Violence in Ancient Egyptian Religious Iconography: Purpose and Meaning. By David A. Falk, PhD. (Paper given at VST 2019 Religion and Violence Conference) While violent motifs in ancient Egyptian religion are well-documented, scholars through the 20 th century generally believed that violence portrayed in the religious context was merely symbolic. But in 2013, an executed slave found beneath the foundation of the temple of Mut at Luxor reopened the whole question of violence in ancient Egyptian religion and iconography.1 Iconography in Egyptian contexts is largely misunderstood, so then it is not surprising that modern scholarship has misinterpreted violent motifs in temples and tombs. The Egyptians featured scenes of war and prisoner decapitations upon the walls of their temples. This could lead one to believe that Egyptian religion glorified violence, but the reality is more nuanced than it might appear at first blush. This paper will explore the use of violent iconography in Egyptian religious settings and will suggest that religious violence had a phenomenological function that served as an apotropaic device protecting Egypt’s fragile agriculture. Primer to Understanding Egyptian Iconography Perhaps the biggest hurdle to understanding violence in Egyptian iconography is coming to terms with the normal function of iconography in Egyptian religion. This requires a bit of a primer in Egyptian metaphysics and phenomenology. The Egyptians believed that writing and drawing could instantiate magical power and physical presence. Egyptian metaphysics tied magic together with writing, both of which were attributed to the god Thoth. 1 Mark D. Janzen, The Iconography of Humiliation: The Depiction and Treatment of Bound Foreigners in New Kingdom Egypt (Ph.D. diss., University of Memphis, 2013), 317. (2) Let us say that I were to write a mild curse on a piece of paper, “may there be one less step than my nemesis expects.” The Western mind would think nothing of this other than to maybe crack a wry smirk because in the West something written on a piece of paper has no more power than a bitter tweet or a nasty greeting card. Separation exists between the agency of the writer, the object of writing, and the mechanics of the world. With the ancient Egyptian mind, that separation does not exist. Divinity had the ability to unite with its images (both statuary and temple reliefs) embodying the god’s divine power. This resulted in a phenomenological view of writing. Writing a mild curse on paper created an object of writing that affected the mechanics of the world. The contents of the written form changed the fabric of reality. So, my mild curse would cause my nemesis to trip at every set of steps he climbs. Keeping this in mind, when we approach the reliefs on the walls of temples and tombs, we have to realize that human beings are not the audience. It may be tempting to postulate that these reliefs served as priestly reminders or just decoration. But, the reliefs of temple rituals probably do not reflect the actual order of ritual performance.2 For example, the order of the rituals at Seti I’s Abydos temple remains hotly debated. 3 I suspect that the reason for this debate is that scholars are asking questions that the original writers were never intending to answer. But if these reliefs are an attempt to instantiate divine reality, then the reliefs in temples and tombs are not there to remind priests or keep detailed historical records. Instead, this would suggest that the purpose for these reliefs was to create a perpetual reenactment of a ritual in writing for the benefit of the Egyptian gods. In effect, the carved reliefs recreated ritual to praise the gods day and night. 2 Katherine Eaton, Ancient Egyptian Temple Ritual: Performance, Pattern and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2013), 43. 3 At least eight different orderings have been suggested for the daily ritual scenes at Abydos. See Eaton, 20-22. (3) Gods, Weapons, and War We will begin with our examination of violence in Egyptian iconography with Montu, the Egyptian god associated with warfare. 4 There is of course the obvious display of violence of with Montu on the right carrying in his left hand a large curved sword. But perhaps, less obvious is the double uraeus cobras on the crown. Prima facie the uraeus cobra may not seem like especially violent iconography as the uraeus is ubiquitously used as a protective symbol all over Egypt. But I would suggest that in this particular context that the violent aspect is quite overt. PT 256 states that the uraeus spits out fire against the enemies of the king. 5 Normally, the uraeus is paired with the Nekhbet vulture, and together the pair symbolized holiness as the Nekhbet keeps a space pure while the uraeus protects space of defilement from the outside. However, the double uraeus is like a double-barreled shotgun, an icon that expresses double aggression. This is an example of iconographic intensification, where the icon is multiplied to multiply its effect. And later kings of the Napatan 25 th Dynasty would wear the double uraeus to emphasize their martial tendencies. In this slide, we have a shallow relief that dates to the Saite period. In it we see the goddess Satis which often represented the star Sirius. She also represented war and hunting, and is shown holding a recurve bow and arrows. Other gods, such as Bes or Sekhmet, are frequently portrayed as warriors or holding weapons. Killing snakes is also a common violent religious motif. At the temple of Kom Ombou, the king is shown killing a snake with a long trident.6 The slide from TT1, the tomb of Sennedjem, shows a cat that is beheading a snake with a knife. 4 Jaroslav Černý, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1952), 37. 5 PT 256 (Kurt Sethe, Die Ältaegyptischen Pyramidentexte [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1908], 302). 6 Description de L’Égypte: Publiée par les orders de Napoléon Bonaparte, Edition complete (Paris: De L’Imprimerie Impériale, 1809; reprint New York: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1997), 1:45. (4) In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the serpent that on a daily basis attempted to devour the sun. Apophis was the perpetual enemy of the sun god Re and the light. 7 The daily defeat of Apophis was often symbolized by a Bastet, represented by a cat killing a snake with a knife. These scenes are sometime referenced in tombs such as TT 132 that depicts a beheaded snake representing the god Apophis.8 On the one hand, the Egyptians recorded the natural antipathy between cats and snakes. On the other, the Egyptians portrayed this antipathy mythologizing it and elevating it as a war metaphor that was incorporated into the eternal daily solar cycle. 9 Execution of Captives Many violent iconographic motifs originated as references to war scenes. One of the earliest of these is found on the Narmer Palette. This object measures 64 x 42 cm and is an oversized cosmetics palette. The circle in center was used for grinding pigments possibly for the application of cosmetic eye paint on cultic statues and was found in the foundation deposit at Herakleopolis. This palette dates to the first dynasty of Egypt and is one of the earliest cult objects from pharaonic Egypt. The palette portrays one of the unification wars. The image on the left shows king Narmer smiting a Lower Egyptian with a mace, while the god Horus gaffs an enemy with a large fish hook. On the right, the top register shows the decapitated bodies of the war dead, and the bottom register shows the king symbolized as a bull tearing down the walls of the city. These scenes of captive execution became commonplace in New Kingdom temples. The mace was a common weapon type used in the Old Kingdom; however, the mace fell out of favor 7 Adolf Erman, A Handbook of Egyptian Religion. trans. A. S. Griffith (London: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd., 1907), 59. 8 Bertha Porter and Rosalind L. B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Tests, Reliefs, and Paintings, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 247. 9 Paul John Frandsen, “Aspects of Kingship in Ancient Egypt” in Religion and Power: Divine Kingship on the Ancient World and Beyond ,2 nd Ed. ed. Nicole Brisch (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012), 47 (5) as a weapon of war by the end of the Middle Kingdom. 10 In the New Kingdom reliefs, the mace was an anachronism even though it is found in most of the smiting reliefs. The display of anachronistic weaponry shows how the weapons themselves become part of the religious repertoire. These reliefs are commonly found in both mortuary and divine temples. We find this motif in the temple of Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramesses III (Dynasty 20). But this same motif also appears in the Karnak Temple of Ramesses III. 11 The scenes often show the king with his arm stretched out holding nine prisoners by the hair and in his raised arm he holds a mace. 12 The nine prisoners represent the so-called “nine bows” which are the traditional nine enemy nations against Egypt. However, a smiting scene can also be shown with particular foes. Here Ramesses III is smiting a pair of Shasu, Levantines who had attempted to invade Egypt from southern Palestine. The king is dressed in clothing similar to Amun-Re, with extra pairs of uraeus added to the crown on either side symbolizing his aggression towards the foreign invaders. A male lion below, representing the power of the king, attacks the Shasu while they are being smited.