Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
felt the seriousness of the situation as was in the case of Abdi-Asirta and later on his
son Aziri.
I’m Osiris, No I’m Osiris, No I’m Osiris: hairstyles and the afterlife.
G.J. Tassie
During the latter part of the Early Dynastic and first half of the Old Kingdom the high
officials were buried around the burial place of their king. The deceased king would
then intervene with the gods on their behalf so that they may enter the vitalised
cosmos and start their journey in the Afterlife. Osiris first starts to be mentioned in the
reign of Neferikare, third king of Fifth Dynasty. At this time Osiris does not appear to
be a state god, but possibly one of the people. When Osiris is first depicted he is
shown as seated wearing the tripartite hairstyle. Certain high male officials start to be
depicted in this same pose and hairstyle at the end of Fifth Dynasty. Until this time
the only men depicted wearing the tripartite hairstyle were deceased kings and gods,
apart from a few Predynastic figurines. This break with the ideology and traditions
that had been in place from the Early Dynastic Period, aligned with other changes
during this period, indicates a socio-religious change. These socio-religious changes
that began at the end of Fifth Dynasty develop through Sixth Dynasty and show their
full expression in the form of anthropoid coffins that appear in Twelfth Dynasty,
showing the deceased male or female wearing the tripartite hairstyle, thus linking the
deceased to Osiris. By this period the king was no longer needed to negotiate with the
gods, for the people could do it on their own, justify their own place with virtuous
deeds of their own and become one with Osiris.
The ritual as Connection Principle in the ancient Egyptian knowledge
Renata Gabriela Tatomir
The Connection Principle (hereafter, CP) says that there is some kind of internal
relation between a state's having intentional content ("aspectual shape") and its being
(at least potentially) conscious.(JERRY FODOR, ERNIE LEPORE, “What is the
Connection Principle?”). Had we tried to apply this principle to the Ancient Egyptian
particular type of knowledge, we would find that there must has been a set of
“techniques” — discerned mentally and visibly as well— which worked as a catalyst
in the process of connecting the levels of reality, i.e., the human, the god, the
deceased. This set of techniques constitutes the very Egyptian ritual. The whole
temple building, with premises included, was considered the actual home of the god.
The god Thoth was honoured as the founder of the Ritual. While many different
definitions of ritual may be formulated, one of the most complete may be the
following one: (ritual) is “… a special event in time and space, organized in terms of a
shared sequence of symbolical, formal acts and utterances, serving the goals, values
and expectations of an individual, a group, a society, a cultural form, or a world order,
whatever these aims may be”(VAN DEN DUNGEN 2008). Through enactment, religious
ritual makes use of the (visible or invisible) natural order (elements & forces) created
by the divine, realizing intention. Therefore, we are using here the word “ritual” as the
252