Oriental Institute Museum visit

[ikhet_sekhmet]

We're home from three weeks in the US, during which I managed to wrangle a few hours at the Oriental Institute's museum in Chicago. It's deceptive - it seems small, just a few rooms on one floor of the building, but it's just crammed with goodies. The current exhibit on birds in Ancient Egypt includes a spectacular ibis mummy case and the unwrapped remains of a mummified eagle, some of the gilding still present on the blackened body. The inevitable Sekhmet (OIM 1339) is a gorgeous pink-grey bust, without rosettes on the dress and part of the throne attached to the back. Her gaze is as weighty as it always is, her expression as peaceful as Durga slaying her enemies with ease. There is also a colossal statue of Tutankhamun, beautiful lions from the Ishtar Gate, and an immense lammasu - I walked into the room facing away from it, turned round, and nearly had a heart attack.

Among several other items which caught my eye was a Nineteenth Dynasty stela (OIM 1567) from the Ramesseum, showing the owner worshipping Sobek-Re and an enthroned lion-headed god. The hieroglyphs were too eensy and shallow for me to make out, but the label gave the dedicator's name as Nebaa and the god's name as Iwnet. This sent me on a wild Google chase until I tracked down the puzzling object in a thesis - turns out the owner was one Nebwa, Scribe of the Army of the Lord of the Two Lands, and the lion-headed figure is not a god called Iwnet (Dendera!), but the goddess Wenut. So that's that cleared up.

__
Exell, Karen (2006) A social and historical interpretation of Ramesside period votive stelae, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2631/
Quibell, J.E. The Ramesseum. B. Quaritch, London, 1898.

Comments

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I had no idea they mummified birds! That's fascinating.

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

Birds, cats, crocodiles - you name it. They were sacred animals which were kept at the temples, or offerings made to the temples (which resulted in an unpleasant industry generating animal mummies to sell to tourists).

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

The different types of animals they mummified is fascinating and a little disturbing, in a way.

The unpleasant industry of animal mummies is horrifying. :(

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

IIUC a lot of the mummies-for-sale were fakes stuffed with trash!

(By a bizarre concidence, Jon is on his way home with Frank's ashes as I type these very words!)

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

Aw, I'm glad he's home.

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

So this stela depicts Wenut as a male lion-headed deity? That's fascinating.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

It's more likely that I just didn't look closely enough. :) Annoyingly, Google Books' version of Quibell omits the relevant plate, although he also identifies the figure as a goddess. I can double-check the next time I'm in at Fisher Library.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Found the complete book (https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/34859/31151022161941.pdf)! And here's the top of the stela:



To me, those hieroglyphs look like "Wenu, Lord of Heaven, Mistress of all the Two Lands". It may be that some of the feminine t suffixes have been omitted on the stela or the drawing. The enthroned figure seems to have a breast (or at least more of one than Sobek-Re), and I think I can see Wenut's name a second time in the inscription, this time determined with a serpent. (I just checked, and Quibell sees it too.)

The next thing I want to know is: why Sobek and Wenut?

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

Wenut's clearly feminine here, as one can see from the breast, but also the lotus scepter, instead of the uas, and because the head is recognizable as a lioness, to my eye at least, though admittedly I can't point to any single feature that makes it so. Seeing any male lion heads much north of Nubia is incredibly rare, of course, so one tends to rule it out a priori. Apedemak has a fringe of mane, though, and a shorter snout, bigger eyes, etc. Leaving out the -t's at the end of feminine words is very common on monuments. Since Wenut's name is determined by a seated Goddess, there's no ambiguity. Now as for the pairing of Wenut and Sobek, that merits some pondering. Since she has a lion head, she's implicitly in the Eye of Re capacity. Perhaps Nebwa is fond of her because he's a scribe? Then the question would be why Sobek in particular. But then sometimes it's really just a question of the peculiarities of personal devotion.

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

On the pairing of Sobek and Wenut, I've just learned that the nome list on the White Chapel of Senwosret lists Wenut, Montu and Sobek as the Gods of the 4th nome of Upper Egypt; also found that at Kom Ombo (KO 94, 1 is the citation, if you'd like to track it down, it's said of Wenut that she "makes protection for Sobek with cobras". I don't know whether the context there establishes a special bond between them, or it's just a case of Wenut as uraeus, which I'm learning is more common than I realized. Also, Wenut as lioness-headed woman is a very common depiction, especially later on, I've learned.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this! I wonder if Sobek, Wenut, and Montu formed a triad - perhaps on the stela Sobek and Wenut are shown as Mr and Mrs.

What is KO 94, 1? I've got the relevant Catalogue des Monuments et Inscriptions from archive.org, but if that's the one, I couldn't spot Wenut. (Mind you, if I'm looking for anything other than a nice big picture or a very straightforward hieroglyphic name, I haven't got a prayer. :)

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Sobek, Wenut, and Montu formed a triad - perhaps on the stela Sobek and Wenut are shown as Mr and Mrs.

This is what I am suspecting, but can't quite nail it down.

What is KO 94, 1?

I'm not sure myself. The citation came from a PDF I got that doesn't include the abbreviation key. It's probably the volume you mention, but archive.org is down for maintenance at the moment, so I can't check for myself.

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

I managed to find the volume elsewhere online. If this is the book they mean, I guess we're talking about #116 on p. 94? I'm not sure that I can find the inscription that's referred to, but the woman with the clump of papyrus over her head may be Wenut. I think that this answers my question, inasmuch as Wenut in this sort of context is functioning as more of a generic Eye of Re on behalf of Sobek, and not in a special relationship that would shed light on the stela and the bit from Senwosret's nome list.

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

Actually, I see that 94, 1 probably means #94 in de Morgan, line 1 of the inscription. I can't immediately spot the phrase in question there either, but these Ptolemaic era inscriptions are very weird. Also, I see that the original citation says "vgl. Photo Leitz 1941"—which could mean that the signs do not appear in de Morgan's transcription as the author of the article sees them. Perhaps the new publication of the inscriptions by Danielle Inconnu-Bocquillon will clear up the matter.