Famous Pharaohs

Domestic Cult and Magic Priests

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Many Domestic Cult and Magic Priests, aimed in large part on protecting the home and its inhabitants from harm, required literate or learned individuals to perform the appropriate rites. Hence, priests were often called upon to serve in this capacity. Lector-priests, with their specialized knowledge of religious texts, were the principal practitioners of apotropaic magic. They also appear to have been consulted in times of medical emergencies, as the Old Kingdom biography of Wash-ptah attests. A group of men identified as hkyw ("magicians") appears in association with the House of Life. Both lector-priests and physicians (swnw) also held specialized titles associated with specific types of magic, such as "Scorpion Charmer." Along with written and spoken prayers, these Domestic Cult and Magic Priests were familiar with, and able to produce, the correct amulets for protection and talismans for blessing.

In the end, the Domestic Cult and Magic Priests played an important role in protecting homes and individuals.

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Priesthood in Ancient Egypt
Prices and Payments in Ancient Egypt
Canaan
Naqada III
Calendar in Ancient Egypt
Calcite

Funerary and Mortuary Cult Priests

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Although stelae and tomb scenes usually show burial offerings being brought by family members, professional mortuary priests are documented serving in private memorial cults as early as the first dynasty. A class of specifically Funerary and Mortuary Cult Priests included the servants of the ka (hmvv- k-j), who provided for the immortal life force of the deceased person. Scenes in tombs from the Old Kingdom onward show priests participating in the funeral—wab-priests pour libation offerings, while lector-priests read aloud the funerary texts critical to transforming the deceased person into an immortal being. Lector-priests also perform the int-rd ceremony, sweeping away the footprints of the celebrants after the ceremony has been completed.

Mortuary literature, from the Pyramid Texts on, provides evidence that the funeral ceremony included not only the reading of religious texts, but also the performance of acts such as playing the role of deities associated with the myth of Osiris. The Coffin Texts, for example, include directions for those taking part in the ceremony, along with texts that must have been spoken aloud, presumably by a lector-priest. Women, who had served as funerary priests (Spmvt-kf) during the Old Kingdom, thereafter acted as (Ay- mourners, impersonating the grieving Isis and Nephthys.

Sem-priests are identifiable by the end of the Old Kingdom, after which they are shown offering incense and performing the Opening of the Mouth ceremony on the mummy of the deceased. Beginning in the New Kingdom, scenes of the funeral accompany several chapters of the Book of Going Forth by Day, and form an increasingly significant part of tomb decoration. A priest wearing a mask of the god Anubis is shown preparing the mummy for burial, and supporting the upright coffin in front of the tomb entrance, while the Opening of the Mouth takes place. The heir of the deceased is typically shown per- forming this ritual, touching the mouth with a ceremonial implement, such as an adze tipped with iron or flint.

Wealthy and influential officials established mortuary endowments in the same way as kings, to perpetuate their memorial cults and to provide for mortuary priests. Several Abydene stelae refer to contractual arrangements with mortuary priests, and the twelfth dynasty tomb of the vizier Djefai-hapi I at Asyiut preserves the complete text of his mortuary contracts. According to the contracts, the priests are responsible for delivering offerings of bread and other items to the vizier's statues in the local temple, in exchange for being paid a portion of the offerings dedicated in the temple.

At the end of the article, it can be said that the Funerary and Mortuary Cult Priests played an important role in the religious history of ancient Egypt.

Recent Pages:

Priesthood in Ancient Egypt
Prices and Payments in Ancient Egypt
Canaan
Naqada III
Calendar in Ancient Egypt
Calcite
Women Priesthood in Ancient Egypt
Temple Priests in Ancient Egypt

Prices and Payments in Ancient Egypt

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These are a key feature of the commercial, market economy. The ancient Egyptian economy, based on redistribution and reciprocity, set prices in units of value that referred directly to commodities, rather than to the abstract concept of money. For the purpose of exchange and trade, the Egyptians first calculated the value of goods and services in units that were directly related to the necessities of life and, later, they calculated in terms of the weights of metals. Yet the Egyptians never fully abstracted the idea of money—goods and services, as well as metals, were valued concretely for what they were.

Sources for the study of prices and payments do not survive from all periods of Egyptian history. Information about wages and rations are best known from documents of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, while commodity prices are best preserved from the Ramessid period. Wage payments in the Old Kingdom are known from the Abusir Papyri. For the Middle Kingdom, there are temple documents, biographies, and archaeological data. New Kingdom wages are known from Deir el-Medina and from documents pertaining to shipping. All the sources indicate that wage payments were made in rations of bread, beer, grain, meat, and cloth, which were the daily necessities of life.

Rations were expressed most frequently in units of bread and beer, the two staples of an Egyptian diet. Most likely, the lowest salaries, which were close to subsistence level, were actually paid in bread and beer. Just as modern coins are guaranteed to contain standard amounts of metal, each loaf of bread was baked from a standard recipe, using equal amounts of ingredients, and had a standard nutritional value. Uniformity was assured through a system called pfs, translated as "baking value." pfs could also be used by the employer to ensure that a predictable number of loaves would be baked from a known amount of grain. The baking value was based on the number of loaves or beer jars produced from a set measure of grain; the higher the value, the smaller would be the loaves, the weaker the beer, or the smaller the jars. Most wage lists assumed that a standard pfs was used in baking and brewing.

Uniformity was also assured through the use of tokens or tallies. During the Middle Kingdom at Uronarti, ceramic tallies have been discovered in the shape of a standard loaf of bread. Presumably that tally could be used to check whether a worker's wages in bread loaves were all the same size. Beer jars were also of a roughly standard size. The standard basic wage was ten loaves of bread and one-third to two full jugs of beer per day (Egyptian beer was much less alcoholic than modem brews and higher in calorie content). That was the ration of the lowest paid staff members. Others were paid in multiples of the standard wage, varying from twice to fifty times the standard wage for highly paid people. Various methods could be used for apportioning wages. For example, documentation exists for a particular ship's crew in which the captain and other officials received twice the ration of the ordinary sailors. In another case, the highest paid official received thirty-eight one-third loaves while the lowest paid worker received one and one-third loaves.

In an example from the Middle Kingdom the staff of a temple received a commission on all the goods that came to the temple. One inscription describes the way the staff was paid in "temple days":

As for a temple day, it is 1/360 part of a year. Now, you shall divide everything which enters this temple—bread, beer, and meat—by way of the daily rate. That is, it is going to be 1/360 of the bread, the beer, and of everything which enters this temple for [any] one of these temple days which I have given you.

In that temple, the regular staff received 2/360 of the total revenue of the temple, while the chief priest received 4/360.

In another case from the Middle Kingdom, an expedition leader received five hundred loaves a day as his "ration." Large sums like that were probably not paid out in actual loaves of bread or jars of beer. It is unlikely that an expedition leader could take his ever- increasing number of loaves of bread—fifteen thousand loaves after a month—with him on an extended trip into the desert or that he could eat that much, even with a large family and servants to support. Thus it seems possible that five hundred loaves of bread was actually a unit for measuring out commodities, approximating the modem idea of a unit of money, a practice that allowed the ancient Egyptians to save and also to draw against an account of bread and beer.

Because the standard measures for bread loaves and beer jars vary from place to place and time to time, it is difficult to calculate how much people had to eat and to determine how well people lived. The caloric value of the soldiers ration at Uronarti was about one-third kilo (0.5 pound) of barley per day. Baked into bread, this is the equivalent of 1,458 calories from bread each day. If these soldiers did any physical work, they must have received at least an additional fifteen hundred calories from beer and/or vegetables just to maintain their weight. The New Kingdom craftsmen at Deir el-Medina received all the necessities of life from their employer: their houses were owned by the state, food and clothing rations were given to them, as well as most of the other necessities, including water, fuel for their ovens, and the tools they needed to perform their duties. Yet the robust trade that they conducted among themselves indicates that those workers required additional goods and services that the state had not provided.

Information about the prices of commodities was derived from Deir el-Medina. Prices were recorded on a few papyri and on numerous ostraca that date to a 150-year period during the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. Many problems with the interpretation of those texts must be overcome, however, before commodity prices can be determined. The ostraca were written in the cursive Hieratic script by nonprofessional scribes who did not write as legibly as did professional scribes. The ostraca were often broken in antiquity and ink has faded during storage in museums. Moreover, the texts were never intended for others to read, but were persona] notes, so that many details that would have been known to the original reader were not recorded. Among the details that were often excluded was the date of when it was written. Such omission often makes it difficult to compare prices, although scholars have determined which ostraca are roughly contemporary by comparing the people named in them. This process has its own difficulties, because the small number of families living in the village drew on a limited stock, of personal names, making it difficult, for example, to pinpoint the generation of a particular Pen-taweret. Another difficulty in determining prices was the lack of description of the goods that were priced. Clearly, some variation in the price of two chairs was based on the quality of the workmanship, although the variation is almost never described in the ostraca. Finally, the precise meanings of words used to describe the commodities is often not understood. Sometimes, only the general category of the good can be determined from the writing. In spite of these difficulties, scholars have isolated four units of value that were used to price commodities: the deben (dbn), the senyu (snjw, originally called s'tj [shaty]), the hin (hnw), and the khar (hyr).

The deben is a measure of weight used for gold, silver, and, most commonly, copper. One deben of copper weighs ninety-one grams. It was divided into ten kite. Copper weights seem never to be lower than five kite or one-half deben, while the more precious metals are found with weights of less than five kite. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether the actual weight of the metal is being described or its value in deben—or, indeed, whether the Egyptians made such a distinction. In the Cairo Ostracon 25242 verso, for example, twenty deben of copper was added to four deben as the vahie of a basket, demonstrating that the actual weight was difficult to separate from the idea of its value. Deben of copper and bronze were not distinguished by the Egyptians. Both were valued as one kite of silver. Silver deben were rarely mentioned in the ostraca, but are more common in the papyri. Papyrus, of course, was used to record official and thus more expensive transactions, while the ostraca were used by the villagers to record private, smaller transactions. This practice ensures that gold deben are never mentioned in the ostraca but appear occasionally in the papyri; it must be assumed that when the word deben is used alone on ostraca, copper deben should be understood.

The senyu ("piece"?) is the second unit of value used by the Egyptians. It is a weight in silver equal to 1/12 deben or 7.6 grams. Its value is calculated as five deben, but that calculation does not always hold true (see below). The senyu is found as a weight or value only in the nineteenth dynasty and early twentieth dynasty up to the first half of the reign of Ramesses III. The senyu could be used to express a value in the same column of figures with deben. The Berlin Ostracon 1268 states the value of objects in senyu but the total of the column in deben of copper. The Varille Ostracon 25 -totals a razor valued at one deben, with a donkey valued at seven senyu.

The hin, a third unit of value, is a measure of volume equal to 0.48 liters (about one-half quart). Its value is 1/6 senyu, but other calculations show that it was also equal to one copper deben. The value of the hin is probably based on the value of one hin of sesame oil, said to be equal to one copper deben. Mrht-oil and 'd-fat were also measured in hin, but their values seem to vary in relation to deben, both more and less than one deben. Thus the value of one hin equal to one deben is based on sesame oil.

The khar is a measure of the volume of grain, either emmer or barley, equal to 76.88 liters (about 80 quarts), which is divided into four oipe. The khar is translated as "sack" and was valued at two deben. Deben, senyu, and khar are all found together in documents ranging from the time of Ramesses II (Hieratic Ostraca 65) through Ramesses V (Hieratic Ostraca 28). The khar is most com- monly found as a unit of value for baskets, both because the volume of a basket was equal to its value and because baskets are relatively inexpensive. The same principle is at work in the Cairo Osti-acon 25242, in which a bed is valued in deben while its legs are valued in oipe. Ostracon Deir el-Medina 21 also differentiates between expensive items in deben and cheaper items in oipe.

The rough equivalent values among deben, senyu, hin, and khar, as given above, reveal the difficulty of calculating precise values for commodities, as well as fixed ratios among the four different units of value. One document values a basket at one- quarter senyu for a volume of one-half khar. Since one khar is equal in value to two deben, the logical conclusion would be that one senyu equals four copper deben in value. Yet another example shows that one senyu of wss-garments is equal to five copper de- ben. Finally, another document values one hin of oil at 1/6 senyu. Since one hin is equal to one deben, the logical conclusion is that one senyu is equal to six deben. Clearly modern ideas about money and prices were not at work in ancient Egypt. Modern conceptions of money would not allow one senyu to be equal to either four, five, or six deben, yet this was the actual state of affairs in Deir el- Medina.

Perhaps the real difficulty in interpreting prices and payments is that modem scholars are attempting to systematize a procedure which was actually determined on a case by case basis. All of the prices discussed above were derived from specific barter agreements. Barter prices were much more fluid than the fixed prices in present-day western markets. Barter prices were set by the strength of each individual's desire to conclude an exchange and each individuals skill at arriving at a good price, in addition to some abstract idea of value based on weight or volume. Use value was probably more important than abstract value and all the commodities exchanged at Deir el-Medina were valued according to actual use: grain was for eating; silver was a raw material for making an object. The value of a good grew according to the need for it.

Because the prices were set by barter, prices tended to cluster in amounts that are multiples of five, especially for amounts over ten deben. Numbers, then, were usually rounded to the nearest five. J. J. Janssen (1988) illustrated that principle by the following example. The Ostracon Deir el-Medina 72 verso described the purchase of a coffin in the following way:

Given to him in exchange for the coffin: eight and one-half deben of copper; again five deben of copper; one pig made five deben; one goat made two deben; two logs of sycamore wood made two deben. Total: twenty-five and one-half deben.

There, the value of the coffin was first agreed to be approximately twenty-five deben. Then values were established for the individual items brought to the exchange. The coffinmaker would decide how much use he could make of the two lots of copper, the animals, and the wood before determining the value he would assign to them. It is unlikely that those goods were accepted for resale at a profit, since that concept seems to be unknown to the Egyptians. The actual desire to own these items becomes much more important than the abstract value assigned to them in deben.

The best source for our knowledge of loans is also Deir el- Medina. There are two kinds of loans attested from the village: one type is made with a fixed date for repayment and a penalty if that date is missed; a second type appears not to have a repayment date and is more likely to reflect an obligation for reciprocity between the lender and debtor. There is limited evidence that loans with fixed repayment dates were made from people of higher social status to those of lower social status, while reciprocal loans were made between people of more equal status. In sum, the Egyptians were able to conduct business in a way that met their needs without ever fully abstracting the concept of- money from their units of exchange value. An often robust economy ran smoothly, using various means of valuing labor and commodities without either money or true markets.

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Canaan

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Canaan, a geographical term (Eg., kn'n; Akk., ki-na-ah-nu; Heb., kn'n) for the area broadly encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean lands that are to the west of the Jordan River, Phoenicia, and part of southern Syria during the second millennium BCE. The term Canaan is frequently used in the scholarly literature as a conventional reference for that region during the entire Bronze Age (occasionally referred to as the Canaanite period), although no certain mention of Canaan or Canaanites has survived in any texts of the third millennium BCE. There are few references to Canaan outside the Bible in the first millennium BCE, although in that period the Phoenicians along the Lebanese coast continued to think of themselves as living in the land of Canaan. The etymology of the word Canaan is uncertain: one suggestion is to derive the name from a Semitic root meaning "to bend"; another relates it to a Human word meaning "blue cloth."

Map of the Ancient Near East during the Amarna Period

Canaan first appears in Near Eastern texts in the fifteenth century BCE in the autobiography of Idrimi, a ruler of the north Syrian kingdom of Alalakh. The earliest reference to Canaanites is on an eighteenth-century BCE cuneiform tablet from Mari on the Euphrates River in Syria. New Kingdom Egyptian texts contain more than a dozen references to Canaan. Canaan was the name that the Egyptians applied to the territory of the Near East (Western Asia) that was under their control, and for which they often had to contend with the empires of Mitanni and the Hittites. Ramessid period documents refer to both Canaan and "the (town of) Canaan (py kn'n)": the latter was an appellation for Gaza, the administrative headquarters of the Egyptian empire in Canaan. It is not always clear whether the mention of "Canaan" in a particular text (especially a topographical list) refers to the land of Canaan or to the town of Gaza.

The oldest reference to Canaan in Egyptian texts is in the annals recording Amenhotpe Us (1454-1419 BCE) campaign of his seventh regnal year to the land of Retenu; the booty list from that campaign included 640 Canaanite prisoners. "The (town of) Canaan" (i.e., Gaza) appears in Sety I's (1321-1304 BCE) campaign report for his first regnal year in the hypostyle hall at Kamak. There is also a mention in the famous Israel Stela from regnal Year 5 of Merenptah (1237-1226 BCE) of the plundering of "the Canaan": that citation is thought by most scholars to be a reference to Egypt's Near Eastern province, but by a few as another mention of Gaza. Papyrus Anastasi I (line 27.1) from the reign of Ramses II (1279-1212 B.C) mentions the "end of the land of Canaan" (i.e., the route leading eastward across Sinai to Gaza). Papyrus Anastasi III A (lines 5-6) and its duplicate. Papyrus Anastasi IV (line 16.4), belonging to the reign of Sety II (1221-1215 BCE), mention Canaanite slaves from Kharu. The land of Canaan shows up in two cuneiform letters sent by Ramses II to his Hittite contemporary, Hattusili III, at the Hittite capital Hattusha (present- day Bogazkoy). The latest phara-onic period reference to Canaan is on a Middle Kingdom statuette reinscribed in the Third Intermediate Period for Pediese, son of a Near Easterner named 'Apy, who evidently was a messenger of "[the] Canaan and Philistia."

Canaan appears on eleven cuneiform tablets (Letters 8, 14, 30,109-110, 131, 137, 148,151,162, 367) and the Canaanites on one (Letter 9), from the diplomatic archive found at Tell el-Amama. Letter 8 is notable for the Babylonian king Burnaburiash's acknowledgment to Amenhotpe IV that "Canaan is your country," while in Letter 30 the kings of Canaan are addressed as the "servants" of the king of Egypt. Middle and Late Bronze Age Canaan was divided politically and territorially into perhaps several dozen small city-states of varying size and importance. Each city-state normally consisted of an urban capital as well as a number of smaller towns and villages and the supporting agricultural land. Generally independent, and not infre- quently feuding with one another, the city-states occasionally banded together (especially in the Late Bronze Age) to oppose Egyptian and other foreign conquerors; perhaps the best-recorded case of such cooperation is that of the towns that gathered at Megiddo to oppose Thutmose Ill's Near Eastern campaign of regnal Year 22.

Egyptian contacts with Canaan in the early twelfth dynasty apparently focused on sites along the Levantine coast (especially Byblos). Later on, in the twelfth and continuing into the thirteenth dynasties, Egypt's foreign interests expanded considerably: the Execration Texts of the period mentioned many of the principal towns of both northern and southern Canaan.

The fifteenth dynasty (c. 1664-1555 BCE) was the one time in antiquity when a line of kings of Canaanite origin ruled in Egypt. The capital of those sovereigns, whose non-Egyptian names included Sheshy, Khayan, and Apophis, was established at Avaris (i.e.. Tell ed-Dab'a) in the eastern Nile Delta. The origins of those Canaanite rulers is to be sought in the movement of Near Easterners into the Delta during the late twelfth and early thirteenth dynasties. The political and military connections of the Hyksos kings with the Canaanite city-states of the late Middle Bronze Age is unclear and much debated: some scholars feel that a Hyksos "empire" included much of southern Canaan, while others deny Hyksos control over any part of the Levant.

During the Late Bronze Age, the Egyptian military, political, and economic activity in the Near East was focused on the major Canaanite towns that lay along the principal routes (e.g., Gaza, Gezer, Megiddo, Hazor), had ports to facilitate maritime trade and/or Egyptian naval activity (e.g., Joppa, Acco, Byblos, Tyre), and/or could support Egyptian political and military control of Canaan (e.g., Gaza and Beth Shan in Palestine, Kumidi and Sumur in Lebanon). The annals of the New Kingdom pharaohs repeatedly mentioned such towns, often as military adversaries of the Egyptians. There is substantial archaeological and textual evidence from the nineteenth and early twentieth dynasties (Late Bronze IIB-Iron IA periods) of Egyptian garrisons or administrative centers in Canaan, especially in the Gaza region, as well as at sites such as Tel Mor, Joppa, Megiddo, Beth Shan, and Kumidi. Finally, in the first millennium BCE, Egypt's relations with Canaan were largely of a commercial and political nature, the occasional Egyptian military forays into the region (most notably that of Sheshonq I in the late tenth century BCE) usually had only short- term consequences for the region.

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Naqada III

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Bird-shaped vase, late predynastic period (Naqada III)

Naqada III culture (c.3200-3050 BCE) was characterized by the abandonment or reduction in significance of certain population centers in Egypt's South (e.g., Matmar, Mahasna), the maintenance or even growth in significance of others (e.g., Hierakonpolis, Abydos), and the foundation of yet others (e.g., Elkab, Tarkhan, Tura). Social changes were of increasing importance, yet despite a certain variance in material culture, this period was a direct continuation of the Gerzean. A major settlement move from the desert to the vicinity of the Nile was necessary in Naqada III. Ecological changes that began in Naqada II were intensified, bringing with them a relative cessation in herding in favor of agriculture. Changes in the material culture indicate an accompanying alteration in the spiritual realm. Some objects were modified in shape, while their basic function was preserved; others, while their shape was preserved, had their functions changed—from utility to ritual-cult-symbolic (e.g., palettes). Pottery included decorated wares, cylindrical jars, cups, and large transport-storage jars, often with engraved and painted serekhs, indicating that the contents were intended for the royal court. The production of flint artifacts relatively decreased—due mainly to the expanded use of metal tools. The use of jewelry also increased, as did the role of sculpture and relief. In Coptos, no later than Narmer's time, three colossal statues of Min (4 meters/I 3 feet high) and three statues of lions (1.5 meters/4 feet long) were erected. Many items have elaborate scenes: palettes, ceremonial mace heads, and knife handles. In temple deposits at Hierakonpolis, Abydos, and Elephantine, a number of figurines—prisoners, children, women, scorpions, baboons—were made of various materials, some votive but some fragments of larger objects and furniture. They indicate development of the ritual-symbolic sphere—that associated with the centralization of authority.

Handle of a decorated knife. Naqada III. Louvre Museum

Glyptics and writing became increasingly important, clearly developed under the influence of impulses from the Near East, passing through a brief phase of imitation, then ultimately containing typically Egyptian motifs and inscriptions. The role of long-distance trade, conducted in all the traditional directions, increased considerably. Contacts with Palestine and the Sinai intensified, showing the importance of this nearby northeastern region and its goods (wine, oil, resin, timber, copper). The Protodynastic colonization of northern Sinai and southern Canaan lasted until the mid-first dynasty. The kings known from this period ruled over all of Egypt—"Uj," Iry-Hor(?), Ka, "Scorpion," and Narmer—have been dated to Naqada IIIB-IIICl. (c.3150-3050 BCE). Toward the end of the Protodynastic Dynasty "O," probably in the reign of Narmer, the kingdom of the pharaohs was established, more or less in the form known from the Early Dynastic (Archaic) period. The gradual (not by conquest) formation of an Egyptian state was therefore the last stage, not the first, from which the civilization of the Nile Valley grew.

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Calendar in Ancient Egypt

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Calendar in Ancient Egypt or the pharaonic Egypt's calendrical syste was both straightforward and simple. From the first dynasty onward, the Egyptian year was divided into three seasons, based on the agricultural rhythm of the Nile Valley: (1) jht, inundation; (2) prt, emergence (of crops); and (3) smw, harvest. These seasons consisted of four months apiece, each containing thirty days. Hence, the basic year of the Egyptians comprised a regular number of days (360) as well as an orderly number of months (12). Such a system had to have five additional days added to it, the epagomenals ("days above the year"), which neatly fixed the annual rotation of the sun to a set integer of 365; there were no intercalary days in that native year.

The calendrical order was most advantageous to Egyptologists' cumulative reckoning of such large-scale time elements as dynasties and epochs. Mainly from hypothetical reasoning, it is assumed that the Nile year was created by the early Egyptian state in order to regularize its economic stability (tax collecting through a census placed on cattle) as well as to record its kings' reigns. Modern scholars, therefore, call this 365-day year the civil calendar, to indicate the original purpose of its reckoning. The number of months, as well as their names, were based on an older, lunar calendar. In this earlier system, it is unclear whether the Egyptians intercalated an extra month (the thirteenth), every three years or so, to bring the calendar into accord with the seasons. Although the extant data neither support nor reject that, traces of the lunar calendar exist in the presence of some feast days, which were determined by the moon's cycle rather than permanently fixed on a day (or days) within the civil calendar.

Some ancient Egyptian festivals were therefore determined by the moon, and quite a number of significant religious events were solely set to a specific lunar day, such as the new moon. For example, the Valley Feast took place within the tenth Egyptian civil month but was not permanently set on a predetermined day within that month. Similarly, the funerary event of Wagy seems to have taken place on day eighteen of lunar month two, although a civil calendar counterpart always occurred on day eighteen of the first civil month. For the most part, Egyptian religious festivals became civil calendar-based since a change had been made from lunar time to the civil calendar when it came into being.

The regnal years of the kings were also reorganized so that they coincided with civil calendar years. In Predynastic times, a lunar calendar must have been the basis for the regnal year. In the Old Kingdom, as the Palermo Stone clearly indicates, the regnal year counts were originally labeled by names of auspicious or important events that occurred within a civil calendar year of 365 days, among which one can single out building projects of a religious nature. After the second dynasty, the regnal years also became orderly, since they were referred to, on a regular basis, by the biennial cattle census that took place throughout Egypt. Eventually, probably by the sixth dynasty, the biennial census was replaced by an annual one. From that time on, all regnal years were rationalized so that the king's year in office was nothing more than an integer that was counted every civil calendar year. The causes for such change included the importance of the centralized state apparatus and the necessity to establish a workable and relatively easy method of counting. Egyptian regnal years were dependent upon a 365-day civil calendar year, not a lunar year, and they operated independently of whether the anniversary of a pharaoh's accession caused a change in the year count (as in the New Kingdom) or whether the presence of subsequent new year's days effected such a change. In the Middle Kingdom (unlike the New Kingdom), counting of regnal years was reckoned from the first day of the civil calendar year to the next, excluding the opening year, which almost always began within a civil calendar year.

Although later sources, mainly of Greco-Roman times, put great emphasis on the star the Egyptians called Sothis (our Sirius), as being connected with an enormous cycle of 1,460 Egyptian civil years, that lengthy period seems not to have been employed by them for any historical reckoning. Nonetheless, the commencement of a year was intimately associated with the goddess Sothis (identified with the goddess Isis), especially if an ideal, rather than a real, beginning was to be stressed. Such was the case because the reappearance of the star Sothis at dawn, after a disappearance of seventy days (its heliacal rising, prt spdt), was originally linked with the inauguration of the year at a time when the Nile waters had crested. Owing to this connection, scholars argue that the first day of the just-created civil year (new year's day) began at the exact time of prt spdt. In many extant festival calendars, as well as a few other sources, Sothis' heliacal rising was given great prominence although it did not interrupt the mundane flow of time, since the astronomical event occurred independently of the way the civil calendar operated.

Research has obviated the need to claim that the Egyptians invented a second lunar calendar, somewhat later than their civil calendar. From our knowledge of the festival system, it appears that most religious celebrations were only on the civil calendar. Those festivals that were lunar-based seem to have been organized around specific lunar occurrences (such as the new moon) that could be seen with the naked eye, but they were nevertheless based partly on the civil calendar. It was understood that the lunar occurrence was fixed within a given civil month and that no independent lunar year was operating alongside the established civil calendar. Therefore, all administrative work, such as daily accounts and the like, were set by the civil calendar; lunar-based events appear to have been restricted solely to the cultic sphere.

The names of the twelve civil months betray their origins, since it is evident that they are mere copies of the original names of their twelve lunar-month counterparts. The first, Thoth, was named after the god of the moon, who was also the reckoner of time. The third, Athyr, overtly indicates that it was named after the goddess Ha-thor, whose festival took place on day one of the following civil month. Khoiak, the designation for civil month four, was similarly borrowed from a major religious event that occurred at the crucial change of season—from the first season, yht, to the second, prt—the festival held on day one of the fifth month. In this case, the first day of peret served as a second new year's day, on which the rejuvena- tion of the subsistence-based agricultural society of Pre-dynastic Egypt was predicated. A similar change from the second season to the third can be observed with the name of month eight, Renenutet. Then, the goddess of the harvest Renenutet bequeathed her name to the final civil month, smw, in recognition of the festival for the gathering of grain, which took place at the beginning of the ninth month. In some cases, for historical reasons, the designations of the civil months were changed. For example, Menchet ("clothing"), civil month number two, was altered to Paophi in honor of the important Theban festival of Opet, which occurred at that time. In similar fashion, Phamenoth, civil month seven, reflected the festival of the deified King Amenhotep I (1514-1493). Yet the final civil month revealed its origins in the rebirth of the sun god Re, for that is what its name, Mesore, actually meant. Earlier, the designation was Wep-renpet ("the opener of the year"), called after the most important festival in the year, that of new year's day, on the first day of Thoth, the first month.

A careful comparison of the month names has determined that at least some of the older designations were based on key religious festivals; however, they seem always to have occurred on or about day one of the following civil month. The clear case of Athyr, mentioned above, provides an excellent example of this. Although the civil month was the third in the year, its religious counterpart, the feast of Hathor, began with the following civil month. Insofar as the civil months postdate the original lunar calendar months in which the key feasts were first celebrated, any attempt to equate a month name with the eponymous feast name must consider this. Even at the inception of the newly created civil calendar, such a shunting of festival dates must have occurred—an alteration partially explained by the original lunar year of only 354 days, and the new civil year of 365 days. The difference of nineteen days (called the lunar-solar epact) explains the lack of equivalence and provides a reason for the observance of the festival of the moon god Thoth on day nineteen of the first civil month. (In a similar lack of concurrence, present-day Easter and Passover continue to be celebrated on old lunar dates that have no fixed Western calendar dates.)

The various festival calendars of the Egyptians reflected the civil calendar insofar as they located their celebrations within the civil year. Quite often a clear separation was made between the "festivals of heaven," which occurred more than once a year, and the "seasonal festivals," which took place annually. By the nineteenth dynasty, the first group merely comprised the various celebrations in honor of lunar days (e.g., day 1, 2, 6, 15, and the like). In contrast, the second group reflected the developed theological outlook of the various temples, wherein the crucial religious manifestations took place once a year. Note that the dichotomy was not merely one of celestial phenomena versus earthly ones, since the heliacal rising of Sothis was placed under the "seasonal festivals." The festival calendars are very important to us because they reveal, in precise fashion, just which days were of crucial importance to the Egyptians and how they were celebrated.

Other segments of time from ancient Egypt also are known. A week was in reality ten days, with the standard holidays at the end (day ten) and the day following. Hour measurements were known, too, but they were of irregular length, roughly identical to the "seasonal hours" of Hellenistic and Roman times. There are Egyptian words for small segments of time other than the hour, but no precise designations for the "half-hour," the "quarter hour," or the "minute." Such a lack of specificity was mainly the result of the relatively simple timekeeping used in the Nile Valley; pharaonic civilization had no need for precise time intervals such as seconds or minutes. The Egyptian hours appear to have been based always on groupings of stars. In the First Intermediate Period, if not earlier, a system of decanal stars was invented, by which there were twelve night hours. These twelve intervals were determined by sight, and they depended on the sighting of various star groups that cannot be identified. As each star group rose, it designated a specific hour of the night sky for ten days (hence each is called a "decan" and the method a decanal system). The decan-hour stars would then move on one integer, for 120 days, or 12 "weeks." At first, the system depended on naked-eye viewing at the eastern horizon; later, in the Middle Kingdom, a more refined method of observation was used, in which the crossing of the star groups across a meridian determined the nightly hours. From the New Kingdom onward, the Egyptians preferred to work out nocturnal timekeeping by the transit of stars across various reference points on a man's body (head, neck, etc.) as he faced south and was checked by a second man who faced him. All such attempts to work out an effective hour system for the night were affected by various difficulties.

Research on such star clocks has confirmed their usefulness; nevertheless, by modern standards such timekeeping was limited by the lack of a coordinate system for the heavens. Only during the Ptolemaic dynasty was a zodiacal system introduced to Egypt, one that had as its basis the division of the Sun's annual path along the ecliptic. This system was based on a "degree" system—originally of Babylonian origin—into which each star group occupied thirty "degrees," there being twelve star groups in all (30 X 12 = 360 degrees, as used today, to describe a complete circle).

The beginning of the Egyptian day was at "dawn," probably in morning twilight (although that is contested by some researchers); the actual dawn, when the Sun first rises in the east, is also a possibility. The inscriptional material is ambiguous. The crucial point is that the Egyptians' calendrical perspective was fixed toward morning sightings directed at the eastern horizon. A lunar month began on the day when the waning crescent moon could not be sighted on the eastern horizon. (The Egyptian month was therefore regulated in a different tradition than either the Babylonian or the Greek, in which months were based on the evening sighting of the first lunar crescent in west). Since the absence of any lunar crescent indicates that the Egyptian system depended on the eastern, morning sighting, the Egyptian lunar epoch occurred about one day earlier than those cultures that regarded the day as commencing with the first western, evening sighting.

The Old Egyptian names for the lunar days are useful to survey for a linguistic connection. The first day, that of no lunar crescent visibility, was connected to the Egyptian word for "new," whereas the "crescent" gave its name to the second day, and the third day was called "arrival," indicating actual visibility (the first crescent might be delayed by atmospheric anomalies, so that it would turn up on day three). There was a "second arrival" on day sixteen, heralding the completion of the full moon (from day fifteen, the Egyptian "half month"), with "first quarter" and "last quarter" (called "parts") the terms for day seven and day twenty-three, respectively. Finally, day thirty was associated with the god Min, owing to his virility; in this case, it is clear that the association with Min indicated procreation. Theologically, the following day was considered the "moon in the womb," with its appearance— birth— occurring on day two of the following lunar month.

For the Ptolemaic period, a few extant sources from Egypt indicate that a regular correlation was drawn between lunar months and their civil calendar counterparts. Papyrus Carlsberg 9, in particular, supplies us with a full (though not complete) listing of such equivalences; from the text, a relatively simple, albeit artificial, cycle was introduced to Egypt, in which 25 Egyptian years (of 365 days apiece) were equated with 309 lunar months, the latter consisting of 16 years of 12 months and 9 of 13 months (365 X 25 = 9,125 days; 309 lunar months with those parameters yield 9,124.95 days). Such a cycle eliminates the need for an actual lunar sighting. Originally thought to be a native Egyptian creation, reinterpretations have placed its sophisticated workings outside the Nile Valley. Other scholarly arguments have connected this Demotic papyrus with the Macedonian calendar—in use for the duration of the Greek domination over Egypt—although serious questions remain concerning the exact extent of its use. One difficulty in textual interpretation is that the columns of odd lunar- civil calendar equivalences were not presented, if those sections merely repeated the integers in the'even columns, as some believe, then the entries in Papyrus Carlsberg 9 are still incomplete. Some Egyptologists see the inauguration of this cycle (c.357 BCE) being based on the nonvisibility of the lunar crescent. Classicists interested in Ptolemaic Egypt prefer to understand the system as one developed for equating Egyptian days and months with the Macedonian calendar, and one extremely fragmentary Greek papyrus reveals that such an equivalence was made (Papyrus Rylands 586); however, the extant pieces are not sufficient to draw any firm conclusions regarding its origins.

Recent Pages:

Moerian
Tasa-Badari
Naqada I
Naqada II
Calcite
Abydos

Calcite

2018-12-16T05:16:00.003-08:00

Alabaster perfume jars from
the tomb of Tutankhamun,
(d. 1323 BC)

Egyptologists today correctly use the term calcite when referring to lithic materials that were historically called travertine, alabaster, Egyptian alabaster, or Oriental alabaster. Geologically, calcite is a mineral composed of hexagonal crystals of calcium carbonate (CaCO,). As used by geologists, the term alabaster refers to a fine-grained, massive variety of rock gypsum, consisting largely of the mineral gypsum (hydrous calcium sulfate, CaSO,, • 2H;0), which is a secondary mineral formed by the hydration of anhydrite (CaSC^) in a zone of weathering. Ironically, alabastrites was the original, ancient Greek and Latin name used for "Egyptian travertine" (a limestone), but that had been forgotten when alabaster acquired its modem definition in the 1500s. Another term sometimes used for Egyptian travertine is calcite-alabaster, which is both inappropriate and self-contradictory. Many Egyptologists now call travertine by the term calcite, to avoid confusion with the well-known and very different-looking Italian travertine, from Tivoli, Italy (the Romans' tivertino, the Latin word for "travertine"). From the Old Kingdom onward, the Egyptians called travertine ss, but during the Old Kingdom it was also occasionally referred to as biyt.

Egyptian travertine (calcite) occurs in two varieties: (1) a nonbanded to faintly banded, tan to brownish-yellow, coarse- grained, translucent form; and (2) the strikingly banded form with interlayering of the first-mentioned variety with a white, fine- grained, opaque form. With prolonged exposure to sunlight, the brown and yellow colors become white. An example of this weathering phenomenon may be seen at the Mosque of Muhammad Ali (built from 1824 to 1848 CE) in Cairo's Citadel. Both the interior and exterior surfaces of this building were clad with banded travertine (calcite), but now the outside surface has become nearly white whereas the inside surface is still brightly colored.

Travertine (calcite) occurs as fracture-and-cavity fillings in the limestone deposits that border the Nile Valley between Esna in the south and Cairo in the north, and nine ancient quarries are known for this rock. The locations, from south to north, and the dates for these sites are the following: one site near Wadi Asyut (New Kingdom); four sites near the Tell el-Amama ruins at Hatnub (Old Kingdom through Roman period), both in and near Wadi el-Zebeida (Middle and New Kingdoms), and in Wadi Barshawi (possibly Middle Kingdom); one site at el-Qawatir near the city of el-Minya (possibly Old through New Kingdoms); one site in Wadi Umm Argub near the Wadis Muwathil and Sannur (Late period); one site in Wadi Araba near Wadi Askhar el-Qibli (Roman); and one site in Wadi el-Garawi near the city of Helwan (Old Kingdom). Banded travertine was obtained from all those quarries, but the nonbanded variety may have come only from Hatnub. (Hatnub is an ancient Egyptian word meaning "golden house," and it may have been applied to that quarry because of the uniform golden-brown color of its rock.).

As a relatively soft mineral (number 3 on the Mohs Hardness Scale), calcite is easily worked with bronze, copper, and other metal or stone tools. Its translucency, pleasing colors, and ability to take a fine polish made it a popular decorative stone in Egypt from early dynastic times onward. Because of the difficulty of obtaining large pieces, it was mainly employed for small objects, such as statuettes, shawabtis, offering tables, vases, bowls, dishes, canopic jars, and unguent jars. The unguent jars are the alabastra of classical Greece, originally ceramic and only later carved from Egyptian travertine (calcite), hence the Greco-Roman name alabastrites for this rock.

Occasionally, calcite was used for paving stones and wall linings in temples as, for example, in the fourth dynasty valley temple of Khafre at Giza and the nineteenth dynasty sanctuary in the temple of Ramesses II at Abydos, respectively. Although large travertine (calcite) objects are less common than small ones, many are known; these include sarcophagi, life-size and colossal statues, naoi, embalming beds, whole shrines, and other objects. One mode of transport for such articles was shown in a detailed painting on the wall of the twelfth dynasty tomb of Djehutihotpe (or Thuthotpe) at Bersheh, where a colossal statue of that nobleman is pulled on a sledge by 172 men. Some notable examples of large objects are the following:

(1) the sarcophagus of King Sety I from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London; (2) two huge blocks at Kamak temple in Luxor—one a Late period offering stand or kiosk foundation in the Great Court and the other, possibly, a statue pedestal of uncertain age in the Central Court; (3) the colossal statue of the god Sobek with the eighteenth dynasty King Amenhotep III (1382-1344) from Dahamsha, now in the Luxor Museum; (4) the colossal statue of King Sety I from Karnak temple, now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo; and (5) two bark shrines, one by the eighteenth dynasty kings Amenhotep I/Thutmose I, and one by the twelfth dynasty king Senwosret I, now in the open-air museum at Karnak temple. Numerous other examples may be found in Alfred Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (1962).

Recent Pages:

Naqada II

2018-12-15T05:18:00.003-08:00

Female figure with bird
traits. Naqada II period,
3500-3400 BCE.
Brooklyn Museum

The most important sites are Hierakonpolis, Naqada, el-Amra, Ma-hasna, Abydos, Matmar, Gerza, and Minshat Abu Oman Most characteristic of this phase is the expansion to the north—Naqada II, emerging from the regions of Naqada I, gradually led to the cultural unification of all Egypt. The expansion into the northern part of Middle Egypt began in Naqada IIC; the expansion into the Delta was no later than Naqada II Dl. It was primarily a territorial occupation, secondarily securing trade routes to the east. The basic principles of the equipment of Egyptian graves originated in this period, with the quantity and quality of grave goods reflecting the growing Naqada cultures social stratification. Separate necropolises appeared, containing exclusively large and rich graves. Graves of the elite are known from Abydos, Minshat Abu Omar, Diospolis Parva, and Hierakonpolis, testifying about social development and the creation of centers of authority. Although buildings are not well known from the period, the models of houses discovered in graves depict rectangular brick buildings, with wooden beams (lintels) over the doors. New kinds of pottery were made of tempered silt. Decorated pottery had scenes of birds and animals, triangles symbolizing the desert, and plants. Others with the portrayal of boats with human figures may point to the existence of rituals that involve the leaders/chiefs of clans/tribes. The oldest preserved Egyptian wall painting, at Hierakonpolis, may therefore be confirmed, since it shows hunting, triumph, and rites associated with boats. Such scenes in a grave context suggest the beginnings of the custom of "taking" symbolic and real events of life into the next world.

Conical mace heads were replaced by pear-shaped mace heads, which, beginning in mid-Naqada II, become symbols of authority— one of the attributes of power in Egypt's royal iconography. The production of copper increased in importance, as did that of gold and silver. In general, metal was sought after, probably a sign of status. Flint was still the most important material for tool pro- duction, but techniques had advanced; in addition to traditional tools made from flakes, a new technique appeared—production of long blades, later processed by bifacial retouching (ripple-flake). The number of personal adornments of bone, ivory, and semiprecious stones increased markedly, as did bracelets, rings, beads, pendants, and amulets. The rich material culture indicates that groups of highly specialized craftsmen existed. Centers of production, such as Hierakonpolis, plus a relatively small number of workshops distributed products throughout the elite. There, the majority of craftsmen also lived. The cities soon played a central role for the larger surrounding territory. For example, Naqada (Eg., Nubt, "city of gold") developed significantly in this period, based on trade in gold and copper from mines in the Eastern Desert. Changes in the environment and in society also transformed Hierakonpolis (Eg., Nekhen), regarded by the ancients as the capital of the Upper Egyptian state, into a major political and economic center. Naqada is equidistant (about 100 kilometers/64 miles in a straight line) from Hierakonpolis and Abydos, and other important population centers were grouped in their immediate vi- cinity. Strong economic centers of local authority arose and trade was conducted in every direction. Contacts with the Levant are indicated by small quantities of Palestinian pottery in Upper Egypt, as well as by the presence of Naqada II products in the Palestine region. Contacts with Sumer and Elam are yet debatable. Although raw materials (obsidian, lapis lazuli), products (cylinder seals), and certain art motifs (a hero strangling a lion) of Mesopotamia or Elarn appeared, their presence in Egypt may be the result of a series of indirect trade contacts, not from regular exchange. Sources have been identified, other than those previously supposed, for at least some of the imported goods. For example, obsidian tools were re- garded as proof of connections between the Nile Valley and the Near East, but new analyses have shown beyond a doubt that that obsidian was acquired in Ethiopia. Contacts to the south are better confirmed: found in Upper Egypt was pottery characteristic of Nubian Group A (made of silt, with a large number of admixtures, and decorated with ornaments filled with white). Many Gerzean period products were also found in Nubia.

Recent Pages:

·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)
·        Poultry in ancient Egypt
·        El Oman
·        Moerian
·        Tasa-Badari
·        Naqada I

Naqada I

2018-12-15T05:07:00.003-08:00

Bone figure with lapis
lazuli inlays,
Naqada I. British
Museum

The existence of a Lower Egyptian kingdom at this period is not probable, but head coverings similar to the Red Crown of Lower Egypt were worn by some figures in rock engravings and paintings (from both the Eastern and Western Deserts); they may be local chiefs. From this period come the first attempts at Egyptian faience and there was some slight increase in copper objects—pins, needles, beads, bracelets, awls, and rings. Models made from cheap materials were deposited in graves (mace heads, knives, boats). Trade intensified in all directions but objects characteristic of Naqada I have been found mostly to the south in Nubia, very rarely to the northern region of the Delta and Sinai. The increase in trade was accompanied by social stratification, still progressing slowly, and the development of local elites.

Recent Pages:

·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)
·        Poultry in ancient Egypt
·        El Oman
·        Moerian
·        Tasa-Badari

Tasa-Badari

2018-12-14T04:25:00.005-08:00

Ruins from Tasa-Badari

Discovered by G. Brunton, the paucity of data made it impossible to determine whether Tasa was a separate culture, a preliminary phase, or a mutation of the Badarian culture (c.4300-3700 BCE). Its originality was manifested in the simple pottery (deep bowls and pots) of brown and grey-black; black or brownish-black polished beakers, decorated with incised lines filled with a white paste, constitute a special group. Tasa may have occupied part of central and southern Egypt to the Armant (Erment) region, whereas the Badari essentially occupied the northern part of Upper Egypt (Matmar-Qau); some sites in the South, in the Wadi Hammamat, and on the Red Sea coast may indicate that the Badarian were relatively-mobile. The economy was based on crops (wheat and barley), animal husbandry (goats, cattle, and sheep), and hunting. In Hemmamiya are found pear-shaped grain silos (3 meters/10 feet deep), lined with mats or baskets, and nearby are 'huts, fireplaces, and animal enclosures. The best-known artifactual inventory comes from the graves,of the extramural cemeteries, where, besides pottery, hollow-based arrowheads were found, as well as saw-edged sickle blades, stone axes, bone needles, pins, awls, and combs; ivory bracelets, beads, rings, vessels, spoons, and combs; cosmetic palettes, shell and stone beads, ear and nose studs, amulets, and clay boat models.

Copper was rare but the presence of turquoise and seashells indicates trade contacts along the Red Sea coast. The origin of the Badarian culture is unknown, but some features can be traced to Palestine (ceramic decoration called "rippling," crop cultivation, animal husbandry), the Western Desert oases (flint-tool techniques, animal husbandry), and Nubia (pottery decorations, animal husbandry). The Badarians seem to have combined various local traditions in forming the first stage of Upper Egyptian culture.

Recent Pages:

·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period
·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)
·        Poultry in ancient Egypt
·        El Oman
·        Moerian

Moerian

2018-12-14T04:13:00.005-08:00

Grain from (Moerian culture)
Merimde Period

Distinguished by B. Ginter and J. K. Kozlow-ski, the Moerian culture was a later phase of the Neolithic in the Faiyum (El-Faiyum) (c.4400-3800 BCE). It is characterized by a flint industry on blades and bladelets that were struck from small concretions, affiliated with the Epi-Paleolithic technological tradition of the Western Desert. Two-thirds of the tools are backed blades, micro-retouched blades and bladelets, retouched blades, and perforators. Pottery, tempered with organic material and sand, includes hemispherical bowls, S-profile vessels, and pots with cylindrical necks. The Moerian economy was based on animal husbandry, hunting, and fishing.

Bibliography and References:

Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 65. Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 1935. p. 27. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
Forde-Johnston, James L, Neolithic cultures of North Africa: aspects of one phase in the development of the African stone age cultures. University of California, (1959), p. 58. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
Hoffman (Michael A.): Egypt before the pharaohs. Taylor & Francis. (1980), p. 168.
Bassey Andah, Alex Okpoko, Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair: The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, Routledge USA (1993), pp. 211-214.
Shaw, Thurstan, The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns. Routledge, (1995), p. 212.
Bogucki, Peter I, The origins of human society. Wiley-Blackwell, (1999), p. 355.
Bard, Kathryn; Steven Blake Shubert, Encyclopedia of the archaeology of ancient Egypt. Routledge, (1999), p. 501.
Eiwanger, Josef, "Merimde Beni-salame". In Bard, Kathryn A. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London/New York, (1999), pp. 501-505.
Brewer, Douglas J.; Emily Teeter, Egypt and the Egyptians. Cambridge University Press, (2007), p. 35.
"picture of the Merimde head". Auswaertiges-amt.de. Archived from the original on 2 March 2012. Retrieved 1 May 2012.

Recent Pages:

·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period
·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)
·        Poultry in ancient Egypt
·        El Oman

El Oman

2018-12-14T04:06:00.003-08:00

El Oman known from a large site, the El Omari culture (c.4600-4400 BCE) is at the outlet of the Wadi Hof, north of Helwan. It was named after its discoverer and was investigated by P. Bovier-Lapierre and F. Debono. Oval, round, and irregular pits were found, dug out from the wadi deposit or cut into the cliff and lined with mats, clay, and wicker. The economy was based on the cultivation of wheat, barley, broad beans, peas, and flax; animal husbandry was based on cattle, goats, sheep, and especially pigs. Fishing was important but hunting and gathering less so. Red pottery from two kinds of local clays was straw-tempered, polished, and smoothed, showing similarity to Palestinian Neolithic A and B.

Recent Pages:

·        Piramesse
·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period
·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)
·        Poultry in ancient Egypt

Poultry in ancient Egypt

2018-12-14T04:00:00.010-08:00

Taking full advantage of the abundance of avian life in their country, the ancient Egyptians' diet was enriched by birds, especially delicious and highly nutritious migratory waterfowl. Just how plentiful and comparatively easy water birds are to obtain in Egypt can be seen from the fact that from 1979 to 1986, by a conservative estimate, between 260,000 and 374,000 of them were taken annually without firearms in the Nile Delta alone, using essentially ancient technology. Moreover, there is sound ecological and other evidence indicating that four or five thousand years ago, the available wildlife was far richer.

A mixed flock ofwaterbirds being
trapped with clap-nets, including
some pintails and European teal.
A wall painting in the tomb of
the twelfth dynasty nomarch
Khnumhotep III at Beni Hasan.

By the middle of the first dynasty, as shown by a representation on a gaming disc found in the tomb (no. 3035) of the chancellor Hemaka at Saqqara, and now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, fowlers had perfected the technique of employing large, rectangular clapnets to capture huge numbers of these migrants. Most of this hunting presumably took place in the then-extensive swamplands of the Delta, but probably also in the Faiyum (El-Faiyum). Those birds not immediately killed when caught were fattened, even force-fed, and kept in a semidomesticated state until needed for food or sacrifice.Members of the aristocracy maintained, as did individual temples, substantial stocks of poultry on their domains. These birds had considerable economic importance. The vast repertoire of scenes from daily life decorating the walls of tomb-chapels belonging to the elite from the Old Kingdom onward routinely include the activities of busy poultry yards and aviaries. These places are shown teeming with various kinds of ducks, geese, cranes, and doves, and frequently have captions giving the birds' names and numbers. The famous fifth dynasty mastaba (tomb 60) of the high- ranking court official Tiy at Saqqara, for example, is noteworthy for its wide assortment of vibrant aviculture and fowling compositions. Such birds must have been so esteemed as table fare, that tomb owners evidently wished to eat them throughout eternity. Generous numbers of waterfowl are carried as offerings by bearers featured in tomb-chapels and temples spanning all eras, they appear among the piles of victuals heaped before the deceased, are put on funerary tables, are named in their extensive menus for the beyond, and are mentioned in temple offering lists. There is some textual evidence from the New Kingdom that birds were affordably priced in ancient Egypt. However, the specially raised and force-fed poultry on view in tomb scenes were undoubtedly reserved for the wealthy. Curiously, the eggs seem to be absent as food in funerary contexts, probably owing to a taboo.

When images are carefully executed and paint is still extant, it is sometimes possible to recognize the precise species depicted. Some of these fowl also appear as standard hieroglyphs. Frequently identified table birds are bean goose (Anser fabalis) or graylag goose (Anser anser), r-? and sr; white- fronted goose (Anser albifrons and Anser erythropus), jrp; Egyptian goose (Alopochen ae.gyptia.cus), smn; ruddy shelduck (Tadoma ferruginea), bsbs?; pintail (Anas acuta), zt and hp; turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) and palm dove (Streptopelia senegalensis), mnwt and 'by, common crane (Grus grus), i^yt, 'jw, and g^, and demoiselle crane (Anfhropoides virgo), wd\ Other valuable birds sometimes kept for food include swan (Cygnus sp.), di-idn?; wigeon (Anas penelope), wsyt; European teal (Anas crecca), probably sr and s; quail (Cotumix cotumix), p'rt;

coot (Fulica atra), wh't; and possibly pigeons (Columba sp.). Pigeon cotes, a customary feature of the Upper Egyptian landscape well into the present century, probably did not exist during dynastic times, and are first attested in the archaeological record during the Greco-Roman period.

The impression one derives from pictorial and written sources of which kinds of poultry were viewed as desirable for dining is confirmed through zooarchaeological studies on bones from cemeteries and settlement sites. Burials of well-to-do people often had mummified victuals. A sumptuous funerary repast prepared for Tutankhamun during the eighteenth dynasty, found near his tomb (no. 62) in the Valley of the Kings, consisted of one brant goose (Branta bemicia), one white-fronted goose, two bean geese, four teals, two shovelers (Anas clypeata), one gadwall (Anas strepera), and two ducks that were not identified. In the intact eighteenth dynasty tomb of the architect Kha at Thebes (tomb 8), the deceased was interred with a large amphora filled with eviscerated poultry, reportedly preserved with salt. Theban tomb paintings show birds being processed in this manner and stored in similar tall jars.

Although Egyptian avicultuialists doubtless experienced some success breeding these birds, owing to the sheer abundance of waterfowl in the wild and ease of obtaining them, there was not a strong incentive for captive propagation. Nevertheless, the growing demand for table geese eventually led to the complete domestication of a goose, probably the graylag, by the time of the New Kingdom. The Egyptian goose occasionally appears in avi-cultural scenes, but only during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. By the early eighteenth dynasty, this large indigenous duck had risen in distinction, becoming sacrosanct to Amun, the powerful god of the city of Thebes. It was surely for this reason that this species was kept as a pet by some Theban notables, and is displayed quietly sitting near them in their decorated tomb-chapels, even accompanying them on fowling expeditions, despite the bird's infamously aggressive behavior. Otherwise, domestic poultry evidently played a small role in Egyptian religious belief.

Today's most characteristic farmyard bird, the chicken (or red jungle fowl. Callus gallus), was unknown to the ancient Egyptians until the nineteenth dynasty, and then only as a marvel imported from Southeast Asia by way of the Near East. The chicken did not become commonplace along the banks of the Nile until at least the Ptolemaic period. Classical writers, such as Diodorus Siculus (I, 74), in the middle of the first century BCE, mention the large-scale artificial incubation of poultry eggs by Egyptian avi-culturalists. Presumably, the practice of constructing hatcheries first developed during the Late period. It is also possible that the eggs of other species, such as the sacred ibis (Tlireskiomis aethiopicus), were incubated to supply the popular and burgeoning animal-cult industry with birds used as votive offerings. The earliest archaeological evidence for these installations comes from the sixth century CE. Hatcheries like this were still being used in some small villages of Upper Egypt as recently as the late 1950s.

Recent Pages:

·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt
·        Piramesse
·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period
·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)

Portraiture in ancient Egypt

2018-12-11T07:10:00.007-08:00

Egyptian death mask from the
18th dynasty. Louvre, Paris

The origins of portraiture in ancient Egypt no doubt lie in the belief in eternal life. In the early phases of Egyptian history known collectively as the Predynastic period, there were attempts to preserve the body. In the Old Kingdom, the cadaver was wrapped in linen that was stiffened with resin or plaster. Lifelike details were molded or modeled, creating a sculpture from the body. Throughout Egyptian history, the ever- increasing elaboration of funerary equipment reveals the desire to prepare the deceased for eternity; tomb sculptures represent a personal ideological imperative that preserves the identity of the deceased as a self-presentation of a virtuous life, both to the deities and to humans.

The ancient Egyptians required abstract qualities or physical correspondence, and often both, in their portraiture, which was limited almost exclusively to sculpture. A pensive or contemplative expression, for example, is a frequent component of a lifelike rendering. Still more than outward appearance, the virtue of the individual represented his or her reality. Foremost in the Egyptian value system was a principle known as maat ("harmony, cosmic equilibrium"), which all persons were expected to preserve. Idealizing statues must have been portraits because they created a necessary fiction; they revealed the admirable qualities, especially the adherence to maat, by which the deceased wished to be remembered. They are the three-dimensional equivalents of the paintings of the judgment of the dead found on cartonnages and sarcophagi. In both sculpture and painting, the deceased is always represented as a sinless, upstanding individual. Unlike later artists, the Egyptian sculptor had little opportunity for personal expression or deviation from convention. Many strictures, including the patron's wishes, controlled the portrait's content.

Tomb sculptures were private and directed primarily toward the deities. Public statues, particularly of royalty, were erected in and around temples and palaces to serve as the official images or self- presentations to both mankind and the theological pantheon. Although the context and purpose of public sculpture often explain the variation in facial types, especially in royal statues, the aspects or character traits were not necessarily different between private and public statues. Furthermore, the official image of a ruler was but one element of the ideological program of his sculptures, regardless of context. His dress, insignias, and crowns—even the dazzling paint or luster of the highly polished stone—were critical elements in the dramatic presentation of his stature.

A few scholars deny the existence of portraiture in Egyptian art, claiming that idealizing sculptures cannot possibly be realistic and that lifelike sculptures are formulaic or pastiches. Others insist that any lifelike attributes, particularly in the facial features, qualify a sculpture as portraiture. To be a portrait, the reasoning goes, an image must be recognizable and unable to be confused with the representations of other individuals. Advocates of this argument do not necessarily require complete verisimilitude. They admit stylistic conventions—a unique configuration of the eyebrow or the outlines of the eye—as markers of identity, along with more specific details such as facial musculature. The problem with this interpretation is that it implicitly requires a physical correspondence between the subject and the sculpture. It also precludes a common means of association by an individual with a group or, in the case of royal portraits, with an earlier ruler. The genealogy of portraiture and the association of an individual with an earlier period contain a very specific political, social, or theological message. Therefore, the continuation of a portrait type may indicate a desire to be associated with a previous person or era rather than being proof of physical similarity. Despite the denial of an individual's "real" appearance, sculptures— as well as paintings and reliefs—of this type are portraits because they reveal the qualities by which the person wished to be known.

There are other factors that must be taken into account when considering a historical portrait in isolation. For example, a statue can be identified with a particular individual in several ways. In its original context or through an identifying inscription, the identity would have been clear, regardless of the stylization, idealization, or similarity to earlier representations. Then again, the great majority of Egyptians would not have seen the pharaoh; hence, the degree of realism of a royal statue would have been lost on them. Furthermore, most sculptures have by now been removed from their settings, and many either are un-inscribed or have lost their original identifying text. Because the facial features of so many of these sculptures are non-individualized, they remain anonymous. Many sculptures were appropriated by later persons and transported to distant locations. Sometimes they were recut and reinscribed for the new owner, but occasionally they were simply reinscribed. Because the original face was left untouched, the recognition factor seems irrelevant. The new inscription gave the sculpture a new identity;

hence, its inner qualities now applied to the new owner. Even when naturalistic details appear, the identity is often difficult to determine without an inscription. Although these works seem idealized, stylized, or formulaic to us, to the ancient Egyptians they were portraits because they conformed to the prevailing style that was appropriate for expressing the inner character of individuals or the role that they fulfilled.

Thus, three different types of portrait are found in ancient Egyptian art: idealized and realistic portraits of real individuals and depictions of Fictitious or nonspecific individuals, such as a "foreigner." The third category combines the first two types because it is a "study" of a more general nature, often with a seemingly realistic appearance. Realism does not consist of surface appearance; otherwise, any photograph would be a portrait. What makes a portrait is the artists elucidation of an emotional, psychological, or intellectual component, an inner life that transcends physical correspondence. Those components are not always recognizable; artists often transmit them in a personal code decipherable by no one else. In modern times, the artist's perception becomes the defining element of the portrait. This luxury of personal inter- pretation, however, was a freedom that the ancient Egyptian artist did not enjoy.

Statue of Raherka and Meresankh. Raherka is
depicted with realistic looking musculature

That portraiture resists a single, all-purpose definition is not surprising, because it encompasses at least four sometimes opposing impulses: the publics expectations, the subject's wishes, the artist's vision, and artistic conventions. Despite the difficulties of interpretation, in very simple terms a portrait is a character study. It probes beneath the surface and reveals not the full range of the indi- vidual's psyche but one or a few aspects, which differ according to the needs that the portrait satisfies. Frequently a portrait is a labored or artificial study, especially when it serves an official or public purpose. Most often, a portrait captures a passing but revelatory mood and transfixes it for all time. Because the artist, subject, and viewer have different perceptions of the finished product, some scholars have rightly questioned the validity of the specific label "portraiture" and have suggested simply "representation" or "approximation" as alternatives. "Likeness" is another option, if it includes works that evoke the psychological or intellectual qualities of the individual and not merely the physiognomic details.

Consequently, portraiture is one of the most confusing, ill- defined, and controversial terms in the study of ancient Egyptian art. Part of the problem is the overemphasis on and misunderstanding of realism, which generally conforms to the modern expectation of anatomical verisimilitude. Realism, however, remains the greatest obstacle to the understanding of portraiture and is the focus here. Before the importance of realism to the Egyptological controversy can be assessed, some general observations on portraiture are necessary.

The style or type of portrait varies according to the intended audience. A portrait created for public display relies heavily on physiognomy. Because the portrait is an official image, however— most often of government, business, and academic persons—the artist acquiesces to formulaic exigencies and endows the representations with heroic qualities, such as the abilities to lead, make difficult decisions, and endure crises. Individual qualities are subordinated to expected roles, and it is sometimes questionable whether correspondence exists. Realism thus serves an ideal or an expectation, but it does not necessarily portray the individual. Realism is not an objective quality; it is subjective and mutable. The realism of a portrait depends on the viewers for whom it was created and the function that it served.

Correspondence is perhaps more evident in portraits intended for the subject's personal enjoyment because something of the individual's inner qualities appear. Nonetheless, uncertainty about the realism remains. The artist may defer to the patron's vanity by subduing some features and emphasizing others. The subject may specify the qualities to be expressed or the manner of representa- tion. The descendants of an illustrious ancestor sometimes commission a flattering portrait, as if to create an official image.

Because the majority of human representations in Egyptian art appear to contemporary sensibilities as idealizing, generalizing, or even formulaic—slim, youthful, physically appealing figures devoid of lifelike features— they are not often regarded as portraits. By contrast, the slightest personal flourish—a furrowed brow, a pensive look, a distinctive nose—supposedly makes the representation the genuine item. Quite apart from the unwarranted primacy accorded to realism, this reductive reasoning is unfortunate on at least two counts. It omits the many nuances of realism, and it completely overlooks an intriguing related issue. Why are lifelike human representations generally confined to sculptures of men? Although numerous exceptions exist, Egyptian paintings and reliefs of both men and women are usually not individualizing, or fall within the category discussed above. Not until the Ptolemaic period do individualizing sculptures of women appear with any regulai-ity, and even then the artist depends heavily on iconographic attributes to portray the identity of an individual queen. Before then, that women are generally depicted in all three media as beautiful, svelte, young, and flawless may seem an enlightened aesthetic, but an equally valid interpretation is darker and pessimistic: the individuality of women was unimportant. The lack of evidence for individualizing portraits of women is as much a social as an artistic commentary because it demonstrates that their role was limited and minimal. The sculptures and reliefs of Hatshepsut illustrate this point well; this female pharaoh is typically portrayed in the guise of a male. The only compromise that convention allowed is Hatshepsut's very occasional portrayal in female form in some of her portraits.

The third portrait type is the most intensely personal, a representation intended neither as an official image nor as a private commission, but as an independent work. It is a category that either did not exist or was rare in ancient Egypt. The artist is free of constraints and expectations and endows the portrait with whatever qualities and sensations come to mind. Because these images are occasionally unflattering to the individual, they may seem more honest and realistic. For example, caricatures, espe- cially the political and social varieties, are freighted with prejudice. Nonetheless, the majority of "independent" portraits are more benign, and on first consideration they are ostensibly the most important of the three types because they represent a personal, unbound, and therefore objective response; but they are no more realistic than portraits commissioned as official images or as more private and personal works. The representations of the same individual are subjective aesthetic responses that may differ from one artist to the next. Which portrait is the most realistic? Whether physical or internal, realism in portraiture is not an empirical, objective quality grounded in consensus. It is an ethos, a preference, or an interpretation, an ever-shifting variable, whose validity and expression depend on the audience, the subject, and the artist.

Few ancient Egyptian portraits are free of stylization. The best illustration consists of the plaster masks found in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose at Tell el-Amama, the capital of the eighteenth dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. Some of the masks seem unretouched, but the majority are reworked or stylized to fit the prevailing artistic style. Although part of the individual's outward appearance is preserved, the alterations suggest that realism was not as important as the assimilation of the individual with the pharaoh by adopting his official style.

Stylization occurs in even the most seemingly realistic portraits. From the fourth dynasty come numerous sculptures known as "reserve heads," which display highly individualizing features. Among the most "realistic" of all Old Kingdom artistic works, these sculptures are regarded as true portraits. In one case, evidence exists for their anatomical veracity: the hooked nose on the head of Prince Nofer, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, recurs among his tomb reliefs. The function of the reserve heads has been debated, but it is generally agreed that they preserve the deceased's vital character. Interestingly enough, that character or inner life is less in evidence than the meticulous surface treatment. However, on a related sculpture, the bust of Ankhkhaef, also in Boston, both the internal and external aspects are revealed. The significant point is that on all these realistic heads, stylization is also crucial. The eyes and the eyebrows are rendered in an artificial manner that is not lifelike but is a traditional aesthetic style. The awkward proportions of some of the heads, the peculiar treatment of their mouths, and their overall ungainly appearance indicates stylization or at least suggests that the heads are not completely lifelike.

Because the mummies of numerous kings survive, a comparison between their heads and their artistic representations is often instructive. The aquiline noses of the mummies of the nineteenth dynasty pharaohs Sety I and Ramesses II are prominent throughout not only their sculptures but also their paintings and reliefs, which are among the most individualizing royal representations in these two media. Nonetheless, they display the same stylization around the eyes found in the reserve heads.

Even the most anatomically detailed Egyptian representations can be deceptive, sometimes they are almost caricatures. The idealizing images of the deceased as slim and athletic have their counterpart in remarkably corpulent figures such as the renowned Old Kingdom statues of Kaiaperu in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and of Hemi-unu in the Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim. Although physical correspondence is a possibility, these statues may have been shaped by a class distinction. Both persons held important positions that freed them from need and from hard manual labor. Their dramatic bodily presence may have been a visual conceit manifesting their affluence. At the opposite extreme, the depictions in painting and relief of pot-bellied fishermen, emaciated and lame cowherds, bald and bewhiskered laborers, and carefully observed foreigners are probably more genre figures born of social commentary than actual individuals. The famous relief of the queen of Punt from Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri and the innumerable scenes of other foreigners are meticulous in their detail; yet it is the peculiarity of the subject matter, its non- Egyptian otherness, that captured the artist's attention. The image of the queen of Punt may seem at first to be extraordinarily realistic, but it could well be a caricature. Unless the artist accompanied Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt, he would have relied on eyewitness reports, which no matter how reliable would have resulted in exaggeration and stylization. Likewise, for all their ostensible realism, the representations of foreigners surely served as conventions or stereotypes; they are not necessarily realistic portraits of actual, historical foreigners simply because they seem to be individualizing.

Still, not every secondary character is formulaic. From the tomb of Horemheb at Saqqara come several reliefs depicting stock figures such as mourners, some of whom have anatomical details (receding hairlines, everted navels) that are unparalleled in similar scenes and probably indicate actual persons. These surprising individual flourishes in ancillary figures provide much of the liveliness of Egyptian art and serve as reminders of the profit to be gained from close study of even the most formulaic or repetitive phenomena.

Realism can be misleading also among representations of historical persons. The well-known statues of Senwosret III and his late twelfth dynasty successors in various collections, for example, have very lifelike, careworn faces, lacking the usual stylization of the eyebrows and eyes. Most remarkably, indications of advanced age are manifest in these statues as never before. Nonetheless, their expressions and appearances seem to be idealizations, evincing a quality or aspect of the king that was part of his official image, his self-presentation to deities and the public. Although the rulers of the waning twelfth dynasty may have had family resemblances that were accurately rendered in their sculptures, the close similarities between the sculptures of Senwosret III and his successors indicate that more than genealogy is at work. Actually, the rudiments of the style successfully exploited by Senwosret III first appear in the reign of Senwosret II. A new ideology expresses itself in the ponderous, haggard faces, which have their analogy in several pensive didactic texts related to kingship.

The phenomenon of appropriation is the clearest indication that physical correspondence was not essential for portraiture. In the thirteenth dynasty and about a millennium later in the twenty-fifth dynasty, private persons followed the late twelfth dynasty royal style. The physiognomy of these nonroyal persons obviously had no importance in their self-presentation. Their borrowing or adaptation of the official image of earlier kings allowed them to share some of the ideological aspects inherent in the royal sculptures. Similarly, portraits of the early Ptolemaic rulers are often hard to distinguish from those of the thirtieth dynasty. This similarity may have been a deliberate royal policy to link the Ptolemies with Egypt's past or, alternatively, the continuation of a stylistic convention. The type was then copied by private individuals, who commissioned portraits that demonstrated a desire to be associated with the royal house.

Exactly the same process recurs throughout Egyptian art, royal and nonroyal, not only in sculpture but also in painting and relief. Once a new official royal style was established, it became the archetype among kings and commoners, who made their own modifications through successive generations. Among many examples, there are a Thutmosid and a Ramessid style. Sometimes the official image had an antiquarian aura. Because Ahmose and Amenhotpe I, the first two kings of the eighteenth dynasty, restored native rule after the Hyksos domination and saw themselves as the heirs of Nebhepetre Montuhotpe, the late eleventh dynasty pharaoh who reunified the country after a period of civil strife, they depicted themselves in his image. Many pharaohs, particularly Ramesses II of the nineteenth dynasty, appropriated the sphinxes and other sculptures of much earlier kings; sometimes the only alterations were not to the face but to the identifying cartouche.

In many respects, portraits filled a general role. It was not necessarily just the facial features of an individual that mattered, but rather the role that was fulfilled. When the pharaoh died, the portrait could be reused acceptably by his successor because it represented the ideals of kingship and not merely the actual features of the individual ruler. New portrait types developed in order to show a ruler's desire—such as association with the previous pharaoh and the promotion of a dynasty—rather than his features. The representation of women in Egyptian art follows a similar pattern: their continual idealization indicates the limited social role of the eternally youthful, slim, beautiful woman. Portraiture enabled the Egyptians to promote themselves to their deities and their fellows alike in a desired or prescribed manner. The evidence for "realistic" representations of individuals needs to be treated with the utmost caution, because they potentially account for the most stylized type. Idealizing images at least portray an individual in a specific role, and as a consequence they should not be misleading to the modern onlooker.

Recent Pages:

·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt
·        Piramesse
·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period
·        Piya (744–714 BC)
·        Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)

Plutarch (c.46-120 CE)

2018-12-11T06:29:00.005-08:00

Plutarch's bust at
Chaeronea, his home town

Plutarch (c.46-120 CE), a greek historian and philosopher. Bom in Chaeronea in Boeotia, Plutarch was educated in Athens, mainly by the Platonist Ammonius, who had an Egyptian name and came to Athens from Egypt. Plutarch spent some time in Rome and also in Alexandria, but the small town of Chaeronea remained his permanent home. There, he filled various public posts and was a priest at nearby Delphi. His family life was very happy; his wife Timoxena bore him five children, while a circle of friends and pupils acted as a little academy under his lead.

Plutarch was a prolific writer, and his many biographical works included Parallel Lives, about Greeks and Romans. His Moral Essays covered a wide variety of themes, such as greed, flattery, loquacity, superstition, education, and marriage; his style was popular, being both lively and instructive. In other essays a more ambitious approach appeared, in that themes were tackled that interested Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists. As an avowed Platonist, Plutarch was in some ways open to Stoic influence; for example, in his emphasis on Providence.

His intense interest in religious beliefs and practices in addition to his vast reading on the whole field have led to the considered claim by Jean Hani (1976) that Plutarch is antiquity's best historian of religions. The claim is strongly supported by Plutarch's superb treatise On Isis and Osiris (the De Iside et Osiride—although written in Greek, the Moral Essays are traditionally called by their Latin titles). In this work, a distinction should be made between the accounts given of myths and rites and the often added interpretations. The accounts showed, on the whole, a remarkable reliability when compared with the evidence of the Egyptian sources; the interpretations, in contrast, were often colored by Pythagorean, Platonic, Stoic, Gnostic, and even Iranian ideas; in chapters 46, 47, and 48 the dualistic basis of Zoroastrianism was presented in an expose, which has often been quoted as authoritative.

For evidence on the contemporary cult of the Egyptian deities, Plutarch relied to some extent on his friend Clea, who held a double priesthood at Delphi—that of Isis and that of Dionysus. His book is dedicated to Clea. (It is possible, though not certain, that Plutarch was also an initiated devotee of Isis.) On a wide range of information about Egyptian religion, Plutarch was greatly indebted to a large number of Greek writers, whose compilations he probably used. Their quality varied, but most important among them to Plutarch was Manetho, a bilingual Egyptian and a high priest at Heliopolis under the first two kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Recent Pages:

·        Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
·        Petuabastis
·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt
·        Piramesse
·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period
·        Piya (744–714 BC)

Piya (744–714 BC)

2018-12-11T05:05:00.003-08:00

Piye's pyramid at El-Kurru

Piya (744–714 BC), third king of the twenty-fifth or Kushite, dynasty. Late period. Piya, also known as Piankhy, was the first ruler of the Kushite kingdom to attempt to control all of Egypt; he is therefore to be viewed as the real founder of the twenty-fifth dynasty. His activities are known mainly from his monumental stela erected at the site of Napata (Gebel Barkal). Piya's first attempts to involve himself in affairs to the north of his southern kingdom of Kush (now in Sudan) led him into immediate conflict with the various princes and dynasts of a divided Egypt. In particular, he claims to have moved north to the ancient center of Amun worship, Thebes, in an effort to exert political and religious influence over that region. He first installed his sister Amunirdis as "God's Wife of Amun" at Kamak, and he appears to have received the tacit submission of Middle Egypt, where various garrisons held by local potentates blocked his way. On his famous stela of victory, dated to the twenty-first year of his reign, Piya is described as focusing particular attention on the city Hermopolis, led by Namlot, who subsequently betrayed him.

Egypt at this time was nominally held by a weak and ineffective pharaoh, Takelot III (r. 750-720 BCE), who effectively ruled only his center in the eastern Nile Delta, Bubastis. Real control over the land was held by numerous monarchs, among the most powerful of whom was Tefnakhte, prince of Sais in the western Delta (r. 724- 717 BCE). It was Tefnakhte who organized the resistance to Piya after the Kushite ruler had effectively gained control of Hermopolis and, hence, of all Upper Egypt. After recounting the fall of Hermopolis in his stela, Piya then explains in detail his march to regain control of the old capital of Memphis and its final capture through another siege. At this point, the war became more complicated for the Kushite ruler. Although Piya claimed pharaonic jurisdiction over the entire Nile Valley—a theological claim as well as a political one—and although he had received ap- proval from the priesthood at Heliopolis, Piya faced organized resistance from the western Delta.

For more than a century, the northwest portions of Egypt had been assimilated by a series of Libyan military men, who eventually consolidated their power at the ancient commercial city of Sais. At the time of Piya's move to the North of Egypt, the leader of this center, Tefnakhte, was pharaoh in name and deed, and he effectively controlled all of the Delta northwest of El-Lisht. It was Tefnakhte who initiated opposition to Piya's control over Middle Egypt after Namlot, the ruler of Hermopolis, had switched his allegiance from Piya to the Saite ruler, and after other major cities in the vicinity also opposed the Kushite pharaoh. This political move was the effective cause of Piya's march north, eventually to capture all of Egypt and subsequently to take Memphis itself. Piya returned to his ancestral kingdom of Kush and erected his stela of victory in his twenty-first regnal year (c.715 BCE). Nonetheless, Tefnakhte was not deposed, and soon thereafter Sais resumed its opposition to the Kushites.

Known mainly from the lengthy and detailed inscription on his victory stela as well as from decorated blocks at Thebes, Piya remains a shadowy figure, especially in contrast to his successors. He was not a native Egyptian and, as such, was vehemently opposed by the native rulers. They organized the resistance against him and the subsequent Kushite rulers. Nevertheless, Piya's religious piety—or at least his conservatism—was one of his hall marks, and there is little doubt that his adherence to the long- standing Amun cult of Thebes, stressed in his stela of victory, was a primary reason why Thebes remained firmly under his control during his reign.

Recent Pages:

·        Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
·        Petuabastis
·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt
·        Piramesse
·        Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)
·        Second Intermediate Period

Second Intermediate Period

2018-12-11T04:35:00.004-08:00

During the Second Intermediate Period (Middle Bronze IIB), a small—roughly 2 hectares—unfortified village with strong Near Eastern or Hyksos characteristics occupied the center of what was to become the fortified site. It was essentially a self-subsistent entity, with numerous silos and, in the earlier strata, entombments within individual ownership plots (much as at Tell ed-Dab'a during the earlier occupational periods). Judging from plant remains pre- served in cooking-fire ashes, the village was seasonal, with no occupation during the summer months. Farming (wheat and barley) and animal husbandry (cattle, sheep and goats, pigs, donkeys, and at least one horse) formed a major part of the local economy, although they were not, apparently, the major reason for the site's existence.

Hunted animals included a small hartebeest, ostriches, and gazelle, reflecting a semi-arid savanna setting; and a variety of migratory waterfowl, indicating the regional presence of small lakes or swamps. At least some pottery—the local pottery constituted a subset of the Tell ed-Dab'a repertory—was made on site, and there is evidence for other industrial pursuits, such as weaving on the (non-Egyptian) warp-weighted loom, and secondary copper-smelting. Flint blades (mostly segmented sickle blades) apparently arrived at the site fully formed; they were locally hatted or rehafted.

That the inhabitants were not simple peasant farmers seems most evident from the burials, which were rich and mostly in tombs. These followed Near Eastern patterns, including ass burials outside of early "warrior" tombs, and were characterized by strong age and sex patterns in the distribution of grave goods. Bronze daggers, a battle-axe, knives, toggle-pins, and other items characterized most adult burials, with. amulets being reserved for juveniles. Gold and silver headbands and armbands, earrings, rings, and scarab mounts were not uncommon. Amethyst beads and an amethyst scaraboid probably were looted from twelfth dynasty tombs.

It appears that Pithom, and other Near Eastern sites in the Wadi Tumilat, existed as adjuncts—with Tell el-Maskhuta perhaps being a major reception point—for long-distance overland trade in high- value commodities with southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa. Presumably the need for such a difficult overland route arose during a period in which the Nile no longer was accessible to traffic bound for Avaris/Tell ed-Dab'a (Holladay 1997b).

Recent Pages:

·        Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
·        Petuabastis
·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt
·        Piramesse

Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom)

2018-12-11T04:27:00.003-08:00

Nubian prisoners of the tomb
of Horemheb in Saqqara

Modern Tell el-Maskhuta was known anciently as Per Atum (hence biblical Pithom), Tukw ("The Estate of Atum in Tkw" [biblical Sukkoth]), Greek Heron-polis (Eroopolis, Heroon), and Roman Ero (Hero). This multicomponent stratified site (30°33'N, 32°60'E) in the Wadi Tumilat region of the eastern Nile Delta was occupied during the last two-thirds of the seventeenth centmy BCE, and again from around 610 BCE to perhaps the early fourth century CE. It experienced brief periods of decline in the fifth century BCE and again in the first century BCE through the first century CE. Probably founded in connection with overland trade to southern Arabia during the Hyksos period, it was a control point and entrepot on the sea-level canal of Necho II (610-595 BC), which ran from the Nile to the head of the Red Sea via the Wadi Tumilat and the Bitter Lakes region.

Tell el-Maskhuta was the first site excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society (Edouard Naville, 1.883). Prior to World War I, Jean Cledat conducted excavations, apparently largely in the temple precincts, which yielded numerous museum specimens but little of scholarly substance. More recently, the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, now the Supreme Council of Antiquities, has conducted numerous excavations in the northern cemetery, along the Ismailia Canal, and in a number of areas in and on the margins of the modern village. Most current knowledge of the site derives from a major series of surveys and excavations conducted by a multidisciplinary University of Toronto team directed by John S. Holla-day, Jr.

Recent Pages:

·        Petosiris
·        Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
·        Petuabastis
·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt
·        Piramesse

Piramesse

2018-12-11T04:15:00.005-08:00

From the early days of Egyptology, continuing attempts were made to locate the position of the Ramessid capital called "The House of Ramesses Beloved of Amun Great of Victories." It was believed to be identical with the biblical city called "Ramesses," from which the Israelites departed Egypt on their Exodus. In the Nile Delta, the vast ruins of Tanis, the region around Pelusium, and the frontier forts of Sile, Tell el-Maskhuta and Tell el-Rotaba, all situated on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, were in turn identified and then dismissed as Piramesse. The French archeologist Pierre Montet insisted that Tanis was indeed the only Ramessid city that could be considered a candidate, because of the enormous numbers of Ramessid architectural fragments that he had uncovered there. Excavations in the vicinity of the modem village of Qantjr, led by the Egyptian Egyptologists Mahmoud Hamza (1928) and Labib Habachi (1940-1943), uncov- ered parts of palaces as well as dwellings of high Ramessid officials and brought the region of Qantir into focus. This work was continued, with a detailed evaluation of archeological remains within the region's topography, by the Austrian Egyptologist Manfred Bietak (since 1966). With further progress of the excavations at Tanis and Qantir, all data led to the final localization of the Ramessid capital in the region between Qanti and el- Khata'na, which has come to be generally accepted. Qantir/Pi-ramesse, the central area of which covers more than 10 square kilometers, is about 100 kilometers (65 miles) northeast of Cairo and about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Ismailia, not far from Faqus, in Sharkijeh province.

The feet of a Ramses II statue at Piramesse

In cooperation with the Egyptian Antiquities Organization and in collaboration with the Austrian mission, the Pelizaeus Museum initiated intensive work in the endangered archeological zone. Francis L. I. Griffith, the British scholar, could still note on an inspection of the area in 1886 that one finds at Qantir a low tell (settlement mound), which continues without interruption as far south as el-Khata'na, more than 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) to the south of Qantir. Today the area is almost completely leveled and prepared for agricultural exploitation, except for very limited remains at Tell ed-Dab'a. Already in antiquity, specifically during the twenty-first dynasty, most of the stone masonry, statues, obelisks, and the like had been removed from Piramesse to build new residences in such sites as Tanis and Bubastis.

During the course of nineteen field seasons since 1980, five excavation sites have been opened; two of these were labeled Q I and Q IV, respectively. Both major sites contain, from top to bottom, badly damaged remains of cemeteries, followed by a more or less preserved habitation level; beneath this is a chariot garrison with attached multifunctional workshops and extensive horse stables;

and below that is a foundry with installations for the industrial production and casting of bronze (Q I) and glass (Q IV). The latest excavations have revealed the remains of a palace-like structure below the royal stud (Q IV), comprising further stables, pillared halls, and a room with a polychrome stucco floor, including gold- plating. These latter elements can. be dated to the reign of Ramesses II by inscriptions and are most likely connected to the systematic building activities of the new residence. They may also reflect a technological transfer in regard to metal processing.

Evidence for this is provided by vast installations that demonstrate the melting of bronze by heating open crucibles from above, and the use of specialized furnaces for heating large-scale casting molds. Those installations cover an area well over 30,000 square meters and are unique in antiquity for their high- temperature technology and size. Altogether, the strata represent a period of a more than three hundred years of settlement history, from about 1300 BCE to the beginning of the first millennium, from the latter part of the eighteenth dynasty to the early twentieth. Earlier occupation levels (Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period) are to be found at Tell ed-Dab'a.

Traces of connections to foreign cultures and countries of the eastern Mediterranean are well documented at Piramesse. Particularly interesting in this regard is the occupation level labeled the Chariot Garrison. Three large contemporary functional units may be distinguished. The north of site Q I contains a peristyle court lined with octagonal pillars which protected polychrome wall paintings from the frequent, sometimes violent rainstorms. The pillars show on their four principal sides the royal protocol of Ramesses II in a version that dates its erection to his first sect-festival in regnal Year 30. The clearest indication of the use of this court for chariotry, in addition to the numerous objects recovered, is the prints of horses' hooves in parts of the courtyard floor.

The second functional unit—multifunctional workshops with intra-craft and cross-craft specialization—is situated within the south part of Q I. These include fireplaces of various types, crucibles of various types, tyeres, layers of ashes and burnt clay, slag, charcoal, casting molds, scrap metal, and recycled bronze objects, all of which indicate the presence of foundries in which not just bronze but also gold, silver, and glass were being produced or worked. Regional concentrations of humus layers, dunghills, and latrines, in combination with stone and bronze knives, hatchets, scrapers, and sickle blades, point to the processing of organic materials such as wood, leather, or reeds. Stone detritus such as flakes and nodules of flint, blue chalcedony, different varieties of camelian and agate, fragments of alabaster still bearing saw marks, smashed pieces of desert boulders, drill cores from rock crystal, pressure stones of bow-drills and their crescents, ball-hammers, and anvils suggest a wide spectrum of raw materials, techniques, and occupations. A specialized area served for the working of animal bones, receiving some of its raw material from a nearby zoo in which elephants, lions, gazelles, and other wild animals were kept. Taken as a whole, this cross-craft workshop reveals an interrelated web of dependent processes, linked together like a modern assembly line to repair and produce chariots and their equipment as well as bronze and glass.

The third functional unit at site Q IV comprises within an area of more than fifteen thousand square meters six rows of twelve rectangular rooms each, a column hall being situated at the western end of each row. The function of this architectural complex, which has no known parallel, can be inferred from the whitewashed floors, tethering stones, and "toilets" built of limestone inside these rooms: all of them—column halls as well as the slender rectangular rooms—are to be designated as "stable rooms," the whole being a royal stud housing a minimum of almost 460 horses and their grooms. Finds of chariot finials include yoke saddle knobs and yoke knobs, mainly carved of alabaster, limestone, or marble. Similarly numerous planoconvex discs, made of the same materials, once decorated the terminal ends of the wooden frame of the chariot's floor frame. Gold-plated bronze buttons, nailheads covered with gold leaf, punched gold bands, and rivets, together with a once- gilded linchpin, reveal that in addition to standard chariot types, lavishly decorated parade chariots were also manufactured and used here.

This conclusion can be further verified by the recovery of a functioning pair of horse bits along with a nave cap made of bronze. Numerous weapons—short swords, arrows, javelins, and lance heads—as well as pieces of scaled body armor belonging to helmets and cuirasses, complete the picture of the charioteers' armory. Correlating the information gained by excavations to ancient Egyptian texts, we can recognize the architecture and its contents as the "armory" and at the same time the "headquarters of thy (the king's) chariotry," described in the hymns of Piramesse.

Within the workshop we note limestone molds for embossing metal sheets, which are unparalleled in the cultural record of the ancient Near East. The identification of the designs engraved into these slabs is possible through Egyptian reliefs depicting Hittite soldiers carrying a shield whose outline exactly resembles the design and proportion of tine motif found on the limestone slabs; it is comparable also to the orthostats found at Zencirii, on which the Hittite weather god wears the homed crown and is armed with a lance, a short sword, and the same Hittite figure-eight shield. The Amama Letters contain lists of gifts sent by Tusratta, king of Mitanni, to Amenhotpe III, naming alongside other costly items, "nine leather shields, the urukmanmi of which are of bronze." Therefore I identify the Human word urukmannu with those metal parts that were produced by embossing bronze sheets using the above described molds, hammers, and punches, also found at Piramesse. Their presence within this metropolis can only be understood as proof that Egyptians and Hittites worked peacefully, side by side. This holds true also for the motif on the back side of the molds, depicting a highly stylized head of a bull, symbol of the Hittite weather god.

The most likely explanation for the peaceful presence of Hittites in Egypt's Ramessid capital is the occasion of the diplomatic marriage between Ramesses II and the eldest daughter of the Hittite king Hattusili III, Maat-hor-nofru-re, which took place in regnal Year 34 of Ramesses II. In several texts, particular emphasis is placed on the friendly encounter of the formerly hostile troops, enabling the ancient historians to state that "both lands had become one (and the same) land." The shield molds with the Hittite motifs must have been used to maintain the shields of the Hittites who served as a palace or body guard for the queen in the Ramessid residence, an outward expression of the friendly union between the two superpowers of the day.

Finds from the Mycenaean world are also present in abundance, most of them in the form of potter) 7 ; there is also a scale of a Mycenaean boar's-tusk helmet. We also have evidence for the cults of several foreign deities, such as a relief depicting a statue of Astarte, the ancient Near Eastern goddess of war and love and protectress of the royal horse team, mounted on horseback; in addition, the name of the ancient Near Eastern god of war, Resheph, was found on a limestone door post. The former object is the archeological manifestation of a passage in one of the hymns of Piramesse, telling us that "Astarte [is situated] in her (the city's) east." Since the hieroglyphic name of Astarte is also preserved on one of the palmiform columns of the stable, it may be assumed that the stable at least was protected by this goddess. Altogether, we have more than circumstantial proof that the hymns on Piramesse are accurate in describing its splendor, contents, layout, and size, comparing Piramesse to other Egyptian cities such as Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis.

Since 1996, the size and layout of the Ramessid metropolis has been further investigated in cooperation with the Bayerisches Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege, Munich, using a caesium magnetometer (SMART SM4G). With this device, sun-dried mud- brick walls, foundation pits filled with sand, and similar features of lower magnetism are clearly to be differentiated from cultural layers with higher magnetism. This enables us not only to measure but also to draw the outlines of individual buildings as well as the ground plans of city districts. Covering an area of almost 100 hectares, the investigated fields contain a palace area, vast living quarters consisting of villas and houses of the Amama type, with courtyards, gardens, streets, avenues, channels, and perhaps parts of a harbor. Several official buildings of still unknown function, one of them resembling in part the North Palace of Tell el-Amarna, and another one comparable to the so-called Foreign Office depicted in the tomb of Tjai at Thebes, are situated to the south of Q I and Q IV. It is hoped that the continuation of the magnetic investigation will lead to a map covering at least the city center with its area of more than 10 square kilometers.

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·        Personal Hygiene in Ancient Egypt
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·        Petamenophis
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·        Philae
·        Piety in Ancient Egypt

Piety in Ancient Egypt

2018-12-10T17:58:00.002-08:00

The concept of piety in ancient Egypt could be defined as a personal, individual expression of faith in and devotion to a deity, as opposed to institutionalized religious practice, which was traditionally the preserve of the king. The monarch was responsible for the maintenance of maat—the order of the universe, both cosmic and social, as established by the creator at creation—which included the maintenance of the relationship between the gods and humankind. This was achieved via the temple rituals conducted, in theory, by the king, but in practice by priests who acted for him. The ordinary person had no role in this activity.

Historical Developments:

Evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom is limited. Some personal names, which in ancient Egyptian are often theophoric, hint at a personal relationship between the deity and the bearer of the name. These names are particularly common in the Late period: for example, Padiese, "he, whom Isis gave" (Greek, Isidore). Yet some are attested from earliest times: for example, Shed-netjer, "whom the god rescues" (from the first dynasty); from the Old Kingdom there were the names Khui-wi-Ptah (or -Re, -Horus, -Khnum, or -Sobek), "may Ptah (or Re, Horus, etc.) protect me." A few texts of the Middle Kingdom also make brief references to personal worship.

The paucity of evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom can be explained by the limits set by what John Baines (1985) defined as "decorum," a set of rules regarding what could and could not be expressed in image and/or text in certain contexts. These guidelines can be illustrated in the way deities appeared on nonroyal monuments. Until the Middle Kingdom, decorum ex- cluded the possibility for nonroyal persons to depict deities on their monuments; they appeared only in texts, almost exclusively of a funerary nature, or in the form of their emblems. Not until the end of the Middle Kingdom were the first representations of nonroyal persons worshiping a deity inscribed on nonroyal stelae. Even there, a barrier usually in the form of a column of inscription and/or an offering table separated the worshiper from the deity. Not until the early New Kingdom and onward did images of deities regularly appear on nonroyal monuments.

Personal religion was encouraged by New Kingdom developments that contributed to a gradual breaking down of the barriers that separated individual and deity, such as the evolution and growth of festival processions of the deities. During the New Kingdom, evidence survives for a burgeoning of such processions, when the divine images were brought out of the seclusion of their temples and carried in a portable boat-shrine along a processional way. Although the images were hidden from view in the cabins of the boats (or barks, as they are often called), the ordinary person could approach them and seek the advice of the deity on all manner of personal issues, through an oracle.

Among the earliest literary evidence for personal piety in the New Kingdom are limestone ostraca, dated paleo-graphically to the pre-Amama period, which carry short prayers addressed to the god Amun. These ostraca may have been placed along the processional way taken by the god, and they bear some of the earliest sentiments of love and devotion to a deity: "Amun-Re, you are the beloved one, you are the only one!"

The growth of personal piety was accompanied by a diminution of the exclusive role of the king and official religion. As Jan Assmann (1984) has pointed out, one of the aims of King Akhenaten was to reverse that trend and restore to the monarch the central role in religion, as the mediator between the one god Aten and the people. His reform failed, indeed it succeeded in achieving the exact opposite—people were not prepared to abandon their old deities, and, since the official cults of the old gods were proscribed by the king, people were forced to turn to them directly. This situation probably explains the explosion of evidence for personal piety in both post-Amarna and Ramessid times, the latter dubbed by James H. Breasted in 1912 "the age of personal piety."

The trauma of the Amarna period and its aftermath doubtless also contributed to the atmosphere of uncertainty that is evident in the following historical period. That uncertainty was illustrated by theophoric names, which contain the verb sd ("rescue," "save"), names such as Shed-su-Amun ("may Amun save him"). Although sporadically met in earlier periods, such names were most frequently used in the New Kingdom (Ranke 1935. p. 330 f.). The letter of the scribe Butehamun to the captain of the bowmen Shed- su-Hor ("may Horus save him") also reflected this phenomenon (Wente 1990, p. 196), as did the emergence of the god Shed, the personification of the concept of the rescuing activity of a deity demonstrated in the study of Hellmut Brunner (1958, pp. 17-19). The inscriptions of Si-mut Kiki (Wilson 1970) provide a particularly good example of some of the perceived dangers and illustrate the concept of a chosen personal deity, to whom the devotee was particularly attached and from whom protection was sought, a well- attested phenomenon of piety that made its first appearance at that time.

As Assmann pointed out (1989, p. 75 ff.), a further religious development in the New Kingdom generated a change in the role of maat. Whereas it was previously held that one's fate depended on one's behavior (if one lived a life in accordance with the principles of maat then one would perforce flourish; if one transgressed against it one would be punished—the king being the one who upheld maat and meted out punishment), instead one came to be seen as directly responsible to the deity, who personally intervened in the individual's life and punished wrongdoing. The misfortunes from which people then needed to be saved were not only those of an impersonal kind but also included divine wrath, meted out as punishment for perceived wrongdoing.

Sources:

Archaeological sources for the practice of piety have survived in the form of shrines and votive offerings, but for a proper understanding of the phenomenon we are dependent on literary sources. These are varied, including biographical inscriptions, hymns, inscriptions on scarabs. Wisdom Literature and, in particular, the prayers (often penitential) of individuals. A very good example in a hymn may be found in those to Amun in the Leiden Papyrus (Prichard 1969, p. 369). The most important Wisdom teaching is that of Amenemope (Lichtheim 1976, pp. 146- 163). The prayers of individuals, inscribed on stelae dedicated to the deity as votive offerings, are very similar to the biblical penitential psalms expressing sorrow for wrongdoing and thanks for forgiveness. The bulk of our evidence comes from the Deir el-Medina, in Western Thebes, from the village of the workmen who built the tombs of the kings. This bias is due primarily to the chance of good preservation of the site, rather than to any unique religious development that may have taken place there, although the fact that Thebes probably suffered from the excesses of the Amama period more than other places may also have been a factor. Ashraf Sadek (1987) presented the evidence from other locations, among which the Wepwawet sanctuary at Assyut (where more than six hundred small stelae were discovered) was particularly significant.

The Elements of the Prayers:

terminology are regularly encountered in the prayers, hymns, and votive offerings:

1. The introductory words of praise and appeal to the deity often include a description of the deity who is said to be "one who hears petitions (nhwt)," "who comes at the voice of the poor (nmhw) in need," "who comes at the voice of him who calls to him."

2. In the description of the transgressor, the writer claims to be a "silent one," that is, a devout person (gr); a poor, humble person (nmhw). By way of apology, the claim is made to be ignorant and senseless (iwty hyty), to be one who does not know good (nfr) from evil (bin).

3. The writer confesses to having committed an act of transgression (sp n thi), to having done what is abhorrent or "taboo" (bty or bwt), to having sworn falsely ('rk m 'dy) by the deity.

4. The deity punishes the transgression, often with sickness; very frequent is the expression "seeing darkness by day," an image for separation from the deity.

5. A promise is made to proclaim the might of the deity to all the world, to "son and daughter, the great and small, generations not yet born," to "the fish in the water and the birds in the air," to "the foolish and the wise."

6. An account is given of answer to prayer—the deity is said to respond to the pleas of the petitioner and "to come as a sweet breeze" to be "merciful" (htp) to "turn" ('n) to the petitioner "in peace" (htp).

The Deities:

There was a range of deities, from the major gods and goddesses worshiped throughout Egypt (such as Amun-Re, Ptah, Hathor, Thoth, Osiris, Wepwawet, Horakhty and Haoeris) to local deities (such as Mer-etseger, the personification of the western mountain, "the Peak," at Thebes). Also worshipped were deified kings, such as King Amenhotep I (1514-1493) and less commonly, mortals, such as Amenophis, Son of Hapu, an official of King Amenhotep III (1382-1344). Amun was popularly worshiped in his forms py rhn nfr ("the goodly ram") and smn nfr n 'Imn ("the goodly goose of Amun"). The prevalence of the former was based on his animal symbol, the ram, being the most public form of the god. It decorated the prow and stern of his portable bark, and the avenues leading to his temples in Thebes were lined with statues of rams. The god Thoth, patron of scribes, was favored by this profession, and prayers to him appear in the Ramessid schooling literature.

The Petitioners:

One of the terms by which petitioners regularly referred to themselves in the penitential prayers was nmhw, "a poor, humble person." This does not mean that piety was a religion of the poor, since they would not have had the means to commission the monuments that provide us with our data. The people from Deir el-Medina who called themselves nmhw were relatively well-situated artisans, and most of the dedications found in the shrines around the Great Sphinx at Giza are by people of middle, lower-middle, or low rank, but even the viceroy of Nubia Huy, addressed a prayer of personal piety to his master, the king Tutankhamun. The king was also involved in this movement: Ramesses II's record of the Battle of Kadesh, inscribed on temple walls and pylons, did on a massive scale what the small votive stelae of the ordinary person did more modestly. In the prayer of Ramesses III to Amun at Karnak, sentiments and ex- pressions are found that parallel those of the nonroyal prayers.

Other terms used to designate the ideal god-fearing pious person were mfty, " a just one," comparable to the sadiq, "just," of the biblical tradition; 1fbhw, "the cool, quiet one"; and gr or gr my', "the silent one" or "the one who is justly silent." Their antithesis is sm or sm 1-3, "the hot or hot-mouthed one." The term "the silent one" is found in prayers of personal piety but is even better known from the wisdom teachings; it refers to those who do not assert themselves but who place their trust in the divine, recognize the supreme free will of a deity, and are totally submissive to that will. That attitude is succinctly summarized in chapter 25 of the Instructions of Amene-mope: "For man is clay and straw, God is his builder; he pulls down, he builds in a moment. He makes a thousand insignificant as he wishes, he makes a thousand people overseers when he is in his hour of life. Happy is he who reaches the West [i.e., the grave] being safe in the hand of god." There, worldly success—once seen as the result of correct behavior, of a life lived in accordance with maat— is held to be totally in the gift of a god; not success, then, but rather an unbroken relationship with a god, was the true mark of a successful life. The model frequently used for the relationship between the individual and a deity is that of servant (byk) and master (nb); as does a servant his master, so the devout person "follows" (sm.s) and is "loyal" to (sms hr mw/mtn) a deity.

The confessions of fault in the penitential prayers refer to "actual sin"; the reference is always to some concrete, individual act or an inner thought or personal attitude. A concept of "general sin" is not found (i.e., the concept of the existence of a barrier between humankind and the divine that is not the result of an individual deed or thought but of the general condition of humankind—the Christian concept of "original sin"). The closest to the latter would be the statement on the stela of Nebra, that "the servant is disposed to do evil" (Lichtheim 1976, p. 106).

Locations of Cults:

Ashraf Sadek (1987) has collected the evidence for the locations of cults of personal piety. They include nonofficial shrines (such as the small chapels erected by groups of individuals at Deir el-Medina or the tiny shrines set up along the path from Deir el-Medina to the Valley of the Kings), as well as places provided at official cult centers (such as the eastern temple at Karnak, dedicated to Amun and "Ramesses who hears petitions," or the monumental eastern gateway at Deir el-Medina, with its relief of "Ptah who hears petitions"). At the Tenth Pylon at Karnak, two individuals—Amenhotep, son of Hapu, and Piramesse—set up statues of themselves to act as mediators between the great god Amun and petitioners. The regular festival processions of the deities were also important occasions for the practice of personal religion; the promise in many of the penitential prayers—to make a public proclamation of the experienced greatness and mercy of the deity—was most probably fulfilled at such processions. The stela of Pataweret (Brunner 1958, pp. 6-12) from the Wepwawet sanctuary at Asyut provides valuable data on this aspect of personal religion. Divided into three registers, the bottom one depicts Pataweret's experience of the saving intervention of Wepwawet, called "the savior," who rescued him from being taken by a crocodile. The other two registers show where he expressed his thanks to the god. In the middle one he is shown alone, praying before an image of the god at a shrine. In the top register he is shown publicly praising the god during a procession.

Although compositions comparable to those of personal piety in the Ramessid era are not known from later periods, many of the sentiments found in them appear in later biographical texts, and their formulas of piety live on in some of the Greco-Roman temple inscriptions.

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·        Philae

Philae

2018-12-10T17:02:00.004-08:00

Philae, an island at the First Cataract of the Nile (24°02'N, 32°59'E), on the southern frontier of Ancient Egypt, It is the site of the most beautiful of all ancient Egyptian temples. In the 1970s, the architectural structures of the original island were moved to their present religious complex devoted to the cult of Osiris. The ritual focus was Biga, the site of the abaton, one of the alleged tombs of Osiris; Philae was dedicated preeminently to Isis, his sister-wife, who became the epitome of the divine wife and mother and thus the most popular of all Egyptian goddesses in the Late and Greco-Roman periods. Although Isis was the major deity of the Philae, the site's location on the frontier between Egypt and Nubia meant that the cults of Nubia also featured on the island, where they were represented by significant cult buildings.

Access to the temple of Isis at Philae

The monuments are dominated by the great temple of Isis and its associated structures, which are concentrated in the west and center of the island on, or adjacent to, a granite outcrop which must have been chosen originally as an embodiment of the primeval hill on which the holy-of-holies of all Egyptian temples was claimed to rest. There is some evidence at Philae of cult activity in honor of Amun in the time of the Nubian pharaoh Taharqa who ruled Egypt between 689 and 664 BCE. These meager traces might well mean that the rise of this frontier religious center owed something to the kings of the Nubian twenty-fifth dynasty, to which Taharqa belonged; however, the earliest known cult building in honor of Isis was a small shrine erected in the Saite period by Psamtik II. This was followed by a further small temple on the granite outcrop, erected by Amasis. Therefore, it now seems that the Saite kings introduced the cult of Isis into this area and laid the foundations for her subsequent glorification on the island.

The next evidence of building dates to the thirtieth dynasty and takes the form of a kiosk of Nektanebo I, which is now situated at the southwestern end of the main temple, and a gate of the same king embedded in the first pylon of the main temple. The gateway clearly formed part of a thirtieth dynasty enclosure wall, but all these features should be regarded as embellishments to the preexisting Saite temple enclosure, because there seems to be no trace of a substantial temple of thirtieth dynasty date.

The building work in the main Isis temple area is overwhelmingly Ptolemaic and forms part of the well-documented Ptolemaic policy of promoting the Isis cult throughout the kingdom and beyond, although a substantial amount of the decoration was added in the Roman period. The core of the Isis temple—everything north of the vestibule—was built by Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246) just behind the ancient shrine of Amasis, which was then demolished. Its decoration, as is normal at this and similar sites, was added sporadically for a long time. This temple was surrounded by a brick girdle wall which almost certainly followed the line of that of the thirtieth dynasty and showed the undulating pattern in laving the brick courses, which was typical of such late structures. This feature may have been used for entirely practical reasons, but it has also been claimed that it imitates the waves of the primeval ocean surrounding the primeval hill on which all temples were claimed to rest.

The temple shows an intriguing ground plan in that the main building has two axes: the main cult area accessed by the second pylon is skewed northeastward in relation to the court to the south. This feature probably arose from the interaction of several factors: the preexistence of the temple of Amasis; a determination to maintain the granite outcrop as the center of cult activity; and the configuration of the island itself—that is, any expansion of the central shrine to the south would have to be skewed to fit the available space. The temple in its final form is a much expanded structure that is entered by the first pylon (Ptolemy V-VI), which gives access to a court flanked on the left by a mammisi, probably begun by Ptolemy III but expanded and completed by Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (170-163, 145-116). This structure, typical of late temples, was, for ritual purposes, the site of the birth of Harpocrates, the son of Isis and Osiris. On the eastern side there stands a colonnade probably built by Ptolemy VIII. The much smaller second pylon, probably completed by Ptolemy VI Philometor (180-164, 163-145), leads via a court and vestibule to the sanctuary dedicated to Isis and her son Harpocrates. Throughout the main temple area there are many examples of work added during the Roman period: for example, the birth-house contains reliefs dating to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, who feature alongside Antoninus in the inner part of the temple; the temple is accessed from the west via a gate associated with the emperors Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus; and the enclosure also contained, to the north, a Claudian temple dedicated to Harendotes, the son of Osiris as champion and protector of his father. In the mid-sixth century CE the island of Isis was Christianized, and a number of churches were dedicated there, including one to the Virgin Mary and one to Saint Stephen, the former being the standard Christian substitute for Isis and the second a highly appropriate replacement for Harendotes. This cultic change brought with it the usual rash of mutilations to the pagan monuments.

The buildings of the Isis enclosure are supplemented by numerous subsidiary structures. To the south lies the long Outer Court, which now forms the main point of access to the temple enclosure. At its southern entrance stands the kiosk of Nektanebo I, removed there no later than the reign of Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysius (80-58, 55-51) and flanked by colonnades of Roman date on the western and eastern sides. In addition, the eastern colonnade embodies the remains of a temple of the Nubian god Arensnuphis (Ptolemaic with some Roman decoration), a well-preserved shrine of Im-hotep (Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205-180)), and a further cult-place often ascribed on quite inadequate evidence to the Nubian deity Man-dulis.

Pavillon of Trajan in Philae

There are numerous other buildings to the north, east, and south which are more loosely connected with the enclosure. At the water's edge on the northeastern section of the island stands a spectacular Roman-period gate, which was probably a triumphal arch of Emperor Diocletian. There are also a temple dedicated to the cult of Rome and Augustus and two Coptic churches, as well as the remains of a Coptic monastery. To the east of the great enclosure wall lies a temple of Hathor (Ptolemy VI/VIII and early Roman), a deity with close affinities with Isis who was associated, in particular, with the neighboring island of Biga. Finally, to the south of Hathor's temple and overlooking the Nile stands a beautiful but unfinished kiosk often ascribed to Trajan; it certainly received such decoration as it has in his reign, but the building itself may well be earlier. In addition to these major structures, the original island of Philae also contained mud-brick settlement remains on the northern part of the island and to the east and southeast. These areas would originally have housed the staff that served the temple, but the remains that were extant until the floodwaters destroyed them are described in the literature as Roman and Christian.

It is difficult to overrate the importance of the religious complex at Philae. It provides us with a major late cult center which is exceptionally well-preserved. Beginning in the Saite period and continuing into the thirtieth dynasty, it underwent a spectacular flowering in the Greco-Roman period, and, because of the circumstances of its dismantling and removal, there is possible a unique insight into its architectural evolution until and including its conversion to a Christian center. In addition, the voluminous texts and iconography yield much information on the last centuries of pharaonic religious thought and practice. In fact, Philae was the last bastion of ancient Egyptian culture, and it is no coincidence that the latest datable hieroglyphic inscription (24 August 394 CE) comes from Philae.

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Petuabastis

2018-12-10T13:40:00.001-08:00

Petuabastis, a name given to several kings of the Third Intermediate Period and Late period, meaning "gift of Bast."

Petuabastis I:

Petuabastis I (r. 813-C.773 BCE) first king of the twenty-third (Tanite or Libyan) dynasty of the Third Intermediate Period. The third-century BCE Egyptian historian Manetho called the dynasty Tanite, pinpointing the city of Tanis, in the eastern Nile Delta, as the place of family origin (not its capital), implying that it was an offshoot of the twenty-second dynasty. The relationship of Petuabastis I to Sheshonq III is unknown, although they may have been brothers. The seat of the twenty-third dynasty, however, is not certain. Its last ruler, luput II, was named after Petuabastis I's coregent luput I, who reigned at Leontopolis (Tell Moqdam) as Piya's victory stela indicates; the burial of a Queen Kama(ma), mother of Osorkon III(?), was found at Tell Moqdam. Petuabastis I and his entire line probably reigned at Tell Moqdam, other monuments of theirs are known from the Nile Delta and Memphis and not only from Thebes, where it has been suggested that the dynasty may have reigned. In his fifteenth and sixteenth years of reign, Petuabastis I had a short-lived co-regent, luput I. The separate regime of Petuabastis I enabled the rebellious Thebans to withdraw recognition of the twenty-second dynasty kings in favor of the new line.

Petuabastis II:

This local king in Tanis is known from inscriptions at Tanis, an unfinished statue at Memphis, and blocks at the museum in Copenhagen. Petuabastis II was encountered in Tanis by Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, in 667-666 BCE, and dethroned by him in 665 BCE. He recurred in later Egyptian tradition in four of six Demotic tales in the Inaros-Petuabastis Cycle. The known manuscripts are of Greco-Roman date; one of them also names Esarhaddon of Assyria.

Petuabastis III:

A minor rebel king of the First Persian Occupation, or twenty-seventh dynasty, Late period, Se-heribre Petuabastis III had a reign of uncertain date. He may have been in power as early as the end of the reign of either Cambyses, who ruled from 525 to 522 BCE, or Darius I, who ruled from 521 to 486 BCE.

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Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie

2018-12-10T13:15:00.004-08:00

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1903

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), archaeologist, bom at Charlton, Kent, on 17 June 1853. His father, William Petrie, was a civil engineer and surveyor; his mother, Anne, was the daughter of Matthew Flinders, the navigator and explorer. Petrie was a delicate child, educated by his parents at home. His mother taught him music, history, and French, and encouraged him in her own hobbies, geology and coin- collecting, while his father schooled him in mathematics and science and taught him surveying. Together they measured Stonehenge, and Petrie surveyed ancient earthworks in the West Country. In 1880 he went to Egypt to test the theory that the Great Pyramid of Khufu had been built by divine inspiration. He surveyed the whole pyramid field, and his careful measurements refuted the theories of the "British Israelites," which brought him to the attention of scholars. Distressed at the destruction of the monuments by careless excavators and treasure- hunters, he eagerly accepted the suggestion of Amelia Edwards, secretary of the newly founded Egypt Exploration Society, that he should excavate at Tanis in the Nile Delta. In his first season (1883-1884), he laid down new principles of scientific excavation in Egypt: careful recording of all finds, even broken objects unfit for museum display, and personal supervision of his workmen, whom he rewarded for what they found. Pottery and potsherds, until then discarded as rubbish, became valuable For relative dating purposes. In the following year, Petrie discovered two Greek cities in the Delta, Naukcratis and Daphne; a wealth of Greek pottery confirmed their identities.

The distinctive black-topped
Egyptian pottery of the PreDynastic period associated with Flinders
Petrie's Sequence Dating System

When he left the Egypt Exploration Society in 1886, Edwards helped him find private sponsorship. In the Faiyum Depression, to the west of the Nile, he opened two brick pyramids, found a number of mummies of the Roman period with painted portraits, and excavated a Middle Kingdom town. In 1890, he was persuaded to dig in Palestine; at Tell el-Hesy he cut a section through the mound, dating the levels there using recovered pottery from Egypt, with which he was familiar; for this he has been called "the father of Palestinian archaeology." At Tell el-Amama, one winter, he found the palace of Akhenaten, with its painted pavement, and Aegean pottery, which established a chronological link with the Mycenaean world. In 1892, Edwards died; she left money to found a chair of Egyptology at University College, London and wanted the new professor to excavate in Egypt and train students. She made it clear that Petrie was her choice. In 1905, he left the Egypt Exploration Society for good and founded the British School of Archaeology in Egypt; his wife Hilda (Uriin), whom he had married in 1896, acted as its secretary and main fundraiser for the rest of their lives, besides helping him in the field.

One of Petrie's most important contributions to archaeological science was his system called Sequence Dating. Another was his discovery of the royal tombs of the first dynasty at Abydos (1899- 1903). Methods and Aims in Archaeology (London, 1904) was to become a textbook for his students, many of whom, having survived the spartan regime of a Petrie camp, became archaeologists of the next generation. Petrie set an example with the prompt publication of his excavation reports; a number of popular books; the journal Ancient Egypt (which he edited); and lectures that fostered public interest in Egyptology. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1904, he was knighted in 1923. In 1935, he moved to Palestine; his last fieldwork was on large tells near the Egyptian frontier. He died on 29 July 1942, and he is buried in Jerusalem, his last home.

Petrie's "Journals" and letters from the field (from 1880 to 1926) are in the Griffith Institute, Oxford; copies of these, and his notebooks and diaries, are in the Petrie Museum at University College, London.

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Petosiris

2018-12-10T06:28:00.003-08:00

Tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel

"he whom Osiris has given"; also called Kliapakhonsu) was high priest of Thoth and lesonis-priest (oikonomos, head of finance) of the temple of Thoth at Hermopolis during the second half of the fourth century BCE. He is famous today for the well-preserved family chapel that he erected at Tuna el-Gebel.

The family of Petosiris had been proteges and appointees of the thirtieth dynasty. His father Es-shu had administered the temple at royal behest, probably under Nektanebo II, and it was one of Es- shu's younger sons, Petosiris, who eventually took over his father's estate as "Master of All His Property," and "Greatest of the Five, Controller of the Cult-seats," priestly titles of the fifteenth (Hermopolitan) nome of Upper Egypt. With priesthoods at Horwer and Nefrusi, as well as the sacerdotal functions for Thoth and Amun-Re, Petosiris received his inheritance just when Egypt was about to endure the second Persian occupation, by the army of Artaxerxes III in 342 BCE. His vivid account of the devastation caused by this invasion— it cannot be dated later—is now graphically supported by the excavations at Mendes, which show the fury and methodical demolition of the site by the Persians:

Painting from the tomb of
Petosiris depicting an ancient
Libyan or Syrian figure
struck by an arrow.

I have been faithful to the lord of HermopoUs since I was born, and his every counsel was in my heart. [He] selected me to administer his temple ... and I passed seven years as le-sonis-priest of this god, adminstering his income . .. when all the while a foreign ruler was doniinus over Egypt, and nothing was in its former place. For war had broken out in Egypt: the South raged and the North was in uproar, and people went about bewildered. No temple had its staff, and the priests were dispersed(?); there was no telling what might happen therein in the future.

Petosiris shepherded his nome through this period of crisis and was later revered as a leading man of his city, "with many dwellings and fields and cattle without number."

For the art historian, the tomb and family chapel loom large because they reflect the first impact of Greek art and culture on Egypt. Petosiris survived the arrival of Alexander in Egypt and witnessed the early influx of Greek settlers and their influence. Together with his son and successor, Tachos, he erected the bipartite tomb chapel, with an inner chamber over the sarcophagus dedicated to his ancestors, and an outer transverse hall provided an inter-columnar screen celebrating himself. While the inner chamber is decorated in the traditional Egyptian canon, the outer chamber features scenes from the traditional Egyptian repertoire of agriculture, animal husbandry, and viticulture, rendered under the strong influence of the classical Greek canon. Some aspects, such as the use of profile, echelon, and stance, hark back to a Nilotic past, but the musculature, individual likeness, irregular spacing, and costume point to the advent of a classical Greek style. The reliefs are important in demonstrating how, at the beginning of Ptolemaic period, in contrast to what was to come later, even a provincial city such as Hermopolis, far from the Nile Delta, was open to external influence.

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Petamenophis

2018-12-10T06:09:00.002-08:00

Four ushabti of Pediamenopet, now in Munich

The most extensive private tomb constructed at any Egyptian site during the pharaonic era belonged to a little-known chief lector-priest, Petamenophis (or Pediamenopet), who lived from the late twenty-fifth into the early twenty-sixth dynasties. Although that title was the highest rank recorded on his tomb, the tomb's massive size indicated that he was one of the most influential individuals in Upper Egypt at that time. Probably constructed during the earliest decades of the twenty-sixth dynasty, his tomb was located within a series of monuments built for local officials in the Asassif region of the Theban plain, dating from about 700-540 BCE. Sometimes considered an expression of an "Archaic revival," the tombs actually follow a four hundred year hiatus of tomb building; yet they incorporate features from nearby private tombs and mortuary temples of the preceding periods, rather than recalling elements of much earlier dynasties. These tombs are conspicuous for their size and complexity, as well as for their shared features, such as the massive mud-brick superstructures, the dramatic subterranean courtyards, the innovative use of architectural sculpture, and the multilevel burial chambers.

The inscriptions from one of the seven known statues of Petamenophis indicate that he was consecrated as lector-priest in 662-661 BCE. Most probably, he achieved the rank of chief lector priest in following years. He lived during the era that coincided with Mentuemhet's term of office as governor of Upper Egypt, yet the mention of any king or "Divine Adoratress" (a female relative of a Nubian king, installed as religious leader at Thebes) is noticeably absent from Petamenophis' tomb. Anthes (1937) speculated that such an omission would be more likely during a period of foreign rule (during the rule of the Nubians of the twenty-fifth dynasty, rather than that of the twenty-sixth dynasty). Petamenophis' name does not appear on the Saite Oracle Papyrus, dated to 651 BCE, with Mentuemhet and other Theban high officials of the early twenty-sixth dynasty. Nor is there any other evidence that Petamenophis lived far into the twenty-sixth dynasty. Mentuemhet clearly did, and perhaps he was a younger, regional contemporary of Petamenophis.

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