Inscriptions from the Palace of Amenhotep III William C. Hayes Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2. (Apr., 1951), pp. 82-112. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2968%28195104%2910%3A2%3C82%3AIFTPOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7 Journal of Near Eastern Studies is currently published by The University of Chicago Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucpress.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Thu Oct 25 06:12:06 2007 INSCRIPTIONS FROhI THE PALACE OF AMENHOTEP I11 WILLIAM C. HAYES I. THE JAR-LARELS-CO~~Z~U~~~~(7rp, "wine"; srnzt, "ale"; <d, "fat"; iu'f, NLIKE those from Tell el Amama48 '(meat"; ~ntr,"incense"; and SO on); (c) a and other sites,4g the jar-labels modifying adjective or phrase indicating from the palace of Amenhotep 111 the quality, form, type, color, consistency, shon-u variation in the "for- or other special characteristic of the con- mulaen employed, so that any general tents of the jar-"very good" (wine), classification on this basis is imprac- (wine) "for offerings," "fresh" (fat), (fat) ticable. There are, hol\-ever, eight distinct ((of lleshT\esh hulls" or "of goats," items of information concerning the con- "dressed" (meat), "sweet" (oil), "clear" tents of the jars, at least one of ~~]~i~his Or ("ed" (hone?.), "shelled" (beans); (d) found in every label and most of in the case of a fen- liquids and granular occur all together, in more or less fixed substances? a statement of the quantity, order, in the longest and most complete Or amount, expressed in Pints (hnw), gal- examples (e.g., N~~.130, 131, 142, 143, lons (hk:t),mn(w)-measures, etc. (see Kos. 158-61). These items are: (a) the date on 209, 86, 232-34, 60, 42); (e) a reference to Tvhichthe contents ofthejar prepared the specific occasion, or purpose, for n hich and packed, given usually only in terms of the food or drink contained in the jar TI as regnal years (h3t-sp)50 of Amenhotep 111, prepared (e.g., "for the repetition of is but in the cases of certain substances like AIajesty's Sed-festival," "for the Feast of animal fats and vegetable oils \\-here fresh- O~et"); (5) a designation of the source of ness Tvas of prime importance including supply, be it a foreign land, a district or also designations of the season, month, to~vnshipof Egypt, a royal or private es- and day of the civil calendar (see r\ros. tate, or a particular vineyard, stockyard, 126, 138, 142, 143, 197, 219); (b)the name Or shop; (g) the name and title of the of- of the contained in the jar fidwho contributed the jar and its con- tents, either as a private donor or in his 4- The photographs transcript~ons and much of the other mater~alon which the follou~ngdiscuss~on capacity as the superintendent of a royal is based will be found in Sumber 1 of the current estate, the mayor of a town, or the corn- volume of JSES, pp. 35-56, Figs. 1-16 For ease and clarity of reference the numbering of the illustratiolls mander Of a loorder fortress; and, will be made to run continuously through the four (h) the name and title of t,he specialist, articles of this series, Figs. 1-16 occnrring in the first article, Pigs. 17-23 in the present article, and so on. fat-~urve?.or,butcher, Or herds- Since it is planned to publish all four articles in this man) n-ho prepared or directly supervised one volume of the Journal textual cross-references can be reduced to the simple form: "See above, p. ." the preparat'ion of the contents of the jar. (or "n . ."). The jar-labels will normally be referred An inspection of the table of Figure 16 to by their type numbers-the Arabic numerals 1-260 (see above, Figs 4-16)-other forms of designation reveals t'he striking fact that,, of the 845 (Roman numerals, letters of the alphabet, etc.) being dated jars51 found in t,he palace ruins, 711 used for the sealings, brick-stamps, ring bezels, and monumerital inscriptions. were sent thither in Years 30, 34, and 37. '~dn~arna,33: Citu I, 165: Crit.v 11, 105. For the Of these, 649 are stat'ed in their inscrip- full titles of the works referred to here and most frequently hereinafter see above, p. 38. 51 The number i~~cludesboth those bearing actual year dates and those associated by their inscriptions a".g., z.38,LVIII, 25-36 with the first Sud-festival, know^^ from many sources 5"ee Gardiner, JA-ES, VIII, 165-71. to have been celebrated in Tear 30. tions to he for the "Sed-festival(s) of His with their inscriptions intact because they Majesty," and it is reasonable to suppose were used only once and then broken and that most of the other 62 examples \\-ere discarded within the confines of the palace for the same purpose. For the remaining fourteen year dates T\-ehave only 134 jars, The concentration in this area in Years 84 of which are dated to the years imme- 30, 34, and 37 of such huge quantities of diately preceding and following those of festival supplies, sent in from many, often the Heb-sed's and n-ere probably also, to a distant parts of the kingdom, leaves little large extent, contributions to these fes- room for doubt that it \\-as at Thebes and tival~.~~The resulting ratio of almost six- while residing in the Malkata palace that teen inscribed jars of supplies for the Amenhotep 111 celebrated his three Xed- Sed-festivals as against every one for all festivals. other purposes and dates seems to be In the case of the first Heb-sed the evi- borne out by the 338 identified but un- dence of the jar-labels is purely corrobora- dated jar-labelss3 and by the 217 unidenti- tive, for this festival is well documented as fied fragments, a great number of which to both the locale and the date of its cele- bear portions of the 11-ords "Heb-sed." A1- bration from other sources-notably, in though, as 11-e go back further and further the king's temple at Soleb in Upper Ku- into the earlier years of the reign, we are bia,55on blocks of relief from his mortuary prepared for a progressively rapid de- temple at Kom el Hetdn in western crease in the number of jar-inscriptions Thebes,j6 in an inscription from the ad- which have survived to the present day, joining temple of his great official, Amen- we cannot possibly account on this basis hotep, the son of hap^,^^ and in the The- alone for the existerlce of only ten labels ban tombs of t~oother prominent digni- for Years 28 and 29 combined as against taries, the King's Scribe, Kher~ef,~~and 229 for the immediately succeeding Year the King's Scribe, Khac-emhet.j"n the 30. Since it is obvious that hundreds of tomb of Kheruef reference is made to "the jars of food and drink were required every Xed-festival (of Year 30) \~hichhe (the year by a vast establishment like the king) celebrated on the 11-est of the City" palace of Amenhotep 111, \I-e must con- (Thebes), and both here and at Soleb the clude either that the ordinary palace sup- building in which hmenhotep I11 and plies arrived for the most part in unlabeled 64 The fragments of almost 300 meat-jars used in containers or that the constant re-use of the second Sed-festival, their labels still fresh and these containers caused them to be seat- clear, were found in a dump in the southeast corner of the forecourt of the Amfin temple (Fig. 1 See Lansing, tered and lost and their inscriptions ob- Bull. MMA, March. 1918, Supplen~ent.pp. 8-10). No literated, the festival jars being preserved original labels referring to a Sed-festival were found on any of the fragments of re-used jars recovered from 5% Label Type So. 142. of which we possess two the palace ruins (see the list of these given above, on examples, is definite proof that contributions to the p. 39). third Heb-sed of Year 37 were still being sent in late j6 LD.111. Pls. 83-86, Text, V, 234-39: Breasted.