Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
from the estate to the beautiful west”, 18 makes its way through various
physical/metaphorical geographies, where the enactment of specific rituals is clearly
depicted, and culminates at the mouth of the tomb, where the celebratory caption of
the Fourth Dynasty tomb of Debehen tells us that “his flesh is complete”. 19 Notably,
the general mood of the participants can be seen to change from somber to joyous as
the procession proceeds.
Although very fragmentary, the overall structure of the funeral liturgy is
suggestive of its dramatic ritual nature, and from six to eight separate rituals can be
discerned in the remaining columns. It is also possible to isolate a number of ritual
activities, including “butchery”, “mourning”, “offering”, and “encircling the
mastaba”. The ritual motif of “encircling” will be examined in some depth, as it
appears to be the most structurally significant enactment of the liturgy, and, unlike the
others mentioned, is not depicted in the funeral reliefs. The act of “encircling” is a
symbolically and metaphorically rich motif in ancient Egyptian ritual, as Ritner has
demonstrated, 20 and, based on this liturgy, it is possible to suggest the specific
efficacious nature of “encircling the mastaba”, particularly with regard to rites of
purification, protection, and boundary. Further analysis of the liturgy, within the
context of the funeral reliefs discussed above, makes it possible to suggest a
refinement to Gardiner’s hypotheses that the liturgy accompanied the funeral
procession and situate it more precisely within the sequence of transformative events.
The pharaonic titulary of Alexander the Great
Francisco Bosch-Puche
The occupation of Egypt by Alexander the Great marks a turning point in the
historical development of the country. On the one hand, the arrival of the Macedonian
king brings the Second Persian Period to an end, while on the other it inaugurates a
new era, that of the Greek dominion or Ptolemaic Period. Three different
chronological stages can be distinguished in the relationship between Alexander and
Egypt: 1) the brief sojourn in the country from the autumn of 332 to the spring of 331
BC; 2) the time when the Macedonian ruler is the holder of the throne until his death
in Babylon on June of 323 BC; 3) the period that continues beyond the end of
Alexander’s own life, in which the king becomes the referent of the Ptolemaic
Dynasty and in which his body and his memory are “instrumentalised” in order to
legitimize the new established order.
For the study of the second of these periods, the Egyptian documentation
represents the main source of information. This diverse group of documents, which
consists of different types of texts written on a variety of media, has not been
considered for its commonality, but rather has been published as separate pieces, or
remains entirely or partly unpublished. The documentation includes, amongst others,
demotic papyri, religious material, mainly stelae relating to the sacred animal cults
and a series of clepsydrae fragments, and, above all, a group of architectural works
carried out around the country in the name of the Macedonian sovereign. The analysis
of this documentation shows the existence of an onomastic protocol for the king that
18
N. KANAWATI and A. HASSAN, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara v. II: The Tomb of Ankhmahor (1997),
51, pls. 20a, 56.
19
S. HASSAN, Excavations at Giza v. IV: The Rock-Cut Mastaba of Debehen (1932-3), 176.
20 RITNER, op. cit., 57-67.
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