Welcome, everyone.
I'm so glad you
could join tonight.
We're right in the middle of the
densest period for Egyptology
at Brown that I ever remember
in my eight years here.
For those of you who
joined us this weekend,
we got a lot of Egyptology.
Those of you who
joined us tonight
get some more Egyptology.
And if you still
are in the mood,
I invite you to join us to
see Gods of Egypt on Wednesday
night.
It should be great fun.
But tonight, we have
the great good fortune
for a much more
scholarly take on things
that The Gods of Egypt.
We're joined tonight by
Professor John Baines,
relatively recently
retired from Oxford.
John needs really
no introduction.
I don't know if I could fit
one into an hour's lecture
if I took an hour,
but I will stop
to mention a couple of
his more recent books.
He's recently written
Visual and Written Culture,
which is a collection of new
and old essays, to which I
travel all the time.
There is really no
other Egyptologist
working in the world who
controls so well both
the textual and
the material data,
and material including
archaeological and art
historical.
His work is an inspiration
across the board.
But also even more recently,
High Culture and Experience.
And to show your
breadth, you're also
currently working on biographies
of ancient Egyptians.
So I've known you
for-- well, since I
was a kid, since [INAUDIBLE]
the people in this room,
and I bring my own kids
to watch you tonight,
as one does when rock
stars are in the room.
So really, I hope
you will join me
in welcoming John, who will
be speaking to us tonight
about visibility,
place, and movement,
ancient Egyptian images
and their contexts.
You understand that [INAUDIBLE]
[INAUDIBLE]
actually, it's very--
Well, thank you
very much, Laurel.
I'm very sorry about
the rock star business,
but there it goes.
So I'll talk obviously mainly
about ancient Egyptian images,
but there will be a
scattering of things
that come from
elsewhere, which I think
helps us to think about
things comparatively.
And it relates to particular
problems that we have.
Now, the basic question
I want to address
is focused around the human
body, but not exclusively.
And it's about how
people represent
people-- and people
includes members
of the human and
the divine worlds--
and then who gets to see them,
and what's done with them.
And so who gets to see them
is about the matter of access,
some things like this.
And what is done with
them is done mostly
to objects that are
three dimensional.
So I'm mainly talking
about statuary,
but actually, the pictures I
use are mainly two dimensional.
They are pictures of pictures.
So it's convenient to begin
with a couple of examples
which are very indirect.
And these are very
early objects.
Most of my material will
be third Millennium,
but I have later material, too.
And this shows you
two of these objects,
called tags, which represent
clearly in the left hand
case, a year of a King's reign.
And you've got in the bottom
right hand corner of that image
a picture of a building, which
has the [? haragus ?] for two
goddesses.
One of them is an
indirect representation
of the goddess by
a means of a crown,
and hence it implies
something about how
she associates with her
status and things like that.
Probably, this
object will signify
that the King does
something like visit
the temple of that goddess.
The other one shows
a temple enclosure.
And I'll leave it at
that now, because we'll
come back to them.
And so here, the left hand, the
maps there is just to show you
that I have material from all
over Egypt in this lecture.
The Egyptians face
towards the south,
so if you start
from the south, you
have the site of Elephantine.
The rings there, or
ovals, don't always
hit the sites in question
because that map didn't always
have that name on it.
But you've got major material
of the third Millennium, which
goes all the way from
the first cataract
of the Nile in the south to
quite near the Mediterranean
coast.
That's indirect material.
The pictures that
I just showed you
are pictures of
sites in the delta,
but they don't come
from the delta.
They come from [? Abydos, ?]
which is about two thirds
of the way down.
Now, on the right, you've got
a couple of predynastic images.
These will be 3500,
that sort of date.
And you've got a flint hippo.
The flint hippo, these
are extraordinary flint
objects which were made in
the pictures of animals,
in particular.
And you have dominance of images
of animals in earlier periods,
very many fewer pictures of
humans, and then that changes.
And then you have a mask.
And the mask, of
course, is something
to do with performance
of some type.
And it is very striking that
we have a certain number--
not large numbers-- of
dynastic prehistoric masks.
We have very few masks
from dynastic Egypt.
I don't think that
means they weren't used.
It probably means
that they were made
of materials that don't
survive or were used
in contexts that don't survive.
So they're just there
to sort of remind us
that things go back a very
long way in Egypt, let's say.
And there we have a picture
of a tomb, which dates
to the late third Millennium.
And it's there-- you obviously
can't see any images there.
It's there for the back of
the court on the right, which
is highlighted here, where there
is a long biographical text.
It's matched by second
text on the other side,
but that doesn't concern us now.
But there, you have the
tomb owner and his wife.
And they're facing the viewer,
facing the visitor to the tomb.
And there are two crucial
things about this.
This man, untypically for a
local leader at this date,
doesn't give any
roles for himself
that are administrative
or to do with expeditions
and other accomplishments
that people would write about.
Instead, he is a priest.
That's his primary role,
and that is given there.
And his wife's short hair
is typical of priestesses
of the goddess
Hathor, so she too
is a member of cult
personnel in some way.
The crucial phrase
is on the left there.
It's not a phrase, it's
three couplets of a verse,
if you put it that way.
And there is the translation.
So he claims to have
lived 100 years,
and he was the
possessor of a ka.
We'll come back to
the ka as we go along.
The ka is some sort of
principle of vitality,
we can say, among other things.
He spent a great
part of his lifetime
as the overseer
of priests-- that
means the high
priest, we can say,
of the goddess Hathor of Qusae,
a place in the middle of Egypt.
He would enter into
Hathor, into her presence,
and see her and perform for
her a ritual with his own arms.
So he would actually touch
the image of the goddess.
And that is something that is
therefore his distinctive claim
to status.
We don't have parallels
for this text.
That's always the problem when
there aren't very many texts,
but we have plenty
of other texts
which would show
that people say what
is most important about
them in these texts.
And the other text of
this particular man,
interestingly, he
mentions that he
had been accused
of a crime, which
must have been so important
that he couldn't conceal it.
So you can see how
these things really
do convey peoples' identities.
So his identity
as being somebody
who can go into the presence of
the deity and touch the deity
is vital.
And the fact that we don't
have other texts like this
doesn't fit with the fact that
we have plenty of other people
who hold the title of
overseer of priests.
Probably, there would be
one of two reasons for that,
but basically,
what I would expect
is that other people have
other accomplishments that they
wish to talk about and
he happened not to.
But we should therefore
assume that the people
of the very highest status
in the local communities,
at least, will be people
who have access to the deity
and to the image of the god,
and the average person will not.
So access is restricted.
And we now move to Renaissance
Germany for our parallel.
And that's the very
famous painting, indeed,
the so-called
crucifixion of Grunewald,
a very doubtful attribution.
And this-- I don't know if
anyone has seen this painting.
It is truly astonishing,
because that
is about three meters wide,
and it's absolutely colossal.
And so that is how you
would see the picture,
about 360 days of the year.
But it's not the whole point.
At Christmas it will be opened
out, and so what you have
there was simply the front
panels showing the Crucifixion.
And there you have the
Annunciation, the Nativity,
and the Resurrection.
And so this is an
even larger object,
once it's been opened out.
It is truly enormous.
And you've got the
empty grave underneath.
But we still haven't
got to the point here.
The point is that on
the 17th of January,
it will be opened
out to reveal that.
And so here is one of the most
famous Western paintings which
is shown mainly, you see,
actually what you mostly
see is the Crucifixion
scene, but it is actually
tertiary in importance.
What is really vital is the
statues that are in there,
and so the statues
show the local saints.
And they are opened
out on the Saints' Day.
And so we have to think that
there is a hierarchy which
is very local to Isenheim in
Alsace, in which what matters
is statuary.
And Western art-- well,
Western art historians,
it seems to me, often confuse
us by placing painting higher
than anything else
in the hierarchy.
Yet the three dimensional
image is what counts,
and as you can see, it's gilded.
And you've got Christ
and the Twelve Apostles
in the predella, the bottom
of the altarpiece, which again
must be the highest status and
most important side of that,
too.
So therefore, the image
in three dimensions,
which will receive some
sort of special treatment,
is what counts.
We go back to Egypt.
We don't have, I
believe, a single cult
image from ancient Egypt.
Now, that's not surprising,
because the cult images
were small.
We have spurious information
about their size,
but they would typically
perhaps be about that size, 50
centimeters.
And they would be made
of precious materials.
They were very often
made of mixed materials,
and they would have included
a lot of organic material.
And so they would
be very vulnerable.
They would need to be renewed.
And we have in fact texts
about renewing cult images.
And they were in temple
sanctuaries, which were all
desecrated in early
Christian times,
and so we don't have them.
But we do have this one here,
which is a candidate for being
a cult image, but on
balance, probably isn't.
So this is a statue of a hawk.
And it's got a very simple
body, as you can see.
It's almost as if it's
a shaped piece of stone,
except it's made of copper.
And then it has this gilded
head with obsidian eyes,
extremely rare, and
the feathers on top.
The feathers show that this
is a multi-period object.
Those feathers
could not have been
added before about 1900 BCE,
or possibly a bit later,
but the object itself is
almost certainly older.
And you can if you look
at the front of it,
you can see two
slots in the plinth,
I think-- yes, that's
a plinth, isn't it.
And that suggests that
there was actually
a statuette of the King which
would have slotted into there.
But the crucial image that we
now have on the left there,
it stood on a pole.
Now, if it stood on a
pole, you can't really
imagine that being a permanent
solution to performing
the cult, because apart
from anything else,
the thing will be
kept in a shrine.
So this suggests
this is actually
a portable image, which will be
used for some sort of rituals.
It's obviously a
fantastically important one,
but it still hasn't
got us to a cult image.
So we will come back
to that problem.
But the other thing I
want to take from this one
is well, two things.
One is the use of
precious materials,
and the other is the fact
that it is a weird object.
Cult images throughout
the world are often weird.
They don't conform to
normal conventions.
So now I want to think
about how far you actually
can represent bodies,
and whether there
are things that will make
you not represent bodies.
And we go to China for this.
So here are early Bronze
Age Chinese vessels.
And Chinese art of this
period eschews the human form
pretty much entirely.
Always exceptions
to any statement,
but those are typical vessels
of the very highest quality
from Bronze Age China.
And what is important to them
is their patterned decoration.
But they are
animated-- or rather,
the left hand one is, by
the presence of these eyes,
which make them kind
of stare at you.
And then there is
a whole discussion
as to what that means.
It's not that they couldn't have
had images of living beings.
Sorry, let's just add there
that you do have dragons there.
So there are
identifiable beings,
but although there they are,
they're probably-- well,
they are obviously
invented beings.
Nobody's ever met a dragon.
And we go about
1,000 km southwest
from where those
were found, and we
find this extraordinary
bronze statue of a man
from a civilization
which is contemporary
with the previous ones,
but it was kind of cast out
of the Chinese tradition.
And so the idea that you
represent the human figure
is what foreigners do in this
period, but not Chinese people.
So there are choices involved,
and the representation
of the human figure
is a sensitive matter
that people may not want to do.
That continues in another sense,
as far as 19th century Korea.
Did anyone see the
exhibition of Korean art
in the Philadelphia Museum,
two or three years ago?
It was worth seeing.
So here you have a ceremony
for the birthday of the King.
And this is not
the nicest example
from the point of
view of thinking
about Egyptian art-- there are
conventions in 19th century
Korea which look as if they
came from ancient Egypt.
But what is really
striking about this
is what I've highlighted there.
There is a throne and a
something in front of it,
but there is no human figure.
And that's because
that's the King.
You could not
represent the King.
So if you are really important,
you can't be depicted.
And all these people
here are less important.
They're the King's servants,
in one sense or another.
Not only that, but if
you look at the painting,
you will see that the
King is right at the back.
The absence of the King
is right at the back.
And then you have
these two screen walls,
so that there are a
number of separations
between the outside
world down here
and what is actually
going on, and then
the person for whom
it's all being done.
And this is actually fairly
typical of many civilizations.
So we'll come back to this one
again indirectly, near the end,
but here you have
Min, the Egyptian god,
and these are the oldest
colossal statues anybody knows.
There are three of them.
That's two of the three.
They come from the
Temple of Coptos,
which is a bit north
of Luxor, Thebes.
And they show this
very flat figure.
You can see that on
the side, on the left.
The statues were about four
meters high, originally.
And this god holds his phallus,
and he is clearly very visible.
He is the absolute opposite
of the sort of point
I've been making up to now.
And as I say, we'll come back
to Min just near the end.
But roughly contemporary
with those statues, you
have here microscopic
objects with human figures
in two contexts.
You've got pictures of
a group of captives,
it seems on the left, a fragment
of an ivory object here.
And you've also got people
carrying offerings and things
like that on another
fragment that you have above.
And then you have this
extraordinary statuette
of a woman.
Now, the reason
for choosing these
is that they're
wearing long clothes.
So these people
are fully dressed,
and the woman is also wearing
a shawl over her head.
And she has-- it's a bit
hard to say, I guess probably
she's got a two layer shawl
or something like that.
And there's every reason
to suppose that clothing
is very important and valuable.
There are thousands of
reasons for thinking this.
Yet, as we go along, we will
find less and less clothing
involved.
So by late predynastic times,
contemporary with those-- well,
Min was wearing something,
he was wearing a belt,
but that's all.
As time goes along, you
have the development
of clothing, which surely goes
back many thousands of years.
And the more clothing you
wear, the higher the prestige
involved.
You can get this clearly
from later periods in Egypt.
But nonetheless, the
conventions which
we will come to as
we go along point
in the opposite direction.
And here you've got
probably an object
which is roughly contemporary
within a generation
or two with the previous one.
And you have on the left
two men who are nude,
and they are captives being led
along in an excruciating pose
by a standard which
symbolizes the deity.
It's there.
And on the right, you
have up here a captive
who is being thrown
to the ground.
Then down here,
there is another--
I assume a very
important captive,
because he's shown at a large
scale-- who is in subjection.
He's forced to bend forward,
and his arms are behind him,
and he is held by
this person here.
That person there is wearing
a long patterned garment.
The pattern is probably
an animal skin.
And so he is probably shown at
least a slightly later date.
Sorry, I'm highlighting that.
The animal skin would
have been the skin
of a panther or a leopard.
Whether that was true at
this date, we can't be sure.
But so these objects
represent the idea
that the person at the
top of the hierarchy
is the one who
wears the clothes.
Nudity is then a state
of abjection of enemies,
which is something
that is known, again,
in many societies.
Now, these objects,
these pallets,
were used for notional use,
for grinding eye paint.
At least that's the prime
use we think they had.
And that was done
in this area here.
But these are
ceremonial objects.
They were never actually used.
You can see that there's no
trace of wear at that point.
Well, you can just
see that, I think.
But we do have examples
that have been used.
And here are a couple of them.
And they have this
arms like this,
and that is the
hieroglyph, that's
a very slightly later date of
the ka, this vital force, which
is passed down the generations
through the treatment
of the body.
And so these actually come from
almost certainly the beginning
of the development of writing.
There's too much connections
for that not to be true.
But at the same time,
these privileges
which are involved in ideas
like the transmission of the ka
are being taken
away from people.
Perhaps these objects
would have been
used for rituals
performed particularly
perhaps on the dead.
So you would prepare
the body for burial.
We never get enough
of a context for this
to be able to reconstruct it.
And then the eye paint
that was produced,
or we would put perhaps
on the wrappings
rather than on the
body itself, would
help you to transmit the
vital force which would bring
rebirth in the next world.
At the same time, it
would bring the qualities
that go down the generations.
It would probably benefit you.
But here is another example that
also bears clear signs of use
but lacks the ka
element and is square.
It's without pictorial value.
And that is, I think, because
the pictorial value was being
withdrawn from anyone who is
below the very high status,
the King and the gods.
And the latest
object we have that's
at all like that is that one.
That's too big in the picture,
but that's the way screens are.
And that one has
hieroglyphs on it.
It's got the ka sign,
and then across the top
it says, life,
duration, and power,
which are three standard
attributes of the King.
So this is presumably
an object that
would have belonged to the King
or been in the King's power,
but it was found in
the tomb of an elite
at the site of
[? Honewan, ?] which
is not where the very
highest elites were buried,
but people one down
the scale from them.
But it's the only thing
like it that is known,
and it is also visibly unused.
So I would interpret
this that you
have a very short phase where
the King might give people
gifts of this sort,
which would then
ratify their status
and their progression
into the next world, and
then that would finish.
That would finish, because
the symbolic world is
becoming ever more restricted.
So then we have the most
famous of all these objects,
the Narmer palette, which
will be a generation or two
older than that last one, or
maybe even a bit older still.
And so that gives you the
way that the representation
of the body develops.
And it has an enormous
progeny in later periods
in other forms.
So the King is there wearing
a very short and tight kilt.
He has a bull's tail, so
he's in some way associated
with the idea of
the power of a bull.
And there are a number of
details of his iconography
which are very clearly known,
attested from later periods.
So although the Narmer
palette itself was deposited
at Hierakonpolis and
nobody saw it again,
we can safely say
that it is using
a repertory that did live on.
Now, there are-- well, you
could certainly do a lecture
on the Narmer
palette, so we won't.
But it is worth just
looking at the figures here.
So the man whom he
is about to smite,
to kill-- though he
never actually does-- it
is virtually nude.
And just go back
for a second, you
will see these two
figures who were probably
meant to be representative
of the dead are nude.
So death and defeat are
represented by nudity.
And then you've got
his sandal bearer
behind him, who has minimal
clothing, but special clothing.
You've got this man
in front of him here,
who is wearing a leopard skin.
And so that's somebody
who is not royal, but is
of the very highest status.
And the King shows his status
with this rather skimpy
but extremely
musclebound clothing.
And he is wearing something of a
shirt, in addition to the kilt.
You can see that
more clearly there.
And mostly, the King is
about the only person
who wears something like that.
So clothing is brought
down to a minimal state,
and the meaning of
the clothing is there
in subtle features
of the iconography,
but I think it has ceased to
relate to what people actually
wear by this date.
So you cannot from this
point on say, well,
the King went around with
hardly any clothes on.
The King from the
tomb of Tutankhamen,
we have very elaborate,
heavy garments.
So that won't work.
And there would have been,
at roughly the same date,
other ways of
thinking about this,
which then we don't have
much material relating to it,
but it's still valid.
So you've got on the
left an over life size
figure in a long cloak.
And that's probably the King.
That sort of statuary
didn't live on.
And then you've got these very
small objects on the right.
These are typically
about this size.
And all of those
five shown there,
you've got a man
wearing a penis sheath.
That is a sign of high
status in this period.
And it lives on a little bit
later, but only a little bit.
And then of the
other four, three
are wearing cloaks and
one, the left hand one
looks like a figure of the King.
But I have my
feeling that this is
material of very varied date.
It might be a later object.
But anyway, the
cloak is something
which marks things like age,
and distinction, and wisdom.
We can produce examples
for all of those.
But cloaking the body is
therefore a positive thing.
So you've got different
developments going on
at the same time, where nudity
of certain types, seminudity,
and a visible body
work together.
And then this is much
simplified as it goes along.
Here, we have the
simpler version,
and these extraordinary wooden
panels of [? Hezirah. ?] So
as you went into
[? Hezirah's ?] tomb,
you saw the one on the left.
And he is wearing a cloak
there, and he is seated.
On the whole, there
is more status
in being seated than standing.
And he is also shown elderly.
So the attributes
of wisdom and things
like that are
associated with wearing
quite a lot of clothing.
The next one shows him with a
fantastically beautiful body,
and not very much in
the way of clothing.
And by this date, jewelry
has gone way out of fashion.
And so people are not
wearing much else, apart
from a garment.
He is holding attributes which
are important attributes,
but you start effectively
developing the repertory which
then lives on for several
centuries in the middle
of the third Millennium,
from this extraordinarily
plain and minimal style
of showing people.
Of course, the other
point I would make here
is that the actual
value in the human body
is clearly very great.
The body is shown as being lean
and muscular and toned, and so
on.
And then we can make the
same points about the King.
This is contemporary
with the last example.
There is King Djoser and
his statue on the right--
shows him cloaked all over.
And he has this extremely
large beard, a false beard,
which signifies that he
is in some way assimilated
to a deity.
And his wig also
shows the same thing.
And on top of the wig
he has a head cloth,
and the head cloth has
solar associations.
So we have very elaborate
iconography here,
which is probably to do with
his passage into the next life,
or something like that.
But in a way, more relevant
to what I'm talking about
here is the one on the left.
That's just the base
of a colossal statue.
And it's an
extraordinary object,
because it's just about
the only object we have
where it's actually got a
sculptor's signature on it,
as you might call it.
And there is another
fragment of the same statue,
of the midriff area, which
has an asymmetrical belt.
And that has heads of a cow with
necklaces descending from it.
That's an ornament
on the garment,
and that's something
which we can parallel also
back to the Narmer palette.
And if you put
that together, you
get a statue looking
something like that,
more than three meters high.
So this is the earliest colossal
statue of a King that we have.
It's just that it's in lots of
pieces, or not enough pieces.
And so the minimal
clothing style
is what is chosen if you
want to express things
like power, which is also given
by the various attributes he's
holding, and so on.
Well, that's just a brief
survey of that sort of thing.
We now go back to what we
had right at the beginning,
and look at how this relates
to where you see objects.
So here you have two
more of these tags.
On the right, you've got both
the photograph and the drawing.
And they show you on the
right the sacred site
of Sais in the delta.
The King visits Sais and
he goes to the temple.
The King is represented
by that emblem there.
And that is the Temple of
Sais, and the boat above
is the means of his transport
to Sais, presumably.
I'm sure it does have
further implications,
but that's enough for now.
On the left, you have the
site of Buto in the delta.
I'm afraid I subsequently
found a better drawing of this,
but sorry.
And that's shown essentially as
a set of shrines interspersed
with palms.
And these are symbols that
live on for millennia.
In addition to all of that,
you have this element here,
which is a slaughtered
jackal suspended from a pole.
At least, that's the pictorial
aspect of it, let's say.
These objects were made in
three dimensional materials
of some sort.
And you've got the left there,
that's a hieroglyph which
means making.
And so what is presumably
done for the temple of Sais
is that this slaughtered
jackal object is brought,
and it is set up
outside the temple.
It is something that
protects the temple
and wards off people
from going inside.
The actual cult image would
in theory be in there,
in that building there.
And in Buto, you don't
even get a sense of what
the central structure was.
But you do have this.
It's a very interesting
detail here,
because that says probably
the arising by the gods.
So you've got a plurality
of gods represented there.
Exactly how, I don't know.
And then you've got two shrines
in Buto, to the right, there.
So you can get a lot
of sense from all
of this of how the
temple in principle
is a very small
place that would be
visited by the King
for certain rituals.
And in there would be the cult
statues, which we cannot see.
And it's very important
that we can't see them.
and the significance of
some of these objects
can be seen in this material.
Really the left-hand image
is the important one here.
You've got a flat
plate it's almost like,
which has the emblem of the
goddess Neith, on the left,
and then it has this a pair
of hieroglyphs for god here.
And I should have
pointed that out to you
that here these pairs
are hieroglyphs for gods.
It's a flag on a pole
or a piece of cloth
on a pole which
flutters in the wind
and so draws attention to the
building without revealing
what's in there.
And so you've got both the
idea of gods in general
can be used for any god,
and at the same time,
you don't see anything.
You just see this
fluttering symbol there.
So the same thing
is so important
that it is then carved into
this object, which as I say,
it's plate like in shape.
But it's got these ridges.
I hope you can see that
down the left-hand side.
And so that makes it
into a representation
of a temple enclosure which
looks blank in the middle.
It's, again, this
sense of absence
you get from these things.
The right-hand one is
just another object
relating to the goddess Neith
which is so extraordinary
that it's worth showing.
It's not closely relevant.
It is a particular sort
of beetle, not a scarab,
but another sort of beetle.
And it's got human arms
holding symbols of power.
And these are fantastically
beautiful objects.
It's extremely thin,
and in some sense,
that representation of a beetle
is a representation of a deity.
That drops out of fashion later.
Though these two figures up here
are also these same beetles.
Something went wrong there.
Oh no.
It didn't.
Well, it didn't go
too badly wrong.
I think I'll be very
brief on this-- just
to say that this one is what
I wanted to draw attention to.
You saw these images
earlier and that
shows a building, a shrine
as you've had elsewhere.
There it is.
With a bucranium on top.
And so the bucranium, the head
of a bovid or an antelope which
is stuck as an emblem
to draw attention
is very widespread in
African symbolism generally.
But it's only a symbol.
It's not something that
is directly worshiped
or anything like that.
Then you got a ram here.
And the ram is a sacred
animal of the ram
god of Mendes in the Delta.
But with the bucranium, we
have lots of parallels for it.
With the ram, we don't.
But I would assume
that this, again,
is a representation of
some sort of absence
because it is all in
a temple enclosure.
That's the entrance on the left.
And so you're not actually
going to see this.
You know that there's
the cult in there.
The ram may [? maintain ?] a
sacred [? ground. ?] I think
that's very likely.
But the sanctuary of the
temple is absent again.
And we go to a small site in the
Delta, Tell Ibrahim Awad here.
And these [? fiance ?] models
of temples were found there.
These are quite small objects,
about this sort of size.
And they have represented
on the outside the same sort
of symbols we've been seeing.
So the pair of
hieroglyphs with gods.
There's another one there,
and they flank an entrance.
This temple is made
of flimsy materials,
so reeds, something like that.
And inside there
would be the god.
You're not going to see the god.
So in these early periods, you
have the idea of concealment--
is the thing that in particular
comes out of all of this.
But you can then
go down 1,500 years
and reflect backwards on
the same sort of point.
Here you have a list
of gods of Memphis,
and details of this list
show, I think convincingly,
that it is based on
very ancient materials.
I'm not claiming that
all of it is consistently
based on ancient materials,
but some of it is.
That line across
the top gives you
a list of quarters of
Memphis, so areas of the city
where different gods
would be worshiped.
This could be within the
city, the central city itself,
or it could be scattered
across the suburbs.
Who knows.
But there are some
hieroglyphs up there.
That writing of the word
for west in Egyptian
is not attested after
the first dynasty
except in a case like this.
So it is presumably a
very ancient designation
which is kept for at least
1,500 years after that.
So you get the sense
from something like this
that you have an extraordinary
density of worship
of gods in the city, but this
doesn't relate to anything
that we can see on the ground
because the Nile has swept
the city away and there simply
isn't any archeology-- there's
not zero, but
there's near zero--
that we can relate it to.
This is just a
translation of bits
of that line across the top
showing you that these relate
to other known things including
the word for Memphis itself
and the [? Henu ?]
bark which relates
to the god Sokar who is
the ancient god of Memphis
and so on.
We don't need to
dwell on that, but we
should think about
how that comes to be
and where it came
from and so on.
And there we have a text
which is a little bit later
than what I want
to mention here,
which is the titles of a couple
of high priests of the middle
of the Old Kingdom, fifth and
early sixth dynasties, which
list of a number of names
of deities which are known
otherwise only in that list.
And so they, it would
seem, have access
to secret knowledge
about who the gods are,
what their names are,
and that is because they
are the high priests.
And I've highlighted in
the translation there--
this is roughly contemporary
with the later of those two
high priests-- this
crucial phrase here,
about how in a
different context,
somebody will be transfigured
into the next life
by means of the secret
writings of the gods house.
Well, the word house may mean
also his estate or something
like that.
So the god is worshiped
in the temple.
And in the temple, will
also be a repertory of text
which are transmitted
over time which
will give meaning to all of us.
Well, we're now going to move
on to something quite different,
thinking about
how you get access
to cult images over time.
In the site of
Elephantine, which
is the island facing Aswan--
the southern end of Egypt--
and there is the pavement of
the temple of the goddess Satet
with in the middle-- we see
this better in the next image--
you've got this shaft
here which descends
from this pavement
to an area which
is about 1,500 years older.
And so as the
structure developed
and was rebuilt over
time, they would not
throw the stone work away.
It would be re-used
in later pavements.
So a lot of other
bits of buildings
have been reconstructed
from these blocks that
were taken away.
Once you've taken
absolutely everything away,
which I hope was OK
archaeologically,
you get to that.
And that is an opening
in the granite boulders
of the cataract
because that's what
creates the cataract
is that the Nile has
to go through the boulders.
And you've got a human
scale standing there,
and you can see-- I
think we see this better
on the next picture-- that
first, the boulder on the left
has been smoothed to make
a kind of vertical wall.
And that's a very
considerable task in itself
if you have a piece of granite
a couple of meters high.
And it's also been used
for centuries because it's
completely blackened.
Exactly how it was
blackened, I don't know.
Then you will see
that at the same time,
the area was shaped a bit.
So that you went to the back
of that smoothed boulder,
and you then kind of
turned left and there was
a niche inside there
or something like that.
And this was then cut off by
this piece of walling here.
And then this was in use
for about 1,000 years.
It then looked like that by the
end of the third millennium.
And then we have to think,
well, what does that all mean?
Well, we've got
two interpretations
to offer you here.
But I think what
will make it most
clear about the
shape of this area
is-- just a second--
it's this plan up here.
That is the focal point
of this whole area.
It's very small, but
it will be probably
where the cult image was kept.
It would be out of view.
It's off axis.
And the Egyptians seem to have
kept their cult images off axis
so that nobody could see them.
Anyone who's been to
the temple Edfu-- anyone
been to temple Edfu?
Some have.
In the Temple of Edfu, on axis
in the middle of the temple
is a wonderful monolithic
shrine of the god.
The only trouble
is the 19th century
photographs show that
it was off axis then,
and it was moved by people
for the sake of tourists
into the axis.
So this idea that the god should
not be seen straight ahead
existed in all periods
as far as we can tell.
So then you've got
on the right there
Barry Kemp's reconstruction.
There's this structure here
which you see in the plan
there.
He believes that you would
have had a, as he puts it,
the realm of the hidden image,
which actually looks to me more
like something like where you
would keep your cult equipment.
Because I think the image
would have been kept there.
And then you brought it
out into the open there,
and you would have set up the
image for whatever purpose
you were going to set it up.
And then the section at
the bottom I don't think
tells us much more.
So we can leave that.
But here is an alternative
by Richard Bussmann.
And I think Richard Bussmann's
interpretation is probably
better.
So he believes that this
is not a large area,
and it would be
spanned by beams.
And it would actually be roofed.
And hence, you
would still have--
that [? plince ?] there
would have a shrine on top,
he suggests.
So the same basic interpretation
as Barry Kemp's is also
given by Richard Bussmann
with the difference
that in Richard Bussmann's
view, nothing of this
would be public.
And so you would
have the cult image
kept in the back for storage,
including overnight let's say.
And the rituals
would be performed
on the image, which
would often be
moved into a more convenient
space for the performance.
And I think that makes
better sense really.
So then we will see
two images later
which can give a bit
more context to that.
That is then what happens
that the area at the back
there is sealed and
a set of shrines
is constructed at a later period
but still within these walls,
so still not visible
to the public.
But people knew about
this because that shaft
that we saw at the beginning
of the set of pictures
was present until an
altogether later date.
So this was a
really central area
for people to think
about their gods
and keep worshipping
them for 1,500 years.
Here we have the Temple
of Tell Ibrahim Awad.
I showed you those [? fiance ?]
models for the same site.
And it's good to have the plan
on the left which shows you
what a tiny structure this is.
I've got something to show you
which gives you perhaps a bit
more sense of this.
And then on the right, you have
the ground plan of the temple.
And here, it looks
as if the main cult
area will be back here
so that it would actually
be behind everything
else, and you
would go around this kind of
U-shape in order to get to it.
And here is the excavator's
reconstruction of this.
He's actually put perhaps
the same sort of idea.
You have here a shrine
that's suggested,
and then I would think that the
cult area would be behind it.
So in this very small
space, you would still not
have access to the main cult
image in any meaningful way.
But what would you be
doing with these images?
So here, you have some statues
of [? Nessa ?] and [? Sepha, ?]
some of the oldest tomb
statues that we know.
And the really crucial
one is the woman there.
It's probably true of the men
too, but let's look at her head
there.
And you can see she has these
very heavy green patches
under her eyes.
Now, the normal material
for this eye paint
that was so important was
malachite or some copper
compound which would be
ground into a powder,
and in this case,
applied to the statue
to revive it for the next life.
So we don't have many
examples of this.
Probably it was sort of
thought at a later date
that didn't really beautify the
statue or something like that.
And so this practice
ceased, but it
doesn't mean that the meanings
that [INAUDIBLE] to it ceased.
Here we are at the step
pyramid, and you've
got on the bottom right
there a photograph
of the Statue of Djoser,
which we saw earlier,
in context where it was found.
And that corresponds
to that area there.
Sorry.
I picked out the wrong thing.
It's this.
And there is a cast of
that statue which you can
see through these peep holes.
So it would have been
there to receive the cult,
but it would have been
fundamentally invisible.
And how would you have
had the value of the cult?
Well, the next
image suggests it.
Here in the tomb
of Ti at Saqqara,
you have a slit, which
is about this size.
And you've got two men
performing sensing rituals.
So the aroma of the incense
would go through that slit
into the chamber behind,
and there you will have--
and here, we have again a
copy of the Statue of Ti
which would receive
the offerings.
So the presence of an actual
body is very important,
but it's a statue body.
The deceased buried in
the chamber underneath
would receive the
benefit indirectly.
That only answers
about 2% of what
we might think about the
meaning of the statues.
If somebody was buried
with 50 statues,
obviously they couldn't all
receive something like this.
So we don't understand that.
And people's ideas change.
Here is the tomb
of Mereruka, which
is not more than a generation
or two later than Ti,
but he has an engaged statue
which is fully visible.
There might have been a door
in front of that statue.
I think that's quite possible.
But there's only a very limited
level of concealment there.
Except that you have these
texts in these tombs which
have ferocious
curses against those
who would enter the tomb
when they shouldn't,
when they weren't in a state of
purity, and things like that.
So there are still
many questions there,
and I think we can't
assume that people have
easy access to all of this.
And here is another very
nice example, I think,
of this pair of people who were
Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep who
are shown-- that's
pictures of statues.
They're holding
hands, which you find
it very hard to make a pair
of wooden statues like that.
And they're receiving sensing.
This is as they are
transported to the tomb.
So in other words, we
must not take these things
too literally.
Not only that,
but our next image
may remind us that
anyway the statues
would have been
invisible in another way
because they would have
been wrapped up cloth.
And there's plenty of evidence
that it would be normal
for [INAUDIBLE] to be
wrapped, and it would only
be unwrapped at
particular points.
And as you can see,
that photograph
there shows both
the wrapped statue
as found in this tomb, which
is from a somewhat later date,
with other objects including
that enormous battle
axe at the front and a
vast amount of other cloth.
So cloth becomes extremely
important in thinking
about what is done with
bodies and things like that.
And there is the statue as
found on the left and the statue
as unwrapped by-- perhaps
it shouldn't have been done.
These days you could
have obviously do
some sort of body
scan of it, and you
could know what it looked
like without unwrapping it.
But in 1905, that might
not have been possible.
And the lady as she then
appears, nude as you might say,
is on display in The Louvre
if you want to go and see her.
But when we sometimes think
these statues are nude,
they were not nude.
They were wrapped.
So now let's go
into later temples--
sorry I've been
talking too long--
and see how you might
represent this sort of thing.
Now, the convention
in a temple is
that the king is shown
performing the rituals.
That is a convention.
It doesn't mean that the
king perform the rituals.
And when you read in
books that the king was
the sole priest who had the
right to perform the rituals,
that in my opinion, is nonsense.
But you do have what
is being done here
in the Temple of Seti,
the first at Abydos, which
has the richest representations
of the ordinary cult actions,
the King is then
unwrapping the god.
And so when the god
has been unwrapped
as one stage in
the ritual, I can
see Laurel thinks he's being
wrapped, but he's one or other.
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHS]
And so you would unwrap the god
at the beginning of the ritual,
and then you would
wrap him up afterwards.
So that is the god Amun.
And you can do that.
That is a very normal
picture of a god
or of the human
figure let's say.
Don't take the scale
literally either
because the scale is
governed by the convention
that the two main
figures have to have
their heads at the same level.
And so the statue of the
god would be about that size
probably.
But you also have other ways
in which you can represent
a god such as this one here,
which represents Osiris,
but he is represented in the
form of this djed, which is
a hieroglyph meaning duration.
But it's clothed.
For some reason,
it isn't wrapped,
but I'm sure somebody will have
found a wrapped djed somewhere.
It's also wearing a crown.
So it's been turned
into an animate figure
by wearing clothes and being
wrapped and having a crown.
And it's having cloth
presented to it.
So again, cloth is
fantastically important to
the whole treatment of bodies.
And then here you have-- really,
this is the crucial picture
because this shows you the
shrine in which the god is
kept.
This is not the shrine in
which he be kept permanently.
It's the shrine in which he be
kept for certain rituals, which
is on a boat.
And so it means it's
a traveling shrine,
and it could be carried around.
But he is wrapped
inside that shrine,
which you can see
only partially,
because the shrine is wrapped.
And so it's multiple
layering of the body
in order to protect it.
And here is the counter-example.
So here, you have Min.
We had him right
at the beginning.
And Min is carried
out in procession
by a whole group of priests,
but he is not wrapped.
He's totally visible.
And if we take the
scale seriously,
which I'm slightly
inclined to do here--
maybe not that
seriously-- but he
would be roughly life
size if you can say
what life size is for a god.
So the figure of Min is roughly
the size of the human figures
in the picture.
But the human
figures are wrapped
instead of Min being wrapped.
So there's a sort
of reverse symbolism
here that Min is so
important that he
has to be shown in
a different status
from the people who
are carrying him.
If you're carrying a
shrine-- top left-- then
these priests are shown
in ordinary clothes.
And bottom left, a
couple of priests
are carrying an emblem of
Min being the lettuce patch.
They are, again, in
ordinary clothes.
But I think the fact that
the human figures carrying
Min around are
concealed by this cloth
is part of the same
sort of messages we've
had throughout but in reverse.
So the [INAUDIBLE] god Min
is a protective figure.
He is so protective that he
doesn't need to be wrapped,
and he can be shown publicly.
And we actually
have, as far as I
know-- I can't think of any
statue of a god in Egypt
which comes from inside
a temple with exception
of those colossal
statues of Min.
And if you have
this one here, this
would be carried out to
the temple and visible.
And there are parallels to this.
It's not unique, not
unique for Min that is.
And then from the side of
Heracleion in the Delta,
there is a colossal
statue of what
I would call a fecundity
figure, a personification
of the inundation which is
four meters high or a bit more
I think, the largest such
statue known anywhere.
But this is not a
normal deity at all.
So we should assume
therefore that deities
are kept inside temples and
that they are not shown publicly
as it were.
And then my last
few images show you
the weirdness side of things.
So we're now going right
down to the fourth century,
and you have register after
register on this [INAUDIBLE]
from the Delta of
images of deities.
And these deities, as you can
see, are often shown on plints,
and those plints don't
really tell us anything.
It's just that,
again, you've got
to have the figures at a certain
height above the register line,
but these are completely
weird figures.
And you have elements
like a tree down there
which is presumably
some sacred tree.
You've got two snakes
up there, and the snakes
are in a special
shrine-like things.
And a very interesting
one is this one here
where you have a nursing
woman underneath a tree,
and that is some composite image
probably signifying the goddess
Isis bringing up the god
Horus in the Delta marshes
or something like that.
And at the Temple of
Hibis in Kharga Oasis,
there are literally
hundreds of these figures.
And so we have to assume that
this is actually what cult
imagery really looked like.
And people point out that if
you go into churches in Italy,
you have all the enormous
number of paintings
and things in them.
They show scenes from
lives of saints and all
these other things
that they show,
but the figures are
normal human figures.
But then there are
figures which are actually
venerated in churches,
and these are often
multimedia figures that
have clothing and are
weird in other ways.
So the boundaries of
artistic representation
are breached by particular
really sacred things.
And here, same context
as the last one,
you have some
figures-- you've got
crossed arrows against a shield.
You've got four of them there.
And some of them have
heads on top of them.
And those crossed arrows
against the shield
are emblems of the goddess
Neith with whom we saw right
at the beginning.
So these are images which
are extremely important, so
important that they've
stayed for nearly 3,000 years
without very major change.
And again, I would
say that that's where
a lot of cult importance lies.
And so we have to remember that
the repertory that we actually
see is only part
of what existed.
And my last image-- this is
really just for fun here.
Although it has one
significant point to it also.
That is an image of
the god Harsomtus
who is one of the junior gods
in the Temple of Dendera.
And it's got a caption above it.
That's what is particularly
relevant for thinking
about this.
It says, "Gold."
And then there's a word
of uncertain reading.
And then it says,
"Height four palms."
So four palm width.
So it's about that size.
And it is this statue which
signifies the god Harsomtus
in the form of an enormous
lotus with a snake
coming out of it which
then curves around.
But it's not very enormous
because, as I said,
it's actually rather small.
And the standing
figure on the left
is actually two figures
layered over each other.
They would be attendant gods who
would carry this object around.
This all together is presumably
some sort of a cult image.
But the entertaining
side of it is
that an Austrian published a
book about 20 years ago saying
that these were ancient Egyptian
pictures of light bulbs.
And so he thought
that in antiquity-- it
is awfully dark in
Egyptian temples--
they were lit with
electric light.
So I will leave you with
that very irrelevant thought.
[APPLAUSE]
[INAUDIBLE]
[INAUDIBLE]
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, we have time for a
question or two before we
[INAUDIBLE].
Well, I actually
want to challenge you
on just a tiny little--
which is your--
you don't think that
the Hierakonpolis
statue of the falcon is a god.
And one of the
arguments you put forth
is that it could
put on a standard.
Yeah.
We have of course multiple
contemporary representations
of standards acting as
divinities in some way.
That's true.
And certainly
later on, you point
to other cases in which
divinities travel out
of their temples later on.
This is happening on the backs
of priest or with the boats.
And I wonder if in
fact we might not
have a cult image of a god that
can be put on and taken off
of a pole, one for
sitting at home and one
for going out in procession.
Well, I'm not saying it's
not an image of a god.
I'm just saying it's not
the principle cult image.
Why not?
I mean, your interpretation's
certainly possible.
But we just can't
tell is the answer to
[INAUDIBLE] for you, is it?
That could be it.
I think that having the figure
of the king on the front
would be surprising
because the king, I think,
would be facing
away from the god.
And so he would be being
protected by the god.
Whereas if you have an object
which is used in the cult,
I would expect there wouldn't
be a figure of the king
because the officiant, the
person who actually performs
the ritual, would take
the role of the person who
cares for the god.
And that wouldn't
really fit that.
But, yes.
I can certainly
be wrong on that.
I had a question about the
temple in Tell Ibrahim Awad.
So you would describe
it as an Egyptian temple
with this offset
entrance actually,
and you're probably aware
of other interpretations
as in your Eastern influence
for that temple in the Delta.
Well, obviously it's
in the Eastern Delta,
but I don't think
anything that was
found in the temple
is un-Egyptian looking
like among the artifacts.
So I'd be inclined to say,
well, it could be that it's
influenced from elsewhere.
But of course, it's outside the
range of what we normally have.
So if it's architecture
is near Eastern,
then it would certainly
fit with Egyptian ideas.
Actually, I've always found that
building really interesting.
And in fact, if you put
that next to the [INAUDIBLE]
Temple-- the
earliest [INAUDIBLE]
Temple-- I actually find
that sort of two room bent
axis-- I know, [INAUDIBLE]
bent axis [INAUDIBLE].
But one parallel
I've seen there also
is with the cult buildings
in [INAUDIBLE] enclosures
from the first dynasty
which are generally
two rooms with a bent axis.
And it's the second room
that has the cult image in it
there as well, which
would maybe have
a parallel between [INAUDIBLE]
and [INAUDIBLE] cult
in the same sort
of construction.
I think you don't
get straight axises
in temples before the
second millennium anyway.
[INAUDIBLE] temples [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHS]
[INAUDIBLE]
I have a rather odd question
and one probably coming out
of a certain amount of ignorance
being a non-Egyptologist.
What's going on with
the lack of footwear?
I've seen with
the Narmer Palette
that at least the king
has a sandal-bearer.
But if we're talking about this
relationship between power,
clothing, cloth, why are
the feet left out of it?
Well, I think the same basic
idea exists as in Islam.
In other words,
you purify yourself
before you go into a temple
and you take off your footwear.
So people have now
identified rooms
next to a royal
palace where it seems
this will be a removing your
footwear room before going
into the presence of the king.
And you clearly have cases where
there's a status implication
of who is wearing
footwear and who isn't.
But I think basically,
it's the pure,
no footwear is the normal thing.
Now, that's odd for the
Narmer Palette in the sense
that he hasn't got any
footwear, but he's got somebody
to bring it with him.
But I would think that--
it's very difficult to say--
but perhaps something like
this, it's a ritual action
that he's performing even
though it isn't a ritual
action that you would have
inside the temple or anything.
But it's kind of taken
away from a context
in which something so mundane
as a shoe would be relevant.
But the idea that
somebody carries your shoe
is of course very
prestigious and that
has-- in many
cultures of course--
the idea that if you touch
anything that touches the king,
you have to be somebody
of very high status
and you have to be protected
from the possible danger
that this brings
with it and so on.
So the message given
by royal footwear
is that it separates the king
from other people [INAUDIBLE].
Is that anything like an answer?
[INAUDIBLE]
I think if you have
further questions,
I will invite you to ask him to
join you for a glass of wine.
Thank you so much
for joining us.
[APPLAUSE]
