Ancient Egyptian Festivals

The scent kit includes six of my scent reconstructions, which are all based on my PhD research on the sense of smell in ancient Egypt. It also includes a detailed description of the significance of each scent for the ancient Egyptian culture.
(1)  Mendesian
(2)  Mummification
(3)  Kyphi
(4)  Ancient Egyptian garden fragrance
(5)  Flowers at the pond
(6)  Scent of ancient Egyptian festivals
Price: 120€ + shipping

""""Abstract:  http://www.mnw.art.pl/gfx/muzeum/files/abstracts.doc

Table of Contents in Harrassowitz publication:
http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/dzo/artikel/201/572_201.pdf?t=1278073888

"""" Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ynumX2liz1wC&lpg=PR7&ots=lxFMNgr9Ut&dq=On%20the%20Heels%20of%20the%20Wandering%20Goddess%20Richter&pg=PA155#v=onepage&q&f=false

This thesis consists of an analysis of two ancient Egyptian
mythological manual; the Tebtunis Mythological Manual and the
Mythological Manual of the Delta. The analysis is focused on the
different modes of structuring and interpreting mythology found in
the manuals. The first chapter is a critical overview of the
different Egyptological theories on Egyptian mythology, with
special emphasis on aetiological myth and etymology. Structuralist theories are drawn upon to formulate two approaches to the mythological material found in the manual and utilized by the Egyptians themselves, viz. the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic. The manuals are found to use model mythological narratives or key myths built upon the myths of the Heliopolitan Ennead to structure the wealth of local mythological traditions. This creates a redundant structure in which the mythology of the individual district becomes an echo or actualization of basic mythic patterns. The Delta manual demonstrates the heuristic nature of this system by adding an extra deity to the Ennead in the form of the female Horus. This goddess is practically unknown outside of priestly manuals but was included to better interpret and associate myths of the Egyptian goddesses. Finally the techniques and structures found in the mythological manuals are compared to those found in the other priestly manuals found in archives, temple libraries or written on temple walls. I conclude that they share similar and compatible approaches which can also be applied to Egyptian ritual texts and narratives.

The annual Opet Festival, during which the bark of Amun-and ultimately those of Mut, Khons, and the king as well-journeyed from Karnak to Luxor, became a central religious celebration of ancient Thebes during the 18th Dynasty. The rituals of the Opet Festival celebrated the sacred marriage of Amun-with whom the king merged-and Mut, resulting in the proper transmission of the royal ka and thus ensuring the maintenance of kingship.

Alle Manuskripte unterliegen einer anonymisierten Begutachtung (peer review); über die Annahme oder Ablehnung des Manuskripts entscheiden die Herausgeber. Über die Internetseite http://studien-zur-altaegyptischen-kultur.de sind die Formatvorlage sowie weitere Hinweise zur Erstellung von Manuskripten für die SAK zu finden.

P. Berlin 8278 and its fragments are interesting in many respects. They give us a clear example of a Demotic dramatic genre, as well as the most complete Demotic version of the conflict of Horus and Seth, and are, therefore, an important link in the evolution of this myth throughout Egyptian history. The text also reveals interesting philological points through its use of rare or unparalleled words. Moreover, it can also be added to the list of rare Demotic texts mentioning letter-names. From a religious point of view, new mythological episodes are also very interesting. By giving us an attestation of the Osirian Khoiak festival celebration in the Fayum and providing us with new material for its study, the present text also expands our knowledge of Egyptian religion during the Ptolemaic period.

This study focuses on analyzing documentary papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt, in which pigs and piglets' ritualistic sacrifice is recorded. The texts have been examined from an economic, social and political point of view. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of the typology of this animal’s sacrifice in the Greco-Roman Egypt religion. In order to reach the aim, different aspects of this kind of sacrifice and its features have been investigated: what type of festivity pigs and piglets were sacrificed at, what deity they were offered to, who paid for the sacrifice's expenses or if there is any taboo in consuming their meat.

Since its discovery by Battiscombe Gunn, it is believed that Saqqara's Ostrakon is able to improve our understanding of how Egyptians designed curved elements, but the geometric significance of the hieratic values is still uncertain. Indeed, in order to obtain an indisputable result, the distance between the vertical ordinates is required, and this distance is not explicitly indicated on the limestone artefact.
But since there were no algebraic formulas at the time of the Pharaohs, a simple grid-based procedure was developed such as those used by the Egyptians to reproduce the scale drawings, to try to decipher the geometric meaning of the curve drawn on the find.
To conclude, this simple process permits to understand that the five hieratic values of the Saqqara Ostrakon describe a segmental arch whose span and rise correspond to the architectural proportions of several Egyptian tombs and arches, and that the numerical sequence of the artefact could be considered the most "ancient" mathematical formula of the circle.

Les ethnies voisines de la vallée du Nil sont souvent représentées en tant qu’ennemis du pouvoir pharaonique. Outre l’iconographie et les textes canoniques, qui figurent ces étrangers anéantis ou dominés, d’autres documents les montrent intégrés au sein de la société égyptienne. Certains étrangers prennent part à des fêtes et cérémonies organisées par le pouvoir royal aux côtés des participants égyptiens. Musiciens et danseurs pour la plupart, hommes ou femmes selon les situations, ils sont impliqués dans le rite et y accomplissent des tâches particulières.

The Myth of Er is a key parallel for Book 11 of Apuleius' Metamorphoses with respect to linguistic, thematic, and structural parallels. Among these structural parallels is a festival scene in both the Myth of Er and Met. 11 that explicitly recalls an earlier festival scene. These two pairs of festivals that bookend most of the action of their respective works point to the significance of Republic 10 for our understanding of Met. 11, and help us see how Lucius is satirized as the sort of person who, to allude to the Choice of Lives (617e-20d5), chooses the wrong life. With the Isis cult Lucius - unlike his anti-type Odysseus in the Myth of Er - falls victim to the same curiositas that plagued him throughout the novel, but this time he should have seen it coming.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03510109

This paper aims at reassessing the role during the festival of Min (pr.t Mnw) of two female characters named Shemayt and Matyt, alternately depicted as priestesses or deities. Women scarcely having key roles in religious ceremonies apart from playing music and singing, the presence of these priestesses during such an important ritual deserves special attention. Starting from a scene in a room north of the chapel of Philip Arrhidaeus in Karnak and based on the various attestations dating from the New Kingdom to the Roman period, the investigation focuses in turn on the study of their names, status and gestures as well as on the context of their depiction in relation with the god Min, in order to elucidate their role in the ritual.

Keywords : Min festival; Shemayt; Matyt; Madet; priestess; goddess; gesture; Kamutef; mourning; re-birth.

Le titre de conducteur de fête a été porté entre le Nouvel Empire et la Troisème Période intermédiaire par au moins une cinquantaine de personnages haut placés de l'administration et du clergé de l'Égypte ou membres influents de la Cour. Cet article met en avant l'apparition de ce titre ainsi que différentes facettes du rôle de conducteur de fête, joué théoriquement par le roi, mais remplacé le plus souvent par les personnages étudiés qui exerçaient en amont de la charge de responsable de l'organisation des festivités, rattachée également au titre de conducteur de fête.

Publication of loose blocks found in 2005 during the work of the dewatering project south-west of Karnak temple. They were dedicated by Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos to Khonsu the child. The hypothesis is that they belonged to a small chapel which was built close to the dromos leading from Mut temple to the Nile, westward of the north-south dromos linking Karnak and Luxor temples. It thus could be associated with the visit of the god Khonsu at Djeme

In Theban Tomb 65 dating to the reign of Ramesses IX and set within the context of representing the bark of Amun resting in a royal memorial temple during the “Beautiful Feast of the Valley” figures of twelve kings are shown. Representing the royal ancestors, these form a carefully assembled group establishing a line of ideal predecessors. As such they are reflective of an aspect of prevalent kingship ideology, and akin to royal titularies in expressing not only vague and eternal ideals, but a specific program or at least the outlines of one.
This paper then attempts to understand the motives behind, or at least suggest possible readings of the particular honour roll embodied in the king-list of TT 65.

During the archaeological fieldwork undertaken in the Henket-Ankh, the Temple of Millions of Years of Thutmose III situated between el-Assasif and el-Khokha, a large amount of sandstone blocks and fragments have been discovered. Although they are quite fragmented, they enable us to posit a hypothesis about some of the scenes that were originally carved on the temple’s walls. This paper focuses mainly on the fragments representing the king in the Heb Sed robe. The Heb Sed robe embodies royal power regeneration. It is therefore especially significant in the Temples of Millions of Years where this aspect played a key role. These reliefs would contribute to the already known iconographic corpus of this period, as well as to the understanding of the temple iconographic programme and function.

Full-text PDF available here:
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Workshop “Les célébrations-Hbw en Égypte ancienne :  aspects pratiques et rituels”

Université de Genève - Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Genève - 23-24 avril 2015

Le terme ḥb est le plus souvent traduit "fête", bien que ses différentes graphies et son champ d'action lexical permettent d'affiner un peu sa traduction.

This book in two volumes is a slightly revised version of my PhD Thesis on the New Year Festival in the temple of Hathor in Dendara, published by Harrassowitz. See the website of the publishing house for details and an abstract: https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/titel_5838.ahtml

This paper is devoted to the festivals of an Ancient Egyptian war-god Montu. The festivals celebrated in the Theban temples at Armant, Tod, Medamud and Karnak are considered. The scenes in the Ramesside
tomb of Khonsu-Ta (TT 31), representing the travel of Montu's river bark from Armant to Tod and backwards are analyzed. Based on the comparison between these scenes and the sources of earlier period, author reveals the time of the festival’s celebration and its relationship with other festivals of Montu, which took place in the temples at Medamud and Karnak during the Inundation season.

Scholars commonly accept the translation of the term ḥb as “festival” in English, as much as “fête” in French or “Fest” in German. While these three terms cover the same semantic field, their exact definitions or what they describe within our imagination may differ, depending on cultural contexts. Ḥb is probably the designation most used by the Egyptians themselves to talk about festival rituals, although other terms exist to describe what we would also call a festival (e.g. prt n nṯr - processions). Ancient Egyptian funerals do not heavily differ in their procedure from other festivals known as ḥbw. But, could funerary rituals be considered one of them? Several documents collected for my database of funerary scenes inform us about the links that could exist between both and may help more generally to get a better grasp of the concept of ḥb. Using lexicography, the different writings known to name a festival, the different uses of the ḥb-sign, and iconographical analysis, this talk will aim to approach the meaning that ḥb had for the ancient Egyptians.

The author reconstructs the ritual and symbolic program of the Full Moon Festival at Dendera temple. The study of the image of 14 gods ascending to the roof of the temple, Chapter 113 of the Book of the Dead and the wall-reliefs of the Osiris chapels on the roof of the Hathor temple shows that the main rituals of the Full Moon Festival were the Opening of the Face, Xnm itn ("Uniting with the sun-disk") and the Opening of the Mouth held over the statue of Hathor in the Osiris chapels.

En Égypte ancienne, si le temple est la maison du dieu, le territoire qui l’entoure est bien son jardin. Loin d’être casaniers, la divinité et son clergé profitent des nombreuses fêtes du calendrier pour y sortir en procession et parfois s’en éloigner.
Cette présentation s’attachera donc à étudier cette mobilité rituelle au cours des fêtes, et principalement celle des prêtres, escortes indispensables de la divinité. Nous étudierons à la fois les déplacements du clergé à l’échelle du territoire local, mais aussi ceux à une plus grande échelle sur l’ensemble de la vallée du Nil lors de manifestations plus exceptionnelles, telles que les fêtes-sed.

The New Year Festival was one of the most important events in the religious calendar of any Egyptian sanctuary. Since the small chapel on the roof, where the central ritual on New Year's Day took place, is preserved only in the temple of Dendara, this place is particularly suitable for a study on this subject.
The texts concerning the ceremonies, which are mostly located on the walls of the staircases and the pillared kiosk on the roof, contain many different designations for New Year's Day. Apart from usual terms like wp rnpt and tp rnpt, there are some unfrequent denominations such as ḥb qmȝ sj ("the festival of the one who created her") and dwȝw n wʿb ("the morning of purity"), which are specific to Dendara and which emphasise certain aspects of the festival like the crucial moment at the beginning of the day and the close relationship between Hathor and her father Re. The ensemble of designations can be regarded as an expression of the theological essence of the festival, distilled by the ancient Egyptian priests into some short notions.
This paper aims to give a brief overview of the diversity of terms for the first day of the year in the temple of Dendara, followed by an analysis of the meaning and application of the most significant ones.

Das Neumond- und Behedet-Fest in Edfu – Eine Strukturanalyse von Text und Bild einer „unregelmäßigen“ Soubassement-Dekoration, in: A. Rickert/B. Ventker (Eds.), Altägyptische Enzyklopädien. Soubassementstudien I, SSR 7, Wiesbaden 2014, 607-684