Iri-Hor

Name of Iri-Hor
Vessel carvings with the name "Iri-Hor"
Proper name	Iri-Hor / Ro Jrj-Ḥr / Rw Companion of Horus / Leo

Iri-Hor (actually Hor-iri , more rarely written Irihor ), also read as Ro , was possibly an ancient Egyptian king ( pharaoh ) of the 0th dynasty ( predynasty ). In Egyptology , however, his existence as a king is sometimes questioned. Some scholars see it as a private person or just an advertisement. More recent finds, however, confirm Iri-Hors's identity as a ruler.

supporting documents

Abydos ( tomb ) Zaujet el-Arjan ( location )

Locations

Iri-Hors's name appears roughly carved in clay on vessels that come from the double graves B1 and B2 and from the tombs of kings Ka and Narmer in Abydos . A clay seal was found in Narmer's grave , embossed with the hieroglyphs "falcon" and "mouth". An identical clay seal was found in Zaujet el-Arjan . His name also appears in a rock inscription on Sinai . There the name is written over a boat, next to the word White Wall (the old name of Memphis ). The earliest evidence of the names "Schemau" for Upper Egypt and "Mehu" for Lower Egypt come from Iri-Hors's time .

Name and identity

To read the name

Iri-Hors's name is made up of the Gardiner characters G5 for " Horus Falcon " and D21 for "mouth". While the common reading of the name today is "Iri-Hor", it was still "Ro" in Flinder's time, Petries and Werner Kaiser , as this - in addition to the sound value "r" - was the usual reading of the oral hieroglyph. Werner Kaiser and Günter Dreyer interpret and translate Iri-Hors's name as “Companion of Horus”, while Jürgen von Beckerath reads Horus Ra and translates it as “speaker” and, alternatively, “head”. Toby AH Wilkinson in turn reads “Iri-Hor”. Ludwig D. Morenz does not like to commit himself to any transcription and suggests a neutral reading as "Horus Mund".

identity

Iri-Hors's name was not found in or next to a royal serech for a long time , so that a reliable identification as a king was initially difficult. Egyptologists like WM Flinders Petrie, Laurel Bestock and Jochem Kahl nevertheless saw in him an independent ruler. They point to the distinctive spelling of Iri-Hors's names: The Horus falcon holds the mouth symbol in its claws. This group of symbols is accompanied by a second, free-standing mouth symbol on several clay seals. This spelling is reminiscent of numerous anonymous Serechs, which are held by a Horus falcon and in which individual hieroglyphs are close by (instead of within the Serechs). Hence the argument that the absence of a serech precludes the existence of a royal name is insufficient. The Egyptologists finally point out that in Iri-Hors's time the Serech had not yet established itself as the canonized royal coat of arms.

Clay seal with the name "Iri-Hor"

Plan of the tomb of Iri Hor

Other Egyptologists, including Peter Kaplony , suspect that the name was a private person whose name can be read wr r3 .

Toby AH Wilkinson sees no name at all in “Iri-Hor”, but rather a property notice and translates accordingly as “property of the king” . The basis of his assessment is the predynastic use of the falcon as a hieroglyph for the term "king". Ludwig D. Morenz and Kurt Sethe tend in a very similar direction and also question Iri-Hors's identity as king. Morenz, for example, suspects that the mouth symbol is not simply a phonetic addition to the Horus falcon. Kurt Sethe sees the group of characters as an indication of origin.

Recent finds

In August 2012 the archaeologists Pierre Tallet and Damien Laisnay discovered several rock inscriptions with the names of the kings Scorpio II , Ka , Iri-Hor, Narmer , Djer and Raneb in Wadi 'Ameyra on the Sinai Peninsula . Iri-Hor's name, falcon-over-mouth, is above the depiction of a large king barque, right next to an anonymous serech. Iri-Hors's name is thus identified as that of a predynastic ruler and the theories of Günter Dreyer and Jochem Kahl are confirmed by this find. Above Iri-Hors's name are the characters for Inebu Hedj , the name of the city of Memphis . According to Tallet and Laisnay, this is the oldest evidence of the existence of Memphis to date.

Possible burial site

Iri-Hors's possible burial site in Umm el-Qaab , Tomb B , consists of two chambers ( B1 and B2 ). It was excavated by Flinders Petrie around 1901 and assigned by Werner Kaiser Iri-Hor under the name "King Ro".

See also

• List of pharaohs

literature

General literature

• Jürgen von Beckerath : Handbook of Egyptian King Names (= Munich Egyptological Studies , Volume 49). von Zabern, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-8053-2591-6 , pp. 36-37.
• Thomas Schneider : Lexicon of the Pharaohs. Albatros, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-491-96053-3 , p. 138.

Special literature

• Rainer Albertz : Spaces and Borders: Topological Concepts in the Ancient Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean. Utz, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-8316-0699-4 .
• Laurel Bestock: The Development of Royal Funerary Cult at Abydos: Two Funerary Enclosures from the Reign of Aha (= Menes: Studies on the Culture and Language of the Early Egyptian Period and the Old Kingdom , Volume 6). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 3-447-05838-2 .
• Douglas J. Brewer: Ancient Egypt: Foundations of a Civilization . Pearson Education, New York 2005, ISBN 0-582-77253-2 .
• Edwin CM van den Brink: Two pottery jars incised with the name of Iry-Hor from Tomb B1 at Umm el-Ga'ab, Abydos . In: Günter Dreyer, Evamaria Engel, Vera Müller, Ulrich Hartung: Signs from the sand: Streiflichter from Egypt's history in honor of Günter Dreyer (= Menes. Volume 5). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 3-447-05816-1 .
• Jochem Kahl : Upper and Lower Egypt: A dualistic construction and its beginnings . In: Rainer Albertz: Spaces and Borders: Topological Concepts in the Ancient Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean (= sources and research on the ancient world. Volume 52). Utz, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-8316-0699-4 ( online ).
• Jochem Kahl: The system of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing in the 0.-3. Dynasty (= Göttingen Orient Research: Egypt. Volume 29). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 3-447-03499-8 .
• Ludwig D. Morenz : picture letters and symbolic signs. The development of the script of the high culture of ancient Egypt (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Volume 205). Academic Press, Friborg 2004, ISBN 3-7278-1486-1 .
• William M. Flinders Petrie : The royal tombs of the earliest dynasties: 1901. Part II (= Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Volume 21). Egypt Exploration Fund et al., London 1901 ( digitization ).
• William M. Flinders Petrie: Abydos: Part 1. 1902 (= Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Volume 22). Egypt Exploration Fund u. a., London 1902.
• Toby AH Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt: Strategies, Society and Security. New edition, Routledge, London 2001, ISBN 978-0-415-26011-4 .

Web links

Commons : Iri-Hor  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Iri-Hor . Info on: Phouka.com (English); last accessed on March 6, 2015.
• Tomb of King Iryhor: The chambers of Iryhor . On: nemo.nu (English); last accessed on March 6, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Werner Kaiser, Günter Dreyer: Umm el-Qaab. Follow-up examinations in the early royal cemetery. 2. Preliminary report. In: Communications from the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo Department. (MDAIK), 38th edition. German Archaeological Institute, Orient Department (ed.). de Gruyter, Berlin 1982, pp. 211-246.
2. ↑ Edwin CM van den Brink: Two pottery jars incised with the name of Iry-Hor from Tomb B1 at Umm el-Ga'ab, Abydos . Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 655-660.
3. ^ Pierre Tallet, Damien Laisnay: Iry-Hor et Narmer au Sud-Sinaï (Ouadi 'Ameyra). A complément à la chronologie des expéditions minières égyptiennes. In: Le Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale. (BIFAO) 2012, No. 112, pp. 381-395.
4. ^ Jochem Kahl: Upper and Lower Egypt . Munich 2007, p. 12.
5. ↑ Flinders Petrie: Abydos / I. London 1902, pp. 4-6.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Laurel Bestock: The Development of Royal Funerary Cult at Abydos. Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 16, 17, 21 & 28.
7. ^ J. von Beckerath: Handbook of the Egyptian king names . Mainz 1999, pp. 9 & 36.
8. ^ ^{A b} Toby Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt . London 2001, pp. 19, 55 & 234.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Ludwig D. Morenz: picture letters and symbolic signs . Friborg 2004, p. 88.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Flinders Petrie: The royal tombs of the earliest dynasties: 1901. Part II London 1901, pp. 29 & 30.
11. ↑ Jochem Kahl: The system of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing in the 0.-3. Dynasty . Wiesbaden 1994, pp. 96-101.
12. ^ Jürgen von Beckerath: Handbook of the Egyptian king names. Mainz 1999, p. 36.
13. ↑ Peter Kaplony: Inscriptions of the early Egyptian times. Volume 1 (= Ägyptologische Abhandlungen. Vol. 8) Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1963, p. 468.
14. ↑ Toby Wilkinson: The identification of Tomb B1 at Abydos: refuting the existence of a king 'Ro / Iry-Hor' . In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. (JEA), 79th edition. Egypt Exploration Society, London 1993, ISSN  0307-5133 , pp. 91-93.
15. ↑ P. Tallet, D. Laisnay: Iry-Hor et Narmer au Sud-Sinaï (Ouadi 'Ameyra), un complément à la chronologie des expéditios minière égyptiene. In: Bulletin de L'Institute Français D'Archéologie Orientale. (BIFAO) 112th edition 2012, pp. 381–395 ( online ).
16. ↑ Werner Kaiser: Some remarks on the early Egyptian period . In: Journal for Egyptian Language and Antiquity. (ZÄS), 91st edition, Berlin 1964, pp. 86–124.

predecessor	Office	successor
unsure	King of Egypt 0th Dynasty	unsure