The Amduat in the Egypt Centre

Inspired by Kasia Szpakowska's talk for the Friends of the Egypt Centre last night, I thought I would introduce one or two artefacts in the Egypt Centre which may have Amduat influences. Kasia's talk was all about the Amduat, the ancient Egyptian afterlife book which shows the journey of the sun-god Re through the afterlife of the Duat. The earliest complete depiction known is from the tomb of Tuthmosis III (1479-1425 BC). 

Unfortunately, we don't have any pure Amduat scenes in the Centre but during the Third Intermediate Period (1069-747 BC), Amduat scenes influenced the afterlife scenes shown in tombs, coffins and papyri. We do have some coffin fragments and a complete, coffin with Amduat influence.

So, here we have W648: It shows the sun-disk in the morning embracing the scarab. Very similar scenes are shown on New Kingdom copies of the Book of the Dead Spell 15, but there a female figure usually embraces the sun-disk. By the Third Intermediate Period, it is the male god Osiris with elements of Shu from the Book of Caverns who does the embracing. And, by this date, Osiris is more closely linked with the scarab. In Amduate texts it seems that Shu is the god who reaches towards the scarab.


And here is EC1053: a piece of cartonnage showing Re in his night boat (you can see the stars), waiting to be reborn. He is shown as a child in a red uterine disk. It isn't entirely Amduat but does echo the idea of Re travelling through the Duat to be reborn,

Here is my favourite character from the complete Third Intermediate Period coffin in the Egypt Centre showing 
Hepet-hor, She Who Embraces Horus. This divinity is almost inseparable from Osiris, guarding his judgement hall. She also tends to appear where Osiris and Re 'get together' in order to renew Re. She does appear on an Amduat Papyrus in the Nelson Atkin Museum of Art, Kansas City, where she holds up Osiris.


Then there is the mound scene on our coffin, not unlike the Amduat mound of Sokar with the snake and rebirth connotations. And, Sokar was very much associated with Osiris. 

While these examples are not entirely Amduat inspired, and several also have Book of the Dead or other Otherworld book influence, they also have some similarities with the Amduat. 

Any mis-attributions, mistakes etc. are of course mine, not Kasia's!

A head, a collector, leeches and dwarves

W351

I photographed this object on Monday in advance of a talk, and have just found out a little bit more about its history which I would like to share.

It is a head part from a Third Intermediate Period coffin (so around 3000 years old). It's made of wood and is around 24cm high. The wood is covered with plaster and then painted. The yellow colour suggests that this was from a woman's coffin, as women tended to be painted with yellow paint.

It has a label on the back showing that it was part of the Wellcome collection. Most of the objects in our museum are part of that collection, collected by Sir Henry Wellcome, the pharmacist. More about him here. But where did he get the object from.

Well apparently it was given to him in 1927 by someone who was well known as an Egyptologist, though had never been to Egypt, Warren R. Dawson. Warren Dawson (1888-1968), was encouraged by the curator of the British Museum, Wallis Budge, to study Egyptology. If you google his name, you will see he wrote various articles including the curiously titled Magician and Leech: A Study in the Beginnings of Medicine with Special Reference to Ancient Egypt, a paper on pygmies and dwarves and also material which he published with Grafton Elliot Smith, well known to students of the history of archaeology. Obviously a scholarly gentleman, who knew several other scholarly gentlemen, he was also interested in science and medicine.

Daemon snakes and green skinned goddesses

Been finding out a bit more about this, W1307.

I thought is showed the ouroboros, a symbol of eternity,  surrounding Isis. It appears I was wrong. A really good PhD thesis by Dana Reemes shows that the idea of the snake biting its tail as a symbol of eternity did not come in until much later. Instead, this snake, which isn't biting its tail is more likely to be a protective symbol surrounding the deceased as the solar-Osirian unity. Snakes like this appear on several coffins of the Priests of Montu at found at Deir el Bahri.

Moreover, this is actually the upper foot part of the coffin, designed so that it could be seen by the deceased. So, if we looked at it on the complete coffin it would appear upside down.

Anyway, if you are interested I have more on the fragment here.

Easter, Onions and Sham el-Nessim

So Easter is coming up and the Egypt Centre is preparing. The festival of Easter originally derives from earlier pagan festivals associated with spring and rebirth, which is what we are going to celebrate in the Centre. So coming up we have children’s workshops ‘The Magic of Mummies’ from 7^th-10^th April. If you are looking for a non-fattening Easter treat you could do worse than to purchase from our shop. Our shop has loads of things to do with rebirth and Egypt, such as jewellery decorated with flowers and also scarabs.

So what has this got to do with onions? Well the link is the modern Egyptian festival of Sham el-Nessim (literally smelling the breeze) which falls on the day after the Coptic Christian Easter and is celebrated by both Muslims and Christians. The day may possibly date back to an ancient Egyptian festival!

It is said that the festival takes its name from the Egyptian harvest season, called Shemu. Over time the ancient name Shemu morphed into the Arabized Sham el-Nessim. In the modern festival traditional food is eaten such as feseek (a salted grey mullet), lettuce, onions, lupin beans and coloured boiled eggs.

In his book, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Edward William Lane wrote in 1834:

A custom termed 'Shemm en-Nessem' (or the Smelling of the Zephyr) is observed on the first day of the Khamaseen. Early in the morning of this day, many persons, especially women, break an onion, and smell it; and in the course of the forenoon many of the citizens of Cairo ride or walk a little way into the country, or go in boats, generally northward, to take the air, or, as they term it, smell the air, which on that day they believe to have a wonderfully beneficial effect. The greater number dine in the country or on the river. This year they were treated with a violent hot wind, accompanied by clouds of dust, instead of the neseem; but considerable numbers, notwithstanding, went out to 'smell' it.

According to Plutarch, in the 1^st century AD the ancient Egyptians offered salted fish, lettuce and onions to their gods on this day.

So, do we have anything onionish in the Centre? Well nothing in the shop. But we do have a couple of things on display. Firstly, clay offering tray which shows onions.....W480 shows two long water channels, two forelegs of oxen, bread and three bundles of leeks or onions. The onions favoured by the ancient Egyptians would have been more like leeks or scallions. Onions were a staple food, so no wonder the living wanted to provide the dead with them.

But more than that, onions appear to have been associated with rebirth!

Onions appear three times in resurrection scenes on our 21^st Dynasty coffin!

Firstly, they appear in the above scene (more about that here). Between Isis and Nephthys is an object which looks like a bag with fringes.

Secondly a bunch occurs here, in the in front of Embracing of Horus (the far left) in the Osiris on the mound scene, and again in front of the right-hand Heka (Heka is the god on the far right), in the same scene.

On noting these strange fringed bags, my first thought was actually that that it was the Abydos or Abydene symbol (ta-wer symbol). The ‘Abydene’ or ‘Abydos symbol’ which had the shape of a bee-hive was considered from the 19^th Dynasty to be the reliquary of the head of Osiris. It is usually shown on a pole and is said to represent a wig, suggesting the head of Osiris. As one would expect, this symbol often occurs and both mound scenes and on scenes of the enthroned Osiris. However, the Abydene symbol does not seem to be shown without the pole. So maybe not the Abydene symbol.

However, as was pointed out to me this is more likely to be a bunch of onions! As Graindorge (1992) has shown, depictions beginning in the New Kingdom show celebrations involving the offering of bunches of onion which look very similar to this depiction (for example in TT255, the tomb ofRoy). 

On 25^th of Khoak, when celebration concerned the triumph of Osiris, relatives of the deceased offered onions associated with Sokar (onions are also used in the opening of the mouth ceremony). Onions grow both under soil and above it and thus mirror the solar-Osirian theology which is a common theme on this coffin. Sokar is himself associated with Osiris. They also drive away snakes and are thus protective.

So there you have it, maybe we should sell onions in our shop for Easter.

References

Graindorge, C. 1992. Les Oignons de Sokar, Revue d'Égyptologie 43, 87-105.

Year of the sheep/goat/ram

On a coffin in the Egypt Centre (W1982) we have a really great scene of the seperation of heaven and earth, with Geb and his consort Nut seprated by Shu (or in or case Heka). Little bit more about it here. There are several reasons why I find this interesting, one because this motif shows a male god as the earth and a sky god as female (in conrast to the usual mother earth idea prominent in many cultures). In the case of our coffin it has the god of magic, Heka, in place of the usual Egyptian god Shu. Usually Shu seperates the pair and ours is one of the few where it's different. This is a scene of creation.

But I am getting off the point, I was going to talk about rams and sheep and such on this secene as it is approproriate for the start of the Chinese New Year (being the year of the ram, or goat or sheep). Should point out that Egyptologists see these clearly as rams. However, there is some debate as to whether the Chinese year is a ram, a goat or sheep.

On the Swansea coffin, two kilted ram-headed deities help She/Heka. There are other coffins which show ram-headed deities assisting. If anyone is interested look at Budapest 87.4.E (Liptay 2011, 69, plate 17) and  the British Museum Greenfield Papyrus (EA10554, Budge 1912, pl. 56) as well as E1.1822 in the Fitzwilliam Museum.  Part ram, part bird figures are shown lifting up Nut on other 21^st Dynasty coffins (e.g. the coffin of Pameshem, Cairo 6008 in Goff, 1979, fig.141). On other coffins the rams are given names such as ‘This God Great in Heaven’ and ‘This God Great in the Duat’ (Budge 1893, 49). The rams are labelled in the Greenfield Papyrus e.g. ‘Ba which embraces all things?’ (BA-sxnt-dmD). 

Rams were associated with a number of gods in Egypt and perhaps in the Theban area were particularly with the night-time aspects of Amun (Niwiński 1987-88, 104). Additionally, the Ram of Mendes is the ba spirit of Osiris and the solar ram is associated with crossing the netherworld at night (Eaton 2006, 87). Rams generally represent fertility. So all this is a good reason for them to appear on a scene of creation.

The ram is also a metaphor for the part of the soul the Egyptians called the ba. This probably derives from the Egyptian for the ba should being the same word as ram, i.e. bA. Ba-birds are often shown as birds with human faces. We have several wooden depiction of them in the Egypt Centre and the the left I show you one. There is a bit more about them here.

On our coffin, the idea that these are indeed intended as soul-birds is reinforced by the addition of the ba-bird (the birds with human heads) also in the scene, and two of these ba-birds (those beneath the arms of the kilted ram-headed figures and shown with arms in front of them in a gesture of worship) appear to have rams horns. E1.1822 in the Fitzwilliam also depicts ba-birds without horns, there called ‘the living soul of Osiris’ (Budge 1893, 49) - I think - I haven't checked this on the actual coffin. Liptay (2011, 66) believes the combination of ram and ba-bird invoke Chapter 85 of the Book of the Dead where ram and bird appear alternately on vignettes.

So those rams seem to have lots of meanings.

The Egyptians did seem to like mixing metaphors.

References

Budge, E.A.W. 1912. The Greenfield Papyrus in the British Museum. The funerary papyrus of princess Nesitanebtashru, daughter of Painetchem II and Nes-Khensu, and priestess of Amen-Ra at Thebes, about B.C. 970. London: British Museum Trustees.

Eaton, K.J. 2006. the Festivals of Osiris and Sokar in the Month of Khoiak. Studien zur Altägyptischen Kulture, 35, 75-101.

Goff, Beatrice L. 1979. Symbols of Ancient Egypt in the Late Period. The Twenty-first Dynasty. The Hague, Paris and New York: Mouton Publishers.

Liptay, E. 2011. Coffins and Coffin Fragments of the Third Intermediate Period. Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts. 

Niwiński, A. 1987-88. The solar-Osirian unity as a principle of the theology of the ‘State of Amun’ in Thebes Dynasty 21. Jaarbericht van het vooraziat-egyptische Genootschap, 30, 89-106.

Ammut- not such a bad girl?

Poor old Ammut, the Devourer, gets such a terrible press normally. She eats the hearts of the deceased who are bad people so that they don't get to go to 'heaven'. But was she really all bad?

You can see her on the steps of the throne of Osiris here (the b/w image is easier to make out). She has the head of a crocodile, the hind part of a hippopotamus and the middle part of a lion. Her teats show she is female. She also wears a modius, like Egyptian royal women. These picture are taken from out 21st Dynasty coffin (you can find out more about it here). She is waiting for the judgement from Osiris, does she get a nice tasty heart, or not?

However, there seems to have been more to her than simply a blood-crazed glutton of hearts. Strangely, perhaps, one of the beds in the tomb of Tutankhamun is in the shape of Ammut and he is called 'Beloved of Ammut'. Such beds in tombs would have been associated with resurrection.

Additionally, she often appears on 21st Dynasty coffins in scenes of Osiris' triumph over death, a scene that could also be said to be associated with resurrection.

Here she is on our coffin in the mound scene, where Osiris sits atop, reborn. Can you see her, front paws on steps? She is in the Amduat, the otherworld.

It seems however, that for the Egyptians, the destruction of enemies was necessary for rebirth, so Ammut is not so bad after all.

In some ways (her hippo links) she seems similar to Taweret, normally thought of as a good girl, but sometimes not so good (there is another tale there).

A Voice Offering

On Monday we had a group of very enthusiatic Swansea MA students in the Egypt Centre looking at our objects as part of their Egyptian language course. They were particularly looking at voice offerings. This is one of the objects that they studied. You can find out a bit more about it here.

We often get groups studying artefacts without text but it is more unusual for those studying text. It seemed to go well with the students commenting about how it was good to see things in context. I'm also hoping that the novelty of seeing text 'in the flesh' will help them remember and inspire them to learn more.

Amduat scene

Been trying to find out a bit more about this scene. It's a fragment of a Third Intermediate Period coffin. I thought the scene was quite unusual.

It shows the sun-disc with arms embracing the scarab. On either side there is an ankh and the symbols for East and West. At the bottom is the hieroglyph showing the rising sun.

As far as I can tell this shows the last hour of the Amduat. The deceased (evoked by the scarab) travels through the Amduat to be reborn with the new sun. Liptay has written on this.

I only know of one other occurence on a coffin (a coffin from Budapest), does anyone know of more?

For more information see: http://www.egypt.swansea.ac.uk/index.php/collection/300-w648

Coffins, cartonnage and wind demons

Aidan Dodson of Bristol University came to see on us on Monday to look at our coffins and coffin fragements. What we hadn't realised is that he wanted to look at cartonnage as well as wooden coffins. We had cartonnage catalogued in a seperate section in our catalogue. However, the cartonnage was soon found and Aidan was able to do a preliminary survey. This proved helpful to us, as well as, (we hope), to him.  It's always useful to have researchers come to us as we learn more about our objects.

I have now added 'cartonnage' under 'coffins' for future researchers while also keeping the ability to search for cartonnage only or wood coffin fragments only. However, this aspect of the catalogue is yet to go live (it is hosted on a site that is only partly controlled by us).

Whilst doing this an interesting piece of cartonnage caught my eye so I thought I would see if I could find out a bit more about it. You can see what I think here: http://www.egypt.swansea.ac.uk/index.php/collection/295-w870 But if anyone knows more about wind demons we would love to hear from them.

Twenty First Dynasty coffin fragment

Repacking 21st Dynasty coffin fragments and finding that some of them fit together.
This one shows Nepythys with the Abydos fetish. From the 19th Dynasty the Abydos fetish was thought to be the reliquary of the head of Osiris.