PATTERNS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHILD DEITIES BY SUNG HWAN YOO B.A., BUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, 1995 M.A., HANKOOK UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES, 1999 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EGYPTOLOGY AND ANCIENT WESTERN ASIAN STUDIES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2012 This dissertation by Sung Hwan Yoo is accepted in its present form by the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date: ____________________ _________________________________________ Professor James P. Allen, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date: ____________________ _________________________________________ Professor James P. Allen, Reader Date: ____________________ _________________________________________ Professor Leo Depuydt, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date: ____________________ _________________________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School ii © Copyright 2012 by Sung Hwan Yoo iii CURRICULUM VITAE Sung Hwan Yoo was born on February 28th, 1970 in Busan, Republic of Korea (South Korea). He received his undergraduate degree in 1995 at Busan National University, majoring in English Literature and Language. He received Master of Translation and Consecutive Interpretation from Hankook University of Foreign Studies in 1999. After graduation, he worked as a professional translator for six years until he was admitted to Brown University in 2005. As a graduate student at Brown University, he taught the undergraduate Middle Egyptian course for the academic year of 2008-2009. He has received awards, including the Army Commendation Medal in 1993 after serving in the Eighth United States Army for his meritorious service as a KATUSA (Korean Augmentation Troops to the United States Army); and the Certificate of Merit (First Prize) awarded by the Minister of Education at the National English Competence Contest for College Students hosted by Hankook University of Foreign Studies in 1994. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Wilbour Professor James P. Allen and Professor Leo Depuydt for their support and guidance. I am especially grateful to them for their careful reading of my successive drafts. Their suggestions and criticism were particularly helpful with regard to the transliteration and translation of the numerous Egyptian texts in the dissertation. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Lanny Bell and Dr. Florence Friedman, who contributed many valuable comments on my dissertation. I am also very grateful to Professor Matthew Rutz, who was kind enough to read my manuscript and make many useful suggestions. Thanks are also due to Claire Benson, Stephen Gervais, Suzan Gervais and Roland Haper for their support, insight and encouragement. I am also indebted to my fellow graduate students for their support, encouragement and humor: Erin Fairburn, Emily Russo, Amada Davis, Julia Troche, Katheryn Howley and Yuzhen Guan. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Yong A Kim and my son Tae Joon Yoo for their support and love for last six years. I could not have written this dissertation without the unwavering support and commitment of my wife, who was always supportive and willing to take care of all household affairs while I was working on my dissertation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION Page 2 PART II. BASIC PATTERNS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHILD DEITIES CHAPTER 2. THE SUN-CHILD Page 17 CHAPTER 3. THE HORUS CHILD Page 46 PART III. CASE STUDIES OF THREE CHILD DEITIES CHAPTER 4. IHY – DIVINE MUSICIAN Page 79 CHAPTER 5. KHONSU – FERTILIZING MOON Page 113 CHAPTER 6. NEFERTEM – MEDIATOR WITH FRAGRANT SCENT Page 164 CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION Page 208 BIBLIOGRAPHY Page 228 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 2-1: Eternal Recurrence and Eternal Sameness Page 20 Fig. 2-2: Pattern of the maternal birth/rejuvenation of the sun-child Page 23 Fig. 2-3: Image of the solar child Page 32 Fig. 2-4: Pattern of manifestation and reconstitution Page 45 Fig. 3-1: Antipodal structure of the Heliopolitan Ennead Page 49 Fig. 3-2: Horus in the papyrus thicket of Chemmis Page 63 vii PART I INTRODUCTION Page | １ CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION THE BEGINNING Once I stpped into the field of Egyptology, I instantly became interested in minor deities in the Egyptian pantheon. By definition, they include (1) lesser deities not as important as the creator- gods and state gods, (2) those who are almost forgotten or less known to us than others, and (3) those who were never worshipped in state-run temples but enjoyed a wide popularity among their followers. In my research on those gods, demigods and even deified mortals, I have discovered that some deities are visualized in the form of a child as the child-member of a divine family. Before long I realized that there had been no attempt to examine them in detail, so I decided to write a dissertation on these “child deities.” For this project, I raised three basic questions: (1) Who are the child deities in ancient Egyptian religious thought? (2) What are their roles in the Egyptian pantheon and theology? (3) Are there prototypes that can serve as a model for the child deities? Therefore, this dissertation constitutes an effort to answer these questions and analyze developmental patterns, if any, of the deities who belong to the specific category of “child deities.” 1.1 Identity and roles As Hornung points out, Egyptian gods are not unbegotten and have a beginning and an end in time (1982: 143). Though one of the most salient features of Egyptian creator gods is that they are Page | ２ all “self-developing” deities, not created or born by others, most of the divine beings in the Egyptian pantheon are in origin a child of other gods. However, it is necessary to narrow down the definition of the “child deities” to be studied in this dissertation, because most of them are only mentioned as a child of a certain creator-god or parent deities without exhibiting certain attributes of a child god or playing any important role as such. For instance, Shu is mentioned in many funerary texts as the son of Atum; but he is never described or visualized as a child god and does not play any role as one in the Egyptian pantheon. Therefore, the first step in the study of the “child deities” should be to lay down definitions of the “child deities” who form a unique class in the Egyptian pantheon. The definitive features of the “child deities” to be studied in this dissertation are listed below: They are always male and usually represented in juvenile or youthful human form, and therefore appear as an infant, a toddler, a child or an adolescent. In most cases, when they are described in a text or visualized in an artistic representation as a child, their iconography conforms to the fixed Egyptian convention of representing them – a nude child, sitting or standing with his index finger held to his mouth and wearing the side-lock of youth on the right side of his head.1 They are child-members of the familial triads consisting of a father, mother and son. The divine familial triads began to be formed around major cultic centers dating to the New Kingdom period. In those familial triads, deities such as Ihy, Khonsu and Nefertem became the child-members because they shared some traits that could qualify them as child-member in the divine family (see 7.7 below). 1 It is also important to note that the child deities, like the child king, are shown with the essential symbols signifying their royalty and divinity, such as the uraeus, the crowns, or other royal attributes. Page | ３ As a child-member of the divine triad, they symbolize the cyclical rejuvenation of the universe and the legitimate succession of the king. In the Late Period, many of them were worshipped in cultic sites of important mother goddesses, such as Isis and Hathor, as their sons. While they remained in the form of a child, they were regarded to retain the full power of a deity. Therefore, they received prayers and were called upon for help by their worshippers. 1.2 What are their role models? In the study of the roles played by the “child deities,” it is important to check if there is a role model for them. Throughout ancient Egyptian history, Horus in the child form, or the Horus child, remained the most prominent role model for other child deities. In addition, we have the young sun-god, who was usually visualized as a child standing on the lotus blossom above the primeval water. As we will observe in CHAPTER TWO, the youthful sun-god, or the sun-child, provides the basis for the concept of the “child deities,” namely the ancient Egyptian notion of the sun’s life-cycle. Therefore, there emerge two prototypes that will serve as a basis for unique features of the “child deities”: (1) the young sun-god, shown as a shining solar child who is considered to be the culmination of the ancient Egyptian cosmogonies; and (2) the Horus child as a faithful son of Isis and the legitimate heir of his father Osiris. The regular rebirth of the sun-child in the eternal cycle symbolizes the renewal of the cosmos and may have led to the concepts of the yearly renewal of Egypt’s fertility and the resurrection of the Page | ４ dead. Meanwhile, the Horus child is destined to succeed Osiris who became the king of the dead after he was murdered by his brother Seth, and to restore the divine order on earth as the legitimate heir and avenger of his father.