Statue of Amenhotep III, 66 of goddess Sekhmet unearthed in Luxor

The discoveries shed further light on what the eighteenth dynasty pharaoh's temple would have looked like

By Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 8 Mar 2017

The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project has discovered a magnificent statue in black granite representing king Amenhotep III seated on the throne.
Project director Hourig Sourouzian told Ahram Online that the statue is 248 cm high, 61 cm wide and 110cm deep.

It was found in the great court of the temple of Amenhotep III on Luxor's West Bank.

"It is a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian sculpture: extremely well carved and perfectly polished," Sourouzian said, adding that the statue shows the king with very juvenile facial features, which indicates that it was probably commissioned early in his reign.

A similar statue was discovered by the same team in 2009 and is now temporarily on display in the Luxor Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art.

When the site's restoration is complete, Sourouzian said, the pair of statues would be displayed again in the temple, in their original positions.

Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ministry of Antiquities Ancient Egyptian antiquities department said the team has discovered up to 66 parts of statues of the goddess Sekhmet this archaeological season. These statues represent the goddess sitting or standing holding a papyrus sceptre and an ankh — the symbol of life.

Statues of lioness goddess Sekhmet unearthed in Luxor's Kom El-Hettan excavation

by Nevine El-Aref , Friday 9 Dec 2016

Egyptian archaeologists excavating the Mortuary Temple of King Amenhotep III in Luxor have unearthed a number of statues of the goddess Sekhmet, daughter of the ancient Egyptian sun god Re, project director Hourig Sourouzian told Ahram Online on Thursday.

"They are of great artistic quality" Sourouzian said of the statues, which were found in four parts, including three busts and one headless torso, in the Kom El-Hettan archaeological area on Luxor's west bank.

Sourouzian oversees the work of the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project, which is working to save the remains of the more than 3,000 year-old temple and eventually restore its dispersed artefacts to the site, to be presented in their original layout.

The project director said her team found the Sekhmet pieces in very good condition, buried in the temple's hypostyle hall—a roofed structure supported by columns. Several other statues of the goddess have been found previously on the same site.

According to Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Ministry of Antiquities, the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet was charged with defending her father Re against enemies.

The many statues of the goddess in the temple of Amenhotep III would also have been intended to protect the ruler from evil and disease, Afifi told Ahram Online. 

"All statues of the goddess are now stored in warehouses supervised by the Ministry of Antiquities for security reasons,” Afifi said, adding that when excavations at the temple are completed and the site is opened to visitors, the statues will be placed back in their original setting.

In addition to the statues of Sekhmet, Sourouzian's team have uncovered large pieces of sphinxes carved in limestone, as well as a small torso of a deity in black granite, within the vicinity of the funerary temple's third pylon.  

“The sphinxes are in a bad state of preservation and will need to be treated before being exposed,” she said.

Egypt's Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany is set to travel to Luxor on Monday, to inspect the newly discovered statues and attend the opening of a temporary exhibit to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Luxor Museum.

The exhibit will display a collection of 40 artefacts discovered by archaeologists on the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project.

The artefacts will include a collection of amulets, Greco-Roman coins, remains of clay pots and religious stelae—stone tablets or columns erected as tombstones or boundary markers.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/251690/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Statues-of-lioness-goddess-Sekhmet-unearthed-in-Lu.aspx

Statues discovered in Amenhotep III temple on Luxor's west bank

A collection of statues depicting the lion goddess Sekhmet was unearthed in the ruins of King Amenhotep III’s funerary temple on Luxor’s west bank

Photocredit: Ahram Online

by Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 15 Mar 2016

A European excavation team working on the funerary temple of King Amenhotep III discovered a set of statues depicting the lioness goddess of war Sekhmet and a partial statue of King Amenhotep III.

Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told Ahram Online that the newly discovered statues are to be put on display within two months at their original location in the temple after the completion of a wall now under construction around the structure.

Mahmoud Afifi, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities department, explains that three of the statues are complete figures depicting the goddess Sekhmet sitting on a throne and holding in her right hand the ankh symbol of life.

Another of the statues depicts Sekhmet standing and holding the papyri slogan in her left hand, with a fifth statue depicting a standing King Amenhotep III wearing the official suit of his jubilee.

Sourouzian pointed out that during the last excavation season the mission unearthed a collection artefacts of the goddess Sekhmet wearing the triode wig and a long tide dress.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/191039/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Statues-discovered-in-Amenhotep-III-temple-on-Luxo.aspx

Museum Pieces - Counterpoise of a menat

Counterpoise of a menat

A bronze decorative counterpoise of a menat. It has the form of Sakhmet, with her body represented as a shrine. A figure of the goddess stands within the shrine wearing a sun or moon-disk. The menat, a bead necklace with counterpoise, was an important ritual object used by priestesses in temple ceremonies, and could be rattled to accompany singing and dancing.

Present location: LIVERPOOL MUSEUM [03/061] LIVERPOOL
Inventory number: 1987.408
Dating: 18TH DYNASTY
Archaeological Site: UNKNOWN
Category: MENAT
Material: BRONZE
Technique: FULL CAST
Height: 15 cm

Menat

The menat (mnit) consists of several strings of beads joined together to a two-part end piece shaped like a rectangle or trapezium with a disk attached. This part functioned as a counterpoise whenever the menat was worn as a necklace. The menat was also often carried in the hand. The strings of beads resulted in the menat making a rattling noise when shaken, similar to that of a sistrum. Together with the sistrum, the menat was used as an accompanying instrument for song and dance.

The first illustrations date from the 6th Dynasty and show the menat being held by women who had functions in the cult of Hathor. Hathor is often shown herself with a menat around her neck, and it can even be seen as one of the manifestations of Hathor, with the counterpoise often taking the shape of the face of Hathor. Hathor's son, Ihy, uses the menat as a musical instrument, just like the musicians named after him who performed at Hathor festivals. Via Ihy, the instrument was transferred to Khons.

The menat is considered to be multifunctional - it could be used for protection, to calm a divine power, or to transfer something of the being of the goddess to the person who touched the menat. The close connection to Hathor meant that contact with the menat would transfer zest for life and love. One relief shows the goddess holding a menat to the nose of the king, as if it were an ankh sign. It is also related to the sphere of fertility and birth. From the late New Kingdom on, the deceased was given the end piece of a menat; in representations they wear it as a kind of pectoral. The friezes on sarcophagi dating to the Middle Kingdom already show complete menats; they represent the menats which were offered to the deceased in the tomb reliefs by dancers.

Bibliography

Piotr Bienkowski and Angela Tooley., Gifts of The Nile: Ancient Egyptian Arts and Crafts in Liverpool Museum., 1995., 62; pl.96.

Sources:

http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=3521

http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/glossary.aspx?id=238

Museum Pieces - Relief of Ptolemy II with Ptah and Sekhmet

Photocredit: Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Relief of Ptolemy II with Ptah and Sekhmet

Present location: ALLARD PIERSON MUSEUM [06/002] AMSTERDAM
Inventorynr: APM 8795
Dating: PTOLEMY II PHILADELPHUS
Archaeological Site: UNKNOWN
Category: RELIEF
Material: LIMESTONE
Height: 44 cm
Width: 65 cm


Panel A shows Ptolemy II Philadelphus standing before Ptah, adoring him and presenting with his right hand a statuette of Ma'at to the god. The king wears the nemes-head dress with uraeus and the ceremonial beard. He is adorned with the wesekh-collar, bracelets and armlets. His clothing is a short, smooth kilt with a belt. Panel B shows the god Ptah standing in a shrine, wearing his usual tight-fitting garment and skull cap. He too wears the ceremonial beard and a collier with a counterpoise on his back. With both hands he holds a staff, of which the top is formed by the hieroglyphs meaning "prosperity", "life" and "durability". The goddess Sekhmet, on panel C, wears a long dress with shoulder bands, a long wig, a collier, two armlets and two bracelets. On her head is the sun disk with a uraeus. In her left hand she holds a staff which ends in a papyrus flower, in her right hand an ankh-sign. The three figures are finely carved, in contrast to the hieroglyphic inscriptions.

Translation
(1) Offering Ma'at (truth) to his father, that he may give life.

(2) [Horus] of Edfu, the great god, lord of the sky.

(3) Userkare-[meramen] ("Mighty is the soul of Re, beloved of Amun"),
(4) [Ptolem]y, may he live eternally.
(5) May all protection, life and prosperity be behind him like Re.

(6) Ptah, lord of Ma'at, king of the Two Lands,
(7) fair of face, who is upon the great throne,
(8) the [great] god, who is in Dendera.

(9) I give you an eternity as king of the Two Lands.

(10) [Sekhmet, ...] of the Two Lands, mistress of all foreign lands,
(11) [..., the great], beloved of Ptah, mistress of the sky.

(12) I give you all joy like Re.

Bibliography
W.A. van Leer, MVEOL, 3, 1936, 12-13/pl. III (nr. 7-8)
B. Porter, R.L.B. Moss, Topographical bibliography, VI, 1939, 110
W.M. van Haarlem (ed.), CAA Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam, Fasc. 1, 1986, 51-53
R.A. Lunsingh Scheurleer, W.M. van Haarlem, Gids voor de afdeling Egypte, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam, 1986, 28, 30/fig. 11 (nr. 9)
W.M. van Haarlem, De Egyptische staatsgodsdienst, MVAPM 44 (september 1988), 8-16: 12, 14/fig. 29
R.A. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Egypte, geschenk van de Nijl, 1992, 104, 103/fig. 70

Sources:
http://dpc.uba.uva.nl
http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=12565

Egyptian goddess statue unveiled in İzmir’s Red Basilica

IZMIR - Doğan News Agency

Photocredit: DHA photo

An almost nine-meter long lion-headed Egyptian goddess Sekhmet has been revived in the Red Basilica (Kızıl Avlu) in the largest structure of the ancient city of Pergamon in İzmir’s Bergama district, and opened to visits on Sept. 26. The statue has already drawn great interest from tourists in the area. 

German Excavation Institute Chairman Ferix Pilson said it would contribute to Bergama’s inclusion in the UNESO Cultural Heritage list in June next year. 

The Egyptian statue pieces found during the excavations since 1930 in the Red Basilica are among the most important statues from the Roman Empire. Among them, the lion-headed goddess statue was reconstructed thanks to the support of the Studiosus Foundation. The statue was raised last year for trial purposes and with further works, and it reached an impressive height of 8.5 meters.

Source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/egyptian-goddess-statue-unveiled-in-izmirs-red-basilica.aspx?pageID=238&nID=55259&NewsCatID=375

Its Reign Was Long, With Nine Lives to Start

‘Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt’ at the Brooklyn Museum

By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: July 25, 2013

(Photocredit: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
At left, “Face of Sakhmet,’ from around 1390-1292 B.C.; right, “Recumbent Lion,” in limestone, from 305-30 B.C.

If your dream of heaven is eternity spent with the pets you love, “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt” at the Brooklyn Museum is your exhibition. All of its 30 objects, sifted from the museum’s Egyptian collection, are of cats, big and little, feral and tame, celestial and not. Whether cast in bronze or carved in stone, their forms were to outlast time, and so they have.

Although it’s often assumed that the domestication of cats began in Egypt, archaeology suggests that Mesopotamia was the place. And despite the feline presence in religious contexts, Egyptians didn’t worship cats per se, but created gods that had their physical features, their expressive moods and their near-supernatural intelligence.

Ancient Egyptians took the supernatural seriously.

It was, for them, reality. The path between life on earth and life in an earthlike place beyond was continuous. The sun traveled it every day, moving across the sky from east to west, dropping from sight to continue its circuit through the netherworld, then turning up on earth again.

More Sekhmet statues unearthed at Amenhotep III's temple in Luxor

Black granite statues of the ancient Egyptian lioness goddess Sekhmet were unearthed Monday at King Amenhotep III's temple on the west bank of Luxor

by Nevine El-Aref , Monday 11 Mar 2013


Egyptian and European excavators unearthed a collection of black granite statues depicting the ancient Egyptian lioness Goddess Sekhmet during their routine excavation at King Amenhotep III funerary temple in the Kom Al-Hittan area on the west bank of Luxor.
The statues depict the goddess Sekhmet in her usual form, sitting on the throne with a human body and lioness's head.

"This is not the first time statues of the lioness goddess have been unearthed at Kom Al-Hittan," said Mohamed Ibrahim, minister of state for antiquities adding that the Egyptian-European mission led by German Egyptologist Horig Sourouzian has previously unearthed 64 statues of Sekhment of different shapes and sizes.

Ibrahim explained that such a large number highlights the important role of the goddess during the reign of the 18th dynasty king Amenhotep III, father of the monotheistic king Akhnaten and grandfather of the golden king Tutankhamun.

Sekhmet was believed to be a protective goddess as she was also the goddess of war and destruction. "Some Egyptologists," pointed out Ibrahim, "believe that king Amenhotep constructed a large number of goddess Sekhmets in an attempt to cure him of a specific disease that he suffered during his reign." Sekhmet was well known of her supposed ability to cure critical deseases.

The lioness for real

A granite statue of the ancient Egyptian warrior goddess Sekhmet was unearthed today in the Mut Temple at Karnak on Luxor's east bank

by Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 16 Jan 2013

During excavation and cleaning works in the Mut Temple at Karnak, a mission from the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE) stumbled on a very well preserved statue of the goddess Sekhmet. The statue is 180 cm tall and depicts Sekhmet as a lioness wearing the cobra and the Aten sun disk on her head and holding the ankh sign in her right hand and the lotus flower in her left.

"This is the first time a standing statue of the goddess Sekhmet in her original lioness form was found in the Mut Temple," Mansour Boreik, the supervisor of Luxor antiquities, told Ahram Online. He added that previously discovered statues there depict Sekhmet seated with the facial features of the goddess Mut, the consort of the god Amun Re, not her original lioness figure.

The ARCE mission uncovered this statue within the sands of the Mut Temple's second hall, within the framework of comprehensive restoration work carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA). The project, which began in May 2012, aims at restoring the temple and its surroundings so that it can reopen to the public, as it has been closed since 1976.

The original plan includes the establishment of a visitor centre where a documentary about the goddess Mut and her role in ancient Egypt would be screened alongside photos of the temple before and after restoration.

The Mut Temple is one among several located at Karnak. For many years it stood in ruins beyond the south gate, some 200 meters south of Karnak's 10th pylon. For some time now it has been undergoing restoration. The Napoleonic Expedition recorded one of the earliest plans of the Mut Temple as well as explorers and historians of the 19th century such as Nestor L'Hôte, whose drawings, made in 1839, recorded details of such temple. The Royal Prussian Expedition in 1842, led by Karl Lepsius and the first directors of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt, August Mariette and Gaston Maspero, had their own record of the monument. However, the first excavation and restoration work started in 1895 by two English women, Margaret Benson and Janet Gourlay.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/62647/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/The-lioness-for-real.aspx

Out of the sea

Jenny Jobbins looks at the regional myths that ancient Egyptians associated with the creation of the world and finds an uncanny parallel with what science teaches us today


The Egyptians believed that the various ramifications of the sun god — Horus, the rising sun; Ra and Ra-Harakhte, the full sun; and Osiris, the setting sun — governed their lives and the lives of all living animals and plants. But how did they explain the creation of that world?
Their theory of creation depended on where — and, to some extent, when — they lived, and was woven around the cults of the different regional divinities. The main cult centres were in Hermopolis, Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes.
To some extent there were common factors in these regional myths. In the beginning was chaos, envisaged as a vast ocean called Nu. From these waters rose a primaeval land mound, the pyramid-shaped benben, and at the same time life emerged from the benben’s rich, alluvial soil.

THE ENNEAD OF HELIOPOLIS: If you were born during the Old Kingdom in the area around Heliopolis, just to the northeast of modern Cairo, you would have grown up in the midst of a spiritually and politically charged atmosphere in the shade of the temple at the centre of the cult of Ra-Harakhte. Only one remnant remains today of this temple, Egypt’s first known temple to the sun god: the obelisk of Senusert I.
The people of Heliopolis (ancient Iwnw) attributed the creation to Atum, a deity who was associated with the sun-god Ra. Atum was the first god: he created himself, emerging on the primaeval mound from the water, Nu. According to the Heliopolitan myth, Atum single-handedly created his progeny, each with an element linked to the physical world. First he sneezed the air god with the onomatopoeic name of Shu, and spat out Shu’s sister, Tefnut. Shu and Tefnut were the parents of Geb, the Earth god, and Nut, the sky goddess. Despite being separated by their father, Shu, Geb and Nut nevertheless produced Isis, goddess of motherhood; Osiris, god of vegetation and resurrection; Set, god of the desert and of storms; and the protector goddess Nephtys. These nine gods, the family of the omnipotent Atum, formed the Ennead of Heliopolis. The hierarchy was perpetuated through the Pyramid Texts, which accompanied the deceased pharaoh and instructed him on how to conduct himself on his passage to the afterlife.
Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, and Anubis, son of Set and Nephtys, were the offspring of the last four members of the original Ennead.

Ptah the god from Memphis

The preeminent God of the city of Memphis, one of the earliest administrative centers of the unified Egyptian nation, Ptah apparently lent his name to the nation itself, at least in the Greek tongue. The Egyptians called their nation Kemi, or something approximating to this, but the Greek name which we have inherited to refer to this land, Aiguptos, appears to be a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian name for the city of Memphis, He[t]-ka-Ptah, ‘House of the spirit of Ptah’. Due to its position at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, Memphis is described as “the Balance of the Two Lands, in which Upper and Lower Egypt had been weighed” in the conflict between Horus and Seth, representing Lower and Upper Egypt respectively (Lichtheim vol. 1, 53). Ptah, a God of life, intelligence, speech (especially the word of command) and craftsmanship, is depicted as a standing mummiform man, wearing a skullcap and a broad collar with a large tassel at the back and holding a sceptre combining the ankh, djed, and was (uas) symbols. Ptah is mummiform, not because he has funerary associations, but to symbolize his participation in the state of changeless perfection with which mummification is associated. Ptah’s consort is Sekhmet and Nefertum is his son. The Apis bull was regarded as Ptah’s mortal representative and the deified vizier Imhotep came to be regarded as Ptah’s son as well. In addition, some late depictions of Ptah in magical contexts depict him as a beardless dwarf—fully humanoid, unlike Bes—in most cases holding snakes in his hands; in one instance, this image is labelled “Ptah endowed with life,” (Holmberg, 182). This image is apparently also commonly intended to depict the triune fusion deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Ptah is also so frequently allied withTatenen in the fusion deity Ptah-Tatenen that in many cases ‘Tatenen’ seems simply to have become an epithet of Ptah’s, but it is always safer to assume, given Egyptian conservatism with respect to theological formulae, that references to ‘Tatenen’ in texts embed a reference to Tatenen himself.