Cartouche (Ancient Egypt)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cartouche in hieroglyphics
Schen ring
V9

Encircle Shenu
šnw
, enclose
King cartridge
V10

Encircle Shenu
šnw
, enclose
King cartridge,
complete
M23
X1 		L2
X1 		<
S29 F35 r G43
>

King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Sneferu (Seneferu)
(reading from left to right)

Cartouche , king ring , cartridge ring or name ring , also hieroglyphic cartouche , describes in Egyptology an elongated-oval line consisting of a loop of rope, which in ancient Egypt enclosed the name of a ruler ( pharaoh ) or small king. From the five-part title of a ruler or his wife, a cartouche contains only the proper name and the throne name .

etymology

The ancient Egyptians called the cartridge as schenu what the verb Sheni ( SNJ ) is borrowed and "circle" or translated means "encircle".

The term “cartouche” used today is very likely borrowed from the French cartouche , which originally literally meant “box”, “ jar ” or “cassette” (container for various objects). As early as the 17th century , the small powder cans for propellant and / or detonation charges of the muzzle loading rifles of French soldiers were called cartouche / s , also during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. These powder cans were flat and elongated-oval shaped and Napoleon's soldiers probably felt themselves at the sight of the Egyptian cartouches with hieroglyphs reminds of their powder cans. Subsequently, this term was adopted, among others, in Egyptology.

description

Name of King Menes in a cartouche in the Abydos King List (reading from top to bottom)

Particularly detailed relief depictions on Egyptian temples and palaces show that the oval loop , which makes up the main part of the cartridge as a frame, consists of a twisted or braided rope cord, the two ends of which intersect at the bottom of the cartridge, thus forming a closing base. Where the cord ends overlap, they are straightened so that they form a continuous line parallel to the end of the cartridge. At the point of intersection, the rope cords are tied together with other, somewhat thinner cords. Especially in stylized images, the loop ends are shown as straight lines, giving the impression that the cartridge is attached to a beam.

Usually cartridges are shown vertically and with the straightened loop ends facing down. They can also be displayed lying down, i.e. horizontally. Depending on the specified direction of writing, the cartridge points to the left or to the right. The name hieroglyphs that are entered in it are also based on the specified direction of writing. Hieroglyphs that depict people or animals, for example, therefore always look in the direction of the beginning of the cartridge. In the case of upright cartouches, the reading is from top to bottom, although the names of gods are shown in front for reasons of religion and respect. The reading and translation itself usually begins with the first character immediately following the name of the god.

The open cartouches of hieratic writing , the cursive writing form of hieroglyphs, are a special form of cartouche representation . The side edges of the frame are missing on the open cartridges and only the beginning and end of the cartridge are shown. A prominent example of this is the Turin Royal Papyrus .

Origin and introduction of the king cartridge

The cartouche emerged from the Schen ring , which stood for eternal protection and was already in use as a written symbol under King Den during the 1st Dynasty . At this time the Schen ring often accompanied the gold name of the Pharaoh, later, as for example under King Hetepsechemui , the founder of the 2nd Dynasty , it also accompanied other characters that were associated with royal titles.

Possible first attempts to surround royal names with the Schen ring could be found on stone vessels belonging to King Chasechemui (end of the 2nd dynasty). In the opinion of Wolfgang Helck , Chasechemui was perhaps the first Egyptian ruler to put his birth name or nebtin name in the Schen ring, thus laying the foundation for the introduction of the royal cartouche. Walter Bryan Emery contradicts this assumption . He points out that the word in question in the Schen ring, namely Besh , actually means "rebel" and is more likely to refer to the principalities of the Nile Delta defeated by Chasechemui . However, Emery admits that he could not satisfactorily clarify why the ancient Egyptians put a description for enemies in a sacred symbol of protection.

The earliest illustrated cartouches are those of kings Nebka and Huni . Both regents can be assigned to the 3rd dynasty in the era of the Old Kingdom . However, both their exact chronological positions are unclear. It is generally assumed that Huni was the last ruler of the 3rd Dynasty and as such introduced and enforced the use of the cartouche. Since King Sneferu , the founder of the 4th Dynasty , the cartouche was already an integral part of the so-called Great King's Titulature, which includes five names of the king.

Use and meaning in ancient Egypt

symbolism

The cartouches originally had a cultic and religious meaning for the ancient Egyptians, as the tying and loosening of knots was also of great importance in the magic of ancient Egypt . As a modified form of the Schen ring, the cartouche had the same symbolic function: it should protect the name ( ren ) of the ruler and keep it for all time. The background was the religious belief that every deceased, whose name remains forever, will continue to exist forever in the hereafter . If his name were damaged or completely destroyed, the soul would be lost and the deceased would be forgotten and fall for nothing. The cartridge was supposed to prevent this by protecting the king's name.

At a later time, when the sun cult of the god Re reached its prime, another symbolism was added: the seemingly infinite loop of the cartouche was compared with the equally infinite course of the sun. Since the Egyptians worshiped the Pharaoh as Sa-Ra ("son of Re") and the sun touched all of Egypt, the power of the Pharaoh was also considered omnipresent and all-embracing. Pharaoh was where the sun was shining.

use

The cartridge that completely encloses the name is intended to provide protection by encircling it. Exclusively were in cartridges birth name ( Sa-Ra name - "Son of Re") and the throne name ( Nesu (t) -biti registered) of the king. In both cases, the epithets , sun disk and goose as well as rush and bee, are always placed in front of the cartridge. In the case of the other three titles of the king, the corresponding names are also introduced by epithets. At the beginning of the cartouche cult, these, in addition to the Horus and gold names , were displayed equally and jointly on public monuments and reliefs, in documents such as papyri and clay seal inscriptions. Sometimes the Nebti and the gold name were also integrated into the cartouche, as evidenced, for example, by a Sinai relief of King Sneferu . In documents and lists of kings, in which deceased rulers are honored as deified ancestors, only the cartouche name was used. Cartridges that appear as part of the name of private persons, especially during the Old Kingdom , are a specialty . An example of this is the name of the high official Iruka-Chufu , which is dedicated to the name of King Cheops (ancient Egyptian: Chufu ). Or the name of the courtier Sneferu-seneb , who was supposed to honor the name of King Sneferu. In later dynasties, such as the New Kingdom , it was apparently no longer permitted to put royal names in cartouches if they were linked to the names of private persons. An example of this is the name of the high priest Ramsesnacht , King Ramses III. should honor, but is no longer enclosed in a cartridge.

Importance in Egyptology

Cartouche from the Ptolemaic period.

For Egyptology, the cartouches with the king's names were and are of great importance because they surround the names of Egyptian rulers and thus emphasize them. When the famous Frenchman Jean-François Champollion and the Englishman Thomas Young worked on the translation and interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early 19th century , they first and foremost oriented themselves to the cartouches. The two researchers noticed that the cartouches always contained the same hieroglyphs and apparently represented the names of certain rulers. With this knowledge the historical foundation for the correct reading and interpretation of the hieroglyphs was laid.

Such cartridges can also be the subject of problem research if they are in an anachronistic context and appear in ancient Egyptian documents , inscriptions and papyri containing lists of kings. The correct assignment of cartouches to their contemporary name-bearers can be particularly problematic if they concern rulers whose lifetime the cartouche enclosing the name had not yet been introduced. Until the end of the 3rd dynasty, the name Horus , the Nebtiname and the symbols for Upper and Lower Egypt (rush and bee - Nisut-Biti ) were used primarily in public documents and on freely accessible royal monuments . Ancient Egyptian authors of lists of kings, mostly priests and high-ranking scribes, tended to put the birth names and nebtin names of deceased rulers in cartouches in order to honor them as eternal ancestors. This trend can already be observed with funeral priests from the time of the change from the 3rd to the 4th dynasty, when the cartridge was introduced. The historical fact that cartridges were uncommon before their introduction was simply ignored. In addition, the real birth names of some of the rulers of the 1st Dynasty are unknown, so the question arises as to which source the authors used for their lists of kings.

There is also another phenomenon : Many cartouche names that concern the rulers before King Huni appear in the various king lists in equally different spellings. This, too, has led to research being unsure whether certain royal names actually refer to the same ruler. For example, the name Neferkare written in the cartouche is given for King Huni in the list of kings of Abydos , but the name "Huni" is missing. In the royal list of Saqqara , the Turin royal papyrus and on the Palermostein, however, Huni is correctly named, but the name "Neferkare" is missing. For King Hetepsechemui , the Bedjau is given in a cartouche in the King's List of Abydos and on the writing tablet of Giza , while the name Netjer-Bau appears in the Turin King's Papyrus and in the Saqqara List . For the reasons mentioned, Egyptologists and historians have difficulties correctly assigning the posthumously used names of kings in cartouches before the end of the 3rd dynasty.

Egyptian king lists also differ considerably from each other and give different numbers of ruler names for individual dynasties. Other lists of kings even leave out entire dynasties. In the Abydos list, for example, the complete 1st intermediate time is missing . Still others, such as the King List of Karnak and the writing tablet of Giza, are extremely selective and only mention very specific, exquisite names of kings.

During the Ptolemaic period , steles and reliefs were made on which empty cartouches appear next to (or above) royal figures. It is possible that the cartouches could have been filled in when the relief was painted, or the king's name was perceived by the artists as irrelevant and therefore left open. For Egyptologists and historians, this trend is a difficulty because the works of art without a royal name cannot be assigned to any ruler or dynasty.

literature

  • Jürgen von Beckerath : Handbook of the Egyptian king names (= Munich Egyptological studies. Vol. 49). von Zabern, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-8053-2591-6 .
  • Ann Rosalie David: Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 1998, ISBN 0-19-513215-7 .
  • Jochem Kahl, Nicole Kloth, Ulrich Zimmermann: The inscriptions of the 3rd dynasty - an inventory . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 3-447-03733-4 .
  • Peter Kaplony : King's Ring. In: Wolfgang Helck (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Ägyptologie (LÄ). Volume III, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1980, ISBN 3-447-02100-4 , Sp. 610-626.
  • David I. Lightbody: Egyptian Tomb Architecture: The Archaeological Facts of Pharaonic Circular Symbolism (= British Archaeological Reports British Series. Vol. 1852). Archaeopress, Oxford (UK) 2008, ISBN 1-4073-0339-2 .
  • Manfred Lurker : Lexicon of the gods and symbols of the ancient Egyptians. 3rd edition, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-16693-0 , p. 116.
  • Stephen Quirke: Who Were the Pharaohs? A History of Their Names with a List of Cartouches . Trustees of the British Museum, London 1990 (new edition), ISBN 0-7141-0955-X .
  • Rainer Stadelmann : King Huni: His Monuments and His Place in the History of the Old Kingdom . In: Zahi A. Hawass , Janet Richards (Eds.): The Archeology and Art of Ancient Egypt. Essays in Honor of David B. O'Connor. Vol. II. Conceil Suprême des Antiquités de l'Égypte, Cairo 2007.
  • Toby AH Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt . Routledge, London / New York 1999, ISBN 0-415-18633-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Osing: The nominal formation of the Egyptian . von Zabern, Mainz 1976, p. 203.
  2. ^ A b Ann Rosalie David: Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt. Oxford / New York 1998, p. 219.
  3. ↑ Simson Najovits: Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, Vol. I: A Modern Survey of and Ancient country . Algora Publishing, New York 2003, ISBN 0-87586-234-9 , p. 251.
  4. ^ A b c David I. Lightbody: Egyptian Tomb Architecture . Oxford (UK) 2008, pp. 36-38, 41-43.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Jürgen von Beckerath : Handbook of the Egyptian king names. Mainz 1999, pp. 27-29.
  6. ↑ Jürgen von Beckerath: Chronology of the Pharaonic Egypt. The timing of Egyptian history from prehistoric times to 332 BC BC (= Munich Egyptological Studies (MÄS) , Vol. 46). von Zabern, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8053-2310-7 , pp. 19-23.
  7. ↑ Barry J. Kemp: Ancient Egypt. Anatomy of a Civilization. Routledge, London / New York 1989, ISBN 978-0-415-01281-2 , p. 106.
  8. ^ Toby AH Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt. London / New York 1999, pp. 177, 201, 206-207.
  9. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Helck: Investigations on the Thinite Age (= Ägyptologische Abhandlungen , Vol. 45). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-447-02677-4 , pp. 117-118.
  10. ^ Jochem Kahl, Nicole Kloth, Ulrich Zimmermann: The inscriptions of the 3rd dynasty. Wiesbaden 1995, p. 209.
  11. ^ Rainer Stadelmann : King Huni: His Monuments and His Place in the History of the Old Kingdom. Cairo 2007, p. 426.
  12. ↑ Lucia Gahlin: Egypt - gods, myths, religions. Edition XXL, Reichelsheim 2001, ISBN 3-89736-312-7 , p. 196.
  13. ↑ a b c Stephen Quirke: Who Were the Pharaohs? London 1990, pp. 24-27.
  14. ^ Hermann A. Schlögl : The Old Egypt (= Beck'sche Reihe. Vol. 2305). 3rd edition, Beck, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 3-406-62310-7 , p. 11.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Helck: Investigations on the Thinite Age (= Ägyptologische Abhandlungen , Vol. 45). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-447-02677-4 , pp. 122-126.
  16. ↑ a b c Stephan J. Seidlmayer: The Relative Chronology of Dynasty 3 . In: Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, David A. Warburton (eds.): Ancient Egyptian Chronology. Leiden 2006, pp. 117-119.
  17. ^ Rainer Stadelmann: King Huni: His Monuments and His Place in the History of the Old Kingdom. Cairo 2007, p. 427.
  18. ↑ Edward Brovarski: Two old writing boards from Giza. In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte. 71st edition, 1987, ISSN  1687-1510 , p. 44.
  19. ^ Thomas Schneider : Lexicon of the Pharaohs . Albatros, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-491-96053-3 , p. 134.
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Helck : Investigations on the Thinite Age (= Ägyptologische Abhandlungen , Vol. 45). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-447-02677-4 , pp. 124-126.
  21. ↑ Susanne Bickel: In Egyptian Society: Aegyptiaca of the Bibles + Orient collections at the University of Friborg Switzerland. Saint-Paul, Freiburg 2004, ISBN 3-7278-1429-2 , p. 51.

Web links

Commons : Cartouche (Ancient Egypt)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Cathie Spieser: Cartouche. In: Elizabeth Frood, Willeke Wendrich (Ed.): UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Los Angeles 2010.