Setting the Scene: the Deceased and Regenerative Cult Within Offering
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Setting the Scene: The deceased and regenerative cult within offering table imagery of the Egyptian Old to Middle Kingdoms (c.2686 – c.1650 BC) Barbara O’Neill Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED www.archaeopress.com ISBN 978 1 78491 117 1 (e-Pdf) © Archaeopress and B O’Neill 2015 Front Image: Woman kneeling before an offering table c. 1450 BC. Walters Art Museum. Public domain, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) Dedicated to Pat O’Neill, whose kA lives on. Contents Contents List of Figures and Tables ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 1.1 An Historical Perspective .......................................................................................................... 2 1.1.1 The Old Kingdom (c.2686 – 2160 BC) ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 2 1.1.2 The First Intermediate Period (c.2160-2055 BC) .............................................................. 7 1.1.3 The Middle Kingdom (c.2055-1650 BC) .......................................................................... 8 1.2 The History of The Research: The Offering Table Scene ....................................................... 10 1.3 Aims and Objectives ............................................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 2: THEORY AND METHOD ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 15 2.1 The Offering Table Scene: A Chronological Framework ........................................................ 17 2.2 New Approaches to Egyptian Visual Culture .......................................................................... 22 CHAPTER 3: SOCIETY AND DEATH ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 26 3.1 Being Egyptian: States of Existence for the Living and the Dead .......................................... 27 3.2 Transformation and Transition ................................................................................................ 28 3.3 Gender and the deceased ......................................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 4: LIMINAL CONTEXTS ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 37 4.1 Talking to the Dead ................................................................................................................. 38 4.2 Offering Table Scene Composition: False Doors, Stelae and Coffins ................................... 41 4.3 Deconstructing Ritual: Libation, Purification and Censing .................................................... 55 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION: GATHERING THE STRANDS ���������������������������������������������������������������� 61 5.1 The End of the Afterlife ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 62 5.2 anx Dt r nHH: Living Enduringly and Repeatedly .............................................................. 63 APPENDIX 1: APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 3 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 65 Women Depicted At Their Own Offering Tables ......................................................................... 65 APPENDIX 2: APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 4 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 84 Ritualised Elements and Royal Motifs within Offering Table Imagery ���������������������������������������� 84 APPENDIX 3: Titles and epithets associated with women in possession of offering table depictions (based on the 106 instances of women’s offering table scenes collated in Appendix 1, page 92). ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 100 APPENDIX 4: Frequency of rituals enacted in offering table depictions from the examples included in this study. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 101 BIBLIOGRAPHY ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 114 i List of Figures List of Figures Figure 1 Map of Egypt indicating main locations referred to in this study ..............................................................................................3 Figure 2 Offering chapel of Akhmeretnisut (Harrington 2013: 41). ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5 Figure 3 False door of SAt-ini-Tti (Daoud 2005: plate XXXII). ...................................................................................................................7 Figure 4. First Dynasty cylinder seal (Friedman 1985: 86). .....................................................................................................................18 Figure 5. Three dimensional offering tables (British Museum EA 22832; EA 21702; EA 975; EA 414). ..................................................20 Figure 6: The Double False Door of Ky and Sat-Sd-Abd, First Intermediate Period. ...............................................................................42 Figure 7: The first Intermediate Period false door exemplifies the concept of the door as a condensed substitute for more elaborate tombs of the earlier Old Kingdom Period. .............................................................................................................................................43 Figure 8: A comparative exploration of table scenes belonging to two women, Nefretiabet at Giza (in the Fourth Dynasty) and that of Senet at Thebes six hundred years later. ...............................................................................................................................................44 Figure 9: A Family Group: The Stela of Ameny and Renseneb with their children, Abydos, Dynasty 13. ...........................................45 Figure 10. Stelae of SAt-aI-Tnw and Iti (Daoud 2005, plates XLVII, XLVIII). .............................................................................................49 Figure 11: Head end of the coffin of Ouadj, Sedment (Asyut), Dynasty 9 to 10 (Willems 1988: 47). ...................................................50 Figure 12: Offering Table Scene: Coffin of Heqata, Qubbet el-Hawa. Late First Intermediate Period, Dynasty 9 and 10 (Willems 1996, plate 16). ................................................................................................................................................................................................51 Figure 13: The Coffin of Ashyt, Thebes, Dynasty 10 – 11 (Willems 1996, Plate 46). ............................................................................52 Figure 14: Coffin of Khnumnakht, Meir, Dynasty Eleven to Twelve. .......................................................................................................53 Figure 15: Offering scene inside the coffin of Ini, Gebelein, Dynasty 11 or 12 (Grajetzki 2006, plate X). .............................................54 Figure 16 Mesopotamian stelae (Hermann and Schloen 2014, figures 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, C1). ....................................................................56 Figure 17. Stela of iAm-Hqt, Lacock Abbey 50029 (Stefanović 2013: 211). .......................................................................................100 List of Tables Table 1: Chronological, dynastic and contextual table of the periods referred to in this study .............................................................2 Table 2. The Stela of Ameny �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46 ii iii iv v vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The funerary art1 of Egypt is one of the most recognisable forms of ancient imagery. Superficial aspects of this culture’s mortuary iconography are firmly embedded into modern culture, although complex meaning encapsulated within this imagery is, at best, only partially understood and often misinterpreted entirely (Van Walsem 2005:14; Mitchell 2002: 166-167). Modern, westernised assumptions often have little in common with Egyptian ways of ‘looking and thinking’ (Hornung 1982:29; Vischak 2006: 255-276). The primary purpose underlying the structure, spatial arrangement and content of Egyptian tombs and their decorative programme was to facilitate the transitional process from life to afterlife for the tomb owner (Bárta 2011:238-257; Nyord 2013:195-200; Assmann 1996: 157-159; Quirke, 1992:141). One of the most ubiquitous elements within this image corpus is a depiction of the deceased seated before an offering table bearing food and drink (Willems 2001: vi- viii; Franke 2002: 8; Bárta 2011:187-188). This study of offering table imagery is centred on the interpretation of iconographical meaning within scene composition and on the ritualistic2 contexts in which this image functioned. Offering table scenes in non-royal contexts from the Old Kingdom3 (c.2686-2160 BC) through the First Intermediate Period (c.2160-2055 BC) and into the Middle Kingdom Period (c.2055-1650 BC) form the focus of this study. It is