Unification Festival (Ancient Egypt)

The festival of unification (also the day of the feast of the accession to the throne ) has been documented in ancient Egypt since King Scorpio II in the 0th Dynasty . However, it has only had a symbolic character since it was first documented . There was no real rule over the regions of Upper and Lower Egypt in the origins, especially since in the predynastic period the "two countries" were assigned other geographical borders.

background

In the further course of ancient Egyptian history, the kings celebrated the festival of reunification during longer periods of government as an anniversary festival, which was carried out to renew their rule. The Unification Festival can therefore be seen as a possible forerunner of the Sedfest , as the celebration of the Unification Festival as a government anniversary no longer appeared under this name later.

Early and Old Kingdom

Under Scorpio II, a violent unification of Lower and Upper Egypt is documented for the first time , which destroyed its capital during the decisive campaign of conquest. Narmer renewed the "compulsory union" with the victory over the Harpunengau , which, among other things, included the area of Pithom .

Under Menes , who was able to achieve a peaceful unification of the empire on an equal footing , the meaning of the festival changed, which since then has been the symbol of common and peaceful rule over Lower and Upper Egypt.

From inscriptions and illustrations on monuments of the Old Kingdom it is evident that since the first unification the Unification Festival was celebrated together with the Accession to the Throne. An exception in the Old Kingdom is Chasechemui , who did not celebrate the Unification Festival when he took office and only made up for it after Lower Egypt was forced to subjugate again.

The festival of unification since the Middle Kingdom

Since the Middle Kingdom , the unification festival has been regularly recorded, but without a specific date, as it refers to the importance of the unification of the empire by Menes under the title “Unification of the two countries” with the captions “proclamation of peace” and “end of the dispute” .

Due to the amalgamation of the festivities “Day of the King's Coronation” and “Unification of the Two Countries”, the name of the unification festival only rarely appears later as a documentary inscription, for example when, contrary to tradition, a woman named herself ruler with the title of king ( Hatshepsut ). Otherwise the "unification of the two countries" was automatically part of the "day of the coronation of the king".

literature

Richard A. Parker : The calendars of ancient Egypt (= Studies in ancient Oriental Civilization. Volume 26, ISSN 0081-7554 ). University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1950.
Siegfried Schott : Altägyptische Festdaten (= Academy of Sciences and Literature. Treatises of the humanities and social science class. Volume 10, 1950, ISSN 0002-2977 ). Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature and others, Mainz and others 1950.

Individual evidence

^ Jochem Kahl : Upper and Lower Egypt. A dualistic construction and its beginnings. In: Rainer Albertz , Anke Blöbaum, Peter Funke (Eds.): Spaces and Limits. Topological concepts in the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean (= sources and research on the ancient world. Volume 52). Utz, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8316-0699-3 , pp. 3–28, here p. 13 ( online ).

[1] Jochem Kahl : Upper and Lower Egypt. A dualistic construction and its beginnings. In: Rainer Albertz , Anke Blöbaum, Peter Funke (Eds.): Spaces and Limits. Topological concepts in the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean (= sources and research on the ancient world. Volume 52). Utz, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8316-0699-3 , pp. 3–28, here p. 13 ( online ).