Les portes des tombes thébaines tardives :

programme décoratif, textes et paléographie

SILVIA EINAUDI (EPHE/PSL ; Université de Cagliari, Sardaigne)

MIGUEL ÁNGEL MOLINERO POLO (Université de La Laguna, Tenerife)

Les portes des tombes dites « monumentales » dans la nécropole de l’Assassif se caractérisent par la présence de textes et de scènes traitant certains thèmes récurrents : le passage du défunt à travers les portes de l’au-delà et sa sortie de la Douat, l’adoration du dieu soleil et d’Osiris, l’invocation au roi et à la divine adoratrice, les offrandes. L’analyse de leurs programmes décoratifs non seulement nous éclaire sur la valeur symbolique de ces lieux de passage, mais nous permet également de mettre en évidence les similitudes entre les différentes tombes, ce qui témoigne de l’emploi de modèles communs (ou de copies directes d’un monument à l’autre).

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Towards the ritual of Opening the Mouth in the tomb of Padiamenope

BARBARA ENGELMANN – VON CARNAP (Universität Heidelberg)

The ritual of Opening the Mouth from the tomb of the chief lector priest Padiamenope (TT 33) has long been known and was most recently published by E. Otto in 1960. Together with the rituals of TT 37 (Harwa) and TT 34 (Montemhet), it belongs to the most well-preserved versions in the Late Period Theban tombs.

Studies in the years 2015 and 2016 have shown that the ritual version in TT 33 is far more detailed than previously thought. It therefore goes far beyond the content of the rituals in the tombs of the 18th and 19th dynasty in Thebes.
In this lecture an overview of all scenes will be given, including newly identified scenes, recorded in TT 33, as well as their order, design and context in the tomb ́s iconographic and textual program.

Finally, this contribution aims to analyse the structure of the ritual in the tomb of the chief lector priest.

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The tomb owners Montuemhat and Petamenope and their “Libraries of Stone” TT 34 and TT 33

LOUISE GESTERMANN (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, IANES – Ägyptologie)

The Fourth Prophet of Amun Montuemhat, Major of Thebes and Governor of Upper Egypt, and the Chief Lector Priest Petamenope were, apparently, contemporaries, despite it being difficult to decide who was first to be born, respectively, to die. In any event, it seems that, through personal contact, they influenced each other, affecting their choices in the decoration and the concept of their tombs TT 34 and TT 33.

With regard to the texts and images used in the tombs, many parallels und numerous overlaps can be observed, some of the compositions occur only in these tombs. Furthermore, the architecture and the structure of the tombs, as different as they seem to be, actually show great similarities. However, this comparability should not obscure the fact that both of these tomb builders each placed emphasis on his individual highlights and created his own and unique burial site.

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The Tomb of Ramose (TT 132)

CHRISTIAN GRECO (Museo Egizio di Torino)

Ramose was a high official of the 25th Dynasty. His tomb (TT 132) has long been neglected and rarely documented in the Egyptological literature. Though it has received little attention before now, the decorated vault of the tomb of Ramose is of great importance because it contains a version of the Book of the Day and of the Book of the Night, both well known in the Ramesside edition (KV 9 and KV 6). In TT 132 both the Book of the Day and the Book of the Night seem to be in enigmatic writing. The texts of the hours and of the gates do not follow the canonical order and they present many interpretative difficulties. The words are not disposed in a logical order within a sentence and fragments of text belonging to different hours are mixed together. The cryptic orthography or a word does not always correspond to that of the word in Normalschrift. The determinatives are uncommon and the normal reading order of signs might be altered, creating perturbations.

An explanation of these transpositions can be found in the retrograde writing. The reading direction of a text copied in retrograde writing is opposite to the usual one. It is plausible to suppose that an artist decorating the tomb, having to copy a text written in retrograde writing and ignoring this writing system might have copied à l’envers, i.e., starting from the end. This system could work perfectly when the artist kept the same number of columns as on the papyrus, from which he was copying, when transferring the text to the wall. Instead when the disposition of the text varied, the artist, who probably ignored the text and started copying from the end, altered the order of the columns, creating a text that needs serious emendations to be interpreted.

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Typology and Artisanship in Twenty-fifth Dynasty Theban Stone Shabtis

MEG GUNDLACH (Independant Scholar)

Despite the many typological studies on shabtis, the reintroduction of high-quality stone shabti production in Twenty-fifth Dynasty Thebes is often overlooked, due to the brevity of the revival. The eight contemporary individuals identified as owners include some of the biggest names of their time: Karakhamun, Harwa, Pedamenope, Montuemhat, Wedjarenes, Dieshebsed, Amenirdis I, and Shepenwepet II. Of these, the Chief Lector Priest Pedamenope’s shabti collection stands out for both the craftsmanship and quantity of the figures. This talk will outline the many aspects of shabti creation focused on throughout the study, with particular emphasis placed on diagnostic features that can be used for identification both in fieldwork and the increasingly digitalized museum presence. As individually sculpted objects, this corpus further provides an ideal opportunity for the study of artisans and artistic production. Utilizing a cohesive approach combining three traditionally independent fields—the study of artistic features, orthography and paleography—an overview of the nine artisan groups identified within the figures of Pedamenope will also be highlighted.

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Dress-choices of the owners of Late Period tombs in the Asasif

ALEKSANDRA HALLMANN
(The Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures; The Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

The monumental temple-tombs in the Asasif present a unique opportunity to investigate the dress choices of their owners during the 25th and 26th Dynasties. The study of their decorative programmes, including the historic and stylistic developments of the represented outfits, allows for the tracing of connections between the various tombs and their owners. The comparative analysis of the same item of clothing seen in the tombs, as well as other media from the period, such as stelae, coffins, and statues, chronologically and geographically contextualize the sartorial choices of Late Period tombs owners.

The lecture draws upon research conducted for the forthcoming book “Ancient Egyptian Costume. Studies in Late Period Private Representations” (Brill, HES), and will discuss those choices and stress the importance of the overall examination of the decorative programs of the tombs for the dress history of the period.

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Loin d’une production standardisée : Les particularités stylistiques des statuettes funéraires thébaines d’époque saïte

RAPHAËLE MEFFRE (CNRS, UMR 8167 « Orient & Méditerranée »)

L’évolution stylistique des statuettes de serviteurs funéraires produites dans les ateliers thébains après la XXVe dynastie est actuellement bien plus mal connue que celle de la production memphite de l’époque. L’étude de plusieurs troupes d’ouchebtis, croisée avec celle des autres monuments appartenant aux mêmes propriétaires, permet de revoir la datation d’un ensemble de statuettes. Redatées et comparées aux autres exemplaires de la XXVIe dynastie, ces statuettes apportent non seulement des données prosopographiques nouvelles mais permettent aussi d’identifier un style propre à la production de la région thébaine.

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Offering Scenes in the Tomb of Karakhamun (TT 223): Case Study of the Intericonicity and “Interimplementation” in a Kushite Tomb

ELENA PISCHIKOVA (South Asasif Conservation Project, American University in Cairo)

This presentation will use elements of ten offering scenes in the tomb of Karakhamun (TT 223) to illustrate the methods of transmission of imagery from earlier monuments and within the necropolis observed in the South Asasif.
This ongoing study explores the observation that the iconography of Karakhamun’s images and style of their execution rarely refer to the same ancient period or group of monuments. Every image had at least two separate references often from different eras, one iconographic and one stylistic.

It is being suggested that the iconographic content and the style of its implementation were transmitted through divergent sets of actions, copying mediums, tools and techniques and became uniquely autonomous in the process. This creates a necessity to trace what can be called “dual” transmission for every image.

Therefore iconography and style of its execution in the tomb of Karakhamun are explored independently from each other through the frameworks of intericonicity and the newly introduced concept of “interimplementation”.
The presentation will attempt to recreate the transition of consciously chosen references from the past through the process of “dual’ transmission to the Kushite variant. “Dual” transmission generates two layers of re-interpretation encoded into the Kushite image.

The presentation will touch on the newly introduced concept of “anti-transmission” when an artist uses an earlier model to deliberately oppose it. “Anti-transmission” is responsible for the unique innovative contextualization of images in every scene in the tomb of Karakhamun. Similar methods of transmission are observed in other tombs of South Asasif and necropolis in general. Artistic and ritual contextualization of tomb imagery, texts, ritual activities and burial assemblages in South Asasif elaborately intertwined Theban, Abydene and Nubian traditions, creating a multi-functional space that served as a museum, library, temple, a place of divine festivals and pilgrimage.

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Formes, fonctions et usages de marqueurs d’abstraction dans la décoration des tombes monumentales de l’Assassif

EDSON POIATI FILHO (université Montpellier 3 – UMR 5140-ASM)

Les « marqueurs d’abstraction » sont des préfixes attestés depuis les premières dynasties, employés pour exprimer de concepts et de notions à travers un processus de dérivation. Leur emploi est fréquent dans la littérature égyptienne, notamment dans les autobiographies, décrets, corpora de textes religieux, contes, sagesses et hymnes. Souvent sans parallèles, les noms formés au moyen de marqueurs d’abstraction sont mis en avant dans diverses compositions et pourraient constituer une marque formelle d’érudition. Cette communication envisage ainsi d’analyser la réception de marqueurs d’abstraction dans le programme décoratif de tombes des XXVe-XXVIe dynasties de l’Assassif pour évaluer leur rôle dans la construction identitaire de l’élite thébaine de cette période.

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Décoration et stratégies mémorielles de la porte du IIe pylône de la tombe de Padiaménopé (TT 33)

ISABELLE RÉGEN (université Montpellier 3 – UMR 5140-ASM)

Remployée dans le petit temple de Médinet Habou, une porte de granite rose au nom de Padiaménopé provient selon toute vraisemblance du IIe pylône de la tombe TT 33, si l’on se fonde sur l’emplacement de portes de tombeaux thébains à la décoration similaire.
Cette porte, aujourd’hui très détériorée, constituait l’une des premières « présentations de soi » de Padiaménopé offertes aux visiteurs de la tombe. L’analyse de la décoration de cet élément architectural permettra de mettre en lumière les stratégies mémorielles élaborées par Padiaménopé et de replacer cette porte dans le fonctionnement global du monument.

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Some Observations on the Transmission of the Book of the Earth in TT33

JOSHUA AARON ROBERSON
(University of Memphis, Institute of Egyptian Art & Archaeology)

The so-called “Book of the Earth” is a collection of contextually related cosmological scenes and texts, which occur in royal monuments (primarily tombs) from the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-Fifth Dynasties. Non-royal exemplars appear first on funerary papyri of the Twenty-First Dynasty, with scattered occurrences in private tombs and other funerary equipment from the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty and later.
This paper will examine the collection of Book of the Earth material from the Theban tomb of Pedamenopet (TT33), to assess its relationship(s) to earlier royal and private exemplars, for the purpose of shedding light on the transmission and reception of this important work after the end of the New Kingdom.

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Une ronde de déesses pour Padiamenopé (TT 33)

CLAUDE TRAUNECKER (université de Strasbourg – UMR 7044-TEO)

Parmi les originalités de la tombe du prêtre lecteur Padiamenopé (TT 33), la plus spectaculaire est la reproduction souterraine de la superstructure du tombeau d’Osiris à Abydos. Le couloir XIII tourne autour du mastaba d’Osiris, masse de 30 coudées de côté, ornée des 15 portes et 24 chapelles représentant, selon moi, le tombeau du dieu tel qu’on l’a imaginé et reconstruit les ritualistes abydéens sous Séthy Ier. À chaque angle du cénotaphe, deux déesses bras tendus et tournant le dos aux pèlerins protègent le monument. Elles sont réalisées en ronde bosse. Les textes qui accompagnent ces huit statues, malheureusement assez fragmentaires, font allusion, semble-t-il, à une liturgie processionnelle inconnue impliquant le temple d’Amon à Karnak. Sur les sarcophages napatéens d’Anlamani et d’Aspelta, inspirés du décor du cénotaphe de Padiamenopé, les textes correspondants sont eux, très banals. Le but de l’exposé est de présenter ce dossier inattendu ouvrant des perspectives nouvelles sur les liturgies funéraires thébaines.