Napatan Temples: a case Study from Gebel Barkal

fig. 33). The text on the left jamb mentions the king's departure through this door for the coronation temples Pr-wr (B 1100) and Pr-nsr (B 1150), which were officially the temples of the royal uraeus goddesses ("Eye of Horus"). On the right jamb, there is another important text, but written in the second person feminine singular. It reads: m htp sp sn(?) …tn wd3.t wd3/irt R' ts.phr wd3 wd3t/irt Hr ts.pr ("In peace, in peace…Your wholeness is the wholeness of the Eye of Re, and vice versa; your wholeness is the wholeness of the Eye of Horus, and vice versa"). The text obviously is addressed to a woman who accompanies the king as he exits the palace and goes to the coronation temples. She is also obviously making magical transformations and is becoming each and every goddess of the royal and divine uraei, just as they are becoming her. As she enters into B 200 and B 300 she becomes the goddesses Mut, Hathor, Isis, Tefnut, Sekhmet, Bastet, Maat, etc, who are the goddesses of the "Eye of Re" and the uraeus of the crown of Amun-Re. When she enters into B 1100 and B 1150, she becomes the goddesses Nekhbet, Wadjet, and Weret-Hekau, who are the goddesses of the "Eye of Horus" and the king's crown. When she puts the crown(s) on the head of her son, she becomes the personification of the eternal divine crown, which is the mountain itself. Everywhere the king went, thus, he needed to be accompanied by one or more of the royal women, who would impersonate one or more of the goddess and perform for him such important ritual roles. W.V. Davies, in his lecture "New Fieldwork at Kurgus: The Pharaonic Inscriptions" at the Ninth International Conference of Nubian Studies in Boston, August 21-26, 1998,

54 reported finding inscriptions at Kurgus of both Ramses II and some of the ranking women of his family. See Lohwasser 2001 and references.

^ These domains would have included all the territory between Napata and the northern border of the Thebaid at El-Hiba, about 35 km upstream from Herakleopolis. El-Hiba marked the northern limi

55t of Upper Egypt and the authority of the White Crown (Baines and Malek 1984, 129; Aufrère and Golvin 1997, 221-223).

^ This hypothetical scenario finds a parallel in the Herodotean fable of the withdrawal of the Kushites from Egypt. Here Sabacos, the last Kushite king, is said to have had a vision that he should kill all the priests in Egypt. Since he imagined that this dream was sent by God to encourage him to commit a sacrilege, he decided to depart from Egypt and to return to Kush, since the fifty years had passed that the oracles of Kush had foretold he should rule Egypt.

56


^ Since Dynasty 18, Amun of Western Thebes had been associated with t

57he Amun of Luxor (and Gebel Barkal) (Pamminger 1992, 99-105)

^ Török's discussion of "Ary's" titles (FHN II 521) places the king squarely in the early eighth century BC. That his name is rendered Iry-mi-Imn ("Ary-mi-Amun") rather than the usual Ir/Irr ("Alara") is easily explained by the common late Egyptian tendancy of names and words to drop their final "r's" in spelling and pronunciation when elided with others (Cerny and Groll 1975, 6; Kendall 1999a, 64). "Ary", therefore, must be Alara. Notice that the king's crown, otherwise similar to that of Herihor and Piye (figs. 44, 45, 46), lacks a uraeus, as though he had not quite achieved full royal status. Nevertheless, over his head flies Nekhbet, revealing that he is under her protection. He was perhaps ruler primarily in priestly mode, like the Theban prelates of Dynasty 21, although he writes his name in cartouches, calls himself

58 "son of Amun"

59and "Lord

60of the Two Lands," and uses the throne name of Ramses II.

^ See note 63.

^ Texts in the lunette of the Barkal Stele of Thutmose III record that the king will "exist as "foremost of the kas of all the Living Ones who arise upon the throne of Horus like Re" or as "foremost of the kas of all the Living Ones who arise as King of Upper and Lower Egypt, south and north, like Re." The term "Living One", therefore, refers to all kings, past, present and future, whom the present king embodies as "foremost of (their) kas." The name Pi-ankh or Pa-ankh also means "the Living One," suggesting that the name of the great Nubian conqueror was chosen to identify himself with all the ancient kings that had supposedly "arisen" at Gebel Barkal since the beginning of time. The name later became a title and epithet of royalty: In the Sanam Stele of Madiken, for example, the lady is called "king's sister and king's wife of the Living One (i.e. Aspelta)" (FHN I, 262, 263, 260). In his stele, Nastasen calls the dynastic founder "Piankh-Alara" (FHN II 477) (Török 1997, 124). The "Living One" wa also a frequent epithet of the high god (Rundle Clark 1991, 59).

^ This Ogdoad as well as Kamutef were also repr

61esented i

62n the Small Temple at Medinet Habu in Western Thebes, which had been founded in Dynasty 11 and was later restored by Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. The temple was connected with the Primeval Hill of Thebes (Djeme), as well as the cult of Luxor (and Gebel Barkal), and the cult of a great serpent, an aspect of Amun, called Kematef. Like the Kamutef temple near the Mut Complex at Karnak (also built by Hatshepsut), it was restored by the Kushites (Morkot 2000, 246-247; Arnold 1999, 47).

^ The scene, of

63 course, is of great antiquity, first appearing on the macehead of King Scorpion (Millet 1990, 55, fig. 2). Cf. also the construction scenes of Thutmose III at Karnak (Schwaller de Lubicz 1977, pl. 174).

^ The upper part of the king's figure, in which the king wears a cap crown, has been restored from a photograph in the Breasted archive in which his preserved head can still be faintly seen. See the on-line archive of the 1905-1907 Breasted Expeditions to Egypt and the Sudan: http://www.oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/PA/

64YPT

65/BE

66E

67S/BEES.html (Orinst P 2984: Gebel Barkal (Napata), Great Temple of Amun).

^

68 (Ignore)

(Ignore) ^