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THE

m BRITISH

Museum

Dictionary of
Ancient Egypt

IAN SHAW AND PAUL NICHOLSON

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO PRESS

This pocket edition first published by Egypt in 2002 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Kasr el Aini Street, Cairo, Egypt
www. aucprcss. com

Published bv arrangement withThe British Museum Press

First published 1995

First published in paperback 1997

Oar el kutub no. 10453/02
isbn 977424762

Printed and bound in Spain by Grafos S.A.,
Barcelona

FRONTISPIECE Detail of wedjat-eyes above a fa Ise door
with decoration imitating textiles. From the wooden
inner coffin of the commander Sepy. Middle Kingdom,
c. 2000 bc, from Dei rcl-Bersha, L 2.13 m. (ma55315)

PAGES 4-5 lino male guests at the funeral feast oj the
vizier Ramose in his tomb at Thebes. 18th Dynasty,
c. 1 390-1336 bc. (graham harrison)

CONTENTS

Maps
6

Preface

Acknowledgements
9

Entries A-Z
10

Chronology
310

Appendix 1
313

Appendix 2
313

Index
316

List of bibliographical
abbreviations

328

Note on the illustrations
328

HERMQPQLIS MAGNA
el-Ashmunein
Tuna el-Gebel

nome boundary

10 nome number

Luxor modern name

THEBES classical name

MEWAT-KHUFU ancient name

Pithom biblical name

nome capitals are underlined where known

scale 1:3 800 000

FACING page Map of Egypt, showing the main
sites mentioned in the text. The Egyptians
themselves made a clear geographical
distinction between Upper Egypt, consisting of
the Nile Valley from Memphis to Aswan, and
Lower Egypt (or the Delta), where the Nile fans
out into several tributaries in its final descent to
the Mediterranean. The twenty-two notnes
(provinces) of Upper Egypt and the twenty
nomes of Lower Egypt are also indicated, and
the nome capitals, where known, are
underlined. Each nome had its own symbol or
standard, often incorporating animals, birds or
fetishes sacred to the local deities.

above Map of the Ancient Near East, showing
Egypt's neighbours in western Asia and the
Mediterranean region. For most of the
Pharaonie period Egypt was well protected by
its natural geographical surroundings,
consisting of the Sinai peninsula and the Red
Sea to the cast, the Sahara Desert to the west,
and the Mediterranean Sea tn the north. In the
New Kingdom the Egyptians' 'empire'
extended well beyond these traditional borders,
as they vied with Mitanni and the Hittitcs for
hegemony over the city-states of Svria-
Palestine. Tt was only in the Late Period
(c. 747-332 bc) that Egypt itself finally
succumbed to the invading armies of Nubia,
Assyria and Persia.

PREFACE

When this book was first produced, no reliable
general dictionary of ancient Egypt was available in
English, and the task of deciding what to include
here and what to leave out was not easy. Many of
the headings in this dictionary are derived from
discussions with students and colleagues, but
responsibility for the final list is ours. The book
largely results from the need to find concise and
accurate definitions of key terms in Egyptology,
some of which have become obscure and archaic
over the years. The principal aim has been to pro-
vide a reference work accessible to anyone with an
interest in ancient Egypt, as well as to the academic
community. The short bibliographies which accom-
pany most entries are given in chronological, rather
than alphabetical, order so that the list moves from
early sources to more recent studies.

The spelling of ancient Egyptian personal names
is a continual source of difficulty. Thus the kings
cited here as 'Amenhotep' may be found elsewhere
as 'Amenhotpe', or in the Greek form Amenophis'.
We have chosen spellings that are as far as possible
consistent with the transliteration of the original
Egyptian, which has the added benefit of being
consistent with those used by Stephen Quirke and
Jeffrey Spencer in the British Museum book of
ancient Egypt (London, 1992) and other BMP pub-
lications. In the headings of entries describing
ancient sites, on the other hand, we have opted for
the most commonly used name. Alternative forms
of names are given in the text and index. We have
endeavoured to make the index as comprehensive
as possible in the hope that readers will find it help-
ful in researching topics or individuals not covered
by specific headings in the text.

The chronological table provided here is that
preferred by the Department of Ancient Egypt and
Sudan in the British Museum. Because of the diffi-
culties in establishing a single absolute chronology
for ancient Egypt, both dates and lists of individual
rulers tend to differ from one book to another, but
most current chronological schemes will be found
to be broadly similar to the one used here. Since
Egyptologists tend to refer to 'dynasties' and 'king-
doms' in a way which can be confusing to the non-
specialist, we have tried to give absolute dates bc
and ad wherever possible.

The entries are supplemented by two appen-
dices. The first of these lists the names and dates of
Egyptologists mentioned in the text (some of
whom have individual entries and bibliographies in
the main text). The second appendix lists the rec-
ognized numbers of Theban Tombs (designated tt)
and those in the Valley of the Kings (designated
kv), along with their occupants and dynasties.
Throughout the dictionary there are frequent ref-
erences to these tomb-numbers, as well as occa-
sional mention of tomb-numbers at other sites, such
as el-Amarna (ea), Beni Hasan (bh), Elkab (ek),
Giza (g) and Saqqara.

Should readers require further detail on certain
topics they are advised to consult both the bibli-
ographies at the end of each entry and the following
more specialized reference works: M. Lurker, The
gods and symbols of ancient Egypt (London, 1974);
W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf (eds),
Lexikon der Agyptologie, 1 vols (Wiesbaden,
1975-1988); G. Hart, A dictionary of Egyptian gods
and goddesses (London, 1986); R. and A. David, A
biographical dictionary of ancient Egypt (London,

1992); J. Baines and J. Malek, Atlas of ancient Egypt
(Phaidon, 1984); and W. R. Dawson, E. P. Uphill
and M. L. Bierbrier, Who was who in Egyptology,
3rd ed. (London, 1995). G. Posener's A dictionary
of Egyptian civilization (London, 1962), although
now somewhat in need of updating and out of print
in English, provides a good range of information on
many general Egyptological topics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank a number of individuals and
institutions for their help during the course of this
project. Firstly we would like to thank the staff of
the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the
British Museum, who have not stinted in sharing
their scholarship with us. We are also grateful to
many friends and colleagues with whom we have
discussed subjects relevant to this book, including
Dr W. Z. Wendrich, who wrote part of the entry on
basketry and cordage, Joann Fletcher, who pro-
vided valuable information for the entry on hair
and wigs, Dr Delwen Samuel, who supplied infor-
mation on ancient brewing techniques, and
Margaret Serpico, who kindly provided informa-
tion on oils and incense. We would also like to
thank Janine Bourriau, Sarah Buckingham, Barry
Kemp, Professor Harry Smith and the staff of the
various expeditions to Egypt with which we are
involved. We should emphasize, however, that the
final responsibility for the opinions expressed
remains our own. In addition, we would like to

acknowledge the support we have received from
University College London and Cardiff University.

For assistance with various aspects of the pro-
duction of the typescript and photographs we
would like to thank Geoff Boden, Dr Caitlin Buck
and John Morgan of Cardiff University and Dr
Nick Fieller of the University of Sheffield.

Joanna Champness, Celia Clear, Emma Way and
Julie Young of British Museum Press gave much
useful help and advice concerning the production
of the original book, and Carolyn Jones and
Christine King on the present edition.

For illustrations we are grateful to the staff of the
British Museum Photographic Service; to Graham
Harrison; the Egyptian Museum Cairo (in particu-
lar Dr Mohammed Saleh); the Griffith Institute,
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York (in particular Dr
Dorothea Arnold) and the Musee du Louvre.
Unless otherwise stated the line drawings are by
William Schenck, to whom we are also indebted.

Finally, we would like to thank Kate Trott, Ann
Jones and Nia Shaw, who have helped in numerous
ways.

Ian Shaw
Paul Nicholson

ABU GURAB

Abu Gurab (Abu Ghurob)
Site on the west bank of the Nile between Giza
and Saqqara, originally known to travellers as
the 'Pyramid of Righa', although actually
dominated by the remains of a sun temple
erected by the 5th-Dynasly King Nyuserra
(2445-2421 bc) whose pyramid stands a short
distance to die south at abusir. It became cus-
tomary in the 5th Dynasty for the rulers to
express their devotion to thelleliopolitan sun-
god ra by building" sun temples in addition to
their own pyramid complexes. Abu Gurab is
the best preserved of the two surviving exam-
ples (the other being that of Userkaf at
Abusir), although at least six are known to
have been built.

The central feature of the temple was a
large, squat monument, the proportions of
which were midway between a benben stone
and a true OBELTSK. Both the 'obelisk'' and the
tapering platform on which it stood were
masonrv constructions rather than monolith-
ic. Tn front of the monument (of which only
the core of the plinth remains) is a large open
court, and in the centre of this open area is a
massive travertine altar comprising a disc

Plan of Abu Gurab.

below General view of the sun temple of the 5th-
Dynasty King Nyuserra at Abu Gurab. The mound
to the left is the base of the large squat obelisk; the
travertine altar to its right is obscured by the
enclosure wall. The Giza pyramids are visible on the
skyline in the far distance. (i>. T. \ichoi.son)

AB U ROASH

ABU SIMBEL

surrounded on each side by four carved exam-
ples of the hieroglyphic sign hetep ('offering 1 ),
giving the whole an unusual cruciform shape.
The altar is flanked on the north by a slaugh-
ter area and by temple magazines. The
entrance to the temple is linked with a 'valley
building' by a covered causeway, like those
connecting pyramids with their valley tem-
ples. On reaching the temple proper, the
causeway becomes a corridor running down
the east side of the courtyard and along the
south side. This corridor, which contained
reliefs of the sed festival (royal jubilee), led
to the 'room of the seasons 1 (containing paint-
ed reliefs depicting the seasons of the
Egyptian year) and ended in a chapel decorat-
ed with scenes of the dedication of the temple.
Although these are evidently important
scenes, thev were carved on poor stone
enhanced with a coating of lime plaster - such
economies perhaps illustrate the strain on the
finances of the Egyptian elite because of the
need to build both pvramids and temples. To
the south of the temple was a brick-built imi-
tation of the uARk of the sun-god.

The site was excavated at the turn of the
century by the German scholars Ludw r ig
Borchardt, Heinrich Schafer and Friedrich
von Bissing, who sent many of the reliefs to
museums in Germany, where a number of
them were destroyed during the Second World
War.

E. Winter, 'Zur Deutung der
Sonnenheiligtumer der 5. Dynaslie 1 , WZKM 54
(1957), 222-33.

E. EDELand S. Wenig, Die Jahreszeitenreliejs aus
dem SonnenheUigtum lies Kdnigs Ne-user-rc,
Mirtcilungen aus der agvptischen Sammlung 8
(Berlin, 1974).

W. Stevenson Smith, The art and architecture of
ancient Egypt, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1981),
128-32, figs 124-5.

D. Wildung, Ni-User-Re: Sonnenkonig-
Sonuengott (Munich, 1985).

Abu Roash (Abu Rawash)
Site of the unfinished funerarv complex of the
4th-Dynasty ruler Djedefra (2566-2558 bc),
the ancient name for which was 'Djedefra is a
sehedu star'. The pyramid, situated to the
north of giza on the west bank of the Nile, was
evidently in better condition in 1839, when it
was first examined by Richard Eloward Vyse
and John Perring. Since then, the site has suf-
fered heavily, having been used as a quarry in
the 1880s, but enough stone blocks remain to
show that it was intended to be partly encased
in red granite.

rhe mortuary temple on the east side of the
pyramid and a large boat pit to the south were

both excavated by Emile Chassinat in 1901.
The boat pit contained many fragments of red
quartzite statuary, including three painted
heads from statues of Djedefra, one of which
was probably from the earliest known royal
sphinx (Louvre Ei2626), as well as the lower
section of a statue of the king accompanied by
Queen Khentetka. Because of the nature of
the local topography, the causeway (linking the
mortuary temple with the valley temple)
approaches from the northeast rather than the
east.

To the north of the pyramid is Wadi Qarun,
site of the still unexcavated valley temple, as
well as a number of remains of a much later
date, including part of a statue of Queen
Arsinoe ti, sister and wife of PTOLEMY u
Philadelphus (285-246 BC), Objects bearing
the names of the Ist-Dynasty pharaofis aha
(r.3100 bc) and den (f.2950 bc) have also been
found at Abu Roash, indicating a strong Early
Dynastic presence at the site.

To the east of the pyramid complex is an
Old Kingdom cemetery, which was also exca-
vated by Chassinat. About two kilometres to
the south arc the remains of a brick-built
pyramid, comprising a knoll of rock and a bur-
ial chamber. This pyramid, the date of which
is unknown, was still relatively well preserved
when it was recorded in the early nineteenth

century by the German scholar Karl Richard
Lepsius.

F. BisSGN de la Roque, Rapport sur lesfouUles
d'Abu Roasck, 3 vols (Cairo, 1924-5).
C. Desroches-Noblfcourt (ed.), Un siecle de
fiuiliesfrancaises en Egypte, 1880-1980 (Paris,
1981), 44-53.

M.Vallogia, 'Le complex funerairc de Radjedef
a Abu Roash', BSFE 130 (1994), 5-17.

Abu Simbel

Site of two rock-cut temples of RAMESES ii
(1279-1213 bc), located about 250 km south-
east of Aswan. The temples were discovered
by the traveller Jean-Louis Burckhardt in 1813
and cleared by Giovanni belzoni four years
later. The largest temple is dedicated to
Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah and the deified
Rameses n. The facade is dominated by four
colossal seated figures of Rameses u wearing
the double crown and nemes headcloth.
Between the two pairs of figures is the

The facade of the 'great temple' of Rameses it at
Abu SimheL Tbe four seated colossi of the king are
each 20 in high: the damaged figure was left
unrestored when the temple was moved to higher
ground as part of the UNESCO operation to
preserve it from the waters of Lake Nasser.

(p. T. NICHOLSON)

ABU SIMBEL

ABUSIR

A temple of Rameses II 6 sanctuary

1 court for sun worship 7 Hittite marriage stele

2 seated colossi of Rameses II 8 south rock-cut chapel

3 large pillared hall 9 north rock-cut chapel

4 side chambers 10 extent of modern

5 small pillared hall concrete dome

temple of Nefertari and Hathor

1 standing coiossi

2 pillared hall

3 vestibule

4 sanctuary

5 extent of modern concrete dome

The tempki of (A) Rameses n and (B) his queen,
Nefertari, and the goddess Hathor at Abu Simbei.

entrance to the cavernous interior of the mon-
ument, and flanking it, beneath the feet and
throne of the king, are the NINE bows, the tra-
ditional enemies of Egypt. The monument
thus symbolized Rameses n's domination of
nubia, as well as his piety to the gods.

The 'great temple' is precisely aligned so
that twice a year (during February and
October) the rising sun illuminates the sanctu-
ary and seated statues of the gods at the rear-
most point of the temple. The temple is con-
ventional in its overall layout, with a large pil-
lared hall immediately beyond the entrance
leading to a smaller pillared hall, followed by a
vestibule and sanctuary. The standard of
workmanship on the wall carvings is not high,
though they are vigorous and retain their
painted colour. The temple was decorated in
the 34th year of Rameses 1 reign, and there is a
discernible decline in artistic standard com-
pared with the decoration of the earlier tem-
ples at abydos. At the southern end of the
external terrace a stele records the marriage of
Rameses to a daughter of the mTTITE king
Hattusilis m, valuable evidence of diplomatic
relations at the time.

A little to the north of the great temple lies
a smaller rock-cut temple dedicated to Queen
nefertari and the goddess hathor of Abshek.
This facade features two standing figures of

the king, flanking those of his queen, on each
side of the entrance. A passage leads to a six-
pillared hall with SiSTRUM-capital columns,
followed by a vestibule, and finally the sanctu-
ary, where a statue of the goddess Hathor pro-
tects Rameses n.

In the 1960s these temples were threatened
by the rising waters of Lake Nasser resulting
from the construction of the Aswan High
Dam and were dismantled, moved and
reassembled on higher ground, through the
co-operation of archaeologists and engineers
working under a UNESCO initiative.
W. MacQuitty, Abu Simbei (London, 1965).
C. Desroci ess- Noblkcourt and C. Kuentz,
Le petit temple d'Abou Siinhel, 2 vols (Cairo, 1968).
T. Save-Soderbergh (ed.), Temples and tombs of
ancient Nubia (London, 1987).

Abusir

Part of the necropolis of ancient MEMPHIS,
consisting of several pyramids of the 5th
Dynasty (2494-2345 BC), a sun temple {see
ABU GURAB), and a number of MA&TABA tombs
and Late Period (747-332 BC) shaft tombs.
Userkaf, founder of the 5th Dynasty, built his
pyramid at Saqqara and a sun temple at
Abusir, a short distance to the north. At least
four of his successors (Sahura, Neferirkara,
Raneferef and Nyuserra) therefore chose
Abusir as the location for their funerary mon-
uments, the ancient names of which were 'The
ba of Sahura gleams 1 , 'Neferirkara has become

a ba\ 'The has of Raneferef are divine' and
'The places of Nyuserra are enduring'. The
finest of the mastaba tombs at Abusir is that of
the 5th-Dynasty vizier Ptahshepses, a relative
of Nyuserra, which incorporates two boat-
shaped rooms presumably meant to hold full-
sized boats, an unusual feature of a private
tomb.

The funcrarv monument of Sahura
(2487-2475 bc), the most complete of the four
royal burials at Abusir, is the quintessential
5th-Dynasty pyramid complex, consisting of
valley temple, causeway, mortuary temple and
pyramid. The imposing portico of the mortu-
ary temple gave access to a large courtyard
with a well-preserved basalt-paved floor and a
colonnade consisting of sixteen red granite
palm columns (the latter now largely
destroyed). The remains of the original lime-
stone walls, with their fine painted decoration,
have been transferred to the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo and the Bodemuscum in
Berlin. Beyond the colonnade were a series of
store rooms surrounding the 'statue chamber',
where the king's statues stood in niches, and
immediately adjacent to the pyramid was the
sanctuary with its alabaster altar. In the south-
eastern corner of the complex stood a small
subsidiary pyramid.

When Ludwig Borchardt excavated
Sahura's complex in 1902-8, he discovered the
earliest temple relief of the king smiting his
enemies, as well as reliefs depicting the cat-

ABUSIR

ABYDOS

goddess BASTET in a corridor surrounding the
palm-columned court. In the New Kingdom
this corridor seems to have been re-roofed and
used as a sanctuary for a local form of the
lioness-goddess skkhmet.

The complexes of Neferirkara (2475-2455
bc) and Nyuserra (2445-2421 BC) are both
unfinished and poorly preserved. The complex
of Neferirkara, although clearly intended to be
larger than that of Sahura, is now best known
for the large quantity of papyri from the mor-
tuarv temple, providing valuable evidence on
the organization of royal funerary cults in the
Old Kingdom. The papyri date from the reign
of Isesi to that of pi-py u, and mainly consist of
rotas for temple personnel, inventories of cult
objects, and letters. Neferirkara's causeway

mortuary temple of Raneferef (2448-2445 BC),
whose unfinished pyramid was actually trans-
formed into a mastaba tomb. Their finds have
included a second papyrus archive, a group of
seals, a collection of cult objects, and the most
important surviving group of 5th-Dynasly
royal sculpture, including an unusual painted
limestone statue of Raneferef himself with a
Ilorus-falcon embracing the back of his head,
as well as wooden statuettes of bound captives.
The Czech archaeologists have also uncov-
ered the original pyramid complex and tem-
ples of Queen Khentkawes (mother of Sahura
and Neferirkara), which was probably a ceno-
taph, since she also had a mastaba tomb
between the causeways of Khufu and Khafra
at gi/.a. In 1988-9 they excavated the shaft-

sun temple Df 1 „,' , """"/„ / /""\ %
Nyuserra -

100 200 300 400 500

sun temple of
Userkaf^,

ABUSIR

1 pyramid complex of Sahura

2 mastaba of Ptahshepses

3 pyramid of Nyuserra

4 pyramid complex of Neferirkara Kakai

5 pyramid of Raneferef

Plan of the Slh-Dynasty pyramid complexes at
Abusir.

was evidently usurped by Nyuserra, who
diverted it to his own mortuary temple. The
poor quality of the rubble core used in these
pyramids has left them in poor condition,
especially since the fine blocks of outer casing
have been plundered. To the northwest of the
pyramid of Sahura are the remains of another
unfinished pyramid complex, which probably
belonged to Shepseskara (2455-244S bc), the
ephemeral successor of Neferirkara.

Since the 1970s the work of a team of Czech
archaeologists, under the direction of
Miroslav Verner, has revealed the mud-brick

tomb of the Persian-period 'chief physician',

Udjahorresnet, who served as chancellor to

Cambyses and Darius I (see PERSIA).

L. Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Konigs Ne-

wer-Re (Leipzig, 1907).

— , Das Grabdenkmal des Konigs Nefer-ir-ka-Re

(Leipzig, 1909).

— -, Das Grabdenkmal des Konigs Sahu-Re

(Leipzig, 1910-13).

P. Posener-Krieger and J.-L. de Cknival,

Hieratic papyri in the British Museum: the Abusir

papyri (London, 1968).

H. RlCKE, Das Sonnenheiligtum des Konigs

Userkaf, 2 vols (Cairo, 1965; Wiesbaden, 1969).

P. Kaplony, 'Das Papyrus Archiv von Abusir',

Orientalia 41 (1972), 180-244.

P. Posener-Krieger, Les archives du temple

funeraire de Neferirkare (Les papyrus dAbousir),

2 vols (Cairo, 1976).

M. Verner, 'Excavations at Abusir, season

1978-9, preliminary excavation report: the

pyramid of Queen Khentkawes ("A")', ZAS 107

(1980), 158-64.

— , 'Remarques preliminaires sur les nouveaux

papyrus d'Abousir', Agypten: Daiter mid i'Vandel

(Mainz, 1986), 35-45.

Abydos (anc. Abdjw)

Sacred site located on the west bank of the
Nile, 50 km south of modern Sohag. The site
of Abydos, centre of the cult of the god osiris,
nourished from the Predynastic period until
Christian times (r.4000 8C— AD 641). The earli-
est significant remains are the tombs of named
rulers of the Protodynastic and Early Dynastic
periods [c. 3100-2686 BC). The earliest temple
at the site is that of the canine god Osiris-
Khcntimentiu (Kom el-Sultan). An extensive
settlement of the Pharaonic period and
numerous graves and cenotaphs of humans
and animals have also been excavated.

The site is still dominated by the temples of
Sety i (1294-1279 bc) and his son Rameses o
(1279-1213 bc), although an earlier chapel,
constructed in the reign of Rameses i
(1295-1294 bc), has survived in the form of a
number of blocks of relief. The cult temple of
Sety T is an L-shaped limestone building, and
the iconography of its exquisite painted reliefs
has been used to interpret the procedures of
the religious rituals that were enacted there.
In one scene Rameses u is shown reading out
the names of previous kings from a papyrus
roll in the presence of his father. The contents
of the document are carved on the adjacent
wall; this king list (along with a similar list
from the temple of Rameses it) has made an
important contribution to studies of Egyptian
chronology.

Behind the temple of Sety l is the Osireion,
a building constructed of huge granite blocks
which has been interpreted as a kind of ceno-
taph of the god Osiris. The structure is
entered via a long descending gallery and dec-
orated with excerpts from the Book of Gates
and the Book of the Dead, as well as cosmo-
logical and dramatic texts. It was once thought
to be an Old Kingdom building, because of the
grandiose scale of the masonry, but it has now
been dated to the reigns of Sety I and
Merenptah and the style is generally pre-
sumed to have been an attempt at archaizing
by New Kingdom architects.

The Abydos cemeteries, including the Early
Dynastic necropolis now known as Umm el-
Qa'ab, were excavated in the late nineteenth and

ABYDOS

early twentieth centuries by the French archae-
ologists Auguste Mariette and Emile
Amelineau, and the British archaeologists
Flinders Petrie and Eric Peet. In the 1960s
Barry Kemp reanalyzed the results of the exca-
vations conducted by Petrie and Peet, and sug-
gested that the Early Dynastic royal tombs were
complemented by a row of 'funerary enclo-
sures' to the east, which may well have been the
prototypes of the mortuary temples in Old
Kingdom pyramid complexes {see also GIZA and
SACiQA^)- In 1991 the excavations of David
O'Connor revealed further support for this the-
ory in the form of a number of Early Dynastic
wooden boat graves near the Shunct el-Zebib,
the best preserved of the 'funerary enclosures'.
A team of German excavators, who have

below Two dolomite vases with gold covers, from
the tomb of King Khasekhemwy at Abydos. 2nd
Dynasty, c.2690 bc, h. of taller vase 5.7 cm.
(EA33567-8)

1 Umm el-Qa'ab: Early Dynastic
royal tombs

2 Shunet el-Zebib and other Early Dynastic
'funerary enclosures'

3 Kom el-Sultan: temple of
Osiris-Khentimentiu

and surrounding settlement

4 temple of Rameses II

5 temple of Sety I and Osireion

6 modem village of
el-Araba el-Madfuna

7 temple of Senusret III

8 Middle and New Kingdom
settlement

1200 ,1600 2000 m'

""" %

9 Q 8

"/(UMIti^'

13n

7 □ \m

9 pyramid of Ahmose and temple of
Ahmose Nefertari

10 cenotaph ofTetisheri

11 and 1 2 cenotaph and
temple of Ahmose

13 cenotaph of Senusret III

.above Plan &f Abydos,

been working in the vicinity of the Early
Dynastic royal cemetery since 1973, have
obtained evidence to suggest that there are
strong cultural links between Petrie's royal
graves at Umm el-Qa'ab (traditionally dated to
Dynasty I, the very beginning of the Early
Dynastic phase at Abydos) and the adjacent
late Predynastic Cemetery u. They therefore
argue that the line of powerful historical rulers
buried at Abydos may now be pushed further
back into what was previously considered to be
'prehistory'.

The tomb of the lst-Dynasty ruler Djer at
Umm el-Qa'ab became identified with the
tomb of Osiris from at least the late Middle
Kingdom onwards, and during the 12th
Dynasty (1985-1795 BC) it became common
for individuals from elsewhere in Egypt to be
buried at Abydos. It also appears to have
become increasingly common for private indi-
viduals to make 'pilgrimages' to Abydos so
that they could participate posthumously in
the festivals of Osiris; large numbers of tombs

and cenotaphs (or 'offering chapels') were
therefore constructed at the northern end of
the site, in the vicinity of Kom el-Sultan.
About two thousand stelae and numerous
offering tables and statues have been plun-
dered and excavated from these funerary mon-
uments. The stelae have provided a great deal
of information concerning the cult of Osiris,
the literary structure of funerary autobiogra-
phies, and a wealth of details concerning the
middle-ranking officials of the Middle
Kingdom and their families.

The southern end of the site incorporates
both Middle and New Kingdom archaeological
remains; a pyramid temple, cenotaph and ter-
raced temple of ahmose i (1550-1525 BC) and
ailmose nefertari were excavated by Charles
Currelly in 1901. In 1993 Stephen Harvey
undertook new excavations in this area, reveal-
ing fragments of painted reliefs of Ahmose I,

right Plan of the temple of Sety 1 and the
Osireion at Abydos.

chapels N

second hypostyle hall

first hypostyle hall

portico (destroyed)

wells

pylon (destroyed)

king list

10 20 30 4Q 50 60 70

ADMINISTRATION

which perhaps depict his campaigns against ihe
ityksos at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty.
A. MAB3ETTB, Ahydos: description des fouiiles
executes sur Temp/acement de cetle vi/le, 2 vols
(Paris, 1869-80).

W. M. F. Pf.trie, The royal tombs of the earliest
dynasties, 2 vols (London, 1900-1).

A. M. Calverley and M. F. Broome, The temple
of king Sethos I at Ahydos, 4 vols (London and
Chicago, 1933-58).

H. Frankfort, The cenotaph ofSeti i at Ahydos
(London, 1933).

B. J. Kemp, 'The Egyptian 1st Dynasty royal
cemetery*, Antiquity 41 (1967), 22-32.

W. K. Simpson, Terrace of the Great God at
Abydos: the offering chapels of Dynasties 12 and 13
(New Haven and Philadelphia, 1974).
A. R. David, A guide to religious ritual at Ahydos
(Warminster, 1981).

D. O'Connor, l The cenotaphs of the Middle-
Kingdom atAbvdos', Melanges Gamal eddiri
Mokhtarn (Cairo, 1985), 161-77.
— , 'Boat graves and pyramid origins: new
discoveries at Ahydos, Egvpt', Expedition 33/3
(1991), 5-17.

G. Dreyer, 'Unim el-Qa'ab:
Nachuntersuchungen im friihzeitlichen
K6nigsfriedhof5./6.Vorbcricht\ MDAIK 49
(1993), 23-62 [preliminary reports on earlier
seasons published in MDAIK jS, 38 and 46].
S. Harvey, 'Monuments of Ahmose atAbvdos 1 ,
Egyptian Archaeology 4 (1994), 3-5.

administration

The process of social and economic control of
the population was an area of life in which the
Egyptians excelled. Many of the surviving
artefacts and documents of the early dynas-
tic period (c. 3100-2686 bc), such as ivory
labels and wine-jar sealings, were clearly ele-
ments of an emerging administrative infra-
structure. The evidence for Egvptian adminis-
tration consists of two basic elements: proso-
pographv (i.e. textual records of the names,
titles and professions of individuals) and the
archaeological remains relating to supplv and
demand of commodities such as grain, beer
and wine. The granaries surrounding the mor-
tuary temple of Rameses n (the ramesseum),
for instance, are tangible remains of the
increasingly elaborate system of storage and
distribution that sustained those employed by
the temple and state in Egypt.

The key factor in the administration of
Early Dynastic Egypt, as in the early city-
states of Mesopotamia, appears to have been
the use of writing as a means of political con-
trol. The SOUSE was therefore the most impor-
tant element of the administration, a fact
which is recognized both in 'pro-scribal' liter-

ary works such as the 12th-Dynasty Satire on
the Trades and in the popularity of statuary
representing high officials in the scribal pose.
It was the scribal profession that was responsi-
ble for assessing individuals' agricultural pro-
duce and collecting taxes on behalf of the king,
provincial governor or temple official.

since fewer administrative documents have
survived for this period in Lower Egypt. The
walls of the Theban tomb of Rekhmira, who
was southern vizier in the reigns of Thutmose
ni { 1 479-1425 BC) and Amenhotep n
(1427-1400 bc), are decorated with his funer-
arv biographv as well as an inscription known

In the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc) there
were two principal state offices apart from that
of king: the vizier {tjayty sab tjaty) and the
overseer of royal works {imy-r kat nesw). The
title vizier is first attested on inscribed slone
vessels beneath the Step Pyramid at Saqqara,
suggesting that the office was introduced
at least as early as the 2nd Dynasty. After the
unification of the country in the late fourth
millennium bc, the various regions retained a
degree of independence in their role as
provinces (or nomes) ruled by local governors
(nomarchs). Whenever the central adminis-
tration was weakened, whether through inva-
sion or economic decline, power tended to
devolve back to the nomes, as in the first and
second so-called 'intermediate periods' (see

CHRONOLOGY).

By the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) the
Egyptian administration had considerably
diversified; because it was no longer possible
for the king to control all aspects of govern-
ment, the role of the vizier had grown more
important. The authority of both the king and
his vizier had also been strengthened since the
12th Dynasty, apparently as a result of a poli-
cy of reduction in the power of the nomarchs.
In the 18th Dynasty there were two viziers,
northern and southern, but most of the sur-
viving evidence concerns the southern vizier,

Fragment of a mall-painting from the tomb of
Nebamitn at Thebes, showing geese being counted
for a tax assessment of agricultural produce. lSth
Dynasty c.MOObc, a. 71 cm. (/■: \37978)

as 'the duties of the vizier', which outlines the
responsibilities of the post.

The New Kingdom national administration
was divided into three sections: the dynasty,
the internal administration and external
affairs. The 'dynasty 1 consisted of roval rela-
tives, most of whom held little political or eco-
nomic power, perhaps because it was they who
might have posed the greatest threat to the
king. The internal administration comprised
four sections: the 'royal domain', the army and
navy, the religious hierarchv and the secular
(or civil) officials.

The roval domain included such posts as
chancellor, chamberlain and chief steward,
while the army and navy were led by a com-
mander-in-chief with chief deputies of north
and south below 7 him. The religious adminis-
tration was controlled by an 'overseer of
prophets of all the gods of Upper and Lower
Egypt', a post which was actually held at vari-
ous times by the vizier or the chief priest of
aml'N. The secular part of the internal admin-
istration was headed by the northern and
southern viziers, with overseers of the trea-

•

AGRICULTURE

suries and granaries below them; it was these
officials who controlled the national bureau-
cracy, judiciary and police. At a local level
there were also 'town mayors' (haty-) and
councils (kenbel) in charge of the judiciary.

The New Kingdom external administration
was divided into two sectors: (1) the governors
of the three northern lands (i.e. the provinces
of Syria-Palestine) and (2) the governor of the
southern lands, who was also known as the
viceroy of KUSit (or King's Son of Kush).
Below the governors of the northern lands
were local princes and garrison commanders,
and below the Viceroy of Kush were the
deputies of Wawat and Kush {the two regions
of Egyptian-dominated Nubia), the mayors of
Egyptian colonics and the local chiefs of. the
Nubians.

N. Kanawati, The Egyptian administration in the
Old Kingdom: evidence oj its economic decline
(Warminster, 1977).

T. G. H. JAMES, Pharaoh's people: scenes from life
in imperial Egypt (London, 1 984), 5 1-72, 1 54-80.
N. Strudwick, The administration <>[ Egypt in the
Old Kingdom (London, 1985).
B.J. Kkmp, 'Large Middle Kingdom granary
buildings (and the archaeology of
administration) 1 , ZAS 113 (1986), 120-36.
S. Qlikkk, The administration of Egypt in the Late
Middle Kingdom (New Maiden, 1990).

aegis

Greek word for 'shield 1 , used by Egyptologists
to describe a representation of a broad neck-
lace surmounted with the head of a deity.
Depictions of sacred BARKS show that thev had
an aegis attached to the prow.
H. Bonnkt, Reallexikon der Agypfischen
Reiigionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), 8-9.

KMOW. Jasper aegis incorporating
a ram 's head wearing sun-disc and
cobra, H. 3.5 cm. (ea3360)

RIGHT Silver aegis with lion's
head, it. 4.8 cm. (t: 67903)

-■..;.;;'„;;- .: .. .<. . ..-..-..■.., ...... ......■.....■' v. ....■ . ■::- :.,-;:y ■■■■■-•... .......

"• ■:.,.. ■ ' •...• .■■ .. .■•■ • ■ ,-. - ' • ■ . ;..:. /:'.:/::,:

B
r

Aegyptiaca

Term usually applied to Egyptian objects
found outside the borders of Egypt itself, par-
ticularly in the Eastern Mediterranean.

afterlife see

FUNERARY BELIEFS

agriculture

The fundamental importance of agriculture in
Egypt is attested from early times, with the
development of land surveying as a means of
re-determining land boundaries after the
annual inundation had deposited its load of
silt on the fields, and also the measuring of
areas of land for taxation purposes. Scenes of
government surveyors measuring agricultural
land are known from the decoration of many
tomb chapels such as that of Menna, an

Detail of the Book of the Dead papyrus o/'Kerquny,
showing the deceased ploughing and sowing.
Ptolemaic period, c.250-150 bc (ea99U , sheet 2)

18th-Dynasty Theban official (tt69).

The development of the calendar itself
was linked to careful observation of the agri-
cultural year, the seasons being named in
accordance with stages of the annual Nile
cycle. Flooding began in mid-June, the time of
the New Year, and maximum depth was usual-
ly reached bv mid-August, although the exact
timing varied from north to south. The reach
of the Nile was extended by the digging of
irrigation canals which could also be used for
moving water at: times of low flood. Canals are
first attested in the Earlv Dynastic period and
it is likelv that the reliefs on the macehead of
King scorpion show the use of irrigation in
the late predyna.stk; PERIOD, As soon as the
inundation began to subside the farmers
blocked canals in order to retain the water,
which was not released for a further month
and a half. In October or November the seed
Was broadcast by hand and then trampled in
by sheep and goats (as well as pigs, according
to Herodotus).

The principal crop was grain, including
barley (Hordeuni; particularly the six-rowed
variety) and three types of wheat: emmer
(Triticum dicocatm), einkorn (Triticum mono-
coccum) and spelt {Triticum spelta). These were
used to make bread and beer, the two great
staples of Egvptian life. The rich soil could
support at least two crops a year, but if a sec-
ond was desired, during the summer, then it

AGRICULTURE

AHA

?..

had to be irrigated manually. In the Old and
Middle Kingdoms, a simple yoke and vessels
were used to move the water, but the introduc-
tion of the siiaduf in the New Kingdom and
the sakkia (an animal-powered water wheel) in
the Ptolemaic period not only made irrigation
easier but also extended the area of cultivable
land. Usually pulses rather than cereals were
grown as a second crop, and although these
'fix' nitrogen and so enrich the soil, the envi-
ronmental effect was probably relatively trivial
compared with that of the Nile flood.

Numerous tomb-paintings depict grain
being harvested with sickles, threshed using
oxen, then winnowed and stored, while the
quantities were carefully measured and
recorded by scribes. Vegetables (including
onions, garlic, peas, lentils, beans, radishes,
cabbage, cucumbers and a type of lettuce)
were usually grown in small square plots,
attested both in tomb-paintings and in the
archaeological record, as in the case of the veg-
etable plots outside the 'workmen's village' at
EL-AMARNA.

oils were extracted from sesame, castor and
flax (Liniim usitatissimum), the latter also sup-
plying the principal fibre for the making of
linen textiles. Grapes were grown for wine,
particularly in the Delta region and oases, and
there are numerous scenes showing wine
presses in use. Many ostraca have also sur-
vived from wine-jars, usually recording the
contents, date and origins of wine-jars. Wine
and beer (see Ai.COHOUC BBVERASES) were
often flavoured with dates, and the fibres of
the date palm were used in the making of
cordage and basketry.

Most of the agricultural land belonged to
the king or the temples, and both kept copious
records of its productivity. Officials often
inflicted severe punishments on those who
failed to meet grain quotas, and in many
tombs, such as that of mereruka in the Old
Kingdom, there are scenes of peasants being
beaten for this reason.
L. Keimer, 'Agriculture in ancient Egypt 1 ,
American Journal of Semitic Languages anil
Literature 42 (1926), 283-8.
K, Baer, 'An eleventh dynasty farmer's letters to
his family', JAOS 83 (1963), 1-19.
J. Vandier, Manuel d'archeologie egyptienne si:
Scenes de la vie agrwole a Vancien et an moyen
empire (Paris, 1978).

T. G. H.JAMES, Pharaoh's, people: scenes from life
in imperial Egypt (Oxford, 1984), 100-31.
H. Wli.sox, Egyptian food and drink (Princes
Risborough, 1988).

E. Strouhal, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 91-107.
W. Wetterstrom, 'Foraging and farming in

Egypt: the transition from hunting and
gathering to horticulture in the Nile valley', The
archaeology oj Africa, ed. T. Shaw et al. (London,
1993), 165-226.

A Group (A Horizon)

Term first used by the American archaeologist
George Reisner to refer to a semi-nomadic
Nubian Neolithic culture of the mid-fourth to
early third millennium rc. More recently,
W. Y. Adams has suggested thai the A Group
and their successors the c grout should be
referred to as the A and C 'horizons', since the
use of the term 'group 1 can give the mislead-
ing impression that they were two separate

Selection of objects from an A-Group grave,
including two Egyptian imports (the tall jar and
painted pot), c.3500-3000 §C, a. of tall jar 45 cm.
(MS1193, 51187, 51188, 51191, 51192)

ethnic groups rather than simply two phases
in the material culture of the Nubians.

Traces of the A Group, which probably
evolved gradually out of the preceding Abkan
culture, have survived throughout Lower
Nubia. The archaeological remains at sites
such as Afyeh (near Aswan) suggest that they
lived mainly in temporary reed-built encamp-
ments or rock shelters, usually in the immedi-
ate area of the Nile, surviving through a
diverse combination of hunting, gathering,
fishing, the cultivation of wheat and barley,
and the herding of sheep, goats and cattle.

Extensive A-Group cemeteries, typically
including black-polished and 'eggshell 1 hand-

made pottery, have been excavated at such sites
as Sayala and QustuI (see ballana and qus-
tul). The grave goods sometimes include
stone vessels, amulets and copper artefacts
imported from Egypt, which not only help to
date these graves but also demonstrate that the
A Group were engaged in regular trade with
the Egyptians of the Predynastic and Early
Dynastic periods. The wealth and quantity of
imported items appears to increase in later A-
Group graves, suggesting a steady growth in
contact between the two cultures. The A
Group was eventually replaced by the c group
at some time during the OLD kingdom. See

also B GROUP.

Hi A. Nordstrom, Neolithic andA-group sites

(Stockholm, 1972), 17-32.

W. Y. Adams, Nubia: corridor to AJhca, 2nd ed.

(London and Princeton, 1984), 118-32.

1 1. S. Smith, 'The development of the A-Group

"culture" in northern Lower Nubia 1 , Egypt and

Africa, ed. W. V. Davies (London, 1 991 ), 92-1 1 1 .

J. II. Taylor, Egypt and Nubia (London, 1991),

9-13.

Aha( t -.310()Bc)

One of the earliest lst-Dynasty rulers of a uni-
fied Egypt, whose name means 'the fighter'.
His reign is attested primarily by funerary
remains at abydos, saqqara and NAQADA.
When Flinders Petrie excavated at Urnm el-
Qa'ab (the Early Dynastic cemetery at
Abydos) in 1899-1900, he discovered Tomb
B19-/15, which contained objects bearing the
name of Aha. However, the earliest of the Isl-
and 2nd-Dynasty elite tombs at north SAQQARA
(no. 3357), excavated in the 1930s, was also
dated by jar-sealings to the reign of Aha.
Although it was once thought that the Saqqara
tomb was the burial-place of Aha (and the
Abydos tomb only a cenotaph), scholarly opin-
ion has shifted since the material from the two
sites was re-examined in the 1960s, leading
to the suggestion that Aha was buried in
Tomb [J19/15 at Abydos and that the Saqqara
tomb belonged to a Memphitc high official.
New research conducted in the Umm
el-Qa'ab cemetery during the 1980s and 1990s
(including the re-excavation ofTomb B19/15)
also suggests that Aha was preceded by a rela-
tively long sequence of earlier rulers of a
united Egypt.

There is still considerable debate surround-
ing the possible links between Aha, WARMER
and MENES (the semi-mythical founder of
Memphis), although two discoveries arc partic-
ularly relevant to this problem. First, an ivory
label, found in the tomb of Neithhotep (prob-
ably Aha's wife) in the late Predynastic ceme-
tery at naqada, appears to give one of Aha's

AHHOTEP I

AHMOSE I

names as 'Men', which has led some scholars
to suggest that he and Menes were the same
person, or at least closely related. With regard
to the place of Narmer in the chronological
sequence, a seal impression discovered at
Umm el-Qa'ab in 1985 appears to put him
securely at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty,
since it lists the first six rulers in the following
order: Narmer, Aha, djer, diet, den and
Merneith (the latter being a female ruler who
may have been a regent). On the basis of these
two pieces of evidence it is therefore possible
that Narmer and Aha were father and son and
that one of the two was also called Menes.

A. II. Gardiner, Eg/pt of the Pharaohs (Oxford,
1%1), 405-14.

B. J. Kemp, 'The Egyptian 1st Dynasty royal
cemetery', Antiquity 41 (1967), 22-32.

Ahhotep I (f. 1590-1 530 bc)
New Kingdom QUEEN whose lifetime spanned
the crucial transition from the Second
Intermediate Period to the New Kingdom,
when the hyksos rulers were expelled from
Lower Egypt, ushering in a new era of stability
and indigenous Egyptian rule. As the daughter
of the 17th-Dynasty ruler Senakhtenra Taa l,
the wife of seqenenra taa ii and mother of
ahmose l (and arguably also of kamose), she
appears to have played an important part in
these wars of liberation. A stele erected by
Ahmose I (1550-1525 bc) in the temple of
Amun-Ra at KARNAk praises his mother's
heroism: 'she is one who has accomplished the
rites and cared for Egypt; she has looked after
Egypt's troops and she has guarded them; she
has brought back the fugitives and collected
together the deserters; she has pacified Upper
Egypt and expelled her rebels'. It has been
suggested that this unusually active military-
role played by a royal wife (see QUEEN) might
actually have been necessitated by the compar-
atively young age at which Ahmose I came to
the throne - Ahhotep i might thus have served
as regent for a few years until he reached
maturity- An inscription on a doorway at the
Nubian fortress of buhen links the names of
Ahmose l and his mother in such a way as to
imply a COREGENCV.

It has also been suggested that Ahhotep may-
have looked after the internal rule of Upper
Egypt while her son was engaged in military
campaigns. Certainly the titles given to
Ahhotep in the Karnak stele include iiebel la
('mistress of the land'), showing that she prob-
ably wielded some pow-er over a geographical
area. The coffin of Ahhotep I was found in the
royal cache at deir el-bahre

The intact burial of another Ahhotep (who
was perhaps the wife of kamose) was discov-

ered at Dra Abu el-Naga in western THEBES in
1859 by agents working for Augusts Marietta
Inside the tomb the excavators found a gilded
wooden ris/ii-coFFlN containing the queen's
mummy. There were also numerous items of
funcrarv equipment, including several elabo-
rate ceremonial weapons of Ahmose I, a neck-
lace consisting of large golden flies, which
was traditionally awarded for valour in battle,
two model gold and silver barks (one placed
on a bronze and wooden cart), and various
items of jewellery.

E W. von Bisslng, Bin Thehanischer Grahfund tmS
tlem Anfang des Neuen Reicbs (Berlin, 1900).
A. Macv Roth, 'Ahhotep I and Ahhotep ll'.
Seraph. 4 (1977-8), 31-46.
C. Vandersleven, 'Les deux Ahhotcps', SAK 8
(1980), 233-42.

M. Saleii and H. Sourouzian, The Egyptian
Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (Mainz, 1987),
cat. nos 120-6.

N. Grtmal, A history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 199-201.

Ahmose I (Amosis) (1550-1525 bc)
First ruler of the 18th Dynasty, who was the
son of the Theban 17th-Dynasty ruler seqe-
nenra taa ll. He came to the throne of a
reunited Egypt after he and his predecessor
kamose had expelled the hyksos rulers from
the Delta region. Recently excavated reliefs
fromABYDOS apparently depict Ahmose's cam-
paigns against the hyksos, which dominated
his reign. The tombs of the soldiers Ahmose
son of Ibana and Ahmose Pennekhbet at elkab
are decorated with autobiographical inscrip-
tions describing the role that they played in
the campaigns of Ahmose l and his immediate
successors. In western Asia he extended
Egyptian influence deep into Syria-Palestine,
and by the twenty-second year of his reign he
may even have reached as far north as the
Euphrates. He also undertook at least two
campaigns into Nubia, establishing a new
settlement at buhen as his administrative
centre, under the command oi a man called
Turi who was to become the first known
viceroy of kush in the reign of amenhotep I
(1525-1504 bc).

In his reorganization of the national and
local government, which had probably
remained relatively unchanged since the
Middle Kingdom (see ADMINISTRATION),
Ahmose I appears to have rewarded those local
princes who had supported the Theban cause
during the Second Intermediate Period
(1650-1550 bc). Although he is known to have
reopened the Tura limestone quarries, little
has survived of the construction of religious
buildings during his reign, apart from a few

Earliest known royal shabti and one of the few
sculptures of Ahmose I to he securely identified as
such by its inscription. The king is portrayed wearing
a nemes headclolh and a uraeus. I8th Dynasty,
c. 1550 BC. limestone, H. 30 an. (E.132191)

additions to the temples of Amun and Montu
at karnak and mud-brick cenotaphs for
TET1S1IER1 and himself at ABYDOS.

The examination of his mummified body,
which was among those transferred into the
deir ei.-bahri cache in the 21st Dynasty, sug-
gests that he was about thirty-five when he
died. The location of his tomb is still not defi-
nitely known, but he was probably buried at

AHMOSE II

A HORIZON

Dra Abu el-Naga in western ti iebes, where the
pyramidal tombs of his 17th-Dynasty prede-
cessors were located.

C.Vandersleyen, Les guerres d'Amosis, fondateur
de la XVIIL dynaslie (Brussels, 1971).
C. Desroches-Noblecourt, 'Le "bestiaire"
symbolique du liberateur Ahmosis', Festschrift W.
We$tendorf(Go\.xin%zn, 1984), 883-92.
A. M. Dodson, 'The tombs of the kings of the
earlv Eighteenth Dynasty at Thebes', ZAS, 1 1 5
(1988), 110-23.

N. Grimal, A history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 193-202.

Ahmose ll (Amasis, Amosis n) (570-526 BC)
Pharaoh of die late 26th Dynasty, who was

originally a general in Nubia during the reign
of psamtek ii (595-589 bc). He came to the
throne following his defeat of aprtes (589-570
bc) at the 'Battle of Momemphis', which -
according to a badly damaged stele — mav actu-
ally have taken place near Terana on the
Canopic branch of the Nile.

Ahmose n was proclaimed pharaoh by pop-
ular demand when Apries was blamed for the
defeat of his troops at the hands of Dorian
greek settlers. According to the Greek histori-
an Herodotus, Ahmose u captured Apries and
initially held him at the palace in sais; he is
later said to have allowed him to be strangled,
although eventually he appears to have accord-
ed him a full royal burial.

Although Ahmose n found it necessary to
continue to employ Greek mercenaries, he was

Green schist head from a statue of a Late Period
king, possibly Ahmose ii. 26th Dynasty, c.550 BC,
it. 38 cm. (f,\497)

more politically shrewd than his predecessor,
presenting himself as nationalistic by limiting
the activities of Greek merchants to the city of
naukratis in the Delta, where they were
granted special economic and commercial
privileges (see trade). Later legend also has it
that he married the daughter of Apries to the
PERSIAN king in order to forestall Persian
designs on Egypt, although this seems unlike-
ly. By conquering parts of Cyprus he gained
control of the Cypriot fleet, which he used to
assist his allies in their struggles against the
Persians. His friendly policy toward Greece
included the financing of the rebuilding of the
temple of Apollo at Delphi after its destruc-
tion in 548 bc, an act that earned him the epi-
thet 'Philhellene'.

He is described by Herodotus as a popular
ruler of humble origins, who is said to have
had such a strong inclination for drink that he
delayed affairs of state in order to indulge in a
drinking bout. At the end of his long and pros-
perous reign he was succeeded by his son
psamtek: ib (526-525 bc), whose rule was to be
abruptlv ended some six months later by the
invasion of the new Persian ruler, Cambyses.

Only a small number of sculptures repre-
senting Ahmose u have survived, and his name
was apparently removed from many of his
monuments by Cambvses. The buildings he
constructed at sais, buto, Memphis and
abydos have also been poorly preserved;
although his tomb, located within the temple
precincts at Sais, was ransacked in ancient
times, a number of his smabtis have been
preserved.

HERODOTUS, The histories, trans. A. de Selincourt
(Harmondsworth, 1972), n, 169-74.
A. B. Lloyd, 'The Late Period', Ancient Egj'pt: a.
social history, B. G. Trigger et al. (Cambridge,
1985), 285-6, 294.

N. Grimal, A history of ancient. Egypt. (Oxford,
1992), 363-4.

Ahmose Nefertari (c.1570-1505 bc)
Perhaps the most influential of the New
Kingdom royal women, whose political and

religious titles, like those of her grandmother
tettsheri and mother ahhotep i, have helped
to illuminate the various new political roles
adopted by women in the early 18th Dynasty
(see queens). Born in the early sixteenth cen-
tury BC, she was described as mmt nesw ('king's
mother') in relation to her son amenhotep i
and hemel nesrp were! ('king's principal wife')
in relation to her brother and husband
AHMOSE e She was also the first royal woman to
have the title kernel netjer (see god's wtfe of
amun) bestowed upon her, an act which was
described in Ahmose i's Stele of Donations in

the temple of Amun at Karnak. This title was
the one most frequently used by Ahmose
Nefertari, and it was later passed on to several
of her female descendants, including her own
daughter Meritamun and Queen iiatshepsut
(1473-1458 bc). It was once interpreted as an
'heiress 1 epithet, marking out the woman
whom the king must marry to legitimize his
claim to the throne, but it is now considered to
have been simply a priestly office relating to
the cult of Amun (carrying with it entitlement
to an agricultural estate and personnel), which
was to acquire greater political importance
during the Late Period.

There is considerable textual evidence for
Ahmose Nefertari's involvement in the cult of
Amun as w-ell as her participation in the quar-
rying and building projects undertaken by her
husband. One stele even documents the fact
that Ahmose I sought her approval before
erecting a cenotaph for tetishhri at Abydos.
She seems to have outlived him by a consider-
able period, apparently serving as regent dur-
ing the earlv years of Amenhotep i's reign. An
inscription of the first year of the reign of his
successor, tiiutmose i, suggests that she was
probably still alive even after the death of her
son. She became the object of a posthumous
religious cult, sometimes linked with that of
Amenhotep i, particularly in connection with
the workmen's village at DEm el-medina,
which they were considered to have jointly
founded. More than fifty of the Theban tombs
of private individuals include inscriptions
mentioning her name.
M. Gitton, Uepouse du dieu Ahmes Nefertary,
2nd ed. (Paris, 1981).

— , Les divines Spouses de la 1 8^ dynaslie (Paris,
1984).

G. Robins, Women in ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 43-5.

A Horizon

Aker

see a group

Earth-god whose cull can be traced back to the
Early Dynastic period. He W'as most often rep-
resented as a form of 'double-sphinx', consist-
ing of two lions seated hack to back, but he w as
also occasionally portrayed simply as a tract of
land with lions' heads or human heads at
cither side. The symbolism of Aker was close-
ly associated with the junction of the eastern
and western horizons in the underworld.
Because the lions faced towards both sunrise
and sunset, the god was closely associated with
the journey of the sun through the under-
world each night. The socket which holds die
mast of the solar bark was therefore usually
identified with Aker.

AKH

AKHENATEN

ABOVE Detail from the Book of the Dead of Am,
showing lions representing the god Aker. 19th
Dynasty, c.1250 bc, painted papyrus. (ea10470)

M. K Bls.son de la Roquk, 'Notes sur Aker 1 ,

BIFAO 30 (1930), 575-80.

C. UK Wit, Le role et le sens du lion (Leiden, 195 1 ).

E. Hornung, 'Aker 1 , Lexikon der Agyptoiogie I,

cd. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf

(Wiesbaden, 1975), 114-15.

J. R. Ogden, 'Some notes on the name and the

iconography of the god 'kr\ VA 2(1986),

127-35.

akh

One of the five principal elements which the
Egyptians considered necessary to make up a
complete personality, the other four being the
ka, ba, name and shadow. The akh was
believed to be the form in which the blessed
dead inhabited the underworld, and also the
result of the successful reunion of the ha with
its ka. Once the akh had been created by this
reunion, it was regarded as enduring and
unchanging for eternity. Although the physical
form of the akh was usually portrayed as a'
si l Aim-like mummiform figure, the word akh
was written with the sign of the so-called
crested ibis (Geronticus eremitd).

Detail of the coffin ofSeni, showing a hieroglyph
representing the crested zkh-bird. Middle Kingdom,
cJOOObc, painted wood, u. 15 cm, (ra30841)

G. Englund, Akh — une notion religieuse dans
VEgypte pharaomque. (Uppsala, 197S).
J. P. Allen, 'Funerary texts and their meaning 1 ,
Mummies and magic, ed. P. Lacovara, S. D'Auria,
and C. H. Roehrig (Boston, 1988), 38-49.

Akhenaten (Amenhotep w) (1352-1336 bc)
The infamous 'heretic 1 pharaoh, during whose
reign the art and religion of Egypt were
marked by rapid change. Born in the early

fourteenth century \ic, he was the son of
amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc) and Queen tiy.
When he initially succeeded to the throne,
probably some years before the death of his
father (although there is still considerable
debate as to whether there was any coregency
between the two), he was known as
Amenhotep iv. However, in the first year of his
reign, he set the tone for a new era by estab-
lishing a temple at karnak dedicated not to
amun but to the god aten., the literal meaning
of which was 'the (sun) disc'.

In his fifth regnal year Amenhotep TV made
two crucial and iconoclastic decisions: he
changed his name from Amenhotep ('Amun is
content 1 ) to Akhenaten ('glory of the sun-
disc') and he began to construct a new capital
city called Akhetaten ('horizon of the Aten 1 ) at
the site now known as ee-amarna in Middle
Egypt. This newly founded settlement was
evidently intended to replace both tiieres and
Memphis as the religious and secular focus of
the country. The ensuing phase in Egyptian
history, consisting of Akhenaten^ reign and
that of his ephemeral successor Smenkhkara,
is therefore described as the Amarna period.

The major religious innovation of
Akhenaten's reign was the vigorous promotion
of the worship of the aten to the exclusion of

AKHENATEN

AKHETATEN

aijovk Colossal status of Akhenaten from Karnak.
1 8th Dynasty, c.1350 SC, sandstone, u. 3.96 m.
(cairo je5 5938)

the rest of the Egyptian gods, including even
the state god amun. The reliefs and stelae in
the temples and tombs of Akhenaten's reign
repeatedly show the royal family (Akhenaten,
his wife neferttti and the royal princesses)
worshipping and making offerings to the Aten,
which was depicted as a disc with arms out-
stretched downwards, often proferring WAS
sceptres and ankh signs, symbolizing power
and life respectively. The names of other
deities - especially that of Amun - were
excised from temple walls in an apparent
attempt to establish the Aten as a single
supreme deity, which has led manv scholars to

attribute the introduction of monotheism to
Akhenaten mistakenly.

It has also been asserted, primarily on the
basis of the evidence of the amarna letters
(diplomatic correspondence between the
Amarna pharaohs and their vassals in
syria-I'Alkstine), that Akhenaten neglected
foreign policy and allowed the Egyptian
'empire 1 in western Asia, to be severely eroded.
There is, however, a certain amount of evi-
dence for Asiatic campaigning during his
reign, and it is also possible that the iconogra-
phy of the period was deliberately underplay-
ing the view of the king as warrior. It should
also be borne in mind that the view of foreign
policy in other reigns during the New
Kingdom tends to be automatically distorted
in that it derives principally from Egyptian
temple reliefs and papyri rather than from
genuine diplomatic documents such as the
Amarna Letters.

After a sole reign of only about eighteen
years, Akhenaten was succeeded first by an
ephemeral figure called Smenkhkara (which
may even have been a pseudonym for
Nefertiti) and soon afterwards bv
Tutankhaten, who may have been a younger
son of Amenhotep in or a son of Akhenaten.
Within a few years the city at el-Amarna had
been abandoned in favour of the traditional
administrative centre at Memphis, and the
new king had changed his name to
Tutankhamun, effectively signalling the end of
the supremacy of the Aten.

The final mystery of the 'Amarna period 1 is
the disappearance of the bodies of Akhenaten
and his immediate family. The royal tomb
which Akhenaten had begun to build for him-

self in a secluded wadi to the east of el-
Amarna appears never to have been completed
and there is little evidence to suggest that any-
one other than _Meketaten (one of Akhenaten's
daughters) was actually buried there. In 1907
Theodore Davis discovered the body of a
young male member of the royal family in
Tomb 55 in the valley of the kings, appar-
ently reinterred with a set of funerary equip-
ment mainly belonging to Queen Tiy. This
mummy was once identified as that of
Akhenaten (a view still accepted by some
Egyptologists) but most scholars now hypoth-
esize that it may have been Smenkhkara.
G. T. Martin, The royal tomb at el-Amarna,
2 vols (London, 1974-89).
D. B. Redford, Akhenaten the heretic king
(Princeton, 1984).

J. D. Ray, 'Review of Redford, D. B., Akhenaten
the heretic king\ GM 86 (1985), 81-3.
C. Aldrkd, Akhenaten: king of Egypt (London,
1988).

Akhetaten see (tell) el-amarna

Akhmim (anc. Ipu, Khent-Mim)
Town-site on the east bank of the Nile oppo-
site modern Sohag, which was the capital of
the ninth NOME of Upper Egypt during the
Pharaonic period [c. 3 100-332 BC).The earliest
surviving remains are Old and Middle
Kingdom rock-tombs, which were severely
plundered during the 1880s, much of the

Coffin oj the woman Tamin wearing daily dress,
from the Roman-period cemetery at Akhmim. 2nd
century .-id, gilded and painted carlonnage and
stucco, //. 1.5 m. (ea29586)

AKKADIAN

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

funerary equipment subsequently being dis-
persed among various collections. At around
this time a large number of Late Period buri-
als were unearthed. The tombs were first exca-
vated by Percy Newberry in 1912 and more
recently re-examined by Naguib Kanawati.
The city 7 originally included a number of tem-
ples dedicated to min, the god of fertility, but
few stone buildings have survived from the
Dynastic period, owing to the widespread
plundering of the site in the fourteenth centu-
ry ad. Recent excavations by Egyptian archae-
ologists, however, have uncovered colossal
statues of RAWESES tl (1279-1213 bc) and
Meritamun. The cemeteries of the Christian
period (ad 395-641), which were excavated in
the late nineteenth century, have yielded many
examples of wool, linen and silk fabrics which
have formed part of the basis for a chronolog-
ical framework for the study of textiles
between the Hellenistic and Islamic periods
(*.3O0 bo-ad 7GG).

P. E. Newberry, 'The inscribed tombs of
Ekhmim', LAAA 4 (1912), 101-20.
K. P. Kuhemann, 'Der Felstempel des Ejc bei
Mihmim\MDAIK35 (1979), 165-88.
N. Kanawati, Rock tombs ofel-flamtimish: the
cemetery oj'Akhmim, 6 vols (Sydney, 1980-).
S. McNally, 'Survival of a city: excavations at
Akhmim', NARCE 1 16 (1981-2), 26-30.
K. P. Kui H.MANN, Materiaien zur Archdologie and
Geschichte des Raumes von Achmini (Mainz,
1983).

E.J. Bkovarski, 'Akhmim in the Old Kingdom
and First Intermediate Period 1 , Melanges Gamal
Eddin Mokktar, I (Cairo, 1985).

Akkadian

Term used to denote a group of Semitic lan-
guages that first appeared in northern
Mesopotamia, in the third millennium bc,
when the south of the country was still domi-
nated by non-Semitic Sumerian speakers. By
extension, the term is also used to refer to the
material culture of northern Mesopotamia,
particularly that of the dynasty founded by
Sargon the Great (Sharrukin; 2334-2279 bc).
The Akkadians adopted the Sumerians'
Cuneiform writing system in order to write
down their own language. They began gradu-
ally to infiltrate sumer during its Early
Dynastic period (f.3100-2686 bc). Such infil-
tration can be seen from the Semitic names of
scribes at the southern site of Abu Salabikh
who wrote in Sumerian; it is likely that many-
people were bilingual even before the unifica-
tion of Sumer with Akkad. Akkadian is divid-
ed into Old Akkadian used in the third millen-
nium and Assyrian and Babylonian in the sec-
ond and first millennia and is related to Arabic

and Hebrew. The Sumerian language, on the
other hand, has no close relatives.

Akkadian quickly became established as the
lingua franca of the ancient Near East, and
remained so over a long period, so that for
example most of the amarka letters (diplo-
matic correspondence between Egypt and the
Levant in the mid-fourteenth century uc) are
written in the Babylonian language, which is a
late form of Akkadian.
J. Oaths, Babylon, 2nd ed. (London, 1986),
22-59.

G. Roux, Ancient Iraq, 3rd cd. (Harmon dsworth,
1992), 146-60.

alabaster, Egyptian alabaster

The terms 'alabaster' or 'Egyptian alabaster 1
have often been used by Egyptologists to refer

Stone vessel from the tomb ofTutankhanmn,
inscribed will; the cartouche ofThutmose in and
details of its capacity (14.5 kin or 6.67 litres), c. 1450
bc, travertine, it. 41.5 cm. (c-tmo, mo. 410,

REPRODUCED COURTESY OF THE GRIFFITH INSTITUTE.)

to a type of white or translucent stone used in
Egyptian statuary and architecture, which is a
form of limestone (calcium carbonate) more
accurately described as travertine. From the
Early Dynastic period onwards travertine was
increasingly used for the production of funer-
ary vessels, as well as statuary and altars; it
occurs principally in the area of Middle
Egypt, the main Pharaonic source being hat-
nub, about 18 km southeast of the New
Kingdom city at el-Amarna.

The use of the term alabaster is further
complicated by the fact that the material often
described by Egyptologists as 'gypsum', a

form of calcium sulphate quarried principally
at Umm cl-Sawwan in the Fayum region, may
be legitimately described as 'alabaster'.
J. A. Harrell, 'Misuse of the term "alabaster" in
Egyptology', GM 119 (1990), 37-42.
D. and R. Klemm, 'Calcit-Alabaster oder
Travertin? Bemcrkungen zu Sinn und Unsinn
petrographischen Bezeichnungen in der
Agyptologie', GM 122 (1991), 57-70.

alcoholic beverages

Beer (henket), the most common of the
alcoholic beverages, formed an important part
of the Egyptian diet. This would be prepared
in the household, or by brewers if it was for
use in rations of state employees. The
Egyptian process for making beer began with
the preparation of partially baked cakes of bar-
lev bread. Thev were placed on a screen over a
vat or jar, and water was poured over them
until they dissolved and drained into the vat,
whereupon the resulting mixture was left in a
warm place to ferment. It has been suggested
that stale bread may have been used as a sub-
stitute. Research by Delwen Samuel has chal-
lenged this traditional view 7 by suggesting thai
bread was not used. Flowever barley, emmer,
or a mixture of both, are evident in beer
residues. Often a variety of flavourings were
added to the brew, including dates, honey and
spices. The sugar from dates or honeyed
bread would also have speeded up the fermen-
tation. The brew was not necessarily very alco-
holic, but had a high nutritional value, and was
therefore an important part of the Egyptian
diet (see POOD). In the first century bc
Diodorus Siculus praised the quality of
Egyptian beer, describing it as barely inferior
to wine.

Both red and white wine (irep) were regu-
larly drunk and there are many tomb-paint-
ings showing grapes being harvested and
pressed, notably those in the tomb of Nakhtat
Thebes (tt52). The juice was collected in vats
for fermentation, and when part-fermented
was decanted into amphorae and left to
mature, sometimes for several years. It then
might be filtered again and have spices or
honey added before finally being transported
in amphorae. These vessels are frequently
inscribed on the shoulder or have stamps
impressed on the mud sealings. Often the
inscription lists the king's regnal year, the vari-
ety of wine, its vineyard, its owner and the
person responsible for production. In effect
this served the same purpose as modern wine
labels and as a result the locations of certain
vineyards are known. The Delta, the western
part of the coast, the Oases of kiiarga and
DAKHLA and the Kynopolis area of Middle

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Kj^sa^™

t .

j aJ} jZ1_lalE* ?(\Jfe_lL

f # *

JLA

above Copy of a ipine-making scene in the Theban
tomb of Khaemwasel (tt261 ). New Kingdom.

Ritual vase for 'Wine of Lower Egypt for the
deceased lady Nodjmet '. 18th Dynasty, 11. 79 cm.
(EA59774)

Egypt seem to have been especial Iy favoured.
Wines might also be imported from
syria-palestine and, later, Greece, and there
were a number of fruit wines made from dates,
figs and pomegranates.

Alcohol was often taken in excess, and a
number of private tombs, such as that of
Djeserkaraseneb (tt38), are decorated with
scenes showing guests exhibiting signs of
nausea during banquets. In the depiction of a
banquet in the tomb of Pahcri at ki.kab, a
female guest says, 'Give me eighteen cups of
wine, for I wish to drink until drunkenness,
my inside is like straw'. Such drunkenness was
regarded as indicative of the abundance of the
feast and therefore to be encouraged.

The best-known mythical instance of
drunkenness was the intoxication of SEKHMET
the lioness-goddess in The Destruction of
Mankind, while the Greek historian
Herodotus recorded that the festival of
bastet the cat-goddess was renowned for its
drunkenness.

H. Wilson, Egyptian food and drink (Aylesbury,
1988).

J. Geller, 'From prehistory to history: beer in
Egypt 1 , The followers of Horns, ed. E Friedman
and B. Adams (Oxford, 1992), 19-26.
E. Strouhal, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 104-5, 127-8,225.

Alexander the Great (352-323 bc)

In 332 bc the second Persian occupation of
Egypt ended with the arrival of the armies of
Alexander the Great. Born in Macedonia in
352 BC, Alexander had already conquered
much of western Asia and the Levant before
his arrival in Egypt, which appears to have
been closer to a triumphal procession than an
invasion. It was in keeping with this sense of

renewal rather than invasion that Alexander
immediately made sacrifices to the gods at
Memphis and visited sru-'A oasis in the Libyan
Desert, where the oracle of amun-ra officially
recognized him as the god's son, thus appar-

Silver coin bearing the head of Alexander the
Great, c.330 tic, o. 2.7 cm. (cm3971e)

ently restoring the true pharaonic line. In a
later attempt to bolster his claims to the royal
succession, it was suggested, somewhat
implausibly, in the Alexander Romance, that he
was not the son of Philip n of Macedonia but
the result of a liaison between his mother
Olympias and nectanebo ii (360-343 bc), the
last native Egyptian pharaoh.

In 331 bc, having founded the city of
Alexandria, Alexander left Egypt to continue
his conquest of the Achaemenid empire (see
Persia), leaving the country in the control of
two Greek officials: Kleomenes of Naukratis,
who was empowered to collect taxes from the
newly appointed local governors, and ptole-
my, son of Lagos, one of his generals, com-
mander of the Egyptian army. Although cer-
tain monuments, such as the inner chapel of
the temple of Amun at i.uxor, bear depictions
of Alexander firmly establishing him as

ALEXANDRIA

pharaoh, he must have had little opportunity to
make any personal impact on the Egyptian
political and economic structure, and it
appears that, for a decade or so after his depar-
ture, the country suffered from a lack of strong
leadership. In 323 nc, however, he died of a
fever and although attempts were made on
behalf of his half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus
(323-317 bc) and his son Alexander IV (317-
310 bc) to hold the newly acquired empire
together, it eventually dissolved into a number
of separate kingdoms ruled by his generals
and their descendants. In Egypt Ptolemy at
first functioned as a general alongside the
viceroy Kleomenes, but eventually he became
the first Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt after the
death of Alexander IV, in 305 BC. It was
Ptolemy I (305-285 bc) who was said to have
placed the body of Alexander the Great in a
golden coffin at Alexandria. His tomb was
probably in the Soma (royal mausoleum), tra-
ditionally located under the Mosque of Nebi
Daniel in central Alexandria, but so far it has
not been found.

W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, 2 vols
(Cambridge, 1948).

A. Burn, Alexander the Great and the Middle
East, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1973).
N. G. L. Hammond, Alexander the Great: King,
Commander and Statesman, 3rd ed. (Bristol, 1989).

Alexandria (anc. Raqote)
Greco-Roman city situated on a narrow penin-
sula at the western end of the Mediterranean
coast of Egypt. It was founded by Alexander
the Great on the site of an earlier Egyptian
settlement called Raqote, archaeological traces
of which have so far been found only in the
form of the pre-Ptolemaic seawalls to the
north and west of the island of Pharos.
Alexander is said to have entrusted the design
of the city to the architect Deinokrates and the
official Kleomenes, but the principal buildings
were not completed until the reign of Ptolemy
u Philadelphus (285-246 bc).

During the Ptolemaic and Roman periods
(c.332 bc-ad 395) Alexandria was a thriving
cosmopolitan city; by 320 BC it had replaced
Memphis as the capital of Egypt and by the
mid-first century BC it had a population of
about half a million, including substantial num-
bers of Greeks and Jews. With its gridded street
plan, it was essentially a Greek rather than an
Egyptian city, and its identity was so strong that
it was known as Alexandrea ad Aegyptunr.
Alexandria 'beside' Egypt rather than within it,
as if it were a separate country in its own right.
In the late first century ad the Roman orator
Dio of Prusa even went so far as to describe
Egypt as a mere appendage to Alexandria.

v- -

The most famous ancient buildings at
Alexandria were the Library and Museum,
which are supposed to have been burned
down, along with an irreplaceable collection of
papyri, in the third century AD. The major
monuments of the Ptolemaic and Roman peri-
ods were the SERAPEUM (a temple dedicated to

ABOVE View of the underground chambers of Kom
el-Shugafa, Alexandria. hl-2nd centuries AD.
(CILUIAM ILIRRISOK)

LEFT Schist head from a statue of a young man,
showing a combination of Greek and Egyptian
sculptural traits, from Alexandria, cist century
bc, it. 24.5 cm. (i:i55253)

the god sfrapis, which may have housed part
of the library collection), the Caesarium, a
Roman stadium and Kom el-Shugafa (a
labyrinth of rock-cut tombs dating to the first
two centuries ad). The Alexandrian 'pharos',
constructed in the early Ptolemaic period on
the islet of Pharos about 1.5 km off the coast,
was probably the earliest knoyvn lighthouse,
but unfortunately virtually nothing has sur-
vived. Excavations at Kom el-Dikka, near the
Mosque of Nebi Daniel, have revealed the
remains of the central city during the Roman
period, including a small theatre, baths, a
gymnasium complex and a possible school-
room. Apart from the fortress of Qait Bey on
the Pharos peninsula, which may incorporate a
few stray blocks from the ancient lighthouse,
there are few surviving Islamic monuments at
Alexandria.

The archaeological exploration of the city has

ALTAR

been complicated by [he fact thut antiquities
from all over Egypt were gathered together in
Alexandria either to adorn new temples or in
preparation for their transportation to other
parts of the Roman and Byzantine empires. Both
Cleopatra's Needle (now on the Embankment in
London) and the Central Park obelisk in New
Yoi'k once stood in the Caesarium, having been
brought there from tjiutmose ill's temple to Ra-
Atum atiiKJJOi'OLis.

Little excavation has taken place in the
ancient town itself, which lies directly below
the modern city centre, but parts of the road
leading from the river port to the sea-harbour
were examined in 1874. One of the most strik-
ing surviving monuments is Pompey's Pillar, a
granite column which was actuallv erected by
the Roman emperor Diocletian in f.AD 297,
close to the site of the Serapeum.
E. Breccia, Alexandrea adAegyfitum, Eng. trans.
Bergamo, 1922).

E. M. FoRSTER, Alexandria: a history anil guide

(London, 1922).

P. M. FRASER, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols

(Oxford, 1972).

H. Kolotaj, 'Recherches arehilectoniques dans

les thermes et le theatre de Kom el-Dikka a

Alexandrie", Das riiinisch-byzautinhclw Agypten,

ed. G. Grimm etal. (Trier, 1983), 187-94.

A. K. Bowman, Egypt after the pharaoh

(London, 1986), 204-33.

L. Cam -oh \, The vanished library, Lrans. M. Ryle

(London, 1989).

altar

In the temples of ancient Egypt, the altar
(kfral) was used to carry offerings intended to
propitiate deities or the deceased. The traver-
tine ('Egyptian alabaster') altar in the sun tem-
ple of Nyuserra (2445-2423 BC) at Abu Gurab
is one of the most impressive surviving exam-
ples. It consists of a huge monolithic circular
slab surrounded by four other pieces of traver-
tine, each carved in the form of a helep ('offer-
ing') sign. In the temple of amun at k \r\ \k a
pink granite altar in the form of a helep sign
(now in the Egyptian Aluseum, Cairo) was
erected byThutmose in (1479-1425 nr.) in the
'-Middle Kingdom court 1 . Relief scenes carved
on the front of this altar show two kneeling
figures of the king presenting offerings to
Amun-Ra.

In the New Kingdom (1550-1069 itc.) mam-
large-scale stone temple altars were provided
with ramps or sets of steps. A massive lime-
stone altar dedicated to Ra-Horakhly, still in
>•"" on the upper terrace of the temple of
Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, was furnished
with a flight of ten steps on its western side.
I he Great Temple of the Aten at el-Amarna is

known to have included a large central altar
approached by a ramp, as well as courtyards
full of hundreds of stone offering tables.

From the Late Period (747-.L12 ik:)
onwards, Egypt began to be more influenced
by Hellenistic and Syrian forms of worship

Amara West, perhaps initially set up as a
base for gold-mining and trading expeditions
further to the south, appears to have taken
over from the town of SOLEB as the seat of the
Deputy of Kush (Upper Nubia). The site
included a stone-built temple of the time of

y_ A-*. .cj^-Vyji^

• * "*■

^, "* - ~..-:' '"-

*H,j *£

The great travertine altar at the sua temple of
King Nyuserra at Abu Gurab. Around the circular

central purl of the altar arc arranged four hetep
(offering) signs, (p. f, mcholso.x)

and the 'horned altar', consisting of a stone or
brick-built block with raised corners, was
introduced from Syria-Palestine. Such an
altar was erected in front of the early
Ptolemaic tomb of pktosiris, a chief priest of
Thoth, at Tuna el-Gebel. See also OFFERING
TABLE.

G. Jkqi ink, L Autel\ BIFAO 19 (1922), 236-49.
1. SriAW, 'Balustrades, stairs and altars in the eult
of [he Aten at el-Amania',^'. I 80 (1994), 109-27.

Amara

The remains of two Nubian towns (Amara West
and East) are located about 180 km south of
YVadi I lalfa on either side of the Nile. The walled
settlement of Amara West, occupying an area of
about 60,000 sq. m, was a colonial establishment
founded by the Eg\ ptians in the Ramesside peri-
od (r. 1295-1069 BC), when most of Nubia was
effectively regarded as part of Egypt. At Amara
East there was once a town and temple dating to
the Meroitic (see MERQe) period (t\300 BC-
\n 350), but only the depleted remains of the
enclosure wall are still visible at the site.

1 governor's ,
residence

2 temple ,

3 residential
areas (

4 extra-mural
settlement

3
3

/ i

3
2

H
1

50 1 00 m

Plan iij'tlie site of Allium West.

Ramcses ll, as well as cemeteries, some con-
temporary with the town and others dating to
the ballana period (e. \n 400-543).
L. Kirw i\, 'Notes and news', JEA 22 (Rid),
101-2.

H. W. FAIRMAN, 'Preliminary excavation reports
on Amara West\jfEA 24, 25, 34(1938, 1939,
1948).

B. J. KEMP, 'Fortified towns in Nubia', Mini,
settlement and nr/ianisiti, cd. P. Ucko et al.
(London, 1972), 651-6.

P. A. Spencer, Amara Wat (London, 1997).

AMARNA, (TELL) EL-

Amarna, (Tell) el- (anc. Akhetaten)
Site of a city, located about 280 km south of
Cairo, founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten
(1352-1336 bc). Abruptly abandoned follow-
ing Akhenaten's death, after an occupation of
only about twenty-five to thirty years, el-
Amarna is the best-preserved example of an
Egyptian settlement of the New Kingdom,
including temples, palaces and large areas of
mud-brick private housing. There are also two
groups of rock-tombs (largely unfinished) at
the northern and southern ends of the semi-
circular bay of cliffs to the east of the city;
these were built for the high officials of the
city, such as the priest Panehsy and chief of
police Mahu. The plundered and vandalized
remains of the royal tombs of Akhenaten and
his family, several kilometres to the east of the
cliffs, were rediscovered in the late 1880s.

Unfortunately, because of the peculiarities
of the site's historical background, the city of
Akhetaten is unlikely to have been typical of
Egyptian cities; nevertheless it presents an
invaluable opportunity to study the patterning
of urban life in Egypt during the fourteenth
century 8C. It was founded in about 1350 bc
and abandoned about twenty years later; the
dearth of subsequent settlement has ensured
remarkable preservation of the city plan. The
site as a whole is contained within a semi-
circular bay of cliffs approximately 10 km long
and a maximum of 5 km wide; the city itself
stretches for about 7 km along the eastern
bank of the Nile. The total population of the
main city at el-Amarna has been estimated at
between twenty thousand and fifty thousand.

Much of the western side of the city,
including houses, harbours and the main
palace of ihe king, has now vanished under the
modern cultivation. However, a large number
of structures have been preserved in the desert
to the east, along with the wells, grain-silos,
bakeries and refuse dumps that comprise the
basic framework of production and consump-
tion throughout the community. The nucleus
of the city, the main components of which are
described in contemporary inscriptions at the
site, was a set of official buildings — principal-
lv temples, palaces and magazines - called the
'Island of Aten Distinguished in Jubilees'.

The three main residential zones of the city
(the so-called north suburb, south suburb and
north city) are characterized by a much more
haphazard layout than the carefully planned
central city; the manner in which they devel-
oped, with the spaces between the earliest
large houses gradually being filled up with
smaller clusters of houses, is usually described
as 'organic'. There are also three small areas of
planned settlement at el-Amarna: a block of

Plan of the city of Akhetaten at el-Amarna.

terraced buildings in the centre of the city
(known as the 'clerks'' houses'), a rectangular
walled settlement located in relative isolation,
more than a kilometre to the east of the main
city (the 'workmen's village') and an area of
dryslone temporary accommodation situated
about halfway between the latter and the cliffs
(the 'stone village').

Over the last hundred years the site has
been examined bv a succession of excavators,
including Flinders Petrie, Howard Carter and
Leonard Woollev Since the late 1970s an
expedition from the Egypt Exploration

Society has produced the first detailed survey

plan of the entire site, as well as excavating and

re-examining a number of parts of the city,

including the workmen's village, the small

Aten temple and the newly identified Amarna-

period temple of Kom el-Nana.

W. M. F. Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (London, 1894).

N. BE G. D'\\ Iks, The rock tombs ufEIAiminut,

6 vols (London, 1903-8).

T. E. PEET et al., The city «/ 'Akhenaten, 3 vols

(London, 1923-51).

G. T. MARTIN, The royal tomb at el-Amarna,

2 vols (London, 1974-89).

L. BOSCHAROT and II. Rjcke, Die Wohnhauser in

nUet-Amarna (Berlin, 1980).

AMA RNA LETTERS

AMASIS

southern
rock tombs

of the relationship between Egypt and these
states, although there are very few letters from
the Egyptian ruler. The state of the empire
under Akhenaten is poignantly documented
in the increasingly desperate pleas for assis-
tance from Syro-Palestinian cities under
siege. As well as giving insights into the polit-
ical conditions of the time, the letters also
shed light on TRADE relations, diplomatic
MARRIAGE and the values of particular com-

Tablei from el-Amama, inscribed with a cuneiform
letter from Ttishratla ofMitanni to Amenhotep III.
18th Dynasty, c.1354 SC, clay, n. 9 cm, (\va29793)

Fragment of painted pavement from a building
called the Marit-Aten at el-Anutrna, showing ducks
Jlying out of a papyrus thicket. I '8th Dynasty,
cJ3S0 lie, painted plaster, n. 93 cm. (MAS5617)

B. J. Kj:mp (cd.), Amarna reports i-vi (London,

1984-95).

B. J. KEMP, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a

civilization (London, 1989), 261-317.

Amarna Letters

Important cache of documents from F.T.-
amarna, discovered in 1887 by a village
woman digging ancient mud-brick for use
as fertilizer (Arabic sebakh). This discovery
led to further illicit diggings and the
appearance of a number of clay cuneiform
tablets on the antiquities market. Their
importance was not immediately recog-
ni7xd, and many passed into private hands,
but Wallis Budge of the British Museum
believed the tablets to be genuine and pur-
chased a number of them; his view was con-
firmed by A. H. Sayce. The tablets are held
by the British Museum, the Bodcmuseum

in Berlin, the Louvre, and the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo.

There are 382 known tablets, most of which
derive from the 'Place of the Letters of
Pharaoh', a building identified as the official
'records office 1 in the central city at el-
Amarna. Their exact chronology is still debat-
ed, hut they span a fifteen-to-thirty-year peri-
od (depending upon interpretations of co-
regencies at this time), beginning around year
thirty of amenhotep hi (1390-1352 BC) and
extending no later than the first year of
tutankiiamun's reign (1336-1327 rc), with
the majority dating to the time of akjienaten
(1352—1336 BC). Most are written in a dialect
of the Akkaoian language, which was the lin-
gua franca of the time, although the languages
of the Assyrians, J EITTJTES and Hurrians
(mitanni) are also represented.

All but thirty-two of the documents in the
archive are items of diplomatic correspon-
dence between Egypt and either the great
powers in western Asia, such as Babylonia
and Assyria, or the vassal states of syrta and
Palestine. They provide a fascinating picture

modities such as glass, gold and the newly

introduced iron, while the various forms of

address employed in the letters indicate the

standing of the writers vis-d-vis the Egyptian

court.

C. Aldrld, Akhenaten, King of Egypt (London,

1988), 183-94.

E. F. CAMPBELL, The chronology of the Amarna

Letters {Baltimore, 1964).

B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a

civilization (London, 1989), 223-5.

W.L.MGRAN, The Amarna Letters (London, 1992).

Amasis see ahmose n

Amenemhat (Ammenemes)
Four of the 12th-Dynasty pharaohs held the
'birth name 1 Amenemhat ('Amun is at the
head 1 ), while the rest, apart from Queen
sobf.kneff.ru, took the name of senusret.

Amenemhat I Seiwtepibra (1985-1955 BC)
was the son of a priest called Senusret and a
woman called Nofret. He was the first ruler of
the 12th Dynasty, but he is probably already
attested at the end of the 1 1th Dynasty, when,

AMENEMHAT

AMENHOTEP

as the vizier of \u.\i'L iio'ii:]' i\ (1992-1985
ik), he led an expedition along the Wadi
llammamat to the Red Sea.

I lis llorus name, Wchem-mesut ('he who
repeats births'), was no doubt chosen to cele-
brate the inauguration of the new dynasty. It is
possible that the literary work known as The
Discourse dj Neferty, in which the emergence
of a ruler called Ameny is supposed to have
been foretold by a prophet in the Old
kingdom, was composed partly in order to
legitimize his accession. He moved the royal
residence to the newly established town of
Amencmhatitjtawy, in the vicinity ofEL-ilSHT,
thus shifting the focus of the country north-
wards. He also reorganized the administra-
tion", ensuring lhat provincial power was in
the hands of his suppurlers, appointing new
governors at Asyut, Cusae and Elephantine
and reintroducing conscription into the army.
He founded a new fortress at Semna in the
region of the second Nile cataract, thus creat-
ing the first of a string of 12th-Dvnastv
fortresses which probablv gave the Egyptians a
stranglehold over economic contacts with
Upper Nubia and the countries further south
in Africa.

He may also have introduced the practice of
coktgkncy by allowing his successor to rule
alongside him lor the last few years of his
reign, thus helping" to ensure a smooth transi-
tion from one ruler to the next. Since he him-
self appears to have been assassinated as a
result of a HARIM conspiracy, this precaution
proved to be fully justified, and he was suc-
ceeded by his son Senusret i (1965-1920 hc),
who had already been effectively in charge of
foreign policy. The political and social reper-
cussions of ihis traumatic end to his reign
were reflected in two new literary works: The
Tale of Siuiihe and The Instruction of
Amenemhat i (the latter being the source of the
assassination story). Amenemhat 's funerary
complex at r.i.-usiiT reintroduced the Old
Kingdom pyramid-style royal tomb.

Amenemhat it Nubkatm (1922-1878 hc:)
succeeded to the throne after a two-year co-
regency with his father Senusret i, who had
already consolidated Egyptian control over
Nubia with the establishment of several fur-
iher forlresses. Amenemhat n's reign was
therefore relatively peaceful, and it is to his
reign thai the TOO 'treasure 1 dates: the variety
of trade items or 'tribute 1 represented in
this hoard suggests that contacts with west-
ern Asia and the Mediterranean world were
flourishing. The discovery of statuary 7 of
AmenemhaEs daughters and officials at a
number of sites in Syria-Palestine also indi-
cates that Egyptian influence in the Levant

was continuing to grow. The pyramid com-
plex of Amenemhat n at DAHSHUR included a
mortuary temple and causeway, excavated by
de Morgan in 1894-5, but the valley temple
has not yet been discovered.

hnenemhat lit Ninmatra (1855-1808 BC)
was the son of Senusret ill and the sixth ruler
of the 12th Dynasty. His reign evidently rep-
resented the most prosperous, phase of the
dynasty, with the military achievements of his
predecessors allowing him to exploit the eco-

^ f^ f-

Granite head of Aineiicumal lit, bearing a usurping
inscription of the 22nd Dynasty. Lute 12th Dynasty,
c. 1820 nc, j'roiu Buhastis, it. 79 m. (£41063)

nomic resources of Nubia and Svria-Palestine
as well as the mineral deposits of the Sinai and
Eastern Desert. He is particularly associated
with the economic and political rise of the
Fayum region, where he completed a large-
scale irrigation project inaugurated by his
father. His surviving monuments in the area
include two colossal granite statues of himself
at Biahmti, temples to SOSEK and rknt.nt tkt at
kiman Fares (Medinel el-Fay um) and
MEDiisrr maaui respectively, and two pyramid
complexes. Like his father and grandfather, he-
was buried in a pyramid complex at Dahshur,
where the mud-brick pyramid has been
stripped of its limestone outer casing, but the
black granite pyramidion, inscribed with his
name, has survived. His second complex, at
1 1 \\\ \r \, included the multi-roomed mortuary-
temple known to Classical authors as the
'Labyrinth'.

-luieneiuhul tr Waahhenira (1808-1799 ik;)
was the son of Amenemhat in and the last male
ruler of the 12th Dynasty. He completed his
father's temples at Medinet Maadi and proba-
bl\ also built the unusual temple at (}asr cl-
Sagha in the northeastern Fayum, but his
reign was otherwise short and comparatively

uneventful, perhaps representing the begin-
ning of the decline of the Middle Kingdom.
His pyramid complex was possibly the south-
ern monument at Mazghuna, about 5 km to
the south of those at Dahshur.
G. Posknt.r, Litierature el politique dans I'Egypte
de hi XIP dynastic (Paris, 1969).
N. GRIM vi., -/ history nf ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 158-81.

Amenhotep (Amenophis)
'Birth name' (or nomen), meaning 'Amun is
content 1 , which was included in the ROYAI.TIT-
ui.arv of four 18th-Dynasty rulers.

imenhotep t Djeserktmi (1525—1504 ik:) was
the SOD of VHMOSE I and &RMOSE NEFERTAfii,
and the second pharaoh of the 18th Dvnastv.
I le appears to have pacified Nubia, established
a temple at the Nubian town of Sai and
appointed Turi as viceroy of kusii. Fie was
probably still very young when he came to the
throne, so it is likely that his mother served as
regent for the first part of his reign. They are
jointly credited with the foundation of the
royal tomb-workers 1 village at DKtR EL-MEDINA,
where they consequently enjoyed personal
religious cults until the late Ramesside period.
1 lis burial-place remains unidentified,
although his tomb is mentioned in an official
inspection list of the sixteenth vear of Rameses
IX*S reign (c.llll ik;). Hc is known to have
been the first pharaoh to build a separate mor-
tuary temple (or 'mansion of millions of
years') at DBS, r.i.-BAfiRi, some distance away
from the tomb itself. However, his mortuary
chapel was later obliterated by the temple of
HATSJ ihpsut, and it is not clear whether he was
buried at Dra Abu el-Naga (see THEBES),
alongside his 17th-Dynastv ancestors, or in an
unrecognized tomb in the \ai.i.i;\ 01' 'nit;
kings (perhaps the uninscribed Tomb KV39,
although work in the 1990s suggests other-
wise). His body, on the other hand, has sur-
\i\ed, having been reburied in a cache at df.ir
i.i.-isAiiRi. It still has an excellent cartonnagf.
face-mask and bad been rewrapped by the
priests who moved it in the 21st Dvnastv; it is
the only royal mummy that has not been
unwrapped in modern times.

Amenhotep n Aahheperuru (1427-1400 ik;)
was the seventh ruler of the 1 8th Dynasty and
eoregenl and successor to his father, tiii.t-
\Kist: in (1479-1425 BC). He was born at MEM-
PHIS, bis mother being Queen Meritra-
Hatshcpsut. The surviving reliefs and texts
give the impression that he prided himself on
his physical prowess, although it is equally
possible that a new heroic image of the king-
si up was simply being adopted. Emulating the
military successes of his father, he undertook

AMENHOTEP

AMENHOTEP SON OF HAPU

three campaigns into SYRIA, bul no military
activity seems to have been considered neces-
sary m Nubia, where he appointed Usersatet
as viceroy oi' kusii and ordered various pro-
jects of temple construction and decoration at
Amada and KALA&SH&. He built a number of
shrines and temples in the region of THEBES,
including structures at KARNAK, medamud and
TOD. Little has survived of his mortuary tem-
ple at Thebes, but he was buried in Tomb kv35

Stele from a household shrine at cl-. [mama,
showing Amenkmep ftt with his principal wife Tiy
beside a table of offerings under the rays of the Aten.
18th Dynasty, C.1356SC, a. 30.5 cm. ( i:,\53799)

in the Valley of the Kings. The decoration of
this tomb, although unfinished, included a
complete version of the book of Amduat (see
funerary TEXTS). When it was excavated by
Victor Loret in 1898 it was found to contain
not only Amenholep rfs mummy (still in his
sarcophagus) but the bodies of eight other
pharaohs (Thutmose IV, Amcnhotep in,
MERENptaii, SET 1 ! ii, Saptah, ra.meses iv, v and
vi), three women (one of whom may be Queen
tiy) and a young boy. These mummies were all
brought to Amenhotep ifs tomb, on the orders
ol Pinudjcm (one of the chief priests of Amun
at Thebes in the 21st Dynasty), in order to
preserve them from the depredations of tomb-
robbers.

Amenhotep its Ncbmaulra (1390-1352 BC)
was the son and successor of Thutmose iv
(1400-1390 uc:), his molhcr being
Mutemwiya. Tie seems to have taken little
interest in military affairs and, apart from
quelling an uprising in Nubia in his fifth reg-
nal year, he was content to maintain the order
established by his predecessors. This policy
w as not altogether successful and during his
long reign it is possible that some of the vassal

states of Syria-Palestine began to break away
from Egypt, paving the way for the ihttites'
expansion into the Levant during the last
reigns of the 18th Dynasty. Some of his for-
eign correspondence has survived in the form

of the AM.ARNA LETTERS,

The time of Amenhotep m is marked bv the
apparent opulence of the royal court and the
high standard of artistic and architectural
achievements, earning him the modern epithet
'the magnificent'. The high artistic skill of the
time is exhibited in the tombs of such high
officials as ramo.se (tt55) and Khaemhet
(tt57). His principal architect, ameniiotei'
son of il\pu, was responsible for the construc-
tion of the processional colonnade at LUXOR
temple, the third pylon at kar_nak, the mortu-
ary temple (the site of which is marked by the
COLOSSI OP \iem\o\) and his palace at
malkata on the Theban west bank.

Some of the art of his reign shows the natu-
ralistic, informal attitudes characteristic of the
Amarna period, and it seems likely that he
chose the ATEN as his personal god, whilst still
honouring the other gods, thus anticipating
(and presumably cultivating) the eventual reli-
gious revolution of his son, Amenhotep i\
(^kiienaten; 1352-1336 uc:), whom he may
have appointed as eoregent towards the end of
his reign, although this remains controversial.
His eldest son, and the original heir to the
throne, was Thutmose, who died young. It has
been suggested that Amenhotep in may also
have been the father of Smenkhkara,
tltankuamln and Princess Baketaten, but
the evidence for these links is tenuous. Tt has
been suggested that his body may have been
one ol those reburied among a cache of roval
mummies in the tomb of Amenhotep u (see
above), although this identification has been
disputed by some authorities. The body in
question is that of a man who suffered from ill
health and obesity towards the end of his life.
Amenophis ill's tomb (k\ 22) was located in the
valley to the west of the main Valley of the
Kings. It was decorated with scenes from the
book of Amduat and when excavated by
Howard Carter it still contained about fifty
small fragments of the lid of the red granite-
sarcophagus in the burial chamber.

Amenhotep n see akiienaten.
H. E. Winlock, A restoration of the reliefs from
the mortuary temple of'Amenhotep ]\JEA 4
(1917), 11-15.

A. Lansing: 'Excavations at ihe palace of
Amenhotep in at Thebes', BMMA 13 (March
1926), 8-14.

J. Cerny, 'Le cuke d'Amenophis Ier chez les
ouvriers de la necropolc thebainc 1 , H/FAO 27
(1927), 159-203.

B. Van de Walle, 'Les rois sportifs de Taneienne
Egypte\ CdE 13 (1938), 234-57.
W. C. Hayes, 'Egypt: internal affairs from
Tuthmosis I to the deadi of Amenophis in 1 ,
Cambridge Ancient History, ed. L E. S. Edwards
et al., 3rd cd. (Cambridge, 1973), 313-416.
A. Kozi.oi-Tand B. Bryan, Egypt's dazzling sun:
Amenholep ill and his world, exh. eat.
(Bloomington and Cleveland, 1992).

Amenhotep son of Hapu (r.1430-1350 rc)
Born in the Delta town of Athribis (tell virus),
about 40 km north of Cairo, in r.1430 lit:,
Amenhotep son of Hapu -also known as Huy -
rose to a position of influence during the reign
of A.\ir.\iio-nT m (1390-1352 bc), In about 1390
BC he moved from Athribis to the royal court at
Thebes, where he is one of the guests portrayed
in a banquet scene in the relief decoration of the
tomb of his contemporary, the vizier ramose
(ti'55). He was subsequently promoted to the
offices of 'scribe of recruits 1 and 'director of all
the king's works 1 , which might be looselv trans-
lated as 'chief royal architect 1 . In this capacity
he would have been in charge of the entire
process of temple construction, from the
extraction of the stone to the sculpting of
reliefs, as well as the commissioning of such
royal statues as the colossi of memnon.

Grey granite scribe statue of Amenholep sun of
Hapu as a young man, from the Tenth Pylon of
Kamak temple. 1 8th Dynasty, c.!36Snc,
ii. 1.28 in. (<:.URi)jiA48(>l )

'■-.--■■■■■■ *

AMMUT

AMULET

He is known to have supervised the con-
struction of the huge temple at SOLEB in Lower
Nubia, where he is depicted alongside the king
in several of the reliefs showing the ritual con-
secration of the temple. He also built two
tombs for himself, and in the thirty-first year
of Amenhotep llfs reign he began to build his
own cult temple on the west hank at Thebes.
Amcnhotep's importance during his own life-
time is indicated not only by the unusual size
of his cult temple but by the fact that it was the
only private monument situated among the
roval mortuary temples on the west bank at
Thebes (see mv.dinet HAliu).

In the precincts of the temple of Amun at
Karnak he was permitted to set up several
statues of himself. His career has been large-
ly reconstructed from the texts carved on
these statues - one limestone block statue
bears inscriptions on all four sides. Although
one text expresses his desire to reach the age
of a hundred and ten, it is likely that he died
in his eighties. He was buried in a rock-tomb
at the southern end of the Qurner Murai, on
theTheban west bank, and a surviving list-
Dynasty copy of a royal decree relating to his
mortuary temple suggests that his cult con-
tinued to be celebrated at least three cen-
turies after his death. Eventually, like the
3rd-Dynasty architect tmhotep (r.2650 lit;),
Amenhotep was deified posthumously in
recognition of his wisdom and, from the
LATE period, for his healing powers. In the
Ptolemaic temple of Hathor at Deir el-
Medina and the temple of Hatshepsut at
Deir el-Bahri, chapels were dedicated to the
worship of both Imhotep and Amenhotep
son of Hapu.

C. Roma ION and A. Variut., Le temple tin senhe
royal Amenhotep fits de Hapou (Cairo, 1 936).

A. Varili.e, Inscriptions concernant Varchitecle
Amenhotep fits de Hapou (Cairo, 1968)

D. Wn.DUXG, Egyptian saints: deification in
phtiraonic Egypt (New York, 1 977).

A. P. Kozeoff and B. M. Bryan, Egypt V dazzling
sim: Amenhotep ill and his world (Bloomington
and Cleveland, 1992), 45-8.

Ammut

Creature in the netherworld, usually depicted
with the head of a crocodile, the foreparts of a
lion (or panther) and the rear of a hippopota-
mus, whose principal epithets were 'devourer
of the dead' and 'great of death'. She is por-
trayed in vignettes illustrating Chapter 125 of
the Book of the Dead (see funerary texts).
The scenes show her waiting beside the scales
in the Hall of the Two Truths, where the hearts
of the dead were weighed against the feather of
maat. It was Ammut who consumed the hearts

-f?> <4> $bx. HH
If J «— * ■ -- 1 J M

Detail from the Boot of the Dead ofHuncfer.
consisting of the i-ignelte associated with Chapter
125. Ammut is shown beside the settles on which the
heart of the deceased is weighed. 19th Dynasty.
C.I28V tic. painted papyrus, (i: [9901, SHEETS)

of those whose evil deeds made them unfit to
proceed into the afterlife.
C. Skeher, Untersuchungen zurDarslelliing ties
Totengerichls im Allen Agypten (Munich, 1976).
R. 0. Faulkner, The ancient Egyptian Book of the
Dead, ed. C. Andrews (London, 1985), 29-34.

Amratian see predynastic: period

amulet

Term used to describe the small prophylactic
charms favoured by the Egyptians and other
ancient peoples. The Egyptians called these
items mekel, neliel or SA (all words deriving
from verbs meaning 'to protect'), although the
term wetljti ('well-being') was also used. As
well as affording protection, they may have
been intended to imbue the wearer with par-
ticular qualities; thus, for instance, the bull
and the lion may have been intended to pro-
vide strength and ferocity respectively. During
the First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 lit:),
parrs of the human body were used as amulet
shapes, perhaps serving as replacements for
actual lost or damaged anatomical elements.
However, only the heart amulet became essen-

tial. Amulets frequently depicted sacred
objects and animals, and, from the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) onwards, they por-
trayed gods and goddesses, not just state and
powerful local deities but also 'household'
deities such as ues and taweret. The range of
funerary amulets increased greatly from the
Sake period (664-525 lit:) onwards.

.Amulets could be made from stone, metal,
glass or, more commonly, faience, and the
materials were selected for their supposed
magical properties. Specific combinations ot
material, colour and shape were prescribed for
particular amulets in funerary TEXTS from as
early as the 5th Dynasty (see pyramid texts),
although recognizable types of amulets were
being made from the Badarian period
(r. 5500-4000 BO) onwards. The names
ascribed to different shapes of amulet are
known from a number of textual sources,
notably the Papyrus MacGrcgor.

A broad distinction can be made between
those amulets that were worn in daily life, in
order to protect the bearer magically from the
dangers and crises that might threaten him or
her, and those made expressly to adorn the
mummified body of the deceased. The second
categorv can include funerary deities such as
anubis, serket, sons of iiorus, but rarely
(strangely enough) figures of osiris, the god of
the underworld. The BOOK OF THE DEAD
includes several formulae with illustrative

AMULET

AMUN, AMUN-RA

Many amulets represented abstract con-
cepts in the form of hieroglyphs, as in the case
of the ankh ('life 1 ) and the DJED pillar ('sta-
bility 1 ). Among amuletic forms were the tvet
('knot of Isis'), the was sceptre, the akhet
('horizon 1 ) and the wedjat-eye (see iiorus).
See also SCARAB and cowroid.
G. A. Reisner, Amulets, 2 vols (Cairo, 1907-58).
W. M. F. Petrie, Amulets (London, 1914).
C. Andrews, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,
1994).

Amun, Amun-Ra

One of the most important gods in the
Egyptian pantheon, whose temple at KARNAK
is the best surviving religious complex of the
New Kingdom. He is first mentioned (along
with his wife Amaunet) in the 5th-Dynasty
pyramid texts, but the earliest temples dedi-
cated solely to Amun appear to have been in
the Thcban region, where he was worshipped
as a local deity at least as early as the 11th
Dynasty. Amun's rise to pre-eminence was a
direct result of the ascendancy of the Theban
pharaohs from Mentuhotep u (2055-2004 BC)
onwards, since politics and religion were very
closely connected in ancient Egvpt. In the
jubilee chapel of Senusret I (1965-1920 nc) at
Karnak he is described as 'the king of the
gods 1 , and by the time of the Ptolemies he was
regarded as the Egyptian equivalent of Zeus.

His name probably means 'the hidden one 1
(although it may also be connected with the

Selection of amulets: faience hand, /.. 3.1 an,

haematite headrest, w. 3 cm, faience papyrus,
/.. 5.6cm, came/ran snake's head, I... 4A cm,
haematite plummet, if. at base 1.8 an, haematite
carpenter's square, n. 1 .5 cm, faience staircase,
/.. 1.9cm, cornelian leg, it. 2 A an, glass heart,
H. 5.3 cm, obsidian pair of fingers, a. 8.5 cm, red
jasper tyet or 'knot of Isis', it. 6.5 cm. Old
Kingdom to Ptolemaic period, c.2300-100 BC.
(ea2299I, 8309, 7-135, 8327, 8332, 3123, 23123,
14622, 8088, 59500, 20639)

vignettes that endow prescribed amulets with
magical powers; particular amulets were
placed at specific points within the wrappings
of a mummy, and Late Period funerary papyri
sometimes end with representations of the
appropriate position of each amulet on the
body.

Grey granite statue of Amun in the form of a

ram protecting King Taharqo, whose figure

is carved between the

paws. 25th Dynasty,

c.690-664 tic,

from the

temple of

Taharqo

at Kawa,

it. 1.06 m.

(EA1779)

A NAT

ANCESTOR BUSTS

ancient Libyan word for water, amun) and he
was usually represented as a human figure
wearing a double-plumed crown, sometimes
with a ram's head. Tt is implied, through such
epithets as 'mysterious of form', thai Amun's
true identity and appearance could never be
revealed. As w r ell as being part of a divine triad
at Thebes (with mut and KHONS), he was also
Amun Kematef, a member of the ogdoad, a
group of eight primeval deities who were wor-
shipped in the region of Hermopolis Magna.
Amun Kematef (meaning L he who has com-
pleted his moment') was a creator-god able to
resurrect himself by taking the form of a snake
shedding his skin. Another aspect of Amun
was an i tiiyphai.lio form, closely related to
the fertility god \u\ and described as Amun
Kamutef (literally 'ball of his mother').

Part of the success of Amun's influence on
Egyptian religion for most of the Dynastic
period lay in his combination with other pow-
erful deities, such as RA, the sun-god, who had
been the dominant figure in the Old Kingdom
pantheon. It was Amun-Ra, theTheban mani-
festation of the sun-god, who presided over
the expanding Egyptian empire in Africa and
the Levant. Eventually theTheban priesthood
of Amun-Ra used the prestige of the cull of
Amun in order to legitimize their rivalry with
the pharaohs at the end of the New Kingdom
(see iikrihor).

The rise of the Kushke pharaohs of the
25th Dynasty led to a renaissance in the wor-
ship of Amun, since the Nubians believed that
the true home of Amun was the sacred site of
Gebel Barkal in northern Sudan (see napata),
Kushite kings such as i'iv, SHABAQp and taitar-
QO therefore associated themselves with the
cult of Amun and thus sought to renew and
reinvigorate his centres of worship.
K. Skti ik, Amun and die aclu Urgotter (Leipzig,
1929).

J. Zwiikk, De Hymuen aan Anion van Papyrus
Laden 13S0 (Laden, 1948).
P. BARGUKT, Le temple d'Amun-re a Karuah: essai
d'exegise (Cairo, 1962).
E. OTTO, Egyptian an and lhe cults of Osiris and

Amun (London, 196S).

— , 'Amun', Lexihon der Agyptologie t, ed. VV.

Hclek, E. Otto and VV. Westciuforf (Wiesbaden,

1975X237-48,

J. Assmann, Egyptian solar religion in the New
Kingdom: Ra, Amun and the erisis of poly theism,
trans. A. Alcock (London, 1995).

Anat

One of a number of deities introduced into
Egypt from Syria-Palestine. The cult of Anat
is first attested in Egypt in the late Middle
Kingdom (r.1800 nc) and one of lhe nvk.sos

Stele of the chief royal craftsman Qeh. In the
lower register Qeh and his family are shown
worshipping the goddess . lnat. In the upper register
(from left to right) the deities Min, Qedeshet anil
Reshej are depicted; the inclusion oj'Min among a
group of Western . lsiatic deities is presumably
explained by his association with the Eastern
Desert. 19th Dynasty, c,1250 bc, limestone, from
Deir el-Medina, a. 12 cm. (t:\191)

kings of the 16th Dynasty (<\1560 bc;) includ-
ed the name Anat-her in his titulary. In the
Third Intermediate Period her cult was cele-
brated in the temple of Mut at TSNiS.

Although she held the beneficent epithets
'mother of all the gods' and 'mistress of the
sky 1 , she was primarily a goddess of war and
was often depicted with shield, axe and lance.
The myths surrounding Anat were concerned
primarily with her savage exploits, and the
Egyptians regarded her as protectress of the
king in battle, a role sometimes shared with
astarte. Although Egyptian texts often used
the names of the goddesses Anat and Astarte
virtually interchangeably, their cults were in
practice distinct.

The Syrian gods rksi EEF and Baal were both
regarded at various times as Anat's consorts,
and she was said to have given birth to a wild
bull by Baal. At times she is also portrayed as
the wife of srth (another god with Asiatic
links), while private monuments sometimes
depicted her alongside min, when the strong
sexual aspect of her cult was being stressed. As
with many other goddesses, her cult was some-
times syncretized with that of nvnion.

J. B. Pritciiarj), Palestinian figurines in relation to

certain goddesses known through literature (New

Haven, 1943), 76-80.

R. Stadki.MANN, Syrisch-paldstinische Gottheiten

in Agypten (Leiden, 1967), 91-6.

A. S. Kapklrud, The violent goddess Anat in lhe

RasShamra lexis (Oslo, 1969).

ancestor busts

Term used to refer to small painled anthro-
poid busts serving as a focus for ancestor wor-
ship in the New Kingdom. Most were of
limestone or sandstone, but a few smaller
examples were made of wood and clay. Thev
were rarely inscribed (the host of
Mutemonet, shown below, being one of the
few 7 exceptions), but the predominance of red
paint (the typical male skin-colour in
Egyptian art) suggests that most of them rep-
resent men. There are about 150 surviving
examples, about half of which derive from the
houses and funerary chapels of the tomb-
workers at the village of deir el-medina. The
cult of the ancestors, each of which was
known as akh iker en Ra, 'excellent spirit of
Ra', was an important aspect of popular reli-
gion among the villagers. These 'excellent
spirits' were also represented on about fifty-
five surviving painted stelae, which, like the
busts, could evidently he petitioned by rela-
tives seeking divine aid.

Limestone ancestor bust of Mutemonet. I9lh
Dynasty, c.1250 BC. ii. 4 ( > cm. (i-:ill ( )H)

ANEDJIJL

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

J. KF.n'H-BF.NNKiT, 'Anthropoid busts n: nor
from Deir el Medmeh alone', BES 3 (1981 ),

43-71.

R.J. BOMAREE, The "h ikr n R" stelae: on ancestor

worship in ancient Egypt (Leiden, 1983).

F. D. Friedman, 'Aspects of domestic life and
reli£ion\ Pharaoh V workers: the villagers of Deir
el Medina, ed. L. H. Lesko (Ithaca, 1994),
95-117.

Anedjib (Adjib, Andjyeb, Enczib) (c.2925 BC)
Ruler of the kite 1st Dvnastv who is thought to
have been buried in Tomb \ at ABYDOS, the
smallest of the Early Dynastic royal tombs in
the cemetery of Llmin el-Qa l ab. Pari of the
wooden flooring was preserved in the burial
chamber. Tomb 3038 at saqqara has also been
dated to his reign by means of seal impressions
which also mention the name of an official
called Nebitka who was presumably buried
there. This tomb contained a mud-brick
stepped structure inside the m vsTARA-iike
superstructure which is considered to be a
possible precursor of step pyramids, and simi-
lar "internal tumuli' have been identified in the
recent re-excavations of the 1 si-Dynasty royal
tombs at Abydps.

Anedjib was the first to have the nebty
('Two Ladies') title and the nesw-bit ('Lie of
the sedge and bee 1 ) name in his ROYAL TTTU-
larv, although the nesw-bil title (without a
name) had already been introduced in the
reign of his predecessor DEN. A number of
stone vessels carved with references to his
SF.D FESTIVAL (royal jubilee) were excavated at
Abydos. On most of these vases his name had
been erased and replaced with that of his suc-
cessor sf.mf.kmikt, leading to suggestions
lhat [here may have been some kind of dvnas-
tie feud.

W. M. F. PETRIE, The royal tombs of tin- first
dynasty i (London, 1900).
W. B. Emery, Great tombs of the first dynasty i
(Cairo, 1949).
— , Archaic Egypt ( I .ondon, 1 %1 ), KIM.

Anhur see onuris

Aniba (anc. Miam)

Site of a settlement and cemetery in Lower
Nubia, founded as an Egyptian fortress in tbe
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 isc). During the
18th Dynasty (1550-1295 nc) Aniba became
the administrative centre of Wawat, the area
between the first and second Nile cataracts.
The reception of tribute from the Nubian
Prince of Miam is portrayed in ihe Theban
tomb of Tutankhamun's viceroy, Huy (rr40).
The site was partially excavated during the
1930s, but after the completion of the Aswan

Copy of a wall-painting in the tomb of Huy, showing
Ueqanefer, Prince nf Miam (Aniba) and oilier
chiefs, bowing be/ore Ihlankbamun. 1 8th Dynasty,
c.l330nc. (cop) iiy \t\ i Di-: G tuts dii tt-.s)

High Dam in 1971 it was submerged by Lake

Nasser.

G. SteINDORFF, Aniba, 2 vols (Gluckstadl,

1935-7).

animal husbandry

The keeping and breeding of animals is attest-
ed as early as the Predvnastic period at Lower
Egyptian sites such as ME3UMDA BEN! SA1.AMA
(i.4900-4300 bc). Even in the Old Kingdom,
there was still an element of experimentation
in the process of domestication of more
unusual breeds, judging from such evidence as
scenes of the force-feeding of cranes in the
5th-Dvnastv tomb of Sopduhotep at Saqqara,
and the depiction of the force-feeding of
hyenas in the 6th-Dynasty tomb of mf.rf.ri k&
at the same site. For most of the Dynastic peri-
od the most common domesticated animals
were cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, asses and poul-
irv Ducks, geese and pigeons were the princi-
pal domesticated fowl; hens deriving from the
African Jungle Fowl may have been introduced
in the New Kingdom, but the earliest pub-
lished skeletal evidence dates to the late fifth or
early sixth century an.

Cattle were important for their meat and
milk but were also kept as draught animals.
From tbe Predvnastic period to the Old
Kingdom, cattle were mainly of the long-
horned type, bul thinner short-horned vari-
eties were gradually introduced from the Old
Kingdom onwards, eventually becoming the
norm. In the 18th Dynasty bumped Zebu
cattle were introduced as draught animals, hut
thev never seem to have become common.

Cattle were tended bv herdsmen who, as in
parts of Africa today, staved with the herd and
moved them to new pastures as necessary. In
the winter the herds grazed in the Nile valley
although many were moved to the Delta dur-
ing the summer months. Identification of
herds was facilitated by marking them, and a
number of branding tools have survived.

It was the meat of oxen which was the most
prized for offerings at temples and tombs, and
which frequently figures in reliefs there.
Wealthy landowners boast of enormous herds
of cattle, and other animals, in their tomb
inscriptions, and as a sign of wealth they were
also a source of taxable revenue.

The I iorsf, introduced around the time of
the iivksos occupation in the Second
Intermediate Period, did not become common
until the New Kingdom, and was then used
primarily for military purposes. Donkeys were
extensively used as pack animals and, like
cattle, for threshing. The CAMEL, was not used
until late in the Pharaonic period, and
although there is some possible pictorial evi-
dence from tbe late New Kingdom, the use of
domesticated camels is not attested until the
ninth century lit:.

Sheep and goats were kept for meat, wool,
hide and probably milk, although wool was
never as important as linen in terms of textile
manufacture. The Egyptians described both
sheep and goats as 'small cattle', thus implying
thai all ihree animals were regarded as being of
roughly the same type. Goats, however, were
more common than sheep, and better suited to
grazing on poor land.

Pigs were regarded as animals of SF'i'U, the
god of chaos, and for this reason enjoyed
somewhat ambiguous status. According to the
Greek historian Herodotus, those who kepi
[hem formed a kind of underclass who could

ANKH

ANUBIS

only marry the daughters of other swineherds.
However, it is not clear whether this was the
case in more ancient times, and a scene from
the 6th-Dymasty tomb of Kagcmni at Saqqara
shows a swineherd giving milk to a piglet from
his own tongue, perhaps implying that the
herders of pigs were not held in any particu-
larly low esteem relative to other farmers.
Excavations during the 1980s at the site of the
el-AMARNA workmen's village have revealed
surprisingly extensive evidence of pig rearing,
and similar evidence has emerged from exca-
vations at Memphis, Elephantine and "Jell el-
Dab'a, indicating that pork must have formed
an important part of the diet of at least some
classes of society. Although pork was never
used in temple offerings, pigs are nevertheless
included in lists of temple assets. Amenhotep,
chief steward of Amenhotep m (1390—1352
uc), states that he donated a thousand pigs lo a
statue of his master at Memphis.
R. Janssen and J. J. Janssen, Egyptian household
animals (Aylesbury, 1989).

E. Strou IAI., Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 109-18.

K. C. MacDonald and D. N. Edwards,
'Chickens in Africa: the importance of Qasr
ibrim\ Antiquity 67/256 (1993), 584-90.
D. J. Brewer, D. B. Redford and S. Redford,

Domestic' plants ami animals: the Egyptian origins
(Warminster, 1994).

ankh

Hieroglyphic sign denoting life', which takes
the form of a T-shape surmounted by a loop.
The pictogram has been variously interpreted
as a sandal strap (the loop at the top forming

Ankh, djed and wns-sceptre amulet. Late Period,
cJOO-SQObc, faience, it. 23.1 an. (1-.64412)

the ankle strap) and a penis sheath. Temple
reliefs frequently included scenes in which the
king was offered the ankh sign by the gods,
thus symbolizing the divine conferral of eter-
nal life. In the Amarna period it was depicted
being offered to Akhenaten and Nefertiti by
the hands at the end of the rays descending
from the sun disc (see aten). The ankh sign
seems to have been one of the few hiero-
glyphs that was comprehensible even to the
illiterate; therefore it is commonly found as
a maker's mark on pottery vessels. The sign
was eventually adopted by the COPTIC church
as their unique form of cross, known as the
crux ansa tit.

J. R. Baine.s, 'Ankh sign,, belt and penis sheath',
SAK3 (1975), 1-24.

C. Andrkws, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,
1994), 86.

antelope

Desert-dwelling horned bovid, which served
as the symbol of the 1 6th Upper Egyptian
nome (province). Three species of antelope are-
known from ancient Egypt {Alcephalus hiisela-
phus, Oryx gazellct and Addax nasomaculatn).
The goddess SATET of Elephantine was origi-
nally worshipped in the form of an antelope,
and her headdress during the Pharaonic peri-
od consisted of a combination of antelope
horns and the Upper Egyptian crown. Satet
was responsible for the water of the first Nile-
cataract at Aswan, and a connection seems to
have been made by the ancient Egyptians
between water and antelopes, so that the god-
dess anuket could also be represented by
another tvpe of antelope, the gazelle, although
she was more commonly depicted as a woman.
The gazelle mav also have symbolized grace
and elegance, and paintings in the 18th-
Dynasty tomb of me\\-\ (tt69) at Thebes
show that it was sometimes used in place of a
aniens (see uadjvt) for minor queens and
princesses.

The desert links of the antelope and gazelle
also led to their association with the god setii,
and, correspondingly the antelope was occa-
sionally shown as the prey of the god horl'S in
later times. One of the earliest forms of amulet
took the form of a gazelle head, possibly in
order to ward off the evil that such desert ani-
mals represented.

G. J. B()ESS\ec:k, Die Haustierc in A/ldgypteii
(Munich, 1953).

L. Stadieein, 'Antilope', Lexikon der Agyptologie
I, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1975), 319-23.
E. Brlwner-Tr-nl'T, 'Gazelle', Lexikon der
Agyptologie n, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W.
Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1977), 426-7.

Anubis (Inpw)

Canine god of the dead, closely associated
with embalming and mummification. He is
usually represented in the form of a seated
black dog or a man with a dog's head, but it is
not clear whether the dog in question — often
identified by the Egyptian word sab - was a
jackal. The connection between jackals and
the god of mummification probably derived

Limestone statuette of Anubis. Ptolemaic period,
cJOO-lOO/ic, it. 5! cm. (t:.\-l7991)

from the desire to ward off the possibility of
corpses being dismembered and consumed
by such dogs. The black colouring of Anubis,
however, is not characteristic of jackals; it
relates instead to the colour of putrefying
corpses and the fertile black soil of the Nile
valley (which was closely associated with the
concept of rebirth). The seated Anubis dog
usually wore a ceremonial tie or collar around
his neck and held a flail or sekhem sceptre like
those held by ostris, the other principal god
of the dead. The cult of Anubis himself was
eventually assimilated with that of Osiris.
According to myth, the jackal-god was said to
have wrapped the body of the deceased
Osiris, thus establishing his particular associ-
ation with the mummification process.
Anubis was also linked with the imiut fetish,
apparently consisting of a decapitated animal
skin hanging at the top of a pole, images of
which were included among royal funerary

ANUKET

APEPI

equipment in the New Kingdom. Both
Anubis and the imiut fetish were known as
'sons of the hesat-cow '.

Anubis' role as the guardian of the necrop-
olis is reflected in two of his most common
epithets: neb-ta-djeser ('lord of the sacred
land') and khenty-seh-netjer ('foremost of the
divine booth 1 ), the former showing his control
over the cemetery itself and the latter indicat-
ing his association with the embalming tent or
the burial chamber. An image of Anubis also
figured prominentlv in the seal with which the
entrances to the tombs in the valley of the
kings were stamped. This consisted of an
image of a jackal above a set of nine bound
captives, showing that Anubis w r ould protect
the tomb against evildoers.

Perhaps the most vivid of Anubis' titles was
tepy-dju-ef ('he who is upon his mountain'),
which presents the visual image of a god con-
tinually keeping a watch on the necropolis
from his vantage point in the high desert. In a
similar vein, both he and Osiris are regularlv
described as khentimentin ('foremost of the
westerners'), which indicated their dominance
over the necropolis, usually situated in the
west. Khentimentiu was originallv the name of
an earlier canine deity at abydos whom Anubis
superseded.

H. KEES, 'Anubis "Ilerr von Sepa" iind der
18. oberagyptische Gau', ZAS 58 (1923),
79-101.

— , 'Kulltopographische und mvthologische
Bdtrige,ZASl\ (1935), 150-5.
— ■, 'Der Gau von Kvnopolis und seine Gotteit',
feo 6 (195$), 157-75.

Anuket(Anquet,Anukis)
Goddess of the first Nile cataract region
around aswan, who is generally represented as
a woman holding a papyrus sceptre and wear-
ing a tall plumed crown. Her cult is recorded
as early as the Old Kingdom, when, like many
goddesses, she was regarded as a daughter of
the sun-god RA, but in the New Kingdom she
became part of the triad of Elephantine along
with kiin'um and SATET. A temple was dedicat-
ed to her on the island of Sehel, a short dis-
tance to the south of Aswan, and she was also
worshipped in Nubia.

E. Otto, 'Anuket', Lexikon der Agyptotogie i, ed.
W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1975), 333-4.

Apedemak

Meroitic leonine and anthropomorphic lion-
headed god, whose principal cult-centres were
at the sites of Musawwarat el-Sufra and Naqa,
both located in the desert to the east of the
sixth Nile cataract in Sudan, although there

were also 'lion temples' at MERGE and probablv
Basa. Many aspects of religion and ritual in
the Meroitic period (c.300 bc-ad 300) derived
from Egvptian practices, amun in particular
being as pre-eminent in Meroe as he had been
in Pharaonic Egypt. But there were also a few
important Nubian deities, such as die anthro-
pomorphic ARENSNUPi us and the creator-god
Sebiumeker, foremost among whom was the
war-god Apedemak.

In the lion temple at Musawwarat el-Sufra
there were long inscriptions consisting of
prayers to the god, inexplicably written in
Egyptian hieroglyphs rather than the
Meroitic script, describing him as 'splendid
god at the head of Nubia, lion of the south,
strong of arm', possiblv indicating that he was
the tutelary god of the southern half of the
Meroitic kingdom, where lions were still rela-
tively common until the nineteenth century
-\D (few references to the god have survived in
Lower Nubia). The lion temple at Naqa,
founded by Natakamani and his queen
Amanitere, consists of a pylon followed by a
pillared court (narrower than the front
facade). The w r alls are decorated with reliefs in
which Apedemak is depicted alongside
Egvptian deities such as hathor and Amun,
even forming a divine triad with ISIS and
jiorus as his consort and child.
J. W. Crowfoot and F. W Griffith, The island
of Meroe: Meroitic inscriptions (London, 1911 ),
54-61 [temple of Apedemak at Naqa],
E Hintzk et al., Musawwarat es Sufra 1/2
(Berlin, 1971).

L.V. ZAiikAR, Apedemak: Han god of Meroe
(Warminster, 1975).

W. Y. ADAMS, Nubia: corridor to Africa, 2nd ed.
(London and Princeton, 1984), 325-7.

Apepi (Apophis)

The name Apepi (or Apophis), which occurs
in manetho, was adopted by at least one of the
hvksos pharaohs who ruled a substantial area
of Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period
(1650-1550 Be). Inscriptions in the temple at
Bubastis (tell basta) preserve the name of
Aqenenra Apepi. A quasi-historical literary
work known as the Oitarrel of Apophis und
Seqenenru describes the war between a Hvksos
king called Apepi and his Theban rival,
seqenenra TAA ii, beginning with a letter sent
by Apepi complaining that he is being kept
awake by the sound of hippopotami in Upper
Egypt. A more reliable version of the Theban
militarv campaign against Aauserra Apepi is
provided by two fragmentary stelae dating to
the reign of the Theban king kamose, and a
later HIERATIC copy of the same text (known as
the Carnarvon Tablet).
T. Saye-Sodfrbfrgh, 'The Hvksos rule in
Egypt',_7£,-/ 37 (1951), 53-71.
R. Stadelmann, 'Em Beitrag zum Brief des
Hvksos Apophis', MDAIK36 (1965), 62-9.
J. van Sfters, The Hyksos: a new investigation
(New Haven, 1966), 153-8.

Apis

Sacred bull who served as the BA (physical
manifestation) or 'herald' of the god PTAH, His
principal sanctuary was therefore located near
the temple of Ptah at Memphis, in the vicinity 7
of which the 'embalming house' of the Apis

Bronze votive group statuette of an unnamed ruler
kneeling before an Apis bull, his bands held out in
offering. It mas dedicated by Pefijaweniuwyhor,
who is named on the bull's pedestal. 26th Dynasty.
c.600uc, a. of bull 12.5 cm. (f.a22920)

bulls has been unearthed. Unlike many other
sacred animals the Apis bull was always a sin-
gle individual animal, selected for his particu-
lar markings. According to the Greek historian
Herodotus, the Apis bull, conceived from a
bolt of lightning, was black with a white dia-
mond on the forehead, the image of a vulture
on its back, double hairs on its tail, and a
scarab-shaped mark under its tongue.

The cult of the Apis probably dates back
to the beginning of Egyptian history,
although Manetho, the Ptolemaic historian,
claims that it originated in the 2nd Dynasty.
The bul! was closely linked with the
pharaoh, both being dhine manifestations of
a god who were crowned at the time of their
installation. Like the king, the Apis bull
had his own 'window of appearances' (see
palaces) and, at least from the Late Period,
he was thought to provide ORACLES. From the
22nd Dynasty onwards, the bull was repre-
sented on private coffins, as if accompanying
the deceased westwards to the tomb or east-
wards (presumably towards a new life) and
serving as a protector of the dead.

At the death of each of the Apis bulls, there
was national mourning, and the embalmed
corpse was taken along the sacred way from
Memphis to Saqqara, for burial in a granite
sarcophagus in the underground catacombs
known as the serapeum, which were in use
from at least as early as the New Kingdom.
According to Herodotus, the Persian ruler
Cambyses (525-522 bc) mocked the cult and
caused the death of the Apis bull of the time,
although it has been suggested that this story
mav simplv have been an attempt to discredit
the Persians, since it appears to be contradict-
ed by a textual record of an Apis burial actual-
ly conducted by Cambyses.

Because of the divine nature of his birth,
the mothers of the Apis bulls were venerated
as manifestations of the goddess ISIS.; thev
were accorded similar burials to their off-
spring, in the Iseum 1 (or 'mothers of Apis'
catacomb), a set of galleries further to the
north in Saqqara which were excavated in
1 970 by Bryan Emery. The 'calves of the Apis'
were also buried ceremoniallv, but their cata-
combs, like the early Pharaonic Apis galleries,
remain undiscovered.

After his death, the Apis bull became iden-
tified with OSIRIS, being described as the svn-
cretic deity Osiris-Apis or Osorapis. In the
early Ptolemaic period the cult of SERAPIS was
introduced, combining the traits of the Greek
gods Zeus, Llelios, Llades, Dionvsos and
Asklepios with those of Osorapis.
A. Mariette, Le Senipeitm de Memphis (Paris,

1882).

1 **-* \c*cz Ysf l^tri l^ffu I i :.j?\

E. BiujGSCH, 'Der Apis-Kreis aus den Zeiten der
Ptolcniaer naeh den hierogh phischen und
demorischen VVeihinschriften des Scrapeums
von Memphis 1 , ZAS 22 ( 1 884), 1 10-36.
J.Verc;outter, 'Unc cpitaphe royalc incditc du
Serapeunf, MDAtK l6 ( 1 958), 333-45.
M. Malinixe, G. Posexer, J. Vercol.ttkr, Ees
steles du Serapeum de Memphis an Mnsee du
Louvre (Paris, W).
W. B, EMERS , 'Preliminary report on the
excavations at North Saqqara 1 969-70°, JEA 57
(1971), 3-13.

Apopllis (i ivksos rulers) see apepi

Apophis

Snake-god of the underworld, who symbol-
ized the forces of chaos and evil. Apophis is
usually represented on New Kingdom funer-
ary papyri and on the walls of the royal tombs
in the VALLEY OF THE KINGS as the eternal
adversary of the sun-god ra. It was the serpent
Apophis who posed the principal threat to the
bark of the sun-god as it passed through the
underworld. Although in some circumstances
Apophis was equated with the god SETII (and
both had Asiatic connections), there are also
vignettes showing Selh contributing to the
defeat of Apophis. The evil 'eye of Apophis'
was an important mythological and ritualistic
motif, which could be thwarted only by Seth
or by the eve of the sun-god. There are about
twenty surviving temple reliefs showing the
king striking a ball before a goddess (at Dear

Detail from the Book afthe Dead ofHin/ejer,
showing the sun-god in the form of a cut
sytnhol/eaily deeapituiing Apophis. /9th Dynasty,
C.128QB& (tnW01,sm;ErS)

el-Bahri, Luxor, Edfu, Dendera and Philae),
apparently in simulation of the removal of
Apophis 1 eve.

The so-called Book of Ipophis was a collec-
tion of spells and rites intended to thwart the
snake-god, the best surviving text being
Papvrus Bremner-Rhind, which dates to the
late fourth century BC. Other fragmenlan
examples of the Book of. Ipophis date at least as
early as the reign of Rameses mi (1184-1153
fjc), and the text was probably originally com-
posed during the New Kingdom, somewhere
in the vicinity of Heliopolis. Like the i:\vx NA-
TION TEXTS, the various spells were connected
with elaborate cursing rituals.
H. Bonnkt, Reullexihon der iigyptisehen
Religmnsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), 51-3.
B. Strickf.r, De grate zeesluug (Leiden, 1953). /
J. F. Borghol is, l Tbe evil eye of Apopis'.^TX-r
59(1973), 114-49.
G. HART, Egyptian myths (London, 1990),

58-61.

Apries (Ilaaibra/VVahibra) (589-570 nc.)
Fourth king of the KA1TE 26th Dynasty and son
of PSAMTEK M (595-589 bc), he was the Biblical
Hophra. Although HERCH50TUS claims that the
wife of Apries was called Nitetis, there are no
contemporary references naming her. He was

APULE IUS, LUCIU S

JSA

an active builder, constructing additions to the
temples at Athribis (TELL fflTSts), haiiakiva
OASIS, MEMPHIS and SMS. In the fourth year of
his reign he had Ankhnesneferibra adopted as
Nitiqrefs successor as god's WIFE OF a.uln.
His foreign policy concentrated primarily on
the defence of the northeastern frontier, with
campaigns against Cyprus, Palestine and
Phoenicia. It was shortly after a defeat by
Nebuchadnezzar n of habyt.on that he was
deposed by the former general Ahmo.se 11 in
570 bc. He fled the country and probably died
in battle in 567 fie, when he attempted to
regain his throne by force with the help of a
BABYLONIAN army (although Herodotus sug-
gests that he was captured and later strangled).
His body is said to have been carried to Sais
and buried there with full royal honours by
Ahmose u. Only one surviving statue has been
identified as Apries by his name and titles
(although several others have been assigned to
him on stylistic grounds), and only a few fig-
ures of private individuals bear his cartouches.
W. M. F. Petrie and J. H. W u.kkr. The palace of
Apr/es (Memphis a) (London, 1999).
B. GUNN, 'The stela of Apries at Mitrahina 1 ,
ASAE21 (1927), 211-37.
H. de Mi-X7.en.aeri 1 ;, Herodotus over Je Z6$te
Dynastie (Louvain, 1951).
B.V. Bothmer, Egyptian sculpture of 'the Late
Perwd, 700 bg-IQQjd (Brooklyn, 1969), 58-9.

Apuleius, Lucius [c .ad 123-after 161)
Classical writer, born at Madaura in Africa
and educated in Carthage, who travelled
widely, visiting Rome and Athens. He was the
author of several literary works, including
Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, the only
Latin novel to have survived in its entirety. It
describes the exploits of a man called Lucius,
who is said to have been redeemed by the
'mysteries 1 of the goddess isrs. Apuleius 1 writ-
ings have thus provided insights into the cults
of Isis and OSIRIS in the Roman period.
R. Graves, The golden ass (I -Iarmondsworth,
1950}.

archaeology see belzom, Egyptology;

lepsiis; mariette; masit.ro; PETRIE; reisner;
ROSki.i.im and WILKINSON.

Archaic period s

' EARLY DYNASTIC

Arensnuphis (Arsnuphis, Harensnuphis)

Mcroitic god, usually represented as a human
figure wearing a feathered crown, whose cult is
first attested at the Upper Nubian site of
Musawwarat el-Sufra during the reign of
Arnakamani (235-218 bc). He was associated
with die Egyptian gods si iti and onuris, merg-

ing with the former in the syncretic form Shu-
Arensnuphis. The Egyptians interpreted his
name as iry-hemes-nefer ('the good compan-
ion 1 ), although the origins of both the god and
his name probably lay much further south in
Africa. His absorption into the Egyptian pan-
theon is also indicated by the fact that he is
depicted in the reliefs of the Egyptian temple
of Dendur, which originally stood about 75
km to the south of Aswan (now re-crected in
the .Metropolitan Museum, New York). There
was even a kiosk dedicated to Arensnuphis in
the temple of the goddess lsis at PIIIEAE,
which— most unusually-was jointly built and
decorated by the Meroitic king Arkamani
(218-200 BC) and the Egyptian ruler i>TDi.i;\n
iv Philopator (221-205 nc).
E. WtNTES, 'Arensnuphis: seine Name und seine
Herkunil 1 , Bd£25 (1973), 2:->5-5[).

Armant (anc. lunu-Montu)
Upper Egyptian site on the west bank of the
Nile, 9 km southwest of Luxor. The excavated
features of Armant include extensive cemeter-
ies and many areas of Predynastic settlement.
The Predynastic necropolis at Armant, exca-
vated by Robert Mond and Oliver Myers

! •;,

■ . . ■ ■

■ ■ -- -

Sands/one stele from the Bucheum of. irmaut, m
which the Roman emperor Diocletian is depicted in
the act of worshipping a mummified Bachis bull.
Roman period, ad 2HS, it. 67 cm. (i:\i(>%)

during the early 1930s, is probably the best-
documented site of its date to have been exca-
vated in the first few decades of the twentieth
century. There is also a stonebuik temple of
the war-god .viontu - dating from the 11th
Dynasty to the Roman period (£.2040 BC-AO
200) — which was largely destroyed in the late
nineteenth century. To the north of the main
site are the remains of the Bucheum, the
necropolis of the sacred bug us BULLS (c.1350
BC-AO 305), as well as the burial-place of the
'Mother of Buchis' cows. Myers also excavat-
ed an a-groit cemetery at the site.
R. A1o\d and O. H. Myers, The Bucheum, 3 vols
(London, 1934).

— , Cemeteries of Armant l (London, 1937).
— , Temples uf. Irmanl: a preliminary survey
(London, 1940).

W. Kaiser, 'Zur inneren Chronologic der
Naqadakultur 1 , Archaeologia Geographica 6
(1957), 69-77.

K. Bard, 'A quantitative analysis of the
predynastic burials in Armant cemetery
UQ(i-\500\JEA 74 (1988), 39-55.

army

There was no permanent national army in
Egypt during the Old Kingdom (2686-2181
ik:), although a smalt royal bodyguard proba-
bly already existed. Groups of young men
were evidently conscripted specifically for
particular expeditions, ranging from quarry-
ing, mining and trading ventures to purely
military campaigns. The inscriptions in the
funerary chapel of Weni at Abvdos (r.2300
bc) describe a campaign in Palestine under-
taken bv an army of 'tens of thousands of
conscripts 1 , whom the king had requisi-
tioned from the various nomarchs {provin-
cial governors).

During the First Intermediate Period
(21 81-2055 lit;) increasing numbers of
nomarchs seem EG have recruited their own
private armies, and it seems likely that the
early 12th-Dy nasty campaigns in Nubia
involved combinations of these local corps
rather than a single national force. By the time
of Senusrct in (1874-1S55 bc). however, the
reduction in the power of the provinces and
the construction of permanent fortresses
and garrisons in nubi \ all seem to have con-
tributed to the creation of a large national
army. The development of militarv organiza-
tion and hierarchy is indicated in the late
Middle Kingdom by the emergence of such
specific titles as 'soldier of the city corps 1 and
'chief of the leaders of dog patrols 1 . Other tex-
tual sources, such as the 'Semna dispatches 1
(see LETTERS), show that there was a consider-
able military infrastructure, manned by

ARMY

MBHSh

Egyptian craftsmen, from faience AMULETS to
royal funerary reliefs, were regarded as essen-
tially the same. The level of aesthetic achieve-
ment may have varied considerably, but all of
these works had the same purpose: to repre-
sent, influence and manipulate the real world.
Nothing expresses the nature of Egyptian
art more succinctly than the fact that the
same religious ritual of 'the OPENING or THE
MOUTH 1 was performed by Egyptian funerarv
priests both on the mummy of the deceased
and on his or her statuary. The ritual involved
touching the face of the statue or mummy
with a set of special implements in order to
bring it to life and allow the k.-\ (life-force or
essence) of the deceased to take up residence
there. In the time of the Ptolemies a similar
rite was performed each day in the temple
of the god Horus at edeu; its objective was to
bring to life every divine figure on the deco-
rated walls, as if the whole temple were a liv-
ing organism.

Soldiers in ike reign oj'llatsliepsul. Important
evidence concerning military equipment is derived
from reliefs such as this from Hatshepsut '& temple
at Deirel-Bahri. (t: r. yicnoLsox)

scribes and other bureaucrats, by the end of
the 12th Dynasty.

It was in the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC),
however, that the military profession came
into its own, and it is significant that men with
military backgrounds, such as HOSEMHEB
(1323-1295 BC) and rameses i (1295-1294 bc),
began to rise to the throne, which had previ-
ously been dominated by a more scribal and
priestly elite. The New Kingdom army was
often led by one of the king's sons; it consist-
ed of a northern and southern corps, each
commanded bv a 'chief deputy 1 . When cam-
paigns were launched into western Asia, Libya
or Nubia, there were usually four or five large
divisions, each comprising about five thou-
sand professional soldiers and conscripts.
These divisions were each named after a god,
such as Amun or Ptah, perhaps with reference
to the deity of the NOME (province) from which
the conscripts were drawn. The smallest tacti-
cal unit of the army was the 'platoon 1 of fifty
soldiers, generally grouped into 250-strong
companies.

From the beginning of the Pharaonic period,
mercenaries were used in Egyptian armies: the
medjay, for instance, were increasingly used as
scouts during desert campaigns. From the
Ramesside period onwards, the reliefs depict-
ing military confrontations show that the
Egyptian troops had begun to incorporate
more and more foreigners, often as branded

SLAVES who were able to gain their freedom by
enrolling in the Egyptian army. In the Saite
period (664—525 uc) the Egyptians became
particularly dependent on greek and Phoeni-
cian mercenaries, who helped to man a fleet of
Greco-Phoenician-style war-galleys, enabling
Egypt to maintain some control over maritime
trade with the Levant. See also captives;
chariot; ships and boats; standards.

Y. Yigael, The arl of warfare in Biblical lands

(London, 1963).

A. R. ScilUl.MAN, Military rank, title and

organization in the Egyptian New Kingdom

(Berlin, 1964).

A. J, Spalinger, Aspects of the military documents

of the ancient Egyptians (New leaven, 1982).

I. Shaw, Egyptian warfare and weapons

(Aylesbury, 1991), 25-30.

Arsaphes see herysiief

art

Just as the works of the Impressionists or the
Cubists can be properly understood only in
terms of the particular time and place in which
they were made, so the style and purposes of
Egyptian art make little real sense without a
detailed understanding of ancient Egyptian
culture. Egyptian art was essentially function-
al, in that funerary paintings and sculptures,
for instance, were concerned primarily with
the continuance of life- the works of art were
intended not merely to imitate or reflect reali-
ty but to replace and perpetuate it.

Whereas in the modern western world a
reasonably clear distinction is usually made
between art and craft, the products of ancient

Predynastic pottery vessel hearing red painted
decoration comprising boats, animals and human
figures, including a dancing woman/ goddess with
raised arms. Early Naqada it period, c.3500 tic,
from el-Amra, II. 29.2 cm. (i-i35502j

Egyptian art was concerned above all with
ensuring the continuity of the universe, the
gods, the king and the people — the artists
therefore depicted things not as they saw
them but as idealized symbols intended to be
more significant and enduring than the real
day-to-day world. They portrayed each indi-
vidual element of the subject from the most
representative angle: the human torso and
eye were clearly both best viewed from the
front, whereas the arms, leg and face were

ART

best seen from the side. This concern with
separate components, at the expense of the
overall effect, often causes Egyptian depic-
tions of human figures to appear distorted
and internally inconsistent to modern eyes.
Even when the figures on the walls of
Egyptian tombs and temples are acting out
mvths, rituals and historical events they are
still carved and painted with the stiffness and
formulaic appearance of hieroglyphs. In an
extreme example of this connection between
writing and art, the burial chamber of the
tomb of Thutmose in (1479-1425 hc; KV34)
has the shape of a cartouche, thus enabling
the body of the king to take the place of the
writing of his own name. The Egyptian writ-
ing system was based on the precise visual
and phonetic meanings of pictures, and in the
same wav the works of art were intended to
be 'read 1 like an elaborate code. In some
tombs, however, hieroglyphs representing
animals that might prove dangerous - such as
snakes — were sometimes shown mutilated,
or with a knife sticking into them, dispelling
their power so that they could serve only
as symbols.

In most recent western art the artists them-
selves tend to be as well known as their works:
their individual styles — and, in the last resort,
their signatures - mark out a body of work as
their own. The situation in ancient Egypt,
however, was almost the reverse - it was
essential for the subject of the art to be iden-
tified by name in order that the sculpture or
painting could serve its religious purpose; the
artists, on the other hand, are only rarely
mentioned. Egyptian artists themselves were
regularly regarded as anonymous craftsmen,
working in teams and according to strict
guidelines, although their works might be
highly regarded. Surprisingly perhaps, this
situation rarely seems to have resulted in
inhibited or uninspired art, indeed the most
recent studies of tomb-paintings at Thebes
have begun to produce evidence for the dis-
tinctive styles and approaches of particular
groups of craftsmen.

The earliest Egyptian art is quite different
from that of the pyramids and temples of the
Pharaonic period. As early as the eighth mil-
lennium BG the first inhabitants of the Nile
valley began to make engraved drawings on
the cliffs, particularly in Upper Egypt and
Nubia. They depicted the fundamentals of
their lives, from wild game and hunting scenes
in the earlier times to river-boats and herds of
cattle in the early Neolithic period. The art of
the Predynastie period (Y.5500-3100 itc) has
survived mainly in the form of small carved
stone and ivorv grave goods and painted pot-

tery vessels, placed alongside the deceased in
simple pit-burials. The small votive figures of
people and animals include many female stat-
uettes made of pottery and ivory, whose exag-
gerated sexual characteristics suggest that they
probably related to early fertility cults (see
sexuality).

Some of the painted scenes on pottery ves-
sels still reflect the prehistoric rock-carvings,
while others foreshadow the styles and preoc-
cupations of the Dynastic period. A painting

Fragment of wall-painting from the tomb of
Kynehu at Deir el-Medina, showing the deified
ntier Amenlwtep i. 20th Dynasty, e. / 129-1 126
nc, painted piaster, it. 44 cm. (/■; \37 ( )93)

in the late Predynastie Tomb 100 at
Hierakonpolis (the first Egyptian example of a
decorated tomb chamber), consisting of
groups of people, animals and boats, is the
only surviving instance of the transferral of
the Predynastie pottery paintings on to the
plastered wall of a tomb. In addition, a paint-
ed linen shroud, preserved in a late
Predynastie tomb at gebelein (now in the
Museo Egizio, Turin), bears depictions of
human figures and a boat, all strongly reminis-
cent of the scenes on contemporary painted

pottery. This suggests that there were prob-
ably many other works of art executed on
organic materials, such as linen and leather,
which have rarely survived from such early
periods.

In the final stages of the Predynastie period
a range of unusual ceremonial artefacts -
MACES, palettes and ivory-handled flint
knives -began to play an important role in the
emerging religious ritual and social hierarchy.
Many of the more elaborate maceheads and
palettes, such as Lhose of the kings named
scorpion and narmer, were discovered in the
so-called 'main deposit' of the temple at
Hierakonpolis. Although the archaeological
circumstances of the discovery are poorly
recorded, they were evidently deposited as
votive offerings, and their carved decoration
appears to summarize the important events of
the year in which they were offered to ihe god.
It is not clear whether any of the scenes arc
depictions of real historical events or simply
generalized representations of myth and ritu-
al. The distinction between mvth, ritual and
history in Egyptian art is a problem that per-
sists throughout the Pharaonic period.

The essential elements of the art of the Old
Kingdom (2686-2181 bc) were the funerary
sculpture and painted reliefs of the royal fam-
ily and the provincial elite, along with the
remains of the earliest sun temples (see ABU
GURAii and l ieliopolis) and the shrines of local
deities. One of the most impressive statues of
the Old kingdom is the diorite statue of a
seated figurer of KHAFRA, builder of the second
pyramid at Giza, which was found in the val-
ley temple of his funerary complex. On the
simplest level the statue is a portrait of a pow-
erful individual, but it is also made up of sym-
bols that relate to the general role of the
pharaoh. His head and neck arc physically
embraced by the wings of a hawk representing
HORUS, the divine counterpart of the mortal
ruler. His throne is decorated on either side
with a complex design consisting of the hiero-
glyph meaning 'union 1 tied up with the ten-
drils of the plants representing Upper and
Lower Egypt, the whole symbolizing the uni-
fied state over which he rules. In the same way,
an alabaster statue of the 6th-Dynasty ruler
PEPY i (2321-2287 bc) has the rear of the
throne carved to imitate a serekli with I lorus
perched on the top; viewed from the front, on
the other hand, Horus stands protectively
behind the king, himself the living god. The
best Egyptian art achieves a syntiiesis of the
real and the ideal.

At the end of the Old Kingdom the provin-
cial governors' tombs became more richly dee-
orated and the royal tombs grew correspond-

ART

ingly smaller. This decline in the power of the
pharaohs resulted in the so-called First
Intermediate Period (2181—2055 uc), when no
single ruler was strong enough to dominate
the whole country. During this comparative!} 7
unstable and decentralized period, the provin-
cial workshops at sites such as j:i.-mo'ali.\ and
gebeulIN hegan to create distinctive funerary
decoration and equipment rather than being
influenced by the artists at the royal court, as
they were in the Old Kingdom and the late-
Middle Kingdom.

The art of the Middle Kingdom
(2055—1650 uc) is exemplified both by the
fragments of relief from the royal pyramid
complexes at DAHSHUR, El -l.isi IT, EJL-LAHUN
and haw.uia and by the spacious tombs of the
governors buried at iskm HASAN in Middle
Egypt. In the latter, the traditional scenes of
the deceased receiving offerings or hunting
and fishing in the marshes are joined by large-
scale depictions of wrestling and warfare (per-
haps copied from Old Kingdom royal proto-
types). The history of the Middle Kingdom is
very much characterized by a tension between
the artistic stvles of the various provincial sites
(principally funerary art at Beni Hasan, deir
el-bersma, MESS, and \nyit) and the styles of
the royal workshops at Itjtawv, a new capital
established in the vicinity of el-Lisht. By the
late Middle Kingdom the distinctive provin-
cial styles had been eclipsed by the art of the
royal Residence, a process which can he traced
both in the development of funerary equip-
ment (from coffins to ceramics) and in the
qualil\ and locations of provincial governors' 1
tombs.

In the late seventeenth century BC Asiatic
rulers (the iiyksos) gained control of a consid-
erable area of Egypt, wilich they governed
from their strongholds in the Delta. The
works of art surviving from the temples and
cities of this phase show that they simply re-
used and copied traditional Egyptian sculp-
tures and reliefs in order to strengthen their
claims to the throne. There were, however,
increasing links with the Mediterranean
world, and excavations at the I Ivksos capital of
Avaris (tei.i. El,- n\i;'\) have revealed Minoan-
style paintings suggesting close contacts with
the people of Crete.

After the expulsion of the Iiyksos, Egvpt
became firmly established as a major power in
the Near East; the fruits of conquest and
international commerce, from foreign
princesses to exotic spices, flowed irresistibly
into the Nile valley. The scale and opulence of
the temples and tombs of this period could not
fail to reflect such an influx of people, com-
modities and ideas.

Statue (ij Khaemiraset, a son ofRameses //,
holding two standards. The sculptor has had only
partial success in carving a difficult band of pebbly
mm across the chest. l')lh Dynasty, c. 1240 tic.
sandstone conglomerate, /'ram harnuL\ n. I Jit in.
(ami)

The art of imperial Egypt ranged from the
funerary temples of Queen hatsiiepsut
(1473-1458 BC) and rwieses n (1279-1213 ik:)
to the more intimate details of the artisans'
painted tombs at deir ec-medina. The tombs
in the vai.i.ey OF ti it; rings and the temples of
KARNAK, luxor, mi:dint.t naijl and deir i:i.-
ijaiiri have done much to establish the city of
Thebes as the centre of the New Kingdom
empire. The seat of power, however, was actu-
ally the northern city of Memphis, near mod-
ern Cairo, where the royal Residence was
located. Excavations during the 1970s and
1980s at the New Kingdom necropolis of
Memphis (particularly the tombs of the mili-
tary commander iKmi.Miir.is, the treasurer
Maya and the vizier Aper-el) and cpigraphic
yvork in the remains of the magnificent temple
of Ptah have begun to redress the balance in
favour of Memphis.

The style of art that emerged during the so-
called \m\rv\ period, yvhich roughly corre-
sponded to the reign of AkMENATEN
(1352-1336 nc), deserves special mention. The
painting, relief and statuary of this period
yverc all characterized by an obsessive empha-
sis on the god VEEN and the royal family, with
the king and his familv sometimes being

shoyvn in unusually intimate scenes. Both the
king and his subjects yvere represented with
unusual facial and bodily features, and a new
canon of proportions served to exaggerate
these physical extremes.

After the end of the New Kingdom, the
rapidly changing artistic styles of the first mil-
lennium BC demonstrate, above all, that
Egyptian art could assimilate neyv possibilities
while retaining its essential character and
integrity. The Egyptians of the Late Period
(747-332 bc), under attack from all sides,
attempted to revive the classic images of the
Old and Middle Kingdoms, yvhich must have
symbolized a lost sense of stability and cer-
tainty amid the political turmoil. The green
basalt statue of the naval officer Udjahorresnel
demonstrates that the native Egyptian officials
were as adaptable as their yvorks of art; it bears
a detailed description of his activities both in
the reigns of the native Egyptian kings au.viosi,
ii (570-526 bc) and psamtek hi (526-525 bc)
and in the ensuing period of Persian rule,
when he served under Darius t (522-486 tsc)
(see PERSIA).

After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander
Tin; grf.at (332-323 bc), the nature of
Pharaonic art was adapted to create a compro-
mise between the needs of the native
Egyptians and the preferences of the new
Ptolemaic (and later Roman) rulers. Some of
the largest surviving religious buildings — the
temple of Isis at i'iiii.ai: and (hat of Horns at
Edfu - were constructed during this period of
over seven hundred years, but the reliefs were
beginning to appear mass-produced and
repetitive. Although such Greco-Roman
reliefs yvere increasingly poorly formulated
and executed, suggesting an Egyptian priest-
hood that was descending into obscurantism
and uncertainty, there are nevertheless indica-
tions of a skilful patterning of text and icon-
ography yvhich helps to compensate for the
apparent aesthetic decline. At the same time,
however, there were neyv cultural elements
absorbed into Egypt from the Mediterranean
world, from the eyu \i mummy paintings
(yvooden funerary portraits painted in a mix-
ture of wax and pigment knoyvn as encaustic)
to the civic architecture of cities such as
Alexandria and Antinoopolis.

From the Middle Ages onwards, after cen-
turies in the shadows, Egyptian art was gradu-
ally rediscovered by Arab and European trav-
ellers. After the sixteenth century there were
European revivals of Egyptian artistic and
architectural styles. Specific events produced
waves of public reaction and interest: the
influence of Howard Carter's discovery of the
tomb of Tutankhamun on the art and design of

ASHMU NEIN, EL-

ASSYRIANS

Europe in the 1920s is well known, but com-
parable levels of interest were also provoked by
the re-erection of the Vatican obelisk at St
Peter's in 1586. Similarly, the Napoleonic
campaigns in Egypt and the publication of the
work of his savants (see ix;i ttoi.ogy) gave rise-
to Egvptianizing decorative art. The arrival in
London of the 'Younger Memnon' (die upper
section of a colossal statue of RAMESES n) in
1818 and the opening of the Egyptian Court at
Crystal Palace in 1854 were also important
events in terms of the western reaction to
Egyptian art. For discussion of Egyptian
architecture see palaces; mRUUDS; TEMPLES;
tombs; TOWNS.

K. Lange and M. Hirmer, Egypt: architecture,
sculpture and painting in three thousand yean
(London, 1968).

H. SCHAFER, Principles of Egyptian art, trans.
J. Baines (Oxford, 1974).
C.Al.nRED, Egyptian art (London, 1980).
W. Stevenson Smith, The art and arch it vet are of
ancient Egypt, 2nd cd. (HarmondswoiTh, 1981).
T. G. II. JAMES and W. V. Da\ li:s, Egyptian
sculpture (London, 1983).
T. G. H. James, Egyptian painting (I -ondun,
1985).

G. Robins, Proportion and style in ancient
Egyptian art (London, 1994).

Ashmunein, el-.\w iiermoe-oi.is magna

Asia, western

Geographical area to the east ot the sinai
peninsula and the Red Sea, comprising
Mesopotamia, Arabia, Anatolia and the
Levant. At least as early as the Predynastie
period, Egypt was alreadv trading with these
areas in order to obtain such raw materials as
wood, copper, silver and certain semi-precious
stones that were not available in Egypt. The
Egyptians' principal export to western Asia
appears to have been gold, obtained from
mines in the Eastern Desert and Nubia.

The relationship between the two regions
was not always an amicable one, and the fertil-
ity of the Nile valley made Egypt constantly
attractive to settlers from the less prosperous
lands of western Asia. The Egyptians 1 general-
ly contemptuous view of the Asiatics is exem-
plified by the Instruction for King Merikam
dating to the First Intermediate Period: 'Lo,
the miserable Asiatic, he is wretched because
of the place he is in; short of water, hare of
wood, its paths are many and painful because
of mountains. 1 The 'miserable Asiatics' com-
prised not merely the nomadic bedouin
(Shasu) hut also the more settled peoples
of Syria— Palestine, and although Egyptian
paintings and sculptures generally portrayed

Fragment of wall-painting from the tomb of
Sobehholep a! Thebes, showing Asiatic envoys
bringing gifts to Thutmose n\ 18th Dynasty, 0.1400
hc, pa/n/ed plaster, H. l.l-fm. ft; lUWIO)

the Asiatic as a tribute -bearer or bound cap-
tive, the real relationship must have been a
more complex amalgam of diplomatic and eco-
nomic links.

The LSth-Dvnastv pharaohs extended the
Egyptian 'empire' (perhaps belter described as
'sphere of influence 7 ) in western Asia as far as
the Euphrates, leading to the influx of many
foreign materials, goods and ideas, from the
introduction of glass to the use of the
CUNEIFORM script in diplomatic correspon-
dence (see amarna LETTERS). Gradually, how-
ever, the Asiatic territories broke away from
Egypt and new powers arose such as the HIT-
tites, Assyrians and PERSIANS, the two latter
powers eventuallv conquering not only the
Levant but Egypt itself.

M. RoAl , Cultural alias of Mesopotamia and the
ancient Near East (Oxford, 1 990).

Assyrians

People inhabiting the north-eastern area of
Mesopotamia, centred on the city ol Assur
overlooking the Tigris. They embarked on a
period of imperial expansion between the early
second and early first millennia BC, most
notably from 883 to 612 BC. In 671 BC, during
the reign of Esarhaddon (6S1-669 BC), they

invaded Egypt, having been slung by the
Egyptians' repeated incitement of trouble
among the Assyrian vassal-towns in the
Levant. On this occasion, however, they soon
withdrew, allowing the 25th-Dynasty Kushite
pharaoh Taharqo (690-664 lie) to regain power
temporarily. In 669 BC the new Assyrian ruler,
Ashurbanipal, launched a new r campaign into
Egypt, culminating in the execution of the
rulers of the various small Delta kingdoms,
leaving only NEKAU t of Sals to rule the coun-
try (or Lower Egypt at least) on Assvria's
behalf. In 664 BcTanutamani, the successor of
Taharqo, succeeded to the throne of Kush and
immediately laid claim to Egypt. Proceeding-
north, he was actively welcomed at Aswan and
Thebes, and then marched on Memphis
which he took, slaying Nekau l in the process.
Ashurbanipal retaliated in 664/3 BC, recap-
luring Memphis and finally sackingThebes and
looting its temples, although Tanutamani man-
aged to escape to Nubia. Eswrn.k i (664-610
BC), son of Nekau I, was placed in charge ol the
country, purportedly as an Assyrian vassal, but
actually as an independent ruler. He continued
his father's delicate policy of encouraging-
native Egyptian revival while avoiding con-
flict with his nominal overlords. This period of
revitahzation ended with the invasion of the
Persian king Cambyses in 525 BC. The Assyrian
policy of appointing local vassal kings seems to
have minimized their impact on the societv and
economy of lire Egyptians, particularly when

ASTARTE

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY

compared with the effects of the Persian,

Ptolemaic and Roman regimes.

D. Oates, Studies in the ancient history of northern

Iraq (London, 1968), 19-41 [the early

development of Assyria].

A.J. Svmtnger, 'Assurbanipal and Egypt: a

source sm&fJJQS 94 (1974), 316-28.

— , 'Esarhaddon and Egypt an analysis of the

first invasion of Egypt', Orientalia 43 (1974),

295-326.

N. Grimal, A history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,

1992), 341-5.

A relief block from the palace of Asburhauipal
(c.645 nc), shaming the Assyrian army attacking
an Egyptian town. it. LNm. (WA 12-1928)

religions entities were regarded as microcosms
of the universe itself. Just as the sky-goddess
NUT was thought to spread her star-studded
body over the earth, so she was also considered
to stretch herself protectively over mummies
and the houses of the gods. In the Old
Kingdom, from the reign of the 5th-Dynasty
pharaoh Unas (2375-2345 \n_.) onwards, the
belief that mortals could be reborn in the form
of the circumpolar stars led to die depiction of
large numbers of stars on the ceilings ol the
corridors and chambers of pyramids. Indeed,
one of the utterances in the pyramid texts was
a request for Nut to spread herself over the
deceased so that he might be 'placed among the
imperishable stars' and have eternal life.

As t arte

War-goddess of Syrian origin, probablv intro-
duced into Egypt in the 18th Dynasty
(1550-1295 ii<;), usually portrayed as a naked
woman on horseback wearing a headdress
consisting of the atef crown or bull horns. She
was adopted into the Egyptian pantheon as a
daughter of ra (or sometimes of ftaii) and one
of the consorts of SETH, and she was particu-
larly linked with equestrian and chariotry
skills; like \N"\T {another Syrian goddess wor-
shipped in Egypt) she was considered to pro-
tect the pharaoh's chariot in battle. A stele of
Amenhotep n near the Great Sphinx at Giza,
recording her delight in the young king's rid-
ing skills, is probablv the earliest surviving
Egyptian textual reference lo Astarte.
J. Leclant, Astarte a eheval d'apres les
representations egyptiennes', Syria 37 (1960),
1-67.

R. Stadelmann, Syrisch-palastinische Gottheiten
m Agyptcn (Leiden, 1967), 101-10.

astronomy and astrology

The Egyptians often decorated the ceilings of
their temples, tombs and coffins with depic-
tions of the heavens, since most funerarv and

The astronomical knowledge of the
Egyptian priests and architects at this time is
indicated bv early examples of the ceremony
ni'pedj sites ('stretching the cord'), first attest-
ed on a granite block of the reign of the 2nd-
Dynasty king Khasekhemwy (c.2686 BC),
This method relied on sightings of the Great
Bear and Orion (see sah) constellations,
using an 'instrument of knowing' (merkhet),
which was similar in function to an astrolabe,
and a sighting tool made from the central rib
of a palm leaf, thus aligning the foundations
of the pyramids and sun temples with the
cardinal points, usually achieving an error of
less than half a degree. Although the texts
and reliefs in temples of later periods contin-
ued to describe the enactment of this pro-
cedure (as in the temple of Horus at edfu), it
appears to have become a mere ceremony and
in practice the temples were simply aligned
in relation to the river.

The earliest detailed texts relating to
astronomy are the 'diagonal calendars 1 or 'star
clocks' painted on wooden coffin lids of the
earfy Middle Kingdom and also of the Late
Period. These calendars consisted of thirty-six
columns, listing the thirty-six groups of stars
('decans') into which the night skv was divid-

ed. Each specific decan rose above the horizon
at dawn for an annual period of ten days. The
brightest of these was the dog star Sirius
(known to the Egyptians as the goddess
.sopdet), whose 'heliacal rising' on about 19
July coincided with the annual Nile inunda-
tion and therefore appears to have been
regarded as an astronomical event of some
importance. The god sah, the mythical con-
sort of Sopdet, was the personification of
another decan, the constellation of Orion.

The calendrical system based on decans was
flawed by its failure to take into account die
fact that the Egyptian year was always about
six hours short, adding up to a slippage of ten
days every forty years. It is therefore unlikeh
that the Middle Kingdom 'star clocks' were
ever regarded as a practical means of measur-
ing time. Nevertheless, the decans were later
depicted on the ceilings of tombs and temples,
starting with the tomb of SENENMUT in west-
ern Thebes (tt353; r.1460 bc). The ''astro-
nomical ceilings' in the Osireion of Sety i at
abydos (r.1290 bc), and the tomb of R&MESES
tv (kv2) (f.1150 nc:) in the Valley of the Kings,
include cosmological texts describing the peri-
od of seventy days spent in the undcryvorld by
each decan.

Interior of lite lid of the wooden coffin ofSoler,
showing Nut flanked by signs of the zodiac and
personifications of the 24 hours of the day. Roman
period, 2nd century id, jhimAbdel-Qitrna,
Thebes, l. 2.13 m. (i;a6705)

ASTRO NOMY AND ASTROLOGY

From at least as early as the Middle
Kingdom the Egyptians recognized five of the
planets, portraying them as deities sailing
across the heavens in barks. These L stars that
know no rest' were Jupiter (Horns who limits
the two lands), Mars (Horns of the horizon or
Horus the red), Mercury (Sebegu, a god asso-
ciated with seth), Saturn (Horus, bull of the
skv) and Venus {'the one who crosses 1 or 'god
of the morning 1 ).

The ceilings of many royal tombs in the
Valley of the Kings were decorated with
depictions of the heavens. In the tombs of
Rameses VI, vn and ix (k\9, kyI and kv6
respectively), dating to the second half of the
twelfth century BC, a set of twenty-four seated
figures representing stars were transected by
grids of horizontal and vertical lines, allowing
the passage of time to be measured in terms of
the transits of stars through the sky.

The concept of the horoscope (the belief
that the stars could influence human destiny)
does not seem to have reached Egypt until
the Ptolemaic period. By the first century AD
the Babylonian zodiac, represented on the
ceiling of the chapel of Osiris on the roof of
the temple of Hathor at dendera, had been
adopted. The surviving lists of lucky and
unlucky days appear to have had no connec-
tion with astrology, deriving instead from the
intricacies of religious festivals and mytho-
logical events.

Z. Zaba, L'orientation astronamique dans
ranciemie Egypte, et la precession de i'axe dit monde
(Prague, 1953).

O. NEUGEBAUER and R. PARKER, 'Two demotic
horoscopes',^-! 54 (1968), 231-5.

— , Egyptian astronomical texts, 3 vols
{Providence, 1969).

R. B&RKER, 'Ancient Egyptian astronomy'.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society oj
London 276 (1974), 51-65.

Stele ofSenusret at from Elephantine, describing
the building of a fortress at the site. 12th Dynasty,
c 1874-1855 m, //. 37 cm. (i- \852)

right Plan of the Aswan region.

below At Aswan the Qitbbef el-Hama (the Dome
of the Winds) is actually the Islamic tomb seen on
top of this hill on the west bank, but is widely used
to refer to the area of Old Kingdom tombs cut into
the hillside. The entrances to several of these can be
seen midway up the slope. (>'. T. MTCfiOLSON)

-I r~0 ./J

1 2 3 4km

modern Aswan

temple

Qubbetei-Hawa

famine stele

rock tombs

First Aswan Dam

rock tombs

southern quarries

island of Elephantine

island of Aqilqiyya

temple of Satis

(current site of Philae

Nilometer

temple)

temple of Khnum

island of Philae

Roman temple

temple on the

Ptolemaic temple

island of Biga

unfinished obelisk

island of el-Hesa

northern quarries

High Dam

island of Sehel

New Kalabsha

G. R. HiUGHES, 'An astrologer's handbook in
demotic Egyptian', Egyptological studies in honor
of'R. A. Parker, ed. L. H. Lesko (Hanover and
London, 1986), 53-69.

H. Beinlich, 'Stern', Lexikon der Agyptologie VI,
cd. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westcndorf
(Wiesbaden, 1986), 11-14.

Aswan (anc. Swenct, Syene)
Site in Upper Egypt, situated immediately to
the north of the first Nile cataract, now at the
northern tip of Lake Nasser. It consists of
three basic components: the town, temples
and granite quarries of Aswan proper on the

ASWAN HIGH DAM

ATEN

eastern bank of the Nile; the rock-cut tombs of
Qiibbet eJ-Hawa on the western bank; and the
town, temples and kilometer of Elephantine,
an island in the centre of the river. Apart from
two small Greco-Roman temples there are few
surviving remains of Aswan itself since the
area has continued to be occupied up to mod-
ern times. The tombs of the governors of
Aswan, at Qubbet el-Hawa, which date mainly
to the Old and Middle Kingdoms (2686-1650
BC), contain important biographical reliefs and
inscriptions. The island of f lephantrne has
been excavated by a German team since the
1970s; their results show the steady expansion
of the settlement from a small Early Dynastic
village and temple to the much larger town of
the Roman period,

E. EDEL, Die h'eisen»ri<bcr tier <J_nbbel el-Hawa hei
Assttan (Wiesbaden, 1 967—).
E. Bresqani and S. Pernigotti, _ issum: il
tempo tolemaieo di Isi. 1 blocchl decorali e isrritli
(Pisa, 1978).

Aswan High Dam

An extensive artificial reservoir was created in
Lower Nubia, when the first Aswan dam was
constructed (and heighlened in three phases)
between 1902 and 1933, necessitating a cam-
paign to survey Nubian sites before they were
submerged. When work began on the new
Aswan High Dam in 1960, the creation of Lake
Nasser, one of the largest reservoirs in I he-
world, was initiated. A UNESCO-co-ordinated
operation was therefore launched, not only to
record the Nubian monuments threatened bv
this much more extensive flooding but also to
dismantle and move certain monuments
(including mil. at., aru sembei. and kai.abs.iia)
to higher ground "before the completion of the
dam in 1971.

A. E. Wi'.Ki am., Report mi the antiquities of Lower
Nubia (Cairo, 1907).

T. Savk-.S(")iji'.riii;rgii (ed.). Temples and tombs of
ancient Nubia (London, I9S7).

Asyut {anc. Djawty; L\kopuIis)
Capital of [he thirteenth Upper Egyptian
nome (province), located roughly midway
between Cairo and Aswan. Despite numerous
textual references to the importance of the
Pharaonic town of Asyut and its lemple of the
jackal-god ui.i'u \\u:t, the excavated remains
are restricted primarily to the rock-tombs of
the local elite, dating from the 9th Dynasty to
the Ramesside period (c.2160-1069 bc). The
biographical texts on the walls of the First
Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom
rock-tombs provide historical information on
the struggle between the rulers of iif.rak-
eeoi'oi.ls magna and THEBES. The tomb of the

12th-Dynasty nomarch Djefahapy contains
uniquely detailed legal texts of endowment
and was later re-used as a cult centre of

WEPWAWET.

F. L. Giui'Tith, The inscriptions of Shi ami Dec
ffifkk (London, 1889).

G. A. Ri'.lsm'.r, 'The tomb of Hcpzefa, nomarch
ofSmr\^./5(19I9),79-9 ( S.

H. Thompson, A family archive from Siiti
(Oxford, 1934).

Aten

Deity represented in the form of the disc or
orb of the sun, the cult of which was particu-
larly promoted during the reigns of
Amenhotep ev/AKHENATEN (1352-1336 BC)

Akhenaten (left) and Nefertiti (right) worship the
Aten (top left), whose rays end in hands, some of
them extending to the offerings filled in front of
_ Ikhenaten. The figures are heavily damaged,
partly due to defects in the stone and partly as a
result of the reaction against the so-called heresy of
Akhenaten. from the tomb of Tutu (/■: t8) w the
southern group of hnarna. (/'. /; \K;tl<iLSt>x)

and Smcnkhkara (1338-1336 sc). The close
links between the disc and the sun-god have
led to some uncertainty as to whether the Aten
was treated as a divine being in its own right.
There is also a certain amount of evidence to
suggest that Akhenaten may even have equat-
ed the Aten with his own father, AMEMIOTEP in
(1390-1352 bc). Earlier pharaohs had been
associated with the Aten, as in the case of

thutmose l (1504-1492 BC), who was por-
trayed in his temple atTombos in Nubia wear-
ing the sun-disc and followed by the hiero-
glyphic sign for L god\

The popularity of the Aten slowly grew
[hroLighout the New Kingdom and the char-
acteristic iconography of the disc with rays in
the form of outstretched arms had already
appeared in the time of Amenhotep n
(1427-1400 BC). The Aten was particularly
favoured by Amenhotep in (1390-1352 BC),
during whose reign there is evidence of the
presence of priests of Aten at iieliopoeis (the
traditional centre of the worship of the
sun-god ra). He akso incorporated references
to the Aten in the names he gave to his palace
at mai.kata, a division of his army and a
pleasure boat.

However, it was under Amenhotep i\ thai
the cult of the Aten reached its peak. On his
accession as sole ruler, the Aten became the
'sole 1 god, and a temple, the Per-Atcn, was
built on the perimeter of the temple of Amun
at KARNAk. This included at least three sanctu-
aries, one of which was called the Hwt-benben
('mansion of the benben 1 ). Within a short time
the cult of Amun appears to have been severe-
ly curtailed and eventually proscribed, and the
Aten began to be promoted as the sole, exclu-
sive deity.

Around the fifth year of his reign,
Amenhotep iv took the next logical step, which
was to create a new capital city with its own
temples dedicated to the cult of the Aten. He
called this new foundation Akhctatcn ('the
horizon of the disc 1 ) and located il in a virgin
site in Middle Egypt thai was untainted by the
worship of other gods (see ee-amarna). The
king changed his name and titles from
Amenhotep to Akhenaten, although elements
of his lilies which already concerned the sun-
god (rather than Amun) were left unchanged.
His acknowledgement of the cults of the sun-
god included the provision of a burial place
for a mnevis bull (the physical manifestation
of Ra) at el-Amarna, although this tomb
remains undiscovered and was perhaps never
completed. Although Akhenaten is sometimes
regarded as the first proponent of monothe-
ism, his relationship to the cult of the Aten
and the rest of the Egyptian pantheon must be
regarded firmly in the context of his lime. Erik
Hornung's view of the cult of the Aten as a
form of henotheism, in which one god was
effectively elevated above many others, is
probably closer to the mark.

Two major temples to the Aten were built
at el-Amarna, although, unlike major Theban
temples, they were built largely of mud-
brick, perhaps with the intention of later

ATEN

ATEN_

rebuilding ihcm in stone. The Per-Aten,

described by its excavators as the Great
Temple, was an open, unroofed structure
covering an area of about 800 x 300 m at the
northern end of the central city. The Hwt-
Aten (literally 'mansion of the Aten 1 hut usu-
ally described by the excavators as the Small
Aten Temple} was a smaller building but of
similar design; both were strewn with offer-
ing tables, and the first court of the small
temple contained a massive mud-brick altar,
which may have been one of the first monu-
ments to be erected in the new city.

Many of the rock-tombs of the elite at el-
Amarna, which were excavated at the northern
and southern ends ol the bay of cliffs to the east
of the city, have prayers to the Aten inscribed
on the jambs of their doorways. Most of these
prayers appear to he extracts from a longer
composition, the Hymn to the Aten which
some scholars believe to have been composed
bv Akhenaten himself. The most complete
surviving version of this hymn was inscribed
in the tomb of \\ , 'superintendent of the royal
horses', who was probably the brother of
Queen tiy (Akhenaten's mother) and later
succeeded TUTANKHAMUN on the throne. This
hymn, which has several antecedents in earlier
ISth-Dynasty hymns to the sun-god, has been
compared with the Biblical Psalm 104,
although the distinct parallels between the two
are usually interpreted simply as indications of
the common literary heritage of Egypt and
rsitAi'.].. The hymn also stresses Akhenaten 's
role as intermediary between the Aten and the
populace, by which means he perhaps hoped
to avoid the creation of a strong priesthood
such as that of Amun. There was rigid official
adherence to the cult of the Aten among the
elite at el-Amarna, many of whom built
shrines dedicated to the new royal familv and
the Aten in the gardens of their villas. It is
clear, however, that traditional religious cults
continued to be observed, perhaps covertly,
even among the inhabitants of the city at cl-
Amarna itself. In the 'workmen's village 1 , on
the eastern edge of the city, numerous amulets
of traditional gods have been found, as well as
small private chapels probably dedicated to
ancestor worship and showing no traces of the
official religion.

On Akhenaten 's death there was a reversion
to the worship of Amun, and attempts were
made to remove all traces of the cull of the
Aten. The city at el-Amarna was abandoned
a nd, perhaps as early as the reign of horemi EE8
(1323-1295 BC), it began lo be demolished,
often leaving only the plaster foundations of

: ceremonial buildings. The stone talatat

the <

bloeks from the temples of the Aten were then

re-used, primarily as rubble filling the pylons
of new 7 temples dedicated to the traditional
official cults. Tn the reliefs at el-Amarna and
other sites, the names and faces of Akhenaten,
his queen M'.it.rtiti and all those associated
with this 'heresy 1 were defaced in the after-
math of the Amarna period.
A. PiANkOi'i', 'Les grandes compositions
religicLises du \ouvel Empire et la reforme
d'Amarna\ BIFAO 62 (1 964), 207-18.
D. B. Redford, 'The sun-disc in Akhenaten's
program: its worship and its antecedents, i\
/-//?CY:' 15(1976), 47-61.
— , 'The sun-disc in Akhenaten 's program: its
worship and its antecedents, \\\j-\RCE 17
(1982), 21-38.
-, . Ikheaatcn the heretic king (Princeton, 1 984),
157-84.

C. ALDRKl i, _ ikhenalen, king of Egypt (London,
1988), 257-48.

Athribis sw 1 1 1 i tcrxa

Atrib, Tell (ane. Hwt-Heryib, Athribis)
Town site in the central Delta region near the
modern town of Benha, about 40 km north of
Cairo. It has been greatly reduced over the
years through local farmers 1 large-scale
removal of sehakh (ancient mud-brick re-used
as fertilizer), although in 1924, in the course of
such plundering, a large cache of jewellery
dating to the Late Period (747-332 is<;) was
discovered. A Polish archaeological expedition
under the direction of Pascal Vermis excavated
part /of the post-Pharaonic town during the
1980s and 1990s.

According to surviving texts, Tell Atrib was
occupied at least as early as the 4th Dynasty
(2613-2494 uc), hut no remains earlier than
the 12th Dynasty (1985-1795 uc) have been
found. The principal god worshipped in the
Athribis region was 1 lorus Khenty-khety, rep-
resented sometimes as a falcon-headed man
and sometimes as a crocodile. The major mon-
uments at the site were a temple dating to the
time of \ii\iosi. n (570-526 uc), the tomb of
Queen Takhut (e.5% bc) and a large settle-
ment and cemetery of the Ptolemaic and
Roman periods (332 Be— AD 395).

The texts indicate that there was once also
an important temple of Amenhotep in
(1390-1352 hc) ai the site, perhaps because
this was the home-town of the influential chief
architect, vmf.muotf.p son OF HAPU. Although
nothing remains of the temple in situ, it would
probably have incorporated the statue of a lion
now in the collection of the British Museum,
which is inscribed with the name of Rameses u
(1279-1213 Be), although it originally bore the
cartouche of Amenhotep ill. This sculpture is

similar in appearance to a pair of lions of the

reign of Amenhotep ill from soi.in.

A. S.GWE, 'Short report on the excavations of die

Institute of Archaeology Liverpool at Athribis

(Tell Atrib) 1 , ASAE 38(1938), 523-32.

P. Vi.rnls, Athri&is: textes el doentnents rehuifi a la

geographic, mix culics el a J'histoire d'une ville clu

Delia egyplien ii Vepoqne pharamiique (Cairo,

1978).

K. Mtsi.iwii'.c andT IIkkisiui, 'Polish

archaeological activities at Tell Atrib in 1 985',

The anhaeology of the Nile Delia: prohlenis and

priorities, ed. E. C. M. van den Brink

(Amsterdam, 1988), 177 205.

Atum

Creator-god and solar deity of iieliopolis,
where he was gradually syncrctized with the
sun-god ua, to form the god Ra-Atum.
According to the Hcliopoliian theology, Atum
came into being before heaven and earth were
separated, rising up from NUN, the waters of
chaos, to form the primeval mound. His name
means 'the all', signifying his creation and
summation of all that exists.

Atum's creation of the universe was concep-
tualized in terms of a familv of nine gods known
as the Heliopolitan ENNEAD. Thus the two off-
spring of Atum, si if (air) and tefmjt (mois-
ture), became the parents of GSB (earth) and
NUT (sky), and the grandparents of OSIRIS, tSJS,
SET1 1 and \kpi iti ivs. Atum was said to have pro-
duced Shu and Tefnut by copulating with his
hand or, according to other sources, spitting
them into being. There has been some debate as
to whether AtunTs act of procreation constitut-
ed masturbation or copulation, in that his hand
seems to have represented the female principle.
Both Alum and his hand were therefore por-
trayed as a divine couple on coffins of the First
Intermediate Period. Similarly, the title 'god's
hand' was adopted by Theban priestesses sup-
posedly married to the god amun.

Atum was regarded as a protective deity,
particularly associated with the rituals of king-
ship. It was Atum who lifted the dead king
from his pyramid to the heavens in order to
transform him into a star-god, and in later
times he protected the deceased during the
journey through the underworld.

He is usually depicted as an anthropomor-
phic deity often wearing the double crown.
The animals particularly sacred to him were
the lion, the bull, the iciinflmon and the
lizard, while he was also believed to be mani-
fested in the SCARAB, which emerged from its
ball of dung just as ATUM appeared from the
primeval mound. Sometimes he was portrayed
in the essentially primordial form of a snake,
which was the appearance that he was expect-

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Detail of the funerary stele of
Pcdiamennebnesullaipy, showing the deceased (on
the far right) worshipping the sun-god in three
separate forms: lla-Horakhty, Alum (third from
the right, wearing the douhle crown) and Khepri
(with a scarab beetle on his head), followed by the
funerary deities Osiris, IstS, Nephthys and the
jackal-headed Anubis. 30th Dynasty or early
Ptolemaic period, 4th-3rd centuries BG, painted
plaster on mood, from Thebes, n. 74 cm. (/■: \8462)

ed to adopt when the cosmos finally collapsed,

returning' everything to its original primeval

state.

K. Sethi:, L Atum als Ichneumon 1 , ZAS 63

(1928), 50-3.

E. Brunner-Tralt, 'Atum als Bogenschiitze',

P. Di'.RQLArx, 'Le demiurge et la balance',

Religions en Egypte hellenistique et romaine:
colloque. de Strasbourg (Paris, 1969), 31—+.
E. HornijNG, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 43-7.

autobiographies see literature

Avaris see tell ei -dab'a

Ay (1.327-1323 m:)

T.ate 18th-D) nasty ruler who came to the
throne after the short reign of tutankhamun
(1336—1327 BC). In his earlier career he was
an important official during the reign of
AKHENATEN (1352-1336 bc). Like yuya, the
father of Queen in, he came from akiimim
and held the titles 'superintendent of the royal
horses' and 'god's father'; it has therefore been

argued that he may well have been Tiv's
brother, Akhenaten's uncle and perhaps uncle
or great-uncle of Tutankhamun. It has even
been suggested that the unusual office of
'god's father' could be held only by the king's
father-in-law, which might have made Ay the
father of m.I'Ertite

Whatever the truth behind these theories,
there is good evidence to show that he was
closely involved in the events of the Amarna
period, and had begun to construct one of the
largest tombs at EL-AMARNA, containing the
longer of the two surviving versions of the
Hymn to the At en (see aten). The last decora-
tion in Ay's el-Amarna tomb seems to have
taken place in the ninth year of Akhenaten's
reign. The progress of his career between then
and the end of Akhenaten's reign is known
from a number of inscribed funerary items,
showing that he rose to the position of vizier
and royal chancellor, as well as acquiring the
unusual epithet, 'doer of right'.

After the reigns of Akhenaten and
Smenkhkara both Tutankhamun and Ay began
to reform the religious heresies of the Amarna
period but, because of Ay's close connections
with his predecessors, his reign of four or five
years is usually regarded as a continuation of
the same grip on the throne. On the wall of
the burial chamber of the illustrious smaller
tomb in which Tutankhamun was actually
buried. Ay is depicted as the loyal heir admin-
istering the final rituals to the royal mummy.
The real break was to come with the reign of
his successor, the general DTOREMKEB, wtin had
no family links with the Thutmosid royal
family (except possibly through his wife
iVlulnedjmet).

Abandoning his unfinished tomb at el-
Amarna, Ay usurped a second tomb in a west-
ern branch of the valley of the kings (kv23),
which had probably been intended for
Tutankhamun (and was perhaps originallv the
tomb of Prince Thutmosc, who predeceased
his father Amenhotep in). The scenes in the
tomb portray him with his first wife Tcy rather
than Ankhcsenpaaten, one of the daughters of
Akhenaten, whom he is thought to have mar-
riedin order to consolidate his claim to the
throne. One unique feature of this tomb is the
presence ol a scene of hunting in the marshes,
which was usuallv found in nobles' tombs
rather than the burial place of a pharaoh.
N, de Garis Dames, The rock tombs of el-Amarna
VI (London, 1908), 16-24, 28-35.
P. E. Newberry, 'King Ay, the successor of
Tutankhamun\.7£_i 18 (1932), 50-2.
K. C. Seele, 'King Ay and the close of the
Amarna period', JNES 14(1955), 168-SO.
O. J. Schaden, 'Clearance of the tomb of King
Ay(\\\23)\JARCE2\ (1984), 39-64.
C. Aldred, Akhenaten: king of Egypt (London,
1988), 298-301.

BADARI, EL-

The Egyptians considered thai each individ-
ual person was made up of five distinct parts:
the physical body, the bit, the ka, the nam!-;
and the shadow. The ba has similarities with
our concept of 'personality 1 , in that it com-
prised all those non-physical attributes which
made one human being unique. However, the
concept of the bet also referred to power, and
could be extended to gods as well as inanimate
objects. Bit was therefore also the term used
for what might be described as the physical
manifestations of certain gods, so that the
Memphite APIS bull was the ha of osiRi.s; simi-
larly the four sons of HORUS were his ba.

Detail from the Book of the Dead of hlunefer,
Consisting of the vignette associated with Chapter
17, which shows a ba-bird on a shrine-shaped
plinth. 19th Dynasty, c.1285 nc, painted papyrus,
from Thebes. (m9901)

It was necessary for the deceased to journey
from the tomb to rejoin his ka if he was to
become transformed into an akh, and since
the physical body could not do this it was the
duty of the ba. The Egyptian names of the
Jabiru stork and the ram both had the same
phonetic value as ba, therefore the hieroglyph-
's signs for these creatures were used to refer
to it in writing. It is possible that this acciden-
tal association with the stork led to the depic-
tion of the ba as a bird with a human head and
often also with human arms. The Egyptians
regarded migratory birds as incarnations of

the ba, flying freely between tomb and under-
world. However, it was also believed that the
ba could adopt any form it wished, and there
were numerous funerary spells to assist this
process of transformation.

In order for the physical bodies of the
deceased to survive in the afterlife, they had to
be reunited with the ba every night, and Spell
89 of die book of THE DEAD recommended that
a golden /'(/-bird should be placed on the chest
of the mummy in order to facilitate this
reunion. The ba-hixd. was also incorporated
into the decoration of private coffins from the
21st Dynasty onwards. Far from correspond-
ing to the modern western concept of a 'spirit'
{as it is sometimes translated), the ba was
closely linked to the physical body, to the
extent that it too was considered to have phys-
ical needs for such pleasures as food, drink and
sexual activity.

E. Wolf-Brinkmanx, Versuch einer Deutung des
Begrijfes 'ba' unhand der UberMejfowtg der
Friihzett und des Alien Reiehes (Freiburg, 1 968).
L. V. Zabkar, A study of the ba concept in ancient
Egyptian texts (Chicago, 1968).
H. Goi:urCKJi, The report about the dispute of a man
mth his bn (P. Berlin 3024) (Baltimore, 1 970).
J. P. ALLEN, 'Funerary texts and their meaning'.
Mummies and magic, ed. P. Lacovara, S. D'Auria,
and C. H. Rciehrig (Boston, 1988), 38-49.
E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredcck
(New York, 1992), 179-84.

Babylonia

Name given to the southern part of
MESOPOTAMIA from the time of Hammurabi
(1792-1750 bc) until the Christian era. Its
capital was the city of Babylon, die site of
which is located about 80 km south of modern
Baghdad. The country covered those areas
described as SUMER and akkad during the
third millennium BC, and like them its lan-
guage (Babylonian) was written in the
CUNEIFORM script.

In the late seventh century BC, the expan-
sion of Babylonian power into Syria-Palestine
clashed with Egyptian interests there. The
Saite pharaoh Nekau n (610-595 bc) opposed
the Babylonian advance, but in the battle of
Carchemish, the armies of Nabopolassar, led
by his son Nebuchadnezzar si, defeated the
Egyptian army, thus effectively ending Nekau
ti's hold on Syria. In 601 bc, however, the
armies of Nebuchadnezzar were driven back
from the borders of the Delta by an Egyptian
army including greek mercenaries. In the
reign of AHMQSE it (570-526 bc) an alliance was
established between Egypt and Babylonia but
by then the Egyptians were threatened by the
growth of PERSIA-

R. Koi.df.wfa', The excavations at Babylon

(London, 1914).

H. Figulla and W. J. Martin, Letters and

documents of the Old Babylonian period (T .undon

and Philadelphia, 1953).

J. Oates, Babylon, 2nd ed. (London, 1986).

D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in

ancient lanes (Princeton, 1992), 430-69.

Badari, el-
Area of Upper Egypt between Matmar and
Qau, including numerous Predynastic ceme-
teries (notably Mostagedda, Deir Tisa and the
cemetery of cl-Badari itself), as well as at least
one early Predynastic settlement at
llammamia. The finds from cl-Badari form
the original basis for the Badarian period
(c. 5500-4000 BC), the earliest phase of the
Upper Egyptian PREDYNASTIC PERIOG. The cl-
Badari region, stretching for 30 km along the
east bank of the Nile, was first investigated by
Guy Br unton and Gertrude Caton-
Thompson between 1922 and 1931. Most of
the cemeteries in the Badarian region have
yielded distinctive pottery vessels (particular-
ly red-polished ware with blackened tops), as
well as terracotta and ivory anthropomorphic
figures, slate palettes, stone vases and flint
tools. The contents of the Predynastic ceme-
teries at el-Badari have been subjected to a
number of statistical analyses attempting to
clarify the chronology and social history of the
Badarian period.

G. Brunton et al., Qiiit and Badari, 3 vols
(London, 1927-30).

G. Brunton and G. Caton-Tiiompson, The
Badarian civilisation and prehistoric remains near
Badari (London, 1928).

G. Brunton, Mostagedda and the Tasian culture
(London, 1937).
—.Matmar (London, 1948).
W. Kaiser, 'Zur Siidausdchnung der
vorgeschichtliehen Deltakuhuren und zur
fruhen Entwicklung Oberiigyp tens', MDAIK 41
(1985), 61-87.

D. L. HOLMES, 'Archaeological cultural resources
and modern land-use activities; some
observations made during a recent survey in the
Badari region, Egypt',. JARCE 29 (1992), 67-80.

Bahariya Oasis

Fertile depression in the northeastern Libyan
Desert 200 km west of the Nile. The archaeo-
logical remains date primarily from the early
New Kingdom to the Roman period (r.1550
BC— AB 395). Near the modern town of Bawit
are the tombs of several 26th-Dynasty
Egyptian governors of the oasis, the 19th-
Dvnastv tomb of the provincial governor
Amenhotep Huy and a necropolis of sacred

BALAT

BALLANA CULTURE/PERIOD

birds associated with the worship of
thoth and horus, dating to the 26th Dynasty
and Greco-Roman period. Also near Bawit are
the remains of a Roman triumphal arch and
two temples, one dating to the reign of Apries
(589-570 BC) and the other to the time of
ALEXANDER THE GREAT (332—323 BC), At the
southern tip of the oasis is el-Hayz, where a
Roman garrison, a basilica and a small settle-
ment dating to the Roman and Christian peri-
ods (i*.30 BC— AD 641) have been excavated.
A. Fakhry, Bahiia oasis, 2 vols (Cairo, 1942-50).
— , The oases ofligypt u (Cairo, 1974).
L. Gtddy, Egyptian oases: Bahariya, Dakhla,
Farafra and Kharga timing pharaonic limes
(Warminster, 1987).

Balat sec DAKHLA OASIS

Ballana and Qustul

Pair of Nubian elite necropoleis on either side
of the Nile some 15 km south of \isl SIMBEL
and now submerged beneath Lake Nasser. An
a-grouf cemetery of elite tumulus graves dat-
ing to the earlv third millennium BC was exca-
vated at Qustul by an expedition from the
Chicago Oriental Institute.

Ballana is the tvpe-site of the Ballana period
(or 'X-Group phase', c. AD 350-700), which
lasted from the decline of the Meroitic empire
to the arrival of Christianity. Many of the dis-
tinctive tumulus burials, nearly two hundred
of wdiich have been excavated, contained evi-
dence of HUMAN" SACRitiCt; in the form of the
bodies of retainers buried alongside the pre-
Christian rulers of Lower Nubia. The drift
sand and low scrub covering the tumuli at

Pottery from Qiisr Ibrim, including examples of the
tall fooled goblets thai are the most typical vessel
forms of the Ba/lunti period. 5th-blh centuries .id,
ii. oftallest vessel 12.2 cm. (m66SW, 67980.
71821, 71822)

Ballana have helped to preserve the graves

from the widespread plundering that affected

the earlier elite Kushite cemeteries of merge

and napata.

W. B. Emery and L. P. Kim w. The royal tombs of

Ballana ami Qiistui (Cairo, 1938).

B. G. Trigger, 'The royal tombs at Qustul and

Ballana and their Meroitic antecedents',^.,-/ 55

(1969), 117-28.

— , 'The Ballana culture and the coming of

Christianity', Africa in Antiquity: the arts of

ancient Nubia and the Sudan l, ed. S. W'enig (New

York, 1978), 107-11.

W. Y. Adams, Nubia: corridor lit Africa, 2nd ed.

(London and Princeton, 1984), 404-15.

Part of u granite

representation of a sa
bark, from the sunclu
of _ fmun at Kurnak.
The various elements
of the sculpture
make up a three-
dimensional
writing of
Mutemipiya,
the name oj
Amenhotcp til's
mother. 18th Dynasty.

clMQ&c, i. 2.13 m. (ba43)

B. Wtl.I.I \M.S, Excavations between Abu Simbel and
the Sudan frontier t: The A-Grnup royal cemetery
at Oiislul: cemetery L, Oriental Institute Nubia
Expedition in (Chicago, 1986).
— , Excavations between Abu Simbel and the
Sudan frontier l \: Noubadian X-Group remains
from royal cemeteries, Oriental Institute Nubia
Expedition ix (Chicago, 1991).

Ballana culture/period j

QUSTUL

>e BALLANA AND

bark, bark shrine

Since the principal artery of communication
in ancient Egypt was the Nile, and the boai
was the most obvious form of transport, it w as
perhaps inevitable that the 'bark' should have
been the accepted vehicle in which Egyptian
gods were transported from one shrine to
another. These divine barks were similar in
shape to Nile boats, except that their prows
and sterns were adorned with the aegis of the
god in question, and the cabin was replaced by
a nao.s containing the cult image of the deitv
Thus the bark of amun, for instance, was dec-
orated with the head of a ram at either end.

These barks were usually kept in the inner
sanctuary of the temple, either resting on a
plinth before die nans, as in the temple of
Horns at edfu, or inside a bark shrine, as"-at
the temples oJKARNAK and LUXOR. There were
often three such shrines in a row, one for each
member of a divine TRIAD (group of three
deities). The barks themselves were scale
models of genuine boats, and are often depict-
ed in the act of being carried aloft on poles by
priests, during FESTIVALS and processions. As
well as the principal shrines in the temples,
there were also small bark shrines along the
routes of ritual processions, usualh described
as 'resting places', or 'way stations 1 .

RIOD pASKETRY AND CORDAGE

BASTA, TELL

> I

In the case of the festivals of Amun at
Thebes, particularly the Valley Festival and
the Opet Festival, these model barks were
placed on ornate river-going barks to make
their journey to the Theban west bank and to
Luxor temple respectively. Similarly the bark
of ii.vnioR travelled from her temple at
DENDERA to that ofllorus at Edfu for the cele-
bration of the 'feast of the beautiful meeting',
a divine union.

A more specialized funerary form of ritual
boat, with origins stretching back at least as
early as the 1st Dynasty at unixis and
saqcjara, is the SOLAS BARK, which may have
been intended to carry the deceased through
the netherworld. The best surviving example
is that of Khufu at GIZA, which was discovered
in a pit beside the pyramid and has now been
reconstructed ;';/ situ.
G. Legrain, 'Lc logement et transport des
barques saerees et des statues des dieux dans
guelques temples egyptiens 1 , B1FAO 13 (1917),
1-76.

G- FoucART, l Un temple flottant: le vaisseau d'or
d\Amon-Ra\ Fondation Eugene Plot: Monuments
ei memoires pubiifc pur VAcademie des
Inscriptions et Belies Let Ires 25 (1921-2), 143-69.

K. A. Kitchen, 'Barke\ Lexikan derAgyptologie
I, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. VVestendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1975), 619-25.

basketry and cordage

A class of artefacts that have frequently been
overlooked by archaeologists in the past, part-
ly because, even in the arid conditions of most
Egyptian sites, thev are not preserved in the
same quantities as pottery and stone vessels.
Although such organic materials as basketrv,
matting (both for floor coverings and roofing)
and rope clearlv played a significant role in the
daily lives of the ancient Egyptians, only a
small percentage has survived in the archaeo-
logical record, perhaps because discarded bas-
kets would often have been burned, whereas
stone and ceramics are difficult to destroy
com pi etc tv.

The Egyptians' uses of baskets ranged from
small disposable bags to large decorated stor-
age baskets for clothes, the ancient Egyptian
equivalent of the wardrobe or linen closet.
The wide variety of uses is partly due lo the
scarcity of wood in Egypt, whereas the materi-
als used to make baskets and rope were readily
available in the Nile valley, Rope was made
from tall strong grasses (e.g. Desmctstackya bi-

T&o coiled baskets and a ,
basket. (ha6346, 5918,5

octangular papyr
'95) '

<-frf>re

pinna/a and Jnipcra/a cylindrica) or from the
rind of the papyrus stem {Cyperits papyrus).
Baskets were made from the leaves of the dom
palm (Hyphaena thebttica), and, increasingly
from the Late Period onwards, the date palm
{Phoenix dactylifera). In modern Egypt, virtu-
ally all baskets are made from date-palm
leaves, while rope and mats are made from the
coarse fibres at the bases of the leaves. From
the Ptolemaic period onwards, rushes (Jaunts
species) were used for making baskets and mats.
The basket-making techniques employed
from the ATesoIithie period onwards were coil-
ing, twining and, to a lesser extent, weaving. In
the Ptolemaic and Rinnan periods, a number of
other mediods and styles emerged, including
plaiting and stake-and-strand basketry. Many of
these techniques are still used in modern times,
therefore the evidence provided by surviving
ancient basketry can often be supplemented

and better understood through the ethno-
archaeological study of modern basket-makers.
W. Z. WEND8ICI I, Who is afraid of basketry? A
guide to recording basketry and cordage for
archaeologists and anthropologists (Leiden, 1991).

Basta, Tell (ana Per-Bastet, Bubastis)
Site of a temple and town in the eastern Nile
Delta, about (SO km to the northeast of Cairo.
It flourished from the 4th Dynasty to the end
of the Roman period (c.2613 Be— AD 395), but
the main monument at the site is the red gran-
ite temple of the cat-goddess rvstht, which
was documented bv the Greek historian
Herodotus in the fifth century BC. The results
of Edouard Naville's excavations in 1887—9
provided archaeological evidence confirming
many of the details of this description. The

Plan of the site of Tell Basta.

modern Zagazig

Middle Kingdom
palace

tomb of Hori I

tomb of Hori II *

temple of Mihos
temple of Bastet

BASTA, TELL

BAT

Part of a granite temple gateway from Bubastis,
showing Osorkon it and Karoma, c.874-850 8C,
it. 1.75m. (n.11077)

site also includes the £tf-temples of the 6th-
Dynasty pharaohs Teti (2345—2323 bc) and
Pepy i (2321-2287 bc) and a pair of 'jubilee
chapels' built by Amenemhat m (1855-1808
BC) and Amenhotep ui (1390-1352 bc) respec-
tively, as well as temples dedicated to the gods
atum and Mihos. To the north of the city are a
series of vaulted mud-brick cat cemeteries and
adjacent ateliers. A 19th-Dynasty hoard of
gold and silver vessels and jewellery was dis-
covered at the site in 1906 (now in the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo).

The city reached its peak when its rulers
established the 22nd Dynasty (c.945-715 bc).
Although the capital during this period was
probably still TANIS (and to some extent MEM-
PHIS), Bubastis must have taken on greater sig-
nificance as the home city of the new kings of
Egypt, osorkon I (924—889 uc), for instance,
appears to have built a hypostyle hall in the
temple of Bastet, as well as decorating existing
walls with a number of new reliefs and con-
structing a small temple to Atum outside the
main precincts. Osorkon n (874-850 bc:) added
a new court to the main temple in celebration

Of his S£D FESTIVAL.

E. Navillk, Bubastis (1887-1889) (London,

1891).

L.Habachi, Tell Baste (Cairo, 1957).

C. C.Vav SiCLENni, 'The eityofBasta: an

interim report 1 , NARCE 128 (1984), 28-39.

Bastet

Cat-goddess and local deity of the town of
Bubastis (tell basta), whose name means
'she of the bast [ointment jar]'. She was
regarded not only as the daughter of the sun-
god but also as the more protective aspect of
the mother-goddess, in contrast to the aggres-
sive image of the lioness-headed sekilmet. In
her earliest known form, carved on stone ves-
sels of the 2nd-Dynasty ruler Hetepsekhemwv
(f.2890 bc) at Saqqara, Bastet was represented
as a woman with the head of a lioness, fre-
quently holding both the ankh sign and a scep-
tre (as well as, occasionally, a meruit necklace).
By the first millennium bc, however, she was
widely portrayed as a cat-headed woman,
often carrying a sistrcm (a form of rattle) and
sometimes accompanied by a small group of

Bronze statuette of the cat-goddess Bastet holding
an aegis in her left hand and a sistnim in her right;
at her feel there are four small kittens. Late Period
or Ptolemaic period, c.06-1—30 nc, it. 26 cm.
(IU25565)

kittens. Her name was commonlv inscribed on
blue glazed ceremonial 'New Year 1 flasks, per-
haps because, like other lioness-goddesses, she
would have been linked with the five epagom-
enal days in the Egyptian calendar. The

festival of Bastet is described by Herodotus.
N. E. Scott, 'The cat of Bastet', BMMA 17/1
(1958), 1-7.
Z. El-Kordy, La deesse Bastet (Cairo, 1968).

J. Malek, The cat hi ancient Egypt (London,
1993).

Bat

Goddess of the seventh Upper Egyptian
nome, usually represented by a cow's head
with curling horns, perhaps the earliest depic-
tion being the pair of heads at the top of the
xarmer palette (c.3100 bc). The iconography
of Bat was almost completely absorbed inio
the cult of the more important cow-goddess
iiathor by the Middle Kingdom.
H. G. Fisci ier, 'The cult and nome of the
goddess Bat', JARCE 1 (1962), 7-24.
— , 'Varia Aegyptiaca: u. B3.t in the New
Kingdom', JARCE 2 (1 963), 50-1 .

batter

Architectural term denoting the sloping face
of a wall in which the foundation courses are
wider than the upper courses, thus adding sta-
bility. This functional and decorative tech-
nique was regularly employed for the walls of
mastaba tombs as well as the enclosure walls
of Egyptian temples, where it was associated
with pax beddixg and sectional construction.

Bawit see baj iakiya oasis

beard

Facial hair in Egypt has an uneven history. It is
clear from certain Predynastic figurines, as
well as from the figures depicted on the
narmer palette, that full beards were favoured
in the formative stages of Egyptian history. B\
the beginning of the Dynastic period, how-
ever, shaving had become fashionable among
the nobility, later spreading throughout die
rest of the population. The earliest shaving
implements appear to have been sharp stone
blades, but in later periods copper or bronze
razors were used. The work of the village bar-
ber is known from Egyptian literature as well
as from tomb scenes such as that of Userhei
(TT56) at Thebes, and it seems to have been a
mark of poor social status not to shave, except
when in mourning or about to depart on an
expedition abroad.

None the less, officials and rulers of the
Old Kingdom, such as Prince Rahotep, arc
depicted with moustaches, and full beards
are widely shown on mummv masks of the
First Intermediate Period and the Middle
Kingdom, such as that of a 12th-Dvnastv indi-
vidual named Ankhef. Despite the low status
apparently attached to facial hair in life, it

BAT

BEDOUIN

was considered to be a divine attribute of the
gods, whose closely plaited beards were 'like
lapis lazuli'. Accordingly, the pharaoh would
express his status as a living god by wearing a
'false beard 1 secured by cord. Such beards
were usually wider toward the bottom (i.e. the
end furthest away from the chin), as in the
case of the triad statues of menkaura. It was
usually after their death that kings were por-
trayed wearing the divine Osirid form of
beard with upturned end, as on the gold
mask of Tutankhamun. Deceased non-royal
individuals are often shown with short, tuft-
like beards.

S. QuiRKE and A. J. Spencer, The British Museum
honk of ancient Egypt (London, 1992), 71-2.
E. Strouhal, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 83-4.

bedouin

Nomadic pastoralists of northern and central
Arabia and Egypt's Eastern Desert, where
their descendants still live today. The ancient
bedouin of the Arabian peninsula are thought
to have been responsible for domesticating the
single-humped Arabian CAMEL at the end of
the second millennium uc, but the earliest evi-
dence for the domesticated camel in the Nile
valley dates to the ninth century BC.

Organized states have alwavs (ell threatened
by nomadic peoples, and the Egyptians were
no exception. They knew the bedouin as
Shasu, or heryw-sh ('sand dwellers'), and bat-
tles against them are recorded as early as the
time of Unas (2375-2345 bc), who depicted
them on the causeway of his funerary complex
at saqqara. In the First Intermediate Period
they invaded parts of the Delta, and although
they were eventually expelled they continued
to be a source of difficulty. During the reign of
the 12th-Dynasty pharaoh Amcnemhat 1

Painted cast of a painted relief in the temple of
Barneses n (c 1250 bc) at Beit el-Wali, shomng
the king trampling bedouin.

{1985-1955 lie) they threatened the turquoise
mines at Serabit el-Khadim in the sinai;
although defeated, thev remained a sufficient
threat for defences to be built around the site
in the time of amenemi iat hi (1855-1808 bc:).

The military might of the New Kingdom
did not deter die bedouin, and Thutmose n
(1492-1479 bc) was obliged to campaign
against them well beyond Egypt's borders. As
before, however, this was not a long-term solu-
tion to the problem, and his successors, the
warrior pharaohs Thutmose m and
Amenhotep II, are also known to have dis-
patched military expeditions against them.
The bedouin's way of life made them almost
impossible to eradicate, since thev were alwavs
on the move and ready to flee into the desert
where a conventional army was not able to fol-
low. Occasionally, as under Sety I (1294-1279
uc), they had to be driven from the wells along
the Egyptian desert route across Sinai.

Their knowledge of the desert and their
ability to move easily across difficult terrain
made them valuable military scouts, although
their skills w r ere not generally plied on behalf
of the Egyptians. When rameses ti (1279-1213
bc) captured two bedouin before his battle
with the Hrrrrri'.s at qadesh they are said to
have misled him into believing that his enemy
was still distant, with near-fatal consequences.
Similarly, it was the bedouin who guided
Cambyses and his PERSIAN army across the
wastes of Sinai in their successful invasion of
Egypt in 525 bc.

R. Giyeon, Les bedouins Shosoit des documents
egypt ietts (Leiden, 1971).

bee

According to one Egyptian myth, bees were
the tears of the sun-god ra. They were
undoubtedly of great importance in providing
honey, which was used both as the principal
sweetener in the Egyptian diet and as a base
for medicinal unguents thus employing its
natural anti-bacterial properties (see

medicine). The Egyptians also collected
beeswax for use in metallurgy (i.e. in the
moulding of wax images for metal casting by
the lost-wax method) as well as in the 'var-
nishing' of pigments.

Bee-keepers are represented on a relief of
Nyuserra (2445-2421 bc) from his sun temple
at ABU GURAB, as early as the 5th Dynasty. This
record indicates that apiculture, alreadv attest-
ed as early as the Neolithic period, was well
organized by the middle of the Old Kingdom,
and that honey was probably being distributed
over large distances. As well as trading honey
it is likely that many communities through-
out Egypt kept their own bee colonies. Bee-
keeping is also shown in the 18th-Dynasty
tomb of Rekhmira (ttIOO). The 26th-
Dynasty tomb of Pabasa (tt279) at Thebes
clearly shows bees kept in pottery hives,
although hives made of mud and odier material
were probably also used. Honey from wild bees
was gathered by professional collectors, known
as bityiP, working along the desert fringes.

The religious significance of the bee also
extended to an association with the goddess
NiU'i'H, whose temple at Sais was known asper-
hit ('the house of the bee'). One of the king's
names, from the 1st Dynasty onwards, was
nesw-bit: 'Pie of the sedge and the bee', which
is conventionally translated as 'king ol Upper
and Lower Egypt' (see tiNGsniP and royal
titulary).

G. KuK\Y, 'Scenes apicoles dans l'ancienne
E«ypie\ JNES 9 (1950), 84-93.
J. Lkclant, 'L'abeille et le miel dans 1'Egyptc
pharaonique', Traite tie biohgie de VaheiUc (sous
la direction tie Remy Chaitvin) v (Paris, 1968),
51-60.

E. Crane, The archaeology of beekeeping
(London, 1984), 34-43.

R. D.Win, The pyramid builders of ancient Egypt
(London, 1986), 155-57.

beer s

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES and FOOD

Begrawiya see mkroe

Behbeit el-Hagar (anc. Per-hebyt, Iseum)

Temple town situated in the northern central
area of the Nile Delta, which nourished in the
30th Dynasty (380-343 bc) and the Ptolemaic
period (332-30 bc). The site is dominated by
the remains of a large granite temple of isis,
the importance of which is indicated by the
fact that one of its relief blocks was later
incorporated into the temple of Isis in Rome.
The plan of the original temple at Behbeit el-
Hagar has proved difficult to reconstruct
owing to damage caused by quarrving and
seismic activity.

BEIT EL-WALI

BENT HASAN

A. Lezine, 'Etat present du temple tie Behheit
el-Hagar*, Kerni 10 (1949), 4 ( >-57.

B. Foster and R. L. B. Moss, Tspagmpkml
bibthgmphyvs (Oxford, 1968), 40-2.

C. Favarjj-Mekks, Le tempte Je Behbeit el-
Hagara (Hamburg, 1991),

Beit el-Wali

Rock-cat temple on the west bank of the Nile
in Lower Nubia, which was dedicated to

Amun-Ra and founded in the reign of rameses
n (1279-1213 BC). The reliefs were copied by
the German Egyptologist Gunther Roeder in
1907, although casts were made by Robert
Hay in the 1820s. The site was not compre-
hensively studied until the work of a joint
expedition of the University of Chicago and
the Swiss Institute in Cairo during the 1960s.
Soon afterwards, the temples at Beit el-Wali
and nearby KAI.ABSHA were moved to New
Kalabsba, 45 km to the north, in order to save
them from (he rising waters of Lake Nasser
{see vsww miuii dam). The reliefs include
depictions of the siege of a Syrian city, the
capture ol a Nubian village and the bringing of
Nubian tribute into the presence of the king,
painted plaster casts of which are displayed in
the collection of the British Museum (see
illustrations accompanying the entries on
BEDOUIN and YICF.ROY ()[■ Kl si l).
G Roi'.ur.R, Der Fehlanpcl von Beit el-ilali
(Cairo, 1938).

1 1. Rk.kf, G. R. Hi GMI.S and E. F. WENTE, The
Bat el-Wali temple of Harnesses it (Chicago, 1967).

Belzoni, Giovanni (1778-1823)

Italian adventurer, explorer and excavator, who
procured large quantities of Egyptian antiqui-
ties for European collectors and museums.
The son of a barber, Belzoni was bom in
Padua and at first pursued a career as a circus
strong man, travelling throughout Europe. In
1814 he went to Egypt, where his attempts to
sell a new type of water wheel proved unsuc-
cessful, leading him to pursue a more lucrative
trade in the excavation and transportation of
ancien! monuments. In 181 6 he began to work
for Henry Salt, the British Consul-General in
Egypt, initially helping him with the trans-
portation of the 'young Memnon\ part of a
colossal statue of Rameses u, which was to
become one of the first major F.gvptian antiq-
uities in the collection of the British Museum.
I lis discoveries were numerous, ranging
from the tomb of King setv i at western
Thebes to the Greco-Roman city of Berenice
on the Red Sea coast. Although his methods
were somewhat unorthodox (and occasionally
unnecessarily destructive), judged by modern

archaeological standards, he was nevertheless
an important pioneer in Egyptology. He did
much to encourage European enthusiasm for
Egyptian antiquities, not only through his
exhibition at the I^yptian Hall m Piccadilh
(London) in 1821 but also through the pub-
lished accounts of his discoveries. In the Great
Temple at \nv simhel, for instance, he and
James Mangles (a British naval officer) com-
piled a plan on which they marked the original
positions of the items of statuary.

After more than eight years of exploration
along the Nile valley, he embarked on an expe-
dition to find the source of the Niger, but died
of dysentery at Benin in December 1823.
G. Bixzom, Narrative of the operations am! reran
dummies wiiliin the pyramids, temples, iambs ami
excavations in Egypt ami Nubia (London, 1 820).
G C\.\\]t,Stro?ig man Egyptologist {London,
1957).
S. Mates, The grait Belzoni (London, 1959).

benben stone

Sacred stone at helioi'oi.is that symbolized
the PRIMEVAL mol !KD and perhaps also the pet-
rified semen of the sun-god Ra-Atum (see
ATL'M). It served as the earliest prototype for
the oi3ELi.sk and possibly even the PYRAMID. In
recognition of these connections, the gilded
cap-stone placed at the very top of each pyra-
mid or obelisk was known as a benbeneL The
original stone at Heliopolis was believed to
have been the point al which the rays of the
rising sun first fell, and its cult appears to date
back at least as far as the 1st Dynasty There
arc strong links between the benben and the

henu-hiri} (the Egyptian phoenix), and both

terms seem to derive from the word weba,

meaning 'to rise'.

J. R. Bunks, 'Bnbn: mythological and linguistic

notes', Oneulaiu, 39 (1970), 389-404.

L. HAHAC.iii, The obelisks of Egypt (Cairo, 1984),

5,10.

Beni Hasan

Necropolis located on the cast bank of the Nile
some 23 km north of el-Minya, dating princi-
pally to the 11th and 12th Dynasties
(2125-1795 uc) although there are some small
tombs dating back to the 6th Dynasty
(2345-2181 tic). There are thirty-nine rock-
cut tombs at Beni Hasan, several of them
belonging to the provincial governors of the
'oryx' nome (province). A number of the 1 1 th-
and 12th-Dynasty tombs are decorated with
wall-paintings of funerary rituals and daily
life, including depictions of Asiatic traders,
battle scenes and rows of wrestlers. There is
also an extensive cemetery of Middle
Kingdom shaft tombs excavated bv John
Garstang in the early 1900s. The equipment
from these undecorated tombs, including
painted coffins and models, forms an impor-
tant corpus with regard to the funerary beliefs
of the Middle Kingdom. At the southern end
of the site is a New Kingdom rock-cut temple,

the SPECS ARTKMIDOS.

Copy of a scene from the tomb of khu/tmhote/i at
Beni Hasan, showing men picking figs irhile
baboons sit in the tree eating the fruit. Early 12th
Dynasty, U9S&BC

BE NU-BIRD_

BES

P. E. NEWBERRY et al., Beni Hassan, 4 vols

(London, 1893-1900).

S, Bickel and j.-L. Cmaitaz, 'Missions

epig rap hiq ues du funds de FEgyptologie de

Geneve an Speos Artemidos', BSEG 12 (1988),

9-24.

T. D. BOURRIAU, Pharaohs and mortals

(Cambridge, 1988), 85-109.

//enu-bird

The sacred Heliopolitan bird, closely associat-
ed with the BENBEN STONE, the OBELISK and the
cult of the sun-gods atlm and ra. Its name
probably derived from the Egyptian verb webett
('to rise 1 ) and it was the prototype for the
Greek phoenix. There may well be an etymo-
logical connection between the two birds'
names, and certainh there are distinct similar-
ities in their respective links with the sun and
rebirth, although a number ol the other aspects
of the phoenix legend are quite distinct.

the desire for transformation might refer to

the changing phases of Venus.

R. Van" Den Broek, The myth oflhe phoenix

according to classical and early christian tradition

(Leiden, 1972).

L. Kakosy, 'Phonix', Lexikon der Agyptologie iv,

ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendarf

(Wiesbaden, 1982), 1030-9.

G. Hart, Egyptian myths (London, 1990), 16-17.

R. Krauss, 'M-mjtt bnw (pAnastasi i A.S)\JEA

79 (1993), 266-7.

Bes

Dwarf god with grotesque mask-like facial
features and a protruding tongue. He is often
shown with the ears and mane of a lion,
although some scholars have suggested thai he
is simply wearing a lion-skin cape rather than
possessing these physical characteristics. He is
common Iv portrayed with a plumed headdress
and carrying musical instruments, knives or

f?;

;,;,:■

_ A"

Painted wooden figure of Bes on a lotus flower.
New Kingdom, ti. 28 cm. (r.A20865)

BELOW Painted relief figures of Bes and a nuked
woman or goddess In the 'Bes Chamhers' at
Saqqura, (REPRODUCED courtesy or the

GRIFFITH INSTITUTE)

Detail of the Book of the Dead of the scribe
Nakht; in the bottom register Nukht is show
adoring the benu-bird. Early 19th Dynasty,
c.1280bc. (EA10471)

The benu-birdi appears in the p^ RAMID
texts as a yellow wagtail serving as a manifes-
tation of the Heliopolitan sun-god Atum; in
Utterance 600, Atum is said to have 'risen up,
as the benben in the mansion of the benu in
Heliopolis'. Later, however, in the BOOK OFTHE
BEAD, the benu-hird was represented as a kind
of grey heron (Ardea cineru) with a long-
straight beak and a two-feathered crest, the is\
(physical manifestation) of both Ra and osiRfS.
Because of its connections with Osiris, it is
sometimes represented wearing the atef crown
(see CROWNS).

Chapter 83 of the Book of the Dead, the
spell for being transformed into a h>nii-bird\
was usually accompanied by a depiction of the
benu-hird. In an analysis of the desire to be
transformed like the /'(•////-bird 1 in Papyrus
Anastasi i, Rolf Krauss suggests that the bird
s ymboh" zc d the planet Venus from at least the
'^ginning of the New Kingdom, in which case

B GROUP

BIBLICAL CONNECTIONS

the SA hieroglyph representing protection.
The name Bes is used to describe a number of
similar deities and demons, including the lion-
demons known from the Middle Kingdom
town of Kahun (see el-lahun and masks) and
the shaft tombs behind the ramesseum, which
are of a similar date. Bes was considered to be
capable of warding off snakes from the house,
and was sometimes portrayed in the form of
the demon Aha strangling two serpents with
his bare hands.

Despite his apparent ferocity, he was a
beneficent deity, much favoured as a protector
of the family, and associated with sexuality
and childbirth. His image is therefore found
on all of the mammisi (birth-houses) associated
with Late Period temples, as well as being
carved on such everyday objects as cosmetic
items. Along with taweret he was one of the
most popular deities represented in amulets.
His image was painted on a frieze in a room of
Amenhotep ill's palace at MALKATA, as well as
on some of the walls of the workmen's villages
at EL-AMARNA and deir el-medina, perhaps
indicating rooms connected with women and
childbirth.

The sexual aspect of the god seems to have
become particularly prominent during the
Ptolemaic period, when 'incubation 1 or Bes
chambers were built at saqqara. Mud-plaster
figures of Bes and a naked goddess lined their
walls, and it has been suggested that pilgrims
probably spent the night there in the hope of
experiencing healing dreams, perhaps in con-
nection with the renewal of their sexual pow-
ers. In the Roman period he was perhaps
adopted as a military god since he was often
portrayed in the costume of a legionary bran-
dishing a sword.

J. F. Romano, 'The origin of the Bes image',
BMS2 (1980), 39-56.

J. D. Bourriau, Pharaohs and mortals
(Cambridge, 1988), 110-13.

B Group (B Horizon)

Now-discredited cultural term invented by
George Reisner to describe the final stages of
the Neolithic a GROUP in NuiiiA (c. 2 800-23 GO
BC), leading up to the beginning of the C~
groljp phase. Two principal reasons have
emerged for rejecting the existence of the B
Group, at least as Reisner envisaged it. First,
there appears to have been great continuity in
material culture, settlement patterns and
cemetery locations between the A and C
Groups and, second, the chronological gap
between the two might actually have been no
more than three centuries roughly contempo-
rary with die Egyptian 3rd and 4th Dynasties
(c.2686-2494 uc). It is therefore possible that

the assemblages usually designated 'B Group'
might actually have resulted from the relative
impoverishment of Lower Nubia or the depre-
dations of early Egyptian imperialism. It has
been suggested that there might have been an
enforced reversion to pastoralism or the local
Nubian population might even have temporar-
ily abandoned the region, eventually returning
in the form of the C Group.
G. Reisner, Archaeological survey of'Nubia:
report for 1907-8 i (Cairo, 1910), 18-52.
H. S. Smith, 'The Nubian B-group 1 , Kush 14
(1966), 69-124.

W. Y. Adams, Nubia: corridor to Africa, 2nd ed.
(London and Princeton, 1984), 132-5.
LI. S. Smith, 'The development of the A-Group
"culture" in northern Lower Nubia', Egypt and
Africa, ed. W.V. Davics (London, 1991), 92-1 11.

Biblical connections

The links between ancient Egypt and the
events described in the Old Testament are
generally problematic and beset by controver-
sy. There are a number of critical problems
with the attempt to correlate Biblical narra-
tives with the Pharaonic textual and archaeo-
logical record. Given that most of the events
described in the Bible had taken place many
centuries prior to the time that they were writ-
ten down, it is extremely difficult to know
when ihey are factual historical accounts and
when they are purely allegorical or rhetorical
in nature.

Because of the vagueness of the Biblical
chronological framework, it is usually also dif-
ficult to assign events to particular historical
periods with any precision. Another major
problem is posed by the possibility that those
events that were of great significance to the
people of Israel cannot be assumed to have had
the same importance for the ancient
Egyptians, therefore there is no guarantee of
any independent Egyptian record having been
made (let alone having survived among the
small fraction of preserved texts). A great deal
of research has therefore tended to concen-
trate on attempting to date the Biblical stories
by means of chance historical clues incorpo-
rated in the narratives, although even then
there is the danger of encountering anachro-
nisms introduced at the time that the texts
were written down.

Most interest has focused on the stories of
Joseph and Moses, both of which contain
many literary and historical details that sug-
gest at least a knowledge of ancient Egypt on
the part of the writers. The episode in the
story of Joseph involving his attempted seduc-
tion by Potiphar's wife is closely paralleled in
an Egyptian story known as the Tale of the Two

Brothers, while several of the personal names
of characters appear to be authentically
Egyptian Late Period forms, such as Asenei
('belonging to the goddess Neith'). However,
these literary and linguistic connections with
Egypt are of little help in terms of dating the
story, which is usually assumed to have taken
place during the Egyptian New Kingdom
(1550-1069 bc, equivalent to the Late Bronze
Age in the Levant), although certain details tie
in much more with the political situation of
the Saitc period (664-525 bc).

The emergence of Moses and the events of
the Exodus are thought to have taken place
in the early Ramcsside period, with r Ameses
n (1279-1213 bc) being considered the most
likely to have been the pharaoh featuring in
the narrative. No texts from his reign make
any mention of Moses or the children of
Israel, although the name Israel first occurs
on the so-called Israel Stele of the time of his
successor, merenetah. Attempts have occa-
sionally been made to equate Moses with the
pharaoh akitenaten, on the grounds that the
latter introduced a peculiarly Egyptian form
of monotheism, but there are no other
aspects of this pharaoh's life, or indeed his
cult of the Aten, that remotely resemble the
Biblical account of Moses. Akhenaten's
Hymn to the Aten has been shown to have
strong similarities with Psalm 104, bul this is
probably Only an indication that the two
compositions belong to a common literan
heritage or perhaps even derive from a com-
mon Near Eastern original. The same reason
is usually given for the very close parallels
that have been observed between a Lale
Period wisdom text known as the Instruction
of Ameneniipet son of Kanakht and the
Biblical book of Proverbs, although it has
been suggested by some scholars that the
writers of Proverbs may even have been
influenced by a text of the Instruction oj
Amenemipet itself

From the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 BC) onwards, there are more verifi-
able references to Egypt in the Bible, particu-
larly in terms of the political events involving
conflict with the Assyrians and Persians. The
22nd-Dvnasty ruler Sheshonq I (945-924 bc),
the Biblical Shishak, sacked Jerusalem and the
temple of Solomon in 925 bc. Hosea, the ruler
of Samaria, is said to have requested military
aid from the Egyptian Prince Tefnakht of sals,
in his attempt to fend off die Assyrians in the
late eighth century bc.
P. Montet, Egypt and the Bible (Philadelphia,
196S).

D. B. Redford, A study of the Biblical story of
Joseph (Genesis 37-50) (Leiden, 1970).

BIRTH -HOUSE

BORDERS, FRONTIERS AND LIMITS

S. GROl-L (ed.), Pharaonic Egypt, the Bible

and Christianity (Jerusalem, 1985).

A. F. Rainey (ed.)j Egypt, Israel, Sinai -

archaeological and historical relationships in the

Biblical period (Tel Aviv, 1987).

D. B. REDFORD, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in

ancient times (Princeton, 1992).

birth-house see mammlsi
Blemmyes

Nomads active in Lower nubia during the X-
Group phase (cJ83 350-700). The Blemmyes
are usually identified as the ancestors of the
modern Beja people. Both the Blemmyes and
the Nobatae (another group of nomads in
Lower Nubia) are mentioned in Classical
texts, but there is no definite archaeological
evidence to connect either of these peoples
with the royal cemetery at ballana dating to
the same period. The situation is summarized
by W. Y. Adams: 'We may . . . epitomize the
riddle of post-Meroitic Nubia by observing
that historians tell us of two peoples, the
Blemmyes and the Nobatae, where archaeolo-
gy discloses only one culture, the Ballana;
moreover, both history and archaeology leave
us in ignorance of the fate of the earlier
Meroitic population and culture.'
A. Paul, A history of the Beja tribes of the Sudan,
2nd ed. (London, 1971).
|PX ADAMS, Nubia: corridor to Africa, 2nd ed.
(London and Princeton, 1984), 382-429.

block statue

Type of sculpture introduced in the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 bc), representing private
individuals in a very compressed squatting
position, with the knees drawn up to the chin.
In some examples the effect is almost to reduce
the human body to a schematic block-like
shape, while in others some of the modelling of
the limbs is still retained. New Kingdom texts
suggest that the origin of the style was the
desire to represent an individual in the form of
a guardian seated in the gateway of a temple.
One of the practical advantages of the block
statue, which became particularly popular dur-
ing the Late Period (747-332 bc), was the fact
that it provided a very large surface area for
inscriptions relating to the funerary cult and
the identification of the individual concerned.
C. Aldred, Egyptian art (London, 1980), 133-5.
W. Stevenson Smith, The art and architecture of
ancient Egypt, rev. "W. K. Simpson
(Harmondsworth, 1981), 181-2.
R. Sci iui.z, Die Entmicklung und Bedeutung des
fotboiden Statueniypus (Hildeshiem, 1992).

blue crown see crowns and royal regalia

board-games see games
boats see SFnps and boats
Book of the Dead

Egyptological term used to refer to the funer-
ary text known to the Egyptians as the 'spell
for coming forth by day 1 - It was introduced at
the end of the Second Intermediate Period
and consisted of about two hundred spells (or
'chapters'), over half of which were derived
directly from the earlier pyramid TEXTS or

COFFIN TEXTS.

Such 'netherworld' texts as the Book of the
Dead were usually inscribed on papyri,
although certain small extracts were inscribed
on amulets. Chapter 30a, for example, was
known as the 'spell for not letting the
deceased's heart create opposition against him
in the realm of the dead' and was commonly
inscribed on heart scarabs, while a version of
Chapter 6 was inscribed on siiabti figures so
that they might perform corvee work on behalf
of the deceased.

Chapter 125, the section of the Book of the
Dead that was most commonly illustrated by a
vignette, shows the last judgement of the
deceased before osiris and the forty-two
'judges' representing aspects of MA at ('divine
order'). The judgement took the form of the
weighing of the heart of the deceased against
the feather of Maat. An important element of
the ritual was the calling of each judge by
name, while giving the relevant 'negative con-
fession', such as: 'O Far Strider who came
forth from Heliopolis, I have done no false-
hood; O Fire-embracer who came forth from
Kherarha, I have not robbed; O Nosey who
came forth from Hermopolis, I have not been
rapacious.' The desired outcome of these neg-
ative confessions was that the deceased was
declared 'true of voice' and introduced into
the realm of the deceased. Although vignettes
always optimistically depict a successful out-
come, the demon ammut ('the devourer of the
dead') was usually shown awaiting those who
might fail the test.

The Book of the Dead was often simply
placed in the coffin, but it could also be rolled
up and inserted into a statuette of Sokar-Osiris
or even incorporated into the mummy ban-
daging. The texts could be written in the
hieroglyphic, hieratic or demotic scripts.
Since most wealthy individuals were provided
with Books of the Dead, numerous copies have
survived.

R. O. Faulkner, The ancient Egyptian Book of the
Dead, ed. C. Andrews (London, 1985).
E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredcck
(New York, 1992), 95-1 13.

borders, frontiers and limits

The Egyptians used two principal terms to
describe a border or limit: lash, which refers to
a real geographical limit set by people or
deities, and djcr, which appears to describe a
fixed and unchanging universal limit. The
tash, whether field boundary or national bor-
der, was therefore essentially an elastic fron-
tier, and, in times of strength and prosperity,
such rulers as Senusret i (1965-1920 bc) and
Thutmose in (1479-1425 bc) could state an
intention to 'extend the borders' (sewesekh
tashw) of Egypt.

The traditional borders of Egypt com-
prised the Western Desert, the Sinai Desert,
the Mediterranean coast and the Nile
cataracts south of Aswan. These geographi-
cal barriers were sufficient to protect the

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Part of a hieratic papyrus inscribed with military
dispatches sent from the Egyptian garrison at
Semna, on the border with Upper Nubia. Middle
Kingdom, c.1841 BC, from Thebes, it. 16 cm.
(EAl0752sttr.ET3)

Egyptians from outside interference for many
centuries. Later on, in the Pharaonic period,
these natural borders helped to maintain
Egypt's independence during periods of rela-
tive weakness. Since, however, the pharaoh's
titulary described him as the ruler of the
entire known world, the political boundaries
of Egypt were theoretically infinite. In prac-
tice the greatest extent of the Egyptian
empire - achieved during the reign of
Thutmos in in the 18th Dynasty - was
marked by the Euphrates in the northeast and
the kurgus boundary stele (between the
fourth and fifth Nile cataracts) in the south.

The border with Lower Nubia was tradi-
tionally marked by the town of Elephantine
(aswan), naturally defended by its island loca-
tion and surrounded by a thick defensive wall.
The original name of the settlement around
the first cataract was Swenct ('trade'), from
which the modern name Aswan derives; this
place name reflects the more commercial

BORDERS, FRONTIERS AND LIMITS

BUHEN

nature of the southern border, representing
opportunities for profitable economic activities
rather than the threat of invasion. Because the
first cataract represented an obstacle to ship-
ping - despite an attempt by the Old Kingdom
ruler Merenra (2287-2278 bc) to cut a canal -
all trade goods had to be transported along the
bank. This crucial land route to the east of the
Nile, between Aswan and the region of Philae,
was protected by a huge mud-brick wall,
almost 7.5 km long, probably built principally
in the 12th Dynasty.

The northeastern, northwestern and south-
ern borders of Egypt were more or less forti-
fied from the Middle Kingdom onwards.
From at least the reign of Amencmhat I
(1985-1955 BC) the eastern Delta was protect-
ed by a string of fortresses, known as the Walls
of the Prince (itiefop heka). These were intend-
ed to prevent invasion along the coastal route
from the Levant, which was known as the Way
of Horus during the Middle Kingdom. At
about the same time a fortress seems to have
been established in the Wadi Natrun, defend-
ing the western Delta from the Libyans. The
western and eastern Delta defences were well
maintained throughout the second millen-
nium bc The New Kingdom fortresses and
garrisons of the Delta borders — including cl-
Alamcin and Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham in

the west and Tell Abu Safa (Sile), Tell el-
Farama (Pelusium), Tell el-Heir (Migdol) and
Tell el-Maskhuta (Pithom) in the east - were
intended to prevent any recurrence of the
hyksos invasion.

S. Sci ioske and H. Brunner, 'Die Grenzen von
Zeit und Raum bei den Agyptern 1 , Archiv fiir
Qtimtfdrsehmg 17 (1954-5), 141-5.

D. O'Connor, 'Demarcating the boundaries: an
interpretation of a scene in the tomb of Malm,
cl-Amarna\ BBS 9 (1987-S), 41-51.

S. Quirk r, 'Frontier or border? The northeast
Delta in Middle Kingdom texts 1 , The
archaeology, geography and history nfthe Delta,
ed. A. Nibbi (Oxford, 1989), 261-74.

E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredcck
(New York, 1992), 73-92.

bread

see food and offering table

bronze see

COPPER AM) BRONZE

Bubastis see tell basta

Buchis

Sacred bull of montu at Hermonthis
(Armant) south of Luxor, just as his northern
counterpart, the apis, was considered to be the
divine incarnation of the god Ptah, so the
Buchis was believed to be the principal physi-

cal manifestation (or ba) of ra and osiris. Like
the Apis bulls, each Buchis was chosen on the
basis of special markings, consisting of a white
body and black face, and the Roman writer
Macrobius (c.\D 400) described the bulls as
changing colour with every hour and having
hair which grew backwards.

After death, each successive Buchis bull was
interred in a great underground catacomb
known as the Bucheum (see serapeum), which
was discovered in 1927 by Robert Mond and
W B. Emery. As in the case of the Apis, the
mothers of the bulls were also interred, and
their catacomb at Armant is known as the
Baqariyyah. The Buchis bulls' sarcophagi
were of sandstone rather than granite, but, as
in the case of the Saqqara Serapeum, the site-
was much plundered. Burials were made from
the time of Nectancbo n (360-343 BC) until the
reign of Diocletian (ad 284-305). There is evi-
dence for the use of the site from die 18th
Dynasty onwards, but burials dating to that
time or earlier remain undiscovered.
R. L. Mond and O. H. Myers, The Bucheum
(London, 1934).

Buhen

Egyptian site in Lower Nubia, located on the
west bank of the Nile, near the second
cataract, and about 260 km upstream from

BUHEN

View of /he 12/li-Dynasiy ramparts al Buhen.

(REPRODUCED COURTESY OF THE EGYPT
fflCPWBATION SOCIETY)

Aswan. The remains were first studied in 1819
but mainly excavated between 1957 and 1964.
The settlement at Buhen was founded in the
Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc) as a centre for
Egyptian mining expeditions. An impressive
array of mud-brick fortifications was con-
structed around the settlement in the 12th
Dynasty (1985-1795 BC)', thus transforming it
into a military garrison controlling the area to
the north of the second Nile cataract. The
Pth-Dynasty settlement consisted of several
regular, rectangular blocks of housing separat-
ed by six major streets. The subsequent New
Kingdom town was undoubtedly much more
of a civilian settlement, as the frontier of
Egypt was pushed further south than the
fourth Nile cataract, thus considerably reduc-
ing Buhen's military importance.

The methods employed by W. 13. Emery at
Buhen were closer to those of the excavators of

EL-AMARNA, AM AHA West and SESF.BI-SAULA

during the 1930s and 1940s than those
employed by archaeologists working on settle-
ment sites elsewhere in the world during the
1960s. However, Emery's approach was neces-
sarily ad hoc owing to the imminence of the
kite's flooding by Lake Nasser (see aswan high
l)AM ), and the excavations were hampered by
considerable post-depositional disturbance of

left Plan of the Middle Kingdom fortress at

Buhen.

the stratigraphy of the Pharaonic remains at

the site.

R. A. Caminos, The New Kingdom temples of

Buhen, 2 vols (London, 1974).

W. B. E,mi;h\ et al.. The fortress of Buhen, 1 vols

(London, 1979).

bull

Symbol of strength, masculinity and fertility
which, from the earliest historical times,
seems to have been regarded as an embodi-
ment of royal might (see narmer). The heads
of bulls, perhaps representing sacrificed ani-
mals, were sometimes used in Predynastic
and Early Dynastic architecture, as in
Mastaba 3504 at Saqqara, dating to the reign
of the Ist-Dynasty ruler djf.t, where clay
heads furnished with real bulls' horns were
set in front of the palace-facade-style walls of
the tomb.

The epithet 'mighty bull 1 or tmll of Horns 1
was held by several pharaohs of the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 rc). The king might
also be described as the ka nutlefCbuW of his
mother'), and the royal mother might herself
take the form of a COW. Similarly, it was the
wild bull which was often depicted as the prey
of the king in hunting scenes. The Nile inun-
dation was sometimes depicted as a bull, since
both were strongly associated with the renew-
al of fertility'. This connection between fertili-
ty, water and bulls probably also explains the
occasional representations of the primordial
lake nun with the head of a bull.

Bulls were also associated with solar
imagery; the 'bull of BA' is mentioned as early

as the 5th Dynasty (2494-2345 bc:) and in the

PYRAMID 'TEXTS, and the cult of the MNF.VI.S bull

of Heliopolis was specifically encouraged by

Akhenatcn (1352—1336 BC) because of its solar

associations. There were, however, also strong

links with the moon and the constellation of

Ursa Major. A number of bulls enjoyed special

.status as .sacred animals, notably the apis and

lit. Cms bulls which were interred in catacombs

at saq_qara and armant respectively.

E. Otto, Bei/nige zur Geschichte der S/ierhulle in

Aegyp/en (Berlin, 1938).

P. Bl'.nRKNS, \Stierkampf', Lexihon der

Agyptologie \ i, ed. W. HelcL, E. Otto and W.

Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1980), 16-17.

W. HELCK, \S tier gutter', Lexikon der Agyptologie

vi, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf

(Wiesbaden, 1986), 14-16.

R. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art (London,

1992), 56-7.

burial see canopicjmls; coffins and
sarcophagi; punerass beliefs; mastaba;
mummification and pyramids

BlltO S^tfil l.l.-FARA'l\

Byblos(GublaJubeil)
Ancient coastal town, the site of which is locat-
ed in modern Lebanon (formerly Canaan),
about 40 km north of Beirut. The principal
settlement, known in the Akkadian language as
Gubla, has a long history extending from the
Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age when the
population appears to have moved to a nearby
site now covered by a modern village.

The importance of Byblos lay in its function
as a port, and from around the time of Egypt's
unification it was a source of timber. The
famous cedars of Lebanon, and other goods,
passed timough it, and Egyptian objects are
found there from as early as the 2nd Dynasty
(2890-2686 bc). Egyptian culture of the
Middle Kingdom had an especially strong
influence on the court of its Middle Bronze
Age rulers, and among the objects found from
the royal tombs of this period are several bear-
ing the names of Amenemhat ill (1855-1808
BC) and i\ (1808-1799 BC) of the 12th Dynasty.
Egyptian objects included ivory, ebony and
gold while local imitations used other materials
and were executed in a less accomplished style.

The site had several religious buildings
including the so-called 'Obelisk Temple', ded-
icated to Ba'alat Gebal, the 'Lady of Byblos 1 , a
local form of astartf. One of the obelisks
erected to her was inscribed with hieroglyphs.
She w r as identified with hathor, a connection
which may have helped establish Astarte as a
goddess in Egypt.

CALENDAR

In the New Kingdom the city features
prominently in the amarna LETTERS, since its
ruler, Ribaddi, sought military assistance from
the Egyptian pharaoh. On this occasion Byblos
fell into enemy hands, but was later regained. A
sarcophagus found with objects of Rameses ii
(1279-1213 bc) and showing Egyptian influ-
ence is important for its later (tenth century
bc) inscription for Ahiram, a local ruler, which
is in early alphabetic characters. However, by
the time of Rameses xi (1099-1069 hc), last
king of the New Kingdom, Egypt had become
so weak and impoverished that it no longer
commanded the respect of cities such as
Byblos, and the Report of Wenamum tells how
an Egyptian official was shabbily treated by a
high-handed prince of Byblos, something
which would previously have been unthinkable.
The importance of Byblos itself gradually
declined in favour of the neighbouring ports of
Tyre and Sidon.

P. Montet, Byblos el I'Egypte, 2 vols (Paris,
1928).

M. Dv\asd, Fouilles de Byblos (Paris, 1939-58).
N. JlDRjiAN, Byblos through the ages (Beirut,
1968).

J.-F Salles, La necropole 'k' de Byblos (Paris,
1980).

calendar

The earliest Egyptian calendars were based on
lunar observations combined with the annual
cycle of the Nile inundation, measured with
NILOMETERS. On this basis the Egyptians
divided the year into twelve months and three
seasons: akhet (the inundation itself), peret
(spring time, when the crops began to emerge)
and shemu (harvest time). Each season consist-
ed of four thirty-day months, and each month
comprised three ten-day weeks. This was an
admirably simple system, compared with the
modern European calendar of unequal
months, and it was briefly revived in France at
the time of the Revolution.

The division of the day and night into
twelve hours each appears to have been initiat-
ed by the Egyptians, probably by simple anal-
ogy with the twelve months of the year, but
the division of the hour into sixty minutes was

«: :

introduced by the Babylonians. The smallest
unit ol lime recognized in ancient Egypt was
the M, usually translated as 'moment' and hav-
ing no definite length.

The Egyptian year was considered to begin
on 19 July (according to the later Julian calen-
dar), which was the date of the heliacal rising
of the dog star Sirius (see astronomy and
astrology and sopdet). Surviving textual
accounts of the observation of this event form
the linchpin of the traditional chronology of
Egypt. However, even with the addition of five
intercalary 'epagomenaP days (corresponding
to the birthdays of the deities Osiris, Lsis,
Horus, Seth and Nephthys), a discrepancy
gradually developed between the lunar year of
365 days and the real solar year, which was
about six hours longer. This effectively meant
that the civil year and the genuine seasonal
year were synchronized only once every 1460
years, although this does not seem to have
been regarded as a fatal flaw until the
Ptolemaic period, when the concept of the
leap year' was introduced in the Alexandrian
calendar, later forming the basis for the Julian
and Gregorian calendars.

LEFT Flask for water from the rising Nile at the
beginning of the flood, marking the start of the
New Year. This type of 'New Year flask' appears
in the Late Period, no earlier than the 7th century
bc, perhaps inspired by foreign vessel shapes. Late
Period, after 600 BC, green faience of unknown
provenance, it. 13 cm. (ea24651, ntuirx by

CHRISTINE BARRATT)

BELOW Calendar in which the lucky and unlucky
days of the year are marked in black and red
respectively. Third Intermediate Period to Late
Period, papyrus and pigment, 11. 24 cm. (eaI0474,
sheet 2)

■:fi*r<-" : \i.

fa •>'-y,

"■■'>•' "■■■ ■

CAMBYSES

CANQPICJARS

As well as the civil calendar there were also
separate religious calendars consisting of PB&-
TIVM-S and ceremonies associated with partic-
ular deities and temples (e.g. the Feast of
Opet at Thebes, celebrated in the second
month ofakhet). The priests often calculated
the dates of these according to the lunar
month of about 29.5 days rather than accord-
ing to the civil calendar, since it was essential
that many of them should coincide with par-
ticular phases of the agricultural or astro-
nomical cycle.

R. A. Parker, The calendars of ancient Egypt
(Chicago, 1950).

t 'Sothic dates and calendar "adjustments" ',

WE 9 (1952), 101-8.

} 'The beginning of the lunar month in

ancient EgypfJNES 29 (1970), 217-20.

R. Krauss, Sothis- und Monddaten (Hildesheim,

1985).

E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck

(New York, 1992), 57-71.

Cambyses see persia, Persians

camel

Although the single-humped Arabian camel
(Came/its dromedarius, more accurately
described as a dromedary) figures prominent-
ly in the modern popular image of Egypt, it
was very much a late arrival among the
domesticated animals of the Nile valley.
Remains of the double-humped Bactrian
camel have been found at sites such as Shahr-i
Sokhta in eastern Iran dating to the third mil-
lennium BC, but the earliest evidence for the
domestication of the single-humped species
in the Near East dates to the ninth century BC.
When the ASSYRIAN king Esarhaddon invaded
Egypt in 671 BC, he is said to have been aided
by camel-using bedouin from the Arabian
desert.

It used to be thought that domesticated
camels did not appear in the Nile valley until
the Ptolemaic period, but the earliest date is
now considered to be the late ninth century BC,
in the light of the discovery of a camel's
mandible and a pellet of camel dung at the
Lower Nubian site of qasr ibrim. The two
finds were excavated during the 1980s from
separate archaeological contexts dating to the
early Napatan period, and both dates were
later confirmed by radiocarbon analysis.
I- Kohler, Zur Domestikation des Kameh
(Hanover, 1981).

*• L. Mason, 'Camels', Evolution of domesticated
animals, ed. I. L. Mason (London, 1984).
£ Roweey-Conwy, 'The camel in the Nile
valley: new radiocarbon accelerator dates from
Qasr \hr\m\ fEA 74 (1988), 245-8.

Canaan, Canaanites

The region that was occupied by the
Canaanite people in the Middle and Late
Bronze Ages (part of the area described by
the ancient Egyptians as Retenu) roughly
corresponds to modern Lebanon, on the
northern coast of the Levant. This territory
essentially consisted of a number of city-
states, including BVBI.OS, Lachish, megiddo
and Ugarit.

A typical 'Canaanite amphora' from el-Am a ma.
H. 58,8 cm. Just as the territorial and ethnic
connotations of the name 'Canaan' are somewhat
ambiguous, so the term 'Canaanite amphora ' is
conventionally applied to this type of Bronze Age
pottery vessel, although it was used for
transporting commodities not only in Caiman bat
throughout the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean
and Egypt. The name reflects the fact thai the form
clearly originated in Syria-Palestine, although
local copies were made elsewhere.

The Canaanites were a Semitic people
related to the hyksos, who had invaded Egypt
in the Second Intermediate Period. They
occupied this part of the Levant during the
Late Bronze Age from around 2000 to 1200 bc,
after which they were displaced by the
Israelites and Philistines from the south and
Phoenicians from the north. Several of their
cities, such as Byblos, remained important
under their new masters, and much of
Canaanite culture is reflected in that of the
Phoenicians.

Canaan acted as a kind of 'clearing house'
for the trade not only of itself but of its neigh-
bours, the Egyptians, the hittites, and the
states of Mesopotamia, and was much influ-
enced by them. It may have been the need to
develop sophisticated record-keeping or to
deal with traders of many nationalities which
led to the development here of an alphabetic
script around 1700 BC, roughly the same date

as the appearance of alphabetic inscriptions at

Serabit el-Khadim in sinat. These are known

as the Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite

scripts (see byblos).

K. Kexyon, Amorites and Canaanites (Oxford,

1966).

A. R. Millard, 'The Canaanites', Peoples of Old

Testament times, ed. D.J. Wiseman (Oxford,

1973), 29-52.

J. E Healy, 'The early alphabet', Reading the past

(London, 1990), 197-257.

D. B. RedI'ORD, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in

ancient times (Princeton, 1992), 167-8, 192-213.

canopic jars

Stone and ceramic vessels used for the burial
of the viscera removed during mummifica-
tion. The term 'canopic' derives from the
misconception that they were connected with
the human-headed jars which were wor-
shipped as personifications of the god osjris
by the inhabitants of the ancient Egyptian port
of Canopus (named after the Homeric charac-
ter who was Menelaus 1 pilot). The 'Canopus
of Osiris' image appeared on some Roman
coins from the Alexandrian mint, and the
name was therefore chosen by early
Egyptologists to refer to any jar with a stopper
in the form of a human head.

The practice of preserving eviscerated
organs during mummification is first attested
in the burial of hetepiieres, mother of the 4th-
Dynasty ruler Khufu (2589-2566 bc), at giza.
Her viscera were stored in a travertine
('Egyptian alabaster') chest divided into four
compartments, three of which contained the
remains of her organs in natron, while the
fourth held a dry organic material. In later
burials, specific elements of the viscera were
placed under the protection of four anthropo-
morphic genii known as the sons ov horus,
who were themselves protected by tutelary
deities guarding the four cardinal points. The
human-headed Imsety (linked with ISIS and
the south) protected the liver; the ape-headed
Hapy (linked with nephthys and the north)
cared for the lungs; the jackal-headed
Duamutef (linked with neith and the east)
guarded the stomach; and the falcon-headed
Q_ebehsenucf (linked with serket and the
west) looked after the intestines.

During the First Intermediate Period
(2181-2055 bc) the jars began to be provided
with stoppers in the form of human heads, and
at this time the canopic bundles were some-
times also decorated with human-faced masks.
By the late Middle Kingdom a set of canopic
equipment could comprise two chests (a
stone-carved outer container and a wooden
inner one) holding four jars furnished with

CAPTIVES

CAPTIV ES

Wooden dummy canopic jars for an unnamed
person. 21st Dynasty, £ 1000 8C, II. of human-
headed jar 31 cm. (i: \95b2-5)

stoppers in the form of human heads. In the
early 18th Dynasty the stoppers were still
human-headed, as in the case of the canopic
equipment of tctanktiamun., but from the
later 1 8th Dynasty onwards it became more
common for the stoppers lo take the form of
the characteristic heads of each of the four
genii, and by the 19th Dynasty these had com-
pletely replaced the human-headed type.

In the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 nc) mummified viscera were usual-
ly returned to the body, sometimes accompa-
nied by models of the relevant genii, but
empty or dummy canopic jars were occasion-
ally still included in rich burials. Canopic
equipment is found in Ptolemaic tombs but
had ceased to be used by the Roman period.
The last known royal canopic jars belonged to
APWES (589-570 bc), and one of these survived
through its reuse as a vessel containing the
body of a mummified hawk at Saqqara.
YY. C. I \\\ ES, Scepter of Egypt l (New York,
1953), 320-6.

G. RkisM'.r, Canopies (Cairo, 1967).
CDolzani, I asi canopi (Milan, 1982).
B. LUSCHER, Unlersuchungen zu Agyptischen
Kanopenkdslen (Hildcsheim, 1990).
A. Dodson, The canopic equipment of the kings of
Egypt (London, 1994).

captives

The motif of the bound foreign captive is one
of the most frequent and potent elements in
ancient Egyptian iconography. The narmer

palette and many other decorated royal arte-
facts of the late Predynastic and Early
Dynastic periods feature scenes of the king
inflicting humiliation on foreign captives. The
earliest example of the archetypal scene of the
pharaoh striking a bound captive was found on
the painted wall of Tomb 100 at nikrakonpo-
lis in the late fourth millennium BC, and the
same 'smiting scene' was still being depicted
thousands of years later, on the pylons of
Egyptian temples of the Greco-Roman period.
On the Narmer macehead (now in the

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), a depiction of
an Early Dynastic royal ritual shows three
bound captives running between two sets of
three cairns (perhaps symbolizing Egypt's
borders).

Limestone and wooden statues of foreign
captives have been found in the 5th- and 6th-
Dynasty pyramid complexes ol Ranefcref,
Nvuserra, Djedkara-lsesi, Unas, Teti, Pep\ i
and Pepy II at Saqqara and abl sir. The French
archaeologist Jean-Philippe Lauer has sug-
gested that there may have been as many as a
hundred statues of captives in each pyramid
complex, perhaps placed in tines along either
side of the causeway linking the valley and
mortuary temples. Later in the Pharaonic
period, schematic representations of bound
captives were used in cursing rituals, as in the
case of five early 12th-Dynasty alabaster cap-
tive figures (now in the Egyptian Museum,
Cairo) inscribed with hieratic EXECRATION
texts comprising lists of the names of Nubian
princes accompanied by insults.

Throughout the Pharaonic and Greco-
Roman periods the depiction of the hound
captive continued to be a popular theme of
temple and palace decoration. The inclusion
of bound captives in the decoration of aspects
of the fittings and furniture of royal palaces -
particularly contexts where the king might

Detail of the relief decoration on the base of a statue
ofRameses n at Luxor temple, showing three foreign
captives. 19th Dynasty, c.1250 BC (s.suAW)

CARTER, HOWARD

CARTONNAGE

place his feet, such as painted pavements and
footstools - served to reinforce the pharaoh's
total suppression of foreigners and probably
also symbolized the elements of 'unrule 1 that
the gods required the king to control. There
are therefore a number of depictions in Greco-
Roman temples showing- lines of gods captur-
ing birds, wild animals and foreigners in clap-
nets (see HUNTING), rkkhyt birds were also
sometimes used as symbols of foreign captives
and subject peoples.

The captives 1 role as metaphors for the con-
tainment of the forces of chaos is also to be
seen in the necropolis seal used in the Valley of
the Kings, which consists of a depiction of
anubis surmounting nine foreign captives rep-
resenting the dangers threatening royal tombs.
Manv of the reliefs in New Kingdom temples
list the foreign peoples and cities whom the
Egyptians had conquered (or would have liked
to conquer), often writing the names of the
polities inside schemaiic depictions of bound
captives.

J.-P. LAUERandJ. LECLANT, 'Decouverte de
statues dc prisonniers an temple dc la pyramide
dePepi Ier\ RdE2] (1969), 55-62.
M. Verner, l Lcs statuettes de prisonniers en bois
d'Abousir', ff</£ .16 (1985), 145-52.
G. Posener, Cinq figures d'euvoutemeni (Cairo,
1987).

R. II. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 18-19.

Carter, Howard (1874-1939)
Born in Kensington, the son of Samuel John
Carter (an animal painter), it was his talent as
a draughtsman that enabled Carter to join the
.Archaeological Survey of Egypt in 1891,
when he was only seventeen. Me received his
training as an excavator and epigrapher from
some of the most important Egyptologists of
the late nineteenth century, including Gaston
maspero and Flinders PETRK, with whom he
worked at el-AMARNA in 1892. Between 1893
and 1899 he worked as a draughtsman for
Edouard Naville at of.ir fl-uauri, and in 1899
he was appointed Inspector General of the
monuments of Upper Egypt, in which capac-
ity he installed the first electric lights in the
VALLEY OF THE KINGS and the temples at ABU
SIMBF.L. [ n 1903 he resigned from (he
Egyptian Antiquities Service after a dispute
with French tourists at Saqqara. He ihen
forked for four years as a painter and dealer
m antiquities, until the offer of finance from
Lord Carnarvon enabled him to return to
excavation in the Valley of the Kings.
Although he discovered six royal tombs at
Ihebes, his most famous achievement was
undoubtedly the unearthing of the virtually

undisturbed tomb of tutankhamln, in

November 1922, finally rewarding Carnarvon

for his support over the preceding fifteen

vears. Carter spent the remaining seventeen

years of his life recording and analysing the

funerary equipment from the tomb, a task

which is still incomplete.

H. Carter and P. E. Newberry, The tomb of

Thoutmosis /rfLondon, 1904).

H. Carter, The tomb ofTut.Ankh.Amen, 3 vols

(London, 1923-33).

T. G. H. James, Howard Carter: the path to

Tutankhitmun (London, 1992).

N. REEVES and J. Tailor, Howard Carter before

Tulunkhamun (London, 1992).

Gilded carlonnage mummy mask of an unnamed
woman, whose vulture headdress almost certainly
indicates that she was a princess. Middle
Kingdom, c.1900 tic, it. dl cm. ft: \29770)

carta nn age

Material consisting ot layers of linen or
papyrus stiffened with GESSO, (plaster) and
often decorated with paint or gilding. It was
most cnmmonlv used for making mummv
masks, mummy cases, anthropoid coffins and
other funerarv items. The earliest cartonnagc
mummy masks date to the First Intermediate
Period, although a few surviving examples of
Old Kingdom mummies have thin layers of

CARTOUCHE

CATARACTS, N ILE

plaster over the linen wrappings covering the
face, perhaps representing an earlier stage in
the development of the material.
J. H. Taylor, 'The development of cartonnage
cases-', Mummies and magic, ed. S. D'Auria, P.
Lacovara and C. Roehrig (Boston, 1988), 166-8.
— j Egyptian coffins (Princes Risborough, 1989),
23-4,47-53.

Cartouche (Egyptian shenu)
Elliptical outline representing a length of
knotted rope with which certain elements of
the Egyptian royaj. titulary were surround-
ed. The French word cartouche, meaning 'gun
cartridge', was originally given to the royal
frame by Napoleon's soldiers and savants,

Detail of the facade of the 'great temple' at Abu
Simbel, consisting of a cartouche containing the
prenomen oj'Rameses n (Vser-Maat-Ra). 19th
Dynasty, } 279-1 213 bc. (i. sn.-nv)

because of its cartridge-like shape. From the
4th Dynasty (2613-2494 bc) onwards the line
was drawn around the king's 'throne name'
(prenomen or nesw-bit) and 'birth name'
(nomen or sa Ra). It proved invaluable to early
scholars such as Jean-Francois Champollion
who were attempting to decipher the hiero-
glyphic script, in that it was presumed to indi-
cate which groups of signs were the royal
names.

The cartouche was essentially an elongated
form of the SBEN hieroglyph, and both signs
signified the concept of 'encircling protection'
denoted by a coil of rope folded and tied at the
end. The physical extension of the original shen
sign into a cartouche was evidently necessitat-
ed by the increasing length of royal names. The
symbolic protection afforded by a cartouche,
which may have been a diagram of the universe
being encircled by the sun, is graph icallv illus-
trated by the choice of this sign for the shape of
some 18th-and 19th-Dynasty sarcophagi, such
as that of Merenptah (1213-1203 bc). Some of
the early 18th-Dynasty burial chambers in the
Valley of the Kings, as in the tomb of thut-
mose ra (1479-1425 bc) (kv34), were also car-
touche-shaped, thus allowing the king's

mummy, like his name, to be physically sur-
rounded by the cartouche.
W. Barta, 'Der Konigsring als Symbol
zyklischer Widerkehr', ZAS 98 (1970), 5-16.
P. Kaplony, 'Konigsring', Lexikon der
Agyptologie in, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W.
Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1980), 610-26.
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 194-5.

cat

Important both as a domestic pet and as a
symbol of deities such as bastet and ra (the
'great cat of Heliopohs'). There were two
indigenous feline species in ancient Egypt: the
j unglc cat {Felts chum) and the African wild cat

Figure of a cat sacred to the goddess Bastet, wearing
protective wedjat-^/c amulet. Late Period, after 600
bc, bronze with gold rings, h. 38 cm. (ea64391)

(Felis sihestris libyca), the former being found
only in Egypt and southeastern Asia. The ear-
liest Egyptian remains of a cat were found in a
tomb at the Predynastic site of Mostagedda,
near modern Asyut, suggesting that the
Egyptians were already keeping cats as pets in
the late fourth millennium bc.

The Egyptian word for 'cat' was the ono-
matopoeic term miw, which, although not
mentioned in the pyramid texts, found its
way into various personal names from the Old
Kingdom onwards, including the 22nd-
Dynasty pharaoh known as Pamiu or Pimay,
literally 'the tomcat' (773-767 bc). The earliest
Egyptian depiction of the cat took the form of
three hieroglyphic symbols, each representing
seated cats. These formed part of the phrase
'Lord of the City of Cats' inscribed on a stone
block from el-lismt, which may date as early
as the reign of pepy ii (2278-2184 bc). From
the 12th Dynasty onwards, cats were increas-
ingly depicted in the painted decoration of
private tombs, either participating in the
scenes of hunting and fowling in the marshes
or seated beneath the chair of the owner.

It was in the funerary texts of the New
Kingdom that the cat achieved full apotheosis:
in the Amditat (see funerary texts) it is por-
trayed as a demon decapitating bound CAP-
TIVES and in the Litany ofRa it appears to be a
personification of the sun-god himself, bat-
tling with the evil serpent-god apopfiis. As a
result of its connection with the sun-god, the
cat was depicted on a number of Ramessidc
stelae found in the Theban region. From the
Late Period onwards, large numbers of sacred
cats were mummified and deposited in under-
ground galleries at such sites as Bubastis (tell
basta) and speos artemidos (see also sacred
animals), and numerous bronze votive stat-
uettes have also survived, including the
'Gayer-Anderson cat' in the collection of the
British Museum.

L. Stork, 'Katzc', Lexikon der Agyptologie in,
ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1980), 367-70.
P. L. Armitage and J. Clutton-brock,
L A radiological and histological investigation into
the mummification of cats from ancient Egypt'.
Journal of Archaeological Science 8 (1981),
185-96.

J. Malek, The cat in ancient Egypt (London,
1993).

cataracts, Nile

Rocky areas of rapids in the middle Nile valley,
caused by abrupt geological changes. There
are six cataracts in the section of the Nile thai
passes through the area of ancient Nubia,
between Aswan and Khartoum.

CATTLE

CHANTRESS

cattle see animal husbandry

cavetto cornice

Distinctive form of concave moulding;, pro-
jecting from the tops of many Egyptian ste-
lae, pylons, altars or walls. The characteris-
tic hollow, quarter-circle shape perhaps
derives from the appearance of the tops of
fronds of vegetation used in Predynastic huts,
before the emergence of mud-brick or stone
architecture.

S. Clarke and R. Engelbach, Ancient Egyptian
masonry: the building craft (London, 1930), 5-6.
[reprinted as Ancient Egyptian construction and
architecture (New York, 1990)]

cemeteries see mastaba and pyramids

C Group (C Horizon)

Nubian cultural entity roughly synchronous
with the period in Egyptian history between
the Old and New Kingdoms (r.2494-1550
bc). The indigenous C-Group people of
nubia were subjected to varying degrees of
social and economic influence from their
powerful northern neighbours. Their princi-

C-Group bowl of polished incised mare from Earas,
c.2340-1550bc, it. 8.1 cm. (ea51230)

pal archaeological characteristics included
handmade black-topped pottery vessels bear-
ing incised decoration filled with white pig-
ment, as well as artefacts imported from
Egypt.

Their subsistence pattern was dominated
by cattle-herding, and their social system was
essentially tribal. In the early 12th Dynasty the
C-Group territory in Lower Nubia was taken
over by the Egyptians, who established a string
of portresses between the 2nd and 3rd Nile
cataracts. It has been suggested that one of the
effects of the Egvptian occupation in the
Middle Kingdom may have been to prevent
the C Group from developing contacts with
the more sophisticated kerma culture that was
developing in Upper Nubia.

B. TfilGGER, Nubia under the pharaohs (London,

197S).

J. H. Taylor, Egypt and Nubia (London, 1991 ).

Champollion, Jean-Francois (1790-1832)

French linguist and Egyptologist who was
responsible for the most important achieve-
ment in the history of the study of ancient
Egypt: the decipherment of hieroglyphs. He
is sometimes described as Champollion 'le
jeune', because his brother, Jacques-Joseph
Champollion-Figeac, was also a scholar. Born
at Figeac, he w r as sent to the Lyceum at
Grenoble at the age of eleven and had already
delivered a paper on the ancient Egvptian
language by the time he left in 1807. He sub-
sequently studied under the pioneering
Egyptologist Silvestre de Sacy at the College
de France in Paris.

Equipped with an excellent knowledge of
Hebrew, Coptic, Arabic, Syriac and
Chaldaean, he embarked on the task of deci-
phering hieroglyphs, using the rosetta stone
(a Ptolemaic inscription consisting of the same
decree written in Greek, demotic: and hiero-
glvphics) as his principal guide. After examin-
ing Egyptian antiquities in various European
collections, Champollion undertook a detailed
survey of Egypt, along with Ippolito rosei.lt-
ni in 1828-9. Although his Leitre a M. Dacicr
of 1822 is usually regarded as the turning-
point in his studies, he did not achieve a satis-
factory understanding of the language until
the completion of his grammar and dictionary
shortly before his death from a stroke in 1832.
J.-F. Champollion, Lettre a M. Dacier relative a
/'alphabet des hieroglyphes phoneliques (Paris,
1S22).

— , Monuments de lEgypte el de la Nubie, 4 vols
(Paris, 1835-47).

Fragment of wall-painting from the tomb-chapel of
Nebamun at Thebes, showing two chariots. The
upper one is pulled by two horses, whereas the lower
one appears to be drawn by mules. 18th Dynasty,
c. 1400 BC, painted plaster, it. 43 cm. (ea37982)

E LI. Griffith, 'The decipherment of the
hieroglyphs',^^ 37 (1951), 38-46.
M. Pourpoint, Champollion et 1'enigme
egyptienne (Paris, 1963).

chantress see cult singers and temple
musicians

chariot

Although the origins of the horse-drawn char-
iot have proved difficult to ascertain, its arrival
in Egypt can be fairly reliably dated to the
Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 bc).
The surviving textual and pictorial evidence
suggests that the chariot (wereret or merkebet)
arrived in Egypt at roughly the same time as
the iiyksos. It consisted of a light wooden
semicircular, open-backed framework, fur-
nished with an axle and a pair of four- or six-
spoked wheels. A long pole attached to the axle
enabled the chariot to be drawn bv a pair of
horses. Its importance as an innovative item of
military technology was based on its use as a
mobile platform for archers, allowing the
enemy to be bombarded bv arrows from manv
different directions. Although the chariot is
often portrayed in temple and tomb decora-
tion from the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc)
onwards, onlv eleven examples have survived,
four of which are from the tomb of
tutankiiamun. A Ramesside papyrus in the
British Museum (P. Anastasi i) provides an
insight into the maintenance of chariotry with
a description of an Egvptian charioteer's visit

CHEOPS

CHRONOLO GY

to a repair shop in the Levantine coastal city oi
Joppa.

The chariot was not only used in battle by
the maiyanmt, an elite corps of" the Egyptian
army in the New Kingdom, it was also
regarded as an essential part of the roval
regalia. Depictions of the king charging
enemies in his chariot became a common fea-
ture of the exterior walls of temples as sym-
bols of 'the containment of unrule 1 , roughly
comparable with the more ancient theme of
the king smiting foreigners with a mace (see
kingship).

M. A. LirnuER and J. H. Crouwee, Wheeled
vehicles and ridden animals in the Ancient \car
East (Leiden and Cologne, 1979).
A. R. Sci-iulman, 'Chariots, chariotry and the
Hyksos\ JSSEA 10(1980), 105-53.
i\l. A. Littwer and J. H. Crouwee, Chariots and
related equipment from the tomb ofTiitdnkhamiin
(Oxford, 1985).

P. R. S. MoorI'.y, 'The emergence of the light,
horse-drawn chariot in the Near Last
r.2000-1500 iu:.\ WA 18/2 (1986), 196-215.

Cheops see kiiltu

Chephren see kjiafra

C Horizon see c group

children

A great deal of evidence has survived from
Egyptian medical and magical documents
concerning precautions taken bv WOMEN to
ensure rapid conception, safe pregnancy and
successful childbirth. The graves of children
have survived in various cemeteries from the
Predynastic period onwards, and attempts
have been made to assess the rate of infant
mortality on the basis of the ratios of adult to
child burials, as well as the study of the human
remains themselves. Undoubtedly infant mor-
tality was high, but families were nevertheless
fairly large, averaging perhaps at about five
children who would actually have reached
adolescence (assuming the early death oi three
or four offspring).

Many surviving reliefs, paintings and sculp-
tures depict women suckling their babies,
including the famous depiction of TBUTMQSE
in being suckled by the goddess isis (in the
form of a tree) in his tomb in the Valley of the
Kings (kv34). The motif of the king being
suckled by his mother Isis or iiatitor was an
archetypal element of Egyptian religion, per-
haps providing some of the inspiration for the
image of Madonna and Child in the Christian
era. A number of magical spells were evident-
ly intended to restore mother's milk, and a

similar purpose may have been served by the
ceramic vessels depicting nursing mothers,
which have survived from the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 nc) onwards. As far as
the elite were concerned, wet-nurses were
often employed, especially by the women of
the royal family; the position off 'royal wet-
nurse 1 was evidently a prestigious office, often
entitling the individual to be depicted in the
tomb of the roval individual whom she had
nursed.

Erom at least the Old Kingdom onwards
(2686-2181 lit.), both boys and girls often wore
a sidelock of youth, marking them out as
pre-pubescent. The sidelock, essentially a
tress of hair hanging over the ear, was worn
until about the age of ten or more, Both
infants and child-gods such as Harpocrates
(see horus) were regularly depicted with one
finger in their mouths as a symbol of their
childishness. Nakedness was also particularly
common among children, judging from the
surviving paintings and reliefs of the
Pharaonic period. It is also clear from such
funerary art that children, as in all ages, played
manv games and sports, ranging from danc-
ing and wrestling to ball games and races. A
number of balls have survived, but the iden-
tification of toys has proved more contro-
versial, given the tendency for them to be

confused with religious and magical para-
phernalia; a 'doll 1 for instance might equally
well have erotic or ritualistic significance (see
sexuality).

Sec also circumcision; clotieng; educa-
tion; MAMMISi; MEDICINE.
E. Feucht, 'Kind', Lexikon der Agyptologie in,
cd. W. Helck, L. Otto and W. Westendorf
{Wiesbaden, 1980), 424-37.
G. Pincm, 'Childbirth and female figurines at
Deir el-Medina and el-Amama\ Orientalia 52
(1983), 405-14.

S. Whale, The family in the Eighteenth Dynasty of
Egypt: a study of the representation of the family in
private lomhs (Sydney, 1989).

R. M. and J. J. Janssen, Growing up in ancient

Egypt (London, 1990).

E. SthOUHAL, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge.

1992}, 11-29.

G. Rumvs, Women in ancient Egypt (London,

1993), 75-91.

chronology

Modern Egyptologists' chronologies of
ancient Egypt combine three basic approach-
es. First, there are 'relative' dating methods,
such as stratigraphic excavation, or the
'sequence dating 1 of artefacts, which was
invented by Flinders petrie in 1899. Second,
there are so-called 'absolute' chronologies,
based on ealendrical and astronomical records
obtained from ancient texts (see astronomy
and astrology and CALENDAR). Finally, there
are 'radiometric 1 methods (principally radio-
carbon dating and thermoluminescenee), by
means of which particular types of artefacts in-
organic remains can be assigned dates in terms
of the measurement of radioactive decay or
accumulation. The ancient Egyptians dated
important political and religious events not
according to the number of years that had
elpased since a single fixed point in history
(such as the birth of Christ in the modern
western calendar) but in terms of the years
since the accession of each current king (reg-

lliteffMi

King list from the temple of Rameses a at Abydos.
the lower register of which repeats the birth and
throne names of Rameses it. 19th Dynasty, c.1250
bc, painted limestone, it. l.3Hin. (eaJ17)

nal years). Dates were therefore recorded in
the following typical format: 'day three of the
second month of peret in the third year ol
Menkheperra (Thutmose m)'. The situation-
however, is slightly confused by the fact that
the dates cited in the 5th-Dynasty king LIST
known as the Palermo stone appear to refer to
the number of biennial cattle censuses (hesbet)
rather than to the number of years that the
king had reigned, therefore the number ol

CHRONOLOGY

CIRCUMCISION

'years' in the date has to be doubled to find out
the actual number of regnal years.

The names and relative dates of the various
rulers and DYNASTIES have been obtained from
a number of textual sources. These range from
the AegyPttaca, a history compiled by an
fVyptian priest called MANETHO in the early
third century BC, to the much earlier king
lists, mainly recorded on the walls of tombs
an d temples but also in the form of papyri (as
with the TURIN ROYAL CANON) or remote desert
rock-carvings (as with the Wadi Ilammamat
list). It is usually presumed that Manetho
himself used king lists of these types as his
sources.

The Traditional' absolute chronologies tend
to rely on complex webs of textual references,
combining such elements as names, dates and
genealogical information into an overall histor-
ical framework which is more reliable in some
periods than in others. The 'intermediate peri-
ods 1 have proved to be particularly awkward,
partly because there was often more than one
ruler or dynasty reigning simultaneously in
different parts of the country. The surviving
records of observations of the heliacal rising of
the dog star Sirius (sopdet) serve both as the
linchpin of the reconstruction of the Egyptian
calendar and as its essential link with the
chronology as a whole.

The relationship between the calcndrical
and radiometric chronological systems has
been relatively ambivalent over the years.
Since the late 1940s, when a series of Egyptian
artefacts were used as a bench-mark in order
to assess the reliability of the newly invented
radiocarbon dating technique, a consensus has
emerged that the two systems are broadly in
line. The major problem, however, is that the
traditional calendrica! system of dating, what-
ever its failings, virtually always has a smaller
margin of error than radiocarbon dates, which
are necessarily quoted in terms of a broad
band of dates (i.e. one or two standard devia-
tions), never capable of pinpointing the con-
struction uf a building or the making of an
artefact to a specific year (or even a specific
decade). The prehistory of Egypt, on the other
hand, has benefited greatly from the applica-
tion of radiometric dating, since it was previ-
ously reliant on relative dating methods. The
radiometric techniques have made it possible
not only to place Petrie's sequence dates with-
^ a framework of absolute dates (however
'mpreeise) but also to push the chronology
back into the earlier Neolithic and Palaeolithic
periods.

■ barker, 'The calendars and chronology', The
Legacy of Egypt, ed. J. R. Harris (Oxford, 1971),
13-26.

R. Krauss, Sethis- und Monddaien: Studien zur

astronomiseketi und technisdien Cbmnologie

Altagyptens (Mildesheim, 1985).

T. M. E. Shaw, 'Egyptian chronology and the

Irish Oak calibration 1 , $NES 44/4 ( 1 985),

295-317.

K. A. Kitchen, 'The chronology of ancient

Egypt', iil 23(1991), 201-8.

clitlionic

Term used to describe phenomena relating to
the underworld and the earth, including
deities such as ger, aker and osiris.

cippussee fiorus

circumcision

The Greek historian Herodotus mentions that
the Egyptians practised circumcision 'for
cleanliness 1 sake, preferring to be clean rather
than comely'; and the practice may well have
been inaugurated purely for reasons of
hygiene. Nevertheless, depictions of certain
uncircumcised individuals in the decoration of
Old Kingdom mastaba tombs suggest that the
operation was not universal.

The act of circumcision may have been per-
formed as part of a ceremony akin to the rites
of passage in the 'age-grade systems' of many
band and tribal societies. A stele of the First
Intermediate Period (2181-2055 BC) mentions
the circumcision of 120 boys at one time,

Detail of a relief from the mastaba tomb of
Anhhmahor at Saqqara, showing a priest
performing an act of circumcision on a boy. 6th
Dynasty, c.2300 m:.

which perhaps implies i ^roup of individuals
of varying ages. It has been suggested, how-
ever, that boys would usually have been about
fourteen years old when they were circum-
cised. The mummy of a young prince aged
about eleven, which was found in the tomb of
Amenhotep u, is uncircumcised and retains
the sidelock OF youtii hairstyle, which was
therefore perhaps worn by young boys only in
the years before circumcision.

The ceremony itself, for which the
Egyptian term was sebi, was carried out using
a curved flint knife similar to those employed
by embalmers. On the basis of this archaizing
equipment, it has been argued that circumci-
sion was essentially a religious act for the
Egyptians. On the other hand, it may have
simph been a practical expedient, given the
fact that metal knives would hardly have sur-
passed a newly-knapped flint in terms of
sharpness. Moreover, considering the lack of
antiseptics, if the cut was as clean and rapid as
possible, the healing process would probably
have been more likely to be successful.

The 6th-Dynasty mastaba of the vizier
Ankhmahor at Saqqara contains a circumci-
sion scene, which appears to show both the
cutting and the application of some sort of
ointment, although the latter is unclear. From
at least the Late Period onwards (747—332 BC)
it became compulsory for priests to be circum-
cised, as part of the purification necessary for
the performance of their temple duties, and
this further illustrates that it was not compul-
sory for children to be circumcised at adoles-
cence. In the Roman period, a ban on circum-
cision (Irom which onlv priests were exempt)
appears to have been introduced.

The Egyptians themselves may have regard-
ed circumcision as an ethnic 'identifier', judg-
ing irom depictions of foreigners in battle
scenes of the New Kingdom, such as those
depicted in the mortuary temple of Rameses ill
at MEDINET HAUL". In enumerating enemy dead,
die Egyptians differentiated between the cir-
cumcised Semites, whose hands were cut off,
and the uncircumcised foes - notably Libyans -
whose penises were removed for the counting.

Although Strouhal suggests that some
ancient Egyptian texts refer to 'uncircum-
cised' virgins and the Roman writer Strabo
mentions that female circumcision was prac-
tised by the Egyptians, no physical evidence of
the operation has yet been found on surviving
female mummies.

EJONQCHEERE, 'La eirconeision des anciens
Egyptiens', Caiiaurus I (1951), 212-34.
O. Bardis, 'Circumcision in ancient Egvpt 1 ,
Indiana Journal for the History of Medicine 12/1
(1967), 22-3.

CLEOPATRA

CLOTHIN G

E. Stroui tAL, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 28-9.

Cleopatra

Name given to seven Ptolemaic queens of
Egypt. The last of these, Cleopatra vn (51-30
bc), was the most illustrious. Clearly intelli-
gent and politically astute, she was reputedly
the only Ptolemaic ruler to have learnt the
Egyptian language. Surprisingly, however, in
view of the later eulogies of poets and play-
wrights such as Shakespeare, her surviving
portraits suggest that the historical Cleopatra
was not especially beautiful.

Cleopatra vn first shared a coregency with
her father Ptolemy xn (80-51 bc) and then
with her brother Ptolemy xtu (51-47 bc) who
ousted her from power for a time in 48 BC Her
links with Rome were first forged through
Pompev, who had been appointed as her
guardian on the death of her father, when he
had become involved in the financial affairs of
the Ptolemaic court. Defeated by Caesar at
Pharsalia in 48 bc, Pompey fled to Egypt,
where he was assassinated. In the same year
Caesar entered Egypt and restored Cleopatra
to the throne as coregent with her second
brother, Ptolemy xiv (47^f4 bc), whom she
married.

In 47 BC she bore a son, Ptolemy Caesarion,
who she claimed had been fathered by Caesar.
She visited Caesar in Rome in 46 bc, returning
after his assassination, whereupon she
bestowed a similar fate on her brother, replac-
ing him with the young Caesarion; her various
political manoeuvres then led to her being
summoned to meet with Mark Antony at
Tarsus. He spent the winter at Alexandria,
after which Cleopatra bore him twins; shortly
afterwards they were officially married, and
subsequently set about the business of using
one another for their own political ends.

In 34 bc, in the so-called 'Donations of
Alexandria 1 , Mark Antony divided various
parts of the eastern Roman empire between
Cleopatra and her children, legitimating this
action to die Senate by informing them that he
was simply installing client rulers. However,
Octavian (later Augustus), who was the broth-
er of Mark Antony's Roman wife, led a propa-
ganda campaign against his brother-in-law and
Cleopatra, dwelling on their supposed licen-
tious behaviour in Alexandria, and in 32 bc
Rome declared war on Cleopatra. The follow-
ing year Octavian defeated Mark Antony at the
naval battle of Actium, partly because
Cleopatra's fleet unexpectedly withdrew from
the engagement. Octavian pursued them both
into Egypt, but Antony committed suicide
and, on 10 August 30 bc, Cleopatra followed

^■-};im il si

Figures of 'Cleopatra vn (left) and her son by

Julius Caesar, Caesarion (right), making
offerings. From the south (rear) wall of the temple
ofHathor at Dendera. (p. T. NICHOLSON)

suit, preferring death to the humiliation of a

Roman triumph. Octavian then had her eldest

son, Ptolemy Caesarion, killed. He appointed

himself pharaoh on 30 August, thenceforth

treating Egypt as his own private estate.

J. Quaegebecr, 'Cleopatra vn and the cults of the

Ptolemaic queens', Cleopatra 's Egypt: Age of the

Ptolemies, ed. R. S, Bianchi (New York, 1988),

41-54.

L. Hughes-IIaelett, Cleopatra (London, 1990).

J. Whitehorne, Cleopa tras (London, 1994).

clepsydra ('water clock')
Device for measuring time, consisting of a
water-filled vessel (usually of stone, copper or
pottery) with a hole in the base through which
the water gradually drained away. The earliest
surviving examples date to the 18th Dynasty
(1550-1295 bc). There are a variety of frag-
ments of stone clepsydrae in the collection of
the British Museum, including part of a basalt
vessel dating to the reign of Philip Arrhidaeus
(V.320 bc), which is marked with vertical lines
of small holes relating to the twelve hours of
the night. Part of a cubit rod in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York, bears the
words 'The hour according to the cubit: a
jar(?) of copper filled with water...', thus
implying that the rod was dipped into a copper
vessel in order to read the time as the water
level fell.

" 1

B. Cotterell, F. P. Dickson and J. Kammixga,
'Ancient Egyptian water-clocks: a reappraisal',
Journal of Archaeological Science 13 (1986),
31-50.

G. Holbl, 'Eine agyptisehe Wasseruhr aus
Ephesus 7 , Antike Welt 17/1 (1986), 59-60.
S. Couchoud, 'Calcul d'un horloge a eau\
BSEG 12 (1988), 25-34,

clothing

Despite the fact that arid conditions have
facilitated the survival of a number of items of
clothing, primarily from tombs of the New
Kingdom, textiles have so far not been studied
in sufficient detail. Modern studies of ancient
Egyptian clothing are therefore still largely
based on the study of wall-pa in tings, reliefs
and sculptures.

In general Egyptian clothing was very sim-
ple: men working in the fields or involved in
craftwork often wore little more than a loin-
cloth or short kilt, although shirt-like gar-
ments have survived from the Early Dynastic
period onwards, the earliest example being a
linen dress/shirt from Tarkhan in Lower
Egypt (c.2800 bc). Clothing can often be used
as a reliable chronological guide in that die
Egyptian elite of most periods were generally
subject to changes in fashion. The dress of
courtiers of Ramesside times, for instance,
could be extremelv elaborate and the men
often wore pleated kilts with unusual apron-
like arrangements at the front.

During the Old Kingdom, women (and
goddesses) are usually portrayed wearing a
kind of sheath-dress with broad shoulder
straps, but by the New Kingdom this had

CLOTHING

COBRA

evolved into a type of dress with only one
strap, and by the reign of Amenhotep in
|p$90— 1352 BC) more diaphanous garments
were being worn. Fine clothing became one of
the specialist products for which Egypt was
known in Roman times. The colourful nature
of the fabrics used in daily life (or perhaps the
use of bead netting over dresses) is illustrated
bv the figures of offering bearers from the
tomb of Meketra (tt280) dating to the early
Middle Kingdom.

The excavation of the Theban tomb of the
architect Kha (tt8) led to the discovery of
twenty-six knee-length shirts and about fifty
loincloths, including' short triangular pieces

of material that would have been worn in the
context of agricultural or building work.
Seventeen heavier linen tunics were provided
for winter wear, while two items described as
'tablecloths' were among Kha's wife's
clothes. He and his wife each had their own
individual laundrymarks, and it is known that
there were professional Iaundercrs attached
to the workmen's village at DEIR EL-MlDJNA
where Kha and his familv lived. A few loin-
cloths made of leather rather than linen have
also survived, some particularly fine exam-
ples having been excavated from the well-
preserved tomb of maiiierpri in the Valley of
the Kings (ky36).

The tomb of tltankhamun (kv62) con-
tained a large selection of textiles, including
children's clothing. So far little of his
wardrobe has been scientifically examined, but
some of the linen contains gold thread, and
one kilt was made up of colourful bcadwork.
Decorated textiles became more common in
the New Kingdom, but were still not com-
mon, some of the best examples deriving from

left Earliest surviving Egyptian garment: linen
shirt or dress, comprising a pleated yoke and
sleeves attached to a skirt with weft fringe,
excavated in 1912 from mastaba 2050 at
Tarkhan. 1st Dynasty, reign oj'Djet, c.2%'0 tic,
!,. of sleeve (neck edge to wrist) 58 cm. (petrie
ml seuu, 28614 Bi)

BELtnv Triangular linen loincloths from the tomb of
Tn tan kha ma n. 18th Dynasty, c. 1330 tic, (cairo,
no. 50b)

the tomb of Thutmosc iv (1400-1390 BC,
kv43) and include crowned uraei (see wadjyt).
Howard Carter believed these to be ceremoni-
al garments, but more recently it has been sug-
gested that they may have been used as vessel
covers.

Priests, viziers and certain other types of
officials all marked their status with particular
items or styles of dress. The vizier, for
instance, was usually depicted wearing a long
robe which came up to his armpits, while the
AT»/-priest was usually shown wearing a leop-
ard-skin.

R. Hale, Egyptian textiles (Princes Risborough,
1986).

G. Vogelsang-Eastwood, Pharaonic Egyptian
clothing (Leiden, 1993).

cobra

Type of snake that served as the sacred image
of wadjyt, patron deity of the town of Buto
(TELL ei.-f\rVi\) in the Delta, who came to
represent Lower Egypt, in contrast to the
Upper Egyptian vulture-goddess NE&HBET. As
the ruler of the two lands, the king included
the cobra (iaret) and the vulture among his
titles and insignia (see crowns and royal
regalia and ROYAL TITULARY). The uraeus was
sometimes described as ''the great enchantress 1
{weret heka.Jp) and could be depicted as a cobra
with a human head (as on the golden shrine of
Tutankhamun). Even before its identification
with the king, the cobra's protective attributes
were recognized, and it was identified as the
eye or ra, sometimes shown protecting his
solar disc bv spitting fire and venom. Pairs of
cobras also guarded the gates that divided the
individual hours of the underworld in the
Book of Gates (see funerary texts); this is
presumed to have been the function of the
gilded wooden cobra found in the tomb of
Tutankhamun.

IL-W. Fi.scijer-Elfert, 'Uto 1 , Lexikon der
Agytopologie vi, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W.
Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1986), 906-1 1.
S. Joi INSON, The cobra goddess of ancient Egypt
(London, 1990).

coffins and sarcophagi

The term 'coffin' is usuallv applied to the
rectangular or anthropoid container in which
the Egyptians placed the mummified body,
whereas the word "sarcophagus 1 (Greek:
'flesh-eating') is used to refer onlv to the stone
outer container, invariably encasing one or
more coffins. The distinction made betw r een
these two items of Egyptian funerary equip-
ment is therefore essentially an artificial one,
since both shared the same role of protecting
the corpse. In terms of decoration and shape,

COFFINS AND SARCOPHAGI

COFFINS AND SARCO PH AG?

coffins and sarcophagi drew on roughly the
same iconograpMc and stj Listic repertoire.

The earliest burials in Egypt contain no
coffins and are naturally desiccated by the hot
sand. The separation of the corpse from the
surrounding sand by the use of a coffin or sar-
cophagus ironically led to the deterioration of
the body, perhaps stimulating developments in
mummification. The religious purpose of the
coffin was to ensure the well-being of the
deceased in the afterlife, literally providing a
'house 1 for the KA.

The earliest coffins were baskets or simple
plank constructions in which the body was
placed in a Hexed position. From these devel-
oped the vaulted house-shaped coffins that
remained in use into the 4th Dynasty
(2613-2494 BG). At around this time the
Egyptians began to bury the corpse in an
extended position, perhaps because the
increasingly common practice of evisceration
(see CANOHCJARS) made such an arrangement
more suitable. By the end of the Old
Kingdom {2181 Be) food offerings were being
painted on the inside of coffins as an extra
means of proyiding sustenance for the
deceased in the event of the lomb chapel being
destroyed or neglected. In the Old and Middle
Kingdoms, a pair of eves was often painted on
the side of the coffin that faced east when it
was placed in the tomb; it was evidently
believed thai the deceased could therefore look
out of the coffin to see his or her offerings and
the world from which he or she had passed, as
well as to view the rising sun.

Decorated coffins became still more
important in the First Intermediate Period

(21 81—2055 nc), when mam" tombs contained
little mural decoration (see bem iiasan). It
was thus essential that coffins themselves
should incorporate the basic elements of the
tomb, and by the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 bc) they often incorporated
revised extracts of the pyramid texts, known
as the COFFIN TEXTS. This change reflects the
increased identification of the afterlife with
osiris, rather than the sun-god ra (see n. \er-

\R\ Tl'ATS).

Anthropoid coffins first appeared in the
12th Dynasty (1985-1795 bc), apparcntly
serving as substitute bodies lest the original he
destroyed. With the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 bc), this form of coffin became
more popular and the shape became identified
with Osiris himself, his BEARD and crossed
arms sometimes being added. The feathered,
riski coffins of the 1 7th and early 1 8th Dynasty
were once thought to depict the wings of the
goddess isis, embracing her husband Osiris,
but are now considered by some scholars to
refer to the ba bird. Rectangular coffins were
effectively replaced by anthropoid types in the
18th Dynasty, hut some of their decorative ele-
ments were retained.

In the Third Intermediate Period (1069-
747 tu:), coffins, papyri and stelae became the
main vehicles for funerary scenes that had pre-
viously been carved and painted on the walls
of lomb chapels. The principal feature of most
of the new scenes depicted on coffins was the
Osirian and solar mythology surrounding the
concept of rebirth (see OSIRIS and ra), includ-
ing the judgement of the deceased before
Osiris and the journey into the underworld,

the voyage of the solar bark and parts of the
Litany of Ra. Among the new scenes intro-
duced in the decoration of coffins and on
funerary papyri was the depiction of the sepa-
ration of the earth-god Geb from the sky-
goddess NL'T.

The excavation of the 21st- and 22nd-
Dynasty royal tombs at TAKES has provided a
number of examples of the royal coffins of the
period (although the sarcophagi were some-
times re-used from the New Kingdom). The
cache of mummies of high priests of Amun at
ueir eL-baiirj has also yielded a large number
of private coffins of the 21st Dynasty
(1069-945 bc). It was also from the end of the
New Kingdom onwards that the interiors of
coffins began to be decorated again; beneath
the lid - especially in the 22nd Dynasty
(945-715 bc;) - there was often a representa-
tion of Nut, while the 'goddess of the west'
(hathor) or the DjED PILLAR began to be
portrayed on the coffin floor. During the
Late Period extracts from the book of ti ie
dead were sometimes also inscribed inside
the coffin.

In the 25th Dynasty a new repertoire of cof-
fin types, usually consisting of sets of two or
three (including an inner ease with pedestal,
an intermediate anthropoid case and a 'four-
poster' or anthropoid outer coffin), was intro-
duced) becoming established practice by the
26th Dynasty. Late Period coffins were also
characterized by archaism, involving the re-

Pain/ed wooden coffin and mummy of an unnamed
Thelmn priestess. 21st Dynasty, c.1000 BC,
ii. lM3m. (i:.i4S7 ( )1-2)

COFFI N TEXTS

COLOSSI OF MEMNON

introduction of earlier styles nt" coffin decora-
tion, such as the provision of the eye panel.

There are comparatively few excavated
burials dating- from t.525 to 350 BC, but more
coffins have survived from the succeeding
phase (30th Dynasty and early Ptolemaic peri-
od), when they typically have disproportion-
ately large heads and wigs. During the early
Ptolemaic period many mummies were pro-
vided with cartonnagc masks and plaques,
fixed on to the body by strips of linen.
A. Niwinski, l Zur Datierung und Herkunft der
altagyptischen Siirgc 1 , Biblioiheca Orientalia 42
§985), 494-508.

H. WnxEMS, Chests of life: a study of the typology
and conceptual development of Middle Kingdom
standard class coffins (Leiden, 1 988).
A. Niwinski, 2ht Dynasty coffins from Thebes
(Mainz, 1988).

\,H. Taylor, Egyptian coffins (Aylesbury, 1989).
N. A. SlLBERMAN, 'Coffins in human shape: a
history of anthropoid sarcophagi', BAR 16/4
(1990), 52-4.

G. Lapp, Typologie der Surge und Sargkammern
(Heidelberg, 1993).

Coffin Texts

Term referring to a group of over a thousand
spells, selections from which were inscribed
on coffins during the Middle Kingdom, par-
ticularly the 11th and 12th Dynasties
(2055-1795 ik;). Many of the Coffin Texts
were derived from the pyramid TEXTS, a
sequence of often-obscure spells carved on the
internal walls of the Old Kingdom pyramids.

During the Old Kingdom the afterlife had
been the prerogative of the king, who in death
was identified with OSIRIS and transformed
into a god. For this reason Old Kingdom
courtiers sought burial close to the king, hop-
ing for inclusion in bis funerary cult so that
they too might be granted some form of after-
life, although the best that they could hope for
was a continuation of their earthly status.
However, with the collapse of the Old
Kingdom came greater sell-reliance and with
it a process which is sometimes described by
Egyptologists as the DEMOCRATIZATION OF TIN'.
afterlife. This meant that everyone could
have access to the afterlife, without being asso-
ciated directly with the royal cult. These new
aspirations of the deceased are set out in a col-
lection of spells painted in cursive hieroglyphs
mside the wooden coftin.

The Coffin Texts were intended to provide
a guarantee of survival in the afterworld and
some of them are the ancestors of spells found
m the New Kingdom hook of t! ik i )EAD. They
nave titles such as the self-explanatory 'Not to
r <>t and not to do work in the kingdom of the

•VV
'£■}■.■■

dead 1 , and 'Spell for not dying a second
death', which was designed lo prevent the
deceased from being judged unfit to enter the
kingdom of Osiris and so condemned to
oblivion.

Both the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin
Texts present more than one version of the
destination of the deceased: they might travel
the sky with the sun-god ra or, alternatively,
might pass down into the underworld of
Osiris. This latter view became increasingly
common from the time of the Coffin Texts
onwards, setting the scene for the funerary
beliefs of the New Kingdom.
R. O. Faulkner, The Egyptian Coffin Tens,

3 vols (Warminster, 1973-8).

A.J. SPENCER, Death m ancient Egypt

(Ilarmondsworth, 1982), 141 2.

H. WlLI.KMS, Chests of life: a study if the typology

and conceptual development of Middle Kingdom

standard class coffins (Leiden, 1 988% 244-9.

The internal decoration of the coffin o/'Gua,
inscribed with extracts from the Coffin Texts. 12th
Dynasty, C,I985—I79S SC, painted mmuLfnnu
Dcirel-Bersha, !.. oj 'coffin 2.6 m. (l,t30S'40}

Colossi of Memnon

Two colossal seated stalues of \Mi.\mn i;p in
(1390-1352 ik:), carved from quartzite sand-
stone, which are located at the eastern end of
the site of his much-plundered mortuary tem-
ple in western Thebes; each of the figures is
flanked by a representation of tiv.

In 21 ik: an earthquake damaged the north-
ern statue, and perhaps created some flaw in
the stone, causing it to produce a characteris-
tic whistling sound each morning. This has
been variously ascribed to the effect of the
breeze or the expansion of the stone, although
the precise reason remains uncertain. Ancient
Greek visitors knew the statue as the 'vocal
Memnttn', suggesting that the figure was the
Homeric character iMcmnon, singing to his
mother Eos, the goddess of the dawn. The
Greek writer strabo at first speculated, some-

COLOSSI Of MEMNON

COLUMN

The Colossi af Memnon on the wast bank at Thebes
are representations in quartzite sandstone of
Amenhotep in. The northern statue (right) is that
known to ancient Greek visitors as the 'vocal
Meinnon'. (rt.sicholson)

what sceptically, that the sound might have
been created by Egyptians standing nearby,
although he claims to have been eventually
convinced of its supernatural origins. In the
third century the Roman emperor Septimius
Severus (\d 193-211) repaired the damaged
colossus, and in doing so seems to have ren-
dered it dumb.

As a result of the identification of the colos-
si with Memnon, the area of western Thebes
itself became known as Memnonia, and the
RAMESSEUM as the Memnonium. The term
Mcmnonium was even applied to the Osircion
at abydos. These names were still fashionable
in the early nineteenth century, when
Giovanni bki.zoni applied the phrase 'young
Memnon' to a colossal head of Rameses 11
which he transported from the Ramesseum to
the British Museum.

A. H. Gardiner, 'The Egyptian Mcmnon'JA'.'/
47 (1961), 91-9.
II. Bowman et al„ 'The northern colossus of

Memnon: new slants 1 , Archaeometry 26/2

(1984), 218-29.

D. Kr.r.MM, R. Kj.kmm and L. Stkclaci, 'Die

pharaonischen Stcinbriiche des silifizierten

Sandsteins und die Herkunft der Memnon-

Kolosse', MBAIK4Q (1984), 207-20.

A. R Kozi.off and B. Bryan, Egypt 's dazzling

sun: Amenholep in and his world (Bloomington,

1992), 138-9.

column

Like much of Egyptian religious architecture,
the shapes of stone columns drew inspiration
from Egyptian native flora and from
Predynastic religious structures made of
reeds, branches and logs. The shaft and capital
were carved in the form of four basic floral
types: papyrus, lotus, palm and 'composite 1 .
In the Greco-Roman period, the composite
capital provided an opportunity for many
more elaborate variations and combinations.
The shafts of columns were also frequently
decorated with scenes and inscriptions in
painted relief.

Wooden columns were used in Egyptian
houses and occasionally also in religious build-
ings, such as Old Kingdom mortuary chapels,
as decorative supports for the roofs and upper

storeys. But the stone pillars and columns in
Egyptian religious and funerary buildings
served symbolic as well as functional pur-
poses, forming an essential part of the cosmu-
logical nature of Egyptian temples.

The earliest stone columns were engaged
papyrus, ribbed and fluted columns in the
entrance and jubilee couri of the Step
Pyramid complex at SAQ&ARA. By the 4th
Dynasty (2613-2494 nc), freestanding
columns of many different stones were being
used in the mortuary and valley temples ol
pyramid complexes. In the relief decoration ol
the causeway of UNAS (2375-2345 nc), granite
palm columns (some examples of which have
survived in Unas 1 valley temple) are depicted
in the process of being transported by boat
from the Aswan quarries to Saqqara.

Fluted l pro to-Doric' columns were first
carved in the entrance to the 12th-Dynastv
tombs of Khnumhotep (bh3) and Amenemlnn
(bh2) at BENI HASAN, and this unusual form was
used again in the north colonnade of
Hatshepsut's chapel of Anubis at deir B -
baiirj, where die columns arc made to appear
more elegant by tapering them towards the tup.

On the most universal level, papyrus
columns represented the reeds growing on the

COLUMN

COPTIC PERIOD

PRiMi'-VAL mound at the beginning of time,
although on a more practical level the forests
f columns that make up i iypostyle halls
were probably also considered essential to
avoid the collapse of the roof, especially in the
sandstone temples constructed during the
New Kingdom. There were two types of
papyrus column: the closed form, in which the
capital was a papyrus bud, and the 'campam-
form' type, in which the flower was shown in
full bloom at the top of the column. The lotus
column (a relatively rare form except at abu.sir
and BENI HASAN) was also sometimes repre-
sented with the capital in flower. Since the
papyrus and lotus were the plants associated
with Upper and Lower Egypt respectively,
they could be used as elements of the architec-
tural svmbolism surrounding die union of the
'two lands'. An unusual type is the 'tent-pole 1
column found in the Festival Hall of
Thutmose m at karnak.

There were also a number of columns pro-

Red granite palm column
from the valley temple of
Unas at Saqqara. Late
5th Dynasty, c.2345 ttc,
n.3.5h'm. (ea1385)

] die

vided with capitals that had iconographic
associations with the particular religious con-
text in which they stood. Thus, hathor-
headed (or sistrum) columns were erected in
rc %ious buildings associated with the goddess
Hathor, such as the temple of Hatshepsut at

Deir el-Bahri and the temple of Hathor at
dendera. Finally, the djed pillar, with four
horizontal bars across its capital, is an icono-
graphic motif rather than a physical architec-
tural element, although the meaning of the
word djed ('stability, duration') was closely
linked with the concept of support, and in
some instances columns were decorated with
djed signs, presumably in order to give them
greater strength.

S. Clarke and R. Engelbach, Ancient Egyptian
masonry; the building craft (London, 1930),
136-50.

M. Lsler, 'The technique of monolithic carving',
MDAIK4S (1992), 45-55.
D. ARNOLD, Building in Egypt: pharaonic stone
masonry (New York and Oxford, 1991), 46-7.

concubine of the dead see sexuaita

copper and bronze

The first metal to be exploited in Egypt, as
elscw r here in the ancient world, was copper,
the earliest surviving examples of which are
small artefacts such as beads and borers of the
Badarian period (c. 5 500-4000 BC). By the late
predynastic period, however, large items,
such as axe- and adze-heads, were being pro-
duced, and the knowledge of copper-smelting
and working was already highly developed. It
has been suggested that the important late
Predvnastic settlement of maadi, in Lower
Egypt, may have prospered on the basis of its
role as intermediary between the sources of
copper in Sinai and the Levant and the Upper
Egyptian 'proto-states 1 whose growth and
competition produced a demand for metal
tools and weapons.

Copper was mined at various localities in
the Eastern Desert, Nubia and the Sinai
peninsula (such as Wadi Maghara) from at
least the early Old Kingdom. The excavation
Of the Earlv Dvnastic phase of the Egyptian
fortress at buiien, near the third Nile cataract,
revealed traces of copper-smelting, indicating
that mining was one of the earliest reasons for
the Egyptian presence in Nubia.

The technology of copper-smelting in the
Old and Middle Kingdoms (2686-1650 bc)
involved the use of crucibles and reed blow-
pipes. The PALERMO STONE states that copper
statues were already being created in the 2nd
Dynast}- (2890-2686 bc), and the most spec-
tacular surviving examples of copper-working
from the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC) are the
life-size statue of the 6th-Dynasty pharaoh
pei'y I and another smaller figure possibly rep-
resenting his son Merenra, both in the Cairo
Museum. These were probably produced by
hammering the metal over a wooden core.

The production of bronze, an alloy com-
bining copper and tin, appears to have
spread from Western Asia. Among the first
known bronze artefacts in Egypt are a pair of
ritual vessels from the tomb of the 2nd-
Dynasty ruler khasekhemwy at aisydos. It
was not until the Middle Kingdom that
bronze began to be imported regularly from
Syria, gradually replacing the use of copper
hardened with arsenic. However, the per-
cen tage of tin varied considerably, from
about 2 to 16 per cent. Tin lowers the melt-
ing point of copper, thus increasing its liq-
uidity for casting. Additions of up to 4 per
cent make the artefact stronger and harder,
but higher levels of tin impair these qualities,
unless the artefact is frequently annealed (re-
heated and allowed to cool).

In the New Kingdom a form of bellows,
consisting of a leather-covered clay vessel with
a protruding tube, was introduced, making the
smelting of copper and bronze easier. From
the Saite period (664-525 lie) onwards, large
numbers of votive statuettes of deities were
cast in bronze using the lost-wax (are perdue)
process, which had been known since at least
the Old Kingdom. Larger objects could be
cast around a core, rather than being made
from solid bronze, thus saving valuable metal.
A. LUCAS, Ancient Egyptian materials and
industries, 4th ed., rev. j. R. Harris (London,
1962), 199-223.

A. Radwax, Die Kupfer- and Bronzegefusse
Agyptens: von den Anfdngen his zum Beginu der
Spdtzeit (Munich, 1983).
M. COWKLL, 'The composition of Egyptian
copper-based metahvork'. Science in Egyptology,
ed. A. R. David (Manchester, 1986), 463-8.
M. A. Leahy, 'Egypt as a bronzeworking centre
( 1 000-539 itc) 1 , Bronze-working centres of Western
Asia, ed. J. Curtis (London, 1988), 297-310.

Coptic period

Chronological phase in Egypt lasting from the
end of the Roman period (c. ad 395) until the
Islamic conquest (c. ad 641). It is now more
accurately described as the 'Christian 1 period
and is roughly equivalent to the Byzantine
period elsewhere in the Near East. The
archaeological and historical definition of
'Coptic' is extremely imprecise, since the term
is often applied not only to the art and archi-
tecture of the Christian period but also to the
culture of the third and fourth centuries ad
('proto-Coptic') and the earlv medieval period
(c. ad 700-1200).

The Coptic language and writing system
(combining Greek letters with six further
signs taken from the demotic script) were
widely used throughout the Christian period

COREGENCY

COS METICS

i"yA,X'V

Oslracon bearing eighteen lines of fis&lms nvitten in
the Coptic script Early Islamic period, /th-Sth
centimes ad, pottery with pigment, probably from
Thebes, it. 13.2 em. (ml4030)

in Egypt and arc still employed in modern
times in the liturgies and Biblical texts of the
Coptic church. The earliest surviving Coptic
religious establishments include the monaster-
ies of St Anthony, St Catherine and St Samuel.
R. Fedden, 'A study of the Monastery of Saint
Anthony', University of Egypt Faculty of Irts
Ballet in 5 (1937), 1-61.

C C. WALTERS, Monastic archaeology in Egypt
(Warminster, 1974).
J. Kamii., Coptic Egypt (Cairo, 1987).
G. Gabra and A. Alcock, Cairo, the Coptic
Mnsenm ami old churches (Cairo, 1993).

coregency

Modern term applied to the periods during
which two rulers were simultaneously in
power, usually consisting of an overlap of
several years between the end of one sole
reign and the beginning of the next. This
system was used, from at least as early as the
Middle Kingdom, in order to ensure thai the
transfer of power took place with the mini-
mum of disruption and instability. It would
also have enabled the chosen successor to
gain experience in the administration before
his predecessor died. The discovery that
eoregencics existed was an important stage in
the clarification of the traditional chronolo-
gy of Egypt.

W. K. Simpson, 'The single-dated monuments of
Sesostris r: an aspect of the institution of
coregency in the Twelfth Dynasty', JNES 15
(1956), 214- 19.

R. Tanner, l Bemcrkungen v.uv Sukzession der

Pharaonen in der 12., 17. trad IS. Dvnastie\

Z.IS'101 (1974), 121-9.

W. J. Mlkwnk, Ancient Egyptian coregencies

(Chicago, 1977).

D. Lorton, Terms of coregency in the Middle

Kingdom 1 , U 2 (1986), 113-20.

corn mummy

Term generally employed to describe a tvpe of
anthropomorphic funerary object made of
soil mixed with grains of corn, which was
usualh wrapped up in linen bandages and
furnished with a wax face-mask. Most exam-
ples measure between 35 and 50 cm in length
and were usually placed in small wooden fal-
con-headed sarcophagi. They are mummi-
form in shape, and some were provided with a
royal sceptre, an erect phallus, an (//(./crown
or a white crown; it is therefore usually
assumed that they were intended to refer to
the god osiRis.

Although a lew miniature corn mummies
have been found encased in Ptah-Sokar-Osiris
statues in Late Period burials, most of the fifty
or so surviving full-size corn mummies derive
from simple pits (rather than tombs) and date
to the Ptolemaic or Roman periods. Maarten
Raven has pointed out that all those with
archaeological provenances appear to derive
from only four sites: Wadi Qubbanet el-Qirud
(in Thebes), Tihna el-Gebel, el-Sheikh Fadl
and the region of Tuna el-Gebel.

The origins of the corn mummy (as well as
the osiris isr.n, an item of New Kingdom royal
funerary equipment that probably functioned
in a similar way to the corn mummv) can be
traced back at least as far as the Middle
Kingdom, since it is at this period that links
began to be established between the cult of
Osiris, fertility and the growth of corn. The
COFFIN TEXTS, for instance, include certain
spells equating the resurrection of the
deceased with the sprouting of barley from the
bod\ of Osiris (equaled with the corn-god
Neper).

Since the corn mummies were not placed in
the tombs of individuals, they elcarb had a
slightly different function from 'Osiris beds'
and other such funerary equipment, which
were intended simply to aid the resurrection
of one deceased individual. Instead, the corn
mummies appear to have been connected with
the mysteries of the cult of Osiris itself. An
inscription in a roof chapel at uendf.ra
describes rituals relating to Osiris, including
the annual ceremonial burial of a corn
mummy,

M. J. R a\ EN, 'Corn-mummies', OMRO 63
(19S2), 7-38.

cosmetics

From the earliest times Egyptian men and
women included various cosmetic items
among their funerary equipment, suggesting
that oils, perfumes and eye-paints were
regarded as virtual necessities. In the early
Predynastic period, stone cosmetic i>AU:n r.s
used for grinding eye-paint pigments, were
already common. The surfaces of some of
these are still stained with traces of black gal-
ena or green malachite. The green malachite-
based form of paint (itdjit) seems to have been
used onlj until the middle of the Old
Kingdom, when it was replaced by the black
galena-based form of kohl (mestlemet). These
ground pigments appear to have been mixed
with water to form a paste and were probahh
applied with the lingers until the introduction
of the 'kohl pencil' in the Middle Kingdom.

The types of vessels in which kohl was
stored varied from one period to another; in
the Middle Kingdom and the ISth Dynasty a
small flat-bottomed stone vessel was used
whereas in the late New Kingdom a tubular
form of vessel (originally a reed) became more
common. The purpose of eye-paint was no
doubt partly the same as in modern times (i.e.
the enhancement and apparent enlargement of
eyes), but it probably also had religious and
symbolic resonances, as well as being a natur-
al disinfectant and a means of protecting the
eyes from bright sunlight. The Egyptians used
ochre as a form of 'rouge 1 on their cheeks (and
perhaps also as lipstick) and employed henna
to colour their hair. There are many sunning
depictions of women applying cosmetics using
a MIRROR, which was itself regarded as an
important item of funerary equipment.

Throughout Egyptian history, oils and fats
were considered essential both for the prepa-
ration of perfumes and INCENSE cones and for
the protection of the skin. Tattoos were also
used as early as the Predynastic period to dec-
orate the skin, judging from the presence of
patterns on some female figurines and the
preservation of geometric designs on the
mummies of certain dancers, musicians and
concubines (as well as in depictions of some
women in tomb-paintings); one mumm\ of a
singer had a small tattoo of Bes preserved on
the thigh. See also hair for discussion of hair-
styles and hairdressing.
A. L. LUCAS, 'Cosmetics, perfumes and incense
in ancient Egypt', JEl 16 (1930), 41-53.
E JONCKHEERE, 'La "mesdemet": cosmetiquc et
medicaments cgypticns\ Hisloirede la Mcdecinc
2/7(1952), 1-12.

J. Ya\t>ii;r and II Aim \nih, Catalogue des ubjch de
toilette egyptiens (Paris, 1 972).
M. STEAD, Egyptian life (London, 19S6), 49-54.

COSMO GONY

CREATION

E. Strouhai., Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 84-9.

cosmogony see creation; ennead and

OGDOAD

cow

Animal which served as the archetypal
Egyptian symbol of motherly and domestic
qualities. The two goddesses ilathor and isis
were often depicted with the horns of the cow;
but only Hathor and bat were depicted with
cow's ears. The image of the cow could also
symbolize the mother of the Egyptian king;
the bovine image of Ilathor was therefore
depicted suckling King Amenhotep it
(1427-1400 nt:) at dkir ei-8AKRI. An associa-
tion with the sky and the underworld was
characteristic of the bovine deities, so that XL 1 ']'
could be depicted as a cow who bore the sun-
god ra on her back each morning. Since the
sacred apis bull represented OSIRIS, it was nat-
ural that the cow which gave birth to him
should be identified with Isis. Thus, from at
least the thirty-seventh regnal year of Ahmose
li (570—526 bc) onwards, the so-called
Mothers of Apis were mummified and had
their own catacombs in the sacred animal
necropolis at Saqqara.

On a more prosaic level the cow was also
an important domestic animal, providing
milk, meat and hides. The first domestic cat-
tle in Egypt, introduced during the
Predynastic period, were probably long-
horned, but a short-horned species appeared
in the Old Kingdom, and humped Zebu cat-
tle were used from the 18th Dynasty
onwards. Wall reliefs depicting scenes of
'cattle counting 1 , for the purpose of tax-
ation, are common in tombs from the Old
Kingdom (2686—21 8 1 bc) onwards, and
numerous funerary models of the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 bc) depict the same
activity. Cattle were regarded as status sym-
bols and, as in many other societies, the pos-
session of a large herd was an indication of
considerable wealth. The funerary reliefs
also indicate that techniques of animal
Husbandry were well developed, much atten-
tion being paid to the depiction of the
branding of stock and human assistance in
the birth or calves. Beef was evidently the
pod of the wealthy elite, and was often por-
trayed in religious and funerary offering
scenes.

E - Hornunq, Der dgyptische Mythos von der
Himmehkuh (Freiburg and Gottingen, 1982).
**• Stork, 'Rind 1 , Lexikon der Agyptologie v, ed.
% Helek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 257-63.

R. Jawssen and J. J. Jaxssen, Egyptian domestic
annuals (Aylesbury, 1989), 27-35.
D.J. Brewer, D. B. Red ford and S. Redford,
Domestic plants and animals: the Egyptian origins
(Warminster, 1994), 77-93.

cowroid

Name given to a cowrie-shell-shaped amulet,
frequently inscribed and serving a purpose
similar to that of a scarab. The cowrie shell
amulet is known as early as Prcdvnastic times.
Its shape was believed to mimic the female
genitalia and girdles made from it were used to
symbolically protect this area of the body.
From the 6th Dynasty (2345-2181 bc) actual
shells were imitated in faience and later in cor-
nelian and quartz.

creation

During the Pharaonic period, a great deal of
Egyptian thought regarding creation was sim-
ply embedded in their iconography, language
and ritual. It was only in the Ptolemaic and
Roman periods that the process of cosmogony
began to be regularly described in explicit nar-
rative accounts. There are, however, three
principal surviving Egyptian creation myths,
each rooted in the cults of deities associated
with particular localities. At hermopolis

Necklace consisting ofcowroids and beads in the
form of false beards or sidelocks of youth. 1 2th
Dynasty and New Kingdom, l. 4f>.3 cm. (ea3077)

MAGNA the myth centred on four pairs of
primeval deities (the ogdoad); at iieliopolis
there was a mvth involving four generations of
deities (the ennead); and at mempihs the
account centred on the attributes of the god

PTAII.

The mvth of the Ogdoad dealt primarily
with the first mystery of creation: how did
'being' appear out of 'non-being 1 ? According
to the Hermopolitan account, the earliest text
of which dates to the Middle Kingdom, the
sun-god emerged from a group of four pairs of
male and female deities whose names simply
describe aspects of the primordial chaos pre-
ceding creation: darkness, formlessness, eter-
nity and hiddenness (or, in the earliest version,
twilight}. The myth of the Ennead, on the
other hand, was concerned with the next stage
in the process of cosmogony; the question of
division and multiplication. How did the cre-
ator transform the one into the many? The ref-
erences to the Ennead in the pyramid texts
show that, at least as early as the Old
Kingdom, the progressive fission and prolifer-
ation of life were both seen in terms of divine

CREATION

CROWNS AND ROYAL RE G A L 1 \

procreation, resulting in a succession of .sym-
metrical pairs.

In the beginning, according to the myth of
the Ennead, there was a mysterious act of cre-
ativity or fertility hy the creator - the sun-god
■YTL'M, for instance, was considered to have
created himself with the aid of such forces as
Heka (the Egyptian term for MAGIC), Sia (a
personification of 'perception') and Hu ('the
divine word 1 ). Having engendered himself,
Atum (whose name meant '■completeness')
then undertook the first net of division or sep-
aration, which he achieved through a combi-
nation of 'masturbating', spitting and sneez-
ing, thus producing new life and splitting it
into two opposites: air (the god Shu) and
moisture (the goddess Tefnut). Shu and
Tefnut then procreated to produce \lt and
ceb, the heaven and die earth, and a common
vignette in the book OF THE DEAD shows Shu

The 'Shuluttjo Stone ': a basalt slab bearing a text
Purporting to be a copy of an ancient composition
describing the creation of the universe by the god
Plait. 25th Dynasty, e. 7 JO tic, i.. 1.37 in. (e i4 ( >8)

literally separating the personification of die
sky from that of the earih.

The myth of the Ennead not only deals with
the question of creation but also leads on to
the emergence of human society in the form of
the myths surrounding the sons and daughters
of Geb and Nut: osikis and SETH and their
consorts lsis and NEPHT] iy.s. These legends,
relating principally to Osiris, went beyond
cosmogony to deal with such issues as king-
si up and human suffering.

The so-called Memphite Theology pre-
sents an alternative, but nevertheless compati-
ble, view of creation by means of the spoken
word. The text was probably composed in the
late New Kingdom and survives in the form of
the 25th-Dynasty 'Shabaqo Stone', a basalt
slab now in the British Museum bearing a
hieroglyphic inscription in which the
Memphite god Ptah creates all things by pro-
nouncing their names.

Each local deity - from sober to bastet -

was, to all intents and purposes, also a creator-
god, but their specific characteristics often led
to variations on the general theme of creativi-
ty The ram-god Kii\t VI, who was connected
with the fertile Nile silt and the pottery vessels
thai were formed from it, was considered to
have modelled the first humans on a potter's
wheel. The fertility god \u\, on the other
hand, was portrayed as an icon of male fertili-
ty whose erect phallus, combined with an
upraised hand thrusting into the V-shape
formed by the Hail over his shoulder (in appar-
ent simulation of intercourse), served as an
unmistakable metaphor for the sexual act
itself. In the late New Kingdom the theme of
the mound rising out of the waters of Nun was
transformed into the myth of the child-like
god \efertem, who was thought to have
emerged from a lotus floating on the face of
the deep. The Book of the Dead describes the
sun-god as a 'golden youth who emerged from
the lotus'. It was in order to identify himself
with Nefertem and the act of creation and
rebirth that TLiTANKt-TAMUN (1336—1 327 bc)
included among his funeran equipment a
painted wooden representation of his own
youthful head emerging from a lotus.

The Egyptian concepts of creation were
closeh interlinked with their views concerning
rebirth, renewal and life after death, and their
religious and funerary imager)- is full of
metaphors for the first act of creation, from
the PRIMEVAL mound and the benben stone lo
the SCARAB beetle emerging from a dunghill.
The texts make it clear that thev regarded cre-
ation not only as a single event at the begin-
ning of the universe but as a phenomenon
which constantly recurred with each new day
or season and which was intimately connected
with the prolonging of life beyond death. The
deity most regularly associated with creation
was therefore the sun-god, whose appearance
at dawn, voyage dirough the sky during the
day and disappearance at the sunset served to
epitomize the cyclical nature of the creator.
J. R. Allen, Genesis in Egypt: the philosophy of
ancient Egyptian creation accounts (New Haven,

1988).

B. MENU, 'Les cosmogonies de 1'aneienne Egvplc\
La creation dans I 'Orient ancien (Paris, 1987).
G. Hart, Egyptian myths (London, 1990), 9-28.
E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E, Bredeek
(New York, 1992), 39-54.

crime see law; mldj.vi and police
Crocodilopolis see medinet ek-i.\um
crook and flail see crowns \nd royal

REGALIA

crowns and royal regalia

The king can be depicted wearing a number of
different head coverings, each corresponding
to particular ceremonial situations. The earli-
est of these to be depicted is a form of tall con-
ical headpiece ending in a bulb. This is dis-
crown of Upper Egypt or white crown (hcd/ct),
which is seen as early as the time of the SCOR-
PION macehead and the xarmer palette (c.3(H!|)
Be). It is sometimes referred to as the neitr or
'White Nefer'. The Narmer palette also slums
the crown oi Lower Egypt, or red crown
(des/iref), which comprises a tall 'chair-shaped %
arrangement from which protrudes a coil.
With unification these two crowns were com-
bined to become the 'Two Mighty Ones', the
double crown [pschent).

The king might also wear the nemes head-
cloth. This was a piece of striped cloth pulled
tight across the forehead and tied into a kind
of tail at the back while at each side of the lace
two strands or lappets hung down. The brow
was decorated with the tiraeus (see \v-\djyt)
and the VULTURE. This is the head-dress repre-
sented in the famous gold mask of
TtTANkimiiN. A plain version of this was the
khat. From the 18th Dynasty onwards ktngs
also wore the 'blue crown 1 {kheprcsh), some-
limes erroneously described as the 'war

Wooden shabti of Tiilanhhamun wearing the red
crown and holding the crook and flail. 1 8th Dynasty.
c. 1330 tic, it. 32 cm. (c una, no. 330c; reprodi CEQ

COURTESY OF THE GRtFFITIl INSTITUTE)

CROWNS AND ROYAL R EGALIA

CULT SINGERS AND TEMPLE MUSICIANS

crown 1 , which is shaped like a kind ol tall,
Hanged helmet and made of cloth adorned
with gulden discs. The "alef crown' 1 is effec-
tively a 'white crown 1 with a plume on either
side and a small disc at the top, which was
worn in certain religious rituals.

The most prominent items in the royal
regalia were the so-called 'crook' {kekti), actu-
ally a sceptre symbolizing 'government 1 , and
the 'OaiP or 'flabellum' (nekhaklm), which may
have derived originally from a fly whisk.
Before it became part of royal regalia, the flail
was associated primarily with the gods osirjs
and min as well as with sacred animals.
G. A. Wainwright, 'The red crown in early
prehistoric twies\JEA 9(1923), 25-33.
Abdel Moneim Abubakr, Untersuchungen iiber
$e altdgyptiscken Kronen (Gliickstadt, 1937).
E- L. Ertman, 'The cap crown of Nefertiti: its
function and probable origin', plRCE 13 (1976),
63-7.
M. Eaton-Krauss, 'The khat headdress to the

end of the Amarna period 1 , SAK 5 (1977),

21-39.

A. LEAHY, 'Royal iconography and dynastic

change, 7 5 0-52 5 lie: the blue and cap crowns'

££478(1992), 223-40.

HKi.ow The major types of crown.

white crown red crown double crown

of Upper Egypt of Lower Egypt of Upper and

Lower Egpyt

LEFT Slatite of Thin titose in mwing, the nemes
hetu/i/oi/i, the uraeus and the ceremonial 'false
beard'. IHih Dynasty. C.J4S0 SC, greywacke, H.

90.5 cm. (i.i kor m S£l u. j2, ex in i u // irius<i\ }

cult singers and temple musicians

From the Old Kingdom onwards, 'musical
troupes 1 (khener) as well as dancers are attest-
ed as elements of the staff of temple cults.
They comprised both men and women, the
latter sometimes individually named, and
clcarK of greater importance than their
anonymous male counterparts. Female musi-
cians were employed in die cults of both male
and female deities.

By die beginning of the New Kingdom the
priesthood had become exclusively male, but
women of high rank, some of whom Were mar-
ried to the priests, were allowed to serve as
musicians {sheviayet). The role of these women
was to play the SISTRUM, as accompaniment to
die ritual chants or cult I ivmns, and sometimes
even to provide the chants themselves.
Usually, however, the chants were performed
by male singers or musicians, although these
individuals never used the title 'musician 1 and
were probably of a lower status than dieir elite
female colleagues.

G. Pinu i, / btive offerings to Haihor (Oxford,
1993), 212-13.

G. Robins, Women in aiicieni Egypt (London,
1993}, 145-9.

cuneiform

Type of script, the name of which derives from
the Latin word aniens ('wedge'), referring to
the wedge-shaped lines making up the picto-
graphic characters used in the earliest writing.
This developed in Mesopotamia during the
fourth millennium, and was initially used to
record quantities, hence the characters were
numerals accompanied by a picture ol the
thing being quantified. Over time, these pic-
tures became stylized into a series of wedge
shapes which could readily be impressed into
tablets of wet clay using a cut reed or other
stylus. The script could be used for picto-
graphic, logographic and syllabic writing and
over time came to incorporate all three.

It was used to write down the SUMEKIAN and
AKKADIAN languages, but also a host of other
western Asiatic tongues, and despite the devel-
opment of inF.ROGMi'inc writing in Egypt
around 3100 BC it was cuneiform which
became the language of diplomatic correspon-
dence throughout the Near East. The
Egyptian court would have supported scribes
fluent in the use of this system. The best-
known examples of cuneiform script in Egypt
are the AMARNA LETTERS. The script is last

CYNOPHELUS

DAB'A, TELL EL-

used in the first century ad: interestingly these
latest texts use Sumerian logograms (word
signs) even though the language had long since
ceased to be in general use.

The decipherment of cuneiform began with
the recognition that a series of brief inscrip-
tions at Persepolis (in Persia) were each writ-
ten out in three forms of the script. By 1802 a
German, G. F. Grotefend, had achieved some
success with the simplest of these, Old
Persian, discovering the names of two kings.
This work was carried much further bv Henrv
Rawlinson who, in 1S35, deciphered a long
inscription of Darius from Bchistun in Iran.
This site too had three versions of the text and
Rawlinson copied all three. Of these the
Elamite was deciphered by Edwin Morris in
1855, and Rawlinson himself deciphered the
Babylonian text in 1851. This was of great sig-
nificance since it could be linked to already
discovered Babylonian and Assyrian texts
from Mesopotamia.
C. Walker, Cuneiform (London, 1987).
[. N. Po.stgate, Early Mesopotamia: society and
economy at ike damn of history (London and New
York, 1992), 51-70.

cynocephalus

Term meaning 'dog-headed 1 , commonly used
to refer to a species of baboon (Papt'o cytto-
cepltaUis), which was one of the principal
manifestations of the gods tiiotii and kiions.
Typically portrayed in a squatting position,
the earliest votive figurines of the cyno-
cephalus baboon have been excavated in the
Early Dynastic settlement at ABYDOS, although
among (he most impressive surviving statues
of Thoth arc a pair of 1 8th-Dvnastv quartzite
colossal figures still standing in situ at HER-
mopolis magna, the main cult-centre of
Thoth. The enthusiasm with which wild
baboons greeted the rising sun reinforced the
association between the baboon form of Thoth
and the sun- and moon-gods. The bases of a
number of obelisks are carved with figures of
baboons with their arms raised in characteris-
tic worshipping posture, and a frieze of
baboons along the front of the Great Temple
a( abu simbf.l also have their arms raised in
adoration of the rising sun.
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 72-5.

Dab'a, Tell el- (anc. Avaris)
Settlement site in the eastern Delta, covering
an area of some two square kilometres on a
natural mound partly surrounded by a large
lake. The town of Avaris, which has been under
excavation .since 1966, consists of several stra-
ta of occupation dating from the First
Intermediate Period to the Second
Intermediate Period (2181-1550 bc). There
are also considerable remains of a later phase
of settlement in the Ramesside period
(f.1295-1069 bc) when the city of Piramesse
spread across Tellel-Dab l, a, although its nu-
cleus was at qantir, further to the north.

During the Second Intermediate Period (he
Hyksos capital of Avaris was effectivelv an
Asiatic colony within Egypt, and Manfred
Bietak's excavations suggest (hat the colonists
were allocated rectangular areas of land, the
patterning and orientation of which were still
occasionally influenced by the preceding-
Middle Kingdom town plan. Both houses and
cemeteries were laid out within the allocated
areas, sometimes in close proximity. The deep
stratigraphy at Tell el-DalVa allows the chang-
ing settlement patterns of a large Bronze Age
community to be observed over a period of
manv generations.

In the earlv 1990s the main focus of exca\u-
tion at Tell el-Dab'a was the substructure of a
large palace building of the Hyksos period at
Ezbet Helmi on the western edge of the site. In
1991 manv fragments of Minoan wall-paint-
ings were discovered among debris covering
the ancient gardens adjoining the palace.
Several of these derive from compositions
depicting 'bull-leapers\ like those in the
Middle Bronze Age palace at Knossos.
Whereas the Minoan and Mycenaean pottery
vessels previously found at many New
Kingdom sites in Egypt are usually interpret-
ed as evidence of trade with the Aegean (see
greeks), the presence of Minoan wall-paint-
ings at Tell el-Dab'a suggests that the popu-
lation of Avaris may actually have
included Aegean families. It has been suggest-
ed that the frequent use of a red painted back-
ground mav even mean that the Tell el-Dab'a
Minoan paintings predate those of Crete and
Thera (Santorini). The existence of Minoan
paintings (and therefore presumablv Minoan
artists) at a site within Egypt itself may help to
explain the appearance in early 18th-Dynasty
Egyptian tomb-paintings of such Aegean
motifs as the 'flying gallop' (i.e. the depiction
of animals 1 fore- and hindlegs outstretched in
full flight). Similar fragments of Minoan
paintings have been found at two sites in the
Levant (Kabri and Alalakh), where thev also

Plan of Tell el-Dab' a and Qantir.

1 Tell el-Oab'a

2 I9th-Dynas1y temple of Selh

3 modern flooded area

4 Ezbet Rushdi el-Saghira

5 12th/13tti-Dynasty palace

6 12th-Dynasty temple

7 1 9th-Dynasty palace

8 possible area of palace lakt-

9 New Kingdom settlement
remains

10 Tell Abu el-Filus and Ezbet
Rusdi el-Kebira

11 and 12 Ezbet Yasergi and
Ezbet Silmy

13 Qantir

14 Ezbet Helmi

DAH SHUR

DAHSHUR

appear to be associated with the ruling elite, as
a t Avaris.

In one of the early 18th-Dynasty strata at
Ezbet Helmi immediately above those con-
taining the painting fragments Bietak also dis-
covered many lumps of pumice-stone, which
may derive from the volcanic explosion on the
island ofThera.

M- Bietak, Tellel-Da/ra ii-vi (Vienna, 1975-91).
— , Avaris and Piramesse: archaeological
exploration in the eastern Nile delta (London and
Oxford, 1981).
— , 'Tell el-DabV, Arcluvfur Orientfarsclumg 32

(1985), 130-5.

Dahshur

Group of pyramid complexes making up the
southern end of the Memphite necropolis, the
nucleus of which is SAQQARA. The most promi-
nent of the surviving monuments at Dahshur
are the two pyramids of the first 4th-Dvnastv
pharaoh, SNEFERU (2613-2589 bc). The three
other major pyramid complexes at Dahshur
belong to rulers of the Middle Kingdom,
namely amenemhat ii (1922-1878 Be), senus-
ret in (1874-1855 bc) and Amenemhat m
(1855-1808 bc). The site also includes the
remains of one of only three surviving 13th-
Dynasty pyramid complexes, containing the
sarcophagus and canopk: JARS of Amenyqemau
(formerly read as Amenvaamu).

The two pyramids of Sneferu were possibly
the first such tombs to be designed from the
outset as true pyramids rather than step pyra-
mids. The southernmost of the two is the
'bent' or 'rhomboidaP pyramid, so-called
because of its marked change of angle from 54°
27 in the lower part to 43° 22' in the upper
part. The reason for this was probably struc-
tural, although the pyramid has other unusual
features, notably a western entrance in addi-
tion to the usual northern one. It was first
investigated by the Egyptian archaeologist
Ahmed Fakhryinl95 1-5.

Sneferu's other monument at Dahshur is
the 'northern' or 'red' pyramid, built from the
outset with an angle of 43° 22', which stands
about two kilometres north of the earlier mon-
ument. Its base area is second only to the
Great Pyramid of his son Khufu at gixa.
^neferu's construction of two pyramids at
Dahshur (as well as his completion of his
father's pyramid at meidum) would have
necessitated an amount of materials and labour
outstripping even the efforts involved in the
construction of the Great Pyramid.

Although each of the three 12th-Dynasty
Pyramids at Dahshur have stone casings, onlv
toe 'white pyramid 1 of Amenemhat n has a
stone core, the others being of brick.

2000 m pyramid of

Senusretlll

south (bent)
pyramid of Sneferu

Plan of Dahshur.

Amenemhat ll's pyramid is so ruinous that
even its exact size is uncertain. The complex
was excavated bv Jacques dc Morgan, who dis-
covered a plundered burial chamber contain-
ing a sandstone sarcophagus that is believed to
have been part, of the original funerary equip-
ment. Nearby arc the burials of princesses of
the late 12th or early 13th Dynasty.

De Morgan also tunnelled into the pyramid
of Senusret ill, where he discovered the mag-
nificent granite burial chamber containing a
sarcophagus of the same material. This pyra-
mid, the superstructure of which was badly
damaged by Maspero's work of 1882-3, w r as
re-examined by Dieter Arnold in the 1980s,
revealing that the burial-chamber was painted
to resemble limestone, perhaps in order to

allow the sarcophagus to stand out in contrast
to its background. The king's remains, how-
ever, have not been found in this pyramid,
which may have been simply a cenotaph. The
nearby mastaba tombs contained the rich
funerary equipment of the daughters of
Senusret it] and Amenemhat n, including
items of jewellery discovered by de Morgan in
1 S94.

The 'black pyramid' of Amenemhat ni also
seems to have served as a cenotaph (the actual
tomb probably being the pyramid at iiawara),
and work during the 1980s revealed a foun-
dation DEPOSIT which included pottery, ritual
bricks and bull crania. This complex also
incorporated the burial of the 13th-Dynasty
ruler Awibra Hor, including a fine KA-statuc.
J. de Morgan, Fouilles a Dakchour, 2 vols (Paris
and Vienna, 1895-1903).

DAKHLA OASIS

DANCE

Interior of the burial chamber cfAmenembai m at
Dahshur, (rephodlcedcolrtes) of mi-, ciiro)

A. FAKlim , The monuments oj Snejeru a!

Dahshur, 2 vols (Cairo, 1959-61).

V. Maragioguo and C. A. Ri.naldi, 'Notesulla

piramide di Amcny Aamu', Onentatia 37 (1968),

325-38.

R. Stadeiaiann, 'Snofru und die Pyramidcn von

Meidum und Dahschur', \WAIK3b (1980),

437-49.

D. Arnold, Der Pyramidenbezirk des Kdnigs

Amettemkel in in Dahschur i (Mainz, 1987).

Dakhla Oasis

One of a chain of oases located in the Libyan
Desert, 300 km west of the Egyptian city of
Luxor. The main pharaonic sites in Dakhla
include a town site of the Old Kingdom
(2686-2181 rtc) and its associated cemetery of
6th-Dynasty mastaba tombs, near the modern
village of Balat; another cemetery dating to the

Deir j- el-Gasr
el-Hagar f

\ 1 Balat:

V n. Z "j ''■""■■ Old Kingdom cemetery
=\) D Amriada ,: i

/ \ Ismant el-Kharab " □ f Balat:

Qaretet- \ Mut D f? Old Kingdom

Muzawwaqa\„ °, ..." ,1 "' h1 "" settlement

Azbat Bashincli

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

First Intermediate Period {2181-2055 BC),
near modern Amhada; and a temple of the
goddess Mut dating to the late Ramesside
period (<\1130 bc), near Ezbet Bashindi. The
Old Kingdom town and cemetery at Balat
show that the Egyptians 1 control extended
hundreds of miles into the Libyan Desert
from a ven early period. The surviving
remains of the Greek and Roman periods (332

BC— AD 395) include a necropolis and temple of
Thoth at el-Qasr, a temple dedicated to the
Theban triad at Deir el-Hagar, Roman tombs
at Qaret el-Muzawwaqa and a Roman settle-
ment and temple at Ismant el-Kharab.
H. E. WlNLOCK (ed.), Dakhleh Oasis (New York.
1936).

L. L. Ginin and D. G. Jkfkkkvs, 'BaJat rappon
preliminaire des Imiilles a Avn Asil,1979-80\
Blii 10 80 (1980), 257-69.
E. E. Gil )i.» , Egyptian oases: Bahariya, Dilkhlu.
l-'arafra and Kharga during pharaomc limes
(Warminster, 1987).

C. Hope, 'Excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in the
Dakhleh Oasis', Egyptian Archaeology 5 (1994),
17-18.

dance

As early as the Predynastic period there were
depictions on potten vessels showing female
figures (perhaps goddesses or priestesses)
dancing with their arms raised above their
heads. The act of dancing was undoubtedly an
important component of both ritual and cele-
bration in ancient Egypt. In normal daily life
musicians and dancers were a common feature
of banquets, but certain ritual dances could
also be crucial to the successful outcome of

Quar/zile relief block from the Red Chapel a!
Ktiniak. showing musicians and dancers. 18th
Dynasty, c.1460 tic. (t. sit ur)

Plan of Dakhla Oasis.
78

DAN CE

DANCJL

DEIFICATION

N "~ 1 1 ,"*«. I

Fragment of a tpaU-paintingjrom the Theban
tomb oj Nebatnun, sfwmngfem&le musicians and
dancers at a banquet. 18th Dynasty, c.1400 isc,
U.61 cm. (i:i37 ( )84)

religious and funerarv ceremonies, as in the
case of the ///ww-dancers, who wore kilts and
reed crowns and performed alongside funeral
processions.

The act of dancing appears to have been
inseparable from music, therefore the depic-
tions of dancing in pharaonic tombs and tem-
ples invariably show the dancers either
accompanied by groups of musicians or them-
selves plaving castanets or clappers to keep
the rhythm. Little distinction appears to have
been made between dancing and what would
now be described as acrobatics, with many
dancers being depicted in such athletic poses
as cartwheels, handstands and back-bends.
Detailed study of the depictions of dancers
has revealed that the artists were often depict-
ing a series of different steps in particular
dances, some of which can therefore be recon-
structed. Men and women are never shown
dancing together, and the most common
scenes depict groups of female dancers, often
performing in pairs.

E. Brunner-Traut, Dec Tanz im alien Agypten
(Gliickstadt, 1958).

H. Wu.n, Les dansc sacrecs de PEgypte
ancienne 1 , Les dames sucre'es, Sources Orientates
I (Paris, 1963), 33-117.

J. Vandjer, Manuel tVarcheohigie egyptieuiie IV
(Paris, 1964), 391-4S6.

E. S'I'rol I ial. Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 41-3.

Darius

see PERSIA, PERSIANS

death see funerary i

decans see

\STRO\OMV AND ASTROLOGY

deification

Ancient Egyptian gods were generally 'born 1
rather than made. As a result it is relatively
unusual to find mortals elevated to the status
of gods. The pharaoh himself was not deified,
but was born as the living iiorus, becoming
OSIRIS at death. From the 18th Dynasty, how-
ever, kings mav have been seeking to diminish
the power of certain priesthoods, notably that
of AMUN, perhaps fearing that they would
threaten the position of monarchy. Stress was
therefore laid upon the cults of RA and ptaii
instead, and in Nubia the reigning king was
linked with the official gods, aspects of the
rider's kingship being worshipped in the tem-
ples. A similar change took place in Egypt
itself, where deified aspects of kingship were
worshipped in the form of royal colossal stat-
ues in temples. It is possible that, with his
promulgation of the worship of the ATEN,
the 18th-Dynasty pharaoh AKHENATEN may
have taken this process a stage further by
effectively declaring himself to be the god
incarnate.

Rameses u (1279-121.3 Be) identified him-
self with a local form of Amun at his Theban
mortuary temple, the ramesseum. It was his
image which replaced that of the god in the
portable hark. Likewise his bark probably
rested in front of the statues of Ptah, Amun,
Ra and Rameses it in the Great Temple at ABU

SIMBEI., where he stressed his identitv as a
manifestation of the sun-god RA. There were
also certain kings who received posthumous
cults among the populace, as opposed to their
official cults centred on the mortuarv temple.
Thus Amenhotep I (1525-1504 bc) and his
mother Ahmose Xefertari were worshipped bv
the royal tomb-workers at deir el-medina, in
recognition of their supposed role in founding
the village.

Private individuals - notably those with a
reputation for great wisdom - were also, in a
few rare cases, deified. The earliest of these
was imitotep, the vizier of the 3rd-Dynasty
ruler Djoser (2667-2648 BC) and the architect
of the Step Pyramid at saqqara. He was dei-
fied about two thousand years after his death,
and revered as a god of wisdom and medicine
whom the Greeks w^ere quick to identify with
their own Asklepios. His connection with
learning also led to a cultic link with TIIOTII
and hence an association with the cults of
SACRED ANIMALS. A number of other Old
Kingdom viziers were deified soon after their
deaths. UiENHOTEP SON OF MAPI, the architect
who built the Theban mortuan temple of
AMENHOTEP II! (1390-1352 BC) at Kom el-
Heitan, was similarly honoured as a god of
healing. He was uniquelv allowed to build his
own mortuary temple among those of the New
Kingdom pharaohs, as well as having statues
of himself in the temple of Amun at Karnak
and a personal shrine at DEIR EL-haiirl

The idea that the drowned also became dei-
fied was established bv the New Kingdom,
and features in the Bank of Gates and Affiduat,
as portraved in the tomb of Rameses VI (kv9).

DEIR EL-BAHRI

D EIR EL-B AHrx

By the Late Period, cults began to be estab-
lished for some of those who drowned in the
Nile, as in the ease of Pehor and Petiesis at
Dendur in Nubia. In the early second century
ad the citv of Antinoopolis became the cult-
centre for the Emperor Hadrian's 'favourite*,
An ti nous, at the spot where he drowned in
Middle Egypt.

L. Habaciii, Feat urns of the deification of R a messes
n (GILickstadt, 1969).
D. Wildung, Imhotep und Amenkotep:
Gottwerdung im alien Agypten (Berlin, 1977).
— , Egyptian saints: deification in pharaonic Egypt
(New York, 1977).

Deir el-Bahri (Deir el-Bahari)
Important Thehan religious and funerary site
on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor,
comprising temples and tombs dating from
the early Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemaic
period. The site consists of a deep bay in the
cliffs containing the remains of the temples of
Nebhepetra mkntlhotep it (2055-2004 bc),
hatshepsut (1473-1458 bc) and THUTMOSE in
(1479-1425 bc), as well as private tombs con-
temporary with each of these pharaohs. The
temple of Hatshepsut is the best-preserved
of the three, consisting of three colonnaded
terraces imitating the architectural style of
Mentuhotep's much earlier funerary complex
immediately to the south of it. As well as incor-
porating chapels to Hathor, Anubis and Amun,

the temple is decorated with reliefs depicting
the divine birth of the queen and the exploits
of her soldiers on a trading mission to the
African land of punt.

The most important private tombs excavat-

above The temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri
is built into a natural embaymenl in the cliffs which
harder the i alley of the Kings, ft is belter
preserved than the earlier temple ofMentuhotep it,
the style of which it emulates, (p. T, xiaiot.su\)

LEFT Fragment of relief from the ciilt-iemple of
Mentithotep u at Deir el-Bahri, showing the king
wearing the red crown. 1 1th Dynasty, c.2030 nc,
painted limestone, a. 53.3 cm. (r.\l397)

ed at Deir el-Bahri are those of Meketra
(which contained many Middle Kingdom
painted wooden funerary models) and st.NF.N-
MiT. An llth-Dynasty shaft tomb at the
southern end of Deir el-Bahri (discovered and
robbed in 1 871 and finally excavated by
Gaston Maspero in 1 881 ) contained a cache of
some forty royal mummies from the \u.i.rv
of the kings reinterred there by 21st-D\ nasty
priests. The kings whose mummies were
found in the 'Deir el-Bahri cache' were sKQr
ENENRA TAA II, AltMOSE i, AMEN1 IOTEP *i

THUTMOSE t, ii and in, SE'fv i and raMESES B, nt
and rx, Pinudjem i and it and Siamun. Another
'cache'eonsisting of 1 55 reburied mummies of
the 21st-Dynasty priests themselves was also
found in a tomb ai Deir cl-Bahri in 1891.
E. Na\ ll.l.l.. The temple of Deir el-Bahari, 1 vols
(London, 1894-1908).

H. E. WiNLOCk, Excavations at Deir el-Bahari,
1911-31 {New York, 1942).

nElK EL-BAIIRI

DEIR EL-BALLAS

temple of Fhutmose III

temple of "'"" ■.,,
Hatshepsut

1 temple of Nebhepetra
Mentuhotep II

2 shrme

3 entrance to royal tomb
of Mentuhotep II

4 peristyle court

5 mastaba-style building

6 ramp ..

Bab el-Husan:
entrance to royal
cenotaph
8 causeway of
Mentuhotep II
i 9 causeway of
Thutmose III

10 kiosk of Thutmose II

11 shrine of Hathor

12 upper colonnade

13 middle colonnade

14 lower colonnade

15 shrine of Anubis

16 north colonnade
causeway of
Hatshepsut

left Plan o/Dcirel-Bahri.

— , The slain soldiers o/Ne&kepetre Mentuhtrtep

(New York, 1945).

J. Lipinska, Deir el-Bahari n: The temple of

Tnthmosis \\\ (Warsaw, 1974).

D. Arnold, The temple ofMettiuk&tep m Dek _■/-

&&fom (New York, 1979).

Deir el-Ballas

Settlement site on the west bank of the Nile
some 45 km north of THEBES, excavated by
George Reisner at (he turn of the century and
subsequently surveyed and re-examined by an
expedition from Boston con centra ting on the
residential areas. Balks was probably original-
ly a staging post in the reconquest of northern
Egypt by ka_mo.se (c. 1555-1550 bc) and
\ii\iosi. i (1550-1525 hc). Peter Laeovara
interprets the early New Kingdom phase of
Ballas as a prototype of the 'roval city', fore-
shadowing such later settlements as GTJROB,

\l\LkATA and EL-AMARW.

A major contribution of Lacovara's survey
of Ballas is the discussion of the functions of
various structures originally excavated by
Reisner. Two large ceremonial buildings, the
so-called North and South Palaces, lie at either
end of a long bay of desert. The South Palace-
was in fact probably a fortress, while the North
Palace may have been a royal residence during
the wars against the HYKSOS, The area between
these two 'palaces' is occupied bv the city
itself, a large part of which was excavated by
Reisner. Laeovara suggests that a group of
New Kingdom houses to the west of the

below Plan of Deir el-Ballas.

cemetery houses '•

500 houses

100 200 300 400 500 m

DEIR EL-BERSHA

DEIR EL-M EDINA

North Palace were occupied bv palace officials,
while a large building interpreted bv Reisncr
as a tvpical el-Amarna-stvle 'villa' is now
thought to have been a set of palace kitchens.
W. Stevenson Smiti i, The art and architecture of

(indent Egypt (Harmonds worth, 1958, rev. 1981),

278 -SI.

P. L\covara, Survey al Deir el-Ballas (Malibu,

1985).

Deir el-Bersha

Funerary site on the east bank of the Nile, 4U

km south of modern el-Minya. The major
components of the site are a row of tombs in
the cliffs at the mouth of the Wadi el-Nakhla,
mostly belonging to the Middle Kingdom
governors of the fifteenth Upper Egyptian
nome. The 12th-Dynasty tomb chape! of
Thuthotep contains particularly interesting
reliefs and wall-paintings, including a depic-

hki .cm Fragment oj' painted limestone relief from
the tomb oj Thuthotep at Deir el-Berska, showing

a procession of servants hearing weapons and, at
the right-hand side, a carrying chair. 1 2th
Dynasty, c. 1870 bc, it. 33 cm. (/■: \1147)

well as a temple dedicated to various gods,
which was founded in the reign ofAmenholep
in (1390-1352 uc) and almost completely
rebuilt in the reign of Ptolemy iv (221-205 BC).
Deir el-Medina was excavated bv Ernesto
Schiaparelli from 1905 to 1909 and by Bernard
Bruyere between 1917 and 1947.

The importance of the site to Egyptian
archaeology as a whole lies in its unusual com-
bination ol extensive settlement remains with
large numbers of ostraca (used for rough
notes and records), providing important evi-
dence of the socio-economic system of Egypt
in the 18th to 20th Dynasties. Unfortunately
this unrivalled opportunity to synthesize con-
temporaneous textual and archaeological data
from a single site has not been fully realized,
primarily because of inadequate standards of
excavation.

B. Brl akrk, Rapport snr lesjhtiilles de Oar el
Medineh, 17 vols (Cairo, 1924-53).
E. Schiaparelli, Relatione sui iavori delta
mimone arehaeologiea itatiana in Egittn n {Turin,
1927).

M. L. Bierijrier, The tomb-builders of the
pharaohs (London, 1982).

/iff ill'

£-'/■

:.-■■■■ ■ i V

MiO\ E Stele oj'Neferhotep, workman at Deir el-
Medina. I9tk Dynasty, c.1250 tic, ln/wsloju;
it. -if) em. (&tl5I6)

w^iirik

tion ol the transportation of a colossal statue
of the deceased from the hatmh travertine
quarries, some 30 km to the southeast. Closer
to the river is a group of Christian monu-
ments, including a church and monastery
(Deir Anba Bishuy) which flourished during
the sixth and seventh centuries AH.
P. F.. NEWBERRY and F. I.. G&!FF1TI i, El-Bersheh,
2 vols (London, 1892).

Deir el-Medina

Settlement site on the west bank of the Nile
opposite Luxor, situated in a bay in the cliffs
midwav between the Ramesseum and Medinet
Habu. The village of Deir el-Medina was
inhabited bv the workmen who built the royal
tombs in the valley oftiie kings between the
early 18th Dynasty and the late Ramesside
period <i. 1550— 1069 tit;). The site also incor-
porated the tombs of many of the workmen as

Plan of Deir el-Medina.

tombs of the villagers

,m ""\ the great pit

'workmen's village

temple of Amun

;MF.piNA

pELTA_

DEMOTIC

.1,

D. Valbfj .1.1:, Les auvriers de la tombe. Deir el-
Medtneh d Vepoque ramesside (Cairo, 1985).
L H. Lesko (ed.), Pharaoh \ workers: the villagers
kfDeir el-Medina (Ithaca and London, 1994).

lelta

Term used to describe Lower Egypt, i.e. the
region north of ancient MEMPHIS. The name
derives from the fact that the Nile fans out
into several tributaries as it approaches the
Mediterranean, creating- a triangular area of
fertile land shaped like the Greek letter delta.
It was this contrast between the narrow Nile
valley of Upper Egypt and the broad Delta in
the north that perhaps led to the concept of
there having originally been 'two lands 1 , unit-
ed into a single state by the first pharaoh. The
modern Delta is intersected by only two
branches of the Nile (the Damietta and
Rosetta). In the Pharaonic period there were
five tributaries, but three of them, the
Canopic, Sebennytic and Pelnsiac branches,
had dried up by the Islamic period, probably
because of a combination of canal-digging and
a small rise in the ground surface of the east-
ern Delta.

A. NlBBl (ed.). The archaeology, geography and
history of I he Egyptian Delta daring the pharaonic
%eriod (Oxford, 1986),

E. C. M. VAN den Brink (ed.). The Nile Delia in
transition: 4th- 3rd millennium tf(;(Tel Aviv, 1992).

democratization of the afterlife

Phrase used to describe the process of usurp-
ing of the pharaoh's funerary prerogatives by
private individuals, particularly in terms of the
identification of the deceased with the god
ostRis. The term 'democratization 1 is, however,
to some extent a misnomer, and it has been
argued that: the usurping of royal formulae and
rituals does not necessarily suggest an erosion
of belief in the kingship. Instead, it is suggest-
ed that the act of imitation might even imply a
strengthening belief in the effectiveness of the
institution of KiNiGSt-m 1 .
S. Ql'irke, Egyptian religion (London, 1992),
155-8.

demons

In Egyptian religion and mythology, the
demons who affected the living were of two
main types: the 'Messengers of sf.ktlmf.t 1 and
those associated with the netherworld.

The first type of demon represents the god-
dess Sekhmet in her evil aspect, and this cate-
gory also includes various other spirits, such as
the discontented dead, evil spirits and even
sleepwalkers. This type was thought to be
especially prevalent at the end of each vear and
had to be warded off by the benevolent

Resin-covered w&oden statuette of a demon (which
was placed by its !9tli-centitry discoverer on a Eaie
Pcrmd plinth J. I'J/h Dynasty, c. 1225 W,from the
] alley of the Kings, it. of figure -12.5 on, u. of
plinth H.2 cm. (EAhl2H3)

demons of OSIRIS and his followers. This host
of demons lived at the edge of the created
world, where they formed the forces of chaos
which from time to time affected the lives and
afterlives of humans.

The demons of the netherworld were still
more terrifying, and the best known of these
was -\m\iut, devourer of the hearts of the
unrighteous, who features prominently beside
the weighing scale in the vignettes illustrating
Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead. The
walls of some tombs, notably those of Rameses
\ ! (kv9; 1 143-1 136 BC) and IX (k.\ 6; 1 1 26-1108
tic), show numerous painted demons from
these Ft. nfrary TEXTS. Like the earthly
demons, these too could be warded off by their
benevolent counterparts who guarded the
tomb and its contents. The 'household gods 1 ,
such as BES and Aha, are sometimes described
as benevolent demons, although this is proba-
bly onlv a reflection of the generally unfocused
use of the term 'demon 1 in Egyptology.
D. Mf.eks, 'Genies, anges et demons en Egypte',
Genies, anges et demons, Sources orientates \ til
(Paris, 1971).

G. PlNCH, Alagic in ancient Egypt (London,
1994), 33-46.

demotic (Greek demotika: 'popular Iseripi] 1
or '[script] in common use 1 ; also known as
enchorial, 'of the country 1 )
Cursive script known to the Egyptians as sekh

shat ("writing for documents'), which, except
in religious and funerary matters, had replaced
the HIERATIC script — from which it was derived
- by the 26th Dynasty (664-525 bc). It was at
first used only in commercial and bureaucratic
documents but by the Ptolemaic period
(332-30 BC) it was also being used for reli-
gious, scientific and literary texts, including
the pseudo-history of the Demotic Chronicle,
the technical Apis Embalming Ritual and the
Khaemwaset evele of stories, and the Sayings
of Ankhsheshonqy (see wisdom literature).
Unlike HIEROGLYPHS and HIERATIC, which were
intended for mutually exclusive media, demot-
ic could be used as a monumental script, hence
its appearance on stelae and as one of the
three texts on the ROSETTA stone.

Demotic continued in use alongside Greek
throughout the Ptolemaic period, its survival
being ensured bv such features of the admin-
istration as the provision of separate Greek
and Egyptian lawcourts. The latest surviving
business documents written entirely in
demotic date to \r> 130 and 175-6, and
Xapthali Lewis has suggested that the demise
of demotic stemmed principally from the
nature of the new regime imposed at the
beginning of the Roman period (r,30 bc),
whereby legal and administrative documents
began to be written solely in Greek. Non-
literary demotic GSTRACA are found as late as
ad 232/3, but thereafter the script survived
only in the production of literary, religious and
scientific texts and in monumental inscriptions
(the latest demotic graffito at PitiLAE being
dated to ad 452). One of the earliest texts con-
taining traces of the COPTIC alphabet (a combi-
nation of Greek and demotic) is the demotic

DEN

DENDERA

;,f;:i;iJifc;,:tjj; i: ,i,:

'".:::': ■■'-■ .■.■■•:... ': ., ,
■•k r - ■■■■■' •.. •/.. .. ■.",...- ,;'r ; ^'J;

^ i- : ' -J.-y.'.'.;:.-

'■■/ : . - -' :■■ " : ■'.' . . .-,■■>.■.

: "" " ' ,.:■' ; »';i '-s« ;'■'■. .■■""•.. . ;'

i ... ' '.

Papyrus from Thebes bearing a demotic inscription
describing a loan of wheat and barley. Ptolemaic
period, 194 BC, it. 23 chl(ra10S31 )

London-Leiden Magical Papyrus, dated to

the third century ad.

P. W. Pestman, Receail de tex/es demotiques el

Inlingues (Leiden, 1977).

S.VLEEMING, 'La phase initial? du demotiquc

aneien', Chrmuque d'Egypte 56 (1981), 31-48.

fed.}, Aspects of demotic lexicography (Louvain,
1987).

_N. Lewis, 'The demise of the demotic
document: when and \\\\\\JEA 79 (1993),
276-81.

Den (Dewen, Ldimu) (f.2950 BC)
Ruler o! the mid 1st Dynasty who probably
succeeded his mother MERNEmi on the throne
(since she may have acted as regent while he
was too young to rule in his own right). He was
the first to add the nesw-bit name ('he of the
sedge and the bee') to his royal titl laky.

King Den is associated with tombs at ABY-
DOS and SAQQARA, both of which were con-
structed with the earliest examples of stair-
ways leading down into them, an architectural
refinement that would have allowed the tombs,
ii necessary, to have been filled up with grave
goods during the king's own lifetime (thus
perhaps acting" as storehouses for surplus pro-
duce). The burial chamber of the tomb at
Abydos dating to the reign of Den was also
paved with granite slabs and some of the
wooden roof supports were placed on granite
blocks; this is the earliest surviving instance of

stone-built architecture in an Egyptian funer-
ary context.

Twenty ivory and ebony labels were exca-
vated from the Abydos tomb, eighteen of them
having been found by Flinders Pctrie in 1900
among the spoil-heaps left by the earlier exca-
vator, Emile Amelineau. One of the ebony
tablets shows a scene from the ritual of the
'appearances of the king of Upper Egypt and
the king of Lower Egypt', a ceremony which
was probably similar to the SED FESTIVAL
(including the earliest depictions of the king
wearing the 'double crown' and also running
between ritual boundary markers). An ivory
label for a pair of sandals (now in the British
Museum) shows the king smiting an Asiatic
and bears the inscription: 'first time of striking
the easterners'; this seems to indicate at least a
ritual interest in the control of southern
Palestine.

One of the Early Dynastic burials excavated
by W. B. Emery in his first season at Saqqara
in 1935 was Tomb 3035, which contained jar-
sealings referring to a man called Hemaka,
who evidently lived in the reign of Den.
Emery's first report on Tomb 3035 described
it as the tomb of King Den's chancellor in the
north, but later, on the basis of die size and
wealth of this and Other tombs at Saqqara,
Emery argued that it must have been the actu-
al burial place of King Den, relegating the
tomb of Den at Abydos to the role of a mere
cenotaph. However, many Egyptologists now
believe that his first theory may have been cor-
rect, making Tomb 3035 the burial place of
Hemaka, Den's chancellor of Lower Egypt.
W. M. F. Petrie, The royal tombs of the first
dynasty r (London, 1900).
W. B. Emeri , Archaic Egypt (Harmondsworth.
1961), 73-80.

A. J. SPENCER, Early Egypt (London, 1993),
64-6.

Dendera (ana Iunet, Tan tore, Tentyris)
Site of the ancient capital of the sixth Upper
Egyptian NOME, located near modern Qena,
close to the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat
route to the Red Sea, making it an important
centre in Dynastic times. The Dendera
necropolis ranges in date from the Early
Dynastic period to the First Intermediate
Period, including mastaba tombs. There arc
also burials of sacred animals, especially the
cows associated with the cult of I lathor, the
local goddess, whose temple dominates the
site.

The various surviving buildings making up
the temple of Hathor date from the 30th
Dynasty to the Roman period and are sur-
rounded by a well-preserved mud-brick enclo-

sure wall exhibiting the technique of pan beD 1 -
niNG. The main entrance is a comparatively
small propylon-style gateway rather than a
large pylon as in most other Upper Egyptian
temples from the New Kingdom onwards.

The earliest surviving building is a MAMMI&
(birth-house) dating to the reign of Nectanebo
i (380-362 hc), on the western side of the fore-
court The main temple, of Ptolemaic and
Roman date, is dedicated to a local form of
Hathor who was closely identified with \i i , as
sky-goddess and daughter of i?\, as well as
being associated with the west and therefore
with the dead. Although the present construc-
tion is late, a temple has stood on the site from
at least the early New Kingdom and texts in
the crypt mention a building from the time of
Pepy I (2321-2287 BC) of the 6th Dynasty

A number of unfilled cartouches refleci the
uncertain political conditions of the first cen-
tury BC, while the south exterior wall bears a
colossal carving of OUEGMTRA vn and her son
Caesarion before the gods. This wall also has a
false door, in the form of a Hathor SISTRUM

The first hypostyle hall of the temple of Hathor at
Dendera, built in the first century . id by the
Emperor Tiberius. The column base shows daiuiiL'C
where grains of stone have been ground out for use
in folk' medicine in post-Piiamnnic times.

(P. T. NICHOLSON)

DESERT

Plan of the temple of Hathor at Dendera.

with wooden canopy (now defaced), where
those not able to enter the temple might peti-
tion the goddess.

The columns of the facade and outer
hvpostvle hall of the temple have capitals in
the form of the head of Hathor surmounted by
a \AOS-shaped sistrum. Although most of
these columns have been damaged, possibly
during the Christian period, some are well
preserved. The crypts depict various cull
objects stored in diem, the most important of
which was a ba statue of Hathor. During New
Year processions this would visit various parts
I the temple including die NUT chapel and
the roof chapel where the bet was united with
the solar disc. The roof also has symbolic mor-
tuary chapels for Osiris, one of which con-
tained a zodiac (now in the Louvre and
replaced by a copy), as w r ell as figures of Nut
and scenes relating to the rebirth of Osiris.

Outside the main temple, along with the
two mammisis, were a small temple to Isis and
a sanatorium for the accommodation and heal-
ing of pilgrims. This may have .served as an
'incubation chamber' (where pilgrims slept in
order to receive healing dreams) but it perhaps
principallv functioned as a centre for cippus
healing (see tiORUs). Between the two mammi-
sis are the remains of a basilica of the Christian
period.

A. Mariette, Demleralt, 4 vols (Paris, 1870-3).
"W. M. F. Petrie, Dendereh (London, 1900).
E. Chassinat and E Daumas, Le temple tie
Dendara, 6 vols (Cairo, 1934-52).
H. G. Fischer, Dendera in the 3rd millennium lie
(New York, 1968).

F.Daum vs, Dendera et le temple d'Hatiwr (Cairo,
1969).

desert

The Egyptians sometimes referred to the
desert as des/tret ('red land') in order to distin-
guish it from the fertile kernel ('black land 1 ), so
called because of the black soil that was
deposited along the banks of the Nile by the
annual inundation. The epithet 'red god' was
therefore often applied to SETH, the tradition-
al god of chaos, since he was said to rule over
the deserts and the general disorder that they
■'^presented, as opposed to the vegetation and
fertility associated with his mythical counter-
part, OSIRIS. A variety of deities, such as \u\
and HATHOR, were considered to watch over
the desert routes, affording protection to trav-
elers, The deserts were essentially considered
to be places of death: first, in the sense of
wildernesses in which wrongdoers might be
sent to perish (either as exiles or as forced

1 outer hypostyle hall

2 inner hypostyle hall (surrounded by
ancillary rooms, e.g. 3 and 4)

3 'laboratory' for perfumes

4 treasury

5 first vestibule: hall of offerings

6 second vestibule: hall of the Ennead

7 sanctuary surrounded by chapels

8 corridor

9 stairs to roof

Christian
basilica

propylon

workers in mines or quarries); and, second, as
the locations of cemeteries. The Western
Desert was regarded as the entrance to the
underworld where the sun disappeared each
night. Various funerary texts describe the
perilous deserts surrounding the kingdom of
the dead itself.

The hieroglyph for desert consists of a dia-

grammatic vicw r of a range of three hills sepa-
rated by valleys, since the deserts were also
mountains, in that thev lav at a higher level
than the intervening Nile valley. The 'desert'
hieroglvph was also used as a 'determinative 1
sign with reference to any foreign country.
Although not impassable, the deserts formed a
barrier around Lgvpt protecting it from its

DIDACTIC LITERATURE

JilliR

neighbours and probably helping to promote

the sometimes introspective tendencies of the

Egyptians.

II. Kkks, -Indent Egypt: a cultural topography

(London, 1961).

I. Si i \\\ , The black land, die red land', Egypt:

ancient culture, modern hind, ed. J. Malek

(Sydney, 1993), 12-27.

didactic literature see w

SDOM LITERATI RE

Diodorus Siculus (//. c.40 bc)

Historian born in the Sicilian town of
Agyrium, who is well known for the descrip-
tion of Egypt included in the first book of his
Bibliiilkfca Historicity a history of the world
from the earliest times until Julius Caesar's
conquest of Gaul. Although his own work is
considered by scholars to be undistinguished,
his writings are often valuable for the frag-
ments reproduced from more important
works. His account of the process of mummifi-
cation, for instance, gives details not recorded
by HERODOTUS, including- the tact that the
embalmer's incision was made on the left
Hank. He also records that the viscera were
washed after their removal, and he claims that
the man responsible for opening the corpse
was usually driven away by his colleagues (an
act which is now generally presumed to have
been ritual). Few details have survived con-
cerning the life of Diodorus, but he is known
to have lived until at least 21 bc.

F. R. WALTON, Diodorus of Sicily (London and
Cambridge, MA, 1967).

A. Burton, Diodorus Siculus I: a commentary
(Leiden, 1972).

Diospolis Parva whiw-semama region
diplomacy see amakna utters
diseases see medicine
divine adoratrice (Egyptian dwat-netjer)

Religious title held bv women, the precise
connotations of which are not fully under-
stood. It was originally adopted by the daugh-
ter of the chief priest of the god amun in the
reign of Hatshepsut (1473-1458 bc). During
the time of the sole reign of Thutmose nt
(1479-1425 bc) it was held by the mother of
his principal wife. By the Third Intermediate
Period it was held together with the title god\s

W 1FE OF AMUN.

G. Robins, Egyptian women (London, 1*>94), 149,
153.

d/erf pillar

Roughlv cruciform svmbol with at least three

cross-bars. Its origins seem to be among the
fetish symbols of the Predynastie period, and
it has been suggested that it might represent a
pole around which grain was lied. Over the
course of time it came to represent the more
abstract concept of stability, and, like the ankh
and was SCEPTRE hieroglyphs, was commonly
used in this sense in decorative friezes.
Although the djed pillar was original!) associ-
ated with the god SGKAR, i'taii, the patron
deity of Memphis, is sometimes described as
The noble D/ed\ It was because of the associa-
tion of Plah with Sokar and therefore also with
osiris, god of the dead, that the djed pillar

_ [mulct in the form of a djed pillar. Sa/te period,

faience, a. 1 1. 1 cm. (ea!2235)

eventuallv became a symbol of Osiris. In the
Book of the Dead it is said to represent his
backbone, and certain depictions of the pillar
portray it with human arms holding the royal
regalia.

It was probably at Memphis that kings first
performed the ceremonv of 'raising the djed
pillar 1 , the best-known depiction of which is in
the Osiris Hall at abydos, although the ritual
was also incorporated into one of the sed fes-
tivals of Amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc) at
Thebes. This act not only served as a

metaphor for the stability of the monarchy but
also symbolized the resurrection of Osiris.
J. van ol;r Vliet, 'Raising the djed: a rite dc
marge", -//•/(-// Miinclien 1985 ill, ed. S. Schoske
(Hamburg, 1989), 405-11.
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 164-5.

Djer ( ( -.3(J00 bc)

Early king of the 1st Dynasty, who was proba-
bly third in the sequence of rulers beginning
with FARMER (as listed on a recently excavated
clay seal impression from the royal cemetery at
abydos). He may also be the same king as hi,
who is mentioned in die king list in the tem-
ple of Sety l at abydos. A rock-carving ai
Gcbel Sheikh Suleiman was once interpreted
as evidence of a military campaign launched
into Nubia at this time, but William Murnane
has now shown that it dated earlier than the
reign of Djer.

The burial chamber of his tomb at Abvdos
(which some scholars still interpret as a ceno-
taph rather than an actual burial-place) was
floored with wooden planks, From the reign of
Djer onwards, each royal tomb at Abydos con-
tained a number of chambers in which differ-
ent types of grave goods were placed, ranging
from stone vases sealed with golden lids, cop-
per bowls, gold bracelets, food, weapons, tools
and furniture made from ivory and ebony.
I lidden in the northern wall of Djer's tomb
was a linen-wrapped human arm adorned with
bracelets of gold and gemstones, perhaps left
behind by tomb-robbers. On arrival at Cairo
Museum the arm was discarded and onh the
jewellerv was kept, therefore it is still not clear
whether the limb was that of Djer himself. At
least as earlv as the Middle Kingdom, his
tomb was converted into a cenotaph of the god
osiris, and when it was first excavated by
Emile Amelineau, the burial chamber con-
tained a stone image of Osiris on a funerary
couch.

W. M. E Pi-:rai-:, The royal tombs of the First
Dynasty! (London, 1900).
W. B. Emery, Great tombs of the First Dynasty. 3
vols (Cairo and London, 1949-58).
W. J. Murnane, 'The Gcbel Sheikh Suleiman
monument: epigraphs: remarks 1 , fNES 46
(1987), 282-5,

Djet (Wadj, 'Serpent') (c.2980 bc)
Ruler of the 1st Dynasty who was probably
buried in Tomb z at Abydos, which was exca-
vated by Emile Amelineau and Flinders Peiric
at the end of the nineteenth century and re-
excavated in 1988 by Werner Kaiser ami
Gunther Dreyer. His rectangular wood-lined
burial chamber is now known to have been

_PJER

DJ0SER_

surmounted by a brick-cased mound of .sand
or rubble hidden beneath the main rectangular
superstructure. Probably the finest of the lst-
Dvnastv funerary stelae (now in the Louvre)
was found by Amelineau in the vicinity of the
tomb; carved from fine limestone, it bears the
serpent hieroglyph (the phonetic value of
which is djet) framed by a royal serekii and
surmounted by a iiorus falcon. Both the
impressive Tomb 3504 at Saqqara (probably
belonging to Sekhemka, an official during
Djet\s reign} and a large mastaba tomb at Giza
have been dated to Djel's reign by the pres-
ence of seal impressions bearing his name.
W. M. E Petri e, The royuJ tombs of the first
dynasty I (London, 1900).
W. B. Emeri , Great tombs of the first dynasty n
(London, 1954).

— , Archaic Egypt (London, 1 961), 69-73.
G. Driver, 'Umm el-Qaab:
Nachuntersucluingen im fruhzeitlichen
Konigsfriedhof 576. Yorbericht\ Mil UK 49
(1993), 57.

Djoser (Zoser; Netjerikhet) (2667-2648 BC)
Second ruler of the 3rd Dvnastv, whose archi-
tect, imiiotep, constructed the Step Pyramid
at SAtiQARA, which was not only the first
pyramidal funerary complex but also the earli-
est example of large-scale stone masonry in
Egypt (see PYRAMIDS). Despite the fame of his
tomb, few facts arc known concerning Djoser
himself or the events of his reign, and most of
the 'historical 1 information concerning his
reign takes the form of late sources, such as the
Famine Stele at Sehel (see FAMINE and KHNUM).
Only the TTorus name Netjerikhet was found
in 3rd-Dynasty inscriptions associated with
the pyramid, and it is only through New
Kingdom graffiti that an association has
been made between this name and Djoser. A
number of fragments of statuary represeniing
Netjerikhet were recovered from the pyramid
complex, including an almost life -size seated
statue from the serdau (now in Cairo), and
on the walls of one of the subterranean gal-
leries to the east of the burial chamber were
three reliefs depicting the king enacting-
various rituals.

C. M. Firth, J. E. Quhei.e and J.-P. Lvu.u, The
Step Pyramid, 2 vols (Cairo, 1935-6).
1- E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.
(Harmondsworth, 1993), 34-58.

One ancient Egyptian word for dog is the ono-
matopoeic hpiep, referring to its barking noise.
A number of different types of dogs can be
recognized from depictions in tombs, many of
•hem tall sleek breeds suitable for hunting.

The identification of specific breeds from such
representations is difficult, since modern
breed definitions allow little flexibility. Suffice
it to say that breeds closely related to the
basenji, saluki and greyhound can be identi-
fied, while there is a more general category of
dogs apparently related to mastiffs and dachs-
hunds.

As well as having a role in the hunt, some
dogs served as domestic pets or guard dogs
and even police dogs. Their qualities of faith-
fulness and bravery are sometimes referred to
in the names they were given; these names are
known from inscriptions on leather collars as
well as from depictions on stelae and reliefs.
Thus we know of 'Brave One 1 , 'Reliable' and
'Good Herdsman", as well as simpler names
referring to their colour. There were, however,
sometimes more negative aspects of the
Egyptians' attitude to dogs: their air of domes-
tic subservience could be used as an insult, and
some texts include references to prisoners as
'the king's dogs'.

Since the jackal and the dog were not well
separated in the Egyptian mind they were
both regarded as sacred to ANUBIS, sometimes
being buried as sacred animals in the
Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara, although
unfortunately there is little information avail-
able concerning the particular species of dog at
this site. The term 'Anubis animal', rather
than jackal, is sometimes used, since its iden-
tification is a matter of debate. Domestic dogs
might also receive special burial, either along
with their owners — a practice known from the
earliest dynasties - or in their own coffins.
Al. Lukker, 'I Iund und Wolf in direr Beziehung
zumTode'. inmim 10 (1969), 199-216.
II. G. Fischer, 'Hunde, Hundestele'. Lextkon
der Agyptologie ui, ed. VV. Hclck, E Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1980), 77-82.
W. BarT'\, 'Schakal ', Eexikon der Agyptologie v,
ed. W. Ilelck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 526-8.
R.Janssen and J. J. Janssen, Egyptian domestic
animals (Aylesbury, 1989), 9-13.
D. J, Brewer, D. B. Redford and S. Redeord,
Domestic plants and animals: the Egyptian origins
(Warminster, 1994), 110-18.

donkeys see animal husbandry
Dra Abu el-Naga see thebes
dreams

Dreams played an important role in
Egyptian culture, principally because they
were thought to serve as a means of commu-
nicating the will of the gods and serving as
clues to future events. Papyrus Chester

DRESS

Beatty in in the British Museum, an early
Ramesside document found al uier ee-medi-
N\, describes a number of dreams, each of
which is followed by an interpretation and an
evaluation as to whether it was good or bad.
It i.s suggested, for instance, that if a man
dreamed of drinking warm beer, this was bad
and he would inevitably undergo suffering.
Although the papyrus itself dates to the early
thirteenth centurv itc, the language of the
text suggests that this dream-list was origi-
nally compiled in the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 lie).

In royal propaganda (see kingship), stelae
sometimes recount the pseudo-prophetic
dreams of pharaohs as a means of justifying
their succession to the throne. The classic
example of the royal dream stele was erected
by 'n-iUTMO.SE iv ( 1400-1390 rtc) in front of the
Great si'hinx at Giza, describing how, as a
young prince, he fell asleep in the shade of the
sphinx and was then told in a dream that if he
cleared the sand away from its flanks he would
become king of Egypt. Centuries later, the
Kushite pharaoh tam ta.yewi (664-656 lie) set
up a similar stele in the temple of Amun at the
Napatan capital city Gebel Barkal (see napa-
TA), describing a dream in which the throne of
Egypt and Nubia was offered to him by two
serpents, who presumably symbolized the 'two
ladies', the goddesses of Upper and Lower
Egypt. Tanutamani's stele thus provides a
mythical explanation for the unusual Kushite
crowns, which are adorned with double timer.
when the king awoke from his dream he was
told, 'the two goddesses shine on vour brow,
the land is given to you in its length and
breadth'.

From the Late Period (747-332 uc)
onwards it became relatively common for indi-
viduals to sleep within temple enclosures so
that ORACLES could be communicated to them
through divinely inspired dreams (see BES).
The Greek term onirocrites was used to
describe the priests whose role was to interpret
these dreams.

J. H. Breasted, Ancient records of Egypt n
(Chicago, 1906), 469.

S. SAUNERON, Lessongesel /ear interpretation
(Paris, 1959).

J. D. Ray, The archive ufhlor (London, 1976),
150-6.

C. ZlVIE, Giza an deiixieme millenaire (Cairo,
1976), 150-1.

J. O. Ray, 'An agricultural dream: ostracon ii\i
5671', Pyramid studies and other essays presented to
I. E. S. Edwards, ed. J. Baines et al. (London
1988), 176-83,

dress

see CLOTHING

DUALITY

DYAD

duality

The Egyptians believed that unity was empha-
sized by the complementarity of its parts.
Thus the king- of a united Egypt still bore the
title 'lord of the two lands' {neb tuny) and 'he
of the sedge and die bee 1 [nesw-hit). Similarly,
the country was divided into the black land
(kemet) and the red land [deshrel), and split
between the east (the land of the living) and
the west (the realm of the dead). The earth was
distinct from the heavens but the two together
were the complementary halves of the created
universe, while beyond the BORDERS of the
universe was the 'uncreated', the chaos from

lifwt

v, 7/ .

The personifications of Lower Egypt (left) and
Upper Egypt (right) crown the pharaoh Ptolemy
VI Philometer with the double crown. Duality was
an important part of Egyptian thought. Temple of
Hunts at Etljii. (t> r. Nicholson)

which man and the gods had emerged (see
CREATION and nl\).

This duality is present at many levels of
thought and symbolism, so that there are
gods of Upper and Lower Egypt, and gods of
the living and the dead. The mythical strug-
gle between iiorus and seti-i was essentially
regarded as the universal struggle between
good and evil, the triumph of light over
darkness and the prevailing of order over
chaos. In more pragamatic terms the king-
ship (personified by the god Horus) and the
ordered bureaucracy which it encouraged
were seen to be stronger than the powers of
anarchy.

Ii. Kees, Ancient Egypt: ti cultural topography,
ed. T. G. H.James (London, 1961).
B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a
civilization (London, 19S9).

dwarfs and pygmies (Egyptian deneg. nan)
Although the same Egyptian term (deneg)
appears to have been used for both dwarfs and
pygmies, the Egyptians 1 attitudes to each of
these categories differed considerably.

Cases of dwarfism seem to have been fairly
common; the condition results from the fail-
ure of the bones to ossify properh, resulting
in stunted growth (achondroplasia), and sev-
eral such skeletons have survived, as well as
numerous depictions in reliefs and statuary.
One particularly striking late 4th- or early
5th-Dynasty 'group statue 1 depicts the dwarf
Seneb and his family. Seneb held several offi-
cial positions: he was overseer of the palace
dwarfs, chief of the royal wardrobe, and priest
of the funerary cults of Khufu (2589-2566 tit:)
and Djedefra (2566-2558 ik:). His statue
shows him seated cross-legged beside his wife
Senetites, who was of normal stature, while
his children stand immediately in front of
him, apparently conveniently masking the
area where his legs would have been if his
limbs had been of normal proportions. The
wealth and prestige evidently enjoyed by
Seneb, to judge from his titles, tomb and
funerary equipment, was not unusual for
Egyptian dwarfs in general, many of whom
appear to have had skilled or responsible
occupations. They are depicted as jewellery-
makers in the Old Kingdom tomb of mereru-
ka at Saqqara, and they are also shown lend-
ing animals, undertaking agricultural work,
and sometimes providing entertainment for
high officials. Seneb's marriage to a woman
who was a lady of the court and a priestess is
one of many indications that male dwarfs were
not obliged to marry women with similar
deformities. The apparent lack of prejudice
against dwarfs is perhaps also indicated by the
fact that a number of gods, notably res, show-
signs of dwarfism.

Pygmies, however, seem to have received
rather less beneficent treatment than dwarfs,
no doubt because they were essentially for-
eigners. They were generally imported into
Egypt from tropical Africa, often serving as
'dancers before the god', temple dancers or
acrobats in the service of ra. The decoration of
the Old Kingdom tomb of Harkhuf (A8) at
Qubbet el-Hawa (see ASWAN) includes a copy
of a letter from the young 6th-Dynasty ruler
I'EPY it (2278-2184 Be), urging Harkhuf, who
was on his way back from an expedition to the
south of Sudan, to take great care of the dane-

Puinted limestone group statue of I he dwarf Seneb
with his wife Senetites and their two children. Late
4th or curly 5lh Dynasty, c.2500 nc, from Giza,
ii. 34m. (c-ur(kjes1280)

ing pygmy he has acquired. The king is quot-
ed as saying, 'my majesty desires to see this
pygmy more than the gifts of the mine-land
[Sinai | and of Punt'.

K. R. Wi'^KS, The anatomical knowledge of the
ancient Egyptians and the representation of the
human figure in Egyptian art (Ann Arbor, 1981 ).
O. EI -Aguizy, 'Dwarfs and pygmies in ancient
Egypt 1 , ASAE 71 (1987), 53-60.
V. Daskn, Dwarfs in ancient Egypt and Greece
{Oxford, 1993).

dyad (pair-statue)

Pair of statues, often carved from the same

block of material, either representing a man

and his wife or depicting two versions ol the
same person. Sometimes the man and wife are
accompanied by their children, usually carved
next to their legs. There are also occasional
groups of two or three identical funerary stat-
ues portraying a single individual, one ol the
earliest examples being the dyad of the 5tn-
Dynasty priest of ra, Nimaatsed, from MA5TA-
BA tomb i)56 at Saqqara (now 7 in Cairo). It has
been suggested that the intention of such
'pseudo-groups' may have been to represent
the body and the spiritual manifestations of
the deceased (see KA), It is possible that nival
dyads, such as the unusual granite double stat-
ue of Amenemhat in from Tanis (also in
Cairo), may portray both the mortal and dei-
fied aspects of the pharaoh.
M. Saleh and H. Sourouzian, 77k Egyptian
Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (Mainz, 1987),
eat. nos48 and 104.

DYAD

DYNASTY

ECONOMICS

dynasty

The division of the Pharaonic period into
dvnaslies was a. chronological system intro-
duced by the priest maneti-io in the early third
century BC, when he composed his history of
Egypt (the Aegyptiacu). The thirty-one dynas-
ties consisted of groups of rulers stretching
from the time of the semi-mythical first
phanioh MENES to ALEXANDER THE GREAT. In

general Manctho's dynasties appear to corre-
spond quite closely to the grouping of kings
suggested by various earlier king lists, such as
the TURIN ROYAL C-\non, and in modern
chronologies the dynasties are usually grouped
into 'kingdoms' and 'intermediate periods*.
The distinction between one dynasty and
another occasionally seems rather arbitrary but
two of the most important determining factors
appear to have been changes in royal kinship
links and the location of the capital.

Because oi the tendency to regard the king-
ship as a unique and indivisible phenomenon,
Manetho's dynasties, like the groups of rulers
in Pharaonic king lists, tend to be treated as if
they occurred in a linear sequence, one after
the other, whereas it is now known mat some
of them (such as the 13th to 17th Dynasties)
represented roughly contemporaneous and
overlapping sequences of rulers who con-
trolled only certain parts of the country. See

also CHRONOLOGV.

W. G. Waddkll, Manelho (Cambridge, MA, and

London, 1940).

W. Helck, Untersiwhungen zu Mtmetho uml dec

dgyptischen Kiiniglistcn (Berlin, 1956).

D. Redford, Pharaonk king-fists, annals md day-

booh: a contribution to the study of the Egyptian

sense of history (Mississauga, 1986).

S. Qurke, Who were the pharaohs? (London,

1990).

Early Dynastic period (3100-2686 bc)
Chronological phase, often described as the
Archaic period, comprising the first two
dynasties of the Pharaonic period, during
which many of the major aspects of the culture
and society of the Pharaonic period emerged.
Some scholars include the 3rd Dynast v
(2686-2613 bc) in the Early Dynastic period,
but most chronologies treat the 3rd to 6th
Dynasties as the old KINGDOM.

The transition from the predynastic peri-
od to the 1st Dynasty was once regarded as a
sudden political event, such as an invasion.
The material culture of the period, however,
suggests that the emergence of the Earlv
Dynastic monarch) was a very gradual
process.

A certain degree of controversy still sur-
rounds the question of tire location of the royal
tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasties, given that
there are elite cemeteries of the period at both
ABYDOS and saqqara, both of which include
inscriptions bearing 1st- and 2nd-Dynast\
royal names. Current opinion, however, tends
more towards Abydos as the royal cemetery
and Saqqara as the burial ground of the high
officials of the time.

The tombs at Abydos and Saqqara have
yielded some of the earliest Egyptian textual
evidence, primarily in the form of stone stelae,
wooden and ivory labels, inscribed pottery jars
and clay seal impressions. On the basis of
these documents, together with the evidence
of radiocarbon dating, the rough chronological
structure of the period has been reconstruct-
ed. The sequence of lst-Dynasty kings, all of
whom were probably buried at Abydos, is now
widely accepted as naraikr, \h-\, djer, djet,

DEA, ANEUJIB, SEMERKHET and QA'A, with

Queen MERNEtTii serving as a regent, probabh
either before or after the reign of Den. The
chronology of the early 2nd-Dvnasty kings,
who were probably buried at SAQQARA, is more
nebulous, perhaps taking the form:
Hetepsekhcmwy, Raneb, Nynctjer, Wenegand
Sened. The last two rulers of the 2nd Dynasty
were peribsen and KHASEKHEMWY, both buried
at Abydos.

B. G. Trigger, 'The rise of Egyptian
civilization 1 , Ancient Egypt: a social history, cd.
B. G. Trigger et al. (Cambridge, 1983), 1-70.
I. Shaw, 'The Egyptian Archaic period: a
reappraisal of the C-l 4 dates', GM 78 (1984),
79-S6.

K. Bard, 'Toward an interpretation of the role of

ideology in the evolution of complex society in

Egvpf . Journal of Anthropological Archaeology D

(1992), 1-24.

A.J. Spfactr, Early Egypt: the rise of civilization

in the Xi/c valley (London, 1993).

B. G Trigger, Early civilization: ancient Egypt

in context (Cairo, 1993).

economics see ^ministration;

AGRICULTURE; COPPER; GOLD; IRON; SN.AT.R;

stone; taxation; trade and wood.

Edfu (anc. Djeb, Apollonopolis Magna)
Upper Egyptian site dominated by a large,
well-preserved temple dedicated to the hawk-
god HORUS. The earliest securely dated histor-
ical evidence in the region of Edfu is a rock-
carving of the name of the lst-Dynasty king
djet (r .2980 bc), in the desert to the east of the
main site, as well as a necropolis of the Earlv
Dynastic period (3100-2686 bc).

The main site includes settlement and
funerary remains covering the entire Dynastic

1 pylon gateway

2 ambulatory

3 first hypostyie hall

4 second hypostyie hall

5 'laboratory' (inscribed with
recipes for incense, etc)

6 offering hall

7 vestibule

8 sanctuary (surrounded
by chapels)

9 'Nilometer'
'library'

Plan of the temple oj'Horus at Edfu.

EDUCATION

EGYPTOLOGY

Pylon of the temple of Harm at Edfu. The south

face of the pylon is decorated with reliefs showing
Ptolemy Ml smiting foreigners. On either side of
the gateway are statues of the hawk-god Horns.
Ptolemaic period, 71 BC, /l. of 'eastern tower 4-1 in.
(p. t. xiaiot.sos)

period, bur a substantial proportion of the
buildings remain unexcavated. The French
and Polish excavators of the 1920s and 1930s
examined die temple as well as the Greco-
Roman and Byzantine levels of the surround-
ing settlement. The construction of the
Ptolemaic temple of I Torus, which was found-
ed on the site of a much earlier Pharaonic tem-
ple, dates to the period between the reigns of
Ptolemy ill and XII (246-51 BC). The reliefs and
inscriptions on ihe walls include the myth of
the contendings of Horus and Si/in (probablv
performed annually as a religious drama) and
an important account of the ritual foundation
of the temple.

M. D£RocHEMONTEix.andE. Giassiwt, he
temple d'P.dfon (Paris, 1892; Cairo, 1918- ).
K. MlCHALOWSkl et ah, Tell Edfou, 4 vols (Cairo,
1937-50).

II. W. Faikman, 'Worship and festivals in an
Egyptian temple', Bulletin of the John Rylands
Library. Manchester 37 (1954), 165-203.
— , The triumph of Ilorus: on ancient Egyptian
sacred drama (London, 1974).
S. Cu vii.i.i'., La iheolagte d'Osiris a Edfou (Cairo,
1983).
— EtljhH (Cairo, 1984).

education

Few ancient Egyptians were given any formal
education, and the majority of the people were
illiterate. For the latter, training was essential-
ly vocational: practical trades and crafts were

passed on from one generation to another, and
boys often appear to have served apprentice-
ships under their fathers. Usually a son would
be expected to take over his father's trade or
post and cvcntuallv to provide the principal
means of support for the family. There is little
surviving evidence concerning the training or
education of women, although daughters gen-
erally seem to have acquired domestic skills,
such as weaving and cooking, from their
mothers.

For the elite members of Egyptian society,
education was cssentiallv a matter of scribal
training, since the use of writing was the kev
to Egyptian administration and economic
organization, and the sphere of the trained
scribe extended bevond writing to the roles of
manager and bureaucrat. A document from
the fourteenth regnal year of Psamtek l
(664-610 BC.) contains the individual signa-
tures of fifty high officials, ranging from
priests to viziers, thus indicating the wide-
spread literacy of the members of the ruling
elite in the 26th Dynasty at least. Many of the
surviving texts from the Pharaonic period
were intended to function not only as literary
works but also as educational textbooks, such
as the Miscellanies, and often the very survival
of these documents is owed largely to constant
copying as a means of acquiring writing skills.
The question of the extent of female literacy is
still a matter of considerable debate; it is pos-
sible that a small proportion of women couid
read and write, since there are surviving letters
to and from women at the New Kingdom
workmen's village of Deir el-Medina
((■.1500-1100 BC), although it is equally possi-
ble that such documents might have been
written and read by male SCRIBES on behalf of
female patrons.

Written education was very clearlv addressed
to boys, and many of the so-called 'wisdom
texts 1 are presented in the form of sets of
instructions spoken by fathers to sons (see
ETHICS and wisdom liter ATURe). The sons of
the elite seem to have been given a broader
education involving reading, writing and
MATHEMATICS. Such boys would probably
have been taught in a scribal school attached to
some particular division of the administration
such as the house of life in a temple or, in
the most privileged cases, at the roval court
itself. For most of the Pharaonic period the
HIERATIC script would have been the first to be
learned, with only a few selected individuals
then being instructed in tire more elaborate
and artistic hieroglyphs. The subject of math-
ematics was evidently taught by means of
numerous examples rather than by the use
of abstract formulae, so that problems were
usually, broken down into a repetitive series of
smaller calculations.

Learning was by rote, in that most lessons
appear to have taken the form of copying out
exercises and committing long passages of text
to memory. The exercises took the form of
model letters, reports and selections from
'instructions 1 such as the Book of Kcmyt.
Frequently such instructions presented a dis-
tinctly biased view of society, praising the
scribal profession and sometimes satirizing
other ways of life (see humour). School disci-
pline was strict, and one text includes the
memorable phrase; 'A bov's ear is on his back
- he listens when he is beaten 1 .
T. G. H.JAMES, Pharaoh's people: scenes from life
in ancient Egypt (Oxford, 1984), 136-51.
E. S'l'itot HAL, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 31-7.

G. RoiilNS, Women m ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 111-14.

D. SWEEMEY, 'Women's correspondence from
Deir cl-Medinelr, Seslo Congresso Lnternazionale
di Egiilohgia, Alii u (Turin, 1 993), 523-9.

Egyptology

Some scholars date the beginning of the di
pline of Egyptology to 22 September 1S22,
day on which Jean-Francois champolt.
wrote his Lettre a M. Dc/eier relative ii Palp
bet des hieroglyphes plione'tiques, in which
demonstrated that he had deciphered
hieroglyphic script. Champollion, howe
was undoubtedly already drawing on the w
of earlier writers, such as horapollo, :
Thomas young, and his work was actual!}
culmination of hundreds of years of ear
'rediscoverv' of ancient Egypt.

The Egyptian civilization was aire
regarded as a venerable and ancient one by

the
ION
hit-
he
the

ork
ind

the

iBYPTO LOGY

EGYPTOLOGY

\:ii i mfri:L.

Photograph showing 'Cleopatra '$ needle ' in the
process of being prepared for transportation by the
British engineer James Dixon. The obelisk nuts placed
in a specially-made metal cylinder, lowed hy boat to
England, and eventually erected an the Thames
Emlhuibnent in 1878, only a year after Dixon had
been contracted to bring it from Egypt. ( 'reproduced
COURTESY OF THE GRIFFITH INSTITUTE)

time that the Greek historian HERODOTUS
(c. 484-420 \u :) compiled the first general
account of the culture as a whole. Pharaonic
Egypt was also a .source of considerable interest
to Arabic scholars of the Middle Ages. Many of
these early accounts mixed observation with
fantasy, and more than a little interest in
treasure hunting, but some show a genuine
curiosity about the names and histories of
the builders of the great monuments. It was
obvious to Arabic scholars and early iravellers
that the tombs and temples were covered in
carvings, the mysterious hieroglyphs, and it
was this aspect of Egyptian civilization that
attracted the attention of European scholars
such as the German priest Athanasius Kircher,
who undertook important research into Coptic
and Arabic manuscripts before turning his
attention to the hieroglyphs. Unfortunately, he
mistakenly believed these signs to be purely
symbolic and non-phonetic, which led him to
the fantastic interpretations of texts that in
later times have earned him a somewhat unjus-
tified notoriety.

The foundations of Egyptological knowledge
were laid by such European 'travellers 1 as
Richard Pococke, Claude Sicard and Frederick
Ludwig Norden, whose pioneering accounts of
the Pharaonic sites they visited are in some cases
the only record of monuments that have long
since fallen victim to plundering or natural

deterioration. However, the firs! systematic
exploration of Egypt was undertaken at the end
of the eighteenth century by a small team of
French scholars accompanying Napoleon's mil-
itary expedition through the Nile valley. The
task of these 'savants' 1 was to record all aspects of
Egypt's flora, fauna and history, and their
results were published between 1 809 and 1822
as the twenty-four-volume Description dc
TEgyptc. Napoleon's expedition was brought to
an end by the British, but the scholars were
allowed to continue their work until 1802. When
Alexandria was surrendered lo the British, die
collections made by the savants were also hand-
ed over, including certain objects, such as the
ROSEXTA STONE, that were to prove crucial to the
development of Egyptology.

Large numbers of individual European
travellers and collectors began to visit Egypt
in the nineteenth century, along with several
further large-scale scientific expeditions,
most notably the work of Jean-Francois
Champollion and Ippolito ROStxuNi between
1828 and 1829, as well as the ambitious
and wide-ranging researches of the German
scholar Karl Richard LEPSIUS between 1842
and 1845. Lepsius 1 expedition undertook
extensive mapping and a certain amount of
excavation, recording some sites not visited
by the French as well as adding further
details to the accounts of known sites; his
work was published under the title of
Denkmaeler a us .iegypten und Aethiopien. In
the English-speaking world, the first compre-
hensive and reliable description of Egyptian
antiquities and culture was Sir John Gardner
Wilkinson's monumental Manners and
customs of the ancient Egyptians, published in
three volumes in 1837, after twelve years
of continuous fieldwork in Egypt and Nubia.

These scientific expeditions unfortunately
took place against a background of looting
and collecting by such pioneers as Bernardino
Drovetti and Giovanni bki.zoni. The antiquities
acquired by such men eventually formed the
nuclei of important national collections, such as
the British Museum, the Louvre, the Berlin
museums and the Museo Egizio in Turin. In
1858 the Pasha appointed a Frenchman,
Auguste MAR1KTTE, to oversee all future excava-
tion in Egypt. Not only did this mark the begin-
ning of more orderh study but it also reflected
an increasing involvement in the conservation
and detailed analysis of the monuments.

Gradually the subject gained respectability,
partly through the establishment of a number
of important academic posts in Egyptology,
and scholars such as Flinders PETJUE and
George REISNER were able to develop increas-

Portrait in oils of Howard Carter, painted by his
elder brother William in 1924. (reproduced

COURTESY OF THE GRIFFI'Ili INSTITUTE)

ingly meticulous techniques of field recording
and excavation. As a result, from the 1890s
onwards the subject became increasingly pro-
fessional in nature. Mariette's overseeing of
excavations developed into the Egyptian
Antiquities Service (the modern incarnation
of which is the Supreme Council for
Antiquities), which is now responsible lor
granting excavation permits to foreign mis-
sions, as well as co-ordinating their work in the
best interests of the Egyptian people. This
increasingly involves the rescue of" sites and
monuments endangered by construction
works, such as the Aswan high dam m the
1960s, the Cairo 'waste-water project' in the

JXKAB

1980s, and the el-Salaam canal in northern
Sinai during" the 1990s. In terms of the popu-
lar conception of Egyptology, however, these
rescue projects have been distinctly overshad-
owed by Howard CARTER'S discover) of the
tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, which was the
first great 'media event' in the history of
Egyptology, capturing the imagination of sub-
sequent generations of scholars.

Modern Egyptologists draw on a huge
diversity of techniques and disciplines,
including sophisticated geophysical survey,
meticulous excavation and recording in plans
and photographs, computer-generated recon-
structions, as well as the more traditional
fields of epigraphy (copying of inscriptions,
paintings and reliefs) and papvrologv.

See Appendix 1 for a list of the names and
dates of the major early travellers and
Egyptologists mentioned in the text,
K. R. Lf.I'SIUS, Denkmaeler aus Aegypten and
Aethkpkn, 12 vols (Berlin, 1849-59).
B. M. Pagan, The rape of the Nile: tomb robbers,
tourists and archaeologists in Egypt (London, 1977).
J. Verc:outter, The search for ancient Egypt
(London, 1992).

D. O'Connor, 'Egyptology and archaeology: an
African perspective', A history of African
archaeology, ed. P. Robcrtshaw (London, 1990),
236-51.

W. R. Dawson, E. P. Uphill and M. Bierbrier,
Who was who in Egyptology, 3rd ed. (London,
1995).

el- All site names beginning with 'el- 1 (Arabic
'the 1 ) are alphabetized under the second part
of the name, e.g. Kurru, el-.

Elephantine see \s\w\

Elkab (anc. Nekheb)

Upper Egyptian site on the east bank of the
Nile at the mouth of Wadi Hillal, about 80 km
south of Luxor, consisting of prehistoric and
Pharaonic settlements, rock-cut tombs of the
early 18th Dynasty (1 550-1295 bc), remains of
temples dating from the Earlv Dvnastic period
(3100-2686 lit.) to the Ptolemaic period
(332-30 bc), as well as part of the walls of a
COPTIC monaster). First scientilically exca-
vated by James Quibell at the end of the
nineteenth century, the site has been inves-
tigated primarily by Belgian archaeologists
since 1937.

The walled Pharaonic settlement of
Nekheb was one of the first urban centres of
the Early Dvnastic period, and for a short time

Set an anil his wife seated before a table of offerings.
Tomb ofSetau at Elkab. (p. t. Nicholson)

Old Kingdom cemetery

p temple of Nectanebo
Late Period enclosure wall

1 part of the town ^%, |ll „.- ;

2 temple of Nekhbet %

3 temple of Thoth '"'"

4 sacred lake f 3

5 rock-cut sanctuary f
of Shesmetet 5^

6 el-Hamman;
chapel of Setau

7 'vulture rock': rock
carvings and inscriptions
(prehistoric - Old Kingdom)

3 chapel of Amenhotep III
9 rock tombs of
New Kingdom nomarchs

Plan of Elkab.

in the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) it
eclipsed the city of Nekhcn (illERAKONPOLLS)
on the opposite bank, becoming" the capital of
the third nome of Upper Egypt. Its massive
mud-brick walls, dating to the Late Period
(747-332 bc) and still largely preserved,
enclosed an area of about 250,000 sq. m. Near
the centre of the town are the remains of sand-
stone temples dedicated to the deities nekhbet
and tiiotii, which date primarily to the 18th
to 30th Dynasties (1550-343 bc), but the orig-
inal foundation of the temple of Nekhbet

almost certainly dates back to the late fourth
millennium bc.

The rock-tombs of the provincial governors
of Elkab in the New Kingdom include those of
Ahmose son of Ibana (ek5), an admiral in the
wars of liberation against the I lyksos rulers
(c.1550 uc), and Setau (ek4), a priest during
the reign of Rameses rn (1184-1153 bc). The
style of the early 18th-Dynasty wall-paintings
anticipates that of the first New Kingdom
nobles' tombs at Thebes.

In 1967 PaulVermeersch discovered a series
of well-stratified EPiPALAEOLtTinc campsites.
Radiocarbon-dated to c. 6400-5980 BC, these

iiOFil'QI'"

ENCAUSTIC

1000 m

are the type-sites of the Elkabian microlithic
industry, filling a gap in the prehistoric cultur-
al sequence of Egypt, between the Upper
Palaeolithic period (f. 10,000 bc) and the earli-
est Neolithic phase (r.5500 bc).
J. E. Quibell, El-Kab (London, 1898).

.. 'L'Elkabien. Une nouvelle industrie

epipaleolithique a Elkab en Haute Egypte, sa

Stratigraphie, sa typologie', CdE 45 (1970),

45-68.

P. Derchain and P. Vermeersci i, Elkab, 2 vols

(Brussels and Louvain, 1971-8).

encaustic

Painting technique, employing a heated mix-
ture of wax and pigment, which was particu-
larly used for the Fayum mummy-portraits of
Roman Egypt (sec art and hawara).

enchorial see demotic

ennead (Egyptian pesedjet)
Term used to describe a group of nine gods.
The earliest and most significant instance of
such a grouping was the Great Ennead of
PLIOPOLIS, consisting of atum (the so-called

'■'.4
i r;

: " ;i -; ■'0''.

vignette from the Book of the Dead papyrus of
Wesitanebtashru, showing three of the members of
the Heliopolitan Ennead: Geb, Nut and Shu,
wmbolizing heaven and earth separated by the sky.
21st Dynasty, c.1025 bc. (eaW554, sheets?)

bull of the Ennead 1 ) and three generations of
his progeny: his children SHU and tefnut, his
grandchildren geb and mjt, and his four great-
grandchildren OSIRIS, ISIS, SETH and NKPHTHYS.
lhese nine deities participated in the
Heliopolitan creation myth, whereby the sun-
god emerged from the primeval waters of nun.
&. Hornung, Conceptions of God in ancient

Egypt: the one and the many (London, 198.1).
N. Grimae, A history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 41-5.

E. IIornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 39-54.

Epipalaeolithic

Poorly defined chronological phase between
the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods, charac-
terised in Egypt by a subsistence pattern mid-
way between hunting and agriculture. In
cultural terms, it was roughly equivalent to the
European Mesolithic period.

erotica

Since the definition of 'erotica 1 or 'pornogra-
phy', as opposed to the honest portrayal of
sexuality, is a culturally biased exercise,
much of the possible erotic significance of
Egyptian art and literature may well be in the
eye of the beholder. The line between erotic
art and religion is not easily drawn, particular-

So-eaHed 'Naukratic figure', from the Greek
settlement at Naukralis. Ptolemaic period, c.300
bc, ie 5.7 em. (ea54S93)

ly in the case of the ancient Egyptian culture,
in which sexuality and fertility were often
important elements of divine cults, such as
those of BES, hatiior and min. The so-called
'incubation chambers' of Bes at Saqqara
appear to have been rooms in which 'pilgrims'
hoped to receive erotic dreams leading to
greater fertility. The walls of the chambers
were lined with figures of the dwarf-god Bes
accompanied by nude females. Similarly, sym-
plegmata (pottery artefacts depicting entan-
gled groups of individuals engaged in sexual
acts) were clearly depicting sexual intercourse,
but it is not clear whether they were purely
erotica or votive in function. A relatively
uncontenlious example of erotica has survived
from the 19th Dynasty (1295-1 186 BC), in the
form of the celebrated Turin erotic papyrus
(Turin, Museo Egizio), which appears to
portray the adventures of a comic character
during a visit to a brothel. A number of ostra-
ca also depict men and women engaged in
sexual acts.

The genre of love poetry appears to have

flourished in the more cosmopolitan atmos-
phere of the New Kingdom, when Egypt was
exposed to new peoples and exotic ideas from
abroad. The poems, written on papyri or
ostraca and dating primarily to the 19th to
20th Dynasties, seem to have been read out
loud with musical accompaniment from
harpists, and so might be regarded as a form of
song. They would perhaps have provided part
of the entertainment at the lavish banquets of
the nobility, and were unlikely to have been
spontaneous compositions. In such poems it
was usual for the couple to refer to one anoth-
er as 'brother 1 and 'sister', sometimes taking
turns to describe their feelings of joy or loss at
their particular romantic situation, or deliver-
ing monologues addressed to their own hearts.
Feasts and banquets in the 18th Dynasty
often appear to have included elements of
erotica, and both men and women are depict-
ed wearing diaphanous clothing at such occa-
sions, when they are depicted on die walls of
tomb chapels. Their entertainment often con-
sisted of naked or semi-naked dancing girls,
some of whom may have been prostitutes. It is
possible, however, that the erotic overtones in
these tomb-paintings may have been deliber-
ately intended to emphasize sexuality and fer-
tility in order to enhance the potency of the
funerary cult. Naked women, sometimes asso-
ciated with cars and ducks, were often used as
decorative elements on toilet objects, particu-
larly during the reign of amenhotep til
(1390-1352 bc). See sexuality for a discus-
sion of the possible relationships between
erotica and fertility, including the production
of so-called 'fertility figurines'.
J. Omi.in, 'Der papyrus 55001 sad seine
satirisch-crolischen Zeichnungen und
Inschriften', Catalogo del Museo Egizio di Torino
m (Turin, 1973).

P. Derchain, 'La perruque et le eristal', SAK 2
(1975), 55-74.

M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian literature it
(Berkeley, 1976), 181-93.
L. Manntchk, Sexual life in ancient Egypt
(London, 1987).

E. Strouhae, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 11-19,39-49.

Esna {anc. lunyt, Ta-senet, Latopolis)
Site on the west bank of the Nile in Upper
Egypt, 50 km south of Luxor. The main sur-
viving archaeological remains are the sacred
necropolis of the Nile perch (Lales niioticus)
and the Greco-Roman temple dedicatee! to the
ram-god khnum as well as the goddesses
neith and Heka (see MAGIC), which was built
on the site of a temple mentioned by texts at
least as early as the reign of Thutmose in

ETHICS

EXECRATION

TYTS

unexcavated inner temple

1 texts of Marcus Aurelius 4 cartouches of Claudius

2 cartouches of Ptolemy VI 5 scene of king and gods
Philometer netting fowl and demons

3 cartouches of Antoninus Pius

Plan of the Temple ofKhnuin at Esua.
(1479-1425 BC). Only the HI POSTYLE HALL was

excavated by Auguste Mariette, and the rest of
the temple remains buried under the sur-
rounding buildings of the modern town. The
building was probably connected originalh
with the Nile by a processional way leading to
a quay, traces of which, bearing cartouches of
the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (ad
161-180), have been preserved in situ.
According to some of the inscriptions in the
temple, there were originally four other tem-
ples in the region (one of which was recorded
by Napoleon's savants), but none of these has
Survived into modem times.

Important late Palaeolithic remains have
also been Found in the vicinit\ of F.sna.
Together with contemporaneous material at
\AQADA, Dishna and Toshka, they make up the
main sources of evidence for the Tsnan 1 lithic
industry which flourished alongside the
Qadan, Afian and Sebilian industries during
the Sahaba-Darau period (c 13,000-10,000
BC). The remains at Esnan sites include grind-
ing stones and sickle blades associated with the
cultivation of domesticated plants, as well as
the stone points and scrapers associated with
hunting and gathering.
S. SaunERON, Ems, 5 vols (Cairo, 1 959—67).
D. Downes, The excavations at Estm 1905 IW6
(Warminster, 1974).

E Wendorf and R. SCHXLD (ed.) Prehistory of the
Hik valley (New York, 1 976), 289-91 .

ethics

The accepted code of social behaviour and the
distinction between right and wrong during
the Pharaonic period both tend to be closely
intertwined with funerary BELIEFS and cultic
requirements. The concept of maat (often
translated as 'truth 1 or 'harmony') was central

to ancient Egyptian ethics, representing the
original state of tranquillity at the moment of
the creation of the universe. It was the feath-
er of the goddess Maat that was weighed
against the heart oTthe deceased to determine
whether he or she was worthy of resurrection
in the afterlife. The so-called 'negative confes-
sion' - a list of sins that had not been commit-
ted by the deceased - was intended to be recit-
ed in this 'hall of judgement 1 in order to
ensure a successful outcome.

A number of practical statements of
Egyptian ethics have survived in the form of
the sehayt (see wisdom uteraturk), mainh
written on papyrus and dating from the Old
Kingdom to the Roman period (c.2686 BC— AD
395). The earliest of these documents describe
the qualities required of a person in order to
ensure success both in his or her lifetime and
in the afterlife. Individuals were expected both
to satisfy their superiors and to protect those
who were poorer. From the second millenm-

■ &

1 '

■ ;.- .■ ■. ■■■:;■ '■; -v;? ? ■

Tmn fragments of a papyrus inscribed with sections
of the Instruction of Ptahhotcp. !2lh Dynasty,
C.1900BC, ii. 15cm. (tilO.UI, 10435)

urn BC, the code of ethics described in the
sebayf was less worldly, tending to measure
virtue more in terms of piety to the gods than
in terms of material success. See also LAW.
T. G. H.J \\u-:s, Pharaoh's people (Oxford, 1984),
73-99.

E. Stroliiai., Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 31-4.

execration texts

Type of document listing places, groups of
people or individuals regarded as hostile or
inherently evil. These texts occur from the late
Old Kingdom onwards and were inscribed on
statuettes of prisoners or pottery jars, which
were often broken and buried as part of a mag-
ical process of triumphing over the persons or
places listed. Most of the surviving examples
were found in the vicinitv of tombs at Thebes
and Saqqara, but a large number were also
excavated at the Middle Kingdom fortress of
Mirgissa in Nubia (including texts inscribed
on a human skull), no doubt comprising mag-

ical defences to back up the physical rnUitarv
fortifications.

The execration texts have helped
Egyptologists to identify those who were con-
sidered lo be enemies of Egypt at different
periods in their history, although the histories!
value of such lists is reduced by die tendency
to repeat stock lists of names, which are often
obviously anachronistic. Sometimes the names

^^V* lo LOUISA

Line-draiving of an 'execration figure' consisting
of a schematic statuette of a hound captive
inscribed with a hieratic cursing ritual, one of five
simitar figures that are thought to have been found
at Ilelwan. The text lists various Nubians and
Libyans as well as two. Egyptian rebels. 12th
Dynasty, C.I92Q&C, travertine, it. 15 cm. (c into.
SE639SS, as iha in tttcit ird Parkinson)

of the hostile forces are listed in great detail,
while in other instances the enemies are the
stereotypical NINE bows, the figure 'nine' rep-
resenting three times three, which was the
'plurality of pluralities', thus designating the
entirety of all enemies. A related example of
the magic involved in the execration texts is
die ceremony of 'breaking red jars' as part of
temple ritual designed to ward off evil, the jars
being the colour of blood.
G. POSENER, 'Achtungstextc 1 , Lexikon der
Agypto/ogie l, ed. W. flelck, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1975), 67-9.
— , Cimj figures d'envoiitement (Cairo, 1987).
D. B. Rkoford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in
ancient limes (Princeton, 1992), 87-93.
K. EC. RitM'.k, The mechanics of 'ancient Egyptian
magical practice (Chicago, 1993).

eye of Ra

Term used to describe the eve of the sun-god.

E YE OF RA

which was considered to exist as a separate
entity, independent of the god himself. The
svmhotism <>f the eye of R \, associated with a
number of goddesses, was complex and
diverse. In the myth identifying HATHOK as the
eye she was regarded as having travelled to
Nubia, whence she had to be lured back. The
gBKBMET version of the eye, on the other hand,
took the form of a savage goddess who revelled
jn the slaughter of humans as the instrument
of the sun-god's wrath. These two versions of
the eye were essentially the two sides of the
personality of the goddess. The eye was also
closelv identified with the cobra-goddess WAD-
ryr, the divine personification of the tinwus
(iarel or nesret in Egyptian) which was worn on
the brow of the king in order to spit venom at
his enemies (see cobra).
H-TeVelde, 'Mut, the eye of Re', J^'"
Munchcn 1985 in, ed. S. Schoske (Hamburg,
1989), 395-403.

eye-paint see cosmetics

faience

Ceramic material composed of crushed
quartz, or quartz sand, with small amounts ol
lime and plant ash or natron. This body mate-
rial is usually coated with a bright blue or
green glaze of soda— lime-silica type. It was
used from the Predynastic period to the
Islamic period; typical products include small
figurines and amulets, architectural ornaments
and inlavs, vessels, and such funeran artelacts
as SHAI5TI figures.

The material was known to the Egyptians
as ijt'heitel, the literal meaning of which was
'brilliant' or 'dazzling'. Like glass, which was
introduced in the New Kingdom (1550-1069
no), its main purpose was probably to imitate
gem-stones such as turquoise and LAHS
LAZULI. Although blue and green are the
must common colours, many others eould
also be achieved, and polychrome pieces
were verv popular at certain periods, not least

during the New Kingdom when elaborate
inlays and pieces ol jewellerv were being
produced. Black decoration was sometimes
added to monochrome pieces by painting in
manganese.

The technology for producing faience ma}
have developed from the process of glazing-
quartz and steatite stones. The material is
more properly called 'Egyptian faience', in
order to distinguish it from the tin-glazec'
earthenware originally made at Faenze in Itah.
from late medieval times. Because the bright
colours uf the Egyptian material reminded
early Egyptologists of European 'faience' (now
more correctly called majolica), they used this
somewhat misleading name.

The bodv material of faience was mixed
with water and then moulded or hand-
modelled to the required shape. Difficult
shapes were sometimes abraded from rough-
outs when partly dried, thus allowing verv
delicate pieces to be produced if necessary.
Mam hundreds of clay moulds for producing
rings, amulets and other items of faience have

Egyptian faience hmvi fvnm Thebes. New Khi^tlmn.
(£.44790)

FAMILY

survived, particularly from urban sites such as

EL-AMARNA and QANTIR.

Glazing was achieved in three ways. The
first of these was 'efflorescence', whereby the
glazing materia] was mixed with the quartz
body and effloresced on to its surface as the
piece dried; when fired, this coating melted to
become a glaze. The second method was
'cementation 1 , in which the artefact to be
glazed was surrounded by glazing powder,
which bonded with its surface during firing.
The finished piece was then removed from the
unused glazing powder, wtiicfa could be easily
crumbled away. In the third method, known as
'application glazing', the object was coated in
slurry (or in powder of glazing material) and
then fired.

A. Kaczmarczyk: and R. E. M. Hedges, Ancient
Egyptian faience (Warminster, 1983).
P. Vandiyer and W. D. Kincery, 'Egyptian
faience: the first high-tech ceramic', Ceramics
and civilization m, ed. W. D. Kingcrv (Columbus,
Ohio, 1987), 19-34.

P. T. Nicholson, Egyptian faience am/ glass
(Princes Rishorough, 1993).

falcon

One of a number of birds which figured
among the sacred animals of ancient Egypt.
The falcon {Egyptian bik) or hawk was fre-
quently regarded as die BA of iiorus, the hawk-
headed god and son of ostris (to whom the
bird was also sacred). Excavations at HIER-
AkONPOLis ('city of the falcon'), the ancient
Egyptian Nekhen, revealed a fine gold falcon
head with two plumes and uracils (Cairo,
Egyptian Museum), which was once part of a
composite statue. The Morus-falcon was the
guardian deitv of the ruler and is frequently
depicted with its wings outstretched protec-
tively behind the head of the king, as on the
famous statue of the 4th-Dynasty ruler
KTIAFRA. It was also the falcon that surmount-
ed the royal SESEKH, where it served a similar
protective function, an extension of the role it
seems to have adopted as early as the begin-
ning of the Pharaonic period, when it was
depicted on the palette of narmer. The bird
was also sacred to the gods MONTH and sokar,
and occasionally also associated with the god-
dess HATHOR. A falcon on a plumed staff was
one of the symbols of the wesl and the necrop-
oleis, and the UA was sometimes represented as
a human-headed falcon.

At least as earlv as the Late Period (747-332
hc) at s^ujgara there was a catacomb con-
structed specifically for mummified hawks
sacred to Horus. Recent examination of a
number of these mummies has shown them to
comprise a number of different types of birds

of prey. Thus, the Horus-lalcon image may

have been regarded as interchangeable with a

whole range of other birds of prey.

I.. Stork and H. Altenmueeer, 'Falke', Lexikou

tier Agyptologie n, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W.

Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1977), 93-7.

R. Wll.kl\SO\, Reading Egyptian art (London,

1992), 82-3.

false door

Elaborate stone or wooden architectural ele-
ment inside Egyptian tombs and mortuary
temples, in front of which funerary offerings
were usually placed. The false door, west-
orientated and serving as a link between the
living and the dead, w r as a rectangular imita-
tion doorway which first appeared in tombs
of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 hc). The
typical form of the false door evolved out of
the 'palace-facade' external architecture of
the MASIABA tombs of the elite in the Early
Dynastic period (3100-2686 bc), the external
sides of which consisted of a series of alter-
nate panels and recessed niches. The false
door was effectively a narrow stepped niche
surmounted by a rectangular stone slab-stele.

Limestone fa he door ofPtahshepsesfrom his tomb
at Saqqara. 5th Dynasty, c.2450 tic, H. 3.66 m.
(f.a682)

usually carved with a figure of the deceased
seated before an OFFERING TABLE and
inscribed with the traditional offering eor-
mli.a and the name and titles of the loirih-
owner. Some surviving false doors incorpo-
rate a life-size relief figure of the ka (spiritu-
al 'double') of the deceased stepping out of
the niche.

S. Wiebach, Die agyptische Scheintiir (Hamburg,
1981).

N. Strcdwick, The administration of Egypt m the
Old Kingdom (London, 1985).
M. SALEl I and H. Socrouzian, The Egyptian
Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (Mainz, 19S7),
cat. nos. 57-8.

G. Haeny, 'SchcintuV, Lexikon dsr Agyptologie v,
ed. W. Helck, E. Otro and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 563-71 .

family see children

famine

Egypt's agricultural prosperity depended on
the annual inundation of the Nile. For crops
to flourish it was desirable that the Nile should
rise about eight metres above a zero point at
the first cataract near Aswan. A rise of only
seven metres would produce a lean year, while
six metres would lead to a famine. That such
famines actually occurred in ancient Egypt is

FAMINE

FARAFRA OASIS

The Famine Stele on the bland ofSehel, south &j
Aswan. The rock bears a carved inscription which
refers to a seven-year famine and purports to dale
to the time of the 3nl-Dynasty ruler Djoser, but
actually belongs to the Ptolemaic period.

(p. T. NICHOLSON)

well documented from a number of sources,
both literarv and artistic.

On the island of Sehel, immediately south
of Aswan, is the Famine Stele, This purports
to be a decree of Djoser (2667-2648 SC) of the
3rd Dynasty recording his concern oyer a
seven-year famine, which is supposed to have
been eventually ended by the ram-god KHNUM,
who controlled the rising of the waters. In fact
the text dates to Ptolemaic times, and may
simply be designed to reinforce the claims of
the temple of KJmum on Elephantine to tax
local produce (although some scholars believe
that it is a copy of an authentic document).

That famines took place during the Old
Kingdom is not in doubt, and the surviving
visual evidence includes several fragments of
relief from the walls of the 5th-Dynasty cause-
way of the pyramid complex of UNAS
(2375—2345 bc) at Saqqara. These reliefs
depict numerous emaciated figures, their rib-
cages clearly visible, sealed on the ground and
apparently weak from hunger. It has been
argued by some scholars, partly on the basis of
these reliefs, that the Old Kingdom
(2686-21 SI Dt;) ended largely because of pro-
longed drought and increasing desertification.
The 'autobiographical 1 inscriptions in the
tomb of the provincial governor Ankhtifi
(t'.2100 bc), at EL-MO'ajXAj describe how he
saved his people from 'dying on the sandbank

of hell 1 ; the phrase 'on the sandbank 1 (em (jes)
perhaps refers to a low inundation and hence
to famine. The inscriptions in the tomb of
Hetepi at Elkab also describe a famine during
the reign of EW.F n (2112-2063 bc).

Prolonged periods of famine, caused by
poor inundation, may indeed sometimes have
led to political turmoil and helped to bring
about a temporary end to die established
order. The Biblical story of Joseph may itself
have taken place during the Second
Intermediate Period (1650-1550 bc), and it
has been suggested that it was a iivksos
king of Egypt whom Joseph saved from the
effects of famine (but see also biblical
connections).

The building of canals and irrigation
ditches did much to alleviate the suffering
caused by low floods, but such stratagems
were not always sufficient. At lean times peo-
ple appear to have turned to the black market
or to theft in order to feed themselves, and
certain papvri indicate that the royal tomb-
robberies of the 20th Dynasty (1186-1069
BC) may have been prompted by the need for
gold to buy food during the so-called 'year of
the hyenas'.

J. V-xndier, La famine dans TF.gyptc ancienne
(Cairo, 1936).

S. Schott, 'Aufnahmen vom Houngersnotrelief
aus dem Aufweg der Unaspyramidc 1 , RdE 17
(1965), 7-13.

D. B. Rkdiord, A study of the Biblical story of
Joseph (Leiden, 1970), 91-9.
B. BELL, 'The dark ages in ancient history, i: The
first dark age in Egypt 1 , American Journal oj
Archaeology 75 (1971), 1-26.
W. Stevenson Smiti i. The art and architecture of

ancient Egypt, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1 981 ),
133-4.

Farafra Oasis (anc. Ta-iht)
Fertile depression in the Western Desert,
about 300 km west of the modern town of
Asvut. The smallest of the major Egyptian
oases, it is first mentioned in texts dating to
the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc), and by the
19th Dynasty (1295-1186 bc) it was said to
have been inhabited by Libyans. Mowever, no
archaeological traces of the Pharaonic phase of
occupation have yet been discovered, the earli-
est known sites being the settlements and
cemeteries at Ain el-Wadi and Wadi Abu
Hinnis in the northern part of the oasis, which
date to the Roman period (30 RC-Ap 395). At
Ain Dallaf, on the northwestern edge of the
Farafra depression, arc the remains of a town
of the early Christian period (c. ad 450).
H. J. L. Beadnell, Farafra Ousts (Cairo, 1901 ).
L. Giddv, Egyptian oases, Bahariya, Dakh/a,
Farafra and Kharga during pharaonic times
(Warminster, 19S7).

Fara'in, Tell el- (anc. Pc and Dep, Per-
Wadjyt, Buto)

Cluster of three mounds (comprising two
towns and a temple complex) in the north-
western Delta, which was occupied from late
Predynastic times until the Roman period
(t.3300 isc-AD 395). In 1888 the site was iden-
tified as ancient Buto by Flinders Petrie, and
in 1904 C. T Currelly undertook trial excava-
tions. The site was subsequently not properly
examined until the 1960s when the survey and
excavations of Veronica Seton- Williams and
Dorothy Charlcsworth revealed Late Period,
Ptolemaic and Roman remains, including
cemeteries, houses, baths and temples. Textual
sources have identified Buto with 'Pe and
Dep 1 , the semi-mythical Predynastic twin cap-
itals of Lower Egypt. The Predynastic strata at
the site were first located in the 1980s by
Thomas von der Way, whose excavations
appear to have revealed a stratigraphic level in
which Lower Egyptian Predynastic pottery
types were gradually being replaced by Upper
Egyptian Early Dynastic wares (see predynas-
tic period).

W. M. F. Petrie and C. T Curri-li.y, Ehnasya
(Cairo, 1904).

T. von der Way, 'Tell cl-FuVin 83-85:
Probleme - Ergebnisse — Perspek liven 1 , Problems
and priorities in Egyptian archaeology, ed.
J. Assmann et al. (London, 1987), 299-304.
— , 'Excavations at Tell cl-Faia^n/Buto in
1987-1989\ The Nile Delta in transition: 4th-3rd
millennium BC, ed. E. C. M. van den Brink (Tel
Aviv, 1992), 1-10.

FAR AS

FECUNDITY FIG U R ES

Faras (anc. Pachoras)

Settlement on rhe border between modern
Egypt and Sudan, which was first established
as a small Egyptian fortress in the Middle
Ivingdom {2055-1650 BC) and continued in
use in the 18th to 19th Dynasties (1550-1186
BC) with the construction of five Egyptian
temples. W. Y. Adams argues that the impor-
tance of Faras owed more to indigenous
Nubian traditions than to am military :-;igmfi
cance that it might have had for the Egyptian
colonists. It continued to function as a reli-
gious centre after the departure of the
Egyptians, and during the Christian period
(r.Au 600-1 500) it was one of the most impor-
tant bishoprics in Nubia.

The episcopal cathedra! (founded c.AD 650)
and the bishop's palace were discovered in
exceptionally good condition when Polish
excavators examined a large mound in the cen-
tre of the modern village that had previously
been erroneously interpreted as a typical strat-
ified TKU.-sile. Although the site is now sub-
merged under the waters of Lake Nasser the
Polish archaeologists were able to transfer 169
painted murals from the cathedral to the
museums at Warsaw and Khartoum. The
stratified pottery from the site, as well as the
paint-layers and stylistic development of the
cathedral murals, have contributed significant-
ly to the development of a chronological
framework for Christian Nubia.
K. MlCHAl.ouSM, Faras l-ll (Warsaw, 1962-5).
— , Faras: centre arthtique lie la Nubie chre'tienne
(Leiden, 1966).
J.Yantim, The excavation!, at Funis (Bologna,

1970).

S. jAkOHlKI-SRl, Faras m (Warsaw, 1972).

J. Kumnska, Farm i\ (Warsaw, 1974).

W. Y. Adams, Nubia: corridor to Africa (London

and Princeton, 1984), 226, 472-84.

Sandstone block of decorative frieze from the first
cathedral at Faras. 7th century id, ii. 25 cm. ft: tW6)

farm animals see agricuxuiu: and animal

IIUSBA\tm\

Fayum region (anc. la-she, She-resy,

Moeris)

Large fertile depression covering 12,000 sq.

km in the Libyan Desert about 60 km to the

southwest of Cairo. The region incorporates
archaeological sites dating from the late
Palaeolithic to the late Roman and Christian
periods (r.8000 BO-Ap 641). Until the
Palaeolithic period a vast salt-water lake lay at
the heart of the depression, but this was grad-
ually transformed into the smaller, fresh-water
Lake Moeris, linked to the Nile by the Bahr

Yussef channel. The earliest inhabitants of ih e
Fayum were the epipalaeouthic: 'Fayum B'
culture, which was succeeded by the Neolithic
'Fayum A' culture in £.5500 BC Traces of both
groups were first found by Gertrude Catnn-
Thompson and Elinor Gardner in the north-
era Fayum.

The region flourished from the Middle
Ivingdom (2055-1650 lie) onwards, when the
Egyptian capital was relocated at Itjtawy
somewhere in the region of t;i -i.isirr, but most
ot the surviving archaeological remains date to
the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, when such
towns as Karanis (Kom Aushim), Tebtunis
(Tell Umm et-Breigat) and Bacchias (Kom el-
Atl) were at their height.
K. S. Sani.h-ord and W. J. Arkeix, Prehistaru
survey of Egypt and Western . isia: Paleolithic man
and the Nile- Fayum divide (Chicago, 1929).
G. CATuN-TiroMPSoxandE. O. Gardner, The
Desert Fay am (London, 1934).
E Wl'ADORr and R. Sci III,!) (eds), Prehistory of
theXi/c Jullcy (New York, 1976), 155-61.
E. Husselman, Karauis: excavations of the
University of Michigan in Egypt, 1928-35
(Michigan, 1979).

A. K. Bowman, Egypt after the pham&hs
(London, 1986), 142-55.

fecundity figures see 1 1 \p\

fertility figurines see a alai.itv

festivals

The Egyptian religious calendar was punctu-
Pian of the Fayum region.

□ Qasr el-Sagha

FES TIVALS

FIELD OF REEDS

aLccl by numerous festivals, often consisting of
I procession in which the cult image of a deity
was moved from one temple to another (usual-
ly providing opportunities for ORACLES along
the route). In the Festival Hall of Thutmose ill
(1479-1425 lie) at KARNAK there is a list of
fifty-four feast-days in one year. A similar text
jn the mortuary temple of Rameses ill
(1 184-1 153 BC) at tetEOiNET HABU lists sixty fes-
tivals. Some of the most important national
events of this type were the New Year Festival,
the Festival of SOKAR, the Raising of the Sky
and the Festival of the Potter's Wheel, but
there would also have been many purely local
festivals associated with the smaller provincial
temples.

Two of the best-known annual religious
events were the Festival of Ope! and the
Beautiful Festival of the Valley, both of which
took place at Thebes from the early 18th
Dvnustv onwards. The Beautiful Festival of
the Valley involved an annual procession tak-
ing the cult statues of the Theban triad
(Amun, Mul and Khons) from Karnak to deir
el-baiiri, which arc located almost exactly
opposite one another, on either side of the
Nile. A later version of this festival involved a
more complex processional route via one of
the mortuary temples that lined the edge of
the cultivation on the west bank. A similar
festival linked Luxor temple with the temple
of Thutmose 111 at MEDINET f 1 Alii (imme-
dialeh to the northeast of Rameses ill's mor-
tuary temple).

The Festival of Opct also took place annu-
ally (in the second month of the season of
akhet), lasting for a period that varied from

two to four weeks. The main event in this fes-
tival was the ritual procession of the divine
images from Karnak to LUXOR, which is
depicted on the walls of the colonnade at
Luxor, built by Amenhotep in (1390-1352 BC)
and decorated by Tutankhamun (1336—1327
bc). The temple at Luxor was in fact con-
structed largelv as a suitable architectural set-
ting for the Festival of Opet.

The divine images in their sacred barks
were initially carried to Luxor overland, along
a sphinx-lined route broken al intervals by
'■bark-shrines' or way-stations, within which
the barks would be temporarily placed en
route. By the late 18th Dynasty, however, the
divine images were taken to and from Luxor in
a series of ceremonial boats. The religious pur-
pose of this festival was to celebrate the sexual
intercourse between Amun and the mother of
the reigning king, thus allowing her to give
birth to the royal k\ (spiritual essence or
double). At the culmination of the festival, the
king himself entered the inner sanctum,
enabling his phvsical form to coalesce with the
eternal form of the &«, so that he could emerge
from the temple as a god.

According to the 'calendar of feast and
offerings' at Aledinet I Iabu, such festivals
required the provision of amounts of loaves vary-
ing from eightv-four in a standard monthly
festival to nearly four thousand in the Festival
of Sokar. F.ach festival therefore incorporated
a ceremony known as the "reversion of offer-
ings', in which the extra food offerings
brought to the temple were redistributed to
the masses.
See also SEQ festival.

■■'-: "J

G. Foucart, 'Etudes thebaines: l;i Belle Fete de

laVallee', BIFAO 24 (l l J24), 1-209.

W. Wolf, Das schb'ne Fest von Ofiet (Leipzig,

1951}.

S. Sn-ioTT, Das schb'ne Fest vnm I liisteniale

(Wiesbaden, 1952).

M. VV. F airman, 'Worship and festivals in an

Egyptian temple'. Bulletin of the John Ryhtitds

Library. Manchester?? (1954), 165-203.

C.J. Bi.kklkk, Egyptian festivals: enactments of

religious renewal (Leiden, 1967).

B. J. Kf.mp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a

civilization (London, 1989), 205-17, fig. 71 .

Field Of ReedS (Fields of Offerings, Fields
of Taru)

To 'pass through the field of reeds' was an
Egyptian metaphor for death, since the 'field
of reeds' was a term used to describe the
domain of osiris. According to Chapter 145 of
the book OF THE dead, it was here thai the
deceased would gather the abundant crops of
emmer and barley; Chapter 109, meanwhile,
describes the gigantic sizes of these crops.

The field was so synonymous with fertility
and abundance that the hieroglyph for field
(si'kliel) sometimes replaced the /;e/e/>-sign thai
was usually employed to denote the act of
offering. Similarly, reed-shaped loaves of
bread depicted on offering tables were occa-
sionally portrayed as actual reeds, thus

Detail of wall-painting in the tomb ofSemiedjcin at
Deir el-Medina, western Thebes, depicting the
deceased in the Field of Reeds. 19th Dynasty,

C. 1200 tSC. (CR. 111. IM It \RRtSOS)

:,■:■■■:■■

FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD

FISH

symbolizing- not only the offerings of bread

but a general abundance of other offerings.

See also funerary beliefs.

L. LeSKO, 'The Field ofTTetcp in Egyptian

eoffm texts', J£4AC£ 9 (1971-2), 89-101.

R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art

(London, 1992), 124-5.

First Intermediate Period (21 8 1-2055 bc)

Chronological phase between the old king-
dom (2686-2181 tic) and the middle KINGDOM
(2055-1650 bc), which appears to have been a
time of relative political disunity and instabil-
ity. The period corresponds to MANETHO's 7th
to 10th Dynasties and the early part of the
11th Dj nasty. It begins with the death of
Queen Nitiqret, the last ruler of the 6th
Dynasty; and ends in the reign of Nebhepetra

VtENTL'llOTIT II.

According to Manetho, the 7th and 8th
Dynasties still governed Egypt from the Old
Kingdom capital, MEMPHIS, but the apparently
rapid succession of rulers and the comparative
lack of major building works are both likely
indications of a decline in royal authority. The
general lack of information concerning the
political developments during this period also
highlights the extent to which the knowledge
of other periods in Egyptian history is found-
ed on the evidence provided by the survival of
elite funerary monuments. The presence of
the pyramid complex of the 8th-Dvnasty ruler
Qakara Iby at S&GEQARA suggests thai Memphis
at least lay within the control of the 7th- and
8th-Dynasty kings. Although most of the
rulers of the First Intermediate Period used
the royal titulary, it seems likely that they
actually governed only a small part of the
eountrv.

W. C. Hayes suggested that the pharaohs of
the 8th Dynasty, perhaps lasting about thirty-
years, were the successors of the 6th- and 7th-
Dynasty pharaohs through the female line;
hence the frequent use of the name Neferkara,
which was the throne name, or prenomen, of
itty ii. If there were, as the king lists sug-
gest, about twenty-five kings in thirty years,
they must either have reigned simultaneous Iy-
er some of them must have been impostors (or
perhaps both). This hypothesis, however, is at
odds with the listing of seventeen names in
cartouches in the abydos king list, since this
list was part of the celebration of the royal
cult; therefore theoretically only legitimate
rulers would have been considered eligible.

The 9th and 10th Dynasties may have last-
ed for as long as a hundred years. They com-
prised a series of rulers originating from her-
AKt.r.opoLrs magna, the first of these probably
being Meribra Khcty i (r.2160 bc). It is not

clear where ihe scat of power lay during this
period, and it is even possible thai Memphis
still continued to be the principal administra-
tive centre, but the territory was largely-
restricted to northern Egypt. The
Ileraklcopolitan rulers came into conflict with
the early Theban 11th Dynasty, beginning
with Sehertawy intll I (2125-2112 bc).
During this period the artistic production of
provincial sites such as gebelein, el-mo'alla
and ASYLT was flourishing, and the funerarv
inscriptions of the governors of these areas
describe both their own achievements and
their allegiance to either the Ileraklcopolitan
or Theban rulers. Eventually the Theban king
Mentuhotep n (2055-2004 bc:) succeeded in
gaining control of the entire eountrv, although
the lack of textual sources for the middle of his
reign means that it is not clear whether he did
so by the military conquest of Herakleopoiis
or by some form of diplomatic arrangement. It
is noticeable, for instance, that relations
between Thebes and Herakleopoiis in the
early Middle kingdom do not seem to he
characterized by any lingering resentment or
hostility.
H. E. WlNLGCK, The rise and Ja ti of I he Middle

Kingdom in Tkebes (New York, 1947).
B. G. Trigger, B. J. Kemp, D. O'Connok and
A. B. LLOYD, Ancient Egypt: a social history
(Cambridge, 1983), 112-16.

S. Seidlmayer, 'Wirtschaftliche und
geseilschaftliche F.ntwicklung im Obergangvom
Alten zum Mittlcren Reich 1 , Problems and
priorities in Egyptian archaeology, ed. J. Assmann,
G. Burkard and V. Davies (London, 19S7),
175-2 IS.

N. Grlmal, A history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 137-54.

fish

Fish enjoyed a somewhat ambiguous position
in ancient Egypt; sometimes sacred, some-
times scorned; eaten by some, denied to oth-
ers. According to the Greek writer Plutarch
(ad 46-126), when the body of the god osirls

A polychrome glass fish vessel, which would have
been used as a container for cosmetics. J 8th
Dynasty, c.1350 lie, from el-Amarua, /.. 14.5 em.
(I-. 65193)

was cut into pieces by setu his phallus was
eaten by three species of Nile fish - the Nik-
carp (Lepiitotits), the Oxyrynehus (Monnyrns)
and the Phagrus. Despite this apparently
inauspicious action, the Oxyrynehus fish was
regarded as sacred at the town of that name in
the Fayum region, since one tradition held
that this fish came forth from the wounds of
Osiris himself. In the tomb of Kabekhnet at
Deir el-Medina (tt2) a fish is depicted in the
position where the mummy of the deceased
would usually be shown, apparently being
embalmed by the god anubis.

Various provinces of Egypt regarded par-
ticular fish as sacred (see sacred animals), so
that a fish which was taboo in one area could
be eaten in another, something which is
said to have led to occasional conflict. The
Delta city of mendes was the principal cult
centre of the goddess hat-met iit, the 'chief of
the fishes', who was worshipped in the form
of either a fish or a woman wearing a fish
emblem (sometimes identified as a dolphin
but probably a Lephlotus fish). The Tilapia (or
Chnuiiis) fish, with its colourful fins, and the
abdju (i.e. Abydos) fish, with its lapis blue
colour, both acted as pilots for the boa! of the
sun-god ra, warning of the approach of the
snake apophts during the voyage through ihe
netherworld.

The Nile, the marshy Delta, the Red Sea and
the Mediterranean coast are all rich in edible
fish, and for ihe poor people of ancient Egypt
these would have served as a substitute for the
more costly meat. Wealthier people frequently
kept fish in ponds both for ornament and as a
source of food, k is known from records exca-
vated ai deir el-medina that fishermen were
employed to provide some of the rations for the
royal tomb-workers, and that temples also
employed them to provide food for lesser oflE

100

FLAIL

FOOD

cials. However, the king, priests and the 'blessed
dead 1 (see aki-i) were not allowed to eat fish,
since it was identified particularly with the evil
god setji. In the text of the Victory Stele of piv
(747-716 bc) the Kushite leader describes his
unwillingness to meet all but one of the defeat-
ed Lower Egyptian princes, on the grounds
that they were fish-eaters.

Fish were usually caught in traps or nets,
some of which might be dragged along the
river channel either by teams of men or
between two boats; Chapter 153 of the nook
OF THE DEAD, for instance, is concerned with
helping the deceased to avoid being captured
in a kind of trawling net. Fishing using hooks
on a line is also recorded, as is harpooning
from papyrus skiffs, although this was pre-
sumably regarded more as a sport than as a
means of subsistence.
I. Gamvier-Wallert, Fiscke and fischhilt im
alien .hapten (Berlin, 1970).
1. Da_\nksk.ioi.d-Samsok, 'The abomination of
the fish in Egyptian religion', Karl Rich ant
■Lepsius: . ikten der taping antiisslich seines 100.
Todeslag, ed. E. Freier and W. E Reinecku
(Berlin, 19<SS), 185-90.

D. J. BREWER and R. E Friedman, Fish and fishing
in ancient Egypt (Warminster, 1989).

flail

CROWNS ANT) ROYAL REGALIA

flies

The fly was considered to have apotropaic and
prophylactic properties, and stone amulets
were being created as early as the \aqada u
period (c.35Q0— 5100 bc), already depicting it
in the form that the hieroglyphic 'determina-
tive 1 sign denoting the flv {«//) was later to
assume. The image of the fly was also depict-
ed on various ritual artefacts during the Old
and Middle Kingdoms (2686-1650 Be),

Apair oj golden [flies of valour', a form of
honorific award. New Kingdom, e. J 500-1 250 bc,
i- -? cm. (ma59416 7)

Golden necklace ofAhhotep i with three pendants in
the form of flies of valour'. New kingdom, e. 1550
lie, /.. (chain) 59 cm, (fly) 9 cm. (v. airo, JF.4694)

including the so-called magic 'wands 1 .
Although the precise svmbolism of fly amulets
remains obscure, the iconographic signifi-
cance of flies is best known during the New 7
Kingdom (1550-1069 bc), when the military
decoration known as the 'order of the golden
fly' (or 'fly of valour') was introduced, perhaps
because of flies 1 apparent qualities of persis-
tence in the face of opposition. Ahmose
Pennekhbet, a military official in the reign of
Thutmose i (1504-1492 isc), records that he
was awarded six of these honorific flies. The
best-known example is a gold chain and three
fly pendants from the Theban tomb of Queen
ahhotep l (c.1550 bc). In addition, the tomb
ascribed to three of the wives of Thutmose ill
(1479-1425 bc) contained a necklace adorned
with ihirtv-three small flies.
A. Hermann, 'Fliege\ Re&UexikonJur Amike und
Chmlenluni\\\ (Stuttgart, 1968-9), 1110-24.
M. Weber, 'Fliege', Lexikon derAgypiologie n,
ed, W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1977), 264-5.
M. Saleii and H. Solroi zian. The Egyptian
Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (Mainz, 19S7),
120.

C. Andrews, Ancient Egyptian amulets (London,
1994), 62-5.

food

A great deal of information has survived con-

cerning the diet of the ancient Egyptians, both
through depictions of food processing and
consumption in their funerary art, and in the
form of food remains from funerary, religious
and domestic contexts. The poorest people in
ancient Egypt seem to have subsisted on
bread, beer (see alcoholic BEVERAGES) and a
few vegetables, notably onions; according to
the Greek writer Herodotus it was with these
very commodities that the builders of the
Great Pyramid were paid. Similarly, the
OFFERING FORMULA, inscribed in Egyptian
Combs from the Old Kingdom onwards, usual-
ly included a request for l a thousand of bread,
a thousand of beer.

Bread was made from emmer-wlieat
(Tiilieum dicticcum, see agriculture), which
was laboriously ground on an arrangement of
stones known as a saddle quern, replaced in
Ptolemaic and Roman times (332 bc— ad 395)
by the more efficient rotary quern. Stone-
ground flour inevitably contained fragments
of stone and occasional sand grains, which,
judging from surviving human skeletal mater-
ial, inflicted considerable wear on the teeth.
Numerous types ol loaf were produced, and
some of these were made in moulds, especial-
ly if they were intended for ritual use rather
than everyday consumption. It was bread that
formed the centrepiece ot offering scenes in
tombs, where it was usually portrayed in rows
of long slices on the table. Similarly it was the
loaf of bread on a slab that the hieroglyphic
sign hetep ('offering 1 ) was actually depicting.

Beer was usually made from barlcv

101

FOOD

jWTREssEg

(Hardamt vitlgare), and seems to have been a
thick, soupy liquid, which, although not
always strongly alcoholic, was nutritious. In a
scene in the New Kingdom tomb of Intefiqcr
(TT60) a child is shown holding a bowl and
the accompanying lines of speech read:
'Give me some ale, for I am hungry 1 , thus
emphasizing the nature of beer as food rather
than simply a drink. Beer was also some-
times sweetened with dates or flavoured with
other fruits.

most Egyptians, something to he eaten primar-
ily at festivals or on other special occasions.

The wealthy would have eaten oxen, and the
evidence from the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 bc) pyramid-town of Kahun (el-
i.ahlx) as well as the New Kingdom 'work-
men's village' at EL-AMARN* shows that pigs
were raised for their meat. Hares, gazelle and
other wild animals would have provided a sup-
plement to the diet of poorer people, as well as
providing iil.\ti\g quarry for the elite.

";-:"::: H: ; : f ^"S: ;: ''?

Funerary cffznnp consisting of bread and fowl
placed mi a reed offering-stand. ISlh Dynasly,
C.I4S0 la:, from Thebes, It. of stand 21. Hem.
(r 15340)

The texts on ostraca excavated at the work-
men's village of DEIR el-medim indicate that
the workers' payments took the form of food
rations. Although these men and their families
were clearly more affluent than agricultural
labourers, the lists of rations give some idea of
the foodstuffs commonly available in the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 BC). Emmer and barley
were the most prized items, since they were
pari of the staple diet. Beans, onions, garlic,
lettuces and cucumbers were among the most
regular supplies of vegetables, but salted FISH
also formed an important element of the
villagers' diet. Meat was usually provided in
the form of complete cattle from the temple
stock yards, or simph as individual portions.
Outside Deir el-Medina, meat would have
been regarded as a considerable luxtlrv for

Animals were also used as a source of fat, and
in order to provide milk for cheese making.
Ducks and, from the New Kingdom onwards,
hens were kept for eggs and meal, and wild-
fowl were hunted for sport and food.

Various fruits (such as dates, figs, grapes,
pomegranates, dom-palm mils and, more
rarely; almonds) were available both to the
inhabitants of the workmen's village al Deir
el-Medina and to the population at large.
Grapes were also used in the making of wine,
and there are numerous tomb scenes of vint-
ners at work. Wine, however, appears to have
been generally consumed by the wealthier
groups in Egyptian society, and the jars in
which it was kept frequently state its place
of origin and year of vintage (see ALCOHOLIC
BEVERAGES).

Honey was obtained both from wild and
domesticated BEES, and, in the absence of
sugar, ii was used to transform bread into
cakes and to sweeten beer. At Deir el-Medina
il is recorded that confectioners were

employed to prepare honey-cakes for the gang

of workmen.

W. B. Emert, Afmerwy repast in an Egyptian

Umi of tilt . Ircliaic period (Leiden, 1962).
W. Daru\ , Food: the •■iff of Osiris (London
1977).

D. J. Chaw i'ord, 'Food: tradition and change j n
Hellenistic Egypt', WA 11 (1979-80), 136-46.
B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a
civilization (London, 1989), 1 17—28.
P.T. Nicholson and I. Smu (e&.),Amient
Egyptian materials and technology (Cambridge,
2000). [chapters by S. Ikram, D. Samuel and
M. A. Morraj |

fortresses

The first representations of fortresses in
ancient Egypt take the form of late
Prcdynastic schematic depictions of circular
and rectangular fortified towns, but the earli-
est surviving archaeological remains of fortifi-
cations are the roughly circular walls at two
Early Dynastic settlement sites in Upper
Egypt: Kom el-Ahmar (inr.KAkoxpoi.is) and

EI.KAlt.

Egyptian towns were apparently only forti-
fied at times of political instability, such as ihe
Earl\ Dynastic phase (5100-2686 lie) and the
three intermediate periods'. Military fortress-
es and garrisons, as opposed to fortified settle-
ments, were essential to the defence of Egypt's
frontiers (see borders, frontiers a\t> limits).
In the reign of Amencmhat l (1985-1955 la ), a
row of forts, known as the Walls of the Prince
(inebm hekn), was established across the north-
eastern Delta in order to protect Egypt against
invasion from the Levant. The same border
was later protected by a number of fortresses
set up by Rameses u (1279-1213 u<:).

During the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650
BC) the area of Lower Nubia from the first 10
the third cataract, which had probably been
peacefully exploited by Egyptian mineral
prospectors during the Old Kingdom, became
part of the Egyptian empire. A group of at
least seventeen fortresses were built, mainly
between the reigns of Senusret I and III
(e. 1965-1 855 nn), apparently serving both
practical and symbolic purposes. On the one
hand they were intended to control and pro-
tect the king's monopoly on the valuable trade
route from the lands to the south. On the
other hand their large scale - perhaps dispro-
portionate to the task - must have served as
physical propaganda in an increasingly mili-
taristic age.

The designs of these fortresses, stretching
from Aswan to Dongola, incorporate many
ingenious architectural devices which would
be more readily associated with medieval

102

FOUNDATION DEPOSITS

FROG

architecture. Ten of the fortresses (south to
north: Scmna South, Kumraa, Scmna,
Uronarti, Shalfak, Askut, Mirgissa, Dab-
enarti, Kor and Uuhen) were constructed in
the area of the second cataract where the Nile
valley is at its narrowest. Although they share
manv common architectural features (such as
bastions, walls, ditches, internal grid-plans
and walled stairways connecting with the
Nile), their various shapes and sizes were each
designed to conform to differing local topo-
graphical and strategic requirements.

In the New Kingdom (1550-1069 ist:), the
Nubian fortresses were substantially rebuilt,
but the role of the fortifications appears to
have become much more symbolic. Temples
began to be built outside the fortress walls and
new towns were established with relatively
perfunctory defences. Essential fortresses and
garrisons continued to be built on the western
and eastern borders of the Delta during the
New Kingdom {such as the Ramesside fortifi-
cations at Zawivet Umm el-Rakham in the
west and Tell el-Heir in the east), and the
Victory Stele of the 25lh-Dvnasty ruler riv
(747-716 BC) mentions nineteen fortified set-
tlements in Middle Egypt. However, only a
small number of fortified structures of the
Third Intermediate Period (1069-747 BC) and
Late Period (747-332 uc) have been preserved,
such as the 'palace'' of Apries (5S9-570 ec) at
S&MPHIS and the fortress of Dorginarti in
Lower Nubia. See also warfare.
D. Di m i a m and J. M. A. Janssen, Second
martlet forts, 2 vols (Boston, 1961- 7).
Y. Yadin, The an ofmrfm in Biblical Iamb m
the light of archaeological discovery (London,
1963).

A. W. Lawrence, 'Ancient Egyptian
fortifications 1 ,^'.-/ 51 (1965), 69-94.
W. B. Emery et al.. The fortress nfBithen, 2 vols
(London, 1977-9).

foundation deposits

Buried caches of ritual objects, usually placed
at crucial points in important buildings such
as pyramids, temples and tombs, from the Old
Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period (2686-30
Be). It was believed that the offering of model
tools and materials would magically serve to
maintain the building for eternity. The pits in
which the deposits were buried, sometimes
brick-lined and occasionally in excess of two
metres in width, were generally located in the
vicinity of the corners, axes or gateways.

In the mortuary temple of the 11th-
Dynasty ruler Nebhepetra Menluhotep n
(2055-2004 ut;) at deir el-ieyiiri, a series of
pits marked the axis of the building. Each con-
tained a loaf of bread, while the corners were

marked with larger pits containing food offer-
ings, including parts of a sacrificed ox and
miniature vessels for wine or beer. The tops of
these deposits were marked by four mud
bricks, three of which contained tablets of
stone bearing the royal titulary of
Mentuhotep. The tablets were made from
stone, wood and metal, thus symbolizing,
along with the mud bricks themselves, the
four principal materials used in building the
temple. Other foundation deposits, such as
those of Amenemhat i (1985-1955 uc) at ee-

Apart from their ritual significance, these
deposits have proved invaluable to archaeolo-
gists from a chronological point of view, since
they often include large numbers of plaques
inscribed with the name of the ruler respon-
sible for the construction of the building in
question. The foundation deposits associated
with a temple of Rameses iv (1153-1147 uc),
near Deir el-Bahri, for instance, contained
several hundred inscribed plaques. Many
Late Period foundation deposits, such as
those excavated at Tell Balamun in the Delta,

Reconstructed foundation deposit from the temple of
Qiiecn Hats/wpsii! at Deir el-Bahn. />. c. / in.
(roclus pt \t) 1925. wn-ROi'Oii'i i\ wusm H \r:ir
York, 25.3.39)

ElSEl'E, incorporated more bricks and a wider
range of building materials, including RWENCE.
Probably the best-known foundation deposits
are those from the temple of Hatshepsut
(1473-1458 uc) at deir ee-h\iiri. Fourteen
brick-lined pits, measuring e.\ m in diameter
and 1.5-1.8 m in depth, were each placed at a
crucial juncture in the plan of the temple. The
contents of the pits included food offerings and
materials used in the construction of the temple,
as well as scarajjs, cow'ROID.s, amulets, traver-
tine jars and model tools (such as crucibles and
the copper ore, lead ore and charcoal for smelt-
ing). The particular selections of model tools
and vessels in foundation deposits can some-
times provide insights into the technologv of the
Pharaonic period, while the study of the food
offerings has contributed to the knowledge of
ancient agriculture and diet.

have proved essential to the dating of temple

complexes.

G. A. Reesner, 'The Barkal temples in 1916',

JE.i 4 (1917), 213-27. [comparison of

foundation deposits from Gebel Barkal with

those from Egyptian sitesj

W. C. IIwes, The scepter of £g)>pi n (New York,

1959), 84-8.

B. Leteelier, 'GrundLingsbeigabe', Lexikon der

Agyptolagie n, etl. W. Helck, E. Otto and W.

Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1977), 906-12.

frog

The Egyptians referred to frogs by several
names, the most common being the ono-
matopoeic kerer. This attention to the frog's
call was extended to familiarity with its habits,
including aspects of its life-cycle. As a result,
it became a symbol of fertility, creation and
regeneration. The image of the tadpole (hefit-
er) became the hieroglyph for 100,000 and is
commonly found decorating the SHEN ring or
the notched staff representing years, thus
wishing the king a reign of 100,000 years.

103

FUNERARY BELIEFS

FUNERARY C ONK 5

The deity most commonly associated with
the frog was iieket, the consort of the creator
god minim. Just as he created the human
race on his potter's wheel, so she often served
as a personification of childbirth, particular-
ly the final stages of labour. In the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 EC) Heket was often
shown on magical objects which were proba-
bly used in the rituals surrounding concep-
tion and birth.

The connection of the frog with creation is
also demonstrated by the fact that HEH, KEK,

Egyptologists to explore the complexity and
gradual elaboration of this belief svstem,
although far more research is required before
the full nature of Egyptian views on the after-
life can be understood, particularly during the
formative period of the Predynastic, before
the emergence of writing.

The Egyptians believed that each human
individual comprised not only a 'physical bodv
but also three other crucial elements, known as
the ka, ISA and akh, each of w T hich was essen-
tial to human survival both before and after

in both royal and private funerary texts and
rituals.

Just as the royal mortuary cult involved the
transformation of the dead king into Osiris, so
the funerary equipment of private individuals
was designed to substitute the deceased for
Osiris, so that they could re-enact the myth of
resurrection and obtain eternal life for them-
selves (see DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE UTER-

life). In order to be assimilated with Osiris
however, the deceased first had to prove that
his or her earthly deeds had been worthy and

-oh ; :;:r™ : w^;;;

1 >

USHHI
;

NUN and 4MUN, four of the eight members of
the ogdoad associated with the Hermopolitan
creation myth, were said to be frog-headed.
Frog amulets were sometimes included in the
wrappings of mummies, or carried as talis-
mans. Even in the reign of akiienaten
(1352-1336 dc), when most traditional reli-
gious beliefs were discouraged, frog amulets
were still carried, many being manufactured at
Akhenatcn's new capital (el-Amarna). With
the official arrival of Christianity in Egypt in
the fourtii century ad, the frog was retained as
a Coptic symbol of rebirth.
I.. Stork, 'FrosdT, Lexikon derAgyptokpe n,
cd. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westcndorf
(Wiesbaden, 1977), 334-6.

funerary beliefs

During the Pharaonic period, the Egvptians"
attitudes to life and death were influenced by
two fundamental beliefs: first, thai death was
simply a temporary interruption rather than a
complete cessation of life; and, second, that
eternal life could be ensured by various
means, including piety to the gods, the
preservation of the body through MUMMIFICA-
TION, and the provision of statuary and other
funerary equipment. The survival of numer-
ous TOMBS and funerary TEXTS has enabled

104

death. They also considered that the name and
shadow were living entities, crucial to human
existence, rather than simply linguistic and
natural phenomena. The essence of each indi-
vidual was contained in the sum of all these
parts, none of which could be neglected. The
process of ensuring any individual's enjov-
ment of the afterlife was therefore a delicate
business whereby all of these separate ele-
ments (the body, ka, ha, akh, shadow and
name) were sustained and protected from
harm. At the most basic level this could be
achieved by burying the body with a set of
funerary equipment, and in its most elaborate
form the royal cult could include a number of
temples complete with priests and a steadv
How of offerings, usually financed by gifts of
agricultural land and other economic
resources.

The surviving funerary texls present an
often conflicting set of descriptions of the
afterlife, ranging from the transformation of
humans into eircumpolar stars to the continu-
ation of normal life in an afterworld some-
times described as the field of rfeds. The
identification of the deceased with osiris, the
god of Abydos who was murdered b\ his
brother seth and brought back to life through
the efforts of his wife isls, played a crucial part

Interim detail of I he c::ffin of Cu-.i decorated ir-ith
a map showing two different routes to the
underworld (part of the Book of Two Ways). 1 2th
Dynasty, c.1985 1 795 nc, painted wood, from
Deirci-Bersha, l.. of 'coffin 2.6 m. (JM3Q839)

virtuous. Since the individual's HEART was
regarded as the physical manifestation of their
intelligence and personality, the judgement
scene depicted on many hook of THE DEAD
papyri shows the heart being weighed against
the feather of the goddess maat, svmbol of I he
universal harmony and ethical conduct to
which all Egyptians aspired (see ethics).
A. II. GARDINER, The altitude of the ancient
Egyptians to death and the dead (Cambridge,

1935).

A.J, SPENCER, Death in ancient Egypt
(Ilarmondsworth, 1982), 139-64.
E. Horni no, Idea into image, trans. E. Bretleck
(New York, 1992), 167-84.

funerary cones

Clay cones of 10-15 cm in length which were
placed at the entrances of tombs, particularly
those in the Theban area. They are first
recorded from the 11th Dynasty (2125-1985
isc) and continue into the Late Period
(747-332 uc), although most belong to the

FUNERARY CONES

FUNERARY TEXTS

Funerary cone of
Merymose, c.1350 bc,
pottery, from Thebes,
u. lb. 7 cm, ix 7.1 cm.

(EA%49)

Each tomb-owner had about Three hundred
identical cones, and the owners of many deco-
rated tombs of die New Kingdom have been
readily matched with surviving cones.
However, there is no evidence of cones from
over three hundred other known tombs. More
significant, on the other hand, is the fact that
no tombs are known for a further four hun-
dred or so cones, suggesting that the tombs to
which they belonged have been destroyed or
re-used, or else await discovery.
N. de G. Daviks and F. I,. Macadam, A corpus of
inscribed funerary cones l (Oxford, 1957).
H. M. Stewart, Mummy cases and inscribed
funerary cones in the Peine collection (Warminster,

1986).

j. Kondo, 'Inscribed funerary cones from the
Theban necropolis', Orient '23 (1987).

also found in eight pyramids dating from the
6th to Sth Dynasties (2345-2125 bc;), com-
prise some eight hundred spells or 'utter-
ances 1 written in columns on the walls of the
pyramid chambers, but apparently not
arranged in any specific order. No single pyra-
mid contains the whole collection of spells,
the maximum number being the 675 utter-
ances inscribed in the pyramid of i'fty n
(2268-2184 BC). The words spoken at the cer-
emony of OPENING ok 'nil'; mouth are first

Part of the Book of the Dead papyrus of the royal
scribe Ani, consisting of the vignette associated with
Chapter 125, in which the heart of the deceased is
weighed against the feather of the goddess Maai.
19th Dynasty, c.1250 bc, painted papyrus. (/■;. i470,
SHEET 3)

New Kingdom and the bulk of them to the
18th Dynasty (1550-1295 bc).

The broadest end of the cone is usually
stamped with hieroglyphs bearing a name, title
and sometimes a short inscription or gen-
ealogy. The earliest, however, are uninscribed.
They were once thought to represent loaves of
bread, roofing poles, mummy labels or bound-
ary stones but current opinion suggests a more
likely explanation. The pointed end allowed
them to be set in plaster as a frieze above the
tomb entrance, while the broad end would be
clearly visible. It may be that this broad circu-
lar end represented the sun's disc, and was
part of the solar iconography of rebirth.

D. P. Ryan, The archaeological analysis of
inscribed funerary cones', I A 4/2 (1988),
165-70.

funerary texts

The Egyptians' composition of texts relating
to death and the afterlife probably stretched
back to an original preliterate oral tradition,
traces of which have survived only in the form
of poorly understood funerary artefacts and
sculptures. The earliest such writings arc-
known as the pyramid TEXTS, the first exam-
pies of which were inscribed in the 5th-
Dynasty pyramid of Unas (2375-2345 uc) at
Saqqara. These texts, versions of which are

recorded in these funerary texts, along with
offering lists.

In the political and social turmoil of the
First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 bc) the
practice of inscribing funerary writings on
private coffins developed. These private funer-
ary documents, which were effectively com-
pressed and edited versions of the Pyramid
Texts, have become known as the coffin
TEXTS, although they were sometimes also
inscribed on papyri or the walls of private
tombs. They are often said to reflect a DEMOC-
RATIZATION of Tilt: aftf.ri.b-f, whereby indi-
viduals were no longer dependent on the ruler
for their afterlife, perhaps as a direct result of

105

FUNERARY TEXTS

FURNIT URE

the gradual decline in the ambitions of royal

funcrarv complexes. However, it might also be
argued that, in their derivation from the
Pyramid Texts, they simply re-emphasize the
crucial role still played by the pharaoh in pri-
vate funerary rituals.

The Coffin Texts often included utterances
forming 'guide-books' to ihe netherworld,
known as the Book of Two Ways. The 'guiding''
function of the funerary texts became increas-
ingly important from the Second Intermediate
Period (1650-1550 rc) onwards, eventually
culminating in the appearance of the so-called
BOOK OP tiil dead (or 'spell for coming forth
by day'), made up of around two hundred
spells (or 'chapters'), over half of which were
derived directly from either the Pyramid Texts
or the Coffin Texts. Such 'netherworld texts'
were usually written on papyri, although cer-
tain sections were inscribed on amulets.

The netherworld texts comprise a number
of related funcrarv writings, which together
were known to the Egyptians as Amduat or
'that which is in the netherworld'. They
included the Book of Caverns, Bonk of Gales
and the Writing of ihe Hidden Chamber. The
theme of all of these works is the journey of
the sun-god through the realms of darkness
during the twelve hours of the night, leading
up to his triumphant re-birth with the dawn
each morning. Many copies of diese books
have been discovered, often with elaborate
vignettes illustrating the text. During the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) they were virtually
confined to royal burials, although from the
Third Intermediate Period (1069-747 BC)
onwards they began to appear In private buri-
als. They were frequently portrayed on the
walls of the royal tombs in the \ \llev of the
KINGS, just as the Pyramid Texts had decorat-
ed the funerary complexes of the Old
Kingdom. Their placing is significant: for
example in the tomb of Barneses vi (k\9;
1145-1136 nc) the Book of Gales is at the
entrance lo the upper level, the Book of
Caverns follows, and in the lower level, fur-
thest from the entrance, is the Book of that
which is in the Netherworld.

During the Ptolemaic period (332-50 BC)
these 'netherworld books' continued lo be pro-
duced, including such remarkable texts as the
Book of Spending Eternity and the Book of
Breathing, which were apparently designed to
protect the deceased and facilitate safe passage
to the underworld. These later texts reflect the
essential continuity of belief throughout
ancient Egyptian history. The differences
between the texts of different periods tend to
result from changes in funerary practice, such
as the shift from regarding the afterlife as being

achievable only via the king to a situation in

which individuals increasingly made their own

provisions. There was also a gradual move

towards the concept of righteous living as a

qualification for the enjoyment of an afterlife.

R. O. Faulkner, The ancient Egyptian Pyramid

Texts (Oxford, 1969).

— , The ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, 3 vols

(Oxford, 1975-8).

— , The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, ed.

C. Andrews (London, 1985).

J. P. Allen, 'Funerary texts and their meaning',

Mummies and Magic, ed. S. D'Auria, P. T.acovara

and C. II. Roehrig (Boston, 19N8), 38-49.

E. Horxung, idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck

(New York, 1992), 95-1 13.

furniture

The best ancient Egyptian furniture was beau-
tifully made and elegantly proportioned, and
it is not surprising that some of their designs
were adopted for European furniture of the
early nineteenth century (often with less suc-
cess than their prototypes). By modern stan-
dards, however, Egyptian houses, particularly
those of the poor, would have had little furni-
ture. The most common items were beds,
chairs, stools and boxes (which served the pur-
pose of the modern sideboard or wardrobe).
Low tables were also used, two wooden exam-
ples being known from Tarkhan as early as the
ist Dynasty (3100-2890 bc).

Various iiems of domestic furniture; a box of
cosmetics, linen, a bed, a headrest, a jar and a jar-
stand. New Kingdom, c.1300 tic from Thebes, u. >f
chest (>! cm. (e \2470, 6S26, $639, 18196, 24708)

The vast majority of the surviving furniture
is made of wood, although at sites such as i:l-
AMARNA numerous limestone stools are found.
Beds are recorded from the 1st Dynasty, and
comprised a wooden frame, jointed at the cor-
ners, and upholstered with matting or leather.
Chairs were used only by the most wealthy
people, and could be very elaborate. The
length of the back support varied greatly, as
did the standard of workmanship: the most
elaborate could have elegant lion's paw feet
and might be inlaid. Most chairs are of a sim-
ple tvpe with no arms, but throne-like ver-
sions are known, including the famous exam-
ple from tutankhamun's tomb (kv62), which
is gilded and inlaid.

Most people would have used low stools,
and by the Middle Kingdom a folding stool
had been developed. Some of these are finch
crafted, as in the example from the tomb of
Tutankhamun, the legs of which end in ducks
heads, each grasping a rail in their bills. The
Egyptians had a great facility for making such
light or prefabricated furniture for use when
travelling or on military expeditions. As early
as the 4th Dynasty a complete travelling bed-
room set, including a tent and carrying chair.

106

FURNITURE

GARDENS

has survived among the funerary equipment
of Queen HETEPWERES, mother of klllFL
(2589-2566 BC). A series of poles and rails
make up a frame whieh could he fitted inside a
tent or room to add extra warmth or privacy,
serving as a sort of portahle houdoir.

The Theban tomb of the architect Kha
(tt8) contains a representative range of New
Kingdom furniture (now in the Museo Egizio,

Wooden chair. IHlh Dynasty, it. 73

. (ea247 c ))

Turin), including a toilet box, a chair and

stand for a pottery vessel.

C. Ai.duki), Tine woodwork', A history ef

technology I, ed. C. Singer, E. J. llolmvard, and

A. R. Mall (Oxford, 1954), 684-705.

E. WanscheR, Sella curulis, the folding stool: an

undent symbol of dignity ('Copenhagen, 1980V.

G. KiLLEN, Egyptian Jiiruilure. 2 vols

(Warminster, 1980 94).

— , Egyptian woodworking and furniture (Princes

Risborough, 1994).

games

The most popular board game known to the
Egyptians was satel, the game of 'passing',
which was played either on elaborate inlaid
boards or simply on grids of squares
scratched on the surface of a stone. The two
players each had an equal number ol pieces,
usually seven, distinguished by shape or
colour, and they played on a grid of thirty
squares known as penr (mouses 1 ) and

squares', which is thought to have been intro-
duced from western Asia. Although several
boards have survived and it is known to have
been played by two players using five pieces,
the rules of the game, as with senet, have not
been preserved.

J.V anddir, Manuel. d'nnheologU' egypiiennew
(Paris, 1964), 4S6-527.
E. B. Pusch, Das Senet Brettspic! im Htm
igyptml (Berlin, 1979).
T. Ki'AD-u.i., 'Games', Egypt's golden age,
ed. E. Brovarski, S. K. Doll and R. E. Freed
(Boston, 1982), 263-72.
W. J. Tait, Game boxes and accessories from the
tomb ofTuiankhamun (Oxford, 1982).

AliOVK Ivory-covered game box from the tomb of
'Julankhainun, with ivory playing pieces and
kmtrt'/c-bones. IStlt Dynasty C.133Q BC, /.. of box
27.5 cm. (CAIRO, so. 593, reproduced courtesy

Ol- Tllli CRIFriTIi l:\STITt IT.)

rich it Detail of the Satirical Papyrus, in which
animals imitate figures in funerary scenes. A lion
and an antelope arc shown playing a game »/"senet.
Late New Kingdom, c. / ISO in., painted papyrus,

it. 'J cm. It; 1 10016)

arranged in three rows of len. Moves were
determined bv 'throw-sticks' or 'astragals'
(knuckie-bones). The object was to convey
the pieces around a snaking track to the finish,
via a number of specially marked squares rep-
resenting good or bad fortune. Sometimes the
wall-paintings in private tomb chapels depict
the deceased plaving a board-game, but it is
not clear whether this activity, when por-
trayed in a funerary context, was regarded
simply as entertainment or as a symbolic con-
test intended to replicate the journey through
the netherworld.

A less popular board game was 'twenty

gardens

In an essentially arid land such as Egypt, the
Cultivated strip of the Nile valley represented
an area of fertile green fields and watery irri-
gation channels. This same lush vegetation,
often accompanied by a pool, was a highly-
desirable asset for houses and temples too.
Secular gardens were mainly cultivated for
vegetables, and were set close to the river or
canal, but by the New Kingdom (1550-1069
BO) thev had developed into more luxurious
areas, often of a semi-formal plan, and some-
times surrounded bv high walls.

Attached to temples there were often gar-

107

GARDENS

GAZELLE

Scene from the Book of the Dead papyrus of
Nakht, showing the deceased and his wife Tjuiu
approach hi!;- Osiris ami Maat in their garden. /9th
Dynasty, c.1300 uc. (f.a!0471. sheet 21)

den plots for the cultivation of specific kinds
of vegetable; the growing of 'cos lettuces 1
(sacred to min) is frequently portrayed in
reliefs and paintings. Similar small plots, made
up of squares of earth divided by walls of mud,
are known from the 'workmen's village' at el-
amarna, where vegetables may have been
grown for use in the rituals performed at the
chapels there. Ornamental trees were some-
times planted in pits in front of temples, such
as that of iiatshepsut (1473-1458 bc) at Deir
el-Bahri, where pils for two trees were found,
unlike the whole grove of sycamore and
tamarisk which stood in front of the 11th-
Dynasty temple of Nebhepetra MENTUHOTEP n
(2055-2004 bc).

The houses of the wealthy often had large
and elaborate gardens centred on a pool,
which in the New Kingdom was sometimes T-
shaped. Pools of this shape are known also
from Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri,
and the shape may therefore have had religious
connotations. Such pools were stocked with
ornamental fish, and served as havens for
waterfowl. Flowers, such as white and blue
lotuses (a kind of water lily), grew in some of
these pools, and papyrus is attested in the
pools at Deir el-Bahri.

The provision of shade was an important
element of the Egyptian garden, and from the
paintings in the Theban tomb chapel of
Kenamun (tt93) it is known that wooden
columns were sometimes used to support a
pergola arrangement of vines. As well as pro-
viding shady arbours, trees were used as a

source of fruit, such as dates, figs and dom-
palm nuts. Grapes might be used for the pro-
duction of raisins or even home-made wine.
The sacred persea tree was grown in both
religious and secular gardens. Nineteen
species of tree were represented in the garden
of Tneni, architect to Thutmosc t (1504-1492
bc), and among the most popular species were
the pink-flowered tamarisk, the acacia and the
willow.

Cornflowers, mandrakes, poppies, daisies
and other small flowers were grown among
the trees and, like the lotus flowers and some
ol the tree foliage, could be used in the mak-
ing of garlands for banquets or other occa-
sions. The pomegranate, introduced in the
New Kingdom, became a popular shrub, and
its flowers added to the colour of the garden.
The overall effect would be one of cool
shade, heavy with the fragrance of the flow-
ers and trees; gardens are therefore one of
the most frequent settings of Egyptian
romantic tales.

Unfortunately, given the aridity of the
Egyptian climate, gardens required constant
attention, not least irrigation, and representa-
tions such as that from the tomb of Ipuy
(tt217) show a siiaduf in use. The gardeners
employed by temples and wealthy households
had several responsibilities, including the
watering and weeding of plants, as well as the
artificial propagation of date palms, a process
that evidently required considerable skill.
G. Good and P. LaCQVARA, 'The garden', Egypt's
golden age, ed. E. Brovarski, S. K. Doll and R. E.
Freed (Boston, 1982), 37-9.
J.-C. Hcgonot, Le jardin dans VEgj'pte ancienne
(Frankfurt, 1989).

A. Wb.KINSON, Gardens in ancient Egypt: their
location and symbolism (London, 1990).

gazelle see antelope
Geb

God of the earth, whose sister and wife was
NUT the sky-goddess. In the doctrine of
Meliopolis he was the son of shu (god of the
air) and tefnut (goddess of moisture), who
were themselves the children of -yjvm (see
creation).

The offspring of Geb and Nut were OSIRIS,
isis, setm and nephthys, and these nine gods
made up the I leliopolitan ennead. In the myth
of iiorus and Seth, Geb acted as judge
between them. Since Osiris was the rightful
ruler of the world, and had been murdered by
his brother Seth, Geb automatically favoured
Horus, son of Osiris and avenger of his father,
making him ruler of the living. The pharaoh
was therefore sometimes described as 'heir of
Geb', in recognition of Geb's protective role.

Scene from the Book of the Dead papyrus of
Taineniii, showing an i thy phallic figure of tin:
earth-god Geb beneath the sky-goddess Nut. Third
Intermediate Period, c.950 tsc, pair/led papyrus
from Thebes, H. (as cut and framed today) 9,5 cm.
(eaIOOOH)

1()<S

(jEBEL F.I.-ARAK KNI FE-HANDLE

GERZEAN

Geb is usually depicted as reclining on his
side with one arm bent. As a god of the earth,
responsible for vegetation, he was sometimes
coloured green, and might actually be por-
trayed with vegetation springing from him. lie
was also sometimes shown with the white-
fronted goose, his emblem, on his head,
although in some other instances he wore the
Lower Egyptian crown. Isis, as his daughter,
might be described as the 'egg of the goose 1 . In
funerary contexts he was a malevolent force,
imprisoning the buried dead within his body,
and it was in this context that he was often
mentioned in the pyramid texts. Earthquakes
were believed to be the laughter of Geb'. In
his benevolent aspect he was a god of fertility,
sometimes emphasized by his erect phallus
pointing skyward towards his wife. In the
Ptolemaic period (332-30 bc;) he became iden-
tified with the Greek god Kronos.
W. HELCK, 'Rp't auf dem Thron des Geb 1 ,
Qtientalia 19 (1950), 416-34.
H. te Velde, 'Geb', Lexikon ier Agyptehgk n,
cd. W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1977), 427-9.
C. Trai/NECKER, Capitis: homines el dieux mr le
parvis Je Geb (Leuven, 1992).

Gebel el-Arak knife-handle

Decorated ivorv handle of a ripple-flaked Hint
knife dating to the late Predynastic period
((,-.3200 bc), which was purchased in 1894 by
the French archaeologist Georges Benedite at
Gebel el-Arak in Middle Egypt, and is now in
the collection of the Louvre. Like the
Protodynastic palettes and maceheads from
adydos and HffiRAK.ONPOt.lS, it provides impor-
tant evidence relating to the early development
of the Egyptian state.

Both sides of the hippopotamus-tusk han-
dle are engraved in a style which is thought to
be Levantine or Mesopotamian rather than
Egyptian. The decoration on one side consists
ol a depiction of several wild beasts, including
the Mesopotamian or Elamite motif of two
lions separated by a man. The other side of
the handle bears scenes of hand-lo-hand
fighting between foot-soldiers as well as a
naval conflict between three crescenl-shaped
papyrus skiffs and two unusual vcrtical-
prowed boats possibly representing foreign-
ers. The style of the Gebel el-Arak knife-
handle constitutes part of the growing body of
evidence for the influence of Western Asia on
late Predynastic Egypt.
G. Benedite, 'Le eoutcau dc Gebel el Arak 1 ,
Fondatkm Eugene Piot, Monuments ei Me'mmres 11
(1916), 1-34.

J-Vandier, Manuel d'archeobgie egyptienne 1/1
(Paris, 1952), 533-9.

H. AssELlSERGllS, Chaos in beheersing (Leiden,
1961), plsxxxviii-lxi.

A. L. Kelley, 'A review of the evidence
concerning early Egyptian ivory knife handles',
TheAnaem World 6(1983), 95-102.

Gebel Barkal see napata

Gebelein (anc. Per-Hathor, Pathyris,
Aphroditopolis)

The distinctive topography of this site, about
30 km south of Thebes, is indicated by its
Arabic name, which means 'two hills'. The
eastern hill is dominated by the remains of a
temple of LTathor, the decoration of which
dates primarily from the 1 1th to 1 5th
Dynasties (2055-1550 isc), although the sur-
vival of a number of Gerzean artefacts sug-
gests that the much-plundered cemeteries
were already in use by the late Predynastic
period. The temple of Halhor was certainly
established by the end of the Early Dynastic
period (2686 tic) and was still in existence dur-
ing the Roman period (30 BC— AD 395). Many
demotic and Greek papyri have been found at
the site, providing a detailed picture of daily
life at Gebelein in the Ptolemaic period. On
Gebelein's western hill are a number oi "tombs,
some of which, although much plundered,
have been able to be dated to the late
Predynastic. Most date to the First
Intermediate Period (2181-2055 bc), includ-
ing the tomb of Iti, whose wall-paintings arc-
now in the Museo Egizio, Turin. The remains
of the unexcavated town-site are located at the
foot of the eastern hill.

G. W. Fraskr, L EI Kab and Gebelcn', PSBA 15
(1893), 496-500.

G. Steindgrff, Cmbjhnde des Mittkren Retches n
(Berlin, 1901), 11-34.
E. Schiapareijj, 'La missione italiana a
Ghebclein\.i.S'JA'2] (1921), 126-8.

B. PORTER and R. L. B. Moss, Topographical
bibliography V (Oxford, 1937), 162-5.

II. G. Fischer, 'The Nubian mercenaries of
Gebelein during the First Intermediate Period 1 ,

Kush 9 (1961), 44-80.

P. W. Pestman, 'Les archives privees de Pathvris
a l'epoque ptnlemaiqiie' Studia Papyroligica
Varia (Pap. Lugd. Bat xrv), ed. E. Boswinkel et
al. (Leiden, 1965), 47-105.

Gebel el-Silsila (anc. Khemv, Kheny)
Pharaonic and Greco-Roman sandstone quar-
ries, rock-cut shrines and stelae on both sides
of the Nile about 65 km north of Aswan. The
quarries, primarily on die easi bank, were in
use from the 18th Dynasty onwards, but there
are also petroglyphs and graffiti in the cliffs
dating back to the late Predynastic period

"" '-;. .■--""^"3?- ^*-~ *

■ *., t

■ "'Mir'

I lets of the Gebel el-SUsila sandstone quarries.

(l. SILUVJ

(c.3400-3100 BC). Most of the shrines, includ-
ing the Great specs of Horemheb, are located
along the west bank and date primarily to the
New Kingdom (1550-1069 dc).
B. Porter and R. L. B. Moss, Topographical
bibliography x (Oxford, 1937), 208-18, 220-1.
R. A. Caminos and T. G. H. James, Gebel et
Silsilahx (London, 1965).

Gerzean ■

PREDYNASTIC

gesso

Material consisting of a layer of fme plaster to
which gilding was often attached using an
adhesive, particularly in the decoration of car-
tonnage. The term derives from the Italian
word for a chalkv substance used in preparing
panels for painting during the Renaissance,
although it can also be traced back to a term
used for gypsum in ancient Mesopotamia.

Giza

Necropolis located in the immediate vicinity
of the southwestern suburbs of modern Cairo,
where a group of pyramid complexes of the
4th Dynasty (2613-2494 tit:), comprising
those of kiiufu, KtiAFRA and \ie\kaur\, are-
located. The Giza plateau cannot be regarded
as fully explored, but the earliest known mon-
ument is mastara y, which probably dates to
the reign of the lst-Dynasty ruler diet (c.2980
bc). The name of the owner of the tomb is
unknown, although the presence of the graves
of fifty-six retainers suggests that he or she
was an important member of the Early
Dynastic elite. Jar-sealings bearing the name
of the 2nd-Dynasty ruler Nynctjer (c.280() nc)

109

tilZA

1 pyramid of Menkaura

2 queens' pyramids

3 rock-cut tombs

4 mortuary temple of Menkaura

5 valley temple ot Menkaura

6 tomb of Queen Khentkawes

7 rock-cut tombs

8 mastaba tombs

9 tomb of Queen Khameremebty II
{wife of Khafra)

10 valley temple of Khafra

11 sphinx temple

12 Great Sphinx

1 3 mortuary temple of Khafra

14 pyramid of Khafra

15 subsidiary pyramid

16 storerooms (?)

17 tomb of Hemiunu

18 western mastaba field

19 pyramid of Khufu

20 boat-pits

21 mastaba-tombs

22 queens' pyramids

23 eastern mastaba field

24 rock-cut tombs

25 New Kingdom temple
of Horemakhet

26 modern village of
Nazletel-Simman

27 tomb of Hetepheres I

Plan of the Ciza necropolis.

have also been round in a tomb to the south of
the main necropolis.

Khufu (2589—2566 BC) - whose father SNE-
ii.RL (2613-2589 Be) had erected the first
true pyramid - built the largest surviving
pyramid, now usually described as the Great
Pyramid but originally called 'Khufu is the
one belonging to the horizon'. It was con-
structed from some .1,200,000 blocks of lime-
stone, each weighing an average of 2.5 tons,
and it differs from most pyramids in having
two burial chambers within the built struc-
ture and a third unfinished chamber below

ground. From each of the two upper cham-
bers, narrow sloping tunnels were construct-
ed; these so-called 'air shafts' probably had
little lo do with ventilation, and for some-
time it has been accepted that they may have
some astronomical function. In 1993 a
German team led by Rudolf Gantenbrink
and Rainer Siadelmann, using a robot cam-
era, discovered a sealed door in one of the
shafts from the Queen's chamber, which has
led to speculation that a fourth chamber
might be located there.

It has been suggested that in the original
design of the Great Pyramid there was to have
been a subterranean burial chamber, but that

this must have been abandoned at an early
stage of the work, since it is only partly hewn.
When first recorded the chambers were found
empty, perhaps having been robbed as earh as
the First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 Be)
when the central authority, which had been
responsible lor their construction, collapsed.

Like all pyramids, that of Khufu was part
of a complex, of which the three subsidiary
pyramids (the so-called queens' pyramids)
are the most obvious part. The temple on the
east side is ruined, and the causeway leading
to the valley temple has been robbed oui ana
lust beneath the modern settlement of Na/let
el-Simman. Several boat-pits surrounded the

110

GIZA

GIZA.

Above Sections of the pyramids looking west:

Khulu; 1 descending passage

2 burial chamber of the 1st plan

3 ascending passage

4 level passage

5 burial chamber of the 2nd plan {'Queen's Chamber'}

6 great gallery

7 burial chamber of the 3rd plan ('King's Chamber')

8 weight-relieving rooms

9 'air shafts' (perhaps of religious significance)
Khafra: 1 upper entrance

2 lower entrance

3 burial chamber of the 1st plan

4 burial chamber of the 2nd plan

Menkaura: 1 abandoned descending passage of the 1st plan

2 burial chamber of the 1st plan

3 descending passage

4 burial chamber of the 3rd plan

Section drawings of the three Giza pyramids.

pyramid, and boats have been found in two of
these. One has been reconstructed and is cur-
rently displayed close to the site of its discov-
ery. It has been argued that ihese boats were
used in the funerary ceremonies, and that
perhaps one of them bore the king's body to
the valley temple. However, it is equally like-
ly that they performed a more symbolic role,
as part of the funerary equipment provided
for the travels of the deceased king with the
sun-god.

Like the other true pyramids, at this site
a nd elsewhere, the superstructure of the Great

Pyramid would not originally have been
uneven but covered by a lavcr of smooth white
Tura limestone, probably crowned by gold
sheet at the apex. This covering was stripped
away in medieval and later times. The burial of
HETEPHEEES, the mother of Khufu, lies just to
the east of the pyramid and gives some indica-
tion of the riches which might have accompa-
nied a pharaoh of this period.

Although Khufu 's immediate successor,

subterranean burial chamber. On the north
and west sides it shows clear evidence of the
quarrying necessary to level the site, the
removed stone being used tor the construction
itself.

The smallest of the three pyramid complex-
es at Giza is that of Menkaura (2532-2503 itc).
Unlike its predecessor, the valley temple was
not of granite but finished in mud brick.
However, it was here that a series of superb

The pyramids of Giza. The Great Pyramid of
Khajii (left) appears smaller than that of Khafra
(centre), since this latter is hiuii en a slight
eminence. The smallest is that of Wenkaara.

(p. i. \~iaio/,.sox)

Djedefra (2566-2558 BC), began to construct a
pyramid complex at abl RjQASH 8 km north of
Giza, he may have been responsible for some
quarrving at Giza, and some scholars have
attributed work on the Great sphinx to him,
although this sculpture is usually assigned to
the reign of Khafra (2558—2532 tic), builder of
the second of the Giza pvramids. The sphinx
is carved from a knoll of rock in a quarry
beside Khafra's causeway, which leads from
his well-preserved granite valley temple to the
mortuary temple on the eastern side of his
pyramid. Statues of the king, his head sym-
bolically protected by horus (now in the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo), were discovered
by Auguste Mariette's workmen in 1 860, dur-
ing the excavation of the valley temple (see
KH \fra illustration).

The site of the pyramid itself is on a slight
eminence; and for this reason, and by virtue of
its still preserving some of its limestone casing
at the apex, it appears larger than that of
Khufu. In ancient times the monument was
known as L Great is Khafra 1 , and is more typi-
cal of Old Kingdom pyramid design, with its

schist triad statues were discovered by the
Harvard/Boston expedition in 1908. They
represent the king with hathor, goddess of
MEMPHIS, and NOME deities. Like the pyramid
of Khafra, that of Menkaura had its lowest
courses cased in red granite, and like its pre-
decessor had the chambers below the built
structure. Unlike the other pyramids at Giza,
however, 'Menkaura is Divine' had palace-
facade carving on its interior walls. This pyra-
mid was the subject of saitk interest in the
26lh Dynasty (664-525 BC), when a new
wooden coffin was inserted. In 1838 the origi-
nal granite sarcophagus was lost at sea while
being transported to England, although the
wooden coffin lid is in the British Museum.

The pyramid complexes are surrounded by
groups of mastaba tombs, in which members
of the royal family and high officials were
buried. The most extensive mastaba cemeter-
ies are arranged in regular 'streets' to the west,
south and east of the pyramid of Khufu, each
tomb being of a similar size. The earliest pri-
vate tombs at Giza are cut into the quarry
faces surrounding the pvramids of Khafra and
Menkaura.

During the New Kingdom there was
renewed activity at Giza. In the 18th Dynasty
Amenhotep it (1427-1400 isc) built a temple to
Horemakhet (Tlorus of the Horizon') near the
Great Sphinx, and this was later enlarged bv

GLASS

_GLAS S

Sely i (1294-1279 bc) in the 19th Dynasty.
During the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 bc) the southernmost of the sub-
sidiary queens' pyramids in the Khufu com-
plex was converted into a temple of Isis. In the
26lh Dynasty the pyramid of Menkaura was
restored, the temple of Isis was enlarged and a
number of tombs were constructed along the
causeway of Khafra, an area which continued
to be used as a cemetery as late as the Persian
period.

W. M. P. Petrie, The pyramids and temples of
Cizeh (London, 1883).
H. Junker, Giza, 12 vols (Vienna, 1929-55).
G. A. Reisner and W. Stevenson S.uiti i, A
history of the Gizu necropolis, 2 vols (Cambridge,
MA, 1942-55).

N. Barakat et aL, Electromagnetic sounder
experiments at the pyramid of Giza (Berkeley,
1975).

M. Lehner, 'A contextual approach to the Giza
pyramids', Archiv dec Onaiifnrschung 32 (1985),
136-58.

I. E. S. EDWARDS, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th cd.
(Harmondswordi, 1993), 98-151.

glass

Although the glazing of stones such as quartz
and steatite, as well as the making of FAIENCE,
had been known since Predynastic times
(c 5500-3 100 bc), glass is extremely rare
before c. 1500 BC, and not certainly attested in
Egypt before the late Middle Kingdom.

It is possible that the craft of glass-making
was first introduced into Egypt following the
campaigns of Thutmose m (1479-1425 BC),
when captive glass-makers mav have been
brought to Egypt from mitanni, where the
technology was already available. Glass is cer-
tainly one of the materials mentioned in lists
of tribute in die Annals of Thuiinose m at
Karnak, and even by the time of Akhenaten
(1352-1.336 BC) glass was still of sufficient
importance to merit inclusion in diplomatic
correspondence. In die amarna LETTERS the
Human and Akkadian terms ehlipakku and
mekkti were used, and these loan-words per-
haps point to the eastern origins of the earliest
glass.

A distinction should be made between
$as&-muking from its raw materials (silica,
alkali and lime) and ghss-working from ready-
prepared ingots or scrap glass (cullet). The
first of these is considerably more difficult
than the second, and recent analyses suggest
that some of the earliest glass in Egypt was
made using materials from abroad, so that
either finished items or raw glass were import-
ed for use by workers (captive or otherwise) in
Egypt. It is likely that, even wiien the industrv
became better established, there were work-
shops which worked onlv glass, obtaining their
supplies in the form of ingots from more
sophisticated installations.

Perhaps because of an importation of
craftsmen from abroad, there are no surviving

Glass containers for unguents and t osmetics, oil
corejormed apart from the gohTrimtncd solid Ctist
example on the left. The jug, irhich hears the name
of Thntmose Hi, is one of the curliest datable
Egyptian glass vessels. 18th Dynasty, c.1450 1336
tic, t.. offish 14.5cm. (U2439L, 47620, 2589,
55193, 4741)

instances of trial stages in the making ol glass
in Egypt, which instead appears as a t Lilly
Hedged industrv. Consequently, technologi-
cally difficult pieces, such as clear decolorized
glass, are known from as early as die reign, of
Matshepsut (1473-1458 bc) and colourless
glass inlays occur in the throne ot
Tutankhamun (1336-1327 bc).

As well as being used for inlays, beads and
amulets, glass was used also in attempts at
more ambitious pieces, including vessels. The
latter were not made by blowing, which was
introduced only in Roman times, but by core-
forming. A core of mud and sand in the shape
of the vessel interior was formed aruLind a
handling rod. This core would then he dipped
into the viscous molten glass (or the glass be
trailed over it) and evened out by rolling the
whole on a Hat stone (marver). The rims and
feet of the vessels could be shaped using p ,n ~"
cers, but the process was usually more compli-
cated than this. Coloured threads were added
to the base colour of the vessel (commonly
blue or blue-green) so that strands ot \cllow,
white, red etc. decorated the piece. These were

112

GLASS

god's wiFr: or amun

sometimes pulled with a needle to make swag
or feather patterns, and then rolled on the
marver to impress them into the still soft body
glass.

The finished vessel was then allowed to cool
slowlv in an oven in a process known as anneal-
ing, which allowed the stresses developed in
the glass to be released gradually. Once cold
the core could be broken up and removed
through the vessel opening. It was Frequently
difficult to remove the core entirely, especially
in the shoulders of narrow-necked vessels, and
the remains of the core often added to the
opacity of these pieces, while those with
broader necks appear more translucent.

Glass might also be moulded. At its sim-
plest this involved the making of plain glass
forms, but it could also be much more com-
plex, with sections of glass cane of different
colours fused together in a mould to make
multicoloured vessels, such as those with yel-
low eyes on a green background, or the con-
glomerate glass pieces with angular fragments
of many colours fused into bowls.

It was also possible to work glass bv cold
cutting. In this process, lumps of glass, some-
times moulded to roughly the shape desired,
were worked as though they were pieces of
stone and so carved to shape. This is an
extremely difficult process requiring great
skill. None the less some fine pieces, including
two headrests made for Tutankhamun, were
produced in this way.

Glass seems to have been regarded as an
artificial precious stone, and like such stones is
sometimes imitated in painted wood. Perhaps
because of this connection it never developed
forms of its own but rather copied those tradi-
tionally made in stone, faience or other mat-
erials. It seems that for much of the New
Kingdom it was a costly novelty material,
probably under royal control, and given as
gifts to favoured officials. Until recently the
production of glass was thought to have
declined after the 2 1st Dynasty (1069-945 bc),
not to be revived on any scale until the 26th
Dynasty (664-525 bc), but J. D. Cooney has
suggested that it persisted on a much reduced
scale. In Ptolemaic times, Alexandria became a
centre for glass craftsmanship, with the pro-
duction of core-formed vessels and, in Roman
times, items of cameo glass, probably includ-
ing the famous Portland Vase (now in the
British Museum).

The best evidence for glass production
eomes from Flinders Petrie's excavations at
EL-amarna, where he found a great deal of
glass waste, but there arc still enormous areas
of technology that are not properly under-
stood, and excavations at that site during the

1990s have produced new evidence based pri-
marily on the detailed study of kilns. It seems
increasingly likely that glass-making was car-
ried on alongside faience production, and pos-
sibly other pyrotechnical crafts. As well as the
remains at el-Amarna, there are glass-working
sites at el-llsiit and malkata.

B. NOLTIi, Die Glasgc/asse im alien Agypten
(Berlin, 1968).

j. D. CooNiiv, Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in
the British Museum iv: Glass (London, 1976).

C. Lii.vqi ist and R. H. Brill, Studies in early

Egyptian glass (New York, 1993).

P. T Nicholson, Egyptian faience and glass

(Aylesbury, 199.1).

goats ,

• ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

god's wife of Amun (Hornet netjer nt Imm)
The title of 'god's wife of Amun' is first attest-
ed in the early New Kingdom in the form of a
tempie post endowed by ahmo.se i (1550-1525
uc) for his wife AHMOSE nki'f.rtvri. It later
became closelv associated with the title of
divine -vdoratrkie (dwat-netjer) which was
held by the daughter of the chief priest of
Amun under Hatshepsut (1473—1458 nc), and
by the mother of the 'great royal wife 1 (see
QUEENS) in the sole reign of Thulmose in
(1479—1425 uc), although its importance at
this time was much reduced. Prom the time of
Amcnhotep in (1390-1352 nc) until the end of
the 18th Dynasty there appears to have been
no royal holder of the office of god's wife of
Amun.

The function of the god's wife was to play
the part of the consort of amln in religious
ceremonies, thus stressing the belief that kings
were conceived from the union between Amun
and the great royal wife. The title L god's hand'
was also sometimes used, referring to the act
of masturbation by vrrvi by which he pro-
duced silt 1 and tltnut. Atum's hand was thus
regarded as female. In the 19th Dynasty
(1295-1 1S6 isc), the title was reintroduced, but
its importance was slight compared with earli-
er periods. In the late 20th Dvnastv, however,
Rameses vi (1143—1136 bc) conferred on his
daughter Isis a combined title of both god's
wife of Amun and divine adoratrice, thus cre-
ating what w r as largely a political post, This
office was from then on bestowed on the king's
daughter who, as a priestess, would have held
great religious and political power in the city
of Thebes. She was barred from marriage,
remaining a virgin; therefore she had to adopt
the daughter of the next king as heiress to her
office. In this way the king sought to ensure
that he always held power in Thebes and also
prevented elder daughters from aiding rival

claimants to the throne. The god's wife was in
fact the most prominent member of a group of
'Amun's concubines', all virgins and all with
adopted successors.

In the 25th and 26th Dynasties (747-525
bc), the god's wife and her adopted successor

;,■■;!

Granite statuette of the god '$ wife . -imenirdis /,
daughter of the Kushite ruler Kashta. Late 8th
century bc, it. 28.3 cm. (t: t4(>(>99)

played an important role in the transference of
royal power. This office was sometimes com-
bined with that of chief of the priestesses of
Amun. Some measure of the wealth and influ-
ence of these women is seen by the building of
a 'tomb with chapef by Amenirdis I, sister of
King Shabaqo (716-702 nc) of the 25th
Dynasty, within the temple enclosure at

MEDINET HAUL.

U. H6l ,sc:i ii:r. The excavation ofMeJinet Habu v;

Post-Rumessid remains (Chicago, 1954).

M. GnTQN, L 'epniise dtt dieu, Ahmes Nefertary

(Paris, 1975).

E. Gralff, Vntersucliungen zur lenvaltiuig unci

Gi'schicltte der Institution der Guttesgemahlin des

113

GOLD

™LD

Amun vom Begin ties Neiien Reiches bis zur

SpM zeii (Wiesbaden, 1981).

M. GiTTON 7 , Les divines epouses de la IHe dynastie

(Paris, 1984).

G. R.GB1NS, Women in ancient Egypt {London,

1993), 149-56.

gold

That gold was a precious commodity in Egypt
is undoubted, although it was outranked by
SILVER when this was first introduced. By the
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 lit:), lunvevcr,
gold had become the most precious material,
and was eagerly sought. It is no surprise that
the oldest known geological map is a diagram
of the gold mines and bekhen-sxont (sihsione)
quarries in the Wadi Hammamat. The late
Predynastie town at naqada, near the mouth of
Wadi Hammamat, was known as Nubt ('gold
town 1 ), perhaps indicating that it grew rich
from the gold trade.

Gold was mined both from the Eastern
Desert and from Nubia, where there arc
Egyptian inscriptions from Early Dynastic
and Old Kingdom times (3100-2181 hc). New
Kingdom private tombs, such as that of
Sobekhotep (tt63), sometimes include depic-
tions of Nubians bringing gold as tribute.
During the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) it
was obtained also from Syria-Palestine by way
of tribute, despite the fact that Egypt was
already much richer in gold than the
Levantine citv-statcs. The Egyptians' prodi-
gious wealth in gold made them the envy of
their neighbours in the Near East, and finds
frequent mention in the amarna LETTERS. For
example letter i:\19 from Tushratta of Alitanni
reads: 'May my brother send me in very great
quantities gold that has not been worked, and
may my brother send me much more gold than
he did to mv father. In mv brother's country
gold is as plentiful as din

Mining and quarrving expeditions were
carried out under military control, and many
of the labourers were convicts (see .stont; and
quarrying). The laborious and dangerous
work mav have ensured that for many it was a
death sentence. The gold-bearing rock had to
be laboriously crushed and washed to extract
the metal which was then carried off for refin-
ing and working.

Gold was regarded as the flesh of R \ and the
other gods, a divine metal that never tar-
nished. As such it was used in the making of

RIGHT Part of a jloral collar formed from gold,
cornelian and blue glass inlaid elements, which
illustrates the use of the cloisonne technique of
goldworking. New Kingdom, c. 1370-1300 Be,
ti. (as strung) 12.2 cm. (ei3074)

4 workers' huts

■reservoir) 5 streaks of brown, perhaps

indicating geological variation
3 shrine of 'Amun of the
pure mountain' 6 wacli floor, identified as the

Toad that leads to the sea'

images of the god, or as gilt for divine statues;
it also adorned temples and the pyramidions
surmounting obelisks and pyramids. The
roval titulary included the 'Golden Horns'
name, associating the king with the sun, while
the goddess Hathor was sometimes described
as 'the golden one\

This connection with the gods made it the
ideal metal in funerary contexts, as spectacu-
larly witnessed bv the mask and coffins of
Tutankhamun (1336-1327 bc), although lesser
individuals aspired to gilded or yellow-painled
masks. The sarcophagus chamber in the royal
tomb was known as the 'house of gold', while
at the ends of sarcophagi or coffins tsts and
nt.I'HTHYS were often shown kneeling on the
hieroglyphic sign for gold (nebw). In the 5th-
Dynasty tomb of ly-Mery at Giza (c6020) an

tffiHD

LEFT/ Copy of pari of the "Uirin wining papyrus'
the earliest surviving geological map, which
documents a quarrying expedition in the vicinity of
a gold-mining settlement in the Wkdi Hammamat
Reign ofRauieses // , c.l J 33-1 147 in:, (ri /,w,

UCSEO EGI7.I0, C tT.1879)

below Par/ of a wall-painting from the tomb-
chapel of Sobekhotep (tt63), showing Nubians
presenting gold as tribute to the Egyptian king. Tin-
gold lias been cast into rings for ease of transport.
18th Dynasty, c. 1400 bc, j'rom Thebes, ft i<>2!)

inscription points out that the shape of the
uebw sign was being imitated by pairs of
dancers in the funerary dance known as the
tfl/eref

In times of unrest the golden funerary
equipment acted as a lure for tomb-robbers,
as recorded in Papyrus Abbot which deals with
the desecration of the tomb of King Sobkem-
saf ii of the 17th Dynasty (1650-1550 bc):

VfflMM

114

GOLD

'I '

'We opened their sarcophagi and their
coffins, . . and found the noble mummy of this
King equipped with a falchion [curved sword]
. . . amulets and jewels of gold were upon his
neck, and his headpiece of gold was upon him.
The noble mummy of this King was com-
pletely bedecked with gold, and his coffins
were adorned with gold ... We collected the
gold we found on the mummy of this god . . .
and we set fire to their coffins

Gold could also serve the living, and the
material melted down by the robbers would
have been used in exchanges, since there was
no actual coinage. The high value of gold made
it a suitable reward for eminent individuals,
and there are representations of favoured New
Kingdom officials such as Maya and
BBREMHEB being rewarded with golden collars
by the pharaoh. There are mam surviving
examples of the 'fly of valour', a military hon-
our usually made of gold.

The gold of ancient Egypt became leg-
endary and eventually passed into medieval
folklore. With the discovery of the tomb of
E-itankhamun, the imagination of the twenti-
eth-century press became particular!)
obsessed with the 'gold of the pharaohs', often
at the expense of discoveries that are archaeo-
•Ogically more significant.

GREEKS

J. Cerxv, 'Prices and wages in Egvpt in the
Ramesside period', Cahiers d'liistaire Mondiale I
(1954), 903-21.

R. Klemm and D. D. Ki.emm, 'Chronologiseher
Abriss der antiken Goldgewinnung in dcr
Ostwtiste Agyptens", MDAiK 50 (1994), 29-35.

great green (Egyptian wadj mer)
Term used to refer to a fecundity figure (see
hapy) who appears to have personified either
the lakes within the Nile Delta or the
Mediterranean sea. The latter interpretation is
a matter oJ considerable debate; it has been
pointed out, for instance, that certain texts
(such as Papyrus Ramcsscuin yt) describe die
crossing of the 'great green' by foot, and other
documents use a determinative sign for the
term that suggests dry land rather than water.
J. Bunks, Fecundity figures; Egyptian
personification and the iconofogy of a genre
(Warminster, 1986).

C. Yandeksu'.yi.n, T,e sens de Ouatlj-Our (WV-
Wr)\ Akten Miimheu 1985 w , ed, S. Sehoske
(Hamburg, 1991), 345-52.

great royal wife see qpeens

Greeks

Egypt did not develop close contacts with

Copy of a wall-painting from the tomb of
Menkheperraseneb tit Thebes, showing foreign rulers
from the Aegean and the Near East bringing tribute
to the pharaoh. The prostrate figure on the left is
described as the 'chief of the Kcf'tiw ' (usually
assumed to be a reference to Crete) and the figure on
the Jar right wears Aegean clothing and carries a
Minoau-stylc bulTs head. IHlb Dynasty, c. 1450 n<:.

Greece until well into the Pharaonic period,
although various economic and political links
gradually developed over the centuries. Bv the
12th Dynasty (1985-1795 uc) the tod treasure
shows Greek influence, but il was in the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 uc) that contacts become
most clear. In Egyptian tombs of 1500-1440 BC
there are representations of cups of the type
found at Vapheio in mainland Greece, which
were brought to Thebes as tribute by Cretans.
Paintings in the tomb of Senenmut (tt71 ) show-
not only a gianl Vapheio cup but also a bull-
headed rhyton, while Cretans are also shown in
the tomb of Menkheperraseneb (TTcS6). It may
be that Cretans and other Greeks visited Egypt
during this time and took away with them
notions of Egyptian architecture, since some
Minoan frescos portray papyrus columns. The
goddess taweret was modified to become the
so-called Cretan 'genius', losing her hippopota-

115

GREEKS

GUROB

'; ii

mus form until she more closely resembled a
donkey. Thoth, in his baboon manifestation,
was also imported into Crete. Similarly,
Mycenaean pottery reached Egypt in die New
Kingdom, perhaps as containers for a particu-
lar valued commodity, and has been found in
large quantities at sites such as ki.-a.\urm.
Cyprus was also important as a source of cop-
per, imported as ox-hide ingots. Certain resins
may also have been imported from Cyprus (and
elsewhere in Greece) and Cypriol pottery is
also attested in Egypt.

Psamtek i (664-610 nc) allowed Greeks
from Miletus to found a commercial centre at
NAUKBATIS, and under Ahmose 11 (57(1-526 tic)
their trade was limited to this city. The
Egyptians levied a duty on commerce there,
and this nits sent to the temple of Neith at
sais. The city struck its own coinage, the only
type of coin known from Pharaonic Egypt.

Mercenary soldiers, including some from
the Mediterranean, had been used increasing-
ly from the New Kingdom, but by the SA1TE
period (664-525 Be) Egypt had come to
depend ever more heavily on Greek mercenarv
troops, who were settled in Memphis. The ris-
ing power of Persia inevitably led to the con-
quest of Egypt in 525 BC, making Egypt a nat-
ural ally of the Greek city-states. In 465 bc,
following the death of Xerxes l (486-465 bc),
there was a revolt by Psamtek of" Sais, and with
Athenian help he besieged the Persians at
Memphis, although he was eventually killed in
454 lie. Through the lasl decades of the fifth
century BC, his supporters survived in the
Delta marshes, retaining their contacts with
Athens. It was at some time during this period
that the Greek historian Herodotus made his
visit to Egypt, recording recent political
events and local curiosities.

In 405 BC Darius a of Persia (424-405 Be)
died and in the following year Amvrtaios
(404-399 BC) seized power in Egypt, becoming
ihc only ruler of the 28th Dynasty. Egypt had
been drawn ever more into the Greek world,
and Nepherites I (599-393 Be) supported the
Cypriote against the Persians. Later, revolts in
Persia led Teos (362-360 lie) to attempt lo
regain those provinces that had been lost; in this
campaign he depended heavily on the Greek
mercenaries provided by the Spartan king
Agesilaus and the Athenian admiral Chabrias.
The power of the Greek mercenaries at this time
is indicated by the fact that a subsequent revolt
in favour of Nectanebo n (360-343 bc), nephew
of Teos, succeeded primarily because of the sup-
port of Agesilaus. In 345 BC the Persians
attacked again, but the Greek mercenaries were
once more disloyal, and Egypt fell.

It was the coming of Macedonian Greeks

116

shaft tombs

Ramessid temple dedicated
to the cult of Thutmose III

under 1LEXANDER THE GREAT (532-323 lie),
ousting the Persians in 352 bc, that brought
Egypt fully into the Hellenistic world. New
cities such as Alexandria and Ptolemais were
established and settled by Greeks, while the
FATUM REGION became an important agricul-
tural centre. Greek was adopted as the official
language, and numerous papyri of the period
have been discovered at oxvrvnciius and else-
where. This mixing of Greeks and Egyptians
led lo new artistic developments, with tradi-
tional subjects depicted in innovative ways, as
in the scenes from the tomb of petosiris at
Tuna el-Gebel.

The Greeks, and through them the
Romans, held Egypt in high regard as a font of
ancient wisdom, and in this way Egyptian civ-
ilization exerted a strong influence on the
Classical world. The ancient Greek timms-
figures, for example, derived their characteris-
tic appearance from the Greeks' observation of

Plan of Gunk

Egyptian statues. The roots of western civi-
lization owe considerably more to Egi pt than
is commonly realized.

H.-J. ThISSEn, 'Griechen in Agvptcn', Lexifon
der Agyptohgie in, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and
W. Westcndorf (Wiesbaden, 1977), 898-903.
B.J. Kemp and R. Merrii.ees, Minmm pottery
from second millennium Egypt (Mainz. 1 98 1 ).
-\. K. Bowman, Egypt after tie phutmhs
(London, 1986).

N. Lewis, Gm-h in Pit/kmak Egypt (Oxford,
19S6).

D. J. Thompson, Memphis muter the Ptokmies
(Princeton, 1988).

Gurob (Medinct el-Ghurob; anc. Mi-wer)
Settlement site at the southeastern end of the
Fayum region, occupied from the early 18th
Dynasty until at least the time of Rameses v

GUROB

HAIR

(1147-1143 bc). Excavated between 1888 and
1920, Gurob has been identified with the town
of Mi-wer, which was established by
Thutmose in (1479-1425 bc) as a royal harm,
and appears to have flourished in the reign of
Amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc). Flinders Petrie
excavated part of the New Kingdom town, as
well as a building identified as a temple, and
cemeteries dating to the New Kingdom and
die Ptolemaic period (332-30 bc). The work of
subsequent British archaeologists concentrat-
ed primarily on the cemeteries and temple,
although W. L. S. Loat mentions the remains
of a small 18th-Dynasty village close to a for-
tified building, which may have been an early
New Kingdom settlement similar to that
beside the South Palace at deir el-bai.i.vs.

In 1905 the town was examined by the
German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt,
who suggested that the main enclosure-wall
contained not a temple - as Petrie had argued
- but a late 18th-Dynasty palace and ha rim as
well as the town itself. More recently, Barn
Kemp has synthesized the results of the vari-
ous excavations to construct an impression of
the New Kingdom hu rim-town which must
have superseded the earlier village. The main
town, contained within an enclosure wall and
divided into three blocks (each with its own
enclosure walls and gateways), appears to focus
on a central limestone building, dating to the
reign of Thutmose in, which was eventually
dismantled by Rameses u (1279-1213 BC).

Many of the finds from the town are in the
collection of the Petrie Museum, London,
and have been catalogued in the course of a
reassessment of the site as a whole. It might be
argued that the combination of artefactual
material from town, temple and cemeteries
eonstitutes a more representative set of evi-
dence than the material at the better-
documented and better-preserved urban site
of EL-AMARNA, which includes very few arte-
facts from funerary contexts.
W. M. E Petrie, Kakun. Gurob and llawara
(London, 1890).

~~ , Illakun, Kakun and Gurob (London, 1891).
W. L. S. Loat, Gurob (London, 1905).

L. Borchardt, Der Ponriitk&pfder Kgmgm Teje:

Wft&ehmgcn der Deutsehen Orieiil-Gcseilscliaji in

Telle!-, imarna i (Leipzig, 191 1}.

G- Brunton and R. E\ t gelbaci i, Gurob (London,

1927).

B- J. Kemp, 'The harim-palace at Mcdinet el-

Ghurab',Z^"515(1978), 122-33.

A - P. Thomas, Gurob: a New Kingdom town,

2 vols (Warminster, 1981).

sexuality. Men generally wore shorter wigs
than women, although their styles were some-
times even more elaborate. Wigs were worn on
public occasions and at banquets, and, like

hair

The style, presence or absence of hair were all
of great importance to the Egyptians, not only
as a matter of personal appearance but also as
symbols or indications of status. The act of
ritual humiliation and subjection was demon-
strated by the king's action of seizing his
enemies b\ the hair before smiting them.

The Egyptians took great care of their hair,
and were concerned to avoid greying and bald-
ness, judging from the survival of texts includ-
ing remedies for these conditions, none of
which seems likely to have been very effective.
Nevertheless, hair was usually washed and
scented, and wealthy individuals employed
hairdressers. The 1 lth-Dynasty sarcophagus
of Queen Kawit from Deir el-Bahri (r.2040 bc;
now r in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo) shows
such a hairdresser at work. Children wore

their hair at the side of the head sometimes as
one or two tresses or a plait, and were other-
wise shaven. This characteristic sidelock. of
YOUTH was regularly depicted, even in the por-
trayals of deities such as the infant iiorus
(llarpocrates).

Hair-pieces in the form of false plaits and
curls were sometimes added to the existing
hair, even in the case of relatively poor indi-
viduals, One of the slain soldiers of
Mentuhotep n (2055-2004 bc) buried at Deir
el-Bahri was found to be wearing a hair-piece
ol this type. More common, however, were full
wigs, which were not confined to those who
had lost their hair but served as a regular item
of dress for the elite, as in cighteenth-centurv
Europe.

Many Egyptian wigs were extremely com-
plex and arranged into careful plaits and
strands. Women often wore very long, heavy
wigs and these were considered to add to their

ABOVE Elaborate wig made from about 120, 000
human hairs. It consists of a mans of light-coloured
curls on top of plaits, designed to allow ventilation,
and would probably have been worn on a festive
occasion. New Kingdom, from Deir el-Medina,
ii. 50.5 cm. ft: \2500)

LEFT Detail from the relief decoration of the
sarcophagus ofQiieen Kawit (a wife ofNebhepelru
Mentuhotep //, shown having her hair arranged by
a servant. I lib Dynasty. c.2055-200d m;, /.. of
entire sarcophagus 2.02 m (c urojfAJSO?)

hair, would often have been scented (see
incense). In 1974 a team of Polish archaeolo-
gists discovered the remains of a wig-maker's
workshop dating to the Middle and New
Kingdoms in a rock}- clefi at Deir el-Bahri.
The objects included a sack and jars contain-
ing hair, as well as a model head with the out-
line of the wig's attachments.

Wigs were usually made of genuine human
hair, although vegetable fibres were sometimes
used for padding beneath the surface. Date
palm is known to have been used for this pur-
pose in the 21st Dynasty (1069-945 bc). Two
Roman wigs made entirely of grass have also
survived, but the use of this material seems to
have been wholly exceptional. Contrary to
persistent references in the archaeological lit-
erature, there is no evidence for the use of
wool or other animal hair in wigs.

From at least as early as the New Kingdom,
the heads of priests were completely shaven

117

in I,

HAPY

JIARIM

during their period of office, Lo signify their
subservience to the deity, and to reinforce
their cleanliness, according to the Greek histo-
rian Herodotus. Times of mourning were
often marked b\ throwing ashes or dirt over
the head, and sometimes even removing locks
of hair. The hieroglyphic determinative sign
for mourning consists of three locks of hair,
perhaps alluding to the myth of Isis cutting off
one of her locks as a symbol of her grief for
Osiris, an act hinted at in Papyrus Ramesseum
\i and described in detail by the Greek writer
Plutarch ( t :\i> 46-126).
E. Lvskowska-Ku.szval, 'Un atelier de
perruquerier a Dcir cl-Bahari\ ET 10 (1978),
83-12(1.

G. PQSENEK, 'La legende de la tresse d'Hathor',
Egyptological studies in honor oj'R. A, Parker, ed.
L. H. Lesko (Hanover and London, 1986),
111-17.

J. Fletcher, 'A tale of hair, wigs and lice',
Egyptian archaeology 5 (1994), 31-3.
— , 'Hair and wigs'. Ancient Egyptian materials
and technology, ed. P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw
(Cambridge, 2000).

Hapy (baboon-god) see canohc jvrs

Hapy (god of the inundation)
The Egyptians made an important distinction
between the Nile itself - which was simply
known as iterw, 'the river 1 - and the Nile inun-
dation, which they deified in the form of
I lapv. He was usually represented as a pot-
bellied bearded man with pendulous breasts
and a headdress formed of aquatic plants.
These attributes were designed to stress his
fertility and fecundity, and in this sense he was
interchangeable with a number of other
'fecundity figures'' whose depictions draw on
the same reservoir of characteristics. It has
also been suggested that the androgynous fea-
tures of the pharaoh AKHENATEN (1352-1336
BC) - and, to some extent, amf.niiotkp in
(1390-1352 BC) - may reflect a similar desire
lo present an image of the body that drew on
both male and female aspects of fertility.

Hapv's major cult centres were at gebet. f.i -
sii.sii.a and ASWAN, where he was thought to
dwell in the caverns among the rocks of the
first cataract. The lower registers of many tem-
ple walls, from the 5th-Dynasty mortuary
temple of Sahura (2487-2475 BC) at -\busir to
the Greco-Roman temple of Horns and Sobek
at kom OMBG, were decorated with depictions
of processional fecundity figures bearing trays
of offerings. From the 19th Dynasty
(1295-1186 BC.) onwards there were occasion-
ally reliefs portraying two fecundity figures,
one wearing the papyrus of Lower Egypt and

Qjtaiizite statue of the inundation-god Hapy,
shown with the facial features ofOsttrkon i, whose
son, Sheshoiiq a, is depicted in relief on the left side
of the statue. 22nd Dynasty, C.9W BC, it. 2.2 in.
(MS)

the other wearing the Upper Egyptian lotus,

in the act of binding together the wind-pipe

hieroglyph (scuta) signifying the unity of the

southern and northern halves of Egypt.

D. Bdnneai , La crue du Nil, divinite egyptienne it

trtrccrs nolle tins d'histoirc (332 uv-Ml ap. j.c)

(Paris, 1464).

J. Baines, Fecundity figures: Egyptian

personifications and the icomdogy oj a genre

(Warminster, 198S),

D. VAN DEK PLAS, L'hynn/e a la erne du Nil, 2 vols

(Leiden, I486).

hariffi (Egyptian ipet, per-lchener)
Term used by Egyptologists to describe an
administrative institution connected with
royal women and probably attached to
Pharaonic palaces and villas during the New
Kingdom. However, the use of this evocative-
term in the ancient Egyptian context is con-

fusing both because it had none of the erotic
connotations of the Ottoman hannt and
because the texts and archaeological remains
are difficult to reconcile.

On the one hand, the surviving texts
describe an important economic institution
supported from taxation, and receiving regu-
lar supplies of rations, and on the other hand
the archaeological remains at gurob- are clear-
ly identified as the remains of an independent
establishment relating to royal women (a
Vitfmn-palace 1 ), founded in the reign of
Thutmose m (1479-1425 uc) and occupied
throughout the rest of the 18th Dynasty. The
inscriptions on stelae, papyri and various other
inscribed artefacts from the main buildings at
the site repeatedly include the titles of officials
connected with the royal harm (or per-khmer)
of Mi-wer. There was evident!) a similar
establishment at MEMPfUS, but that site has not
survived.

Although other harims have in the pasi been
identified among the remains at such sites as
MALtL-VTA and EL-AMAKNA, which incorporated
the palaces of Amenhotcp in (1390-1352 tic)
and Akhenaten (1352-1336 bc) respectively,
thev are unlikely to have had any connection
with the harm described in the texts and usu-
allv in fact derive more from the imaginations
of the excavators than from any hard evidence
(although the so-called North Palace at el-
Amarna, which ironically was not identified as
a harini by its excavators, bears some compari-

Copy of a relief showing Runieses at with one oj the
princesses in his harim. Eastern Gate, Medincl
Hahu.

son with the buildings at Gurob). As far as the
textual version of the institution is concerned,
the women arc said to have undertaken such
tasks as the weaving of linen (an activity that is
well attested at Gurob). The harim was admin-
istered by such male officials as tax-collectors
and scribes, whose titles have been preserved
on numerous surviving documents.

When the pharaoh took a new wife f> r

ITS

HARPO CRATES

HAT-MEHIT

concubine she was added to the hariin, along
with her entourage of maidservants, so that, as
time went by, literallv dozens of women mighi
be attached to it. Children, including occa-
sional young foreign captives, were brought Lip
in the royal hariin, a practice that may have
fostered the Biblical story of Moses. Given die
details oi the Moses narrative, it is perhaps not
surprising lo hnd that the women of die luiriiu
occasionally became involved in political
intrigue. From the Turin Judicial Papyrus it is
known that Try, a wife of Rameses in
(1184—3153 lit:), plotted with other women
and some of the male officials to overthrow
him in favour of her son. In the event the plot
was discovered and the prince was forced to
eommil suicide, along with several of the other
conspirators, although the fate of Tiv and the
other women is not known.

A. Df, Buck, L The judicial papyrus of Turin',
JEA 13 (1937), 152-64.

E. Reisek, Der kihagliclte Jlurim tin alien . igyfiten
unit seine Vermaltung (Vienna, 1972) [reviewed by
B.J. Kemp,.7i'.-J 62 (1976), 191-21

B. J. Kemp, 'The harim-palace at Mcdinct el-
Ghurab\ ZAS\5 (1978), 122-33.

D. Nord, 'The term hnr, "harem" or "musical
performers"?', Sliulics in ancient Egypt, the
Aegean and the Sudan, ed. W.K. Simpson and
W. M. Davis (Boston, !981), 157-45.
G. Robins, Women in ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 58-40.

Harpocrates see hurls

Harsomtus .vtr horus

Hathor

Imporiant bovine goddess worshipped in
three forms: as a woman with the ears of a
Cow, as a cow, and as a woman wearing a head-
dress consisting of a wig, horns and sun disc.
Her associations and cult centres were among
the most numerous and diverse of any of the
Egyptian deities. In her vengeful aspect she
sometimes also shared the leonine form of the
goddess si;kJiMi',T, and in this guise she was
regarded as one of the 'eyes' of the sun-god ra.
She was also described as 'lady of the sky', and
her role as the daughter of ra was reinforced
in the temple of 1 K >rl s at i :i >FU by references to
her marriage to Horus of Edfu, a falcon-god
associated with the heavens.

The literal meaning of her name was 'house
»1 Horus', and was written in the form of a fal-
con contained within a hieroglyph represenl-
uig a rectangular building. Since die pharaoh
was identified with Horus, Hathor was corre-
spondingly regarded as the divine mother of
each reigning king, and one of the royal titles

was 'son of Hathor 1 . Her role as royal mother
is well illustrated by a statue of Hathor in the
lorm ol a cow suckling the pharaoh
Amenhotep h (1427-1400 tic:) from a chapel at
DEB F.t.-HAiiRi (now in the Egyptian Museum,
Cairo). The king, however, was also regularh
described as the son of isis, who appears to
have usurped I father's role when the legend of
Isis, si /ii i and osiris was conflated with that of
die birth of Horus.

In one myth Hathor was said to have been
sent to destroy humanity (see EYE of r\), but

Faience sistruin decorated with the face of the
goddess Jlcithnr, with cow '$ ecus and distinctive
curling wig. 26th Dynasty, after 600 tic. (&A34190)

she was more usually associated with such
pleasurable aspects of life as SEXUALITY, joy
and music. Her connection with music was
particularly represented by the sistklm, cere-
monial examples of which were often endowed
With I lalhor heads, sometimes surmounted bv
a was, and frequently shaken by the priest-
esses of the cult of Hathor. She was also regu-
larlv portrayed on the meiiut counterpoise
attached to necklaces.

In her funerary aspect, most notably at
western Thebes, she was known as 'lady of the
West 1 or 'lady of the western mountain'. Each
evening she was considered to receive the set-

ting sun, which she then protected until
morning. The dying therefore desired to be 'in
the following of Hathor'' so thai thev would
enjoy similar protection in the netherworld.
Hathor was also one of the deities who was
thought to be able to determine the destinies
of newborn children.

She was the goddess most often associated
with the desert and foreign countries, and as
such was worshipped as 'lady of uvblos 1 . At
the tlrqi oisi. mines of Serabit el-Khadim in
Sinai a temple was built to her in her role as
'lady of turquoise'. By extension she was also
known as 'lady of faience 1 (the latter being an
artificial substance designed to imitate certain
precious stones).

The citv of Memphis was an important
centre of Hathor worship, and she was
described there as 'lady of the sycamore 1 , but
from as early as the Old Kingdom (2686-2181
UC) her principal cult centre was at DEMDERA,
where a temple of the Ptolemaic and Roman
periods dedicated to the triad of Hathor,
Horus and Ihy is still preserved (on the site of
an earlier foundation). The sanatorium associ-
ated with this temple probably relates to the
healing properties that were associated with
the goddess because of the mvth in which she
restored the sight of Horus after his eye had
been put out by" Scth.
S. A.1..T.AM, Beitriige znm Haiharkult (his ZUm Ende

desMR) (Berlin, 1965).

P. Dl'RCMAIN, Hathor Qiiadrifons (Istanbul, 1972).

S. Qi iRki:, Ancient Egyptian religion (London,

1992), 126-30.

G. Pi\Q i, / olrcc offerings lo Hathor (Oxford,

1993).

Hat-Mehit

Fish-goddess of the Delta, who served as the
svmbol of the sixteenth nomeof Lower Egypt,
the capital of which was the city of MEMOES,
her principal cult centre. Her worship at
Mendes became less important with the rise of
the ram-god Banebdjedet, who came to be
regarded as her consort. She was usually rep-
resented either as a Nile carp (Lefiidotus) or as
a woman with a fish emblem (once misidenti-
fied as a dolphin) on her head.

Hatnub

'Egyptian alabaster 1 (travertine) quarries and
associated seasonally occupied workers 1 settle-
ment in the Eastern Desert, about 65 km
southeast of modern el-Minya. The pottery,
hieroglyphic inscriptions and hieratic graffiti
at the site show that it was in use intermittent-
ly from at least as early as the reign of Khufu
until the Roman period (c.2589 BG-AD 300).
The Hatnub quarry settlements, associated

119

111
111

HATSHEPSUT

/ tern itj the Old Kingdom travertine quarry tit
Hitliiak (t. SHAW)

with three principal quarries, like those associ-
ated with gold mines in the Wadi Hammamat
and elsewhere, are characterized by drystone
windbreaks, roads, causeways, cairns and
stone alignments.

G. W. Fraser, 'Hat-Nub', PSBA 16(1894),
73-82.

R. Avn-ius, Die I'ehenimcliriften vim Haluub
(Leipzig, 1928).

I. M. E. Sll \w, 'A survey at Hamuli", Amanta
reports III, cd. B.J. Kemp (London, 1986),
189-212.

Hatshepsut (147.V1458 uc)
Daughter of THUTMOSE i (1504-1492 lie) and
Queen AHMQ5E nefertari, who was married to
her half-brother Thutmose II (1492-1479 Be),
the son of a secondary wife, perhaps in order
to strengthen his claim to the throne. She had
a daughter, Neferura, by Thutmose n, but the
heir to the throne, the future Thutmose ill was
the son of one of Thutmose it's concubines.
Since Thutmose m (1479-1425 Be), was the
only male child, he was married to his half-
sister Neferura in order to reinforce his posi-
tion. Because Thutmose in was still young
when his father died, Hatshepsut was appoint-
ed regent, and she took the further step of
having herself crowned king, allowing her lo
continue to enjoy a long coregency with the
young Thutmose, thus effectively blocking
him from full power. In this she appears to
have had the support of the priests of Amun,
and some of the reliefs in her mortuary temple
at df.ir i.i.-ruiri reinforced her claim by
emphasizing her divine birth, the result of a

union between Amun and her mother Queen
Ahmose. She was probably never the chosen
heir of her father Thutmose l, although she
claimed to have been given the kingship dur-
ing her father's lifetime. It is likely, however,
that these reliefs and inscriptions concerning
her legitimacy were simply part of the usual
paraphernalia of kingship rather than self-
conscious propaganda on her part.

During her reign there was renewed build-

L". <•• I,

■Iff

Relief 'block from the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut at
Karntih, showing the queen performing a religious
ceremony associated with the kingship. 18th Dynasty,
e.1476 bg, quartzite. (GR.-iH.-m ;/_irriso\)

ing activity at Thebes and elsewhere, i n
which she was assisted by SESENMUT arch'-
rect, chief courtier and tutor to Neferura h-
is possible that his political skills had already
helped to gain Hatshepsut her elevated posi-
tion. Her temple at Deir el-Bahri, influenced
by the earlier temple of Nebhepetni V1EN-.
tujgtep ii (2055-2004 uc), was the finest of
her buildings. Here she recorded other
aspects of her reign, most notably her trading
expeditions to PUNT, nvnLOS and SINAI as well
as the transport of two enormous granite
obelisks from the quarries at Aswan io the
temple of Amun-Ra at karnak. It has, in the
past, been suggested that the reign of
Hatshepsut was an unusually peaceful period
in Egyptian history, but evidence has gradu-
ally emerged tor the continued dispatch of
military expeditions during her reign, despite
the apparent emphasis on trade in the reliefs
at Deir el-Bahri.

Her monuments at Deir el-Bahri and else-
where frequently show her in kingly costume,
including the royal beard, and they often refer
to her with masculine pronouns and adjectives
as though she were male (although, once
again, it is likely that this was simply a ease of
adhering to the accepted decorum of kingship
rather than deliberate deception). In practice,
there must have been some sense of conflict
between her sex and the masculine role of the
pharaoh, but only the occasional grammatical
slips in the texts (and, more importantly, the
posthumous attempts to remove her name
from monuments) have survived as indications
of such feelings of inappropriateness.

When Thutmose m reached maturity, he
eventually became sole ruler, but it is by no
means clear whether Hatshepsut simply died
or was forcibly removed from power. It has
been argued that the apparent disappearance
both of Neferura and Senenmut (who is not
attested after Thutmose ill's nineteenth regnal
year) may perhaps have eased the transfer of
power. It used lo be ihought that Thuimose
immediately set about removing his step-
mother's name from her monuments, as retri-
bution for her seizure of power, but it is now
known that these defacements did not take
place until much later in his reign. This re-
dating perhaps calls into question the motive
of pure vengeance or anger, as opposed to a
feeling that her reign had simply been con-
trary to tradition. On the other hand her two
massive obelisks at Karnak appear to have
been deliberately concealed behind masonry,
and her name was among those omitted EreiH
subsequent king LISTS,

She had prepared a tomb for herself in the
Valley of the Kings (kv20), which was discov-

120

HAVVARA

HAWARA

ered by Howard Carter in 1903. There is no

evidence that k\ 20 was ever used for her bur-
ial, although it contained an emptv quartzite
sarcophagus originally intended [orThutmose
i (now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
She may have been laid to rest in an earlier
tomb, the so-called 'south tomb' in the Wadi
Sikketlaqa el-Zcid in the cliffs to the south of
Deir el-Balm, which had been constructed
before her rise to the throne.
H. Carter and T. M. Davies, The tomb §f
Hdtshopsitu (London, 1906).
H. Carter, 'A tomb prepared for Queen
Hatshepsuit and other recent discoveries at
Thebes\.7£./ 4 (1917), 107-18.
W. F Edoerton, The Tkutmmi succession
(Chicago, 1933).

P. DoRMAN, The monuments of Senenmut
(London, 1988).

P. Der Manueuan and C. E. Loesen, 'New
light on the recalled sarcophagus of
Hatshcpsut and Thutmose I in the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston',.?/-, i 79 (1994), 121-56.
J. Tyi.DESS.ey, Hatchepsttt: the female pharaoh
(Liar mo nds worth, 1996).

Hawara

Royal necropolis in the southeastern Fayum
region, the most important element of which
was the pyramid complex of AMENEMIiAT P3

north chapel

mortuary temple
(the 'Labyrinth'!

50 100 m

Plan of the pyramid complex of Amenemhat m at
Hawara.

above View of the pyramid at Ihuvaru. (l. SHAW)

RtGi it Mummy case ofArtetn'ulorus, incorporating
an encaustic portrait of the deceased. Roman
period, early 2nd century ID, painted and gilded
stucco, from Hawara, tl. 1.67 m. (t:\2IH10)

(1855-1808 ik:). The mortuary temple con-
structed immediately to the south of the pyra-
mid was known to Classical authors as the
'Labyrinth 1 . It was visited by the Greek histo-
rian Herodotus, who described a complex of
three thousand rooms connected by winding
passages. The site subsequently became part
of the itinerary of Greek and Roman trav-
ellers. Although only a few traces of the mor-
tuary temple have survived, it has been sug-
gested that it may originally have had some
similarities to the complex surrounding the
Step Pyramid of Djoser (2667-2648 BC) at
SA(i-iAKA. Hawara was first identified by
Lepsius in 1843 and later excavated bv
Flinders Pctrie in 1889-9 and 1 910-1 1 . In the
vicinity of Hawara Petrie also discovered a
cemetery incorporating a number of Fayum
mummy-portraits executed in ENCAUSTIC or
tempera and dating to the Roman period
(30 bc-ad 395).

W. M. F. Petrie, Hawara, Bialnmt and Arsiuoe
(London, 1889).

— , Kahun, Guroh and Hawara (London, 1890}.
W. M. F Petrik, G. A. Wainwright and
E. MACKAY, The Labyrinth, Gerzeh and
Mazguneh (London, 1912).
A. B. Lloyd, 'The Egyptian Labyrinth 1 , JE. 4 56
(1970), 81-100.

D. Arnold, 'Das Labyrinth und seine Vorbilder',
MDAIKZS (1979), 1-9.

121

IIAWAWISII, EL-

J1KART

Hawawish, Bl-see vkhmim

hawker FALCON

headdresses

The insignia and regalia of Egyptian rulers
and deities included a wide variety of head-
dresses. The pharaoh invariably wore headgear
of some kind, ranging from the double crown
to the simple nemes headcloth (see cry n\ \s \\u
roi \i. regalia).

The deities' 1 headdresses were often
extremely distinctive, and from an
Egyptological point of view often serve as the
principal clue to the identity of the deity con-
cerned. Occasionally such attributes as the
headdress are transferred from one deity to
another in order to reflect the adoption of par-
ticular characteristics. The commonest head-
dresses are listed below :

Amentet (personification of the West): standard
surmounted hv a feather and bird.

Araun: crown with two tall plumes, also combinud

with a sun disc.

Anuket: crown or cap of feathers.

Alum: double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Gcb: either a goose or the crown of Lower Eg_\ pt

combined with the atefciavnx.

Ha (god of the Western Desert): the hieroglyph

for desert or hills.

Hathor: cow's horns and solar disc.

Keh: notched palm frond.

[ lorus: double crown or triple atef crown.

label (personification of the East): spear standard.

Isis: the hieroglyphic sign for tin-one, a pair of

cow 's horns and a solar disc, or a vulture

headdress.

Khons; lunar disc and crescent.

Maat: feather.

_\lin: double-plumed crown with ribbon Qi*

streamer hanging from the back.

VI ut: vulture headdress sometimes surmounted

by double crown.

Nefertem: lotus Rower.

EC3

Amentet label

Nephthys

(91®

Neith, Hemsut

Wadjyt

Lower Egypt, Hapy

Upper Egypt, Hapy

Atum, Horus

Nekhbet, Mut, Isis

Ra-Horakhty. Sekhmet

Neith: shield wirh two crossed arrows and crown

of Lower Egypt.

Xekhbet: vulture headdress or crown ofUppcr

Egypt.

Nephthys: hieroglyphs denoting 'mistress of the

house", consisting of a rectangle surmounted by a

basket shape.

Nut: ceramic vessel.

Osiris: ate/ 'crown.

Ptah: skull-cap,

Satet: white crown with antelope horns.

Serket: scorpion.

Seshat: star of five or seyen points.

Shu: ostrich feather.

Wascr/Wosret (goddess of rheTheban nome): \\ \s

scki'tri. with a ribbon, placed above the

hieroglyphic sign for nome {a field marked out

with irrigation channels).

heart

To the Egyptians the heart {haiy or //'), rather
than the brain, was regarded as the source of
human wisdom and the centre of the emotions
and memory. Its function in the circulation of
the blood was not understood, although one-
religious treatise states that the movement of
all parts of the body was determined hv the
heart. Because of its supposed links with intel-
lect, personality and memorv, it was consid-
ered to be the most important of the internal
organs.

Since it was felt that the heart could reveal
a person's true character, even after death, it
was left in die body during \u \imifk vi ION,
and if accidental!) removed would be sewn
back into place. There was some concern that
the heart might testify against its owner and so
condemn him or her at the judgement; in
order to prevent this, a heart SCAKAR was com-
monly wrapped w r ithin the bandages. The
inscription on this scarab usualh consisted of
Chapter 30 from the BOOK or 'nit. \w.wr. '0
my heart which I had from my mother; O my
heart which I had upon earth, do noi rise up
against me as a witness in the presence ol the
lord of things; do not speak against me con-
cerning what I have done, do not bring up any-
thing against me in the presence ol the great
god of the west . . .'

In the portrayal of the final judgement - a
popular vignette in copies of the Book ol the
Dead - the heart of the deceased \urs shown
being weighed against the feather of M ^ K\ "he
symbol of universal truth and harmony), and
the god Anubis was sometimes to be seen
adjusting;' the balance slightly in favour ol the
deceased to ensure a safe entry into the under-
world. The heart was thought to he given back
to the deceased in the afterlife; Chapters 2fr-V
of the Book of the Dead were then fore

HEH

HEIRESS THEORY

A selection of hear! scarabs and amulets: TOP LEFT
green faience scarab inscribed with Chapter 308 of
the Book of the Dead, 3rd Intermediate Period, L
6.7 cm. (l \(>(>817) top right steatite, very flat,
human-headed bean scarab inscribed on tbc
underside with Chapter 30a of the Booh of the
Dead fur the woman his. New Kingdom, /.. 6, 8 cm.
(t:\38073) BOTTOM LEFT green-glazed steatite
scarab inlaid with cornelian and bine glass. The
underside bears Chapter JOB of the Boob of the
Dead, New Km»dom, L. 4 J cm. (f- \66814)
BOTTOM {:r~\TRE polychrome glass heart amulet
with slightly convex faces, 18th Dynasty,
n. 2. / em. (r \29265) bottom right light
turquoise-blue glass, jlai-backed, convex-faced
heart. New Kingdom, n. 2.0 cm. (t:.i8128)

intended to ensure that the heart was restored
and could not he removed.

From the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC)
onwards, 'heart amulets', taking: the form ol a
vase with lug handles (perhaps representing the
blood vessels), were introduced into the funer-
ary equipment. The heading of Chapter 29b in
the Book of the Dead stated that such amulets
should be made of seheret stone (cornelian), but
there are many surviving examples which are
made from other materials, such as glass.
R. O. F-u LkNLR, The ancient Egyptian Book oj
the Dead, ed. C. \ndrcus (London, 1972), 52-6.
C. ANDREtt S, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,

1994), 72-3.

Heh

God of infinity, usually represented as a kneel-
ing man either holding a notched palm-rib
(hieroglyphic symbol for 'year 1 ) in each hand or
wearing a palm-rib on bis head. Occasionally
he is also shown carrying an Wkii sign over
his arm. The primary meaning of the term
heh was 'millions', but he w r as transformed
into the god of eternal life by such symbolic
associations with the concepts of 'year' and
'life'. His image was consequently incorpo-
rated into royal iconography as a means of
ensuring the king's longevity. With typical
Egyptian attention to DUALITY, the alternative
word for eternity, djel, was represented as a
female deity

Along with his consort Hauhel, Heh was
also one of the OGDOAD, a group of eight
primeval deities whose main cult centre was at
hermoi'Ous magna. The motif of Heh was
often incorporated into the decoration of royal
regalia as a means of ensuring longevity Heh
was also connected with the myth of the
'celestial COW', who was said to have been sup-
ported by a group of eight Heh deities; in the

Lid of a mirror-case from the tomb of
Tuttinkhamau. bearing a figure oj' the god Heh,
it. 27 cm. (ctiRn \<>. 27 lot), RSPSODtfGEO
cot tm;s-> or Tin. Ginrnri/ wsTTTi ft:)

same way Heh is often represented as holding
up the solar hark: and finally lifting it back
into the heavens at the end of its voyage

through the netherworld.

II. AlTK\\K]^m,'Uch\ Lexihoii dec .Igyplo/ogie \l.

ed. W. Ilelck, L. Otto and W. Wcstcndorf
(Wiesbaden, 1977), 10S2 4.
J. F. BORGHOl T5, 'Heh, Darreichen des\ l.ex/ko
derAgypiu/ogie il, ed. W. Hclck, E. Otto and
WWcstendorf {Wiesbaden, 1977), 10N4- 6.

heiress theory see aiimose nut.rtaki and

Heka see magic
Heket (Hcqat)

Goddess represented in the form of a frog, a
tvpical primordial creature which, at certain
times of the year, was observed to emerge from
the Nile, apparently reborn and thus perhaps
emphasizing the coming of new r life. She is
first attested in the PYRAMID TEXTS where she is
said to have assisted in the journey of the dead
king to the sky The remains of a temple of
Hekct have been excavated at Qus, and in the
tomb of I'ETOSiRi.s (f.300 bc) at Tuna el-Gebel
there is a text dealing with a procession in her
honour, in which she requests that her temple
at Her-wer (a still-unlocated site) he restored
and protected from the inundation.

I lekeFs strongest association was with
childbirth, particularly the final stages of
labour. During the Middle Kingdom
(2055—1650 lit;), she w 7 as depicted or named
on such magical artefacts as ivory daggers

123

HELIACAL RISING

HER1HOR

and clappers, in her role as protector of the
household and guardian of pregnant women;
The term 'servant of Heket' may have heen
applied to midwives. Just as the ram-god
khnum was considered to have been respon-
sible for fashioning the first humans on a pot-
ter's wheel, so Heket was portraved as his

Diorite-gneiss amulet in the form of 'the frog-
goddess Heket. New Kingdom-3rd Intermediate
Period, it. 1.4cm. (v..\1475H)

female complement in that she was credited
with fashioning the child in the womb and
giving it life.

Although amulets of Heket were less popu-
lar than those of BES or TAWEUET, they are not
uncommon, even during the reign of AKIIEN-
ATEN (1352-1336 BC), when many other tradi-
tional cults were proscribed. Her life-giving-
powers associated her with the myths sur-
rounding osirls, the god of the dead, and in
this capacity she was depicted as receiving
offerings from Sety I (1294-1279 Be) in his
temple at Abvdos.

C. Andrews, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,
1994),63.

heliacal rising see calendar and sotiiic

CYCLE

HeliopoliS (Tell Ilisn; anc. lunu, On)
One of the most important cult-centres of the
Pharaonie period and the site of the first
known sun temple, dedicated to the god Ra-
Horakbty (see ra), which was probably first
constructed in the early Old Kingdom (c.2600
bc). Although little remains of the site now, its
importance in the Pharaonie period was such
that araiant was sometimes described as the
'southern 1 leliopohY.

The 5th-Dynasty sun temple of Nyuscrra
(2445-2421 bc) at abl gcrab is thought to
have been modelled on the prototypical
Heliopohtan sun-temple complex. Because a
great deal of the original temple at Heliopolis
is now buried beneath the northwestern sub-
urb of Cairo, the only significant monument
still standing in situ is a pink granite obelisk
dating to the time of Senusret I (1965-1920
bc). There arc a number of surviving monu-
ments and fragments of relief from Heliopolis

that have been moved elsewhere, including the
obelisks re-erected in New York and London,
which both date to the reign of Thutmose ill
(1479-1425 bc).

The site also incorporates a Predvnaslic
cemetery and the tombs of the chief priests of
Heliopolis during the 6th Dynasty (2345-2181
bc). In an area now known as Arab el-Tawil
there was a necropolis of sacred M_\t;vis bulls
of the Ramesside period (1 295-1069 bc).
W. M. E Petrii. and E. M ack \i , flc/iojudis, Kafi
Ammar and Shurafa (London, 1915).
L. Habaciii, Akhcnaten in Heliopolis", Festschrift
Rich: Beitrage zur Agyptischen Bauforschung and
Altertumskuiule 12 (Cairo, 1971), 35-45.
F. Debono, The predynastic cemetery at He/hpolis
{Cairo, 1988).

Heqat see heket

Herakleopolis Magna (Ihnasya el-Medina;

anc. Henen-nesw)

Site located 15 km to the west of modern Beni
Suef, which reached its peak as the capital of
the 9th and 10th Dynasties during the First
Intermediate Period (2181-2055 bc). It was
renamed Herakleopolis Magna in the
Ptolemaic period (332—50 bc), when the
Greeks identified the local deity, a ram-god
called iierysitef, with their own god Herakles.
The surviving remains include two Pharaonie
temples, one of w r hich was dedicated to
Heryshef, and the nearby necropolis of

Granite column with a
palm-leaf capital, from
the temple of Heryshef at
Herakleopolis Magna.
Reign of Rameses it
c. 1250 BC, it. 5.2<S m.
(MI123)

Sedment el-Gebel, which incorporates a
cemetery of the First Intermediate Period and
rock-tombs of the Ptolemaic and Roman peri-
ods (332 lie— \ej 395). The main temple of
Heryshef was founded at least as early as ihe
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc) and signifi-
cantly enlarged during the reign of Rameses n
(1279-1213 bc), when a irvms'ni.E n\i.,i vras
constructed.

The site also flourished during the Third
Intermediate Period (1069-747 bc), and the
surviving remains of this date include a ceme-
tery, a large temple and part of the settlement.
When the temple was excavated by a Spanish
team during the 1980s, the finds included a
libation altar and a pair of inlaid eyes thought
to derive from a cult statue. The same team
has also excavated parts of the First
Intermediate Period and Third Intermedial c
Period cemeteries.

E.Nmi.i.F, -Ihnas el Mediae/, ( Hcracleupuiis
Magna) (London, 1894).

W. M. E Petrie, Ehuasyn 1904 (London, 1905).
J. Lope/., 'Rapport prcliminaire sur les foirilles
d 1 IIerakleopolis(1968)\ Oriens Autiquas 13
(1974), 299-316.

J. PADRtJ and M. Perez-Die, 'Travails reccnts tic
la mission archeologique espagnole a
Herakleopolis Magna 1 , Akten Mi'tnchen 1985 □,
ed. S. Schoske (Hamburg, 1989), 229-37.
M. Perez-die, 'Discoveries at Heraclcopolis
Magna 1 , Egyptian . trchaadogy n (1995), 25-5.

Herihor(//. 1080-1070 bc)
High priest of Anion at Thebes during the
reign of the last 20th-Dynasty ruler RAMESES
xi (1099-1069 bc). Inscriptions in the last
decade of the Dynasty refer to a 'renaissance
era 1 , during which, although Rameses was still
nominally the only legitimate ruler, i he
administration of Egypt was effectively divid-
ed between three men: the pharaoh himself,
whose power-base was in Memphis and
Middle Egypt, smendes (his eventual succes-
sor) who controlled most of Lower Egvpt from
the Delta city of tanks, and Herihor, who
dominated Upper Egvpt and Nubia.

The origins of Herihor are poorly known,
but it is thought likelv that his parents were
Libyan. The textual studies of Jansen-
Winkeln increasingly suggest that Piankhi,
onee thought to be Herihor's son and succes-
sor, was the father-in-law of Herihor (see
new ki\(ino\i). B\ the last decade of
Rameses xfs reign, Herihor had acquired the
titles of high priest of Amun atThebes, gen-
eralissimo and vicerov OF klsm, a combina-
tion of offices that must have brought him to
the brink of ruling as a pharaoh in his own
right. Indeed, in one relief in the temple of

124

HERIHOR

HERMOPOLIS MAGNA

-~ mm

Ike

siili

Df/rt/7 «/'//»< £«4 o/ft&e Dad papyrus <f Heritor,
showing the deceased arid his wife, hale Neip
Kingdom, a/070 BC. (t: i!0541)

Khons at KARNAK, his name is written in a
cartouche and he is explicitly portraved as
equal in status to the king, while in another
relief elsewhere in the temple he is shown
wearing the double crown.

Both Herihor and his wife Nodjmet were
given cartouches in the inscriptions on their
funerary equipment, but this 'kingship'
seems to have been limited to a few relatively
restricted contexts within the confines of
Thebes, and it was Rameses xi\s name that
appeared in administrative documents
throughout the country. Apart from the
reliefs at Karnak, the only significant surviv-
ing monuments of Herihor arc a statue
(Egyptian Museum, Cairo) and a stele
(Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden), and
no traces of his tomb have been found in
western Thebes.

His rule over the Theban region was the
chronological setting for the Report of
IVenamitn (the text of which is preserved on a
single papyrus now in the Pushkin Museum,
Moscow). This literary classic, which may
possibly be based on a true account, narrates
the difficulties encountered bv an Egyptian
diplomat sent by Herihor to bring back timber
from SYRIA at a time when Egyptian influence
in the Levant was on the wane.
G. Lefebvre, Histoire des grands pret res d' Anion
de Kuriiiik jiisaii'd la v v/e dynastic (Paris, 1929).

<4^

M. LlCIITIII'.lM, Ancient Egyptian literature ll

(Berkeley, 1976), 224-30 [translation of the

Report oflloiainnn]

M.-A. BONIIEME, 'Herihor, fut-il effeetivement

rai:\ BIJAOH-) (1979), 267-84.

K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in

Egypt (HOO-bSO lie), 2nd ed. (Warminster,

1986), 16-23, 248-52, 535-41.

K. Janskn-Winkki a, "Das Ende des \euen

Seiches', ZAS 119 (1992), 22-37.

HermopoMs Magna (el-Ashmunein; anc.

Khmun)

Ancient Pharaonic capital of the 15th Lpper

Egyptian NOME and cult-centre of Thoth,

located to the west of the Nile, close to the

position of a pair
of colossi of Thoth
as a baboon

/ f"

enclosure \\

\\ temple of
'# ; TTioth

{ temple of Amun
^^^^W, Christian basili

ica

100 200 300 400 500 m
seated colossi of Rameses II modern settlement

modern town of Mallawi. The site was badly
plundered during the early Islamic period
but there are still surviving traces of temples
dating to the Middle and New Kingdoms,
including a pylon constructed by Rameses it
(1279-1213 BC) which contained stone
blocks quarried from the temples of
Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC) at EL-AMARNA, a
few kilometres to the southeast. There are
also substantial remains of a COPTIC basilica
constructed from the remains of a Ptolemaic
temple built entirely in a Greek architectur-
al style. The nearby cemetery of TUNA el-
GEUEL includes two of the rock-cut 'bound-
ary stelae' 1 of Akhenaten, the tomb-chapel of
petosiris (c. 300 dc), a temple of Thoth and
extensive catacombs dating mainly from the
27th Dynasty to the Roman period (c.525
BC— AD 3 ( )5).

G. Rof.ijer, Hermopolis 1929 39 (Ilildesheim,
1959).

J. D. Coonf.v, Amarna reliefs from Hcrmopulis in
American collections (Brooklyn, 1965).
G. Roeder and R. Hanke, Ainama-reliefs aus
Hermopolis, 2 vols (Hiidesheim, 1969-78).
A.J. Spencer and D. M. BAn.EY, Excavations at
el-Ashmunein, 4 vols (London, 1983-93).
A.J. Spencer, Ashmunem 19X0-19X5: a
practical approach to townsite excavation 1 ,
Problems and priorities in Egyptian archaeology^
ed. J. Assmann et al. (London, 1987), 255-60.

above One of the colossal statues of the god Thoth
as a baboon, at Hermopolis _ Magna. Reign of
Amenhotep tit, c. 1370 BC ft. sit W j

left Plan of Hermopolis Magna.

125

HERODOTUS

J^SVRA

Herodotus (<\484-<r.420 bc)

Greek traveller and historian born at
Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, whose works are
a particularly valuable source for the later his-
tory of Egypt. Some scholars have described
him as the 'father of history', although others
have called him 'father of lies 1 , because of his
supposedly fantastic tales. Nevertheless, a
number of his stories have subsequently been
vindicated by archaeology (see ti:u. ijast-\).

The nine books of Herodotus* Histories
were written between 430 and 425 BC, and
principal!) describe the struggles between the
G8KKKS and the Persians, although the second
book is devoted to Egypt, apparently drawing
heavilv on personal experiences.

His travels in Egypt, which took place in
about 450 BC, may have extended as far south
as Aswan, although he gives no detailed
account of Thebes, concentrating instead on
the Delta. His information was largelv pro-
vided by Egyptian priests, many of whom
probably held only minor offices and would
perhaps have been anxious to take advantage
of an apparently gullible visitor in order to
show off their assumed knowledge.
Nevertheless, his account of Egypt in the
fifth century BC has been largely substantiat-
ed, and his astute observations included the
identification of the pyramids as royal burial
places. A major source of information on
MUMMIFICATION and other ancient Egyptian
religious and funerary customs, he attracted
numerous ancient imitators, including
STRABO (who visited Egypt in c.M) ik) and
DIODORLS stcu.u.s.
W. G. WaDDELL, Heradolus, Book n (London,

1939).

J, \\"n.so\, Herodotus in E&rpi (Leiden, 1970).

A. B. Lloyd, Herodotus Book ttJ: an introduction

(Leiden, 1975}.

— , Herodotus Booh ti.2; cammentmy !-%'

(Leiden, 1976).

— , Herodotus Booh ll.2: commentary ( > ( >-lS2

(Leiden, 1988).

Heryshef (Arsaphes)

Fertility god usually represented in the form
of a ram or ram-headed man, who was wor-
shipped in the region of HER aki.f.opoi.is
MAGNA, near modern Beni Suef, from at least
as earh as the 1st Dynasty (3100-2890 BC),
according to the PALERMO STONE. The etymol-
ogy of Heryshef 's name, which literally means
'he who is upon his lake', suggests that he was
considered to be a creator-god who emerged
from the primeval waiters of the sacred lake.
The first-century Greek historian Plutarch
rendered the name as Arsaphes and translated
it as 'manliness 1 , but he was probably simply

taking an Egyptian pun at face value. Heryshef
was at various times associated with the sun-
god Ra and the god of the dead OSIRIS: he is
therefore sometimes portrayed with either the
sun-disc headdress or the alcf crown (see
CROWNS WD ROI \I. REGALIA).
G. Hart, A dictionary of Egyptian gods and
goddesses (London, 1986), 85-7.

Hesyfa (Hesy) (c JZ66G bc)

Official of the time of the .hd-Dynasty ruler
DJOSliR (2667-2648 bc:), whose titles included
the posts of 'overseer of the royal scribes,
greatest of physicians and dentists 1 . His
mastaua tomb (S2405 [\3]), located to the
north of the Step Pyramid at SAQCJARA, was
discovered by Auguste Mariettc in the 1880s,
and re-excavated, about thirty years later, by
James Quibell.

The tomb has an elaborate corridor chapel
with palace-facade decoration (sec skri:kh)
along its west wall consisting of eleven niches,
each of which would originally have been
brightly painted in matting patterns. At the
back of each niche stood a carved wooden
panel, only six of which had survived at the
time of discovery (now in the Egvptian
Museum, Cairo). The panels are sculpted

stairs

shaft

hidden niches

painted corridor

outer corridor

serdab (statue chamber)

\iio\K Detail of Q wooden stele jrmn the lowb <>j
Hesyra at Saqtjara, 3rd Dynasty. C.26S& BC, ll. of

complete stele I 14 cm. (cdmojE28S04, i. sit mi )

with the figure of Hcsvra in various costumes,
while the beautiful!) caned hieroglyphs pre-
sent his name and titles. The eastern wall of
this corridor was decorated with delicutcb
painted carvings of furniture and offerings,
carefully set out as if arranged in a shelter of
matting. In an outer corridor was the earliest
representation of a crocodile awaiting unwary
cattle as they crossed a stream, a theme that
was to be repeated mam times in later
maslabas. The burial itself was located in a
subterranean chamber connected with the
superstructure bv a shaft. The tomb was one
of the Hrst to incorporate a SERDAB (si.uue
chamber).

A. Mvkir/i tk, Les oms/ahas dc /' Inc/eii Empire
(Paris, 1882-9).
J. E. Qt tBFJX, The lomh of Hesy: excavations at

Samara (Cairo, 1913),

W. Woon, 'A reconstruction of the reliefs of

Hesy-re\.7 -IKC£ 15 (1978), 9-24.

_\L Salem and II. SouROtiziAX, The Egyptian

Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (Mainz, 1987).
no. 21.

' The masiaha lomh uj 'Hesyra (s iqq in i

2405).

126

HETEPHERES I

HIERAKONPOLIS

Hetepheres i(r.26()0isc)
Early -kh-Dynasly queen, who was the princi-
pal wife of SNEFEKU (2613-2589 Be), the moth-
er of KHOFL (2589-2566 hc) and probably also
the daughter of Huni, last ruler of the 3rd
Dynasty. Little is known of her life, but her
well-preserved burial at GIZA (g7000x) was dis-
covered in 1925 b\ the staff photographer of
the Harvard-Boston expedition, led by
George Reisner.

The excavation of an area of unexplained
white plaster on the eastern side of the Great
Pyramid revealed a tomb shaft leading to a
small empty room, deep below which was a
concealed burial chamber. This contained a

Canopy, bed and chair from the lamb ofQiieen
Hetepheres. 4th Dynasty, c.2(>00 lie. (t-avi'Ti i\

MUSEUM, CAIRO)

sealed sarcophagus, a mass of gilded wood in a
very poor state of preservation, and a number of
items of metal work. Inscriptions on some of the
objects indicated that the tomb belonged to
Hetepheres, the mother of Khufu, whose
funerary equipment had apparently been hasti-
ly reburied. Although the sarcophagus was
empty, a concealed niche was found to contain
an alabaster canopic box, with resid ues believed
to derive from the ml'.m.mifk:atjon of her body.
Reisner believed that the remains of
Hetepheres' funerary equipment had been
reburied by Khufu after her original tomb,
perhaps located near that of Sneferu at
DARsiiut, was robbed. However no tomb of
Hetepheres has yet been found at Dahshur,
and indeed the only evidence for her existence
derives from Tomb g7()00x. This has led Mark
Lehner to suggest that the Giza shaft tomb
was in fact the queen's original place of burial
but that her body and the majority of the
equipment were reburied under Gi-a, the first
of the 'satellite pyramids' to the east of
Khufu's main pyramid. This theory might also
explain the damage inflicted on the sarcopha-
gus, pottery and furniture of the original
tomb. It is still not clear, however, why die

canopic chest was not removed, although it is
possible that g7000x was felt to be so close to
the satellite pyramid as not to require the
transfer of canopic equipment. Ironically, it
was probably the lack of a superstructure that
helped to preserve the original burial, whereas
pyramid cii-a was robbed in ancient times.

The careful restoration of the finds (now in
the Egyptian Museum, Cairo) has yielded
some ol the best evidence for funerary equip-
ment during the Old Kingdom, providing
insights into the likely wealth of a full royal
burial of the period. The items of gilded
wooden furniture included a carrying chair, a
bed and an elaborate canopy that would prob-
ably have been erected over the bed.
G. A. Relsnkk and "VV. S. Smith, .-/ history of the
Gtza necropolis n: The fWith "fPJetepheres. the
mother of Cheops (Cambridge, MA, 1955).
_M. Lkl i\i:r. The pyramid tomb oj ' Hetep-heres and
the satellite pyramid of I\lmjn (Mainz, 1985).

Hiba, el- (anc. Teudjoi; Ankyronpolis)
Settlement site incorporating a poorly pre-
served temple of "Amun of the crag' (or L Amun
great of roarings'), constructed by Sheshonq I
(945-924 lit:). From the late 20th to the 22nd
Dynasty (1100-715 ur.), the town of Teudjoi
functioned as an important frontier fortress
between the zones controlled by the cities of
Herakleopohs Magna and Hermopolis Magna.
Large numbers of bricks from the enclosure
wall were stamped with the names of
Pinudjem I and Menkheperra, who were
powerful Theban chief priests of Amun-Ra
in the early 21st Dynasty (r.1050 isc) who
presumably established a residence at el-Hiba.

After a period of decline during the Late
Period {747-332 nv.) the town regained its
importance under the name of Ankyronpolis
in the Greco-Roman period (£.304 hc-ad 395),
when it once more developed into a military
settlement. The earliest excavations at el-Hiba
concentrated either on the cemeteries, where
there were caches of Greek and demotic-
papyri, or on the Greco-Roman areas of the
town. In 1980, however, the American archae-
ologist Robert Wenke conducted a surface sur-
vey ol' the entire site, including test excava-
tions within the settlement, which indicate
that Teudjoi was founded at least as early as
the New Kingdom.

B. Grenfeij. and A. IK vr, The Hibeli papyri i
(London, 1906).

II. RANKE, Kojniscbe f'ried/ioje be/ Karara and der
. lmtmtempel Seheschonks t. bet el llibe (Berlin,
1926).

E. G. Turner, The Hibeli papyri a (London,
1955).
R.J, Wenke, irchMohgkatmvcstigmhmMel-

Ihbeb 19.S0: Preliminary report (Malibu, 1984).

HierakonpollS (Kom el-Ahmar; anc
Nekhen)

Settlement and necropolis, 80 km south of
Luxor, which was particularly associated with
the hawk-god horu.s, the Greek name of the
town meaning 'city of the hawk/falcon 1 . It
nourished during the late Predynastic and
Early Dynastic periods (c. 4000-2 686 bc). One

Plan showing the location of the principal
settlement and cemetery areas af Hierakonpolh.

500 m

1 i'/" 2

750 1

/ J

/ Wadf'Abu Suffron

J f"* 2

; ^

\\ v i $&£

^^2^ uV ^ „i

\ "\

c ,

""X 3?

/^>„ 2

\ '%,,*

;>■*'"

the Painted ^<^ ll „->"\

J? _^-

1 Predynastic settlement

Tomb no. 100

N^VM!! 1 ' 1 " ^

W' / 2

2 Predynastic cemeteries

3 2nd-Dynasty 'fort

)§

K^tmumm^

'"/„ t ^-'"tniM*' 1

historic town with temple of Horus

~~ J ai!»-.ii,i' , '"" l »«i>"' .

and 'Main Deposit', overlying

Predynastic settlement

127

HIERATIC

HIEROGLYPHS

of the most important discoveries in the
Predynastic cemetery is Tomb 100, a late
Gcrzean brick-lined burial which was the first
Egyptian tomb to be decorated with wall-
paintings (sec ycr), but the location of this so-
called Painted Tomb is no longer known. The
poorly recorded excavation of the town of
Ilierakonpolis undertaken bv James Quibcll
and F. W. Green included the discovery of the
'Main Deposit', a stratum between two walls
relating to an Old Kingdom temple complex
within the settlement. The Main Deposit
seems to have consisted primarily of ceremo-
nial objects dating to the Protodynastic period
(c.3000 BC), including the \ar\ier palette and
scorpion macehead. However, because of a
lack of accurate published plans and strati-
graphic sections, the true date and significance
of this crucial Protodynastic assemblage
remain unclear. Further survey and excava-
tions at Hierakonpolis took place in the 1970s
and 1980s, not only identifying a range of
Predvnastie sites in the desert surrounding the
town but also shedding further light on socio-
economic patterning of the Early Dynastic
town and identifying the onlv known example
of a Predynastic shrine. The so-called 'fort' of
km v.si'.Ki n:\i\u has now been identified as a
'funerary enclosure' like the Shunet el-Zebib

at AliVDOS.

J. E. Qi iBKi.i. and F. W. Gules, HiemktmpoJis, 2

vols (London, 1900-2).

B.J. KEMP, 'Photographs of the decorated tomb

arHicrakanpolis\7'£_J 59(1973), 36-43.

B. ADAMS, Ancient Hierakonpolis (Warminster,

1974).

M. A. HOFFMAN etal., 'A model of urban

development for the Ilierakonpolis region from

predvnastie through Old Kingdom times',

JARCE 23 £1986), 175-87.

B. ADAMS, The fori cemetery tit flierakonpo/is

(excavated by John Garsttmg) (London, 1988).

hieratic (Greek hkratika: 'sacred')
Script dating from the end of the Early
Dynastic period (t\2686 bc) onwards. The
essentially cursive hieratic script was based on
the hieroglyphic symbols that had emerged
some five centuries earlier, but it should not be
confused with 'cursive hieroglyphs', which
were used for most of the Pharaonic period in
such religious writings as the coffin TEXTS
and the book, of THE DEAD, Hieratic was always
written from right to left, whereas the orienta-
tion of cursive hieroglvphs varied. Until the
11th Dynasty (2055-1985 bc) hieratic docu-
ments were arranged mainlv in columns, but
most texts from the 12th Dynasty (1985-1795
bc) onwards consisted of horizontal lines. It
was also in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650

::==*

£ : !S3:

, V V-<A-

„-'-'-'

M . .

' :-.«•>!_. _.t

Si" •

,; ".

:: : .: :;

One sheet of the Great Harris Papyrus, a hieratic
document consisting of a list of temple endowments
and a short summary of the reign ofRameses ill.
It is the longest surviving papyrus roll, measuring
41 m. Reign oj'Rameses t\: c.I / 50 bc, from
Thebes, it. 42.5 an. (JL-i9999, siilet75)

bc) that hieratic began to be written in differ-
ent slvles, ranging from the rapid 'business'
hand to the more aesthetically pleasing 'liter-
air' hand.

With the development of hieratic, scribes
were able to write more rapidly on papyri and
ostraca, and this script - rather than the more
cumbersome hieroglvphs — became the pre-
ferred medium for scribal tuition (see educa-
tion). There was also an even more cursive
form of the script known as 'abnormal hierat-
ic 1 , which was used for business texts in
Upper Egypt during the 'Third Intermediate
Period (1069-747 bc). B\ the 2blh Dynasty
(664-525 bc) the demotic script had emerged
out of the so-called 'business hieratic' of
Lower Egypt.

G. Moller, Hieratische Eesestiicke, 3 vols

(Leipzig, 1909-10).

— , Hieratische Puldogmphie, 3 vols (Leipzig,

1909-12).

R.J. Williams, 'Scribal training in ancient

Egypt* , JAOS 92 (1972), 214-21.

W.V. BaTIES, Egyptian hieroglyphs (London,

1987), 21-3-

hieroglyphs (Greek: 'sacred caned [letters |')
The Egyptian hieroglyphic script, consisting
of three basic types of sign (phonograms,
logograms and 'determinatives') arranged in
horizontal and vertical lines, was in use from
the late Gerzean period (r.3200 bc) to the hue
fourth centurv ad. The last known datable
hieroglyphic inscription, on the gate of
Hadrian at Philae, was carved on 24 August \\>
394. The apparently low level of literacv in
Pharaonic Egypt (estimated at perhaps as low
as 0.4 per cent of the population) has led to the
suggestion rhat hieroglyphic texts were
employed by the elite as a means of restricting
knowledge and power.

The decipherment of hieroglyphs by Jean-
Frangois CHAMPOLUON, primarily through his
examination of the trilingual decree inscribed
on the ro.setta stone, was undoubtedly the
single greatest event in the development of
Egyptology, providing the key to an under-
standing of the names, history and intellectual
achievements of the ancient Egyptians.

Painted hieroglyphs on the inferior of the outer
coffin oj the physician Sent. Middle Kingdom,
c.2000 tic, /tainted mood, from Deir el-Bersha,
it. 15 cm. (t;i30X41)

128

HIEROGLYPHS

HIPPOPOTAMUS

Hieroglyphs were primarily used as deserip-
tive components of the carved reliefs decorat-
ing temples and funerary monuments. It was
felt that the hieroglyphic names of gods,
people and animals were as capable of posing
a threat as the living entity itself - for this
reason many of the signs in the PYRAMID TEXTS
and some coffin texts were deliberately
abbreviated and mutilated in order to neutral-
ize any potential dangers within the royal
tomb.

Although a total of more than six thousand
hieroglyphic signs have been identified, the
majority of these were introduced during the
Ptolemaic and Roman periods. In the
Pharaonic period fewer than a thousand sym-
bols are attested, and an even smaller number
were in regular use. There was a nucleus of
frequent basic signs, and others were evident-
ly invented and introduced as they became
necessary, sometimes providing an indication
of changes in material culture. The signs were
written in continuous lines without any punc-
tuation or spaces to show where words or sen-
tences began or ended. The orientation of the
letters was usually towards the right, so that
the text was read from right to left and top to
bottom, although in certain instances (such as
the engrav ing of two symmetrica] inscriptions
on either side of a stele or relief) the orienta-
tion was from left to right.

As in Egyptian art, the individual signs of
the hieroglyphic script are essentially dia-
grams of the phenomenon or entity in ques-
tion; whether the sign is representing a loaf of
bread, an owl or a human figure, it was intend-
ed that the ideogram should consist of the
most characteristic and visually familiar ele-
ments of its physical appearance — thus most
birds are shown completely in profile, but one
exception is the owl, which, because of its dis-
tinctive eyes, has its face shown frontally.

Thc logograms and determinatives in
hieroglyphic script were both essentially
depictions of (he things that they represented:
thus logograms were individual signs whose
meaning was broadly equivalent to their
appearance (i.e. a shorthand diagram of the
sky meant '.sky'). Determinatives were pic-
tures of types of things, placed at the ends of
words made up of phonograms in order to
indicate what types of words they were (i.e.
the verb ivesheb, meaning 'to answer 1 , was fol-
lowed by a sign consisting of a man holding
his hand to his mouth). The phonograms con-
sist of three types: twenty-six uniconsonantal
signs (each representing a single consonant,
e.g. the quail-chick sign, pronounced w),
about a hundred biconsonantal signs (pairs of
consonants, such as the diagram of a house-

plan, which was pronounced />;■), and forty to
fifty triconsonantal signs (e.g. the logogram
representing the adjective 'good 1 , which was
pronounced nfr).

The main problem encountered in pro-
nouncing a section of hieroglyphic text is that
there were no vowels in the written form of
ancient Egyptian, only consonants. The study
of the Coptic language (which evolved out of
the ancient Egyptian language), as well as var-
ious surviving transliterations of Egyptian
words into other ancient scripts (such as
ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN and Greek), has enabled
the 'vocalization'' of many Egyptian words to
be at least partially reconstructed. However,
the conventional method of making the conso-
nants pronounceable is to read the signs ' and
3 as if they were the letter a, and to insert the
letter e wherever necessary; thus the words s\
pr and nfr are conventionally pronounced as
sa, per and nefer.

There were three basic stages in the devel-
opment of the hieroglyphic script: early, mid-
dle and late; it was highly conservative and
continually lagged behind the spoken lan-
guage in both vocabulary and syntax. A cru-
cial distinction therefore needs to be made
between the stages in the development of the
language and the various phases of its written
form. The language has one distinct break, in
the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 Etc), when
'synthetic' Old and Middle Egyptian, charac-
terized by inflected verb endings, was
replaced, in the spoken language at least, by
the 'analytical' form of Late Egyptian, with a
verbal structure consisting of articulated ele-
ments. Egyptian is the only 'language of
aspect' for which the change from the 'syn-
thetic' stage to 'analytical' can actually be
sttidied in its written form.

The hieroglyphic system was used for
funerary and religious texts while the cursive

hieratic script was used primarily for admin-
istrative and literary texts. Bv the 26th
Dynasty (664—525 bc) demotic had replaced
hieratic, and for a number of centuries the
Greek and demotic scripts were used side bv
side, eventually being superseded by Coptic.
See language for chart of hieroglyphs.
See also funerary texts; LIBRARIES; LITERA-
TURE; PAPYRUS and SCRIBES.
A. Ii. GARDINER, Egyptian grammar, being an
introduction la the study of hieroglyphs, 3rd ed.
(Oxford, 1957),

C. A. Andrews, The Rose tin Stone (London, I9S1).
J. R. Baines, 'Literacy and ancient Egyptian
society', Man 18(1983), 572-99.
J. D. Rav , 'The emergence of writing in Egypt',
WA 17/3 (1986), 390-8.
W V. Davif, Fgyptfin hieroglyphs (London.
1987).

II. G. Fischer and R. A. Camisos, Ancient
Egyptian epigraphy ami palaeography, 3rd cd.
(New York, 1987).

hippopotamus

Riverine mammal that nourished in Egypt
until well into Dynastic times. The date of its
disappearance in Egypt is debatable, but it was
certainly still present during the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 uc). Like the crocodile,
the male hippopotamus was regarded as a nui-
sance and a doer of evil, because it often tram-
pled and devoured crops; a New Kingdom
school text makes this clear: 'Do you not recall
the fate of the farmer when the harvest is reg-
istered? The worm has taken half the grain,
the hippopotamus has devoured the rest...' It
was probably for this reason that hippopota-
mus hunts were organized as early as the pre-
historic period. Many of the mastaba tombs of
the Old Kingdom, such as that of the 5th-
Dynasty official TV at Saqqara (no. 60), includ-
ed depictions of the spearing of hippopotami.

Faience statuette of a

hippopotamus.

1 2th- 1 3th Dynasties,

it. 9.2 cm. (B 135044)

129

HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

HITTITES

Such hunts might have given rise to a rova!
ceremony in which the king's ritual killing of a
hippopotamus was svmbolie of the overthrow
of evil, as in the myth of jiorls and SETH. In
this myth, Horns was often portrayed in the
act of harpooning Seth as a hippopotamus
(although in other contexts Seth was depicted
as a crocodile, an ass or a typhonian animal).
This scene was Frequently repeated on the
walls of temples, most notably that of Ilorus at
kdi'L, as well as in tomb scenes and in the form
of royal funerary statuettes such as those
showing Tutankhamun with his harpoon and
coils ot rope.

However, the female hippopotamus had a
beneficent aspect, in the form of tawtret ('the
great [female] one 1 ), the pregnant hippopota-
mus-goddess who was among the most popu-
lar of the household gods, and particularly
associated with women in childbirth. In
pi.itarch's version of the myth of Ilorus and
Seth, Taweret was the consort of Seth, who
deserted him for Horus.

During the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650
Be), large numbers of blue faience figurines of
hippopotami were created, probably for
funerary use, although their popularity with
art collectors is such that few have been
obtained from archaeological excavation,
therefore their provenances are poorly
known. It is usuallv assumed, however, that
these statuettes, whose bodies are frequently
decorated with depictions of vegetation, were
associated with fertility and the regenerative-
effect of the Nile.

T. Savf.-Soderberuh, On Egyptian representations
iij kippopotmffits hunting as a religious motive
(Uppsala, 1953).

II. Kkks, 'Das 'Test der Weissen" und die Stadt
Sm\ Z-/S83(1958), 127-9.

A. Bt:i jRMANN", Das Nitpfcrd in tier I ustelluugswe/l
tier Mien \gypteu I (Frankfurt, 1989).

history and historiography

Defining Egyptian history is as difficult a task
as defining Egyptian 'literature 1 ; in both cases,
modern scholars are inevitably attempting to
impose upon the Egyptian sources modern
concepts and categories that would often have
had no real meaning or relevance to the
ancient writers. The types of ancient Egyptian
texts that are usuallv described as 'historical 1
would have had a very different function when
they were originally composed (see, for
instance, king lists); they therefore have to be
carefully interpreted if genuinelv 'historical 1
data are to be extracted from them.

The Canadian Egvptologist Donald
Redford defines true history as The telling of
events involving or affecting human beings

(not necessarily, though usually, in narrative
form), which took place prior to the time of
composition, the chief aim of which is to
explain those events for the benefit, predilec-
tion and satisfaction of contemporaries, and
not for the enhancement of the writer's per-
sonal reputation 1 . In fact William Hayes sug-
gests, in the Cambridge Ancient History, that
there arc only four surviving Egyptian histor-
ical texts that would conform to a definition
such as that given by Redford: these are the
stelae of kamose (t. 1555— 1550 ik;), describing
his bailies against the llyksos; the Amtafa of
Tlintinuse in (1479-1425 BC), describing his
campaigns in Syria-Palestine; and the
Victory Stele of m (747-716 hi:), describing
his conquest of Egypt. Redford adds to these
Hatshepsui's speech inscribed in the SPEOS
ARTK.uinos rock-temple, a possibh fictional
speech made by uuiksks hi (11 84 — 1 1 53 bc) at
the end of the Great Harris Papyrus and
Osorkon's description of the Theban rebel-
lions in the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 Be). A further text which may now
be added to this list is a fragment of the
annals of \MEMEMHAT II (1922-1878 BC), dis-
covered at Memphis in the mid-1950s but not
published until 1980, which shows that some-
thing approximating to the modern concept
of a historical record (although lacking anv
analytical component) was already being
compiled in the Middle Kingdom (2055-
1650 bc), in the form of detailed records of
the political and religious events from each
year of a king's reign.

How r ever, notwithstanding the few excep-
tions listed above, the vast majority of such
narrative-structured and ceremonial texts
surviving from Egypt were concerned much
more with preserving and transmitting
national traditions or with performing a par-
ticular religious or funerary role, rather than
being attempts lo present objective accounts
of the past. Even the supposedly historical
fragments of Egyptian texts such as the
Kamose stelae, the Speos Artemidos 'speech'
and the Annals ofTlititmose in are effectively
components of the temples in which thev
were found: they therefore differ consider-
ably from the true historical tradition inau-
gurated by the Greek historian HERODOTUS
(c.484— r.420 BC) in that they incorporate a
high degree of symbolism and pure ritual. In
their cult of the king's personality they arc-
closer to the Res gestae glorifying the deeds
of the Roman emperor Augustus than the
more 'journalistic' histories written by
Thucydides or Tacitus, in which the stated
aim at least is to present the objective truth
about past events.

The contents of most of die monumental
texts and reliefs on the walls of Egyptian
tombs and temples are much closer to the
symbolic and static world of myth than lo his-
tory. There is a common tendency to regard
myth as a form of 'primitive history', but this
is rarefy the case. Redford makes a good dis-
tinction between myth and history; 'The
meaning of myths has nothing to do with their
having occurred in the past, but rather with
their present significance. . .Horus's champi-
oning of his father, the upliftings of Shu, the
murder of Osiris — these are all primordial
events, timeless and ever-present; and neither
king nor priest who re-enacts them can be said
to lid 111 an historic role, or to be commemorat-
ing "history"'.

L. Bun., 'Ancient Egypt 1 , The idea of history in
the _ Inriciit Near East, ed. J. Obermann (New
Haven and London, 1955).

D. B. Redford, Phaniouic king-lists, annals and
day-books: a contribution to the study of the
Egyptian sense of history (Mississauga, 1986).

E. Hornunu, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 147-64.

J. Malek, 'The annals ol'Amenemhat n 1 , Egyptian
irchaeoiogy2{l992),lt

Hittites

People of somewhat obscure origins, described
by die Egyptians as Kheta, who settled in
Anatolia in the third millennium BC, Although
they themselves were speakers of an Indo-
European language, in time their empire
absorbed the Hurrian-speaking people of
\iiT.-\\\i, and the Akkadian language was fre-
quently used for diplomatic and commercial
correspondence.

During the Hittite Old Kingdom
(c. 1750-1 450 bc), the nucleus of the state was
established in central Anatolia, with its capital
initially at Kussara and later at the belter-
known site of Boghazkbv (ancient Hattusas).
By the sixteenth century ik: they had con-
quered Syria, and at one stage the empire
stretched as far south as babylon.

During this period of imperial expansion
(c. 1450-1200 bc) the Hittites appear to have
concentrated on reinforcing their grip over
northern Syria, thus displacing the
Mitannians and bringing them into direct
conflict with ASSYRIA and Egypt

The most famous of their military con-
frontations with Egypt took place during the
early reign of Rameses n (1279-1213 bc), cul-
minating in the battle of qadesii in 1274 BC,
which was commemorated on many of
Rameses' temples. The stalemate that resulted
from this battle, in which both Rameses and
the Hittite king Muwatallis appear to have

130

HIW-SEMAINA REGION

HOREMAKHET

claimed victory, eventually led to the signing
of a peace treaty in the twenty-first, year of
Ramescs' 1 reign. This document is preserved
both on Egyptian monuments and on
Akkadian cuneiform tablets from Boghazkov.
Rameses cemented the alliance by marrying a
Hittitc princess, an act that was celebrated by
the Hittitc marriage stele at Abu Simbel. This
was not, however, the first attempt to link the
two great powers. A letter discovered in the
Hittite archives is believed to have been sent
by a royal woman of the late Amarna period
(perhaps Ankhesenamun, widow of
tl T\\kii\\iL\), requesting the Hittitc king
Suppiluliumas I to send one of his sons to be
her husband. The prince in question, however,
was murdered en route to Egypt and the pro-
posed marriage seems newer to have taken
place.

It was also during the Hittite imperial phase
that a closely guarded technique for smelting
iron was discovered, and iron is certainly one
of the commodities mentioned in the arm ar\ \
LETTERS as being imported into Egypt in small
quantities. An iron dagger in the tomb of
Tmankhamun no doubt derived from the same
source. Even among the Hittites themselves,
iron seems to have been regarded as an
extremeb precious metal, suitable only for
prestige goods.

The Anatolian heartland of the Hittite
empire finally began to disintegrate in the late
thirteenth century DC, perhaps as a result of
the appearance of the ska peoples whose
migrations also threatened Egypt. This left
only the rump of their empire in Syria, con-
sisting of a group of 'Nco-Hittite 1 city-states
which were finally absorbed by vssvria in the
eighth century lie.

J. Vergotk, Toutankhamon dans les archives
hit tiles {Istanbul, 1%1).
K. A. Kitchen, Snppilniuima and /he _ hnarmt
pharaohs (Liverpool, 1962).
— , Pharaoh triumphant; the life and limes of
Harnesses u (Warminster, 1982), 74-95.
J. G. M vujcekn. The Hit tiles and their
contemporaries in Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (London,
19S6).

O. R. Gluma, The 1 Unites, 2nd ed.
(Hai-mondsworth, 1990).

Hiw-Semaina region (Diospolis Pana)

©roup of 1'RT.nvNA.S'nc, Pharaonic and
Roman-period sites on the east bank of the
Nile in Upper Egypt. The Hiw-Semaina
region, which was surveyed and excavated by
Flinders Petrie in 1898-9, stretches for about
1 5 km along either side of the modern el-
Ranan canal, from the village of Eliw in the
southwest to Semaina in the northeast. It was

Roman fort
ancient quarry
mastaba tomb
cemetery R (Predynastic),
now covered by factory housing
Oid Kingdom Cemetery A
6 Predynastic Cemetery

7 Predynastic village of Halfia Gibi (site HG)

8 Predynastic Cemetery C

9 and 10 areas of Predynastic settlement
(Petrie's site F)

11 Predynastic Cemetery H and Predynastic
settlement (site SH)

12 modern village of Semaina

1 3 modern village of Abadiya

aluminium factory

The fiiw-Semaiita region.

the excavation report on the Predynastic
cemeteries of Abadiya and Hiw that formed
the basis for Petrie's compilation of the first
relative chronology of the late PREDYNASTIC
period (Naqada i-ii), which is still largeh
valid.

In 1989 Kathryn Bard conducted a new
survey of the area, relocating some of these
cemeteries and linding that the Predynastic
Cemeteries U and R and the Old Kingdom
MASTABA ai Cemetery A had been destroyed.
She also re-examined a few surviving patches
of Predynastic settlement that Petrie had men-
tioned only briefly in his report. At site l sn\
an area of late Predynastic settlement which
Bard discovered near Semaina and beside
Petrie's Cemetery n, another surface survey
revealed widespread traces of stone-working,
suggesting that the Hiw-Semaina region may
have been a Predynastic centre for stone vessel
manufacture.

W. M. F. Petiue, Diospolis Farm: /he cemeteries of
. Ibadiyeh ami Hit (London, 1901 ).
K. Bard, -Predynastic settlement patterns in the
Iliw-Semaineh region. Upper Egypt*, Nyame
-Ihiniui 32 (1989), 2-4.

Horapollo (fourth century ATS)

Supposedly a native of Upper Egypt, whose
work, the Hieroglyphica, claimed to be an
explanation of the symbolic meaning of vari-
ous hieroglyphic signs, derived directly from
ancient Egyptian sources. The original was
probably written in COPTIC, although the work
is known only from Greek translations.
Although the meanings of many signs were
correctly identified by Horapollo, the allegori-
cal reasons that he gives for their meanings are

often fantastic. The llien/glyphica was redis-
covered in the fourteentii century \]> and
exerted great influence on the scholars of
Renaissance Europe, forming the basis of G. P.
Valeriano Bolzoni's Hieivg/yphica, which first
appeared in 1556 and was reprinted and
enlarged on several occasions. Unfortunatcly
il was the allegorical and symbolic aspects of
Horapollo's work that led scholars such as
Athanasius Kircher {1602-80) to regard
hieroglyphs as a symbolic language, a view
which retarded the decipherment of the script
for many years. Even in the nineteenth centu-
ry a number of scholars, such as Gardner
Wilkinson, were still being misled by
Horapollo and thus frustrated in their attempts
at decipherment.

II. R. HALL, 'Letters to Sir William Gell from
Henry Salt, (Sir) J. G. Wilkinson, and Baron von
Bunsen\_7£. / 2(1915), 133-67.

Horemakhet see horizon and ijorus

Horemheb (1323-1295 i« :)
General and 18th-Dynasty pharaoh, whose
rule represented a return to comparative nor-
mality after the ilMARNA period. His military
career probably began during the reign of
akhenaten (1352-1336 Be), when he was per-
haps known by the earlier name of
Paaienemheb, although this is disputed by
many Egyptologists. Little is known of his
background apart from the fact that his familv
came from Herakleopolis. His wife
Mutnedjmet may possibly have been neferti-
TT*S sister, in which case she may have bol-
stered his claims to the throne. By the reign of
tutankiiamun (1336-1327 bc) he had risen to
a position ol great power as generalissimo and
began work on his tomb at SAQCJAJtA, the

131

HOREMHEB

HORSE

■

left Dow-jamb from the iamb ofHoremheh, with
carved relief showing the king in an attitude of
adiiraiinn. 18th Dynasty, c 13(10 ec, u. fine,
restoration) 1.83 m. (i:.i550)

iiiii.nw Scribe statue qfiforemhei. ISth Dynasty,
cISOObc ii. 1.17 in. (Nm yomk, Mi:rRopouTt\
msm ii. 23.10.1)

Memphite necropolis. This tomb was first
located by the German archaeologist Richard
Lepsius in the nineteenth century and exca-
vated by an Anglo-Dutch expedition during
the late 1970s. Its painted relief scenes, frag-
ments of which are spread through the collec-
tions ol many different museums, depict
scenes of his triumphant return from military
campaigns, as he attempted to restore the
Egyptian empire in Nubia and the Levant.
When he succeeded Kl (1327-1323 Be) on the
throne he undertook numerous construction
works at the temples of KABNAK and LUXDR,
ami at ceuei. ei.-sii.sila he created a speos
(rock-tempic).

On an administrative level he introduced
numerous reforms designed primarily lo
decentralize the government, and he erected a
stele in the temple of Mut at karnak bearing
an inscription outlining his plans for ihe
restoration of order after the depredations of
the Amarna period. It was during Horemheb's
reign that the dismantling of Akhenateifs Icm-
plcs to the men began, although it is possible
that the destruction of the royal tomb al el-
Amarna took place slightly later, in the early
Ramessidc period.

He usurped Ay's mortuary temple in the
vicinity of medinf.t habl in western Thebes
and constructed a new royal tomb for himself in

132

the Valley of die Kings, abandoning his virtual-
ly completed private tomb at Saqqara. The
Theban tomb (i<\57) was innovative both in its
decoration (sunk relief scenes from the Book of
Gates) and in its architectural style, consisting of
a single straight corridor with side-chambers,
rather than the bent-axis style of the previous
18th-Dynasty royal tombs. In the burial cham-
ber his red granite sarcophagus remains in situ,
but the mummy has not survived.
R. HvRl, Hamnheb el la reinr Mouliieil/mel, an la
Jin il'aiic dynastic (Geneva, 1965),
E. Horni no and P. Teicilm l\\, Das Grab i/es
Hurcmhabim Taldtr Kiinige (Berae, 1971).

J.-M. Ksua rniis, le diem J'Haremhcb:
traduction, eommenlaiir epigraphiijiie. pbilologitjiie

el inttitutamet (Brussels, 1981).

G. T. Martin, The Memphite lamb of Horcinbcb

(London, 1989).

horizon

The Egyptian hieroglyph denoting the hori-
zon (akliel) was essentially a schematic depic-
tion of the two mountains between which the
sun rose, indicating that the horizon was
regarded as the home of the sun-god. One
aspect of the god l iorl is, who was closely asso-
ciated with the sun cult, was therefore
described as Horemakhet ('Horns in the hori-
zon'). As the place of sunrise and sunset the

horizon was also considered to be protected
by \KEli, a god personified by a pair of lions
sometimes replacing the mountains in
amulets depicting the horizon. It was perhaps
this link between the lions and the horizon
which led to the Great Sphinx al Giza being
regarded as the principal manifestation of
Horemakhet.

The appearance of the horizon was often

Amulet lii the firm of Ihe Met hieroglyph
representing Ihe horizon. (e-i8300)

imitated in the iconography and forms of
Egyptian art and architecture, from the god-
dess of the horizon, whose two breasts some-
times replaced the mountains on either side of
the sun, to the twin lowers of PYLONS, which
formed part of the transformation of temples
into metaphors for the cosmos.
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian on
(London, 1992), 1.14-5.

horse

The domesticated horse was introduced into
Egvpt from western Asia in the Second
Intermediate Period (1650-1550 tic) at rough-
ly the same time as the chariot, although a
horse skeleton excavated at buhen may date as
early as the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 la ).
Several horse burials have been excavated at
TELL i:i.-i>ab'\, the site of the iivksos capital
Avaris.

Unlike donkeys, which were used for agri-
cultural work from at least the beginning of
the Pharaonic period (c.3100 lie), horses were
essentially status symbols, used for such activ-
ities as hunting, warfare and ceremonial pro-
cessions. They were almost always used to pull
chariots rather than being ridden, although
battle scenes in the New Kingdom (1550-1069
BC) occasionally show individual soldiers
mounted on them. On the basis of surviving
chariot yokes it has been calculated dial the
average height would have been around I.3S
m, although some surviving examples were
evidently taller, such as the 1.5-m-high skele-
ton found in front of the tomb of senemilt
(tt71). By the end of the 18th Dynasty
(1 550-1295 bc), horses were firmly established
as prestige gifts between rulers in north Africa
and the Near East, but they seem to have been
particularly prized by the Kushite kings of the

HORUS

right Relief block from el-Amama bearing a
depiction of a pair of horses, which probably
originally formed part of a depiction of a royal
chariot procession. I Hlh Dynasty, c. 1350 8C,

11. 23 cm. ( WETROl'OLITAS MlSI'.l \\, \A'U YORK,

L.W9.&19)

25th Dynasty (747-656 Be), who had several

horses interred beside their pyramidal tombs

at r.i.-kLKRi and NURI,

A. R. SCHSJLMAN, 'Egyptian representations of

horsemen and riding in the New Kingdom',

J3VSS10 (1957), 267-70,

M A. Lrrauut and J. II. CROt wel, Wheeled

vehicles and ridden animals in the Ancient Near

East (Leiden and Cologne, L979J.

L. Stgrce, 'Pferd 1 , Lexikm der Agyptofagie rv,

ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf

(Wiesbaden, 1982), 1005-13.

R. and J. JANSSEN, Egyptian household animals

(Aylesbury, 1989), 58-43,

C. RoMMELAERE, Les cheran.v da Nouvel Empire
Egyptian (Brussels, 1991).

HorilS (Haroeris, Harpoerates, Harsomtus,
Horemakhet, Ra-Horakhty)
FAIXON-god whose name is attested from at
least as early as the beginning of the Dynastie
period (i\3100 BC). Although not actually
named as such, it is probably the Horns-falcon
who was depicted on the 'Battlefield' and
'Narmer 1 ceremonial PAi.ri rr.s, apparently
subjugating his enemies in the battles leading
to the unification of Egypt. In addition, the
TURIN royal canon (a 19th-Dynasty king list)
describes the Predvnastie rulers of Egypt as
'followers of Horus'.

Usually depicted as a hawk or as a man
with the head of a hawk, Horus was not only
a god of the sky but the embodiment of
divine kingsiiii' and protector of the reigning
pharaoh. Gradually the cults of other hawk-
gods merged with that of Horus, and a com-
plex array of myths became associated with
him. According to one of the most common
myths, he was the child of the goddess ISIS,
and in this role (later known as Harpoerates)
he was usually depicted in human form with
the smi.i.ocK or voutii and a finger to his
mouth, often being seated on his mother's lap
(particularly in amulets and bronze votive
statuettes).

From die Late Period to the Roman period
(747 bc— \D 395) a new vehicle for the image of
Horus, the cippus, became popular. This was a
form of protective stele or amulet showing the
naked child-god Horus standing on a croco-
dile and holding snakes, scorpions, lions or
other animals in his outstretched arms. On
such cippi Horus was also sometimes associat-

ed with other deities. The purpose of the dp-
pus seems to have been to provide healing pow-
ers to combat such problems as snake bites or
scorpion stings.

As a son of Isis and ostris, I lorus was also
worshipped under the name of Harsiese, the
god who performed the rite of OPENING OF THE
_mqlth on his dead father, thus legitimizing
his succession to the throne as earthly ruler. In
a similar vein, as Horus Iun-mutef, priests or
eldest sons wearing panther-skin costumes
would ritually purify the path of the
deceased's coffin.

Cippas or 'floras stele \ showing Horns as a child
with the power to overcome harmful forces. Like
J\cjp Kingdom examples, this item is of wood, bat
the prominent Bes head and three-dimensional
representation of the child Horns point to the Late
Period, when most examples mere of stone. Late
Period, after 600 BC, wood, from Memphis (?),
II. 39 cm. (EA6Q9S8)

The mythology of the Osirian I lorus
(rather than any of the other aspects of Horus}
w r as principally concerned with his struggles
to avenge the murder of his father Osiris and
to claim his rightful inheritance, the throne of
Egypt, by defeating the evil god SETH. The lat-
est narratives of the myth tend to combine
several different traditions. In the first ver-
sion, Seth was Horus 1 uncle, whereas in the
second version he was his brother. There arc-
also differing accounts of their struggles or
'contendings', which were associated with the
myth of Horus even before the contendings
became linked with the Osiris myth. The
Shabaqo Stone (c.705 BC, now in the British
Museum), a 25th-Dynasty inscription pur-
porting to be a copy of an Old Kingdom text,
describes the story of the earth-god GE8 judg-
ing between the two and eventually awarding
the throne to Horus. However, a more lively
version is provided by the Ramesside Papyrus
Chester Beatty I (Chester Beatty Library,
Dublin), which details the varied, sometimes
ludicrous, rivalry of Horus and Seth, includ-
ing a race in boats of stone. In this version it is
the sun-god ra who adjudicates at the end of
an eighty-year contest, although as usual it is
Horus who finally becomes king of Egypt. It is
possible that these mythological contendings,
an even later account of which is given bv the
Greek writer PLUTARCH, may reflect a distant
memory of the struggles of the 'two lands'
before unification, although few prehistorians
would now attempt to use such comparativeh
recent documents to interpret the late
Prcdynastic archaeological material ((-.3200-
3100 bc).

During his contendings with Seth, Horus is
said to have lost his left eye (which represent-
ed the moon), although fortunately the god-
dess tLVntOR was able to restore it. The ndjat-
or wedjal-eye (the 'eye of Horus') therefore
came to symbolize the general process of
'making whole' and healing, the term ndjat

133

HOUSE OF LIFE

HUMOUR

literally inclining 'sound 1 . It also represented
the waxing and waning of the moon, and
served as a metaphor for protection, strength
and perfection; ireil/at-L'xc amulets are
extremely common.

Since Horus was a skv-god and a cosmogo-
nic deity, his eyes were interpreted as the sun
and moon, and he was frequently described in
the Old Kingdom (26cS6— 21S1 BC) as a god of
the east, and hence of the sunrise. In this guise
he became known as Horemakhet ('Horns in
the horizon') and he was also merged with Ra,
to become Ra-Horakhtv. There were numer-
ous forms of Horus throughout Egypt, but he
is particularly associated with EDFU, the site of
the ancient city of Mesen. There was a temple
of Horus at Edfu from at least as early as the
New Kingdom, and in the well-preserved
Ptolemaic temple he was worshipped as part
of a triad with llathor and their child
Harsomtus. From at least as early as the 4th
Dvnastv Horus Ivhcntv-Irtv was worshipped
ai Letopolis (Kom Ausim) in the western
Delta.

Horus was also closely associated with htf.r-
akonpolis (literally 'town of the hawk 1 ) which
was known as Nekhen during the Pharaonic
period. From the temple at this site was exca-
vated the golden falcon head (now in the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo) which probablv
formed part of a cult image. In his role as
Horus of Behdei, a town in the Delta, he was
also portrayed as a winged sun-disc, an image
that constant!) recurred in the decoration of
many other temples, harking back to his origi-
nal manifestation as a god of the sky.
See also KOM o.uuo and sons OP horus.
G. l)\rk.ssy, Textes a dessins magiques (Cairo,
1903), 1-2.

A. H. Gardiner, The Chester Beatty papyri i
(London, 1931),

— 'Horus the Behdetite\J& / 30(1944), 23-60.
J. G. Griffiths, The conflict of Horus and Seth
from Egyptian and Classical sources (Liverpool,
1%!)).

H. W. Fuum w. The triumph of Horus: an ancient
Egyptian sacred ilrtinui (London, 1974).
S. QyiRKE, Ancient Egyptian religion (London,
1992), 61-7.

C. Andrews, hnaleis of 'ancient Egypt (London,
1994), 4.i-4.

House Of Life (Egyptian per ankh)
Temple institution sometimes compared with
a medieval scriptorium. Although usually
associated with a religious institution, the
House of Life differed from its monastic
counterpart in that it was not simply a place
where priests were trained in the reading and
copying of sacred texts but apparently also a

134

school for SCRIBES and the children of the elite
(see r.ou:vnoN). Tl is also likely that copies of
such funerary texts as the hook or THE dead
were produced for sale to private individuals.
ASTRONOMY, geography, \i vi nt:\i \Tics and
law, as well as the interpretation of DREAMS,
would have been taught in the House of Life,
while priests would have had ample theologi-
cal material to study. They would probably
also have utilized the temple LIBRARY, or
House of Books (per metljal), which would no
doubt have been the principal source of the
original documents copied by the pupils. The
personnel of the House of Life also appear to
have been concerned with medicine, and it
may be that the sanatoria associated with a
number of later temples were connected in
some way with the Houses of Life.

The priests of the House of Life may also
have been concerned widi overseeing die work
of temple craftsmen, and were perhaps
involved in the design of new pieces for manu-
facture. Houses of Life are recorded at
Memphis, Akhmim, Abvdos, Koptos, Esna
and Edfu and there must certainly have been
examples at Thebes and elsewhere. The House
of Life at EL-AMARNA, a complex of mud-brick
buildings in the centre of the city of
Akhctaten, midway between the main temple
and palace, was clearly ^identifiable when
excavated in the 1930s because the bricks were
stamped with the words per ankh. In most
other respects, however, these buildings were
undistinctive, although significantly it was in
riiese rooms that one of the rare fragments of
papyrus at el-Amarna (part of a funerarv text)
was found.

A. II. GARDINER, 'The House of Life 1 ,. 7E.I 24
(1938), 157-79.

A.Volten, Demotisehe Trainiulcntiing
(Copenhagen, 1942), 17-44.
J. D. S. Pentjlerur\ , City nfAkhcnalcii m/l
(London, 1951), 115, 150.

E. Strouhal, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 235-41.

houses see towns

Hu see i

rtW— SEMAJMA REGION

human sacrifice

There is no certain evidence of the practice of
human sacrifice in Egypt from the Old
Kingdom (2686-2181 BC) onwards, although
the practice is known from kerma in Nubia at
a time roughly contemporary with the Second
Intermediate Period (1650-1550 BC),

In the Protodynastic and Early Dynastic-
period (r.3200-2686 oc), dierc may be archae-
ological indications of the funerary sacrifice of

servants. It has been argued that the apparent
shared roof covering many 'subsidiary burials'
surrounding- the tombs of certain lst-Dvnasry
rulers at Abvdos and Saqqara (3100-2890 \x)
is an indication that large numbers of roval
retainers were killed simultaneously in order
to accompany the pharaoh into the afterlife.
This practice would no doubt later have been
superseded by the more widespread use of
representations of servants at work (in the
form of wall decoration and three-dimension-
al models), and the eventual provision of
shaisti figures, whose role appears to have
been to undertake agricultural work on behalf
of the deceased.

From the late Predynastic period onwards,
votive objects and temple walls were frequent-
ly decorated with scenes of the king smiting
his enemies while gripping them by their hair,
but these acts of ritual execution are usually
depicted in the context of warfare. The actual
sacrifice of prisoners at temples - as opposed
to ihe depiction of foreigners as bound cap-
tives - is attested by textual evidence from die
reign of Amenhotep it (1427-1400 Tit:). He
claims to have executed seven Syrian princes
in the temple of Amun at Karnak, displaying
the bodies of six of them on its walls, and
hanging the body of the seventh on the walls
of narvia.

The tale of the 4th-Dynasty ruler Khufu
(2589-2566 uc) and the magician Djedi, com-
posed in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc)
and preserved on Papyrus Westcar (Berlin),
provides a good illustration of the Egyptians'
apparent abhorrence of human sacrifice.
Khufu is portrayed as a stereotypical tyrant
who asks for a prisoner to be decapitated so
that Djedi can demonstrate his magical ability
to restore severed heads, but, according to the
story, the magician insists that the demonstra-
tion be made on a goose rather than a human.

It is also worth noting that the pyramid
-| i:\ts include possible references to cannibal-
ism in the form of the so-called 'cannibal
hymn 1 (Utterances 273-4), which describes
the king 'eating the magic' and 'swallowing i he
spirits" of the gods. However, it is difficult to
know in this instance whether the concept of
the king eating the gods was purely metaphor-
ical or based on some early sacrificial act.
M. LlCil I'll HUM, Ancient Egyptian lilcralnrc I
(Berkeley, 1975), 36-8, 217-20. ['cannibalism
hymn'' and Papvrus Westcar]
A. J. Spencer, Early Egypt (London, 1995),
65-97.

humour

Since humour and satire are both concerned
with the subversion and undermining of the

HUNTING

normal decorum of society, they are notoriously
difficult to analyse or dissect in modern rimes,
let alone in an ancient culture such as Pharaonic
Egypt, when even the most basic framework of
die system of decorum (or social mores) is not
fully understood. Notwithstanding this basic
problem, there are a few relatively unambigu-
ous surviving examples of visual humour, such
as the scene, among the reliefs in the temple of
Haishepsut (1473-1458 sc) at deir i:l-uaiiri,
that portrays the overweight figure of the
queen of PUNT followed by a small donkey,
whose caption reads 'the donkev that had to
carry the queen 1 . The comic impact of this
scene on ancient Egyptians is perhaps indicat-
ed by the survival of an osTRAm.N bearing a
rough sketch of the queen clearly copied from
the original.

Such titles as Satire on the trades and Be a
scribe are used by Egyptologists to describe
particular types of text from the Middle and
New Kingdoms that poured scorn on all
trades and professions other than that of the
scribe. Although the Egyptian scribe's superi-
ority complex was so highly developed that
parts of the 'satires 1 may even have been
regarded as factual rather than ironic, there is
undoubtedly a considerable element of comi-
cal exaggeration and caricature in the descrip-
tions of the various trades, providing a literary
counterpart lor the gentle visual mockery of
some of the labourers depicted in private
tomb-paintings.

On the whole, there seem to have been rela-
tively few outlets for humour within the con-
fines of official funerary and religious art and
literature; therefore most of the more light-
hearted aspects of Egyptian culture tend to be
restricted to the arena of rough sketches and
OSTRACA, depicting such taboo subjects as a
pharaoh with unseemly stubble on his chin. A
large number of such sketches, however, fall
into the category of 'animal fables', in which
animals - particularly cats and mice — are
depicted engaged in typical human activities
such as beating captives, driving chariots or
making obeisance to a ruler. In a few instances
these scenes are portrayed on papyrus, as in the
case of the so-called Satirical Papyrus {now in
the British Museum), which dates to the late
New Kingdom and includes scenes of a lion
and antelope playing a board-game (see games
for illustration) and a cat herding geese. It has
been suggested that these images of animals
may be all that survive of 'beast fables',
although no literary counterparts have sur-
vived, and there is currently no sure way of
determining whether the pictures were either
intended to be humorous or connected in some
way with such didactic writings as the Discourse

i:j tytjtrty. in which the disintegration of soci-
ety- is described in terms of deliberate reversals
and inversions of the natural world.
S. CuR'l'O, /,/; salira nell'antieo Egilto (Turin,

1965).

B. VAN fiEWAJLLE, L' bum our dans la Ulleralure el
duns l\!rl is Vanaeune Egypte (Leiden, 1969).

Huni see menu :\\ and sneitrl

hunting

Although hunting in the Pharaonic period was
relatively unimportant as a means of subsis-
tence, it still retained a jjreat deal of ritualistic
and religious significance. Two basic types of
hunting were regularly represented on the
walls of tombs and temples throughout the
Pharaonic period: 'fowling and fishing 1 and
'big-game', the former consisting primarily of
small-scale fishing and bird-snaring on the
banks of the Nile, and the latter consisting of
the hunting of wild deer and lions in desert
terrain, and bulls, crocodiles and hippopotami
in the marshes. These two categories also cor-
respond roughly to the private and royal
domains, with scenes of 'fowling and fishing in
the marshes 1 being a common component of
private tomb decoration but only in one case
appearing in a royal tomb (that of King AY,
KV23 in the Valley of the Kings).

By the New Kingdom (1550-1069 uc;),
descriptions of the pharaoh 's exploits as a
hunter of such beasts as wild bulls, lions, ele-
phants and rhinoceroses formed an essential
part of the characteristic Egyptian style of
kingship. Two series of commemorative
SCARABS of nii-NHOTEP in (1.390-1352 uc) were

inscribed with detailed descriptions of his
hunting of wild bulls and lions, and the deco-
ration of the first pylon of the mortuan tem-
ple of Rameses ill (1184— 1153 bc:) at MEDINET
i-uru includes a detailed depiction of the king
and his soldiers hunting bulls. Such royal
hunts appear to have taken place within delib-
erately enclosed areas, so that the animals
would have no escape, and the excavation of
the New Kingdom settlement at soleb in
Nubia has yielded traces of post-holes which
may well indicate the presence of an enclosure
surrounding a large hunting park covering an
area of 600 m X 300 m. There are also a few
private Lombs that show die deceased hunting
wild game in the desert, thus providing the
artists with a rare opportunity to depict the dis-
tinctive savanna and desert landscapes in which
the hunt occurred.

Conversely, the simple netting of birds
became an important part of temple decora-
tion, with the king and various gods often
being depicted hauling clap-nets containing
both birds and beasts. Whereas the depictions
of fowling in private tombs no doubt reflected
the actual activities of the elite, the temple
scenes are usually interpreted as allegories of
the preservation of harmony by hunting down
and suppressing evil and unstable phenomena
(symbolized by the birds and animals strug-
gling in nets).

In the Old Kingdom, the pvramid com-

I I all-painting from she lotah-chapel ofi\ebamun,
showing the deceased with his family hunting birds
in the marshes. 18th Dynasty, c. 1400 lie, painted
plaster, from Thebes, it. SI em. (/-: i37977)

w^^m^M

135

HUSBANDRY

HYKSOS

Relief decoration m the back of the first pylon of
tin- mortuary temple qfSamesa in (1184-1153)
ill Mediae! Halm, showing lite Ling limning mid
bulk Rameses is portrayed standing in his elm rim
and thrusting a lung bunting spear ul one af/he
bulb. The leading group of soldiers in the lower
register are shown Jiriug arrows, apparently
engaged only in the more mundane pursuit of the
birds and fish of the marsh-lauds, ft. sit m )

plexes of Sahura (24S7-2475 lie:) and Pepy n
(2278-2184 BC) contained depictions of the
king hunting a hippopotamus rendered at a
larger-than-life scale; the allegorical nature of
these scenes, in terms of the king's contain-
ment of chaos, is demonstrated by the reliefs in
the temple of tiORU.s at Emu, which transform
the acl of binding and spearing a hippopota-
mus into a dramatic re-enactment of the myth-
ical conflict between the gods Horus and setii.
T. SwE-SoDERBERGH, On Egyptian representations
of hippopotamus bunting as a religious motive
(Uppsala, 1 ')5.5).

J. Leceant, 'Un pare de chasse de !a Nubie
pharaoniquc', Le sol. la parole el I'ceril: 2000 tins
d'histoire ojfieaiue: melanges en honnntige it
RaymondManny (Paris, 1981), 727-34.
W. Decker, Sports and games of ancient Egypt,
trans. A. Guttmann (New Haven, 1992),
147-67.

E. S trou-iae. Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 11S-22.

husbandry .«v agriculture and umm.

HUSBANDRY

HyksOS (Egyptian beta bbasivl: 'rulers of
foreign lands 1 )

Term used to refer to a Palestinian group (or
perhaps only their rulers) who migrated into
Egypt during the late Middle Kingdom
(e. 1800-1 650 lit:) and rose to power in Lower
Egypl during the Second Intermediate
Period (1650-1550 BC). Il used to he assumed
that the Hyksos conquered Egypt at the end
of the 13th Dynasty, but it is now recognized
that the process was probably far more grad-
ual and peaceful; according to Donald
Redfbrd, 'it is not unreasonable to assume
that with the gradual weakening of royal
authority, the Delta defenses were allowed to
lapse, and groups of transhumants found it

easy to cross the border and settle in Lower
Egypt... Having persuaded oneself of this,
the Hyksos assumption of power reveals itself
as a peaceful takeover from within bv a racial
element already in the majority. 1

The Semitic names of such 15th-and 16th-
Dynasty Hyksos rulers as Khyan, Joam and
Jakbaal (c. 1650-1 550 tic) clearly indicate their
non-Egyptian origins. A number of Nen
Kingdom texts, including the Ramessidc
Papyrus Sallicr l (r.1220 Hi:), suggest that the
Hyksos interlude was essentially the ruthless
imposition of Asiatic culture on that of the
native Egyptians, but these were undoubtedly
biased accounts, and the archaeological evi-
dence is considerably more ambiguous.

The cemeteries, temples and stratified set-
tlement remains at such eastern Delta sites as

IEEE EE-nALl'A, TEEE EL-\I A.skHUTY and lt.EE
EE-VAIIl DIVA include considerable quantities
oi Syro-Palestinian material dating to the
Middle Bronze Age II period (r.200O-7OO U( j.
hut the Hyksos kings themselves have left few
distinctively 'Asiatic' remains. The small
number of royal sculptures of the Hyksos
period largely adhere to the tomographic and
stylistic traditions of the Middle Kingdom.
There is some evidence lo suggest that the
riders supported the traditional forms ol"
government and adopted an Egyptian-sly le
ROYAL titulary, although Manfred Bietak
has discovered a door jamb at Tell el-Dab'a
bearing the name of the Hyksos king
Sokarher with the title hehi kliaswl. Their
major deity was .setii bin they also wor-
shipped other Egyptian gods as well as awe
and vstarte, two closely related goddesses of
Syro-Palestinian origin. Conventional forms

A selection nf scarabs dating lo the Hyksos period.
(mmyoiik, wtrruoi'ut.ii i\ museum)

136

HYKSOS

HYPAETHRAI.

of Egyptian literature, such as the Rhind
Mathematical Papyrus (set- MATHEMATICS)
continued to be composed or copied.

Having established their capital at Avaris,
they appear to have gradually spread west-
ward, establishing centres such as tfi.i. el-
YAlltniVA, and taking control of the important
Egyptian city of Memphis. The discovery of a
small number of objects inscribed with the
names of Hyksos kings at sites such as
Knossos, Baghdad and Boghazkby (as well as
the remains of Minoan frescos at 15th-
Dynasty Avaris) suggest that the new rulers
maintained trading links with the Near East
antl the Aegean.

Seals at the Nubian site of KERM \ bear the
name Sheshi, apparently a corrupted form of
Salitis, the earliest known Hyksos king. The
presence of these seals probably indicates that
there was an alliance between the Hyksos and
die kingdom of Kerma, which would have
helped them both to counter opposition in
Upper Egypt, where a rival group, the 17th
Theban Dynast); were violently opposed to
foreign rule. The Second Stele of kAAIOSE,
describing one of the Theban campaigns
against the Hyksos, includes clear references
to a Xubian-Hyksos alliance by the end of the
1 7th Dynasty.

During the Hyksos period, greater use was
made of HORSES, and their use in warfare was
developed through the introduction of the
CHARIOT, which facilitated the development of
new military techniques and strategies. The
curved sword (khepesh) was introduced, along
with body armour and helmets. Ironically, it
was probably the adoption of such new r mili-
tary technology by the Thebans that helped
their rulers to defeat the Hyksos, and to estab-
lish aiimose ] (1550-1525 nc) as the first king
of the 1 8th Dynasty, and founder of the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 uc),

The grave goods in Upper Egyptian private
cemeteries of the Hyksos period (such as
Abydos and Qau) show great continuity with
the prc-ITyksos period, suggesting that the
cultural impact of the Hyksos rulers may have
been restricted to the Delta region. Even sites
in the Memphite region and the western Delta
show few indications of Palestinian influence.
It has also been suggested by Barry Kemp that
the apparent 'cultural hiatus 1 in the Fayum
region during the Second Intermediate Period
may simply be an indication of political dis-
ruption in those areas which had previously
had a strong association with the Middle
Kingdom central administration.
J. vo\ BeckeRATH, Untersuchungen zur polithchm
Gescluchte dersweiten Zmkchenzm in .igyplen
(Gluckstadtand New York, 1%5).

J. Y \\ Seters, The Hyksos, a item hmestigatitm

(New Haven, 1966).

B. J, KEMP, 'Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom

and Second Intermediate Period', Ancient Egypt:

u social history, B. G. Trigger et al. (Cambridge,

1983), 71-182.

D. B. Redford, Egypt. Cammi and Isrmi in

ancient limes (Princeton, 1992), 98-129.

hymns and litanies

One of the most common types of religious
ten in ancient Egypt was the hymn, usually
consisting of a eulogy incorporating the
names, titles and epithets of a deity. The
mythological details included in many hymns
help to compensate for the general dearth of
narrative-style myths in Egyptian literature.

Hymns could be inscribed on the walls of
both tombs and temples as well as on papyri;
although they were generally intended to be
recited as part of the ritual of a cult - Papyrus
Chester Beatty [\ (recto, now in the British
Museum), for instance, includes hymns to be
sung by the worshippers in a temple - but they
were sometimes composed simply as 'literary 1
documents in their own right, as in the case of
the Hymn to the Nik Inundation (one version
of which is recorded on Papyrus Chester
Beatty v). Often the function of the hymn can
be difficult to ascertain: a cycle of live hymns
to sen'UShf.t til (1874-1855 lie) were found in
the town associated with his pyramid at i.r-
i.aiiln, but it is not clear when thev would
have been recited, whether as part of the
regular cult at the pyramid complex or on a
special occasion such as the visit of the
reigning king.

Numerous funerary stelae were inscribed
with hymns to osiris, the god of the dead, and

.-.' if ." " US T% "lite

the Litany n/'Ril, a hymn to the sun-god, was
inscribed in mam Ramesside royal tombs in
the VALLEY OF THE KINGS, Among the most
poetic of the hymns to the sun was the Hymn
tn the - lien, the longest version of which was
inscribed in the tomb of a at el-am arna. Its
description of the role of the Al en in the sus-
tenance of the world from dawn to sunset has
often been compared with Psalm 104,
although the undoubted similarities between
the two compositions almost certainly result
from a common literary heritage rather than -
as some scholars have argued - from am con-
nection between the worship of the Aten and
the origins of Jewish monotheism. In addi-
tion, it has often been pointed out that there is
little in the Hymn In lite Aten that does not
already appear in earlier Egyptian hymns to
the sun-god.

A. BAKI.O) and E Daivhs, Hynines ft priem tie
I'Egyple nneienne (Paris, 1980).
M. LlCHTIIHM, Ancient Egyptian literature II
(Berkeley, 1 "76), S 1-1 18.

P. ALFEIU'.'t, Hynines d'Egyple et J' Israel: eludes de
slruelures lilleraires (Freiburg, 1981).

hypaethral

Term used to describe a building that has no
roof and is therefore open to the sky, as is the
case in the Kiosk of Trajan at fhieae.

hypocephalus

Amuletic discs inscribed with extracts from
Chapter 162 of the book of nit: dead and
occasionally bearing vignettes representing
certain deities. They were intended to 'warm'
the head of the deceased. The earliest exam-
ples simply consisted of pieces of inscribed
papyrus, but the hypocephali proper consist of

flypacep/ialits afNesliiiipakhered, n
temple musician, decorated with
the profile figures of four
bulunms worshipping the sun.
Late Period or Ptolemaic
period, 4th— 3rd centuries
BC, plastered linen and
pigment, from Thebes,
It. Hem. (SA36I8S)

i « ■ ^ - -,:■ \

Mm • ■■ »»^*

&■

HAP

HYPOSTYLE HALL

HYPO STYLE HALL

papyrus sheets mounted un small c. artonnage
discs, which have been discovered in a few
tombs from the 26th Dynasty (664-525 Be
onwards), There are also a few surviving
examples made from metal. In keeping with
their intended function, they were usually
placed between the head of the mummified
body and the funerary headrest.

hypostyle hall

Large temple court filled with columns, form-
ing an essential element in Egyptian religious
architecture, the name deriving from the
Greek for 'resting on pillars 1 . There was a dis-
tinct transition from the pylon into the open
courtyard and then into the hypostyle hall.
The hall was crowded with pillars and lit only
by clerestory windows in the uppermost part
of the walls. The columns could be of varying
diameter and height, although those lining the
axis route of the temple were usually the tallest
and broadest. It was not uncommon for a sin-
gle temple to have two hypostyle halls.

The symbolism expressed by the hypostyle
hall is that of the reed swamp growing at the
fringes of the primeval MOUND, since the
entire temple was regarded as a microcosm of
the process of creation itself. Beyond the hall,
the roof of the temple invariably became lower
and the floor higher, while the dimensions of
the rooms grew r smaller, until the sanctuary
itself was reached. This cosmogonic symbol-
ism is well illustrated in the temple of Amun at
karn.ak, where a dense foresl of 134 columns
spring from bases reminiscent of ihe earth
around the roots of papyrus plants. The great
columns along the axis route are each 23 m in
height, and end in massive open papyrus flow-
ers, while the rest of the columns have closed
papyrus bud capitals.

In the temple of khnum at esna, the
'swamp 1 symbolism is reinforced by the carv-
ing of insects on the column capitals. The
architraves above the columns, as well as the
ceiling itself, are representative of the sky (sec
\stronomy \\n ASTROLOGY), while the lowest
parts of die enclosing walls often bear scenes
of rows of offering bearers walking along the
ground surface.

P. A. SprNCF.R, The Egyptian temple: a
lexicographical study (London, 1984).
E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 115-29.

Part af the Great Hypostyle Hall of the temple of
Amun al Karnak. These are the smaller, closed
papyrus bud columns: the open papyrus columns
along the axial route stand 23 m high.

(p. T. MCHOLSON)

138

IBIS

II.LAIIUN

ibis

The sacred ibis {Tkmkiomu ae/hiopteiis) is
the best known of the principal species of
ibis in Egypt; its distinctive features include
a white body, a dark curved bill and a black
neck, wing-tips, hindquarters and legs. Until
the nineteenth century it was relatively com-
mon in Egypt but by 1850 it had almost dis-
appeared. This bird was regarded as an
incarnation of THOTH, and in the Late Period
(747-332 lie.) and Ptolemaic limes (532-30
uc) sacred ibises were mummified in vast
numbers and buried in catacombs at tl\.\
EL-GEBEL, suyiVRA and elsewhere (see
SAGREO WIMAI.S).

The Greek historian herodotus states that
in his time ii was an offence to kill an ibis.
However, it i:: known from examination of the

A mummified this from the Sacred Annua I
Necropolis at north Saqqara. Ptolemaic period,

C.15&&C, (ea68219)

mummified remains of these birds that some
must have been hastened to their death; in
addition it seems that they were being deliber-
ately bred for the purpose of votive mummifi-
cation. It has been suggested that their eggs
were artificially incubated in ovens; both
mummified eggs and the remains of other
species of ibises are known from the catacombs
at Saqqara,

The cult of Thoth led to the production of
numerous ibis amulets and statuettes, mam' of
which have survived at Tuna el-Gebel and
Saqqara. The mummification of ibises and the
production of votive items must have played
an important part in the economy, and a vari-
ety of fraudulent practices are recorded in the
archive of a priest called Hor at Saqqara.

The 'glossy ibis' (Plegudis falcinellus) has a
characteristic curved bill, as well as long legs
and an iridescent bronze-coloured gloss on its

upper back and wings. Like the sacred ibis, it
was frequently depicted in tomb reliefs from
the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 no), usually
being painted as if it were completely black.
According to Herodotus it fought with winged
serpents which flew to Egypt from Arabia.
The 'hermit ibis' {Geronticiis cremila) has a
long neck, long legs and a distinctive ruff,
leading some scholars to. describe it as the
'crested ibis'. Its image served as the hiero-
glyph meaning 'to shine' (see \ki 0. In modem
Egypt it is a rare accidental migrant, bui ii
may have been more common in ancient times.
Sinet it is not a waterside bird, it features less
commonly in ancient scenes set on the banks
of the Nile, which usually include the sacred
and glossy varieties.

J. D. R\^, The archive of Hor (London, 1976).
G. T. Martin, The sacred animal tmerop&Hs at
North Saqqara (London, 1981).

P. F. HOULIHAN, The birds of ancient Eg$rpi
(Warminster, 1986), 26-52, 146-7.

ichneumon

Type of mongoose common hi Africa, which is
larger than a domestic cat, and thus bigger
than its Indian counterpart. The creature is
realistically portrayed in a number of Old
Kingdom tombs such as that of the 5th-
Dynasty noble T\ (e.2400 hc; Tomb 60 at
Saqqara), and less realistically depicted in
some of the New Kingdom tombs, such as that
of Menna (tt69) at Thebes.

By the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc)
the ichneumon was included among the
SACRED WIMAI.S and by Ramesside times
(1295-1069 lie) it served as a symbol of the
spirits of the underworld. Its skill in
despatching snakes led to the myth that the
sun-god ra once took the form of an ichneu-
mon in order to fight \pohijs, the great ser-
pent of the underworld. This solar identifi-
cation is responsible for the sun disc sur-
mounting some ichneumon figures.
Sometimes this disc is accompanied by a
ttmeus, which serves to identify the creature
with w \Djvr, the goddess traditionally asso-
ciated with Lower Egypt. The mongoose
emblem of the goddess Mafdet suggests that
she may have originally adopted this mani-
festation, which w r ould have been particular-
ly suitable given her supposed power over
snakes and scorpions.

Many bronze figurines of ichneumons have
survived, although most date from the Late
Period (747-532 ru:) or Ptolemaic period
(352-50 bc), when its depiction can be diffi-
cult to differentiate from that of the shrew.
E. Bri \ner-Tr \lt, 'Spitzmaus und ichneumon
als Tiere des Sonnengottes\ Naebricblcn der

Akudemie der ITisscitschaften in Gdl/ingeti ( 196-->),

123-65.

— , 'Ichneumon', Lcxikon (far Agyptohgie ill, ed.

W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf

(Wiesbaden, 1980), 122-5.

J. MALEE, The eat in ancient Egypt (London,

1993), 52-9.

Illahun set i

-AI1LN

Imhotep

Vizier and architect of the first pyramid, the
Step Pyramid of DjOSER (2667-2648 bc) of the
3rd Dynasty, manmtmo credits him (under the
Greek form of his name, Imouthes) with the
invention of building m dressed stone He is
also said to have w ritten a number of 'instruc-
tions' {scbayf, see wisdom LITERATURE),
although none has survived. It was for his
great learning that he was most respected and,
some two thousand years after his death, the
first evidence appears of his deification, a great
rarity for non-royal individuals in ancient
Egypt. He was considered to be a god of wis-
dom, writing and mkdjcim-;, and as a result
became linked with the cults of the gods
TiioTM and i'tmi.

1 olive bronze statuette of the deified architect,

Imhotep. Late Period, 0th— lib centimes n<:.
(t: t6380(J)

139

IMIUT

INCE NSE

The Greeks identified him with their own
god of medicine, Asklepios, and his cult cen-
tre at Saqqara, the \*\sklepion\ became a
centre for pilgrimage by those seeking heal-
ing. Many worshippers left a mummified ibis
as a votive offering to htm in the great under-
ground catacombs nearby, and some of these
birds bear appliques of Imhotep on their
wrappings. Pilgrims also left clay models ol
diseased limbs and organs in the hope of
being healed by Imhotep. Bronze figurines of
the deified Imhotep are common from the
Late Period onwards. He is usually repre-
sented as a seated scribe unrolling a papyrus
across his knees. The base of the statuette
sometimes bears the names and titles of its
donor.

The Saqqara catacombs extend beneath the
3rd-Dynasty MASTABA tombs, a fact which led
the British archaeologist W. B. Emery to
search the area for the tomb of Imhotep him-
self, a process which inadvertently led to the
discovery of the SACKED animal necropolis.
The tomb of Imhotep has still not been dis-
covered, although some have argued that it
mav be the large uninseribed mastaba 3518 at
Saqqara.

As well as having a cult centre at Saqqara,
Imhotep was also worshipped at karnak, df.tr
EL-BAHW, piitlae and in the Ptolemaic temple
to Ilathor at fjf.ir f,t-.\ii:di\a, where he was
venerated alongside amemiotf.p SON OF KAPU,
another important deified official.
D. WiLDti.MG, Imhotep und Amenhotep:
Gattmerdung im alien Agyplev (Berlin, 1977).
— , Egyptian saints: deification in pbaraon/c Egypt
{New York, 1977).

imiut

Fetish symbol consisting of the stuffed, head-
less skin of an animal (often a feline) tied to a
pole which was mounted in a pot. It is
recorded as earlv as the 1st Dynasty
(3100-2890 Be), but is best known through its
assimilation with the worship of Anubis,
being depicted in the chapel of Anubis at DiiiR
ei.-r-yhri and elsewhere. As a result, the imiut
is sometimes described as the 'Anubis fetish 1
and serves as one of the epithets of the god.
Models of the emblem were sometimes
included among funerarv equipment, as in
the case of the tomb of tltankiiami \
(1336-1327 bc).

C. N. REEVES, The complete Tutankliamiin
(London, 1990). 135.

incense

The most common Egvptian word lor the
product used as incense is senetjer (meaning 'to
make divine'). However, the term incense has

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S >.:/:"': :

'SZv-?:-..- "-I r-}-'M.-,\

r^'-Kv^ ; :;;:j::;: : Js : j \r%

i-u.u-i-V'-i: ..."••:•• - ; ■••'■::'. : rS' r ''

^'■Mf^-^-X-^ m£^m^-%

1 \

r '=' : ^.^:••:'■..'^:^;1^::

' : ':' ! :^? : -'^ ■■■■■■i'- t :..

'.• ;,:-;• . -iijjjj :■.,..■■,-...„.,■■

■■:■: :■ %>:

"'.',■'■

}%7^k?x\u : ::.':5^;.-:': '■■i;, ■■■--■ - .

mme:% j- : ' -'-*-"

Tiro imiut fetishes (or Anubis fetishes ') from the
lambofTuiauL'hamun. 18th Dynasty, e. 133(1 no,
n. Uu cm. (c.iiR<\ mos 194 wi> 202, reproihud
QOi RTi-:s) or mi-: CRirrrru wSTiWTK)

been somewhat vaguely used by Egyptologists
to describe a range of aromatic substances
used for burning in temples and for scenting
the person. 'Incense trees' were one of the
commodities brought to Egypt by Hatshcpsui
(1473-1458 BC) as a result of the expedition
that she sent to the African land of PUNT, and
aromalics were also imported from the
Mediterranean. Senetjer, however, is now
known to come from a species ol Pistaciu.

The function of 'incense cones 1 is a matter
of some debate. There are numerous represen-
tations of guests at banquets and public func-
tions, as in the tomb of Nebamun, wearing
their heavy wigs, on top of which a cone of
incense mixed with fat was placed.
Traditionally it has been assumed that these
cones would gradually melt in the warm
atmosphere and run down the wig and clothing
of the guest to leave them fragrant and cool.
No such cones have been discovered archaco-

isKi.ou Fragment ofirall-painltngfrom the tomb of
Sebamun, shaming guests wearing incense canes ai
a bam/uet. 18th Dynasty, cA 4(1(1 nc, painted
piaster, fram Thebes. //. 61 an. (El37984)

■::;ftte I * . I n niMflwH' \ -

^tm^mmm-" '

140

INSTRUCTIONS

INYOTEF

logically, however, and Joann Fletcher has put
forward an argument that the depiction of the
cone is used simply as a hieroglyphic symbol to
depict the tact that the wigs were scented. It
seems unlikely that guests would have wished
to have their very elaborate and expensive wigs
matted with congealed fat or then- fine linen
garments marked and stained (although some
paintings perhaps suggest that this did hap-
pen). The view that the cone illustrates some-
thing that would otherwise be impossible to
represent seems a plausible one.
A. M. BtACKMAN, 'The significance of incense
and libations in funerary and temple rituals',
ZASSQ £1912), 69-75.

J. FLETCHER, Ancient Egyptian kair: a study in
Style, Jbrm efxd 'function (unpublished dissertation,
Manchester University, 1995).
M. Serpigo and R. Wi iite, 'The botanical identity
and transport of incense during the Egyptian
New Kingdom', . lntiaui/y 74 (2000), 8S4-97.

instructions see wisdom [jterat^e

Intef (lnyotcf)

Name taken by three rulers of the Theban
11th Dynast) (2125-1985 ik:), who were all
buried in rock-cut SAFF tombs, in the el-Tarif
region of western Thebes. They called them-
selves after an Sth-Dynasty Theban nomarch
(provincial governor) and chief priest, listed as
a ruler in ihe so-called Table of Karnak (an
ISth-Dvnasty Theban king list), who was the
father of mentuhotep t (£.2125 hc), the
founder of the 1 1th Dynasty.

Intef tSehertawy (2125-21 12 in;), the son of
Mentuhotep i, initially took the title 'supreme
chief of Upper Egypt*, but later in his reign he
conquered the rival cities of eoptos, dendera
and tiiER \ko.\pous and adopted a royal
TITt i.arv.

Intef ti Wahankh {21 12-2063 lie), the son of
Intef I Sehertawy, succeeded in consolidating
the military successes to achieve genuine con-
trol over Upper Egypt. The inscriptions in the
tomb of Helepi at Elkab describe a FAMINE
during his reign. In addition, the lower por-
tion of a stele (Egyptian Museum, Cairo) was
found in 1860 by Auguste Mariette, outside
Intef n's tomb at el-Tarif, describing his con-
quests and portraying him with five named
dogs at his feet.

Intef tit Nakktmbtepmfer (2G63-2055 nc) is
thought to have restored the funerarv chapel
of the deified nomarch Heqaib at
Elephantine. His reign is generally more
poorly documented than his two predeces-
sors, although he is usually described as Intef
the Great. His son, Nebhepetra mentuhotep
n, was to become the first ruler of both Upper

and Lower Egypt since the end of the Old
Kingdom.

The name Intef was also taken bv three
Theban rulers of the 17th Dynasty, who ruled
Upper Egypt during a period of instability
immediately preceding the emergence of
rulers (in this case KAMOSE and AHMOSE i) who
reunited the two halves of the countrv.
P. E. Newberry, l On the parentage of the Intel"
kings of the Eleventh Dynasty*, ZAS 72 (1936),
118-20.

H. E. WlNU k:k. The rise and fill of the . Middle
Kingdom in Thebes (New York, 1947).
W. SctlENkKL, Memphis, Herahleopulis, Tlichcn:
die epigraphischen Zeugnisse der 7.-11. Dynastic
Agyptens (Wiesbaden, 1965).
D. Arnoi j >, Grdhcr des _ llteu mid . 1 hlileren
Reichesm El-Tarif (Mamz, 1976).

inundation

Term used to describe the annual Hooding of
the Nile in Egypt, which has not taken place
since the completion of the ASWAN high dam
in 1971. Such was the importance of the Nile
inundation to the ancient Egyptians that
they worshipped hapy, a personification of
the floods and the ensuing fertility. The
Egyptian seasons were based on the annual
Nile cycle, and named accordingly: akhet the
inundation, perei the growing season, and
shewn the drought season. However, the
inundation only occasionally occurred in the
calendrical season of akhet, since the civil
calendar itself became gradually more and
more out of step with the seasonal and lunar
measurements of time.

Each year between June and September the
Nile and its tributaries, the Blue Nile and the
Atbara, receive the heavy summer rains of the
Ethiopian highlands. These rivers greatly
increase their volume and Hood along the
Nile's course. For thousands of years, prior to
the construction of the High Dam, the flood
would have become noticeable at Aswan bv the
last week of June, and would have reached its
full height in the vicinity of Cairo by
September. The floods would begin to subside
about two weeks later. The flooding of the land
led to the deposition of a new layer of fertile
silt every year, so that fertilizer w^as not gener-
al!} necessary, the soil being replaced each
year. The importance of recording the level of
the inundation, in terms of predicting soil fer-
tility and crop yields, led to the devising of
methods for the recording of the Nile's height,
using kilometers (although there is no evi-
dence for them in the earliest periods).
However, there is no firm evidence that such
records were used to calculate crop yields as a
basis for TAXATION,

The first crops could be planted in October
and November and would ripen in March or
April, at which time the river had reached its
lowest level (see agriculture). During this
time little watering would have been necessarv.
The water could be retained longer on the
land by the use of basins and canals, and it
could be raised from the river by irrigation
devices such as the si ialh v. The extensive
flooding of the land also produced an unavoid-
able 'slack period' in the agricultural vear, dur-
ing which certain corvee tasks could be under-
taken. In the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC),
PYRAMID building was one such task, and the
high water levels could be used to ship stone
closer to construction sites than would other-
wise have been possible.

The inundation was also a time of celebra-
tion, and offerings were made to I iap\ , the god
who personified the Nile flood. The Hymn to
the Nile Inundation, probably composed in the
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 nc), praises the
river for the renewed life it brings to Egypt
each vear.

B. H. Strickkr, De overs/ mining van de Nijl
(Leiden, 1956),

D. Bonne u , La erne du Nil (Paris, 1964).
K. Bt TZER, Early hydraulic civilization in Egypt
(Chicago, 1976).

W. Su-iexkel, Die Benuisseningsrevolutiou nn
alleiiAgypt.cn (Mainz, 1978).
J. J. Janssen, 'The day the inundation began 1 ,
jmS46/2(m7\ 129-36.

lnyotefi<r iNTEE

Although iron was introduced into western
Asia by the third millennium BC, the first evi-
dence of iron smelting in Egypt, dating to the
sixth century BC, was excavated by Flinders
Petrie at the Delta city of naikkviis. There
are a number of earlier examples of iron arte-
facts in Egypt, stretching back to the early Old
Kingdom (r.2600 BC), but most of these are
assumed to have involved naturally occurring
meteoric rather than smelted iron. A fragment
of iron found in the pyramid complex of
Khufu at giza has been shown to be much later
in date than the Old Kingdom.

Until the 22nd Dynasty (945-715 uc) iron
artefacts were primarily restricted to ritual
contexts, such as royal tombs, as in the case of
the small iron dagger found in the tomb of
TUTANKHAMUN (kv62; 1336—1327 bc). The
AMARNA LETTERS include references to gifts of
iron sent from western Asiatic rulers to
Amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc) and Akhenaten
(1352-1336 bc), indicating the prestigious
nature of the metal at diis date (see iiittites).

141

IRRIGATION

ISIS

It was only during the Roman period (30 BC-
An 395) that iron tools and weapons became
relatively common in Egypt. For the use of
iron in Nubia, see mkrok.

A. Lt CAS t Ancient Egyptian materials and
industries, 4th ed., rev. J. R. Harris (London.
1962), 235-43.

R. M U>i)i\, 'Early iron metallurgy in the Near
East 1 , Transactions of the Iron and S '/eel Institute
of Japan 15/2 (1975), 59-68.
R. E Tyuxotk, 'The origin of iron smelting in
Africa', )\ est African Journal of Archaeology h

(1975), 1-9.

B. SCHEEL, Egyptian mela/workiug and tools
(Princes Risbomugh, 1989), 17-18.

irrigation see uirici i.tlrf.; inundation;

SCORPION and SMAI3UF

ishedtreesct vm.es
Isis

Goddess who encapsulated die virtues of the
archetypal Egyptian wife and mother. She was
the sister-wife to ostitis and mother to HORUS,
and as such became the symbolic mother of
the Egyptian king, who was himself regarded
as a human manifestation of Hof US. The asso-
ciation between Isis and the physical royal
throne itself is perhaps indicated by the fact
that her name may have nriginalh meant 'seat 1 ,
and the emblem that she wore on her head was
the hieroglvphic sign for throne. From the
Xew Kingdom (1550-1069 tit;) onwards, she-
was closely connected with HATHQR and so
sometimes wore a solar disc between cow
horns. Her maternal role included that of the
Tsis-cow 1 , mother to the aims bull, and 'great
white sow of Heliopolis'. Her origins are
uncertain, although she seems tit have been
first worshipped in the Delta; in the
Heiiopolitan theology she was regarded as a
daughter of the deities GKB and nit.

She is best known mythological ly as the
devoted wife of Osiris, whose bod\ she sought
after his murder by SETH. She is said to have
made the first mummy from the dismembered
limbs of Osiris, using her wings to breathe life
into him and magicallv conceiving her son
Horns in the process. In the temple of Hatbor
at DENDERA, there are reliefs depicting this
necrophiliac act of conception, showing Isis
hovering over the mummy in the form of a kite.
In reference to diis role, she is often depicted
in the form of a woman with long elegant
wings, often embracing the pharaoh or, in pri-
vate funerary scenes, the deceased. According
to the myths, Osiris became ruler of the under-
world, w r hile Isis gave birth to her son at
khemmis in the Delta. Numerous bronzes and

reliefs show her suckling Ilorus in the form of
the young king seated on her lap

As Tsis great in magic 1 she could be called
upon to protect the young, and would be
invoked at times of injury. She was also able to
combine her medicinal skills with great cun-
ning. When the sun-god R\ was bitten by a
snake (fashioned by Isis from earth mixed with
Ra's saliva) she is said to have offered to cure
him in return for knowledge of his secret
name. Having found out this name, she
became 'mistress of the gods who knows Ra by
his own name' and passed on her knowledge to
Horus, thus enabling him to acquire great
powers. Her great cunning was also described
in the story of the contending^ of Horus and

Gilt, foonze and mood statuette ofhh suckling
Horns. The wooden chair and pedestal are original
and thej'ace of the goddess is gill. Tale Period,
after 1)00 tic, from north Saqqara, it. 23 cm.

(i: \07h%)

Seth, in which she was instrumental in having
Seth condemn himself, so that her son would
become the earthly ruler of Egypt.

Her most famous and long-lived sanctuan
was on the island of Pi in. At. near Aswan, but lis
a universal goddess she was widely wor-
shipped, with significant cults at Egyptian
sites such as DENDERA as well as at mtii.os in
Syria-Palestine. The great importance attached
to her cult by the Nubians is demonstrated

142

ITHYPI-IALLIC

by the survival of her worship at Phiiae (on the
border between Egypt and Nubia) until the
sixth century \D, by which time virtually all of
Egypt had become Christianized.

In post-Pharaonic times her cult was adopt-
ed as one of the Classical 'mystery 1 cults, grad-
ually spreading through the Hellenistic world
and the Roman empire. There were temples
erected to her in Rome itself, including a sub-
stantial complex at the Campus Martius. The
Classical writer Apuleius (c.AD 140) described
a ceremony of initiation into the cult of Isis in
his Metamorphoses, although the final rite in
the ceremony was not disclosed. Ln
Greco-Roman times, her cult began to surpass
that ol Osiris in popularity, seriously rivalling
both the traditional Roman gods and early
Christianity.

II. W. Ml i.li;r, Isis rait dem HoruskuiaY, Ujk
14(1963), 7-38.

M Mlnstkr, I nlersnchiingen zur Collin Isis vom

Alien Reich bis zum Ende des \cucn Seiches

(Berlin, 1968).

J. G. Griffiths, Plutarch s De Iskte et Osmde

(Swansea, 1970).

R. F. Witt, his in the Qmew- Roman world

(London, 1971).

J. Lixtast, Iin-cfiiuirc bMiogmphique des /shun,

_ 7 vols (Leiden, 1972-4).

E Dl \ and, Lc mite d'tsh dam le basstn oria&ok

tie hi Miditemmee, 3 vols (Leiden, 1912).

R. A. WtLD, Water in the eullie inn-ship of his mid

Sarapis (Leiden, 1981).

Israel

The Israelites are attested in Syria-Palestine
from the late Bronze Age onwards. Their cul-
tural and ethnic origins are difficult to clarify
partly because the archaeological and Biblical
sources of evidence are difficult to reconcile.
The Biblical accounts of the origins of the
people of Israel, which are principally-
described in the books of Numbers, Joshua
and Judges, are often at odds both with other
ancient textual sources and with the archaeo-
logical evidence for the settlement of CANAAN
in the lale Bronze Age and early Iron Age
(,•.160(1-750 iu:).

Israel is first textually attested as a political
entii\ in the so-called Israel Stele, an inscrip-
tion of the fifth year of the reign of MERENFrAH
(1213-1205 BC), which includes a list of
defeated peoples: 'Their chiefs prostrate
themselves and beg for peace, Canaan is dev-
astated, Ashkelon is vanquished, Gezer is
taken, Yenoam annihilated, Israel is laid waste,
its seed exists no more, Syria is made a widow
for Egypt, and all lands have been pacified. '

Donald Redford has suggested that the
Israelites were probably emerging as a distinct

'The so-called 'Israel Stele* or 'victory stek of

Mai'iiptah ', which is inscribed with a list of
defeated peoples, including the firs! known mem ion
of Israel (DETAIL \n<>\ K). The side iras erected by
Meirnfiliih in his jiinenay temple at Thebes. Til It
Dynasty, 1213 -1203 lie, grey granite, it. 3.hSm.
(cunnjrJNOH)

element of Canaanite culture during the cen-
tury or so prior to this. Some authorities have
argued that the early Israelites were an
oppressed rural group of Canaanites who
rebelled against the Canaanite cities along the
coast, while others have hypothesized that
they were the survivors of a decline in the for-
tunes of Canaan who established themselves in
the highlands at the end of the Bronze Age.
Redford, however, makes a good case for
equating the very earliest Israelites with the
semi-nomadic people in the highlands of cen-
tral Palestine, known to the Egyptians as the
Shasu (see tsr.noux), who constantly disrupt-
ed the Ramesside pharaohs 1 sphere of influ-
ence in Syria-Pales tine. This theory is bol-

stered by the fact that the hieroglyphic deter-
minative written in front of the name Israel
on the Israel Stele indicates that it was regard-
ed as a group of people rather than a city.

Although, unlike Israel, the Shasu are often
mentioned in Egyptian texts, their pastoral
lifestyle has left few traces in the archaeologi-
cal record. By the end of the thirteenth centu-
ry BC the Shasu/Israelites were beginning to
establish small settlements in the uplands, the
architecture of which closely resembled con-
temporary Canaanite ullages.

In the tenth century tic; Solomon ruled over
an Israelite kingdom that had overcome both
Canaanites and Philistines, emerging as the
dominant state in the Levant. At the capital,
Jerusalem, only the barest ruins of Solomon's
temple and palace have survived. After his
reign, the territory was split between the king-
doms oflsrael and judah, which survived until
722 and 587 BC respectively. In the Egyptian
Third Intermediate Period (1069-747 tic) and
Late Period (747-332 BC) there are a number
of references in Egyptian texts to Egyptian
political dealings with Israel, Judah and other
Syro-Palestinian polities, particularly in the
forging of alliances to hold back die threats
posed by the \ss\ria\s and PERSIANS.

See also BIBLICAL oowkctions.
VV. M. F. Pktril, Six temples at Thebes (London,
1897), 13.

E. HORNUNG, L Die Israclstele des Merenptah',
-igyp/en uud tltcs Testament 5 (1985), 224-33.
G. W. Aiilstrou, II ha mere the Israelites?

(Winona Lake, IN, 1986).
M. S M.KHandl-I. Soltrolzi \\, 'The Egyptian
\iusemn, Cairo (Mainz, 1987), no. 212.
D. B. RliDFORD, Egypt, Caiman and Israel in
ancient times (Princeton, 1992), 257-82.

ithyphallic

Not specifically an Egyptological term, but
generally used to refer to deities or human fig-
ures having an erect penis, particularly the
gods ami \ and mix.

lUWen (Egyptian iwn: 'pillar 1 )

Pillar-shaped fetish of the city of iikuopous

which was a symbol of the moon, in the same

way that the OBEUSK was associated with the

sun-god. The name was also applied to the

moon-god manifestation of osn-us.

K. M\rti\, Tin Go run! symbol des Lehens

(Hildesheim, 1977), 1 6— IS.

— , iLin-Pfeiler', Lexikon der . Igyptnbigie ill, ed.

W. Helck, K. Otto and IV. Westendorf

(Wiesbaden, 1980), 213-14.

143

JACKAL

JEWELLE RY

jackal see &mjbis, dog and wepwawet
jewellery

From die earliest times in ancient Egypt, jew-
ellery was used as a means of self-adornment
and also as an indication of social status. Thus,
it is not surprising" to find that jewellery is
among the first types of artefact known from
Egypt. During the Badarian period
((■.5500-4000 bc) broad belts or 'girdles 1 of
green glazed stone beads were made. Later in
the predynasttc period necklaces of faience
beads were worn, along with bracelets and
amulets of shell and ivory.

In the lst-Dynasty tomb of DJER at Abydus a
dismembered arm decorated with four
bracelets was discovered by Flinders Petrie.
These early examples of jewellery show con-
siderable sophistication, and such precious
materials as gold, lapis LAZULI, TURQUOISE and
amethyst were already being used. Although
the actual burial was not preserved in the 3rd-
Dynasty tomb of SEKHEMRHET at Saqqara, the
excavations did reveal items of spectacular
jewellery, including a delicate bracelet of gold
ball-beads. The 4th-Dynasty tomb of Queen
] ietepi iere.s I at Giza contained numerous
pieces of royal jewellery, including silver bangles
inlaid with butterfly designs. In certain periods
the Egyptians seem to have regarded SILVER as
more valuable than gold, and this find gives
some indication of the rich jewellery that must
have accompanied the burials of the pharaohs
during the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 i:c;).

The peak of Egyptian jewellery-making was
undoubtedly the Middle Kingdom (2055-
1650 ec), when works of great elegance and
refinement were produced, as in the case of the
jeweller) of Princess Khnemel, who was buried
at DAHSHUR during the reign of the 12th-
Dynasty ruler Amenemhat u (1922—1878 8C).
Her equipment included two beautifully made
openwork diadems inlaid with semi-precious
stones, and the famous Cretan-influenced
'bull mosaic' pendant, which, until recently,
was widely believed to be glass. The Dahshur
treasure was rivalled only by the late 12th-
Dynasty jewellery of Sithalhoriunet from a
shaft-tomb at EL-LAHUN, which included a dia-
dem, a gold collar and two pectorals, as well as
necklaces and bead-girdles (now in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York and the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo).

From the royal necropolis at ee-lisht came

Egyptian royal jewellery of the Middle Kingdom
and Second Intermediate Period (c. 1880- 1590 Be).
TOP elect rum winged scarab, inlaid with cornelian,
green feldspar and lapis lazuli. (ei54460) above
CENTRE ajoure gold plaque showing Amcuemhat n
offering unguent to Alum. (ea59194) centre gold
finger-ring with lapis lazuli bezel, (p.. \57098) LEFT
AND right two bracelet spacer-ban crowned by
reclining cats, with twelve threading tabes; the
inscription on the base of each names Nubkheperra
lutefand his wife Sobkemsaf (t. 67099, 57700)
BOTTOM human-headed green jasper heart scarab of
Sobkemsaf a, a roughly-incised verse of Chapter
30 ti from the Book of the Dead around the gold
plinth, (t:.i7870) l. of heart scarab 3 J> cm,

the fine jewellery of a 12th-Dvnastv noble-
woman named Senebtisy, whose 'broad collar"
incorporates faience, turquoise and gold leaf
However, the fact that this piece has no fasten-

ings suggests that it may have been made
specifically for funerary use. The same tomb
contained gold hair ornaments in the form ot
flowers, a bead belt with a gold buckle deco-
rated with Senebtisv's name, and a further
broad collar with falcon terminals. The jew-
ellery of this period was to influence products
in neighbouring lands, and excavations al the
Svro-Palestinian city of Bvblos have revealed
numerous Egyptianizing items, including a
gold 'breast-plate 1 bearing the pattern ol an
Egyptian broad collar.

The earliest significant finds of jeweller) m
the New Kingdom derive from the tomb of
Queen AllHOTEi* a, whose equipment included
magnificent inlay work, and an extremely fine
chain made from looped six-ply gold w ire.
The jewellery of Memvi, Merti and Menhet,
three foreign wives of Thutmnsc Hi
(1479—1425 BC), was discovered in a much-

144

JEWELLER Y

J UDGEMEN T OF THE DEAD

plundered rock tomb at Wadi Gabbanet el-
Qurud, about three kilometres to the west of
Deir cl-Bahri in western Thebes. The finds
(now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York) include gkss elements among the gem-
Stones and gold. Although glass was precious

a son of Rameses u (1279-1213 in:) whose
funerary chapel was attached to the SE&AFEt. \i
at Saqqara. Two of the Ai'is-bull burials made
by the prince also contained jewellery,
although this is generally regarded as clumsy
and poorly made.

920

have revealed large quantities of fired clav

moulds used for the making of faience

amulets, beads and finger rings. Blue faience

disc beads were evidently produced (and lost)

in their thousands at such 18th-D\ nasty town

sites as el-Amarna and Malkata.

H. E. WiNU)t;k, The treasure. of three Egyptian

princesses (New York. 1948),

C. AYbhed, J&bwZj ofthephuraolis (London,

1971).

C. A. R. A\l JREW5, Catalogue of Egyptian

antiquities in the British Museum \ I: Jewellery

(Lnnhut, 1981),

J. Ogdv.x, Jewellery of the ancient world (London,

1982).

C \. R. Amiukws, AuewM Egyptian jewellery

(London, 1990).

judgement of the dead s,

■e FUNKRARY

Fragment of mil l-paiii ling from /lie tomh if
Sabekholep(rif)3), showing jewellery-makers and
met a /-workers making beads ami precious nh/ects.
Several nj the men arc using quadruple and triple
how drills to pieire hard-slonc heads. ISih
Dynasty, reign of'Thutmose n. (.. I39S Be, painted
plaster from Thebes, HMcm.fB.i920)

at this time, the Wadi Qubbanet el-Qjrud
finds mark the beginning of a trend whereby
New Kingdom jewellery became increasingly
elaborate and garish, making more use of
artificial stones, and gradualK becoming less
delicate.

The fabulous jewellery of tl'J'Wkiiamin
(1336-1327 hl:) is sometimes described as
expensive costume jeweller}-, lacking the
refinement of die Middle Kingdom and early
New Kingdom work. The major find of the
19th Dynasty is the jewellery of Khaemwaset,

During the New Kingdom ear ornaments
became relatively common, and a variety of
earrings were produced, particularly in stone
and glass. Pierre MontxTs excavations at rwis
in 1939-40 led to the discovery of royal jew-
eller} of the Third Intermediate Period
(1069—747 lie), which, although less accom-
plished than some of the earlier work, is clear-
ly of a generally similar type to the New
Kingdom material.

The scientific and aesthetic study of the
surviving items of jewellery has been supple-
mented by pictorial evidence, from tombs
such as those of rkkiimir \ (ttIOO),
Amcncmopet (tt276) and Sobekhotep (tt63),
as well as the debris of FAIENCE workshops
such as those at EL-AMARNA. The jewellery
worn by poorer people was mostly made from
less valuable gemstones or faience. The exca-
vations of the 1 Sth-Dvnastv eitv at el-Amarna

145

KALABSHA

Almost untranslatable term used by the
Egyptians to describe the creative life-force of
each individual, whether human or divine.
The kit, represented by a hieroglyph consist-
ing of a pair of arms, was considered to be the
essential ingredient thai differentiated a living
person from a dead one, and is therefore
sometimes translated as 'sustenance 1 . It came
into existence at the same moment that the
individual was born, subsequently serving as
his or her '"double 1 and sometimes being
depicted in funerary art as a slightly smaller
figure standing beside the living being (see
dyad). Sometimes the creator-god KHNUM was
shown modelling the ka on a potter's wheel at
the same time as he was forming the bodies of
humanity

When any individual died, the ka continued
to live, and so required the same sustenance as
the human being had enjoyed in life. For this
reason it was provided either with genuine
food offerings or with representations of food
depicted on the wall of the tomb, all of which
were activated by the offkring formula,
addressed directly to the ka. It appears that the
ka was thought not to eat the offerings physi-
cally but simply to assimilate their life-
preserving force. In giving food or drink to
one another in normal daily life, die Egyptians
therefore sometimes used the formula for
your ka* in acknowledgement of this life-
giving force. Consequently the offerings
themselves came to be known as kmv and were
sometimes replaced in representations of die
offering TABLE by the ka sign - two out-
stretched arms that magically warded off the
forces of evil. It was to the ka that offerings
were made before the FALSE doors set up in
tombs.

funerary statues were regarded as images
of the ka of the deceased, and sometimes these
too incorporated the ka symbol, as in the case
of the image of the 1 3th-Dynasty ruler Awibra
Hor from DAHSHUR (c.1750 BC; Egvptian
Museum, Cairo), which depicts the deceased
with the ka hieroglyph in the form of a head-
dress. It was thought that the reunion of the ba
and ka. in the underworld effectively trans-
formed the deceased into an AKH (one of the
"blessed dead').

J. P. ALLEN, 'Funerary texts and their meaning 1 .
Mummies and magic, ed. P. Laeovara, S. D'Auria
and C. II. Roehrig (Boston, 1988), 3S-+9.

K.i\-sttttue of King Awibra Hor, discovered within
its nans in a tomb in the north of the pyramid of
Anienemhat in a! Dahshur. I3lh Dynasty,
c.UOObc, ii. nans 2.07 in. h. ofstatue 1.7 in.
(curoje30948)

E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Rredeck
{.New York, 1992), 167-84.

Kalabsha (anc. Talmis)
Site of an unfinished, free-standing temple in
Lower Nubia, about 50 km south of Asw^an.
The complex was built in sandstone masonn
and consisted of a pylon, forecourt, hvpostvle
hall, two vestibules and a sanctuarv. It was
dedicated to the local god Mandulis and dates
primarily to the early Roman period {r.30 bc),
but the colony at Talmis evidently dates back
to at least the reign of Amenhotep n
(1427-1400 bc), who is depicted in the paint-
ed wall reliefs of the hypostyle hall, in
1962—3 the buildings were dismantled, in
order to save them from the waters of Lake-
Nasser, and in 1970 they were reassembled ai
a new location 750 m to the south of the

ASWAN HIGH DAM.

K. G. Sii'.GLLR, Kalabsha. Architektur and
Baugeschichte des Tempets (Berlin, 1970).

Kamose (1555-1550 bc)

Last ruler of the Theban 17th Dynasty, suc-
cessor of seqknknra taa ti (f. 1.560 hc) and pre-
decessor of aiimosk i (1550-1525 bc), the first
ISth-Dynasty ruler. The principal documents
relating to his reign are two large stelae at
Karnak (both recounting his campaign:-,
against the hyksos rulers), as well as the
Carnarvon Tablet, which appears to be a later
scribal copy of the stelae. The text derived
from these three documents begins by
describing the war between Seqenenra Taa u
and the Hyksos king Aauserra \vvv\
(1585-1542 BC) and goes on to narrate
Tvamosc's continuation of the conflict after
his father's death. He was buried in a pvrami-
dal-style tomb at Dra Abu el-Naga (see
THEBES)j where the earlier 17lh-Dynastv royal
tombs are located, and it appears that his
tomb had still not been robbed over four hun-
dred years later when the necropolis was
inspected during the reign of Rameses tx
(1126-1108 bc). His coffin was discovered
at Dra Abu el-Naga in 1857, but his mummi-
fied bod) disintegrated as soon as it was
opened.

A. H. GARDINER, 'The defeat of the Hyksos by
Kamose\y/< 7 3(1917), 95-110.
H. WiNDOCK, 'The tombs of the kings of the
Seventeenth Dynast} atThebes\y£-/ 10(1924),
217-77.

H. Gauthikr, 'Les deu.v rois Kamose (wile
dynastic)', Studies Griffith, ed. S. R. K. Glanville
(Oxford, 1932), 3-8.

L. Habaci n. The second stele of Kamose ami his
struggle against the Hyksos ruler and his capital
(Glucksmdt, 1972).

146

KAMUTEF

Kamutef

Divine epithet meaning L bull of his mother',
which was used from the New Kingdom
onwards to refer to the combined irhyphallic
form of amln and min. Amun-Min-Kamutcf
is frequently depicted receiving offerings of
lettuces, or standing beside them as they grow.
H. RiGKE, Das KamittefHci/igiiuii Hatschepsuts
uml Thutmoses in (Cairo, 1939).
H. Jaritz, 'Kamutef, Lexikon tier Agypttilogie hi,
ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Wesrendorl"
(Wiesbaden, 1980), 308-9.
G. HAENY, 'Zum Kamutef' , CM 90 (1986), 33-4.

Kara nog

Large town-site and necropolis located in
Lower Nubia about 60 km south of Aswan,
which flourished in the Meroitic and post-
Meroitic periods (c.300 BC-AD 550). By at least
as early as the third century BC, Karanug had
developed into a major town; the unusually
scattered settlement was unique among
Meroitic administrative centres (e.g. faras,
Gebel Adda and qa.sr iurim) in being protect-
ed by a huge three-storey mud-brick '■castle 1
rather than a surrounding enclosure wall.
Whereas Meroitic sites in Upper Nubia con-
sist principally of temples and tombs, the
remains of Karanog and other surviving
Lower Nubian Meroitic settlements are dom-
inated by palaces and fortifications, and there
is a distinct lack of royal sculptures and
inscriptions. In view of this discrepancy W Y.
Adams has proposed that Lower Nubian
towns such as Karanog may have been gov-
erned by local feudal rulers rather than being
under the direct control of the Meroitic kings
in the south.

C. L. Woollev and D. Randux-MacIvkr,
Ktirtuwf', the Riinnnio-^ii/'idi! cemetery
(Philadelphia, 1910).

C. L. Wooi.i.kv, Karanog, the town (Philadelphia,
1911).

W. Y. Adams, 'Meroitic north and south, a study
in cultural contrasts', Memtka 2 (1976), 1 1-26.
— ^Nubia: cm •rider In Africa, 2nd ed. (London
and Princeton, 1984), 356-7, 371-8.

Karnak (anc, Ipct-isut)

Huge complex of religious buildings covering
over a hundred hectares in the northeastern
area of modern Luxor, consisting of three
major sacred precincts dedicated to the deities
amun-ra, MU'i" and montu, each surrounded
by trapezoidal mud-brick enclosure walls. The
enclosures also encompassed several smaller
temples dedicated to PTAH, Opet and KHONS
respectively. The main temples were continu-
es of the temple complex til Karnak.

temple of Thutmosel

1 first pylon

2 triple shrine of Sety II

3 temple of Rameses III

4 second pylon

5 Great Hypostyle Hall

6 third pylon

7 fourth pylon

8 fifth and sixth pylons
Middle Kingdom court

10 festival hall of
Thutmose III

sanctuary of Amun Kamutef

11 first fcachette') court

12 seventh pylon

13 second court

14 eighth pylon

15 ninth pylon

16 sed-festival temple of
Amenhotep II

17 temple of Khons

18 tenth pylon

19 temple of Opet

20 temple of
Khons Pa-Khered

21 temple of Mut

22 temple of Rameses 111

rgpn

temple of Nectanebo II

147

KAWA

ally eaended and embellished bj the rulers of
Egypt from at least the Middle Kingdom
W5-1650 BC) until the Roman period (30
« - m> 395), but most of the surviving remains
date to the New Kingdom (1550-1069 w).

The principal temple at Karnak, dedicated
to Amun-Ka, the pre-eminent god of the New
Kingdom, consisted of two axes, each com-
prising a succession of pylons and courtyards
interspersed with obelisks, smaller temples
shrines and altars. The earliest axis stretches
horn (vest to east, incorporating the Great
ITypostyle Mall of Ramcses li (1279-1213 i,c)
which is over 0.5 hectares in area. The second
axis extends the temple southwards towards
the nearby precmcl of the goddess Mut To
the south of the junction between the two axes
is a vast rectangular SACRED LAKE. The first
court on the north-south axis is also known as
cachette court', since an impressive collection
of thousands of fragments of royal and private
statuary (mostly now in the Egyptian
Museum, Cairo) was discovered here in 1902
buried under the temple floor.

Although Karnafe has been subject to
numerous excavations since the late nine-
teenth century, the vast majnrin of resources
have been devoted to the conservation and re-
erection of the standing monuments. It is the
largest and best-preserved temple complex „f
the New Kingdom, and its reliefs and inscrip-
tions incorporate valuable epigrapbic data
concerning the political and religious activities
ol imperial Egypt.

Karaak was surrounded b] the growing city
of Thebes (anc. Wascl), which was the reli-
gious centre of Egypt for most of the Dvnastic
period. In ,.667 nc: the temple and town were
sacked by the vss, run ruler Ashurbanipal and
from then on the city centre graduallv moved
two kilometres southwards to the area around
LUXOR temple. Much of the ancient Theban
settlement therefore lies underneath modern
Luxor, rendering it largely inaccessible to
archaeologists.

G. Lf.ur ttN, La mnpla dtt Karmh (Brussels
1929).

&M»:fttMjHiii m i.:Mftfii».i»:s -mm xs
in-: isirwk, CahiersA Karnai, h vols (194,-82)
P. Barguet, he temple ,/: /,„„„-«,. i K[lnlak: ,,,.,„■
d'exigese (Cairo, 1962).

Bronze statuette of a Kushite king (perhaps

Talwrq,,) j nm Temple TalK.nr,,. 2SthDymsty
0.690 k, II. 11.2 cm. (i: ih.lSVS)

regained its importance and SHABAQp
(716-702 ik), Shabitqo (702-690 nc) and
TAHARQO (690-664 K) all contributed new
buildings, reliefs and statuary. Taharqo effec-
tively created a new sanctuary of uiun com-
parable with that at Gebel Baikal, after which
the Kushite kings were obliged to cam out
important rituals at Kawa. Taharqo's work was
commemorated by a stele, still hi silu, dating to
the sixth year of his reign.

M. EX. Macadam, The temples of Karn 'vols
(Oxford, 1949-55).

Kematef see

t.VILN

Kawa

Temple site located opposite Donfola in the
heartland of the Nubian kram culture. The
temple complex was founded bv VMKNHOTEPBl
(1390-1352 BC) but it had been virtually aban-
doned by the reign of Rameses vn (1 136-1 129
lit:). Eventually, with the emergence of the
Kushite 25th Dynasty (747-656 «;), the sue

148

Kernel

The name thai the ancient Egyptians used to
describe Egypt itself. The literal meaning of
Kemct ,s -black land', a reference to the fertile
Nile silt which was annually spread across the
land by the inundation. The Egyptians
referred to themselves as the rancid, c,i Kernel
('the people of the black land'). For the
Egyptians, therefore, black was essentially the
colour of rebirth and regeneration, probahl,
having none of the western connotations of
death and decay.

The fertile, black landscape of Kernel was

surrounded, in stark contrast, bj the desert
known to the Egyptians as Deshret ('the red
land'). This sense of natural duality wis
deeply ingrained in the Egyptian world-view
in that then- land was that of the lotos and the
PAPYRUS, of the red crown and the white of
Upper and Lower Egypt
H. Km, Anciml Egypt: a cultural topograph?, ed
T. G. H. James (London, 1961).

Kenamun (Qenamtm) (r.1450-1400 ue)
High official of the 18th Dynasty, whose well
preserved Theban tomb (tt93) was never
properh excavated since it was already known
to early travellers in the eighteenth century
ID. He was chief steward to IMENHOTO II
(-1427-1400 ik.) and superintendent of die
dockyard of Peru-nefer near Memphis. The
fact that he was the son of the royal nurse
Amenemopet is perhaps an indication that
high administrative posts could be gained dur-
ing the New Kingdom even bv individuals
with relatively indirect links to the royal fami-
ly. \ si i urn of Kenamun, probably 'given to
him by the king, is the first known piece of
three-dimensional Egyptian sculpture to be
formed from glass (although a glass sculpture
of the head of Amenhotep „, now in the
Corning Museum of Glass, New York, would
have been roughh contemporary) This
Kenamun should not be confused with his
namesake, who was Mayor of the Southern
City (Thebes) in the reign of Amenhotep in
(1390-1352 nc), and owner of another Theban
tomb (TT162).

N. de G. D ivies, The UmhafKm-Amm at
Thebes, 1 vols (London, 19,10).
J. D. COONEY, 'Glass sculpture in aneiem Egypt'
Jmiriuihif Class Slmliesl (1960), 12-14.

Kerma

Town-site of the early second millennium l.<
near the third Nile cataract in Upper Nubia
which was almost certainly the capital of ihe
Kushite Kingdom during the Egyptian Old
and Middle Kingdoms (2686-1650 lie) - il is
therefore the type-site for the Kerma culture
(£.2500-1500 nc), probabh lo he identified
with the Egyptians' 'land ofYam'. The site of
Kerma incorporates a large settlement of the
Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 IK) i
cemetery of late Kerma-cuhure tumulus-
graves (including the tombs of rulers). These
elite burials also incorporated large numbers
of sacrificed retainers.

The site is dominated bv two enigmatic
mud-brick structures, known as the ,/effiifi,,
dating to the seventeenth century isc The L-
shaped western cleffufa, almost certainly a tem-
ple, is in the centre of the town, while the east-

KHAFRA

KHARGA OASIS

Jlaridniade 'Kerma ware' beaker from Tumulus A
ul Kerma. Classic Kerma phase. c.7 750-1550 DC,
ii. 11.6 m. (£455424)

em dejfufa, a type of funerary chape], is part of
the cemetery at the southern end of the site.
Each of the deffitfas was originally an almost
solid block of mud bricks covering" an area of
roughlv 1500 sq. m.

G Relsner, Excavations at Kcnna \-\\ , 2 vols
(Cambridge, MA, 1923).

B. Gratien, Les cultures Kama: essai de
classification (Lille, 1978).

C. Bonnet, 'La deffufa occidental a Kerma:
essai d , intcrprctation\ BIFAO 81 Supp. (1981),
205-12.

— , 'Excavations at the Nubian roval town of
Kerma: 1975-91', tntiquity 66 (1992), 611-25

Khafra (Chephren, Rakhaef; 2558-2532 m.)
Son of KHEI'L (2589-2566 uc), fourth ruler of
the 4th Dynasty and builder of the second
pyramid at giza. He succeeded to the throne
after the death of his half-brother Djedefra
(2566—2558 BC), who had constructed his
pyramid at \nt ROASH rather than Giza (lead-
ing to suggestions from some scholars that
there was a temporary religious schism
between the younger and elder branches of
Khufu's successors). Khafra's ROYAL T1TIILAM
included the new sa Ra ('son of Ra 1 ) epithet,
which Djedefra had used for the first lime.

His pyramid complex at Giza was similar to
that of Khufu, although slightly smaller and
currently better prcseryed. It is usually
assumed that the head of fhe Great Sphinx
was caryed into the appearance of Khafra,
since it is situated immediately next to his
causeway and valley temple. There have been
suggestions that the geological condition of
the sphinx indicates that it was carved at a
somewhat earlier date, but the archaeological
and circumstantial evidence appear to support

its synehronicity with the 4tb-Dynasty pyra-
mid complexes.

Khafra's granite-lined valley temple, exca-
vated by Auguste Marietle in 1860, was found
to contain several royal statues, including a
magnificent monolithic seated statue of the
king with a Horus falcon embracing the back
of his head, which is one of the masterpieces
of Old Kingdom sculpture (now in the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo). The diorite-gneiss
from which the statue was carved was obtained
by an expedition sent to the so-called
'Chephren quarries' in Lower Nubia, some
240 km south-west of modern Aswan. The
head of a pink granite statue of a similar type,
representing Khafra, has also been discovered
more recently.

i\l. SVEEiiand H. Souroezjan, The Egyptian
Museum, Calm: ofjmat catalogue (Mainz, 1987),
cat. no. 3 1 .

C. V \nderseeye\~, 'Une tete de C-hefren en

granite rose', MM 38 (1987), 94-7.

N. Grimal,_J history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,

1992), 72-4.

I. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.

( Harmon dsworth, 1993), 121-37.

Kharga Oasis

The southernmost and, at around 100 sq. km,
the largest of the major Egyptian western
oases, which is located in the Libyan Desert
about 175 km east of Luxor. There are traces
of Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) occupa-

10 20 30 40 50

60 70 80

90 km

1 Qasr el-Mustafa Khasif

2 Nadura, Roman temple

3 el-Baqawat, Christian
cemetery

4 Hibis, Persian and Ptolemaic

I Q. 2 i

/ n3n -.

J 5 j

temple of Amun

5 modem town of el-Kharga

6 Qasr el-Ghueida, temple
ofAmun.MutandKhons,

| n6 1
t o7 \

/□8

Late Period and Ptolemaic

7 Qasr Zaiyan, Ptolemaic
and Roman temple and
town (Tchonemyris)

8 modem town of Bulaq

9 modern town of el-Maks

el-Qibla

10 Qasr Dush, Roman temple I
of IsisandSerapis

"■■■ o D

Diorite-gneiss seated statue of 'Khafra from his
pyramid complex at Giza. 4th Dynasty, c.2500
uc. it. t.68 m. (Cairo jfAOOOI)

Plan of Kharga Oasis.

tion at Kharga and its material culture was
clearly closely connected with that of the Nile
valley throughout the Pharaonic period.

However, most of the surviving architectur-
al remains (including settlements, stone tem-
ples and cemeteries) date from the Ptolemaic
period to Coptic times (£.332 BC— AD 500).
G. Cato\-Tiio\ii\so\, Kharga Oasis in prehistory
(London, 1952).

L. Giddy, Egyptian oases: Bahariya, Dakhla,
Farafra and Kharga during pharaonic times
(Warminster, 19S7).

Khasekhemwy (Khasekhem) (t-.2686 bc)

Late 2nd-Dynastv ruler, whose reign is partic-
ularly important because he was the last
Abydene ruler (see aovdos). The reign of
djosfr (perhaps his son) was marked by the
transfer of power to MEMPi us, the introduction
of large-scale stone masonry and the official
transfer to a new royal cemetery at saqqara.

149

KHASEKHEMWY

KIILPR]

One of KhasekhemwVs wives, Nimaathep,
was later worshipped as the ancestress of the
3rd Dynasty (2686-2613 nc).

The name khasekhemwy was usually writ-
ten inside a kkrekh frame surmounted by
depictions of a SETH animal alongside the
usual iiORLS falcon. Since the serekh of his pre-
decessor peribskn was surmounted by a Seth
animal alone, it has been suggested that
khasekhemwy' 1 s reign represented a return to
religious (and perhaps also political) normali-
ty, after a period of turmoil under his prede-
cessor. This, however, is probably an excessive-
ly historical explanation for what may essen-
tially have been an iconographic phenomenon.
The debate about the political events al line
end of the 2nd Dynasty hinges partly on the
question of whether the myth of the struggle
of Horus and Seth had any historical
antecedents. The picture was once believed to
be further complicated by the existence of the
name khasekhem, which was thought to refer
to another ruler reigning between Peribsen
and khasekhemwy. However, the name is now
generally considered to be an alternative
spelling for khasekhemwy.

The principal surviving monuments from
Kfoasekhemwy's reign are Tomb v in the Early
Dynastic cemetery at Umm el-Qa'ab and the
.Shunet el-Zebib, both of which are at abydos,
as well as the so-called Tort 1 of khasekhemwy
at itiERAkONPOus. Two statues of the king, as
well as an inscribed granite door jamb (bearing
his name and a depiction of the temple foun-
dation ceremony), decorated stone vessels
(both bearing depictions of the goddess
NEKHBET) and a fragment of a stele, were all
excavated from the Early Dynastic temple at
Hierakonpolis. The depictions of slain ene-
mies on the two statues have been interpreted
as evidence of military activities during his
reign.

His tomb, nearly 70 m in length, is not only
the last royal tomb in cemetery b at Umm el-
Qa'ab but also the largest and most unusual
The substructure consists of a central corri-
dor, flanked by thirty-three store-rooms for
funerary offerings, leading to a stone-lined
burial chamber which is then followed by a
continuation of the corridor Ranked by ten
further magazines.

The Shunet el-Zebib, a huge double-walled
mud-brick enclosure located at the desert
edge, is the best surviving example of a group
of 'funerary enclosures', probably the fore-
runners of the valley temples in pyramid
complexes, each of which was erected by one
of the rulers buried in cemetery n. The
Hierakonpolis Tort 1 , a large mud-brick enclo-
sure also located close to the floodplain, is now

generally considered to have been a mortuary
monument comparable with the Shunet el-
Zebib, although the poor standard of Emile
Amclineau's excavation in 1897-9 and 1905
has hindered any more definite statement
regarding its function.

P. E. Newberry, 'The Set rebellion of the second
dymist\ \ Ancient Egypt (1922), 40-6.
R. Engelbach, 'A foundation scene of the
second dynasty 1 , JEA 20 ( 1 934), 1 83-4.
M. Hoitman, Egypt before the pharaohs
(London, 1980), 348-54.

W/e/rerfrieze

Decorative motif commonly employed in
ancient Egyptian architecture from at least as
early as the 3rd Dynasty (2686-2613 BC). The
earliest shrines and temples were constructed
from reeds tied into bundles or matting, and
sometimes the tops of these were elaborately
knotted. As techniques of stone architecture
developed, these rows of knots were translated
into decorative carved or painted friezes
around the upper edges of buildings, thus
constantly alluding to the idea of the first
shrines built on the PRIMEVAL mound as it
arose from the waters of ivun.

Khenty-khety see tell atrib
Khepri

Creator-god principally manifested in the
form of the SCARAB or dung beetle, although he
was sometimes depicted in tomb paintings and
funerary papyri as a man with a scarab as a
head or as a scarab in a boat held aloft by nun.
In the tomb of pktosirjs at Tuna el-Gebel

(r.300 nt;), he is depicted wearing the ate/
crown of the god Osiris.

Because the Egyptians observed that scarab
beetles emerged, apparently spontaneously,
from balls of dung, it was perhaps not surpris-
ing that they came to believe that the scarab
was associated with the process of CREATION
itself. Khepri is attested from at least as early
as the 5th Dynasty (2494-2345 bc), when one
of the spells in the PYRAMID TEXTS invoked the
sun to appear in his name of khepri (the liter-
al meaning of which was 'he who is coming
into being'). Because he was self-created, he
was identified with die creator-god atlm, and
because the movement of die sun from east to
west was believed to be the result of being
physically pushed like a dung-ball, he was also
identified with the sun-god ra. As a deity
closely associated with resurrection, Khepri
was also believed to be swallowed by his moth-
er Ntr each evening, and passed through her
body to be reborn each morning, lie appears
in this guise in Chapter 83 of the book OF THE
DEAD: 'I have flown up like the primeval ones,
I have become Khepri . . .'

From the Middle kingdom (2055-1650 BC)
onwards, the scarab form of amulet was being
produced in very large quantities. On a more
monumental scale, it is considered likely thai
each temple originally incorporated a colossal

Granite colossal statue of a scarab beetle, probably
representing the god Khepri, the form taken by the
sun-god at the time of his birth in the morning. It
mis found in Constantinople, where it had probably
been taken in Roman times. Date and provenance
unknown, it. 89 cm, (MA74)

150

KHONS

stone scarab on a plinth, representing the tem-
ple as the primeval MOUND from which the
sun-god emerged to begin the process of cos-
mogony. Such a scarab is still preserved in situ
beside the sacred lake in the temple of Amun

at KARNAk.

J. Assmann, 'Chepre', Lexikon der Agyptologic I,
cd.W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westcndorf
(Wiesbaden, 1975), 9.14-40.

Khnuni

Ram-god whose principal cult centre was on
the island of Elephantine at aswan, where he
was worshipped, probably from the Early
Dynastic period (3100-2686 bc) onwards, as
part of a triad with the goddesses SATET and
ANUKET. In his earliest form he appears to have

principal creator-gods (see creation). This
creative role stemmed inevitably from the
combination of the creative symbolism of
moulding pottery, the traditional potency of
the ram and the fact that the Egyptian word
tor ram, ISA, also had the meaning of 'spiritual
essence' (although the latter was usually writ-
ten with the stork hieroglyph). Perhaps partlv
because of diis punning connection with the
concept of the /w, Klinum was regarded as the
quintessential ha of the sun-god ra, who was
therefore depicted with a ram's head as he
passed through the netherworld in the solar
bark.

The best-preserved temple of Khnum is the
Greco-Roman construction at esna, where his
consort was Menhyt, a relatively unknown

to Khnum at a time of famine caused by low

inundations.

A. M. Badawi, Der Gott Chnum (Gliickstadr,

1937).

L. IlAinciii, 'Was Anukis considered as the wife

of Khnum or as his daughter? 1 , ASAF. 50 (1950),

501-7.

P. Barci BT, La stele de la famine ii Sehel (Cairo,

1953).

P. BEitREN.s, 'Widder', Lexikon der Agyptologie vi,

ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westcndorf

(Wiesbaden, 1986), 1243-5.

Khons

Moon-god, whose name means 'wanderer',
typically represented as a mummiform human
figure (occasionally hawk-headed) holding

been portrayed as the first type of ram domes-
ticated in Egypt (Ovis longipes), which had
corkscrew horns extending horizontally out-
wards from the head, as opposed to the later
species (Ovis platyra), which had horns curv-
ing inwards towards the face and was more
often associated with the god amun-.

Khnum's strong association with both the
Nile inundation and the fertile soil itself con-
tributed to his role as a potter-god and there-
tore also to his cosmogonic role as one of the

Fragment of sandstone wall-relief decorated with a
representation of the god Khnum as a ram-headed
man. 18th Dynasty, c. 1300 BC, it. -IS cm.
(r. i6S544)

lioness-goddess, although the goddess neith
also features prominently in the reliefs. The
texts on the walls of the Esna temple celebrate
his creation of the entire universe including
gods, humans, animals and plants. The so-
called famine Stele at Sehel describes appeals

Votive stele, the upper register of which depicts a
seated, figure of the god Khons receiving a libation
and offerings. 18th Dynasty, c.1550 1295 tic,
limestone, a. 38. t cm. (e,\1297)

sceptre and flail and wearing the sidelock of
youth with a headdress consisting of a hori-
zontal crescent moon surmounted by a full
moon. Like troth (another lunar deity), he
was also portrayed as a cynocephalus baboon.
He appears to have originally been associated
with childbirth, and in the Theban region he
was considered to be the son of amun and
mut. In the 20th Dynasty (1186-1069 BC) a
temple of Khons was built within the
precincts of the temple of Amun at karnak.. At
kom ombo, however, he was regarded as the
son of the deities .sober and hathor.

151

KING LISTS

One manifestation of Khons, known as l the
provider', was credited with the ability to
drive out evil spirits. The Bentresh Stele (now
in the Louvre) is an inscription composed in
the fourth century BC but purporting to dale to
the reign of Rameses u (1279-121.1 bc). It
claims that the pharaoh sent a statue of Khons
to a Syrian ruler in order to facilitate the cure
of an ailing foreign princess called Remresh.
P. DERC1 i \i\, 'Mythes et dieux lunaires en
Egypte', Sources orieiila/es $: La lane, mythes el

rites (Paris, 1962), 19-68.

G. Posener, l Une rcinterpretation tardive du
nam du dieu Khonsou', ZAS 93 (1966), 1 15-19.
H. Bhunner, 'Chons\ Lexiktm tier 4g)/pohpe i,
ed. W. Hclck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1975), 960-3.

Khufu (Cheops) (2589-2566 uc)

Second ruler of the 4th Dvnastv, whose name
is an abbreviation of the phrase Khmcni-kuefiii
(*KJ i\i m protects me 1 ). I Ie was the son of sne-
FEEU (2613-2589 bc) and the builder of the
Great Pyramid at GIZA, His own burial cham-
ber was found to contain only an empty, sar-
cophagus, but part of the funerary equipment
of his mother, hetepi-ieres i, survived in a
MASTABA tomb near his pyramid. Despite the
fame of his funerary complex, the only surviv-

Ivory si til tie He of Khufu, whose Horns name is
inscribed on the right side of the throne; his
cartouche, inscribed on the other side, is partly
broken. This is the only surviving representation of
the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza. 4th
Dynasty, c.2570 nc, from Abydos, it. 7.5 cm
(c,ttiioji:36l43)

ing complete representation of Khufu himself
is a small ivory statuette of a ruler wearing the
red crown ol Lower Lgvpt anil seated on a
throne carved with Khufu \s Horus-name,
which was excavated from the temple of
Khentimentiu at ABYDOS by Flinders Pctrie,
and is now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Several rock-carved texts at remote quarrying
sites such as nvi'Mii and Wadi Maghara sug-
gest that his reign, not unexpectedly, was
marked by considerable quarrying and mining
activity.

In Eater tradition he was reputed to have
been a tyrannical ruler, although these tradi-
tions cannot be substantiated by contempo-
rary evidence and perhaps relate simply to the
imposing scale of his pyramid.
W. M. F. Pkyiui^ Jbydos n (London, 1903), 30,
pis 13-14.

Z. Hawass, 'The Khufu statuette: is it an Old
Kingdom sculpture? 1 , Melanges Gamal Monkhtar
i (Cairo, 1 985), 379-94.

L E. S. Edwariw, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.
(Harmondsworth, 1993), 98-121.

Khyan (Seuserenra, c.1600 bc)
A 15th-Dynastv iiyksus ruler of Lower
Egypt, whose 'throne name 1 was Seuserenra.
Unlike the other 1 lyksos pharaohs, who com-
missioned very few architectural or sculptur-
al monuments, Khyan was responsible for the
decoration of religious structures at GEBELEIN
(along with his successor Aauserra apepi) and
Bubastis (tele BASTA). The international
influence of Khyan is perhaps indicated bv
the discovery of a number of objects bearing
his name at sites outside Egvpt, including
scarabs and seal impressions in the Levant, a
travertine vase lid at Knossos, part of an
obsidian vessel at the Hit tire capital of
Hattusas (Boghazkdy). Although the two lat-
ter items were presumably prestige gifts or
trade goods, it is possible that the seals indi-
cate a degree of Hyksos control over southern
Palestine. The granite lion bearing Khyan's
name that was found built into a house wall at
Baghdad and is now in the collection of the
British Museum is usualh assumed to have
been removed from Egypt some time after the
Hvksos period.

R. GiVF.ON, 'A sealing of Khyan from the
Shephela of southern Palestine', y/;'/ 51 (1965),
202-4.

W. C. Hayes, 'Egypt from the death of
Ammenemes in to Seqenenre if, Cambridge
Ancient History ii/i, ed. I. E. S. Edwards ctal.,
3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1 973). 42-76.

king lists

Term used by Egyptologists to refer to surviv-

ing lists of the names and titles of rulers of
Egypt, some of which also incorporate infor-
mation concerning the length and principal
events of individual reigns. Virtually all of the
surviving examples derive from religious or
funerary contexts and usually relate to the cel-
ebration of the cult of royal ancestors, where-
by each king established his own legitimacy
and place in the succession by making regular
offerings to a list of the names of his predeces-
sors. The lists are often surprisingly accurate,
although they are also noticeably selective,
regularly omitting certain rulers, such as
aki ienaten (1352-1336 itc.), who were consid-
ered to have been in any way illegitimate or
inappropriate.

Several such lists exist, although only that
in the temple of Sety t (1294-1279 uc) at \by-
DOS, listing seventy-six kings from MENES to
Sety himself, remains in its original context. A
second list, from the nearby temple of
Rameses it (1279-1213 uc), is now in the
British Museum, and an earlier example from
the temple of Amun at KA8JJAK, listing sixty-
two kings from Menes to Th utmost- tit
(1479-1425 BC), is now in the Louvre.

The Saqqara Tablet, an example of a private
funerary cult of the royal ancestors, was found
in the tomb of a scribe called Tcnroy; it lists
fifty-seven rulers from the 1st Dynasty until
the reign of Rameses n. Another private exam-
ple of a king list was found in the tomb of
Amenmessu at Thebes (tt373; r. 1300 BC),
where the deceased is shown worshipping the
statues ol thirteen pharaohs.

The hieratic papyrus known as the TURIN
ROYAL canon, compiled in the 19th Dynasty,
and the basalt stele known as the Palermo
stone, dating from the end of the 5th
Dynasty, are valuable records, although both
are incomplete, much of theTurin Canon hav-
ing been lost in modern times. There arc also a
few much briefer king lists, such as a graffito
at the mining and quarrying site of Wadi
I lammamat, dated palacographically to the
12th Dynasty (1985-1795 BC), which consists
of the names of five 4th-Dynasty rulers and
princes.

The historian mwetiio must have used
such king lists, presumably in the form of
papyrus copies in temple LIBRARIES, when he
was compiling his account of the history of
Egypt, which is known only from the some-
times contradictory fragments preserved in
the works of other ancient authors.
W. B. Emery, Archaic Egypt (Harmondsworth,
1961),21-4.

D. B. REDFORT>, Pbaraoritc king-lists, annals and
day-books: a contribution to the study of the
Egyptian sense of history (Mississauga, 1986).

152

KINGSHIP

B.J. Kemp, tncieni Egypt: anatomy of a

civilization (London, 1989), 21-3,

kingship

The concept of kingship and the divinity of
the pharaoh were central to Egyptian society
and religion. At the very heginning of
Egyptian history, the evidence from such sites
as aisyuos, vuiym and SAQQAM suggests that
the basic nature of Egyptian administration
and the strong association between the king
and the falcon-god horus had already become
well established. A great deal of the ideology
surrounding Egyptian kingship can be
deduced to some extent from the development
of the SOW, TITULARY, which fulfilled a num-
ber of roles, including the establishment of the
relationships between the king and the gods,
and the explanation of how each reign related
to the kingship as a whole.

The title uestr-bit (literally 'he of the sedge
and the bee 1 ) is usually translated as 'King of
Upper and Lower Egypt' but its true meaning-
is quite different, and considerably more com-
plex, in that nesw appears to mean the
unchanging divine king (almost the kingship
itself), while bit seems to be a more ephemeral
reference to the individual holder of the king-
ship. Each king was therefore a combination of
the divine and the mortal, the neste and the bit,
in the same way that the living king was linked
with Horus and the dead kings, the royal
ancestors (see king lists), were associated
with osiKis.

Ideally (lie kingship passed from father to
son, and each king was usually keen to demon-
strate his filial links with the previous ruler.
On a practical level, the ruler could demon-
strate the continuity of the kingship by ensur-
ing that his predecessor's mortuary temple
and tomb were completed, and on a more
political level he would do his best to demon-
strate that he was the chosen heir whose right
to rule was ensured by his own divinity.
Sometimes the attempts of certain rulers to
demonstrate their unquestioned right to the
kingship have been misinterpreted as 'propa-
gandist 1 efforts to distort the truth by means
of the various reliefs and inscriptions depict-
ing such events as their divine birth and the
bestowal of the kingship by the gods.

Although there may have been a certain
amount of political (rather than religious)
impetus behind the works of such unusual
rulers as Queen iiatsuit'Slt (1473-1458 itc),
most of the surviving references to the king-
ship belong much more within the overall role
of the king in imposing order and preventing
chaos. The function of the king as the repre-
sentative ol the gods was to preserve and

Detail of a section of wall-relief in the temple of
Hathur at Dendera, shaming the writing of the
iron! 'pharaoh ' f per-aa,) in a cartouche. The
inscriptions in temples of the Ptolemaic ami Roman
periods often include cartouches inscribed irilh this
generic term for the king, rather than with a
specific ruler s name. ft. s/i in )

restore the original harmony of the universe,
therefore a great deal of the iconographv in
Egyptian temples, tombs and palaces was con-
cerned much more with this overall aim than
with the individual circumstances of the ruler
at any particular point in time. Just as it was
essential to stress the king's divine birth, so
the celebration and depiction of each SED it:s-
ti\ \i. (royal jubilee) was intended to ensure
that the king was still capable of performing
his ritual role.

The term per-aa ('great house') - which
was eventually transformed, via Greek, into
the word pharaoh - was initially used to
describe the royal court or indeed the state
itself, in the sense that the 'great house' was
the overarching entity responsible for the
taxation of the lesser 'houses' (perm), such as
the temple lands and private estates. Bv
extension, from the late INth Dynasty
onwards, the term began to be used lo refer
to the king himself.

H. FRANKFORT, Kingship ami the gods (Chicago,
1948).

H, W. Fairman, 'The kingship rituals of Egypt',
Myth, ritual and kingship, ed. S. II. Hooker
(Oxford, 1958), 74-104.
G. P05ENER, I)e hi divimte dn pk&raon (Paris,
I960).

B. G. TRIGGER ct ah. Ancient Egypt: a social
history (Cambridge, 1983), 52— ft 1 , 71-6, 204-25,
288-99.

N. Grim \i,, Les termes de hi propagamle royal
egyptienne de lit xixe dynastic a la eoiti/ttete
d' Uexandre (Paris, 1986).
M. A. BONHEME and A. Four. \i , Pharaon, les
secrets dn poircoir (Paris, 1988).
J. D. R\v, The pharaohs and their court', Egypt:
ancient culture, modern land ed. J. Malck
(Sydney, 1993), 68-77.

kiosk

Type of small openwork temple with support-
ing pillars, the best known examples being that
of Senusret I (1965-1920 BC) at KARNAK, and
that of Trajan (ad 98-1 17) at pint. At;. The term
is sometimes also employed to refer to a small
sun-shade or pavilion for the use of a king or
official.

kohl see cosiurmcs

kom

Term which has entered Arabic from the
Coptic word .vj;^ ('village') and is generally
used to refer lo the mounds made up of the
ruins of ancient settlements. Its meaning is
therefore similar to the Arabic word tell,
although the latter is more commonly applied
to the higher settlement mounds of the Levant
and Mesopotamia.

Kom Abu Billo (Terenuthis)

Site of a Pharaonic and Greco-Roman town
situated in the western Delta, which derives
its Greek name from that of the snake-
goddess rkmattf.t, whose cult was cele-
brated in the area. 44ie early Ptolemaic
temple remains, excavated by F. El. Griffith
in 1887-8, were dedicated to the goddess
Hatmor in her manifestation of 'mistress of
turquoise', and there are nearby burials of
sacred cow r s presumably relating to the cult
of Halhor. The importance of this temple
rests primarily on the fact that it is one of the
few monuments constructed during the
reign of the first PTOLEMY (Ptolemy I Soler;
305-285 uc). During the Roman period the
economic importance of Terenuthis rested
on the role it played in the procurement and
trading of MATRON and salt, owing to the
proximity of the road leading to Wadi
Natrun.

The nearby cemetcn spans a much broader
period, ranging from the Old Kingdom to the
late Roman period. Some of the New
Kingdom graves contained 'slipper-coffins 1
made of pottery and decorated with ugly facial
features, while many of the Roman-period
tombs were marked by unusual stelae consist-
ing of reliel representations of the deceased
either standing or lying on a couch and
accompanied by an inscription in DEMOTIC or
Greek.

A. HERMANN, 'Die Deltastadt Terenuthis und
ihreGotrin\4/0. ///-," 5 (1934), 169-72.

B. Porter and R. L. B. Muss, Topographical
bibliography iv, lsted. (Oxford, 1934), 67-9.
J. G. GRIFFITHS, 'Terenuthis 1 , Lexikon der
Agyptologie VI, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and

W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1986), 424.

153

KOM LL-AHMAR

KOM OMBO

Kom el-Ahmar J?? iiierakontous

Kom el-Hisn (anc hm)

Site of tlie town of Tmu, located in the west-
ern Delta, about 12 km south of naukratis.
When it was first surveyed by F. LI. Griffith,
in 1885, a large proportion of the mound was
still in existence, but it is now much reduced
by the work of sebakhin (farmers quarrying
ancient mud-brick for use as fertilizer). The
principal mound is dominated by the ruins of
a temple dedicated to the local goddess,
skki imet-i f ATHOR, which was established by
5ENCSRET I (1965-1920 BC) in the early 12ih
Dynasty.

When the large rectangular temple enclo-
sure was excavated in 1943-6 by the Egyptian
archaeologists A. Hamada and M. el-Amir, it
was found to contain various items of Middle
and New Kingdom sculpture, including stat-
ues of Amcncmhat m (1855-1808 BC) and
Rameses ir {1279-1213 BC).

In the New Kingdom (1550-1069 isc), the
town of Imu replaced the earlier (still undis-
covered) town of Hwt-ihyt as the capital of the
third Lower Egyptian nome. The nearby
cemetery contains hundreds of graves, most of
which date from the First Intermediate Period
(2181-2055 BC) to the New Kingdom.

According to the brief report describing a
Canadian survey of the site in 1980, the most
impressive surviving architectural feature at
Kom el-llisn is the painted, stone-built
Middle Kingdom tomb of Khesuwer, 'over-
seer of prophets 1 .

\L A. Gardner, Naukratis u (London, 1888),
77-80.

G. Darkssy, 'Rapport sur Kom el-IIisn 1 ,. ISAE
4(1903), 281-3.

B. PORTER and R. L. B. MOSS, Topographical
bibliography TV, Isted. (Oxford, 1934), 51-2.
A. Hamada and S. Fared, 'Excavations ai Kom
el-Hisn, season 1945', ASM 46 (1947),
195-205.

— -, 'Excavations at Kom el-IIisn, 1946', ASAE
48 (1948), 299-325.

P. Brodie ct al., 'Kom el-IILsn', Cities of [he Delta
i: Naukratis (MaKbu, 1981), 81-5.

Kom Medinet Ghurob see gurob

Kom Ombo (anc. Ombos)
Temple and associated settlement site located
40 km north of Aswan, with surviving struc-
tural remains dating from at least as early as
the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 bc), although
there are also a number of Upper Palaeolithic
sites scattered over the surrounding region.

Detail of a section of mall-relief in the temple of
Horns and Sohek at Kom Ombo, showing Ptolemy
n Phi/opator making offerings to the crocodile-gotl
Sohek. Ptolemaic period, c. 221-205 bc (i. sn \ii)

Plan of the double temple of Horns and Sohek ai
Kom Ombo.

10 20 30 40 m

3^ff

• • • • •

inini

1 forecourt

2 altar

3 first hypostyle hall

4 second hypostyle hall

5 outer vestibule

6 middle vestibule

7 inner vestibule

8 (northern) sanctuary of
Horus (Haroeris)

9 (southern) sanctuary of Sofeefc

10 inner corridor

11 outer corridor

12 position of false door stele

The surviving temple buildings, first cleared
of debris by Jacques de Morgan in 1893, were
dedicated to the deities Sobek and Haroeris
(see horus) and date mainly to the Ptolemaic
and Roman periods (332 nc-An 395), most ol
the relief decoration having been completed hi
the first century BC. The architectural plan ol
the temple is unusual in that it effectively
combines two traditional cull temples into
one, each side having its own individual suc-
cession of gateways and chapels.
J. de Morgan et al., Kom Ombos, 2 vols (Vienna,
1909).

154

KOM EL-SHUQAFA

Kom el-Shuqafa

t 'U.examjrr

KoptOS (Qift, anc. Kcbet)
Temple and town site located about 40 km
north of Luxor, at the entrance to the Wadi
Hammamat. This valley contained gold mines
and breccia quarries and also served as the
principal trade-route between the Nile vallev
and the Red Sea. The benefits of the town's
location, on the east bank of the Nile, arc con-
sidered to have been the primary reason for
the foundation and subsequent prosperity of
the Pharaonic settlement at Koptos. To the
east of the main site there are cemeteries dat-
ing to the late Predynastic period
(c.3300-.)100 uc), when xaqada, situated
almost opposite Koptos on the west bank, was
the dominant town in the region.

The surviving settlement remains at Koptos
date back to the beginning of the historical
period (r.3000 bc), including three colossal

B. J. Kemp, Am lent Egypt: anatomy of a
civilization (London, 1989), 64-91.

C. Tral xf.cker and L. Paxtai.acci, 'Le temple
dTsi a El Qal'a pres de Coptos', Akten Miincben
I9$5 ill, ed. S. Schoske (Hamburg, 1989),
201-10.

Kumma see slmna

Kurgus

Site in the fifth-cataract region of Nubia,
where Thutmose 1 (1504-1492 uc) and
Thutmose ni (1479-1425 bc) both carved
inscriptions on boulders marking the southern
frontier of Egypt. The choice of this spot for
the erection of the stelae, close to the southern
end of the so-called Korosko Road, suggests
that an important overland trade-route, pass-
ing through the gold-bearing region of the
Wadis Allaqi and Gabgaba, was probably
already being used in the early New Kingdom.

the royal tombs at el-Kurru were built in the
style of miniature Egyptian pyramids, starting
with that of prv (747-716 uc), the founder of
the 25th Dynasty. Undecorated rectangular
funerary chapels were located immediatelv
beside the east faces of each of the superstruc-
tures. The subterranean burial chambers
could be entered down long flights of steps
leading from shafts also situated to the east of
each pyramid. Adjacent to the pyramidal
tombs, which include those of siiauaqo
(716-702 lie), Shabilqo (702-690 BC) and
tanutamam (664-656 Be), are twenty-four
roughly contemporary horse burials. After the
mid seventh century bc, el-Kurru was effec-
tively abandoned and Nuri became the site of
the new cemetery of the Napatan rulers.
D. Dl xl [AM, The myal cemeteries oj'Kitsli, l:
El-Kxmt (Boston, 1950),

Kush see kkrma; nuwa and viceroy of kush

; ::::^:-^™p:lK::&.^^:;:: :::

/:■: i

I !-

Limestone sunk relief depicting Senusret I engaged
in a sed-fstival nii'ai m the presence of the
jerltlily-god Mill, The king is shown running
between boundary stones symbolizing the limits of
his kingdom; in front of him ore his throne name
ami Horns name. The line of vertical text below
the names reads 'hastening by boat to Min, the
great god who ,.: ,n the midst oj his Lily Villi
Dynasty, clVHOoc, H. 1.11 m. (t'lninr: huseum,
1478b)

limestone statues of the local fertility-god min
and various other items of 'preformal' sculp-
ture, which were excavated by Flinders Petrie
in an Early Dynastic context at the temple of
Min. The visible remains of the temple date
mainly from the New Kingdom onwards. The
Greek and Roman monuments at Koptos,
including a small temple of isis at the nearby
site of el-Qal'a, have been studied by Claude
Traunecker and Laure Pantalacci.
W. M. F. Petrie, Koptos (London, 1 896).
A. J. Reinach, Rapports sur lesfimlles de Koptos
(Paris, 1910).

W. Y. Adams, Nubia: corridor to Africa, 2nd ed.
(London and Princeton, 1984), fig. 33.

Kurru, el-
Royal necropolis of the Napatan period
(r. 1 000-300 uc), situated in Upper Nubia on
the Dongola reach of the Nile. The site was
first used from i-.lOOO BC onwards for the
tumulus-burials of the rulers of the kingdom
of Kush, the political focus of which was nap-
ata, which also includes the sites of Gebel
Barkal, Ntja and Sanam.

In the later Napatan period (f.750-653 lit:),

155

I.AHUN, F.I.-

languagl;

Lahun, el-
Necropolis and town-site, located at the east-
ern edge of the kwi.m REGION, about 100 km
southeast of Cairo. The principal monument is
the pyramid complex of Senusrel !i
(1880-1874 lit:). The internal arrangement of
the superstructure consisted of a knoll ol rock,
surmounted bv a network ol stone-built
retaining walls stabilizing the mud-brick
matrix of the building. One of the most
unusual features of Senusrct n's monument is
the fact that, unlike most other pyramids, the
entrance is from the south rather than the
north, perhaps because he was more con-
cerned with the security of the tomb than its
alignment with the circumpolar stars. The
burial chamber contains an exquisite red gran-
ite sarcophagus and a travertine offering table.
In one of the four shaft-tombs on the south
side of the pyramid, Flinders Petrie and Guy
Brunton discovered the JEWELLED of
Sithathoriuncl, including items bearing the

Plan of the pyramid complex of Sen urn- 1 n at
el- 1. alum and the associated settlement.

The pyramid qf Senusret n at ei-Lahun is
constructed of mud-brick around a series of
limestone malls, some of which can he seen til the
base of the pyramid. The structure has lost its outer
casing and so has weathered to a rounded profile.
(f. r. Nicholson)

cartouches of Senusret n and Amcnemhat in
(1855-1808 ii(.).

Beside Senusret ifs Valley Temple arc the
remains of Kahun, a rectangular, planned
settlement, measuring about 384 m x 335 m,
which is thought to have originally housed
the officials responsible for Senusret's royal
mortuary cult but was later regarded as a
town in its own right, having a ftitty- {mayor).
Small surviving areas of such settlements
have been found at other sites in the immedi-
ate vicinity of Old and Middle Kingdom
pyramids. A large number of IHF.R VTIC papyri,
dating to the laie Middle Kingdom
((-.1850-1650 in.) and ranging from religious
documents to private correspondence, were
discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1880-90
(now in the Petrie Museum, University
College London). Further documents were
later discovered as a result of illicit excava-
tions; these papyri, the business letters of the
temple scribe 1 loremsaf, are now in Berlin
and have not yet been fully published.
W. M. F. Pk.tkik, Kahnn, Gurob and Hamara
(London, 1890).

, lllahun, Kuban and Gumb (London, 1891).
F.LI. Griffith, Hieratic papyri from kahun and
Guwh (London, 1898).
W. M. F. Pftrif, G. Brunton and M. A.
Mi iw.\\ , Lubun ii (London, 1923).

II. E. Wi.ylock, The treasure of F.I- La ban (New
York, 1934).

|{. Gi w, 'The name of the pyramid town of
Sesostris n\JEA3\ (1945), 106-7.

U. Lurr, illahunstudierT, Oibuiueue 3 (1982),
101-56; 4 (1983), 121-79; 5 (1986), 117-53. | die

papyri]

B.J. \\.v.\\\\ Ancient Egypt; anatomy of a

civi&mtkn (London, 1989), 149-57.

U Lift, Das lirbre run Iliabun (Hicmliscbe
Papyri) (Berlin, 1992).

I. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5ih ed.
(Harmondsworth, 1993), 21 2-13.

language

Ancient Egyptian is probably the second old-
est written language in the world, being pre-
ceded only by slmfriw in western Asia. Ii
forms one of the five branches of a family ol
languages spoken in north Africa and the
ancient Near East, known as Afro-Asiatic (or
Hamito-Semitic). Because of various common
elements of vocabulary and grammar, these
five linguistic branches are thought to derive
from an earlier l proto-language\ Ancient
Egyptian therefore includes certain words that
are identical to those in such languages as
Hebrew; Berber and Tuareg.

Egyptian is also the earliest written lan-
guage in which verbs have different 'aspects
rather than tenses, which means that the
emphasis is placed on whether an action has
been completed or not, rather than whether ii
occurred in the past, present or future. V cm -
cial distinction needs to be made between the
stages in the development of the Egyptian lan-
guage and the various phases of its written

156

LANGUAGE

LAPIS LAZULI

3 glottal
stop

/ o or i

MAAA il

ra *

guttural,
Semitic
* ayin

n p

li stronger
h

as ch in

s originally

as sh in
.ship

J\ q as q in
queen

& ' loch

^=o h softer h &$ d

n s originally

< £^ k

zL sw

as g in
good

as / in
tune

as tf in
dune

■*CL

■^y sc/m

h/z

I 1

man,

occupation,

name

animal
(-skin)

plants

copper or
bronze

book
(papyrus

roll),
abstracts

'nh 'to live'

,v/,nv 'Pre-
condition

/vw^ ^ — L ym 'sea'

/\a/w\ V I

Chart showing the different types of hieroglyphic

chit meters.

form. The language has one distinct break, in
the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 uc), when
'■synthetic 1 Old and Middle Egyptian, charac-
terized bv inflected verb endings, was
replaced, in the spoken language at least, by
the more complex 'analytical 1 form of l.aie
Egyptian, with a verbal structure consisting of
articulated elements. Egyptian is the only 'lan-
guage of aspect" for which the change from the
'synthetic 1 stage to 'analytical 1 can actually be
studied in its written form.

The written form of Egyptian, on the other
hand, passed through several phases. In the
first stage, the stone-carved iukrogj.yititc: sys-
tem was used for funerary and religious texts
while the cursive HIERATIC script was used for
administrative and literary texts. By the 25th
to 26th Dynasties (747—525 nc) di.motic
emerged, and for a number of centuries the
Greek and demotic scripts were used side by
side.

The demotic and hieroglyphic writing sys-
tems began to be replaced in the third century
AD by Coptic, which consisted of the Greek

alphabet combined with six demotic signs.
This was actually a less suitable means of ren-
dering the Egyptian language, but it was intro-
duced for purelv religious and cultural rea-
sons: Egypt had become a Christian country
and i he hieroglyphic system and its derivatives
were considered to be fundamentally 'pre-
Christian' in their connotations. Nevertheless,
the Egyptian language itself, despite being
written in an adaptation of the Greek alpha-
bet, has survived in a fossilized form in the
liturgy of the Coptic church even after the
emergence of Arabic as the spoken language of
Egypt .

Since the prc-Coptie Egyptian writing sys-
tems consisted purely of consonants, Coptic
texts (as well as occasional instances of Greek,
Akkadian and Babylonian documents that
transcribe Egyptian words and names into
other scripts) have proved cxtremclv useful in
terms of working out the vocalization of the
Egyptian language.

A. H. Gardimeh, Egyptian grammar, hemgan
introduction to the study of hieroglyphs, 3rd cil.
(Oxford, 1957).

T. C. IloiK.ii., ijfoasiatk: a survey (The Hague,
1971).

J. and T. Bv\o\ (eds), Hamilo-Seiuitica:
proceedings of a colloquium held by the historical
section of the Linguist ics .Association (Great
Ihiiaui), March f970(Vhe Hague, 1975).
C. C, WaLTEHS, Aft elementary Coptic grammar of
the Sahidic dialect, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1983).

lapis lazuli (Egyptian kheshed)
Metamorphosed form of limestone, rich in the
bine mineral lazurite (a complex feklspathoid),
which is dark blue in colour and often flecked
with impurities of calcite, iron pvrites or gold.
The Egyptians considered that its appearance
imitated that of the heavens, therefore riicy
considered it to be superior to all materials
other than gold and silver. They used it exten-
sively in JEWELLERS until the Eate Period
(747-352 BC), when it was particularly popular
for amulets. Il was frequently described as
'true' khes&ed, to distinguish it from imitations
made in i-'Aii;\cr: or glass. Its primary use was
as inlay in jewellery, although small vessels are
also known, and il could also be used as inlay
in the eyes of figurines.

Unlike most other stones used in Egyptian
jewellery, il does not occur naturally In the
deserts of Egypt bul had to be imported

157

LATE PERIOD

Detail of a bracelet consisting of a lapis lazuli
scarab set in gold. The beads are of gold, cornelian
and faience. I. of scarab 2. 8 cm. (E4&S6I6)

either directly from Badakhshan (in north-
eastern Afghanistan) or indirectly, as tribute
or trade goods from the Near East. Despite its
exotic origin it was already in use as early as
the Predynastic period, showing that far-
reaching exchange networks between north
Africa and western Asia must have already
existed in the fourth millennium bc. It is rep-
resented in temple scenes at medinet haru
and at karnak.

A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian materials and
industries, 4th ed. (London, 1962), 398-400.
G. HERRMANN, 'Lapis lazuli: the early phases of
its trade 1 , Iraq 30 (1968), 21-57.
J. C. Payne, 'Lapis lazuli in early Egypt", Iraq 30
(1968), 58-61.

E. Porada, A lapis lazuli figurine from
Hierakonpolis in Egypt', Sranica Antiqna 15
(1980), 175-80.

lapwing .■

EKHYT BIRD

Late Period (747-332 bc)
Phase of Egyptian history comprising the 25th
to 31st Dynasties, stretching from the end of
the thtrd intermediate period (1069-747 bc)
to the arrival of Alexander the great (332
IK.), The Third Intermediate Period was dom-
inated by simultaneous dynasties of rulers in
the Delta and the Theban region, but shabaqo
(716-702 BC), the second ruler of the Kusbite
25th Dynasty, exerted Nubian influence over
the north both by military conquest and by
moving the administrative centre back from
Thebes to Memphis.

Despite the fact that the 25th-Dynasiv

kings ruled over a larger territory than in the
preceding period, the state does not seem to
have heen truly unified during this period,
with local princes apparently maintaining
considerable independence. Nevertheless,
the combined kingdom of Egypt and Nubia
was a formidable one, rivalled only by the
rising empire of the Assyrian rulers. The
Egyptian kings attempted to thwart the
spread of Assyria into the Levant by joining
forces with some of the Palestinian rulers.
Not only did they fail to overthrow" the
Assyrians, but in 674 BC they were them-
selves threatened, when Esarhaddon
(681-669 Be) mounted an invasion of
Egypt. This attack failed, and although his
second campaign, in 671 BC, was more suc-
cessful, he was still unable to suppress all
opposition. The Egyptian king taiiarqo
(690-664 bc), who had fled to Nubia, was
therefore able to reoccupy Memphis.
However, the Assyrians attacked again, this
time under Ashurbanipal (669-627 bc), who
was aided by two local rulers from SAJS —
NEKAU I (672-664 rc) and his son Psamtek -
and was thus able finally to establish
Assyrian rule over Egypt. Nekau I was left
as governor, but was killed by the armies of
tanutamani (664-656 rc), the son and suc-
cessor of Taharqo.

The constant breaking of Assyrian rule led
to severe reprisals, and Ashurbanipal returned
to Egypt at some point after 663 BC, laying
waste to great areas of the country and forcing
Tanutamani to flee back to Nubia. However,
this by no means put paid to Egyptian inde-
pendence: a rebellion in babylonia caused
Ash urbanipal to wi thdraw, and, with
Tanutamani also gone, Nekau i's son, psamtek I
(664-610 bc), was able to appoint himself king

as the first full ruler of the 26th saite Dynasty
(664-525 bc).

Psamtek was an astute ruler and sought to
establish a sense of national identity while at
the same time making use of foreign merce-
naries, notably Greeks and Carians, to sup-
press those local rulers who might oppose
him. From this time onwards Egypt was
increasingly drawn into the Classical and
Hellenistic sphere. Later in the dynasty, a
trading colony of greeks was established; the
Greek writer Herodotus credits this act to
ahmose [l (570-526 bc), although it is more-
probable that Ahmose simply reorganized one
of a number of existing Greek settlements.
Foreign policy in the 26th Dynasty had large-
ly been concerned with attempting to preserve
the balance of power, but by the time that
Ahmose u's son, Psamtek in (526-525 bc),
succeeded to the throne, Persia had become
the dominant power.

In 525 rc Cambyses (525-522 bc) invaded
Egypt, establishing the Persian 27th Dynasty
(525-404 rc). He appears to have been an
unpopular ruler, but his successor Darius I
(522-486 bc) undertook major building works,
including the completion of projects that had
been initiated by Saite rulers. The Egyptians,
however, presumably inspired by Greek victo-
ries over the Persians, embarked on a course of
rebellion, supported by military aid from the
Greeks.

In 404 BC Egyptian unrest reached a climax
in the revolt by Amyrtaios of Sais which
resulted in the expulsion of the Persians, first
from the Delta, and within four years from the
whole country. But Amyrtaios (404-399 bc)
proved to be the only king of the 28th
Dynasty: in 399 bc the throne was usurped by
Nefaarud (Nepherites) t (399-393 bc), ruling

158

LAW

from another Delta city, mendes. He and his
successors of the 29th Dynasty (399— .180 uc:)
relied heavily upon foreign mercenaries for
their military power, and in this way were able
to stave off further Persian incursions. Finally
they were themselves displaced by the 30th-
Dynasty rulers, beginning with xectanebo i
(380-362 ik:).

This new line continued the 'nationalistic 1
air of the 25th and 26th Dynasties, particu-
larly in terms of the renewal of building
activity and increased devotion to traditional
cults. The cults of sacred animals were par-
ticularly important at this time, and it is pos-
sible that the various industries and priest-
hoods associated with the sacred animal
necropoleis became an important part of the
economy.

Persian attempts at re-conquest were
thwarted until 343 BC when Nectanebo u
(360-343 lit:), the last native pharaoh, was
defeated by Artaxerxes in Ochus (343-338 bc)
who established the 31st Dynasty or Second
Persian Period (343-332 bc). This short sec-
ond phase of Persian domination was particu-
larly unwelcome; therefore the conquering
armies of Alexander the Great (332-323 uc) in
332 bc appear to have encountered little oppo-
sition. With the Macedonian conquest, Egypt
became established as part of the Hellenistic
and Mediterranean world, under the control
of Alexander's successors the Ptolemies (see

PTOLEMAIC PERIOD).

F. K. Kienitx, Die polilische Geschichte Agyptem

vom 7. bis ziun 4. Jahrhundert vor der Zeitwende

(Berlin, 1953).

E. R. Russmaxn, The representation of the king,

xxrth Dynasty (Brussels, 1974).

A.J. Spalinger, 'Esarhaddon and Egypt: an

analysis of the first invasion of Egypt', Qrient&lia

43 (1974), 295-326.

A. Lloi r>, 'The Late Period, 664-323 nc\

Ancient Egypt: a uncial history, cd. B. Cj. Trigger

et al. {Cambridge, 1983), 279-548.

N. Grimal,_J history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,

1992), 334-S2.

J. H. Johnson (ed.), Eife m a multi-cultural

society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constanline ami

beyond (Chicago, 1992).

law

A Greek writer states that there was a
Pharaonic legal code set out in eight books,
but this is known only from the Late Period

(747-332 bc); therefore the situation in earlier
times is more difficult to assess. The law is a
particularly difficult area of study because the
translation of ancient terms into modern legal
language lends to give them a misleading air of
precision.

Egyptian law, like the codes of ethics, was
essentially based on the concept of MAAT
('decorum' or 'correctness'), in other words
the common-sense view of right and wrong as
defined by the social norms of the da v. Since
the pharaoh was a living god, ruling by divine
right, it was clearly he who was the supreme
judge and law-giver (see kingship). However,
as with his priestly duties, it was often found
necessary to delegate his authority.

The principles of the Pharaonic legal sys-
tem are thought to have been codified to some
extent, but no such documents have survived.
There are, however, a number of funerary
texts outlining the duties of such high officials
as the vizier, which can shed some indirect
light on the legal practices. In theory, anyone
with a grievance could take a case to the vizier,
although actually gaining an audience would

■■mni . :

• ■

'if^t i fi ;• ■ ■ ■ . ■■

. .■ ■ ■ ■ ■ - ■■.-. ■■■-■■ ■■,■■■-.;

■•fivx'y-

:,p--r:;-i

.'■■'■

VU;H'^

i---" "-. -' :

i ,1 M , '

.■'■■;■■

Bt'aS-ftiJ if.

Detail (from the Salt Papyrus, which contains the
petition of the workman Amemmkhte denouncing
the crimes of the foreman Paneb, Eate 19th
Dynasty, cA 200 bc, from Deir el-Medina.
(kiIOOSS)

no doubt often have been difficult. That some
cases were clearly dealt with in this way is
reflected in the popular Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 BC) narrative known as the Tale of
the Eloquent Peasant.

Definitions of official roles probably existed
for all important offices, thus allocating them
places in the overall administrative hierarchy.
The Egyptians do not appear to have differen-
tiated between administrative and legal func-
tions, so that any person in authority might, in
certain circumstances, make legal judgements.
However, the title 'overseer of the six great
mansions' seems to have been held by the
ancient equivalent of a 'magistrate' and the
term 'mansions 1 probably referred to the main

law court in Thebes (although there must
surely have been other such courts). It is
thought that a gold maat pendant (now in the
British Museum) may have been the official
'badge' held by legal officials. Some surviving
statues of high officials from the Late Period
are shown wearing such a chain and pendant.
The cases that they examined would be
reported to the pharaoh, who may have been
responsible for deciding the punishment in
the most serious cases.

Verdicts and punishments were probably
based loosely on precedent with variations
being introduced where appropriate. Since the
records of cases were archived at the temple or
vizierate offices, references to past cases were
no doubt usually possible. It was thanks to this
practice of automatically archiving such docu-
ments that the famous trial of tomb-robbers,
recorded on the Leopold n-Amherst Papyrus,
was preserved, Unfortunately, this papyrus
does not record the sentences of the accused.
It seems, however, that Egyptian law issued
similar punishments to all those who had com-
mitted similar offences, irrespective of varia-
tions in wealth or status (except in the case of
SLAVES). Judgements and decisions were evi-
dently recorded by official scribes.

In cases where individuals were sentenced
to exile, their children were automatically out-
lawed along with them. Similarly, families
could suffer imprisonment if a relative desert-
ed from military service, or defaulted on the
corvee labour demanded by the state. Papyrus
Brooklyn 35.1446, dating to the 13th Dynasty
(r. 1795—1650 bc), records the punishmenl
duties imposed on labour defaulters.

Minor cases were tried by councils of
elders, each town having its own local kenhet in
charge of the judiciary For example, a number
of cases survive from the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 bc), in the form of the records of
the workmen at deir el-mkdina, mostly deal-
ing with small matters such as non-repayment
of loans. Individuals frequently kepi their own
notes of such cases on OSTRACA, presumably so
that if repayments were not made in the
agreed lime they could remind those present
at the judgement and receive redress.

Cases were sometimes judged by divine
oracles rather than by human magistrates. It
is known from Deir el-Medina, for instance,
that the deified founder of the village,
Amenhotep i (1525-1504 bc), was often asked
to decide on particular cases. It is unclear how
this divine judgement was actually given, but
it seems that ostraca for and against the accu-
sation would be put at each side of the street
and the god's image would incline toward
whichever verdict was deemed appropriate.

159

LLONTOPOLIS

LETTE&S TO THE DEAD

A national variant on this was the giving of the
law through the oracle of Aniun, which
was practised during the 2 1st Dynasty
(1069—945 bc).

In the Ptolemaic period (332—30 bc),
Egyptian law existed alongside that of the
Greeks, although only certain cases could be
tried under it. Greeks were favoured bv the
law, and cases against them were generally
heard in the state courts. The Romans intro-
duced a system of law thai was common
throughout the empire, with only summary
modifications.

J. vY u,so\, 'Authority and law in ancient Egypt',
Journal of the _ Imericau Oriental Society
Supplement 17(1954), 1-7.
S. P. \ i.it.mim;, 'The days on which the Knbt
used to gather', Gleanings from Deir el-Medina,
cd. R. J. Demaree and J. J. Janseen (Leiden,
1982), 183-92.

J. SarEAF, La notion tlu droit d'apres les ancieus
egyptiens (Vatican City, 1984).
I. Harari, 'Les decrets royaux: source du droit",
£>£8 (1987), 93-101,

J. TyLHESLEY, The judgement of the (diaraoh: crime
and punishment in ancient Egypt (London 2000).

Leontopoiis .<

-MUQBAM

Lepsius, Karl Richard (1810-84)

German Egyptologist who led the Prussian
expedition lo Egypt in 1 842-5. He was born in
Naumburg-am-Saale and educated at the uni-
versities of Leipzig, Gottingen and Berlin,
completing a doctorate in 183.1. It was after
the completion of this dissertation that he-
began to study Egyptology in Paris, using
Jean-Francois ciiampou.kin's newly published
grammar to learn the ancient Egyptian lan-
guage. Like Champollion, he spent several
years visiting European collections of
Egyptian antiquities before making his first
visit to Egypt in 1842. He took with him a
team of Prussian scholars, including a skilled
draughtsman, and his main aim was to record
the major monuments and collect antiquities,
in the same way as the earlier Napoleonic
expedition (see EGYPTOLOGY), He also worked
in Sudan and Palestine, sending some fifteen
thousand antiquities and plaster casts back to
Prussia in the course of his travels.

In 1849-59 he published the results of the
expedition in the form of an immense twelve-
volume work, Deiikmaelcr aits Aegyplen and
Aethiopicn, which, like the Napoleonic
Description de I'Egypte, still provides useful
information for modern archaeologists (many
of the sites and monuments having severely
deteriorated since the mid nineteenth cen-
tury). In 1865, Lepsius was appointed as

Keeper of the Egyptian collections in the
Berlin Museum, and the following year he
returned to Egypt with an expedition to
record the monuments of the eastern Delta
and Suez region, in the course of which he
discovered the Canopus Decree at i wis, a
bilingual document that provided a useful lin-
guistic comparison with the ROSETTA STONE.

His career continued with numerous fur-
ther publications as well as the editing of the
principal German Egyptological journal
(Zcilsclirift f/ir dgyp/isehe Spruche mid

- Uieriumskitride), and in 1869 he visited Egypt
for the last time in order to witness the inau-
guration of the Suez Canal. He died in Berlin
in 1884, having made one of the greatest indi-
vidual contributions in the history of
Egyptology.

K. R. Lkp.sils, Denkmi/eler aus -legypteu mid
. te/hwpicu, 12 vols (Leipzig, 1849-59).

- -, Discoveries in Egypt (London, 1852).

— , kiinigshucli der alien Aegypter, 2 pis (Leipzig,

1<S5S).

■ — , Das bilingne Dekret von Kanoptts in der

Origiiialgrosse mil iibersetzniig beider Texte

(Leipzig, 1886).

G. Eislks, Richard Lepsius, Eng. trans. (New

York, 1887).

letters

There are two ways in which Egyptian letters
have been preserved in the archaeological
record: sometimes the originals themselves
have survived (in the form of papyri, ostraca
and wooden boards), but in many other cases
such commemorative documents as stelae,
inscriptions or temple archives incorporate
transcriptions of letters, whether real or imag-
ined. The earliest known letters belong to the
latter category, being hieroglyphic copies of
letters sent by King Djedkara-Isesi
(2414-2375 uc) to me officials Senedjcmib and
Shepsesra at ABUSIR. Only a few other letters
have .survived from the Old Kingdom
(2686-2181 bc), such as 1 larkhuf s record of a
letter sent to him by the \oung peiw ii
(2278-2184 BC). -Most of those from the
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 Be) are made up
of an archive of eighty-six letters from Kahun
(sec f.i.-i.uil \) and a set of eleven items of
correspondence between Ilekanakhte and his
family, although an important specialized
form of letter from this period has survived in
the form of the so-called *SEMNA dispatches'
(12ih-Dynast\ military communications
between Thebes and the Nubian FORTRESSES).
Many items of private and royal correspon-
dence from the New Kingdom have survived,
including the simple hieratic notes on ostraca
sent by the workmen at deik el-meui\a.

numerous fate Ramesside private letters, and
the royal diplomatic correspondence from el-
Amarna (see amar\-\ LETTERS), which was
written in cuneiform on clay tablets. A large
number of actual items of correspondence
written on papyri have survived, such as the
two letters written by an oil-boiler at el-
Amarna. One of the most important texts used
in scribal teaching during this period was the
satirical Letter of Hon in which one official
writes to a colleague, ridiculing his abilities
and setting tests of his bureaucratic knowl-
edge. This document would have educated
scribes in the protocol of letter-writing.
G. Maspe&Q, Du genre episto/aire chez les egyptiens
de Vepoque piiaraoniipie (Paris, 1 S72).
T. G. H. JAMES, The Ilekanakhte papers and other
early Middle Kingdom documents (New York,
1462).
E. WenTE, Letters from ancient Egypt (Atlanta,

L990).

J.J \\SHE\, Late Ramesside letters and
communications (hieratic papyri in the British

Museum) (London, 1991),

R. B. Parkinson, / oiccsfrom ancient Egypt
(London, 1991), 89-95, 142-5.

letters to the dead

The Egyptians believed that the worlds of the
living and the dead overlapped (see ilnerarv
beliefs), so that it was possible for the dead to
continue to take an interest in the affairs of
their families and acquaintances, and perhaps
even lo wreak vengeance on the living. The
relatives of the deceased therefore often
sought to communicate with them by writing
letters, invariably requesting help or asking for
forgiveness. Eewer than twenty of these letters

I V

tv-

f&Wt3W

Mm I

^Wy

A letter to the dead 'written on the interior (right,)
and exterior (\.\-.\~r) of the 'Cairo Bowl', a rough
red pottery vessel which would probably have been
filled with food ojferings and placed in a tomb. The
letter is from a woman called Dedi to her dead
husband, informing him that their servant-girl is ill
and appealing to him for help in warding off the
illness. Early 12th Dynasty, c.l'JOO BC, ». 40 cm.

(US III \ I!) 8, />lRk/\.\0\)

160

LIBRARIES

LIBYANS

have survived, but it has been pointed out that
their extensive geographical distribution prob-
ably indicates a widespread sense of the need
to communicate with the dead because of the
magical powers lhat they were thought to have
acquired in the afterlife. The letters date from
rhe Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom
{2686-106° ik;), but they appear to have been
replaced in the Late Period (747—332 bc:) bv
letters addressed directly to deities.

Some letters to the dead were simply writ-
ten on papyrus but a number of shrewder indi-
viduals adopted the ploy of inscribing the texts
on the bowls in which food was offered to the
deceased in the tomb-chapel. One of the best-
known such letters was sent from a Ramcsside
military officer to his dead wife, whom he
addressed as 'the excellent spirit, AnkhirV,
asking her why she had abandoned him and
threatening to complain to the gods about the
unhappiness that her untimely death had
caused.

A. H. Gardiner and K. Setiie, Egyptian ktters
to the dead (London 1928).
W. K. Simpson, 'The letter to the dead from the
tomb of" Mem (N3737) at Nag' ed-Deir', JE_ I 52
(1966X39-52.

— , 'A late Old Kingdom letter ro the dead from
Nag' ed-Deir \35O0\JfK I 56 (1970), 58-64.
M, Guilmot, 'Lettre a une epousc defuncte
(Pap. Leiden i, 371}% ZjS 99 (1973), 94-103.
R. Parkinson, I hires from ancient Egypt
(London, 1991}, 142-5.

libraries

The general question of the nature of ancient
Egyptian libraries is overshadowed by the loss
of the Great Library at Alexandria, which was
burned to the ground in the late third century
AD. The Alexandria library bad probabh been
established by PTOLEMY I Sotcr (305-285 BC),
who also founded the Museum ('shrine of the
Muses'), initially creating both institutions as
annexes to his palace. Later in the Ptolemaic
period, another large library was created,
probably within the Alexandria serapeum, but
this too was destroyed in vo 391. Although the
papyri themselves have not survived, the lega-
cy ot the Alexandria libraries can be measured
also in terms of the scholarship undertaken bv
such writers as Apollonius of Rhodes and
Aristophanes of Byzantium, who both served
as directors of the Great Library.

As far as the libraries of the Pharaonic peri-
od are concerned, there is certainly evidence
that the Alexandrian institutions stood at the
end of a long tradition of Egyptian archivism.
The house OF liee (per ankh), where Egyptian
scribes generally worked and learned their
trade, has been identified at such cities as

mlmpius and el-amarna, but temple libraries
and official archives have generallv proved
more difficult to locate. The term per medjal
('house of papyrus rolls') is used to describe
the repositories of papyri associated with gov-
ernment buildings and temple complexes.

A number of temples, such as those at ESNA
and piiilal, have lists of texts written on cer-
tain walls, but the only definitely identified
temple library is a niche-like room in the
southern wall of the outer hypostyle hall of the
Greco-Roman temple of Mortis at edel (c.SO
nc). An inscription over the entrance to this
room describes it as the 'library of Horus\
although it is possible that it simplv contained
the few rolls necessary for the daily rituals.
The location {or indeed the very existence) of
a library in the ramhsselm (V. 1250 bc) at
Thebes has proved a more contentious ques-
tion, with most modern Egyptologists failing
to identify any room that equates with the
'sacred library 1 mentioned by the Greek histo-
rian Diodorus (r.30() ik;), although archives of
the late New Kingdom administration were
found in the immediate vicinity of the mortu-
ary temple of Rameses in at MEECSNET n\ni
(r. 1 170 nc). The existence of royal libraries is
indicated by the survival of three faience
''bookplates' bearing the names of AMENHOXEP
lit, two of which are also inscribed with the
names of the literary works written on the
papyrus rolls to which they were attached.

A small temple library of the Roman peri-
od, excavated from a room in the Favum city of
Tebtunis, contained a number of literary and
medical works along with the purely religious
texts that had no doubt dominated most earli-
er temple libraries in die Pharaonic period. A
list of the texts used by Egyptian priests was
compiled by Clement, bishop of Alexandria in
the late second century &D,

In 1896 James Quibell excavated shaft-tomb
no. 5 under the Ramesseum, discovering a
wooden chest containing a set of papvri
belonging to a lector-priest of the 13th
Dynasty (.'.1795-1650 bc). This collection of
texts — the most valuable single find of Middle
Kingdom papyri - is often referred to as a
'library', but in this context the term refers
more loosely to an assemblage of documents
rather than an actual institution or building.
Nevertheless, the texts provide a good idea of
the wide variety of texts which might have
been included in a Middle Kingdom library,
including literary narratives, military dis-
patches from SEMNA fortress (see letters), an
ONOMASTICON, medical remedies, magical
spells, a hymn to Sobek and fragments of a
dramatic or ritualistic composition. The word
'library-' is also used to describe the large col-

lection of papyri owned by a succession of

scribes at deir el-\u:ijin\, including the

Chester Beatty papyri.

J. E. Ql'IUI'.i.i., The Ramesseum (London, 1898).

II. R. HALL, 'An Egyptian bookplate: the ex-libris

of Amenophis m and Teie'.^TT -/ 12 (1926), 30-3.

V. Wessetzm , 'Die agyptische

Tempelbibliothek', Z IS 100 (1973), 54 9.

— , 'Die Bueherliste des Tempels von Edfu und

Imhotep\ GM 83 (1984), 85-90.

G. P)LiRK\Ri), L Bib!iothekcn in alten Agypten',

Bib/lot heh: fimckung und Praxis 4 ( 1 980),

78-115.

J. D Bot'RRIAL, Pharaohs and mortals

(Cambridge, 1988), 79-80, 110.

L. CANPORA, The vanished library, trans. M. Ryle
(London, 1989), 147-60.

Libyans (Tjehenu, Tjemehu, Meshwesh,
Libu)

In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the
Western Desert, beyond Egypt's frontiers, was
home to the Tjehenu, usually translated as
'Libyans'. They were regularly depicted bv
die Egyptians as bearded and light-skinned,
but they were also occasionally shown as fair-
haired and blue-eyed. They seem to have been
semi-nomadic pastoralists, and thev make
occasional appearances in Egyptian art from
early times, although they are often difficult to
distinguish satisfactorily from the inhabitants
of the western Delta of Egypt itself. It is
thought likely, however, that the defeated
enemy depicted on the late Predynastic
Battlefield Palette (r.3100 BC) were Libyans.

King djer (t'.3000 bc) of the 1st Dynasty is
said to have sent an expedition against the
Libyans, and other campaigns are recorded
under sneferu (2613-2589 BC) of the 4th
Dynasty and Sahura (2487-2475 bc) of the 5th
Dynasty. Sahura's mortuary temple contained
reliefs showing the dispatching of a Libvan
chief by the king, a scene repeated in the mor-
tuary temple of Pepy u (2278-2184 ik;) of the
6th Dynasty, and still current in later times.

Until the New Kingdom (1550-1069 8C),
action against the Libyans was generally little
more than punitive raiding. By the time of Sety i
(1294-1279 ik.), a people known as the
Meshwesh and Libu had settled in the territory
previously occupied by the Tjehenu and were
attempting to settle in the Delta. They were
held at bay by Sety and his son Rameses n
(1279-1213 bc), but it was left to merenptaii
(1213-1203 bc) to repulse them. He faced a
force comprising not only Meshwesh and
Libu but also Ekwesh, Shekelcsh, Teresh,
Sherdcn and various Aegean groups. This
confederation became known as the sea
PEOPLES. They attacked Egypt in Merenplah's

161

LIBYANS

LION

Steh showing a Libit clnef -.fjinng the hieroglyph
for 'countryside ' to the Egyptian deities Sekhmet
and ffeka, a donation dated in the hieratic text
below to year 7 ofSheshonq 1 and specified as ten
aroitras (about seven acres). 22nd Dynasty,
c.760 HC, limestone, u. 30.5 cm. (i-n73%5)

fifth regnal year, and although the initial
response was slow the king eventually drove
them hack, supposedly killing six thousand
and taking nine thousand prisoners. But the
victory was not final and they returned tinder
Ramesesm (1184-1153 BC), only to be defeat-
ed in a bloody naval battle.

Ironically, many of the prisoners taken in
such actions were forcibly settled in Egypt
and gradually became a powerful group, at
first serving the generals ruling Thebes in the
21st Dynasty (1069-945 bc}, who were prob-
ably themselves of Libyan ancestry.
Ultimately the Libyans came to power in
their own right, as the 22nd and 23rd
Dynasties (945-715 tic), ruling from Bubastis
(teei. basta) and tanks respectively (sec
osorkon and SHESHQNQ), This so-called
'Libyan period' was beset by rivalries
between different claimants to the throne,
and some scholars argue that the existence of
contemporaneous lines of rulers was charac-
teristic of Libyan society. The aggressive and
anarchic spirit of these times is perhaps
reflected in the demotic Cycle of Pedubastis
(see literature). Despite this political
uncertainty, particularly during the 23rd
Dynasty, certain crafts such as bronze work
flourished, although there seems to have been
little monumental construction taking place.
The reunification of Egypt under the
Kushite 25th Dynasty and Saite 26th
Dynasty put an end to the period of Libyan

anarchy, and the motif of the smiting of a

Libyan chief reappeared in the temple of

Taharqo (690-664 bc) at kawa.

0. Bates, The eastern Libyans (London, 1914).

G.Waimyright, 'The IVleshwesh\ _/£-:/ 48

(1962), 89-99.

N. K. Sandars, The Sea Peoples: warriors of the

eastern Mediterranean (London, 1978), 114-19.

A. Spa linger, 'Some notes on the' Libyans of the

Old Kingdom and later historical reflexes',

JSSEA 9 (197% U5-6Q.

M. A. Lkamv, 'The Libyan period in Egypt: an

essay in interpretation', Libyan Studies 1 6 (1985),

51-65.

— , Libya and Egypt, c. 1 300-750 HC (London,

1990).

lion

By the Pharaonic period the number of lions

in Egypt had declined compared with prehis-
toric times, when their symbolic and religious
associations first became established. It is pos-
sible that the connection between the king and
the Hon stemmed from the hunting of these
animals by the tribal chiefs of the Predynastie
period. A Greek papyrus mentions lion burials
at Saqqara in the sacred animal necropolis,
but these have not yet been located.

Since lions characteristically lived on the
desert margins, they came to be considered as
the guardians of the eastern and western
horizons, the places of sunrise and sunset. In
this connection they sometimes replaced the
eastern and western mountains, symbolic of
past and future, on either side of the horizon
hieroglyph (akhet). Headrests sometimes
took the form of this akhet hieroglyph, sup-
ported by two lions; on an example from

Tutankhamun's tomb they flank shc, god of
the air, who supports the head of the king,
representing the sun. Since the sun itself
could be represented as a lion, Chapter 62 of
the book of THE dead states: 'May 1 bc grant-
ed power over the waters like the limbs of
Seth, for I am he who crosses the sky, I am
the Lion of Ra, I am the Slayer who eats the
foreleg, the leg of beef is extended to me ... '
The lion-god aker guarded the gateway to
the underworld through which the sun came
and went each day. Since the sun was born
each morning and died each evening on the
horizons, so the lion was also connected with
death and rebirth and was thus portrayed on
funerary couches or biers, as well as embalm-
ing tables.

The beds and chairs of the living were
sometimes also decorated with lions 1 paws or
heads, perhaps in order that the occupant too
would rise renewed after sleep or rest. The
gargoyle rainspouts of temples were often
made in the form of lions 1 heads because it was
imagined that the lion stood on the temple
roof absorbing the evil rainstorms of SETH and
then spitting them out down the sides of the
building.

The Delta site of Leonlopolis (tej.e el-
muqdam) in the Delta was sacred to the lion
god Mihos (Greek Mysis), and Shu and
teenut were also venerated in leonine form at

Statue of a lion, probably sculpted in the reign of
Auieiihotep lit hut bearing a dedicatory text of
Tutankliainun and an inscription of the Meroitic
ruler Anianislo. 18th Dynasty, e. 1350 bc, granite,
from Gebel Baikal, originally from Soleb,
it. 1.17 in. (i-a2)

162

LISH T, EL-

LITERATURE

the site, since they were sometimes regarded
as lion cubs created by atum. Most leonine
deities were female; the most important of
these was SEKHMET, whose cult was eventually
merged with those of BASTET and mlt. She
was regarded as one of the 'eyes OF pa 1 , and in
one myth she was almost responsible for the
annihilation of mankind.

See also sphinx.
U Schweitzer, Loire und sphinx m alien Agyptm
(Gliicksradt, 1948).

C. de Wit, Le role et lie sens du Hon duns TEgypte
anciame (Leiden, 1951).
U Rosslep-Kohi.kr, 'Lowc-Kopfe;
L6we-S tut uen', Lexikou der Agypto/ogie in, ed.
W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1980), 1080-90.
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 68-9.

Lisht, el-
Necropolis including the pyramid complexes
of the two earliest 12th-Dynastv rulers, AMEN-
KMiiAT i and SENUSRET i (c. 1985— 1920 nc),
located on the west bank of the Nile, about 50
km south of Cairo. The establishment of a
royal necropolis at el-Lisht was a direct result
of the founding of a new royal residence,
Itjtawy, which appears to have temporarily
replaced Memphis as the seat of government.
Itjtawy is often mentioned in texts of the peri-
od and probably lay a short distance to the east
of el-Lisht. The actual town-site has not vet
been located, because, like many Egyptian set-
tlements, it has probably been covered by cul-
tivated land.

The pyramid of Amenemhat i, at ihe north-
ern end of the site, was originally about 58 m
high; its core included limestone blocks taken
from Old Kingdom buildings at saqqara. Its
mortuary temple was located on its east side. A
stone causeway leads down from the mortuary
temple towards the valley temple excavated by
the Antiquities Inspectorate. The complex of
Senusret i is similar in basic plan to that of his
father, comprising a limestone pyramid, origi-
nally 61 m high, surrounded by nine small
subsidiary pyramids. Just to the north of the
mortuary temple, ten seated life-size statues of
the king were found (now in the Egyptian
Museum, Cairo).

The pyramids are surrounded by the
remains of numerous mastaha tombs of

Statuette of a god or kiw> (possibly Senusret i)
jrom the tomb ofLmhotep in the south pyramid
cemetery at el-Lisht. 1 2th Dynasty, c. 1950 bc,
gessoed and painted wood. It. 58 an.

(metropolitan wsm \i, xj-:ii )oi?h 1-1.5.17)

courtiers, including that of Senusret-ankh,

chief priest of ptmi, located about 200 m to the

east of the outer enclosure wall of Senusret I.

Senusret-ankh's burial chamber contains

extracts from the PYRAMID TEXTS executed in

sunk hieroglyphs.

W K. Simpson, 'The residence of It-towy\

JARCE1 (1963), 53-64.

D. Arnold, The south cemeteries of Lisht r. The

pyramid ufSanvosrct /(New York, 1988).

— , The south cemeteries of Lisht u: The control

notes ami learn murks (New York, 1990).

— , The south cemeteries of Lisht in: The pyramid

complex ofSeuwosrel i (New York, 1992).

literature

The term 'Egyptian literature' is often
employed to refer to the entire surviving cor-
pus of texts from the Pharaonic period (usual-
ly excluding such practical documents as LET-
TERS or administrative texts), rather than
being used in its much more restricted sense to
describe overtly 'literary 1 output. However,
the individual documents can, like other
ancient texts, be variously grouped and cate-
gorized on the basis of such diverse criteria as
physical media (e.g. OSTRACV, papyri or ste-
lae), script (hieroglyphics, hieratic, demot-
ic, Greek or COPTIC) and the precise date in the
history of the language. Although many texts
have been assigned to particular genres (such
as WISDOM literature or love poems), they are
usually best understood in terms of the specif-
ic historical and social context in which they
were written. Inscriptions listing the contents
of temple archives and LIBRARIES, as w r ell as a
few surviving caches of papyri and ostraca
owned bv individuals or institutions, provide a
good sense of the range of texts that were
deliberately collected and preserved during
the Pharaonic period, including technical
manuals such as medical and mathematical
documents.

Within particular periods of Egyptian his-
tory, there were many different genres of
texts. The Old Kingdom literary record was
dominated by religious eunkraky texts, par-
ticularly the pyramid texts, used in roval
tombs, and the 'funerary autobiography 1 ,
used in private tombs to provide a poetic
description of the virtues of the deceased.
There is also some evidence of the compo-
sition of such technical texts as medical trea-
tises, although no actual documents have
survived. Although a form of verse was used
for many 'non-practical 1 w r ritings, there was
no literature in the narrowest sense of the
term. As far as history and historiography is
concerned, a few fragments of annals have
survived (see king lists).

163

LITERATURE

LIVESTOCK

The Middle Kingdom was particularly
characterized by the introduction of such fic-
tional literature as the Talc of the Shipwrecked
Sailor, the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, the
Tales of Wonder (Papyrus Wcstcar) and the Tale
oj'Sinuhe, all of which purport to be historical
accounts, although many of the details of their
plots indicate that they were fantasies designed
to entertain and edify rather than to record
actual events. Many of these fictional narratives

Wooden hoard, prepared with gesso in provide a
reasonably good writing surface. It was probably
suspended from a peg by passing a cord through
the hole on the right. The text is lite only
surviving version of the Discourse of
Khakheperraseneb, a literary discourse
concerning social and personal chaos. Early 18th
Dynasty, c. 1500 in:, painted wood, provenance
unknown, it. 30 cm. (s. tS645. l)

(sometimes described, rather misleading!} and
anachronistical!)-, as 'propaganda') provide a
good counterpoint to official texts, in that the\
present a much more ambivalent view of
ancient Egypt, showing the subtle shades ol
distinction between good and evil. In the reli-
gious sphere, the COFFIN TEXTS, based on the
Pyramid Texts, began to be used in private
tombs. Manuscripts have survived more plen-
tifully from the 12th and 13th Dynasties,
including a much wider range of types of text,
from HYMNS AND LITANIES TO ONOMASTICA.

In the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) many

of the existing genres were augmented and
expanded, including such categories as annals,
offering lists, prayers, hymns, journals, 'funer-
ary biographies 1 , funerary texts (e.g. the rook
of THE DEAD), mathematical and diagrammatic
texts, king lists, onomastica, decrees and
treaties. It is noticeable that literary texts began
to be composed in Late Egyptian, whereas offi-
cial inscriptions continued to be written in
Middle Egyptian (see language). The style of
New Kingdom narratives, such as the Tale of
the Predestined Prince and the Tale of the
Capture ofjoppa, is generally considered to be
more light-hearted and episodic. A new form
of text is the so-called 'miscellany 1 , consisting
of collections of prayers, hymns or didactic-

texts, similar to the modern anthology, In addi-
tion, many more 'personal 1 types of document
began to be composed, including love poems,
written in hieratic from the Ramesside period
onwards and usually consisting of dramatic
monologues spoken by one or both of the
lovers. There are also numerous surviving
records of economic transactions from the
New Kingdom (e.g. deeds of sale, tax docu-
ments, census lists, see taxation and trade),
as well as many legal records (e.g. trials and
wills, see i. \w), magical spells and medical
remedies (see magic), 'day-books' (daily scrib-
al accounts of royal activities) and letters.

Although die demotic script, introduced in
the Late Period, was initially used only for
commercial and admin is trativc texts, it began
to be used for literary texts from at least the
early Ptolemaic period onwards. The range of
demotic literary genres was just as wide as in
hieroglyphs and hieratic, although no love
poetry has vet been attested. The two out-
standing examples of demotic narrative fiction
are the 'Tales of Seine/ ' Khaemwasel and the
Cycle of hiaros/ Pedttbaslis, each consisting ol a
set of stories dealing with the exploits of a
heroic individual. It has been suggested that
some of the themes and motifs in these demot-
ic tales were borrowed from, or at least influ-
enced by, Greek works such as the Homeric
epics or Hellenistic novels and poetry.

Throughout the Pharaonie period it is often
difficult to distinguish between fictional narra-
tives and accounts of actual events, and part of
this problem stems from a general inability to
recognize the aims and contexts of particular
texts. Two late New Kingdom documents, the
Report of Wenantan and the Literary Letter of
Woe, exemplify this problem, in that we cannot
be sure whether they are official accounts of
actual individuals or simply stories with com-
paratively accurate historical backgrounds.
Many such documents are perhaps best
regarded as semi-fictional works and their
original function and intended audience may
never be properly clarified.

The related question of the extent of liter-
acy is also controversial. Many scholars have
argued that the percentage of literate members
of Egyptian society may have been as low as
0.4 per cent of the population, although others
have suggested, on the basis of the copious
written records from deir el-medlna (admit-
tedly an atypical community), that the ability
to read and write was considerably more wide-
spread. It is noticeable, however, that virtually
all of the surviving 'literary -1 texts were pri-
marily aimed at (and written by) a small elite
group. Sec also education; house of life;

lJiTTERS TO THE DEAD; SCRIBES.

J. H. Breasted, _ Indent records of Egypt, 4 vols

(Chicago, 1906).

G. Posener, LitteraluiT el politique dans FEgypte

dc la xnc dynastic (Paris, 1956).

J. Assmann, 'Der litcrarischeTexte im Alten

Agvpien: Versuch eincr Begriffbestimmung',

OZ,Z69(1974), 117-26.

— , 'Egyptian Literature', The -inchor Bible

Dictionary, vol. 2, ed. D. N. Freedman (New

York, 1992), 378-90.

M. LicIitiikiu, Ancient Egyptian literature, 3 vols

(London, 1975-KO).

J. B-\ines, 'LUcrao and ancient Egyptian

society', Man n.s. IS (1983), 572-99.

R. B. Parkinson, ibices from ancient Egypt: tut

anthology of Middle Kingdom writings (London,

1991),

trf. and animal

HveStOCk st't'AGRKUi:

HUSBANDRY

lotus

Botanical term used by Egyptologists to refer
to the water lily {seshen), which served as the
emblem of Upper Egypt, in contrast to the
Lower Egyptian papyrus plant. The lotus and
papyrus are exemplified by two types of gran-
ite pillar in the Hall of Records at karnxk.

During the Pharaonie period there were
essentially two kinds of lotus: the white
Nyntphaea lotus, whose petals are bluntly
pointed and which has very large flowers, and
the blue Nyinphaea caernlae, which has point-
ed petals and a slightly smaller flower. In later
times, however, probably after 525 BC, a third
type, Nelumho nttcifera, was introduced from
India. It is the blue lotus which is most com-
monly depicted in art, frequently held to the
noses of banqueters in tomb scenes, although
die fragrance may not be very strong. The
Greek historian Herodotus states that parts ol
the plant were sometimes eaten, and recent
researchers have suggested that the lotus had
hallucinogenic properties.

The lotus was symbolic of rebirth, since one
of the creation myths describes how the new-
born sun rose out of a lotus floating on the
waters of nun. The buds form under water and
gradually break the surface before opening
suddenly a few days later. The centre of the
flowers is yellow, and the blooms generally last
only a single day, and certainly no more than
four, before closing and sinking beneath the
water, from which tbcv do not re-emerge.

Chapter 8 1 of the book of the dead is con-
cerned with the act of being transformed into
such a lotus: T am the pure one who issued
from the fen . . . Oh Lotus belonging to the
semblance of Neferlem . . .' The blue lotus was
also the emblem of the god neeertem, 'lord of

164

LOVE POEMS

LUXOR

perfumes'. A painted wooden sculpture from
the tomb of Tutankhamun (1336-1327 BC)
appears to depict the head of the king in the

The head uj Tuiaiikhamitn emerging out of a touts,
from his tomb in the I alhy ufihe Kmg$, 18th
Dynasty, e. 1330 nc, painted mood, //. 30 cm.
(cttRO, MO.S, REPRODUCED COUSTMS\ or Till:
GRIFFITH INSTITUTE)

form of Nefertem emerging from a lotus (see

illustration).

W. B. Harkr, 'Pharmacological and biological

properties of the Egyptian lotus 1 , JARCE12

(1985), 49-54.

A. Nibhi, 'The so-called plant of Upper Egypt 1 ,

DE 19 (1991), 53-68.

C. Ossian, 'The most beautiful of flowers: water

lilies and lotuses in ancient Egypt', KM'/' 10 (1)

(1999), 48-59.

love poems .see EROTICA and SEXUALITY

Luxor

Modern name for a Theban religious site ded-
icated to the cult of wil N Kamutef, consisting
of the ipei-resyt ('temple of the southern pri-
vate quarters' or 'southern hariin), which was
founded in the reign of AMENHOTEP hi
(1390-1352 Be) and augmented by successive
pharaohs, including RAMESES n (1279-1213 nc)
and ALEXANDER Tiir: great {332-323 Be). The
primary function of the original temple was as
a setting for the festival of Opet, in which the
cult statue of the god Araun was carried

obelisk

seated colossi of
Rameses l[
pylon of Rameses II
colonnade of
Amenhotep III
hypostyle hall
first antechamber
('Roman sanctuary')
second antechamber
'birth room'
bark shrines of
Amenhotep III and
Alexander the Great

TO transverse hall

1 1 sanctuary of

Amenhotep III • •

+' 1

JE33

l::::<:::l

h4* • • • • * • • ■

J J peristyle court of
• • Amenhotep III

Plan nj'lhc temple iifAiiiaii-kuinnlefal Laser.

annually along an avenue of sphinxes leading
from the temple of Amun at KARlsSK to Luxor.

One of the purposes of the Opet festival was to
enable the human king to 'merge' with his divine
royal k\ in the presence of Amun, and then to
reappear with his royal and divine essence reju-
venated. The inscriptions in the temple describe
him as 'Foremost of all the living leas' when he
emerges from the inner sanctuan.

The processional colonnade at Luxor, con-
structed by Amenhotep m and later usurped by

IIORKMUKU (132.1-1295 lie), is flanked h\ a
frieze depicting the celebration of the Festival
of Opet, which is one of the few surviving
examples of temple relief from the reign of
TUTONKHAMUN (1.1.16-1.127 in:). The peristyle
court, the pylon entrance and two OBELISKS
were added by Rameses it. The pylon contained
TALA'rivr blocks deriving from a now-destroyed
temple to the ITER Only one of the obelisks
remains In situ; the other, given to the French in
1819, now stands in the Place de la Concorde in
Paris. The main sanctuary of the temple, which
had perhaps fallen into disrepair b\ the Late
Period (747-332 tic), was reconstructed in the
late fourth century bc by Alexander the Great,
who claims to have restored it to its original
stale 'in the time of Amenhotep'.

The temple was transformed into a shrine
of the imperial cult in the Roman period and
eventually partially overbuilt by the mosque of
Abu Haggag. In 1989 a cachelte of exquisitely
carved stone statuary (similar to the KVHWk
cachette) was excavated from beneath the floor
of the court of Amenhotep til. The statues,
dating mainly to the 1 8th Dynasty ( 1 55(1-1 295
BC), had perhaps been buried there by the
priesthood in order to protect them from die
pillaging of invaders.
A. Gai i:t, Le temple de Linixm (Cairo, 1894).
C. KuENTZ, La face md da tmtssifest da pyhne tie
Raimls II a Ijm.xtir (Cairo, 1971).
L, BELL, 'Luxor temple and the cult of the roval
im'JNES 44(1985), 251-94.

\1. ABBEL-RAZiq, Das Santlaar .liimmpliis III iai
Luxar-Tcmpcl (Tokyo, 1986).
M. El .-Svtil UK, The disfnreiy nfthe slilluaiy
emhelle of Luxor laaplc (Main/, 1991 ).

165

MAADI

MACE

Maadi

Late Prcdynaslic settlement-site of about 18
hectares, located 5 km to the south of modern
Cairo. The settlement, consisting of wattle-
and-daub oval and crescent-shaped huts, as
well as large subterranean houses, flourished
from Naqada I to n; recent excavations suggest
that the eastern part was occupied earlier than
the western. At the northern edge of the set-
tlement there were one-metre-high pottery
storage jars buried up to their necks. There
were also large numbers of storage pits con-
taining carbonized grain, cornelian beads and
other valuable items at the southern end of the
site. The bodies of foetuses and children were
sometimes buried within the settlement, but
there were also three cemeteries nearby, that at
Wadi Digla being the richest.

There was less evidence of hunting and
gathering at Maadi than at earlier Lower
Egyptian Predynastic sites. As well as agricul-
tural remains, there was also extensive evi-
dence of craft specialization, including the
processing and trading of copper, the analysis
of which suggests that it probably derived
from mines at Timna and the Wadi Arabah, in
southeastern Sinai. Over eighty per cent of the
pottery is of a local ware (not known from
Upper Egyptian sites), but the presence of
Gerzean pottery and stone artefacts also
implies that there was increasing contact with
Upper Egypt. It should be noted that the
remains of cemeteries at ei-Saff and Haragch
(in Middle Egvpl) contain items that are char-
acteristic of the 'Maadtan' culture, suggesting
that there may also have been a certain amount
of cultural expansion southwards in the late
Predynastic period.

The excavation of Maadi has revealed large
quantities of imported pottery from Palestine
dating to the Early Bronze Age I phase (includ-
ing thirty-one complete jars); these mainly
consisted of a globular jar with a broad, tlat
base, high shoulders and long cylindrical neck.
The imported ceramics also included the so-
called Ware v pottery, made with unusual
manufacturing techniques and, according to
pelrographic analysis, from Palestinian clay.
The combination of Palestinian products
found at Maadi {including copper pins, chisels,
fishhooks, basalt vessels, tabular-like flint tools,
bitumen and cornelian beads) and the presence
of typical Maadian and Gerzean products at
such Palestinian sites as Wadi Ghazzeh (Site 1 1)

and Tel el-Erani suggest that Maadi was func-
tioning as an entrepot in the late Predynastic
period. The means by which the trade goods
were transported has perhaps been confirmed
by the discovery of bodies of donkeys at
Maadi.

M. Amer, 'Annual report of the Maadi
excavations, 1935', CdE n (1936), 54-7.
M. A. HOFFMAN, Egypt before the phantohs (New
York, 1079), 200-14.

I. Rr/fc^NA and J. SEEKER, 'New light on the
relation of Maadi to the Upper Egyptian cultural
sequence', MBATK4Q (1984), 237-52.
1. Careka, M. Fiungiihre and A. Palmier],
Tredvnastic Egypt: new data from Maadi',
African Archaeological Review 5 (1987), 105-14.
I. Rjzkara and J. Seeiier, M&ttdi, 4 vols (Mainz,
1987-90).

J. Si.i.l ikk, L Maadi - eine pradynastiche
Kailturgruppczwischen Oberagyplen und
Palestina 1 , Prachistonschc Zeilschrift 65 (1990),

123-56.
Maat

Goddess personifying truth, justice and the
essential harmony of the universe, who was
ustiallv portrayed as a seated woman wearing
an ostrich feather, although she could some-
times be represented simply by the feather
itself or by the plinth on which she sat (prob-
ably a symbol of the PRIMEVAL MOUND), which
is also sometimes shown beneath the throne of
osiRts in judgement scenes. On a cosmic scale,
Maat also represented the divine order of the
universe as originally brought into being at the
moment of creation. It was the power of Maat
that was believed to regulate the seasons, the
movement of the stars and the relations
between men and gods. The concept was

Golden chain milk a gold foil pendant in the form
of the goddess Maat, which may have served as a
judge V insignia. 2hth Dynasty or later, after
C.600BC, it. 2.8 cm. (a i4H ( )98)

therefore central both to the Egyptians 1 ideas
about the universe and to their code of ethics.

Although the figure of Maat is widely repre-
sented in the temples of other deities, only a
few temples dedicated to the goddess herself
have survived, including a small structure in
the precinct of Montu at KAftNAK. Her cult is
attested from the Old Kingdom (2686—21 81 uc)
onwards and by the 18th Dynasty (1550-
1295 BC) she was being described as the
'daughter of Ra\ which was no doubt an
expression of the fact that the pharaohs were
considered to rule through her authority. The
image of Maat was the supreme offering given
by the king to the gods, and many rulers held
the epithet 'beloved of Maat'. Even akhenaten
(1352-1336 uc), whose devotion to the cult of
the aten was later reviled as the antithesis of
Maat, is described in the Theban tomb of the
vizier RAMOSE ( ri'55) as 'living by Maat 1 .

Since the goddess effectively embodied the
concept of justice, it is not surprising to find
that the vizier, who controlled the LAK courts
of Egvpt, held the title 'priest of Maat 1 , and it
has been suggested that a gold chain incorpo-
rating a figure of the goddess may have served
as the badge of office of a legal official. Maat
was also present at the judgement of the dead,
when the iikart of the deceased was weighed
against her feather or an image of the goddess,
and sometimes her image surmounts the bal-
ance itself. The place in which the judgement
took place was known as the 'hall of the two
truths'' (manly).

R. A\tiies, Die Maat des Echnaion von Amarna
(Baltimore, 1952).

V. A. ToiiiN, L Ma'at and Sikn: some comparative
considerations of Egyptian and Greek thought 1 .
JARCE 21 (mi\ 113-21.
J. Assmann, Ma'al: Gerechligkeit and
Unstcrblirhkeil im alien igyplen (Munich, 1990).
E. Teeter, The presentation of Maat: the
iconography and theology of an ancient Egyptian
offering ritual (Chicago, 1990).
E. rioRNUNCi, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 131-46.

mace

Earlv weapon consisting of a stone head
attached to a shaft of wood (or sometimes of
ivory or horn), often tapering towards the end
that was gripped. Many maceheads have been
excavated from Predynastic and Early
Dvnastic cemeteries. The earliest examples,
dating to the Naqada t period (r.4000-
3500 uc), were disc-shaped, although many of
these appear to have been either too light or
too small to have been actually used in battle.
The discovery of a clay model macehead at
Mostagedda suggests that they may often have

MACE

MAGIC

A chr.nl- disc-shaped Predyuistic marehead frimi
el-Mahasna, dating In tin- Natpic/a i period
(4000-3500 K), ix 8.8 cm, and a reihetda
pear-shaped macehead of tin: Naqada 11 period
(c.3500-3ino n<:). u. 6.9 em. (BA49QQ3Am
32089)

been intended as ritualistic or symbolic
objects.

In the Naqada II period (r.3500-3100 DC),
the discoid form was superseded by die pear-
shaped head (as well as a narrow, pointed form
that may have been introduced from western
Asia). By the late Predynastic period both cer-
emonial palettes and maceheads had become
part of the regalia surrounding the emerging
kingship. In Tomb 100 at hiekakonpolis the
painted decoration includes a scene in which a
warrior, who may even be an early pharaoh,
threatens a row of CAPTIVES with a mace.

The image of the triumphant king bran-
dishing a mace had already become an
enduring image of kingship by the time the
xarmer palette (Egyptian Museum, Cairo)
was carved, This ceremonial mudstone
palette, showing King Narmcr (i.3100 BC)
wearing the while CROWN and preparing to
strike a foreigner with his mace, was found in
the 'Main Deposit' (probably incorporating a
cache of votive items) in the Old Kingdom
temple at Ilierakonpolis. The same deposit
included two limestone maceheads carved
with elaborate reliefs, one belonging to King
scorpion- and the other to Narmer (Oxford,
Ashmolean Museum), showing that the
macehead itself had become a vehicle for
royal propaganda. The archetypal scene of
the mace-wielding pharaoh was of such
iconographic importance that it continued to
be depicted on temple walls until the Roman
period.

The mace was associated with the healthy
eye of the god horls, whose epithets includ-
ed the phrase 'lord of die mace, smiting down
his foes', and its importance in terms of the
kingship is re-emphasized by the presence of
two gilt wooden model maces among the
funerary equipment of tltankii v\lt\
(13.16-1327 lie).

W. Wolf, Die Baroffhtng ties alliigyptischen
Heenss (Leipzig, 1926).

B. Adams, Ancient Hicrahmpolis (Warminster,
1974), 5-13.

W. Decker, 'Keule, Keulentopf ', Lcxitan tkr
Agyplologic in, ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 19S0), 414—15,

magic

The Egyptians used the term heka to refer lo
magical power, in the sense of a divine force
(sometimes personified as the god Heka) that
could be invoked both by deities and humans
to solve problems or crises. In modern times a
clear distinction is usually made between the
use of prayers, MEDICINE or 'magic', but in
ancient Egypt (and many other cultures) these
three categories were regarded as overlapping
and complementary. Thus, a single problem,
whether a disease or a hated rival, might be
solved by a combination of magical rituals or

' fcf.

treatments (sesham), medicinal prescriptions
(pekhrel) and religious texts (rip).

A somewhat artificial distinction is usually
made between the religious texts in tombs and
temples and the 'magical texts' or 'spells' that
were intended lo solve the everyday problems
of individuals. These texts range from the
Bunt nf Gates in New Kingdom royal tombs to
curses inscribed on OSTftACA, or even spells to
cure nasal catarrh, but all of them would have
been regarded by the Egyptians as roughly
comparable methods of gaining divine assis-
tance. All employed heka, the primeval potency
that empowered the creator-god at the begin-
ning of time. Whereas magic, in the modern
sense of the word, has become relatively
peripheral to the established religions, in
ancient Egypt it \n\ at the very heart of reli-
gious ritual and liturgy. Magic was the means
by which the restoration of all forms of order
and harmony could be ensured. The royal
uracils (see cobra and WASpr), perhaps the
most vivid symbol of the pharaoh 's power, was
sometimes described as marl hekaip: 'greal of
magic'.

Probably the best-known literary descrip-
tion of the practice of magic in Egypt is a fic-
tional narrative composed in the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 bc) and preserved on
the 18th-Dynasty Papyrus Westcar. This text
describes various marvels performed by the
magicians Djadjaemankh and Djedi at [he
courts of sxtitkl and fcllLFU in the 4th
Dynasty (2613-2494 nc).

As in many other cultures the techniques
employed by Egyptian magicians were based
largely on the concept of imitation - the belief
that the replication of a name, image or myth-
ical event could produce an effect in the real
world. The imitation of names meant that ver-
bal trickery, such as puns, metaphors and
acrostics, were regarded as powerful forms of
magic rather than simply literary skills. In the

Curved imigic ' wand. Incised with figures of deities
and mythical lieasls, prohattf intended la prated
the owner /nun harm. Middle Kingdom, c. 1800 lie,
hippopotamus ivory, I.. 3(> cm. (t: \18I75)

167

MAGIC BRICKS

MALKATA

case of the ]'.\]'.(.Rvrio\ TEXTS, the act of
smashing' ostraca OT figurines bearing the
names of enemies was considered to be an
effective way of thwarting them. Similarly, the
creation of statuettes or figurines of gods or
enemies, which could then be either propitiat-
ed or mutilated, was regarded as an effective
way of gaining control over evil forces. In a
sophisticated combination of verbal, visual
and physical imitation, it was believed that
water poured over cippi of morls (stelae
depicting Horus the child defeating snakes,
scorpions and other dangers) would confer
healing on those who drank it.

The shaft tomb of a priest of the late
Middle kingdom (£.1700 lit;) excavated from
beneath the Ramesseum in western Thebes
contained a mixture of 'religious' and 'magi-
cal 1 artefacts, including a statuette of a woman
wearing a lion mask and holding two snake-
wands, an ivory clapper, a section of a magic
rod, a female fertility figurine, a bronze cobra-
wand, and a box of papyri inscribed with a
wide range of religious, literary and magical
texts (see LIBRARIES), This single collection of
equipment clearly demonstrates the vast spec-
trum of strategies which would have been
involved in Egyptian magic, enabling an indi-
vidual priest to draw on the power of the gods
with a wide variety of means and for a number
of different purposes.
M. LlCHTtSHM, Ancient Egyptian I item In re
(Berkeley, 1973), 215-22. [Papyrus Westcar]
J. V. Bokghouts, .Indent Egypt in n magical lexis
(Leiden, 1978).

VI. R\ WEN, 'Wax in Egyptian magic and
symbolism 1 , Oudheidknmiige Mededeliugen nil hel
mjksmweum van Oudhedm te Leiden 64 (1983),
7-47.

C. |ACQj Egyptian magic, trans. J. j\I. Davis
(Warminster, 1985).

A. M. Bi.ackman, Thest&ty of king Kkeops and
the magicians, transcribed from Papyrus Westcar
(Berlin Papyrus 3033), ed. \\. \. Davies
(Reading, 1988).

|. E BqkGI kilts, 'Magical practices among the
villagers', Pharaoh '$ workers: the villagers of Deir
el-Medina, ed. L. II. Lesko (Ithaca and London,
1994), 119-30.

R. K.. Ritnkr, The mechanics of ancient Egyptian
magical practice (Chicago, 1993).
G. PlNClI, Magic in ancient Egypt (London,
1994).

magic bricks

Set of four mud bricks that were often placed
on the four sides of the tomb during the New-
kingdom (1550-1069 Bt:) in order to protect
the deceased from evil. Surviving examples
date from at least as early as the reign of

Magic brick with shabti-/// , t' human figure, Jroui
the north wall of the burial chamber in ihe tomb oj
Tutankhaniun. 18th Dynasty, c. 1 33(1 m:,
it. I S.I an. (CAIRO, VQ. 259, Rl-l'R<>i)t cm

i:oi Rft:s\ ar Tin: GRirnrii INSTITUTE)

Thutmosc in (1479-1425 BC) until the time of
Rameses u (1279-1213 ut;). A socket in each
brick supported an iMULET, the form of which
depended on the cardinal point where the
brick was placed: thus the brick beside the
western wall included a faience DJED pillar,
that beside the eastern wall incorporated an
unfired clay amisis, and those beside the
southern and northern walls contained a reed
with a wick resembling a torch and a mummi-
form siiAirn-like figure respective!}. The
amulets themselves usually faced towards the
opposite wall. The bricks were inscribed with
sections of the hieratic text of Chapter 151 of
the nook OF' THE DEAD, describing the role they
played in protecting the deceased from the
enemies ol osiins.

E. THOMAS, 'The four niches and amuletic
figures in Thcban royal tombs', J IRCE 3 (1964),
71-8.

S. Qcirki". and J. Spkmt.r, The British Museum
book of anneal Egypt (London, 1992), 94 -5.

Maiherpri (Mahirpra) (r.1450 bc)
Military official of the early 18th Dynasty,
whose small intact tomb (ev36) was found in
western Thebes b\ Victor Loret in 1 899, It was
the first unplundered tomb to be discovered in
the vai.i.i.'i or the kings in modern times,
although the poor records of its excavation
mean that little is known about the original

disposition of the items within the burial
chamber, and there is not even a definitive list
of the objects themselves.

Because of the fine quality of the burial and
its location among the royal tombs of the New
Kingdom, it has been suggested that
Maiherpri, who held the titles Tan bearer on
the right hand of the king 1 and 'child of the
[royal] nursery', must have enjoyed consider-
able royal favour, perhaps being a foster-
brother or son of one of the early New
Kingdom rulers, while his physical features
(dark complexion and curly hair) indicate that
he was of Nubian descent. There are few clues
as to the ruler under whom he served; possible
candidates are Ilatshepsut (1473-1458 BC),
whose name was inscribed on a piece of linen
in the tomb, Thutmosc in (1479-1425 BC),
Amenhotep II (1427-1400 jk:) and Thutmosc i\
(1400-1390 BC).

The funerary equipment included a large
black resin-covered wooden sarcophagus con-
taining I wo smaller coffins, both ol which were
empty. The body itself lay in a second set of
coffins to one side of the sarcophagus. The
funerarv equipment included an impressive
hook or riir. DEAD papyrus, as weD as leather
quivers full of arrows (some tipped with flint)
which reinforce his identification as a stan
dard-bearer in the Eg\ ptian army (perhaps
even a royal bodyguard). Other leather items
preserved among his funerarv equipment were
two dog collars, one of which was inscribed
with the animal's name (Tantanuet), as well as
a box containing leather loincloths, which
Howard Carter later discovered buried under a
rock outside the tomb.

II. Cartt.r, 'Report on general work done in the
southern inspectorate i: Hiban el-Molouk",
J.S'_ j£4(1903),46.

M. Svi.Kll and H. Socrouxivn, The Egyptian
Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (Mainz, 1987),
no. 142.

C. N. Rr.rv r.s, The I alley of the Kings ( London,
1990), 140-7.

Malkata

Settlement and palace site at the southern end
of western Thebes, opposite modern Luxor,
dating to the early fourteenth eenturv no.
Essentially the remains of a community that
grew up around the Theban residence of
Amenhotep ill (1390-1352 bo), it was excavat-
ed between 1888 and 1918, but only a small
part of this work has been published, and the
more recent re-examination of the site by
David O'Connor and Barry Kemp in the earlv
1970s has only partially remedied this situa-
tion. The excavated area of the site comprises
several large official buildings (including four

168

MAMMISJ_

MANETHO

probable palaces), as well as kitchens, store-
rooms, residential ureas and a temple dedicat-
ed to the god Amun.

lb the cast of Malkata are the remains of a
large artificial lake (die Birket llahn) evidently
created at the same time as Amenhotep ill's
palaces, probably in connection with his SED
festival. The southern end of the site (Kom
el-Samak) was surveved and excavated during
the 1970s and 1980s by a Japanese expedition
from Waseda University, revealing an unusual
ceremonial painted platform-kiosk approached
by a stair and ramp.

R. nt: P. Tvtls, ^preliminary report on tkepre-
excavalion of the palace oj Ameuhoiep lit (New
York, 1903).

W. Hayes, 'Inscriptions from the palace of
Amenhotep m\JNM$ 10(1 95 1 ), 35 40.
B.J. KK.vii'and D. O'Ciiwok, 'An ancient Nile
harbour: University- Museum excavations at the
Birket Habu\ Internal maul journal ofXaufical
Archaeology ami Ltiderwalcr Exploration 3/1
(1974), 101 36.

Y.Watanmik and K. Skm, The architecliire of
Kom E! Samak at Malkata South: a study of
architectural restoration (Tokyo, 1 986).

mammisi (Coptic 'birth- place', 'birth-house')
Artificial Coptic term invented by the nine-
teenth-century Egyptologist Jean-Francois
Champollion to describe a particular type of

The mammisi of Horns at Edfu mas constructed
by Ptolemy I // and xm and iras the setting for
annual 'mystery plays' concerning the hir/h oj the
god. (t\ T. \iatni,so\)

building attached to certain temples, such as
EDFU, m.mierx and pi in. At., from the I.ate
Period to the Roman period (747 nc— yd 395),
often placed at right angles to the main temple
axis. The Ptolemaic mammisi usualh consisted
of a small temple, surrounded bv a colonnade
with intercolumnar screen walls, in which the
rituals of the marriage of the goddess (Tsis or
Hathor) and the birth of die child-god were
celebrated. There appear to have been earlier
counterparts of the mammisi in the form of
18th-E)vnasty reliefs describing the divine
birth of Hatshepsut (1473-1458 bc) ai ijkir
|'.i.-];\iiui and that of Amenhotep ni (1390—
1352 ik;) at LUXOR.

The temple complex at Dendera includes
two mai/iuiisis in front of the main temple. One
of these dates to the Roman period, while the
other is a much earlier construction of
Nectanebo 1 (380-362 nc) in which 'mvsterv
plays' concerning the births of both the god
Ihy (see hathor) and the pharaoh are said to
have been enacted, comprising thirteen acts
and two intervals. It is highlv likclv that simi-
lar dramas and rituals took place in other
birth-houses, with the intention of ensuring
agricultural success and the continuation of
the royal line.

K. Cn \ssiwi ', Le mammisi iTEdjim, 2 vols (Cairo,
1939).

— , Ees mammisi des temples egyptiens (Paris,
1958).

E Dal'.mas, Ees maminisis de Dendara (Cairo,
1959).

J. Ji_ \ker and E. Winter, Das Gehurtshaus des
Tempels der Isis in Phild (Vienna, 1 965).

Manetho (r.305-285 nt )
Egyptian priest and historian. Tittle is known
of his life, and it is disputed whether he was
born M \ie\i>es or iiF.uoi'ous. It is clear, how-
ever, that he was Egyptian and could read
Egyptian scripts, although he wrote in Greek.
His major work, a HJSTQRS of Egypt called the
Aegypliaai, was probably prepared during his
time at the temple of Sebennvtos, which is
near die modern town of Samannud in die
Delta. It has been tentatively suggested that
his priestly duties included a role in the estab-
lishment of the cult of sf.rahs under Ptolemy
i Soter (305-285 in:). As a priest he would have
had access to the archives of Egypt's temples
(see libraries), and with his ability to read
hieroglyphs he was able to produce a valuable
stud), which he dedicated to Ptolemy n
(285-246 ik;).

Unfortunately his history has not survived
intact, but is preserved in a series of some-
times contradictory fragments in the works of
other writers, notably the Jewish historian
[oscphus (first century AI)), and the Christian
writers Julius Afrieanus {c. \v> 220), Eusebius
(r. \o 320) and George called Syncellus (c. ad
800). Nevertheless, his division of the earthly
rulers into thirty dynasties (with the later
addition of a thirty-first) has been a major
influence on modern perceptions of the out-
line of Egyptian history, and the system was
used by [can-Francois Champollion in order-
ing the sequence of CARTOUCHES he discovered
from his decipherment of the hieroglyphs.

Manelho is credited with a further seven
works: The Sacred Book, An Epitome of
Physical Doctrines. On Festivals, On Ancient
Ritual and Religion, On the Making of Kyphi
(the latter being a type of incense), Criticisms
of 'Herodotus and The Book of Sothis. The last
of these was certainly not the work of
Manetho, and it is equally possible that some
of the other works were never even written.
\\ WKTHu, Aegyphaca, ed. and trans. W. G.
Wadell, Eoeb Classical Lihnin (Condon, 1940).
A. I.i.oyi), 'Manetho and the Thirty-First
Dynasty \ Pyramid studies and other essays
presented to I. E. S. Edwards, ed.J. Haines etal.

(London, 1988), 154-60.
maps and plans

The question of ancient Egyptian use of maps,
plans and diagrams is complicated by the dif-
ferences between modern conceptions of art
and representation and those that prevailed in
the Pharaonic period. There are therefore
Egyptian depictions of such phenomena as
landscapes and architectural features that
might be described - in modern terms - as
'diagrammatic', in the sense that they combine

169

MAPS AND PLANS

MARRIAGE

several different perspectives. For instance, in
Ramescs it's depictions of the Battle t>f QADESH
(t'.1274 BC), there is a bird's-eye view of the
immediate context of Qadesh (i.e. a tract of
land bounded by two branches of the River
Orontes), but the city itself is depicted as if
seen from the side.

There are also, however, a small number o!
surviving drawings on ostraca and papyri that
differ from mainstream Egyptian works of art
in that they appear to have had various practi-
cal uses as diagrams, whether as the working
drawings of architects or, on a more metaphys-
ical level, as a means of navigating through the
afterlife. The earliest surviving Egyptian maps
arc of the latter type, consisting of schematic
depictions of the route to the netherworld (the
Book of Tnm Ways) painted on coffins of the
Middle Kingdom (2055-165(1 BC).

The earliest surviving Egyptian map of an
actual geographical region is the so-called
Turin Mining Papvrus, an annotated pictori-
al record of an expedition to the hekJiett-
stone (greyw r acke or siltstonc) quarries of
Wadi Hammamat in the Eastern Desert. The
Turin Mining Papyrus, now in the Museo
Egizio, Turin, dates to the mid-twelfth cen-
tury ix:; it was evidently a document either
created to assist in a hek hen-stone quarrying
expedition in the reign of Rameses n
(1153-1147 uc), or, at the very least, com-
posed in order to commemorate the details of
the event. The map identities the essential
elements of a group of gold mines {at a site
now known as Bir Umm Fawakhir) as well as
the principal quarries, which are located fur-
ther to the east.

The textual and pictorial details of the
papvrus have recently been re-analvsed, and
its meaning and archaeological context re-
assessed. It incorporates colour-coded geolog-
ical zones, the locations of the mines and
quarries, a miners' settlement, a cistern (or
'water-reservoir'), three ancient roads, two
locations associated with the processing and
transportation of minerals, a shrine dedicated
to 'Amun of the pure mountain 1 and a com-
memorative stele from the time of sf.ty t
( 1 294-1 279 BC).

An ostracon of the Ramesside period in the
British Museum bears a rough architectural
plan annotated with measurements and
accompanied by a hieratic text describing the
orientation of the drawing in relation to an
actual building, which remains unidentified.
Two other architectural drawings have been
rccognizxd as plans of specific royal tombs in
the valley OF the KtNGS. A papyrus in Turin
bears part of a detailed ink plan of the tomb of
Rameses iv, while a less detailed plan on an

ostracon in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo has

been identified as the tomb of Rameses tx

(1126-1108 Be).

H. CASTER and A. 1 1. Gardiner, 'The tomb of

Ramesses ]\ and the Turin plan of a nival tomb\

JE.U(V)]1\ 130-58.

E. IIorMjNG, 'ZumTuriner Grafaplan', Pyramid

studies and other essays presented to 1. E. S.

Edwards, ed. J. Baines et al. (London, 1988),

138-42.

R. B. P'\|{kinso\, I dices from ancient Egypt

(London, 1991), 134-6. [plan of the

netherworld]

J. A. Harrell andY. M. Brown, L The oldest

surviving topographical map from ancient

Egypt: Turin Papyri 1879, 1899 and 1969',

$ARCE 29 (1992), 81-101

Mariette, Auguste (1821-81)

French Egyptologist who excavated manv of
the major Egyptian sites and monuments and
founded the Egyptian Antiquities Service. He
was born and educated in BouIogne-sur-Mer
and in 1839-40 he lived in England, teaching
French and drawing in Stratford and working
unsuccessfully as a designer in Coventry. In
1841 he returned to Boulogne to complete his
education, and the following year he devel-
oped an enthusiasm for Egyptology when he
examined the papers bequeathed to his family
by his cousin Nestor L'Hote, who produced
huge numbers of drawings as a draughtsman
on uiampollion's expedition to Egypt in
1828-9.

Between 1842 and 1849 Mariette taught
himself hieroglyphics (using Champollion's
grammar and dictionary) and studied
Coptic, eventually obtaining a post in the
Louvre, where he made an inventory of all of
the Egyptian inscriptions in die collection.
In 1850 he was sent to Egypt to acquire
papyri for the Louvre, but instead embarked
on the excavation of the Saqqara serapeum;
the ensuing four years were probably the
most successful of his archaeological career.
In 1855 he became Assistant Conservator at
the Louvre and two years later he returned to
Egypt. With the financial support of Said
Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, he undertook
several simultaneous excavations, including
work at Giza, Thebes, Abydos and
Elephantine. In June 1858 he was appointed
as the first Director of the newly created
Egyptian Antiquities Service, which enabled
him to gather together sufficient antiquities
to establish a national museum at Bulaq, near
Cairo. His subsequent excavations at thirty-
five different sites, regularly using large
numbers of relatively unsupervised workers,
were criticized by later, more scientific, exca-

vators such as Flinders PETRJE and George

reisner, but he is nevertheless deservedly

honoured by modern archaeologists as the

creator of the Egyptian Antiquities Service

and the Egyptian Museum, without which

the plundering of Egypt would have carried

on St a far greater pace in the late nineteenth

century. He died at Bulaq in 1881 and was

buried in a sarcophagus which was later

moved to the forecourt of the modern

Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

A. MARIETTE, Le Serapeum de Memphis (Paris,

1857).

— , Notice des pri/ieipa/ix niomuuenls exposes dans

les "aleries pnrcisoircs dn . \hisee. . . A Bonlak ( Cairo,

1864).

— , The monuments of Upper Egypt (London,

1877).

E. Mariette, Mariette Pacha (Paris, 1904).

G. Damll, A hundred years of archaeology, 1st

ed. (London, 1950), 160-4.

marriage

Although many current descriptions of
ancient Egypt tend to assume that marriage in
the Pharaonic period was similar to die mod-
ern institution, there is surprisingly little evi-
dence either for marriage ceremonies or for
the concept of the married couple (as opposed
to a man and woman simply living together).

The word heme!, conventionally translated
as 'wife', is regularly used to identify a man's
female partner, but it is not clear what the
social or legal implications of the term were.
In addition, it has been pointed out that the
equivalent male term hi ('husband') is only
rarely encountered. This is one of the most
obvious results of the fact that most of the sur-
viving sculptures and texts relate to male
funerary cults; therefore women are primarily
identified in terms of their relationships with
men (rather than the men being defined b\
their links with women).

The work hehsivt seems to have been used
to refer to another category of female partner,
which is occasionally translated as 'concu-
bine', but the situation is confused by the
existence of some texts of the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 bc) that describe a woman as
both lieittet and hebswt at the same time.
Hehsmt is therefore sometimes taken to refer
to a man's second or third wife, if he remar-
ried after the death or divorce of an earlier
spouse.

Very few documents describing the act of
marriage have survived from the Pharaonic
period, although a number of legal texts, often
described as 'marriage contracts', have sur-
vived from the period spanning the Late and
Ptolemaic periods (747—30 jic). These texts.

170

MASKH UTA, TELL EL-

frcqucnttv incorporating the phrase shep en
sehemet ( f price for [marrying-] a woman 1 ),
appear to lay down the property rights of each
of the partners in a marriage, rather than
specifically documenting or endorsing the act
of marriage itself.

The actual ceremony of marriage is poorly
documented, but there are more frequent
records of divorces. Both remarriage and mul-
tiple marriages were possible, but it is not
clear how common it was for men to take
more than one wife. It has been pointed out
that the numbers of rooms in the New
kingdom tomb-workers' community of Di.m
EL-MEDINA appear to conform with monoga-
mous rather than polygamous arrangements.
However, from at least as early as the 13 th
Dynasty (c\ 1795-1 650 ttc), polygamy was
certainly practised by die Egyptian kings,
with one consort usually being cited as the
'great royal wife' [kernel nesir were I, see
queens). The custom of brother-sister and
father-daughter marriage appears to have
been confined to the royal family, perhaps
partly because the deliberate practice of
incest, commonly occurring in the myths of
Egyptian deities, was regarded as a royal pre-
rogative, effectively setting the king apart
from his subjects.

In the New Kingdom, many pharaohs also
took foreign wives in so-called 'diplomatic
marriages', which were used either as a means
of consolidating alliances with the kingdoms of
the ancient Near East or as an indication of the
complete subjugation of a foreign prince, who
would have been obliged to send his daughter
to the king both as an act of surrender and as a
means of ensuring his subsequent loyalty.
P. Phst\hn, Marriage ami inairinumiai property in
ancient Egypt (Leiden, 1961).
W. K. Simpson, 'Polygamy in Egypt in the
Middle Kingdom', JEA 60 (1974), 100-5.
A. R. Scnui.MAN, 'Diplomatic marriage in the
Egyptian New Kmgdom\ JNES 38 (1979),
177-94.

S. AiXAM, 'Quelques aspects du mariagc dans
l'Egypte aacienne' , JE. 4 67 ( 1 98 1 ), 1 1 6-3 5 .
E. StroLiIial, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 51-8.

G. Roams, Wemen in ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 56-74.

Maskhuta, Tell el- (anc. Per-Temu,Tjeku)
Town-site and capital of the eighth nomc of
Lower Egypt during the Late Period
(747—332 8C), located at the eastern edge of the
Delta, 15 km west of modern Ismailiya and the
Suez Canal. The site was first excavated by
Edouard Navillc in 1883 on behalf of the
newly established Egypt Exploration Fund.

1 enclosure wall

2 storehouses (?)

3 central buildings

4 temple (?)

modern
village —

100 200 300 400 m

Plan of Tell el-Mashhuta.

Black granite votive falcon of Barneses it. 19th
Dynasty, 1279-1213 tic, from Tell el-Maskiinta,
t/QSem. (£41006)

On the basis of its ancient name, Per-Temu,
the site was identified with the Biblical city of
Pithom, but more recent excavations by a team
from the University of Toronto have dis-
proved this theory, demonstrating that there
was a HVKSOS level below the remains of the
city founded by Nekau u (610-595 oc:) which
was still flourishing in the Roman period
(30 BC-AD 395). The fluctuating importance of
the site appears to have been closely linked to
the fortunes of the Wadi Tumilat, through
which an ancient canal connected the apex of
the Delta with the Red Sea.
H. E. Nayii.it., The store-city ofFithsm and the
route of the Exwtm (London, 1885).
J. S. Hon. urn, Jr, Otic* "/'the Delta ur. Tell el-
Aiaskimtu (MAhbu, Vm).

masks

The question of the extent to which masks
were used in Egyptian religious and funerary
rituals has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.
Paintings, reliefs and statuary throughout the
Pharaonic period regularly include depictions
of human figures with the heads of various
creatures, from jackals to falcons. It is uncer-
tain, however, whether these depictions are
always intended to represent physical manifes-
tations of the gods themselves, or whether, as
seems possible in some instances, the figures
are masked priests representing the deity in
question. Some of the ceremonial palettes of
the late Prcdynastic and Early Dynastic periods
(c. 3300-2900 bc) are carved with depictions of
bird- and animal-headed humans, sometimes
described as masked figures, although they
are not necessarily any more likely to he
masked than equivalent depictions of the
Pharaonic period.

Studies concerning priests' use of masks are
hampered by the fact that only two examples
have survived. In the Rbmer-Pelizaeus
Museum al Hildesheim there is a painted
ceramic bust of Anubis of unknown prov-
enance, nearly 50 cm high and dated to the
fifth or sixth century BC A pair of holes were
bored through the pottery below the snout,
presumably in order to allow the priest to see
out; the 'mask 1 also had notches on either side
of the base to fit over the wearer's shoulders. A
relief in the Ptolemaic temple of Hathor at
Dendera shows a priest apparently wearing a
similar jackal-head mask, with his own head
visible inside (he outline of the jackal's head.

At one of the houses in the town of Kahun
(see i:t -i.akun), Flinders Pctrie excavated a
cartonnage lion's head mask provided with
eye -holes, which would probably have allowed
the wearer to assume the identitv of the magi-
cal demon Aha. This mask, dating to the

171

MASKS

MA STAB A

Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 uc), is now in
the collection of the Manchester Museum.
The unusual set of late Middle Kingdom
objects found in shaft-tomb 5 under the
Ramesseum included a wooden figurine repre-
senting either a lion-headed goddess or a
woman wearing a similar kind of mask, which
was probably connected in some way with the
performance of MAGIC It is possible that mam-
other masks were made of organic materials
such as cartonnage, linen or leather, which,
even in Egypt's climate, would not necessarily
have survived in the archaeological record.

Profile mew of the funerary mask of
Titlankhamun, from his tsmb in the I alley of the
Kings. The characteristic heard has been removed
in this photograph. ISlh Dynasty, c. 133(1 n<;, gold,
lapis lazuli, cornelian, quartz, obsidian, turquoise
and coloured glass, n. 54 em. (c.MRo ;ji;h()h72,
MPkQM <:i;n COI /r//:.v> of tiii: c;Rtrmii
Msnn rii)

The use of masks in funerary contexts is
much better documented, ranging from the
famous golden masks of it .i-wkiiwiln
(1336-1327 sc) and psusenntss I (1039^-991 ik;)
to the humbler painted cartonnage masks that
were introduced in the Firsi Intermediate
Period (2181-2055 nc) to assist in the identifi-
cation of the linen-wrapped mummy. The car-
tonnage mummy mask was used in the First
Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom,
the 18th and 26th Dynasties and the Greco-
Roman period (32 tic— \i> 595), when hollow

painted plaster heads and the so-called 'Fayum
portraits' (depicting the face of the deceased
in ENCAUSTIC or tempera on a wooden hoard)
began to be used alongside the traditional car-
tonnage masks.

The forerunners of mummy-masks date to
the 4th to 6th Dynasties (2613-2181 ik:), tak-
ing the form of thin coatings of plaster mould-
ed either directly over the face or on top of the
linen wrappings, perhaps fulfilling a similar
purpose to the 4th-Dynasty RESERVE HEAIJS. A
plaster mould, apparently taken directly from
the face of a corpse, was excavated from die
6th-Dynasty mortuary temple of TETl
(2345-2323 i;c), but this is thought to be of
Greco-Roman date. The superficially similar
plaster 'masks' that were excavated in the
house of the sculptor Thutmose at EL-AMARN \
were probably not death-masks at all but
copies of sculptures, intended to aid the sculp-
tors in making accurate representations of the
el-Amarna elite.

W. M. F. Pr.TRir., Kalnm, Cnrob and Hawara
(London, 1890), 30, pi. \ m.27.
J. E. QutBELL, Excavations at Saqqara
(/W7-/W.V) (Cairo, 1909), U^pLbt
C. L. Bi.kkkkk, l Die Maske: Verhullung und
Often bar ung', The sacred bridge (Leiden, 1963),
236-49.

C. A. Andrews, Egyptian mummies (London,
1984), 27 -30.

A. WOUNSKI, 'Ancient Egyptian ceremonial
masks', DEd (1986), 47-53.
P. Pammingkr, Anubis-Maske 1 , . Igypteus
Aufslieg zur Sii'ltmacht, cxh. eat. Hildesheim, ed.
A. Eggebrecht (Mainz, 1978), 312-13.
W. DAVIS, Masking the blow: the scene of
representation in lute prehistoric Egyptian art
(Berkeley, 1992), 38-40, 72-82.

D. Sweeney, 'Egyptian masks in motion', CM
135(1993), 101-4.

J. H. Taylor, Wlasks in ancient Egypt: the
image of divinity 1 . Masks: the art of expression,
ed.j. Mack (London, 1994), 168-89.

Maspero, Gaston (1846-1916)

French Egyptologist who succeeded Auguste
\i\rii:ttk as Director of the Egyptian Museum
ai Bulaq and edited the first fifty volumes of
the immense catalogue of the collection there.
I le was bom in Paris and educated al theLvcee
Louis le Grand and the Ecole Normale, even-
tually becoming Professor of Egyptology at the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes in 1869, at the age of
only twenty-three, having studied with both
Mariette and Olivier de Rouge. In 1880 he-
made his first trip to Egypt at the head of a
French archaeological mission that was eventu-
ally to become the Instilut Francais
d'Archeologie Orientale. From 1881 onwards.

as Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service
and the 13ulaq Museum, he excavated a!
numerous sites from Saqqara to the Valley of
the Kings. His distinguished career, which
included the first publication of the pyramitj
TEXTS and the discovery of the cache of royal
mummies at unit i.i.-ijaiiri, was eventually
brought to an end through illness, which
forced him to return to France in 1914. He-
died two years later, just before he was about to
address a meeting of the Academy in Paris.
G. Maspero, Les momes royaks de Den- ei-Bahan
(Cairo, 1889).

— , Eludes de inylltologie et d'archeoiogie
egyptieuue, 8 vols (Paris, 1895-1916).
— , Les inscriptions ties pyramides de Saqqarah
(Paris, 1 S94).

— , Histoire aneiemie des peuples de /'Orient, 3 vols
(Paris, 1895-9).

G. \1 'VSiT.RO and A. Barsayii, Foai/les auiwr de
la lyrainide d'Onnas (Cairo, 1900)
G. Masi-kko, ,\V/;> light on ancient Egypt
(London, 1908).

— , Guide da visi/enr aa innsee da Caire, 4th ed.
(Cairo, 1915).

W. R. Dawson, 'Letters from Maspero to Amelia
Edwards',^ 1 Is (1947), 66-89.

mastaba (Arabic: "bench')
Arabic term applied to style of Egyptian tomb
in which the superstructure resembles the low
mud-brick benches outside Egyptian houses.
Mastaba tombs have sloping walls, so that the
roof area is smaller than that of the base.

The mastaba tomb was used for both
royal and private burials in the Early Dynastic
period (3100-2686 nc:) but only for private
burials in the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 ik:). It
comprises a substructure, usually consisting of
the burial chamber and magazines, surmount-
ed by a mud-brick or stone superstructure.
Ancillary buildings, notably chapels, were
originally attached to the superstructure but
were gradually incorporated into it. The best
eyidence for mastabas of the Early Dynastic
period derives from ABYDo.s and SAQQARA, sup-
plemented by those at wqaih. For the Old
Kingdom, giza, SAQQARA, ahu.hir and \ii:ii.h . \i
are all important mastaba cemeteries.

Early Dynastic mastabas comprise a pit cut
into the rock and divided by brick partitions.
The central chamber, that for the hurial, was
sometimes decorated. In the earliest examples,
the underground rooms did not have connect-
ing doors, and all were roofed over with tim-
ber. As a result the burial had to be made
before the brick superstructure was completed.
From the mid 1st Dynasty onwards a stairwav
was incorporated into the design allowing eas-
ier access to the tomb, and completion of the

172

MASTABA _

MATHEMATICS AND NUMBERS

Cut-anmy drawing of an Old Kingdom private
mastaba lonik

superstructure before burial was made. This
stairway was blocked by portcullises in an
attempt to prevent robbery of the burial and
magazines, some of which began to be incor-
porated into the superstructure. By the late
2nd Dynasty a series of rock-cut chambers
sometimes led from a central corridor beneath
the superstructure. Tombs were .surrounded
by an enclosure wall, which, like the super-
structure, took the form of a palace-facade
design (see serekii) during the 1st Dynasty.
Some of these tombs were accompanied also
by boat pits. Superstructures of the 2nd
Dynasty were plainer, except for niches at the
north and south ends of the eastern wall.

During the 3rd Dynasty (2686-261.1 lit;),
the pyramid complex developed as the royal
burial monument, but the mastaba continued
to be used by the rest of the elite, although the
number of subterranean rooms was gradu-
ally reduced until, h\ the 4th Dynast}
(2613-24 l H lit:), only a burial chamber
remained, connected to the superstructure by
a vertical shaft which eould be blocked with
rubble. This type of mastaba was built
throughout the rest of the Old Kingdom.
Panelled facades regained popularity 7 during
the 3rd Dynasty, although not always on all
sides of the tomb, and by the 4th Dynasty-
stone had become the preferred building
material. Similarly, the southern offering
niche, which had evolved into a simple chapel,
became larger, developing into a distinct room
within the superstructure, and by the 5th and
6th Dynasties (2494-2181 BC) a whole series of
rooms had developed in the superstructure,

transforming it into a funerary chapel. These
often bore elaborate decoration, including
scenes of daily life which are valuable for the
understanding of agricultural and craft activi-
ties (see BtfERERUKA and n).

The chapel contained the vwsv. door stele
and altar, usually located in an offering cham-
ber above the burial. Here the family would
come to make their offerings to the deceased.
An oi'TKRiNG formula carved on the walls
would also magically ensure sustenance for the
deceased, statues of whom were walled up in a
SfcRDAB and visible only through small open-
ings in the masonry. During the Old
Kingdom, the afterlife of officials depended
on royal favour, and their tombs, granted by
the king, clustered around his monument, as
in the 'streets 1 of tombs at GIZA and SAQCJARA,

Mastaba tombs continued to be constructed
for private individuals at sites such as AttustR,
KDFU, Qatta and Qubaniva during the Middle
Kingdom, sometimes copying the pyramids of
the 12th Dynasty (1985-1795 bc) in their use
of elaborate open-excavation corridors. At
most other sites, the rock-cut tomb had essen-
tially replaced the mastaba as the principal
form of private funerary architecture. In the
New Kingdom (1550—1069 isc:), however, the
so-called 'chapel-tombs', particularly exem-
plified by the Memphite tomb of iiorf-MHIOJ at
Saqqara, have been likened by some scholars
to the mastaba form. The superstructure of
these chapel-tombs usually had the appear-
ance of a shrine or temple consisting of a set of
rooms arranged along an axis, in contrast to
the relatively solid mass of the Old and Middle
Kingdom mastabas. Shafts led down to the
burial chamber from the courtyards of the
superstructure.

Chapel-tombs were also common after the
end of the New Kingdom, as in the case ol the
royal tombs of die 21st and 22nd Dynasties
(1069-715 tit;) in the precincts of the temple
of Amun at tanis, which probably originally
had superstructures of this type (although
only the substructures have survived). The
Late Period tombs of the uod's WIVES Of AMUN
at MroiNF.T habl were also in the same archi-
tectural tradition.

W. B. Et\*ER¥, Anh& k Egypt (Ilarmondsworth,
1961).

f Brinks, 'Mastaba und Pvramidentempel - ein
sirukturt4lerYergleich\ GM 39 (1980), 45-60.
A.J. Spencer, Death in ancient Egypt
(Harmondsuonh, 1982), 45-1 1 1 .
P. Watson, Egyptian Pyramids and mastaba tombs

(Aylesbury, 1987).

S. D'Auria, P. Lacovara and C. H. Roiiirio

(eds). Mummies and magic (Boston, 1988).

N. Chkrpion, Mastabas et bypogees d'Ancieu

Empire: le probleme tic la dalalion (Brussels,

1989).

mathematics and numbers

The Egyptian numerical system was a combi-
nation of the decimal and the repetitive. It
lacked a symbol for zero, but scribes occasion-
ally left a gap between numbers as though
such a sign existed. The following signs were
used to represent numbers:

i i

100

1000

10,000

100,000

1,1)00,000 [often meaning
'more than 1 can count'].

Numbers were written from the largest to the
smallest, so that 1,122 (reading ^

from right to left) would be: 1 1 OD ^ J

Unlike the Greeks, the Egyptians did not
develop abstract formulae, but proceeded by a
series of smaller calculations. The state ol
mathematical knowledge in the Pharaonic
period has been deduced from a small number
of mathematical texts, comprising four
papyri (the Moscow, Berlin, Kahun and, most
famously, Rhind), a leather scroll and two
wooden tablets. A number of mathematical
papyri written in the DEMOTIC script have also
survived from the Ptolemaic period
(152-30 K).

The modern surveys of monuments have
enabled much to be deduced concerning the
Egyptians 1 practical use of mathematics, and —

173

MATHEMATICS AND NUMBERS

MEASUREMENT

Section of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus,
written in the Hyksos period, hut claiming to he a
copy of a 12th-Dynasty work. This part of the text
consists of a series ofprohlems concerning the
volumes of rectangles, triangles and pyramids- 15th
Dynasty, c. 1550 tic, papyrus, from Thebes,
ii.32cm. (/■: 1 10057.. sm:i:rH)

al least since the time of Flinders Petrie's sur-
vey of GIZA - it has been clear that the meth-
ods involved in setting out the pyramid com-
plexes (2686-1650 bc) were pragmatic rather
than mystical.

The Egyptians 1 calculation of whole num-
bers was relatively simple: to multiply by ten,
for example, the appropriate hieroglyphs were
changed for the next highest, so that ten, for
instance, could become one hundred. In other
calculations, a sum equal to the desired multi-
plier was reached by a process of doubling,
while the multiplicand was itself doubled as
many times as necessary for the multiplier.
Thus the sum 17X19 would be calculated by
first deriving the multiplier from the table
below, in which 16 + 2+ 1 = 19:

"I.TIPUF.R

MUl.TIPI

136

16*

272

.•;/•'

Once a number was reached which was equal to
half or more of that desired, no further doubling
was needed. Thus, in the case cited above, 16

is more than half of 19. All that was now

necessary was to read across the table and add
the relevant figures (marked above by an
asterisk), 272 + 34 + 17 - 323, which is the
product of 17 X 19. 1 lenee there was no need
for multiplication tables, simply tables of
duplication. Division was achieved by revers-
ing this process.

The use of fractions appears to have caused
more difficulties, particularly as the Egvplians
recognized only those in which the numerator
was one, all of which were written by placing
the hieroglyph V above the relevant number:
thus one-third would have been rendered as
II | . There were, however, also some spe-
cial signs for such commonly used fractions as
two-thirds, three-quarters, four-fifths and
five-sixths, and the Rhind Papyrus is excep-
tional in presenting a table of fractions in
which the numerator is two. Complicated frac-
tions were written by reducing them to two or
three separate fractions, the first of which had
the smallest possible denominator. Thus two-
fifths was written as one-third + one-fifteenth.
In calculations fractions were broken down
and thus treated as whole numbers.

The Egyptians used the observation of
practical situations to develop geometrical
knowledge early in their history. They knew
that the area of a rectangle was equal to its
length multiplied by its width. They had also
found that if a triangle was drawn inside the
rectangle, having the same length as its sides
and the same height as its width, then its area
would be half that of the rectangle.

However, the Egyptians' major achieve-
ment in geometry was the calculation of the
area of a circle according to the length of its
diameter. This was done by squaring eight-
ninths of the diameter's length, which gives an
approximate value for pi of 3.16. With their
knowledge of area, thev were also able to cal-
culate volume, including tiiat for a cylinder
and pyramid, even when truncated. This again
was achieved by a series of smaller calcula-
tions, which, although they lack the elegance
of formulae, are nevertheless correct.

In the absence of formulae, scribes learned
their mathematics by copying out set exam-
ples, replacing the figures with their own.
Unlike the Mesopotamian mathematicians the
Egyptians were more interested in practicali-
ties than in theory. Nevertheless, certain cal-
culations in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
end with the short phrase mitt pw ( L it is
equal'), which is used where calculations could
not be exactly matched to proofs.
C. F. Nims, L The bread and beer problems of the
Moscow Mathematical Papyrus', ;JEA 44 ( 1958),
56-65.

R.J. Gii.ung.s, Mathematics in the time of the
pharaohs (Cambridge, MA, 1972).
R. A. PARKER, Demotic mathematical papyri
(London, 1972).

J. Svastal, 'Beitrag zur Erforschung dcr
Geschiehte der "Ver mess Lings kunde im alten
Agypten', Acta Polytcchnica, Price Cl'UT
vh-itzt- 13 (1983), 69-80.
G. Robins and C. Suite, The Rhind
mathematical papyrus (1 .ondon, 1 987).

measurement

Knowledge of weights and measures was fun-
damental to the smooth running of the
Egyptian bureaucracy. This is evident from
tomb scenes showing scribes recording the
amount of grain or counting cattle (see TAX-
ATION), and from the measured rations and
weights of copper issued at DK1K EI.-MEDINA, as
well as vignettes of the weighing of the heart
in the HOOk OFTHE DEAD.

The main unit of measurement was the
royal cubit (52.4 cm), approximately the
length of a man's forearm and represented by
the hieroglyph *s> -Q ■ The royal cubit com-
prised 7 palm widths each of 4 digits of thumb
width (thus 28 digits to the cubit). Artists
generally used a grid to lay out their drawings,
and until the end of the Third Intermediate
Period (1069-747 m) they used the 'short
cubit 1 of 6 palms (44.9cm) which was roughly
the length from elbow to thumb tip, conven-
tionally 45 cm. From the SAITE PERIOD
(664-525 rsc) onwards, however, the royal
cubit was used bv artists. During the Persian

174

MEASU REMENT

MEDICINE

occupation, on the other hand, the royal
Persian cubit of 64.2 cm was sometimes used,
although a reference cubit for this measure at
Abydos is actually 63.85 cm long.

The length of the double reweu was equal to
that of the diagonal of a square with sides of
1 royal cubit (74.07 cm). The double remen,
divided into forty smaller units of 1.S5 cm each,
was the measurement used in land surveying,
long with the la (or weh-ta) of 100 royal cubits.
Area was measured by seljal ( 1 00 cubic square),
later called the aroura.

A number of measuring rods, including the
wooden examples used bv craftsman and
surveyors, have survived.The most detailed
knowledge of the cubit derives not from worka-
day measures, which could vary considerably,
but from ceremonial cubit-rods cut in stone
and deposited in temples, or occasionally
buried with officials. These were also inscribed

the kite measured silver or gold only. They
were used to describe the equivalent value of
a wide variety of non-metallic goods, thus
forming a rudimentary price system in the
non-monetary economy of the Pharaonic
period (see trade).

Measures of capacity also existed, notably
the hin (about 0.47 1): ten hinw making one
hfktit of about 4.77 I, and one /'//(//■making 160
hinw (75.2 1). The kin could be subdivided into
units as small as / >2 , as well as into thirds,
known as khay. Scribes measuring grain are
depicted in the tomb of Menna.
A. Wekjali., Weights ami balances (Cairo, 1 90S).
J. CERNV, 'Prices and wages in Egypt in the
Rainess ide period 1 , Cahicrs d'Histoirc Momlialc l

(1954)^903-21.

F. G. SkiNNr.R, 'Measures and weights 1 , -1 history
tifteekftalogy i, ed. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard and
A. R. Hall (Oxford, 1954), 774-84.

the main temple, a much earlier phase, dated
by pottery to the late Old Kingdom
(/.2300-2181 isc), was uncovered in 1939. This
consisted of a polygonal enclosure wall con-
taining a grove of trees surrounding a small,
roughly rectangular mud-brick temple. At the
rear of the small temple there were two wind-
ing corridors, each leading to a small chamber,
and each chamber being covered by an oval
mound of soil, perhaps symbolizing the
primeval MOUND, This early 'shrine 1 appears
to lie outside the normal conventions of
Pharaonic temple design.
C. Robiciion and A. Varille, 'Medamoud:
fouilles du Musee du Louvre, 1938\ QtE 14/27
(1939), 82-7.

— , Description sommaire dit temple primifif de
Medamoud (Cairo, 1940).
B.J. Kemp, indent Egypt: anatomy of a
civilization (London, 1989), 66-9.

above Wooden cuhil-rod. Late period, /.. 53.3 cm.
(M2307S)

right Fragment of schist cubu-rod. New
Kingdom. L. IS. 2 cm. (EA366S6)

with other useful information such as inunth-
TTON levels or references to nomes (provinces),
forming a kind of compendium of the sort once
found in school exercise books in Europe. A
knotted rope was used in surveying land, the
boundaries of which could be marked with
stones, as portrayed in the tomb of Menna at
Thebes (tt69, c.1400 8C).

Weights were also commonlv used, and a
large number in stone, pottery and bronze
have survived; the earliest, excavated at
Naqada, date to the Predynastic period
(r.3500-3100 bc). Many weights in the
Dynastic period are inscribed, while others
are in the shape of bulls' heads, cattle or
other animals. Weights were traditionally
made in units known as debens, weighing
about 93.3 g, but after the 12th Dynasty
(1985— 1795 BC) this unit was supplemented
by the kite of 9-10 g, and the deben itself was
increased to weigh 10 kite. The deben was a
measure of copper, silver or gold, whereas

Medamud (anc Madu)

Site of an ancient town located 5 km northeast
of KARNAK temple, at the northernmost edge of
Thebes. The modern site is dominated by a
temple of the falcon-god montl winch dates
back at least to the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 BC), although the nucleus of the
complex is of the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 bc)
and the outer sections are Greco-Roman in date
(332 bc-ai) 395). The temple is dedicated to the
local triad comprising Montu, Ra*ttawy and
Harpocrates (the child-like form of iiorus).
Next to the main Greco-Roman temple was a
sacred lake and behind it was a smaller temple
dedicated to the bull manifestation of Montu,
similar to the Bucheum at armant.

The ground-plan of the Middle Kingdom
phase of the temple of Montu has been oblit-
erated by the later phases superimposed on it,
but numerous stone architectural elements
such as columns and royal statues have sur-
vived, re-used elsewhere on the site. Beneath

medicine

Egyptian medicine was a mixture of magical
and religious spells with remedies based on
keen observation of patients, and any attempt
to impose the modern distinction between
magic and medicine usually only confuses the
picture. The most common cure for maladies
was probably the amulet or the magic spell
rather than medical prescriptions alone, since
many illnesses tended to be regarded as the
result of malignant influences or incorrect
behaviour.

I lowever, at least as earlv as the 3rd Dynasty
(2686-2613 bc), there were already individuals
corresponding roughly to the modern concept
of a doctor, for whom the term sinw was used.
There were also surgeons (called 'priests of
Sekhmet 1 ) as well as the ancient equivalents of
dental and veterinary practitioners. The
Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the
fifth century BC, claimed that Egyptian doc-
tors each had their own specializations, such as

175

MEDICINE

MEDINET EL-FAVUM

■■■'■'.■. ■..:■:.:■..,

■ '•. • ' : ■ • . .

;•- -, • • -

: ■ ' . ■ ■

.■■■■

"■ -
- =<£

Detail of the L&ndo® Medical Papyrus. Sap
Kingdom-, c. 1300-/ 200 uc. (ea)0Q$9).

gynaecology or osteopathy, but there is no evi-
dence that this was SO in the Pharaonic period.
Egyptian doctors appear to have been mainly
men, given the fact that only one woman doc-
tor is definitely attested, although this evi-
dence may well be biased, in that the principal
sources are inscriptions on funerary monu-
ments, most of which were created for men
rather than women.

A number of surviving medical papyri pro-
vide information concerning the Egyptians'
knowledge of medicine and the composition of
the body. Such medical texts mav have been
housed in temple archives (see LIBRARIES),
although the only evidence for this is the
assertion of the Greek physician Galen
(r.AD 129-99) that the ancient temple archives
at Memphis were being consulted by Greek
and Roman doctors of his own time.

The Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus
(r.I600 bc:) was once thoughi to be the w r ork
ol a military surgeon, but recent opinion
suggests that its author may have been a doc-
tor associated with a pyramid-building work-
force. The text deals mainly with such prob-
lems as broken bones, dislocations and
crushings, dividing its forty-eight cases into
three classes: 'an ailment which I will treat',
l an ailment with which I will contend' and an
'ailment not to be treated 1 . The symptoms of
each case are described and where possible a
remedy prescribed. Although it cannot be
claimed that the writer fully understood the
concept of the circulation of the blood, he
clearly recognized that the condition ol' the
heart could be judged by the pulse: 'The
counting of anything with the fingers [is
done] to recognize the way the heart goes.
There are vessels in it leading to every part
of the body . . . When a Sekhmet priest,
any s/inr doctor . . . puis his fingers to the

„:,r

: - : . . .

■;■■■■■ :

*■■

■r

head ... to the two hands, to the place of the
heart ... it speaks ... in every vessel, every
part of the body. 1

The Kahun .Medical Papyrus (f.2100-1900
bc), which may also be the original source for
the Ramesseum IV— \ and Carlsberg vm
papyri, deals with the ailments of women and
is particularly concerned with the womb and
the determination of fertility. It also
describes such methods of contraception as
the consumption of 'excrement of crocodile
mixed with sour milk 1 or the injection of a
mixture of hone) and natron into the vagina.
The Berlin Papyrus (r. 1550 bc), on the other
hand, contains the earliest known pregnancy
test: 'Barley and emmer\ 'The women must
moisten it with urine every day ... if both
grow, she will give birth. If the barley grows,
it means a male child. If the emmer grows it
means a female chitd. If neither grows she
will not give birth.' Modern experiments
have shown that the urine of a woman who is
not pregnant will actually prevent the growth
of barley, suggesting surprising scientific
support for this test.

The Ebers Medical Papyrus (r.1555 uc;)
was originally over 20 m long and consisted
simply of a list of some 876 prescriptions and
remedies for such ailments as wounds, stom-
ach complaints, gynaecological problems and
skin irritations. Prescriptions were made up in
proportions according to fractions based on
parts of the eye of I iokus, each part symboliz-
ing a fraction from '■/-. to '/_,. The Hearst
Papyrus (ff.1550 BC) is inscribed with over
250 prescriptions, a number of which deal
with broken bones and biles (including that of
the hippopotamus)

The Brooklyn Papyrus deals with
snakebites at great length, while the Chester
Beatty \! Papyrus ((.1200 uc) is concerned
onl\ with diseases ot the anus. The London
Papyrus is one of the best examples of the
Egyptian three-pronged approach to healing.

which might be described as holistic in mod-
ern terms. It consists of a combination of
magical spells, riluals and practical prescrip-
tions, all of which would have been consid-
ered equally essential to the recovery of the
patient.

It is clear from these works thai it would be
incorrect to suppose that the dissection
involved in mummification provided the
Egyptians with a good knowledge of the work-
ings of the human body. The purpose of
numerous organs remained unknown; for
example, although it was known that brain
damage could cause paralysis, it was not real-
ized that the brain had anything to do with the
act of thinking, an activity which the
Egyptians ascribed to the heart. The purpose
of the kidneys was also unknown, and it was
believed that all bodily fluids, such as blood,
urine, excrement and semen, were eonstanth
circulating around the body.

In the Ptolemaic period (332-30 bc:) Greek
forms of medicine were combined with those
of die Egyptians, just as the local deities were
assimilated with those of the Greeks. Thus the
deified i\iiiOTt;i> become identified with the
Greek god Asklepios, and the Asklepieion al
Saqqara became a centre for medicine.
Patients sometimes also staved overnight in so-
called incubation chambers at such temples, as
in the cult-place of ffES at Saqqara, in the hope
of receiving a cure through divinely inspired
t)Rt:.\.M.s. From the Late Period (747-332 w )
onwards, sanatoria were often attached to
major temples such as the cult-centre of
Hathor at DENDER4.

j. II. Breasted, The Bdmn South Papyrus, 2 vols
(Chicago, 1 930).

A. Gardiner, The Ramesseum Papyri (Oxlbrd,
1955).

P. Gnu. mi mil i, T/it-physhiiit/s afphuraotw
Egypt (Cairo, 1983)

A.-P. LECA, La mederine igypt&nne au temp den
plumitms (Paris, 1983).

J. Nunn, Anticiii Egyptian medicine (London,
1995)

Medinet el-Fayum (Kiman Fares; anc,
Shedvet, Crocodilopolis)
Site ol the cult centre of die crocodile- god
SGBI3C, located in the centre of the RWUYi
ri;gk>\ 7 . It is not clear when the settlement of
Shedvet was founded, but the earliest known
archiieclural remains derive from a temple of
Sobek constructed in the 1 2th Dynasty
(1985-1795 bc) and restored by Rameses ti
(1279-1213 BC), The settlement and the tem-
ple must have particularly flourished during
the late Middle Kingdom, when several rulers
of the 13th Dynasty (1795-1650 bc) took

176

MEPIN ET HABU

MEDINIi T HABU

games including references to Sobek. Most of

the surviving remains (including' another tem-
ple, a sacred lake and some baths) date to the
Greco-Roman period (332 lit:— vn 395), when
the town was the capital of ihe province of
Arsinoe. In the early twentieth century \n
the site still covered an area of some three
hundred acres, hut it has now diminished con-
siderahlv because of the northwestward
expansion of the modem city.
L. KAkosy, 'Krokodilskulte', Lexikon tier
.'igyplohpc 111, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf ( Wiesbaden, 1980), SOI— 1 1.

Medinet Habu (anc. Djamet; Djerrie)

Temple complex dating from the New
Kingdom to the Late Period (c.1550-332 lit;)
at the southern end of the Theban west bank,
opposite modern Luxor. Most of the archaeo-
logical and epigraphic work at the site was
undertaken by the Chicago Epigraphic Survey
in the 1920s and 1930s.

The earliest section of the complex was a
small temple built by Hatshepsut (1473-1458
uc) and Thutmose in (1479-1425 nc), but this
was later eclipsed by the construction of the
mortuary temple of Rameses ill (1184—1153
Be). The latter is aligned roughly southeast to
northwest, but conventionally the side facing
the Nile is described as east. The whole com-
plex is surrounded by massive mud-brick
walls, with a copy of a Syrian fortress, known
as a in/gi/ol, serving as its eastern gateway
(sometimes called the 'pavilion gate'), '['he
heads of foreign captives are displayed below
windows in the eastern passage of the gateway.
In rooms above the gate are scenes showing
Rameses ill at leisure, playing draughts with
the women of his hakim. It is possible that it
was in this private suite of rooms that an
unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Rameses in
took place. Nearbv was a landing stage where
boats could moor, having reached the site by a
canal from the Nile.

The exterior walls of the temple are deco-
rated with scenes from the various campaigns
of Rameses in, notably his wars with die
LIBYANS and the SEA PEOPLES, who are also
depicted in the first court of the temple.
The first PYLON shown the king smiting his
enemies, while rows of human-headed
'name rings' depict the conquered lands. The
second court is devoted to scenes of religious
processions, nolabh those of \un and SOKAR.
Despite the generally good state of preser-
vation of the temple, the HYTOSTYLE IIALL
has suffered greatly, the columns being-
reduced to onl\ a few metres. However, in
the southwest corner is a treasury building
with scenes depicting some of the temple

1 courtyard of Antoninus Pius

2 Ptolemaic pylon

3 eastern (fortified or 'Migdol') gateway

4 tomb chapels of god's wives of Amun

5 temple of Amun (of Hatshepsut/Thutmose II

6 sacred lake

7 first pylon

8 first court

9 second pylon

10 second court

11 hypostyle hall

12 first vestibule

13 second vestibule

1 4 sanctuary

5 Gate of Rameses III

6 palace

7 western gateway

8 residential areas

9 magazines

20 indicates position of
the house of Butehamun

The temple complex of 'Rameses m a! Malinei Habit.

equipment. Other temple valuables were
probably kept in a better concealed building
immediately in front of the north wall of the

sanctuary. The focus of the main axis of the
temple is the sanctuary of Amun, behind
which lies a false door for 'Amun-Ra united
with eternity*, namely the divine form of
Rameses m.

177

MRDINF.T HABU

MEDJAY

The temple of Medinet Habu. Set within uiud-
hrkk enclosure walls (left and right) is the
mortuary temple of Rameses nt, the first pylon of
which is shown here, as well as other buildings. In
the foreground (left) the chapels of the god's wives
of Amun cun he seen. (p. /: MCtto/.sox)

On the southeastern side of the temple are
the remains of a royal palace, which was prob-
ably much smaller than the king's main resi-
dence, serving as a spiritual palace as well as
for occasional royal visits. It was originally
decorated with glazed tiles, many of which are
now in the Cairo Museum, and its bathrooms
were lined with limestone to protect the mud-
brick. From the palace the king could enter the
first court, or peruse ii from a 'window of
appearances' on its southern side

Because of its strong fortifications,
Medinet Habu became a refuge in unsettled
times, and the residents of the workmen's vil-
lage at dkir EL-MEDINA moved there during the
late 20th Dynastv (e. 1 100-1 069 BC); the
remains of the house of one of the village
scribes, Buiehamun, are at the western end of
the temple. At some later time, however, the
temple defences were overwhelmed and the
west gate demolished. Near the eastern gate
are a group of 'chapel-lombs 1 , beneath which
several of the 25th- and 26th-Dynasty god's
WIVES of wiun (Shepenwepet n, Amenirdis I,
Shepcnwepet Mi and Mehitenwesckhet) were
buried.

The route to the Amun temple of
Hatshepsut andThutmose in underwent mod-
ifications in the 25th Dynasty {747- 656 BC),
and in Ptolemaic and Roman times. In the
Ptolemaic period the town of Djeme was built
within the main walled compound. It derived
its name from the ancient Egyptian term for
the site, Tjamet or Djamet, and took advantage

of the protection offered bv the site. During

this lime the second court of Rameses ill's

temple was used as a church. For a discussion

of the archaeological significance of New

Kingdom mortuary temples, sec ramesselm

(on which the basic plan of Rameses ill's mor-

tuarv temple was modelled).

Ei'iGRAPinc; Survey, Chicago, Medinet Habu,

8 vols (Chicago, 19.10-70).

U. HolScher, 777C excavation of Medinet HaBit,

5 vols (Chicago, 1934-54).

W. J. Mt rnane, United with eternity: a concise

guide to the monuments of Medinet Habit {Chicago

and Cairo, 1980).

Medinet Maadi (anc. Dja; Narmouthis)
Site in the southwestern Favum region where
a temple of the cobra-goddess re\e_\utet (a
harvest dcitv) was founded during the reigns
of ameat.miiat in and n (1855-1799 bc). It was
later expanded and embellished during (he
Greco-Roman period. The dark sandstone
inner part of the temple consists of a small
papyrus-columned hall leading to a sanctuary
comprising three chapels, each containing
statues of deities. The central chapel incorpo-
rated a large statue of Renenulet, with
Amenemhat im and iv standing on either side
of her. The Ptolemaic parts of the temple com-
prise a paved processional way passing
through an eight-columned kiosk leading 10 a
portico and transverse vestibule. It has been
suggested that the unusuallv good preserva-
tion of this temple complex, excavated by a
team of archaeologists from the University of
Milan in the 1930s, mav have been due simplv
to its relative seclusion.
A. Voguano, Prima (e secoiulo) rapporto degli
scuvi condelti delta R. Universita di Milam nella
zona di Mudiuet Maadi, 1935-6 {Milan, 1936-7).
R. Neumann, TX-rTempe! des Mittleren

Reiehes in Medinet Madi', MDAIK 8 (1959),
185-9.

Medjay

Nomadic group originally from the eastern
deserts of Nubia, who were commonly
employed as scouts and light infantry from the
Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 lit:}
onwards. They have been identified with the
archaeological remains of the so-called p\\-
grayk culture, although some scholars dis-
agree with this association.
E. Fa'DF.s eei.de (ed.), Agypten und Kusch (Berlin,
1977), 227-8.

B. J. Kemp, l 01d Kingdom, Middle Kingdom
and Second Intermediate Period', Ancient Egypt:
a social history, B. G. Trigger et al. (Cambridge,
1985), 71-182 (169-71).

Megiddo, Battle of

Conflict between the armies of the 18th-
Dynasty ruler thutmose iti (1479-1425 lie)
and those of the prince of the Svro-Palestinian
cilv ol Qadesh. The latter was no doubt
backed by the military mighl of the state of
Mt'EANM, which had created a network of vas-
sal city-states in Syria during the early 15th
century bc. The 'annals' of the reign of
Thutmose ill, compiled by the military scribe
Tjaneni and inscribed on the walls of the Hall
of Annals in the temple of Amun al karn.ak,
have provided the details of the Battle of
Megiddo, as well as sixteen further campaigns
in the Levant.

Less than a year after assuming sole rule of
Egypt (i.e. after the death of HATSHEPSUT),
Thutmose embarked on a campaign to deal
with an uprising of Svro-Palestinian cifv-
states. A council of war between the king and
his generals revealed that there were three
possible strategies for attacking the prince of
Qadesh, whose armies were encamped near
the city of Megiddo: to take a southerly route
via a town called Taanacb, which lav about
eight kilometres southeast of Megiddo; to
march northwards to the town of Djeftv,
emerging to the west of Megiddo; or to head
directly across the ridge, which would allow
them to appear from the hills about two kilo-
metres from Megiddo. In time-honoured
fashion, the pharaoh chose the direel
approach, against the advice of his generals
and despite the dangers involved in a three-
dav march single-file through a narrow pass.
This route, however, was negotiated success-
fully, allowing them to launch a surprise
frontal attack on the enemy. In the ensuing
slaughter, the Asiatics lied into the citv, leaving
behind the kings of Qadesh and Megiddo, who
had to be hauled on to the battlements bv their

178

MEIDUM

MEIR

clothing. After a seven-month siege, Megiddo
was captured, bringing the campaign to a suc-
cessful conclusion.
H. H. NEtsON, The batik of Megiddo (Chicago,

1913).

H. Grapow, Studien zu den Anna/en Thutmosis
des drillen una Izu ihnen vemandten histcmschen
Benchten des Neuen Seiches (Berlin, 1949).
A. J. Spalinger, 'Some notes on the Battle of
Megiddo and reflections on Egyptian military
writing', . m UK 30 ( 1 974), 11 1-9.
— , 'Some additional remarks on the battle of
Megiddo 1 , CM 33 (1979), 47-54.

Meidum

Funerar\' site of an Linusua! early pyramid
complex and associated private cemetery, situ-
ated close to the Fa\ um region. The pyramid

(although Sneferu's 'north 1 pyramid at
Dahshur may have been the earliest to have
been designed as such from the outset). It was
once suggested that the outer casing of the
Meidum pyramid collapsed early in the 4th
Dynasty, and thus inspired the change of angle
in the final stages of Sneferu's 'bent 1 pyramid
at Dahshur, assuming that both were being
built simultaneously. However, the presence of
a well-established cemetery of early 4th-
Dynasty MASTABA tombs surrounding the
pyramid, as well as the New Kingdom graffiti
in the mortuary temple, all make it more like-
ly thaL the collapse came much later, and cer-
tainlv no earlier than the New Kingdom.

The corbelled burial chamber was built into
the superstructure of the pyramid ai the level
of the old ground surface, and, in its architec-

reliefs and statuary. The internal walls of the
superstructure of the tomb of Nefermaat and
his wife Atet were decorated with painted
scenes of daily life, including the celebrated
depiction of the 'Meidum Geese 1 . The same
tomb also includes an innovative, but appar-
ently short-lived, form of wall decoration
using coloured paste inlays. The painted lime-
stone statues of Rahotep and Nofret (Egyptian
Museum, Cairo), probably a son and daugh-
ter-in-law of Sneferu, were discovered by
Auguste Mariette in 1S71 in a mastaba to the
north of the pyramid. The earliest surviving
mummy, dating to the 5th Dynasty, was exca-
vated by Flinders Petrie at Meidum in 1891,
but it was later destroyed when the Royal
College of Surgeons was bombed during the
Second World War.

Cross-sect inn through the pyramid at . Meidum,
showing how the original stepped profiles ( 1. 2)
mere infilled to give the smooth profile (3). The
burial chamber is labelled 7.

is usually ascribed to Huni (2637-2613 Bt:),
last king of the 3rd Dynasty, although his
name does not appear anywhere on the monu-
ment and it is perhaps more likely that his
funerary monument would have been located
at SAQQARA (possibly in an unexcavated enclo-
sure to the west of the step pyramids of Djos-
er and SEKHEMKHET). The Meidum pyramid
may have belonged to his son SNEFERU, whose
name is mentioned in graffiti dating to the
New r Kingdom (1550-1069 BC) in the passage
and chamber of a small mortuary temple at the
site. Alternatively it may have been completed
by Sneferu but begun b\ Huni, since Sneferu
himself appears to have had two pyramid com-
plexes at DAHSHUR.

The modern appearance of the Meidum
pyramid is that of a stepped tower, but it was
originally constructed as a seven-stepped
pyramid, amended to eight steps, and finally-
provided with a smooth outer casing to trans-
form it into the earliest true pyramid

The pyramid of .Meidum now presents a tower-like
appearance due to the loss of its original casing. It.
was probably constructed by either Bum or his son,
Sneferu. (p. t. \iatot.xox)

tural sophistication, it is regarded as second
only to the 'grand gallery 1 in the Great
Pyramid of Khufu (2589-2566 lie;) at GIZA.
The building interpreted as a mortuary tem-
ple on the east side of the pyramid was found
to incorporate two enormous uninscribed
round-topped stone stelae probably forming
part of an offering chapel. An open causeway
led to the valley temple, which has not yet
been excavated.

The mastaba cemeteries, located north and
east of the pyramid, have provided some of the
best examples of early 4th-Dynasty paintings,

W. M. F. Petrie, Meydum (London, 1S92).

W. M. F. Petrie, E. Mac:kay and G. A.

Wainwright, Meydum and Memphis in

(London, 1910).

K. MeNDELSSON, 'A building disaster at the

Meidum pyramid\7£W 59 (1 973), 60-71 .

I. E. S. Edwards, 'The collapse of the Meidum

pyramid',^:.! 60 (1974), 251-2.

R. Stadelmann, 'Snofru und die Pvramiden von

Meidum und Dzschuv\ MDAIK 36 (1980),

437-9.

M. Salem and H. Sourouzian, The Egyptian

Museum, Cairo (Mainz, 1987), nos 25-7.

I. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.

(Ilarmondsworth, 1993), 71-8.

Meir

Group of decorated rock-cut tombs in Middle

179

MEMPHIS

Egypt, about 50 km northwest of modern
Asyut. The tombs, dating to the 6th and 12th
Dynasties (2345-2181 and 1985-1795 BC
respectively), were badly pillaged during the
nineteenth eenturv and eventually excavated
and recorded bv Avhvard Blaekman between
1912 and 1950. They contained the funerary
remains of the governors of Cusae and mem-
bers of their families, while the shaft-tombs of
their .servants were cut into the surrounding
cliffs. Among the most important tombs are
those of Niankhpepykem, a chancellor of Pepy l
(vi; 2321-2287 bc), and Senbi, a nomarch
(provincial governor) during the reign of
Amenemhat i {m; 1985—1955 BC). There are
few remaining traces of the town of Cusae
(Qis), the capital of the fourteenth province of
Upper Egypt, which was situated about eight
kilometres to the east.

A. M. Bi. \ck\i \\, The rock temh of. War, 6 vols
(London, 1914-53).

Memnon

St'C COLOSSI OF \1FAI\0\

Memphis (Men-nefer)
Capital city of Egypt for most of the
Pharaonie period, the site of which is centred
on the modern village of Mit Rahina, some
24 km south of modern Cairo. It was capital of
the first Lower Egyptian NOME and the admin-
istrative capital during the Early Dynastic
period (3100-2686 BC) and Old Kingdom
(2686-2181 IK.). It is said to have been found-
ed by the Ist-Dynasty ruler mfafs.

The L Memphite necropolis 1 , located to the
west of the city, includes (north to south) \uu

ROA.Sli, QIZA, ZAWIYET Fl.-ARVW, A11LSIR,

s\(hi\k\ and DAHSHUR, eoven'ng a distance of
approximately ?>5 km. Satjqara, however, is
both the largest and nearest section of the
necropolis. Very few tombs are actually located
at Memphis itself, although a few from the
First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 lie:) have
been discovered close to Mit Rahina, while at
Rom Eakhrv there are tombs of 22nd-Dvnastv
high priests (945-715 BC).

The name Memphis seems to derive from
the pyramid town associated with the pyramid
of Pepy I (2321-2287 bc) at Saqqara, which
was called Men-nefer (meaning 'established
and beautiful 1 ). A more ancient name for the
city was Incb-hedj ('White Walls 1 or 'White
Fortress'), which probably referred to the
appearance of the fortified palace of one of the
earliest kings. It has been suggested that this
original town may have been located near the
modern village of Abusir and that the settle-
ment gradually shifted southwards toward
modern Mit Rahina. The location of the site at
the apex of the Delta made it well suited for

1 palace of Apries

10 temple of Rameses II

2 northern enclosure wall

1 1 Kom Rabia

3 modern village of Mit Rahina

1 2 Kom Fakhry: area of First Intermediate

4 enclosure wall of trie temple of Ptah

Period tombs and section of Middle

N .

5 hypostyle hall

Kingdom settlement

W-O

6 west pylon

13 temple of Ptah

7 embalming house of Apis bulls

14 palace of Merenptah

8 alabaster 7 sphinx

15 ruins of unidentified structure

■- — - — _

9 colossi of Rameses II

1,
1

-~--i=

w
ll

n
H
n

!.!

8D 1 ;
;i'D9

\ -*^-

i 1

7 ii

5 1

"a ; ! 11

=£a=

--_~r=!)l

I I I I I

i 1 1

100 200 300 400

500 600 700 m

Pirn of Memphis.

the control of both this and the Nile valley, so
that it was sometimes also known as the 'bal-
ance of the two lands 1 .

The remains of early Memphis lie beneath
thick deposits of Nile alluvium, and much is
below the water table. However, a survey
directed by David Jeffreys on behalf of the
Egypt Exploration Society is attempting to
locate an early settlement in an area of ancient
higher ground bv means of a series of drill
eorings forming the basis for a map of the sub-
surface topography.

The most obvious monuments at the site-
belong to the New Kingdom, the time when
THEBES bad become the religious and admin-
istrative centre of Egypt. Nevertheless,
Memphis retained a great deal of impor-
tance, and continued to serve as the northern
capital. Indeed mam scholars see it as the
'real' administrative capital for most of
Pharaonie history, The visible New
Kingdom monuments comprise the temple
of ptah, patron of the city, much of which
dates to the time of Rameses u
(1279-1215 bc). However, Ptah, who at
Memphis formed a TRIAD with SE&BMET and
nf.ff.rtfm, was one of the most ancient
deities of Egypt, and earlier temples to him
clearly existed. Part of the Ramessiele temple
re-uses pyramid casing blocks, perhaps
brought from Saqqara, and earlier elements,
including a lintel of Amenemhat in
(1855-1808 bc:), have been found there, indi-
cating that older structures remain to be dis-
covered. A fallen colossus of Rameses ti and

an 'alabaster' sphinx of the New Kingdom
are those features of the site most commonly
visited in modern times, since the temple is
often flooded owing to the high water table.

The Kom Qala area of the site contains
the remains of a palace of Merenptah (1213-
1203 bc), successor to Rameses n, along with a
smaller Ptah temple. Nearhv Petrie discovered
the remains of an industrial site of the Roman
period, where FAIENCE was being produced.
The Kom Rabia area was the focus of a British
excavation during the 1980s, yielding a valu-
able ceramic chronological sequence for the
New Kingdom and pari of the Middle
Kingdom, as well as giving greater insights
into a small pan of the ancient city.

An embalming house for the wis bull, liv-
ing manifestation of Ptah, was built b\
Sheshonq I (945-924 in:) of the 22nd Dynasty,
probably replacing an earlier structure, and
traces of this, including enormous travertine
embalming tables, are still visible. This too has
been the subject of recent excavation. North of
the precinct of Ptah is an enclosure of the Late
Period, best known for the impressive 26di-
Dynasty palace mound of Apries (589-570 isc).
Perhaps intentionallv, this mound would have
provided Apries with a clear view of the
Saqqara necropolis, which was a source of
inspiration for artistic revival during the
SA1TE I'KKini).

In Ptolemaic times the city dwindled in
importance, losing out to the new sea-port at
ALEXANDRIA, while the founding of Kustat,
ultimately to become part of Cairo (after the
Arab conquest in 641), dealt the final blow to
the citv. Its remains were still clearly visible

ISO

MENDES

MEN K AURA

in the twelfth century ad, but like the stone

buildings of its necropolis they have suffered

from 'quarrying' and the activities of

sebui'li'tn (farmers using ancient mud-brick as

fertilizer).

W. M. F. Pemue, Memphis i (London, 1909).

R. Antiies, Milrahiua 19S6 (Philadelphia, 1965).

B. Porter and R. L. B. Moss, Topegmphmi

bibliography rn/2 (Oxford, 1978), 830-75.

D. G. Jeffreys, The survey of Memphis (London,

1985).

D. G. Jeffreys and'A. Tavakes, 'The historic

landscape of Early Dynastic Memphis', MDAIK

50(1994), 14.1-7-1.

Mendes (anc. Per-banebdjedet)

Tell el-Rub L a is the site of Per-banebdjedet,
die capital of the sixteenth Lower Egyptian
NOME. The chief deity here was originally the
goddess n a T-uEi irr, but from the 2nd Dynasty
(2890—2686 bc) onwards she was increasingly
replaced by her consort, the ram-god
Banebdjedet [bit | manifestation J of the Lord of
Djedet). Their son Harpocrates (see IIQKUS)
completed the Mendesian triad. The earliest
surviving structures at the site are \i\si\n\
tombs of the late Old Kingdom, and a granite
naos of the time of Ahmose n (570-526 bc) is
the earliest of the temple remains. The associ-
ated city may have been the home-town, and
perhaps also the capital, of some of the rulers
of the 29th Dynasty (399-380 Be). The Greek
historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt
around 450 BC, noted the sacrifice of goats at
Mendes, in contrast to the use of sheep else-
where in Egypt. It is possible, however, that he
mistook the sacred ram for a goat. There arc-

also traces of minor Ramesside buildings at
the site. Fresh field work during the 1980s has
revealed settlement remains of the late
Predvnastic and Early Dvnastic periods.
II. DEMEUI.ENAKRKandP. Mackay, Me ndes II
(Warminster, 1976).

D. J, BREWER and R. J. Wenke, 'Transitional late
Predynas tic-Early Dynastic occupations at
Mendes: a preliminan report 1 , The Nile Delia in
transition: -flh 3rd millennium //(.', ed. E. C. \1.
\mikn Brink (Tel Aviv. 1992), 191-7.

Menes (<\3nnoin:)

According rn the Eg) plian historian
\i wk Tim (r. 505-285 ik:), Menes was the
founder of the Egyptian state, responsible for

[//script ion mi an ivory label for an oil jar. with a
record of events in the reign of King Aha. M the
right-hand side of the top register is the hieroglyph
men, which has bee// interpreted as the name of
Menes. Early Dynastic Period, c.3100 is<:, ivory.
from the mastaba tomb ofNeithhotep at Xat/adit,
ti. 4.H cm. (c uroji:31773)

Menkaura (2552-2503 bc)
Penultimate king of the 4th Dynasty, and
builder of the third pyramid at giza. He was
the son of kiiAi'RA (2558-2552 B.c) and grand-
son of kiiLi't (2589-2566 bc), the builders of
the two other pyramids at the site. The surviv-
ing details of his life are largely anecdotal and
derive principally from the Greek historian
HERODOTUS, who describes htm as a pious and

The 'ram of Mendes'. 26lh Dynasty, C.6QQ BC,
glass, /.. nfbase 9 cm. ft; l(>3772)

the Lnificatiou of the Two Lands.
Unfortunately it is not clear whether Menes
is to be identified with the historical figures
\ \R\iEU or \u\. An ivory plaque from NAQAHA
bears the name of both Menes (Men) and
Aha, although it has been argued that it prob-
ablv records a visit by the latter to a place
connected with Menes. Many scholars now
believe that Narmer is the legendarv Menes,
since the two names are linked on jar-sealings
from \n\ i.)os. However, the identification
remains uncertain. In either case we know-
virtually nothing of the reign of this ruler.
His great achievement, the unification of
Egypt, now stands as his only memorial. The
Greek writer Herodotus credits him with
draining the plain of MEMPHIS, but without
any evidence. To the ancient Egyptians he
was the first human ruler, whereas earlier
kings were regarded as demi-gods.
W. B. EMERY, Archaic Egypt (Harmon ds worth,
1961).

Wooden c::f)m from th: pyramid cf the 4th-
Dynasly ruler Menhanrit at Giza. 26th Dynasty,
c.664 323 m:. (r.4hh47)

just ruler. When told by the oracle of iiito
that he had only six years to live, he is said to
have effectively doubled his remaining life b\
banqueting through the hours of each night.

His pyramid complex was excavated b_v
George reisnkr, although the pyramid itself
had been entered prcviouslv b\ a number of
carK nine teen th-centurv Egyptologists,
including Colonel Vyse, who removed a fine
sarcophagus (decorated in the palace-facade
style; see serekii) and attempted to send it
back to England by boat. Unfortunately it was
lost when the merchant vessel Beatrice sank in
October 1838. However, part of an anthropoid
coffin bearing the name of the king was safely
removed to London along with bones from the
burial chamber. It is now known that the date
of the col fin cannot be anv earlier than saite

181

MEiSTUEMHAT

Greymacke triad statue of Mad-aura,
accompanied by the grub/ess Elat/mr (on his right)
and the personification of the I/lh name of Upper
Egypt (on his left). It was excavated by the
Harvard-Boston expedition from the valhy temple
ofMenkuiira at Giza in 1908, along mil h three
other triads in perfect condition and a fragment of
a fifth. 4th Dynasty, c. 2500 in;, ti. 92.5 cm.
(t:\iRo :jt:40h79j

times (664-525 bc), and was probably a later
reburia! of remains believed to be those of the
king, although the assoeiated bones have been
dated to the Coptic period.

The pyramid, which covers less than a
quarter of the area of the Great Pyramid,
underwent several changes of plan, and was
probably never finished. Its lowest sixteen
courses are of red granite, and it is possible
that the whole was to be covered in this way;
some of the passages are also lined with gran-
ite, occasionally carved into palace-facade dec-
oration. From the complex comes a statue of
die king and his wife, Queen Khamerernebty
n, while a number of fine triad statues have
also been discovered. These are among the
finest examples of Old Kingdom sculpture
and are now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Menkaura was succeeded by Shepseskaf
(2503-2498 rc) who chose to be buried in a
large mastaba-shaped tomb (the Mustabat
Fara'un) midway between SAQQARA and
DAHSHUR.

G. A. Rkisnkr, The temples of the third pyramid at
Giza (Cambridge, MA, 1931).
I. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.
(Harmnndsworth, 199.1), 137-51.

Menna(f.l4()0n<:)

An 'estate inspector' in die reign of Thutmosc
[V (1400-1390 bc), whose Theban tomb (tt
69) at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna included impor-
tant scenes depicting land survey. The wall
decorations also include the agricultural activ-
ities overseen by Menna, as well as religious
and funerarv scenes, including the weighing at
the HEART,

B. POSTER and R. L. B. Moss, Topographical
bibliography 1/1 (Oxford, 1960), 134-9.

Mentuemhat (r.700-650 rc)
'Prince of the city 1 and 'fourth prophet of
Amun', who rose to power in the Theban
region during the reign of the Ivushite
pharaoh taharqo (690-664 bc), on whose
behalf he constructed various additions to the
temple at karnak. His career spanned the
transition between the 25th and 26th
Dvnasties, surviving the turmoil of the mid
seventh century bc, during which Egypt was

182

MENTUHOTEP

MERENPTAH

twice conquered by the \ssvri \\s and
Taharqo's successor, 'lanutamani, sti-ug^ietl lor
several years against the Suite pharaohs, NEKAL"
i (672-664 bc) and psamtek i (664-610 Be).
Despite the fact that the first Assyrian inva-
sion involved the sacking of Thebes by
Esarhaddon's armies, Mentuemhat appears

Grey granite statue oj Went new hut, from the
Cuchette Court in the temple oj'Amtm tit Karmik.
25th-2dth Dynasties, cM70 r,c, ft. 1.37 in.
(curo vx;42236)

to have maintained a tight grip over the
Theban region, and a cvlinder-seai of
Ashurbanipal described him as 'king of
Thebes'. At the death of Tanutamani in
t\656 lie, he controlled a large area, some-
times described as a 'temple state', stretching
from Aswan in the south to perhaps as far
north as Hermopolis Magna.

Mentuembat's tomb in western Thebes
(tt34) consisted of a decorated subterranean
burial chamber and a huge stone and mud-
brick superstructure with tall papyrus
columns in its forecourt. The reliefs are typi-
cal of the archaizing tendencies of the 25th
and 26th Dynasties, drawing extensivelv on
the styles and subject-matter of scenes in Old
and New Kingdom tombs.
J- LECLANT, Mentouemhat, t(uttlriihne prophets
d'Amon, prince </e hi ville (Cairo, 1961 ).
D. ElGMER., Die monument 'a /en Grahhuutcn tier
Spiitzeit in tier ihehanischen Nekropole (Vienna,

1984).
Mentuhotep

Birth name 1 (meaning 'montu is content 1 },
held by a series of three Theban kings of the
11th Dynasty (2055-1985 Be) and one of their
ancestors. Their reigns (particularly that of
Mentuhotep it) heralded a return to political
stability after the comparative confusion and
decentralization of the First Intermediate
Period (2181-2055 BC), Very little is known

about Mi'iiiuixitep i, who was the father of
INTEF i (2125-2112 BC), the first fully recog-
nized ruler of the Theban region. Most
chronologies therefore list Intef I, rather than
Mentuhotep i, as the earliest llth-Dynastv
ruler of the Theban region. In the reign of
Senusret l, however, both Mentuhotep 1 and
Intef I were given their own religious cults and
the fictitious llorus nanreTcpy-aa ('ancestor')
was invented for Mentuhotep i, since he and
Intef i were both recognized as the founders of
the Middle Kingdom.

The most important of the four 11th--

Painted sandstone head of a statue of Mentuhotep
a Nebhepetru,from his cult temple at Deir el-
Bahri llth Dynasty. C.2QS5-2004 BC, it. .IS cm.
(EA720)

Dynasty rulers of Egvpt was Mentuhotep it
Nebhepetra. lie assumed control of the coun-
try as a whole, primarily by overthrowing the
I lerakleopolitan 10th Dynasty, who had been
the principal rivals of the earlv llth-Dvnastv
rulers, lie subsequently moved the capital to
Thebes, re-established the post of vizier,
launched military campaigns against the
Libyans and the Sinai BEOOUIN, and regained a
certain degree of control over nubia. At deir
EL-BAiiRi, in western Thebes, he built an
unusual terraced funerary complex, the pre-
cise reconstruction of which is a matter of
debate, although it appears to have been an
ingenious combination of elements of the SAFF

TOMB, the Old Kingdom mastaba and the
symbolism of the primeval mound. Six hun-
dred years later its plan was copied and elabo-
rated by iiatsiiepslt (1473-1458 nc) in the
design of her mortuarv temple, which is locat-
ed immediately to the north. Mentuhotep ifs
complex incorporated a cenotaph containing a
seated statue of the king as well as the tombs of
six of his queens, including a magnificent set
of limestone sarcophagi. His successor,
Mentuhotep tit Sankhkara (2004-1992 bc), was
buried in another valley a short distance to the
south of Deir el-Bahri, but his funerary com-
plex, consisting of a similar combination of
ramp and podium, was unfinished and unin-
scribed. He rebuilt die fortresses along the
border of the eastern Delta, where a cult was
later dedicated to himself and the
Herakleupotitan ruler Khetv ill at the site of
el-Khatana. The name of the final 11th-
Dynasty ruler, Mentuhotep n Nehtawyra
(1992-1985 nc;), is recorded on a stone bowl
from ei.-i.lsi it, but would otherwise be practi-
cally unknown if it were not for the rock-
carved records of his quarrying expeditions to
the Wadi el-Hudi amethyst mines and the
Wadi Hammamat siltstone quarries, the latter
venture being led by a vizier named
Amenemhat, w r ho may have later become
\me\f.mii vr i (1985-1955 uc), the founder of
the 12th Dynasty (1985-1795 bc:).
E. Naville, The xnh Dynasty temple at Deir el-
Bahari, 3 vols (London, 1907 13).

H. E. Winlock, The shun soldiers of Xchhcpctre
Mentuhotep {New York, 1945).
- The rise ami jail of the Middle Km-doin in

Thebes {New York, 1947).

D. Arnold, Der Tempel des Kiimgs Mentuhotep

von Deirel-Bahari, 2 vols (Mainz, 1974).

N. Gkimal, _J history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,

1992), 154-8.

Merenptah {1213-1203 itc:)
The extraordinary length of the reign of r Ame-
ses ti ( 1 279-1 2 1 3 Be) meant that at least twelve
of his sons died before him, including
Khacmwaset, who was for several years the
appointed heir. Merenptah, the fourth
pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, was therefore
probably already in his fifties by the time he
came to the throne. Apart from an incident in
which he sent food supplies to the ailing iiit-
tite empire, the major event of his reign was
an attempted invasion by the LIBYANS and sea
peoples, w r hich he managed to fend off in the
fifth year after his accession. Just as Rameses n
had recorded the Battle of QADESH in both
prose and poetry, so Merenptah described his
victory in prose form on a wall beside the sixth
pylon at KftKNAK and in poetic form on a large

183

MERERUKA

MERIMDA BENI SALAMA

granite stele (Egyptian Museum, Cairo),
which was discovered by Flinders Petric in

1896 in the first court of Merenptah 's mortu-
ary temple at western THEBES. This monument
is usually described as the Israel Stele because
it is the earliest surviving Egyptian text to
mention the people of ISRAEL (in a list of cities
and states defeated by Merenptah). Little of
the mortuary temple now remains in situ and il
mostly consisted of re-used stone blocks,
columns and stelae from the nearby mortuary
temple of \MENHOTEP in.

Unusually, given the generally poor preser-
vation of I'ALACKS, the best surviving structure
from _VIcrenp tail's reign is the royal residence
that he built next to the temple of Ptah at MEM-
I'liis. It was excavated in 1915-19 by Clarence
Fisher, and many fragments of masonry are
now in the collection of the University
Museum of Philadelphia. His other major sur-
viving monument is tomb k\8 in the VALLEY
oftiif. kings, which still contains fragments of
his stone sarcophagi, although the magnificent
granite lid of the outer sarcophagus was exca-
vated from an intact royal burial at TANIS,
where it had been re-used to eo\er the coffins
and mummy of PSUSENNES (Pasebakhaenniut) !
(1039-991 lie). The body of Merenptah him-
self was found among the cache of mummies
reinterred in the tomb of Amenhotep u
(kv35). Following the brief reign of a usurper
called Amenmessu, he was succeeded by his
son slit n (1200-1 194 lit).
W M. F. Pi:tkii„ Six temples at Thebes (London,
1897).

G. E. Sunn, 'Report on the unwrapping of the
mumrm of Mencphmh', ASAE 8 (1907),
108-12.

Ci. A. Wunwright, 'Merneptah'said to the
Hirrires\.7£J 46 (I960), 24-5.
M. LiarritElM, Ancient Egyptian tilcraliire li
(Berkeley, 1976), 73-8.

D. G. Jeffreys, The survey of Memphis i

(London, 1985), 19-20.

Mereruka (c.2350 ik)

Vizier, chief justice and inspector ol the
prophets and tenants of the pyramid of Teti
(2345-2323 Tit:) of the early 6th Dynasty. Also
known by die nickname 'Menf, he was the son
of Nedjetempet, a royal acquaintance. I lis wile
was the Princess W'alctkhethor (nicknamed
Seshseshet) and, in keeping with the practice
of the Old kingdom, it was due to his connec-
tions with the royal family that he held high
office.

Mis m \staba tomb at SAQtJARA is the largest
known at the site, with some thirty-two rooms,
and incorporated the burial of his wife and
son, Meri-Teti, as well as himself. The tomb is

elegantly decorated with numerous daily-hie
scenes, including depictions of attempts to
domesticate gazelles and hyenas (see wimal
iilsbandry), and craft activities which are a
valuable source of information on the society
and economy of the 6lh Dynasty The funer-
ary statue of Mereruka is situated at the north-
ern side of his six-columned hall. The masla-
ba also incorporated a number, of skrdars
(statue chambers).

G. E.J. DaREKSY, Le mastaba de Mem (Cairo,
1898).

P. Dlki.l, The mastaba of Uercriika (Chicago,
1938).

B. PORTKR and R. L. B. Moss, Ibpogmpfikal
bibliography in/2 (Oxford, 1978), 525-37.

meret chest

Ceremonial chests containing linen or cloth-
ing of four different colours, which symbol-
ized the clodi that was used to wrap up the
body of osiRis. Each of the four chests was
bound up on the outside and decorated with
four upright ostrich feathers. From the 17th
Dynasty (1650-1550 Be) to the Roman period
a ritual called 'consecration of the meret
chests' 1 or 'dragging the meret chests' was ce-
lebrated by the pharaoh and often depicted in
temple reliefs. The four chests symbolized the
four corners of the earth and therefore the
whole of Egypt, and the ritual involved the
presentation of each chest four times before a
god. The symbolic link between Egypt and the
chests appears to have derived at least partly
from the phonetic similarity between die term
/(/ mere! [meret chest) and the phrase la mery
(beloved land). Since I he dismemberment,
reassembly and revival of the dead god was a
crucial clement in the myth of Osiris, the pre-
sentation of the chests also symbolized resur-
rection and renewal.

A. Egberts, 'Consecrating the were! -chests:
some reflections on an Egyptian rite', Aklen
Miliieheu, 1985, ed.S. Schoske (Hamburg, 1989),
241-7.

R. H. Wilkinson, Symbol and magic in Egyptian
art (London, 1994), 175-6,

Meretseger

Theban cobra-goddess, the literal meaning of
whose name is 'she who loves silence 1 . Her cult
is primarily attested during the New kingdom
(1550-1069 lie). She was thought to live on the
mountain overlooking the VALLEY OF tin:
LINUS, which in ancient times bore her name;
as a result of this topographic connection, she
was also sometimes known as 'the peak of the
west'. Her realm encompassed the whole of
the Theban necropolis, and she was especially
revered by the workmen of deir EL-MKD1NA

; [ f. : : .""' V:^;/;;v:^._ ......

Ostrtuon shinning the workman Khmmmose
worshipping the serpent firm of i he goddess
Meretseger. 19th Dynasty, c. 1200 BC, painted
limestone, from Deir el-Medina, Thebes,
n. 16.5cm ( i:\S5i0j

who dedicated many stelae to her. She was
believed to punish by blindness or venom
those who committed crimes, and the stelae
frequently seek to make atonement for such
wrongdoings in the hope of a cure. The cult of
Meretseger began to decline from the 21st
Dynasty (1069-945 Be) onwards, at rough l\
the same pace as the abandonment of the
Theban necropolis itself.
B. Bruyere, MeriSegeri, Deir el Uedinch (Cairo,
1930).

\L \ m.wvwvaw, Ancient Egyptian literature II : The
NewKingdom (London, 1976), 107-9.

Merimda Beni Salama

Predvnastic settlement site in the western
margin of the Delta, about 60 km northwest
of Cairo, where excavations by German
archaeologists in 1928-39 and the 1980s have
revealed the earliest evidence for fully seden-
tary village life in the Nile valley. The
'Merimda 1 phase of the Lower Egyptian PRE-
nvXANTic PERIOD appears to have been rough-
ly contemporary with the late Badarian and
Amratian phases in Upper Egypt The total
extent of the site is estimated al 180,000
sq. m, and some areas of debris are up to 2 m
deep. Radiocarbon dates suggest that it was
inhabited between about 5000 and 4500 w ..
Ivarl Butzer has estimated the population at
about sixteen thousand, but this may be an
overestimate, since Barry Kemp argues thai
the entire site may have been one small but
gradually shifting community rather than a
large set of simultaneously occupied villages.
The graves within the settlement are largeh
those of children and are entirely lacking in
grave goods.

The potterv and hthics are similar to those

184

MKKKHF.T

of the Fayum A culture (sec FAYUM region),
but the shapes and decoration of the pottery
are more elaborate and varied at Merimda.
Polished black pottery has been found in the
upper strata, as well as pear-shaped stone
maceheads possibly deriving- from Asiatic
examples, which have been interpreted as pro-
totypes for the Upper Egyptian Gerzean
maceheads (see mace). The presence of fish
bones, hooks, net weights and harpoons sug-
gests that fishing was an important subsistence
activity.

The earliest houses at Merimda Beni
Salama were simple wind-breaks and pole-
framed huts, while the later strata include the
remains of mud-brick huts (probably wilh
pitched roofs), measuring no more than 3 m in
diameter. The high level of organization with-
in the villages is indicated by the presence of
numerous 'granaries', taking the form of jars
or baskets, and b\ the fact thai a number of the
mud huts were laid out in rough rows as if
arranged along streets.

H. Junker, Ihrliiujir Bench! fiber die Graining tier
_ tkadsmie titer II issetisch often in I J icn auj tier
neo/itischeii Siedlung von Merinide-Beui Saldme,
d vols (Vienna, 1929-40).
B.J. Kemp, 'Merimda and the theory of house
burial in prehistoric Egypt 7 , CV£43 (1968),
22-33.

M. A. Hoffman, Egypt after the pharaoks (New
York, 1979), 167-81.

J. ElW.WGi.R, Merimde-Benisaldnu\ 2 vols (Mainz,
1984-8).

merkhetsee

\STR0\O\n INI) VSTROLOG1

Merneptah see merenptah

Me roe

Type-site of the Meroitic period (<\30() SC-
AD 350), located on the east bank of the Nile in
the Butana region of Sudan, excavated by John
Garstang, George Reisner and Peter Shinnie.
To the cast of the town of Meroe, which
became the centre of the Kushite kingdom in
the fifth century ik;, and adjacent to the mod-
ern village of Bcgarawiva is a cemetery of
small pyramidal royal tomb chapels of the
Meroitic period, the earliest of which were
located at the southern end.

The city includes a number of palaces (pos-
sibly two-storeyed), a temple of Isis dating to
the naiht.w period (r. 1000-300 lit:) and a
temple of Amun which was established in the
seventh century BC and elaborated in the first
centun ad. To the east of the town there was
also a temple of APEDEMAK, the Nubian lion-
god, founded in the third century BC. One of
the most striking features of the site is the

presence of large slag heaps deriving from the
smelting of iron, which may well have been
one of the mainstavs of the city's prosperity. It
was once suggested that the Meroitic kingdom
supplied iron to the rest of Africa, but iron
artefacts do not appear to have been unusualh
prominent in Meroitic settlements or graves
and it was nol until the post-Mcroitic period
that iron became crucial to the economy of
Nubia.

New insights into the end of the Meroitic

ABOVE iragment o) '' relief fwn the south wall of the
funerary chapel of pyramid N II at Meroe, which
probably belonged to Quern Shakdakhetc (c 2nd
century BC), the first female ruler of Meroe. She is
here shown enthroned with a prince and protected
by the wings of the goddess /sis. li. 2S2 in. (ea7I9)

l.i.i- 1' Gold ornament representing some form of
canine animal, perhaps a jackal. _ llthough it is
said to have been found neur Gyrene in Libya, it is
clearly of Meroitic work and is closely paralleled
by other examples found in the pyramid ofOiieeu
lii/auishal'helo. 1st century tic. II. 3. 1 cm.

(r. t68$Q2)

period - suggesting that there was no dramat-
ic collapse of the civilization but simplv a
process of cultural change — have been provid-
ed b\ the excavation ot a 'post-Meroitic 1
tumulus burial at the site of el-l lobagi, about
60 km southwest of Meroe.
D. DuMtAMandS. CHAPMAN, 'The royal
cemeteries ofkusli, ill -v (Boston, 1952-63).
P. L. Sniwir., Meme: a civilization of /he Sudan
(London, 1967).
P. L. SitiNMKandF. J. KENSK, 'Meroitic iron

185

MEROITIC

MIDDLE KINGDOM

working 1 , Meroiiic studies., ed. N. B. Millet and
A. L, Kelley (Berlin, 1982), 17-28.
P. Lenobi.r and N. D. M. Sjiarji-', 'Barbarians at
the gates? the royal mounds of el-Hobagi and the
end of 'Merc*?, Antiquity 66 (1992), 626-35.
L. Torok, Meroe city: an ancient African capital
(London, 1997).

Meroitic see meroe

Mersa Matruh (anc. Paraetonium)
Harbour-site on the Egyptian Mediterranean
coast, about 200 km west of Alexandria, which
was the site of the Ptolemaic city of
Paraetonium. In the late second millennium
BC colonists from the eastern Mediterranean
appear to have founded the first small settle-

Basalt vessel of a type thought to be of Libyan
oripn; similar stone vessels have been excavated
from graves in the vicinity of Mersa Matruh.
Early 3rd millennium BC, it. 27.5 cm. (i:\h4354)

ment at Mersa Matruh on an island in the
lagoon. The excavated artefacts from the
island include large quantities of Syro-
Palestinian, Minoan, Cypriot and Mycenaean
pottery vessels, indicating a wide range of
trade links between the Aegean region and the
north African coast during the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 lit:). The earliest traces of
Egyptian occupation in the area are the ruins
of a fortress of Rameses n (1279-1213 bc) at
Zawival Unim el-Rakham, about 20 km to the
west of the site of Paraetoni um .
Dl Wl i!TK , 'Excavations at Mersa Matruh,
summer 1985', NARCMB1 (1985), 3-17.
— , 'The 1985 excavations on Bates 1 Island,
MarsaMatruh',7. WC£23 (1986), 51-84.
— , 'University of Pennsylvania expedition to
Marsa Matruh, 1987', NARCE 139 (1987), 8-12.

Meskhent

Goddess of childbirth, who is represented in
the form of a female-headed birth-brick (on
which ancient Egyptian women delivered their
children) or as a woman with a brick on her
head. At the time of a child's birth she also
determined its destiny. However, from the
New Kingdom (1550-1069 uc) onwards this
role could be taken by the male god shay.
Papyrus Westcar describes how she told each
of the first three kings of the 5th Dynasty
(2494—2345 Be), all of whom were buried at
abuser, that they would eventually come to
rule Egypt. She was also a funerary goddess
and was present at the judgement of the
deceased to aid in their rebirth into the after-
life, just as she had in life itself
See also bes; i ieket; taweret.
G. Pinch, Magic in ancient Egypt {London,
1994). 127-8.

Mesopotamia

Term used to describe the area covered by
modern Iraq, encompassing at various times
the ancient Kingdoms of akkad, sumer, baby-
lonia and Assyria. The word derives from the
Greek term meaning '[the land| between the
rivers 1 , the rivers being the Tigris and
Euphrates.

M. Roaf, Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia (New
York and Oxford, 1990).

metals and metalworking see copper;

gold; iron and silver

Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 ee)

Chronological phase that began with the reign
of the Theban ruler mentuhotep it
Nebhepetra (2055-2004 BC) and ended with
the demise of the 13th Dynasty (r.1650 tic); it
is usually divided into two phases, the earlv
Middle Kingdom (consisting of the late 11th
and early 12th Dynasties) and the late Middle
Kingdom (from the reign of senusret hi to
the end of the 13th Dynasty). The diverse lit-
erary output of the Middle Kingdom, includ-
ing the proliferation of wisdom literature,
provides some insights into the social and
political concerns of the period, although
many of the classic texts, such as the Tale of
Sintthe and the Discourse of Neferty, are diffi-
cult to analyse because of uncertainty as to
their original functions, audience and intent.

In the New Kingdom the ktNG LISTS suggest
that Mentuhotep ii was regarded as the
founder of the Middle Kingdom, and at this
period his funerary monument at DEIS
m-BAiiRi was evidently considered to be one of
the finest achievements of the period. Little
textual evidence has survived concerning

Mentuhotep iv Nebtawyra, the last 11th-
Dynasty ruler, but it is possible that his vizier,
Amenemhat, may be the same individual as the
first king of the 12th Dynasty, amf.xe.mii at i,
who established a new capital called
Amenemhalitjtawy ('Amenemhat lakes posses-
sion of the two lands'), often abbreviated to
Itjtawy. The archaeological remains of this city,
where the Residence (royal court) was situated
until the end of the Middle Kingdom, have not
vet been located. It is usually assumed to have
been on the west bank of the Nile in the vicin-
ity of the pyramid complexes of Amenemhat i
and his successor Senusret i at ei.-i.isht, mid-
way between Memphis and Meidum.

The earlv 12th Dynasty was characterized
by the clarification of the boundaries of
nomes, the agricultural development of the
I'AYUM and the gradual annexation of Lower
NUJitA. The principal sources of evidence for
the royal court of the 12th Dynasty derive
from the pyramid complexes located at el-
Lisht, iT-i.AHL'N (Senusret it), DAHSHUR
(Amenemhat II, Senusret ill and Amenemhat
in) and iiywvra (Amenemhat m), but elite
provincial cemeteries at sites such as ASYUT,
deir EL-BERSI ia, meir and BEM I iasax also con-
tinued to llourish during the early 12th
Dynasty at least. By the late 12th Dynasty the
royal pyramid complexes began to be sur-
rounded by more substantial remains of the
tombs of courtiers, perhaps indicating
stronger links between the nomarchs (provin-
cial governors) and the Residence.

As far as the non-funerary architecture of
the period is concerned, a few examples of
religious buildings have survived, including
the earliest known phases ol the temple of
Amun at karxak and the temple of Sobek and
Amenemhat in at MEDIXET maadi, but mam-
appear to have been dismantled and re-used in
the course of the foundation of the temples of
the New Kingdom, \rydos became particular-
ly important as a centre of pilgrimage as a
result of the increasing significance of the god
osiris, whose burial place was identified with
that of DJF.R, in the Umm el-Qa'ab region of
the site.

The reign of Senusret in seems to have con-
stituted a watershed in the Middle Kingdom,
both in terms of the administrative system and
the nature of the surviving funerary remains
It was during his reign that the string oi
['ortr esses in Nubia were strengthened, thus
consolidating the Egyptian grip on the
resources of Nubia. At the same time, the
excavation of a channel through the first Nile
cataract at Aswan would have had the effect of
allowing boats to travel unhindered from the
second cataract to the Mediterranean coast.

186

M1N

MIN

Although Manetho\s 1 3th D\ Tfast y evident-
ly continued to rule from Itjtawv, there appear
to have been a large number of rulers with
very short reigns, none of whom were in
power for long enough to construct funerary-
complexes on the same scale as their 12th-
Ovnasty predecessors. In other respects, how-
ever, the material culture and political and
social systems of the late 12th and 13th
Dynasties were relatively homogeneous. W. C.
Hayes argued that the real central power dur-
ing the 13th Dynasty resided largelv with the
vr/JF.ns, but it is now considered more likely
that royal authority was maintained, despite a
general lack of political continuity. The frag-
mented nature of the 13th Dynasty undoubt-
edly had a damaging effect on the control of
Egypt's borders, resulting in a relaxation of
the grip over Nubia and an influx of Asiatics in
the Delta (particularly apparent in the archae-
ological remains at TELL EL-OAB'a in the east-
ern Delta). The end of the Middle Kingdom
was marked by the abandonment of Itjtawv at
roughly the same time that the minor rulers of
parts of the Delta were supplanted by the
heka-khaswt ('rulers of foreign lands'), ren-
dered in Greek as the iivksos.

See also agriculture; armant and EUCAB.

II. J. Kan tor, 'The final phase of predvnastic

culture: Gerzcan or Semaiucan?*, J5VJE53

(1944), 110-36.

M. A. Hoffman, Egypt before the pharcwhs (New

York, 1979).

B. G. Trigger, 'The rise of Egyptian

civilization 1 , Ancient Egypt: a social history, ed.

B. G. Trigger ct al. (Cambridge, 1 983), 1-70.

E Hassan, 'The Predvnastic of Egypt*, Journal

of World Prehistory 2 (1988), 135-85.

E. C. M. van BEN Brink (ed.), The Nile Delta in

transition: dth-Srd millennium uc (Tel Aviv, 1992).

B. Midant-Reynes, Prehistoire de VEgypte (Paris,

1992).

W. Wetterstrom, 'Foraging and farming in

Egypt: the transition from hunting and

gathering to horticulture in the Egyptian Nile

valley 1 , The archaeology of Africa: food, metals

and t&tms, ed. T Shaw, B. Andah and P. Sinclair

(London, 1993), 165-226.

K. A. Bard, 'The Egyptian Predvnastic: a review

of the evidence', Journal of Field Archaeology 21

(1994), 265-88.

prenomen (throne name) see rov\l

priests

The Egyptian priest should not be viewed in
the same way as a modern religious leader,
such as a clergyman, mullah or rabbi. The
term 'priest 1 is simply a modern translation for
a number of religious offices connected with
the Egyptian temple. The Egyptian priest, lit-
erally described as a 'servant of god 1 (hem net-
jer), was not neeessarilv well versed in reli-
gious doctrine (see education), and, particu-
larly in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, he did
not necessarily work full-time for the temple.
The common modern translation c&hem netjer
as 'prophet 1 has led to a certain amount of
misunderstanding regarding the role of this
official. He was employed at the temple to look
after the cult statue of the deity. Tike mortals,
the god or goddess was thought to have daily
needs for food and clothing.

Most priests would not have come into con-
tact with the cult image, and, in theory, only
the pharaoh, the high priest of every cult, had
the privilege of attending the god. In practice,
however, his authority w r as delegated to the
chief priest, who was supported by lesser
priests who would have attended to offerings

A sem priest in leopard-skin robe. In his left hand
he holds a censer. Detail from the Book of the Dead
papyrus of Ani. i 9th Dynasty, c.I2S0nc.

(EA10470, SHEETS)

and minor parts of the temple ritual. The 'sec-
ond prophet' attended to much of the eco-
nomic organization of the temple, while lower
ranks, known as tvah priests ('purifiers 1 )
attended to numerous other duties. There was
also a female version of the hem netjer title
(hemet netjer) and many elite women of the Old
and Middle Kingdoms served as priestesses of
the goddess hathor.

The chief priest, or 'first prophet 1 , could
wield significant power, and this position
allowed him great influence in what would
now be regarded as secular matters. During
the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 uc) the priest-
hood of the god AML'N became extremely pow-
erful, and it is possible that they may have
been temporarily suppressed in the reign of
&KHENATEN (1352-1336 bc). In the 21st
Dynasty (1069-945 bc), a succession of
Libyan generals took control of the Theban
region, using the title High Priest of Amun to
legitimate their power.

There were also groups of priests with spe-
cialist knowledge, including 'hour priests'
whom Serge Sauncron interprets as
astronomers; he suggests that these men
would have determined the time at which
festivals took place. This was an important
duty, since the Egyptian calendar was rarely
in step with the seasons. Astrologers some-
times determined lucky and unlucky 1 days
and books of these predictions have survived
(see astronomy and astrology). The HOUSE
of life had its own priestly officials, who
attended to (he teaching of writing and copied
out texts, while it was the 'lector priests' [hety
keif) who would recite the words of the god.
Various cult singers and temple musicians
were needed to accompany the rituals, and
women of noble birth, who sometimes held
titles such as 'chanlress of Amun 1 , were occa-
sionally depicted in this role, sometimes hold-
ing a sistrum. In the cult of Amun the god was
also considered to have an earthly wife, the
god's wife of amun, which also became an
important political title, although the title is
not attested before the 18th Dynasty.

During the New Kingdom, administrators,
in association with the 'second prophet', over-
saw the provisioning of the temple from
estates and endowments. They ensured that
the requisite numbers of offerings were
brought in each day, and that the labourers
went about their tasks properly. Only the
essence of the offerings was thought to be con-
sumed by the god, bu( the physical substance
was consumed by the priests through a
process now known as 'reversion of offerings 1 .
Various foods were prohibited by particular
temples so that the priests' diet may often have
been atypical, but such food taboos are com-
mon in many religions.

The Greek historian Herodotus states that
Egyptian priests were required to wash twice
during the day and a further twice during the
night, as well as being entirely clean sh;r\ en
and without body hair. He also says that ihey
were obliged to be circumcised and, since
there was no prohibition on marriage, to
abstain from sexual intercourse during their
period of office. He claims that they were pro-
hibited from the wearing of wool or leather, in
favour of fine linen, and that their sandals had
to bc made from papyrus.

Particular ranks of officials also wore special
garments, such as the leopard skin worn by
sem priests. In addition, there were regulations
and prohibitions connected with particular
cults. However, although these rules were
strict, they applied to individual priests only
during three months of the year. This was
because the priests were divided into tour

228

PRIMEVAL MOUND

PSUSENNES

groups of identical composition. These are
now known by the Greek word phy/es,
although the Egyptians called them saw
("■watches'). Each phyle served for only one
month before returning to their usual profes-
sions for a further three months. Such offices
could be very lucrative, in that the priests were
granted a fixed portion of temple revenue
while in the service of the temple.

Since religious knowledge was not a prereq-
uisite, it is not surprising to find that priests
often simply inherited their posts irom their
fathers, although appointments were also gen-
erally endorsed by the king. In certain circum-
stances, priestly offices could even be pur-
chased, a method that became common under
Roman rule. It should be remembered too that
in many of the small provincial temples the
priests might often have been less important,
and the full hierarchy may not have been rep-
resented. Despite the apparently prosaic
methods of entering the priesthood, there was
a definite code of ETHICS, including proscrip-
tions against discussing temple rites or prac-
tising fraud. The extent to which such codes
were actually obeyed is unknown, although
cases of malpractice are recorded.
H. Kees, Das Priestertum in agyptischen Slant
vom neuen Reich bis zur Spiitzeit, 2 vols (Leiden
and Cologne, 1953-8).

— , Die Hohenpnester von Aiiiuu von Karnak von
Herihor bis zuin Ende tier Athiopienzeit (Leiden,
1964).

S. Sauneron, The priests of ancient Egypt (New
York, 1969).

E. BSESCIANI, 'Tempelpcrsonal i (ak)\ Lexikon
der Agyploiogie vi, ed. W. Ilelek, E. Otto and
W. Wcstendorf (Wiesbaden, 1986), 387-401.
A. iVL Roth, Egyptian pkyles m the Old Kingdom
(Chicago, 1991).

S. Quirkk and A.J. Spencer, The British Museum
book of ancient Egypt (London, 1992), 74-8.
E. Strouiial, Life in ancient Egypt (Cambridge,
1992), 223-34.

primeval mound

The hill that emerged from the primeval
waters of NUN was an important element in
Egyptian religious thought and imagery. The
potency of the image of fertile ground emerg-
ing from water must have owed a great deal to
the cycle of the annual INUNDATION of the Nile,
whereby fresh agricultural land regularly
appeared out of the flood waters.

The primeval mound was the principal sym-
bol of the act of creation and the Memphite
god tatjenen (whose name means 'raising of
the land 1 ) was a personification of the hill itself.
The sun-god atum is sometimes described in
the pyramid texts as 'hill 1 , and correspond-

ingly the Heliopolitan benben stone, which
was closely asociated with Atum's cult, appears
to have been a physical manifestation of the
mound. The shape of the pyramids themselves
may have derived, like the benben, from the
primeval mound. The power of the SCARAB as a
metaphor for the rebirth of the sun-god was
due partly to the observed fact that beetles
emerged from dung-hills.

The concept of the original hill of virgin
land was maintained in the practice of building
the sanctuaries of tempees over low mounds of
pure sand. Similarly tombs and cenotaphs,
such as the Osireion at ahydos, often incorpo-
rated a symbolic 'island' at their centres.
A. DeBucr, De Egyptische Voorsteliingeu
betreffende den Oerheuvel (Leiden, 1922).
IT. R. Hall, 'Review of De Buck, De Egyptische
...<I922)\J7"£_-J10(1924), 185-7.
A. A. Saleii, 'The so-called "primeval hiU" and
other related elevations in ancient Egyptian
mythology', MDAIK 25 (1969), 110-20.
II. A. Soilogl, Der Got! Tateneii (Freiburg,
1980).

K. MARTIN, l Urhtigel', Lexikon der Agypto/og/'e
vi, ed. W. Ilelek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1986), 873-5.

Psammetichus

see PSAMTEK

Psamtek (Psammetichus)

'Birth name' given to three kings of the 26th

(or saite) Dynasty (664-525 bc).

Psamtek I Wahibra (664-610 isc) and his
father nekau i of sals (672-664 bc) were bodi
carried off to Nineveh by the Assyrians, fol-
lowing their involvement in a plot led by the
Kushite ruler taiiarqp (690-664 bc). While in
exile thev were supposcdlv indoctrinated into
Assyrian ways (Psamtek being given the name
Nabu-shezibanni), before being returned to
Egypt as vassals of Ashurbanipal.

At this time power was concentrated in the
Delta, and the Assyrians placed Memphis and
Sais under Nekau r and Athribis (tell atrib)
under Psamtek t. In 664 bc, however, Nekau
died and Psamtek I took over his rule, becom-
ing the first true rider of the new 26th
Dynasty. With the help of Carian and greek
mercenaries, he effectively took control of the
whole of the Delta. The increased numbers of
foreigners in Egypt led to measures to control
them, and archaeological evidence suggests
that the site of naukratis, among others, may-
have been set up during his reign. Upper
Egypt was still in Kushite hands, perhaps
under tanutamant (664-656 bc), son of
Taharqo. However, by his ninth regnal year
Psamtek I was recognized as ruler of both
Upper and Lower Egvpt.

To cement his rule over Thebes, he obliged
the god's wife of amun Shepenvvepet n and
her appointed successor, Amenirdis u, to
adopt his daughter Nitiqret (Nitocris) as their
ultimate successor. Psamtek then gradually
replaced Theban officials, as each died,
putting his own proteges in their places and
thus tightening his grip on Upper Egypt. Well
established as he now was, he ceased any pre-
tence to be an Assyrian vassal.

The 26th Dynasty was to be characterized
by renewed nationalism; Psamtek's artists
therefore carefully studied and copied the art
of the Old Kingdom. There was also a
renewed respect for old-established religious
practices, including the worship of sacred
animals, whose cults grew dramatically, even-
tually becoming a significant part of the econ-
omy. Psamtek was succeeded by his son,
Nekau ti (610-595 bc).

Psamtek u Neferihra (595-589 bc), son and
successor to Nekau u, is weD known because
of the numerous surviving monuments bear-
ing his name. He is also known to have
launched an expedition against the Kushitcs,
which penetrated deep into NUBIA. Like his
predecessors, he relied heavily on foreign
mercenary troops, and at ABU simbel there are
graffiti left by his Carian, Greek and
Phoenician soldiers. Among his generals was
ahmose ii (570-526 bc), who was eventually to
supplant his son APRILS in the succession to
the throne.

Psamtek hi Ankhkaenra (526-525 bc), the
son of Ahmose n, was the last king of the 26th
Dynasty. His rule lasted for only some six
months, following which he was executed by
the Persian ruler Cambyses (525-522 bc) who
invaded Egypt in 525 bc.
J. Yoyotte, 'Le martelagc des noms royaux
elhiopicns par Psammetique ll', RdE 8 (1951),
215-39.

E K. Kienitz, Die politische Geschichte Agyplens
vn (Berlin, 1953).

R. A. Caminos, 'The Nitocris adoption stela',
JEA 50 (1964), 71-101.
E. Cruz-UrtBE, 'On the existence of
Psammetichus 1 , Serapis 5 (1980), 35-9.

Psusennes (Pasebakhaenniut)
'Birth name 1 taken by two kings of the 21st
Dynasty, who ruled from Tanis in the Delta at
the start of the Third Intermediate Period.

Psusennes 1 Aakheperra Selepenamun (1039-
991 bc), successor of Smendes (1069-1043 bc),
the founder of the 21st Dynasty, was perhaps
the most important ruler of the dvnasty. His
tomb was discovered at Tanis by Pierre
Montet in 1940. The richness of the funerary
items (see tanis) has been described as second

229

PTAH

only to those from the tomb of tutankhamun,
although the timing of die find led to their
befng overshadowed by Howard Carter's earli-
er discovery. It is likely that Psusennes con-
centrated most of his activities at Tarn's, where
he built an enclosure wall for the temple com-
plex. During his reign Upper Egypt was
under the control of the Libyan generals rul-
ing from Thebes (see new KINGDOM).
However, there does not seem to have been
great rivalry between the Theban and Tanite
rulers; Psusennes i himself was probably the
son of the Theban High Priest Pinudjem I and.,
in addition, one of his daughters was married
to a Theban priest.

Psusennes it Titkheperura Selepenra (959-
945 Be), the last king of the 21st Dynasty,
may have been the son of the Theban High
Priest Pinudjem n (990-969 Be). Tie might
therefore have reunited the rule of Upper
and Lower Egypt when he acceded to the
Tanite throne on the death of Siamun
(978-959 bc). After Psusennes' death, how-
ever, the crown passed into the hands of the
Libyan rulers of the 22nd Dynasty, and it has
been suggested that the Tanite ruling family
may by then have been comparatively poverty-
stricken. The 22nd-Dynastv pharaoh
osorkgn i (924-889 bc) subsequently seems
to have attempted to gain support for his
claim by marrying Psusennes 1 daughter,
Maatkara, who gave birth to shesiionq. n
(f.890 bc), thus establishing a blood link
between the two dynasties.
P. Montet, La necropole royale de Tarns \: Lcs
constructions el le tombeau de Psoussennes a Tunis
(Paris, 1951).

K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt (1100-650 bc), (Warminster, 1986),
283-6.

A. Dodso.n, 'Psusennes n 1 , RdE 38 (1987),
49-54.

Ptah

Creator-god of Memphis who was usually por-
trayed as a mummy, with his hands protrud-
ing from the wrappings, holding a staff that
combines the DJED pillar, ANKH sign and was
sceptre. His head was shaven and covered by
a tight-fitting skull-cap leaving his ears
exposed. From the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 bc) onwards, he was represented
with a straight beard. The basic iconography
of his images remained virtually unchanged
throughout the Pharaonic period. In
Hellenistic times he was identified with the
Greek god Hephaistos.

Ptah himself was part of a triad at
Memphis, along with his consort {the
lioness-goddess sekhmet) and the lotus-god

Rameses /// htf::re the trtwl of Memphis (from left
to right): Nefertem, Sekhmet and Ptah. 20th
Dynasty, c. //SO BC, third illustration from the
Great Harris Papyrus, it. 42.5 cm. (i:a9999/43)

nefertem, whose relationship with Ptah is
unclear, imhotep, the deified architect of the
Saqqara Step Pyramid, came to be regarded
as a son of Ptah, although he was not consid-
ered to be a member of the Memphite triad.

Ptalrs original cultic association seems to
have been with craftsmen, and the High Priest
of Ptah held the title mer khercp heiuir
('supreme leader of craftsmen 1 ). This connec-
tion with the production of artefacts probably
contributed to the elevation of his cult into
that or a universal creator-god. He was
thought to have brought the world into exis-
tence by the thoughts emanating from his
heart and the words emerging from his
tongue. Although he was clearly already
regarded as a creator as early as the Old
Kingdom (2686-2181 bc:), the references to
him in the pyramid texts are minimal. It has
been suggested that this virtual omission from
the royal funerary cult may have resulted from
the reluctance of the Old Kingdom priesthood
of r-\ al iiELiOPOi.is to allow a Memphite deitv
to rival the sun-god. Ptah was, however, cred-
ited with having devised the opening op the
molti i ceremony, and it was perhaps in a sim-
ilar spirit of theological rivalry that the priests
of Ptah themselves devised a CREATION mvth
(the Memphite Theology) in which Ptah gave
birth to Ra and his ennead.

During the Old Kingdom the cult of Ptah

gradually impinged on that of another
Memphite deity, the hawk-god SOKAll,
resulting in the emergence of a funerary
deity known as Ptah-Sokar (see also
pataikios). By the Late Period (747-332 bc)
this combined deity had also taken on ihe
attributes of osiri.s, the god of the dead,
resulting in the appearance of Ptah-Sokar-
Osiris. Wooden images of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris
were regularly included among the funerary
equipment of private individuals during the
Late Period, usually taking the form of a
standing mummiform human-headed figure
on a hollow wooden pedestal, sometimes
with miniature falcons on the base. An earli-
er version of this type of funerary figure,
first attested in the 19th Dynasty (1295-1 186
bc), simply consisted of a mummiform image
of Osiris standing on a pedestal (sometimes
with a book of the dead papyrus secreted
inside).

The temples of Ptah at Memphis were
gradually expanded during the Pharaonic
period, and further important cult centres
were established at Karnak and the Nubian
sites of abu SIMBEE and Gerf Husein. It has
been suggested that the name of one of his
Memphite shrines, Hwt-ka-Ptah, may have
been corrupted by the Greeks into the word
Aiguptos, from which the modern name
'Egypt 1 derives.
_M.Stolk,/W/ (Berlin, 1911).
M. Sandman Hoi.mberg, The god Ptah (Lund,
1946).

H.A. Sciilogl, DerGott Thtenm (Freiburg;,
1980), 110-17.

230

PTAH

p TO L E MA [CPE RIOD

H. tk Velde, 'Ptah\ Lexikon der Agypt&kgic i\ ,
ed. W. Hclck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1982), 1177-80.
C. Maystre, Les grands pretres de Ptah de
Memphis (Rs&urg, 1992).

Ptolemaic period see ptqlemy

Ptolemy

Name held by a succession of fifteen
Hellenistic riders of Egypt from 305 to 30 BC

perhaps to use it as a unifying political force,
hut in practice it was the cult of the goddess ISIS
that grew and spread from Egypt.

The Macedonians and other Greeks were
already familiar to die Egyptians long before the
arrival of Alexander, since the Egyptian army in
the Late Period (747-332 uc) had invariably
included large numbers of GREEKS as mercenar-
ies. Ptolemaic rule, however, did not remain
popular, and there were revolts in the Theban
area in 208-186 BC and 88-86 bc As Ptolemaic

Limestone relief showing Ptolemy i offering flowers
tti one of the manifestations of Hat/tor. Ptolemaic
period, c.300 nc, from Kom Aba Billo, II. 33 em.

(EA6-I9)

In this dictionary the 'Ptolemaic period' is
taken to include the brief preceding
'Macedonian 1 phase (332-305 tic), encompass-
ing the reigns of ALEXANDER THE KREAT
(332-323 BC), his half-brother Philip
Arrhidaeus (323—317 tit:) and his son
Alexander iv (317-310 bc).

The policy pursued by Alexander the
Great, in which he portrayed himself as an
Egyptian ruler and effectively grafted the new
administration on to the existing political and
religious structure, appears to have been fol-
lowed by his Ptolemaic successors with vary-
ing degrees of enthusiasm and success. Many
Egyptian temples, including those at dendkra,
EDfu, esna and kom OMBO, were either rebuilt,
repaired or newly founded. Such Pharaonic
administrative and religious centres as
Thebes, Memphis and Tanis were replaced by
itEXANDRIA, a new capital city on the shores of
the Mediterranean, the very position of which
indicated the Ptolemies' realignment of Egypt
towards the Mediterranean region rather than
Africa or western Asia.

Ptolemy i Soter I (305-2S5 BC), founder of
the Ptolemaic line, rose to die throne of Egypt
after the death of Alexander iv, having adminis-
tered Egypt as a general (then known as
Ptolemy of Lagos), since the death of Alexander
the Great. Ptolemy i devised the cult of SERAPXS
from the existing cult of Osiris— Apis, hoping

rule weakened, so the Ptolemies relied ever

more heavily on Rome, and eventually the
actions of CLEOPATRA vn (51-30 BC), the daugh-
ter of Ptolemy \n (80-51 BC) and sister-wife of
Ptolemy \m (51-47 BC), provided a pretext for

[he Roman conquesl of Egypt under Octavian,

the future Emperor Augustus (30 UC-AD 14).

D. J. Crawford, Kerkeosiris, an Egyptian village

in the Ptolemaic period (Cambridge, 1971).

II. Maehler and V. M. Strocka (eds), Dm

ptolemaische Aegyptcn (Mainz, 1978).

A. K. Bowman, Egypt after the pharaohs

(London, 1986).

N. LEW IS, Greeks m Ptolemaic Egypt (Oxford,

1986).

W. -M. El.Ll.s, Ptolemy of Egypt (London, 1994).

Punt (Pwenet)

Name used by the ancient Egyptians to

describe a region of east Africa to which trad-

ing missions were sent from at least the 5th
Dynasty (2494-2345 lit;) onwards. There is still
some debate regarding the precise location of
Punt. Although it was once identified with the
region of modern Somalia, a strong argument
has now been made for its location in southern
Sudan or the Eritrean region of Ethiopia,
where the flora and fauna correspond best with
those depicted in Egyptian reliefs.

Punt (the 'land of the god 1 ) was the source
of many exotic products, such as gold, aro-
matic resins, African blackwood, ebony, ivory,
SLAVES and wild animals, including monkeys
and the sacred CYNOGEPHALUS baboons. The
Egyptians also appear to have brought pyg-
mies from Punt (see DWARFS and i j vgmies),
judging from the funerary inscription of
1 larkhuf, an expedition leader of the reign of
PEPi n (2278-2184 bc).

Some trading missions evidently travelled
overland to Punt, but the mure common route-
was by sea, usually departing from the ports of
Quseir or Mersa Gawasis on the west coast of
the Red Sea. As a distant and distinctly non-
Egyptian land. Punt gradually acquired an air
of fantasy, like that of Eldorado or Atlantis.
For this reason it sometimes features in narra-
tive tales such as the Title of the Shipwrecked
Sailor in the Middle Kingdom (2055-
1650 ik:), and is also mentioned in various love
poems in the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC;
see EROTICA).

The best-documented trading expedition to
Punt was that of the reign of Hatshepsut

Limestone relief blocks front the temple of
Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. Parehu, ruler of
Punt, walks in front of his obese wife Alt, whose
condition is considered by some scholars to be the
result ofDercum s disease. Behind than come men
carrying gifts for Hatshepsut s expedition. 18lh
Dynasty, 1473-N5H tic. max. it. of block
49.3 int. (CAIRO ]t:!427(> t.\nji:8%6])

231

PURIFICATION

PYLON

(1473-1458 bc), scenes from which are depict-
ed on the second terrace of her funerary
temple at DBR H.-BMBI. These reliefs show the
process of trading', which may have taken the
particular form of barter known to anthropol-
ogists as 'silent trade', by which the two par-
ties in the transaction do not negotiate verbally
but set out exchange-goods until both are sat-
isfied that the respective amounts are suffi-
cient. Only then does actual exchange take
place. The scenes also include depictions of
conical reed-built huts built on poles above the
ground and entered via ladders. The sur-
rounding vegetation includes palms and
'myrrh trees', some already in the process of
being backed apart in order to extract the
myrrh.

Whereas the ruler of Punt was distin-
guished from the Egyptians primarily by his
beard and unusual costume, his wife was evi-
dently much more memorable. She is depicted
as an obese woman, and the saddled donkcj
that carried her is singled out for particular
attention, not only because of the queen's
great weight but also because it was still rela-
tively unusual for the Egyptians to ride either
donkeys or horses at this time. The scenes also
show myrrh trees being loaded on to the ships
so that the Egyptians could produce their own
aromatics from them. Trees such as these
might eventually have been replanted in the
temple at Deir el-Bahri, judging from the sur-
viving traces of tree-pits.

A stele in the mortuary temple of
Amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc) records a
speech delivered by the god Amun, in which
the king is informed: 'Turning my face to sun-
rise I created a wonder for you, I made the
lands of Punt come here to you, with all the
fragrant flowers of their lands, to beg your
peace and breathe the air you give.'
W Stevenson Smith, 'The land of Punt'
ZARCEi(im\S9-W.
R. IIerzoo, Fount (Gliickstadt, 1968).
D. M. Dixon, 'The transplantation of Punt
incense trees in Egypt', JEA 55 (1969), 55-65.
K. A. KrrCHEN, 'Punt and how to get there',
Oriexmlk 40 (1971), 184-207.
M. Liciitheim, Ancient Egyptian literature it
(London, 1976), 46-7.

R. F YTToviai, 'The problem of Punt in the light
of recent Eeldwork in the eastern Sudan*, Akten
Miinchen 1985 tv, ed. S. Schoske (Hainburir,
1991), 257-72.

K. A. Kitchen, 'The Land of Punt', The
archaeology nf Africa, cd. T. Shaw et a!. (London
1993), 587-608.

purification see priests; sacred lake; taboo
and water

2.32

':"

m m

pylon (Greek: 'gate')

iMassive ceremonial gateway (Egyptian
bekhena) consisting of two tapering towers
linked by a bridge of masonry and surmount-
ed by a cornice. Rituals relating to the sun-god
were evidently carried out on top of the gate-
way. The pylon was used in temples from at
least the Middle Kingdom to the Roman peri-
od (c.2055 bc-ad 395). It has been tentatively
suggested that the carliesl known pylons may
have been constructed in the pyramid complex
and sun temple of the 5th-Dynast\ ruler
Nyuserra (2445-2421 Be) at abusir and ABU
gurau, but the oldest intact examples are those
inTheban royal mortuary temples of the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 Be), such as medinet
HAUL' and the ramesseum.

The pylon was usually filled with rubble
(often consisting of blocks plundered from
earlier temples, as in the case of tai.atat
BLOCKS), but many also contained internal
stairs and rooms, the purpose of which is
uncertain. Ancient depictions of pylons show-
that the deep vertical recesses visible along the
facades of surviving examples were intended
to hold flagstaffs; above each groove was a
small window through which the flag could be
attached. Such flags would have had particular
significance in the context of the temple, in
that the Egyptian word for 'god' (neljer) took
the form of a symbol usually interpreted as a
fluttering pennant.

Pylons were frequently decorated with
reliefs enhanced with bright paint and inlays,
in which the scenes tended to emphasize the
theme of royal power, since the outer pylon
would have been the most visible part of the

First pylon of the temple ofhk at Philac. The reliefs
on the outer faces of the pylon's tamers are typical
showing the king ( Ptolemy xtl Neos Dionysos)
sinking foreign captives with a mace. The scenes
mittld originally have keen painted, (l. shiiiJ

temple for the great mass of the population
who were forbidden to pass beyond the first
courtyard. The most common motif on the
pylon was that of the king smiting foreign
enemies or offering captives to a god.

Many temples had only one pylon, but the
more important religious complexes consisted
of long successions of pylons and courtyards,
each added or embellished by different rulers;
the temple of Amun at karinak, for instance, has
ten pylons. In the unusual temples dedicated to
the Aten in die city at ei.-amarna, the pylons
appear to have been somewhat different, con-
sisting of pairs of separate towers without any
bridging masonry between them.

It is likely that the pylon represented the
two mountains of the horizon {akhel) between
which the sun rose, thus contributing to llie
TEMPLE'S role as a symbol of the cosmos and
the act of creation. The towers were each iden-
tified with the goddesses isis and NEPHTHYS.
F. W. von Dissinc; et al.. Das ReATeiligtum ties
KSnigs Ne-Wtiscr-Rc I (Leipzig, 1905), 8-10,
19-24.

L.BoRClHRijr, Dm Gralnlenkmal ies KSnigs VV-
aser-Re '(Leipzig, 1907), 97.
T. Dombardt, 'Der zweitiirigc Tempelpylon
altagyptischerBaukuiist und seine religiose
Symbolik', Egyptian Religion l (1933), 87-98.
P. A. Spencer, The Egyptian temple: a
lexicographical study (London, 1984), 193-4.

PYLON

PYRAMID

pyramid

Funerary monument, built usually of stone
masonry and consisting of four triangular
sides meeting" in a point. It served as the focal
point - or at least the most visible component
^ of Egyptian royal funerary complexes from
the 3rd Dynasty (2686-2613 Be) to the Second
Intermediate Period {1650-1550 isc).
Throughout the rest of the Pharaonic period
private tombs occasionally incorporated small-
scale mud-brick or stone 'pyramidia'. The
modern term derives from the Greek word
pyramis ('wheal cake'), presumably because
cakes of this type were pyramidal in shape; the
ancient Egyptian word, however, was mer.

In purely architectural terms, pyramids can
be divided into two broad types: 'step pyra-
mids 1 and 'true pyramids'. The first step
pyramids appear to have developed initially
out of the rectangular royal and private masta-
ba tombs of the Early Dynastic period
(3100-2686 BC), but by the early 4th Dynasty
the first smooth-sided true pvramid had been
constructed at DAHSHUR- Over the next thou-
sand years the pyramid gradually acquired a
wide range of symbolic meanings.

The lull-scale 'pyramid complex 1 consisted
of a true pyramid with its mortuary and valley
temples, a causeway between the two latter,
and usually a number of smaller 'subsidiary
pyramids'; this had evolved by the beginning
of the 4th Dynasty. However, the origins of the
pyramid complex can be discerned in the royal
tombs and 'funerarv enclosures' at Early
Dynastic abydos and the Old Kingdom Step
Pyramid complex at SAQ_qara.
Chronology and development: The first step
pyramid was built by the architect imhotep for
the 3rd-Dynasty ruler Netjerikhet djoser
(2667-2648 Be) at saqqara. From the reign of
Djoser onwards the pyramid complex was
established as the royal funerary monument
and burial-place. Djoser's pyramid seems to
have initially taken the form of a huge masta-
ba, built in stone rather than mud-brick, but it
was gradually extended and elaborated until it
became a pyramidal superstructure consisting
of six massive steps and reaching a height of
60 m, making it clearly visible from the capital
dty of Memphis. A passage from the north
side led to the subterranean royal burial cham-
ber, and eleven subsidiary chambers for mem-
bers of the family. A series of ancillary cham-
bers and corridors were decorated with elabo-
rate blue FAIENCE tiles and relief sculpture
snowing the king performing rites at his royal
jubilee (sed festival).

In Djoser's complex the recessed, 'palace-
tacade' style of the superstructures of Saqqara
m astaba tombs of the Early Dynastic period

was used to decorate the great enclosure wall
surrounding the pyramid and its ancillary
buildings. It is thus thought likely that
Djoser's monument was a combination of a
royal tomb and a 'funerary enclosure' (or
Talbezirk), such as those of the 1st- and 2nd-
Dynasty rulers at Abydos (e.g. the Shunet el-
Zebib complex of khasekhemwy).

To the east of Djoser's pyramid was an
open area surrounded by rows of solid
'dummy' buildings apparently intended to
replicate various provincial shrines. This part
of the complex was almost certainly connect-
ed with the celebration of the sed festival,
although it is not clear whether the ritual
itself would have been enacted there during
the king's lifetime. A mortuary temple, now
badly ruined, stood on the north side of the
pyramid, and a large rectangular structure
know r n as the 'south mastaba' lay at the south
end of the enclosure (perhaps serving as a
cenotaph balancing the main pyramid and
thus symbolizing the DUALITY of the Egyptian
kingship). Tiie complex as a whole seems to
have been simultaneously a permanent
monumental equivalent of the sed festival
and the celebration of the royal funerary
cult. As later pyramids became more con-
cerned with the king's solar connections, the
importance of the sed festival as an element
of the funerary complex appears to have
diminished correspondingly.

The remains of the unfinished step-pyramid
complex of sekhemkiiet (2648-2640 oc) are
situated a short distance to the southwest of
Djoser's complex. A few other surviving traces
of enclosure walls at the western side of the
Saqqara necropolis, including the so-called
Great Enclosure (currently being investigated
by a team from the Royal Museum of
Scotland}, suggest that further 3rd-Dynasty
rulers probably began to erect similar monu-
ments. It is also worth pointing out that the
use of steps in pyramid-building never truly
died out, in that many true pyramids contin-
ued to consist of a stepped structure, which
was simply transformed by the application of a
smooth outer casing. The late 3rd-Dvnasty (or
early 4th-Dynasty) pyramid at meusum, for
example, was originally conceived as a step
pyramid; in this instance, however, the smooth
outer easing eventually collapsed, and the
original stepped core of the superstructure
was revealed.

The two pyramids of .sneferu (2613-
2589 Be) at dahshur were probably the first
royal funerary monuments to be conceived as
true pyramids from the outset. The southern-
most of these is known as the 'bent pyramid 1
(or 'rhomboidal pyramid 1 ), owing to the

marked change of angle part-way up its pro-
file, from 54° 27' in the lower part to 43° 22' in
the upper. However, the 'northern pyramid'
(or 'red pyramid') was successfully completed
with a constant angle of 43° 22'. From this
time onwards the practice of giving names to
pyramids is regularly attested; thus the north
pyramid was known as 'Sneferu appears in
glory' and the bent pyramid as 'Sneferu of the
south appears in glory'.

However, it was Sneferu's son Kiiuru
(2589-2566 BC) whose name came to be most
intimately linked with pyramid construction,
since his funerary monument is the Great
Pyramid at giza, the largest surviving pyra-
mid. It stands alongside two other smaller
pyramid complexes belonging to two of his
successors, khafra (2558-2532 bc) and
menkaura (2532-2503 BC) (although the
unfinished pyramid complex of his immediate
successor, Djedefra (2566-2558 Be), was locat-
ed further to the north at ABU roasii).

As far as the overall development of the
pyramid complex was concerned, the basic
components were already present in the Giza
monuments, which were first scientifically
studied by Flinders Petrie in 1880-2. Each
pvramid was entered by a passage from the
north, and on its east side was a mortuary
temple, usually interpreted as the royal equiv-
alent of the mastaba funerary chapel. A walled
(later roofed) causeway led down from the
mortuary temple to the valley temple, which
was associated with the royal funeral rites and
statue cults. All of the Giza pyramids, as well
as most other surviving pyramids, were
accompanied by 'subsidiary pyramids' of vary-
ing size and number, located within the main
pyramid enclosure; some of these are
described as 'queen's pyramids 1 , since thev
were probably built for the king's wives, while
others may have served a similar purpose to
the 'south mastaba 1 in Djoser's complex.

The internal arrangements of the Great
Pyramid were atypical in that there were three
burial chambers - one subterranean and the
other two built into the core of the super-
structure — whereas most other pyramids had
only one subterranean burial chamber hewn
out of the bedrock below the superstructure.
Small shafts, usually known as 'air shafts 1 ,
lead from the uppermost chamber of the
Great Pyramid to the outside of the pyramid,
while similar ones lead from the so-called
'queen's chamber' several metres below. The
investigation of one of these vents in 1993
revealed the presence of a blockage midway
along the passage, which may be a door to a
fourth chamber or perhaps simply closes off
the shaft.

233

PYRA MID

It has long been suggested that the 'air
shafts 1 in the Great Pyramid actually served
some astronomical function, since they are
evidently carefully aligned with various stars,
including the constellation of Orion (the
Egyptian god SAH), which might have been the
intended destination of the king's BA, when he
ascended to take his place among the circum-
polar stars. A certain amount of astronomical
observation was clearly used in the process of
pyramid-building, particularly in terms of the
precise alignment with the cardinal points, but
there seems to be little foundation for the sug-
gestion that the layout of the three pyramids at
Giza was intended to symbolize the shape of
the belt of Orion.

The pyramids of abusir, which date to the
5th Dynasty (2494-2345 bc), are regarded as
the peak of development of the standard
pyramid complex, although both their archi-
tectural quality and their size are less
impressive than those of the Giza pyramids.
It has been suggested that the more modest
scale of the Abusir pyramids might have par-
tially resulted from the diversion of
resources into the sun temples that began to
be erected in the 5th Dynasty (see ABU
cjluah). The layout of the complexes differs
only in the sense that they show less variabil-
ity, and a subsidiary pyramid began to be
regularly placed in the southeast corner of
the enclosure.

The last 5lh-Dynasty ruler, t \ \ s
(2.175-2345 bc), seems to have been the first to
inscribe the PYRAMID TEXTS on the internal
walls of his pyramid at Saqqara. This practice
was then taken up by the rulers of the f«h
Dynasty (2345—2 1 8 1 bc.) and their queens,
providing Egyptologists with a set of almost
eight hundred early religious 'utterances' that
have provided a useful body of evidence with
regard to the symbolism and purpose of pyra-
mid complexes.

The standard of workmanship of pyramids
appears to have declined along with the polit-
ical and economic structure of the Old
Kingdom, and the pyramid complex all but
disappeared in the First Intermediate Period
(2181-2055 bc). However, the form began to
be used again in the Middle Kingdom, when
the state had been reunified. The unusual
funerary complex of the llth-Dynasty ruler

MKNTUIIOTKP II (2055-2004 BC) at BEffi EL-
BAi-iRi may have incorporated a pyramidal
superstructure (although opinions differ on
this point), but the full pyramid complex was
reintroduced with the complexes of uien-
emiiat t and sknusret I at ki.-i.lsht. Later
12th- and 13th-Dynasly pharaohs built pyra-
mids at Dahshur, HAWARA, Saqqara,
Mazghuna and rx-i.AHUN. These pyramids
made extensive use of mud-brick, using stone
only for cross walls which were then inlilled
with rubble or mud-brick, although the
whole edifice was given a casing of fine lime-
stone so that externally it would have
appeared as well built as those of the Old
Kingdom. However, the subsequent removal
of these outer casings has reduced them to a
more severely weathered state than I heir
stone-built predecessors.

No pyramids have survived frum the 1 4th to
16th Dynasties (1750-1650 bc), although
there were a few small mud-brick nth-
Dynasty pyramids at western Thebes, and the
17th-Dynasty ruler AHMOSE I (1550-1525 nc)
is known to have constructed a cenotaph at
Abydos in the form of a mud-brick pyramid.
Thereafter, the 'pyramidion' became a com-
paratively minor element in the pyramid-
shaped superstructures of private funerary
chapels, as in the case of the cemetery of the
New Kingdom workmen at DI3S ix-mi.ihM-
Many hundreds of years after the construction
of the last Egyptian pyramid complex, the
pyramid form was revived - albeit on a smaller
scale and with much steeper sides - in th*

The pyramids oj'Kltujit, Kliafra and Mcataani id
Giza, with the subsidiary pyramids oj'Mcnhaurti
in the foreground. 4th Dynasty c. 258V-2503 bc
(grahaw ii \rriso\)

234

PYRAMID

PYRAMID TEXTS

funerary monuments of the Napatan and
iVleroitic kings of Nubia (see MERGE, \apata
and nuri)-

Methods of construction: There has been con-
siderable speculation concerning" the means
used to construct the pyramids. No textual
records outlining such methods have survived,
although presumably this omission is a result
of the accident of preservation (or perhaps
even a proscription on the description ot such
a sacred task); the suggestion is occasionally
made that no records were kept because pyra-
mid construction was regarded as a compara-
tively prosaic activity not worthy of record,
but this is surely unlikely, given the vast
resources and amounts of labour involved in
such projects.

The careful survey work begun by PETRIK,
and extended in recent times by Mark Lehner,
has shown that the Giza site was carefully lev-
elled, probably by cutting a series of trenches
as a grid and flooding them with water, then
reducing the surrounding stone islands 1 to
the desired level. The cardinal points would
subsequently have been determined astro-
nomically (see ASTRONOMY ami astrology).
Much of the required stone w r as obtained from
sources immediately adjacent to the complexes
themselves, with only the fine limestone for
the outer casing being brought from Tura
across the river. When granite was needed, for
such purposes as the lining of burial chambers
or, in the case of Menkaura, part of the casing,
it was brought up the Nile from Aswan (and
indeed reliefs in the causew r av of Unas show
granite columns being conveyed by boat from
the quarries to the temple). The final stage of
transporting the stone would probably not
have been as difficult as it now appears, since
the flood waters of the annual inundation
would have allowed the boats to bring the
stone close to the pyramid itself Since the
flood also produced a slack period in the agri-
cultural year, the king was able to employ large
bodies of seasonally available labour.

The methods by which the stone blocks
were raised into position remains a con-
tentious issue. A variety of techniques have
been suggested, from the use of simple cranes
(based on the shaduf style of irrigation) to
elaborate systems of levers and rockers, which
would certainly have been used in positioning
the blocks. What seems certain, from the
archaeological evidence, is that ramps were
used. These would have grown longer and
higher as the pyramid became larger, and
would no doubt have been major feats of engi-
neering in themselves. There are only surviv-
Pg traces of long, straight ramps, but it has
been suggested that the terraced nature of the

pyramid core would have often made it more
convenient to use a series of much smaller
ramps built along the sides of the pyramid
from step to step; the remains of these would
no doubt have been lost when the outer casing-
was applied.

The casing would have been smoothed from
top to bottom while the scaffolding or ramps
were gradually cleared away. Once the debris
had been cleared from the site, the mortuary
temple and subsidiary pyramids would no
doubt have been completed. It is also possible
that the causeways from pyramid to valley
temple originally served as construction ramps
from quay to building site, and the valley tem-
ple would have been built beside a quay con-
nected with the Nile by canal.
Symbolism ami purpose: There is general agree-
ment that the fundamental purpose of the
pyramid was to serve as a highly visible super-
structure for royal burials (with the exception
of seven late 3rd-Dynastv non-sepulchral step
pyramids, perhaps erected as symbols of royal
power at provincial capitals; see NOMES). There
is, however, still a great deal ol debate con-
cerning the symbolism of its shape and design.
It has been suggested that it represented the
primeval mound of creation, on which the
sun-god was thought to have been born, and
which was probably first symbolized by the
Heliopolitan isenuen STONE.

Since the pyramidion at the top of each
pyramid was often gilded and was closely con-
nected with the sun, it has been proposed that
the building was intended to symbolize the
sloping rays of the sun. However, it has also
been suggested that, particularly in the case of
the step pyramids, there may have been an
association with the idea of ascending to the
heavens on a stairway, since it was believed,
from at least the Old Kingdom onwards, that
the deceased were able to rise up to the night
sky, becoming transformed into imperishable
stars'. There is also a great deal of symbolism
in the various locations of such features ol the
pvramid complex as the entrance to the pyra-
mid, the mortuary and valley temples, the sub-
sidiary pyramids, as well as more detailed
features, such as the position of the sarcopha-
gus and the orientation of the internal corridor
and chambers.

The Greek historian uerodotus (f.484-
420 uc) gave an account of the pyramids, but
Pliny (ad 23-79) seems to have been the first
ancient writer to suggest that they might have
contained treasure. After the Arab conquest
(ad 641), such stories of buried riches led to
numerous attempts to open the pyramids,
although the contents of the burial chambers
were always found to have been long since

plundered. Various myths concerning the ori-
gins and significance of pyramids persisted
among European travellers, including the
ingenious theory that they had functioned as
the granaries of the Biblical Joseph. In modern
times, much stranger theories continue to be
concocted concerning the nature of pyramids,
and the pragmatic accounts of generations of
archaeologists have done little to dispel the
popular belief" that they are embodiments of
some lost mystic knowledge and/or the key to
the understanding of the universe.
W. M. F. Petrie, The pyramids and temples of
Gizeit (London, 1883).

D. ARNOLD, Building in Egypt: pharaonic stone
masonry (Oxford, 1991).

G.H&RT, Pharaohs and pyramids (London, 1991).
J -P. Lalkr, Lespyrumides de Suhkara, 6th ed.

(Cairo, 1991).

T. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.
(Ilarmondsworth, 1993).
C. SCARRE, 'The meaning of death: funerary
beliefs and the prehistorian 1 . The ancient mind:
elements of cognitive archaeology, ed. C. Renfrew
and E. II W. Zubrow (Cambridge, 1994), 75-82.
R. StadkI-.viann, 'Die sogenannten Luftkaniile
der Cheopspvramidc Modellkurridore fur den
Aufstieg des Koiiigs zum I IimmeF, MDAJK 50
(1994), 53-6.

Pyramid Texts

The earliest Egyptian funerary texts, compris-
ing some eight hundred spells or 'utterances 1
written in columns on the walls of the corri-
dors and burial chambers of nine pyramids ol
the late Old Kingdom (2375-2181 bc) and
First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 BC). In
modern texts and translations of the Pyramid
Texts the individual utterances are conven-
tionally numbered in a sequence relating to
their usual position in the pyramid, progress-
ing from the burial chamber outwards,
although it has been suggested that the oppo-
site order (from the entrance to the burial
chamber) may in fact be a more logical
sequence. Siegfried Schott, for instance, has
argued that the texts make up a ritualistic
description of the funereal progress of the
king's dead body from its arrival in the valley
temple to its deposition in the burial chamber.
Although the earliest surviving Pyramid
Texts are inscribed in the 5th-Dynasly pyra-
mid of unas (2375-2345 rc) at Saqqara, the
examples in the pvramid of vva'Y t, a short dis-
tance to the south, were the first to be discov-
ered. Thev were inscribed in the pyramids of
six kings altogether (all buried at Saqqara
between die 6th and 8th Dynasties), as well as
in the three pyramids of Pepy ifs queens. No
single pyramid contains the whole collection

235

PYRAMID TEXTS

QADESH, BAT TLE OF

of spells, the maximum number being 675
utterances in the pyramid of Pepy n
(2278-2184 uc).

The constant references to the cult of the
sun-god in the texts suggest that they were
probably composed by the priests of iiei.iopo-
lis. There appear to have been several basic
categories of utterance, including what might
be described as 'magical' spells aiming to pre-
vent harm to the deceased; these often use
archaic language perhaps indicating the
Predynastic origins of the ideas. Indeed, some-
times these magical utterances seem to be
referring to aspects of the funerary cult that
were no longer current at the time that the
pyramids were built, as in the case of
Utterances 273-4 (the 'Cannibal Hymn'),
which appear only in the pyramids of Unas
and TETl (see HUMAN SACRU'ICe). Another type
of utterance seems to consist of the texts of
various rituals which would have been per-
formed at the royal funeral, with the deceased
addressed as osiris. This type of spell, which
includes texts dealing both with offerings and
with the resurrection, was inscribed in the
burial chamber itself, no doubt the most
sacred part of the pyramid. The opening of
TIIE MOUTH CEREMONY is first recorded in these
ritual texts, along with the early offering ritual.
Another category of spell, generally inscribed

on the walls of the ante-chamber and corridor,

seems to have been intended to be uttered by

the tomb owner personally.

H. RlCKK, Bemerkungen zur dgyptischen Baukunsl

des Allen Reich (Zurich and Cairo, 1944-50).

S. ScHO'IT, Bemerkungen zum agyptischen

Pyramidenkult (Cairo, 1950).

R. O. Faulkner, The ancient Egyptian pyramid

texts (Oxford, 1969).

J. P. Allen, 'The Pyramid Texts of Queens Ipwt

and Wdbt-m. 8)',jfetSCF23 (1986), 1-25.

W. Barta, 'DiePyramidentexte auf den

Privatsargcn des Mittlcren Reiches', ZAS 1 1 3

(1986), 1-8.

J. Osing, 'Zur Disposition der Pyramidentexte

des Unas', MDAIK, 42 (1986), 131-44.

Qa'a (Ka'a) (,.2890 bc)
Last ruler of the 1st Dynasty (3100-2890 BC),
who was probably buried in Tomb Qat hby-
dos, excavated first by Emile Amelineau and
later by Flinders petrie at the turn of the cen-
tury. The tomb was re-excavated by Gunther
Dreyer and Werner Kaiser in 1991-2. Two
typical royal funerary stelae bearing the king's
name were found on the east side of the tomb.
The recent excavations show that the tomb
was built in stages, with the thick walls of the
central burial chamber eventually being hol-
lowed out lo create extra magazines. The dis-
covery of seal impressions and other artefacts
bearing the name of Hetcpsekhemwy, the first
ruler of the 2nd Dynasty (2890-2686 lie), sug-
gests that there may have been no real break
between the 1st and 2nd Dynasties.

Four tombs at Saqqara have been dated to
Qa'a's reign, including the large mastaba
tombs 3500 and 3505. The latter incorporates
a set of rooms on the north side of the super-
structure, where the lower parts of two wooden
statues were found. It has been suggested that
this maze of rooms may have served as an
offering chapel which would perhaps have
been an antecedent of the mortuary temple in
pyramid complexes. The stelae of two of
Qa'a's officials, Merka and Sabef, bear more
complex inscriptions than those of earlier
reigns, suggesting an increasingly sophisti-
cated use of the hieroglyphic script.
W. M. F. Petrie, The royal tombs of the first
dynasty I (London, 1900).
W. B. F.MERV, Great tombs of the first dynasty III
(London, 1958).

W. B. Emer\, /lrchaic Egypt (London, 1961),
86-91.

A.J. Spencer, Early Egypt (London, 1993)
83-4.

Qadesh (goddess)

see QEDE.SHET

Qadesh, Battle of (r.1274 uc)
Military clash between rameses n (1279-1213
bc) and the hittite king Muwatallis, which
was the first major conflict in the ancient
world to be described in detail. There are thir-
teen surviving Egyptian accounts of the battle,
recorded both on papyri and on the walls of
many of Rameses it's temples in Egypt and
Nubia. These thirteen versions are also writ-
ten in three different literary forms: poem,
bulletin and captioned reliefs.

The Battle of Qadesh.

In the summer of the fourth year of his
reign (/.1275 BC), Rameses II launched a mili-
tary campaign into the Levant. He succeeded
in consolidating Egyptian control of the
provinces of Canaan and Upi and recaptured
Amurru without coming into direct conflict
with the Hittites, Egypt's principal rivals in
the region. Because Rameses then forced the
prince of Amurru lo sign a vassal treaty with
Egypt, the Hittite king Muwatallis is said to
have sworn to regain the Syrian territories. For
his part Rameses was now keen to capitalize on
his successes by pushing forward into the area
of central Syria and the city of Qadesh in the
spring of 1274 BC.

In his second campaign, Rameses sent a
division of elite troops (the Na'arn) north-
wards along the Phoenician coast, while the
main army, divided into four divisions (named
Amun, Pre, Ptah and Seth), marched through
Canaan and Upi to approach Qadesh from the
south. Meanwhile, Muwatallis had assembled
an army said to have been more than double
the size of the Egyptian forces.

While Rameses and his army were passing
through the wood of Labni, a few miles to the

236

QA NTIR

QEBEIISENUEF

south of Qadesh, two captured bedouin con-
vinced them that the Hittites were still a con-
siderable distance away, in the area of Aleppo.
By the time it was realized that die Hittites
were in fact camped nearby, just across die
Orontes, Ramescs had already set up camp
near Qadesh and his three other divisions were
still some way behind. Before anything could
be done to remedy this situation the Hittite
chariots launched their attack, taking the Pre
division hv surprise and sending them fleeing
north towards Rameses and the Egyptian
camp.

Although Rameses is said to have rallied the
eombincd troops of Amun and Pre in an
attempt to rescue the situation, it is clear that
the Egyptians might have been routed at this
stage if it had not been for the timely arrival of
the Na'arn troops. The Egyptians were then
able to regroup and push back the Hittite
chariotry, thus allowing the Ptah and Seth
divisions finally to catch up with the rest. The
following morning the battle resumed but
eventually they reached a state of stalemate. In
the subsequent exchange of envoys Rameses
(unlike his father skty i) refused to make a
treaty and returned to Egypt with the control
of Amurru still unresolved. Moreover, as soon
as he had retreated, the Hittites gained control
of both Amurru and Upi, thus pushing back
the Egyptian frontier to the borders of
Canaan.

Despite Rameses n's euphemistic accounts
of the battle, he was finally obliged to make a
treaty with a new Hittite king, Hattusilis ill,
in 1259 bc, in order that Egypt and the
Hittites could form a united front in the face
of the growing threat of the Assyrian empire
of Shalmaneser i.

J. H. Breasted, The Battle of Kadesh, a study
in the earliest known military strategy {Chicago,
1903).

H. Goedicke, 'Considerations on the Battle of
Kadesh', 7^4 52 (1966), 71-80.
K. Kitchen, Pharaoh triumphant
(Warminster, 1982), 53-62.
H. Goedicke (ed.), Perspectives on the Battle of
Kadesh (Baltimore, 1985).
B. Ockinga, 'On the interpretation of the
Kadesh record 1 , CdE 62/1 23-4 (1987), 38-48.

Uantir (anc. Piramesse)

oite of the ancient Egyptian harbour-town of
Piramesse, located in the eastern Delta near
modern el-Khatana. Piramesse was founded
W Sety i (1294-1279 bc) and transformed into
a ne w royal residence and seat of government
by his successor Rameses n (1279-1213 bc). A
mud-brick palace dating to the earliest phase
°f the town was discovered in 1929, and exca-

Two polychrome faience tiles showing an aquatic see&S,
from a palace of Rameses n at Qimlir. L. 59. 7 cm.

(METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, MW YORK, ROGERS EUND
AND EDWARD S. EIARKN ESS GIFT, 35.1.104)

vations in the 1980s have revealed military
barrack-rooms and workshops, also dating to
the Ramesside period. By the end of the New
Kingdom (r.1069 bc) the city had diminished
in importance and a great deal of its stonework
was transferred to the temples at tanis in the
21st Dynasty and Bubastis (tell basta) in the
22nd Dynasty

W. C. Hayes, Glazed tiles from a palace of
Harnesses //at Kantir (New York, 1937).
E. Uphill, The temples of Per Ramesses
(Warminster, 1984).

M. B\K\AK,Avaris and Piramesse, 2nd ed.
(Oxford, 1986).

E. Puscii, 'Bcricht iibcr die scchstc
Hauptkampagne in Qantir' Piramesse-Nord
herbst 1988', GM 112 (1989), 67-90.
— , 'Auslandisches Kulturgut in Qantir-
Piramesse', Akten Miinchen 1985, ed. S. Schoske
(Hamburg, 1989), 249-56.

Qasr Ibrim (anc. Pedeme, Primis}
Site of a Lower Nubian multi-period fortified
settlement, now located on a headland in Lake
Nasser about 240 km south of Aswan, which
has been excavated by the Egypt Exploration
Society every two years since 1961. The earli-
est activity at Qasr Ibrim dates to the late New
Kingdom (c. 1000 bc), and the site was occu-
pied throughout successive periods until the
early nineteenth century AD, when the garri-
son was still manned by Ottoman soldiers
from Bosnia.

The principal surviving building is a
Nubian cathedral dating to the eighth century
ad. Remains from earlier periods include four
rock-shrincs dating to the New Kingdom
(c. 1550-1 069 bc) and a number of temples
dating from the 25th Dynasty (747-656 bc) to
the late meroitic period (cad 100-350). To
the north and south of the main town-site
there are a number of cemeteries, mainly dat-

ing to the Meroitic, ballana, Christian and

Islamic phases of the site's history.

W. B. Emery and L. P. Kirwan, The excavatiofis

and survey between Wadi es-Sebua and Adindan

1919-31 (Cairo, 1935), 268-77.

R. A. Caminos, The shrines and rock inscriptions of

Ibrim (London, 1968).

W. Y. Adams, 'Qasr Ibrim: an archaeological

conspectus', Nubian Studies: proceedings of the

symposium for Nubian studies, 1978, ed.

J. Plumley (Warminster, 1982), 25-3.1

A.J. Mills, The cemeteries of Qasr Ibrim

(London, 1982).

M. Hinds and V. Menage., Qasr Ibrim in the

Ottoman period (London, 199 1 ).

M. Horton, 'Africa in Egypt: new evidence from

Qasr Ibrim', Egypt and Africa, ed. W. V. Davies

(London, 1991), 264-77.

Qebehsenuef s

' SONS <■.)!■■ IIORLS

Qedeshet (Qadesh, Qudshu)
Syrian goddess, generally portrayed as a naked
woman (viewed frontally), holding flow r ers and
snakes, and standing on the back of a lion. Tier
cult began to be celebrated in Egypt at least as
early as the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 bc),

Limestone relief fragment depicting the Asiatic-
goddess Qedeshet. She holds a lotus in one hand
and snakes in the other. 19th Dynasty, c. 1250 BC,
it. 25.5 cm. (ea60308)

237

QUDSIIU

QUEF.NS

Such was her assimilation into Egyptian reli-
gion that she was considered to be a member
of a TRIAD along with the fertility god MiN and
the Asiatic deity HESHEP. She was also linked
both with the Egyptian goddess hathor and
with anat and astartk, two other Asiatic god-
desses whose cults had filtered into Egypt.
J. Leiboyitui, 'Une imitation d'epoque greco-
romainc d'une stele de la deesse Qadech', AS. IE
41 (1941), 77-86.

I. E. S. Edwards, 'A relief of Qudshu-Astarrc-
Anath in the Winchester College collection 1 ,
?NES 14 (1955), 49-51.

R. STADELMANN, Synsch-paldstin/sche Gollheiten
inAmten (Leiden, 1967), 110-33.
C. Ceamer, 'A gold plaque from Tell Lachish',
Journal nf the Tel Aviv University Institute of
Arckae&fogyl (1980), 152-62.

Qudshu see qkokshkt

queens

Term usually applied lo various female rela-
tives of the pharaoh, although considerable
caution is necessary in using the word in an
ancient Egyptian context, since there is no
Egyptian term precisely corresponding" to it.
Instead, the Egyptian texts tend to highlight a
number of important women who arc defined
by their kinship with the king.

There arc three main types of 'queen': the
'great royal wife' (heme! nesw were/), the 'king's
mother 1 (mmt nesw) and the 'king's wives'
(hemwl nesw). The great royal wife appears to
have been second only to the king in terms of
the political and religious hierarchy, and she is
often represented alongside him on monu-
ments. Very occasionally, as in the case of
NET'ERTiTi, she was also represented alone. It
was usually one of the sons of the great royal
wife who was heir to the throne.

For many years scholars believed that suc-
cession to the throne was purely via the female
line; it was thus suggested that each king, irre-
spective of whether he was the son of the pre-
vious ruler, had to marry a sister or hall-sister
in order to legitimize his claim to the throne.
This so-called 'heiress theory' would have
meant that one of the daughters of the previ-
ous king would always have become a great
royal wife in the subsequent reign. I lowever, it
has been pointed out that there are several
clear instances where kings married women
w r ho were not their sisters, as with the mar-
riage of Amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc) to tiv,
the daughter of a chariotry officer, therefore
the theory is no longer accepted. It has been
suggested that the popularity of the 'heiress
theory' may have been due partly to the
attempts of earlier scholars to explain the

Bronze statuette of a queen, late New Kingdom,
it. 22 cm. (b 64388)

Egyptians' apparent acceptance of the roval
practice of incest (see marriage).

The 'mother of the king' was an important
member of the roval family, and, like the great
wife (and sometimes also the royal daughter),
she was often depicted alongside the king on
his monuments. For example. Queen Tiy still
enjoyed considerable prominence in the reign
of her son akitenaten (1352-1336 bc).

The third category ol queen, the 'king's
wives', were simply the other women to whom
he was married, most of whom would have
resided in the uartm. From the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 lie) onwards these wives would
often have included foreign women married as
part of a diplomatic arrangement. It seems to
have been common for foreign rulers to be
asked to send their daughters to Egypt, where
they would have effectively been treated either
as tribute or as hostages, guaranteeing the
preservation of good relations between the two
rulers. The relationship thus established was
perhaps more of a link between two ruling
families than between two states, since a newly

acceded foreign ruler was often asked to pro-
vide a new daughter, even though the daugh-
ter of his predecessor was no doubt still living
and married to the Egyptian king.

Because the conventions of Egyptian art
and literature focus largely on the king and his
exploits, little information has survived con-
cerning even toe most famous queens, such as
Tiy, Ncfertiti and nki'i.rtari, the wife of
Ramescs n (1279-1213 8C). There are also
comparatively few surviving personal details
concerning iiatshepslt (1473-1458 tic), who
was both a queen and a king, in that she ruled
initially as a regent and then assumed the full
attributes of kingship for many years. Most of
her monuments were damaged and altered by
her stepson and successor, Thutmose in
(1479—1425 bc.) who, late in his reign, appears
to have reacted against the idea of a female
king, which might have been regarded as an
abnormality, a contravention of the Egyptian
conception of ma AT (truth and harmony).

It is clear, therefore, that - however power-
ful queens may have been and however much
influence thev might have wielded over the
kings' decisions - they remain shadowy fig-
ures, effectively masked by the powerful
iconographv of the king, which usually sug-
gests thai it was the place of the king's wife or
mother to be the epitome of feminine grace
while her husband typified the essence of
masculine power.

B.J. KEMP, 'The harim-palace at Medinet el-
Ghurab', ZAS 105 (1978), 122-33.
A. R. Sciiui.vian, 'Diplomatic marriage in die
Egyptian New Kmgdom*, JNSS 38 (1979),
177-93.

G. Robins, A critical examination of the dieon
that the right to the throne of ancient Egypt
passed through the female line in the 18di
Dynasty*, CM 62 (1983) 67-77.
L. Tro\, Patterns nfqueenshtp in ancient Egyptian
myth and history (Uppsala, 1 986).
G. Robins, llinuen in ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 21-55.

238

RACE

Ra (Re)

Heliopolitan sun-god whose cull is first attest-
ed in the name of the 2nd-Dynasty ruler
Raneb (f.2865 bc). The cult of the sun was cel-
ebrated particularly at ueuopolis (ancient
lunu), now largely covered by the northern
suburbs of Cairo. Numerous aspects of the
material culture and religion of the Old
Kingdom were influenced by the cult of Ra,
but it was not until the 4th Dynasty
(2613-2494 bc), when the royal title so Ru
('son of Ra') was introduced by Djedefra
(2566—2558 bc), that the worship of the sun-
god reached its peak. In the 5th Dynasty sev-
eral sun temples incorporating large masonrv
SBELISKS (see abl GURAB and benben) were
constructed, apparently all modelled on the
earliest temple of Ra at Heliopolis, although
no trace of this has survived in the archaeolog-
ical record.

The sun-god was usually represented as a
hawk-headed human figure wearing a sun-disc
headdress, but in the underworld, through
which he sailed in the solar bark, he was por-
trayed as ram-headed. Ra exerted such a
strong influence on the rest of the Egyptian
pantheon that virtually all of the most signifi-
cant deities were eventually subsumed into the
universalist sun-cult by a process of syn-
cretism; thus AMUN became Amun-Ra, montu
became Montu-Ra and i-iorus became Ra-
Horakhty. In his manifestation as creator-god,
the sun-god himself took the name of Atum-
Ra, combining with another Heliopolitan
sun-god, atum, whose name means 'perfec-
tion 1 (see creation and enneao). The Litany
of Ra, a text of the New Kingdom (1550-
1069 bc) inscribed on the walls of some of the
royal tombs in the VALLEY of THE kings (the
earliest example being in that of Thutmose
HI, kv 34), is essentially a celebration of Ra's
identification with OSIRIS, the god of the
underworld.

It was during the reign of akhenaten
(1352-1336 bc) that the concept of the sun-
god as a universal deity (into whom all other
deities could bc absorbed) seems to have come
closest to a monotheistic position. The wor-
ship of the ATEN (literally the 'disc'), repre-
sented almost diagrammatically in the form of
3 sun-disc from which arms stretched down
Jeering life and power to the royal family, was
substituted for the cults of anthropomorphic
figures such as Ra-Horakhtv or Amun-Ra, and

: . - .

at M-® { :

&?'%-

■■

r\i-

Sheet from a papyrus depicting the priestess
Henilowy prostrating herself in adoration before
the sim, which emerges from the desert horizon and
contains the eye of Horns, thus spelling out the
rebus of the god Ra-Horakhty. 2 J si Dynasty,
ii. 20 nu. (eiIOOIS,. sheet ])

Akhenatcifs Hymn to the Aten appears to

describe a deity whose power permeates all

aspects of life] thus effectively superseding the

traditional Egyptian 'pantheon'.

A. Piankoff, The Utmy of Re (New York, 1964).

J. Assmann, DerKiinig ah Sonnenpriester

(Gltickstadt, 1970).

D. B. Redford, 'The sun-disc in Akhenaten \s

program: its worship and antecedents i\ J.IRCE

13(1976), 47-61.

S. Quukf., Ancient Egyptian religion (London,

1992), 21-51.

J. Assmann, Egyptian solar religion in the New

Kingdom: Re, Amun and the crisis of polytheism,

trans. A. Aleoek (London, 1995).

race

The apparently simple question of the racial
origins or characteristic racial type of the
Egyptians is both difficult to answer and in
some measure irrelevant. We know that their
language belonged to the group known as
Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic, which simph
means that they shared some common traits
with the languages of parts of Africa and the
Near East. Languages of this group can bc
spoken by people of vastly different racial
type, just as Spanish may be spoken bv
Spaniards and South American Indians.

Examination of human remains from the
Predynastic period shows a mixture of racial
types, including negroid, Mediterranean and
European, and by the time that Pharaonic civ-
ilization had fullv emerged it was no longer
meaningful to look for a particular Egyptian
racial type, since they were clearly already; to
some extent at least, a mixed population. It is
in the context of the Protodynastic period
([■.3100-2900 BC) that the issue of race has

often been most hotly debated, with a number
of scholars, including W. B. Emery, claiming
that the Predynastic Egyptians were effective-
ly conquered by a new race from the east.
Although the skeletal evidence for this theory
is still considered to be indicative of some kind
of physical or racial change, it is now thought
that there was a slower period of transition
which probably involved the indegenous
Egyptian population gradually being infiltrat-
ed by a different physical type from Syria—
Palestine, via the Delta region (see PREDYNAS-
TIC PERIOD).

A more fruitlul avenue is to inquire how the
Egyptians saw themselves. The answer to this
is partly defined in the negative, in that they
clearly did not consider themselves to be
either African or Asiatic; that much is obvious
from their art and literature (see CAPTIVES). As
'Egyptians 1 , they were automatically different
from all their neighbours, even when certain
Egyptian individuals may have appeared 'for-
eign' in their racial characteristics, as in the
case of the New Kingdom military official
maiherpri, who held an important post and yet
was clearly of negroid origins. Clearly, despite
the highly developed iconography of foreign-
ers, it was nevertheless possible for many dif-
ferent racial types to consider themselves

The enemies of Egypt mere usually portrayed as
captives, in this case an Asiatic and a Nubian arc
Kfl symbolically bound to the staff of

Tatankhamun and so always in the royal
grip, (curo no50ci\ reproduced

COURTESY OF THE GRIFFITH INSTITUTE)

239

RADJEDEF

RA MESES

Egyptian. Perhaps the clearest example of this
is the case of the skeletal remains from the
'tomb of two brothers 1 at Rifeh, dating to the
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc), where the
physical appearance of one of the men was
negroid, while that of his brother was more
European.

It has recently been argued by certain schol-
ars, notably Martin Bernal, the author of
Black Athena, that the Egyptians were essen-
tially a 'black African' culture, and that ancient
Egypt should therefore be regarded as a pin-
nacle of negroid achievement, the artistic and
cultural influence of which instigated the ear-
liest achievements of the Classical civilizations
in the Mediterranean. Although valuable in
drawing attention to African contributions to
western culture, Bemal's hypothesis might be
accused of missing the essential point, in that
'civilizations' cannot necessarily be defined in
purely racial terms. While the population at
large may consist predominantly of one or
another racial group, its 'culture 1 and the
archaeological record of its characteristics are
often the product of the interaction of many
racial groups.

D. E. Derry, 'The dynastic race in Egypt', $BA
42 (1956), 80-5.

A. C. Berry, R. J. Berry and P. J. Ucko,
'Gcnctical change in ancient Egypt', Man n.s. 2
(1967), 551-68.

A. C. Berry and R. J. Blrry, 'Origins and
relations of the ancient Egyptians', Papulation
biology of the ancient Egyptians, ed. D. R.
Brothwell and B. A. Chiarelli (New York, 1973),
200-8.

B. G. TRIGGER,, 'Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic? 1 ,
Africa in antiquity: the arts of ancient Nubia and
the Sudan f, cd. S. Hoehfield and E. Riefstahl
(Brooklyn, 1978), 26-35.

M. Bernal, Black Athena: the Afro-Asiatic roots
of classical civilization, 2 vols (London, 1987-91).
E J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or
whiter BAR 15/5 (1989), 24-9, 58.

Radjedef (Djedefra) see abu roash and

K1IAFRA

Ra-Horakhty see horus and ra

Like the dull, the ram (Egyptian ha) was ven-
erated bv the Egyptians for its fertility, and
although sheep were regarded as unclean, and
thus unsuitable food for purified persons, the
ram was worshipped from early times. The
earliest ram-gods seem to have been based on
the Ovis longipes palaeoaegyptiaca species,
which has long wavy horns and a heavy build;
this was the form in which khnum and

Banehdjcdet (see mendes) were represented. A
second species, Ovis dries platyra aegypnaca,
appeared somewhat later in Egypt, perhaps
around the 12th Dynasty (1985-1795 bc); this
ram had a lighter build, fat tail and curved
horns, the form often attributed to the god
Amun.

Khnum, the local deity of Esna and
Elephantine, was the most prominent of the
ram deities, worshipped as the creator of
humankind. From the New Kingdom
onwards, the cult of the god amun absorbed
that of Khnum, and Amun himself was com-
monly represented in ram form, although with
the curving horns of the platyra species. The
Delta town of Mendes was a cult centre for the
ram-god Banebdjedet, who held the epithet
'lord of Djedet' and was regarded as the BA of
the god Osiris. 1 "he Greek historian
hkrodotus, who visited Egypt around 450 isc,
noted the sacrifice of goats at Mendes, in con-
trast to the use of sheep elsewhere in Egypt,
although his reliability on this point is ques-
tionable. At Herakleopolis Magna the ram was
worshipped under the name heryshef. At
many of these cult centres rams were regular-
ly mummified and buried in catacombs at var-
ious cult centres (see sacred animals).
L. Stork, 'Sehaf ', Lexikon der Agyptologie v, ed.
W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westcndorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 522-3.

P. BemrknS, 'Widder, Lexikon der Agyptologie VI
ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1986), 1243-5.
R. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art (London,
1992), 60-1.

Rameses

'Birth name' used in the royal titulary of
eleven rulers in the 19th and 20th Dvnasties,
This phase of the New Kingdom is therefore
often described as the 'Ramesside' period.

Rameses i Menpehtyra (1295-1 294 BC) was a
military officer from the eastern Delta who
rose to the rank of vizier under horemheb and
founded the 19th Dynasty (1295-1186 BC).
His adoption as heir by Horemheb is recorded
in the form of an inscription added to the
granite interior coffin (Egyptian Museum,
Cairo) which was apparently made for him
while he was still vizier. He was married to a
woman called Satra, whose father was also a
soldier, and she bore him a son, the future
SETY I. Although his reign lasted barely two
years he managed to build temples at AB3TDOS
and buiien and completed the construction of
the second pylon at karnak, as well as almost
completing his tomb in the valley of the
kings (kv16), which was decorated with
scenes from the Book of Gates like those in the

Upper part of a granite figure of Rameses II
wearing the double crown and holding the crook and
flail, symbols of royalty, 19th Dynasty, cJ25(J n<;,
n. 1.43m. (ea(>7)

tomb of Horemheb. The style of the surviving
funerary equipment, such as the wooden
'guardian statues' now in the British Museum,
is said to be influenced by the art of much ear-
lier rulers at the beginning of the 18th
Dynasty.

Rameses a Usermaatra Selepenra (1 279—
1213 BC) was the third ruler of the 19th
Dynasty. A vast number of temples, monu-
ments and statuary were created (or usurped
from earlier rulers) during his extremely long
reign, including the construction of several
Nubian rock-cut temples at ABU simbel, \mARA
West, beit el-wali, Derr and Gerf Husein. He
was also an active builder in Egypt itself,
where his projects included numerous temples
at Memphis, the court and pylon of U XO®
temple, the ramesseum at western Thebes (his
mortuary temple), another temple at Abydos,

240

RAMESF.S

RAMESES

RAMESSEUM

!-: ; :SSiSi : -i ;

g the crook and
7}', c. 12S0 nc,

the surviving
the wooden

tish Museum,
: of much ear-
of the ISlh

penra (1279-

of the 19th

nples, monU-

i (or usurped

xtrcmely long
on of several

SIMBEL, AM iRA

rfHusein. He
Egypt itself,
erous temples
ion of LUXOR
n Thebes (his
)le at Abydos,

the completion of his father's temple nearby,
and the decoration of the great fiypostyle
I-lali. at Karnak (as well as other additions to
the complex).

The major event of his reign, celebrated
repeatedly on the walls of his major temples,
was the confrontation with the i-iittites
known as the BATTLE OF qadksh, which - if
not the great victory he would clearly have
liked - ensured that the Hittite empire was
kept at bay and Egyptian interests in the
Levant were more or less protected.
Eventually he signed a treaty with the
Hittites, and the archive of CUNEIFORM tablets
at Boghazkoy contains a large number of LET-
TERS sent by Rameses to the Hittite king and
his wife. Surviving stelae also record
Rameses' further consolidation of relations
with Hatti through his marriages to two
Hittite princesses in the thirty-third and
forty-fourth years of his reign (see queens).

His principal wife was nefertarj, to whom
the smaller temple at Abu Simbel was dedi-
cated, and when she died his daughter
Meritamun was elevated to this position. In
the eastern Delta, where his family origins lay,
he established a new capital called Piramesse
(see qantir and tell el-dab'a) at a site near
modern el-Khatana where Sety I had previ-
ously built a palace. This was to be the capital
city for the rest of the Ramesside period,
although the royal cemetery was still in the
valley of the kings at Thebes. Rameses' own
tomb was Kv7 but his mummy was one of
those found in the DEER el-bahr! mummy
cache.

During the first part of Rameses' lifetime
the heir to the throne had been
Amunherkhepeshef, one of his sons by
Ncfertari, but it was Khaemwaset, the son of
another wife called Isetnofret, who was heir
for most of the latter half of his reign. Despite
a vigorous career as chief priest of Ptah at
Memphis, Khaemwaset died in the fifty-fifth
year of Rameses' reign, about a decade earlier
than his father, and when Rameses finally died
it was his thirteenth son, mf.rfattaii, who suc-
ceeded him on the throne. Even Merenptah
seems to have been middle-aged by the time
that he came to power; he was the first of sev-
eral short-lived rulers who had perhaps
already passed their peak as a result of
Rameses' unusually long reign.

Rameses ill Usermaalra Meryanum (1184—
H53 bc) was the second king of the 20th
Dynasty (1186-1069 dc). He appears to have
consciously set out to emulate his illustrious
Predecessor Rameses n, not only in his titles
a nd military campaigns but also in the archi-
tectural style of his temple-building. He was

the son of the short-lived ruler Scthnakhte
(1 186-1 184 tsc) by his wife Tiye-mercnese. He
himself married a woman called Esc but, in
common with most New Kingdom rulers, he
also had many minor wives, by whom he bore
numerous children.

Defensive foreign policy occupied much of
the early part of his reign. His first conflict, in
the fifth year of his reign, was with the Libyans
and their allies, whom he defeated and
brought hack to Egypt as slaves. Three years
later the great coalition of displaced and
migrant peoples from the north, known as the
sea peoples, who had been repulsed by
Merenptah in the late thirteenth century bc,
advanced into Syria, apparently with the aim
of settling. The Sea Peoples, as their name
indicates, were backed up bv naval forces,
including Sherdcn Hoops, who were noted
seafarers. Although presumably not used to
fighting maritime battles, the Egyptian navy
managed to destroy the Sea Peoples' fleet,
while simultaneously defeating the troops in
Syria on land. Apart from another campaign
against the Libyans in his eleventh year, the
remaining two decades of Rameses ill's reign
were peaceful.

These campaigns, along with several others
that may well be fanciful copies based on
scenes from the ramesseum, were recorded in
some of the reliefs on the walls of Rameses liPs
mortuary temple at .meoixet h.-\bu. Details of
his life can also be gleaned from the Great
Harris Papyrus, the longest known papyrus
roll (now in the British Museum), a list of
temple endowments compiled by Rameses iv
(1153-1147 or) at the time of his father's
death, which concludes with a description of
the dead king's achievements. The way in
which he died may be indicated by the
accounts of a trial of participants in a i /ninn/
conspiracy', preserved in several documents,
the most important of which are the Lee and
Rollin Papyri and the Turin Judicial Papyrus.
It appears that a secondary queen wished to
place her son on the throne in place of the
king, whom she sought to murder with the
assistance of other women of the hariiu. It is
not clear whether the plot succeeded, but the
king's body, originally buried in k\ll, was
preserved in the deir el-bahri cache and
shows no signs of a violent death.

There were, however, other problems in
Rameses ill's reign, which seem to have
resulted from poor communication between
the king and his officials. A strike of the
workmen of deir el-medina occurred in the
twenty-ninth year of his reign as a conse-
quence of the irregular and delayed delivery
of rations.

He was succeeded by one of his sons,
Rameses i\, who was the first of a series of
increasingly weak rulers. Eventually, in the
reign of Rameses xi (1099-1069 bc) at the end
of the 20th Dynasty, the control of Thebes fell
into the hands of Libyan generals bearing the
title High Priest of Amun, and by the late 22nd
Dynasty much of the kingdom dissolved into
independent princedoms.
W. Erichsen, Papyrus Harris (Brussels, 1933).
A. deBuck, 'The judicial papyrus of Turin',
$6A 23 (1957), 152-67.

A. Gardiner, Ramesside administrative documents
(Oxford, 1948).

W. E Edgertox, 'The strikes in Ramses ill's
twenty-ninth yew\JNES 10 (1951) 137-45.
K. Kitchen, Pharaoh irmmphant: the life and
times o/Ramesses ll (Warminster, 1982).

D. Polz, 'Die Sarge des (Pa-)Ramessu', MDAIK
42(1986),145-66.

E. Horxung, Zwei Ramessidische Kiinigsgraber:
Ramses ft uud Ranaes I n (Mainz, 1 990).

E Fevre, Le dernier pharaon: Ramses III ou le
crepuscuk d'une civilization (Paris, 1992).
K. A. KiTCl ikn, Ramesside inscriptions, 1 vols
(Oxford, 1993-)

Ramesseum

Mortuary temple of Rameses u (1279-1213
bc), located on the west bank of the Nile at
western thebes, opposite modern Luxor. It
was misleadingly described by diodorus as the
'tomb of Ozymandias', which in turn inspired
Shelley's verse. The principal building, in
which the funerary cult of the king was cel-
ebrated, was a typical stone-built New
Kingdom temple, consisting of two successive
courtyards (each entered through a pylon), a
HYPOSTYLE HALL with surrounding annexes,
leading to a room for the sacred bark (a ritual
boat containing a cult image) and the sanctu-
ary. The complex includes the remains of a
royal palace and large numbers of mud-brick
granaries and storerooms. Both pylons are
decorated with scenes from the Battle of
qaoesil

The reliefs and architecture, as at other
funerary complexes such as the mortuary
temple of rameses hi at medinet habu (the
plan of which was closely modelled on that of
the Ramesseum), constitute an important bodv
of evidence concerning the beliefs and rituals
relating to the royal funerary cult, while the
surrounding granaries indicate ihe importance
of the New Kingdom temples with regard to
the overall economy of Egypt. Evidence con-
cerning the existence of a scribal training
school at the Ramesseum has survived in the
form of a large pile of ostraca (see education
and HOUSE OF LIFE).

241

RAMESSEU.M

RAMES SEfM

1 first pylon 4 hypostyle halJ 7 second vestibule ('Library') to sanctuary

2 temple palace 5 temple of Sety I n fbirrl msmuilo u ,
,„„„„ rf „. ... ' ™ J ' e inirn vestibule 1 1 storerooms and workshops n

3 second pylon 6 first vesibue 'Astronomical Room') 9 bark tell °

■'■
242

m»ve Mm o/tfc Rmessem.

i ,eft ftar o/'/Ac 0.n>/</ pillars of the second court
of the Rumesseum. luuli by Barneses n ai Thebes.
The building later served w a model fir the

mortuary temple ofllameses III al Mediae! Balm.
(/•. t. siatoi.sa\)

Beneath the Moor of the mortuary temple a
shaft tomb of a priest of the late Middle
Kingdom (,.171)0 lie:) was excavated by James
Quibcll in the late nineteenth century. The
burial chamber contained a bos of papyri and
a range of religious and magical artefacts (see
UBRARJES, MAGIC and MASKS).

As far as the later history of the site is con-
cerned, a number of papyri of the Third
Intermediate Period (including fragments of
ONOMASTtCA) have been discovered, in addi-
tion to the remains of an elite cemetery of
roughly the same date.

J. E. Quihei.i, The Runicsseiiin (London, 1898).
B. Pouter and R. L. B. Moss, Topographn «/
bibliography n, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1972), 432-1.'.

RAMOSE

REKHMIRA

W. Helck, Die Rrtiui/darsle/lungeii des
Ramesseunis i (Wiesbaden, 1972).
R. Stadf.lmann, 'Ramesseum', Lexik/m der
Agyptologie \ ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and
W. Weslcndorf (Wiesbaden, 1984), 91-8.

Ramose

Vizier under Amenhotep in (1390-1352 ik.)
and Akhenaten (1352-1336 tic:), whose Theban
tomb at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna (TT55) is of par-
ticular importance because it includes reliefs
executed in both the distinctive \\marna style'
of Akhenalen and the more traditional style of
his father. The southern wall depicts the
funeran processions of Ramose, while the
west side preserves one of the earliest depic-
tions of Akhenaten worshipping Che VTKN.
Like many Thcban private tombs, it remained
unfinished, and the fate of its owner, as with
many of those who held office before
AkhenaierTs move to el-Amarna, is unknown.
The tomb was once known as 'Stuart's Tomb 1 ,
since it was cleared by 1 L W. Villiers Stuart in
1879, although it had been known to
Egyptologists since I860.

A. E. P. Wi;i(.i.\l.l., A guide to the antiquities of
Upper Egypt (London, L910), 160-5.

N. l>l-: G. D \\ IKS, The tomb of the vizier Ramose
(London, 1941).

B. PORTER and R. L. 8. Moss, Topographical
bibliography l (Oxford, 196(1), 105-1 1.

red crown ■•

' CROWNS \NI) ROYAL KKGA1JA

Reisner, George Andrew (1867-1942)

American Egyptologist who set new standards
in Egyptian archaeologv with his meticulous
excavation methods, which were then compara-
ble only with those of the British archaeologist
Flinders I'I.trik. Born in Indianapolis of
German parents, he at first studied law at
Harvard, but in 1893-6 be acquired a travelling
fellowship enabling him to study Semitic lan-
guages at Berlin University, eventually gravitat-
ing towards Egyplology. Just as Petrie was sup-
ported for much of his career by the novelist
Amelia Edwards, so Rcisner's long-term exca-
vations at (il/A, NAG KL-DHIR, KI'.RVi-V and IJK1R
r,L-i3A].].,\s relied largely on the financial assis-
tance of the philanthropist Phoebe Apperson.
At the Nubian sites of Nt ri, ki.-klrrl and
Gebel Barkal (nafvi'a) he discovered the pyra-
midal tombs of seventy-three Nubian rulers,
including the 25th-Dynasly pharaohs (747—
656 bc). His attention to detail, which involved
the earliest Egyptological use of section draw-
ings as well as plans, resulted in lengthy reports
(several of which were unfortunately still
unpublished at his death) describing such mon-
uments as the valley temple of MENKAURA and

The carving in the tomb of the vizier Ramose at
Thebes is amongst the finest of its time. Here two
mate guests are depleted at a funerary least. IHih
Dynasty, c. 1390 1336 ec (CR ui i w // utiusos)

the shaft-tomb of Queen I tETEPHERES I at Giza.
The latter was his most famous discovery, since
it still contained much of the queen's funerary
equipment, although the body itself seems to
have been buried elsewhere. Reisner con-
iributcd several volumes to the catalogue of
antiquities in the collection of the Egyptian
Museum at Cairo. After a period of twenty-
eight years as Professor of Egyplology at
I larvard, he died al Giza in 1942.
G. A. Reisner, Amulets (Cairo, 1907).
G. A. Ri;is\KK and A. M VCE, The Early Dynastic
cemeteries of Naga-ed-Da\ 2 vols (Boston,

1908-9),

G. A. RiusNER, Models of skips and boats (Cairo,

1913).

— , Excavations at Kerma, 2 vols (Cambridge,

MA, 1923).

G. A. Reisner and W. Stevenson Smith, A

history of the Gizn necropolis, 2 vols (Cambridge,

MA, 1942-55).

J. A. WlLSON, Signs and wonders upon phanwh

(Chicago, 1964), 145-58.

_M. LehNEK, The pyramid Iamb of HctepAteres and

the satellite pyramid of Klmfu (Mainz, 1985).

Rekhmira

Vizier under Thutmose PI (1479-1425 BC) and

Amenhotep u (1427-1400 itc), whose tomb
(irlOO) at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna is unique
among the private tombs in the Theban
necropolis. Texts on its walls describe the
installation of the VIZIER, a post of great
importance particularly at a time of imperial
expansion. A further set of texts describe the
duties of the vizier, and the moral code within
which his administration was intended to
operate (see ethics). It is stated that 'there was
nothing of which he [the vizier] was ignorant
in heaven, in earth, or in any quarter of the
underworld'.

The painted decoration includes numerous
scenes relating to agriculture and craftwork,
manv of which provide information concern-
ing such activities as jewellery-making and the
activities in sculptors' studios, which have
served to supplement archaeological and
experimental data. One of the w r alls is decorat-
ed with scenes from the presentation of foreign
tribute by Nubians, Syrians, Cretans and rep-
resentatives of various other neighbouring
countries. These scenes include valuable infor-
mation on trade and tribute, indicating the
kinds of raw materials and artefacts that were
acquired from particular geographical areas,
which has also proved useful in dating surviv-
ing imported goods.

Funerary scenes are also represented in the
tomb, including the opening OF THE MOUTH
CEREMONY being performed on Rekhmira 's
mummy, following the funeral procession to

243

REKHYT BIRD

RJiUGION

the tomb. The tomb chapel has no burial shaft
below it, and it has been suggested that
Rekhmira was buried in a shaft tomb in the
Valley of the Kings, although the location of
this burial-place remains unknown.
K. Sf.the, Die Einsetzmig des Veziers toiler tier IS,
Dynastic. Imchrift tin Crake des Rekh-mi-re m
Sckecli Abd el Ctirmi (Leipzig, 1909).

A. E. P. Weigall, A guide l„ the antiquities »/'
Upper Egypt (London, 1910), 115-17.
N. de G. Dawes, The tomb ofRekh-mi-rc at
7M« (New York, 1943).

B. Porter and R. L. 11 Moss, Topographical
bibliography i/i (Oxford, 1960), 206-14.

rekhyt bird

Egyptian term for the lapwing ( I anefltts vanel-
//«), a species of plover with a distinctive crest-
ed head. It was often used as a symbol for sub-
ject peoples, probably because, with its wings
pinioned behind its back, thus preventing it
from flying, it roughly resembled lire hiero-
glyph for a bound CAPTIVE.

The symbol is first attested in the upper
register of relief decoration on the late

mmMi

Section of relief mi a cohmm in llie temple ofKmrt
Ombo, showing a rekhyt bird (lapwing),
representing I lie king i subjects in an altitude if
worship), (t. sit iir)

Predynastic 'Scorpion macehead' (c.3 1 00 bc);
a row of lapwings are shown hanging by their
necks from ropes attached to the standards
representing Upper Egyptian mums
(provinces). In this context the rekhyl appears
to be representing the conquered peoples of
northern Egypt during I he crucial period
when the country was transformed into a sin-
gle unified state. In the 3rd Dynasty
(2686-2613 Be), however, another row of lap-
wings were depicted in the familiar pinioned
form, alongside the m\e bows (symbolizing
Egypt's enemies), crushed under the feet of a
stone statue of djoser from his Step Pyramid
at Saqqara. From that point onwards there was
a continual ambiguity in the symbolic mean-

ing of the birds (to modern eyes at least) since
they could, in different contexts, be taken to
refer either to the enemies of Egypt or to the
loyal subjects of the pharaoh.

The rekhyl bird icon, sometimes taking the
form of winged and crested human figure, was
used regularly in the decoration of Egyptian
palaces and temples throughout [he Pharaonic
and Greco-Roman periods. The bird was usu-
ally depicted with a pair of human arms
upraised in the traditional gesture of worship
and in many cases il was perched on a neh
hieroglyph (meaning 'all') with an accompany-
ing star-shaped dim hieroglyph ('to adore'),
thus forming a rebus signifying 'all subject
peoples adore [the pharaoh]'.
P. F. Hotl.liux, The buds of, indent Egypt
(Warminster, 19S6), 93-5.

A. NlBDl, Lapwings and Libyans in aneient Egypt
(Oxford, 1986).

, ' The rhj.t people as permanent foreigners in
ancient Egypt', DE 9 (1987), 79-96.
C. Vandersleykx, 'The rekhyt and the Delta',
'The archaeology, geography and history if the
Delta, ed. A. Nibbi (Oxford, 19S9), 501-4.

religion

Ancient Egyptian 'slate religion' was con-
cerned with the maintenance of the divine
order; this entailed ensuring that life was con-
ducted in accordance with MAAT, and prevent-
ing the encroachment of chaos. In such a sys-
tem it was necessary for religion to permeate
every aspect of life, so that il was embedded in
society and polities, rather than being a sepa-
rate category. The Egyptian view of the uni-
verse was capable of incorporating a whole
series of apparently contradictory creation
myths. This holistic view also led to the treat-
ment of prayer, Magic and SCIENCE as realistic
and comparable alternatives; as a result it
made good sense to combine what might now
be described as medical treatment with a cer-
tain amount of ritual and the recitation of
prayers (see medicine), each component of the
overall treatment having the same aim: to sup-
press evil and maintain the harmony of the
universe.

The temples and their attendant priests
therefore served as a perpetual means of stabi-
lizing the universe. Each day they attended to
the needs of the god (who was thought to be
manifested in the cult image), made offerings
to him, and thus kept the forces of chaos at
bay. A distinction is sometimes made between,
on the one hand, the important state gods (e.g.
iiorus or ists) and local deities (e.g.
Banebdjedet at MENDES) and, on the other
hand, the 'popular' or 'household' deities such
as BES and t.-Uveret.

In actual practice the only major difference
seems to have been the lack of major cult-
places dedicated to the latter (and ewen
Taweret effectively had a cult-place at karmr-
in the form of the temple dedicated to her pre-
decessor Opet).

A more useful distinction can be made
between the tendency of the state religion to
focus on the concerns of the state and the
kingship, whereas surviving ostraca, stelae and
votive offerings show that the individual
Egyptians regarded religion primarily as a
melhod of averting disaster or harm on a more
personal level. Since childbirth was a particu-
larlj dangerous lime in the lives of ordinary
people, it is not surprising that the most pop-
ular household gods were credited with partic-
ular protective powers in this regard, while the
processes of procreation and birth were both
areas in which magic, prayer and medicine
were inextricably entwined.

Neglect of the gods, or blasphemy against
them, could lead to punishment. Various stelae
from deir ei.-medina, for instance, describe
how an offence against the cobra-goddess
MEKETSEGER led to blindness or other com-
plaints, and how, after penitence, the deitv had
cured the wrongdoer. Although concerned
with maintaining Maat, Egyptian religion
generally was not overtly directed towards the
personal morality that was implicit in uphold-
ing Maat. However, the WISDOM literati re
provides some insight into the Egyptians'
\ iews on morality, and some of the same con-
cepts are reflected in the funerary TEXTS of
the New Kingdom.

Egyptian funerary BELIEFS were also
directed towards the continuance of the
established order. The dead person attempted
10 ensure that through mummification, and
the provision of the established offerings and
funerary goods, the KA would receive nour-
ishment and the u-\ find the body. The
deceased would avoid the perils of the under-
world and travel safely in the bark of the sun-
god ra. Sec also ait.n; deification; nao.s and
SHRIKE.

S. S.AUNERON, The priests ifiineiem Egypt
(London, I960).

S. Morexz, Egyptian religion (London, 1975).
E. LlPfxskl (ed.), State and temple economy in the
ancient neaceasl, 2 vols (Leuven, 1979).
E. HoRNLNC, Concept ions of god in ancient F.gypl:
the one and lite many (London, 1 983).
J. Assmann, Agypten: Theologie mid Frbniniigheit
einer friihen Hochkultur (Stuttgart, 1984).
J. P. Al.t en et af, Religion mid philosophy in
ancient Egypt (New Haven, 1 989).
S. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian religion (London,
1992).

244

RENENUTET

RESHEE

Renenutet (Greek Themtmkk)

Cobra-goddess, protector of the king, and
goddess of fertility who was represented as a
cobra or a woman with a cobra head, some-
times nursing a child. Her name may be trans-
lated as 'the nourishing snake'. In the Old
Kingdom (2686-2181 bc) she was regarded as
an important guardian of the king, who united
with WADJYT as a fire-breathing cobra to pro-
tect him in the afterworld. She was also the

\ : \

IS;

Stele showing Setau, the Viceroy ofKush during
the reign of Rameses it, pouring a libation before
the goddess Renenutet, who is depicted in the form
of a serpent. 1 9th Dynasty, C.J300 HC, limestone,
from Buhen, 11. 50 cm. (eaW55)

protectress of the linen garment worn by the
king, which was thought to instil fear into his
enemies in the afterlife. By extension, she was
sometimes connected with the provision of
mummy bandages.

As the 'lady of fertile fields' and 'lady of
granaries' she was responsible for securing
and protecting the harvest. Her cult enjoyed
particular popularity at the city of Dja
(medinet maadi) in the fayum region where a
PSTTVAL was annually celebrated for her, and
where she was linked with the gods kobek and
Horus (this triad being known by the Greeks
as Hermouthis, Sekonopis and Ankhoes). In
this role as a corn goddess she was associated
with osmis in his youthful form of Neper
(Nepri). Her part in [he Osiris myth is
extended by a mention in the book of the
°EA» in which she is said to be the mother of
Horus from a union with ATOM. This led to
ber being identified with the goddess ISIS, who
Was herself regarded as a divine mother.
J- Broekhuis, Degodin Renenwetel (Assen, ] 971 ).

'reserve head'

Type of funerary sculpture, consisting of a
limestone human head, usually with excised
(or unsculpted) ears and enigmatic lines
carved around the neck and down the back of
the cranium. About thirty examples are known,
all deriving from private mastaba tombs in the
Memphite necropolis (principally at giza) dat-
ing to the Old Kingdom, primarily from the
reigns of kiiufli and kiiafra (2589-2532 bc).
They were placed in the burial chamber close
to the corpse, whereas other Old Kingdom
statues were usually placed in the chapel or the

SEIUMB.

The English term 'reserve head' refers to
the theory that the sculpted head was intended
lo act as a substitute for the real head of the
deceased in the afterlife. The facial features,
although idealized, are thought to have been
intended to be more 'realistic' than was usually
the case with Egyptian statuary, although this
view has been contested by Roland Tefnin.
According to Tefnin, the heads had a more-
complex religious function, simultaneously
serving both as a means by which the spirit
could identify its own body and as a symbol of
the ritual decapitation and mutilation of the
deceased, thus protecting the living from the
ill will of the dead.

E. Naville, Les letes de pierre deposees dam les
lombeaux egyptieus (Geneva, 1909).
C. L. Vandersleykn, 'ErsaLskopf \ Lexikon der
Agyptologie it, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1977), 11-14.
N. B. Millet, 'The reserve heads of the Old
Kingdom', Essays in honor of Don's Dunham, ed.
W. K. Simpson and W. M. Davis (Boston, 1981),
129-31.

R. Tffnin, 'Les tetes magiques de Gizeh 1 BSFE
120 (March 1991), 25-37.

Reshef (Reshep, Reshpu)
Amoritc war-god whose cult is strongly attest-
ed in Egypt during the 18th Dynasty (1550-
1 295 Be), no doubt as a result of the influences
emerging from the Egyptian 'imperial'

Limestone 'reserve head' from Giza. Old
Kingdom, late 4th Dynasty, C.2S5&BC. H. 27 cm.

(metropolitan museum, new york, rogers
fund 48.1 56)

Late Period statue of the war-god Reshef holding a
spear and a shield and wearing the white crown
with a gazelle 's head on the front. It is the only
surviving stone statue of Reshef Late Period,
provenance unknown, M. 29 cm. (metropolitan

MUSEl'M, NEPTYORK, GIFT OF JOSEPH W. DHEXEL,

J889, 89.2.215)

presence in the Levant. In the same way as the
Asiatic goddesses qedeshf.t, anat and
astarte, he became thoroughly absorbed into
Egyptian religion and was usually represented
as a bearded figure wearing an Upper
Egyptian white crown with a gazelle's head
at the front (in place of the sacred cobra or
uraeus of wadjyt) and a ribbon hanging down

245

ROMANS

at the rear. Sometimes he was portrayed in the
act of wielding a mace or spear, like the
Egyptian war-god montu, with whom he
developed considerable affinities. Although
there are many bronze statuettes of the god,
and he is depicted on a number of stelae from
sites such as Memphis and Qantir (often being
portrayed alongside other Asiatic deities), only
one stone statue has survived (Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York). It should be
noted that these images are rarely named,
therefore they could, in theory, represent
other Asiatic gods.

B. Grdseloit, Les debuts da culteck Rcchefen
Egypt: {Cairo, 1942).

W. K. Simpson, 'An Egyptian statuette of a
Phoenician god', BMMA x/6 (1 952), 1 82-7.
H. Df. Meulenaere, De cullus van Resjefin
Egypt (Leaven, 1955).
W.J. Fui.co, The Canaanite god Resep (New
Haven, 1976).

A. R. SCHULMAN, 'Reshep at Zagazig: a new
document', Studicn zu Sprache unci Religion
Agyplens: Festschrift W. W'fa?«x/»r/'(G6tu'ngen,
19S4), 855-6.1.

Romans

The Romans' earliest involvement in the
affairs of Egypt dates to the period when
Pompcy became engaged in the financial
affairs of the Ptolemaic court, ultimately
becoming the guardian of CLEOPATRA vn
(51-30 lit:) on the death of her father ptolemv
xii (80-51 bc). When Pompey was defeated by
Caesar at Pharsalia in 48 BC he fled to Egypt,
but was assassinated there. Caesar then
entered Egypt and reinstated Cleopatra (who
had been briefly deposed in 48 lie) as CM-
REGENT with her second brother, Ptolemy XIV
(47-44 lit:), who became her husband.
However, in 47 BC Cleopatra gave birth to a
son, Ptolemy Caesarion, whom she claimed to
have been fathered by Caesar. Her visit to
Rome, in 46 BC, attracted a great deal of atten-
tion, as did her political manoeuvres on her
return to Egypt, involving the assassination of
her brother and the installation of Caesarion
on die throne. Having been summoned by the
Romans to meet with Mark Antony at Tarsus,
she soon afterwards bore him twins.

In 34 BC, Mark Antony divided various
parts of the eastern Roman empire between
Cleopatra (now his wife) and her children,
while informing Rome that he was simply
installing client rulers. However, Octavian
(later Augustus) organized a propaganda cam-
paign against Antony, and in 32 BC Rome
declared war on Cleopatra. The following year
Octavian defeated Mark Antony at the naval
battle of Actium. Both Mark Antony and

Bronze statue of Horns dressed in Roman armour.
Roman period, provenance unknown, it. d] cm.
(i: 1.16062)

Cleopatra committed suicide, and Octavian
had Caesarion killed, thus effectively bringing
an end to the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

Octavian Augustus appointed himself
pharaoh on 30 August 30 Be, thenceforth
treating Egypt as an imperial estate, rather
than a Roman province. This special status
was retained under subsequent emperors.
Greek remained the official language, and
Alexandria the dominant city. The country
underwent a sparse military occupation,
although outposts are known throughout the
country as far as QASR IBUIM in Nubia.
Augustus ruled from 30 DC to AD 14, during
which time he appears to have done little to
endear himself to the native Egyptian elite, not
least through his contempt for traditional reli-
gion and his refusal to visit the sacred \pis bull
at Memphis.

Superficially, Roman rule was a continua-
tion of the Ptolemaic period, except that no
ruling family was resident in Egypt. This had
important consequences, in that il may have
removed any incentive for Egypt to create
wealth, given that it was effectively being
exploited at a distance, as a source of food for
Rome. Improvements in irrigation that had
been introduced by the Ptolemies were
exploited to the full by the Roman administra-
tion, and the produce was gathered up in tax

by governors who could be held personally
liable for any shortfalls.

The official adoption of Egyptian practices
such as the completion of Ptolemaic temples

(e.g. DENDEIU, KOM OUBO and I'lllLAE) in

Egyptian style, and the depiction of the
emperors in Egyptian garb did little to distract
attention from the harsh conditions under
which the poor laboured. There were various
revolts, including an uprising of Jews in
AD 1 15-17. The emperor Hadrian (ad 1 1 7-38)
looked more favourably on Egypt, and trav-
elled widely in the country. He even incorpo-
rated a serapel \i into his villa at Tivoli, along
with statues of Egyptian gods. The influence
of Egyptian religion on Rome became very
great at this period. However, conditions in
Egypt probably improved little as a result of
the imperial visit, which seems to have result-
ed only in the founding of new settlements
such as Antinoopolis in Middle Egypt.

During the reign of Marcus Aurelius
(adI 61-80), Egypt was stricken by a plague,
which can only have added to the gradual
depopulation of the country, while a rival bid
for power made by Avidius Cassias in AD 175
did nothing to help the situation. Conditions
improved slightly under Scptimius Severus
(AD 193-211) who reorganized the local
administration and carried oul various
building works, notably the repair of the
colossi ot memnon at Thebes. This concilia-
tory phase was short lived, and in \n 215
Caracalla (ad 198-217) banned Egyptians
from Alexandria, ordering the killing of all the
youth of the city because of a slander made by
the inhabitants.

The reign of Diocletian (ad 284-305) was
infamous for its persecution of Christians
(knowat as Copts in Egypt) and Egypt w as not
spared, perhaps even suffering more grievous-
ly through the influence of Sossianus
Hieroeles, a fanatical persecutor. This was an
attempt to enforce traditional Roman religion,
but il was not to be effective. Not onh did
Christianity survive, but Egyptian cults,
notably that of ISIS, were already established
within the Roman empire.

Ahhough the eavlm region, heavily settled
by Greeks, continued to be favoured by Roman
visitors (who needed special permission U: ?isit
the country), il too gradually underwent
depopulation, evident by the fourth century
AD. In AD 384 Theodosius (id 379-95) issued
an edict commanding the closing of all pagan
temples, and ordering the adherence of die
entire populace to Christianity. However, some
areas resisted, and PHILAE remained an oulpost
of traditional religion for a considerable timc
The Egyptian Christians continued to sel i'P

246

RO S E L LINI, IPPOLITO

ROYAL TITULARY

churches and monasteries in some of the

ancient temples, and to establish settlements

(see coi'Tic period).

J. G. Milne, J history of Egypt under Roman rule

(London, 1924).

H. I. Bell, Egypt from Alexander the Great to the

Arab conquest (London, 1956).

P. A. Brunt, 'The administrators of Roman

Egypt', Journal of Roman Studies 65 (1975),

124-47.

N. Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman rule

(London, 1983).

A. K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs

(London, 1986).

D. PKACOCk, Rome in the desert: a symbol of power
(Southampton, 1992).

Rosellini, (Niccolo Francesco) Ippolito

(1800-43)

Italian Egyptologist, born and educated in
Pisa, who accompanied Jean-Francois ciiAM-
POLlion on the Franco-Tuscan expedition to
Egypt in 1828-9. Although his career was rel-
atively short, his ten-volume description of
the major monuments of Egypt, published
between 1832 and 1844, was one of the most
influential Egyptological publications of the
mid-nineteenth century, rivalling the principal
publications of his contemporaries, Karl
Richard LEPSKJS and Sir John Gardner

WILKINSON,

I. Rosellini, / monumenti dell'Egitto e delta Nubia,
disegnali da/la spedizione scieutifico-lelteraria
Tascuna in Egttto, 3 pts, 10 vols (Pisa, 1832—14).
G. GABRIEL!, Ippolito Rosellini e il suo ginrnule
del/a spedizione lelleraria Toscano in Egi'tlo i/eg/i
ami 1828-29 (Romu, 1925).

E. Breccia (ed.), Scritti dedicati alia mermria di
Ippolito Rosellini ne primo cenicnario della morte
(Florenee, 1945).

G. Botti (ed.), Studi in memoria di Rosellini nel
primo cenienario della morte, 2 vols (Pisa, 1949-55).

Rosetta Stone

Black granitic stele discovered in 1799 at the
village of el-Rashid (Rosetta) in the western
Delta of Egypt. The Rosetta Stone (now in the
British Museum) is inscribed with a decree
issued at Memphis and dated to 27 March
196 BC, the anniversary of the coronation of
Ptolemv v Epiphanes. The main significance of
the text lies not in its content, a record of ben-
efits conferred on Egypt by Ptoiemy V, but in
the fact that it is written in three scripts: irtERO-
GLVPi-ncs, DEMOTIC and Greek. It should be
noted, however, that the text is an important
source for the re-cstahlishment of Ptolemaic
(Alexandrian) rule over Egypt after the seces-
sion of a great deal of the country at the end of
the reign of Ptolemy IV, ten years earlier.

The Rosetta Stone, inscribed in hieroglyphics (top),
demotic (centre) and Greek (bottom), provided a
key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script.
Although found at el-Rashid (Roseita) and
recording a decree issued in Memphis, it may
originally have been erected in Sais. Ptolemaic
period, 196 bc, granitic stone, h. U4m. (t : .\24)

Early Egyptologists such as Silvestre de
Sacv, Johann David Akerblad and Thomas
Young recognized the potential of the Rosetta
Stone in terms of the decipherment of
Egyptian hieroglyphs. Young deciphered the
demotic text, but it was Jean-Francois
Clvampollion who made the final break-
through, announcing in his famous Lettre d M.
Dacier'm 1822 that the Rosetta Stone had not
only enabled him to decipher the names of
Ptolemy and Cleopatra, as Young had, but also
provided him with the means lo understand
the basis of the phonetic and ideogrammatic
system employed in hieroglyphic texts.
C. A. Andrews, The Rosetta Stone (London,
1982).

S. Quikke and C. A. Andrews, The Rosetta
Stone: a 'facsimile drawing (London, 1988).

Royal Canon of Turin wilrin royal

CANON

royal ka see ka
royal titulary

The classic sequence of names and titles held
by each of the pharaohs consisted of five names
(the so-called 'fivefold titulary 1 ), which was not
established in its entirety until the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 bc). The five epithets to
some extent encapsulate Egyptian views on
kingship, in the sense that three of them stress
his role as a god, while the other two emphasize

the perceived division of Egypt into two lands,
both under the control of the pharaoh.

The 'birth name' (also known as the
nomen), such as amenemhat or rameses, was
introduced by the epithet 'son of ra\ It was
usually the last name in the sequence in
inscriptions giving the king's name and titles,
but it was the only one to be given to the
pharaoh as soon as he was born. The other
four names (Horus; He of the two ladies;
(Horus of) Gold; and He of the sedge and bee)
were given to the ruler at the time of his instal-
lation on the throne, and their components
mav sometimes convey something of the ide-
ology or intentions of the king in question.

In the late fourth millennium BC the earliest
kings' names are attested. These simple
'Horus names', painted on pottery vessels and
carved on fragmentary ivory and wooden
labels, typically consisted of a falcon perched
on a SERF.Kii frame containing the name of the
king in question. By the end of the 1st
Dynasty (3100-2890 bc), all elements of the
full titulary, apart from the 'son of Ra' (sa Ra)
name had appeared, although often they made
their initial appearance as isolated symbols and
epithets rather than as full-blown names. For

Fragment of ivory from the tomb of King Den at
Abydos. The king's 'Hums name' appears In a
serekh surmounted by the falcon-god Horus. 1st
Dynasty, c.2950 nc, if. h an. (tu35552)

instance, die 'He of the sedge and bee' title
(nesjv-bit) was first used in the reign of den
(c.2950 bc), but it was anedjib (c.2925 isc) who
was the first to have both the title 'he of the
sedge and bee' and also a second name
(Merpabia) linked with it.

Two further crucial developments in the
royal titulary took place during the 4th
Dynasty: Huni (2637-2613 bc) introduced the

247

ROYAL TITULARY

SACRED ANIM ALS

use of the CARTOUCHE to frame his 'He of the
sedge and bee' name, and Djedefra
(2566-2558 BC) was the first to use the 'son of
Ra' title. By the 1 1th Dynasty (2055-1985 lie)

the two names by whieh the king was most
regularly known were the two 'cartouche
names': 'he of the sedge and bee' (the throne
name) and 'son of Ra' (the birth name). The
religious implication of this change was that
die king was no longer first and foremost a
manifestation of Horus; instead he was seen
primarily in terms of his rule over the two
lands and his relationship with the sun-god.

The importance of the royal titulary in
terms of legitimizing and enshrining each
king's right to die throne is indicated both by
the apparent care taken in choosing names and
by the lengths to which many foreign rulers of
Egypt went to acquire authentic titulary. In
the reign of the Persian ruler Cambyscs i
(525-522 bc), for example, an Egyptian priest
called Udjahorresnet was employed to create a
suitable throne name for him (see Persia).
H. Gauthier, Le livre des rois d'Egypte, 3 vols
(Cairo, 1907-17).

P. Kaplont, 'Konigstitulatur', Lcxikon der
Agypiologie in, cd. W. Helek, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1980), 641-59.
N. Grimal, Lcs lermcs tie la propaganda royals
egyplienne (Paris, 1986).
S. QpBtKE, Who mere the pharaahs} (London,
1990).

Hieroglyphic sign meaning 'protection 1 ,
which may have originally represented the
rolled-up reed mat that would have sheltered
herdsmen; it might also have served as a type
of papyrus 'life-vest' for boatmen. It is clear
that the sign soon acquired the more general
meaning of 'protection', and, like the ankii
sign, it was used either as an amulet in its own
right or as a symbol held bv the deities BE5
and taweret. In the Middle Kingdom

Amulet in the form of
the sa hieroglyph made
in electrum wire.
Middle Kingdom,
c.2055-1650bc,
h. 4 cm. (f.a6S332)

(2055-1650 BC) the sa shape was used as a sin-
gle, repeated element in jewellery and on magic
wands, while in the New Kingdom (1550-
1069 bc) it usually occurred in combination
with other signs such as the ankh, djf.d or
TYET (Isis knot). Virtually all of the surviving
amulets in the form of the sa sign date to the
Middle Kingdom.

R. H. Wm.kin.son, Reading Egyptian an
(London, 1992), 196-7.

C. Andrews, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,
1994), 43.

sacred animals

The Egyptians held a number of animals to be
sacred as the living manifestations of various
gods (see ra). The belief may have come from
Prcdvnastic times, when animals were revered
for particular qualities, such as the bull for its
strength and the lion for its aggression. Some
of the NOME gods may have had their origins in
such totemistic beliefs.

In some cases, after £.700 isc, a whole
species of animal, bird or fish was revered, as
with the ibis (sacred to the god thotii) or the
falcon (sacred to iiorus and OSIRIS), while in

other cases individual animals might repre-
sent the god, as with the cynocephalus
baboon of Thoth, or more especially the apis
bull at Saqqara (see serapeum). In the latter
case only one Apis bull existed at any one
time, and this animal was selected and reared
with great care because of its distinctive
markings.

The sacred animal cults were overseen by
their own priesthoods, who cared for the ani-
mals and ultimately arranged for their mum-
mification and burial. In the case of an Apis
BUCiiLS or mnevls bull, the burial would be
very elaborate, involving funerary equip-
ment and ceremonies similar to those sur-
rounding a royal funeral. The hawks and the
ibises, on the other hand, were donated in
their thousands as votive offerings, therefore
manv of the mummies were placed in wooden
boxes or sealed pottery jars. Pilgrims would
pay for the embalming and burial of one of
these birds as an act of piety. The jars con-
taining mummified birds or animals were
buried in underground galleries such as the
extensive complexes at saqqara or TUNA ee-
CtEbee, while the Apis and Buchis bulls, as
well as their mothers, were each allocated
splendid hypogea (subterranean tomb cham-
bers) with individual granite sarcophagi. At
Saqqara the sacred baboons were found
buried in wooden shrines set in stone niches
in their own gallery. These cults grew in
importance from the late New Kingdom
onwards, reaching a peak in the Late Period
(747-332 BC);, when they may have formed an
important part of the economy. The Sacred
Animal Necropolis at north Saqqara was
excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society
during the 1960s, and two more recent
expeditions at the site, during the 1990s,
have concentrated firstly on the analysis of
the chronological development of the gal-
leries, and secondly on the use of the mum-
mified remains to study the genetic history
of primates.

As well as the numerous galleries of
sacred animals at Saqqara, there were
important centres for the cult of sacred rams
at MENDES, HERAKLEOPOLIS MAGNA, ESNA and

elephantine, sacred cats at tell ba.sta and

beni masan, Mnevis bulls at heuopoli.-. (and

possibly el-amarna), Buchis bulls at

armant, the sacred cow of Hathor al ih.n-

dera, and sacred crocodiles at kom nMiio,

MEDINET Ei.-FAYUM (Crocodilopolis) and el-

Maabda.

J. D. RAY, 'The world of North Saqqara', WA

10/2(1978), 149-57.

G. T. Martin, The sacred animal necropolis al

North Saqqara (London, 1981).

248

SACRED LAKE

SAFF TOMB

B. Gessler-Loiir, Die heiligen $e>
ft/H^/(Hildesheim, 1983).

m agyptischer

sa/f tomb

Type of rock-cut tomb constructed primarily
in the el-Tarif area of western Thebes for the
local rulers of the Theban 11th Dvnasty
(i\tf.f i-nr; 2125-2055 bc). The term stiff
(Arabic: 'row') refers to the rows of rock-cut
pillars which stood around three sides of a
large trapezoidal sunk forecourt, forming the
distinctive frontage of each of the tomb
chapels. Private saff tombs have also been
excavated at armant and DENDERA,
D. Arnold, Griiber des Allen itnd Mittleren
Reiches in Ei-Tarif(UmtiZ, 1976).

Sah (Orion)

Personification of the principal southern con-

Amulets of six sacred animals, top left to rigi it
Ram in turquoise faience, Third Intermediate
Period. Ibis in turquoise and dark blue,
representing Thoth; the bill is supported by the
feather of Maat, Late Period, L. 4.5 cm. Apis bull
in turquoise faience, Suite period, l. 2.9 cm.
bottom left to RIGHT Cow, probably
representing Hathor, in bronze, Late Period. Lion
in pale green faience, representing Nefertem, Suite
period. Jackal, probably representing iVepwawet,
Third Intermediate Period, (n.-il 1896, 36451,
61622, 11600, 64617, 36448)

D. Kkssler, Die Heiligen Ticre and der Konig I
(Wiesbaden, 1989).

R. Perizonius ct al., 'Monkey mummies and north
Saqqara', Egyptian Archaeology 3 (199?,), 31-5
P. T. Nicholson, 'Archaeology beneath Saqqanf ,
Egyptian Archaeology 4 (3994), 7-8.

sacred lake

Artificial expanse of water located within die
precincts of many Egyptian temples from the
Old Kingdom to the Roman period (2686 BO-
|Q 395). The most common type is that of the
Temple of Amun at karnak: a rectangular,
stone-lined reservoir filled by ground water
and entered via several stairw r ays, which the
Egyptians described as a she netjeri ('divine
poof). The sacred lake fulfilled a number of
different cultic purposes, serving as a setting
for the sailing of barks containing images of
the gods, the home of such aquatic sacred ani-
mals as geese or crocodiles, and a source of
pure water for the daily ritual ablutions and
libations of the temple. As well as the conven-
tional rectangular lake found at such sites as

i^egfilsfc^

The sacred lake in the precincts of the temple of
Hathor at Dendera. (l. Sli.lirj

.ARMANT, MEDINET HABU, DF.NDERA and TAN1S,

there were several other forms, such as the
horseshoe-shaped pool (known as an isherw-
watcr) that enclosed the main buildings in the
sacred precinct of Mm a( Karnak. There were
also circular reservoirs completely surround-
ing the main cult-place of the Osireion at aby-
DOS and encircling the shrines of the Maru-
Aten at el-amarna.
H. Bonnet, Realkxikon der dgyptischen

Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), 694-5.

P. Mon'it.t, Le lacsacrede Tunis (Paris, 1966).

stellation that was later known as Orion. The
god was described as the 'glorious soul of
osiris' and formed a divine triad along with
the dog star sopuf.t (Sothis) and his son
SOPED, who was the god of the eastern border.
P. Casanova, 'De queiques legendes
astronomiqoes arabes considerees dans leurs
rapports avee la mythologie egyptienne', BIFAO
2(1902), 1-39(17-24).

K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae magicae: Die
griechischen Zauberpapyri (Stuttgart, 1973),
26-33.

H. Blhkens, 'Orion', Lexikon der Agyptologie IV,
ed. W. Hclck, E. Otto and W. Wcstcndorf
(Wiesbaden, 19S2), 609-11.

249

_SAQQARA

Sais (Sa el-Hagar)

Town in the western Delta, the remains of
which are mostly covered by the modern vil-
lage, and date principally to the eighth to sixth
centuries lie. Its patron goddess was \eitii,
whose cult is attested at least as early as the 1st
Dynasty (3100-2890 BC), suggesting that Sais
itself must have been occupied from the late
Predynastic period onwards. It was the provin-
cial capital of the fifth nome of Lower Egypt
and the seat of the rulers of the 24th and 26th
Dynasties (727-715 and 664-525 bc). There
appear to be no surviving remains earlier than
the late New Kingdom ( t .1100 bc). The
remains of the tell have been largely destroyed
by seluikhin (farmers removing mud-brick
deposits for use as fertilizer), leaving only a
few relief blocks in situ, and the site has not
yet been scientifically excavated. See also

.SAITE PERIOD.

B. Porter and R. Moss, Topographical

bibliography IV (Oxford, 1934), 46-9.

L. Habacni, 'Sais and its monuments', J.^ J/; 42

(1942), 369-416.

R. ki.-Sayed, Documents relatifs ti Sms et ses

divinites (Cairo, 1975).

— , La dime Neith it Sais (Cairo, ] 982).

Saite period

Term applied to the 26th Dynasty (664-
525 bc), when Egypt was ruled from the city of"
SAIS in the Delta. The overall character of the
period stems from the fact that the first Saite
ruler, psamtek t (664-610 bc), had shaken off
ASSYRIAN and Kushite rule, thus ushering in a
new era of Egyptian nationalism, This cultur-
al change was expressed primarily bv ihe
sculpture and painting of the period, which
were often consciously modelled on earlier
work, particularly that of the Old and Middle
Kingdoms (2686-1650 bc), a process thai had
already begun in the late Third Intermediate
Period and especially in the 25th Dynasty
(747-656 bc), when Kushite kings sought to
legitimize their rule by using established
Egyptian artistic styles.

The enormous care with which Saite artists
copied ancient works of art is indicated by the
fact that they appear to have overlaid some of
the panels in the Step Pyramid at SAQQARA with
grid lines in order to reproduce the reliefs,
even creating a new 7 entrance into the pyramid
in order to gain access to the subterranean
chambers. It is interesting to note, however,
that the copies did not necessarily reproduce
the originals in precise detail. Instead, there
were often artistic innovations, as in the ease of
the reliefs in the tomb of MENTUEMIIAT (tt34;
c. 700-650 BC.) which, although apparently
drawing on scenes from the nearby 18th-

Dynasty tomb of \ie\na (tt69; c.140() bc:),
nevertheless added new details. Such observa-
tions have led to suggestions that the Saite
period should be regarded as a time of vigorous
renaissance rather than slavish archaizing.

Smuhrh traditional religious practices
were reinforced but often simultaneously re-
shaped; thus the SACRED animal ctdts grew in
importance, and their upkeep became an
increasingly important element of the
Egyptian economy. The cult-centre of the
goddess \eiti! at Sais was expanded and
embellished, while new temples were con-
structed at Memphis (still the administrative
centre) as well as at Thebes and other major
cities throughout Egypt. During this period
the Theban region was effectively controlled
by the god's wife of AMUR In another indica-
tion that the Saite period was a time of
progress as well as revival, the demotic script,
first attested in c.700 be, gained wide accep-
tance under the 26th-Dynasty rulers,

The Egyptian army came increasingly to
depend upon GREEK mercenaries, and as early
as 630 bc a settlement for Greek traders was
founded at \ALkR vns in the Delta. The town
was later reorganized under -ui.mo.se ii
(570-526 bc), who was traditionally credited
with its foundation. This economic connec-
tion with the Greeks inevitably led to Egypt's
closer involvement in the affairs of the
Mediterranean, and a change in outlook. From
this time onwards, many Greeks travelled to
Egypt, including HERODOTUS, who described
Egypt in the period immediately following the
Saite dynasty. See also LATE period.

J. D. Coonei , 'Three early Saite tomb reliefs',

JNES9(]950l 193-203.

H. Kee.s, 'Zur Innenpolitik der Saitendynastic',

Nachrichten der Geschichte rind Wissenschaji,

Gottingen Phil.-Hist. Klasse i (1963), 96-106,

A. B. Lu n n, 'The Late Period, 664-323 bc".

.-indent Egypt; a social history, B. G. Trigger

et al. (Cambridge, 1983), 279-348.

P. Der Manuelian, Living in the pas! (London,

1994}.

Saqqara

Site of the principal necropolis of the ancient
city of MEMPHIS, situated some 17 km from the
gka suburb of Cairo, which was in use hum
the 1st Dynasty (3100-2890 bc) to the
Christian period (\n 395-540). The entire
length of the site is about six kilometres, with
a maximum width of about 1.5 km. It has been
suggested that the name of the site may be
derived from that of the god sokar, although
Arab chroniclers state, more plausibly, that it
derives from the name of an Arab tribe trace
resident in the area.

The importance of the Saqqara necropolis
is indicated by the very crowded nature of the
burials, with some having been re-used many
limes and most having been extensively plun-
dered throughout antiquity. Beneath the
ground, Saqqara is honeycombed with inter-

The Step Pyramid oj'Djoser at Saqqara is
surrounded by a complex of ritual buildings and
courts, including these 'dummy chapels' in the scd
festival court, reconstructed byJ.-P. Lane/:
(p. t: NICHOLSON)

250

SA QQARA

SAQQARA

mastaba tombs of the 1st Dynasty

2 mastaba tombs of the 6th Dynasty

3 New Kingdom necropolis

4 Antiquities Inspectorate

cut tombs, galleries and robber shafts, not
always visible on the desert surface.

The lst-Dynasty ruler narmer is the earli-
est king whose name is known from Saqqara;
his actual burial was almost certainly in Tomb
Bl7— IS of the Umm el-Qa'ab cemetery at aby-
dos, but a stone bowl bearing his name was
discovered in one of the extensive storerooms
beneath the Step Pyramid of DjOSEB
(2667-2648 bc). It is not impossible that there
was originally also a monument of the reign of
Narmer at Saqqara, since slightly later lst-
Dynasty MASTABA tombs are well attested at
the site, forming a distinct group along the
northeastern edge of the plateau.

It is thought likely that the original site of
the White Walls (one of the names for ancient
Memphis) was probably near the modern vil-
lage of Abusir, which is situated at the north-
eastern edge of the plateau, close to the lst-
and 2nd-Dvnasty tombs. 7'he development of
an extensive cemetery of mastaba tombs along
the plateau edge during the first two dynasties
might have gradually produced a situation
when the population at Memphis would have
round it difficult to distinguish any particular
tomb among the great mass on the edge of the

plateau; it has therefore been suggested that
this may be partly why the architect imhotkp
devised such an innovative structure as
Djoser's funerary monument in the early 3rd
Dynasty (see pyramids). This was the first
time that stone architecture had been used on
such a large scale in Egypt. It therefore still
followed closely the earlier building styles con-
nected with mud-brick and organic materials:
thus the 'palace-facade' style of decoration
continued to be used, and wooden columns
were transformed into stone.

Mastaba tombs were constructed at
Saqqara for the Memphite elite during the
Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc), many of them
focusing closely on the pyramids of the kings,
which date from the .ird-Dynasly complex of
Djoser to the 13th-Dynasty monument of
Khendjer (<\1748 BC). The 5th-Dynasty pyra-
mid of Unas (2375-2345 bc:) was the first to
be inscribed with the pyrmvud texts, while
the pyramid complex of the 6th-Dynasty
ruler Pepy n (2278-2184 lie;) was effectively
the last major funerary monument of the Old
Kingdom at Saqqara. The remains of the
small mud-brick pyramid of the 8th-Dynasty
ruler Ibi aptly symbolize the decline in the

Plan of north Saijijara.

political and economic system from the Old
Kingdom to the First Intermediate Period
(2181-2055 bc).

In the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 Be)
and Second Intermediate Period (1650-
1550 bc) the area around DAHSHUR and EL-
i.isiit, as well as the sites of et-mhun,
HAWARA and THEBES, became the main centres
of royal funerary activity. Although Thebes
was probably the religious capital of the New
Kingdom, Memphis retained a great deal of
its administrative importance and, as for
most of Egyptian history, it was the real seat
of government. Many important officials of
the New Kingdom resided in the city, and
although their rulers chose to be buried in
the VALLEY oi 1 the KINGS at Thebes, many
nobles constructed elaborate temple-style
tomb chapels for themselves at Saqqara, usu-
ally surrounded by the smaller tombs of their
servants and family.

Some of these New Kingdom tombs were
recorded by Karl Richard LEBSIUS during his
expedition of 1842-5, but their precise loca-
tions were subsequently difficult to ascertain

251

SAQQARA

_SARAPIS

monastery of Apa Jeremias

pyramid of Meryra (Pepy I]

pyramid of

Neferkara (Pepy II) S

tomb of Shepseskaf
(the Mastabat el-Faraun)

pyramid of the late /fyl
Middle Kingdom — '

from maps. Since 1975, the joint expedition
of the Egypt Exploration Society and Leiden
Museum has rediscovered some of: these
tombs, in a part of the necropolis to the
south of the causeway of the pyramid of
Unas, where the finest surviving tombs
date to the period between the time
of tutankhamun (1336-1327 bc) in the late
18th Dynasty and Rameses n (1279-1213 BC)
in the early 19th. The rediscoveries have
included the tomb of Maya, the treasury offi-
cial of Tutankhamun, and that of his col-
league, the generalissimo fiork.mhkb (1323-
1295 uc), who later became king and was
buried in a royal tomb (kv 57) in the Valley of
the Kings at Thebes, In the cliffs towards the
Early Dynastic remains at the northern end
of the Saqqara plateau, a French expedition
led by Alain Zivie has also discovered the
tomb of Aperia (or Apcr-el), who was north-
ern vizier during the reigns of .akhf.naten
(1352—1336 BC) and Tutankhamun, thus
probably indicating that Memphite officials
continued to govern from Memphis even
when a new capital had briefly been estab-
lished at KL-A.Y1ARN_\.

There was also New Kingdom activity in
northwestern Saqqara, in the form of the
hypogea (tomb chamber) of the sacred APIS
bull, which began to be buried in the under-
ground galleries of the Serapf.um from at

RIGHT Carved relief from, the mastaba-chapel of
Plahhotep at Saqqara, showing a herdsman
leading forward a group of prize cattle. 5th
Dynasty, &2380 bc. (graham iiarrison)

left Plan of south Saqqara.

least the time of Amenhotep in (1390-1352
bc) until the Roman period. By the Late
Period (747-332 uc) onwards, large numbers
of sacred animals were being buried in h uge
quantities in the vast underground cata-
combs at the north end of the site; these
mummified animals and birds included cows
identified as the 'Mothers of Apis 1 , as well as
cynockpfialus baboons, hawks and ibises.
The area was probably chosen for a sacred
animal necropolis because of its traditional
connection with Tmhotep, who had become
identified with thoth, a god particularly
associated with baboons and ibises. The texts
suggest that rams sacred to the god
Banebdjedet (see mendes), as well as the
calves of the Apis bull, may also have been
buried in this area, although the actual gal-
leries have not yet been located. Further to
the east, there were burials of dogs or jackals
connected with the Anubeion (see anubis),
and of cats connected with the Bubasteion
(see bastet). So many cats were buried in
this pari of Saqqara that their mummified
remains were deposited in many of the earli-
er private funerary monuments, including
the nearby tomb of Aper-el.

Private tombs of post-New Kingdom date
26th and 27th Dynasties are also located
near the pyramid of Unas. Many of the
artists decorating tombs of the 26th Dynasty
(or saite period) deliberately copied a great
deal of the earlier funerary art at Saqqara.
Tombs of the 30th Dynast)' (380-343 BC)
and Greco-Roman period {332 BC— AD 395)
are clustered mainly on the northern side of
the Step Pyramid, and towards the
Serapeum.

Since manv of the tombs at Saqqara were
constructed from unusually small stone blocks
(particularly during the New Kingdom), they
could easily bc dismantled to provide a read}
source of building stone for later building
operations. Much of the monastery of Apa
Jeremias, to the south of the Unas causeway,
for instance, was constructed from such re-
used blocks. During the time of the monastery,
a small Coptic settlement was established to
the southeast, close to the valley temple of
Unas.

: '■:.! " \ '■,:■■::■.

W. B. Emery, Great tombs of the first dynasty,

3 vols (Cairo and London, 1949-58).

J. D. R« , 'The world of North Saqqara 1 , /[."-/,

10 (2} (1978) 149-57.

G. T Martin, 'The New Kingdom necropolis at

Saqqara', Acts of the First International Congrrss

of Egyptology, ed. W. F. Reinecke (Berlin, 1 979),

457-63.

— , The sacred animal necropolis at north Saqqara

(London, 1981).

J. M AT, EX , 'Saqqara, Nekropolen nr\ Lexikon der

Agyptologie v, cd. W. Hclck, E. Otto and

W. WestendorF (Wiesbaden, 1984), 410-12.

G, T Martin, The hidden tombs of Memphis

(London, 1991).

J. Van Dijk, The New Kingdom necropolis of

Memphis: historical ami iconographical studies

(Groningen, 1993).

Sarapis see sfrapis

sarcophagus see coffins and sarcophagi

Satet (Saiis)

Goddess associated with the island of
Elephantine at asavan and guardian of the
southern frontiers of Egypt. She was usually
depicted as a woman wearing the white CROWN
of Upper Egypt, with antelope horns on
either side of it From the New Kingdom
onwards, she was regarded as the wife ol the
creator god khnum. She was also considered
to be the mother of ANUKET the huntress. The
principal cult centre of Satet at Elephantine
(on the site of an earlier Predynastic shrine)
was excavated by a German expedition during
the 1980s and 1990s.

Although she was most common!} wor-
shipped in the region of Aswan, her name has
also been found inscribed on jars excavated
from the subterranean galleries of the Step
Pyramid of Djoser at SAQQARA, and she is men-
tioned in the PYRAMID texts as a goddess

252

SATIS

SCORPION

specifically concerned with purifying the
deceased. Her temple at Elephantine is situat-
ed at the point at which the first waters of the
annual Nile inundation would be heard before
the flood itself became visible. This geograph-
ical situation would perhaps have emphasized
the aspects of her role relating to fertility. In
her function as protectress of the southern
border she was considered to repel Egypt's
enemies with her arrows.
G.Roedkr, 'Sothis und Sabs', ZAS45 (1908),
22-30.

D.Vulbelle, Satis e! Anoukis (Mainz, 1981).
G. Dreyer, Der Tempel der Sutet: die Fttnde der
Fruhzeit und des Allen Reiches (Mainz, 1986).

SatJS see SATKT

scarab

Common type of amulet, seal or ring-bezel
found in Egypt, Nubia and Syria-Palestine
from the 6th Dynasty until the Ptolemaic
period (c. 2345— 30 bc). The earliest were
purely amuletic and uninscribed; it was only
during the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC)
that they were used as seals. The scarab seal is
so called because it was made in the shape of
the sacred scarab beetle (Scarabaem sacer),
which was personified by kjtepri, a sun-god
associated with resurrection. The flat under-
side of the scarab, carved in stone or moulded
in faience or glass, was usually decorated with
designs or inscriptions, sometimes incorpo-
rating a royal name. Scarabs, however, have
proved to be an unreliable means of dating
archaeological contexts, since the royal name
is often that of a long-dead ruler;
Menkheperra, the prenomen oFThutmose ill
(1479-1425 BC), being a particularly common
example.

During the reign of amenhotep tii
(1390-1352 bc), a series of unusually large

II mmiff

fazed steatite commemorative scarab of
menhotep in describing a lion hunt undertaken
nhekwu 18th n,,,,,,,/,, c.]360bc, t-t. 8.5 cm.

Amenhotep „,,...

h the king. 18th Dynast}

(ea29438)

scarabs were produced to celebrate certain
events or aspects of Amenhotep's reign, from
the hunting of bulls and lions to the listing of
the titles of Queen tiy. There were also a
number of funerary types of scarab, such as
the large 'winged scarab' (virtually always
made of blue faience and incorporated into the
bead nets covering mummies), and the 'heart
scarab' (usually inscribed, with Chapter 30b of
the book OP THE dead), which was included in
burials from at least the 13th Dynasty
(1795-1650 nc) onwards.

The term scaraboid is used to describe a seal
or amulet which has the same ovoid shape as a
scarab but may have its back carved in the
form of some creature other than the scarab
beetle. This appears to have developed out of
the practice of carving two-dimensional ani-
mal iorms on the flat underside of the scarab,
which is known as early as the First
Intermediate Period (2181-2055 bc).
P. E. NEWBERRY, Ancient Egyptian scarabs: an
introduction to Egyptian seals and signet rings
(London, 1906; repr. Chicago, 1979).

C. BcANKENBERG-VANDeLDEN, The large

commemorative scarabs of Amenhotep at (I.eiden,

1969).

E. Hoknung and E. Staehei.in, Skarabden und

andere Siegelainulette aus Busier Saminlungen

(Mainz, 1976).

M. MALAISE, Les scarabees de coeur dans I Egypte

ancienne (Brussels, 1978).

B. JAEGER, Essm ck classification ties scarabees
Menkheperre (Gbttingcn, 1982).

G. T. Martin, Scarabs, cylinders and other ancient
Egyptian seals (Warminster, 1985).

C. Andrews, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,
1994), 50-9.

science

The need to solve particular problems, such
as the moving of large weights of stone, or
the calculation of the height or angles of
pyramids, was usually the inspiration for
particular developments in Egyptian 'sci-
ence', which does not seem to have existed as
a word or concept in its own right. Research
appears not to have been undertaken for its
own sake, and no attempt was made to derive
general laws, such as mathematical theorems,
from practical solutions. In a society in
which religion played a major role it is
unsurprising to find that pure research w r as
not conducted. Any phenomenon could be
explained by reference to the actions of the
gods, and such science as there was may be
seen as practical measures, such as the pre-
diction of the Nile inundation (see ntlome-
ters) and the construction of temples and
funerary complexes.

Nevertheless, the Egyptians were clearly
capable of keeping accurate scientific records,
when necessary, and such surviving docu-
ments as the Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus
(New York Historical Society) even suggest
that they sometimes conducted what amount
to scientific experiments. Similarly, the atten-
tion to astronomy in the development of the
calendar shows careful observation,
although they do not seem to have sought
reasons for the discrepancy between the sea-
sons and their calendar, a phenomenon which
was due to the need for an additional quarter-
day each year.

There are undoubtedly still aspects of
ancient Egyptian technology that remain
poorly understood (such as the precise meth-
ods by which many of the monuments were
constructed), but there is no reason to believe
that the Egyptians had any special hidden
knowledge that has since been lost.

See also astronomy and astrology; magic;

MATHliMATICS and MEDICINE.

O. Neugebauer, The exact sciences in antiquity,

2nd ed. (Providence, 1957).

R.J. Gn. lings, Mathematics in the lime of the

pharaohs (New York, 1982).

W. Westendorf, 'Wissen sell aft', Eexikon der

Agypto/ogie Vi, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and

W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1986), 1278-9.

M. Cl . AGETT, Ancient Egyptian science, 2 vols

(Philadelphia, 1989).

scorpion

Arachnid which, like the serpent, became
the object of cults and spells from the
earliest times in Egypt, doubtless principally
because of the fear of its sting. Two main
species of scorpion are found in Egypt: the
paler, more poisonous Buthridae and the
darker, relatively harmless Scorpinnidae. The
scorpion ideogram, one of the earliest known
hieroglyphic signs, was depicted on wooden
and ivory labels found in the late Predynastic/
Early Dynastic royal cemetery at abydos and
also among the cache of cult equipment in the
Early Dynastic temple at iherakonpolis. A
Prolodynastic ruler called scorpion was por-
trayed on the 'Scorpion macehead' from
Hierakonpolis.

The goddess serket was the principal
divine personification of the scorpion
(although Isis was also said to have been pro-
tected from her enemies by seven scorpions),
and was usually depicted w r ith a scorpion
perched on her head. Another, less well-
known deity, the god Shed (also described as
'the saviour'), was linked with the scorpion
and considered to afford protection against its
sting; two stelae dedicated to Shed were found

253

SCORPION

SCRIBE

fdiie-drawing of the relief scent' on the Scorpion
macehead from Hierakonpolis, slit/wing King
Scorpion wearing tile white crown ant! conducting
a ritual, c.3100 DC. (DSAWN BY RtCIIARD
P, LRKIWSON A1TER MARIAS COXJ

in a chapel associated with the workmen's vil-
lage at kl-amarna. Images of scorpions are
also depicted on cippi, a type of stele used to
ward off scorpion stings and snake bites from
the Late Period onwards (see iiorus). See also

TA-UITjKT.

H. Kanter, L Giftschlangen und Skorpione

\ordafrikas', Die Sahara and litre Randgebiel I,

ed. H. ScHIFFERS (Munich, 1971 ).

E. Horxung and E. Staehelin, Skaraha'en and

andere Siegehunulette mis Busier Saininlungen

(Mainz, 1976), 131—3-

J.-C. Goyon, 'Hededvt: Isis-scorpion et Isis an

scorpion: en marge du papyrus de Brooklyn

47.218.50', BIFAO 78 (1978), 439-58.

P. Bkiirk.NS, 'Skorpion', Lexikon tier Agyptologie

v, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W Westendorf

(Wiesbaden, 1984), 987-9.

E Kanel, 'La nepe et !e scorpion': un monographic

surla deesse Serbet (Paris, 1984).

Scorpion ((.3150 bc)

Name held by two Prutodvnastic rulers, one of
whom was perhaps buried in Tomb L-j of the
Lmm el-Qa'ah cemetery at abydos.

A fragmentary pear-shaped limestone
macehead (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford),
bearing a depiction of a man wearing the white
crown of Upper Egypt and identified as King
Scorpion, was excavated from the 'main
deposit' in the temple precinct at hierakonto-
LIS in 1896—8. The stratigraphic context of the
'Scorpion macehead' was poorly recorded by
the excavators, James Quibell and Frederick
Green, but the style of its decoration almost
certainly dates it to the late Predynastic
period when the early Egyptian state was first
appearing (r.31 SO no). Like the narmkr
palette and macehead, it is decorated with a
raised relief depiction of an early pharaoh

engaged in ritualistic activities. On the
Scorpion macehead this roval figure, identi-
fied by scorpion and rosette ideograms, wears
the white crown of Upper Egypt and is appar-
ently excavating a ceremonial irrigation canal
with the help of attendants.

Tomb L-j at Abvdos was excavated bv a
team of German archaeologists in 1988,
revealing a twelve-chambered subterranean
tomb, originally roofed with wood, matting
and mud-brick. Although it had been plun-
dered in antiquity, one chamber still contained
over four hundred vessels imported from
southern Palestine, and the excavation of the
burial chamber revealed fragments of a wooden
shrine and an ivory model /;e/.'rt-sceptre (see
CROWNS), suggesting that the tomb's owner
was a ruler. Throughout the site there were
large quantities of fragments of pottery dating
to the late Predynastic (NAQADfl.) period, many
of which bore ink inscriptions consisting of
the scorpion hieroglyph; it is considered
unlikely, however, thai this Scorpion was the
same ruler as the figure represented on the
Scorpion macehead.

J. E. Quibell and E W. Greex, Hierakonpolis,
2 vols (London, 1900-2).
A.J. Arkell, 'Whs King Scorpion Menes? 1 ,
-tuiujuity 46 (1963), 221-2.
E. J. BftUMGARTEL, 'Scorpion and rosette and the
fragment of the large Hierakonpolis macehead 1 ,
ZAS 92 (1966), 9-14.
M. A. HOFPMAM, Egypt before the pharaohs
(London, 1980), 312-17.
G. Drkykr, 'Uram el-Qaab:
Nachuntersuchungen im friihzeitlichen
Konigsfriedhof 5. /6. Vorbcricht', MR UK 49
(1993), 23-62.

scribe

Term used to translate the Egyptian word sesh,
which was applied not only to clerks or copy-
ists but to the class of bureaucratic official
around whom the entire Egyptian political,
economic and religious system revolved (see
ai: )mi\istration). Throughout the Pharaonic
period it is likely that only a small percentage
of the population was literate, and the scribal
elite tended to pass on their profession from
father to son, thus enabling power to be
retained by the same family groups over long
periods. The prestige attributed to the scribal
profession is indicated by the popularity of the
'scribe statue 1 , portraying members of the elite

right Qitartzite statue of the chamber hi in
Pessliuper, who is lioldiug a papyrus roil in his left
hand in the attitude of a scribe. 25th or 26th
Dynasty, provenance unknown, it. 53 cm.
(r: il514)

in typical cross-legged scribal pose, even if
they had never served as professional scribes

Many of the HIERATIC texts used in the
EDUCATION of scribes, in preference to the
slower and more ceremonial hieroglyphs
consisted of descriptions of the comfort and
prestige enjoyed by scribes, in contrast to the
rigours of manual labour (see wisdom LITER-
ATURE and literature). Much of the work
and training of scribes is thought to have
taken place in an institution known as the

J-IOLSE OF LIFE.

The hieroglyphic signs used for the terms
'scribe' and 'writing' were both essentially
depictions of the scribal equipment, consist-
ing of a stone or wooden palette containing
two cakes of ink (usually red and black), a
leather bag or pot holding water, and a set of
reed brushes. During the Pharaonic period,
the brushes were made from the stem of
fundus maritimus, but from the Ptolemaic
period (332-30 no) onwards reed pens cut
from the stems of Phragmites aegyptiaca were
more frequently used. The surfaces on which
scribes wrote varied from simple ostraoa
(chips of stone and potsherds) to more expen-
sive manufactured materials such as PAPYRUS,
leather sheets and thinly plastered wooden
boards.

R. J. Williams, 'Scribal training in ancient
Egypt', JAOS 92 (1972), 214-21.
J. R. Baint.s, 'Literacy and ancient Egyptian
society', Man 18 (1983), 572-99.

254

SCRIBE

SEA PEOPLES

SEDEINGA

Sea Peoples

Loose confederation of peoples of the eastern
Mediterranean, who attempted to settle in
Syria-Palestine and Egypt between the thir-
teenth and twelfth centuries BC. The names
and characteristics of the individual peoples,
some of whom probably originated from the
Aegean and Asia Minor, are known from
reliefs at MEDINET haul and KAXNAK as well as
from the text of the Great Harris Papyrus
(now in the British Museum), a historical text
at the end of a list of temple endowments from

Detail of the head of a Sherden soldier from the

reliefs depicting the battle ofQitdesh on the outer
wall of the temple of Rameses it at Ahydos.
(i. shah)

the reign of rameses in (1184-1153 BC). It is
clear from these sources that the Sea Peoples
were not bands of plunderers but part of a
great migration of displaced peoples. When
they moved overland, the warriors were gener-
ally accompanied by their wives and families
carrying their possessions in ox-drawn carts;
there was a clear intention to settle in the areas
through which they passed.

Their first attack on Egypt took place in the
fifth regnal year of the 19th-Dynasty ruler
MERENPTAH (1213-1203 BC), The LIBYANS,
allied with these migrant peoples, named as
the Ekwesh, Lukka, Mcshwesh, Shekelesh,
Sherden and Teresh, launched an attack on the
Delta. Merenptah gained a victory, killing
more than six thousand of them and routing
the rest. He then recorded his victory on one
of the walls of the temple of Amun at Karnak
and on the so-called ISRAEL Stele in his funer-
ary temple.

In the eighth regnal year of Rameses in, the
Sea Peoples returned. They had perhaps
already brought about the destruction of the
pTTITE empire, and are probably to be held
responsible for the sacking of the client city of
Cgarit on the Syrian coast as well as cities

such as Alalakh in nordiern Syria. This time
the list included the Denen, Pelesct,
Shekelesh, Sherden, Tjekel, Teresh and
Weshwesh, and the attack came by both land
and sea. Rameses ill's troops in Palestine
defeated the land-based attack, while the
Egyptian navy destroyed the enemy fleet on
the Delta coast. Like Merenptah, Rameses ill
recorded his victory in. stone, on the outer
walls of his mortuary temple at Medinet
Ilabu, while the compiler of the Great Harris
Papyrus included them in a broader account of
the campaigns of his reign.

Study of the 'tribal' names recorded by the
Egyptians and Hittites has shown that some
groups, notably the Denen, Lukka and the
Sherden, were already active by the reign of
Akhenaten (1352-1336 Be), while the Lukka
and Sherden were also recorded, along with
the Pelesct, serving as mercenaries in the army
of Rameses n (1279-1213 Be) at the battle or

QADESH.

Attempts have been made to link the vari-
ous groups of Sea Peoples with particular
homelands, or at least w r ith the places in which
they eventually settled. The Ekwesh have been
identified with the Homeric Achaean Greeks,
the Peleset with the Biblical Philistines (who
gave their name to Palestine), and, more con-
tentions!) 7 , the Sherden with Sardinia.
G. A. Wainwright, 'Some Sea-Peoples and
others in theHittitc archives', y£_-l 25 (2) (1939),
148-53.

G. A. Wainwrigjit, 'Some Sea Peoples', JEA 47
(1961), 71-90.

R. Stadelmaxn, TJieAbwehr der Secvolker
unter Ramses m* Snecnlum 19(1968), 156-71.
W. Helck, Die Bezichungen Agyptens and
Vorderasiens znrAgais Ins ins l.fh. v. Chr.
(Darmstadt, 1979).
N. K. Sandars, Sm Peoples (London, 1985).

Sebek see sober

Second Intermediate Period

(1650-1550 ik.)

As the middle kingdom (2055-1650 bc) went
into decline, groups of Asiatics appear to have
migrated into the Delta and established set-
tlements (see iivksos). The Second
Intermediate Period began with the establish-
ment of the 15th Dynasty at Avaris ( TELL
EL-DAB*A) in the Delta. The 15th-Dynastv
rulers were largely contemporary with the
line of minor Hvksos rulers who comprise
the 16th Dynasty. The precise dates of these
two dynasties, and more particularly their
rulers, are uncertain, as are those of the
17th Dynasty, the last of the period. The 17th
Dynasty ruled from Thebes, effectively

acting as the '■native 1 Egyptian government,
as opposed to the foreign northern rulers.

Having established their capital at Avaris,
the political influence of the Hyksos appears
to have gradually spread, with the develop-
ment of centres such as tellel-yahudiya and
TELL el-maskhuta, and the probable seizure
of the important Egyptian city of MEMPHIS.
The discovery of a small number of objects
inscribed with the names of Hyksos kings at
sites such as Knossos, Baghdad and
Eoghazkoy (as well as the remains of Minoan
frescos at 15th-Dynasty Avaris) suggests that
the new rulers maintained trading links with
the Near East and the Aegean. Seals at the
Nubian site of KERMA bear the name Sbeshi,
apparently a corrupted form of Salitis, the
earliest known Hyksos king. The presence of
these seals probably indicates that there was
an alliance between the Hyksos and the king-
dom of Kerma, which would have helped
them to counter the opposition of the 17th
Dynasty in Upper Egypt. The last rulers of
the 17th Dynasty, seoenenra taa ii and
kamose, campaigned openly against the
Hyksos, and aiimose i, the first ruler of the
18th Dynasty, was eventually able to drive
them from power, thus establishing the NEW

KINGDOM.

J. von BeckesaT] I, Untemtchnngen znr politischen

Gescluchtc der zweiteu Zwischenzeil in Agypten

(Gliiekstadt and New York, 1965).

J. Van Seters, The Hyksos, a new investigation

(New Haven, 1966).

B. J. Kemp, 'Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom

and Second Intermediate Period', Ancient Egypt:

a social history, ed. B. G. Trigger ct a!.

(Cambridge, 1983), 71-182.

D. B. Rkdi-ord, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in

ancient limes (Princeton, 1992), 98-129.

Sedeinga

Religious site in Upper Nubia, consisting of
the ruins of a temple of Amenhotep m
(1390-1352 Be), located only a few kilometres
to the north of the temple of soleu. The
Sedeinga temple was probably dedicated to
the cult of Amenhotep m's wife. Queen tiy,
and the modern toponym appears to be a con-
siderably distorted version of the ancient
name of the temple (hwl-Tiy). Certain signifi-
cant parts of the temple have survived, such as
columns with iiATHOR-hcadcd capitals and a
fragment of relief bearing a representation of
Tiy in the form of a sphinx, which was per-
haps also intended to suggest a leonine form of
the 'eye of iiorus'. The temple was restored
and elaborated during the reign of the 25th-
Dynasty pharaoh taiiarqo (690-664 bc).
M. Sciiiff Giorgim, 'Premiere campagne des

255

SED FESTIVAL

SEDGE

fouillcs a Sedcinga 1963-4', Kush 13 (1965),

112-30.

j. Leclant, 'Taharqa a Sedcinga', Festschrift

W Wesiendorf(G6ttmgzn, 1984), 1113-20.

serf festival (Egyptian heb-sed: 'royal
jubilee')

Ritual of renewal and regeneration, which was
intended Lo be celebrated by the king only after
a reign of thirty years had elapsed. In practice
the surviving inscriptions and monuments
associated with this festival seem to show that
many kings whose entire reigns were much
shorter than thirty years have left evidence of
the celebration of their sed festivals. There arc
two possible interpretations of this situation:
first, that many kings actually celebrated the
sed festivals well before the requisite thirty
years had elapsed, or, second, that they ordered
the depiction of the ritual in anticipation of the
actual event happening' later in the reign.

The sed festival (which derives its name
from a jackal-god called Sed, closely related to
wepwawet of Asyut), is inextricably linked
with the Egyptian perception of KINGSHIP,
being documented from a very early stage in
Egyptian history. The two essential elements
of the ceremony (the paying of homage to the
enthroned king and the ritual of territorial
claim) are depicted on an ebonv label from the
tomb of King den at Abytlos (now in the
British Museum, see illustration above). The
right-hand corner of the label shows the king,
at first, sealed inside one of the special festival
pavilions, wearing the double CROWN, and,
later, running between two sets of three cairns
or boundary markers (probably symbolizing
the borders of Egypt). The two scenes are
framed by the king's name in a sf.rf.kh frame
on the left and the hieroglyphic sign for a reg-
nal year on the right.

The first royal mortuary complexes were
concerned with the king's enactment of the sed
festival. The eastern side of the Step-Pyramid
complex of Djoser at saqqara incorporates the
earliest surviving architectural setting for the
festival, in the form of a courtyard surrounded
by 'dummy' chapels, each representing the
shrines of the local gods in different provinces.
At the southern end of the court is the base of
a double pavilion which would have held two
thrones like the one shown on the ebonv label
of Den. It is presumed that the king would
have sat on each throne dressed in the Upper
and Lower Egyptian regalia respectively, thus
symbolizing his dominion over the 'two lands'
of Egypt.

In the adjoining court to the south of the
pyramid traces were found of boundary
markers like those between which the king was

required to run. A relief from the subter-
ranean chambers of the pyramid shows Djoser
himself running between two sets of cairns;
this dynamic image of the running pharaoh
(often holding strange implements) continued
to be depicted in W-festival reliefs throughout
the Pharaonic period, as in the case of one of
the blocks from the red chapel of Hatshepsut
(1473-1458 bc) at karnak temple.

From the 4th Dynasty onwards the impor-
tance of the sed festival in the royal mortuary
complex was lo some extent, eclipsed by reliefs
associated with the cult of the dead king, but
there were still large numbers of buildings
constructed and decorated in connection with
the royal jubilee, not least the mortuary temple
of Amenhotep in (1390-1352 bc) at Thebes,
the Aten temple of akibznaten in east Karnak
and the s^/-festival court of OSORKON ii
(874-850 bc) at Bubastis (TELL basta).

Although there is enormous continuity in
the depictions of sed festivals from Den to
Osorkon, it seems from the descriptions of the
three sed festivals celebrated by Amenhotep tti
that the liturgy and svmbolism of the cer-
emony could sometimes be adapted to suit the
occasion or the place. The huge lake excavated
to the east of the palace of Amenhotep in at
mai.kata appears to have functioned as the set-
ting for a reinvented sed festival, in which the
king and the divine statuary were carried along
on barges, in imitation of the voyage of the
solar BARK through the netherworld.
H. Ke.es, 'Die wcissc Kapclic Scsostris 1 1. in
Karnak und das Sedfest', MDAIK]6 (1958),
194-213.

I. EFT Block of relief front the Red Chapel of
Hutshepsut at Karnak, showing the queen taking
part in one of the rituals of her sed festival, with
the boundary-markers visible behind Iter. 18lb
Dynasty, c. 1 473-1 458 nc. (i. SHAW)

beeow Oil-jar label bearing a scene depicting the sec j
festival of King Den. In the upper right-hand corner
the king is shown running between two markers
probably representing the borders of Egypt. 1st
Dynasty, c.2900 bc, ebony, u. 5.5 cm. ft: [32650)

E. Uphill, 'The Egyptian sed-festival rites",

7/V£S24(1965), 365-83.

E. Hornung and E. Staehlin, Stttdien zum

Sedfest (Geneva, 1974).

W. J. Murnaxe, 'The sed festival: a problem in

historical method', MR UK 37 (1981 ), 369-76.

sedge

Term used to refer to the plant, the hieroglyph
for which formed part of the royal tiillary
as early as the 1st Dynasty (3100-289O BC),
when one of the titles of the king of Upper
Egypt was 'he who belongs to the sedge'
(apparently referring to the eternal, divine
aspect of the kingship). From the unification
of Egypt (r.3100 bc) onwards, the sedge and
the bee became part of the titulary ol the Iving
of Upper and Lower Egypt: nesw-bil Che ol
the sedge and the bee').
S. Qlirke, Who were the pharaohs? '(London,
1990), 11,23.

Sekhemib see pektbsen

Sekhemkhet (2648-2640 bc)
One of the principal rulers of the 3rd Dynasty,
whose reign probably lasted for onK about
eight years. It has been suggested that lie may
be the same ruler as Djoserti (or Djosertcti)
whom the tcrin royal canon, a king list pre-
served on a papyrus dating to the reign of
Ramcses n (1279-1213 bc), lists as the succes-
sor of DJOSER Netjerikhet (2667-2648 BC)- ^
w r as Sekhemkhet who sent one of the earhes
expeditions to the turquoise mines at Wa" 1
Maghani in the Sinai, where three rock-carved

256

SEDGE

SEKHEM SCEPTRE

SELKIS

depictions ol the king- (still in situ) show him in
the act of smiting an Asiatic prisoner.

His unfinished step-pyramid complex lies
close to the southwest corner of the Step
pyramid of his predecessor, Djoser, at
g&QQARA; it was excavated by Zakaria Goneim
during the period 1951-9 and by Jean-
Philippe Lauer in 1963-76. Sekhemkhet's
name was found inscribed on the clay stop-
pers of jars from the pyramid. The burial
chamber contained a closed travertine sar-
cophagus with a wreath placed on top, which
was nevertheless found to be completely
empty, suggesting that either the burial cham-
ber or the sarcophagus may have been dupli-
cates, perhaps serving some ritual purpose or
designed to fool tomb-robbers. In the so-
called 'south mastaba' at the south end of the
enclosure (similar to that in Djoser's com-
plex), the excavations revealed a wooden cof-
fin of 3rd Dynasty type, which was found to
contain the skeleton of an eighteen-month-
old child of unknown identity.
M. Z. Gonkim, The buried pyramid (London,
1956).

— , Horns Sekhem-khet: the unfinished step
pyramid at Sac/aura I (Cairo, 1957).
J.-P. Laufr, 'Recherche ct decouverte du
tombeau sud de PHorus Sekhem-khet a
Saqqarah', BIE 48-9 (1969), 121-31.
I. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.
(Harmondsworth, 1993), 58-65.

sekhem sceptre

Symbol of power which was sometimes
shown in the hand of the king from the Early
Dynastic period (3100-2686 isc) onwards,
but which also served as a badge of office for
the highest officials, who are commonly
shown holding it in funerary reliefs. When
the king held a sekhem sceptre in his right
hand he would usually hold a mace or censer
in the left, whereas officials generally held
only a staff in the left hand if the sekhem was
in the right.

The term sekhem meant 'power' or 'might 1
and was associated with a number of deities (as
well as being incorporated into such royal
names as sekjtemkjiet). Thus the name of the
lioness-goddess sfkhmf.t means 'she who is
powerful'., while the god OSIRIS was sometimes
described as 'great sekhem who dwells in the
thintff nome'. The term was also associated
with anuuis, another god of Abydos, who, as
S?od of the underworld and Khentimentiu
( chief of the westerners'), had a particular
association with the royal cemetery and the
supposed burial place of Osiris at Abydos. The
sekhem sceptre was sometimes depicted
behind the reclining figure of Anubis.

i^&^^.\^/':-&i

Stele ofSurenenutet, steward of the double
granary, showing him seated and holding a
sekhem sceptre. 12th Dynasty, c.1950 BC,
limestone, from Abydos, ti. 52 cm. (eaSBS)

Occasionally the sceptre was shown with two
eyes or a face carved into it.

The sceptre also played a role in the mortu-
ary cult, in that it was often held by individu-
als making offerings. It appears thai the scep-
tre was waved over the items being offered to
the ka of die deceased. A gilded sekhem sceptre
was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun
(1336-1327 bc; kv 62), and on its back were
carved five registers showing a slaughtered
bull, which may possibly have signified the
number oi times that the sceptre was waved
during the offering ritual.
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 1S2-3.

Sekhmet (Sakhmef)

Lioness-goddess whose name simply meant
'she who is powerful'. She personified the
aggressive aspects of female deities and acted
as the consort of i'tah and probably the
mother of nefertem in the Memphite triad.
She was usually portrayed as a woman with a
lioness's head but, as the daughter of the sun-
god ra, she was also closely linked with the
royal uraeus in her role as the fire- breathing
'eye of ra' {see also wadjyt). The pyramid
tf.xts twice mention that the king was con-
ceived by Sekhmet.

Because of the rise to power of the Theban
rulers of the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc),

the Theban triad (amun, mut and khons)

became correspondingly more important and
began to 'absorb' the attributes of other
deities. This meant that Sekhmet was increas-
ingly represented as an aggressive manifesta-
tion of the goddess Mut, and large numbers of
statues of the lioness-goddess were therefore
erected by amenhotep hi (1390-1352 bc) both
in the temple of Mut at karnak and in his
mortuary temple in western THEBES.
J. Yoyotte, 'Une monumentale litanie de granit:
les Sekhmet d'Amenophis m et la conjuration
permenantc de la deesse dangereuse', BSFE
S7-8 (1980), 46-75.

P. Gfrmond, Sekhmet et la protection du moiule
(Geneva, 1981).

Two statues of the goddess Sekhmet from Thebes.
18th Dynasty, e. 1400 bc, it. 2. 18 m, 2.28 m.
(EA62, 80)

Selkis see sfrket

Semainean i

PREDYNASTIC PERIOD

Semerkhet (r.2900 bc)

Penultimate ruler of the 1st Dynasty, who suc-
ceeded anfdjtb on the throne and was proba-
bly buried in Tomb U at Abydos. His name is
not listed on the Saqqara Tablet (a Ramesside
king fist) and, in contrast to the other 1st-
Dynasty rulers, no MASTABA tombs of his reign

257

SEMNA

_SENL : SRET

have yet been discovered at Saqqara; it has

therefore been suggested that he usurped
Aned jib's jubilee vessels in order to bolster
somewhat shaky claims to the throne. On the
other hand, his nesw-bit name ('he of the sedge
and bee', see royal titulary), Semenptah, is
probably that rendered by manetho as
Semempses, and he is also mentioned on the
Palermo STONE (a 5th-Dynasty king list). It is
also perhaps significant, in terms of his legiti-
macy, that his tomb at Abvdos is larger and
more elaborate than that of Anedjib.
W. M. F. PETSIK, The royal tombs of the first
dynasty I (London, 1900).
W. B. Emery, Arckais Egypt (London, 1 961),
84-6.

A.J. Spencer, Early Egypt {London, 1993),
83-4.

Semna

Fortified town established in the reign of
Senusret i (1965-1920 lie) on the west bank of
the Nile at the southern end of a series of
I'OKTRKSSES founded during the 12th Dynasty
(1985-1795 uc) in the second-cataract area of
Lower Nubia. The Semna gorge, at the south-
ern edge of ancient Egypt, was the narrowest
part of the Nile valley It was here, at this
strategic location, that the 12th-Dvnasty
pharaohs built a cluster of four mud-brick
fortresses: Semna, Kumma, Semna South and
Uronarti (all covered by the waters of Lake
Nasser since the completion of the ASWAN
high dam in 1971). The rectangular Kumma
fortress, the L-shaped Semna fortress (on the
opposite bank) and the much smaller square
fortress of Semna South were each inves-
tigated by the American archaeologist George
REtSNER in 1924 and 1928. Semna and Kumma
also included the remains of temples, houses
and cemeteries dating to the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 bc), which would have been
roughly contemporary with such Lower
Nubian towns as amara West and seseisi-
sldla, when the second cataract region had
become part of an Egyptian 'empire' 1 , rather
than simply a frontier zone.
G. A. Rkisner, 'Excavations in Egypt and
Ethiopia', BMFA22 (1925), 18-28.
D. IX \u\\i and J. M. A. JANSSEN, Second
calumet forts l: Semna, Kumma (Boston, 1960),
5-112.

B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a
a-alization (London, 1989), 174-6.

Senenmut (// <-.1470bc)
Chief steward in the reign of hatshepsut
(1473 — 1458 bc), who appears lo have been
born ai arm ant of relatively humble parents
(Ramose and Hatnefer). He entered royal ser-

Sea ted statue of Senenmut nursing Princess
Neferura, to whom he was tutor, within his clouk.
1 8th Dynasty, c. 1470 BC, black granite, from
Kamak (?), n. 71 cm. (ea!74)

vice in the reign of Thutmose w (1492—1479
BC), and under Hatshepsut he became the
most influential member of the court. His
numerous titles included the role of steward of
Amun and tutor to Hatshcpsut's onlv daugh-
ter, Neferura. There is no evidence that
Senenmut ever married, and he is usually
depicted only with his parents or with
Neferura. This has led some scholars to spec-
ulate that he was the lover of Hatshepsut,
although evidence for this theorv is distincllv
flimsy.

His responsibilities included the overseeing
of royal building works at Thebes, a duty men-
tioned on one of his many surviving statues. It
was probably as a result of his influence in
construction projects that he had himself por-
trayed in the temple at deir ELH8AHRI, although
his figures stand behind shrine doors, where
they were not readily visible. He is also credit-
ed with organizing the transport and erection
of the two great obelisks of Hatshepsut in the
temple of Amun at larnak.

He built two tombs for himself; the first
(tt71) is high on the hillside at Sheikh Abd el-

Qurna and still preserves a rock-cut BLOCK
STATUE portraying him in his role as royal
tutor, with Neferura seated on his lap. This is
one of six surviving block statues of Senenmut
and Neferura, although the rest are freestand-
ing. About 150 ostraca were found in his
tomb, including sketch-plans of the tomb
itself and various literary texts. He later hegan
a second grander tomb (rr353) to the east of
the first court of the temple of Hatshepsut at
deir EL-15AIERJ, which is sometimes described
as the "secret tomb'. Its walls are decorated
with scenes from the BOOK QFTHE DEAD and its
roof is the earliest known 'astronomieal ceil-
ing' (see astronomy and ASTROLOGY). The
tomb was never completed, and, like the
images of Senenmut at Deir el-Bahrl and else-
where, it was defaced in antiquity. This
defacement was probably caused by some kind
of fall from grace, since there is no further
record of Senenmut from late in the reign of
Hatshepsut. Neferura is not attested after
Llatshepsut's eleventh regnal year, and it has
been suggested that Senenmut then sought to
ally himself with Thutmose in (1479-1425 bc)
with whom Hatshepsut was supposedly co-
regent. Peter Dorman has suggested that
Senenmut mav well have outlived Hatshepsut
and continued as an unrecorded official during
the sole reign of Thutmose in.
W. C. Haves, Ostraka and name stones from the
tombofSen-Mut (no. 71) ut Thebes (New York,
1942).

B. PORTER and R. L. B. MOSS, Topographical
bibliography 1/1 (Oxford, 1960), 139-12, 417-18.
P. Dorman, The monuments of Senenmut:
problems in historical methodology (London,
1988).
— , The tombs of Senenmut (New York, 1 99 1 ).

Senusret (Scnwosret, Senusert, Scsostris)
L Birth name' taken by three kings of the 12th
Dynasty (1985-1795 bc).

Senusret I Kheperkara (1965-1920 BC) was
the second ruler of the 12th Dynast), who
sticceeded to the throne after the assassination
of his father amenemmye i (1985-1955 bc),
with whom he had ruled as coregent lor up to
a decade. The unusual circumstances of his
accession form the background to die lalf "J
Sinulie and the Instruction of ' Amenetnhat i. He
continued the policy of expansion in Lower
Nubia and established a garrison ai the
fortress of buden. As far as relations with
Svna-Palestine were concerned, the policy
was very different, concentrating on main-
taining commercial and diplomatic links
rather than achieving territorial gains. " e
protected the Delta region and the oases
of the Western Desert from Libyan invasion

258

SE NUSRET

SENUSRET

by means of a scries of military expeditions.

He had already begun a programme of
temple construction during his coregency
with his father, extending and embellishing
most of the major temples, including those at
fCARNAK and HKUOPOUS. His pyramid complex
at EL-LISHT, near the new 12th-Dvnastv capi-
tal, Itjtawy, was located to the south of that of
Amenemhat i; the burial chambers of both
these monuments are currently inaccessible.
Two painted wooden figures, one wearing the
white crown and the other the red crown, were
excavated from the neighbouring mastaih
tomb of the priest Imhotep; these may possi-
bly be portraits of Senusrct 1 but have also
been interpreted as dating to the 13th Dynasty
(1795-1650 hc).

Senusrct u Khakheperm ( 1 880-1 874 im :), the
fourth ruler of the 12th Dynasty, succeeded
Amenemhat n (1922-1878 BC) after a co-
regency. He constructed his funerary complex
atEL-LAHUN, placing the entrance to die pyra-
mid not on the north side, as in most other
pyramids, but a short distance to the south,
perhaps because the practice of aligning the
monument with the circumpolar stars was
considered less important than the security of
the tomb. Stronger connections with the cult
of Osiris may be indicated by the presence of a
row of trees around the base of the pyramid as
well as the first instances of balls of mud con-
taining grain (see osims bed). The burial
chamber, excavated by Flinders PETKIE in
1887-8, contained an empty red granite sar-
cophagus. In the vicinity of the valley temple
Petrie also excavated the settlement of Kahun,
which was originally built in order to house
the community associated with the pyramid
and the royal funerary cull.

During his reign, the tomb of Khnumhotep
at BENJ iia.ha.n (wi3) records the arrival of a
Bedouin trading party apparently bringing
supplies of galena for use in cosmetics. This
incident is indicative of the fact that Senusret's
foreign policy was characterized by an expan-
sion in commerce with western Asia and
Nubia. He also inaugurated an ambitious irri-
gation system in the FAYUM REGION, which
enabled large areas of new agricultural land to
he brought under cultivation.

Senusret tit Khukaura (1874-1855 bc) suc-
ceeded Senusret u, and was to be instrumental
m re-shaping Egypt's internal and foreign
affairs. His domestic policy centred on the re-
organization of the administrative system.
Since the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc), the
major threat to royal power had probably come
& the nomarchs, the provincial governors

ern nlhia. These three ministries (waret) were
each headed by an official and an assistant.

In the preceding two reigns, there had been
little military activity, and Nubian tribes had
perhaps gradually moved northyvards, toward
the second cataract. Senusret in took military
action against these tribes in his eighth, tenth
and sixteenth regnal years, thus enabling the
frontier to bc established at SEMNA, south of
the second cataract. This border was further
secured by a scries of eight kortrksses
between Semna and iiUHE\, further to the
north, although it is not clear how many of
these were built, and how many extended, by
Senusret HI. Communication between
Elephantine and the fortresses was facilitated
by the enlargement of a canal built by Pcpy I
(2321-2287 bc) near the island of Sehel, south
of Aswan. So great was his hold on Nubia that

i-Ei'T Black granite statue of 'Senusret fit, from
Deirel-Buliri. IM Dynasty, c.lSWnc,
ii. 1.22 in. (i:.\()Hb)

tJELOW The reconstructed While Chapel of
Senusret i. which was found in fragments inside the
3rd pylon of Ainenhutep in at Karnak. 'The
exterior is decorated with lists of the Egyptian
names (provinces). (t>. t. siciiolso_\)

(•see

Nomes); a shift in the funerary patterns of

th e elite (a di

ecline in provincial tombs) may-

indicate that Senusret in reduced their author-
ity drastically by removing many of their
eslablished privileges. The means by which
this was achieved is unclear, but henceforth it
was the king's vizikrs who oversayv all branches
of administration. There were three viziers:
one for the north, another for the south and a
third for Elephantine (see ASWAN) and north-

by the New Kingdom the deified Senusret yvas
worshipped in northern Nubia.

The king seems to have personally led a
campaign into Palestine, and to have taken the
town of Sekmem, probably to be equated with
Shechem in the Mount Ephraim region. This
is the only recorded campaign in western Asia
during his reign, although useful insights

259

SENWOSRET

_SERAPEU M

concerning attitudes towards foreign enemies
are provided by die EXECRATION TEXTS, many
of which have been excavated at the Nubian
fortress of Mirgissa. The names of Sckmem,
Ashkelon, Bvblos and Jerusalem are men-
tioned in these texts, as well as many of the
Nubian peoples, including the Kushites and
the MEDJAY.

Senusret constructed a temple to Montu,
god of war, at the Upper Egyptian site of
medamud, and chose dahshur, at the southern
end of the Memphite necropolis, as the site of
his pyramid complex. The pyramid itself,
however, has suffered from the overzealous
investigations of Richard Vvse and John
Perring, causing damage to its already weath-
ered profile. Tn 1894-5 Jacques de Morgan
undertook a more careful investigation, dis-
covering a wealth of jewellery in the tombs of
women ol the roval family in the vicinity. The
site has recently been re-examined by Dieter
Arnold on behalf of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. Although the
superstructure of the pyramid is in poor con-
dition the subterranean chambers of the king
are spectacular; the corridors are lined in line
white limestone, with a granite burial chamber
and sarcophagus. However, there is no evi-
dence that Senusret ui was ever buried here. In
1994 the jewellerv and sarcophagus of Nefret,
the queen of Senusret ui, were discovered.

After his death his feats were conflated with
those of Senusret I and El, and by Classical
times he was probably also confused with
Rameses n (1 279-1213 BC). He thus eventually
became regarded as ''high Senusret', ihe arche-
typal Egyptian ruler.
K. Langk, Sesostris (Munich, 1 954).
P. LACAU and H. Cheyrier, Une chapdle de
Sesostris leva Karnak, 2 vols {Paris, 1956-69).
G. Po.SENER, Litlerature el. politique dans I'Egyptc
de la Ml dynastic (Paris, 1956).
H. Goedicke, 'Remarks on the hymns to
Sesostris iu\,7_4/?C£ 7 (1968), 23-6.
W. K. Simpson, 'Sesostris n and Sesostris in 1 ,
Lcxikon dcr Agyptologie v, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto
and W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1984), 899-906.
D. Wildung, Sesostris mid Amenemhel: Agyptcn
in Millleren Reich (Freiburg, 1 984).

Senwosret see senusret

Seqenenra Taa u (,.1560 bc)
Theban ruler of the 17th Dynasty, who began
the series of campaigns against the HYKSOS
rulers in the Delta, which were eventually to
culminate in the liberation of Egypt by his
son AHMOSE I (1550-1525 bc), the first ruler
of the 18th Dynasty. The Ramesside tale of
the Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenra

(Papyrus Sallier i) consists of part of an
eccentric account of Seqenenra's struggles
with the Elyksos ruler Aauserra APEPI.
Although his tomb has not been located, it
probably lies somewhere in the Dra Abu el-
Naga region of western Thebes, and fortu-
nately his body was one of those preserved
(along with Ahmose i's) in the deir el-bahri
mummy cache discovered in 1881, His head
and neck had clearly been badly wounded,
suggesting that he died in battle. A forensic
examination of the body in the early 1970s
succeeded in obtaining a good match between
the gashes and the tvpical dimensions of a
Palestinian axe-head of the correct date, con-
firming the suspicion that he died in a battle
against the Hyksos, although more recent
analysis of the skeleton has suggested that
some of the wounds had been inflicted at a
later date and that he may therefore have sur-
vived the first onslaught.

B. Gunn and A. II. Gardiner, 'New renderings
of Egyptian texts li: The expulsion of the
Wykms\JEA 5 (1918), 36-56.

II. WiNi.ock, 'The tombs of the kings of the

seventeenth dynasty at Thehes',^4 1 (1 924),

217-77.

M. Bietak and E. Stkouhal, 'Die

Todesumstande des Pharaohs Sequenenre (17.

Dynastic)', Annalen des Naturhistorischen

Museum, IVien 78 (1974), 29-52.

C. Vandersleyen, 'Un seul roi Taa sous la 17e
dynastie', CM 63 (1983), 67-70.

Serabit el-Ktiadim

sec TUiu^uoisi:;

Serapeum

Term usuallv applied to buildings associated
with the cult of the apis bull or that of the later
svneretic god SERAPIS. The Memphite
Serapeum at saqqara, (he burial-place of the
Apis bull, consists of a scries of catacombs to
the northwest of the Step Pyramid of Djoser.
From the 30th Dynasty onwards, funerary
processions would have approached the
Serapeum via a dramas (sacred way) running
from the city of Memphis to the Saqqara
plateau.

The Saqqara Serapeum was excavated in
1851 by Auguste Mariette, who was led to the
site through his discovery of traces of some of
the sphinxes lining the dromos, which are faith-
fully described by the Greek writer strabo
(c.63 bc-AD 21). The catacombs date back at
least as early as the 18th Dynasty (1550-
1295 bc) and continued in use until the
Ptolemaic period (332-30 bc); they contain
many massive granite sarcophagi weighing up
to 80 tons, although all but one had been
robbed of their burials. Mariette also found the

| 1 entrance
| 2 burial made under
^ Cambyses (27th
| Dynasty)

1 3 burial marie under
£ Ahmose II (26th

I Dynasty}

1 4 last Apis burial of
% the 30th Dynasty

Plan oj the Serapeum at Saqqara.

burial of Prince Khaemwaset, a son of R amkses
it (1279-1213 bc), who had been responsible
for constructing some of these vaults.

The Serapeum serving as the cult centre of
Serapis was located at Alexandria, close to
Pompey's pillar, but it was sacked by
Christians when Theodosius (AD 379-95)
issued an edict in ad 391, ordering if to be
razed to the ground, and only the subter-
ranean section has survived. Some of the
underground chambers served for jackal buri-
als associated with the temple of anubis, while
other parts were shelved to hold the temple
library. With the spread of the cult of Serapis,
other such cult-centres were consiructed,
including one at the Greek holy site ol Delos,
w r hich was founded by an Egyptian priest in
the third century BC.

A. Mariette, he Serapeum de Memphis, ed.
G. Maspero (Paris, 1882).
E. Otto, Beitragc mr Geschichte des Sticrkultc m
Agypten (Berlin, I93S).
J. Vercoutter, Textes hiographiques du SerapcuM

deMempM$(P&tis,l9$2),

260

SERAPIS

SEREKH

M.Malinink, G. PoSKNERandJ.VERCOUrj-ER,
Catalogue des steles du Seraphim de Memphis i,
2 vols (Paris, 1968).

P. JVI. FRASER, Ptolemaic Alexandria I {Oxford,
1972), 246-76.

The underground catacomb known as the
Serapeum was the burial place of the Apis bulk.
Near the entrance, niches winch once, contained
votive stelae can be seen, along with the lid of one
of the massive bull sarcophagi, (p. T. NICHOLSON)

Serapis (Sarapis)

Composite god resulting from the fusion of
the Egyptian god Osorapis {himself combin-
ing the gods OSIRIS and aims) with attributes of
a number of Hellenistic gods, notably Zeus,
Helios, Hades, Asklepios and Dionysos. From
the latter, Osorapis took solar, funerary, heal-
ing and fertility aspects, although in fact he
already encompassed some of these. The fer-
tility aspect of the god is emphasized by his
protection of the corn supply, denoted by a
corn measure (see modrjs) on his head.

Serapis is first attested in the reign of
ptolemv I Soter (305-285 bc) and was consid-
ered to be representative of the essence of
Egyptian religion, while at the same time
blending it with Greek theology. Unlike the
Apis bull, the main cult-centre of Serapis was
n °t at Memphis or Saqqara but at the
■Alexandrian serapeum, which functioned as
an important centre of learning. His consort
Pj® isis, whose cult was also popular among
Romans, and the pair came to embody the
^tural forces of male and female fertility. In

ex andrian iconography they were some-
represented on door jambs as a pair of

times

human-headed serpents, the bearded one rep-
resenting Serapis. His cult was adopted by the
Romans, and spread very widely through the
empire. One text mentions a temple of
Serapis in Britain, and indeed a sculpted head
of the god was found at the Walbrook
Mithraeum in London. The Romans thus
appear to have kept alive the very Egyptian
animal deities that they art initially said Lo
have despised.
L. VlD.M an, his ami Sarapis bet den Griecheu and

casern (Berlin, 1970).

P. M. Eraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria i (Oxford,

1972), 246-76.

J. E. Stamhaugm, Sarapis under /he early

Ptolemies (Leiden, 1972).

W. HormBOStel, Sarapis (Leiden, 1973).

G. J. E Kater-Sibhes, Preliminary catalogue of

Sarapis monuments (Leiden, 1 973 ).

serdab (Arabic: 'cellar 1 ; Egyptian per-twi:

'statue-house 1 )

Room in mastaua tombs of the Old Kingdom

(2686— 21S1 bc), where statues of the ka of the

deceased were usually placed. There were

often eye-holes (known as the 'eyes of the ka-

house') or a narrow slit in the wall of the

chamber, both enabling the ka to leave the

chamber and allowing offerings to pass

through to the statues from the tomb chapel.

The earliest serdabs in private mastaba tombs

dale to the 4lh Dynasty (2613-2494 tic).

A. M. Blackman, 'The ka-house and the

serdab',,//:.-/ 3 (1916), 250-4.

G. A. Reisner, The development of the Egyptian

tomb down to the accession of Cheops (Cambridge,

MA, 1936), 267-9.

A. J. Spencer, Death in ancient Egypt

(Harmondsworth, 1982), 60-1.

serekh

Hieroglyphic symbol comprising the recessed
panelling described in modern times as
'palace- facade' decoration, which is believed
to have been modelled on the design of the
earliest royal residences. The palace-facade
design is imitated in mud-brick on the mastaba
tombs of the Early Dynastic period (3100-
2686 bc) and Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc),
on false door stelae, coefins, sarcophagi and
numerous other funerary and ceremonial con-
texts throughout Egyptian history

The term is usually employed to refer to a
rectangular frame surmounted by the HORUS fal-
con, within which the king's 'Horus name' was
written (see ROYAL titulary). This frame seems
to have effectively symbolized die domain of
Horus, the royal residence. Occasionally the
royal name in its serekh surmounted by Horus
was combined with a sculpture as in the statue

Granite stele bearing the serekh of Ranebfrom
Mitrahina (Memphis). 2nd Dynasty, c.2850 tic,

If 99 cm. ( METROPOLm-lN MUSEUM, mW YORK,

.7o.s7.7v/ PiLrr/t:ii bi;q_i'/;st I960, 60,144)

of the 6th-Dynasty ruler Pepy i (2321-2287 bc;

Brooklyn Museum, New York), where it forms
the back of his throne. Such iconography is
typical of the close relationship between
Egyptian art and wTiting. More spectacular
examples are the monumental falcon panels
which formed part of a palace-facade wall for
the enclosure of the pyramid complex of
Senusret i (1965-1920 bc) at EL-LiSHT.

For a brief period, in the 2nd Dynasty
(2890-2686 tic), SETH replaced Horus as the
god surmounting the serekh (see periksen and
kiiasekhemwv), thus transforming it into a
'Seth name', but the change was short lived.
The Horus name continued to be written in a
serekh even after the introduction of the car-
touche for the 'birth' and 'throne' names.
W. Kaiser, 'Einige Bemcrkungen zur
agvptischen Friihzcit m. die Rcicheinigung',
ZAS9) (1964), 86-125.
R. II. Wilkinson, 'The Horus name and the
form and significance of the serekh in the royal
Egyptian (\tukny\JSSEA 15 (1985), 98-104.
W. B<\rti-ia, 'Der Palasrhorustitel und seine
Vorlaufer in der Friihzcit', CM 117-18 (1990),
55-8.

S. Quirkh, Who were the pharaohs? (London,
1990), 19-23.

A. O'biuen, 'The Serekh as an aspect of the
iconography of early kingship', JARCE 33
(1996), 123-58.

261

SERKET

SERPENT, S\Ak E

Serket (Selkct, Sclkis)

Scorpion-goddess usually depicted as a
woman with a rearing SCORPION on her head,
although, like many Egyptian goddesses, she
could also he represented as a lioness or ser-
pent. Her name appears to he an abbreviation
of the phrase serket helyt ('the one who causes
the throat to breathe 1 ), presumably in ;m
attempt to neutralize the threat posed by scor-
pions. The cult of Serket is attested as early as
the 1st Dynasty (3100-2890 BC), on the
inscribed funerary stele of Merka from Tomb
3505 at Saqqara, and she also appears in the
PYRAMID TEXTS as the 'mistress of die beautiful
house 1 . This latter epithet relates to her role in
the embalming process, and she was regarded
as the protector of the hawk-headed canopic-
jar deitv Qebehscnuef (see .sons OF iiorus).
Along with three other goddesses, Isis,

Glided and painted wooden figures of three of the
four goddesses ivltrt protected the golden shrine of
Tutankhanutn. including (from left to right)
Nei/h, Ists and Serket, whose head is surmounted
by a scorpion. 18th Dynasty, C.I336 1327 tic,
it. 90 cm. (<: itii(>ji:(>0()8i>, SMPHODVCm
couRTi-.s) <>!■' rat: Griffith institute)

Nephthys and Neith, she was charged with
guarding the royal coffin and canopie chest.
Although she often features in spells to cure or
avoid venomous bites (and was probably the

patroness of magicians dealing with such

bites), she is rarely invoked in spells relating to

scorpion stings.

F. K.ANKL, 'La ncpe et le scorpion: un mnnographie

sur la deesse Serket (Paris, 1984).

— , Les pretres-onah de Sekhmel et les eonjurateurs

deSerket (Paris, 1984).

serpent snake

As in most cultures, the snake was regarded bv
the Egyptians as a source of evil and danger- j"t
was the principal form of the god ai>< m its, who
threatened the sun-god during his voyage
through the netherworld (see FUNkrar?
TEXTS). In the same way that the sairpion-
deities SERKET and Shed were worshipped and
propitiated in order to avert the danger posed
by their physical manifestations, so prayers
and offerings were made to the serpeni-god-
desses renknutkt and MERET5EGER, so that
snake-bites could be avoided or cured. There
was also a snake-god called Nehebkaw, first
attested in the pyramid TEXTS of the late 5th
and 6th Dynasty (r.2375— 2181 bc). Ti was not
until the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 ih:) that the first amulets of
Nehebkaw were made, usually representing
him as a man with a snake's head and tail.

The most highly regarded serpent -deity
was the cobra-goddess wadjyt, who was the
patroness of Lower Egypt and, along with the
vulture-goddess NEKHBET, a symbol of the
king's rule over the two lands of Egypt. The
uraeiis (cobra), traditionally poised at the fore-
head of the pharaoh as a potent symbol of his
kingship, was given the epithet iveret hekaw,
'great of magic', and there were strong associ-
ations between serpents and the practice of
magic. A 13th-Dynasty bronze serpent (now
in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge),
found entangled in a mass of hair in 'Tomb 5'
under the RAMESSEUM at Thebes, has been
interpreted as a magician's 'wand' like those
held bv a statuette representing a lioness-
headed (or lioness-masked) female magician,
which was found in the same context and is
now in the Manchester Museum (see \i Mi ((".).
A type of stele called a cipptts, used during the
Late Period (747-332 bc) as a means of ward-
ing off such dangers as snakes, scorpions and
disease, usually depicts Harpocrates (see
HORis) holding snakes and other desert crea-
tures in either hand.

Serpents were also regarded as primeval,
chthonic creatures intimately linked with the
process of creation, therefore the four god-
desses of the Hermopolitan OGDOAI) were
sometimes described as having snakes' heads,

and Kematef, the cosmogonic aspeei

of the

god amun, look the form of a serpent. There
was also the ouroboros, the serpent whose
body coiled around the universe, eventual!)
allowing it to bite its own tail, which served as
a metaphor for the relationship between beiSg
and non-being. This serpent, the earliest sur-
viving depiction of which is on the small goKr
en shrine of tutankhauun (1336-1327 ["■)'
represented the powers of resurrection an

262

SESEBI-SUDLA

-^N ^1

//*^\I

^^w^ 1 \

%y^/^/ ^

'<^ " • f

jWtf ofPaneb, a foreman of the tomb-workers
ul Deir el-Medina, showing Punch worshipping
the goddess Meretseger in the form of a serpent.
19th Dynasty, c. 1 195 bc, ii. 19.3 cm. (t:\272)

renewal, and it was thought that the regenera-
tion of the sun-god was re-enacted every night
within its body. While the ouroboros conveved
a sense of endless spatial length encompassing
the universe, another snake called the metwi
{'double cord') served as a manifestation of the
infinity of time, and a depiction from the Book
of Gates in the tomb of Sety I (1294-1279 bc)
shows the undulating coils of a vast snake
accompanied by the hieroglyphs signifying
'lifespan 1 .

J. Bourriau, Pharaohs and mortals: Egyptian art in
the Middle Kingdom (Cambridge, 1988), 1 1 1-13.
S. Johnson, The cobra goddess of ancient Egypt
(London, 1990).

E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 49-51, 63-4.

Sesebi-Sudla

Walled settlement situated in the Upper
Nubian Abri-Delgo reach, between the second
and third cataracts, which was founded by the
18th-Dynasty pharaoh Akbenaten (135 2—
1336 bc). The roughly contemporaneous
Nubian towns at BUHEN and mtrgis.sa, dating
to the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), were
essentially extensions of garrisons established
in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc), but
Sesebi-Sudla was a newly established town
and very much a product of the New
kingdom Egyptian policy of colonization of
Nubia. It covered an area of more than five
hectares and the population has been estimat-
ed at about 1000-1500.

^H*

r-r/Vn

_.___-- ? residential areas

temple

ABOVE Plan ofSesebi.

right Faience vessel decorated with blue lotuses
found at Sesebi. New Kingdom, a 1-1.5 cm.
(inbdtttl)

The principal areas excavated by Avlward
Blackman and H. W. Fairman in 1936—8 were
the northwestern and southwestern corners of
the site. The remains in the northwestern cor-
ner of the town were dominated bv a large tri-
partite temple dedicated to the Theban triad
(\mun, jYiur and kiions), which must there-
fore have been founded in the early years of
Akhenaten's reign, before his full-scale adop-
tion of the cult of the aten. The southwestern
area comprised a dense block of houses
arranged along a regular grid of streets. The
examination of the central eastern area of the
town has also revealed traces of a small enclo-
sure surrounded by a ditch, which mav bc the
remains of an earlier settlement established in
advance of the main town.

Since the date of the town's foundation was
within a few years of the establishment of a
new Egyptian capital city at el-amarna, com-
parisons between the two sites are potentiallv
revealing. The few elite houses at Sesebi-
Sudla, unlike the villas in the main city at el-

263

SF.SHAT

_SET H

Amavna, were not set in extensive private gar-
dens, and many of the smaller houses, like
those in the Theban workmen's village at deir
el-medjna, were regularly furnished with cel-
lars. The colony as a whole showed signs of
'careful, regular and economic planning 1 ,
making it more similar to the peripheral work-
men's village at el-Amarna than the main city.
These fundamental differences suggest that
the town of Sesebi-Sudla was probably a spe-
cialized, state-run community rather than
simply a cross-section of Egyptian society
transplanted into Upper Nubia.
A. T.. Beackman, 'Preliminary report on the
excavations at Sescsbi, Northern Province,
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1936-7\.7£'J 23 (1937),
145-51.

H. W. FAiRMAN, 'Preliminary report on the
excavations at Sesebi (Sudla) and 'Amarah West,
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1937-4% JEA 24 (1938),
151-6.

R. Morxot, 'The excavations at Sesebi (Sudla)
1936-38', BeitmgemfSudmf&mhmgZ0U\
159-64.

Seshat

Goddess of writing and measurement, usu-
ally represented as a woman clad in a long
panther-skin dress and wearing a headdress
consisting of a band surmounted bv a seven-
pointed star and a bow. From at least the 2nd
Dynasty (2890-2686 BC) onwards she was
recorded as assisting the pharaoh in the
foundation ritual of 'stretching the cord' (see

ASTRONOMY -WD ASTROLOGY), although the

goddess Sefkhet-Abwv ('she who has laid
aside the [two] horns') sometimes replaced
her in this role. Temple reliefs of the Old and
Middle Kingdoms (2686-1650 nc) show her
in the act of recording the quantities of
foreign captives and booty in the aftermath
of military campaigns, but in the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 isc) she became much
more associated with the SED FESTIVAL (the
royal jubilee ritual); she is therefore often
depicted with the notched palm rib that
traditionally represented the passing of time,
and, like her male equivalent TROTH, she
was sometimes shown writing the names of
the king on the leaves of the persea tree
fsee TREES),

R. Engeebaqi, 'A foundation scene of the
second dynasty',^'- (20 (1934), 1 83-4.
G. A. Wainwrigi IT, 'Seshat and the pharaoh',
$EA 26 (1940), 30-40.
H. Bonnet, Reallexikon derAgyptischen
Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), 699-701 .
W. Helck, 'Seschat', Lex ikon tier Agyptologie v,
ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 884-8.

Sesostris

see SENUSBET

Seth (Set, Setekh, Suty, Sutekh)
God of chaos and confusion, who was general-
ly depicted with a human body but with the
head of a mysterious animal, often described
as 'Typhonian' (because of his later identifica-
tion with the Greek god Typhon). With its
long nose and squared ears, the 'Seth animal'
has sometimes been compared with an
anteater, but was probably a completely myth-
ical beast. The full anima! form of the god was
depicted with an erect forked tail and a canine

.,■:■.'■

. . ...

Limestone stele ofAapehty, a royal craftsman,
showing him adoring the god Seth. The craftsman's
name is a play on the phrase aa-pehty meaning
'great af'stre>/glh ', one of the epithets of Seth mho,
in Ramessitle times, became a patron of Egypt
along with Amiin, Ra and Ptah. !9t.h Dynasty,
v.I '200 nc, from Thebes, n. 21.2 em. (i-:\3S3()0)

body, but he was also occasionally represented
in the guise of other abhorred animals, such as
the hippopotamus, pig and donkey. The earli-
est known representation of Seth takes the
form of a carved ivory artefact (perhaps a
comb) from Tomb i-i29 at el-Mahasna, dating
to the \-\(i'\OA i period (e. 4000-3500 nc), while
the distinctive figure of the Seth-animal is also
portrayed on the macehead of the Proto-
dynastic ruler scorpton (t\3150 BC).

According to surviving religious texts, Seth
was the son of the sky-goddess nut, the
brother of osiris, isis and nephthys (the latter
being also his wife), and was said to have been

born in the region of naqada. Since the deserts
and foreign lands were equated with enmity i n
the Egyptian world view, Seth became patron
of such countries, and was also sometimes
associated with the foreign goddesses an at
and astarte.

According to legend, Seth was supposed to
have murdered his brother Osiris and then to
have engaged in a long and violent contest
with his nephew horus, who sought to avenge
the death of his father. In this contest, Seth
put out the eye of Horns, while the latter cas-
trated Seth, part: of whose violent nature prob-
ably derived from his sexual potency. It has
been suggested, in this context, that the strug-
gle between the two gods may have served as a
metaphor for the role of male SEXUAErn in the
cult of the Egyptian king. Tn the various con-
tests, Seth took on many forms, including
those of a black boar and hippopotamus, and it
is common to see Horns spearing him in one
of these animal guises, as in the ambulatory of
the temple of Ilorus at edel. Eventually the
gods were called upon to judge which of the
two should bc the earthly ruler. Despite his
great evil, Seth was favoured by r-\ on account
of his seniority. However, it was eventually
decreed that Horus should be the ruler of the
living (hence his identification with the king)
while Osiris would govern the underworld
(hence his identitication with the dead king).
As god of chaos and confusion, Seth lay out-
side the ordered universe, thus serving as a
necessary complement to the divine order,
since everything within the Egyptian system
needed an opposing force in order to maintain
the necessary balance (see DUALtTS ).

Despite his failure to gain the throne Sedi
was said to have remained a 'companion of
Ra', dwelling with him and causing storms
and bad weather. He is also supposed to have
journeyed with the sun-god in his BARK
through the twelve hours of the night. In this
context his violent nature was put to good use,
defending Ra from the coils of the serpent
apophis, whom he speared from the bow of the
boat. Since the deceased king also journeyed
with Ra, he too enjoyed the protection of Seth.
Similarly Seth might be called upon to P r0 ~
vide good weather by withholding the chaotic
aspect of his character that would usually have
instigated storms.

Despite his unsavoury reputation, Seth was
nevertheless the object of veneration; his cult
had been centred at Naqada since the
Predynastic period, as well as in the north-
eastern Delta. The 2nd-Dynasn "^
Peribsen chose to write his principal name i
a serekii surmounted by an image of Set
rather than Horus, in a radical change iron 1

264

SETY

SEXUALITY

traditional iconography, while his successor,
KHASEKHEMWY, placed images of both gods
above his name. Thereafter, however, the
serekh remained uniquely associated with
Horus.

In the Second Intermediate Period
(1650-1550 hc) Selh was worshipped by the
HYKSOS at Avaris (tell el-dab'a), perhaps
because he was a thunder-god, like the
Levantine deity, Baal. He was also venerated
by the rulers of the 19th and 20th Dynasties
(1295-1069 Be), some of whom took his name,
as in the case of Sety l (1294-1279 BC) and
Sethnakhte (1 186-1 184 bc). The rulers of this
period occasionally made reference to the
strength of Seth when describing their own
deeds in battle.

From the late Third Intermediate Period
(f.800 bc) onwards, there appears to have been
a change in the way that Seth was viewed.
Whereas previously he had been regarded
simply as an ambivalent force, avoided for
most purposes but invoked for others, he
began instead to be seen as evil and undesir-
able, to the extent that some of his statues were
reearved with die attributes of the god Amun,
and his defeat by Horus was widely celebrated.
H. teVelde, Seth, god of confusion (Leiden,
1967).

C. Ona.sci i, 'Der agyptische und der biblische
Seth', ArchivfiirPapyrusforsehung 77(1980),
99-119.

S. QuiRKE, Ancient Egyptian religion (London,
1992), 61-70.

Sety

'Birth name 1 forming part of the ROYAL titu-
lary of two pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty
(1295-1186 bc).

Sety i Mennmatra (1294-1279 bc;) was the
second ruler of the 19th Dynasty, the son of
RAMeses I and the father of Rameses II. His
coregency with his father appears lo have
lasted virtually from the beginning of the
dynasty, perhaps in a conscious effort to avoid
the problems of succession that had con-
tributed to the decline of the 18th-Dynasty
royal family. The concern with historical con-
tinuity is evident in his temple at abydos,
where the cull of the royal ancestors was cele-
brated with a relief showing his son reading a
papyrus inscribed with the names of sixty-
seven predecessors stretching back to the
semi-mythical menes (see king lists).

His reign seems to have been successful on
Krtuall-y all levels with military campaigns in
the Levant and wars with the Libyans and
Hittites effectively securing the country's
s Phere of influence in north Africa and the
gfear Last. In terms of architecture, the reliefs

WWlift

l-f

/ ■^s*

tJJ

rr ■

l/j%

Watercolour by Henry Salt of a seem in the tomb
of Sety i at Thebes, painted c, 1818.

in his temple at Abydos and the paintings in
his tomb in the VALLEY of the kings (ky17)
were among the most elegant of the New
Kingdom. His mummy was among the group
which survived the tomb-robberv of the Third
Intermediate Period (1069-747 bc) through
reburial in the 'deir el-baiiri cache 1 .

Sety a Userkheperura Selepema (1200-
1 194 BC) was the designated heir of
merenptaii (1213-1203 bc), but it seems
likely that he was initially prevented from
reigning by the emergence of a rival claimant
called Amenmessu, son of a relatively
unknown daughter of Rumeses 11. About five
years after the death of Merenptah, Sety
finally became king, and there is surviving
evidence o! work which he commissioned at
Karnak and the Ramesseum. His tomb in the
Valley of the Kings (KV-I5) was never com-
pleted but the standard of the reliefs on the
walls was high. His mummy was among those
re-interred in the tomb of amlntiotep ti in
the 21st Dynasty (1069-945 bc).
H. Chewier, he temple reposoir de Sea it (Cairo,
1940).
A. R. David, A guide to religious ritual at Abydos

(Warminster, 1981).

E. Hornlng, The tomb oj'Seti i (Zurich and

.Munich, 1991).

K. A. Kitchen, Raniesside inscriptions, 7 vols

(Oxford, 1993).

sexuality

Until comparatively recently it was often
implied that the ancient Egyptian attitudes to
sexuality were somewhat naive or cov. It is

now recognized, however, that the Egyptians'
view of sexual behaviour was relatively unin-
hibited and straightforward; like most soci-
eties, they applied their code of ETHICS to cer-
tain aspects of sexuality, in that adultery was
not condoned and sexual intercourse in
sacred places was prohibited, but their gener-
al attitude was distinctly pragmatic and
unprudish.

Sexuality and fertility were clearly of great
significance in manv of their religious beliefs.
The ithyphallic god min was a popular svmbol
of fertility, to whom cos lettuces were offered,
allegedly because the white sap of the lettuce
was identified with semen. The Egyptians
were aware that semen {mw) was the male con-
tribution to conception, although they also
believed that the semen emerged from a man's
bones and thus provided the child with its
skeleton, while women were thought to supply
the baby's soft tissues. As far as contraception
was concerned, some of the surviving 'medical
papyri 1 prescribe recipes for potions to avoid
pregnane v.

From at least the Badarian period onwards,
figurines of women, made from clay, wood,
ivory or stone, were included among funcrarv
equipment. These were often highly stylized
and generally emphasized one or more of the
sexual characteristics, The interpretation of
the various different types of fertility fig-
urines' has proved extremely difficult. Two
areas of confusion have persisted until recent
times: on the one hand, some figures were
described by their excavators as 'dolls' and
therefore incorrectly viewed as toys; on the
other hand, even when their sexual signifi-
cance was recognized by scholars, they were
often automatically assumed to have been

265

SHABAQO

intended for the posthumous sexual gratifica-
tion of the deceased (despite the fact that they
have been found in the tombs of women as
well as men).

It is now believed by most Egyptologists
that the function of such female figurines
within the tomb was lo reinforce or symbolize
the sexual aspects of regeneration and rebirth.
There are a number of specialized types such
as the wooden 'paddle dolls', so called because
of their shape, which have been found mainly
in 1 lth-Dynasty Theban tombs. Another very
common Middle Kingdom type, often mis-
leadingly described as 'concubines of the
dead 1 , consisted of clay or faience female fig-
ures, often truncated at the knees, which were
found in both tombs and houses.

Medical papyri make it clear that physicians
were familiar with the male sexual organs bul
less so with the female genitalia. The hiero-
glyphic sign showing female genitalia was
often used for the word 'woman', 'while the
erect penis was sometimes used to denote
'male 1 or 'husband'. The two hieroglyphs were
occasionally even superimposed to express
sexual intercourse. The art in temples and
tombs frequently depicts or alludes to the sex-
ual act. In the temple of Hathor at oeivdera,
for example, isis, in the form of a kite, is shown
poised on the phallus of the mummified osirts
as part of the Osiris myth. Similarly, the coffin
of the deceased might be identified with the
sky-goddess \ut, as though the deceased had
returned to her body to await rebirth.

Homosexuality was not unknown, and
tended to be described somewhat disapprov-
ingly, as in the attempted rape of the god
iiokus by his enemy SKTI1. The Greek histori-
an Herodotus made reference to the practice
of bestiality in Egypt, but his reliability in this
matter is uncertain, and he may even have
been confusing mythological references and
ritual acts with actual sexual preferences.
P. J. Ucko, Anthropomorphic figurines of
Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete (London,

1968).

H. Bri wer, 'Fruchtbarkcit', Lextkon tier
Agyptologie it, ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1977), 336-44.
L. Manniciii:, Sexual life in ancient Egypt
(London, 1987).

Shabaqo (Shabaka) (716-702 isc)
Second ruler of the Egyptian 25th Dynasty
(747-656 ik;). He rose to power over the king-
dom of \\p\i\ after the death of his brother
piy (747-716 BC), who had already conquered
Egypt but apparently failed to consolidate his
military success. Shabaqo soon re-established
control over Lower Egypt, defeating his main

rival, the 24th-Dynasty Saite king Bakenrenef
(Bocchoris; 720-715 BC) and replacing him
with a Kushite governor. Throughout his
reign he made manv additions to Egyptian
temples, such as those at Memphis, abvdos and
Esna, while at karnak. he erected a 'treasury'.
The 'archaism 1 that characterized the art and
architecture of the 25th and 26th Dynasties
was already apparent in the reign of Shabaqo,
particularly in the case of the 'Shabaqo Stone 1
(now in the British Museum), an account of
the creation of the universe by the god Ptah
which was inscribed on a slab of basalt and
claimed to be copied from an old worm-eaten
documenl.

Shabaqo appointed his son, Horemakhet, to
the post of High Priest of Amun at Thebes,
although the real power in the Theban region
still lay in the hands ol" Shabaqo's sister,
Amenirdis I, the god's will. OP AMUK, who
constructed a mortuary chapel and tomb for
herself within the precincts of MEBINET haul.
When Shabaqo died, he was buried in a pyra-
midal tomb at the Napatan royal necropolis of
ll-kurkl" and was succeeded by Piv's son
Shabitqo.

K.A. KJTCHEN, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt (11(10-050 BC), 2nd ed. {Warminster,
1986), 37S-83.

shabti (Egyptian ushahti, shawabli)
Funerary figurine, usually mummiform in
appearance, which developed during the
Middle Kingdom out of the funerary statu-
ettes and models provided in the tombs of the
Old Kingdom. The etymology of the word
shabii is unknown, as is the variant slunvtibti,
but by the Late Period (747-352 ik.) the term
ushahti, meaning 'answerer', was in general
use.

The purpose of the statuettes was to spare
their owner from menial corvee labour in the
afterlife, which would be required for the
deceased to produce his or her food. The fig-
ures stood in for both the deceased (in whose
name they would answer the call to work) and
the servants of the deceased. Some shahtis are
uninscribed but most are decorated with
Chapter 6 of the BOOS or THE DEAD, which is
therefore known as the 'shabti chapter*.
Several forms of this text have been identified
by Hans Schneider, but its basic purpose was
to enable the shahtis to accomplish their tasks:
'O shabti, if | name of deceased] be summoned
to do any work which has lo be done in the
realm of the dead - to make arable the fields,
to irrigate the land or to come) sand from
east to west; "Here am I", you shall say "I
shall doit".'

Early New Kingdom shahtis were sometimes

Shahtis of the princess Henutmehyt and the box in
which they ivere contained. The box shows her
adoring the jackal-headed Oaamutef and the
human-headed Imsety, two of the four Sons if
Horns. 1 9th Dynasty, e. / 290 fie, wood, from
Thebes, n of box 34 on. (t. \4IS49)

accompanied by model hoes and baskets
and from the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 uc) onwards some 'overseer fig-
ures' were provided with a whip, while later
examples have such details moulded or
carved as part of the statuette. New Kingdom
shahtis were also occasionally shown in ordi-
nary dress rather than in the guise of it
mummy Initially the deceased was provided
with only one shahli, but by (he New
Kingdom the numbers had increased signifi-
cantly so that there might be 365 figures, one
for every day of the year, accompanied by
thirty-six 'overseers', giving a total of 401,
although as many as seven hundred are said
to have been found in the tomb of Setv I
(1294-1279 BC). The increasing number ol
shahtis led to the manufacture of special con-
tainers now known as .\7w /'//-boxes.

The quality of shahtis and their material
varies widely although wood, clay, wax, stone,
bronze, KUiAr.t. and even GLASS are known-
Faience is the material most common!) associ-
ated with shahtis, particularly with regard to
the fine examples of the 26th to 30th
On nasties (664-545 lie:). The poorest qu*
shahtis were barely recognizable as such, a
some - especially of the 17th Dynasty

266

S H A DOW, SHADE

SHEN

(1650—1 550 lit) - were little more than wooden
pegs. The use of shubtis died out during the
Ptolemaic period (332-30 lit:).
K M. H PETRIE, Shubtis (Warminster, 1974).
H. D. SatNEIDER, Shabtis, 3 vols (Leiden, 1977).
H. M. Stewart, Egyptian sh&btk (Princes
Risborough, 1995).

shadow, shade (Egyptian shm)

The shadow was regarded by the Egyptians as
an essential element ol every human being; as
with the AK1-I, i!.\, £A and NAME, it was consid-
ered necessary to protect it from harm.
Funerary texts describe the shadow as an en-
tity imbued with power and capable of moving
at great speed, but the Egyptian word for
shadow (slim/) also had the connotations of
'■shade' and 'protection 1 , consequently the
pharaoh is generally portrayed under the
shade of a feather- or palm-fan (the same
hieroglyphic sign being used for both fan and
sunshade). The painted scenes decorating the
royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings take
account of the sun's shadow as it passes
through the netherworld, and it was felt that
power was transferred to those over whom the
solar shadow fell. In the city at u.-wi \r\.\
there was a special type of shrine dedicated to
the god vii:\, known as u sluvi-Ra ('sun-
shade').

B. George, Zu den altagyptischen t orstellungen
vom Schatten ah Seeie (Bonn, 1 970).
E. Hornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Bredeck
(New York, 1992), 178-9,

shaduf

Irrigation tool consisting of a long wooden
pole with a receptacle at one end and a coun-
terbalancing weight at the other, by means of
which water could be transferred mil of a
river or canal. It is first depicted on an \kk \-
UIAN cylinder seal of the late third millen-
nium BC but it was probably not introduced
into Egypt until the 1 Nth Dynasty
(1550-1295 isc) and the earliest surviving
depictions are on the walls of the tomb
chapels of Neferhotcp and Merira n at the
time of Akhenaten (1352-1336 ik.). It was
eventually superseded, first b_\ the
Archimedes screw (Arabic lunbiir) in the
fifth century nc and, second, by the water-
wheel (Arabic saqiya) in the early Ptolemaic
period, although small shudnfs are still occa-
sionally used, even in modern Egypt, to
water garden plots.
K. W. Butzi.r, l Schaduf\ Lexikon der
Wptptotogie v, ed. W. Helck, E. OtTo anil
W.Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1984), 520-1.
k. Strouial, Life in ancient Eg^rpt (Cambridge,
1992), 97.

Shay

God who served as a symbol of allotted life-
span or destiny, and was therefore occasionally
portrayed in vignettes of the weighing of the
heart of the deceased (the Egyptian last judge-
ment). In the Ptolemaic period he became
closely identified with the Greek serpent-god
of fortune-telling, Agalhodaimon.
J. Qi. \l.<_a:m:i R, Lc dieii egyptien Shaidaus hi
religion ct ranamasiiqite (Eouvain, 1975).

1 \\!.\i \i. in siiWURV and ram

Sheikh el-Beled (Arabic: 'headman of the
village 1 )

Popular name for the wooden statue of a chief
lector-priest called Ka-aper, whose tomb,
mastaba cN, was excavated by the French
archaeologist Auguste Manette at north
Saqqara, near the pyramid complex of the

The life-like statue of the chief lector priest Ka-aper
is better known as the 'Sheikh ei-Rcled\ apparently
because he reminded Muriel te's workmen of their
village headman. The original cane and sceptre held
in his bunds were missing und the cune he now holds
is modern: the legs have u/sn been purity restored.
4th Dynasty, c.2490 nc, sycamore mood mi/h copper

and rock crystal eyes, from Saai/ara. maslubu c.S,
ii 1.12 m. (c \innc.c34)

5th-D\nasty pharaoh Userkaf (2494-
2487 ik:). The life-size standing figure
(Egyptian Museum, Cairo), carved from
sycamore wood, is widely regarded as one of
the masterpieces of Old Kingdom private
sculpture. Ka-aper is portrayed as a thick-set,
middle-aged figure clad in a straight skirt
and holding a staff in his left hand and a
si'.kiiKM nceptri: in bis right (both traditional
symbols of authority). His eyes are made of
rock-crvstal rimmed with copper and fur-
nished with pupils in the form of drilled
holes filled with black pigment.

The dales of mastaba c:8 and the statue have
been a matter of some debate, but most schol-
ars place Ka-aper and his tomb in the late 4th
Dynasty (c.l'M) i;c). The Sheikh el-Beled is
comparable with other 4th-Dynasty realistic
sculptures, such as the bust of Ankhhaf in
Boston; it was found in association with a large
granite stele and part of a wooden figure of a
woman thought to represent Ka-aper's wife
(Cairo). Another wooden statue of a man
(Cairo), although of inferior quality, is consid-
ered to be a representation of Ka-aper at a
younger age and probably derives from the
same mastaba.

J.V.wniER, Manuel d'urcheologie egypliennc II!
(Paris, 1958), 90- 1,104-5, 125-8.
CVANDERSLEYEN, l T.;i date du Cheikh cl-Beletl
(Caire ca 34)\JMAW (1983), 61-5.
M. Salei i and H. Solrolzian, The Egyptian
Museum, Cairo: official catalogue (.Mainz, 1987),
no. 40.

shen

Hieroglyphic symbol depicting a circle or ring
of rope folded and knotted at the bottom; since
the circle effectively had no end, it came to
denote infinity. When the shen sign was
depicted encircling the sun, it appears to have
symbolized the eternity of the universe. This
property of encirclement was extended to
denote protection as w r ell as eternity, making
the sign doubly potent. Consequently it is fre-
quently found as a decorative clement in
designs, and is particularly associated with
IIORLS the falcon or NEKHBET the vulture who
bold the sign in their claws above the king,
offering him eternal protection. Similarly it
appears as an amuletie element in jewellery
from die Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 nc)
onwards. The shape is well suited to linger
rings, but also occurs in pendants, earrings
and pectorals. Richard Wilkinson suggests
that the upeurved wings of some jewelierv in
the form of birds deliberately imitate the
shape of the shen that thev hold in their claws.
On sarcophagi the sign commonly appeal's
in the hands of the goddesses who kneel on the

267

SHESHONQ

_SHIPSANDBOATs

Double-sided amulet in pale green faience in the
firm of the .shen sign symbolizing infinity, eternity
ami protection. Suite period, 11.17 cm. (£lSS025J

uebw sign ('gold'), at the ends of royal sar-
cophagi of the New Kingdom such as that of
Amenhotep n (1427-1400 Be). The shape of
the sign is imitated by the ouroboros, the
snake which bites its own tail, and that the two
are related is shown by the sarcophagus lid of
Merenptah (1213-1203 Be), which is carved in
the shape of a cartouche (the elongated form
of the shen sign in which royal names were
written) surrounded by an elongated
ouroboros.

R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992).

Sheshonq (Shoshcnq, Sheshonk, Shishak)
Libyan name held by me kings of the 22nd
and 23rd Dynasties (945-715 Be and 818-715
lie respectively) as their 'birlh name' or nomen
(see ROYAL TTTUl .Mil).

Sheslmnq I Heiljkhepcira Setepenra (945-924
BC), a nephew- of osorkon the elder, was a
descendant of the LIBYAN 'great chiefs of the
Meshwesh'. He rose to power through his role
as general and adviser to bsuseni«s ll
(959-945 BC), whom he eventually succeeded,
thus inaugurating I he period of Libyan domi-
nation. He succeeded in restoring Egyptian
political influence over Palestine, an act com-
memorated on the 'Bubastite portal', which
was the gateway leading into the first court of
the temple of Amun at KUiNAK. His reliefs on
an exterior wall of this court at Karnak depict
his victory over the two Jewish kingdoms of
ISE \n. and Judah (sec biblical CONNECTIONS).
The presentation of a statue of himself to
King Abibaal of bvblos probably also indicat-
ed the full resumption of economic links with
the Levant.

Slieslton,/ ft Uequklieperru Setepenra (r.890
lie:) was the designated heir of osorkon i
(924-889 lie:), but died before him, having
ruled only in a coregenoy with his father

rather than as a pharaoh in his own right. In
1939 Pierre Montet discovered his silver cof-
fin in the vestibule of the tomb of Psusenncs I
(1039-991 nc) al tanis, and the age of die
mummified body which it contained is esti-
mated to have been about fifty years at death.
He is probably the same person as Sheshonq
Meryamun, who is recorded as chief priest of
Amun at Thebes at roughly the same time; a
quartzite statue of Hapy the god of the inun-
dation, now in the collection of the British
Museum, was dedicated by Sheshonq Mery-
amun, whose figure is caned in relief at
Hapy's side (see iiapy for illustration).

Sbesllottq in Userinaatra Setepenra/ 'titnnn
(825-773 BC) was the successor to Takelot u
(850-825 bc), baring apparently usurped the
throne from the heir, prince Osorkon. It was
around the eighth year of his reign that he was
somewhat eclipsed by Pedubastis l (818-793
bc), ruler of Leontopolis (tell h.-viuodam),
who also declared himself king, thus creating
the 23rd Dynasty, whose rulers were contem-
poraneous with the last four rulers of theTanitc
22nd Dynasty. This left Sheshonq in with his
territories restricted to parts of the eastern and
central Delta, while it was Pedubastis whose
reign was apparently endorsed by the influen-
tial priests of Amun at Thebes.

Shesltmtq it Usermaaira Mcryumitn (r.7S0
BC) had a brief reign (six years al most) as the
23rd-Dynasty successor to the throne of
Pedubastis l at Leontopolis.

Sheshonq V Aukheperra (767-730 bc), the
penultimate 22nd-Dynasty ruler, reigned for
nearly forty years and is relatively well attest-
ed, particularly at Tanis, where he constructed
a small temple dedicated to the triad of Amun
and, in the thirtieth year of his reign, a chapel
relating to his SED festival.
K.A. KITCHEN, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt (lWO-hiO a,;), 2nd ed. (Warminster
1986), 287-354, 575-6.

J. Vovotte et al., Tanis, Tor des phantom (Paris
1987).

D. A. Aston, Takefoth n - a king of the
"Theban 23rd Dynasty"?', jEA 75 (1989)
139-53.

N. Grlmal, A history of ancient Fj-ypl (Oxford
1992), 319-311.

shesmet girdle

Belt or girdle from which an apron of beads
was suspended, forming part of the symbolic
attire of Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom
rulers such as Djoser (2667-2648 lie), which
perhaps evolved from Predynaslic beaded
girdles. The bell was also worn by certain
deities, and there was a goddess Shesmetet,
attested from the Early Dynastic period

(3100-2686 BC) onwards, who personified the
girdle. By at least the 5th Dynasty Shesmetet
was represented with the head of a lioness and
considered as a form of the goddess bastet

ll is possible that the shesmet itself even-
tually developed into other forms of belt, such
as those found in male burials from the Old
Kingdom onwards, which were later extended
to women by the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 bc). The tomb of Scnebtisy a
woman of the 12th-Dynasly royal family
buried at el-i.isiit, contained numerous items
of jewellery, including a shesmet girdle. The
cullic significance of the girdle is perhaps also
indicated by the fact that the epithets of the
god SOPED included the phrase 'lord of the
shesmet '.

P. E. Newberry, 'SSmit', Studies presented l„
Francis Llewellyn Griffith (London, 1932)
316-23.

E. Staeiiklin, 'Sehesemct-Giirtcr, Lcxihui der
Agyptologie v, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden, 1984), 586-7.

ships and boats

The importance of water transport, both as a
practical means of communication and as a
recurring religious metaphor, arose inc\ itably
from the existence of the river Nile and its
tributaries as the principal artery of communi-
cation in ancienl Egypt. The prevailing wind
in the Nile valley came from the north, so that
sails could bc used to propel boats travelling
south, while those heading north, against the
wind, relied on oars and the current. For this
reason, the hieroglyph for 'travelling north',
even in the case of overland travel, consisted of
a boat with its sails down, while that for 'trav-
elling south' shows a boat with billowing sails.
Boats were already being used as early as the
Gerzean period (r.3500-3100 lit:).

A great deal of information has survived
concerning Egyptian ships and boats, princi-
pally in the form of depictions on the walls of
tombs, funerary models and textual refer-
ences. There have also been a number of finds
of actual boats, ranging from the reconstructed
solar bark of Khufu (2589-2566 in ) to the
fragments of boat timber preserved through
their reuse for such purposes as the construc-
tion of slipw r ays.

Travel by boat was so ingrained in the
Egyptian psyche that it was considered natural
to depict the sun-god Rjs travelling through
the sky or the netherworld in his bark-
However, when sailing outside the Nile valley,
on the Mediterranean or Red Sea, the ships
seem to have stayed close to the shore. Unlike
the Greeks, the Egyptians were evidently not
enthusiastic seafarers.

268

SHIPS AND BOATS

SHRINE

Probably the earliest and simplest boats
were papyrus skiffs, made of bundles of reeds
lashed together. These would have been used
for fishing and hunting game in the marshes,
for crossing the river and for travelling short
distances, and this type probably remained in
use throughout Pharaonic history. Even from
Predynastic times there is evidence for larger
vessels, though perhaps still of reed construc-
tion. Painted pottery of the Naqada period
shows elaborate, many-oared, ships with
numerous sailors. The prows and sterns of
such vessels are usually upturned; ihey would
normally have been provided with at least one
large steering oar, and sometimes also a sail
and cabin.

The boats and ships of the Old Kingdom
(2686-2181 BC) were usually made of WOOD

the boats carrying the great granite papyrus
columns for his valley temple.

The typical craft of the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 Be) were similar in design,
although, from the late Old Kingdom
onwards, the steering oar was operated as a
rudder by means of ropes. The mast was col-
lapsible and rested on a stand when not in use,
while the cabin was usually located at the
stern. Many models of these boats have sur-
vived in tombs, where they played an impor-
tant role in the funerary cult, symbolizing the
journey of the deceased to abydos. There are
also surviving fragments of timber from actual
vessels reused for slipways and ramps in the
pyramid complexes at el-lisht.

In the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc) ves-
sels seem to have become more specialized;

Model Boats frequently accompanied burials of the
Middle Kingdom and symbolized the pilgrimage lo
Abydos. 12th Dynasty, c.1900 nc, provenance
unknown, u. of hull 10.2 cm, /.. 6b. 7 cm.
(ea9524)

obtained either locally or from Syria-Palestine.
They had a characteristically curving hull and
were usually provided with several steering
oars, a mast and a long narrow sail. Oars would
also have been used for propulsion when there
was insufficient breeze to fill the sails. The
best-known surviving Old Kingdom boat is
that found beside the pyramid of Khufu at
Giza, which was made of large planks of wood
sewn' together with ropes. Rather less elab-
orate vessels would have been used to transport
stone from the quarries to the construction
Sl tes of pyramid complexes. The reliefs deco-
ding the causeway of the pyramid complex of
Ur *as (2375-2345 BC) included depictions of

there were usually cabins on both the stern
and the prow in addition to a main cabin in
the centre of the boat. The helmsman oper-
ated double steering oars by a system of ropes
and levers as before, and the width of the sail
was greater than its height. The Egyptian
navy of this period was put to the test when it
repulsed the invasion of the sea pkopi.es,
according to the reliefs of Rameses in
(1184-1153 BC) at viEDiNT.T fiAiiU. As in the
Old Kingdom, huge masses of stone were also
moved by barge, including obelisks for the
temple of Hatshepsut (1473-1458 bc) at deir
el-bahri. The same queen also sent a sea-
borne expedition to plnt. A late 20th-
Dynasty literary (or possibly quasi-historical)
text, The Report of Wenamttn, outlines a sea-
journey by an official to obtain timber from
byblos; this expedition was initially unsuc-
cessful due to Egypt's poor political fortunes
at the time (see herihor).

Boats of die Late Period (747-332 bc) seem
to have remained roughly similar, but the stern
was generally higher. With increasing Greek
influence from the saite period onwards,
however, sea-going vessels began to be mod-
elled on those used by the Greeks and
Phoenicians, and by the time of the sea battle
of Actium, between Cleopatra vii (51-30 bc)
and the Roman consul Octavian (later
Emperor Augustus), the Egyptian ships
appear to have been similar in design to those
of the Romans.

G. A. Reisner, Models of ships and boats (Cairo,
1913).

P. I.ipki., The royal ships of Cheops (Oxford,
1984).

M. Bietak, l Zur Marine des Alten Rciches',
Pyramid studies and other essays presented to
I. E. S. Edmards, ed. J. Baines et al. (London,
1988), 35-40.

D. A. Jones, A glossary of 'ancient Egyptian
nautical titles and terms (London, 1988).
R. H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 152-7.
S. V inson, Egyptian boats and ships (Princes
Risborough, 1994).
D. A. Jo\HS, Boats (London, 1 995).

shrine

Term which is to some extent synonymous
with naos, in that it is often used to refer
either to the innermost element of a temple
(where the cult image or bark of the deity was
placed) or to the elaborate boxes containing
funerary statuary (such as those in the tomb of
tutankiiamun (kv62)). The Egyptian term
Peris used to refer to the pavilion-style shrines
of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The traditional Upper Egyptian shrine
{per-wer or kar) has a shape identical to that of
the golden shrine of Tutankhamun, consisting
of a square box topped by a cavetto cornice
and a roof or lid sloping down from the front.
Although the hieroglyphic image was initially
used simply to designate the chapel of the
goddess nekilbet at elkar, it came to symbol-
ize the whole geographical region of Upper
Egypt itself. The Lower Egyptian shrine {per-
nu or perneser) was a dome-roofed box with
high posts on either side, which became the
model for various other objects such as sar-
cophagi (see COFFINS and sarcophagi) and
siiABTi-boxes. The original shrine was located
at Buto (tell ej-farra'in), the city of the
cobra-goddess wadjyt, hut it too came to rep-
resent the region as a whole.

The English term 'shrine', however, is often
used to describe various small freestanding
buildings which in themselves were miniature
temples or chapels, such as the 'BARK-shrines',

269

SIDELOCK OFVn UT H

which were placed along processional ways as
temporary resting places for the divine bark as
it was carried between one temple complex
and another. The gardens of the larger houses

•".';V. ;, -''J:^ 'V;™. -i-'.,,,,

Granite shrine from Pliilae. carved during the
reign of Ptolemy I in Euergetes II (1 70-1 lb HCj
and bearing texts including a dedication to the
goddess his, the principal deity of Phiiae.
n. 2.51 m. (cillM)

at El -amarna often contained unusual shrines
in the form of small decorated pvlons or ste-
lae, which were dedicated to the royal family of

AKHF.NATF.N (1352-1.136 BC).

M. Eaton-Krauss and E. Gxaefe, The small

golden shrine from the tomb ofTulaiikbamint
(Oxford, 1985).

Shu

God of the air and sunlight, whose name
probably means 'he who rises up'. He was
usually depicted as a man wearing a headdress
in the form of a plume (which was the hiero-
glyph denoting his name). Apart from refer-
ences in the pyramid texts and COFFIN
TEXTS, his cult is not attested until the New
Kingdom, when his comparative prominence-
is probably a reflection of his association with
the force of life, which was an increasingly
important clement of Egyptian religion in the
New Kingdom.

While Shu symbolized dry air, his sister-

wife, tefxut, was goddess of moisture or cor-
rosive air; they were the first two gods created
by atu.m according to the creation myth of
Ileliopolis, in which they were said to have
come into being from the semen of Atum or
from the mucus of his sneeze. Their children
were geb the earth-god and nut the sky-
goddess, and it was Shu's role to support the
outstretched figure of Nut, thus effectively
separating the sky from the earth.

He was not a solar deity (indeed he was
often linked with the lunar deities RHONS and
tiiotii), but his role in providing sunlight led
to an obvious connection with the sun-god ra,
and it was believed that he brought the sun to
life each morning. Similarly, in the under-
world, it was thought that he protected the sun
from the snake-god apopiifs, although at the
same time he was portrayed at the head of a
group of the torturers threatening the
deceased. During the reign of Akhenaten
(1352-1336 lie) the cult of Shu escaped pro-
scription because of his solar associations, and
he was considered to dwell in the sun-disc (see
aten). With a typical Egyptian sense of DUAL-
ITY, his wife, Tefnut, was linked with the
moon. His connections with die sun, with res-
urrection and with separating heaven and
earth are exemplified in a headrest of
Tutankhamun (1336-1327 Be) in which Shu,
flanked by two lions, supports the head of the
sleeper, so that the composition as a whole
forms ihe horizon hieroglyph, thus perhaps
allowing the head of the king to be identified
with the sun poised on the horizon.
P. Derciiain, 'Le nom de Chou et sa fonction',
RM ZJ (1975), 110-16,

H. VAN DE Wai.i.e, 'Survivantes mythologiques
dans Ics coiffures royal de I'epoque atonienne',
CdE 55/109(198(1), 23-6.

II. TE Vei.de, 'Sehu*, Lexikon derAgypio/„, <h , v
ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 735-7.
S. Quirke, Ancicnl Egyptian religion (London
1992), 25-31.

sidelock of youth

Egyptian children, particularly boys, are usu-
ally portrayed with their heads shaved, apart
from a single plaited 'sidelock', which features
ill the hieroglyph for 'child' (khered) and was
considered to be the archetypal symbol of
youth. Four actual examples of sidelocks were
found in 6th-Dynasty graves at Mostagedda
by Guy Brunton. The childlike versions of

Grey-green faience amulet of Shu. god of air and
sunlight, supporting a sun-disc. Suite period.
C.664-S2S in:, it. J cm. (i: ifM.i'))

Fragment from the tomb ofAnherkhau, shanviiga
child iri/b the sidelock ofyouih. Wilt Dynasty,
ii.llMI m:. from Dcir el-Medina. (Ell.SJ'J)

such gods as iiorus and khons were regularly
portrayed with a sidelock, as were royal off-
spring, including the 'Amarna princesses', the
daughters of \kiie\aten (1352-1336 lie). The
sum priest, who usually performed the final
rites of resurrection on the mummy of the
deceased, often wore a sidelock, presumably in
imitation of Horus, who would have per-
formed the same filial rites on the body of his
father o.sires.

silver

Although the Egyptians could obtain gold
and electrum (the natural alloy of silver and
gold) from the mountains of the Eastern
Desert and Nubia, silver was comparatively
rare, and may even have been unknown in
early times, since the Egyptian language lacks
a word for it. They described it only as the
'white metal', and seem to have regarded it as
a variety of gold.

When silver was first introduced into the
Egyptian economy, its value seems to have
been higher than that of gold, judging f roffl

270

SILVER

SINUHE, TALE OF

Cult image of the god Amun from his temple at
Karnak. New Kingdom, c.1300 bc, stiver and
gold, it. 23 em. (u i60006j

the fact that silver items were listed before
those of gold in descriptions of valuables dur-
ing the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc). The
value of the earliest silver imports is indicated
by the thinness of the bracelets of the 4th-
Dynasty queen hktepheres i (c, 2600 Be), in
marked contrast to the extravagance of her
goldwork. A silver treasure excavated at the
site of tod comprised vessels probably made
in Crete, or perhaps somewhere in Asia but
under Cretan influence. This cache dates to
the reign of Amenemhat n (1922-1878 BC), in
the 12th Dynasty, and is roughly contempora-
neous with finds of fine silver jewellery at el-
Eahun and Dahshur.

By the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc),
however, silver may have been regarded as less
valuable, presumably as a result of increased
availability; according to the Rhind
Mathematical Papyrus (written in the Second
Intermediate Period but perhaps originally
imposed in the 12th Dynasty), silver had
acquired a value approximately half that of
Sold. It was imported into Egypt from western

Asia and the Mediterranean, and became
readily available only from the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 BC) onwards. A study by Jaroslav
Cerny, based on New Kingdom ostraca
recording sales and other transactions, sug-
gests that metal prices remained relativelv
constant between the 12th and the 19th
Dynasties (f.1985-1 1S6 bc), with silver main-
taining half the value of gold, and copper
about one-hundredth the value of silver.

Despite (or perhaps even because of) the
increased quantity of silver available in the
New Kingdom, the tomb of Tutankhamun
(1336-1327 bc; k\62) contained relatively
little silvcrwork. The rulers of the 21st and
22nd Dynasties, who were buried at TAMS,
made greater use of silver in their burials.
Sheshonq n (c. 890 bc) had a solid silver coffin
with gilded details in the form of the hawk-
god sokar. Silver was regarded as the material
from which the bones of the gods were fash-
ioned, while their flesh was considered to be
made from gold.

E Bis.son be LA Roole, 'Le tresor de Tod\ CdE
12 (1937), 20-6.

J. Cernv, 'Prices and wages in Egypt in the
Ramesside period', Cahiers d'Histoire Mmidiale l
(1954), 903-21.

A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian materials and
industries, 4th ed. (London, 1962), 245-9.
N. H. Gale and Z. A. Stos-Gale, 'Ancient
Egyptian siivcr\_7£'_-i 67 (1981), 103-15.
Z. A. Stos-Gale and N. H. Gale, 'Sources of
galena, lead and silver in Predvnastic Egypt 1 ,
.-Ides du KM Symposium international
d'archeometrie, Paris 26-29 mars 1989 ni \Revue
d'Archeometrie, Supplement 1981] (Paris, 1981),
285-96.

Sinai

Peninsula situated between Egypt and the
Levant at the northern end of the Red Sea and

to the east of the Suez canal, which has tradi-

Relief fragment of King Sanakftl from the turquoise
mines at Wadi Maghara, central Sinai. 3rd
Dynasty, c.2680 bc, sandstone, n. 33 em. (ea691)

tionally been settled by bedouin. The people
of the Nile valley and southern Palestine peri-
odically exploited its mineral resources (pri-
marily consisting of turquoise and COPPER),
and created settlements, shrines and rock-
carvings at sites such as Serabit el-Khadim,
Wadi Maghara, Wadi Arabah and Timna. A
major archaeological survey of the Sinai was
undertaken by Flinders petrie in 1904-5, and
in the 1990s many sites were investigated in
northwestern Sinai in advance of the con-
struction of a new canal.

Texts written in an unusual script known as
Proto-Sinaitic have been found at a number of
places in the Sinai, including Serabit el-
Khadim, as well as at sites in Palestine. The
script consists of at least twenty-three signs,
about half of which appear to derive from
Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the texts probablv
date mainly to the late Middle Kingdom
(;. 1800-1650 bc) or Second Intermediate
Period (1650-1550 bc), but it has still not been
properly deciphered. It is possible that Proto-
Sinaitic represents a crucial early stage in the
development of the alphabet.
W. M. F. Petrel and C. T. Currelly, Researches
in Sinai (London, 1906).

W. F. Albright, The proto-Sinitic inscriptions and
their decipherment (Cambridge, MA, and
London, 1966).

B. Ron ienberg et al., Sinai: pharaohs, miners,
pilgrims and soldiers (New York, 1979).
W. V. Davies, Egyptian hieroglyphs (London,
1987), 57-60.

Sinuhe, Tale of see literature

Sirius see sopdet

SJStrum (Egyptian sesheshl; Greek seislron)
Musical rattling instrument played primarily
by women, except when the pharaoh was mak-
ing offerings to the goddess hatiior. Although
most surviving Greco-Roman examples are
made of bronze, many ritual or funerary
examples, which would often have been non-
functional, were made from other materials
such as wood, stone or faience.

Priestesses, princesses and royal wives were
often represented shaking the instrument
while participating in rituals or ceremonial
activities. There were two basic types of
sistrum, hooped and NAOS-shaped, both of
which were closely associated with the cult of
Ilathor, whose head was often depicted on the
handle. An early travertine sistrum inscribed
with the names of the 6th-Dynasty ruler teti
(2345-2323 bc) takes the form of a papyrus
topped by a news, which is itself surmounted
by a falcon and cobra, thus forming a rebus of

271

SIWA OASIS

_SMENKHKAR A

Detail of a Book of the Dead papyrus bearing the
figure of the priestess Anhai shaking a sistrum and
holding a length of vine. 20th Dynasty, c.l 100 BC
(eaW472,shf.f.t7)

the name of Hathor (i.e. hwt Ilor). The naos-
stylc sistrum thus dales back at least as early
as the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc), but it
was the hooped style which became most
common bv the Greco-Roman period
(332 isc-ad 395).

N. de G. Davtes, 'An alabaster sistrum dedi-
cated to KingTeta',^ 6 (1920), 69-72.
F. Daumas, 'Les objects sacrcs de la deesse
Hathor a Dendara', ME 11 (1970), 63-78.
C. Ziegler, Catalogue des instruments de
musique egyptiens (Paris, 1979), 3mfJ.

Siwa Oasis (anc. Sekhet-imit; Ammonium)
Natural depression in the Libyan Desert
about 560 km west of Cairo, where the earli-
est remains date to the 26th Dynastv (664—
525 BC). The site includes the cemetery of
Gebel el-Mawta, dating from the 26th Dynasty
to the Roman period, and two temples dedi-
cated to the god amun, dating to the reigns of
Ahmose it (570-526 bc) and Nectanebo n
(360-343 BC) respectively. In 332 esc the
famous oracle of Amun at Siwa is said to have
been visited by Alexander the great, where
he was officially recognized as the god's son

and therefore the legitimate pharaoh. In the
Middle Ages, the caravan route from north-
west Africa passed through the Siwa Oasis.
A. Fakiiry, The oases of Egypt i: Siwa Oasis
(Cairo, 1973).

K. P. Kuhlmann, Das Ammoneion: Archaologie,
Geschichtc and Kti/tpri/xis des Orakels von Siwa
(Mainz, 1988).

slaves

Attempts to analyse the use of slaves in ancient
Egyptian society have often been thwarted by
problems of definition and translation, as well
as by the emotive connotations of a term thai
invariably conjures up anachronistic visions
either of ancient Rome or of the nineteenth-
century plantations of the New World.

Most of the population of Pharaonic Egypt
were tied to the land or followed strictly
hereditary professions; these men or women
were often included among the possessions of
kings, high-ranking officials or TEMPLE estates.
Thev might, however, be better described as
'serfs 1 {semedet or meret), although even this
translation is perhaps too closely connected
with images of feudal society in medieval
Europe, especially in view of the fact that
Egyptian farmers were 'tied to the land' not
legally but bv tradition and economic circum-
stances. Semedet and meret were allowed to
own property but appear to have enjoyed very
limited freedom by modern western standards.

True slavery, in the Classical sense of the
word, seems to have been rare in Egypt before
the Ptolemaic period (332-30 bc). Most
Egyptian slaves (hemm or hakw) would have
been Asiatic prisoners of war (khenelw, or,
more commonly, sekerw ankhw), although it is
clear from records of the Late Period (747—332
uc) that Egyptians too could be slaves, and
indeed that they were sometimes obliged to
sell themselves into slavery, presumably in
order to gain food and shelter or to pay debts.
The Jewish mercenaries at Elephantine
(aswan), for instance, are said to have had
Egyptian slaves during the Late Period. It
appears that slaves were generally well treated,
and some at least seem to have owned prop-
erty. Both male and female owners of slaves
had the right to free them, and it was possible
for slaves to marry free-born women and even
to own land.

The popular assertion that the pyramids
were built by slave labour finds little support
in the surviving textual records of the Old
Kingdom (2686-2181 bc), since the work on
royal funerary monuments was mostly con-
ducted through corvee labour. Quarrying and
mining, however, were sometimes carried out
by convicts or foreign prisoners of war. It was

not until the Middle Kingdom and the New
Kingdom that prisoners of war became
numerous enough to play any perceptible role
in Egyptian society. The records of the work-
men's village at deir el-medina show that
slaves were employed on a communal basis
particularly to help with the grinding of grain
for bread-making, and some workmen in the
community even owned personal slaves. One
19th-Dynasty worker, Ken, buried in tomb
tt4 at Deir el-Medina, appears to have had
about twelve slaves, thus illustrating that the
ownership of slaves was by no means the
exclusive preserve of the elite.
A. EI.-M. Bakir, Slavery in pharaonic Egypt
(Cairo, 1952).

S. P. Vleeming, 'The sale of a slave in the time of
pharaoh Py', OMRO 61 (1980), 1-17.
E. S. Bogoslovskiy, 'On the system of the
ancient Egyptian society of the epoch of die New
Kingdom', Altorient Forschungen 8 (1981), 5-21.
E. Cruz-Urihk, 'Slavery in Egypt during the
Saite and Persian periods', Revue International
des Droits de VAntiqmte 29 (1982), 47-7 1 .

Smenkhkara

see -\k"iii-;\ATi:N

snake see serpent

Sneferu (Snofru) (2613-2589 bc)
First pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty; who was dei-
fied by the Middle Kingdom and celebrated
in later literature as a benevolent and good-
humoured ruler. He was the son of his prede-
cessor Huni by Meresankh I (probably a
concubine rather than one of the principal
wives) and father of kiiufu, the builder of the
Great Pyramid at Giza. According to the
Palermo stone, he sent military expeditions
against the Nubians and Libyans as well as
quarrying expeditions to the TURQIJQISE mines
in the Sinai. His 'Horus name' was Nebmaat,
but his royal titulary was the first to have his
other name (i.e. Sneferu) enclosed within an
oval ring or cartouche. It was by this 'car-
touche name' that he and subsequeni kings
were known.

The lime of Sneferu is also crucial in terms
of the development of the royal pyramid com-
plex, since the three funerary monuments
constructed during his reign (one ai meiuCM
and two at dahsi-iur) represented ihc first
attempts at true pyramids, moving away from
the step-pyramid complexes ol the 3*""
Dynasty. The North Pyramid (or ^^
Pyramid') at Dahshur is thought to have been
the actual burial-place of Sneferu.
A. Fakiiry, The monuments of Sneferu at
Dahshur, 2 vols (Cairo, 1959-61).
R. Stadelmann, 'Snofru und die pyramiden von

272

S NOFRU

SOBEKNEFERU

Meidum und Dahsclmr', MDAIK 36 (1980),

437-9.

E. Graefe, 'Die gute Reputation dcs Konigs

"Snofru"', Studies in Egyptology presented to

Miriam Lichtheim, cd. S. Isarclit-Groll

(Jerusalem, 1990), 257-63.

I. E. S. Edwards, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.

(Harmondsworth, 1993), 70-96.

Snofru see SNEFERU

Sobek (Sebek, Suchos)

Crocodile-god who was portrayed either as a
crocodile (often perched on a shrine or altar)
or as a man with a crocodile's head, often
wearing a headdress consisting of the horned
sun-disc and upright feathers. His two main
cult-centres were at the Upper Egyptian site
of kom ombo, where he shared a temple with
horus, and at medinet el-fayum in the centre
of the Fayum region, where the town of
Shedyet, later known as Crocodilopolis, once
stood. There were, however, numerous other
shrines and temples dedicated to Sobek
throughout the Nile valley, such as gebel el-
silsila and gebeleln. The temples of croco-
dile-gods were usually provided with a pool
containing sacred crocodiles.

During the 12th and 13th Dynasties the
cult of Sobek was given particular promi-
nence, as the names of such rulers as
sobekhotep and sobekneferu indicate. From

Section of relief in the mammisi at Kom Ombo,
showing Ptolemy ix making offerings to a seated
figure of the crocodile-god Sobek, c. llb-107 tic.
(i. SHAW)

the Middle Kingdom onwards, like many
other deities, he gradually became assimilated
into the cult of the pre-eminent 'state' god
amun, and in the form Sobek-Ra was wor-
shipped as another omnipotent manifestation
of the sun-god. By the Ptolemaic period his
association with the sun-god was sufficientlv
close that he was identified with the Greek god
Helios.

C. Dolzani, Ildio Sobk (Rome, 1961).
L. Kakosy, 'Krokodilskulte', Lexikon der
Agyptologie in, ed. W. Ilelck, E. Otto and
W. Westendorf ("Wiesbaden, 1980), 801-1 1 .

Sobekhotep

'Birth name' held by eight rulers of the 13th
Dynasty (1795-C.1650 bc), most of whom had
very short reigns. The few surviving monu-
ments from the reign of Sobekhotep ii
Amenemhat (f.1750 bc) include relief blocks
from medamud and deir el-baiirj. Sobekhotep
tti SekhemrasevmdjtaTPy (t\1745 bc), the son of
a Theban prince called Mentuhotep, is
credited with the construction of a colonnade
and a number of gateways in the temple of
Montu at Medamud. A pair of important
papyri relating to administration during the
Pharaonic period (one of which lists a
month's income and expenditure incurred by
the royal court during a period of residence at
Thebes) have also survived from his reign. The
period encompassed by the reigns of
Sobekhotep iv Khaneferra (f.1730-1720 bc) and
his two brothers, Neferhotep i and Sihathor,
was the most stable phase in the 13th Dynasty
There are a number of surviving colossal stat-
ues of Sobekhotep iv, as well as several relief

*-:

fragments from temples embellished during

his reign.

J. VOX Beckerath, Untersuchungen zur politischen

Gesc/nckte der zweiten Zwischenzeit (Gluckstadt

and New York, 1964).

D. Franke, 'Zur Chronologic in des Mittleren

Reiches n', Onentalia 57 (1988), 245-74.

S. Qlirke, 'Royal power in the 13th Dynasty',

Middle Kingdom Studies, ed. S. Quirke (New

Maiden, 1991), 123-39.

Sobekneferu (1799-1795 bc)
Last ruler of the 12th Dynasty, whose name
means 'beauty of Sobek'. The sister (and per-
haps also the wife) of amenemhat iy
(1808-1799 bc), she became the first definitely
attested female pharaoh, although Queen
Nitiqret (^.2180 bc) may have come to power
in similar circumstances at the end of the 6th
Dynasty. The reign of Sobekneferu appears to
have lasted only about three years, but she is
credited with completing the construction of
the mortuary temple of Amenemhat jii
(1855-1808 bc) at hawara, the so-called
'labyrinth'. The location of her own tomb has
not yet been definitely ascertained; it has been
suggested that she may have been buried in the
uninscribed northern pyramid complex at
Mazghuna, immediately to the north of the
complex ascribed to Amenemhat iv, but both
identifications have been questioned on archi-
tectural grounds.

W. M. F. Petrte, G. A. Wainwright and
E. Mackay, The Labyrinth, Gerzeh and
Mazguneh (London, 1912).
I. E. S. Edwards, The pyratnids of Egypt, 5th ed.
(Harmondsworth, 1993), 227.

Sokar

God of the Memphite necropolis, who was
usually shown as a human figure, often mum-
miform in appearance, with the head of a
hawk. He was also sometimes portrayed as a
low mound of earth surmounted by a boat
containing the hawk's head-an image that was
connected with the title 'he who is upon his
sand' in the Amduat (see funerary texts).
The most spectacular surviving image of the
hawk-headed Sokar is the silver coffin of
sheshonqji (i-,890 bc) from tanis.

The origins of the god, and indeed the
very etymology of his name, are obscure; he
seems originally to have been a god of the
Memphite region, possibly a patron of crafts-
men, although he was also venerated as an
earth or fertility god. By the Old Kingdom
(2686-2181 bc) he was identified with the
god of the dead, Osiris, who, according to
legend, was slain by the evil god seth at ahy-
dos, thus extending the domain of Sokar into

273

SOL AR BARK

A wooden Ptah-Sokar-Osiris .figure standing &n a
sarcophagus on whisk are sealed four hawks with
snn-efisrs. The hases of such figures, or the figures
themselves, were often hollowed out to contain
funerary papyri. 26th Dynasty, 664 $25 BO,
it. 'Ml cm. (EA9737)

Upper Egypt. This association is doubtless
the origin of his funeran role, and it is in this
context that he is described in the PYRAMID
TEXTS as the creator of 'roval bones' and in
the BOOK OP THE DEAD as the maker of foot-
basins from silver, which was the material of
which divine bones were believed to have
been composed.

Sokar was also linked with the god i r i \n (at
an earlier date than the connections with
Osiris), no doubt because both deities shared
associations with MEMPHIS and craftsmen, and
consequent!) SEKHMET, the lioness wife of
Ptah, came to be regarded as Sokar's consort.
In the Old Kingdom, the combined cult of
Ptah-Sokar became more elaborate, and by the
Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 nc.) it had
expanded further into Ptah-Sokar-Osiris.
From the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC)
onwards, the FESTIVAL of Sokar was lavishly
celebrated, particularly in the necropolis of
western Thebes, w r hcre it is portraved in some
of the reliefs decorating the walls of the sec-
ond court of the mortuarv temple of Rameses

III at MKDINKT HAliL .

It was in the syncretic form of Ptah-Sokar-
Orisis that Sokar was most often represented,
particularly from the Late Period (747—332
lu:) onwards, when manv tombs were
equipped with wooden statuettes depicting
Ptah-Sokar-Orisis as an anthropomorphic
mummiform ligure, with or without a hawk's
head, combined with curled ram horns, sun-
dtsc, plumes and utef GROWN. The Ptah-
Sokar-Orisis figure was usuallv shown stand-
ing on a miniature sarcophagus base, some-
times surmounted by figures of Sokar-hawks.
Tt was sometimes hollow; in which case it
would often have originally contained a copy
of a Book of the Dead papyrus or a corn
mummy; alternatively, a small piece of the
Book of the Dead was occasionally placed in
the sarcophagus base. The distinctive amu-
letic figure of pataikos almost certainly
derived from the Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figure.
G. A. Gahali a and K. Kitchen, 'The festival of
Sokar\ Oncnlaliu 38 (1969), 1-76.
M.J. RAVEN, 'Papyrus-sheaths and Ptah-Sokar-
Osiris statues 1 , OMRO 59-60 (1978-9),
251-96.

E. B&ES&ANI, 'Sokar 1 , Lexikon iler Agypto/ogie \,
ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 1055-74.

solar bark (soki boat)

Just as the images of gods were carried
between temples or shrines in ceremonial
harks, so the sun-god and the deceased
pharaoh were considered to tra\el through the
netherworld in a 'solar bark 1 . There were two
different types of solar bark, that of Lhe dav
{m&ntlet\ and that of the night (wescktet). It is
possible diat the well-known solar barks dis-
covered in the pyramid complex of Khufu at
GIZA (one ol which has been reconstructed and
displayed in situ) were intended to serve as a
means of conveying the pharaoh through the
netherworld.

G. Foi CART, 'Ln temple flottant: le vaisseau d'ur
d'Amon-Ra', Fondat'um Eugene Plot: Monuments
el meumires publics par i '_ lcadcniie ties Inscriptions
a Mies Lettres 25 (1921-2), 143-69.
O. PlRCHOW, 'Konigsschiff und Son n en bark 1 ,
il'ZKM 54(1957), 34-42.
K. A. KITCHEN, 'Barke 1 , Lexikon ierAgyptvingie
i, ed. W. Helek, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1975), 619-25.
P LlPKE, The royal ships of Cheops (Oxford.
1984).

R. H. Wilkinson, Heading Egyptian art
(London, 1992), 152-3.

Soleb

Site in the third cataract region of Upper
Nubia, which was excavated by a team from
the University of Pisa between 1957 and 1977.
It consists primarily of a sandstone temple
built by Amenhotep m (1390-1352 uc), the
remains of a town which became the capital of
Kush in the late 1 8th Dynasty; and cemeteries
dating mainly tt) the New Kingdom
(1550-1069 nc) and the Meroitic period (300
lic-Ai) 350).

The temple of Amenhotep ru was dedicated
both to aml_\-ra of Karnak and to Nebmaatra,
lord of Nubia (a deified version of Amenhotep
ill himself). Nebmaatra w r as portrayed as an
anthropomorphic moon-god wearing the
ram's horns of Amun, in effect a local version
of KHGNS, the son of Amun-Ra and ml i . The
temple formed the setting both for the cel-
ebration of a .sr.D festival and for the ritual of
'illuminating the dais 1 , whereby Nebmaatra
was invoked to ensure the regular appearance
of the full moon by healing the eye of HORN'S.
Several myths describe the 'eye 1 as having lied
to Nubia, where it w r as frequently said to have
taken on the appearance of a lioness, it is
therefore possible that a pair of red granite
lions inscribed with the name of Amenhotep
in and originally installed at the temple (a nti
later moved to Gebel Barkal) may have repre-
sented the lioness-goddess of the full moon,
Tefnut-Mehit. These statues - the 'Prudhoe

SO MTUTEFN A KHT

;! S' ! ' :: '*^.:r;M?? "

" ■■■ ';

' : * ! *? : ;*'"" : l''*' : '*Uii#t*UFi52

77/1? w««je ';/ '///? temple at So/eb, built by
Amenhotep ill. From a 19lh-centuty drawing by
George Alexander Iloskins. (rep row cv.vj

COURTESY OF THE GRIFFITH l\STITUTE)

Lions' - are now in the British Museum (see

illustration under uov).

M. Schiff giorgini, Soleb, 2 vols (Florence,

1965-71).

Somtutefnakht

see PERSIA, PERSIANS

Sons of Horus

Four deities (Duamutef, Qebehsenuef, Imsety
and HapyJ who were responsible for protect-
ing the internal organs of the deceased (see
CANOPrc jars). Each of the four gods was asso-
ciated with a particular canopic vessel and its
contents, while the gods themselves were said
to be protected by particular goddesses. The
four are first mentioned in the Old Kingdom
(26S6-2181 lie), when the PYRAMID TEXTS
describe them as the 'friends of the king 1 ,
assisting him in his ascension to the heavens.
Their connection with the god HORUS also
dates to this period. In the Middle Kingdom
(2055-1650 bc) their association with particu-
lar goddesses and specific internal organs was
not well defined, but their roles had become
clearer by the New Kingdom (1550-1069 Be),
by which time they had also become members
of the group known as the 'seven blessed
ones 1 , who were considered to guard the coffin
of the god osiris (father of Horus) in the
northern sky.

From the late 18th Dynasty onwards the
stoppers of the canopic jars were fashioned in
the forms of the heads of each of the four gods
('■ e - a jackal, a cynoccphalus baboon, a hawk

and a man). Drawings and paintings of the
four sons consisted of human figures (some-
times mummiform) each with their character-
istic head. Their forms and functions are sum-
marized below:

Name of deity

far

Hem!

Cardinal

contents

point

Imsctv

liver

human

south

Hapv

lungs

ape

north

Duamutef

stomach

jackal

east

Qebehsenuef

intestines

falcon

west

Faience figures of the four Sons of Horus. They are
(from left la right) Imsety, Duamutef
Qebehsenuef and Hapy. Such canopic figures might
be placed within mummy mrappings. Late New
Kingdom, h. of Imsety 14.6 cm. (/■: $6230}

When portrayed on coffins, from the Middle
Kingdom onwards, the depictions of Hapy
and Qebehsenuef were placed on the west side
at the head and foot respectively, while those
of Imsety and Duamutef were located in the
corresponding positions on the east side. The
north (head) end of the coffin was usually pro-
tected by NEPHTHyS, while the south (foot) was
associated with isis.

W. C. Haves, The scepter of Egypt (New York,
1953), 320-1.

A.J. Spencer, Death in ancient Egypt
(Harmondsworth, 1982), 157-9.
A. Dodson, The canopic equipment of the kings of
Egypt (London, 1994).

Sopdet (Sothis)

The goddess Sopdet, known as Sothis in the
Greco-Roman period (332 bc-ad 395), was
the personification of the 'dog star 1 , which the
Greeks called Seines (Sirius). She was usually
represented as a woman with a star poised on
her head, although the earliest depiction, on
an ivory tablet of the lst-Dynasty king djkr
(t.3000 bc) from Abydos, appears to show her
as a seated cow with a plant between her horns,
ft has been pointed out that, since the plant is
symbolic of the year, the Egyptians may have
already been correlating the rising of the dog
star with the beginning of the solar year, even
in the early third millennium bc;.

Along with her husband saii (Orion) and
her son soped, Sopdet was part of a triad
which paralleled that of osiris, tSIS and horus.
She was therefore described in the pyramid
texts as having united with Osiris to give
birth to the morning star.

275

SOPED

SPHINX

J.V Andjer, Manuel d'archeohgie egyptienne I

(Paris, 1952), 842-3.

L. Kakosy, 'Die Mannweibliche Natur des

Sinus in Agypten', Studia Aegyptiaca 2

(Budapest, 1976), 41-6.

G. Clerc, 'Isi-Sothis dans le monde romain 1 ,

Homniages a MaartenJ. Vernmseren (Leiden,

1978), 247-81.

C. Desroche-Noblecourt, 'lsis Sothis - le

chien, la vigne - et la tradition millenaire',

Livredu Centmaire, IFAO 1880-1 980 (Cairo,

1980), 15-24.

Soped (Sopdu)

Hawk-god and personification of the eastern
frontier of Egypt, whose primary cult-centre
was in the twentieth Lower Egyptian nome at
the city of Per-Soped (modern Saft el-Hinna),
although there are also inscriptions attesting
his worship at Scrabit el-Khadim in the Sinai
peninsula (see turquoise). He was represented
either as a crouching falcon or as a bearded
man wearing a SHESMET girdle and a head-
dress of two falcon feathers, often carrying a
WAS SCEPTRE, a battle-axe and an ankii sign.
The pyramid TEXTS associate him with the
teeth of the deceased pharaoh, but they also
describe him as a star who was born from the
union of the king (as osiris) and the dog star
SOPDET (as lsis). He therefore became associ-
ated with the more important hawk-god horus
(producing the syncretic form Har-Soped),
and the triad of Sopdet, SAH and Soped thus
paralleled the divine family of ISIS, Osiris
and Horus.

I. W. Schumacher, Der Gott Sopdu, derHerrder
Fremdl 'cinder (Freiburg, 1988).

Sothic cycle

In terms of the Egyptian calendar, the dog
star Sirius, whose Egyptian name was Sothis
(sopdet) was the most important of the stars
or constellations known as decans (see astron-
omy and astrology), and the 'Sothic rising'
coincided with the beginning of the solar year
only once every 1460 years. This astronomical
event (known as a heliacal rising) took place in
ad 139, during the reign of the Roman emper-
or Antoninus Pius, and was commemorated by
the issue of a special coin at Alexandria. There
would have been earlier heliacal risings in
1321-1317 BC and 2781-2777 BC, and the
period that elapsed between each such rising is
known as a Sothic cycle. The Egyptian textual
records of Sothic risings (surviving from the
reigns of Senusret in, Amenhotcp i and
Thutmose in) form the basis of the conven-
tional chronology of Egypt, which, in turn,
influenced that of the whole Mediterranean
region.

3rtmze statuette of the
oddest Sopdet. Late
^eriod, after c. 600 BG,
i. 19 cm. (till 143)

R. A. Parker, 'Sothic dates and calendar

"adjustment"', RdE9 (1952), 101-8.

J. Cerny, 'Note on die supposed beginning of a

Sothic period under Sethos \\JEA 47 (1 961),

150-2.

M. E Ingham, 'The length of the Sothic cycle 1 ,

JEA 55 (1969), 36-40.

R. Krauss, Sothis- und Monddalen: Studien zur

aslronomischen und technischen Chronologic

(Ilildeshcim, 1985).

Sothis

see sopdet

soul house see

OFFERING TABLE

speos (Greek: 'cave')

Term used in Egyptian archaeology to refer to
a small rock-cut temple. Egyptologists in the
nineteenth century tended to apply the term
to comparatively large temples, such as the
rock-cut shrines of Rameses II (1279-1213 Be)
at ABU STMBEL, but its use has since become
much more restricted.

Speos Artemidos

Rock-cut temple dedicated to the lioness-
goddess Pakhet (or Pasht), located about three
kilometres east of the Middle Kingdom rock-
cut tombs of BENi hasan, in Middle Egypt.

The temple, locally known as Istabl 'Antar (the
'stable' of An tar, a pre-lslamic hero) was built
by Hatshepsut (1473-1458 bc) and Thutmose
in (1479-1425 bc). Pakhet ('she who scratches')
is known from the coffin texts as a night-
hun tress, which was presumably the reason
why the Greeks later identified her with their
own Artemis. There is no evidence for am cult
of Pakhet in the area of Beni Hasan before the
New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc).

The temple consists of a vestibule, sup-
ported by eight HATHOR-headed columns,
connected by a short corridor with an inner
chamber where the cult image would once
have stood, although only the niche now sur-
vives. An inscription on the architrave above
the vestibule describes the ravages of the
hyksos rulers, and the work of Hatshepsut
in restoring the damage they caused. It is
usually assumed that this text simply uses
the Hyksos as convenient personifications of
disorder, since their expulsion had taken
place more than seventy-five years earlier,
under the reign of her great-grandfather,
aiimose t (1550-1525 bc). Ironically, the
queen's own name was later hacked out when
Scty i (1294-3279 bc) inserted his own car-
touches instead. The temple is surrounded
by the much-plundered burials of sacred
cats, most of which date to the Late Period
(747-332 bc).

A. Fakhry, 'A new speos from the reign of
Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis in at Beni-IIasan\
ASAE 39 (1939), 709-23.
A. H. Gardiner, 'Davics's copy of the great
Speos Artemidos inscription', JEA 32 (1946),
43-56.

S. BiCKELandJ.-L. Chappaz, 'Missions
epigraphiqucs du fonds de TEgyptologie dc
Geneve au Speos Artemidos', BSEG 12 (1988),
9-24.

J. Malek, The ail in ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 97, 126-8.

sphinx

Mythical beast usually portraved with the
body of a lion and the head of a man, often
wearing the royal nemes headcloth, as in the
case of the Great Sphinx at Giza. Statues of
sphinxes were also sometimes given the heads
of rams (criosphinxes) or hawks (hiemko-
sphinxes). In one unusual case from the mor-
tuary temple of Amenhotcp m (1390-1352 BC)
a sphinx was given the tail of a crocodile, evi-
dently in imitation of a beast associated with
one of the Egyptian constellations. Women are
rarely represented in the guise of a sphinx, and
even Queen hatshepsut (1473—1458 bc}
assumed the form in her masculine role as
king rather than as a woman.

276

SPHINX

-■

The Great Sphinx at Giza probably represents the
4th-Dynasty ruler, Khafra. Although much of the
body is carved from a knoll of rock, substantial
stone cladding has been added at intervals since
Pharaonic times both in response to erosion and as
a means of improving areas of poor quality rock.
Further conservation work has recently been
undertaken, (p. t. nichoi.son)

Although the ancient Greek terra sphinx
meant 'strangler 1 , it has been suggested that
the origin of the word may have been the
Egyptian phrase shesep ankh ('living image 1 ),
which was an epithet occasionally applied to
sphinxes. The Egyptian sphinx, associated
with both the king and the sun-god, w r as clearly
very different from the malevolent female
sphinx that features in Greek myths such as
the tales of Oedipus and Perseus. Even when
Egyptian sphinxes are depicted in the act of
trampling on foreign enemies, as in a depic-
tion on a shield from the tomb of
Tutankhamun (kv62), the slaughter was
clearly regarded simply as one of the arche-
typal aspects of the kingship. This theme was
popular in jewellery, as in the case of the 12th-
Dynasty pectoral of Mereret from dahshur,
which bears a scene of two falcon-headed
sphinxes crushing the enemies of thepharaoh.

The head of a statue of Djedefra (2566—
2558 bc), discovered in his pyramid complex
at AJ3U roasii, is thought to be the earliest

surviving fragment of a sphinx (now in the
Louvre). The same site also yielded a small
limestone sphinx statuette. However, the
Great Sphinx at GIZA, located beside the
causeway of the pyramid of KHAFRA
(2558-2532 bc), remains the best-known
example. Measuring 73 m long and a maxi-
mum of 20 m in height, it was carved from a
knoll of rock left behind after quarrying. The
face probably represents Khafra himself,
although it has been argued that it may repre-
sent his predecessor Djedefra. On many occa-
sions it has been all but buried by sand and
recleared, the most famous instance being
recorded on the 'Dream Stele' erected directly
in front of the Sphinx by Thutmose IV
(1400-1390 nc), describing the promise made
to him in a dream that if he cleared the sand he
would become king.

A detailed study of the Great Sphinx was
undertaken by the American archaeologist
Mark Lehner during the 1980s, leading to the
suggestion that a standing figure of a king was
added between the paw r s of the Sphinx in the
New Kingdom. As early as the 18th Dynasty
(1550-1295 bc) the Sphinx was already subject
to reconstruction work in the form of lime-
stone cladding, and there has been growing
concern with regard to the gradual deteriora-
tion of the monument, which has lost its nose,
uraeus and divine beard (fragments of the two
latter features being in the collections of the

British Museum and the Egyptian Museum,
Cairo). More recently erosion and rising
ground water have become a problem, and the
site is currently the subject of environmental
monitoring.

An incomplete 4th-Dynasty temple, appar-
ently made from the same stone as the sphinx
itself, was built immediately in front of the
monument. It was probably intended for the
worship of the three forms of the sun; khf.pri
in the morning, RA at midday, and atum in the
evening. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx
was identified with Horemakhet {'Horus in
the horizon'), and a new temple dedicated to
Horemakhet was constructed to the north of
the earlier building, which would by then
have been completely immersed in sand. This
New Kingdom temple was also dedicated to
the cult of Hauron, a Canaanile desert-god
who may have become identified with the
Great Sphinx partly because it was buried in
the desert.

From at least as early as the New Kingdom,
avenues of sphinxes lined the processional
ways (drontfti) leading to many temples,
including those of karnak and LUXOR. The
main entrance to the temple of Amun at
Karnak is flanked by rows of criosphinxes,
while the pylon of the Luxor temple was
approached through avenues of human-
headed sphinxes bearing the cartouche of the
30fh-Dynasty ruler Nectanebo i (380-362 bc).

277

PANDA RDS

^TEL£

E. Chassinat, 'A pi'opos d'tme tete en grc\s rouge

du roi Didoufri 1 , Fondation Eugene Piot:

Monuments et menu/ires publics par {Academic ties

Inscriptions el Belles Lcttres 25 (1921-2), 53-75.

S. Hassan, The Sphinx: its history in light of

recent excavations (Cairo, 1949).

C. Dk Wit, Le role et le sens du lion dans I'Egypte

ancienne (Leiden, 1951).

A. Dessenne, Le sphinx: elude iconographique

(Paris, 1957).

H. DKMisci-i, Die Sphinx (Stuttgart, 1977).

M. Leiiner, 'Reconstructing the Sphinx', CAJ

2/1 (1992), 5-26.

I. E. S. EDWARDS, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed.

(Harmondsworth, 1993), 121-4.

standards

Wooden standards, comprising poles sur-
mounted by cult images, were used from the
Predynastic period onwards as a means of dis-
playing fetishes or representations of deities
symbolizing the different towns and MOMES
(provinces) of Egypt. There are depictions of
standards on many of the ceremonial
PAOETTES, maceheads and labels of the late
Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods
(f .3200-2890 BG). The Bull Palette (now in the

Early Dynastic ivory label showing King Den
smiting an Asiatic; on the right-hand side is a
standard surmounted by the figure of a jackal. 1st
Dynasty, c.2950 BC, from Ahydos, n. -1.5 cm.
(EA55586)

Louvre) shows a rope clutched by hands on

the end of several standards each of which evi-
dently personified regions controlled by an
early Egyptian ruler. The scorpion macehead
(Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) inventively
used a row of standards as gibbets from which
to hang the subject-peoples in the form of
kf.kiiyt birds. More conventionally, the
nar.mi:r palette (Egyptian Museum, Cam))
shows the king wearing the 'red crown' and
preceded by a group of four standard-bearers
as he inspects enemy dead.

The term 'standard-bearer' was a military
rank designating the commander of a unit of
about two hundred men, and the title was held
by numerous individuals throughout the
Pharaonic period. Whereas the nome stan-
dards usually appear to have been three-
dimensional images at the top of the poles,
military standards are often represented as
rectangular wooden stelae bearing painted fig-
ures of gods or occasionally aggressive scenes
such as the pair of wrestlers on a Nubian sol-
diers' standard depicted in the Theban tomb
of Tjanuny (tt74, ; .1400 HC).

Priests are regularly portrayed in the act of
carrying standards bearing either stelae or fig-
urines of deities, as in the case of the wooden
statue of a priest called Penbuy holding two
standards, each surmounted by divine statu-
ettes (now in the Museo Egizio, Turin). A pair
of ebony statuettes of amenhotep hi and tiy
(Riimer-Pelizacus Museum, Hildesheim) and
a faience figurine of Ptah (University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia) are thought to
have derived from temple standards of this
type. See also illustration under art.
C. C. Seligman and M. Murrav, 'Note upon an
early Egyptian standard 1 , /VWu (191 1), 165-71.
R. O. Faulkner, 'Egyptian military standards',
_7EA 27 (1941), 12-18.
C. Chadefaud, Les statues porte-enseignes de
t'Mgypte ancienne (Paris, 1982).
S. Cl rto, 'Stanclarten', Lexikon der Agyptologie v,
ed. W. I Ielck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1984), 1255-6.

stars set astronomy and astrology;
calendar; saii; sopdet and sothic cycle

stele

Slab of stone or wood bearing inscriptions,
reliefs or paintings, usually of a funerarv,
votive, commemorative or liminal nature,
although these four categories often overlap.
The earliest funerary stelae were excavated
from the cemetery of 1st- and 2nd-Dynasty
kings at abydos The royal stelae at Abydos
consisted of pairs of large stone-carved slabs
bearing the name of the king written in a
SEKEKH frame, while the private stelae from the
tombs of their courtiers at Abvdos and
saqqar.A were smaller and less carcfullv
carved.

By the 3rd Dynasty a new type of funerarv
stele, the ial.se door, had emerged out of a
combination of early slab stelae and the
inscribed niches into which they were set.
This was to be the focal point of the private
offering cult for much of the Pharaonic
period, providing a symbolic door between the
world of the living and the afterlife, through

left Granite stele of
Penbstn from tomb / ■,;
Ahydos. 2nd Dynasty,
c.2700 bc, n. 1.12,/,.
(v.. i3SS97)

BELOW Ptah, the patron
of craftsmen, receives
offerings and adoration
from the royal craj'tsman
Penbuy. Painted

i limestone stele of Penbuy
from Deir el-Medina,

J 19th Dynasty, C.J2S0
uc, a. 38 cm. (i:.\NM>)

K!f : c|:^

ffliB *-*!>*, ** :**r i^Ki; : ...

which the KA of the deceased could pass buck
and forth to partake of the offerings in the
chapel. In the early Middle Kingdom a new
round-topped type of funerary stele heg;in to
be used, particularly in votive contexts such as
the offering chapels at Abydos.

Votive stelae, usually placed in temples,
were principally rectangular, round-topped
slabs decorated with either painted relief dec-
oration or painting over a thin layer of plaster.
Large numbers of votive stelae were erected at
particularly sacred sites such as Abvdos and
the Saqqara serapelm, although they are less
prominent in the archaeological record than
funerary stelae. Most stelae were decorated

278

STELE

STONE AND QUARRY IN G

with scenes of an individual bearing offerings
to a deity or simply in the act of worshipping
the god or goddess whose assistance was
sought, but a special form, known as an 'ear
stele 1 , was also decorated with sets of cars,
apparently in order to ensure that the prayer
recorded on the stele was heard by a particular
aspect ot the deity in question: 'he/she who
listens to prayers 1 . These stelae constitute part
of the evidence for rhc growth in 'personal
piety 1 in the New Kingdom, whereby individ-
uals attempted to make their own approaches
to deities, rather than relying on priests to
intercede on their behalf.

Commemorative stelae were a form of
votive stelae erected in temples bv the
pharaohs or their courtiers in order to describe
royal exploits on behalf of the gods. This cat-
egory includes the 'KAMOSE Stelae' describing
the conquest of the iivksos, the 'iskaki. Stele'

Qtiartzite stelophorous (stele-bearing) statue of
Amenivahsit. The stele is inscribed With a pra yer to
the sun-god and a figure of the god Ra-FIorakhly
in his bark: 18th Dynasty, c. 1450 tic, n. 56 cm.
(iL-t480)

enumerating MEREMPTAH*5 campaigns against
Libyans, Sea Peoples and Asiatics, the 'Victory
Stele' of the Kushite ruler piy, recounting his
glorious crusade through Egypt, supposedly
re-conquering it on behalf of the god Amun,
and the 'Restoration Stele' of tutankhamun,
describing the religious reforms introduced
>n the immediate aftermath of the Amarna
Period. A more specialized group of commem-

orative stelae were the rock-cut and freestand-
ing inscriptions carved at sites such as GEBEL
r.i.-.sn.-Sii.\ and iivim .i; in order to mark the
achievements of quarrying and mining
expeditions (see STONE -WD QUARRYING W!)
tlrquoisk).

luminal stelae were set up to mark the
edges of territory the simplest version being
the stones that marked the edges of fields. On
a more sophisticated level were the unique
'boundary stelae' at the edges of the city of
Akhetaten at kl-a\i arna, and such far-flung
monuments as the skmna and KUKGUS stelae,
marking the southernmost BORDERS of Egypt
in the 12th and 18th Dynasties respectively.

Stelophorous statues, consisting of human
figures holding or offering stelae, were pro-
duced from the 18th Dynasty onwards. Such
stelae were usually inscribed with hymns to
the sun-god.

W. U. F pETRffi, The royal tombs of Ihe curliest
dynasties II (London, 1901), pis xwi-xxxi.
P. L JCAU, Stiles da Xouvel Empire (Cairo, 1909).
).\ \s\>\v.K Manuel d'archenlogie egyptienue \\/\
(Paris, 1954).

L. Habau ii, The second kamosc stele (Gliickstadr,
1972).

S. WiKHACH, Die agyplisehe Scbeintiir (Hamburg,
1981).

W. J. Murnane and C. Van Siu.en hi, The
boundary stelae ofAkbenaten (London, 1993).

stelophorous statue set stele
stone and quarrying

Whereas many ancient peoples were obliged to
trade with other cultures in order to obtain the
mineral resources they needed, the Egyptians
were well provided with a diverse range of
types of" stone in the deserts on either side of
the Nile valley. Their exploitation of stone is
first attested in the form of small chert quar-
ries of the Palaeolithic period, dating to
c.35000 bc. In the Predynastic period
(c.550()-3I(K) ik:), relatively small pieces of
such favoured stones as siltstone, basalt, brec-
cia, limestone, sandstone and granodiorite
were being quarried for the production of cos-
metic PALETTES, MACES and vessels. The carv-
ing of stone vessels, often from very hard
stones, for funerary use virtually reached the
level of mass production in the Earlv Dvnastic
period (3100-2686 bc).

By the mid-third millennium bc there were
hundreds of quarries scattered across the
western and eastern deserts and the sinai
peninsula and southern Palestine, often in
extremely remote areas, since the use of stone
was an essential component of the Pharaonic
economy, particularly once the reign of DJQSER

and the construction of his Step Pyramid at
s\(ni\R\ had ushered in a new era of monu-
mental stone masonry on an unprecedented
scale.

The amount of quarrying that took place in
each reign of the Pharaonic period (3100-332
BC) can be employed as a kind of measure of
politic d centralization and stabihtv There arc

Unfinished statuette
of a woman or goddess
with the surface still
showing the marks of
the sculptor's chisel.
Late Period, c600sq
basalt, ii. 32 cm.
(H45S2SI)

even some Egyptian rulers who would barely
be known if it were not for the remote rock-cut
inscriptions commemorating their quarrving
expeditions, as in the case of the 1 lth-Dvnastv
pharaoh Mentuhotcp i\ (1992-1985 BC), who
sent expeditions lo Wadi el-Hudi for
amethysts and to the Wadi 1 lammamat for silt-
stone (greywacke).

Egyptian kings would often supply their
loyal courtiers with the stone thev needed for
their funerary equipment, and this arrange-
ment seems to have been an important
element in the political and personal links
between the pharaoh and his officials. The
tomb of an official called Weni at Abydos
describes the quarrving expeditions that he
organized for the king and mentions the roval
gift of a fine limestone sarcophagus from ihe
Tura quarries.

Although the scale of many expeditions
would have effectively made them royal
monopolies, archaeological evidence from the
hatnub travertine ('Egyptian alabaster') quar-
ries, the Uram el-Sawwan gypsum quarries
and the Gebel el-Zeit galena (lead sulphide)
mines suggests that there was intermittent
private exploitation of certain raw materials
throughout the Pharaonic period, perhaps
following in the footsteps of the major
expeditions.

279

SYNCRETISM

K.-J. Seyfried, Beitrage zu den Expeditionen des

Mittleren Reichcs in die Ost- Wihie (Hildesheim,

1981).

J. A. IIarrell, 'An inventory of ancient Egyptian

quarries', NARCE 146 (1989), 1-7.

D. Arnold, Bui/ding in Egypt: pharaonic stone

masonry (New York and Oxford, 1991).

D. and R. Klemm, Sleine iind Sleinbruche im alien

Agypten (Berlin, 1993).

I. Shaw, 'Pharaonic quarrying and mining:

settlement and procurement in Egypt's marginal

regions*, Antiquity 68 (1994), 108-19.

B. G. Aston, J. Harrfj.i. and I. Shaw, L Stone',

Ancient Egyptian materials and technology, ed.

P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw (Cambridge 2000).

Strabo (f.63 bc-t.ad 21)
Greek historian and geographer, who was born
in Pontus but spent several years at
Alexandria, which he describes in some detail
in the eighth book of his Geography. As in
herodotus' Histories, much of Strabo's infor-
mation concerns Lower Egypt, but he also dis-
cusses the Theban monuments, including the
tourist attractions of his day such as the
colossi of memnon and the New Kingdom
rock-tombs. He also travelled as far south as
the first cataract near Aswan in c.25 bc, record-
ing the presence of the milometer at
Elephantine. Although not generally as infor-
mative as the work of Herodotus, Strabo's
Geography is nevertheless a valuable record of
Egypt in the first century bc.
Strabo, The geography, trans. II. L.Jones
(London, 1932).

strikes

The only evidence for the very modern con-
cept of the 'strike' or withdrawal of labour
occurs in some of the surviving documents
from the DEIR EL-MEDINA community of royal
tomb-workers. The records of the scribe
Amcnnakhte show that the government sup-
plies for the village were repeatedly delayed
over a period of six months in the twenty-
ninth year of the reign of rameses hi
(1184—1153 bc). The workers therefore even-
tually went on strike and staged protests in
front of the mortuary temples of Thutmose in,
Sety r and Rameses n, on the Theban west
bank. Despite attempts by the central admin-
istration to remedy the situation, further
strikes took place later in the year and later
documents seem to show that the rest of the
Ramesside period was dogged by poor rela-
tions between the village and the government.
It is possible that the Deir el-Medina strikes
are part of the evidence for a steadv decline in
the political and economic stability of Egypt as
it slid gradually towards the fragmentation of

the country in the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 bc).

W. Edgerton, 'The strikes in Ramesscs m's
twenty-ninth year', JNES 10 (1951), 137-45.
C. J. Eyre, 'A "strike" text from the Theban
necropolis', Orbis Aegypliorum Speculum,
Glimpses of ancient Egypt: studies in honour of
B. W. Fairmau, ed. J. Ruffle, G. A. Gaballa and
K. Kitchen (Warminster, 1 979), 80-91 .

Suchos wsohek
Sumer, Sumerian

Early Mesopotamian ethnic and linguistic
group comprising a series of autonomous city-
states, which emerged in about 3400 bc It was
probably the first 'civilization' in the world,
perhaps appearing as a result of the stimula-
tion of the organizational demands of irriga-
tion agriculture. Among the principal
Sumerian cities were Ur, Eridu, Lagash and
Uruk, some of whose rulers are known from
king lists compiled in the second millennium
bc. Sumerian, the spoken language of the
people of Sumer, is unrelated to any other
known linguistic group; it was recorded in the
cuneiform script, archaic versions of which
already appear to be in the Sumerian language
in the later fourth millennium bc (i.e. the
Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods). The presence
of Sumerian cylinder seals at late Predynastic
sites in Egypt has raised the possibility that
early cuneiform may have inspired the devel-
opment of hieroglyphs in Egypt, but there is
slill considerable debate concerning the con-
nections, if any, between these two ancient
scripts. Around 2300 bc Sumer was incorpo-
rated into the AKKADIAN empire.
S. N. Kramer, The Sumenans (Chicago, 1963).
II. CRAWFORD, Sumer and the Sumerians
(Cambridge, 1991).

sun set atf.n; atum; ra and SHADOW

symplegma (Greek: 'intertwined 1 )
Greek term used to describe a type of sculp-
tural group depicting a group of intertwined
figures engaged in sexual intercourse, usually
executed in painted terracotta. Votive sculp-
tures of this type were sometimes deposited in
shrines and temples, especially in the
Ptolemaic period (332—30 bc). The largest sur-
viving symplegma, now r in the collection of the
Brooklyn Museum, New York, is a terracotta
Ptolemaic sculpture portraying a nude woman
receiving the sexual attentions of four male
figures (each wearing the distinctive sidelock
of a jrcm-priest), while two attendants hold a
representation of a bound oryx. In this
instance it has been suggested that orgiastic

scenes were probably associated with the pro-
creative powers of the god osnus, while the
bound oryx perhaps symbolized the contain-
ment of evil.

R. S. BlAXCI ll et al., Cleopatra 's Egypt: age <>j il ie
Ptolemies (Mainz, 1988), no. 130.
— ■, 'Symplegma 1 , Ancient Egyptian art in the
Brooklyn Museum, ed. R. A. Fazzini et al. (New
York and London, 1989), no. 82.

syncretism

The process of syncretism, by which two or
more deities were fused into the object of a
single cult, was a fundamental aspect of the
development of Egyptian religion. Erik
Hornung has made an eloquent study of the
ways in which the attributes and associations
of 'local 1 and 'national' deities were rearranged
and combined by the Egyptians in a form of
visual and iconographic theology. Thus the
recurring concept of a single underlying 'uni-
versal 1 deity was considered to be manifest
in a huge variety of Egyptian gods and god-
desses. The syncretizing of one god with
another, such as the transformation of wiun
and ra into Amun-Ra, and the fusion of mil,
SOKAR and OSIR5S into the consummate funer-
ary image of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, was a natural
consequence of this flexibility in Egyptian
theology. The same process could also be used
to assimilate Asiatic, Nubian, Greek or Roman
deities into the Egyptian pantheon, as in the
case of the Meroitic god Shu-ARENSMTHis,
the Asiatic goddess ANAT-Hathor, and the
Greco-Roman god serapis (Zeus, Helios and
Osorapis).

H. Bonnet, 'ZumVersta'ndnis des
Synkretismus', ZiS 75 (1939), 40-52.
— , 'Synkretismus', Reallexikon der dgyptischen
Rel/gionsgeschichte, ed. H. Bonnet (Berlin, 1952),
237-47.

J. G. Griffiths, 'Motivation in early Egyptian
syncretism', Studies in Egyptian religion dedicated
to Professor Jan Zandee, ed. M. H. vanVoss et al.
(Leiden, 1982), 43-55.
E. Hornung, Conceptions of God in ancient
Egypt: the one and the many (London, 1983),
91-9.

Syria-Palestine

Geographical area in western Asia, comprising
the southern and northern sections of the
Levant, bordered by the sinai peninsula to the
southwest, the Mediterranean to the west,
Anatolia to the north, and the Arabian desert
and Mesopotamia to the south and east. See

HYBLOS: CANAAN: ISRAEL: MEGIDDO and QADESH.

280

TA-BITJET

TALATAT BLOCKS

Ta-bitjet

Scorpion-goddess closely associated with the
bleeding caused by loss of virginity. She is
described as the consort of the hawk-god
HORUS in certain magical spells intended to
avert the consequences of poisonous bites.

tabOO (Polynesian tabu)

Originally a term applied to the various mech-
anisms by which Polynesian social divisions
were created and maintained. In Egyptology,
as in the study of many other ancient civiliza-
tions, the term is commonly used in a slightly
different sense, to describe the various phe-
nomena that posed a threat to the structure of
the universe. Taboos were in effect the means
by which the social and metaphysical frame-
work was preserved and reinforced.

The Egyptians believed that taboos were
instilled by the creator in particular objects,
people and actions, and it was felt that only
the creator-god himself, or sometimes the
king (functioning as a demiurge), could alter
this situation. The word used by the
Egyptians to refer to the concept of taboo
seems to have been bwt, according to Pierre
Montet's analysis of cult-topographical lists
of the Late Period (747-332 BC). Unless
some parts of the universe were declared bun
it was considered to be impossible to recreate
the primordial state of the universe at the
moment of creation, since the act of cos-
mogony was effectively concerned with the
creation and maintenance of the very bound-
aries from which taboos were derived. One
type of taboo affected access to such cer-
emonial and ritualistic structures as temples,
tombs and palaces, in the sense that individ-
uals were prohibited unless they adhered to
certain rules of purity, such as abstinence
from sexual activity. Other forms of taboo
Were concerned with the avoidance of such
activities as the consumption of certain
foodstuffs, including pigs, fish and honey,
or walking upside down (an action somehow
connected with faeces). Since the epagom-
enal days at the end of each year (see
calendar) w r ere taboo, it was considered
essential for the names of each of the days to
be memorized.

Taboos could affect physical entities rang-
mg from bodily orifices to national borders,
hut they could also apply to events such as
copulation or birth. It is important to note,

however, that the most important factor was
often the geographical or cultural context
rather than the event or act itself. Taboos could
often be purely local, affecting only the in-
habitants of a region dominated by a particu-
lar deity.

In the Victory Stele of the Kushite ruler piy
(747-716 bc) the description of the surrender
of the Delta princes involves reference to two
taboos regarding circumcision and the con-
sumption of fish: 'They were forbidden to
enter the palace because they had not been cir-
cumcised and diey were eaters offish, which is
an abomination to the palace, but King Nimlot
was able to enter the palace because he was
clean and did not eat fish.'
P. Montet, 'Le fruit defendu', Kemi u (1950),
85-116.

J. Zandee, Death as an enemy (Leiden, 1960).
P.J. FRANDSEN, 'Tabu', Lexikon tier Agj'ptologu-
vi, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Wcstendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1986), 135-42.
— , 'Bwt- divine kingship and grammar', Akten
Aliinchen 1985 in, cd. S. Schoske (Hamburg,
1989), 151-8.

Taharqo (Taharka, Taharqa) (690-664 BC)

Third pharaoh of the napatan 25th Dynasty,
who inherited the throne of Egypt and Nubia
at the age of about thirty-two, on the death of
his nephew (or possibly cousin), Shabitqo
(702-690 bc). During the first half of his
twenty-six-year reign he was able to undertake
a considerable amount of construction, partic-
ularly in the temple complexes of kar_nak,
kawa, medinet habu and Sanam. He also had
his daughter, Amenirdis n, adopted as god's
wife of amln at Thebes, partly no doubt in
order to ensure that mhntuemhat, the power-

ful 'fourth prophet of Amun', did not exert too
much independent control over the Theban
region.

He recorded the early years of his reign on
a series of stelae in his temple at KAWA, the first
of which dated to the sixth year of his reign. In
the seventeenth year (c.674 bc) he defeated the
invading armies of the Assyrian king
Esarhaddon, but three years later Esarhaddon
returned and succeeded in driving him out of
Memphis, apparently capturing his son and
brother in the process. Although Esarhaddon
died in 669 bc, his successor Ashurbanipal
wasted no time in reconquering" Egypt, this
time pushing down much further south to
Thebes, forcing Taharqo to retreat in exile to
the Kushite heartland around Napata.

Once the Assyrian armies had withdrawn,
the rulers of the princedoms of Lower Egypt
plotted with Taharqo to restore him to power.
The Assyrians, however, were alerted to the
potential rebellion and promptly killed most
of the Delta princes, leaving only the favoured
Saite prince nekau i (672-664 bc) and his son
psamtek i (664-610 bc) as the Assyrian-backed
joint rulers of Lower Egypt. Shortly after-
wards, Taharqo died in Napata, leaving the
throne to his nephew tanutamani (664-656
bc); he was buried in a pyramidal tomb at the
royal cemetery of NURI.
M. E Laming Macadam, The temples of Kawa,
2 vols (Oxford, 1949-55).

K. Mysliewiec, 'Das Kbnigsportrat des Taharka
in Napata', MDAIK 39 (1983), 151-7.
W. Y. Adams, Nubia: corridor to Africa (London
and Princeton, 1984), 246-93.
J. Leclant, 'Taharqa', Lexikon der Agyptolngie
vi, ed. W. Helck, E. Otto and W. Westendorf
(Wiesbaden, 1985), 156-84.
K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt (1100-650 bc), 2nd ed. (Warminster,
986), 387-93.

talatat blocks

Small sandstone relief blocks dating to the
Amarna period (c. 1352-1336 bc), the name
for which probably derives from the Arabic
word meaning 'three hand-breadths 1 , describ-
ing their dimensions (although it has also

Granite sphinx of Taharqo from
Temple Tat Kawa, Nubia.
25th Dynasty, 690-664 bc,
l. 74.7 cm. (£41770)

281

TALMIS

TANIS

been suggested that the word may have

stemmed from the Italian for 'cut masonry',
lugliaUi). Their distinctive shape derives from
the rapid construction techniques employed
by AKHENATEN (1352-1336 uc) in commis-
sioning the temples of the Aten at EL-AMAKNA
and karnak, which necessitated the provision
of large quantities of smaller, more roughly
carved blocks compared with the temples
constructed during the rest of the New
Kingdom. When the '"heretical' Amarna-
period temples were comprehensively disman-
tled in the reign of moremiieb and the early
Ramesside period, the tulatat blocks were pre-
served through their re-use as rubble in the
construction of new temples; Horemheb, for
instance, used them to fill the Ninth and
Tenth pylons in the temple of Amun at
Karnak. The largest numbers of luhilal blocks
have been found in the temples of Karnak,
LUXOK and 1 ii-.rmopous magna, although
smaller numbers have also been found at sev-
eral other sites, including Medamud, Asyut
and Abydos. The tens of thousands of blocks
now form vast and complex jigsaw puzzles,
the partial solution of which has already
assisted archaeologists in their attempts to
reconstruct the plan and appearance of the
various Amarna-period temples at el-Amarna
and Karnak.

D. B. Rf.dfoki), Akhenetten, the heretic king
(Princeton, 1984), 65-71.
G. Aldred, Akhenaten, king of Egypt (London,
1988), 69-87.

Talmis

See KALAUSIIA

Tanis (anc. Djanet; San el-Hagar)
Most important archaeological site in the
northeastern Delta, and capital of the nine-
teenth Lower Egyptian nome in the Late
Period (747-332 uc). The principal exca-
vations at Tanis were carried out in 1860-80
by Auguste mariktte, in 1883-86 by Flin-
ders pktkie and in 1921—51 by Pierre Mnntct,
and the site is still being studied by French
archaeologists.

Although many blocks and fragments of
reliefs and statuary from the Old and Middle
Kingdoms as well as the reign of Rameses n
(1279-1213 bc) have been discovered at the
site, all of this earlier materia! appears to have
been re-used . Montet believed that the
Ramesside sculpture identified the site as
Piramesse, the new capital established by Sety
i (1294-1279 uc) and Rameses it, but this the-
ory has been invalidated by work at tell el-
pab'a and qantir (the latter being the actual
site of Piramesse). The earliest recorded
building at Tanis dates to the reign of

outer enclosure wall-

iniier enclosure wall
temple of Horus

□D

1 tomb of Osorkon II

2 tomb of Psusennes I and Sheshonq II

3 tomb of Amenemope

4 tomb of Sheshonq III

5 and 6 tombs with unknown occupants

Plan of Tunis.

psusennes i (1039-991 bc) of the 21st
Dynasty, who was responsible for constructing
the huge mud-brick enclosure wall (430 m x
370 m) surrounding the temple of Amun.
Later rulers of the 21st and early 22nd
Dynasty added to the temple complex, while
nectanebo r (380-362 bc) of the 30th Dynasty
also built there, removing stone from the
temple buildings of SHE8HQMQV (767-730 bc)
and psamtek i (664-610 bc) for use in the con-
struction of the SACRED lake. On the south-
western side of the site, beyond the temple
enclosure, is a smaller temple dedicated to
MUT and K1IONS, where the Asiatic goddess
astarte was also worshipped. This building
was reconstructed during the reign of Ptolemy
iv (221-205 bc).

Montct's discovery, in 1939, of the royal
tombs of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties was
overshadowed by the outbreak of the Second
World War; therefore the finds are less widely
known than would otherwise have been the
case. Six tombs w r ere discovered: all were sub-
terranean and constructed of a combination of
mud-bricks and re-used stone blocks, many of
them inscribed. The occupants of two of the
tombs are unknown, but the remaining four
belonged to Psusennes I, Amenemope (99j-
984 bc), Osorkon u (874-850 nc) and
Sheshonq m (825-773 bc:). However, two fur-
ther royal burials had been placed in these
tombs: the tomb of Psusennes I contained the
hawk-headed silver coffin of Sheshonq "
(t\89l) bc) as well as the coffin and sarcophagus
of Amenemope, while that of Osorkon Q held
the sarcophagus of Takelot It (850-825 bc).

282

TANUTAMANI

TAWERET

The goldwork and other equipment from the
Tanis neeropolis are the most important
source of knowledge concerning royal funer-
ary goods of the Third Intermediate Period
(1069-747 uc).

W. M. E Point., Tunis, 2 vols (London, 1885-7).
P. Movrt'.T, Les muveUm fouilles tie Tunis (Paris,
1933).

— , La necropole i-oyule de Tunis, 3 vols (Paris,
1947-60).

— , Le hie acri tie Tunis (Paris, 1966).
K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt (1100-65(1 uc), 2nd ed. (Warminster,
1986).

G. GtWON, La t/aoiiierle ties Iresors tie Tunis
(Paris, 1987).

J. Yoyotte et al., Tunis. Fur Jcs phurtwns (Paris,
1987).
— , Colli t if the phurutihs (Edinburgh, 1988).

Tanutamani (Tantamarri, Tanwetamani)
(664-656 bc)

Last of the 25th-Dynasty pharaohs, mho
defeated and killed the ASSYRlAN-backed Saite
ruler NEKAt l (672-664 Be) in 664 BC, and was
then recognized as king by the Delta princes.
He left a stele in the temple at Gebel Baikal
which described how, in a dream, the throne of
Egypt had been offered to him by goddesses.
This method of legitimizing and strengthen-
ing his claim to the throne drew not only on
the text of the Victory Stele of the napatan
ruler m (747-716 IK.) but also harked back to
the lHth-Dynasty Dream Stele of thutmose
iv (1400-1390 uc).

Tanutamani's reign over the whole kingdom
of Egypt and Nubia lasted for little more lhan
a year. In 663 uc he was overthrown in the
same way as his uncle (or cousin) TAHARQQ, by
the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, whose armies
plundered the temple treasures of Thebes.
Despite maintaining control over the Napatan
territories in Nubia, Tmuiamani was unable to
regain control of Egypt itself, where the
Assyrians established Nekau's son, PSAMTEk I
(664-610 uc), as a vassal ruler. In the Thcban
region, however, the dates continued lo be
written in terms of the years of Tanutamani's
reign until at least 657 uc, although a local
priest, MENTUEMH vr, appears to have wielded
the genuine political power. In 656 uc
tanutamani died and was interred in a typical
Napatan pyramidal tomb (accompanied bv
horse burials) in the royal cemetery at el-
KUKRL.

K. A. Kitchen, The Thin/ Intermediate Period in
pypt (1100- 6S0 at:), 2nd ed. (Warminster,
1986), 393-400.

A. A. Gasm EL-Seed, 'La tombe de Tanoutamon
a EI Kurru (Ku.16)', Rd£ 36 (1985), 67-72.

Tatjenetl (Tatenen: "risen land')
Primeval god who is mentioned on the
siiabaqp Stone (see ogdoad and I'lAn) in con-
nection with the emergence of the primeval
MOUND at the moment of creation, as his name
suggests. His cult was initially attested at
Memphis and became closely associated with
the various myths of CREATION; he was effec-
tively the Memphite equivalent of the BENBEN
stone at Heliopolis, although he was also sym-
bolic both of Egypt itself and of the fertile
land rising annually from the waters of the
inundation. Often portrayed as a bearded man
wearing a crown consisting of ram's horns, a
sun-disc and two plumes, he was an 'earth
god' or chthonic deity, like AKER and geii,
guarding the passage of the SOLAS BASK
through the netherworld. In the Litany oflia,
however, he is listed as the personification of
the phallus of the dead king.
E. A. E. RiiVMOMi, 'The children ol'Tanen',
ZAS 92 (1966), 116-28.
II. A. Sciii.ogi., Der Gull Tuteuen (Freiburg,
1980).

tattoos see cosmetics

Taweret (Taurt, Thoeris)
Household deity in the form of a female hip-
popotamus, who was particularly associated
with the protection of women in childbirth.
She was usually portrayed with the arms and
legs of a lion and die back and tail of a croco-
dile (or even a complete crocodile perched on
her back), while her pendulous breasts and full
belly clearly conveyed the idea of pregnancy
Her headdress comprised a low modi us sur-
mounted by two plumes, sometimes with
horns and a disc, and she often held a large SA
amulet ('protection') and sometimes an \NKll
symbol ('life'). As a result of Mediterranean
trade, her image was absorbed into the iconog-
raphy of the Minoan civilization on the island
of Crete, where she was eventually trans-
formed into the somewhat different 'Genius'
figure.

The hippopotamus-goddess is altested as
early as the Old Kingdom, when she took
three principal names: Opet or Ipy ('harim' or
'favoured place'), Taweret ('the great goddess')
and Reret ('the sow'). Although there is a
temple of Opet al KASNAK, dating to the Late
Period and Ptolemaic period, it was the cult of

Figure of the household deity Taiveie! resting
on u sa sign. She was especially associated
ivilh the protection of women in chiltlhirih und is
one oj the most commonly represented oinuleiic
denies. New Kingdom, rock crystal, //. 9.5 em.
(E 124395)

Taweret that gained particular importance
over time Like the dwarf-god as, she appears
to have bad no cult temples of her own,
although a few statues have survived, and she
was sometimes portrayed in temple reliefs.
The Egyptian system of constellations con-
nected the hippopotamus with the northern
sky, and it was in this role as Nebetakhet ('mis-
tress of the horizon') that Taweret was depict-
ed on the ceiling of the tomb of Setv i
(1294-1279 uc) in the Vallev of the Kings
(k\15).

Essentially a benevolent figure, Taweret
was widely represented on amulets from the
Old Kingdom (2686-2181 uc) onwards,
including large numbers excavated from
houses at ei.-amarxa (r.1340 uc). Because of
her protective powers during childbirth, the
image of the hippopotamus-goddess was con-
sidered a suitable motif for the decoration of
beds and headrests. Faience vases in die shape
of the goddess, provided with a small pouring
hole at the nipple, were sometimes used to

28.3

TAXATION

TEFNUT

serve milk, presumably in an attempt to instil
extra potency into the liquid.

The male hippopotamus was essentially
regarded as a destructive animal and therefore
closely associated with the evil god setii. Tt
was presumably with this connection in mind
that the Roman historian Plutarch described
Taweret as the 'concubine' of Seta, who had
changed her ways to become one of the 'fol-
lowers' of IIORUS.

S. QyikkE, Ancient Egyptian religion (London,
1992), 107.

G. Robins, Women in ancient Egypt (London,
199.1), 85-7.

C. ANDREWS, Amulets of ancient Egypt (London,
1994)40-1.

taxation

From at least the Old Kingdom (2686-2181
bc) onwards, the government of Egypt
revolved mainly around the collection of taxes
by the central and provincial administrators. It
is important, however, to try to distinguish
between tax and rent and between regular and
ad hoc taxes. The PALERMO stone and other
surviving documents suggest (hat there were
biennial censuses of agricultural produce so
that the 'treasury' could assess the amount of
tax to be paid by individuals (although even
these censuses may have actually taken place at
irregular intervals). Because of the non-
monetary economy that operated for almost

Detail of a fragment of wall-painting from the
tomb-chapel oj 'Nebaniun, showing cattle being
paraded in front of a scribe (at the extreme left oj
the upper register) so that a tax assessment can bc
made. 18th Dynasty, C.I4Q0 bc, painted plaster
from Thebes, n. S&5 cm. (t-:.i37976)

the whole of the Pharaonic period, taxes were
paid in kind. The surviving scenes of daily life
in private tombs show that scribes were sent
out to measure the precise areas of land under
cultivation and to calculate meticulously the
numbers of livestock from geese to cattle.

The seriousness with w r hich this system was
enforced is indicated by such evidence as the
scene depicted in the 6th-Dynasty mastam
tomb of the vizier Khentika at Saqqara (i\2300
bc), showing five men in the process of being
punished for corruption in the collection of
taxes. A painting in the tomb chapel of Menna,
dating to the reign of Thutmose rv ( 1 400—
1390 bc), shows a stock scene of the assess-
ment of produce and collection of taxes by
scribes, and the subsequent beating of a
farmer who has not paid his tax, while Papyrus
Lansing, a well-known 20th-Dynasty text
(now in the British Museum), describes the
severe penalties suffered by a defaulting
farmer and his family, despite their failed har-
vest. The tomb of an 18th-Dynasty vizier
called kekhmira (r.1425 bc) is decorated with
a portrayal of the reception of taxes on behalf
of the king, including detailed descriptions of
specific amounts of such products as cakes,
barley, honey, reed mats, gold ingots and linen.
It is interesting to note that the scribes them-
selves usually seem to have been exempt from
taxation, although it has been pointed out that
the tax was generally levied on agricultural
produce, which the non-farming scribes
would rarely have owned in the first place.
'Exemption decrees' could be issued to indi-
viduals and institutions; these are our chief
source of knowledge of taxation.
A. H. Gardiner, 'A protest against unjustified
tax demands', Mil 6 (1951), 1 15-24.

B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a
civilization (London, 1989), 2.14-8.

Tefnut

Goddess associated with moisture or damp,
corrosive air. She and her brother-husband
snu were the first gods created by atum,
according to the doctrine of Lleliopolis (see
creation). Because she was considered to have
been created by a process of ejaculation or
spitting, a pair of lips could be used to denote
her name. The children of Shu and Tefnut
were geb and nut.

In the same way that the myths and attrib-
utes of Atum gradually merged with those of
ra, so Tefnut and Shu became 'EYES OF ka'; in
these roles, Tefnut took the head of a lioness,
and Shu that of a lion. Both were worshipped
in these forms at Leontopolis (teli. ei-
muqdam) in the Delta. Tefnut was also identi-
fied with the uraens (see wadjyt), thus estab-
lishing an association with the kingship, and it
was in this connection that she appeared in die
pyramid texts in the form of a serpent rearing
from a sceptre.

W. Spieui:XH!'.i<G, Dcr dgyptiscke Mythus von
Sonnenauge (Leiden, 1917).
S. West, 'The Greek version of the legend of
Tefnut', y£4 55 (1969), 161-83.
S. Q\j\kke, Ancient Egyptian religion (Lomlnn,
1992), 25-31.

tekenu

Enigmatic figure which played an uncertain
role in private funerary rites. Scenes on the
walls of tombs of the early New Kingdom,
such as that of Reneni at elkab (ek7), dating to
the reign of Amcnhotep I (1525-1504 bc), por-
tray the tekenu as a man wrapped in a skin or
bag, usually taking the form of a human-
headed sack-like bundle placed on a sledge
and drawn along by cattle as part of the luner-
al ceremonies. Since it was carried alongside
the coffin and canopic equipment, it has been
suggested that ihe sack may have simply con-
tained the parts of the body that could neither
be mummified nor placed in canopic jars but
were nevertheless essential to the full resur-
rection of the deceased. It would perhaps also
have served as an image of the body itself

The tekenu has also been interpreted as a
svmbolic survival of the practice of funerary
human sacrifice or even as a symbol of the
contracted form of corpses of the Pred>nastic
period, although there is little evidence to sub-
stantiate either of these views.
J. Gwvn Griffiths, 'The tekenu, the Nubians
and the Butic buiial\ Kush 6 (1958), 106-20.
E. IIornung, Idea into image, trans. E. Brcdeck.
(NcwYork, 1992), 169-70.

284

TELL

TEMPLE

Scene from the tomb of Menem at Elkab (f.kJ)
showing funerary rites, including the opening of the
mouth (middle register), and procession. In the
upper register the tekenu can be seen being pulled
along on a sledge in front of men carrying a chest.
18th Dynasty, c. 152(1 BC. (/'. T. NICHOLSON)

Tell

All site names beginning with 'Tell' are alpha-
betized under the seeond part of the name, e.g.
Yahudiya, Tell el-.

tell (Arabic: 'mound')

Term usually employed to describe an artificial
mound consisting of superimposed settlement
remains. Although many Egyptian toponyms
incorporate the word it is more accurately
applied to sites elsewhere in the Near East
- the site of 'tell ei.-amarna', for instance,
derives from local tribal names rather than
topography.

temenos

Ancient Greek term used to describe the
sacred precinct surrounding the cult place of a
deity. In Egyptian religious architecture it is
usually loosely applied to the area within the
enclosure wall of a temple. The religious com-
plex at KARN&K consisted of three distinct
temenoi: the precincts relating to the temples
of a.mun, MUT and MONTU respectively.

temple

Building or complex of buildings regarded by
the ancient Egyptians as the 'house' of a deity
(or deities). The most essential component of

the Egyptian temple was the innermost cult-
chamber or shrink, where the image of the
deitj was kept The activities of the temple
revolved around the worship and celebration
of the deity's cult via the image in the shrine,
and the building itself was not a meeting-place
for worshippers bill an architectural setting
for the celebration of the cult.

The modern conception of the Egyptian
temple is biased by two principal factors of
archaeological preservation. First, very few
pre-New-Kingdom temples have survived,
primarily because Egyptian temples were
repeatedly rebuilt in the same sacred area,
therefore the earliest structural phases were
often obliterated, buried and recycled in con-
structing the later versions of the temple.

Second, most Lower Egyptian religious com-
plexes, such as the temple of Ptah at Memphis
and the sun temple at imi.iopoi.is (Iwnw), have
been heavily pillaged over the centuries, there-
fore comparatively little of their plan and dec-
oration has been preserved. The result of these
two archaeological distortions is that the mod-
ern view of the Egyptian temple is based
almost entirely on Upper Egyptian temples
dating from the New Kingdom (1550-1069
bc) onwards. The most elaborate surviving
example of the Upper Egyptian temple is the
precinct of Amun at karnak, while the best-
preserved such building is the temple of
Horus at edfu, dating to the Ptolemaic period
(332-30 bc).

The typical post-Middle Kingdom Upper
Egyptian temple appears to have consisted of a
series of processional ways through which the
king and his priests could gradually approach
the cull image in its naos. The same conduits
also provided the backdrop for religious festi-
vals, which usually consisted of the trans-
portation of the deity's statue, carried in a
BARK, from one temple to another. Within the
confines of the temple, these processional
ways passed through open courtyards,
i-ivpoSTYi.E HALLS and massive ceremonial
gateways known as PYLONS. The decoration of
the external walls of the temple tended to con-
centrate on the motif of the king's conquest
over enemies and wild beasts, symbolizing the
protection of the god's cult. The painted
reliefs on the internal walls usually depicted
aspects of the performance of rituals, showing
the king engaged in the presentation of offer-
ings to the various deities associated with the
temple, and thus performing his role of inter-
mediary between the human and the divine.

The temple was also considered to be an
architectural metaphor both for the universe

Reconstruction drawing of the temple ofKhons ctl
Karnak, built during the 20th Dynasty, c. / 100 lie.
(drawn by aiius'iiNi: n iRR.rti)

285

THEBES

and for the process of CREATION itself. The
floor gradually rose, passing through forests of
plant-form columns and roofed by images of
the constellations or the body of the sky-
goddess NUT, allowing the priests to ascend
gradually from the outermost edge of the uni-
verse towards the sanctuary, which was a sym-
bol of the inner core of creation, the primeval
MOUND on which the creator-god first brought
the world into being.

Apart from serving as universal metaphors
and eternal backdrops for die celebration of
cult and ritual, the temples also served as
important parts of the Egyptian economic
infrastructure. Each was founded not merely
as a hollow building but as an important insti-
tution employing large workforces and
endowed with such reliable sources of income
as agricultural land and gold mines. The main
temple was therefore invariably surrounded by
ancillary buildings such as granaries and
slaughter-houses, in which the daily offerings
were stored and processed, usually eventually
being re-distributed to feed the temple staff
themselves. The administration of the temple,
which in modern terms might be divided into
ritualistic and economic activities, is docu-
mented both in the temple reliefs and in cer-
tain surviving archives of papyri, particularly
those that have been excavated from the Old
Kingdom mortuary temples of Neferirkara
(2475-2455 BC) and Ranefcref (2448-2445 BC)

at A11LS1R.

II. W. F-urmax, 'Worship and festivals in an
Egyptian temple 1 , BullcUn of the John Ryiamls
Library, Manchester 37 (1954), 165-203,

A. R. David, A guide £q religions ritual at Abydas
(Warminster, 1981).

P. SPENCER, The Egyptian temple: a
lexicographical study (London, 1984).

B. J. KEMP, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a
civilization (London, 1989), 91-105.

D. O'Connor, 'The status of early Egyptian
temples: an alternative theory*, The followers uj
flatus, ed. R. Friedman and B. Adams (Oxford,
1992), 83-98.

Teti (2345-2323 ur.)

First ruler of the 6th Dynast} (2345-2181 BC)
whose reign probably does not represent any
sharp break with the preceding reign of l/NAS,
in that he married Tput, one of Unas 1 daugh-
ters, although it seems likely that his father
came from outside the 5th-Dynasty royal fam-
ily. Teti was the first of many rulers to take the
Horus name Sehetep-taw\ ('pacifier of the
two lands 1 ) in his ROYAL TITULARY, possibly
suggesting a desire on bis part to remedy
problems in the administration, which had
become less stable by the end of the 5th

Dynasty, as a result of the increasing power of
nomarchs (provincial governors). The evi-
dence of his more concrete attempts to adjust
the balance of power includes firstly a stele at
Abvdos exempting temples from TAXATION and
secondly the marriage of his eldest daughter to
the vizier MERERUKA, who was later to be chief
priest of his funerary cult.

The historian manetho claims that Teti was
eventually assassinated by his bodyguards, and
although there is no other evidence for this, it
seems likely that PEPY i, his true heir and even-
tual successor, was initially usurped by
Userkara. Little is known about the latter who
reigned for only a year and may have been a
descendant of a 5th-Dynasty pharaoh.

Tea's pyramid complex, excavated by James
Quibell in 1907-8, is situated in north
Saqqara, accompanied by the MA3TABA tombs
of several of his officials, including that of
Mereruka. In a revival of a 4th-Dynasty tradi-
tion, the complex included pyramids for two
queens (Iput and Kawit), The internal passage
of the pyramid was only the second to be
inscribed with PYRAMID TEXTS, and the burial
chamber contained a grey basalt sarcophagus,
the body and funerary equipment having been
plundered in ancient times. A plaster death-
mask (now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo)
was found in his mortuary temple, but it is
uncertain whether it was taken from the body
of Teti himself.

C. M. Firth and B. Gunn, The Tea py ram id
cemeteries, 2 vols (Cairo, 1926).
J.-P. Lai kr and J. Lecxant, he temple haul <lu
complexe jimeraire du roi Teti (Cairo, 1972).
N. Grim \l, . I history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 80-1.

I.E. S. EDWARDS, The pyramids of Egypt, 5th cd.
(Harmondsworrh, 1993), 179-80.

Tetisheri( ( '.1590-1540i!c)
Wife of the 17th-Dvnasty Theban ruler
Senakhtenra Taa i and mother of SEQENENRA
TAA 11, who appears to have been of non-royal
origin. She survived until the early 18th
Dynasty and, like her descendants \niiotki 1 i
and \i IMOSE m-tkrtari, appears to have been an
unusually influential woman. Her grandson,
A1IMOSE i, established cenotaphs and funerary
estates for both himself and Tetisheri at \nv-
DOS, where she was granted a posthumous cult
as the most important female ancestor of the
ISlh-Dvnasty rulers. Despite her importance,
only one statue has survived, the lower portion
of a limestone statuette, die present location of
which is now unknown. The collection of the
British Museum includes a seated statuette
purporting to represent Tetisheri, but this has
been identified as a forger}.

M. H. Gaii'itiU'R, Livrc des nus d'Egypte u, 1 59-00.
— -, 'Monuments et fragments appartenanr a
flnstitut Francais cfArchcologie Orientale du
Cairn', B1EAO 12 (1916), 125-44 (128-9).
\V. V. Davies, I royal statue reattributed (London,
1981).

Thebes (anc. Waset)

Principal city of Upper Egypt and capital of
the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. The archae-
ological remains of the city and temples of
Thebes surround the modern city of Luxor on
the east bank of the Nile, while the west hank
is the site of the mortuary temples and tombs
of kings and high officials from the Middle
Kingdom to the end of the Pharaonie period
(r. 2055-332 BC). Because of its long and
important history, Thebes has been a centre of
archaeological research since at least the time
of the Napoleonic expedition (1798-1802; see
Egyptology).

The ancient Egyptians knew the town as
Waset, symbolized by the was SCEPTRE, but the
Greeks called it Thebes, after their own city of
the same name in Bocotia. Unlike other major
cities of the Pharaonie period, such as MEM-
PHIS, UKi.ini'OLis or \nviJOS, its origins were
comparatively recent; it probably emerged as a
small provincial town during the Old

Gilded wooden rishi
c-.fjin •;/ king
Nuhkheperm Inicf
from his tomb ill Dm
Ahttei-Naga. The
necropolises <>l Thebes
are a major source oj
knowledge on
funerary practices.
1 7th Dynasty.
cl650sc,u. L93»
(t; 16652 J

286

THEBES

Plan of Thebes.

Kingdom (2686-2181 uc), but eventually
assumed a more prominent role in the First
Intermediate Period (2181-2055 11c), as the
principal rival to the 'Herakleopolitan 1
dynasty of Lower Egypt (see HERAKLEGPOU5

MAG\A and MENTUHOTEP ll).

The 9th and 10th Dynasties of Lower
Egypt ruled from the traditional administra-
tive centre, Memphis, bul the roughly con-
temporary llth-Dynasty rulers of Upper
Egypt came from akmwt and therefore estab-
lished Thebes as their seat of power. At the
end of the First Intermediate Period the
Thcban rulers emerged victorious, ousting the
Herakleopolitans and gaining control of the
whole of Egypt. The Middle Kingdom
Pharaohs then ruled from the newly founded
city of Itjtawv ("taking possession of the two

lands 1 ), situated near the new necropolis of u -
ijsht, although they clearly still regarded
Thebes as their sacred city. The rulers of the
12th Dynasty (1985-1795 isc; see \menkmhat
and SENUSRET) established Thebes as the capi-
tal of Upper Egypt, and henceforth ami \, the
local god o( Thebes, became increasingly
prominent. In the 11th Dynasty royal burials
were already being made on the west bank,
notably at el-Tarif in the north but also at or.iR
I'X-tsAiiRi, where Mentuhotep u (2055-2004
ik;) built his funerary complex. By the New
Kingdom (1550-1069 nc:) the Theban west
bank was developing into a great necropolis
thai would eventually rival the Memphitc
necropolis of SAHARA in importance.

At the end of the Second Intermediate
Period (1650-1550 nc) it was once again a local
Theban dynasty that rose to power, expelling
the mvksos from Egypt and reunifying the

country Burials of the 17th Dynasty are con-
centrated around Dra Abu el-Naga between
el-Tarif and Deir el-Bahri. The 114 known
rock-tombs at Dra Abu el-Naga include those
of officials from the early New Kingdom to the
Late Period (c. 1550-500 nc:), as well as the
pyramidal royal burials of the 17th-Dynasty
rulers and their families (r.1650-1550 rc).
The area has been extensively plundered and
many of the tombs have now been badly dam-
aged or lost.

The New Kingdom was the most important
period in Theban history, and it was during
this period that successive rulers began to
enlarge and elaborate the temple complex of
KAitWK (the ifiet-isut, 'most favoured of
places'), founded in the 12th Dynasty and
dedicated to the divine triad of Amun, mlt
and iviiovs, as well as MONTU (another local
god). In the reign of AMENHOTE? HI

287

THINIS, TH1NITE PERIOD

THOEIUS

(1390-1352 bc) the ccxor temple (the ipet-
resyl, 'private chambers to the south*) was
founded, a short distance to the south of
Karnak.

On the west bank the vaeeey of the kings
became the burial place of the New Kingdom

t rulers from at least as early as the reign of

thutmose i (1504-1492 bc), while many of the
highest officials of each of the reigns were
buried nearby on the hill slopes of Dra Abu el-
Naga, Deir el-Bahri, el-Khoka, Asasif, Sheikh
Abd el-Qurna and Qurnet Murai. A long row
of mortuary temples also stood on the west
bank, usually with communities of officials,
priests and servants housed in the vicinity (see

MEDENET IJABU and RAMF.SSEUM). At DEIB EE-

meujna was the walled settlement and ceme-
tery of the workmen responsible for con-
structing the royal tombs. A number of royal
palaces were also constructed on the west
bank, ranging from the comparatively small
buildings attached to the mortuary temples to
the sprawling complex of buildings from the
reign of Amenhotep in at maekata.

Even in the Ramesside period (1295-1069
bc;), when the royal palace and the central
administration were transferred to the Delta
{see qantir and tf.ee el-dab'a), Thebes
retained a great deal of its religious and politi-
cal significance, and the bodies of rulers were
still brought to western Thebes for burial in
the Valley of the Kings. The kings of the 21st
and 22nd Dynasties (1069-747 bc) governed
from various cities in the Delta, but they
lacked the strength to control the whole coun-
try, and at this time Libyan generals, from
FiF.RiHOR onwards, controlled Upper Egypt
from their power-base at Thebes. It was only
in the Late Period (747-332 BC) that the
importance of the city finally seems to have
dwindled in favour of Memphis, TANK, saes
and bubas "lis.

B. Porter and R. L. B. Moss, Topographical
bibliography ]-ll (Oxford, 1964-72).
E. Riefstaiie, Thebes in the lime ofAmnnholep in
(Norman, OK, 1964).

J. Baines and J. Malek, Alias of anneal Egypt
(Oxford, 1980), 84-105.

L. Man'MC.i if, City of the dead; Thebes in Egypt
(London, 1987).

Thinis, Thinite period

The remains of the ancient town ofThinis, cap-
ital of the Thinite region, have never been
located, although it has been suggested that
they may have been situated in the vicinity of
the modern village of Girga, several kilometres
to the north of the Predynastic and Early
Dynastic cemeteries of abydos.

The Thinite region appears to have been

the most important of the small states that
were competing for control of Upper and
Lower Egypt, at the end of the Predynastic
period. The first two Egyptian dynasties,
covering a period of over four hundred years
(£-.3100-2686 BC), were described by the
Egyptian historian Manetho as the 'Thinite
period', in recognition of the fact that Early
Dvnastic Thinis enjoyed a short period of
pre-eminence, when it was the seat of power
of the first rulers of a united Egypt. It is
unclear, however, precisely when the centre
of power transferred northwards to Memphis,
thus diminishing the political role ofThinis
and leaving A bydos as a site of purely cere-
monial and ritualistic importance (see ABY-
DOS and saqqara for discussion of the possi-
ble roles of the Thinite and Memphite
necropolises).

Third Intermediate Period (1069-747 bc)
Chronological phase following the new king-
DGM. Smendes (1069-1043 bc) succeeded
rameses xi (1099-1069 bc) as first king of the
21st Dynasty (1069-945 bc), but his was only-
one line of succession in this period of divided
government. Smendes ruled from'EANis, while
the High Priests of Amun at Thebes, under
Pinudjem I, continued to rule an area stretch-
ing from as far north as ei.-fuba (south of the
Fayum) to aswan in the south. The two lines
intermarried, and the Thebans recognized the
official Tanite dating system, but maintained
Upper Egypt as a separate state.

The Delta-based 22nd Dynasty (945-715
bc:) began with the reign of the Libyan ruler
shesiionq. i (945-924 bc). His accession co-
incided with the decline in power of the
Theban High Priests, so that he was able to
install his son at Thebes, lending some degree
of unity to the two lands. Later in the Dynasty,
however, the Thebans appear to have objected
to the establishment of Osorkon, son of
Tikeloi n (850-825 bc), as High Priest of
Amun, and embarked on a civil war with the
northern rulers. The establishment of rival
dynasties followed, with the result that the
22nd to 24th Dynasties were all ruling simul-
taneously in different parts of the country.

Osorkon ill (777-749 lie:) established his
daughter Shepenwepet as gou\s wife OF AMUN
in Thebes. The importance of this post as, at
the very least, a symbol of the political control
of Thebes, meant that it was subsequently
filled by a series of adoptions imposed by the
dominant ruler of the tune. It was perhaps by
this means that the Kushite 25th Dynasty 7
demonstrated that it had secured religious as
well as political authority in the region.
Despite having gained the Theban region,

however, the 25th Dynasty was still thwarted
for a while by the 24th Dynasty (727-71 5 bc)
ruling from the town of sais in the Delta, The
Napatan ruler piy (747-716 bc) campaigned as
far north as Memphis until he was satisfied
that he had secured control of the Nile valley
then he withdrew to napata. His campaigns,
however, were inconclusive, necessitating fur-
ther military activity by his successor, SHABAQp
(716-702 bc) at the beginning of the late
PERIOD (747-332 uc).

M. Bierbrier, The late New Kingdom in Egy/it
(c. 1300-664 wc): a genealogical and tikrmo logical
investigation (Warminster, 1975).
D. O'Connor, 'New Kingdom and Third
Intermediate Period, 1552-664 BC 1 , Ancient
Egypt: a social history, ed. B. G. Trigger et al.
(Cambridge, 1983), 183-278.
K. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in
Egypt, 2nded. (Warminster, 1986).
R. FAZ7AN1, Egypt: Dynasty \\tt-\.\r (Leiden,

1988).

K. Janskn-Winkeln, 'Das Ende des Neuen
Reiches\ ZAS 119 (1992), 22-37.
— , TJer Beginn der Libyschen Ilerrschaft in
Agypten', BN1\ (1994), 78-97.

Thoeris see taweret

Thoth (Djehuty)

God of writing and knowledge, who was
depicted in the form of two animals: the
baboon {Papio cynocephahs; see cyno-
cepiiat.us) and the sacred ibis {Thrcskwrn
(lethiopicus), both of which arc elegantly por-
trayed on the exterior of the unusual early
Ptolemaic tomb-chapel of a priest of Thoth
called pf.tosik.es. In his baboon form Thor.li
was closely associated with the baboon-god,
Hedj-wer ('the great white one 1 ) of the Early
Dynastic period (3100-26S6 bc:). By the end of
the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 bc) he was most
frequently portrayed as an ibis-headed man,
usually holding a scribal palette and pen or a
notched palm-leaf, engaged in some act of
recording or calculation. Utterance 35'* of the
pyramid texts describes how the gods gained
access to the netherworld by travelling 'on the
wing of Thoth' across to the other side of the
'winding waterway 1 .

He was worshipped, along with his little-
known consort, Nehmetaway, at the ancient
city of Khmun (hermopoets magna) in Middle
Egypt, although there was also a temple of
Thoth at DAKHLA oasis and at Tell Baqliva in
the Delta. There are few surviving remains of
the temple at Khmun, but two colossal baboon
statues erected by Amenophis in (1390-133-
bc) still dominate one area of the site (see illus-
tration under iiermopoeis magna).

288

THOTH

THUTMOSE

Squat ting figure of the god Tlwth m the form of a
baboon, inscribed with the cartouches of Amenhotep
lit. IHth Dynasty, c. 1390 nc. quarizite, ti. 67 tin.
{mS8J

Thoth was closely associated with the
moon (the second 'eye of RA*) and was regu-
larly shown with a headdress consisting of a
disc and crescent symbolizing the lunar
phases. It is possible that the long curved beak
of the ibis was identified both with the cres-
cent moon and with the reed pen. An associa-
tion with the passing of time is reflected in
those depictions that show him recording the
king's names on the leaves of the persea tree.
In vignettes of the 'judgement of the dead 1 ,
regularly included in Book of the Dead papyri
in the New Kingdom (1550-1069 nc), Thoth
was often shown both in his anthropomor-
phic, ibis-headed manifestation, recording the
results of the weighing of the heart of the
deceased, and, less frequently, as a baboon.
Sometimes, in addition, he is shown as a
baboon perched on top of the scales. It was
probably because of his role as guardian of the
deceased in the netherworld, and as an inter-
mediary between the various deities, that he
became associated w T ith the Greek god
Hermes in the Ptolemaic period (332-30 bc),
hence the renaming of the city of Khmun as
Hermopolis Magna.

C. Bovlan, Thoth, the Hermes of Egypt (Oxford,

1922).

C. J. Beeeker, Hcttbor and Thot (Leiden, 1973).

A. P. ZrVTE, Hermopolis et k nome. de /'ibis:

recherches stir la province da dieu Thot en Basse

Egl'pte (Cairo, 1975).

M. T. Derchain-Urtel, Thot: rites egyptiens 3

(Brussels, 1981).

— , 'Thot a Akhmim 1 , Hommages a F. Daumas,

ed. A. Guillamont (Montpcllier, 1986), 173-80.

J. Quaegebelr, 'Thot-Hermcs, le dieu le plus

grand!', Hommages a F. Daunius (Montpellicr,

1986), 525-44.

V. Wkssetsky, 'Tier, Bild, Gott: fiber die Affen

des Thot\ Akteu Miincheu 1933 ill, ed.

S. Schoske (Hamburg, 1989), 425-30.

throne name (prenomen) see (torn

Thutmose (Tuthmosis)

Birth name, meaning 'Thoth is born', held by

four 18th-Dvnasty pharaohs.

Tbutmose t Aakhcperkara (1504-1492 BC)
was the successor of amenhotep i and the
third ruler of the 18th Dynasty. Although his
reign was comparatively short, his achieve-
ments in terms of foreign policy were signif-
icant. The inscriptions atTombos, in the area
of the third Nile cataract, and Kurgus, south
of the fourdi cataract, indicate that he had
consolidated and expanded Egyptian control
over Nubia. Another stele (known only from
later records) erected on the far side of the
river Euphrates and commemorating a suc-
cessful militarv incursion into the territory of
mitanni, suggests that he was the first of the
New Kingdom pharaohs to gain control of a
substantia] area of the Levant. The main
motivation for Egvptian expansion into
Nubia and western Asia lay in the desire to
secure trade routes for such raw materials as
oils, timber, copper, silver and sla\ es, all of
which were more difficult to obtain within
Egypt itself.

Thutmose l is considered to have been
buried in kv58, the earliest tomb in the valley
OE" the kings at Thebes, but his body was
probably among those reinterred in the cache
of royal mummies at DEIR ei.-bahri. Although
a sarcophagus bearing his name was discov-
ered in K\'38, a second one was also found in
the tomb of his daughter tiatsi [EP.sut (kv20).

Thutmose // Aakheperenra (1492-1479 bc)
was the son of Thutmose I by a lesser wife
called Mutnofret. In die first year of his reign
he erected a victory stele at Aswan, describing
the crushing of a revolt in Nubia, thus signal-
ing that he was continuing his father's aggres-
sive foreign policy. A virtually undecorated

tomb in the Valley of the Kings (k\42) con-
taining an uninscribed sarcophagus, was once
thought to be his burial place but this is now
considered unlikely. His mortuary temple in
western Thebes was excavated by French
archaeologists in 1926.

Thutmose tit Menkhepetra (1479-1425 bc.)
was the son of Thutmose u and a minor wife
called Aset. When Thutmose n died, his wife
and half-sister Hatshepsut acted as regent for
the first few years of the reign of Thutmose in.
By year seven of his reign she herself had
assumed the full titulary of a pharaoh, thus

Head from a green schist statue probably
representing Thutmose tit or Hatshepsut. 13th
Dynasty, cMSOmc. n. 43.7 cm. (u\98b)

delaying the full accession of her nephew for
more than twenty years. He finally came to the
throne in his own right in about 1458 bc, pre-
sumably on the death of Hatshepsut. It was
probably not until relatively late in his reign
that he began systematically to remove
Halshepsut's name from her monuments,
replacing it with his own.

In his foreign policv he emulated the
exploits of Thutmose r, re-establishing

289

THUTMOSE

T1Y

Egyptian suzerainty over Syria-Palestine
with the BATTLE OF megiddo in the first year
after Hatshepsut's death, thus neutralizing the
military threat posed hy the Prince of Qadesh
and his Mitanman allies. This battle and his
subsequent Levantine campaigns were re-
corded in the Hall of the Annals in the temple
of Amun at karnak. As well as expanding the
cult-centre of Amun, he also built temples at
Deir el-Bahri and MEtaNET BABU as well as
numerous sites in Nubia and the Delta. At
\rmant and speos artemidos he completed
his stepmother's constructions.

His tomb in the Valley of the Kings (kv34)
is decorated with scenes from the Amdttat
('that which is in the underworld 1 ) and his
mortuary temple on theTheban west bank has
survived, although in poor condition. Mis
mummy was one of those discovered in the
Deir el-Bahri cache.

Thutnme n Menkheperura (1400-1390 bc)
was the son of Amenhotep u, the father ot
Amenhotep in and the grandfather of \khen-
aten. The so-called Dream Stele at Giza
describes how he was offered the throne of
Egypt in return for removing the sand from
the Great Sphinx. Since he does not seem to
have been the actual heir to the throne, it is
possible that this inscription formed part of the
legitimizing of his accession. In terms of
foreign policy his reign marked a period of rec-
onciliation with Mitanni, including a 'diplo-
matic marriage'' to the daughter of Artatama I,
the Mitannian ruler. He also left a stele at the
island of Konosso, near Aswan, commem-
orating an expedition to quell rebellion in
Nubia. Bodi his Theban funerary temple and
his tomb (k\43 in the Valley of the Kings)
have survived, and his mummy was among
diosc recovered from die tomb of Amenholep
ii in 1898.

H, E. Wixlock, 'Notes on the reburial of
Tuthmosis i\JEA 15 (1929). 56-68.
W. F. Edgerton, The Thutmosid succession
(Chicago, 1933).

D. B, Redford, History and chronology of lite
Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt: seven studies
(Toronto, 1967).

A. Tui.noi'T, Tlmtmosis in (Munich, 1984).

B. M. Bryan, The reign of Thutmose a (Baltimore
and London, 1991).

X. Grlual, A history of ancient Egypt (Oxford,
1992), 207-21.

Thutmose (Djehutymose, Tuthmosis)

(c. 1340 oc)

One of the principal sculptors of the reign of

akhenaten (1352-1336 uc), whose titles
describe him as 'king's favourite and master
of works, the sculptor Thutmose 1 . His house

and workshop, buildings P.47.1-3 in the
south suburb of el-am akna, were discovered
by Ludwig Borchardt in December 1912.
Most of the identifications of occupants of
houses at Amarna have been made on the
basis of inscribed door lintels or jambs, but
Thutmose's house was ascribed to him
through the excavation of a fragment of an
ivory horse-blinker from a domestic rubbish
pit. A storeroom of Thutmose's atelier
(P.47.2: room 19) was found to contain
numerous artist's 'trial pieces', as well as
many unfinished statues and heads, including
those of the king, queen and princesses.
There were also a number of plaster heads
probably representing various members of
the Amarna-period royal family, which were
initially interpreted as death-masks but are
now usually assumed to have been the 'master
images' from which sculptures in stone may-
have been copied. The most spectacular find
was the brightly painted limestone bust of
nefertiti, the principal wife of Akhenaten
(now in the collection of the Agyptisches
Museum, Berlin).

L. Borchardt, Portrats der Konigin Nofret-ele
(Leipzig, 1923).

L. Borchardt and H. Ricke, Die Wohnhaaser in

Tell ei-Amarna (Berlin, 1980), 96-7.

R. Krauss, \Der Bildhauer Thutmose in

Amarna', Jahrhnch der Preussischer Kullurbesitz

20(1983), 119-32.

C. Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London,

1988), 59.

time see calendar; chronologv; clepsydra
and history and historiography

titulary

see ROYAL TITULARY

Tiy(Tiye)(r.]410-1340it<:)
Principal wife of the late 18th-Dynasty ruler
amenhotep hi (1390-1352 bc). Her father was
a chariot officer (see yuya and tuyu) and her
brother, Anen, rose to the position of Second
Prophet of amun. She seems to have exerted
considerable influence both on her husband
and on her son akhenaten (1352-1336 bc).

The lips ofQiieen Tiy. 18th Dynasty, c. 1380 bc,
yellow jasper, it. 12.6 an. ( 'metropolitan

MUSEtM, N£ft YORK, EDttARDS. IIARKNESS UIFT.

1926,26.7.1396)

290

;•

TIY

After the death of Amenhotep in, for instance,
the correspondence from Tushratta, the ruler
of mitanni, was addressed directly to Tiy. She
was regularly being- portrayed alongside her
husband in sculptures, and her titles were
listed on one of a series of commemorative
SCARABS issued by the king.

On the accession to the throne of her son,
Akhenaten, the centre of power transferred
from Thebes to a new capital city at EL-
amarna. A relief in the rock-cut tomb of
Huva at el-Amarna shows that Tiv visited

mfw:m$m

TOMBS

Green steatite head of Tiy from the lew pie of
Hatlior at the titruuoise-mining site ofSerabit el-
Khadim. Sinai. 18th Dynasty, c.1370 BC,
u. 1.2 cm. (cairo jf.38257)

Akhenaten at the new city in the twelfth year
of his reign, and she may even have had her
own residence there. She was perhaps buried
with her son in the royal tomb at Amarna, but
this is by no means certain. It is likely, at any
rate, thai her body was eventually taken to
Thebes. Some of her funerary equipment
was found in tomb KVSS in the VALLEY OP THE
kings, although the body associated with
these objects is believed to be that of
Smenkhkara, the short-lived coregent of
Akhenaten. A body of a royal woman discov-
ered among the cache of roval mummies in
the tomb of Amenhotep □ (kv35) is thought
to be that of Tiy, although this identification
has not been universally accepted. A lock of
her hair was also found in a miniature coffin
in the tomb of tltanktiamun (k\62).
A. RoWE, 'Inscriptions on the model coffin
containing the lock of hair of Queen Try 1 , ASAE
40(1941), 627.

C. Aldred, Akhenaten, King of Egypt (London,
1988), 146-52,219-21.
G. Robins, Women at ancient Egypt (London,
1993), 21-55.

t\t!tsee tyet

Tod {anc. Djertv, Tuphium)
Site on the east bank of the Nile, south of
ARMANI', which dates from at least the Old
Kingdom until the Islamic period. A mud-
brick chapel was constructed there as early as
the 5th Dynasty (2494-2345 BC), but the site-
gained in importance in the Middle
Kingdom (2055-1650 hc), when temple con-
struction for the local god monti. was under-
taken by mentuhotep ii (2055-2004 BC),
Mentuhotep ni (2004-1992 nc) and sf.nu.s-
RET t (1965-1920 BC). Although these struc-
tures are now almost entirely destroyed, a
number of impressive fragments of relief
have survived, including part of a wall deco-
rated on both sides with depictions of the
goddess Tjanenent and the god Montu, dat-
ing to the reign of Mentuhotep in (now in
the Louvre).

In February 1936 the French archaeologist
Francois Bisson de la Roque discovered the so-
called 'Tod treasure' underneath the Middle
kingdom temple. The treasure comprised
silver vessels (which may have been made
in Crete, or perhaps somewhere in Cretan-
influenced western Asia), a silver lion, lapis
lazuli cylinder seals from Mesopotamia, and
gold ingots. These were found in four bronze
chests bearing the cartouche of Amenemhat n
(1922-1878 bc) of the 12th Dynasty. Not only
was this discovery one of the richest finds of
silver in Egypt, but the evidence it provides

The Tod treasure, discovered by Francois Bissau de
la Roque lit the temple of Montu in 1936, is one of
the largest finds of silver from ancient Egypt. 12th
Dynasty, c.1900 RC L. of box 45 cm. (louire
i- 15128-1 5318, photocr i/'tt: je tN-WC noror)

concerning contacts with Greece and the Near
Fast during the Middle Kingdom is a valuable
indication of trade contacts at the time.

From the New Kingdom have survived the
remains of a rark shrine erected byThutmose
in (1479-1425 BC) for Montu, the decoration
of which includes restoration work under-
taken by other kings of the 18th, 19th and 20th
Dynasties. Many of the blocks of Thutmose
ill's temple were later re-used in the construc-
tion of the Deir Anba Ibshay church to the east
of the site. In front of the site of the temple of
Senusret I, Ptolemy viu (170-116 bc) built a
new temple and sacred lake, and a kiosk was
added in the Roman period.
F. Bisson de la Roquk, 'Le tresor dc Tod', CdE
12 (1957), 20-6.

J. Vandier, 'A propos cfun depot de provenance
asiarique trouvcaTod', Syria 18(1937), 174-82.
K Bisson de la Roqpe, G Conteneal and
F. CllAPOLTltlER, Le tresor dc 7nV (Cairo, 1953).
C. DESRon-iES-Nom.EcotjRT and J. Vercoutter,
Un Steele dejomllesfranauses en Egypt 1880-1980
(Paris, 1981), 157-65.

tombs

In the strictest sense of the word the ancient
Egyptian tomb underwent very little develop-
ment over the course of the six millennia from
the beginning of the Predynastic period to the
end of the Roman period (r.5500 BC— AD 395).
In essence the tomb itself was almost always
subterranean, usually comprising a simple pit,

291

TOMBS

1 court

2 hall

3 passage

4 offering chamber

- tomb chapel

- underground chamber

Piai/ and cross-section of a private tomb oj the
18th Dynasty at Thebes. The tomb belonged lo
Sobckhotcp whose life at court is recorded in scenes
in his tomb-chapel, which mas located above
ground. In the 19th Dynasty, tomb chapels were
decorated with funerary texts. The subterranean
parts of the tomb were largely undecorated and
were blocked except for burials, (dr.iu \ BY
aiRisTisi: n iiiR-nr)

a rock-cut room or a chamber of mud-brick or
stone, within which the body was placed, usu-
ally accompanied by funerary equipment ot
various kinds. The pit style of burial was par-
ticularly persistent, being used not only by
most of the Predynastic population but also by
poorer people throughout Egyptian history.

The full study of the development of the
Egvptian tomb is therefore principally con-
cerned with the evolution of the superstruc-
ture, which was invariably the architectural
form of the 'offering chaper rather than the
burial chamber itself. Since the purpose of the
funerary monument was to ensure the con-
tinued survival of the deceased, the attention
of the funerary architects and artists naturally
focused not so much on the body itself but on
the chapel, which was the interface between
the dead and the living, and the means by
which the k_\ ('spiritual essence') and the u<\
(*pOteacy') of the individual could communi-
cate with the world outside. Although there
were obvious differences in scale and elabor-
ation between the pyramid complexes of the
Old Kingdom and the simplest MASTABA
tombs of some of the more lowly officials of
the time, all of these buildings were essentially
performing the same function, providing a
vehicle for the making of offerings to the
deceased. From the serdabs containing statu-
ary of the deceased to the stelae bearing
inscriptions naming and describing the indi-
vidual, and listing the required offerings for

the cult, the basic components of the funerary
chapel and mortuary temple were very similar.
There were certain subtle architectural and
artistic means by which royal tombs could be
distinguished from those of their courtiers, and
equallv there were ways in which the design
and iconography of the tomb could be used to
indicate the prerogatives and privileges held by
certain members of the non-royal elite and not
by others. However, some of the major differ-
ences in the outward appearance of tombs were
the result of simple geological and geographi-
cal variations, such as the availabilitv of good

quality building stone (as at giza and SAQQAg \\
or the suitability of the desert cliffs for the
excavation and decoration of rock-cut cham-
bers (as at ASYU'J; ben] iiasan and meir).
Factors such as these would have determined
whether private funerary chapels were rock-
cut or built. In addition, the chronological
changes in architectural style within pariicular
necropolises, such as saqoara or THEBES, were
generally the result of dynastic or religious
change, as well as an increasing reaction to the
threat of tomb-robbery. Indeed, the problem of
security seems to have been one of the main
factors that led to the move away from the
highly visible pyramid complexes of the Old
and Middle Kingdom to the hidden corridors
of the valley oi- THE kings at Thebes in the
New Kingdom.

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