The Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period royal decrees were documents commissioned by the king and placed at the gates of temples with important messages concerning the regulation of work, cultic, and economic activities. In this article I review the validity of these texts as sources of historical research for modern scholars and their effective use as documents by the ancient Egyptians. I propose that royal decrees offer valuable information concerning the king's access and impact on temple economies at the end of the Old Kingdom and beginning of the First Intermediate Period. This access remained continuous and unchanged until the second half of the reign of Pepi II when non-royal patronage becomes more prominent in the texts and the presence of royal sealings decreases. I challenge the impression that royal decrees had no practical validity for the ancient Egyptians by showing that the permissions and restrictions exposed in the decrees are consistent with shifts in rhetoric and external evidence for historical change at the end of the Old Kingdom.
A recent project concerning the Portico of Obelisks in Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari included documenting the decoration at a higher resolution than the 1908 publication by & Eacute;douard Naville, yielding interesting linguistic, visual, and historical details regarding Hatshepsut's boats. The linguistic element concerns the name of a vessel discovered after combining the text on a loose block and an inscription in the reconstructed part of the portico's wall. A both linguistic and visual detail is the specific hieroglyph used as the determinative for the obelisk barge, probably showing its appearance. The detailed depiction of various types of boats taking part in transporting obelisks is the visual part, which still raises issues concerning the historic accuracy of the scenes. New block identification allowed us to identify the boat name, to confirm some boat structures, and also to confirm the presence of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III in the scene.
The article provides a comprehensive analysis of how the term "Canaan" and its variations are used in Egyptian sources from the New Kingdom period. It explores the appearances of "Canaan" and "Canaanite" in various contexts, such as military campaigns, topographical lists, monumental inscriptions, and administrative records. Through a detailed examination of these sources, the study aims to clarify whether these terms refer to the entire region known as Canaan or to specific localities within it, such as Gaza. When the ethnicon "Canaanite" is used, it is possible to determine that the individuals came from the land of Canaan, and that the term does not mean "Gazan." The findings highlight that "Pa-Canaan" should be translated as "that which belongs to Canaan," and that the article "p;" should not be understood as the definite article, but as the possessive article/prefix "p;-(n)." The toponym "Canaan" in topographical lists appears in specific geographical contexts, namely together with Sharuhen and Raphiah on the coastal plain of the southern Levant, and once next to Ashtarot and Rehob in the Beth Shean Valley, and seems to refer to a specific place rather than a region or land, namely Gaza and its environs.
This paper will explore the ritual power and significance of gold for Nubian cultic practitioners at the ancient Egyptian temple of Philae, located at the traditional border between Egypt and Nubia. Philae was a place of cultural, religious, economic, and military interaction between Egyptian and Nubian populations, both of whom engaged in religious practices at the temple, often jointly. Though co-religionists, Nubian practice diverged in specific ways from that of Egyptian priests and practitioners. Long associated with gold, Nubia served as the primary source of this precious metal for ancient Egypt. This paper will explore the presentation of gold by Nubians at the temple of Philae as recorded in hieroglyphic texts that decorate the temple walls and in the words of Nubian visitors who inscribed their prayer texts on the temple walls primarily in the Egyptian language (Demotic), but also in the Meroitic language and in Greek. Additionally, I will describe the unique symbolism and ritual power of gold in the Nubian religious practices at Philae.
Representations of the military provide important sources of evidence for our understanding of how the instability of the civil war impacted the values and priorities of the ruling elite. This paper examines all of the known elite military wall scenes and funerary models from the First Intermediate Period and early Middle Kingdom by investigating their owners, content, and locations in the tomb. Through an innovative comparative analysis, this paper identifies, for the first time, the distinguishing features between the two media in their portrayal of the military. It proposes reasons for their distinctive representations and what stimulated the appearance of the military theme among funerary models. By considering these artistic developments alongside the changing historical circumstances, the analysis reveals that a period of instability in society impacted the ruling elite's preparation for the afterlife, increasing the desire to publicly promote their military leadership and to maintain eternal access to protection.
According to dated monuments, Sesostris III had a reign of 1g years. The Illahun lunar dates confirm 1g years, if md-dj-nt and especially w,'gj are numbered as lunar days 15 and 17. By contrast, it has been argued that md-dj-nt and w,'gj ought to be re-numbered as lunar days 16 and 18, implying 1g + 11 regnal years. The re-numbering is based on an unreflected averaging method. Below, theory and application of the averaging method is expounded, confirming the traditional numbering of md-dj-nt and w,'gj as lunar days 15 and 17.
This article is an equity critique of Egyptology, specifically targeting the way in which intersectional marginalization affects publishing trends. The article looks at 447 articles published in the Journal of the American Research Center (JARCE) between 1990-2021 and considers the gender and nationality of all the authors involved. It then uses the statistics gathered from this analysis to illustrate the degree to which men are publishing more than women and non-Egyptians more than Egyptians. It then breaks down these modes of marginalization intersectionally, that is, it shows how looking at these forms of marginalization in combination gives a different view of the data. The resulting analysis clearly shows that Egyptian women scholars publish in JARCE at disproportionately low rates compared to non-Egyptian women as well as Egyptian men. This occurrence has nothing to do with problems specific to Egypt, but is rather the result of global inequalities (the marginalization of non-Western countries by the west, and the marginalization of women generally) working in combination, as demonstratable also in the West. The article then expresses the need for initiatives directly targeting this issue in order to make Egyptology both a more inclusive and holistic discipline.
Nearly 50 years after the constitution of women's and gender studies as academic fields, this article intends to analyse the impact of their creation and methodological development on the Egyptological discipline. Based on a corpus of 858 bibliographic references related to women and/or gender and selected through the Online Egyptological Bibliography digital tool, this research first aims to study statistically the quantitative evolution of such scientific publications from the end of the nineteenth century to current times, as well as the languages used in these productions and the themes they tackle. Then, a chronology of the main methodologies and approaches of the concepts of "women" and "gender" in ancient Egypt is outlined, highlighting their relation to the contemporary academic issues. Finally, this article discusses the (slow) integration process of women's and genderstudies within Egyptology and gives an outlook on some perspectives offered by this interdisciplinary approach.
This article considers the enduring historical questions about the Dahamunzu affair: the identity of the Egyptian participants-Dahamunzu and her deceased husband Niphururia-as well as the fate of the Hittite prince Zannanza. It accepts the derivation of the name "Niphururia" from "Nebkheperure," the prenomen of Tutankhamun, and therefore identifies Dahamunzu as the young pharaoh's widow, Ankhesenamun. This conclusion is supported by evidence from Tutankhamun's burial and its aftermath, which dovetails with the Hittite record of events, principally the Deeds of & Scaron;uppiiuiiuma (CTH 40). Especially important is the absence of a legitimate heir to the Egyptian throne and the accession of a commoner, the god's father Ay. As for Zannanza, this article uses a draft letter of & Scaron;uppiluliuma I (CTH 154, KUB 20.20) to argue that the prince died in the Nile Valley, rather than on the way there, as the Second Plague Prayer of Mursili II (CTH 378.2) indicates. The fact that he is otherwise unknown suggests that he was still quite young, perhaps not past his minority, but whether foul play was involved in his demise cannot be determined. It is important to recognize that the limited number and quality of our sources make these conclusions provisional. Indeed, the remnants of a letter of Mursili II (KUB 19.15 + KBo 50.24) apparently referencing Horemheb may prove that the Dahamunzu scandal occurred several years earlier, at the time of Akhenaten's death. Unfortunately, this document-like much of the other evidence for an anterior date-is ambiguous, and it does not outweigh the combined philological and historical arguments.
The paper explores the way that European colonialism has, at least in part, set the agenda for describing the ancient regime of pharaonic Egypt: finding types of order that the primary data does not show, and would not itself imply, and so incorporating the ancient world into the developmental trajectory of the West, disengaged from the later apparently decayed history of indigenous populations. The underlying agenda here is to justify which models describe the reality of imperfectly documented societies. Specific issues discussed are the use of the documentary record to seek for legal and administrative impersonality; the mapping of titles and epithets onto reconstructions of administrative structures; mapping and geographical knowledge as a context for evaluating the penetration of government; the ownership of land and people, envisaged in ideas of slavery and the existence of census.
This study proposes a new plausible reconstruction of the genealogy of three high dignitaries of the 18th Dynasty who could be related: the royal son of Kush, Usersatet; the steward of the royal residence at Perunefer, Qenamon; as well as the second prophet of Amun in the Heneketankh, Kaemamon. All three bear, moreover, the title of child of the kap and have family ties with the royal wet nurses.
The paper explores the way that European colonialism has, at least in part, set the agenda for describing the ancient regime of pharaonic Egypt: finding types of order that the primary data does not show, and would not itself imply, and so incorporating the ancient world into the developmental trajectory of the West, disengaged from the later apparently decayed history of indigenous populations. The underlying agenda here is to justify which models describe the reality of imperfectly documented societies. Specific issues discussed are the use of the documentary record to seek for legal and administrative impersonality; the mapping of titles and epithets onto reconstructions of administrative structures; mapping and geographical knowledge as a context for evaluating the penetration of government; the ownership of land and people, envisaged in ideas of slavery and the existence of census.
Scholarship often identifies the First Intermediate Period as a time of great change in Egyptian history. This paper will argue that investigation of Egyptian social practice highlights that the First Intermediate Period was not just a time of creative disruption, but also a time of social continuity unifying the late Old Kingdom with the Middle Kingdom. This paper uses utilitarian ceramics as a proxy for both domestic and mortuary practices. A morphological investigation of First Intermediate Period bread and beer forms illustrates a dual arc of economic change beginning in the late Old Kingdom running in tandem to a thread of social stability uniting the First Intermediate Period with the Middle Kingdom.
This study proposes a new plausible reconstruction of the genealogy of three high dignitaries of the 18th Dynasty who could be related: the royal son of Kush, Usersatet; the steward of the royal residence at Perunefer, Qenamon; as well as the second prophet of Amun in the Heneketankh, Kaemamon. All three bear, moreover, the title of child of the kap and have family ties with the royal wet nurses.
This paper aims to offer an overview of ancient Egyptian artists’ representations with a palette in two-dimensional scenes that occurred in eight tombs during a limited time window, i.e. , from mid-Dynasty 18 to the Ramesside Period. By connecting these “(auto)portraits à la palette” via a chronological analysis, the article paves the way for a comprehensive study of this specific iconographic shorthand to signal a sš-ḳdw.t ’s identity, closely related to an artist’s definition of themselves within their own social world. In so doing, they blurred the line of our modern distinction between “scribes” and “draftsmen.”
This article aims to investigate an obscure title held by Takheta, the wife of the penultimate pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, Amasis. While previous studies focused mostly on the queen’s origin and its implications for the diplomatic policy of the Saite kings, this paper explores Takheta’s inclusion of a rare title ḫrp(t) sšmt šnḏt (the directress of the butchers of the Acacia House) in her queenly titulary.
In this article I examine the presence of the toponym Ya`gob'el el within its geographical context in the topographical lists of Thutmose III, , Ramesses II, , and Ramesses III. Historically, Ya`gob'el and the toponyms clustered with it are located by scholars in Syria. However, it is possible that Ya`gob'el within Thutmose HI's list is found to the south of Moab. The topographical lists of Ramesses II and Ramesses III mention place names that might be linked to Ya`gob'el, and should be located in southern Transjordan, where the Edomite deity Qaus was worshiped.
This paper investigates how the Hyksos' notoriety was forged in seventeen ancient textual sources, s, considering the origins of the vilification of the Hyksos, s, the development of the vocabulary associated with these foreign rulers, and how the Thebans or Egyptians perceived themselves in direct contrast with the Hyksos. The study reveals that the negative terminology used in the textual sources to refer to the Hyksos is grad-- ual and suggests that the growing hostility between Upper and Lower Egypt resulted in a shift in discourse to justify the conflict between the two kingdoms together with the establishment of a warrior ethos. Ultimately, this research highlights the pivotal role of the Theban (Egyptian) sources in shaping the legacy of the Hyksos that became a key "cultural memory" to articulate and affirm ancient Egyptian cultural identity in the New Kingdom.
The land of Wetenet is one of the most enduring Red Sea placenames mentioned in Egyptian literature. Its place in the Egyptian conceptual map of the Red Sea has been largely ignored due to it being eclipsed by the much more ubiquitous toponym, m, Punt. Unlike Punt and its aromatics, Wetenet was visited primarily to secure ebony, with these voyages also providing the stimulus or "field notes" for the elucidating the Eastern Souls, the solar baboons of cosmographic literature. A study of the etymology and geography of this land provides a framework for Wetenet's possible location, namely in the coastal regions of Sudan or Eritrea.
Abstract This article aims to study the appearance of the cult epithet “theos Soter” on the hieroglyphic monuments dating back to the second reign of Ptolemy IX. It highlights the problems that Egyptians encountered while translating such an epithet from Greek theos Soter to Egyptian pꜢ nṯr nty nḥm. As shown by the Demotic documents covering several years, this did not happen at once. This study offers a new dating tool for the monuments of the second reign of Ptolemy IX according to the appearance or absence of the translated epithet. Cette étude porte sur l’épithète de culte « dieu Sôter » lorsqu’elle apparaît sur les monuments égyptiens inscrits en hiéroglyphes au cours du second règne de Ptolémée IX. L’article consiste à mettre en relief les problèmes de traduction envisagés par les anciens Égyptiens pour transmettre le terme grec théos Sôter vers l’égyptien pꜢ nṯr nty nḥm, ce qui ne s’est pas fait en une seule fois. La présente étude offre un nouvel outil de datation pour les monuments au cours du second règne de Ptolémée IX en fonction de l’apparition ou non de l’épithète.
