Servant of MutStudies in Honor of Richard A. Fazzini

Edited by

Sue H. DAuria

LEIDEN BOSTON2008

MUT OR NOT? ON THE MEANING OF A VULTURE SIGNON THE HERMITAGE STATUE OF AMENEMHAT III

A O. B

Hermitage Museum

Richard Fazzini was one of the first colleagueswhom I had the pleasure to guide in the Egyp-tian gallery of the Hermitage as its keeper. Atthat time, he was much engaged in excavationsof the precinct of Mut at Karnak and, of course,an inscription on the Hermitage statue of Amen-emhat III that may be interpretedor notasthe earliest known record of Mut was one of thesubjects of our discussions. More than yearshave passed since that time, but the problem ofthe beginning of the cult of Mut is not muchclearer now than it was in the eighties, and thenature of the Hermitage vulture still remainsobscure. This makes me write this small paperand dedicate it to Richard, an excellent museumEgyptologist and a kind and brave man.

A statue of Amenemhat III in the HermitageMuseum (fig. )1 occupies a special place in thehistory of Egyptology: a comparison of its face(fig. ) with that of one of the Tanis sphinxesmade by Golnischeff in 2 initiated stylis-tic and iconographic studies of Middle King-dom royal portraiture. Golnischeff was inter-ested mainly in the facial features and the nameof the king represented and, thus, he paid onlyminimal attention to other aspects of the in-scriptions on the throne. He reproduced one ofthem in standard typographic hieroglyphs;3 the

last preserved sign of both inscriptions, that of avulture with a flagellum, of which only the up-per part survives in either case, was shown ascomplete. The meaning of the vulture sign wasbeyond any doubt for Golnischeff, who trans-lated the inscription as Le dieu bon, source derichesses (mot mot: faisant les choses), Maa-n-Ra, fils du Soleil, issu de son flanc, Amenemha-t,ami (ce mot est emport par une lacune) de ladesse Maut.4

Very little was done for the study and inter-pretation of the statue after Golnischeff, in spiteof its obvious importance as one of the best por-traits of Amenemhat III, attributed to him notonly stylistically but also on the grounds of in-scriptional evidence. Although its general viewwas repeatedly reproduced (mainly by means ofreprinting Golnischeffs photograph),5 only onepublication touched upon the inscriptionsandin a very unsatisfactory manner. In the catalogueof Egyptian sculpture in the Hermitage by Lapisand Matthieu (the entry written by the latter), thevulture signs are lacking in the handwritten copyof the texts and their existence is not reflectedin the translation either6the mistakes unfortu-nately characteristic of that poorly published andbadly edited book. Traces of the signs, however,are visible on a photograph in a picture-book

1 Inv. no . Black granite, h. cm. Provenance un-known, modern history uncertain; the earliest record ofits presence in the Hermitage is G. Treu, Ueber die gyp-tische Sammlung der Eremitage (St. Petersburg: Schmitzdorff,), S. . Matthieu supposed that it could have beenbought by the Russian Academy of Sciences with the col-lection of Carlo Ottavio Castiglione in ( - , , - [: , ], [Irma Aleksandrovna Lapis andMilitsa Edwinovna Matthieu, Ancient Egyptian Sculpture in theCollection of the State Hermitage (Moscow: Nauka, ), ]),but this is only a conjecture, possible but unconfirmed bythe early museum documentation.

2 Wladimir Golnischeff, Amenemha III et les sphinxde Sn, RecTrav (): .

3 Ibid., . Actually Golnischeff published a recon-structed combination of two similar mirroring inscriptions:it is oriented as the proper left column, but the cartouchewith the name "Imn-m-.hA.t is shown undamaged, as it is inthe proper right one.

4 Ibid. The same translation had earlier been publishedin Wladimir Golnischeff, Ermitage Imperial: Inventaire de lacollection gyptienne (S. l., ), .

5 See PM , : --.6 , , , ,

. (. ). The translation is inexact also in otherrespects.

.

devoted to the Hermitage pharaonic collectionpublished five years later by Landa and Lapis,7

but their shapes are too indefinite for sure read-ing if based only on the photograph.

The inadequateness of publications might bethe reason why the inscriptions were not dis-cussed as a possible source for the early historyof the cult of Mut for a long time. Only yearsafter Golnischeff, Vandier devoted some wordsto them in Manuel darchologie gyptienne,8 but sincehe had never seen the original, he entirely re-lied upon Golnischeffs reading and understand-ing. Due to the alleged presence of Mut, Vandiersupposed that the statue came from Thebes (i.e.,from the temple of Mut at Karnak). Thirty moreyears passed, and at last the Hermitage sculpturewas discussed by Fay in her most thorough man-ner9 as the closest parallel to the figure of Amen-emhat V from the sanctuary of Heqaib at Ele-phantine split between the museums of Viennaand Aswan.10 According to her, the two monu-ments are so similar that they seem to have beenmade in the same workshop; however, she defi-nitely and convincingly discarded the possibilityof the manufacture of the Hermitage statue ina Theban workshop (although admitted that itcould have been made for Thebes elsewhere) andcast doubt on the interpretation of the vulturesign as the name of Mut.11 In a later paper, Faydemonstrated that the slight upward pull at thecorners of the lips of the St. Petersburg statueis characteristic of the images of Amenemhat IIIproduced in Lower Egyptian workshops.12 In apaper by Polz devoted to the statuary of the lastkings of Dyn. , it is mentioned as an example of

the stilisierende Stil in the sculpture of Amen-emhat III,13 but is not interpreted at all. Thus, al-though there is obvious progress concerning theartistic aspect of the issue, a new discussion of theinscriptions is no doubt a must.

The inscriptions (fig. ) are identical, placedsymmetrically on the front surface of the throneat either side of the kings legs and continuedon the horizontal upper surface of the base;14

unfortunately, the front of the base, with feet andthe terminal parts of the inscriptions, is lost. Theyread:

ntr nfr "r(") (")

h.t N(")-mA#.t-r #(w) sA R #(w) n

h.t.f

"Imn-m-.hA.t ///Younger God15 who performs rites16 Nimaat-re, son of Re of his body, Amenemhat17

///.

7 Natalia B. Landa and Irma A. Lapis, Egyptian Antiqui-ties in the Hermitage (Leningrad: Aurora, ), no. (betterin the proper right inscription, worse in the proper left one).

8 Jacques Vandier, Manuel darchologie gyptienne (Paris:A. et J. Picard, ), , pls. , and , .

9 Biri Fay, Amenemhat VVienna/Assuan, MDAIK (): .

10 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum S : ibid., Taf., ; Eva Rogge, Statuen des Neuen Reiches und der DrittenZwischenzeit, CAA Wien, Lief. (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern,), (with bibliography down to ); now also Wil-fried Seipel, GottMenschPharao: Viertausend Jahre Menschenbildin der Skulptur des alten gypten (Wien: Kunsthistorisches Mu-seum, ), ; Helmut Satzinger, Das KunsthistorischeMuseum in Wien: Die gyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung, AntikeWelt, Sondernummer (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern,), ; Dietrich Wildung, ed., gypten v. Chr.:Die Geburt des Individuums (Munich: Hirmer, ), , .Aswan : Labib Habachi, The Sanctuary of Heqaib, Ele-phantine IV, AV (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, ), , , pls. -cd; Fay, Amenemhat V, Taf. .

11 Fay, Amenemhat V, .12 Biri Fay, The Abydos Princess, MDAIK ():

.13 Felicitas Polz, Die Bildnisse Sesostris III. und Amen-

emhets III. Bemerkungen zur kniglichen Rundplastik derspten . Dynastie, MDAIK (): .

14 This arrangement is characteristic of the statuary ofAmenemhat III; ibid., .

15 On the meaning and translation see Oleg DmitrievichBerlev, Two KingsTwo Suns: On the Worldview of theAncient Egyptians, in Discovering Egypt from the Neva: TheEgyptological Legacy of Oleg D. Berlev, ed. Stephen Quirke(Berlin: Achet Verlag, ), .

16 On "r(") (")h.t see now Carolyn Diane Routledge, An-

cient Egyptian Ritual Practice: "r-ht and nt- #, PhD diss., Uni-

versity of Toronto (Toronto: National Library of Canada,).

17 The cartouche, its contents, and parts of the precedinghieroglyphs are broken off in the proper left inscription,perhaps with a single blow that could be intentional.

The shape of the upper parts of the signs is stillvisible in spite of the badly damaged surface ofthe stone, and it obviously is Gardiners G ,a vulture with a flagellum (figs. and ). As al-ready mentioned, Golnischeff without hesitationread as the name of the goddess Mut.18 How-ever, nowadays the problem appears much morecomplicated and important than it seemed in thenineteenth century: it seems that there are no re-liable records of Mut before the Second Interme-diate Period,19 and thus, the Hermitage statue ei-ther offers the earliest known record of Mut in aroyal context, or it bears a name of another vul-ture goddess. Both options deserve consideration.

As te Velde has demonstrated,20 it is impossi-ble to read the name of Mut in the Pyramid andCoffin Texts21 or in the Hammamat inscriptions,while the understanding of some Middle King-dom personal names including the element or

22 is equivocal.23

As the earliest evidence on Mut, te Velde24 re-gards a representation (unfortunately damaged)of a leonine deity standing on its hind legs and la-beled on the Second Intermediate Periodmagic wand in Nationalmuseet Copenhagen,25

but this object creates more problems than it

solves. .Hsm is a rare name of a lion-demon,26 oneof the protectors of Re, but the meaning of re-mains obscure or, at least, not as obvious as it wasfor te Velde. First, it can be Mut, who in the latertimes was often considered a lioness27 and a pro-tector of the Solar God, his Eye.28 Second, it canbe not Mut, but another deity associated with avulture. Third, it can be a determinative referringto a complicated, both leonine and avian natureof .Hsm. The latter option seems preferable to me,but even if is really Mut, her presence on sucha specific object as a magic wand bears only avery slight relation to the cult, and especially tothe royal cult.

Another possible early record of Mut may bein the Middle Kingdom Hymns to Diademspreserved on a Second Intermediate Period pa-pyrus, where is included in the list of ser-pent goddesses of the Hymn h.29 Although Troyis absolutely sure of the presence of Mut in thehymns,30 the spelling is too indefinite for unam-biguous conclusions,31 and in any case the contextis purely speculative and not cultic.

Much more important is the evidence ofthe late Middle Kingdom or Second Intermedi-ate Period stela of "Ib-rs32 mentioning

18 Golnischeff, Amenemha III et les sphinx de Sn,.

19 Herman te Velde, Mut, in L , ; te Velde,Mut, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt , ed.Donald B. Redford (New York: Oxford University Press,), ; Barbara S. Lesko, The Great Goddesses of Egypt(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, ), .

20 Herman te Velde, Towards a Minimal Definition ofthe Goddess Mut, JEOL (): .

21 The authors of Lexikon der gyptischen Gtter und Gt-terbezeichnungen regard CT V, f. as the only reference toMut in the Middle Kingdom; Lexikon , ed. Christian Leitz,OLA (LeuvenParisDudley: Uitgeverij Peeters en De-partement Oosterse Studies, ), . However, thecontext makes it possible to understand (B6C),(S1C) and (S2C) as spelling variants of mw.t, mother;cf. Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Con Texts (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, ), .

22 Hermann Ranke, Die gyptischen Personennamen (Glckstadt: J.J. Augustin, ), .

23 Mut or mother, e.g., (Ranke, Personenna-men [Glckstadt: J.J. Augustin, ], :)Nb.t(.")-mw.t, (My) Lady is Mut or Nb.t(.")-mw.t(."), (My) lady is(my) mother; (ibid., :)sA-mw.t, Son of Mut,or sA-mw.t(."), Son of (my) mother; Mut or anothergoddess, e.g., (ibid., :)Mn(w)-mw.t or Mn(w)-nhb.t, Mw.t-.htp." or N

hb.t-.htp." (ibid., :); Mutor either alternative: , (ibid., :) .Htp-mw.t,Mut is satisfied, or .Htp-n

hb.t, Nekhbet is satisfied, or

.Htp-mw.t(."), My mother is satisfied.24 te Velde, Mut, L , .25 Inv. no. ; George Francis Legge, The magic

ivories of the Middle Empire, PSBA (): pl. , fig. ;Percy E. Newberry, Catalogue of the MacGregor collection of Egyp-tian antiquities (London: Davy, ), pl. ; Hartwig Alten-mller, Die Apotropaia und die Gtter Mittelgyptens: Eine typolo-gische und religiongeschichtliche Untersuchung der sog. Zaubermesserdes Mittleren Reichs , Dissertation (S.l., ), ; Daniel Polzet al., Bericht ber die ., . und . Grabungskampagnein der Nekropole von Dra" Abu el-Naga/Theben-West,MDAIK (): Abb. .

26 Lexikon der gyptischen Gtter und Gtterbezeichnungen , ed.Christian Leitz (LeuvenParisDudley: Uitgeverij Peeters enDepartement Oosterse Studies, , OLA ), . Thename (without an association with a vulture) appears also ona magic wand of Dyn. (Polz et al., Bericht ber die .,. und . Grabungskampagne, ) from Dra" Abu el-Naga(ibid., Abb. ).

27 E.g., as the lady of Asheru at Karnak. On Asheru as adesignation of the cult places of lioness goddesses see SergeSauneron, Villes et lgendes dgypte, BIFAO ():.

28 On Mut as an eye of the Solar God and, thus,his protector, see Lana Troy, Mut Enthroned, in Essayson Ancient Egypt in Honour of Herman te Velde, ed. Jacobusvan Dijk, Egyptological Memoirs (Groningen: STYXPublications, ), .

29 Adolf Erman, Hymnen an das Diadem der Pharaonen auseinem Papyrus der Sammlung Golenische, APAW philos.-hist.Klasse, , Abh. (Berlin, ), .

30 Troy, Mut Enthroned, .31 Erman (Hymnen an das Diadem, ) had already read

Mut, but with some doubt.32 Leipzig (lost in the Second World War). Renate

.

,33 Mw.t nb.t mgb, Mut, lady of Me-geb.34 This is an unequivocal record of a rela-tively early provincial cult of Mut, but, again, ithas nothing to do with the royal cult.

Thus, even though we may suppose withsomerather insignificantdegree of probabil-ity that Mut could already be adored in theMiddle Kingdom, she played no role of impor-tance, and her name can hardly be present ona royal cult monument like the Hermitage statueof Amenemhat III. Then in the beginning ofthe lost epithet of the king must be a name ofanother vulture goddess closely related to royalty.The most probable contender for this role is thesky goddess Nekhbet, who is often representedabove the king in mural compositions as protect-ing him with her outstretched wings.35 However,these compositions are not of much interest forus here since they are commonplace, icons of theworld order in general, as it must be, but not ev-idence of the cult of Nekhbet or of her presencein the royal cult. Representations and records ofNekhbet as an independent, non-heraldic deityare surprisingly infrequent on the monuments ofAmenemhat III, but they still do exist.

One of them is an interesting but enigmaticpiecethe lower part of a colossal headless lime-

stone statue of a vulture from Coptos36 that, ac-cording to Keimer,37 could have a female head.Both the provenance and the appearance of thestatue make it more than probable that it re-presents Nekhbet, but the inscription on thebase reads: , #n

h

.Hr(w) #A-bA.w n(")-sw.t b".t(") [N(")-mA#.t-r #(w)] mr""Shm.t nb.t #n

h-tA.w", Live Horus great of bau,

dual king [Nimaatre] beloved of Sekhmet, ladyof Ankhtaui. The syncretism of Nekhbet andSekhmet is well known,38 but the need of the pres-ence of Sekhmet in the temple of Coptos remainsinexplicable.39

More explicit and important is the evidenceof the stela from Elkab,40 dated to the year of Amenemhat III and devoted to his buildingactivities in the city. Amenemhat III is named

, mr" Nhb.t nb.t p.t, Beloved of

Nekhbet, lady of the sky, given life.Records of Nekhbet are rare, besides the he-

raldic contexts, during the rest of Dyn. aswell,41 and seem to be present only on the mon-uments of Senusret I. On a lintel from Karnak,42

he is represented in front of several deities, oneof them being , N

hb.t .h

d.t nhn", Nekhbet,

the white one of Hierakonpolis. A relief frag-ment from Coptos43 bears the names of Senus-

Krauspe, Eine heute verlorene Stele der Leipziger Samm-lung (gyptisches Museum der Karl-Marx-Universitt Leip-zig ), in Festschrift zum jhrigen Bestehen des Berlinergyptischen Museums, Mitteilungen aus der gyptischenSammlung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, ) S. , Taf.-a.

33 Handwritten reproduction of the inscription in ibid.,, is inexact.

34 On mgb/mgb.t, a site situated somewhere in the tenthUpper Egyptian nome, not far from Qau el-Kebir, seeSir Alan H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica (Ox-ford: Oxford University Press, ), ; Farouk Goma,Probleme der Lokalisierung von gyptischen Ortsnamen,ZDMG Supplement / (), , Nr. , ; Goma, Die Be-siedlung gyptens whrend des Mittleren Reiches , TAVO, ReiheB, / (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, ), ; JaromrMlek, A New Sculpture from Mgbt, the town of Mut, GM (): .

35 See data collected in Eileen Hirsch, Kultpolitik und Tem-pelbauprogramme der . Dynastie: Untersuchungen zu den Gttertem-peln im alten gypten (Berlin: Achet, ), , .

36 JE -bis. PM , ; W.M. Flinders Petrie, Kop-tos (London: Quaritch, ), pl. ; Hans Gerhard Evers,Staat aus dem Stein: Denkmler, Geschichte und Bedeutung der gyptis-chen Plastik whrend des Mittleren Reichs (Munich: Bruckmann,), Taf. , ; Ludwig Keimer, Sur un fragment destatuette en calcaire ayant la forme dun oiseau (vautour?) tte de reine, ASAE (): .

37 Keimer, Sur un fragment de statuette.38 E.g., they may be interchangeable in the Coffin Texts;

see Hirsch, Kultpolitik, .

39 It is of interest that the shape of the statue correspondsto Nekhbet, the determinative to the name of the goddessstresses her leonine nature, while the epithet refers to theMemphite hypostasis of Sekhmet. Can it be a result of acentralized rationalization of the cults characteristic of thereign of Amenemhat III?

40 Stobart Stela (now lost). Henry Stobart, EgyptianAntiquities Collected on Voyage Made in Upper Egypt in the Years & (Berlin: Vrsch & Happe, ), pl. =Georges Legrain, The king Samou or Seshemouand the enclosures of El-Kab, PSBA (): plate facingp. .

41 From the preceding First Intermediate Period weknow a stela of .Htp" from Elkab (Gawdat Gabra, Pre-liminary Report on the Stela of .Htp" from El-Kab fromthe time of Wakhankh Inytef II, MDAIK (): ), where the lord of the owner, Inyotef II, is named

, Horus enduring life, dual king,son of Re Inyotef born of Nefru, beloved of Nekhbet (l. ).Below, .Htp" mentions his service in , temple of thelady of the universe, Nekhbet (l. ). In either case, thename of the goddess must be read as Nekhbet and notMut, due to the provenance of the stela. For the referenceto this monument, I am indebted to Dr. Arkadi E. Demid-chik, Novosibirsk.

42 Franoise Le Saout, Abd el-Hamid Ma"arouf, andThierry Zimmer, Le Moyen Empire Karnak: Varia ,Cahiers de Karnak (): pl. .

43 Lyon, Muse des Beaux Arts E ; Les reserves depharaon: Lgypte dans les collections du Muse des Beaux-Arts deLyon (Lyon: Muse des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, ), , .

ret I,Hpr-kA-r #(w), and several gods (representa-

tions are lost) including , Nhb.t nb.t p.t,

Nekhbet, lady of the sky. On a jamb frag-ment from Coptos,44 Senusret I is depicted as re-ceiving life from Bastet and Nekhbet, who says:

d".n(.") n.k snb rnp.wt .Hr(w) m#nh nb, I give you health/and/the years of Ho-

rus as every/kind of/ life.Thus, reading as Mut in the inscriptions on

the Hermitage statue is hardly possible, while theexistence of the monuments of Amenemhat IIIrevealing his interest, although limited, in thecult of Nekhbet, makes the understanding of theideogram as Nekhbet the most probable option.The end of the titulary may be reconstructed as

Amenemhat [beloved of]

Nekh[bet, lady of the sky] or similarat leastthe lost part of the base was large enough to beara passage of this size.

With this reading, it is possible to speculateon the provenance of the Hermitage statue asCoptos or Elkab, the only places where the mon-uments of Amenemhat III mentioning Nekhbetwere found. Fays hypothesis on the Lower Egyp-tian production makes it safe enough to supposethat the statue was made within the frameworkof a certain state-wide project; the same couldbe the case of the Elephantine statue of Amen-emhat V. If considering the data from the rest ofthe dynasty, Karnak must not be excluded as an-other place for which the Hermitage statue couldhave been intended.

44 Petrie, Koptos, pl. .

.

Fig. . Statue of Amenemhat III, Hermitage. Courtesy of the Hermitage Museum.

Fig. . Statue of Amenemhat III, Hermitage , detail. Courtesy of the Hermitage Museum.

.

Fig. . Inscriptions on the vertical front surface of the throne of the statue ofAmenemhat III, Hermitage . Courtesy of the Hermitage Museum.

Fig. , ab. Inscriptions on the upper surface of the base ofthe statue of Amenemhat III, Hermitage . (a) proper left,

(b) proper right. Courtesy of the Hermitage Museum.

Fig. . Vulture signs on the Hermitage statue of Amenemhat III.