Mummies, magic and medicine in ancient Egypt

Multidisciplinary essays for Rosalie David

Andrew Price, Roger Forshaw, Andrew Chamberlain, Paul Nicholson, Robert Morkot, Joyce Tyldesley

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784997946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Archeologia

This volume, published in honour of Egyptologist Prof. Rosalie David OBE, presents the latest research on three of the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian civilisation: mummies, magic and medical practice. Drawing on recent archaeological fieldwork, new research on Egyptian human remains, reassessments of ancient Egyptian texts and modern experimental archaeology, these essays try to answer some of Egyptology's biggest questions: How did Tutankhamun die? How were the Pyramids built? How were mummies made? A number of leading experts in their fields combine both traditional Egyptology and innovative scientific techniques to ancient material. The resulting overview presents the state of Egyptology in 2016, how it has developed over the last forty years, and how many of its big questions still remain the same.

PART II

Magico-medical practices in ancient Egypt

8

A most uncommon amulet

Carol Andrews

I offer this article to Rosalie on the subject of what I believe to be a unique amulet in the hope that its more curious and contradictory elements will pique her interest sufficiently for her to call into use her extensive knowledge of ancient Egyptian religion and mythology to seek an answer to the questions they pose.

Among the extensive collection of ancient Egyptian amulets in the Department of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, EA 26586 is an embellished wedjat eye made of pale green glazed composition (Plate 2). It measures 2.5 cm at its greatest length and 3.1 cm at its greatest height. There is no information on its provenance. The wedjat, especially in this material, is probably the amuletic form to have survived in the greatest numbers to the present day. It was not only worn in life for protection and might be taken to the tomb subsequently for use in the afterlife, but was specifically listed among prescribed amulets to be set on the wrapped mummy. Thus it is found in the pictorial record of amulets to be placed on the body of Osiris himself, depicted on the thickness of a doorway in the western Osiris complex on the roof of the temple of Hathor at Dendera (Andrews 1994: fig. 1). It also occurs in schematic plans of how amulets were to be set on contemporary mummies, found at the end of certain Late Period funerary papyri (Andrews 1994: fig. 2). Examination of Late Period mummies where amulets were still in position has confirmed that the wedjat is almost omnipresent, though rarely in the same place on the body (Petrie 1914: figs. L–LII). However, this particular example of the amulet is embellished with details which render it unique among published examples of wedjats.

The basic amulet resembles a human eye with brow above and markings below, the latter taking the form of a drop shape in front and an up-curling spiral behind. Since the wedjat is one of the two ‘eyes of Horus’, the markings ought to resemble those on the head of the sky-god in falcon form. However, although the drop shape at the front does indeed imitate the characteristic darkcoloured feathering at the front of the cheek of the ‘Horus falcon’ (Houlihan and Goodman 1986: fig. 61), the up-curling spiral most resembles the lacrimal line on the faces of big cats, whether lion, leopard or cheetah (Desroches-Noblecourt 1963: pl. XXVIII). The most likely explanation for this curious combination has been provided by Westendorf (1963: 138–9).

The piece is pierced horizontally for suspension through the length of the rectangular box which surmounts the eyebrow. It also has a distinct front and back. Although by convention the wedjat eye is usually identified as the left ‘lunar’ eye of the falcon-headed sky-god, damaged or diminished when the moon waned each month but then healed and made whole (‘wedjat’) when it waxed, it is noteworthy that almost as many wedjat eyes as amulets represent the right ‘solar’ eye as the left (Andrews 1994: fig. 46). Moreover, the orientation of all the imagery depicted on this piece make it clear that this wedjat was intended to represent the right ‘solar’ eye.

Within the thick drop below the eye on both faces, and filling the whole available space, is depicted a very constricted up-reared cobra wearing a sun disc with, apparently, the coil of its body behind, arching up to the level of the head, although this detail is by no means certain. On the back face of the amulet only, inside the area defined by the up-curling spiral and almost filling it, is another up-reared cobra, without a sun disc but with a very distinct coil of the body behind, arching up to the level of its head. Just behind the tip of its tail three vertical stalk-like stripes, each surmounted by an elongated bud-like shape, might be intended to represent stylised vegetation of the type where cobras are sometimes found. All three snakes, whether on the front or back surface of the amulet, face outwards, that is to the right, thus providing further confirmation that it is the right eye which is intended. The cobra’s connection with the sun, emphasised by wearing a sun disc, is well established (e.g. Kees 1977: 54); it is particularly obvious when the snake is wrapped around the sun disc on top of a deity’s head. Although there is no reason to assume that the cobra without a sun disc does not have a solar connection, its presence on this amulet could just as well be explained as confirmation of one of the functions of the wedjat itself in a funerary context. The sloughing of a snake’s skin and the emergence of a new reptile from it was considered symbolic of regeneration and new life. According to the Osiris myth, the offering of his healed eye by falcon-headed Horus to his dead father Osiris was so powerful a charm that it restored him to life.

The up-reared cobra or uraeus as goddess was the Eye of the Sun, spitting fire at enemies when worn on the divine or royal brow and wreaking destruction at the sun-god’s command. But just as important a manifestation of the Eye was any of the various lion goddesses, all of whom had a fierce side to their character: Sekhmet, Menhyt, Mehit, Mut, Tefnut and Wadjyt were among their number. Even the apparently docile cat-headed Bastet, usually depicted with kittens emblematic of her fertility at her feet and sistrum and menyet for music-making and festivity in her hands, had a lion-headed form when she too embodied the sun’s vengeful Eye. It is because of this savage aspect of all these goddesses that, even though their usual form might be otherwise, when embodying the Eye they were represented as a woman with maned lion’s head: hence their apparently contradictory designation as lion goddesses. That their heads are usually surmounted by a sun disc with uraeus wrapped around it is a further reminder of their connection with the sun-god and his Eye. It is this link which suggests the probable identification of the leonine figure which reclines along the top of this amulet.

The lion, as embellishment, is a rare feature considering the number of wedjats to have survived: only fourteen of this type have been identified (Müller-Winkler 1987: 103). Of these, two are thought to depict a cat rather than a lion in the original publication, and in another of the fourteen the badly damaged figure was originally identified as a bull (Petrie 1914: 33, section 141g). In EA 26586 the lion reclines on top of the rectangular box which surmounts the eyebrow and its body lies to the left, the orientation furnishing further evidence that this is the right ‘solar’ eye as amulet. However, its head is not forward-facing with the front legs stretched before it, in the posture of all recumbent lion-form amulets, gaming pieces and jewellery elements since the earliest dynasties. This is also the posture from the 4th Dynasty onwards of large scale lion-form sculpture in that most characteristic Egyptian hybrid, the human- or animal-headed sphinx. Instead, it is recumbent with its head turned to face the viewer, its front right leg lying nonchalantly over the paw of the left, and, although it is a detail difficult to discern, the underside of the paw of the back left leg appears to be visible behind the right back leg. This is exactly the posture of one of the two red granite Prudhoe lions in the British Museum, the pair being the first ever to exhibit this pose among large-scale lion sculpture, and it occurs extremely rarely subsequently, only in the 30th Dynasty and into the Roman Period, and never on this scale (Kozloff and Bryan 1992: 219, no. 30).

These lions came from the temple of Soleb in Nubia built by Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty and would have stood one on either side of the temple’s entrance way, hence their mirror-image appearance. The lion on the amulet is identical to the Prudhoe lion which would have stood on the left. It is known that the pair from Soleb represented the eyes of the sun-god, both solar and lunar, and so the lion on the left might be assumed to represent the lunar eye, the entity which the fierce lion-headed goddesses and, in particular, Tefnut embodied. Yet the amulet has been shown to be a right eye. However, texts exist which show that the right and left eyes might be transp...