Who's Who in Ancient Egypt

Michael Rice

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415154499
• eBook ISBN: 9781134734191
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte der ägyptischen Antike

In this compelling guide and sourcebook, renowned author and scholar Michael Rice introduces us to the inhabitants of ancient Egypt, allowing us to encounter their world through their own eyes. Here are the great and the famous, from Cleopatra to Tutankhamun, but here also are the grave-robber Amenwah, Nakht the gardener and Sebaster the hairdresser. The whole arena of Egyptian life is expressed in these pages. Not only are there nearly a thousand biographies, there is also a chapter on 'Encountering Ancient Egyptians', sections on kingship and on religion, a chronology, a glossary and maps. A combination of erudite scholarship and a clear and accessible style, this volume opens up the world of the ancient Egyptians to all those with an interest in the subject in a way that has never been done before.

Who’s Who IN ANCIENT EGYPT 1

A

Aakheperkare-senb, Scribe, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1438 BC. The pyramids in Giza, Saqqara, Meidum and Abu Roash frequently attracted appreciative visitors during the reigns of the kings of later times. One such visitor was Aakheperkare-senb, the son of an important temple functionary, who left an inscription on the walls of the Meidum mortuary temple, ascribed to King SNEFERU of the Fourth Dynasty; Aakheperkare-senb’s graffito is one of the reasons for the pyramid’s attribution to the king.

Aakheperkare-senb was deeply impressed with what he saw. Giving the precise date of his visit (‘the twelfth day of the fourth month of summer in the forty-first year of the reign of THUTMOSE III’) he says that he found the pyramid ‘as though heaven were within it and the sun rising in it’. He prays that the heavens may rain with myrrh and drip with incense upon its roof.

Fakhry 1961:67–8.

Edwards 1985:81.

Aba (alt. Ibi), Scribe, Twentieth Dynasty, date not known. A Scribe of horses during the Ramessid period, Aba was buried in an exceptionally large and palatial tomb in the Theban necropolis (TT 351).

PM I.1:417.

Aba, Official, Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, Late Period, c. 664–610 BC. Aba was a high official, the steward of the God’s Wife of AMUN in Thebes, NITIQRET. He came from the north and was a contemporary of King PSAMETIK I. He was buried in the Theban necropolis (TT 36).

PM I:69.

Kitchen 1986: §353.

Abdi Kheba, Palestinian King, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1352–1336 BC. The religious and aesthetic preoccupations of King AMENHOTEP IV-AKHENATEN, after his removal to the city of Akhetaten, encouraged many of the states beyond the northern frontiers, which were subject to Egyptian suzerainty, to rebel. The process of the disintegration of Egyptian authority was rapid and a number of Egypt’s client rulers found themselves in a parlous situation. Some remained loyal, however, amongst whom was Abdi Kheba, the King of Jerusalem, who appealed to the Egyptian king for a modest contingent of troops, fifty men, to help him hold the land. Akhenaten ignored his pleas, as it appears he ignored the others which were directed to him.

Aldred 1988:283.

W.L.Moran, The Amarna Letters, Baltimore, 1992.

Achoris, see Hakor

Agatharchides, Geographer and Historian, Ptolemaic Period, second century BC. Born in Cnidus, Agatharchides spent his career in Alexandria, at the court of PTOLEMY VI. He wrote a study of the successors of Alexander which was well received. He also produced a description of the Red Sea, in five books. His works are lost but DIODORUS SICULUS quotes a description of labourers washing out gold from crushed quartz.

Diodorus Bibliotheke III:12–14. Loeb 1933–67. Thompson, Ancient Geography.

S.M.Burstein, Agatharchides of Cnidus: On the Enythrean Sea, London, 1989.

P.M.Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols, Oxford, 1992.

Aha (alt. Hor-Aha), King, First Dynasty, Archaic Period, c. 3150 BC. Probably the first king of Egypt, Aha was the son or successor of NAR-MER. His mother may have been Queen NEITHHOTEP; alternatively she has been described as his wife. Aha is also most likely to be identified with MENES, the reputed unifier of the Two Lands.

According to MANETHO, Aha reigned for sixty-four years, presumably coming to the throne as a very young man. He was said to have died as the result of injuries sustained in a hippopotamus hunt, a story which is as likely as not, myth.

To Aha were ascribed many of the most important early achievements of the emergent monarchy. He is credited with campaigns in the north and south of the Valley, to bring about the Unification of the Two Lands. He also is said to have established temples to the gods of Egypt, thus inaugurating a practice which was one of the glories of the kingship over the next 3,000 years.

Aha is commemorated especially by what are customarily called ‘labels’, ivory plaques which appear to record outstanding events in the reigns of the early kings. One, the ‘Abydos label’, records the king’s name, which is displayed in the formal surround of the serekh, the foundation of a temple to the goddess Neith, a shrine, the capture of a wild bull and a representation of boats sailing past towns on the banks of the Nile. Another seems to link Aha with Menes. He was the first Egyptian king to use the nebty name, honouring ‘The Two Ladies’ (the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively) in his titulary: in his case the chosen name appears to have been Men.

During Aha’s reign, architecture begins to be of a notable quality; in addition to the temples which he is said to have built, there is evidence of substantial funerary monuments, of a size and character markedly different from those of the preceding, late Predynastic period. The place of Aha’s own burial at Abydos is really the first monumental funerary complex in the history of Egypt. A number of young people, presumably the king’s retainers and servants and none of them above the age of twenty-five, were buried with him, to attend him in the afterlife. This custom was widespread during the First Dynasty.

The tomb of Aha’s presumed mother (or wife), Neithhotep, also at Abydos, is a large and elaborate structure, which the king may himself have built for her. A remarkable tomb (3503) at Saqqara, probably the resting place of one of Aha’s great ministers, has a model estate built inside it, showing granaries and other buildings of the sort which would have been in use in the king’s time.

Emery 1954:171; pls LVII-LXVI.

B.J.Kemp, ‘The Egyptian First Dynasty Royal Cemetery’, Antiquity, 41 (1967) 22–32.

Spencer: 63–5, pls 56–7.

B.Adams and K.M.Cialowicz, Protodynastic Egypt, Princes Risborough, 1997:63, fig. 44c.

Ahanakht, Nomarch, Ninth/Tenth Dynasties, First Intermediate Period, c. 2160–2025 BC. The nomarch of Hermopolis, during the reign of King NEFERKARE, Ahanakht bore the title ‘Overseer of the Western Desert’.

Kees 1961:130.

Aha-nakht, Veterinarian, Twelfth Dynasty, Middle Kingdom, c. 1985–1795 BC. The veterinarian Aha-nakht’s name appears amongst graffiti, identifying a number of medical practitioners of various disciplines working in the quarries at Hatnub. He was a w’ab priest of Sekhmet and is depicted in company with a more important physician, Hesy-shef-nakht. He is described as ‘one who knows bulls’.

Nunn: 128–9.

Ahhotep I, Queen, Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Dynasties, c. 1590-c. 1530 BC. The wife of SEQENENRE TAO II, who died in the campaigns waged to expel the Hyksos from Egypt, Ahhotep was one of the several powerful and determined women who exercised considerable influence in the New Kingdom, especially in the Eighteenth Dynasty, of which she was long revered as the ancestress. On Seqenenre Tao’s death his son KAMOSE succeeded; it is not known for certain if he was the child of Ahhotep. Although Kamose was instrumental in carrying on the war against the Hykos after Seqenenre Tao’s death, he did not long survive his f ather. After his death, Seqenenre Tao’s son by Ahhotep, AHMOSE, was proclaimed king. He was too young to undertake the full responsibilities of the kingship and his mother acted as regent until he was sixteen. Ahhotep probably died in the early years of her son’s reign; she was rewarded with divine honours and a long-surviving cult was established in her memory. Her son raised a stele in her honour at Karnak, praising her part in the expulsion of the Hyksos and describing her as ‘one who pacified Upper Egypt and expelled her rebels’.

Ahhotep II was possibly the wife of King KAMOSE.

Urk. IV 21, 16.

A.Macy Roth, ‘Ahhotep I and Ahhotep II’, Serapis (1977–8) 31–40.

Saleh and Sourouzian: 118–26. EMC.

Ahmose, King, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1550–1525 BC. Ahmose was the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, hence the progenitor of a family which was to rule Egypt for more than two centuries and the founder of the New Kingdom which was to survive for half a millennium. He was the son of SEQENENRE TAO II and AHHOTEP, one of the formidable queens who frequently appear in the New Kingdom. When Ahmose succeeded, after the death of his elder brother KAMOSE, he was probably some ten years old and his mother was regent until he assumed his full powers, when he was about sixteen. He set about the expulsion of the Hyksos, who ruled the northern part of Egypt as the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties, which he achieved in the sixteenth year of his reign. The reign of Ahmose marked a return to the building of royal and temple monuments on a substantial scale. The quality of the craftsmanship is generally high, a characteristic which was to persist throughout the New Kingdom, even if the surviving works do not always match the best of the works of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Egypt also resumed her contact with the world outside the Valley, a process which had been somewhat interrupted during the Hyksos period, and trade was maintained with Crete, Byblos and Nubia; lapis lazuli, from distant sources in Asia, began to reach Egypt once again.

Ahmose was honoured with a cult in his name throughout the Eighteenth Dynasty, a distinction he shared with his mother, Ahhotep. The oldest known royal shabti is ascribed to him. He is estimatedto have been around thirty-five years old when he died.

Grimal: 193–202.

Shaw and Nicholson 1995:18.

BM EA 32191.

Ahmose, Ar my Officer, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1540 BC. Ahmose was a native of Elkab in Upper Egypt and, like his father, Baba, was a soldier; Baba indeed served under the King SEQENENRE TAO II in the early campaigns against the Hyksos invaders. His mother, whose name is frequently joined to his, was Abana. Ahmose seems to have spent most of his career serving in the king’s fleet; he left a detailed account of the fighting, on land and on the Nile, from a ship called Appearing in Memphis, led by the young king whose namesake he was. He fought at Avaris in the Delta, a stronghold of the Hyksos; he was present at the long seige of Sharuhen in Palestine, the capture of which effectively ended the Hyksos presence in Egypt. Twice he was awarded ‘Gold ofV alour’ and was given numerous slaves by the king, captives secured in the battles in which he fought. He also served with Ahmose in putting down a rebellion amongst the people of Nubia in the south. Ahmose acquired two young warr iors as slaves from this campaign and a gift of land.

Ahmose left the account of his exploits and the valiant and resourceful actions of his king in his tomb at his birthplace. His life spanned the reigns of Seqenenre Tao and King THUTMOSE I; he must have been a great age when he died when, as he said ‘I rest in the tomb which I have made’.

V.Loret, L’Inscription d’Ahmés, Fils d’Abana, B d’E, Cairo. Lichtheim 2:12–13.

Ahmose-Meritamun, Queen, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1525–1504 BC. Ahmose-Meritamun was married to her brother, King AMENHOTEP I, the second king of the dynasty which inaugurated the New Kingdom. Only one son appears to have been born of their marriage, who died in infancy.

James and Davies: 34–5; ill. 41. Tyldesley: 60–2. BM 93.

Ahmose Nefertiry, Queen, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1570–1505 BC. Ahmose Nefertiry was one of the three exceptional women who so greatly contributed to the creation of the long-lasting imperial phase of Egyptian histor y, the New Kingdom. She was probably the daughter of KAMOSE, the king who did much to effect the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, a task which was completed by his brother AHMOSE, to whom Ahmose Nefertiry was married.

The queen was closely associated with her husband in the work of rebuilding and consolidating the state which he undertook after the defeat of the Hyksos. It is clear from the many inscriptions which record their endeavours that Ahmose Nefertiry carried great authority during her lifetime.

Ahmose Nefertiry was the first royal lady to be given the title ‘God’s Wife of Amun’, an office which was to become of great political significance in the south of Egypt, from Amun’s principal shrine at Thebes. A number of queens and princesses followed Ahmose Nefertiry in the appointment, which in later times was to be identified with that of ‘Divine Adoratrice’.

The queen was the mother of AMENHOTEP I into whose reign she survived. On her death she was accorded exceptional honours, eventually sharing a mortuary temple and perhaps a tomb with him. Her cult was long established and attracted particular devotion in the Theban necropolis, especially amongst the artisans who worked there. She is frequently depicted with her son, receiving the worship of devotees, in later ages.

It appears that Amenhotep I had no direct heir. He was succeeded by THUTMOSE I, whose claim to the throne was by right of his marriage to a daughter of Ahmose and Ahmose Nefertiry, who thus was responsible for the continuation of the line which the family had established.

M.Gitton, Les Divines Epouses de la 18e Dynastie, Paris, 1984. Robins 1993:43–5.

Ahmose-Pennekheb, Soldier, Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1550–1525 BC. Ahmose-Pennekheb served in the army of King AHMOSE, who finally drove out the Hyksos invaders from the north. He campaigned with the king in Palestine and Syria.

He may have been present at the fall of Avaris, the Hyksos capital, which was captured only after a prolonged seige.

Ahmose-Pennekheb was a contemporary of AHMOSE, son of Abana, and came from the same town as his near-namesake; he was also buried at Elkab. He was evidently long-lived; he died during the reign of Queen HATSHEPSUT, to whose daughter, Princess NEFERURE he was a tutor.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Encountering the Ancient Egyptians
• The Egyptian kingship
• The gods of Egypt
• Chronology
• Rank, title and office in Ancient Egypt
• Who’s Who in Ancient Egypt 1
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Appendices
• Appendix 1: Entries by occupation
• Appendix 2: Entries in chronological sequence
• Appendix 3: Ancient Egypt in museum collections