On the Position of Women in the Ancient Egyptian Hierarchy
1921; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 7; Issue: 1/2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3853813
ISSN2514-0582
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Historical Studies
Resumo9 the making of statues and for the performing on them of the rite of Opening the Mouth, this taking place in the House of Gold'.The division into an Upper Egyptian and Lower Egyptian mrt, which goes back to the Fourth Dynasty2, is also probably due to this priestess participating in the Sed-festival, the representations of which are always divided into two halves, an Upper and a Lower Egyptian.Kees is very possibly correct in regarding the mrt as "hieroglyphic as it were" for the large body of musician-priestesses that actually participated in the perfortrmances depicted schematically in the temple reliefs-" an abstraction of them all8."In the Middle Kingdom there were certainly musician-priestesses, ?i (hnywt), attached to the temple of Osiris at Abydos4 and to the temple of ljathor at Cusae5.In the New Kingdom there were musician-priestesses, smcywt or hnywt, of Osiris6, Isis7, Mut8, :Iapi9, Horus of Anibeh in Nubia ', lEathor of Denderah 1, the Great Ennead of Karnak 2, Upwawet'3, and above all of AmenreC, whom, judging fromll surviving monuments, almost every woman who dwelt in or near Thebes during the New Kingdom seems to have served as musicianpriestess.Again an inscription of Raresses II, and also Ramesses III's adaptation of it, speak of the "great noble ladies of the temple of Ptah and the Hathors of the temple of Atum," who were evidently musician-priestesses, for they are spoken of as greeting the king (when he visited these temples) with jubilation and the beating of tambourines'4.An inscription in the great temple of Hathor at Denderah gives five titles of musicianpriestesses of that goddessl5.This doubtless means that there were five (chief?) musicianpriestesses attached to the temple of Denderah in Ptolemaic times.The two above-mentioned inscriptions at Edfu record, along with other information about the local cults, the special title assigned to the high-priest of the leading divinity of each of the forty-two nomes of Upper and Lower Egypt.Immediately after the high priest's title with its accompanying attribute "who officiates (ir lht) for him or her," i.e., the nomedivinity, mention is made of a female officiant, likewise possessed of a special title which is followed by the attribute "who rattles the sist uam in front of him or her."That the title of 1 SETHE, Urkunden des dg.yptischen Altertums, I, 114, line 11; DAVIES-GARDINER, Tomb of Amenemhet, 58; BLACKMAN in Journal, v, 155, 159. 2 SETHE ap.BORCHARDT, loc.cit. 3 KEES, op.cit., 105 foll.Mrt, it is to be noted, is the title of the high-priestess of Thoth of Hermopolis (BRUGscH, Dictionnaire geographique, 1361), who, along with Horus, is so closely associated with the Pharaoh's ceremonial toilet in the House of the Morning, the temple-vestry (BLACKMAN, Journal, v, 156; Rec. de Trav., xxxix, 44 foll.).Was it as high-priestess, and perliaps therefore as wife, of Thoth (see below, pp.11 foll.)that the mrt received the king on his arrival at a temple ?However, in the pyramid-temple of SahurYe (SETHE ap.BORCHARDT, op.cit., p. 102) the Upper Egyptian mrt seems to be identified with Eileithyia (Nhbt) of El-Kab (Nhb).4
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