Between Pharaohs and Nomads | 129living human being than to the water-wheel which that foot turned.” This per-
vasive impersonality, however, also required absolute hierarchy: “As the pyramid
culminates in its apex, so the Egyptian state culminates of almost mathematical
necessity in the Crown, the ‘red flame,’ which is addressed in the pyramid texts
as living Godhead.... [E]verybody received from the King the function which
made him a man.”^22
This combination of hierarchy and anonymity is compared with examples
both ancient and modern. In contrast to ancient China, “no less conservative”
than Egypt according to Buber, no civil society was allowed to flourish along-
side the all-encompassing Egyptian state. Buber cites Breasted’s “fine book,” The
Dawn of Conscience, to support the claim that the first ideas of social justice de-
veloped in Egypt, but he notes that this could be only a hierarchical, centralized
justice, leaving no room for individual freedom: “The perfect economic and po-
litical centralization which characterized Ancient Egypt has led certain students
to speak of it in terms of State socialism [Staatssozialismus/סוציאליזם של מדינה].”^23
From the many possible contrasts to the striking anachronism “state socialism”
here (e.g., free-market capitalism, fascism), we should not be surprised that Buber
presents the “Israelite” critique of Egyptian institutions in terms of libertarian-
socialism (i.e., anarchism). This plays out on the micro level of specific Israelite
versus Egyptian social practices, as well on the broad civilizational level, where
the sedentary agricultural and architectural society opposes the organization of
the nomadic tribe.
The concept of a civilizational contrast between sedentary and nomadic so-
cieties was familiar to Buber from his studies in comparative religion, especially
in the fields of archaeology and anthropology. The discourse around this contrast
is always freighted with implied normative assumptions, even if these are not
always framed in an explicitly political way. Buber claims that mutual distaste,
even revulsion, exists between the two types of societies. From the perspective
of the great civilizations, the nomad is dangerous, threatening, wild, and unpre-
dictable. Buber quotes a Sumerian hymn that refers to the Amorite of the western
hills, “who knows no submission... who has no house in his lifetime,” and an
Egyptian document that describes “the miserable stranger.... He does not dwell
in the same spot, his feet are always wandering. From the days of Horus (i.e.,
since time immemorial) he battles, he does not conquer, and is not conquered.”
As Buber puts it, “Here can be heard the deep animosity of the settled State form
of life towards the unstable elements of the wilderness, yet also the knowledge
of their indomitability.”^24 In the language of the great civilization, such people
are commonly given a name that means “detached, dissociated, not-belonging.”
These designations, according to Buber, are not ethnic or clan related.^25 Both
Semites and non-Semites, for example, were included among the Habiru people
of the regions stretching from southern Mesopotamia through Anatolia to Syria,