Akhenaten's Sed-festival at Karnak

397 Pages·1992·73.168 MB·English

by  Jocelyn Olive Gohary

Akhenaten’s
Sed-festival
at Karnak
Studies in Egyptology
Edited by Alan B. Lloyd
Professor of Classics and Ancient History, University College of Swansea
Editorial Advisor: A. F. Shore
Professor of Egyptology, University of Liverpool
The Egyptian Temple, Patricia Spencer
The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom, Nigel Strudwick
Corpus of Reliefs of the New Kingdom from the Memphite Necropolis and
Lower Egypt Volumel, Geoffrey Thorndike Martin
Problems and Priorities in Egyptian Archaeology, Edited by Jan Assmann,
Gunter Burkard and Vivian Davies
Lost Tombs, Lise Manniche
Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom, Yvonne Harpur
Untersuchungen zu den Totenbuchpapyri der 18. Dynastiem Irmtraut Munro
The Monuments of Senenmut, Peter F. Dorman
The Fort Cemetery at Hierakonpolis, Barbara Adams
The Duties of the Vizier, G.P.F. van den Boom
A Glossary of Ancient Egyptian Nautical Titles and Terms, Dilwyn Jones
Land Tenure in the Ramesside Period, Sally L.D. Katary
Valley of the Kings, C.N. Reeves
The Cobra Goddess of Ancient Egypt, Sally B. Johnson
A Bibliography of the Amarna Period and its Aftermath, Geoffrey Thorndike Martin
The Private Chapel in Ancient Egypt, Ann H. Bomann
Forthcoming:
After Tutankhamun, Edited by C.N. Reeves
Gods, Priests and Men, Aylward M. Blackman, compiled and edited by Alan B. Lloyd
The City of Meroe, Lazio Torok
Akhenaten' s
Sed-festival
at Karnak
Jocelyn Gohary
First published 1992 by Kegan Paul International Ltd
Published 2019 by Routledge
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52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
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© Jocelyn Gohary 1992
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gohary, Jocelyn, /944-
Akhenaten's Sed - festival at Karnak. - (Studies in
Egyptology).
1. Egypt. Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt, fl. I 379-1362
B.C.
I. Title II. Series
932'.014'0924
ISBN 0-7103-0380-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gohary, Jocelyn (Jocelyn Olive), 1944-
Akhenaten's Sed-festival at Karnak/ Jocelyn Gohary.
p. cm. - (Studies in Egyptology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7103-0380-7
1. Akhenaten, King of Egypt. 2. Sed festival. 3. Karnak (Egypt) -
Antiquities. I. Series.
DT87.4.G64 1991
932'.014'0924 - dc20 90-46308
CIP
ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0380-6 (hbk)
Table of Contents
Preface v
List of Plates vii
Abbreviations ix
Part I: the Sed-Festival
1. Definition of the Sed-festival 1
2. Date of the Sed-festival 3
3. Location of the Sed-festival 5
4. Evidence of Sed-festivals 6
5. The Rites of the Sed-festival 9
Part II: Sed-festival scenes of Amenhotep IV on
the Karaak talatat
1. The Akhenaten Temple Project 26
2. The number of Sed-festivals celebrated
by Amenhotep IV 29
3. The location of the celebration of
Amenhotep IV’s Sed-festival 34
4. Wall area covered by Sed-festival scenes 36
5. Size of figures in Sed-festival scenes 36
6. The identification of Sed-festival scenes 37
Part III: Catalogue of matched scenes and
individual talatat
1. Matched scenes 40
2. Individual blocks 120
Part IV: Conclusion 167
Appendix: Register of Matched Scenes and
Individual Blocks 170
Footnotes 205
Bibliography 230
Index 236
iii
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Preface and Acknowl e dgmen t s
The reign of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV-Akhenaten is a period
of ancient Egyptian history on which there is much information,
though most of it is of a controversial nature. The Sed-festival
is an ancient religious festival for which much evidence exists
but because of the incompleteness of that evidence, several
different interpretations of the festival have arisen.
Amenhotep IV apparently celebrated a Sed-festival early in
his reign and recorded the event in his new temple complex
dedicated to the Aten at Karnak. Blocks from the temple
buildings which were re-used after the death of Amenhotep IV, were
examined and photographed by the Akhenaten Temple Project between
1966 and 1977 in an attempt to analyse, with the aid of the
computer, scenes carved on the blocks known as the Akhenaten
'talatat*. The present work covers a selection of these blocks,
those depicting parts of the Sed-festival. Whilst working for
the Project from 1968 to 1973, I was entrusted with the task of
studying the Sed-festival scenes, which eventually formed the
basis of my Ph.D. thesis presented in 1977. This research was
originally to have been one of a series of publications on the
findings of the Akhenaten Temple Project, but due to problems
which arose over the publishing of subsequent volumes after Volume
1 appeared in 1976, this work on the Sed-festival talatat has
remained unpublished until now.
With a subject as popular as the reign of Amenhotep
IV-Akhenaten, new books and articles are constantly appearing and
fresh ideas being suggested. Since 1975 Professor Donald B.
Redford of Toronto University, has been conducting excavations on
the site of the Aten Temple at the east end of Karnak. In
addition, the Centre Franco-Egyptien at Karnak is continuing to
study, with the aid of more advanced computer techniques than
those available to the Akhenaten Temple Project two decades ago,
talatat extracted by them from the west wing of the Ninth Pylon.
It is very difficult to keep abreast of all these more recent
pieces of information, whilst at the same time trying to finalize
a work such as this book, where my main concern is to make
available to all interested persons the hitherto unpublished
record of the Sed-festival of Amenhotep IV from Karnak. I hope
that any shortcomings in that respect will be outweighed by the
presentation of what can still only be regarded as a first report
and analysis of the Sed-festival scenes, which will no doubt be
added to and reinterpreted as fresh evidence and new finds come to
light. This study may not clarify many points about the
Sed-festival in general, but it is hoped that it will add some
more information on the development of the cult of the Aten and
the effect of this cult on the enactment of a religious festival
which can be traced back to the Archaic Period.
v
My especial thanks are due the late Mr. Ray Winfield Smith
(Director of the Akhenaten Temple Project from 1965 to 1972) and
Professor Donald B. Redford (Director of the Akhenaten Temple
Project from 1972 onwards) for allowing me to use material from
the Project for my study of Amenhotep IV’s Sed-festival at Karnak.
I also wish to thank Professor Redford for permission to publish
the Project’s photographs and other data on the talatat. There
are several other persons to whom I extend my gratitude for their
help and encouragement; the late Professor H. W. Fairman and
Professor A. F. Shore of the School of Archaeology and Oriental
Studies, Liverpool University, for their guidance during my
original research; Dr. C. F. Nims, ex-Director of Chicago House,
Luxor, for copies of the drawings of scenes from the tomb of
Kheruef before its publication; Dr. G. Haeny, ex-Director of the
Swiss Archaeological Institute in Cairo, for access to unpublished
photographs of blocks from the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III;
past staff members of the Akhenaten Temple Project, in particular
the late Mr. Leslie Greener for the line-drawing of Scene 1; Miss
S. Crowgey for her translation of M. Mathieu’s article on the
Sed-festival; Mr. Y. A. Abdel-Ghaffar for his painstaking work in
preparing the manuscript and my husband, Said, for his constant
support and practical assistance.
Finally, I express my thanks to the present publishers for
enabling this work to become available to a wider public at long
last.
Jocelyn Gohary
vi
List o£ Plates
1. Matched Scenes:
I-XIX: the palanquin procession
XX: the tnt3t-dais
XXI: the tnt3t-dais; a possible baldachin
XXII: the tnt3t-dais; a foundation rite; the heb-sed
band
XXIII: the heb-sed band
XXIV-XXVII: the palace
XXVI11-XXXIX : the offering-kiosk series
XL-XLI: the Re'-Harakhte altars
XLII : miscellaneous figures of the king
XLIII-XLV: the lion and sphinx palanquin
XLVI : procession scenes; inscriptions
XLVII: narrative inscriptions
XLVIII-XLIX: homage scenes
L: the 'Kheruef’ dancers
LI: dancers and musicians
LII: cattle
LIII-LVI: the offering-with-libation ceremony
LVII : the Window of Appearance; men carrying meat
LVIII: miscellaneous priests
LIX: the Window of Appearance
LX: the Window of Appearance; male dancers; the
atef-crown; priests
LXI : ladies-in-waiting
LXII : ladies-in-waiting; soldiers
LXIII: miscellaneous officials
LXIV-LXVI: miscellaneous officials with titles.
2. Individual blocks:
LXVII-LXXVII: palanquin procession scenes
LXXVIII-LXXXV: the offering-kiosk series
LXXXVI: miscellaneous small scale figures of the king
LXXXVII: lion-furniture; the tnt3t-dais
LXXXVIII: scenes paralleled in other Sed-festival reliefs
LXXXIX: depictions of Re' -Harakhte; the Re'-Harakhte
altars
XC-XCI: miscellaneous figures of the king and queen
XCII : the sinuous wall; the king and queen in the Window
of Appearance
XCIII: the atef-crown; possible foundation rites; the
hb-sd motif band
vii