Chapter 3 Egyptian Rhetoric, Seshat, and Rhetoric-as-Being

Baines (2007) has provided a glimpse into the tradition of the analysis of myth in the German philological tradition and has noted that at least up to the year 2000, the German scholarly tradition retained a conceptual focus on myth in Egyptian society. Older mythologists in this tradition, such as Kurt Sethe (1932), tended to draw unsupportable inferences but recognized a basic axiomatic truth concerning the deities in ancient Egypt: as Baines explained, “relations between gods” could serve a conceptual mapping function well into Egyptian prehistory (p. 82). Reactions are mixed with the specific conclusions of Sethe, but his early work is useful because he advanced the idea that Egyptian deities served a conceptual mapping function, which would be extended by theorists such as Jan Assmann. Hermann Kees (2022) and others tended to assume that the available evidence is only a fraction of what originally existed, a logical assumption. The extremely limited life of papyrus records and the obvious inaccessibility of the oral tradition leave us with scattered epithets, invocations, and references from which to draw conclusions, a point further confirmed by Brunner-Traut (2014). The scattered inscriptive and visual evidence that Budde (2000) has documented contains the most geographically and archivally diverse evidence concerning Seshat. Schott further noted the distinction and relations in the Pyramid Texts between human and divine worlds (1942). Assmann (2001a, 1977) rejected the existence of narrative myths at least until the Middle or New Kingdom and noted that the role of myth in Egypt derives from its iconicity, not narrativity: the gods were essentially iconic of concepts, institutions, and social relations. Assmann’s use of metaphorical terms for this general understanding of myth, however, is limited, as “iconicity” implies the gods of Egypt expressed their essence and relations—their ontology—through images alone. I argue, conversely, that abstractions in Egypt possessed identity through the gods, and regarding rhetoric, whose most direct identifier is through Seshat, though certainly Thoth and Ma’at bore upon the relational nature of the idea of rhetoric in ancient Egypt. Contemporary scholars have placed a significant emphasis on Ma’at because her characteristics align with contemporary notions of the telos of rhetoric, far more than the Egyptian fundamentals of rhetoric’s ontology.

Page 81 →Assmann et al. (1982) analyzed myth as iconic because it exhibits a “constellation of constancies” in the mythic record (p. 38). In so doing, Assmann seems to be implying mythic representations of deities are iconic, not in the sense that they represent a larger constellation of associated concepts, but rather as patronages of one specific concept. For example, Assmann analyzed the engravings in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Hathor and concluded that they stand for allied concepts like the mysteries of procreation, the embrace of the father, the rearing of children, and birth (p. 38). Assmann’s analysis, which embraced both inscriptive hieroglyphic and iconic evidence, likewise represented a “constellation of constancies” in depictions of Seshat. Assmann described these constellation formations as a collative “myth.i sehe Aussagen (collective statements; p. 39). In the case of the Hathor depictions, the constellation of images associated with procreation assumes “a mythological life of its own,” moving from general constellations of concepts to specific expressions of a mythic world that are a composite of the whole (p. 39). Assmann referred to this mythic expression in Egypt as marked by a “narrative lack of contours” (narrative Konturlosigkeit, p. 39). The lack of neat contours or delineations makes an identification of rhetoric in the Egyptian mythological tradition more difficult. Therefore, an analysis of the mythic sources of rhetorical theory in Egypt calls for a completely different mode of analysis than the previous chapters on the Sumerian textual evidence.

Despite their lack of narrative contours, the major categories of Seshat’s patronages—epithets, invocations, and iconic depictions—represent a composite of rhetorical concepts. They are readily identifiable qualities as a constellation of independent components that form a fragmentary composite of the concept of rhetoric. The associations of Seshat with archival knowledge, generative graphic design, and rhetorical agency suggest that she was a conceptual identification that would even retroactively be described as rhetorical by Egypt’s Greek Ptolemaic conquerors. In Assmann’s (1982) terminology, the constellation of evidence that identifies Seshat as an ancient anthropomorphic representation of rhetoric constitutes a “crystallization point” (Kristallisationspunkt, p. 40). The center of meaning (Bedeutungsschwerpunkt) derives from an examination of this point at which the confluence of propositions surrounding Seshat’s being comes into stark focus (p. 38).

Thus, while Assmann’s early work suggested that icons could present an array of meanings that form a myth—albeit lacking narrative contours—those icons can crystallize into a refractory point that illustrate an abstract concept. The same might be said of various invocations, epithets, and images Page 82 →surrounding a deity such as Seshat. The question for the Egyptologist is thereby epistemological when interpreting these questions, using Assmann’s heuristic. Nevertheless, the gods might represent abstractions of cultural and social significance, as in the case of Ma’at and social justice. My analysis hinges upon these methodological and epistemic assumptions when analyzing the non-narrative evidence associated with the Egyptian rhetorical pantheon. Seshat-as-concept is most decisively rhetorical among the (rather vast) Egyptian pantheon, based on her association with archival knowledge, generative graphic design, and the inherent ability to convey eloquence between the divine and human realm. Baines has pointed out that under Assmann’s framework, myth is often “mobilized in a non-narrative context” so that “the underlying analytical abstraction of a myth” can be analyzed outside of narrative characteristics (Baines, 1991, p. 94).

In summary, the German philological tradition’s focus on the analysis of myth in ancient Egypt recognized that Egyptian deities served a conceptual mapping function. To draw conclusions, an identification of the function of deities as conceptual maps was a necessary heuristic for the available evidence, given the scattered epithets, invocations, and references. While Assmann (1982) argued that the identity of the gods in Egypt could be found in their iconicity, where the gods were essentially iconic of concepts, institutions, and social relations, I contend that abstractions in Egypt can find their identity in the fragmentary evidence concerning gods with which those concepts are associated. The identity of the gods-as-concept does, indeed, include rhetoric as one of those concepts, particularly regarding Seshat and Thoth.

One further qualifying element of this inquiry relates to the rhetorical myth of ancient Egypt, namely the significant development beyond Assmann’s work by John Baines. Baines (1991) problematized Assmann’s separation of the divine and “real” worlds because, to the Egyptians, the gods possessed a “being” that was not wholly segregated from the existence of other beings; the divine and mortal spheres were in a constant state of mediating interaction. For the Egyptians, the divine world was shared in the being of the real world, even if its status was less physically and causally identifiable than the “being” of the human world. Assmann distinguished between the “real” world and the human world, but in fact, the reality of the world to the Egyptian mind was a great deal more complex. Take a related concept as an example: magic. Magic was a conceptual way of viewing the world and an activity with practical implications in ancient Egypt (Ritner, 2021, 1997). Though markedly different than the act of writing or speaking, they Page 83 →were related, as both had conceptual and practical dimensions. Moreover, magical practice implicated writing and speaking. Conversely, writing necessitated writing and speaking because these acts precipitated magical consequences. This chapter contends that rhetoric, like magic “was a distinct force that could also be personified as a major deity” (Baines, 1991, p. 39). Speech could be made magical, and the magical quality of speech could alter the world itself.

While to Assmann (1991), “one could distinguish between narrowly ‘instrumental’ practices” (p. 40) and ones wholly associated with human life, such as rhetoric, Baines (1991) maintained that such a distinction is impossible. This is why deities such as Thoth and Seshat possessed an ontological character in Egypt. Their identification could not exist in a segregated world in which there was a magical or religious world distinct from the “real” world. Suh a categorical division “would cut across analytical notions” of the “real” world and the “everyday” world (p. 42). There is, to Baines, “no easy way to connect this with changes in the status” of the two “and their sanctity and relations” (p. 42). However, in the context of rhetoric, the connection between Assmann’s separate secular and spiritual worlds could be explained through the integrity of rhetoric’s magical and palpable nature in ancient Egypt. Assmann (1991) proposed three relations, which may be characterized as mythical statements, one of which may be “instrumental or analogical” (handlungsbezogen, p. 43). Baines (1991) disagreed: “Assmann seems to assume that these functional relations” might transform the myth itself into a “mythical statement”; however, Egyptian myth is “an analytical abstraction” (p. 43). Baines underscored that the relationship between myths and mythical statements can be reciprocal. For purposes of this analysis, I contend that the analogical expression of abstract social concepts and practical activities (such as rhetoric) is found in the personification of Seshat in the Egyptian pantheon. However, the identification of rhetoric in her person derives from a worldview unique to the ancient Egyptian context.

Kerry Muhlenstein (2008, 2007) observed that the ancient Egyptians had an ontological character that did not wholly distinguish between spheres of activity that had a secular or a sacred character (p. 115). This absence of distinction would notably permit an identification of Seshat to represent the idea of rhetoric in an analogical fashion. Her status is observable through a crystallization of her attributes into one refractory point in which the idea of rhetoric coalesces; the invocations concerning those attributes are thereby aspects of the mythic ontology in Egyptian culture. Muhlenstein maintained that the Page 84 →ontological character of the gods signifies that the language of texts need not “refer to either the mundane or the supernatural” as a dichotomous interpretation of sacred or secular (p. 114). That “the other-worldly, or preternatural, was superjacent in all aspects of Egyptian life” would be a fact of existence for the Egyptians, especially evident when they would “employ language in the form of simile” (p. 115). Thus, the otherworldly nature of Seshat-as-concept was at work in the qualities attributed to her in texts employing similes, which were ultimately analogical in nature (p. 115). When the Egyptians used analogical expressions to describe a king as a strong bull who destroys enemies with his flame, it was an ontic expression. As we shall see, when Egyptians suggest Seshat is “the lady of writing” who causes annals to “circulate forever,” the expression is an identification of rhetoric expressed in the sum of its parts. In the Egyptian perspective, gods and humans could have a simultaneous presence across conceptual planes that defy our attempts to superimpose our own discrete categorical distinctions: humans could engage in “mundane” rhetoric but still participate in its divine essence. That gods interposed themselves in human activities is fundamental to the Egyptian understanding of things-in-themselves, which often transcends figurative language. Assmann (2001) explained Egyptian conceptual expression, in the manifestation of divinities as composite representations, as follows: “The Egyptian language had no word for the all-embracing, abstract horizon of totality described by our concepts ‘cosmos,’ ‘world,’ and ‘reality,’ just as it had no word for ‘time’ or ‘space.’ Instead, we encounter not a concept, but a constellation: not (just) of concepts, but (also) of gods” (p. 78). I partially offer Assmann’s analysis for a method to interpret Egyptian myth, but dissent from the notion that ancient Egyptians were somehow inherently unable to express abstract concepts linguistically. Nor is it plausible that Egyptians could not onomastically designate broad conceptual categories. Rather, the cultural presuppositions that affected these designations were fundamentally different from others. That their language somehow shaped their thought is arguably a reductive and fallacious proposition. Rather, their reality was one of not just concepts or gods but gods-as-concepts. These gods were an identification that rhetoric possessed a viable and independent existence as a concept. This identification in Seshat is the beginning of Egyptian rhetorical theory, at least in the textual record. Therefore, additional concrete examples are necessary based on this somewhat complex array of theories. I move to an analysis of the evidence of Seshat’s evidentiary character as a representation of rhetoric to bring us to a refractory point of understanding rhetoric in ancient Egypt.

Seshat’s relationship to rhetoric derives from a constellation of concepts and moves to a specific expression of a living concept in Egyptian culture. Her relationship is expressed in a variety of inscriptions that compose Seshat’s mythic identity-as-concept, which are a crystallization of these surrounding concepts. They form to demonstrate the instrumental properties of Egyptian rhetoric, and the first of these properties is Seshat’s association with archival knowledge. Seshat had a fundamental association with archival knowledge and wisdom and even had loci associated with that knowledge. Her archival knowledge was infinite in terms of its temporal scope and comprehensiveness. In the two very different cultures of Egypt and Sumer, metaphors were created to convey the relationship of archival knowledge to rhetoric, but their manner of expression differed. The content of these metaphors was categorically the same, however radically their context differed. The way that Egyptian culture used Seshat as an identification of rhetorical principles, therefore, requires a deeper inquiry.

To understand the nature of Seshat in relation to rhetoric necessarily implicates her relationship to archives, in the sense that libraries represented human knowledge as a source of persuasion: her association with memory, ancestral knowledge, and archive-as-place was integral to her role as conceptual expressions of rhetoric. Whereas in Sumer, Nisaba’s archive was stellar and symbolized by a writing tablet, Seshat’s archive was the architectural features she inscribed. Archives were also loci of rhetorical activity in Egypt, particularly in writing. Place and architectural structure were a medium of expression and the locus of knowledge. Both Nisaba and Seshat were the patrons of either literal or cosmic archives in Sumer and Egypt. This is apparent in the many contextual clues left to us, which are often analogically metaphorical. Seshat had the stewardship and control of archival knowledge and stood for its generative power in human life. However, her stewardship was one point in the constellation of ideas that takes one step toward the identification of rhetoric-as-knowledge. The metaphor of the archive and the goddess’s relation to it was logically distinct from the metaphor of the stellar tablet-as-archive in Sumerian myth because Seshat’s archives were far more closely associated with archives-as-monumental spaces and locations of written invention.

Seshat’s archival role is overtly related to writing and rhetorical expression. Her role had limited involvement in papyrus-based scribal activity compared to Thoth’s role because her involvement was associated with permanent Page 86 →carving in stone. No less, Seshat was consistently associated with “the house of books” in inscriptions spanning thousands of years, and she maintains and “records the royal name at birth and writes it on a sacred tree” (Wainwright, 1941, p. 32). Seshat’s relationship to the archives, and to writing, is of acknowledged tremendous antiquity even to late Egyptians: she is called “ ‘The Original One’ ” and the one “ ’who originated writing at the beginning’ ” (Chassinat, 1933, pp. 32, 168) and became “Mistress of the House of Books” and “Lady of Writings in the House of Life” (Budde, 2000, p. 45). Budde has described a common epithet of Seshat: she is “the ruler and mistress of writing” who was “first of the house of books” (p. 20), and these two epithets are distinct but sometimes conjoined in inscriptions describing Seshat. Budde compared multiple epithetical inscriptions to Seshat, which seem to have four subtly different variations. Taken together, they are sufficient to describe Seshat’s very common dominion over archival knowledge: “the first woman of the house of books” is always the description however varied her nominative is; whether she is referred to as “Seshat the little one,” “Seshat the great” or simply “Seshat,” she is associated with libraries in her inscriptions (p. 22). Other epithets refer to her as “lady of the annals” (p. 87). However, Seshat was not merely the goddess over human libraries; she controlled the libraries of the gods, that is, the ideal library in which all books exist and all books are complete (Meador, 2011). Seshat’s relation to archival knowledge was, therefore, spatial and monumental, unlike Nisaba, whose knowledge seemed to surround the circulation of the contents of discrete sets of signs, and had a stellar association with futurity because of the centrally astrological comparison with signs in Sumeria.

Seshat’s access to knowledge was comprehensive, in both spiritual and temporal spheres. According to Budde (2000), Seshat’s epithet as the lady and mistress of the House of Books can be found dating back to at least the Old Kingdom (p. 204). Seshat’s relationship to writing as archival knowledge could not be more overt as to necessitate much further analysis. Even her comparatively rare visual depictions commonly appear in library ruins. In Ptolemaic times it is said that Seshat brought the king up in the bookhouse. Budde added that “in the libraries of Edfu and Philae she herself appears in pictures. In the library of Edfu she crouches with the bird-shaped Thoth next to the king’s cartouches in the frieze, which represents a kind of quintessence of her spatial function” (p. 205). Nisaba’s writing and stewardship of writing possessed a spatial function, suggesting that archival knowledge was often associated with place. Seshat’s writing adorned the walls and other architectural features of monumental spaces, which were implicitly part of their design. Seshat “wrote” the Page 87 →very presence of human communal spaces into existence, just as she wrote the conceptual space for rhetorical activity in society. Her qualities were likewise qualities of Egyptian rhetoric because they were memorial, spatial, and permanently inscribed; these subcategorical qualities associated with her archival patronage were likewise subcategories of Egyptian rhetoric. Therefore, to understand the rhetorical nature of the crystallized point of Seshat’s centrally rhetorical nature, one must examine the nature of Egyptian libraries as Egyptians culturally understood them.

Seshat was responsible for a scriptorium and archive called the House of Life, which transcended an archival role and implied a rhetorical one (Gardiner, 1947). The cultural role of the library was also a locus of rhetorical production, which is apparent in the generative literate culture of ancient Egypt. Seshat’s generative rhetorical nature is apparent in epithets because the House of Life was where “Theological and scientific writings were written, copied and probably stored” (Budde, 2000, p. 205). According to Zinn (2007), modern libraries tend to focus mainly on their “service function,” which involves providing public access to information. However, in Ancient Egypt, the primary function of libraries was “the preservation and transmission of collective wisdom” (p. 175). The process of transmission was important for the reification of ma’at, or the order and balance of the universe (p. 172). Ancient Egyptian libraries, according to Zinn, were intended to record the progress of ma’at; “the right routine and rules, truth, justice, and cosmic order” (p. 173). Seshat’s role in writing is of a monumental nature, and the monumental structures she was most closely associated with were not merely archival but rhetorically generative. This association illustrates Seshat’s mediating position connecting knowledge to intellectual dynamism. Seshat’s role in monumental planning was not an archival role as we understand it today.

Redford (1971) cited ancient texts consulted by the pharaohs in places such as the House of Books or the House of Life during times of crisis. Several inscriptions cited by Redford refer to this practice, suggesting that ancient Egyptian libraries played an essential role in guiding the deliberation of the pharaohs during difficult times (pp. 84, 91; see, e.g., Webb, 2013). The circulation and generation of texts were central to the social relations of the Egyptian world, which suggests that the interconnectedness of language, whether written or spoken, had a centrality for Egyptian society. As a generative conceptual force at work in this practice, Seshat, the first lady of books, was pivotal. The generative and sustaining power of language and its continued mobilization was inherent to Seshat’s nature. Seshat did not merely perform a service or gatekeeping function; Page 88 →she was vital to the dynamism of the literate practices that were a fundamental element in Egyptian society. As just one example found in Redford, prospective civic decision-making depended on Seshat, extending her rhetorical role to deliberative processes at the center of Egyptian policy. Seshat ultimately represented shared relational values in her duty to textual culture, whether generative or archival.

The House of Life differed significantly from the archival concept of the library and extended to it a creative and educational role in Egypt. According to Weber (1972), writing was practiced and texts were circulated in the House of Life, but this purpose was secondary to its cosmological role. Seshat’s archive had the primary “purpose of preserving the entire creation, and in this sense, it was a real ‘house of life’ ” (see Budde, 2000, p. 204; Weber, 1972, p. 956). Its designation as the House of Life, therefore, suggests that its importance was to bridge the world of knowledge and human life with continuous textual work as if writing was the work of preserving the fabric of life itself. It was Seshat’s house of generative written activity, the place where the stylus never stopped, which in some manner supported human activity on a much grander scale. The evidence of the spatial and activity-based geography associated with Seshat likewise underscores her rhetorical role. As a generative art that relied on traditional knowledge, Egyptian rhetoric was, therefore, “consistent with the life-giving and regenerative traits of the goddess” (Budde, 2000, p. 204). As a further example, another inscriptive epithet describes Seshat as “Seshat the great, the lady of writing, great of magic, foremost of the library, which causes your annals to circulate forever” (Cauville & Devauchelle, 1985, pp. 41, 9–10). Much like her role in the House of Life, her epithet connects her role as an archival goddess with her rhetorically generative role; Seshat’s powers connect vital and circulatory functions of knowledge and wisdom to her archival role. Her power over archival knowledge and wisdom was one central aspect of the ancient conceptual rhetorical principles, restoring harmonious relations to beings in the Egyptian cosmos.

One inscription describing Ramesses IV suggests the House of Life possessed a similar, metaphorical, and figurative existence, akin to the House of Wisdom associated with Nisaba (see Chapter 1). It also contains a passage relevant to the nature of Thoth, described in the next chapter. According to Gardiner (1938), “Ramesses IV caused to be graven in the rocks of the … Wady Hammamat” a passage in which he is described as “ ‘excellent of understanding like Thoth, and he hath penetrated into the annals like the maker thereof, having examined the writings of the House of Life’ ” (p. 162). The passage implicitly Page 89 →suggests that to enter into the House of Life is to enter into the annals. In so doing, one might essentially commune with Thoth, the other major rhetorical deity in the Egyptian pantheon. “The maker thereof” is Thoth, strongly suggesting not only Thoth’s generative role in the production of knowledge and discourse, but the relational nature of his power. But just as important, it suggests that the House of Life was not merely a physical repository of knowledge, but a state of communion with the rhetorical deities associated with learning. Another inscription strongly indicates this status; Gardiner (1938) noted an inscription found at Tomb 111 at Thebes of the chief scribe Amenwahsu, a “scribe who wrote the annals of the gods and goddesses in the House of Life”; the inscription also notes that it was written “in this tomb by the scribe of the House of Life Amenwahsu with his own finger(s)” (p. 161). It is of note that the scribe, then, was a generative composer, not a copyist. This fact is strongly suggestive of the creative role of the House of Life. That Amenwahsu composed the annals of the gods themselves suggests an even more intriguing connection between scribes, their divinities, and the idea of authorship of rhetors in ancient Egypt.

Obvious similarities between Seshat and Nisaba are apparent. Both are ancient goddesses associated with knowledge and wisdom, specifically archival knowledge. They are, through anthropomorphic exemplarity, goddesses of rhetoric in their respective cultures. Seshat’s access to knowledge was cosmic and comprehensive, and she controlled not only human libraries but also the libraries of the gods, where all books exist and all books are complete. The dynamic nature of reality depended on her active participation in knowledge in the order of things. Nisaba is associated with historical and technical knowledge and the wisdom of the gods in a kind of archive, namely the stellar tablet. Nisaba was the keeper of the archives of the gods and was responsible for recording all things, and her role could likewise be dynamic in the sense that the stars were subject to recurring circulation but were fixed in their patterns. Both goddesses share a conceptual relationship to archives that constituted a repository of all human knowledge and were likewise a source of persuasion and generative invention. Their association with memory and the past was integral to their role as conceptual expressions of rhetoric. They had a rhetorical relationship to archives metaphorically illustrated through the stewardship and control they exercised between humans and knowledge. The metaphor of the archive and Seshat’s relation to it was shaped by the cultural beliefs and values of Egypt, which were similar but differed in their fundamental metaphysical understanding, however, in the relations of knowledge to the universe.

Page 90 →The evidence of Seshat’s role in archives is integral to her generative rhetorical nature. Seshat’s archival attributes crystallize as a partial identification of Egyptian rhetoric, though without a narrative lack of contours. Ancient Egyptian libraries, like the House of Life, focused on preserving and transmitting collective wisdom and reaffirming the existence of ma’at. Seshat’s central position as an instrument connecting knowledge and progressive change demonstrates one step toward the center of meaning: Seshat’s representation of rhetoric. She crystallizes rhetoric as an identification of this aspect and her patronage of generative graphic design.

A secondary element in the constellation of concepts surrounding Seshat is her relationship to graphic depictions. Her role in generative designs was often architectural, both metaphorically and ritually. Therefore, her relationship to graphic generative design is the second specific expression of a mythic concept that crystalizes these surrounding concepts into an identification of Egyptian rhetoric. Apart from the evident patronage of Seshat to the act of writing, the astral hallmarks of Seshat—and therefore her relationship to futurity and generative design—can be found in her garment. In a relief carving from a statue of Ramesses, we see Seshat with a brush or stylus, and her raiment (detailed in Figure 7) demonstrates an association with astral and planetary symbols (see also Budde, 2000, p. 52, n. 302).

In other representations, Seshat wears a leopard skin. As Altenmüller (2010) noted, the leopard print possesses a “starry quality” (p. 36). The connection between Seshat’s astral or cosmic regalia and her architectural role—a metaphor that can extend to her rhetorical role—likewise connected her to preceptual future design. Her starry raiment is likely suggestive of the Egyptian tendency to align architecture astronomically and in certain architectural rituals in which Seshat was invariably involved. Wainwright (1941) explained that Seshat’s presence is depicted in the “stretching of the cord” ceremony when pharaonic authorities would lay the foundation of a temple. Thus, like Nisaba, Seshat is associated with the stars, but in relation to preceptual design or futurity. Recall that in Nisaba’s case, she holds the lapis lazuli tablet, or Tablet of Destiny, which is the repository of all knowledge and a record of all events in futurity. In Nisaba’s case, the magical trappings seem to be separate regalia that connote her power over future preceptual creation. Whether the Egyptians associated the starry raiment with archival knowledge is unclear. But a connection between Page 91 →astral symbols and preceptual futurity is apparent given their predisposition to be associated with architectural alignment. Seshat’s starry raiment could symbolize both qualities, because she acted as the mediator between divine knowledge and the archive held in the eternal past and the preceptual design of the future.

Thus, another refractory point of Seshat’s representation as rhetoric is evident in her role in design and building. This role composes her exemplarity and identity as an identification of rhetoric. However, some context is necessary to illustrate that architecture, cosmic order, and rhetoric are three species of one genus represented in Seshat and why she controls all three. (“Rhetoric” is simply the name given to her governing categorical power at a later date and in another cultural context.) In Egypt, the relationship between architectural design and inscription as a rhetorical and cosmic function would not be immediately evident to a contemporary reader. To an ancient Egyptian, however, the connection would likely be obvious. The architectural, pictorial, and inscriptive evidence collectively relates to Seshat’s capacity for generative and measured design. This evidence suggests a higher conceptual category of Seshat’s province of patronage that embodied rhetoric-as-concept. Baines (1989) explained in detail how colossal and memorial structures were inherently related to communication in Egypt. Describing them as memorials, Baines asserted, is apt. They began to appear when appropriate occasions were presented from the Fourth Dynasty when early inscriptive artifacts would be used to commemorate events; construction and memorialization were a primary occupation of Egyptian kingship (ca. 2550 bce). These inscriptive and architectural artifacts were monumental and created meaningful compositions (Baines, 1989, p. 475). For long periods of Egyptian history, “instead of writing and representation, the chief form of more general display was therefore architecture” (p. 477). Architecture was public, rhetorical, and laden with meaning to the Egyptian eye. However, Seshat is not the goddess of architecture or even the goddess of building: she is depicted only ever as planning or measuring the precincts of buildings, not building them. Seshat plans the precincts of an architectural memorial monument in the same way a writer or speaker might plan to compose discourse. Seshat therefore patronized the planning of another rhetorical form that was material, memorial, and monumental.

Page 92 →In ancient Egypt, architectural features fused supernatural realms, mortal activities, and monumental construction. Architecture represented a “juncture between the world of the gods and the human world” (Baines, 1989, p. 477). Seshat’s architectural role, which generatively prefigured the construction of monumental spaces themselves, was premeditated, graphic, and rhetorical. Monumental architecture was also instrumental in connecting and promoting the cosmic order in the physical environs of Egypt, which ensured that the world of temples and monuments mirrored the cosmos writ small. To the Egyptians, space and structures were meaningful writings that connected not only image and word but also the divine and human realm. Egyptian architectural philosophy itself is thus consistent with Seshat’s other roles. Seshat was a goddess not of things but of the connections between them; her presence was an early beginning of a relational ontology that would eventually be expressed in the figure of Thoth. Writing and architectural planning possessed a categorical, rhetorical, and conceptual unity in the Egyptian consciousness, and that unity was in Seshat. That architecture and architectural inscription could likewise convey the cosmic relationship of human and divine worlds has many illustrations in the existing inscriptive evidence; Baines cited an example of inscriptions of Horus as exemplum in such depictions (p. 475).

Page 93 →Seshat’s participation in one ritual, of which there are multiple scholarly interpretations, bears close examination for relevance to her rhetorical role (see Magdolen, 2006; Belmonte et. al., 2009). Her image in “The stretching of the cord” ceremony depicts Seshat with the pharaoh, designating the precincts of a temple. In this ceremony, Seshat demarcates and limits the boundary of the temple precincts; in her relationship to discourse, she does likewise with rhetorical precepts. Seshat’s relationship to foundation ceremonies as a form of methodical design—and their relationship to solar and stellar alignment—is also of note. Seshat demarcated temple precincts because “An alignment of the building with the stars or the cardinal points was often intended” (Müller, 2018, p. 182). Seshat’s presence suggests astronomical knowledge, evidenced by her participation in this type of measured and preceptual future design. One such depiction of this ritual of design occurs in the ceremony, “in which cords were used to trace the line of the foundation trenches by stretching them between poles driven into the corners of the future building” (p. 182). Budde (2000) has catalogued the sequence of epithets on an exhaustive number of inscriptions to Seshat and determined that many “are related to writing and architecture” (p. 27). Budde emphasized that Seshat’s association with the beginning of writing became most notable in Graeco-Roman times, when she became known as “the primordial one who began writing or engraving” to emphasize the great antiquity of the invention (p. 201). It appears that Seshat’s roles as mistress of writing and of architecture were conjoined from her earliest inscriptive appearance.

The usual hieroglyphic signs indicating writing, scribal activity, or scribal tools are not associated with Seshat. She was often depicted with a stylus, but her “writing” was much more associated with the decoration of architectural spaces or “carving” on temple walls (Budde, 2000, p. 202). Budde suspected that Seshat’s role was, therefore, distinct from Thoth’s, who was responsible for scribal writing on papyrus; the distinction is a meaningful one in the context of Seshat’s role as rhetorical exemplar, specifically related to preceptual design and the architectural role she possesses. Her role was not precisely goddess of writing but of the knowledge and dispositional capacity to design. This capacity did not seem to discriminate between writing, speech, or architecture with plan and purpose. Architectural design is quite reasonably associated with the art of rhetorical design because Seshat is not just the goddess of writing but of a categorically higher order of activities. Many share common enterprises involving Page 94 →graphical planning or other symbolic mediums, whether architectural, verbal, or graphic constructions. Seshat is never depicted writing on papyrus, but on solid, vertical surfaces. She is likewise conjoined with all sorts of intentional symbolic planning, arguably conveying a higher category of patronage than merely writing or architectural design. The crystallization point of her conceptual identity is a categorical level higher than either writing or measurement. It is fundamentally a creative, preceptive, and therefore rhetorical identity.

In another inscription, which depicts Seshat and Hatshepsut laying the foundation in a surviving block of the Queen’s Red Chapel, Seshat is referred to equally as “The Lady of Scripture and Lady of the Words of God” (Budde, 2000, p. 200). This description is juxtaposed with her ritual role in measuring the foundation and delimiting the temple’s precincts. Her collective epithets relate her inherent nominative presence to a connection between architecture and writing, demonstrating the Egyptian conception of their interrelatedness through a higher conceptual category. A conceptual category related to the design of symbolic artifacts is far more consistent with Seshat’s nature than merely describing her as the goddess of writing and likewise explains the distinction of her duties and attributes from those of Thoth. Seshat, as the goddess of the knowledge of preceptive abstract design, is thereby distinct from a patron of the writer or their writings. The distinction suggests that conceptually, rhetoric was personified by Seshat as an art related to design and creative construction within fixed perceptual parameters. Wainright (1941) explained that as mistress of the builders, her relationship with architects, potters, scribes, and other skilled laborers implicated a role of meticulous design and skillful labor, rather than with mere transcription or recordation. Another task associated with Seshat from the earliest to the latest times was to measure and perhaps give the king his lifespan in years, thus designing his destiny. This design is another example of perceptual demarcation, not of material symbols, but of the structure of human life itself. Wainwright asserted that Seshat is the one who grants the years to the pharaoh, in a role somewhat analogical to that of Nisaba, who has dominion over the symbols of human destiny, because “Seshat fixes the king’s fate and decides the time” (p. 34). Her relationship to time, standing between the archival past and the preceptual future, expressed Egyptian rhetorical theory. Rhetoric is “made” somewhere after intent and before delivery, in an inchoate period of deliberation by the speaker before speaking itself. Just as the Pharaoh and Seshat demarcate the limits of a temple through future planning and design, the speaker or writer must be unified with Seshat before the act of persuasion to demarcate the precincts of discourse.

Page 95 →One inscription concerning the lifespan of pharaohs attributed to Seshat states, “I inscribe thy kingship for all eternity” and assures Amenhotep III, “I give to thee millions of years and life and prosperity’ ” (De Morgan, 1894, p. 50; Wainwright, 1941, p. 35). Thus, Seshat’s role relates as much to generative and preceptual future design—in this case, of human destiny—as to archival memory. Seshat fixes the precincts of the pharaoh’s destiny, as she preceptually designs the limits of discourse. Seshat’s relationship to destiny appears as late as the Ptolemaic period: “She who reckoneth the life-period, Lady of Years, Lady of Fate” (Chassinat, 1933134). Her celestial raiment, or identification with astral bodies might therefore be implicitly connected to her role in the direction of future action and careful design. Her temporal relationship between archival knowledge (in the past) and its actualization in a measured design (in the future) is one key to her role as a personification of conceptual rhetoric in ancient Egypt. Another connection between speech, creation, and architecture is illustrated by Seshat “speaking the temples into existence, founding the temples themselves with her utterances (Budde, 2000, p. 150). Nativity scene inscriptions relate to Seshat’s ability to measure the future of the pharaoh, which she conveys with a magical power directly related to writing. At the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, Seshat speaks, giving the pharaoh the gift of “years of time” (p. 148). Thus, her relation to fate and preceptual futurity is more revealing in her speech or writing; Seshat’s speech bestows the future precincts of the pharaoh’s life. Budde gave two examples of the speech of the goddess, one on the back of one of the colossal statues at Luxor, where Seshat promises to “make your name permanent as heaven is permanent … As long as time exists, you will exist” (p. 97). Therefore, Seshat’s qualities of measurement and writing, permanency, and preceptual futurity are elements of the concept of rhetoric in ancient Egypt. When taken together with archival knowledge and Seshat’s pivotal ability to convey these powers to humans through writing or speech, these qualities constitute a composite of rhetorical theory to the ancient Egyptians. Another inscription at Edfu shows Seshat promising the pharaoh to “make your name permanent as king … with the writing of my own fingers” (p. 97). Her statement itself conjoins her twin duties of active rhetorical creation through the act of writing and archival memorialization but extends them to making the pharaoh’s reign permanent in historical time. Eyre (2013) confirmed that by the time of the Old Kingdom, “The endowments of the temple of Sety I at Abydos” were “made permanent in texts written by Seshat and Thoth” and that by at least that period “gods make things unchangeable by putting them in writing” (p. 89).

Page 96 →Seshat’s collective epithets emphasize her inscription, architecture, and magical skills, illustrating a categorically higher identification of rhetoric. But this power likewise takes its “being” through the interconnectedness of these concepts. Seshat acted as the anthropomorphic figure in which the qualities of Egyptian rhetoric crystallized. Her composite nature is both tropic and philosophical, suggesting that rhetoric as an art finds a personification in Seshat related to design and creative construction. Seshat’s identity implicates meticulous design and skilled labor which connected her to various crafts. This further strengthens her role as a rhetorical exemplar of preceptual design, whether in the form of language or monumental architecture. The evidence of Seshat’s role in archives as well as preceptive design thus reveals two crystallized points in the constellation of constancies that point to her fundamentally rhetorical nature. While her mythic presence lacks narrative contours in this set of attributes, a less nascent image of Egyptian rhetoric begins to form when taken together. Likewise, through her anthropomorphic being-as-rhetoric, we might be better able to articulate the Egyptian theory of rhetoric. Seshat stands temporally and metaphorically between the archival past and the preceptively designed future. There remains one final role suggested by the evidence: as a mediator between eloquence and humans. This final role seems the most persuasive evidence of Seshat’s place as conceptual rhetorical exemplar.

A third and connected point of crystallization is her mediating power between the concept of rhetoric and the generative rhetorical power of human beings. In this regard, Seshat’s connection to rhetorical power is illustrated in the imagery contained in her epithetical inscriptions relating to the human mouth. In the context of her relationship to monarchs and devotees, several inscriptions record Seshat as residing in the mouth of the speaker. One spell in Coffin Texts 746 recounts that anyone who invokes her power must state that their “hands are those of Seshat who is in my mouth as the Sistrum-player” (Faulkner, 2007, p. 284). Another more provocative inscription describes the speaker’s relationship to Seshat as one “whom Thoth himself has taught, and into whose mouth Seshat has spat” (p. 249). The latter inscription reveals the fundamental nature of eloquence in Egypt as contextually formed by a relationship of Thoth and Seshat as personified concepts. Thoth forms an epistemic element of rhetorical knowledge, while Seshat embodies its physical application (regarding Thoth, see Chapter 4).

Page 97 →Budde (2000) has also pointed out a late inscription from the Ptolemaic period that depicts a ritual scene at Edfu where a number of gods offer gifts to the king; Seshat gives to Ptolemy IV “the perfect utterances that come out of her mouth and the transfigurations that are on her lips” (Chassinat, 1934, p. 77). These inscriptions and epithets thereby connect Seshat’s power to rhetorical power, whether written or spoken. The eloquence and wisdom of the pharaoh are attributed to the primal transference—or the mediating exchange—of spittle between Seshat and the Pharaoh. As Ritner (1997) has explained, speech constituted the “articulation of the divine thought in the mind of the deity” because “the mouth is a representative to divine contact” (p. 76).

Ancient Egyptians believed that “everything that is articulated by the mouth has its divine power”; it is therefore logical to assume that at some point, ancient Egyptians believed the power of speech was in some manner a result of divine contact with the salivary utterance of the goddess (Ritner, 1997, p. 96). That Seshat might even reside in the mouth of the speaker and play the vocal capacities of a speaker like a musical instrument suggests the kind of divine power that was also her province and that it was associated with eloquent speech. Ritner has observed that Coffin Texts (ss. 746), describing Seshat’s presence in “the mouth” of the speaker, suggests that her verbal presence evidences her command over both “the letter and the spirit of the ritual text” (p. 97). The transference of power between Seshat and the pharaoh in the form of saliva was likewise a materialized gift of transference, conveying the capacity for eloquence and the ability to employ wisdom for rhetorical ends. These statements bear considerable examination.

Seshat is portrayed as an active agent, bestowing rhetorical power upon the pharaoh and other speakers. By residing in the mouth of the speaker, she directly influences their speech and controls their ability to communicate effectively. This connection between Seshat and the pharaoh demonstrates her agency in shaping the speaker’s rhetorical prowess. Likewise, the statements emphasize Seshat’s mediating role between divine power and human communication. Her presence in the mouth of the speaker signifies her ability to affect the speaker’s agency to convey eloquence to their speech; Seshat, like most rhetorical deities, had an inherently liminal capacity to connect divine knowledge and human speech. Bestock (2013) has shown that early writing in Egypt “can be seen in part as a conscious projection of power and relationships from this world into the next” (p. 53). In the case of the provocative inscription, Seshat’s act of spitting into a speaker’s mouth symbolizes a direct transfer of divine power, making her an essential mediator between the divine and the mortal Page 98 →world. By connecting Seshat to the mouth of the pharaoh and other speakers, the statements imply that her influence extends to both written and spoken forms of communication. Her presence as the “sistrum-player” suggests that her power extends to performative aspects of communication. The passage likens the relationship of the musician to Sistrum as Seshat to a speaker’s eloquence. This analogy implies a shared agency in which the eloquence of the deity is attenuated with the speaker. This connection solidifies Seshat’s position as a goddess of rhetorical precept and underscores that the ancient Egyptian concept of rhetoric was instrumental in mediating between planning, memory, and speech. Seshat’s rhetorical knowledge mediates a speaker’s eloquence, which attenuates the elements of effective speech.

Still other evidence hints at Seshat’s pivotal role as a figure that conveys, and therefore mediates, eloquence to humans. Because eloquence seems possible only with the knowledge and favor of Seshat, this evidence further illustrates that she represented rhetoric-as-concept. In certain circumcision scenes on temple walls in Egypt, Budde (2000) has likewise recounted Seshat’s role in the birth and naming ceremony of certain pharaohs. In at least two of these, Seshat is depicted as dipping a writing instrument in a bowl (presumably for ink) before the circumcised pharaoh. The partially destroyed inscription below the depiction at Deir el-Bahari is in the first register on the north wall of the Nativity Hall. Below this image, the inscription states that Seshat is giving the pharaoh “Words to speak from Seshat, the first (and here the inscription ends)” (p. 95). A similar circumcision scene exists in the Nativity Room of the Temple of Luxor, though the inscription is now wholly destroyed (p. 96). Thus, eloquence is within the purview of Seshat to grant; rhetorical design with an eye to futurity is implicit when it comes to her dominion over speech and writing since she is depicted as granting the pharaohs eloquence at birth and for life. This relationship is evident in the Coffin Texts as well, which directs that “You shall bring Thoth to him in his shape and Seshat in her shape, and they shall bring to him this writing. It is his recognition, it is his being made a spirit in the Island of Fire … so that N may see those who are yonder among the blessed” (Faulkner, 2007, p. 191).

In this spell, the presence of Seshat and Thoth aid the voyage of the pharaoh’s spirit in the process of recognition. It underscores the revelatory nature of Seshat’s power: when the pharaoh beholds Seshat, his recognition is advanced to know where he is to proceed in the future; by beholding the writing of the past, guided in his journey, Seshat mediates this revelatory experience. Thoth’s patronage of writing is mainly in the medium of papyrus and is thus associated with writing as a disposable medium, ideal for messages in Page 99 →transit written on lightweight papyrus. However, in nearly all evidence extant, Seshat’s patronage of writing is related to the design expressed in the writing of fate and measurement of temples in stone, implying her writing is fixed, memorialized, and permanent. Seshat’s ritual or inscriptive artifacts describe duties to building or human destiny as one of measurement, and this was likely her relationship to rhetoric as well, revealing Egyptian conceptual rhetorical duties in their divine personifications.

Seshat, like Thoth, possesses a liminal power that is cited in magical rituals; in Coffin Text 10, it is states “The portal is opened for you by Seshat” (Faulkner, 2007, p. 246). Other inscriptions indicate to Budde (2000) that “the knowledge of writing and its resulting rhetoric enables Seshat herself to drive away enemies” (p. 202). If the power of Seshat extended to eloquence, then perhaps it was her ability to combine the power of creative, preceptual discourse for future use with comprehensive, archival knowledge of the past to a rhetor. Seshat stood, in essence, at the very moment when the past and the future combined in the act of speech, and speech and writing drew their power from the two at the central point of one moment. Seshat’s power was thus somewhat kairotic, creating a rhetorical marriage of knowledge accumulated in the past with opportunity and design culminating in speech for the future: Seshat attenuated both. It is likewise noteworthy that “the creative power of spittle as envisioned in these Egyptian tales finds numerous parallels,” including “Akkadian creation mythology,” underscoring a general similitude in the worldview of Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythic theory in the concept of orally transmitted wisdom (Ritner, 1997, p. 189). Perhaps the late Temple inscriptions are the most conclusive evidence that Seshat was the patron and teacher of rhetoric in ancient Egypt. The pharaoh is described as having an education in her temple, and “in these late texts, the ruler is also referred to as one to whom Seshat bestowed rhetoric” (Budde, 2000, p. 202). The latter is part of the inscription series in Chassinat’s (1933) Edfou Texts, Volume VI and VIII (pp. 337, 295). As an inscription in a Ptolemaic temple, it demonstrates that the Greek concept of rhetoric existed in Egypt at the time of the temple of Edfu’s construction and was associated with Seshat, though perhaps superimposed upon an existing concept in which the Greeks saw striking parallels. In the engraving and the inscription accompanying it, Seshat speaks to Ptolemy X, “Behold, my hand determines your annals with the writing (Dhtwj) of my own fingers. It is Re who speaks through (Seshat) with his mouth” (Chassinat, 1933, pp. 337, 295; Schott, 1972, p. 27; see also Schott, 1963). The Ptolemies and their line applied the term rhetoric to Seshat in a retrospective manner. However, even to the Greeks, the nature of Seshat was Page 100 →manifest in the wake of the Ptolemaic conquest. If Hellenic conquerors recognized Seshat as compatible with their conception of rhetoric, they recognized a conceptual identification of rhetoric in Egypt that preceded their arrival. Thus, Seshat’s patronage of rhetoric represents an unbroken chain of rhetorical patronage from the Old Kingdom to Hellenistic Egypt. At a minimum, the inscription suggests that the Hellene conquerors made an informed association between Seshat, a deity recognized since the Old Kingdom, and rhetoric.

Consider the contrastive evidence for the rhetorical agency of both Nisaba and Seshat as a composite identification of rhetoric. Seshat, a goddess of rhetorical precept, can bestow rhetorical power upon the pharaoh and other speakers as if residing in the mouth of the speaker and sharing not only in the eloquence of their speech but perhaps the agency that prefigures speech. Her presence symbolizes a direct transfer of divine power, making her an essential mediator between the divine and mortal world. Nisaba, who guides the fingers of persons in the writing process as the instrument of measured design, is responsible for teaching Shulgi the art of comprehension. Nisaba occupies a liminal position that principally is a sign of the knowledge of the means of eloquence. Both occupy, by implication, a liminal position between human and divine, astral and earthly, and conceptual and practical worlds. However, while both figures occupy a mediating position, they substantially differ in their specific cultural contexts. While Nisaba is primarily associated with rhetorical arts by guiding the writing process through comprehension, Seshat seems to have a far more direct role in the agency of the speaker; occupying the speaker’s mouth, in a sense, she “stands in place of” the speaker. The relational nature of both figures establishes a union between goddess-as-concept and human participants in a theological, hierarchical, and causative order; both examples suggest that the power of communication is connected to divine power. The ability to communicate effectively depends on the intervention of a divine mediator. Both conceptions of rhetoric suggest that the concept possesses a kind of autonomy, which suggests that rhetoric is not solely a matter of self-mastery or learned skill, but a living concept that mediates between spheres of human and superhuman knowledge.

Likewise, both Nisaba and Seshat exhibit a liminal and causative connection between archival wisdom and planned discourse. Nisaba offers only the sign of the knowledge of the means to rhetorical prowess, while Seshat occupies a more direct revelatory relationship to the human world. Seshat stands in for the speaker’s agency in the act of eloquence. In this sense, she bears a striking relationship to eloquence conceived by the Sumerians in the Spell of Nudimmud. Both depictions of the gods as mediating the speaker’s agency are Page 101 →suggestive of a relational ontology between the gods and a hypothetical rhetor. The implication is that true eloquence combines divine and human agency.

Both Nisaba and Seshat possess a marked association with futurity and generative design and have architectural roles, or at least metaphorically expressed relationships to technical planning of all kinds, principally graphic and rhetorical. They are also deeply associated with the archival past, and both stand at a nexus between these things: their nature is as much temporal as it is conceptual. Nisaba is responsible for creating human destiny and establishing the rites that permit human existence. Her power is organizational, and she organizes the knowledge of human relationships. Nisaba’s knowledge is knowledge of the means of persuasion and invention. The distinction between Seshat and Nisaba is not in their similar hallmarks and mythic characteristics; it is in the differing perspectives on the gods of rhetoric in the two cultures, and by extension, their identification of rhetoric, which is central to the history of the idea. Both Egyptian and Sumerian cultures identified rhetoric as having a conceptual being, and both anthropomorphized it using a constellation of elements that point to a central categorical concept. Their common association with archival knowledge, generative graphic design, and the ability to convey eloquence between the divine and human realm crystalize to form a common identification of rhetoric-as-concept.

Although some might see it as superimposing a Graeco-Roman set of terms upon an Egyptian past, Seshat’s association with permanent stone inscription and archives places her as a likely expression of one aspect of rhetoric later cultures would describe as memoria. Our next visitor, however, was associated with the transitory medium of writing on papyrus, but also magic and science, strongly suggesting his personification was more associated with the traditional Graeco-Roman canon of inventio. But just as significantly, Thoth personifies the relationally ontological nature of rhetoric in Egyptian society generally but also represents a link between Egyptian and Graeco-Roman rhetoric in significantly more tangible ways, eventually becoming known as “the Egyptian Hermes” to Roman citizens like Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in Greek in a Roman province at the time of Cicero (Library, 1.8.3). Thoth’s abiding presence would become even more specifically apparent in the way he was received and arguably (mis)interpreted in Plato’s dialogues. I therefore turn to examine Thoth’s role in relational ontology as a hallmark of rhetorical processes in Egyptian thought.