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forth later that the stele
had been set up in order to
commemorate «les dons faits au temple d’Ammon
de Napata (sic! - A.V.)
13
par la mère d’Aspalout»,
14
«an endowment made by his queen»,
15
«le trans-
fert fait par lui, à sa fille et à la postérité de celle-ci,
d’une fondation qu’il avait d’abord constituée, dans
le temple d’Amon à Napata (sic! - A.V.), en faveur
de sa femme, lorsque celle-ci était devenue prêtresse
de ce dieu.»
16
One of the most recent renderings, published in
1994 in the Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, stated that
the stele is «recording the investiture of Queen Kheb
le) for the name of the «king’s sister» which is elsewhere
rendered by the author as «Matsenen». Since Schäfer’s
republication of the stele (see note 22 below) this name is
usually interpreted as «Madiqen», or similar.
13 The earliest students of the stele believed that one of the
temples of the Jebel Barkal sanctuary, usually identified
with Napata, is mentioned in the text. It was not before
F.L. Griffith’s excavations on the site of Sanam, situated on
the other bank of the Nile and afterwards for some time
referred to as «Contra-Napata» (‘Oxford Excavations in
Nubia’, LAAA, Vol. IX (1922), p. 77), that the real loca-
lisation of the temple of «Amun-Re, Bull of the Land of
the Three-Curved Bow» was established. Worth noting is
Griffith’s observation that in Aspelta’s time «the hierarchy
of Napata and the court in Contra-Napata were not on
speaking terms» (ibid., p. 79).
14 H. Gauthier, Le Livre des Rois d’Égypte, T. IV (MMIFAO
20; Cairo, 1915), p. 56.
15 E. A. W. Budge, The Egyptian Sûdân, Vol. II (London,
1907), p. 66; cf. id., Annals of Nubian Kings (Egyptian
Literature, Vol. II; London 1912), p. xcviii.
16 C. Boreux, Département des antiquités égyptiennes
(Musée National du Louvre. Guide-catalogue sommaire,
I; Paris, 1932), p. 84.
(sc. princess Henuttakhebit - A.V.)
17
into a priestly
office at Sanam»,
18
which, due to the authority of
this edition, might give the impression that a certain
concensus has been achieved among scholars. Yet,
even in 2000 the view that the Dedication Stele «gives
an account of Madiqen’s induction into the office (of
priestess - A.V.)» was still maintained.
19
Thus it is to
be admitted that 140 years after the first publication
of the monument a student of the Louvre stele still
has to face three principal questions:
a) who was the subject of the action,
b) who or what was the object of the action,
c) what was the aim of the action under discussion.
As for the subject (performer) of the action, there
are at least four different views, depending on the
rendering of the key phrase in lines 8-9, which follow
the enumeration of titles and proper names of the
eleven officials who came to the temple of Amun and
precede the statement of the ordinance. According
to the generally used (Schäfer’s) copy of the text,
20
17 The problems of reading of this princess’ name and titula-
ry are discussed in some detail in A.K. Vinogradov, ‘The
Dedication Stela: The Name of the Kushite Princess’, BzS,
Bd. 7 (Wien, 1999), SS. 119-127.
18 L. Török, ‘Adoption Stela of Aspelta. Comments’, in Eide
T., Hägg T., Pierce R.H., Török L. (eds.), Fontes Historiae
Nubiorum, Vol. 1 (Bergen, 1994), p. 231.
19 Ye. Ye. Kormysheva, Mir bogov Meroe (St-Petersburg and
Moscow, 2000), pp. 60-61; cf. D.A. Welsby The Kingdom
of Kush. The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (London,
2002=1998), p. 31.
20
Urk. III, 104.
Fig. 1. Lunette of the Dedication Stele (after E. A. W. Budge, Annals of Nubian Kings (Egyptian Literature, Vol. II; London,
1912), pl. VIII).
2012
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107
the passage in question, opening the main text of the
stele, reads:
(8) <…>
(9)
<…> (text of the ordinance following).
The earliest students of the stele assumed that the
«decree» was announced, on behalf of the king, by
the grandees who came to the temple and addressed
its priests. Thus Paul Pierret, in 1873, translated the
statement as «<...> ensemble 11 hommes sont venus
au temple d’Ammon-ra, Taureau de la Nubie dire de
la part de son royal fils Pharaon aux prophètes et aux
divine pères de ce temple (savoir:) <...>.»
21
A similar rendering was set forth in Heinrich
Schäfer’s (re)publication of the text in 1895. In com-
menting on the passage, however, he pointed out the
grammatical vagueness of the phrase on the break
of lines 8 and 9: «Den Schluss der Periode muss ich
unübersetzt lassen, da ich die Schwierigkeiten, die er
bietet, nicht lösen kann. Der gleich folgende Befehl
wäre mir als eine Rede der Priester des Tempels
schwer verständlich. Er ist ein königlicher Befehl,
den die elf Beamten den Priestern überbringen;
und das muss in dem Schluss dieses Satzes stehen.
Dieselbe Auffassung zeigt auch Pierret’s Überset-
zung: ‘dire de la part du roi (sic! - A.V.) aux proph.
etc.’. Wie das aber grammatisch herauszubringen ist,
verstehe ich nicht.»
22
When presenting his own line-by-line analysis of
the text in the first part of his article, Schäfer opted for
leaving out the closing part of the phrase and marked
it only by a dotted line.
23
Yet in giving a connected
translation at the end of the paper he found a tech-
nical means to express his intuitive understanding
of the passage and conveyed the part in question by
a smaller size of type (here highlighted by underli-
ning - A.V.): «Zusammen elf Personen kamen zum
Tempel des Amon-Re, des Stieres von Nubien, und
sprachen im Auftrag des Königs zu den Propheten
und Gottesvätern dieses Tempels: <...>.»
24
21 Pierret, Études égyptologiques, p. 101, cf. 97. He read the
group on the turn of lines as
«son royal fils» which
was later corrected by Schäfer
into much more logical
«Majesty (of) Horus of <…>». This could simply
stand for «Majesty of <…>» (see note 39 below).
22 ‘Die aethiopische Königsinschrift’, S. 107. Schäfer quotes
Pierret’s translation not quite correctly, perhaps from
memory. This does not affect his rendering however.
23 Schäfer, ‘Die aethiopische Königsinschrift’, S. 107.
24 Schäfer, ‘Die aethiopische Königsinschrift, S. 111.
In 1912 a different interpretation was put forward
by E.A. Wallis Budge who thought that the ordi-
nance was announced - also on behalf of the king -
not by the royal officials to the priests (as Pierret and
Schäfer thought) but vice versa: «<...> In all, eleven
men came to the temple of Åmen-R
ā, the Bull of
Ta-Sti. The servants of the god (i.e., priests) and the
divine Fathers of this temple space on behalf of the
Majesty Horus Pharaoh [saying]: <...>.»
25
Explai-
ning this reading, Budge set forth a suggestion that
the officials may have come to the temple «to take
part in the ceremony connected with the presentati-
on of an endowment of the temple which the Queen
Matisen <…> purposed to offer to the god.»
26
Still another point of view was expressed in 1994
by Richard H.
Pierce in the Fontes Historiae Nubi-
orum: «<…> a total of eleven men, who came to the
temple-compound of Amen-Rê, the Bull of Bow-
land (Nubia) saying to the majesty of Horus Pharaoh
to the prophets and god’s-fathers of this temple-
compound, <…>.»
27
On the basis of this rendering László Török,
the author of the interpretative commentary to
the whole publication, reconstructed a picture of a
«royal council» considering «the investiture of Kheb
(i.e. Henuttakhebit - A.V.) into a priestly office held
formerly by Madiken.» According to this recon-
struction, «<…> the King is presented by the royal
council a proposal concerning the appointment. The
scene is the Amûn Temple at Sanam, where the King
appears personally <…>, and where the council (?)
and the investiture are attended by the assembled
prophets and god’s fathers of the temple.»
28
If the text is understood in this way, the ruling
king turns out to be merely a speechless actor, to
whom less than a dozen of royal officials dictate what
to do with his two kinswomen and their very modest
(see below) property, after which this decision - with
no sign of this king’s approval - gets the power of a
royal decree and is commemorated on a royal stele.
This picture looks very odd indeed.
A complete alternative to the latter view is found
in Aylword M. Blackman’s 1921 paper ‘On the Posi-
tion of Women in the Ancient Egyptian Hierarchy’.
Recounting the text of the stele, the author states that
«The Nubian king Aspelta had all his chief officers of
State and the priests of Amun lined up in the temple
and informed them that he had appointed his daugh-
25 Budge, Annals of Nubian Kings, p. 107.
26 Budge, Annals of Nubian Kings, p.
с.
27 R.H. Pierce, ‘Adoption Stela of Aspelta. Text and trans-
lation’,
FHN I, p. 261.
28 Török, ‘Adoption Stela’, p. 265.