The Message of the Restoration Stela

When a boy of around nine became king of Egypt in his own right, whoever was the power behind the throne decided to erect a stela in the Great Hypostyle Hall in front of the Third Pylon of the Temple of Amun at Karnak.  This bit of propaganda was to let the prophets, priests, and whoever else could read the writing on the slab know that, if the harvest failed or the land did not otherwise prosper, it was not the fault of the present administration.  Because it had disassociated itself with any recent reigns that might have gone before.  Nobody was mentioned by name but all the rulers who had not been true devotees of the god, Amun, were denounced in two curt phrases.  "Their hearts were weak in their bodies.  They destroyed what had been built." 

True, the new king, Nebkheperure Tutankhamun, was the son of one of them, had to be--but, on the Restoration Stela, he has no father save Amun although, of course, Son of the Sun was part of the titulary formula.   Much of the text deals with the displeasure of the gods at the havoc the previous, anonymous, pharaohs had wrought.  No wonder, as their temples had become abandoned, their halls footpaths.  No offerings were made and so, the deities had turned their backs on Egypt and nothing good came of anything.  I do not think it is just an accident that the stela is dated Year 1, 4th month of the season of Akhet [Khoiak] Day 19.  In 1331 BCE, a reasonable date for the "restoration of the old order", this amounted to the 7th of November.   By this time the Nile flood had receded and it was the time of sowing.  Since the stela mentioned some things Tutankhamun had already fashioned for the gods, new and better statues, shrines, new servitors for their temples, they should now be propitiated.  He had spared no expense.  If the height of the flood hadn't quite been up to expectation, if the harvest should be less than abundant--well, this king was not to blame.  He had done all he could to curry favor with the old gods--or at least that was what the Thebans were given to know.  The ruler was not to be seen. He was in the Northland, at Memphis, living in the palace of his illustrious forebear, Thutmose I.  No harm in mentioning the name of that king.  It might lend the impression that Tutankhamun had it in mind to emulate that great conqueror, whose heart had certainly not been weak in his body.   The stela admits the sovereign is young but he is a paragon in every way.  He is knowledgeable like Ra, ingenious like Ptah, and as perceptive as Thoth.  Never mind that he is only nine years old and the victim of incest in some ways best not to mention.  He is working in the best interests of the nation and the rest is up to the gods, themselves.  Evidently, a successor of Tutankhamun, Horemheb, found the Restoration Stela expressed his opinion of all those rulers who had come before *him*, Tutankhamun included.  And so he usurped that slab as soon as he was able. 

Mississippi River Pioneers

Some of you may not be aware that I am also an historian of the early settlements on the Upper Mississippi.  Today I have started a new blog called Mississippi River Pioneers.  If you are interested in American history of the Midwest, mostly of the 19th Century, go to this link:

http://mississippiriverpioneers.blogspot.com/

The view in the photo is of the area near Prairie du Chien, where the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers converge. 

A Little Nefertiti Logic

Last night, sleepless from too much sleep due to having been in bed for a couple of days on account of a nasty virus, I was struck by a jolt of logic.  In 1999, as many of you know, I published an online paper with the title, "Do We Have the Mummy of Nefertiti?"   If you haven't already read it, you can find it here:

 http://www.oocities.org/scribelist/do_we_have_.htm

Ever since Dr. Hawass et al published the JAMA paper on the DNA of the family of Tutankhamun, there has been, among the online Egyptolophiles, the knee-jerk reaction that, because she has now been confirmed as a daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, the mummy the "Younger Lady from KV35" cannot possibly be Queen Nefertiti.  But the fact remains I first got the idea that KV35YL could be Akhenaten's wife because of physical resemblances of the remains to her portraits.  There are quite a few, and I point them all out in my paper.  I do admit to having had doubts that the KV35YL can have been a daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye because their [at the time purported but now confirmed] mummies are excessively short in stature and the KV35YL is taller. At 5' 2", the YL is taller than her father and certainly taller than the 4' 9" Queen Tiye. 

But here's the thing.  No matter what arguments people line up against the KV55 individual and the KV35YL being Akhenaten and Nefertiti, it seems an undisputed fact that Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye had a daughter who looked like Nefertiti, possessed the physical attributes evidenced by that lady's portraits [when she was allowed to look like herself and not like a strange version of Akhenaten].  Put differently, Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye were capable of engendering a Nefertiti or someone who resembled her greatly--down to the extraordinarily long, swanlike neck.  Logic and DNA dictate it must be so.  After I had proposed that the KV35YL might be Nefertiti, another woman, Susan James, took a good look at the Elder Lady and concluded that *she* looked like Nefertiti and advocated this identification.  There is no hope for Ms. James' theory now, evidently, but perhaps James' perception of a resemblance was not far off the mark.  For more, please do a search on the blog post "Tutankhamun's Family Tree--the Possibilities" here.

Granddaughter, Danya, making obeisance to the royals

More On Substitution Portraits

The Theban tomb of Sennedjem was found intact and contained the man, his wife, and some of their relatives.  Their coffins were beautifully decorated, even though the mummies of Sennedjem and spouse, Iyneferti, were discovered to be switched.  Nevertheless, that Sennedjem's outer coffin was made in the long reign of Ramesses II is rather obvious from the coffin's face--not that of Sennedjem but that of the sovereign.  Just like the face of the actual mummy of Ramesses the Great, the right eye is somewhat smaller than the left. 

However, the most realistic portrait of Ramesses II I have ever seen is below:

The detail is not very good in this scanned image but a haughtier portrait is difficult to imagine.  Note that the right eye is, once again, smaller than the left and there is the big, puffy chin under the smallish mouth of what is supposed to be a portrait of the scribe, May.  I cannot recall where the statue resides.

Granville's Mummy Died of TB

This news is 2 years old but still interesting.  Here is a report on Granville's Mummy, one that was unwrapped in the 19th Century:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0910/09100104

and here is a contemporary report from a witness to the unwrapping, from a bit in the London Magazine:

http://tinyurl.com/78cfbvc

Granville found a tumor in the remains and figured the woman, Irtyersenu, had died of cancer, but the tumor was actually benign.

From Nurses to Queens

In the winter of 2005 I published a piece in Britain's Ancient Egypt Magazine called "The Head-dress of Lady Rai".  The point of the article was that the indentations on the forehead of a female mummy from the Deir el Bahari cache, named Rai, seemed to conform to the joins on a golden headdress of another [lost?] mummy, Satdjehuty, as depicted on her mask in the British Museum.   The joins, as visible in a larger image, have been traced over in red by me to demonstrate just how they line up with the bottom of the head-dress.  Here are the relevant images:

I no longer have a copy of my own article but, if I recall correctly,  there were nurses of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari named Satdjehuty and Rai, the latter's coffin being in the Deir el Bahari cache but containing the corpse of Queen Inhapi.  Rai's head-dress seems to have gone slightly askew but that of Inhapi slipped down so much onto her face that it crushed her nose and left a pattern of its rishi-feathers on her face. More about the mummy of "Rai", shown here, can be found on Max Miller's website at:

http://members.tripod.com/anubis4_2000/mummypages1/Early18.htm#Rai

I also remember that, even while writing my piece for the magazine, I wondered how anyone knew the BM mask belonged to Satdjehuty as the visible inscription did not evidence such a name.  Now I know the answer.   The burial of Satdjehuty was discovered around 1820, according to Wiki, but how that is known eludes me.  The lady, being a king's daughter, king's sister, and king's wife, seems to have been a consort of Seqenenre Tao II.  Her nickname was "Satibu".   Her mummy mask went to the British Museum but the remains of her wooden sarcophagus was acquired by Munich, where it was exhibited in 1999.  That Satdjehuty was a queen is known from the Munich artifact.  In 2005 I could find nothing indicating that the Satdjehuty of the BM mask was a queen and opinions fluctuated between "lady of the court" and "princess".  Even now the BM website does not recognize this Satdjehuty as a queen.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/m/mummy_mask_of_satdjehuty.aspx

But Wikipaedia indicates she is and I will try to investigate the matter further, although I think Wiki is correct.  While the mask does not have a uraeus, the Munich sarcophagus head-dress, much the same, clearly once did:

I wrote in my article that what appeared to be golden head-dresses of ladies of the court were very queenly in appearance and now, of course, I know why.  The Satdjehuty [which seems to have been a common name of the era] of the BM mask was no nurse or lady of the court--but a queen.  A bandage, probably also in the BM, indicating a Satdjehuty as "a praised one of Ahmose-Nefertari" likely belonged to different lady and has been erroneously connected to the owner of the mask.  The grandmother of Senenmut, great servant of Hatshepsut, was called Satdjehuty, too.  Satdjehuty, the queen and sister-wife of Tao II, is also mentioned on the mummy-shroud of her daughter, Ahmes, who was buried in QV47 and is now in the Turin museum. [Dodson] The other wives of Tao II were Ahhotep and Inhapi.  

Therefore, the mummy, supposedly named "Rai", can also not be a mere nurse but is surely a queen, as well.  Now there is nothing known to be worn by ladies of the court that can have left the impression on the brow of the mummy--just the weighty golden crown of a king's wife.  If you read about this mummy on Max Miller's site, you will have noticed that an inscription on a bandage was thought to say "Rai", but the other inscriptions were left vague in what Professor Eliott Smith had to say about these female remains in his book, "The Royal Mummies".  A curious photo of one of the bandages along with some hair can be seen below, souvenirs of Smith in a frame.  Scroll down and you will come to it here:

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/blog/index.php/tag/egyptian-gods/

Yes, indeed, a coffin of a nurse of Ahmose-Nefertari, belonging to "Rai", was certainly found in the cache but that the mummy, supposed to have been Rai, herself, all these years can be that lady is now very doubtful.  An investigation into the matter should be conducted by the Cairo Egyptian Museum and the DNA of  "Rai" could be compared with the mummies of other queens of the period. There is the coffin of a man named Paherypedjet, too, in which "Rai" was found, but what happened to him?  His mummy does not appear to have been discovered among those in the cache.  The BM mask was purchased in 1880 at Morten & Sons from the sale of the collection of  Samuel Hull, of whom I know nothing.   The mask is no more than 13 inches high.  It does not make so very much sense that, if the nurse of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, Rai, was going to be included by the reburial commission with the defunct royals of Egypt, that her coffin would be taken from her and used for Inhapi.  Why not, then, just leave Rai in her own coffin and place Inhapi in that of Paherypedjet?  It seems to me that the nurse was never deemed of sufficient rank to be included in the cache but lost her coffin to one royal lady and possibly even some of her bandages for the re-wrapping of another young queen.

The Face of Tutankhamun

I have written it here and elsewhere that the best way to know how a king of Egypt really looked is to see his face as substituted for those of his servants and nobles.  The above is supposed to be the head of a statue of Paramessu, a northern vizier of Tutankhamun who eventually became pharaoh as Ramesses I.  Even though this stone face is less than perfectly intact, it is easy to see that it actually belongs to the boy-king Paramessu served.  In these "substitution portraits", which were a very common way to show ones loyalty to the ruler in the New Kingdom, the artists did not bother to flatter the pharaoh nearly as much as they did in his own official images.  Therefore, the above rendering of the young Tutankhamun is about as faithful a portrait as would have been made of him in antiquity and it compares very well to the face of his mummy.  Notable are the almond eyes with their heavy lids and the thick lips that close with difficulty over the large, protruding front teeth.  Click on the image for a larger view.