Iset (daughter of Ramses VI.)

Iset (daughter of Ramses VI.) In hieroglyphics
title	Hemet-netjer-en-Amun Ḥmt-nṯr-n-Jmn Consort of Amun
extended form	Hemet-netjer-en-Amun-em-Ipet-sut Ḥmt-nṯr-n-Jmn-m-Jpt-swt Consort of Amun of Karnak
Iset stele

Iset (E) , also called Aset or Isis (* before 1135 BC), was an ancient Egyptian princess from the 20th dynasty , who was given by her father Pharaoh Ramses VI to strengthen the - dwindling - royal influence in southern Egypt . entrusted with the office of the " wife of God of Amun ", which came out of practice, and was thus endowed with an important religious and political function as goddess and wife of God and thus the highest priestess of the god Amun in Thebes . She was also the first to carry the further title "Divine Admirer of Amun". Contrary to the earlier tradition, she was not married and therefore left no offspring.

origin

Ramses III. at the incense offering in grave KV11 (grandfather of Iset E)

Iset was a granddaughter of Ramses III. , who was the 2nd Pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty from 1186 to 1154 BC. And his great royal wife Iset D Ta-Shirtjert (Isis II), who is depicted in her tomb QV51 in the Valley of the Queens . Only the name of her mother, Shirtjeret, is known about their origin, which is not of Egyptian but of Syrian ( Akkadian ) origin.

Fragment from the sarcophagus of Ramses VI. ( British Museum )

Iset's parents were Ramses VI, who lived from 1143 to 1135 BC. Ruled as the fifth pharaoh of the 20th dynasty, and his "great royal consort" Nubkhesbed ("gold and lapis lazuli").

Life

childhood

Few details are known about Iset's life. She probably grew up at the court of her father, Pharaoh Ramses VI., In the city of Memphis , which was the capital of the kingdom during the New Kingdom from around 1213 to around 1077. The ruins of Memphis are located at the beginning of the Nile Delta near the city of Mit Rahina about 18 km south of Cairo . Her brothers grew up with Iset: Ramses VII , who succeeded her father as the 6th pharaoh of the 20th dynasty and ruled from about 1136 to 1129, Amenhirkopshef D (Amenherkhepshef), who however died before his father and in the Valley of the Kings in Grave KV13 in the reused sarcophagus of Tawosret , who was the last female pharaoh of the 19th dynasty around 1188 BC. BC died, was buried, and Panebenkemyt, of which we only know that he is depicted on a statue of his father, which is now in the Museum of Luxor.

Memphis, ruins of the Temple of Ptah

The town grew up in the Iset was blossomed already under the 19th dynasty and the time of the king's daughter, the seat of the central government and the military command and played religiously an important role in the local worship of the creator god Ptah , where the Temple of Ptah , a the oldest and most important temple complexes of ancient Egypt , was dedicated. For political reasons, there was gradually a syncretism by uniting three regionally venerated gods, the creator god Ptah from Memphis, the god Amun from Thebes and the sun god Re from Heliopolis to form a trinity Amun-Re-Ptah, which was regarded as the god of the world.

Political realities

Iset lived at a time when Egypt was experiencing growing economic and political difficulties. Her father's predecessor - her cousin - Pharaoh Ramses V had already tried to create a reliable basis for assessing agricultural yields by creating an at least partial land register . However, he died of smallpox before it could be evaluated. It was only used under her father's government, but this could not prevent rising grain prices from leading to famine. Your father Pharaoh Ramses VI. therefore took drastic austerity measures, reduced the troop of tomb-builders, and instead of erecting important buildings himself, he limited himself to changing the inscriptions on existing buildings from Ramses IV to his name in order to claim them for himself.

There were also military problems, although her father presented himself as the victorious defender of Egypt in the portrayal of his military triumphs on the temple walls, since in reality garrisons had to be withdrawn from the borders to protect the heartland.

At that time, there was also a rift in the traditional religious worldview of ancient Egypt as a result of the increasing number of looting of older royal tombs, as these questioned the inviolability of the tombs destined for eternity and the divinity of the pharaohs and thus the foundations of the Egyptian world order ( Maat ) .

At the same time there was a decline in royal power, which increased the influence of the large families in the provinces, where priestly and state offices had often become hereditary. In the south of the empire, the influence of the Pharaoh was particularly small, as the high priest of Amun, Ramsesnacht , acted as the real ruler of Thebes and thus of large parts of southern Egypt. This not least because at his time the reign of the pharaohs was so short that he himself took office under the rule of six pharaohs - from Ramses III. until Ramses IX. - exercised.

Consort of Amun

This difficult political situation makes the special role Ramses VI understandable. had intended for his daughter Iset. It should strengthen the influence and control of the Pharaoh in the south of the empire by assuming an important religious function. Ramses VI. renewed an old tradition in that he renewed the high religious office of the wife of God of Amun in Karnak and transferred it to his daughter. This office had played a major role at the beginning of the 18th dynasty, with Queen Ahmes-Nefertiry being the first to carry this title, but it was later out of use.

As God's wife of Amun, Iset owned her own palace in Thebes and achieved a rank through which she stood above the merely "human" high priest Ramsesnacht as a divine person and as consort of the god Amun and should therefore be able to limit his ambitions for power and those to strengthen royal control over the Temple of Amun in Karnak - and thus over the south of the empire - again. This is because this temple was not only considered to be the second largest religious building in the world, but because it was of great importance not only religiously and politically, but also economically, as the extensive temple goods made up a significant part of the Egyptian economy.

Ramses VI. also gave his daughter Iset another office, which has seldom been assigned since the 18th dynasty, that of the "Divine Admirer of Amun". This office subsequently gained increasing importance and played a major role, especially in the Third Intermediate Period, as the bearer of this dignity adopted the daughter of the future pharaoh when the dynasty changed and thus indirectly legitimized the transfer of ruler's rights. Unlike her predecessors in these functions, who were mostly queens and usually great royal wives, she was the first to remain unmarried.

Columns of the Hypostyle in the Temple of Amun-Re in Karnak

Iset therefore lived a long way from her family in Thebes, which was about 800 km south of the Mediterranean coast on the east bank of the Nile and had served as the capital of Egypt since the Middle Kingdom , but was later abandoned in favor of Memphis in the Nile Delta . Thebes was not only an economic and administrative focus, but also a religious center, since the Theban god Amun had become the main god of the state and every pharaoh tried to surpass his predecessors by building even more significant temples. The temple district, in which the remains of the largest temple complex in Egypt, the Karnak temples , are located, which include the Amun temple , the temple of Chons and the temple of Ptah, is today in the small town of Karnak in Upper Egypt ( Arabic الكرنك al-Karnak - " fortified village "), which is located about 2.5 km north of Luxor .

It is not known whether Iset actually succeeded in asserting the interests of her dynasty against the growing influence of Ramses Night, the high priest of Amun in Thebes, as planned by her father. In any case, this remained until the reign of Ramses IX. in office, whereupon his son Amenophis from about 1103 to 1070 BC Succeeded him.

Iset died at an unknown time in her palace at Thebes and was in the since about 2000 BC. Used the Dra Abu el-Naga necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, near the Valley of the Kings, where their image is on a stone block. It is also the cemetery where her famous predecessor, Ahmose-Nefertari, was buried as the consort of Amun.

Illustrations

A figure of Iset is on a stele now in the Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester. This comes from the small town of Koptos (today Qift), which was then called Gebtu, was an important trading center and a religious center, but was later overtaken by Thebes. There is also a depiction of her enthronement as consort of God on a stone block from the Dra Abu el-Naga necropolis, with her name appearing in a cartouche with the designation "Divine Admirer" .

Web links

Commons : Manchester Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Museum website

literature

• Jan Assmann : Re and Amun. The crisis of the polytheistic worldview in Egypt of the 18th – 20th centuries Dynasty. (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. 51). Friborg / Göttingen 1983, ISBN 3-7278-0278-2 .
• Aidan Dodson , Dyan Hilton: The complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-500-28857-3 .
• Christian Leblanc: The rulers of the New Kingdom in West Thebes. In: Kent R. Weeks (ed.): In the Valley of the Kings. Of funerary art and the cult of the dead of the Egyptian rulers. VMB Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-88-540-1769-6 , p. 279. (Translation from English)
• Ian Shaw: The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-280458-8 .
• Toby Wilkinson : The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The story of a mysterious civilization from the 5th millennium BC To Cleopatra. 3. Edition. Random House, Pantheon 2015 edition, ISBN 978-3-570-55275-9 . (Translation from English)

Remarks

1. ↑ The designation Iset (E) serves to distinguish it from previous bearers of this name
2. ↑ This year results from the year of her father's death, since of course she must have been born before this point in time.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ian Shaw: The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-280458-8 , p. 474.
2. ↑ The government data given here are based on the work of Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hilton: The complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-500-28857-3 , p. 291. Compared to other Egyptological works, there are therefore often deviations of a few years, although there are often slightly different names for proper names.
3. ^ ^{A b c} Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hilton: The complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. 2010, p. 192.
4. ^ ^{A b c} Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hilton: The complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. 2010, p. 291.
5. ^ Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hilton: The complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. 2010, p. 191.
6. ^ Christian Leblanc: The rulers of the New Kingdom in Thebes-West. In: Kent R. Weeks (ed.): In the Valley of the Kings. Of funerary art and the cult of the dead of the Egyptian rulers. VMB Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-88-540-1769-6 , p. 279. (Translation from English)
7. ^ Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hilton: The complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. 2010, p. 186.
8. ↑ Jan Assmann: Re and Amun. The crisis of the polytheistic worldview in Egypt of the 18th – 20th centuries Dynasty. (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. 51). Friborg / Göttingen 1983.
9. ↑ Toby Wilkinson: Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. 2015, p. 470.
10. ↑ Toby Wilkinson: Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. 2015, p. 471.
11. ^ "Dra 'Abu el-Naga / Western Thebes". Dra 'Abu el-Naga / Western Thebes web.archive.org : An archaeological investigation of a residence necropolis in Upper Egypt (Luxor). German Archaeological Institute.