The Amduat and its Relationship to the Architecture of Early New Kingdom Royal Burial Chambers (original) (raw)
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The Afterlife Existence Captured in Stone.The Sixth Dynasty False Door Stela of Inti in the Social and Religious Context In The Art of Describing. The World of Tomb Decoration as Visual Culture of the Old Kingdom. Studies in Honour of Yvonne Harpur, edited by P. Jánosi and H. Vymazalová, 2018
Bárta, M. and V. Dulíková 2018 The Afterlife Existence Captured in Stone.The Sixth Dynasty False Door Stela of Inti in the Social and Religious Context In The Art of Describing. The World of Tomb Decoration as Visual Culture of the Old Kingdom. Studies in Honour of Yvonne Harpur, edited by P. Jánosi and H. Vymazalová, pp. 53-84. Charles University, Prague. The scene with two representations of the tomb owner at the table of offerings depicted on the central panel of the false doors of the Old Kingdom Egypt was not a random composition. Quite on the contrary, it was a very thoughtful abbreviation of an elaborate concept related to the transition of a man from this world to the afterlife. It can be first observed in the mid Fifth Dynasty, a period of several profound changes, which had a deep impact on the further development of the Egyptian society, religion and state towards the end of the Old Kingdom. In fact, a much later tradition of the Book of the Dead expresses a very similar concept. The vignettes of Chapter 105, referring to the coming of the deceased to ka and joining it in the afterlife, also include the two individuals’ principal stages discussed so far. The opening stage of this chapter of the Book of the Dead contains a vignette in which the deceased is rendered as a person with a gesture of devotion or veneration. The concluding stage, on the other hand, shows him as the one who has attained the blessed afterlife existence. The Book of the Dead thus con.rms the two different concepts ascribed to the two different representations of the deceased at the table of offerings facing each other and the exceptional existence of the two false doors of Ty in his Saqqara tomb. This concerns not only the different selection of gestures for each of them used to express the different status of the deceased, but also the spatiality, the orientation of both figures facing each other, which refers to two different temporal actions. These frame the whole process of the transformation of the deceased into a resurrected being.
New Kingdom Private Theban Tombs: places of interaction between the living, the dead and the gods
First International Egyptological Conference in Romania: Gods & Humans in Ancient Egypt, 2020
Private Theban tombs dated to the New Kingdom belonged to a high-status population. They are funerary monuments thought as houses of eternity, where the deceased could live forever after his death. But these tombs are also liminal spaces where the borders of the realm of the living and that of the dead could be erased so the dead, the living, and the gods could contact. This happened during some special events, such us the celebration of banquets during the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, when tombs were open to visits. Within the banquet scenes painted on the tombs we can see some symbols, as the unguent cone, or figures, such as dancers or musicians, that would make this communication between the different realms easier. But this contact also took place through the texts and scenes that decorated these tombs, for example through the Appeal to the Living, and through the offerings or the Letters to the Dead. Another moment of interaction between the living, the dead and the gods in the necropolis is the funeral itself. During this ritual the muu dancers acted as some kind of demi-gods and contacted with the gods and the world of the dead to approve the burial in the world of the living. But also the mourners depicted in these processions communicated with the dead through their laments. This paper aims to analyse these elements and occasions, as well as their presence and depiction in New Kingdom private tombs, to establish the most important moments of communication and interaction between the living, the dead, and the gods within the private Theban tombs.
in: S. Kubisch/U. Rummel (eds.), The Ramesside Period in Egypt: Studies into Cultural and Historical Processes of the 19th and 20th Dynasties, Proceedings of the International Symposium held in Heidelberg, 5th to 7th June, 2015, SDAIK 41, Berlin 2018, pp. 249-275, 2018
The starting point for the considerations on late Ramesside tomb architecture presented in this paper is the monumental tomb temple complex of the two High Priests of Amun, Ramsesnakht, and his son, Amenhotep, at Dra’ Abu el-Naga (K93.11/K93.12). The elaborate architectural and spatial concept of these monuments is revealing with regard to both the development of funerary architecture and tomb semantics, as well as to the function of tombs within a well-defined ritual landscape. Besides the funerary resp. religious dimension, the findings at the site also shed light on the biography of the HPA Amenhotep and the political situation in 20th Dynasty Thebes. The deliberate destruction of the High Priests’ funerary monuments at the end of the new Kingdom illustrates their symbolic character and significance in terms of their owners’ (political) identities. Furthermore, the material record of these monuments provides valuable insights into the economic situation under the last Ramesside kings: compared with the tomb temple of his father Ramsesnakht, the complex built by Amenhotep clearly displays a decline in artisanal quality. This observation suggests a change in the available building resources, which occurred from the reign of Ramses VI to Ramses IX, and is consistent with the overall economic crisis that prevailed at the end of the New Kingdom.
G. Magli, 2011
Royal funerary landscapes in Egypt show a remarkable continuity in the use of symbols and in the interplay between natural and man-built features. In such a context directionality, both in the sense of succession of elements and of orientation of single buildings and tombs, plays a relevant role in governing the landscape in accordance with the idea of "cosmic" order, the basis of the temporal power of the Pharaoh. This paper investigates cognitive aspects of the funerary royal landscapes of the New Kingdom, with special emphasis on the connections with astronomy and orientation. A close similarity between the sacred landscape at western Thebes and the early dynas-tic funerary landscape at Abydos comes out and such a similarity may have been one of the reasons for the choice of Valley of the Kings as royal Necropolis. The original, actually unique way in which old symbols and features were re-elaborated by Akhenaten in planning his funerary landscape at Amarna is also highlighted.
Death and the Sun Temple: New Evidence for Private Mortuary Cults at Amarna
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 2017
This article places the Sunshade of Re at Kom el-Nana within the context of inscriptions relating to other Sunshades of Re, in particular those relating to the Sunshade of Re of Hatshepsut. While the Sunshade of Re at Kom el-Nana served the solar cult of the Aten, overseen by the regenerative aspects of royal Amarna women, it also served as a locus for the mortuary cults of the non-royal or noble courtiers at Tell el-Amarna. It is also proposed that Kom el-Nana could have been understood as a type of mortuary locale, with the added possibility that all Aten temples at Amarna may have had a similar function.