DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE FORCE IN THE FESTIVAL OF THE VALLEY -A Comparative Study with the Opet Festival- Masashi FUK.AYA * Among known festivals celebrated in ancient Thebes, many Egyptologists agree that the Festivals of the Valley and of Opet are the most important. This is verified by many historical documents, which juxtapose the two festivals in texts and pictorial depictions on a great scale. Thus, it is significant to compare the two festivals to obtain better insight into their detailed religious context and new perspectives for further research, which has not been pursued, particularly for the Valley Festival, since the 1950's. This article intends to shed light on the Valley Festival, focusing on the socio-religious function by an analogy with the Opet Festival, research of which has gained modest but not negligible progress in the last two decades. The most distinct feature of the Valley Festival was that it supplied not only a formal setting for the renewal of kingship and royal ancestral cult, but also a private setting for the common people to hold a banquet in their family tombs. These two dimensions were closely linked through the figure of Amen, who distributed offerings to convey his godly power in both spheres. According to records from the private tombs, the people received various offerings from the temples where the procession of Amen made a stop during the Valley Festival. Yet the distribution of temple offerings is not attributed only to the Valley Festival, but also to many other festivals. What distinguishes the Valley Festival then? By focusing on the differences in ideologies between the Valley and the Opet Festivals, this paper will explore how the god (or king) and the people were interrelated during the festivals in different manners. Keywords: Valley Festival, Opet Festival, Thebes, Amen, offering distribution * Ph. D. Student in Philosophy, University ofTsukuba JSPS Research Fellow Vol. XLll 2007 95 1. Introduction 1 We know that Egyptians celebrated a number of festivals since the dawn of their civilization, but records give us few details about these early festivals apart from their names. 2 Among them, festivals held in Thebes draw attention on account of the better state of preservation of their historical documentation. Because these festivals were celebrated for the supreme god, Amen, in the most influential religious city, Thebes, they were held on a great scale and left a relatively large corpus for us today. Since the initial work by Foucart in 19243 and the following study by Schott in 1952,4 the Festival of the Valley has been neglected until today. This also applies to the Festival of Opet. 5 Although these two festivals have been regarded as very important for their scale, references to them usually rely on classic works written over half a century ago. Of course these works are still very useful especially for their meticulous documentation, but they provide no more than a basic framework. No effort has been made in a long time to understand the festivals in their own context by focusing on their functional and religious meanings. In the last two decades, some scholars have tried to obtain better insight into the core religious elements of the Opet Festival. In 1986, Murnane presented two reliefs depicting the rituals which seem to have been performed before Amen in the sanctuary of the Luxor Temple, the final destination of the Opet Festival.6 Bell examined the important function of the king's royal Ka in this temple in 1985.1 In 1998, he made remarks on the religious meanings of the Opet Festival and on the presence of common people in the temple vicinity during the festivals. 8 This progression in research is primarily due to the publication of reliefs depicting the Opet Festival in the Colonnade Hall of the Luxor Temple in 1994.9 This was published by the Chicago Oriental Institute in full detail with commentary, which greatly helps a comparative study with the Valley Festival. Other recent publications contribute reliable textual data and clear iconographic material to renewed research on the Valley Festival. Volumes of the Archaeologische Veroffentlichungen series (AVDAIK), and the Theben series, which have been published by the German Archaeological Institute, since 1970 and 1983 respectively, have both included documentation about private tombs in western Thebes. 10 In addition, a series of publications by Norman Davies and Nina Davies, between 1913 and 1963, 11 complement these new publications. With this material, it has been established that people once held celebrations in their ancestor's tombs during this festival. An allusion to the ideological 96 ORIENT DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE FORCE IN THE FESTIVAL OF THE VALLEY connection between the common people and the god (or king) is a very distinctive feature of the Valley Festival (see below in Chapter 3). In 2000, the Polish-Egyptian team completed the restoration project of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, final destination of the festival. Karkowski points out that the depictions of the Opet and Valley Festivals are juxtaposed on the east wall of the upper terrace in this temple. 12 The scenes of the Valley Festival continue on the north wall depicting the return trip of the bark procession and are an unparalleled pictorial example on a large scale, which will hopefully be published by the team in the near future. This is another reason to warrant a reassessment of the Valley Festival. This article will not focus on the core cultic matters of the Valley Festival, instead it intends to clarify the human-god relationship of this celebration, and its social and ideological function in comparison with the Opet Festival. This is therefore in line with the later work of Bell (mentioned above), drawing attention to how common lay people could have been able to participate in the state festivals, which are traditionally thought to have been very exclusive in nature. 2. Historical Development of the Festival of the Valley and the Religious Landscape of Thebes The Festival of the Valley is first attested in the Middle Kingdom, from the reign of Amenemhat I (1938-1908 BC). 13 Its first textual reference, discovered in western Thebes, is simply ~b=f tpy smw wbn=f ~r n llni r int Nb-~pt-r : "His festival on the first day of the third season. He rises when crossing the river to the valley ofNebhepetre (Mentuhotep II)." 14 This is quite possibly an allusion to the later "his beautiful festival of crossing the river" or "his beautiful festival of the Valley." 15 Mentuhotep II (2010-1960 BC) was the first who built a funerary complex (named llj-swt) in the western valley, now called Deir el­ Bahari (Figure 4). 16 It is not known when the blueprint of the city of Thebes was first developed. According to a pillar recording the names of Amen and Intef II which was discovered in the Karnak Temple (now in the Luxor Museum}, this temple was already present in the early Eleventh Dynasty. 17 The Karnak Temple and Deir el-Bahari were apparently a pair of landmarks facing each other, located at the east and the west ends of the city respectively. 18 The two were probably connected by the canals which ran into the Nile. According to Hatshepsut's Red Chapel, there were once canals leading to the mortuary temples of Tuthmose I and III, and perhaps to her own. 19 Along this geographical axis between Karnak Vol. XLIT 2007 97 and Deir el-Bahari are the Middle Kingdom cemetery at Dra Abu el-Naga,20 the memorial temple of Ahmes-Nefertiri, and the memorial temple of Sety I, of which the last is often described in inscriptions as "being constructed in front of (/:ift-l]r) the Karnak Temple."21 In the time of Sety I, the festival procession during the Valley Festival was performed along this east-west axis, and stopped at the memorial temple of this king and the bark chapels on the way to Deir el-Bahari.22 The memorial temple of Sety I is generally supposed to have functioned as a way station to provide a resting place for the festival procession. 23 It is true that this axis marks the northern border of the city area, and Thebes developed southward from here in subsequent times. 24 It is most likely that the Festival of the Valley was celebrated from the Middle Kingdom period using this northern border, so it can be assumed that the above mentioned graffito from the time of Amenemhat I refers to the Valley Festival. Indeed, the graffito was found on a cliff at Dra Abu el-Naga, from where one can easily look over to Deir el-Bahari as well as across the Nile to Karnak. The festival was, however, later celebrated in the second month of the harvest season, not "on the first day of the harvest season." The date and duration of the festival will be discussed in the last chapter. On the other hand, it is difficult to draw a decisive conclusion on when the southern border of Thebes was first formed. This is mostly due to the Luxor Temple whose construction date and period of architectural development are unknown, although the earliest mention to this temple is from the time of Sobekhotep II in the Thirteenth Dynasty.25 The origin of the Opet Festival has not yet been verified either. The festival is first attested on the relief of the Red Chapel but this does not necessarily mean the festival did not exist before Hatshepsut's reign. 26 Since the Festivals of the Valley and Opet were always juxtaposed in textual references and iconographic depictions in reliefs, they seem to be the most prominent state festivals.