Sudan's Holy Mountain. Jebel Barkal and Its Temples

Oxford Encyclopaedy of Ancient Nubia, 2020

This chapter examines the origins of the god Amun, of his name, his ram-headed form, and their connections to Nubia, which seem to have been overestimated. Amun appears to be the major deity worshipped in Nubia after the Egyptian conquest of the New King dom. Considered to be a national and universal god, he became the protector of Kushite kingship, spread through the religious conversion of the Kushite elite to Egyptian reli gious beliefs. Amun is a solarized deity figured as a man (occasionally ithyphallic) with a two-feather headdress primarily as the god of Karnak, and as a ram-headed deity as that of Jebel Barkal. He may also appear as a bull, a goose, and more questionably as a croco dile or a cobra. His main sacred cities were Napata, Pnubs, Kawa, Sanam, and Tara. He is occasionally accompanied by Mut, Khonsu, Satis, and Anukis.

and feasting show those officials being honored squatting before the façade of the palace, with a head-smiting scene in the background. This can only be the large relief of Akhenaten which decorated the reveals of the gate of Pylon III at Karnak, and lay just south of the royal palace. Whether a large colonnade decorated with figures of Nefertiti once stood on the site of the present Pylon II must remain moot; it remains a possibility that some parts of the Amen temple remained in operation, at least until the celebration of the jubilee. Thereafter, we find the high priest of Amen, Maya, sent to the quarries (year 4), and the writing of the name "Amen" obliterated intentionally throughout Karnak and the whole Theban area. On the eve of Akhenaten's abandonment of Thebes for Amarna the king changed his name from "Amenhotep" to "Akhenaten," and had every cartouche modified accordingly. After this hejira, work stopped on his Theban buildings: none of the later changes in nomenclature or art style appears at Thebes.

On the other hand, Jan Assman cannot possibly deceive every one! His interpretation of the pictorial presentation of the evil worshipped by Hyksos as god cannot be left so incomplete. Certainly, the Hyksos worshipped Seth (Zety) and Apophis (Apope), but the depiction of Seth under the combined form of man and hippopotamus has nothing to do with artistic inventions due to a fictional need of "personalizing" Seth. Furthermore, Seth was not a properly speaking "desert god", as Assman implies; Seth was cast in the desert which represented for the Ancient Egyptians the concept of vacuum, the "non existence". But Seth was originally conceived as Satan, and according to the religious – spiritual concepts and fundamentals of the Ancient Egyptian Art, Satan was represented as a hippopotamus (and at times as a crocodile), when the apocalyptic level of mythical semiotics was involved. A perfect example in this case is the Messiah – Satan conflict narrative at Edfu (inner part of the Western Outer Wall) that antedates and clearly supersedes the Christian Book of the Revelation. The fact that the Hyksos pseudo-pharaoh Apope dispatched a delegation to Thebes to demand the immediate termination of the traditional Egyptian game of harpooning hippopotamuses (which in the Ancient Egyptian culture was a theatrical act, aptly pre-modeling the ultimate victory of Messiah – Horus over Satan – Seth) illuminates his Satanic identity, while shedding also light on the real identity of any modern scholar presenting a pro-Hyksos version of Egyptian History. All this is necessary to take into consideration, when the History of Ancient Kush / Ethiopia is concerned. Ideological – religious – spiritual identification clarifies much the situation and helps draw the correct conclusions. In fact, the same ideological – spiritual – religious clash that characterized Egypt for millennia can be attested in Ancient Kush / Ethiopia, and this greatly helps in properly assessing historical developments as the outcome of clash between two priesthoods. As societies are not monolithic phenomena, one should not imagine that the kingdom of Kerma that sided with the Hyksos rulers was entirely under control of a priesthood dedicated to Satan – Seth. Ancient Egypt and Kush / Ethiopia were highly nuanced societies whereby the rival priesthoods coexisted for millennia, perpetuating their fight by means of myth interpretational variants, educational literature, socioeconomic involvement, and grip over the political – military power. First published in AfroArticles, Buzzle and American Chronicle on 12th March 2010

2017

Ancient Egyptian sources frequently depict Pharaoh as god's representative on earth during his lifetime and as a god after his death. In his lifetime, the king was identified with Horus, the god of heaven. After his death, he became Osiris, the god of the dead. On occasion, he was also named after other gods-for example, Montu, the war-god, Sekhemet, the plague-goddess, and Khnum, the potter-god of creation. At times, he was also described as "the living image of god x." According to Egyptian thought, those who sat on the royal throne were the earthly successors of the gods who ruled Egypt during the primordial period. The ruling king was called prt nṯr "seed of god" or nṯr "god." On occasion, the boundaries between king and god became so blurred that it is impossible to determine whether the title "god" refers to the king or god. When a king ascended the throne, he was given a five-fold name that included divine epithets: "son of Re (the sun-god)" or "Horus." 1 The king's divine lineage is clearly reflected in the illustrations portraying his birth and the inscriptions accompanying them. Herein, the god was given the features of the king's father and coupled with his earthly mother. 2 The king was thus regarded as god's son in the literal, physical sense. 3 1. In the official literature, the title "god" when referring to king usually comes with adjectives such as nfr "good," wr "great," wʿ "one, unique," mnḫ "excellent," etc.

The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile comprise a rock art gallery of exceptional historical significance. The authors show that the images of boats with attendant prisoners, animals and the earliest representation of a pharaoh offer a window on Dynasty 0, and depict the moment that the religious procession of Predynastic Egypt became the triumphant tour of a tax-collecting monarch.

Following the death of Ramesses XI, Egypt entered into a chaotic situation of multi-division that lasted more than 300 years. The high priests of Amun of Thebes had risen to power during the century-long period of the successors of Ramesses III, and their polytheistic ideology could not be accepted by other priesthoods in Egypt. The secession of the North (Lower Egypt) created the phenomenon of several parallel dynasties; the reason for this is that the pharaohs of Lower Egypt, although backed by the priesthoods of Heliopolis and Hermupolis and strengthened by the interfering Libyan princes, were still very weak to drive the Theban priests out. On the other hand, the latter, known in Ancient Egyptian as Whem Mesut (lit. repetition of births; e.g. Renaissance), although drawing from the wealth of Kush / Ethiopia and machinating against the North, were not strong enough to recapture the whole of Egypt. The high priests of Thebes were not considered as a proper dynasty, despite of the existing kin relationship among them, and despite the fact that all of them resumed the pharaonic position, and had their names inscribed in cartouches according to the royal customs of Egypt. Through Horihor´s grandson, Psunennes I, there was kin relationship also between the high priests of Thebes and some of the Lower Egyptian pharaohs. Even this was not able to make the "Two Lands" (Tawy in Ancient Egyptian, a second name for Egypt) reunite, due to the risen priestly control (either monotheistic Heliopolitan and Hermupolitan in Lower Egypt or polytheistic Theban in Upper Egypt and Kush / Ethiopia). First published in AfroArticles, Buzzle and American Chronicle on 20th March 2010 Republished in the portal of the Oromo Parliamentarians: https://www.oromoparliamentarians.org/English/Facts%20about%20Oromo/Oromo%20Kushatic%20Nations%20Napta%20-%20Egypt.htm

Qurna and Qurnet Marai in the Theban necropolis runs a valley that meets the floodplain at the site of the mortuary temple of Rameses II, the Ramesseum (Figures i, 2). The valley is a counterpart to the valley of Deir el-Bahri, where the temples of Mentuhotep II Nebhepetra and Hatshepsut are situated. But unlike the Deir el-Bahri valley, this valley does not contain famous standing monuments. Today, the valley presents a wild, almost desolate, appearance (Figures 3, 5, 21). A closer look, however, reveals features that indicate major landscaping efforts were undertaken in ancient times. Figures 2 and 3 show two separate places where quarrymen cut trenches into the rock preparatory to removing the entire rock face at the southwestern side of the valley.2 And at the western end of the valley where the limestone rock surrounds a natural bay, a considerable part of the ground was leveled to form an even plateau (Figure 3). Herbert E. Winlock in 1914 was the first to recognize that the plateau and trenches were traces of building activities.3 The discovery was important enough for him to record it in the opening paragraphs of The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947). It is a memorable description of archaeological intuition: One day just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the groom and I were exercising my horses behind Sheikh Abd el Kurneh Hill. The light was exactly right, and as I came to the highest bit of path, with the towering cliffs to the right and the lower hill to the left, I noticed below me for the first time a ? The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1991 Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 flat platform and the upper part of a sloping causeway ascending from the cultivation. In a flash I was spurring down the hill and up onto the level place to look down the line of the ancient roadway to the point where it disappeared behind the Ramesseum. I realized that in the flat terrace under the cliffs we had the grading for a temple like the one built in the Eleventh Dynasty at Deir el-Bahrijust to the north. In 1920-21 Winlock cleared the platform under the cliffs of later debris.4 In the course of this work, he recleared an underground passage and burial chamber (Figure 4) that had first been excavated by Robert Mond in the winter of 1903-4.5 Winlock rightly connected this burial chamber of royal proportions with the landscaping efforts described above, and he identified the ensemble as an unfinished royal funerary monument. At first, it seemed a simple matter to identify the individual for whom this monument had been intended. The similarities in the plan of the burial chamber-as well as in the general shape of the causeway and funerary temple-to the great funeral monument of Mentuhotep II Nebhepetra in the neighboring valley of Deir el-Bahri6 pointed to a successor of that king as the owner (Figure 1, nos. 1 and 5). Further indications of a late Eleventh Dynasty date for the structure were thought to exist because of the large tomb of the chancellor Meketra, situated at the northern side of the valley (Figure 5). This official was known to have served Mentuhotep II Nebhepetra as "overseer of the six great law-courts" around year 39 of that king's reign.7 During the last years of Nebhepetra's reign, Meketra was "chancellor" (imy-r' htmt) and was depicted or mentioned in this capacity several times in the relief decoration of Nebhepetra's funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri.8 The fact that Meketra's tomb was not sit-The notes for this article begin on page 41. 5 The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Metropolitan Museum Journal www.jstor.org ® uated among the tombs of the other officials of Nebhepetra's court, on the slopes around the valley of Deir el-Bahri (Figure i, nos. 6 and 7),9 suggested to Winlock and others that Meketra outlived Nebhepetra and went on to serve his successor, Mentuhotep III Seankhkara. It was therefore logical to assume that the unfinished royal tomb in the valley, situated below the tomb of Meketra, belonged to King Mentuhotep III Seankhkara. (See Appendix I.) A group of inscriptions on nearby rocks seemed to corroborate the identification of the unfinished monument as the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep III. Between the valley, or rock bay, of Deir el-Bahri and the bay in which the unfinished royal funerary monument is situated lies yet another, smaller bay surrounded by limestone cliffs (Figure i, no. 4).1' In this smaller bay numerous graffiti of Middle Kingdom date are incised in the rock cliffs high above the valley floor. Winlock recognized that various groups of priests had incised their names here." Among these names, the greatest number were