Napatan Temples: a case Study from Gebel Barkal
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V. Chapters 162-167 of the Book of the Dead. Many of the above interpretations of the Barkal pinnacle will seem highly suspect to the "uninitiate." However the rules of this strange association game are confirmed by Chapters 162-165 and 167 of the Book of the Dead - the so-called "Nubian chapters." 40 Chapter 163 actually makes reference to “the ipt (or Npt=’Napata’), headland of Nubia,” and the others employ unknown words which are specifically designated as “of the Nubian speech” (Allen 1974, 157-162). The texts all seem to be describing, by means of puns and divine associations, the same sort of infinitely layered theology as that which I have traced above. The earliest known versions of these texts belong to Dynasty 21, but they are obviously older. They must have been composed in the New Kingdom. They obviously continued in use in Egypt through Ptolemaic times, so they reveal an Egyptian awareness of and interest in the mysteries of Gebel Barkal even centuries after it ceased to be under their political control. A straight translation of these texts results in a series of nonsensical passages. Yet if one knows the "secrets" of the pinnacle, as traced above, the texts make perfect sense. Four of the texts (162-3, 165 and 167) are addressed variously to Amun, Osiris, and a “Great Lion”, while the other (164) is addressed to Sekhmet-Bastet “Eye of Re,” who is also called Weret-Hekau and Mut. In these texts Amun and the lion, called "Heq", seem to be forms of each other, perhaps directional reflections, or perhaps pacified and unpacified aspects of each other. In Spell 162, for example, this dual being is called “Lord of the White Crown (wrrt).” He is said to be “equipped with the flail,” and he is “Lord…of the phallus,” indicating his association with Kamutef and the Pinnacle-Phallus-White Crown. He is also called “Lion of Might” (rw shm), which recalls by pun that in Spell 164 the leonine goddess Sekhmet-Bastet, “Eye of Re,” is called his “royal wife.” Shm is simply the masculine form of shmt, again suggesting that the pinnacle combined male and female principles. Since Sekhmet was the “unpacified” form of the "Eye of Re," the lion was probably the unpacified form of Amun. Later in the text the lion is called “Embracer of the Great Goddess,” suggesting again that they were two beings, male and female, united as one in the pinnacle. Finally, he is described as “Lord of Forms, numerous of beings, who conceals himself in the Eye (wd3t=W3dyt) from his children." In other words, the many forms of the lion are “hidden” (Imn) in the form of the Eye-Uraeus-Phallus-Pinnacle, while he is nonetheless visible as a figure wearing the White Crown. Spell 162 concludes by applying the lion’s epithets to the deceased, who is Osiris. This reveals that the Lion and Osiris are also one being. One of his epithets is “Tail of the Ram-Lion,” showing that he is also Amun in a state of transformation to or from a ram. Amun and Osiris here are clearly forms of each other, but they are personifications of different time. Amun represents day, life and present time; Osiris represents night, death, and past time, or transition to new life. They converge and separate as Khepri at dawn and reconverge as Atum in the evening. In Spell 163, the deceased, as Osiris, is described as one who is “hidden (imn) within the Pupil of the Eye (wd3t).” This Pupil is called “Creator of the ka (ir k3).” Later in the text, Amun is addressed in the same way: “O Amun, you bull (k3), Khepri, lord of the Two Eyes (wd3ty=W3dty), Fierce of Pupil is your name. Osiris is the image (tit) of your two Eyes. Enchainer (srsr) is the name of one; Crusher (sp), who creates the ka, is the name of the other.” Here we learn that “Osiris is hidden (imn)” within the Eye-Uraeus-Pinnacle. This phrase can as well be translated “Osiris is Amun within the Eye-Uraeus-Pinnacle". We must conclude therefore that the pinnacle contains a “hidden” figure that is both Osiris and Amun. The text then states cryptically: “He it is who sets northwest of the ipt (or Npt: ‘Napata’), headland of Nubia, without journeying to the east.” This text makes no sense unless we stand on the southeast side of Gebel Barkal at sunset and gaze to the northwest at the profile of the pinnacle, which assumes the exact form of a standing figure of Osiris wearing the White Crown. The phrase "without journeying to the east" can only be understood with reference to the local Nile, which here flows from northeast to southwest, making true "east" the same as "river west". When the sun rises in the east, in other words, it is again "west" in terms of the "upside-down" river. The implication is that Osiris can live eternally here, for there is really no "east". At Gebel Barkal, the upper world and the underworld have become the same, or perhaps they have simply merged with primeval time, before there was a difference. Ironically Spell 162 Variant contradicts this while reminding us of the pinnacle's lunar associations. Speaking of Osiris; the text states: “You dawn in the eastern horizon of the sky.… you dawn as the moon…You have seen the aging of Thoth; You come as the inundation…" Then it concludes: “Your ka is enduring, and your phallus is within the maidens. You resume your form as yesterday…You are lord of the Uraeus (i’rt).”
In Spell 163 one of the Eyes-Uraei is named “Creator of the ka.” A few lines later, Amun himself is called Ka (“Bull”), which is an abbreviation of his full name Kamutef (“Bull of his Mother”). The goddess within the Eyes-Uraei is thus his "mother". After combining all the male and female deities mentioned in the text into a single entity (i.e. the Gebel Barkal pinnacle), the spell informs us that “Atum…is his real true name.” Since the living king was a manifestation of Atum when he wore the Double Crown, and since he was a manifestation of Amun as Ka ("Bull"), and since he was a manifestation of Osiris, we see that the pinnacle was conceptualized simultaneously as an image of the primeval god, the primeval king, the living god and the living king. In other words, it was at Gebel Barkal, rather than at Luxor, where all aspects of god and royal being converged physically in the natural rock to fulfill the meaning of "Kamutef" (cf. Bell 1985, 258-259; Traunecker 2001, 221-222). The name of Kamutef can be translated in different ways that reveal the mysterious and complex nature of the god, as traced above. These meanings are derived from the various interpretations of the word "ka". When written with the “bull” hieroglyph, as it was in the normal spelling of the god's name, it meant literally “bull." But this word also concealed the meaning “phallus” and suggested the bull's procreative act and power. This spelling, however, was also a pun on an identical word, written with the “open arms hieroglyph". This word, for want of a more precise English equivalent, is usually translated "divine double" (cf. Faulkner 1964, 283; Bolshakov 2001, 215-217). The name of Kamutef (“Bull of his Mother”) is usually taken to mean that Amun (as "Bull/phallus") impregnated his wife-consort, the goddess Mut ("Mother"), who gave birth to him as "Bull" and thus became his "mother". Since the kings in their titularies are always called "Bull," the name Kamutef also refers to Amun's manifestation of himself as his own son, the king (Kessler 2001, 211).41 In this way the god was simultaneously father and son, and the living king was the god's filial aspect of himself. In biological terms, of course, this makes no sense, but in Egyptian solar terms it was completely logical. The sun (Amun-Re) was one being, but he had separately personified aspects. Atum (the old sun at sunset), Re (the strong sun of midday), and Khepri/Horakhty (the child sun of dawn).42 As each god daily transformed from one to the other, each became parent or son of himself through the one being of Amun-Re. Since the living king was likened to the sun god in all these phases, he was always an integral part of this strange genealogy. The mythological concept of the ka ("Bull"=Procreator) becoming the ka ("Bull"= the king) played out in reality through the medium of the ka ("divine double"). Although the king was a mortal man, he was thought to be born with an exact duplicate of himself that was also shared by Amun, his father. During the king's coronation and each year thereafter in the Opet ceremony, as well as during the king's Heb-Sed or Jubilee, the king ritually united with his ka. When this happened the king was thought to share a common essence with the Creator, and the Creator was thought to be manifest in the living king. Each of these ceremonies was thought to set the clock back to the sp-tpy, so that each new reign and each New Year became a replay of the moment of Creation, when all royal and divine power were combined in the one great god. This was why, upon his coronation, the king was given a special "throne name" that described his own unique ka-aspect of the god. "Kamutef," when translated "Ka of his Mother" also meant that the child of Mut was that mysterious being ("divine double") in which the king and god were joined as one. If we take the name Kamutef in another way, we see that the god actually becomes his own mother. As stated in Spell 163, it is she, within him, who is the "creator of the ka." If he is the "'Divine Double' of his Mother” then he must also be her exact reflection, and thus must be female. If, on the other hand, we translate the name as "Phallus of his Mother," Mut becomes an exact reflection of him, and thus must be male. These intellectual imponderables are given form in the vignettes accompanying the "Nubian Spells" of the Book of the Dead. The vignette accompanying Spell 163 includes a pair of winged eyes with legs, symbolizing the two “Eyes” in the texts – the “Eyes of Re and Horus” or, in other words, the divine and royal uraei, which symbolize all the goddesses manifested in the Barkal pinnacle. The same vignette also includes a pair of dwarf beings (Ptah?) sharing the posture and attributes of Kamutef - one with double falcon head and swty crown, symbolizing Re.43 These figures are said to be “what is in the pupils” of the Eyes. They are, in other words, the hidden forms of the god within the Pinnacle-Phallus-Uraei (Allen 1974, 159-160). These figures flank another, which is described in the text as “(an image of ) Mut having three faces - one like the face of Ph3t (“Revealed One”=a lioness [i.e. Sekhmet, Tefnut, Weret-Hekau, Wadjet]) wearing twin plumes (swty), another like a human face wearing the White Crown and Red Crown, another like a vulture’s face (i.e. Nekhbet) wearing twin plumes. She possesses a phallus, wings, and lion’s claws” (fig. 27) (Faulkner 1972, 163; Allen 1974, 160-161). Amun Kamutef, therefore, is revealed as the god who combines father, mother, and child, and all of their infinite forms, within himself. He is all forms of creation yet unborn. An amulet from Ku. 54 (Boston MFA 24.645) takes the form of a ram-headed pregnant winged goddess, which apparently depicts the god at the moment of his giving birth (Dunham 1950, pl. 51A, 1380)! One royal ritual that took place at Luxor Temple during the later Eighteenth Dynasty was the coronation of the king. In Section III above, I quoted a text of Hatshepsut, in which her father Thutmose I supposedly announced her kingship from "Southern Sanctuary." Horemheb, too, has left us an account of his coronation at "Southern Sanctuary" (Gardiner 1953; Murnane 1995, 230-233). These rites took place generally on New Year's Day, which was the annual symbolic repeat of the sp-tpy, when the Nile, at its lowest and weakest in mid-summer, suddenly began its miraculous rise. At this time, the king was united with his divine parent and reborn as the sun on earth. The close relationship of the king and kingship to the Creator is revealed in the forms of the word h' ("to rise, appear in glory"). The coronation ceremony was called h'i ("the Rising"), which was a word also used for the "rising" of the sun. The Primeval Hill of Creation was called h' ("Riser"), and this hill was the source of the h'w ("Risers"= "Crown") (Faulkner 1964, 185-186). The crown itself was also said to have been created by Re at the sp-tpy (FHN I 55, 236, 237). The origin of kingship and the crowning of the king, thus, was linked symbolically to the primeval moment and the primeval place. By the Eighteenth Dynasty this place was thought to be Luxor Temple, which we now know was merely a symbolic substitute for Gebel Barkal. These two sites were perhaps understood to be kas ("divine doubles") of each other in the name "Southern Sanctuary". We are forced to conclude, therefore, that in the New Kingdom, kingship, like Creation itself, was imagined to come from Napata, the remotest town in the Egyptian Nubian empire. VII. Gebel Barkal as Mythical Source of Upper Egyptian Kingship It is well known that in Napatan times the kings of Kush believed Gebel Barkal was the source of their kingship and crown and that these things had been handed down to them by the god of Gebel Barkal "since the time of Re" (FHN I 55, 236, 237). While such statements imply a long historical memory, Taharqa's knowledge of, or interest in, his own family seems to have extended no further back than his grandmother's generation and to his great-uncle Alara, the first Napatan king known to us by name. Later Napatan kings also spoke of Alara, but knew or said nothing of any earlier king (Török 1997, 123-126). Beyond this there seems to have been no dynastic memory other than Egyptian mythological history or that Napata and Nubia had once been occupied by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom. Through their priestly advisors, however, the early Napatan kings realized that when they embraced the Amun cult, and the god declared them to be his own sons, they became a part of the great continuum of this history, which in their conviction had begun at Napata (cf. FHN II 644-646). The "kings of Kush since the time of Re," it seems, were the pharaohs of the New Kingdom as well as all the "White Crown wearers" who had preceded them to the beginning of time, even to Osiris. All of them appeared in the colossal royal figure wearing the White Crown who was manifested in the Gebel Barkal pinnacle. As sons of Amun, the new Napatan kings saw themselves as heirs of this primeval kingship, which meant that all previous Egyptian kings were their "ancestors" (FHN I 132, 172, 220, 221; Griffith 1922, 102-103). The tradition is exactly that related by Diodorus Siculus (FHN II 644-645), who states that the "Aithiopians" were the first men created on earth because they were "closest to the sun", that they were the first men to honor God, that they colonized Egypt, that the Egyptians were their descendants, that Osiris was their leader, and that their kings "use tall pointed felt hats ending in a knob" (See also Burstein 1999, 122-123). Gebel Barkal was the site of the primary coronation during Napatan times. When the Kushite kings of Dynasty 25 were crowned at Memphis (FHN I 153-155), the ritual was surely coordinated with Napata (cf. Herodotus ii. 139). Nearly every Egyptian language text preserved from the post-Dynasty 25 era refers to the Barkal sanctuary as that to which the Napatan king went first to be selected or confirmed for rule by Amun of the mountain; it was also there that the god gave the king his crowns. We know that a preliminary crowning ceremony took place soon after the death of the old king (FHN II 401-403), but a formal ceremony seems to have taken place again on New Year's Day (FHN I 55, 77, 205-206, FHN II 404-406, 409).44 This day, as previously noted, coincided with the start of the Nile inundation, which was the annual anniversary of the sp-tpy (Zabkar 1988, 121-123; Kemp 1993, 200; Kendall 1997a, 330-331 and refs.) .
Immediately following his coronation at Gebel Barkal, the king undertook a journey downstream, in which he stopped at each of the other Amun sanctuaries to celebrate duplicate coronations there (Török 1997, 224-234). On this journey the king acted as the sponsor of the rising Nile. His visitg himsations to the various towns and sanctuaries symbolically renewed their prosperity for the coming year. In the Kawa stele of Irike-amanote, the king's secondary coronation ceremonies at Kawa and Pnubs are described in some detail (FHN II 408-411). In a torchlight procession at each place, the king is said to have made the local Amun go around each city, carried in his bark, while the king himself accompanied it "holding up his arms," as the text states (FHN II 413). By this gesture he was surely making the sign of the hieroglyph "ka," which symbolized what the multitudes were actually said to have cheered: "The son is united with his father." At each of the Amun sanctuaries, therefore, the king united with its god, thereby assuming that god's powers. The description seems identical to that of the Egyptian Opet festival at Luxor (Bell 1997, 157-176). The Napatan kings, starting at Gebel Barkal, seem to have traveled no further downstream than Pnubs (Kerma) to perform these rituals, but one wonders if during the New Kingdom, at those times when the pharaohs themselves visited Gebel Barkal, they may have begun the same journey at "Pure Mountain" at New Year's Day and completed it at Luxor in time for the Opet, two months later, when the Nile was in full flood. This is certainly what Piye did before commencing his Egyptian campaign of Year 20 (FHN I 77, 79; cf also FHN I 118-119). It is Piye's Year 3 Stele that preserves the earliest Napatan record of the kingship tradition of Gebel Barkal. Here he declares that "Amun of Napata granted me to be ruler of every foreign country," and "Amun in Thebes granted me to be ruler of the Black Land (Kmt)" (FHN I 57; Reisner 1931, 89). The twin Amuns of Barkal and Karnak are presented here as mutually supportive aspects of each other, each giving the king a vital portion of his kingship. Only one Amun, however, is shown in the lunette. This is the ram-headed god of Napata, whom the text says gave the king "every foreign country." Yet we see that he is the one handing the king two royal crowns and thus also giving him the kingship of "the Black Land." One crown is the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, and the other is the cap crown, which obviously had some meaning analogous to, but not quite identical with, the White Crown. Here Amun of Napata seems to be granting the gift ascribed to Amun of Thebes. We wonder if there is an inconsistency here, or if we are to understand that the two gods are really exactly the same and perform the same tasks. We also wonder what the king really means here by the terms "foreign countries" and "the Black Land." Does the Red Crown of Lower Egypt symbolize "foreign countries"? Does the cap crown symbolize "Kemet"? "Kemet", in this case, would have to be understood here as a united Nubia and Upper Egypt. By the time of Harsiotef, "Kemet" had come to mean Kush (FHN II 446). The stele informs us that although there were other kings (in Egypt), Piye's kingship was superior to theirs because it was granted to him by Amun. The idea that Piye was the "bodily" son of Amun, created through a union between the god and the king's own mother, is pure royal dogma of the New Kingdom (Bell 1985, 280 and refs.). His titularies were also derived from those of Thutmose III and Ramses II (Reisner 1931, 93-97; Török in FHN I, 51-52). It is quite evident, therefore, that the Kushite ruler is presenting himself as the first of a new breed of "authentic" kings the likes of which the world had not seen since the great pharaohs of centuries past.45 While the text is surprising for its political assertiveness - all the more so since nothing like it (and hardly even a written text!) had preceded it in the Nubian tradition - we find that Piye's ideas about Gebel Barkal were exactly those expressed seven centuries earlier by the Egyptian kings. Piye and the other Napatan royals, in other words, were not inventing a kingship tradition; they were simply reviving an old one from the New Kingdom that they knew gave them unassailable legitimacy and full authority to rule Egypt. The idea that the pharaohs of the New Kingdom may have viewed Gebel Barkal as the source of their own kingship, or more particularly Upper Egyptian kingship, may seem unthinkable. But there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that they did. The Barkal Stele of Thutmose III, for example, had two images of Amun in its lunette; to each the king appeared making offerings (Reisner and Reisner 1933a, pl. 3). Although both gods were erased by the followers of Akhenaten, the god on the right ("south") can still be identified by his partly preserved epithet "[Amun .… who is] in Pure Mountain." This god is made to say to the king "I give you the kingship of the Two Lands." The figure and name of the god on the left ("north") are completely destroyed, but it was certainly Amun of Karnak, who is made to say "I give you all foreign lands." We see from this the surprising fact that the Egyptians, even in early Dynasty 18, considered the god of Gebel Barkal to be the one who granted the "kingship of the Two Lands (i.e. Egypt)." The text even seems to echo Hatshepsut's in her Red Chapel at Karnak, who states that Amun of "Southern Sanctuary" (Gebel Barkal) told her father Thutmose I in an oracle that she would be ruler "of the Two Lands" and "all foreign lands" (see above, Section III). Why would the Egyptians attribute their kingship to a remote mountain in Nubia? The reason is evident in Ramses' relief at Abu Simbel, which shows the anthropomorphic Amun of Karnak ("Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands, who is in Ipt-swt") seated inside Gebel Barkal, from which rises an enormous uraeus, crowned with the White Crown (fig. 17). From this, it appears that the pharaohs believed this mountain - an extension of Karnak - was the home of the most important manifestation of Nekhbet (of Nekheb/Nekhen) and thus was the true source of the Upper Egyptian uraeus and kingship. This idea is given further support by the texts of Amenhotep Huy, Viceroy of Kush under Tutankhamun, who informs us variously that his authority extended from "Nekhen to Nswt-t3wy ('Karnak'=Gebel Barkal)" or from "Nekhen to Karoy". These texts also state that "Khenethennefer was entrusted to him, and Upper Egypt was bound together under his supervision" (Davies and Gardiner 1926, 10-11). From this we conclude that by Dynasty 18 the Thebaid and all of Nubia, with a "Karnak" at each pole, had become the united province of Upper Egypt and the White Crown. Nekhbet was the chief deity of Nekheb (el-Kab) and was the patron deity of Upper Egyptian royal power. Nekhen (Hieraconpolis), across the river, was also the home of the god of primeval kingship, Horus of Nekhen, whose Soleb statue, incidentally, Piye erected in B 500 at Barkal, as if to proclaim the mountain a kind of "divine double" of Nekhen (cf. Kemp 1991, 37-42, Simpson 1971; Dunham 1970, 25, 27, pl. 25). The Egyptians were surely aware that the earliest wearers of the White Crown resided at Nekhen, but on encountering Gebel Barkal and its statue-like pinnacle "wearing the White Crown," they must have revised their history to assume that this place was the true origin of the White Crown and the ancestors who had worn it. In his Barkal Stele, Thutmose III remarks: "My Majesty fought a herd of 120 (elephants in Niy). Never had the like been done by any king since (the time of) the God, (by any of) those who formerly received the White Crown" (Reisner and Reisner 1933a, 31). The idea that the king's uraeus dwelt at Gebel Barkal, even in the Eighteenth Dynasty, finds further proof in Thutmose's Barkal Stele. After recording the founding of the first Egyptian settlement at Barkal, he describes a “miracle” by which Amun revealed himself to the Egyptians as the mountain's occupant. He said this miracle occurred at night after a spectacular meteor lit up the sky from south to north. It was witnessed only by the night watchmen. At a crucial point, the text becomes fragmentary, but there follows the descripton of a surprise attack by an unidentified enemy host, which was suddenly annihilated by fire while the Egyptians and locals slept. Although the words describing the cause of the fire have been lost, an earlier passage in the text provides a clue to what it was. Here the king describes himself in battle as “(rushing) like a falling star between the two bows (of heaven) when it crosses the sky...It is his uraeus diadem which overthrows (his enemies) for him; (it is) his flame-goddess which overcomes his enemies” (Reisner and Reisner 1933a, 27-28, 35-36). Since the Egyptians believed that a uraeus could destroy any and all enemies of the king or god by means of its fiery breath or searing gaze, they must have circulated the story that the pinnacle came to life one night as the king’s fire-spitting uraeus and was their salvation. The tale would have been contrived to confirm that the irresistible power of each pharaoh was lodged in the pinnacle, which was his royal uraeus in Upper Nubia. The rock, incidentally, faced almost due south, across the river, and would surely have been thought, like the uraeus on the king's crown, to be the guardian of the border of the empire. : If the ancients conceived the Gebel Barkal pinnacle simultaneously as the "Eye of Re" and the "Eye of Horus" - the respective divine and royal uraei - one must naturally assume that they also conceived the mountain as the crown of the god or the king, or both of them merged. In fact there is explicit proof of this from Napatan times. In the stele of Nastasen, the city of Napata is named several times. In the usual spelling, the city name is followed by hieroglyphic determinatives indicating “water,” “mountain,” and “city.” But the spelling varies. Sometimes the mountain determinative is the normal sign for “mountain;” sometimes it is a rectangular “block of stone” (Gardiner 1969, sign-list N 26 and O 39). In several instances, these determinatives are replaced by a third: a dome-shaped hieroglyph with rearing uraeus (fig. 28). This obviously denotes the specific mountain of Napata: Gebel Barkal, the mountain with the "uraeus" (Priese 1977, 361, n. 52). This hieroglyph, it will be seen, also appears at the top of the stele in an inscription over the head of Nastasen's mother, Pelka (fig. 29). The text is uncharacteristically revealing, for the words say plainly: “She gave the crown in Napata because her father [i.e. Amun] established [there] the ka of the crown of Re-Harakhty” (di.n.s p3 sh m Npy dd smn.n it.s k3 n p3 h3 Hr-3hty).46 The Gebel Barkal hieroglyph is the determinative of the word ka (“divine double’), which indicates absolutely that the “divine double” of the primeval crown (“the crown of Re-Harakhty”) is the mountain itself. The meaning of this statement is at once obvious when we view the mountain at sunset from the east, when it exhibits the perfect silhouette of the Kushite cap crown (fig. 30). Even the wide coils of the twin serpents on the crown front can be seen to simulate the natural curve of the front of the cliff (fig. 31). Much has been written about the Kushite cap crown (Russmann 1974, 27-44; Török 1987; 1997, 284-287; Leahy 1992, 223-240). The solution of its origin, however, seems really quite simple. The crown simulated the shape of Gebel Barkal, which, as the Primeval Hill of Re/Amun-Re, was also believed to be the ka and source of the primeval crown. Those who wore this crown believed they were the direct heirs of the most ancient kingship, which was only granted to through Gebel Barkal. The crown thus became the unique badge of the Kushite dynasty and reminded all that the Napatan kings were the god’s chosen, who had sprung from the True Source. As the Year 3 Stele of Piye suggests, the cap crown with one uraeus implied royal authority over "Upper Egypt" (as redefined in the New Kingdom), which included the Thebaid and Nubia and the union of the "two Karnaks". The crown probably did not acquire its second uraeus until the time of Shabaqo, who officially annexed Lower Egypt and the authority of the Red Crown. The cap crown of Dynasty 25, then, was really a sort of "Triple Crown" that incorporated Nubia, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, while simultaneously declaring that the origin of kingship came from Gebel Barkal. But were the Kushites the first to see a crown in the natural outline of Gebel Barkal? Surely not, for as we know they revived ideas and rebuilt temples here that had already existed during the New Kingdom. As we have seen, it was Thutmose III who first described the uraeus on the mountain, and both he and Hatshepsut attributed their kingships to Amun of Gebel Barkal. The idea of a crown in the mountain would have been implied by its "uraeus" right from the beginning. The Egyptians, determining that Gebel Barkal was the original source of (Upper Egyptian) kingship, would surely have begun to ponder its relationship to their own historical crowns. Initially, they would have seen the obvious "White Crown" in the pinnacle summit as “proof” that its earliest wearers came from here and that Nekhbet in her uraeus form dwelt here. They might also have remarked the similarity of the mountain's silhouette to the profiles of common images of Old Kingdom kings, in which the royal subjects wore a uraeus on their natural heads or over tightly fitting head-covers (Russmann 1974, 29-31). Probably the first Egyptian royal crowns to acknowledge the primacy of Gebel Barkal were those featuring rams’ horns, which identified the ruler as united with the ram god of Luxor/Gebel Barkal and Nubia in general (Bell 1985, 268-270). The increasing development of the cap crown during and after the Amarna period, however, especially between the reigns of Seti I and Herihor (Russmann 1974, 31-33; Leahy 1992, 232-239), may have been a result of continuing active speculation on the nature of Gebel Barkal and the relationship of Nubia to the Thebaid through the Amun cult. Cap crowns evoked both the shaven heads of priests and the smooth pate of Ptah, and the crown may thus have symbolized a kingship with a particular priestly function in connection with the gods of the Primeval Hill. Cap crowns in use by Egyptian kings during the Third Intermediate Period would probably only have been imitative artifacts of the Ramesside Period, but with Dynasty 25, the cap crown was naturally revitalized and became dominant. The power of this symbol as a sign of legitimacy and connection to Kamutef and the source of the ka even ensured its continuance into Dynasty 26. Following the war of Psammeticus II against Kush in 593 BC, however, the Saites shunned it in favor of the old Blue Crown (Leahy 1992, 228-229), doubtless as a political statement that they and not the Kushites were the true heirs of the New Kingdom pharaohs and that the Barkal cult was invalid or at least no longer relevant in Egypt. The post-war Saite tendancy to erase one of the uraei on the crowns in images of Kushite kings seemed to say: "We accept your rule of the south, but you have no authority - and never had any authority - in the north" (cf. Yoyotte 1951; Török 1997, 371-374) |