Commemorative scarabs of Amenhotep III
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During the reign of the ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ian pharaoh Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC after his father Thutmose IV died...
hundreds of so-called memorial scarab
Scarab artifact
Scarabs were popular amulets in ancient Egypt. According to ancient Egyptian myths, the sun rolls across the sky each day and transforms bodies and souls. Modeled upon the Scarabaeidae family dung beetle, which rolls dung into a ball for the purposes of eating and laying eggs that are later...
s were issued to commemorate the deeds of the pharaoh. Such scarabs were found in several archaeological sites of the Near East, from Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
to Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
. Over two hundred of them are known to exist in museums and collections around the world.
Most of the scarabs are made of steatite painted blue or green. Their length varies between 4.7 and 11 cm, their width between 7 and 8.9 cm. Most of them are pierced for threading. On the basis of their inscriptions the scarabs can be divided into five groups (in parentheses the number of scarabs of the type found on several sites):
- "lion hunt scarabs" (123)
- "marriage scarabs" (56)
- "lake scarabs" (11)
- "bull hunt scarabs" (5)
- "Gilukhepa scarabs" (5)
The scarabs are likely to have been made at the same time, in or after the 11th regnal year. The scarab beetle was a symbol of the sun god Khepri
Khepri
This article is about the Egyptian god. For the type of robot, see Khepera mobile robot.In Egyptian mythology, Khepri is the name of a major god. Khepri is associated with the dung beetle , whose behavior of maintaining spherical balls of dung represents the forces which move the sun...
, and glazed materials were called tjehenet ('shining') in Egyptian, so the shining scarabs refer to the king, the dazzling Sun himself.
Groups
Lion huntThe inscriptions on the lion hunt scarabs emphasise the pharaoh's strength and bravery by recording that Amenhotep killed over a hundred lions (102; 110 on some scarabs) during the first ten years of his reign. These have the shortest inscription (7 lines), their average length is 7,7 cm. The lion hunt scarabs vary the most in size; the smallest scarab is 4,7 cm long, the largest is more than twice its size with a length of 9,5 cm.
Marriage
The so-called marriage scarabs actually refer not to the marriage itself, and neither do they mention a marriage date. They record the name of Amenhotep's chief queen Tiye
Tiye
Tiye was the daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu . She became the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III....
(following that of her husband), along with the names of her parents, as if to explicitly state her non-royal birth: the name of her father is Yuya
Yuya
Yuya was a powerful Egyptian courtier during the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt...
, the name of her mother is Thuya; she is married to the great king whose southern border is at Karoy and whose northern is Naharin. Tiye's importance is shown by defining the boundaries of the empire in terms of her. The length of the inscription on these scarabs is 9-10 lines, the scarabs' average length is 8,5 cm.
Lake
The lake scarabs commemorate the construction of an artificial lake for Queen Tiye in the 11th regnal year. On these, the name and titles of the pharaoh are followed by those of Tiye, the names of her parents, then the description of the lake that was dug in Tiye's town Djaruha. The lake was 3700×700 cubits large, and the royal couple was rowed on the lake in the royal barge Aten-tjehen. The name of the boat means 'Shining Sun-disc', this is the first appearance of this name which later becomes an epithet of the king himself. The lake scarabs vary the most in their texts, but the differences don't affect the meaning of the text itself. The text is 11 lines long, the average length of these scarabs is 8,4 cm.
Bull hunt
The bull hunt scarabs record that in the 2nd regnal year Amenhotep, followed by his soldiers and officials, went to Shetep (possibly the area of Wadi el-Natrun) on his barge Khaemmaat ('Appears in Truth'), charged at wild bulls by his chariot and killed them. On the first day he slayed 56 bulls, four days later he killed 40 of them. The bulls had been previously surrounded with a ditch.
Hunt was not only a favourite pastime for the pharaohs, it also symbolized the ruler's strength and his victory over the forces of chaos, thus it equalled victory on a battlefield. These scarabs also list the titles of the king and mention Tiye.
The bull hunt scarabs have both the greatest length (9,9 cm) and the longest text. The only scarab which doesn't have its back carved in the shape of a beetle is among these scarabs. This one has two longitudinal holes for suspension.
Gilukhepa
The Gilukhepa scarabs commemorate the arrival of Princess Gilukhepa, daughter of Shuttarna II
Shuttarna II
Shuttarna II was a king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni in the early 14th century BC.Shuttarna was a descendant and probably a son of the great Mitannian king Artatama I. He was an ally of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III and the diplomatic dealings of the kings are briefly recorded in the...
of Mitanni
Mitanni
Mitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC...
into the pharaoh's harem in the 10th regnal year. She had a retinue of 317 ladies-in-waiting. Tiye is also mentioned on the scarab. The length of the text is 10 lines, the average length of these scarabs is 7,2 cm.
Inscription of a scarab
Inscription on one of the lion hunt scarabs:Life for Horus
Horus
Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists...
, the Mighty Bull, appearing in truth
The Two Ladies
Two Ladies
In Ancient Egyptian texts, Two Ladies is a religious euphemism for Wadjet and Nekhbet, the deities who were the patrons of the Ancient Egyptians and worshiped by all after the unification of its two parts, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt...
, who establishes law and pacifies
the Two Lands; the Golden Horus, strong of arm, who smites Asians, King of Upper and Lower Egypt
Upper and Lower Egypt
Ancient Egypt was divided into two regions, namely Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. To the north was Lower Egypt where the Nile stretched out with its several branches to form the Nile Delta. To the south was Upper Egypt, stretching to Syene. The two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united c....
,
Nebmaatre
Nebmaatre
Nebmaatre was a ruler dated to the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt. The king may date to the 17th dynasty based on an axe blade inscribed with his name...
, Son of Re
Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...
, Amenhotep
Amenhotep
Amenhotep was an ancient Egyptian name. Its Greek version is Amenophis. Its notable bearers were:-Pharaohs of the 18th dynasty:*Amenhotep I*Amenhotep II*Amenhotep III*Amenhotep IV -Princes:...
, ruler of Thebes
Thebes, Egypt
Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.-History:...
, may he live!
King's Wife Tiye, may she live! The number of lions
His majesty brought from his shooting,
from Year 1 to Year 10
total of lions, 102.
Sources
- Arielle P. Kozloff & Betsy M. Bryan: Egypt’s Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and His World (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992) ISBN 0-940717-17-4, pp.67–69.