Egypt Exploration Society

Three Monuments from Memphis in the Fitzwilliam Museum Author(s): Janine Bourriau Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 68 (1982), pp. 51-59 Published by: Egypt Exploration Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3821622 . Accessed: 21/01/2014 05:10
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(5I)

THREE MONUMENTS FROM MEMPHIS IN THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM

By JANINE BOURRIAU

THEEgypt Exploration Society is planning to begin work at Memphis in I98I, and it seems appropriate in this volume celebrating the Society's work to look forward to that enterprise by publishing for the first time three objects from Memphis in the Fitzwilliam Museum. I am most grateful to the editor for allowing me the opportunity to do so.I The objects are a stela (E. SS. 37) of a High Priest of Memphis, Senbuy, of the late Middle Kingdom, a statue of Amenophis III (E. 82. 1913), which almost certainly came from Petrie's excavations at Memphis, and a stela (E. 195. I899) of the chief goldworker, Panehsy, of the reign of Merneptah. The Fitzwilliam has a considerable collection of objects from Memphis and Saqqara,thanks largely to its subscriptions to the excavations of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt and the Egypt Exploraand the lists tion Society. Most of them are listed in the Topographical Bibliography2 in since this the of recent acquisitions published I974 journal. Of unpublished objects from the site, these three are perhaps the most interesting, and will be discussed in chronological order. The Stela of Senbuy We do not know when the stela of Senbuy came to the museum and for this reason its number, E.SS. 37, incorporates no year number. It was registered soon after the Second World War when the Fitzwilliam's present catalogue was prepared by Norman Rayner with help from F. W. Green, Honorary Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities. It has never been published. The stela (see fig. i and pl. III, i) is round-topped and made of limestone, and measures 34-0 cm long, I8-5 cm wide, and 4-0 cm thick. Filling the lunette is a design consisting of two wdat-eyes placed either side of a sn sign; below are six horizontal lines of text, and below these three figures of roughly equal size. In the centre stands the owner of the stela, Senbuy, with his wife, Nubemheb, behind him, her hand touching his shoulder; in front of them both, offering a lotus bouquet, we find a son, Re(-Seth. The stela is incised throughout, and there is almost no modelling of the surface except on the legs of the figures. The stone was already bruised when the inscription was cut, as the area around the knot in the son's kilt
I I have also benefited a great deal from discussions with Dr Jaromir Malek, Dr Geoffrey Martin, and Mr Cyril Spaull. Mr Reginald Coleman most skilfully copied my facsimile drawings of the two stelae. 2 Omitted from the Bibliography because they are uninscribed E. 53. g19, an ear-stela, E. I2-I3, two areu trial pieces, and E. 14I. 19I3, a Ptolemaic shrine-stela, all from the British School of Archaeology in Egypt excavations at Memphis. In addition there are two shabtis, E. 51. 1932, of the Osiris-Apis from the Serapeum, and E. I. I896, of Psammetichus, born of Sebarekhyt, from Saqqara.

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I. Stela of Senbuy, Fitzwilliam Museum E. SS. 37

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THREE MONUMENTS FROM MEMPHIS

53

shows. It was originally painted, but only a few traces of dark red remain on the legs of the central figure. Apart from chips missing from three of the corners the stela is complete. The faces of all three figures have been scarred with a chisel, and there are similar marks on the arms of Re<-Seth and on Senbuy's left hand and foot. Most interesting of all is the chisel-mark on the Seth-animal in 1. 7. Since the inscription has otherwise been left untouched, the marks appear to be a deliberate mutilation, perhaps specifically intended to deprive the family of the use of their hands, feet, and mouths and thus the enjoyment of the offerings promised in the inscription. Whether their association with the Seth cult, which is suggested by the occurrence of the rare name Rec-Seth, brought the proscription upon them, remains no more than an intriguing possibility. Internal evidence strongly suggests that the stela originally came from the Memphite region, and it is listed in the 'Saqqara Miscellaneous' section of the Topographical Bibliography (III2, 2, 738). The provenancecannot be assumed from Senbuy's title alone since at least one High Priest of Memphis in the Middle Kingdom, Senwosretcankhu, was buried at Lisht.3 The stela is of interest for several reasons: it preserves the name of a hitherto unknown Memphite High Priest; it mentions the Festival of the Rising of Sothis, and it provides another example of the rare name Rr-Sth.
Translation (i) An offering which the King gives (to) Ptah, South of his Wall, Lord of 'Ankh- Tawy,

of breadand beer, (and) (2) Osiris,Lord of Busiris, that they may give invocation-offerings the altar and offeringtable (3) oxen and fowl, and food-offeringscomingforth upon (4) one whose the the and the k3 Lord All count, (5) comingto hereditary prince for of of of the templeis awaited on the day of the rising of Sothis, (6) the greatest of the directorsof craftsmenof the Lord of All, chiefpriest of his god, the lector-priest,Senbuy,justified. In front of the woman's face and continuing below her arm is a single vertical line: his wife whomhe loves, the royal ornament,Nubemheb.Above the son's head is a short horizontal line: (his) son Rer-Seth,justified. Commentary
it appearson severalprivatestelae and on an obelisk of SesostrisI from Medinet el-Fayfim. It is a
geographical term (although Griffith in Tanis, II, 15 n. 4, suggested that this was not the original meaning) referring variously to the region of Memphis, the city itself, or the necropolis.4 1. 4. nb (r-) dr. This epithet, though here and in 1. 6 applied to the god Ptah, was a general one associated with kings or gods.5 The dr-sign itself is a clumsy, schematic version of Gardiner M36, 'a bundle of flax stems'.
3 BMMA
4

1. i. nb rnh-t;wy. This epithet does not seem to be applied to Ptah before the Middle Kingdom, when

28 (November 1933, Part 2), II-I2, figs. I5-16. The different interpretations are summarized in Maj Sandman Holmberg, The God Ptah (Lund, I946),

213-15.

5 R. 0. Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Oxford, 1962), 129. Gardiner in Egyptian Grammar, 3rd edn. (Oxford, I964), 79, suggests a slightly narrower application to the sun-god or the king.

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54

JANINE BOURRIAU

1. 5. s ;w r it f m hwt-ntr rr prt Spdt,6 'one whose coming to the temple is awaited on the day of the rising of Sothis'. Occurring as it does in the list of Senbuy's titles, this phrase describes one of his most important duties, which was, to take the most obvious interpretation first, to lead the ritual celebrations on the feast of the prt Spdt, the day when the star Sirius was visible again after its conjunction with the sun had resulted in a seventy-day period of invisibility.7 Parker has demonstrated that the lunar calendar was based on the heliacal rising of Sirius which had perhaps originally been observed to coincide with the beginning of the inundation. In the Middle Kingdom, the event, prt Spdt, appears for the first time in lists of festivals,8 in tombs,9 on stelae,I0 and on coffins." It was a feast of paramount importance, equivalent to the wp-rnpt, 'Opening of the Year', and its celebration was perhaps a regular duty of the High Priest of Memphis. The inscriptions recording the High Priests of the Middle Kingdom12 contain no reference to any role in the prt Spdt, but GardinerI3 mentions Old Kingdom occurrences of the title followed by the phrase n rr hb or n rr which he translates as 'belonging to (i.e. functioning on) the day of festival'. The phrase may have only a general meaning since the High Priest must have had a leading role in all Memphite festivals, but it is possible that a particular feast, viz. prt Spdt, was meant. Senbuy, after all, thought it important enough to single it out from the other feasts in which he officiated. Another possible interpretation of s (w r it'f m hwt-ntr rr prt Spdt is that Senbuy himself made, or was responsible for making, the observations of Sirius. In this case, only when he gave the word by entering the temple (or climbing down from the roof?) that Sirius was visible again could the festival and the new year begin. The text is not explicit, but at least it suggests that during the Middle Kingdom the temple of Ptah at Memphis was an observation-point, if not the observation-point for all Egypt as classical authors record.14 Incidentally in the cutting of Aa slip of the chisel has produced a mark which might almost be taken for part of the sign. 1. 6. wr hrp hmwt n nb r-dr,15'greatest of the directors of craftsmen of the Lord of All'. The title of the High Priest is followed by an epithet referring to Ptah: cf. Wb. III, 86, 4, which gives a wr hrp hmwt n Pth of the New Kingdom, and the wr hrp hmwt n Rsy-inb-f of Gardiner's Onomastica, I, 38*. The precise meaning of the title has been much discussed, most recently by De Meulenaere in Festschrift des Berliner Agyptischen Museums zum I50 jdhrigen Bestehen (Berlin, I974), 183-4, and Fischer, Varia. Egyptian Studies, I (New York, 1976), 63-7. As Fischer has noted, writings like this one, where the title is followed by n plus the name or epithet of Ptah, cast doubt on De Meulenaere's suggested new reading of wr hrp hmwt as hmww wr shm, translated as 'l'artisan du Tres Puissant'. Dieter Wilding has provided in the Lexikon (ii, 1258-63) an extremely useful list of High Priests of Memphis of the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period. Senbuy can now perhaps be added after no. 24 Srgm(?) of the Thirteenth Dynasty.
6 For the construction see W. Spiegelberg, Z4AS 64 (1930), 72-3; A. H. Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe (Paris, 1916) 58; Faulkner, op. cit. 208; Wb. III, 419, 3. Commentators have agreed that the variant of the construction with r dates from the New Kingdom (Amenophis II). This stela takes it back a little further, into the late Middle Kingdom. 7 R. A. Parker, The Calendars of Ancient Egypt (Chicago, I950), 7. 8 Op. cit. 34, 173; Wb. iv, III, I4. 9 P. H. Newberry, Beni Hasan, I (London,
IO

1893), pl.

24. 1902),

CC 20338, H. 0. Lange and H. Schaifer,Grab- und Denksteine des Mittleren Reichs, I (Berlin, "I J. Garstang, Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt (London, 1907), pl. ix, 1. 9. 12 D. Wildung in Lexikon der Agyptologie, ii, 1259 and bibliography there cited.
I3
14

349-50.

A. H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, I (Oxford, I947), Parker, op. cit. 39 n. II7.

39*.

I5

One minor correction should be made to the facsimile drawing. In the writing of hmwt Gardiner U24 is .

written

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THREE MONUMENTS FROM MEMPHIS

55

With the exception of his high-ranking but honorific titles iry-prt h4ty-rI6 Senbuy's other offices were priestly: hm-ntr r; n ntr'f, 'chief priest of his god'; hry-hbt, 'lector-priest'; s;w r it'f m hwt-ntr rr prt Spdt, whether this in fact represents a separate office or simply a function of the High Priest. There is no evidence here to suggest that the literal meaning of the title, 'greatest of the directors of craftsmen', carried any force.I7 1. 6. Snbwy, cf. Ranke, Personennamen,I, 3I4, 3. A common late Middle Kingdom name. 1. 7. Rr-Sth, cf. op. cit. 322, 4; Te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion, I36. Another example of a rare name compounded with the names of Re and Seth. The occurrence cited by Ranke, the brewer (rfty) Sth-Rr, appears on a Middle Kingdom stela from Abydos (Cairo 20345, Lange and Schafer, I, 356; iv, pi. 26). Simpson18 discusses a reference to a hwt rct Swth on a statue of the Second Intermediate Period from Heliopolis, and, in this context, the probable Memphite provenance of the Fitzwilliam stela is noteworthy.
1. 8. Nbw-m-hb, cf. Ranke, Personennamen, I, 191, 5. Her title, hkrt nswt, 'royal ornament', is a

common one for women in the Old and Middle Kingdoms.19

The stela is probably to be dated to the Thirteenth Dynasty or perhaps a little later. If we apply the criteria of Bennett,20 Smither,21 and Barta,22 we find that the offering
formula shows characteristics first appearing in the late Twelfth Dynasty from the

reign of Sesostris 1,23 but it does not show the writing nsw di htp for nsw htp di which becomes more common in horizontal inscriptions during the Second Intermediate Period.24 This negative argument cannot be pushed very far, but the personal names and costume of Senbuy25 also suit a Thirteenth Dynasty rather than a Second Intermediate Period date. The style of the cutting suggests the late Mliddle Kingdom: cf. the occasional poor spacing such as the cramped writing of Snbwy in 1. 6, the irregularity of the hr sign in 11.3 and 4, and the disproportionately large and clumsy nb and dr signs. A Statue of Amenophis III The kneeling statue of Amenophis III is in brown quartzite, and was received and numbered by the Museum in I913. The provenance is not absolutely certain, since there is no record of the piece in the Museum's remaining records of 1913 acquisitions (these are however a haphazard group of documents) or in the distribution lists of the British School held at University College.26
i6

See the titles with which they occur in G. T. Martin, Egyptian Administrative and Private Name Seals

(Oxford, 1971), I77. 17 Sandman Holmberg, op. cit. 56. I8 JEA 62 (1976), 4I-4.

Martin, op. cit. I84. JEA 27 (I94I), 77-82, I57. 21 JEA 25 (I939) 34-7. 22 W. Barta, Aufbau und Bedeutung der altdgyptischen Opferformel,(Gliickstadt, I968), 72-80. 23 The writing of Osiris with the determinative of the carrying chair, Gardiner Q2 -4; of Ddw as ~ the phrase k; n N. 24 The earliest dated example cited by Barta, op. cit. 73, is as early as the reign of Sobekhotpe IV. 25 J. Vandier, Manuel d'archeologie, in (Paris, 1958), 249. 26 I am very grateful to Mrs Barbara Adams for checking them for me.
20

19

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JANINE BOURRIAU 56 The statue, E. 82. 1913 (see pl. III, 3-4), is brokenoff at the base of the neck, above the feet, and at the corners of the offeringtable. It measures45-0 cm in height and 35-7 cm in width. The neck-break is I4*8 cm wide by 23.0 cm long, and the lower break 49'4 cm wide by 22-7 cm long. The stone is coarse, veined with greyish-white streaks. The king is kneeling upright and holds an offering-table in his arms. He wears a beard, a wig with long side lappets and pigtail, a broad bead collar with Horus-head terminals, and a short kilt. The pose occurs in statues of other Eighteenth Dynasty kings, e.g. Tuthmosis III,27 but it is rare, if not unique, for Amenophis III.28 This is probably an accident of survival due to the total destruction of the king's temple at Memphis and the almost complete loss of his mortuary temple at Thebes. The square-topped back pillar and the support for the offering-table carry inscriptions, respectively ntr nfr nb t;wy Nb-Mcrt-Rc (mry) P(t)h, and s; Rr [cartouche hammered out] mr Shmt. The king's name has been deliberately removed from the cartouche visible from the front, and this incidentally may suggest that the statue originally stood with its back against a wall or similar obstruction. Little has been lost from the base since the front column is complete, leaving room for only a narrow sign such as mr to complete the inscription on the back. Shmt was the goddess usually associated with Ptah at Memphis.29 While nothing of it survives above ground, a temple to Ptah was built by Amenophis III at Memphis. A statue of the royal scribe Amenhotpe30found there carries inscriptions recording its construction. The Stela of Panehsy Unlike E. SS. 37, the date when the stela of Panehsy came to the museum is known. It came in 1899 and was presented by Professor Lewis of Trinity College to Dr M. R. to the for the iofund James, Director of the Museum, in return for his subscrition purchase of the Carne collection.3IThere is a reference to the stela in the Wilkinson manuscripts32in the Griffith Institute which includes drawings of the cartouche of Merneptah and the figure of Ptah. Wilkinson made these sketches in 821 in Alexandria and he describes the stela as 'a block of white stone in [the] possession of Mr Carn [sic] found by Lee at Akhmim(?)'. The Revd John Carne, educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, visited Egypt in i821,33 and the stela was apparently obtained from Peter Lee34who was British Consul in Alexandriaand whose name crops up in many letters and diaries of British travellers of the period. The stela, E. 195. I899 (see fig. 2 and pi. III, 2), measures 54 cm long by 18-5 cm wide by 7i5 cm thick. It is rectangularand made of fine, white limestone and is complete
28 29

27 Vandier, op. cit. p.i cl. Op. cit. 324, 630, both references to this statue.

30 Gardiner in Tarkhan and Memphis v (London, 1913), 33-6. 31 Information in a letter from Lewis to James dated 23 Jan. I899 in the archives of the Department of Antiquities. 32 Wilkinson MSS IV. 24. I owe this reference to Dr Jaromir Malek.
33

Sandman Holmberg, op. cit. 188-9.

W. R. Dawson and E. P. Uphill, Who was Who in Egyptology (London, I972), 53. 34 Op. cit. 167.

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0 5 . I cm. I FIG. 2. Stela of Panetsy, Fitzwilliam Museum E. i95. 1899

10

cm.

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58

JANINE

BOURRIAU

except for two chips along the right side. Two signs have been lost with them but they can be restored without difficulty. The stela begins with four vertical lines in sunk relief containing names and epithets of the god Ptah. Below these in raised relief is Ptah himself holding a ws-sceptre hand the and dd-signs, seated before a table of offerings. Between Ptah and the table, also in raised relief, is a date and a cartouche, 'Year 4 of Binere'-Meramun' (Merneptah). Below the scene follow six lines of text in sunk relief naming Panehsy and his parents, PrE(emheband Tamy(t). The Merneptah date is of
particular interest since it allows another stela commemorating the same family in the British Museum35 to be closely dated.

Translation

(I) An offeringwhich [the King] gives (to) Ptah, Fair of Face, Osiris,First of the Westand Thoth, that they may grant a going down and erners, Anubis, (2) RerIHarakhty, hindrance without throughthe gates of (3) the necropolisand a going down comingforth into the sacredbarquelike thefollowers of the god when he travels to the (4) god, to the k3 of the chief goldworkerof the House of Gold, who makes(statues of) the gods, Panehsy, justified, (6) born of the Lady of the justified, son of the chief goldworkerPreremheb, House, the chantressof Amun, Tamy(t),justified.

Commentary Vertical inscription(upper): (i) Pth sps (2) sty Rr nfrhr (3) sdmnh (4) (w)t. The epithets of Ptah are the familiar ones.36 The stela seems to belong by reason of its text and the relationship of text and image with the large group of votive stelae of the Nineteenth Dynasty found by Petrie at Memphis.37 This is the strongest reason for supposing it to have come from Memphis rather than Akhmim, which Wilkinson himself had doubted. 1. 3. No distinction is made between ,, the vulture (Gardiner Gi), and nh, the guinea fowl (Gardiner G2I): see also 1. 5 in the horizontal text.38 (Lower): rnpt (ht-sp) 4 n Ba-n-rr-Mr-n-'Imn. The presence of the king's name and date, which is what drew Wilkinson's attention to the stela, is an argument in favour of its being a votive rather than a funerary stela. It also provides a terminuspost quem for the stela BM I41, since the three people on the Fitzwilliam stela are named on it also with the epithet, m;r hrw. Horizontal inscription: hry nbw n hwt-nbw ms ntrw, a title held by both Panehsy and his father, is translated following James as 'chief goldworker of the House of Gold who makes (statues of) the gods.' Erika Schott has recently discussed the activities which took place in the House of Gold in a series of articles in Gottinger Miszellen.39 She confirms that during the Old Kingdom at least the Opening
35

B. M.

141,

T. G. H. James, Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian Stelae etc., Part 9 (London, 1970), 23-4,
pls. xi, xiv, xv; H. M. Stewart,

pi. xix. 36 Sandman Holmberg, op. cit. 70-4, 75-9, io8-II. 37 W. M. Flinders Petrie, Memphis, i (London, 1909),

Egyptian Stelae,

Reliefs and Paintings from the Petrie Collection (Warminster, 1976), pls. 28-9. 38 Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 469, and references cited. 39 GMz 2 (1972), 37-41; 3i-6; 29-34; 9 3 (I972), 4 (I973), 5 (I973), 25-30;

(I974),

33-8.

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THREE MONUMENTS FROM MEMPHIS

59

of the Mouth ritual could take place there and that it was a treasury, a 'Schatzhaus', in which fine linen and oil and the personal apparel of the king were kept. In this earlier context the mswt ntr m hwt nbw40meant the toilet of the King. There is no doubt, however, that the House of Gold in the Nineteenth Dynasty was also a workshop in which statues were made.41 11.6-7. For Pt-nhsy see Ranke, Personennamen,I, I 3, I3. Panehsy was the son of Pre)emheb and Tamy(t), and the only other object which can with certainty be attributed to the same family is the BM stela I4I. The latter is considerably larger than the Fitzwilliam stela and is cut entirely in sunk relief. It records the names and titles of eighteen members of the family but without making the relationship between them clear. The Cambridge stela establishes that Panehsy and Precemheb, who are the principal dedicants of the BM stela, were father and son, and the suffix f in the case of 'his mother T;-my(t)' refers to Panehsy. The other affiliations remain unknown since it seems extravagant to assume that *f, wherever it occurs on the BM stela, refers to Panehsy. The central figure in the scene on the stela is the Osiris fetish, and this, together with the ranks of relations, suggests that it was a funerary stela. The British Museum has no record of its provenance or when it was acquired. 1. 7. o is used for t in T;-my(t).

The contrast between the two stelae, E. SS. 37 and E. I95. I899, is very great. The signs on the latter are confidently cut with straight strokes of the chisel. The quality of the cutting is much higher and the signs carefully spaced, with the elongated charactertypical of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
40 GM 4 (I973),
41

34.

A. H. Gardiner in N. de Garis Davies, The Tombof Amenemht (London, 1915), 58 n. i; reference quoted by James, op. cit. 24, viz. B. Bruyere, Deir el Medineh (1930), 44, 68.

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PLATE III

i. Stela of Senbuy, Fitzwilliam Museum E.SS.37

2. Stela of Panehsy, Fitzwilliam Museum E.I95. I899

3. Statue of Amenophis III, Fitzwilliam Museum E.82. 1913, Front

4. Back view of same

Photographs courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum

THREE

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MUSEUM