Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
lagide s’est légitimé auprès des Gréco-macédoniens au travers d’une panoplie de
vertus et de qualités que ses épiclèses soulignent.
De notre point de vue, il n’est pas pertinent de déterminer avec exactitude si tous
les rois faisaient effectivement preuve des qualités —ou des défauts— auxquels leurs
noms officiels (prédicats et noms) font allusion. Nous avons toutefois cherché à le
faire au nom d’une exégèse scientifique. Ce qui est véritablement important est de
comprendre que toutes les éventuelles exagérations, formules laudatives ou critiques
systématiques ont été, d’un côté, des contributions essentielles pour la définition
d’une image idéale du roi et, d'un autre, le produit d’une image déjà construite. Dans
ce contexte, la titulature et l’onomastique sont des composantes politiques et
idéologiques au sein desquelles convergent des intentions clairement propagandistes.
Selon les contours helléniques, les qualités salvatrices, de victoire ou d’opulence
matérielle, la justesse des actions honorables et la protection des sujets constituaient
l’essence de la propre monarchie.
Thebes, Amarna, Memphis: Akhenaten’s officials with double tomb
Daniele Salvoldi
During the sixth year of his reign, Akhenaten moved the capital city and the royal
necropolis from Thebes to Amarna. After his death, during his seventeenth year of
reign, Ankhetkheperura, Semenkhkare or Tutankhamun moved again the capital city
to Memphis and the royal necropolis to Thebes. These sudden changes in politics, that
took place in less than thirty years, caused a unique phenomenon in the history of
ancient Egypt: court officials, who had the right of a burial, moved their tombs
following their sovereign now at Thebes now at Amarna and now at Saqqara or
Thebes again. Nevertheless, not all the cases are clear: only a compared discussion of
titles and familiar relationships, of tomb architecture, iconography and style can help
the identification; it seems certain that nobody mantained the Amarna burial.
If we count the few tombs in the theban necropolis during the first years of
Akhenaten’s reign, the most of them have a permission given by his father
Amenhotep III at the end of his reign to high officials like Vizier Ramose (TT 55) and
the Stewart of the Great Royal Wife Kheruef (TT 192), the Amarna necropolis —
with its 45 tombs— shows us a royal necropolis fully operating. The memphite
necropolis, that recently showed us some interesting good news, has several post-
Amarna Age tombs, starting from the best known Eighteenth Dynasty tomb: that of
Horemheb. Excluding the tombs of the two officials that later became kings, id est Ay
and Horemheb himself, there are only two certain cases of double tomb; three very
uncertain; two cases in which —unless the homonymy— is possible to exclude with
certaincy that we are dealing with only one man.
The most remarkable case is that of Parennefer, Royal butler clean of hands, who,
unique of the court in the first years of Akhenaten’s reign, had the privilege to
excavate a tomb at Thebes (TT 188). He followed Akhenaten at Amarna, carrying on
the same offices, and he built a beautiful tomb in the South necropolis, where he
imported many iconographical and architectural models from his first tomb. If at
Amarna the style is the one typical of Akhenaten’s reign, the theban tomb has a
strange transitional style, decisive for a reconstruction of an exact Amarna art
chronology.
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