 (p. 201) The small, summarily worked steatite fragment illustrated in the accompanying pI. and fig. was acquired by the British Museum in 1868 from the collection formed in Egypt by the artist Robert Hay (1); its current BM running number is EA 36279 (formerly EA 8520a). The piece measures 5.4 cm long, 0.6 cm extant width and 2.8 cm maximum height. The original find-spot is umecorded, though (as will become apparent) it was probably Thebes and most likely the Valley of the Kings.
The top surface of the piece is carved in relief with a recumbent figure of the deified king, his feet resting upon an elliptical base, the plain lappet wig with uraeus surmounted by the horns, disc and double plumes. The body itself is shown swathed in a one-piece shroud, through which the form of the body and the knees may be discerned. To the left of the figure stands the goddess Nephthys (presumably balanced, when the object was complete, by a figure of the goddess Isis), arms inclined towards the king, wearing the distinctive head ornament made up from the hieroglyphs of her name. Between king and goddess, standing upon its tail, is a crocodile. As already noted, the piece is incomplete: approximately one-third of the right-hand edge is split away and lost, this damage having perhaps occurred at the time holes were being drilled (for some as yet undetermined purpose) into the lower surface and head- and foot-ends of the object.
Few things are certain about this piece, but what, seems clear is that EA 36279 reproduces in miniature an Egyptian royal sarcophagus, with the box and lid carved as one from a single piece of stone. From the presence of a recumbent figure on the lid, a feature of the extant lids of Merenptah through to Ramesses IV, a general dating of the piece to the 19th Dynasty may be proposed. The modelling of EA 36279 resembles most closely the sarcophagi of Siptah (2), Sethnakhte (3), Ramesses III (4) and Ramesses IV (5), though it does not reproduce precisely the detail of any of these monuments.
The function of EA 36279 is not at all obvious. That it was intended to serve merely as an amulet would seem less than inevitable - not least for the total lack of parallels - and a rather different possibility might be considered.
"Architectural" models of pharaonic date are well known, from Egyptian texts, from representations in temple wall-reliefs, and from actual examples. The finest and most famous model to have come down to us is that of a temple gateway of Sethos I preserved in The Brooklyn Museum (49.183) (6). In an article on this piece published in 1973, Ahmed Badawy proposed that the Brooklyn (p. 204) model was to be associated with the ceremony of "Presenting the House to its Lord" (7), a part of the foundation ritual known from scenes in the temples of Esna and Dendera (8). Badawy`s suggestion has yet to be bettered (9).
Founding rituals are usually thought of in the context of temple dedication; however, it is clear from the archaeological record that tombs also - generally royal tombs - could be consecrated in a similar manner. (This conclusion should occasion no surprise: the tomb, like the temple, was the dwelling of a god, a Hwt nTr, a similarity of concept reflected in the parallels to be observed between the ritual material recovered from certain New Kingdom temple sites and that found in royal tombs of the period) (10).
With this in mind, a number of funerary parallels for the Brooklyn temple model may be tentatively identified: a solid limestone object which Flinders Petrie, who acquired the piece at Memphis, believed to be a representation of the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (11); a solid limestone model of the pyramid of Ammenemes III at Hawara (12); and an elaborately carved representation of the inner chambers of this same king`s pyramid at Dahshur, brought to light in the Valley Temple by Dieter Arnold in 1976 (13). A fourth funerary parallel for the Brooklyn model would be the miniature royal sarcophagus British Museum EA 36279, which, like the pyramid models, presumably formed but part of a larger composition employed in the rite.
One further possibility might, in passing, be mentioned: that the ceremony of "Presenting the House to its Lord" was, on occasion, accomplished with a two- rather than a three-dimensional model of the monument concerned. Several two-dimensional representations of temples and tombs have come down to us, in a variety of media, which fall outside the category of true "working drawings" and are otherwise difficult to assign a function. These anomalous works include: a plan of Dendera temple executed on leather, recorded as having been brought to light in antiquity hidden in the interior of a brick wall (14); a plan of the New Kingdom temple of Heliopolis, executed on "slate", now in Turin (15); and, most notably, the well-known plan of the tomb of Ramesses IV (KV 2) preserved on a papyrus, also in Turin (16).
|
(p. 205) To sum up: the fragmentary object British Museum EA 36279 may be identified as a model of a royal sarcophagus of the 19th or 20th Dynasty. It is proposed that this model was employed in the rite of "Presenting the House to its Lord", hitherto attested in the archaeological record only for temple foundations. It is further suggested that the representations employed in this ritual could be two- as well as three-dimensional. This would permit a new interpretation of a number of two-dimensional "architectural" drawings, including the plan of the tomb of Ramesses IV preserved on a papyrus in Turin.
Nicholas Reeves
(p. 201) * An earlier version of this note first appeared (in Russian) in Vestnik Drevnej Istorii 3 (1991), p. 236-238. Thanks are due to my former colleagues in the British Museum`s Department of Egyptian Antiquities, in particular Mr WV Davies, Keeper of that Department, and Christine Barratt, to whom the drawings are due. For their comments on Egyptian royal sarcophagi I thank Edwin Brock and Aidan Dodson; neither, however, bears any responsibility for the conclusions here reached.
(1) WR Dawson and EP Uphill, Who Was Who in Egyptology (2nd edition), 1972, p. 135; S Tillet, Egypt Itself. The career of Robert Hay, Esquire of Linplum and Nunraw, 1799-1863, 1984.
(2) H Burton, BMMA 11 (1916), p. 14-17; H Altenmueller, SAK 10 (1983), S. 47, Abb. 2.
(3) Samivel and M Audrain, The Glory of Egypt, 1955, p. 148, pI. 56; H Altenmueller, SAK 10 (1983), S. 47, Abb. 2; E Hornung, The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity, 1990, p. 170.
(4) Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, E 1.1823: J Romer, Valley of the Kings, 1981, p. 53.
(5) E Hornung, Zwei ramessidische Koenigsgraeber: Ramses IV und Ramses VlI, 1990, p. 120 ff., pIs 89-93.
(6) A similar model is in Copenhagen: M Mogensen, La Glyptotheque Ny Carlsberg. La collection egyptienne, 1930, A 742, p. 102, pI. 110.
(p. 204) (7) A Badawy, Miscellanea Wilbouriana 1 (1972), p. 1-23.
(8) For the rite, cf. JM Weinstein, Foundation Deposits in Ancient Egypt, 1973, p. 16,425.
(9) D Berg`s reservations in SAK 17 (1990), p. 81-106 and esp. 103 ff., should be noted, though they are not, for this writer, compelling.
(10) Compare with the royal material from the tombs of Amenophis II (G Daressy, Fouilles de la Vallee des Rois, 1902, pis 27 ff.) and Tuthmosis IV (ThM Davis, H Carter and PE Newberry, The Tomb of Thoutmosis IV, 1904, pIs 25 f.), for example, the fragmentary faience throwsticks and other objects recovered from Dendera (WMF Petrie, Dendereh 1898, 1900, pI. 23), Serabit el-Khadim (WMF Petrie, Researches in Sinai, 1906, pI. 150), and elsewhere.
(11) Cf. IES Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, 1985, p. 277, pI. 60 (Petrie Museum, University College London, UC 16519).
(12) Ibid., pI. 61 (Petrie Museum, University College London, UC 14793). Both this and the preceding, Edwards suggests, "may perhaps be placed in the category of architectural and planning aids" (o.c., p. 277), though he goes on to point out that "There is ... no certainty that these models were not made after their respective pyramids had been built".
(13) D Arnold, Die Pyramidenbezirk des Koenigs Amenemhet lll. in Dahschur, I. Die Pyramide, 1987, p. 86-88, pIs 35, 66-68.
(14) Cf. the Marquis of Northampton, W Spiegelberg and Newberry, Report on Some Excavations in the Theban Necropolis during the Winter of 1898-1899,1908, p. 37, n. 1, referring to J Duemichen, Baugeschichte des Denderatempels, pI. 1.
(15) Turin inv. Suppl. 2682: AM Donadoni-Roveri (ed.), Egyptian Museum of Turin. Egyptian Civilization. Monumental Art, 1989, p. 90, fig. 137.
(16) H Carter and AH Gardiner, JEA 4 (1917), p. 130-158, pI. 29; E Scamuzzi, Museo Egizio di Torino, 1965, pI. 77. This drawing depicts the compromise plan actually achieved, and not the tomb plan originally conceived: see N. Reeves, CdE 61/121 (1986), p. 47, n. 5.
|
British Museum EA 36279
|
Fig. 1: British Museum EA 36279
|
|