The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

Egyptian kingship was, however, Janus-faced. Its inner visage was that of supreme patriarch, standing guard over a vastly extended family – a Great House (the literal meaning of ‘pharaoh’). Its outer face is shown in depictions of the king as a war leader or hunt leader asserting control over the country’s wild frontiers; all were fair game when the king turned his violence upon them.111 This is very different, however, to heroic violence. In a way, it’s the opposite. In a heroic order, the warrior’s honour is based on the fact that he might lose; his reputation means so much to him that he is willing to stake his life, dignity and freedom to defend it. Egyptian rulers, in these early periods, never represent themselves as heroic figures in this sense. They could not, conceivably, lose. As a result, wars are not represented as ‘political’ contests, which imply a match between potential equals. Instead, combat and the chase alike were assertions of ownership, endless rehearsals of the same sovereignty the king exercised over his people and which ultimately derived from his kinship with the gods.