹO Muḥammad! I have not loathed any creature as much as I have loathed two men: One of them was a jinnī named Ibl īs, when he refused to bow down to Adam; and the other is Fir awn, when he said: “I am your highest lord”ʹ“[481]. The final quotation here comes from the Makkan Sūratu l‐N āzi āt [79:16‐26]: `
`
`
’
`
´
`
His Lord called to [Mūsa] in the sacred valley of Ṭuwa: “Go to Fir awn, for he has in rebellion risen high (ṭ a ġa), and say to him: “Would you purify yourself and let me guide you to your Lord so that you should fear Him?” Then [Mūsa] showed [Fir awn] the Great Sign, but Fir awn denied and disobeyed, and turned his back hastily. Then he summoned his people and proclaimed: “I am your highest lord.” So God seized him [and made him] an example—both last and first. Indeed, here we find an instructive lesson ( abra). `
`
`
`
From the perspective of the Qur ān, then, the ruins of Pharaonic Egypt serve a precise historical and religious function. They neither constitute the “cinders and sepulture” that Joachim du Bellay mourns in his Antiquitez de Rome (1558), nor do they awaken the sublime as was the case for C.‐F. Volney, contemplating the ruins of Palmyra, in his mediation Les ruines (1791): ´
Hail, solitary ruins, you sacred tombs, and silent walls! It is you that I invoke, to you that I address my prayer. Yes! Although your aspect averts, with secret terror, the common gaze (les regards du vulgaire), it excites in my heart the charm of a thousand sentiments and thoughts. What useful lessons! what affecting and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult you. 6 Given the Qur ānʹs characterization of Fir awn and the motives that it attributes to him for enga‐ ging Hāmān to build his tower, Islāmic scripture understandably displays no nostalgia for the ruins of the Pharaonic past. Rather, as visible signs of the benighted age before Islām, the shattered ṣarḥ , and by extension all the fragments of Fir awnʹs building projects, not only stand as witness to the historical truth of the Qur ān. They serve both as a sign of Godʹs authority as “lord of the worlds . . . and master of the day of doom” [Q 1:2 and 4], as well as an example (mathāl) of the fate that awaits miscreants—the “companions of Hellfire”—who disobey His pro‐ phets (anbiyā ) and deny His messengers (rusul)—who in this case was Mūsa, the prophet whom God sent specifically to the Banū Isrā´ īl. What retains its importance for Islām, then, are the Egyptian ruins in their state of ruin, monumental structures that God purposely destroyed in order both to create an enduring remin‐ ´
`
`
´
´
6
C.‐F. Volney, Oeuvres , 2 vols. (Paris: Fayard, n.d.): 1:169.
viii
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
der and to set an example for mankind to come. According to ḥadī th , moreover, Muḥammad took the trouble to visit Memphis where, with a single damnatory glance, he shattered into pieces all the idols that still remained. It is only in their fracture , then, that the monuments (ṣaruḥ) of Miṣr signify within Islāmic thought. Later Muslim chroniclers, accepting Muḥammad’s charge to “travel through the earth and find out the consequences of those who denied the truth” (Q 30:42), filled in the details of Fir awnʹs fall and set them in world historical perspective: chronologies, king lists, topographies were all worked out, along with reconstructions of the social, religious, and political practices of the period. What was at stake in Pharaonic history, however, was—as al‐Ṭabar ī stressed—not simply the fates of individual recreants or any particular heretical belief, but rather a whole way of life, an entire system of ideas, values, and traditions, that stood funda‐ mentally opposed to the world order willed by God. Though this antagonism and resistance informed almost every aspect of ancient Egyptian culture, it was most evident in the large‐scale building projects, which, following up the statements of the Qur ān, al‐Ṭabar ī and his successors understood to be the material embodiment of the perversity of the regime. An anecdote related by Muḥammad b. Abdullāh al‐Kisā ī (c. 490 AH) tells, in an emblematic fashion, of one Egyptian king who built palace after palace specifically in order to elude a voice that urged him to ack‐ nowledge and submit to God: `
s
´
`
`
Fir awn saw a man coming out of the walls of his palace biting his nails and saying, “O Accursed One, do you think that your Lord is blind to all your evil deeds . . .?” Fir awn was terrified and moved to another palace, but the same man came to him and said, “O Accursed One, you will be destroyed to the end of time if you do not believe in God!” So Fir awn moved to yet another palace. He continued to move from one palace to another until he had built forty palaces, but always he saw the man. The last he built on a magni‐ ficent scale and called it Heliopolis on account of its beauty. 7 `
`
`
This direct link between architecture and apostasy found its most immediate expression in the reliefs and inscriptions that covered the walls of Fir awn’s temples. Far from constituting a repo‐ sitory of ancient wisdom, as Athanasius Kirchner, for example proposed, Muslim historians identified these carvings as talismans and texts intended for profanatory use. Some structures the scholars interpreted as large alchemical laboratories replete with “chambers for pulverizing, ponding, condensing, separating, filtering,” etc.,8 while at other sites discrete statues or images were credited with thaumaturgic powers. An oft mentioned magical relief from the reign of Queen Dalūkah is described by Abū al‐Ḥasan Al ī ibn al‐Ḥusayn ibn Al ī al‐Mas ūd ī (282 – 345 AH) as follows: `
`
`
`
During her thirty‐year rule, the queen endowed Egypt with temples and statues, and she contrived magical devices. In the temples, she placed images of all peoples who might attack Egypt on every side, together with pictures of their steeds, be they horses or camels. 7
Muḥammad ibn Abd Allāh al‐Kisā ī , Tales of the Prophets , trans. W. Thackston, Jr. (Boston, 1978), 212‐13. `
`
Ibn Waṣ īf Shāh, Account of Egypt , cited by Taq ī l D īn al‐Maqr īz ī , Description topographique et historique de l’Egypte , trans. U. Bouriant and P. Casanova, 4 vols. (Paris, 1895‐1920), 1:103. 8
’
ix
PARERGON
She also had depicted there the peoples of Syria and the Maġrib who might invade the country by sea. Into these temples, which were remarkable for their solidity and di‐ mensions, she gathered all the secrets of nature, the properties inherent in minerals, animals, and plants, choosing for this the moment most favorable according to the move‐ ments of the stars and the influences above. By this means, when an army left al‐Ḥijāz or al‐Yaman to invade Egypt, the camels or other figures represented in the temples disap‐ peared under the ground: the foreign army immediately experienced the same fate, and the soldiers or animals were destroyed. If the invasion came from Syria, the same thing happened to the figures turned toward the side from which the army advanced, and the destruction of these images caused the annihilation of the real army as well. It was the same for the armies coming out of the Maġrib or maritime expeditions directed from Rome, Syria, etc. Thus, he sovereigns and foreign peoples feared the Egyptians and kept from making them their enemy. 9 As Abū Zayd Abdu r‐Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. Khaldūn (732 – 808 AH) explained: “The temples of Upper Egypt are remnants of sorcery attesting to the cultivation of magic in ancient Egypt . . . These things were later declared forbidden and illegal [so that] the sciences concerned with them were wiped out and vanished . . . The sword of religious law hangs over them and prohibits their choice as an object of study.”10 Traditionists identified many specific sites with places mentioned in the Qur ān, though Leo Africanus reports that virtually any ancient rubble in the Maġrib might be ascribed to the Pharaonic period, even if patently of Greco‐Roman date,11 and this ultimately made it an object of taboo. The proscription against Fir awnʹs ruins did not, however, render Muslims in Egypt or from elsewhere in the Islāmic world insensitive to their magnificence. Ibn Jubayr, for example, who passed through al‐Fusṭ aṭ on his way from Ġarnaṭ ah to Makka in 579 AH, considered the pyramids at al‐Ğīza one of the wonders of the Islāmic world,12 and visitors who stayed longer in the city generally took the opportunity to explore more distant sites as well. Abd al‐Laṭ īf of Baġdād, for example, who spent time with Mūsa b. Maim ūn and Ṣalāḥ ad‐D īn in 603 AH, made the short trip to Memphis, which he later recalled in his Account of Egypt: `
´
`
`
Despite whatever has been seen to be the causes of its destruction, the ruins [of Memphis] still offer to the spectator a combination of wonders that so confounds the understanding that even the most eloquent men would undertake to describe them in vain. The more one gazes upon the city and its remnants, the greater the admiration it inspires; and every Al ī b. al‐Ḥusayn al‐Mas ūd ī , Kitāb Murū j al‐Dhahab wa Ma ādin al‐ Jawhar , ed. C. Barbier de Meynard and P. de Courteille, rev. C. Pellat, 5 vols. (Beirut, 1966‐74), 2:399‐400; translation: Les prairies d’or (Paris, 1967‐ 74), 2:306‐7. 9
10
`
´
Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddimah 3:128 and 89.
G. Ramusio, “Della descrizione dell’Africa e delle cose notabili che quivi sono per Giovan Lioni Afri‐ cano,” Navigazationi e Viaggi , ed. M. Milanese, 3 vols. (Torino, 1978 [1550]), 1:217‐18. 11
12
x
Ibn Jubayr, Travels of Ibn Jubayr , trans. R. Broadhurst (London, 1952): 45‐46
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
additional glance at the ruins is a fresh source of rapture. Scarcely do they give birth in the mind to one idea before they suggest another still more admirable; and the moment you satisfy yourself that you have reached a perfect comprehension of the whole, they convince you that what you have conceived still falls short of the truth.13 Heretical or not, the physician goes on to discuss the carvings at the site and, after a detailed consideration of their technique, style, and especially the rendering of the human form, he concludes: “The beauty of the sculpted faces and the proportions of the body represent one of the supreme achievements in the realm of art. They are as perfect as can be rendered in stone.”14 The scale, engineering, and aesthetic value of these monuments attracted many intellectuals, and by the Mamlūk period a voluminous corpus of specialized literature on Egyptian antiquities (āthār) had accumulated, characterized by an amalgamation of Egyptian, Arab, Hebrew, and Greek scholarly sources, as well as fabulous inventions.15 When al‐Maqr īz ī came to compose his chapter on pyramids in the middle of the fifteenth century CE, he was able to consult over two dozen treatises on the topic already in circulation, as well as a large body of occasional literature and celebratory verse. 16 Whatever their historical or aesthetic appeal, however, the ruins visible across North Africa and along the Nile still mainly stood as cautionary reminders of a regime whose complete eradication had been a necessary condition for the rise and establishment of the true faith: it was precisely in their corrosion and decay that they stood as palpable witness to the righteousness and prophetic vision of Islām. It hardly comes as a surprise, then, that the call to repair and reconstruct these fallen and half‐ buried monuments issued not from Muslims but from European merchants, travelers, dip‐ lomats, and esthetes who began to visit Egypt in increasing numbers from the late seventeenth century CE on. “What appeal, what secret penchant [draws me to] this malformed jumble of ruined palaces and fallen temples?” J. B. Coeuilhe asked in 1768. “Turning architect, I gather, I organize, I recombine this mass of fragments in my mind, where all at once majestic monuments arise.”17 Likewise, architectural historians, such as J. B. Fischer von Erlach, took the sketches of the Egyptian antiquities brought back by travelers to the Nile valley and began to reconstruct the ruined buildings in hopes that through “intervention [and] reasonable conjecture, they might “rescue the monuments from the injuries of time.” 18 Pictorial “restitutions” of this type quickly
Abd al‐Laṭ īf, Historiae Aegypti Compendium, arabicè et latinè , ed. J. White (Oxford, 1800): 118‐20.
13
`
14
Ibid. 128.
To cite only the most famous: Ibn Zūlāq’s History and Praise of Egypt , the Annals of al‐Musabbiḥ ī , Ibn Waṣ īf Shāh’s Account of Egypt and its Wonders , Murtaḍā b. al‐ Af īf’s Book of Marvels , al‐Maqr īz ī’s Opinions and Observations on the History of the Districts and Monuments of Egypt , al‐Qalqašandi’s Glimmer of Dawn for the Dimsighted. 15
`
16
Arabic text and translation in E. Graefe, Das Pyramidenkapitel in al‐ Makrī zī ’s ‘Khiṭ aṭ ’ (Leipzig, 1911).
17
J. B. Coeuilhe, Les ruines (Paris, 1768). For the intellectual context, see Chapter 2.
18
J. Fischer von Erlach, Entwurff einer historichen Architectur (Vienna, 1721), Preface. xi
PARERGON
gave rise to the idea of material “restoration,”19 and by the end of the eighteenth century, public officers, most prominently A.‐C. Quatremère de Quincy, began to promote the conservation and refurbishment of the scattered remains: It is crucial, both for history and for the arts in general, to prolong the existence of archi‐ tectural monuments, to arrest their deterioration, and to complete them, where there is still time, by reestablishing what is missing on the model of the parts that still survive . . . In preserving ruined buildings, . . . [one needs] to restore their integrity, as far as this is possible, either by replacing the original materials, or by substituting ones that are similar, or disencumbering [the structures] from debris, or sweeping away the earth that conceals their foundations, or the overgrowth defacing them. 20 For Egypt, with its “numberless fragments of columns and heaps of ruined constructions,”21 this not only entailed an “obligation . . . to reproduce the totality of [the buildings’] disposition, with its proper arrangement, relations, and proportions,”22 but posited a vast program of archaeolo‐ gical inquest, recovery and reevaluation. “If Egypt were possessed by a Nation sympathetic to the fine arts,” Volney wrote with his eye on the horizon, “we should find these resources for an understanding of the ancient world such as elsewhere earth denies us . . . Until that time, perhaps not so far distant as one thinks, we must put off our desires and our hopes. It is then that we shall be able to dig the whole land of the Nile and the deserts of Libya . . . where the monuments covered in the sands preserve themselves in trust for the coming generation.”23 By and large, European ruinistes remained ignorant of what Okasha el‐Dakly has called the “missing millennium” of Muslim scholarship devoted to the Pharaonic era which included studies of al‐qalam al‐barbāwī (“the pen of the ruined temples”, i.e., hieroglyphs) and al‐qalam al‐ kāhinī (“the pen of the priests”, i.e., hieratic), as well as Pharaonic science, medicine, and magic.24 For the residents of Ottoman Egypt, however, the Qur ānʹs directive to study the means by which Fir awnʹs regime resisted the order of God was one thing; but European designs to excavate and reconstruct the monuments of his architect Hāmān, was quite another, and this proved disquiet‐ ing to say the least. When European travelers arrived and began measuring and drawing every Pharaonic ruin that they could find, Egyptians tended to react with suspicion, if not outright hostility, something that the Europeans unfortunately misconstrued as ignorance or malice. 25 Using the profile of the first pylon at Edfu as the inspiration for a more sleek modern office or ´
`
For the terminological distinction, see A.‐C. Quatremère de Quincy, Encyclopédie méthodique: Architecture , 3 vols. (Paris, 1788‐1825), 3:286‐88. 19
20
Ibid. 3:314.
21
Ibid. 1:27.
22
Ibid. 3:286.
23
Volney, Voyage 1:256‐57.
24
O. el‐Daly, op. cit.
See, for example, C. Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern , 2 vols (Co‐ penhagen, 1774‐78). 25
xii
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
apartment complex—as does Volume I of the Napoleonic Description de lʹÉgypte (1809) [Fig. 2]— came dangerously close in the eyes of the Egyptian alī m (“scholars”) to reviving the order of Pharaonic Egypt. In fact, reading through the accounts of European travelers to Egypt from the `
Description de l’Egypte A I (1809)
Egyptian Revival house, Los Feliz (1924)
Fig. 2
xiii
PARERGON
mid‐seventeenth century CE through the early nineteenth one cannot help but notice the over proportionate number of fallāḥī n who murdered Europeans at or near Pharaonic sites where rob‐ bery does not seem to have been a motive. This was potentially one quick and dirty way to deal with “unbelievers” (kuff ār) who had the temerity to rush in where angels feared to tread, partic‐ ularly individuals intent on restoring the very monumental buildings that both the Qur´ān and later Islāmic tradition had declared taboo. In one sense, then, the executions carried out at Fir‐ awn’s spurious and sacrilegious “Holy of Holies” ( 9sr-Dsr.w ) on 17 November 1997 by the Van‐ guards of Conquest, one militant Islāmic group among others operating in contemporary Egypt, continued this tradition though more methodically and on a much larger scale. Between 1992 and 2015, in fact, there have been over forty‐five fatal attacks on tourists at Egyptian museums or archeological sites—many inspired by the wahhābī mission of al‐Qā ida— with the goal of ridding the country of all individuals primarily interested in pre‐Islāmic Egypt, but with little or no concern for Egypt’s welfare as an orthodox Islāmic state. While Muslim law (šarī ah) in no way prohibits the study of Egyptian antiquities, it does provide an asymmetric challenge to the ostensibly “secular” and “disinterested” reconfiguration of Ilm al‐ Miṣrī yāt into “Egyptology” as an “independent” and “scientific” field of knowledge‐production, now centered in the West. To preserve the Temple of Isis at Philae by transporting it from one island to another, to digitalize Karnak so that one can “fly through” its colonnades in virtual 3D, to rebuild the Library at Alexandria is to embark upon a precarious venture. It is to enter—and to intervene within—a culturally contested terrain, where there is not just one witness to the “truth” of the discipline but two. German, Latin, Japanese—students risk little today in learning to read Geru‐ salemme liberata (1575), Os Maias (1888) , or Genji monogatori (c. 1025). To resurrect classical Egyp‐ tian, however, to piece back together the hieratic fragments of Sinuhe , to crack the cryptography of the Temple at Esna: this is to stir up the dust, to revivify the rubble of the pre‐Islāmic past, which is therefore to take up—whether consciously or not—a position within politics on a world order. In the empirical legacy that runs from Francis Bacon through John Locke to Auguste Comte and Karl Popper, Western scholars have confidently linked Egyptology to man’s potential for “perfectibility”—a “science” validated by its struggle to overcome what even Tertullian had already recognized in the second century CE as the “absurdity” (ineptia) that stands at the heart of Christian faith. 26 Contemporary Muslims, however, at least those who follow in the footsteps of the Egyptian activist and martyr Sayyid Quṭ b, consider the intervention of Egyptology as a matter of belief and rectitude whose sole justification would entail, in Søren Kierkegaard’s terms, “a teleological suspension of the ethical”27—a notion rather foreign to Muslim thought. As Quṭ b explains in his momentous Ma ālim fi al‐Ṭ arī q (“Signposts along the Way” [1963]): `
`
`
`
`
When a person embraced Islām during the time of the Prophet—peace be upon him—he would immediately cut himself off from jāhiliyyah—that is, the state ignorant of the guidance from God. When he stepped into the circle of Islām, and would start a new life, separating himself completely from his past life under ignorance of Divine Law. He would 26
Tertullian, De carne Christi V, 4: “prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est.”
27
S. Kierkegaard, Frygt og Bæven (Copenhagen, 1843), Problema 1.
xiv
HIEROGLYPHIC EGYPTIAN
look upon his deeds during his life of ignorance with mistrust and fear, with a feeling that these were impure and could not be tolerated in Islām. With this feeling, he would turn toward Islām for new guidance. Thus, there would be a break between the Muslim’s present Islām and his past jāhiliyyah, and this after a well thought out decision, as a result of which all his relationships with jāhiliyyah, would be cut off and he would be joined completely to Islām. This was the parting of the ways and the starting point of a new journey, a journey free from the pressures and the values, concepts and tradition of the jāhilī society. Today, we are also surrounded by jāhiliyyah , which is of the same nature as it was during the first period of Islām, perhaps even a little deeper . . . It is therefore necessary— in the way of the Islāmic movement—that in the early stages of our training and education we should remove ourselves from all the influences of the jāhiliyyah in which we live and from which we derive benefits. We must return to that pure source from which those people derived their guidance, the source of which is free from any mixing or pollution. We must free ourselves from the clutches of jāhilī society, of jāhilī concepts, jāhilī traditions and jāhilī leadership. Our mission is not to compromise with the practices of jāhilī society, not truck any compromise.28 On three occasions, the Qur ān employs the term jāhiliyyah ( ignorance”) to designate the “era of unknowing” that preceded Muḥammad’s advent as a prophet and, through his mediation, the descent of the Qur ān. For Quṭ b, the most important of these proof texts comes from the Sūratu l‐Fatḥ—the Sūrah of Victory—which traces the passage of mankind from a state of ignorance ( jāhiliyyah)to one of knowledge ( ilm): “When those who disbelieved held disdain in their hearts—the disdain of ignorance (al‐ḥamiyyata ’l‐ jāhiliyyati)—God sent down His Sak īna [cf. Heb. š ĕ kînâh) on His Messenger and on the believers, and made them adhere to the word of right‐ eousness (taqwā)” (Q 48:26). Borrowed from pre‐Islāmic poetry, the term jāhiliyyah figures here as part of a diachronic scheme in which the Qur ān divides Universal History into two periods that are antithetically opposed—first, an originary “age of ignorance,” which, ended through the intervention of the Prophet, who introduced instead an “age of cognizance”—or, if you will, Islām. Together, then, the pair jāhiliyyah and ilm or jāhiliyyah / islām constitutes one of the foun‐ dational oppositions that structure Muslim thought, which relegates jāhilī ideas, jāhilī traditions, jāhilī art, literature, and architecture to an absolute past that not only remains over and done with, but has no utility or value for the present. Hence the well‐known story—almost certainly apocryphal—concerning the destruction of the great Library at Alexandria, which Ibn al‐Qift ī (c. 567 – 645 AH) relates as follows: ´
“
´
’
`
´
`
Yaḥyā al‐Naḥw ī the Egyptian, the Alexandrian, disciple of Severus, was a bishop in the church of Alexandria by Egypt who advocated the Jacobite way. Later on, however, after having read works of philosophy, he rejected what Christians believed about the Trinity, and it became impossible for him that the One had become Three and that the Three would be One. When it was discovered by the bishops of Egypt that he had rejected S. Quṭ b, Milestones , 2nd ed. (Damascus, n. d.), condensed and modified; emphasis added. See further, S. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyyah (New York, 2006). 28
xv
PARERGON
[this doctrine], they became furious and gathered to discuss his case and to organize a disputation. Here they refuted him and his view was declared heretical. His incapacity pleased them and they sought to reconcile with him, displaying a friendly attitude and asking him to retract his view and to stop saying what he had wanted to prove and establish to them. But he did not, so they dismissed him from his position, after some public discourses. Now Yaḥyā , who lived until the conquest of Egypt by Amr ibn al‐ Āṣ , and came to visit Amr, who knew his reputation in knowledge and his position [on the Trinity] and what had happened to him with the Christians. Amr honored him and gave him a position. He listened to his speech about the impossibility of the Trinity and was pleased with it. He also listened to Yaḥyā’s speech on the cessation of the world and was amazed by it, despite the fact that what he used were logical proof. `Amr listened to Yaḥyā’s phil‐ osophical expressions with sympathy, although the Arabs did not know them, and became fond of him, for Amr was not only sensible, but also good listener and thinker. So he took Yaḥyā [into his company] and kept him always at his side. One day Yaḥyā said to Amr, “You have authority over Alexandria, and have seized all manner of things in it. I will not object to anything that is of use to you, but anything that is not useful to you, we should have a priority.” Amr said to him: “What is it that you want?” To which Yaḥyā replied, “The books of wisdom which are in the royal storehouses—they have fallen under your responsibility, but you don’t have any use for them, while we need them ourselves.” Amr said to him: “Who gathered these books, and what is so important about them?” And Yaḥyā answered him: “Ptolemy Philadelphus, one of the kings of Egypt. In his reign, science and the people of science were held in esteem, and he searched for books of knowledge and ordered them to be collected, dedi‐ cating special storerooms to them and trusting the responsibility for their collection to a man named Zam īra. And Ptolemy supported Zam īra so that he could collect the books, search for them, buy them, and incite sellers to bring them. In a short time, he had assem‐ bled 54,120 books. “When the king was informed of Zam īra’s success in this business and he had verified their number, he asked him: ‘Do you think that there is a book remaining in the word that we don’t have?’ And Zam īra replied: ʹThere are still in the world a great mass: in Sind, in India and Persia, in Jurjan and in Armenia, Babylonia, and Mosul, as well as among the Byzantines.’ And the king was pleased with this and he told him: ‘Continue in your pursuit.’ And so he did until the death of the king. And these books are kept until today and preserved as the responsibility of the governors working for the kings and their successors.” Amr was quite impressed with what Yaḥyā had told him, and he began to covet the books about which Yaḥyā had spoken, but he said: “I cannot make any order without first asking the permission of the Prince of the Faithful Umar ibn al‐Khaṭṭ ā b.” So he wrote to Umar, informing him of Yaḥyā’s speech as we have reported it and asking for his instructions about what he should do. And he received a letter from Umar enjoining him: “As for the books you mention, if they are in agreement with the Book of God, we `
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
xvi
