Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
whether the practice of gift exchange in international diplomacy during the Late
Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1200 BCE) may have influenced this development.
The Eighteenth Dynasty provides several examples, in both temple and tomb
contexts. The military annals of Tuthmosis III inscribed on the temple walls at Karnak
are known for their descriptions of this king’s military campaigns and lists of the
spoils of war he claimed in victory. Accompanying these texts is a scene showing the
king offering the booty of one campaign to the god Amun. These gifts to the god,
displayed as rows of objects in ten registers, include many vases and other vessels,
some of apparently foreign manufacture, necklaces and statues —and scribal palettes.
Scenes from two contemporaneous Theban tombs add to the pictorial evidence of the
inclusion of scribal palettes among precious objects being presented as offerings. In
the Theban tomb of Menkheperreseneb (TT 79), a high official under Tuthmosis III
and Amenhotep II, a scene shows a line of offering bearers approaching an offering
table that is in front of seated figures, and one of these bearers carries two scribal
palettes. Scribal palettes are also included in another scene in this tomb, along with
other objects representing Menkheperreseneb’s funeral equipment, which was a gift
of the king. In the nearby tomb of Kenamun (TT 93), chief steward of the king under
Amenhotep II, there is a scene in which the king, seated in a kiosk, receives the usual
gifts of statues, stone vases and metal vessels, and one of the offering bearers here
presents three scribal palettes.
Archaeological excavations have shown that scribal palettes inscribed with the
names and titles of high officials and priests were objects included in elite burial
assemblages during the Eighteenth and Ninetheenth Dynasties. Although the use of
the scribal palette as an object for high-status individuals was an aspect of burials
throughout Pharaonic history, New Kingdom scribal palettes demonstrate innovations
in iconography and inscriptional content compared with earlier examples. This may
be due to a range of influences, including societal attitudes towards literacy, and
changes in religious thought or expression, such as the text of the Book of the Dead
Chapter 94, in which the deceased requests a scribal palette. In some cases,
inscriptional evidence and archaeological context indicate that scribal palettes and
painting palettes (which may have served a similar purpose as a mortuary object in the
New Kingdom) were specifically dedicated to and/or provided as gifts to the
deceased. Many of the scribal palettes and painting palettes found in the tomb of
Tutankhamun (KV 62) may well have been gifts to the deceased king from members
of his court. A later New Kingdom example of an ivory scribal palette, inscribed with
the cartouche of Ramesses III and found among the Megiddo ivories, will also be
discussed.
Of the women, the mirrors and the “Social Revolution” (Admonitions: 8,5)
Jose Carlos Castaneda
In this report it is carried out a revision of the symbolic meaning of the mirror and
their use in the Egyptian old civilization, from the writing of the name until their
connotations in the Egyptian woman’s life in diverse spheres —daily life, sexuality,
religion— meditating finally about the importance of the mention of this instrument in
the paragraph 8,5 of the papyrus Leiden 344 rectum, the Admonitions of an Egyptian
sage, of remarkable relevance for the social Egyptian history to the being source for
the study of an episode of historical controversial existence: the “Social Revolution”
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