ABSTRACT
In the words of a medieval Arabic poem, the Great Pyramid, the archetypal ancient Egyptian monument, is ‘feared by time, yet everything else in our present world fears time’ ‘Umāra al-Yamanī Schäfer 1986, p. 24). The protagonists of such a culture defy the future to erode their achievements, and they may appear set against change. Yet their successors are aware of change, and they have the monuments of the past almost ineradicably before them; they too seek to construct enduring monuments; in looking to the future they emulate the past and extend its traditions. Such obvious paradoxes could hardly be suppressed by the actors. They form a context for involvement with past, present and future in a complex society – large monuments are characteristic of complex societies and archaeologically relevant, but tension between the transient and the enduring is common anywhere. A literate, complex society can supply a continuing, precisely formulated ideological context for such reactions to the past. Very restricted literacy, as there was in ancient Egypt, brings limitations: the chief evidence, which consists of texts and works of art, relates to the ruling elite. I do not study the cult of the dead and of ancestors, which might give evidence for uses of the past in slightly more of the society. The topic can only be sketched here; the 1st millennium BC, the richest period for uses of the past, requires separate study. (For a different treatment see Redford 1986.)
