Stela of the Exiles
The Stele of the Exiles ( Louvre C 256) is a dark granite stele with hieroglyphic text from ancient Egypt and dates to the 21st Dynasty . It contains an amnesty decree from the High Priest Mencheperre .
discovery
The stele was discovered around 1860 by Henri Maunier , then the French vice-consul in Luxor , and brought to Paris in 1884 . It is now in the Louvre.
Status
The upper part of the stele is severely damaged and only one piece has survived, on which the high priest of Amun is standing in a praying pose before the god Amun . The larger lower part is completely preserved. Of the 23 lines of text, the first four are largely destroyed.
Content and background
In the 21st dynasty, Thebes was almost independent of the pharaohs ruling in Tanis and was controlled by the high priests of Amun. In the 25th year of the reign of Smendes I , a revolt broke out against the high priest Masaharta . Mencheperre, the brother and successor of Masaharta, put down this rebellion, entered Thebes victoriously and was appointed by the god Amun as his father's successor. Soon the exiles were but - through an oracle of Amun sanctioned - from their exile in the oasis Kharga called back to Thebes. This possibly testifies to the weak position of the still minor high priest in relation to the Theban priesthood.
Data
The text contains three dates:
- Year 25 (of Smendes), III. Schemu 29: Oracle (presumably with the banishment to the Kharga oasis)
- Year 25, I. Achet 4: Entry of the Mencheperre into Thebes
- Year [1 (?)] (Des Amenemnesut or Psusennes I.): Recall of the exiles
literature
- Jürgen von Beckerath : Exile stele. In: Lexicon of Egyptology . (LA) Vol. VI, 1986, pp. 919-920.
- Jürgen von Beckerath: The stele of the exiles in the Louvre museum. In: Revue d'Égyptologie. Vol. 20, 1968, pp. 7-36.
- Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi : The stele of the exiles. In: Texts from the environment of the Old Testament . (TUAT) Vol. II / 1, 1986, pp. 112-117.
- Ad Thijs : Introducing the Banishment Stele into the 20th Dynasty. In: Journal for Egyptian Language and Antiquity. Vol. 138, 2011, pp. 163-181.