Coronation (pharaoh)
| Coronation in hieroglyphics | ||||||
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Chai-en-nisut-biti ḫˁj-n-njswt-bjtj appearance (coronation) of the king |
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The Egyptians understood the coronation of an Egyptian king ( Pharaoh ) to be the divine confirmation of the previously designated successor. In the rare cases of a missing designation from the predecessor, the judgment of the Council of Gods was used as a substitute . The associated ceremony was subject to only a few changes in Egyptian history and was always linked to a special holiday, which was mythologically linked to a "festival of renewal".
Succession and Accession to the Throne
The coronation was preceded by the official raising of the successor during the reigning king's lifetime. The basis was the rite that only biological sons could be publicly proclaimed as future heirs to the throne. For example, Ramses II reported on his designation:
“When my father appeared before the people, I was the child on his lap. Regarding me, he said: Crown him king, that I may see his beauty as long as I live. He had the eunuchs called to put the crown on my forehead: Give him the crown serpent on his head, so that he may preserve the land, lead the army and rule over humanity. "
After the death of the king, the accession to the throne followed the next morning at sunrise , with reference to the sun god ; on Horus as a heavenly deity up to the 4th Dynasty , then up to the Second Intermediate Period on Re and finally from the New Kingdom on Amun-Re . Only with the accession to the throne were the divinely necessary conditions for the later coronation given. In the time between the death of the old king and the coronation of his successor, the designated new king acted as a representative of his predecessor and took over his government duties. In the Egyptian calendar , however, the assumption of the throne was not regarded as an official takeover of government, which is why the actual coronation day was only celebrated as a recurring annual ceremony together with the symbolic union of Upper and Lower Egypt .
With the end of the seventy days of mummification , the last section before the coronation began. The designated successor organized the funeral service of his predecessor for the next feast day; in the New Kingdom more often on the second lunar day of the month . Only through the ascension to heaven carried out for the predecessor could the successor obtain the swearing-in by the deities.
Coronation ceremony
Night ceremony
In the night ceremony, for example on the first lunar day of the month, the designated king was placed on a bed in the Holy of Holies. Then four wooden seals were placed under his head. At this point he was already in an advanced state of numbness, which was supposed to symbolize his death.
This was followed by the raising of the dead and the ritual decapitation of plants, which was supposed to banish the evil forces. In the house of life , the priests finally brought nine different birds to the designated king. The wings of a falcon and then those of a vulture were placed around his cheeks.
Day ceremony
In the morning the future king moved to the ritual palace, which was located near the Amun Re temple , and waited for the processional procession , which started from there at the time of sunrise . After arriving at the large double gate of the ritual palace, the processional escort moved to the opposite western double gate. The designated king stepped out of the ritual palace a short time later and ritually prostrated himself in front of the Amun statue, which was carried by the priesthood on a litter in front of the entrance.
After the priesthood placed the designated king on the litter in front of the Amun statue, they went to the Maat temple with the adjoining Iaru lake to carry out the symbolic purification. The festival community then returned to the Amun Re temple, where the nine-fold anointing to the king followed and the master of ceremonies in the Holy of Holies bestowed him with the divine regalia along with the two sceptres Ankh and Was , the white leather sandals and the staff of the foreign countries.
After the costume was completed, the new king sat on the block throne in order to alternate between the white crown of the south, the red crown of the north and the double crown, which symbolized the union of the two countries of Upper and Lower Egypt . For the further progress of the procession the new king wore the ostrich feather crown of Chepresch and went to the nearby barque sanctuary of the shadow of God to have his personal throne name announced. When the Nemes headscarf was handed over at the same time, the other names of his other titulatures followed: Horus name , Nebtin name and Gold name .
To celebrate the last section of the coronation feast, the priesthood led the king back to the large double gate of the ritual palace and then into the holy of holies. After the final anointing, a priest ended the coronation with the hieroglyphic symbol of power baked from resin bread , which was placed in the king's palm and which he then consumed.
The coronation ritual ended with the sacrifice of the seven animal-shaped images of gods from the house of life , which were made of clay. Now the new king could climb into his gold-studded chariot and show himself to his cheering people in a great procession.
literature
- Coronation. In: Hans Bonnet : Lexicon of the Egyptian religious history. 3rd, unchanged edition. Nikol, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 , pp. 395-400.
- Rolf Gundlach : Temple festivals and stages of royal rule in the 18th dynasty. In: Rolf Gundlach, Matthias Rochholz (ed.): Feste im Tempel (= Egypt and Old Testament . Volume 33, 2 = files of the Egyptological temple conferences. Volume 2). 4th Egyptological Temple Conference, Cologne, October 10-12, 1996. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-447-04067-X , pp. 55–57, here p. 63.
- Accession to the throne. In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto : Small Lexicon of Egyptology. 4th, revised edition. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04027-0 , p. 311.
- Siegfried Schott : The memorial stone Sethos 'I for the Chapel of Ramses' I in Abydos (= news of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. Philological-Historical Class 1964, Volume 1, ISSN 0065-5287 ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965.