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Male Bodies and the Construction of Masculinity in New Kingdom Egyptian Art

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Male Bodies and the Construction of Masculinity in New Kingdom Egyptian Art MALE BODIES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY IN NEW KINGDOM EGYPTIAN ART Gay Robins Emory University It is with great pleasure that I offer this paper Min as a deity has still to be satisfactorily defined, to Richard Fazzini on the occasion of his 65th there is little doubt about the nature and roles birthday. of Amun. The two most important aspects of the In ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script, words god for understanding the significance of his ithy- usually end with a final hieroglyph that indicates, phallic image are the connected roles of creator in a general way, the meaning of the word.1 The god and kAmwt.f.6 word tAy, meaning “male/masculine,” ends with In one explanation of the creation, already ¯ the image of an erect, often ejaculating penis,2 recorded in the Old Kingdom and still current making clear that the condition of being male over 2,000 years later, the creator god brought the in ancient Egypt was linked to the erect phallus. ordered world into being through an act of mas- When we turn to images of the male body found turbation.7 This account provided a way for the in formal New Kingdom art, depictions of figures Egyptians to visualize the solution to the prob- with erect phalli are common. Throughout the lem of how one could get to the plurality of temples of Amun at Thebes and elsewhere, fig- creation from the singularity of a creator. They ures of the god in ithyphallic form alternate with speculated that before the moment of creation non-ithyphallic ones.3 Although Amun only came there were only the primeval waters, in which to prominence in the 11th Dynasty, he was al- the potential creator floated without conscious- ready at that time linked to the much older sun ness. The creation of the ordered universe took god, Re, under the form of Amun-Re.4 Through place when the creator god came into being, of this solarization, Amun, whose name means “hid- himself, on a mound that arose out of the waters. den,” acquired a visible form in the world that There, he masturbated and produced the first linked him to the divine creator and maintainer male and female pair of deities. The creator god of the universe. Although there are no known im- had contained everything within himself, includ- ages of Amun from before the 11th Dynasty, we ing the male and female principles. Once these know he acquired his ithyphallic form from the were separated from the creator as a divine cou- god Min, a much older deity, who was already ple, they were able to interact sexually and pro- depicted on vase fragments dating to the Early duce another pair of deities, who in their turn Dynastic Period.5 While the full significance of produced two more. Thus, the plurality of the 1 James P. Allen, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Kingdom (Sydney: Australian Centre for Egyptology, 1995), Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge: Cambridge 176. University Press, 2000), 28. 6 Lanny Bell, “Luxor Temple and the Cult of the Royal 2 Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, Wb. 5, 345; Ka,” JNES 44 (1985): 258–259; James P. Allen, Genesis in Rainer Hannig, Großes Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch-Deutsch Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts,Yale (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1995), 945. Egyptological Studies 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 3 E.g., Helmut Brunner, Die südlichen Räume des Tempels 1988), 48. von Luxor (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1977); Harold H. Nel- 7 PT 527; Raymond O. Faulkner, “The Bremner-Rhind son, The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak vol. 1,part1, The Wall Papyrus—III” JEA 23 (1937): 172, 27.1;RaymondO.Faulk- Reliefs (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1981). ner, “The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus—IV,” JEA 24 (1938): 41, 4 Dieter Arnold, Der Tempel des Königs Mentuhotep von Deir 28.27–29.1, 29.2; Allen, Genesis in Egypt, 13–30; Tom Hare, el Bahari vol. 2, Die Wandreliefs des Sanktuares (Mainz: Philipp ReMembering Osiris: Number, Gender, and the Word in Ancient von Zabern, 1974), pls. 1, 6. Egyptian Representational Systems (Stanford: Stanford University 5 Ann McFarlane, The God Min to the End of the Old Press, 1999), 111–124. male bodies and the construction of masculinity in new kingdom egyptian art 209 created world came from the singularity of the is to explore the means by which New Kingdom creator god.8 artists conveyed the notion of masculinity in elite Since the creator god was a form of the sun males without displaying the erect phallus that is god, the first sunrise occurred at the time of cre- its primary marker. ation, initiating the endless solar cycle in which The patrons who commissioned monuments the sun set every evening in the west and reap- were the king and the elite scribal class from peared in the east next morning. The Egyptians which officials were drawn to staff the govern- speculated on the mechanism that allowed this to ment bureaucracy. This group formed no more occur, and developed, as one solution, the idea than five percent of the population and probably that in the evening the sky goddess swallowed the less, but produced virtually all of the textual and sun god who, in entering her, impregnated her, visual material that survives. Within the elite, only so that he could be reborn of her in the morn- men could hold government office, which gave ing. Occasionally, the young sun god was shown them a higher status than women of the same so- as a child with an erect phallus to symbolize his cial group. The vast majority of the population— procreative abilities.9 The concept of the god who the illiterate non-elite—contributed little to the renewed himself by impregnating and being born written or visual record of ancient Egypt that has of a goddess, who was thus both his consort and come down to us; what we know of this group his mother, was expressed through the notion of comes largely from elite sources. My discussion, kAmwt.f, and this epithet was frequently applied therefore, necessarily relates to the views of the to the ithyphallic forms of both Amun-Re and small elite group. Furthermore, the images that Min.10 this group has left to us were made almost exclu- The erect phallus is also used to symbolize the sively for religious and funerary purposes. They resurrection of the god Osiris after his murder represent an ideal, decorum-bound view of the by his brother Seth. Ithyphallic figures of Osiris world suitable for such contexts and avoid the sometimes appear in depictions of the dwAt,the imperfections, complexities, and untidiness of the realm ruled by the resurrected god.11 In temple lived world. The world represented within a fun- contexts, scenes show the conception of Horus, erary context must have related in some way to after the goddess Isis has brought her murdered the lived world, since it was the latter that pro- consort back to life.12 Similarly, the male dead vided the vocabulary and context for constructing who pass successfully to the realm of Osiris, the world represented on funerary monuments. where they become divine, are promised the Nevertheless, my investigation of the male body renewal of their sexual capabilities.13 By contrast, and construction of masculinity can only be an the damned are depicted as bound prisoners investigation of these things in the represented and rendered impotent by being shown naked world of religious and funerary art as visualized without any genitalia.14 by the elite. This is because, despite the fact that Thus, the evidence of the hieroglyphic script this represented world must have been rooted in shows that in general the concept of masculinity the social norms and world view held by the elite was embodied by the erect phallus, while texts group in life, one cannot read it as a direct reflec- and images make clear that in the divine world, tion of the lived world of the elite, and, in fact, the erect phallus was a highly potent symbol of there are real problems, which I cannot explore creation, self regeneration, and resurrection. Yet here, in understanding how the two relate. when we turn to New Kingdom formal images of The first thing that is apparent on examin- the non-divine male body, that is, the body of the ing figures of elite New Kingdom males is that king and the elite male official, the erect phallus the penis is never shown. In fact, the genital is nowhere in evidence. The aim of this paper area is always covered by an opaque white kilt 8 Allen, Genesis in Egypt. 12 Eberhard Otto, Egyptian Art and the Cults of Osiris and 9 Erik Hornung, The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity Amun (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), pls. 16–20. (New York: Timken Publishers, 1990), 90, 98 no. 65. 13 Hornung, The Valley of the Kings, 137; Kent Weeks, The 10 Christian Leitz, ed., Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und TreasuresoftheValleyoftheKings(Cairo: American University Götterbezeichnungen 7 (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 258–260. Press, 2001), 269. 11 Hornung, The Valley of the Kings, 159,no.113;Erik 14 Hornung, The Valley of the Kings, 152, 161,nos.119–120, Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife,trans. 162,no.122; Weeks, The Treasures of the Valley of the Kings, David Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 87 267. and fig. 49, 110 and fig. 61..
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