Museum Pieces - Block statue of Nes-Amun

Photocredit: BA Antiquities Museum/C. Gerigk

Block statue of Nes-Amun

Category: Sculpture in the round, statues, human / gods and goddesses statues, block (cube) statues
Date: Late Period (664-332 BCE)
Provenance: Upper Egypt, Luxor (Thebes), East Bank, Karnak temple
Material(s): Rock, granite, black granite
Height: 46 cm; Width: 20.5 cm; Depth: 29.5 cm
Inventory#: BAAM Serial 0598

Description

Block statue of a priest serving the god Montu in Thebes by the name of "Nes Amun" which was found in a cache in Karnak.  The priest is represented in a squatting position and a relief sculpture of the god of the dead, Osiris in mummified form and wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, occupies the centre of the statue.  The god Osiris holds the crook and flail, emblems of power and government.  Hieroglyphs in two vertical lines on the sides glorify him.  The back of the statue also contains hieroglyphs divided into two horizontal lines which read from right to left representing a dedication from the priest and prayers for his soul.

The Priesthood

The priest in ancient Egypt was considered a servant of the god and he was therefore referred to as Hem-Neter, Hem literally meaning servant, Neter meaning god.  He was attached to a temple to look after the needs of the god in terms of food and clothing.  During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, some priests worked only part-time at the temple and returned to their ordinary everyday family life and occupation after a stint lasting three months in the temple compound (one month in every four per year).

Priests were divided into different ranks and had different duties within the temple, such as attending to offerings and minor parts of temple ritual, or running the economic affairs and administration of the temple, while only the chief priest was allowed to handle the cult image. This high rank of priesthood was not limited to men only, as women from the elite also filled the role of chief priestess. They were called Hemet-Neter and during the Old and Middle Kingdom served the goddess Hathor.

The chief priest exercised great power and influence on Pharaoh and ordinary people alike. During the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295), the god Amun gained supremacy over other gods and as a result, the Amun priesthood dominated the religious landscape and became exceedingly powerful.

The lowest or entry rank among priests was that of Waab, or 'purifier' who was entrusted with the purification and cleanliness of ritual area and items, however, he was not allowed into the inner sanctuary.  Another rank of priesthood was that of astrologer/ astronomer which was in charge of divination and of calculating time and setting the calendar determining religious festivals, as well as lucky and unlucky days.

Other priests attached to the "House of Life" or 'Per-Ankh'  were responsible for teaching religious matters, writing and for copying texts.  The Hery Heb or lector priests recited the words of the god.  They were part of the permanent staff at the temple.

Every temple had its retinue of singers and musicians to perform during festivals and rituals. Women among the nobles had the title of "singer or chantress of Amun" and were shown holding or shaking the musical instrument called sistrum during ceremonial activities.

There were other priests involved with healing, with oracles, those who were able to communicate with the dead (mainly women called Rakhet) and those workers of protective magic.

Priests were not allowed to wear wool or leather products, only clothes made of high-quality linen and sandals made of Papyrus, with the exception of the Sem priests who wore a cheetah skin.  The latter performed the 'Opening of the Mouth' ceremony during the mummification process.

Priests inherited their role from their fathers, and by the Roman period it was common for the office to be bought.  The role of priests in small provincial temples remained less important than in larger ones.


Bibliography
"Priests". In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Edited by Donald B. Redford. Vol. III. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
"Priests". In Dictionary of Egyptian civilization. By Posener, Georges, Serge Sauneron and Jean Yoyotte. Translated from the French by Alix Macfarlane. London: Methuen, 1962.

Source: http://antiquities.bibalex.org/Collection/Detail.aspx?lang=en&a=598

Remains of 'End of the World' Epidemic Found in Ancient Egypt

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   June 16, 2014

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of an epidemic in Egypt so terrible that one ancient writer believed the world was coming to an end.

Working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor) in Egypt, the team of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL) found bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (historically used as a disinfectant). The researchers also found three kilns where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire containing human remains, where many of the plague victims were incinerated.

Pottery remains found in the kilns allowed researchers to date the grisly operation to the third century A.D., a time when a series of epidemics now dubbed the "Plague of Cyprian" ravaged the Roman Empire, which included Egypt. Saint Cyprian was a bishop of Carthage (a city in Tunisia) who described the plague as signaling the end of the world.

Occurring between roughly A.D. 250-271, the plague "according to some sources killed more than 5,000 people a day in Rome alone," wrote Francesco Tiradritti, director of the MAIL, in the latest issue of Egyptian Archaeology, a magazine published by the Egypt Exploration Society.

Tiradritti's team uncovered the remains of this body-disposal operation between 1997 and 2012. The monument his team is excavating was originally built in the seventh century B.C. for a grand steward named Harwa. After Harwa's death, the Egyptians continuously used the monument for burial (Akhimenru was a successor who built his own tomb there). However, after its use for body disposal during the plague, the monument was abandoned and never used again.

The use of the complex "for the disposal of infected corpses gave the monument a lasting bad reputation and doomed it to centuries of oblivion until tomb robbers entered the complex in the early 19th century," Tiradritti writes.

Luxor: Ancient Egyptian Capital

by Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 25 June 2013

Luxor is a modern-day Egyptian city that lies atop an ancient city that the Greeks named “Thebes” and the ancient Egyptians called “Waset.”

Located in the Nile River about 312 miles (500 kilometers) south of Cairo the World Gazetteer website reports that, as of the 2006 census, Luxor and its environs had a population of more than 450,000 people. The name Luxor “derives from the Arabic al-uksur, ‘the fortifications,’ which in turn was adapted from the Latin castrum,” which refers to a Roman fort built in the area, writes William Murnane in the "Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt" (Oxford University Press, 2001).

The ancient city of Luxor served at times as Egypt’s capital and became one of its largest urban centers. “On the East Bank, beneath the modern city of Luxor, lie the remains of an ancient town that from about 1500 to 1000 B.C. was one of the most spectacular in Egypt, with a population of perhaps 50,000,” write archaeologists Kent Weeks and Nigel Hetherington in their book "The Valley of the Kings Site Management Masterplan" (Theban Mapping Project, 2006).

In ancient times, the city was known as home to the god Amun, a deity who became associated with Egyptian royalty. In turn, during Egypt’s “New Kingdom” period between roughly 1550-1050 B.C., most of Egypt’s rulers chose to be buried close to the city in the nearby Valley of the Kings. Other famous sites near the city, which were built or greatly expanded during the New Kingdom period, include Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Queens and Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir al-Bahari.

“Of all the ancient cities, no other city reached the glory of Thebes in supremacy,” writes Egyptologist Rasha Soliman in her book "Old and Middle Kingdom Theban Tombs" (Golden House Publications, 2009). “Thebes is the largest and wealthiest heritage site in the world.”

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.

Dynasties of Egypt Part III: Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period

The Middle Kingdom is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, between 2050 BC and 1652 BC.

The period comprises two phases, the Eleventh Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes, and the Twelfth Dynasty onwards, which was centered around el-Lisht. 

The Eleventh Dynasty of Ancient Egypt was a group of pharaohs whose earlier members are grouped with the four preceding dynasties to form the First Intermediate Period, while the later members from Mentuhotep II onwards are considered part of the Middle Kingdom. They all ruled from Thebes.

An inscription carved during the reign of Wahankh Intef II, the third pharaoh of the Eleventh Dynasty, says that he was the first of this dynasty to claim to rule over the whole of Egypt, a claim which brought the Thebans into conflict with the rulers of Herakleopolis Magna during the Tenth Dynasty. Intef undertook several campaigns northwards, and captured the important nome (regional governorship) of Abydos.

Warfare continued intermittently between the Thebans and the Herakleopolitans until the fourteenth year of Nebhetepra Mentuhotep II, when the Herakleopolitans were defeated, and the Theban dynasty began to consolidate their rule. Mentuhotep II commanded military campaigns south into Nubia, which had gained its independence during the First Intermediate Period. Some type of military action took place against Palestine, after which the pharaoh reorganized the country and placed a vizier (high government official) at the head of civil administration for the country.