Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
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Panther-head on the cloak
Éva Liptay
In the iconographical repertoires used on two Twenty-first Dynasty Theban funerary
papyri one can meet the same rather unique iconographical motif: a panther head en
face on the long cloak reaching to the ground and covering the whole body, worn by a
strange figure who seemingly has a prominent role in the represented events. One of
the representations is the closing scene of the Richmond papyrus, flanked by two
scarabs half-emerged from the (right) Solar Eye and the ithyphallic figure of the
cosmic “great god” half-emerged from the mound of the eastern horizon. The cloaked
figure has black skin and wears a long beard and a head-dress composed of ram-horns
upon the forehead and a sundisc between two long feathers.
The scene is a Twenty-first Dynasty interpretation of the so-called enigmatic wall
in the tomb of Ramesses IX. The key figure is the rejuvenating world creator
represented as a mummy-shaped, ithyphallic god with one arm raised. It served as a
closing scene to the nightly journey of the sungod. The other example is a reinterpretation
of another well-known scene in the tomb of Ramesses VI which focuses
on the snake-formed sun barque at the very same moment as above. The passengers in
the original version are the ram-headed form of the sungod and his similarly ramheaded
bA. The latter motif has been transformed, however, in the Twenty-first
Dynasty version, i.e. the funerary papyrus of Djed-Khonsu-iufankh I. Opposite to the
ram-headed god, in front of the barque, the figure familiar from the previous example
appears again: his cloak covering the whole body is decorated with a broad collar and
a panther-head en face. The head-dress is the same as in the previous case.
The common feature of both interpretations is, therefore, the panther-head en face
on the long robe of the figure accompanying the rejuvenating sun-god which occurs in
the same context in both cases: at the last moments before sunrise.The usage of the
discussed motifs goes back to several older patterns the survey of which can explain
the conveyed meaning of the returning symbol.
1. The above mentioned two 21st Dynasty scenes were obviously inspired by
Ramesside royal tombs. The panther head en face also can be traced back to
festive robes worn by New Kingdom pharaohs. The mythological role of the
panther worn by the rejuvenated and divine form of the king is to identify him
as the son of the sun god and the divine aspect of Neferhotep. His special
adornment obviously belongs to the official garment of the sed-jubilee of the
pharaoh aiming the rejuvenation of the ruler during his earthly reign.
2. There are some cases in the iconographic repertoire of the Ramesside royal
tombs, however, where symbolic elements of the royal sed-ritual are evidently
applied in cosmic context. In the Tomb of Ramesses VI the same garment with
the panther head en face occurs twice, exclusively after Schluβszenes of
Underworld Books, when the pharaoh performs offering ritual as closing act to
the invocated (and reborn) aspect of cosmic god. The pictorial evocation of the
sed-rituals which originally had been intended to serve the royal renewal was
started to be used obviously in order to ensure the rebirth of the deceased of
non-royal origin in the period of the Twenty-first dynasty. This conceptual
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