Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
before the decoration was started, to a kind of taboo which excluded wives of the men
who were in service of powerful women. Most of the explanations imply, some even
state, that the interests of a (male) tomb owner, quality of his relationship with wife
and her subordinate role are the decisive factors for her presence or absence in the
tomb decoration. In the opinion of A.M. ROTH, the consistent absence of husbands
from the tombs owned by women whose married status is confirmed by
representations of children, is due to the fact that the husbands were superfluous for
the rebirth of women. The absence of one of the spouses was also already considered
in terms of status. Still, there are no indications that one single rule or pattern is valid
for all the cases.
In order to scrutinize the possible reasons for differences, several examples will be
examined of female tomb owners (especially those whose husbands or relatives are
known or with some probability identified e.g. Khamerernebty, Nedjetemepet) and
some women of similar rank buried in the tombs of their spouses, as well as their
respective husbands, inter alia on the basis of the data concerning the titles, the scale
of representations and their position in the tomb decoration. The social rank of an
individual member of a society is positioned in relation to the rank of other society
members, but it is not static: it is constantly redifined or finely tuned according to
context and in relation to different persons. The interplay of multiple factors relevant
in social life and reflected in the burial has a variety of results; whether a woman is
present in the tomb of her husbands as a marginal, equal or prominent person, or is
completely absent, may depend on the constituents of both her and his identity, such
as descent, gender, inherited or acquired status, and they sometimes result in a
married woman being primary or sole beneficiary of the funerary cult in her own
chapel or tomb. Besides, the avoidance of “competition” between the relatives could
play a role also in the case women: it can be observed in tombs such as Mereruka’s
tomb, where Meriteti is consistently labelled as son in tomb sections belonging to his
parents, and the record of his high titles is limited to the rooms of his own cult. It is in
the interest of a woman to be the focus of the funerary cult instead of being adjunct to
her husband, her needs provided for only through him, and her relative status is the
decisive factor in attaining it. The authority based on administrative rank (power over)
may be stronger than the status based on influence (power to), but the first one doesn't
necessarily prevent or subjugate the display of the second one.
“Lost child” of Isis: towards the problem of the “interpretatio Graeca” of the
Osirian myth in texts of later antic and Christian authors
Olga Alexandrova Vassilieva
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate some specific features of Graeco-roman
interpretation of the Osirian myth in the texts of later antic and Christian authors.
These sources of the interpretatio Graeca have been little studied in comparison with
those of Herodotus, Plutarchus and Diodorus. The subject of a “lost child” studied in
this paper has been taken as a typical example of the later antic tradition of
interpretatio Graeca. Texts of some authors, containing mentions of Isis and Osiris
inform us that Isis set out in search of her lost child. This child is called either
Harpokrates (Cassiod.Var.V.17; Hyg.Fab.277), or Osiris (Etym. Magn.s.v. Kovpto";
Min.Fel.Oct.21.1–2; Lact. Div.inst. I.20-21, cf. I.17; Ael. Nat.anim.X.45; Euseb.
Praep.ev.III. 51), or he is not given any name (Arnob. Adv. nat. I.36). Most authors
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