The Riddle of the Tachat Family

At the end of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty, several attestations of women named Tachat with the title wr.t ḫnr n jmn are possible to observe. These women all had a family background associated with service in the temple, mainly with the cult of Amun. This article brings these women together, and shows that the line of holders of this post in the Amun temple could imply the continuation of possible family ties among these female temple personnel. The family tree covers a rather long period of time for the women in question, who held this post in the cult of Amun even during the Amarna Period, demonstrating that some officials in Thebes were able to worship Amun even during the Amarna Period.

The New Kingdom

The New Kingdom encompasses five hundred years of Egyptian history (c.1550–1070 bc) characterized by long stretches of domestic stability and foreign expansion. Lengthy reigns of kings such as Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, and Ramesses II abound in textual, architectural, and artistic milestones; the reign of Akhenaten and his immediate successors, the Amarna Period, illuminate the potential for both religious and political transformations in a civilization often described as monolithic and unchanging. Extensive textual and archaeological material from throughout the Nile Valley make the three dynasties of the New Kingdom among the best understood of the pharaonic era.

The Late Eighteenth Dynasty Tomb of Ry at Saqqara (Reign of Tutankhamun). Horemheb’s Chief of Bowmen and Overseer of Horses Contextualised

This article presents the Saqqara tomb of Ry, an army official who built his funerary monument in the immediate post-Amarna period (temp. Tutankhamun c. 1319–1310 BCE). The Leiden-Turin Expedition to Saqqara excavated this anonymous mud-brick tomb structure in 2013. Recent research revealed that various decorated limestone revetment blocks held in museum collections around the world derive from this tomb. They were removed by early excavators almost 200 years ago and formed part of the antiquities collections of prominent collectors such as Giuseppe Passalacqua and Henry Abbott. The dispersed tomb elements bearing texts and iconography are here contextualised and the funerary monument is analysed in the framework of the development of the Memphite New Kingdom necropolis. ملخص البحث يقدم هذا المقال مدفن ري في سقارة، مسؤول بالجيش بنى لنفسه المدفن في فترة ما بعد العمارنة مباشرة (فترة توت عنخ أمون، حوالي 1319-1310 قبل الميلاد). قامت بعثات ليدن وتورينو في عام 2013 بتنقيب هذا المدفن المجهول في سقارة، وهو مبني بالطوب الطيني. كشفت الأبحاث الحديثة أن العديد من لوحات الحجر الجيري المزخرفة والمنتشرة في عدة متاحف حول العالم أصلها من هذا المدفن. لقد تم نقلها أثناء الحفريات المبكرة قبل مئتان عام تقريباً وكانت جزءاً من المجموعات الأثرية لهواة جمع الآثار البارزين مثل جوزيبي باسالاكوا وهنري أبوت. العناصر المبعثرة لهذا القبر تحمل نصوصاً وأيقونات مختلفة، في هذا النص تم جمعها ودراستها وتحليل الغرفة الجنائزية في إطار تطور مقابر ممفيس خلال فترة الدولة الحديثة.

New Radiocarbon-based assessment Supports the Prominence of Tel Lachish during late Bronze age IB-IIA

ABSTRACTThis article presents a new suite of radiocarbon (14C) dates for the lower portion of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) sequence of Area S, Tel Lachish. The results show that the lowest levels reached by Ussishkin in the 1980s (S-2 and S-3) date significantly earlier than was previously thought. Level S-3, with its monumental architecture, belongs in the 2nd half of the 15th century BCE, as does the commencement of Level S-2. The laminated deposit of S-2 continues through the first half of the 14th century BCE, coinciding at least in part with the Amarna period. This redating leads to improved agreement between archaeological and textual evidence regarding the presence of a substantial, prominent settlement at Lachish during LB IB-IIA, from the reign of Thutmoses III through the Amarna period.

Ay, Neferti, Nakhtmin and Ameny

Summary During his reign, King Ay had a speos built in Akhmim, known as the speos of el-Salamuni. Its façade displays a monumental inscription, which contains a long eulogy to the king uttered by the overseer of works, Nakhtmin. For the composition of this inscription, its author had recourse to the Prophecy of Neferti. This paper investigates the ways and means of this recourse. First, el-Salamuni’s inscription is transliterated, deconstructed, and translated. Then, locutions and verb forms belonging to the first part of the inscription and of the Prophecy of Neferti are compared. This comparison shows that whilst conceiving a unique text, the author of the inscription used locutions and verb forms specific to the Prophecy to compose a text structured like it, thereby allowing the reader to readily call the Prophecy to the mind. A lexical comparison of both texts completes this examination. Next, an investigation of Ay’s deeds related in the inscription reveals the importance of the notion of benefactions (ȝḫ.t), with the speos of el-Salamuni being an exemplification of what being ȝḫ means for the king. Furthermore, although Ay’s deeds praised by Nakhtmin in his eulogy look like a collection of random deeds, they do in fact illustrate different facets of the one pivotal and dominant deed that is central to Ay’s actions: the restoration of communication between the gods, the king and the people, for which purpose the speos happens to be a medium. This investigation also shows that by recourse to the Prophecy, Ay is made into a messianic king, likened to Ameny. Then, in order to explore the reason of the recourse to the Prophecy of Neferti, the speeches of Neferti and Nakhtmin are considered in relation to each other. Based on their common witnessing function, it can be deduced that the author of the inscription considered Neferti to be a true prophecy. This leads to the question of the genre of the Prophecy and of el-Salamuni’s inscription. It is proposed that the inscription is an epideictic text. For convincingly classifying el-Salamuni’s inscription as a rhetorical epideictic composition coming under the Aristotelian rhetoric, the essential features of this genre are sought. As a matter of fact, an audience, a kairos, an appropriate ethos for the speaker, an argumentation founded on the logos, but also a strong pathos, can be characterised. As for the thesis of the discourse, it is understood that if the communication with the gods is restored and if the people take advantage of it, it is thanks to Ay’s personal values. The temporality of Nakhtmin’s encomium, who relates events from his present, the focus of the text on virtue, as well as its dispositio, complete the list of the essential features of an epideictic composition. In conclusion, the notion of propaganda is reassessed, and el-Salamuni’s inscription as an epideictic text reinstated as a long-term socio-political discourse, as a composition admittedly aimed at establishing absolute confidence of the audience in Ay, but also at reinforcing social cohesion and cultural identity, a function probably required after the Amarna Period.