Of Aspelta, king of Kush (6th century B. C. E.)

2012 

 

 

                                          Varia

113

deners of the Mentiu-Sechet» (cols 20-21) and «men 

who know their spells (being) children of the chiefs 

of every land» (col. 21). 

Similar practice most likely survived until much 

later times, for, according to the Great Inscription of 

king Irikeamannote (5th century B.C.E.) in Gema-

ten, during his visit to Pnubs he presented, among 

other gifts, to the temple of Amun-Re a certain 

community of captives («families of the Murs»), to 

serve as «sistrum-carriers»

73

 (cols 62-63).

74

 

As all these examples suggest, the office of 

sistrum-player did not necessarily imply a privi-

leged position in the temple hierarchy, since it could 

be «filled» with a captive foreigner. Moreover, it has 

to be stressed that the term jHjj.t, which is of parti-

cular interest for us here as the attribute of Madiqen 

(and may be, of Henuttakhebit), in fact did not even 

mean «sistrum-player» but seems to have had a most 

general meaning «musician», being cognate with 

jHj

 

(or jr jHj) «make music».

75

 Consequently, in order 

to ascertain the true status of a temple musician it is 

necessary to clarify the real conditions in which she 

functioned.

Listing all the relevant data from the Dedication 

Stele, we get the following facts:

a) a representative of the royal family, perhaps a 

sister of the ruling king,

b) is «given» into the office of sistrum-player 

(evidently not the most prestigious in the temple 

hierarchy, since it could be «filled» with an unna-

med Kushite or even a captive woman)

c) in the temple, which, despite its proximity to 

the temple of Amun of Napata, the main sanc-

tuary of Kush, was not even the second- but the 

fourth-best in prestige,

76

d) receiving a strikingly modest allowance,

e) the fact of which being announced under unpre-

cedentedly pompous conditions (in presence of the 

73  For this office see e.g. C.E. Sander-Hansen, Das Gottes-

weib des Amun (København, 1940), S. 37.

74 Macadam, The Temples of Kawa, pl. 24. The phrase may 

be understood so as if such was also the destiny of three 

other peoples, Gr-Imn-ct, %kct, and *rhT, mentioned before 

the MwArc.

75  Wb. I. 122. 1-6 «musizieren».

76  Note the order in which temples are enumerated in the 

Anlamani Stele (Kawa VIII, line 24). The same temples 

in exactly the same order are enumerated in the annals 

of three later Kushite kings as sanctuaries visited by each 

of them in the course of enthronement procedure, except 

that instead of the Sanam temple, omitted from these three 

lists, the temple of the goddess Bast in Taret is referred to 

in the last two (Great Inscription of Irikeamannote, cols 

37, 49, 56; Harsiotef Stele, lines 10-11, 19-20, 20-21, 21-22; 

Nastasen Stele, lines 12, 22, 25, 32).

highest ranking officials and a great number of 

priests, including the highest in hierarchy),

f) by order of the king,

g) but without the king’s personal attendance, 

which may point to the secondary importance of 

this office.

77

Summarising these observations, one may be dri-

ven to a paradoxical conclusion: that in the action 

described in the Dedication Stele we see a sort of 

political sacrifice by means of which the king perhaps 

intended to propitiate the god Amun-Re (like king 

Cepheus in the Greek myth about Andromeda) in 

view of some political, ecological etc. emergency. On 

the other hand, because an office with a remarkably 

modest income (almost «miserable» for a represen-

tative of the royal clan) is the focus of the record, an 

alternative interpretation is also possible: the «dedi-

cation» in the case of Madiqen and Henuttakhebit 

may have meant a deliberate incapacitating of the 

person(s) involved, if not a kind of punishment. 

Many examples are known from world history

78

 

when «dedication» to a god, or involuntary ritual 

«cutting» or «tonsuring» (particularly, when this was 

bound up with priestly celibacy) etc., were used for 

political purposes. In Kush, where no distinct rule of 

royal accession seems ever to have existed and where 

genealogical rights to the throne, as it seems, were 

often claimed with reference to the female line,

79

 the 

practice of some kings’ marriage with certain of their 

sisters and dedicating some other sisters to gods (as 

in the case of the celibate «God’s Wives» of Amun 

in Thebes in the 25th Dynasty period)

80

 could be an 

77  Blackman, p. 28; ūf. S.R.K. Glanville, ‘The Admission of a 

Priest of Soknebtynis in the Second Century B.C.’, JEA, 

Vol. XIX (1933), p. 40 (a much more late but still relevant 

an example).

78  Cf. the most popular in the classical world story about 

the forcible dedication of Silvia Rhea, future mother of 

Romulus and Remus, to the goddess Vesta (Liv. I. 3). Note 

also the Middle Age chroniclers’ relations about compul-

sory «tonsuring» of certain kings of the Francs after their 

dethronement by their political rivals (Crégoire de Tours, 

Histoire de Francs, 2 (Chararic and his son); Éginhard, Vie 

de Charlemagne, 1 (Childeric), etc.).

79  A.K. Vinogradov, ‘O mekhanizme prestolonasledovani-

ya v Kushe’, Meroe, Vol. 2 (Moscow, 1981), pp. 73-81; 

K-H. Priese, ‘Matrilineare Erbfolge im Reich von Kusch’, 

ZÄS, Bd. 108 (1981), SS. 49-53; A.Lohwasser, ‘Queenship 

in Kush: Status, Role and Ideology of Royal Women’, 

JARCE, Vol. XXXVIII (2001), pp. 64-66.

80 Macadam, The Temples of Kawa, pp. 120, 126; F.K. Kie-

nitz, Die politische Geschichte Ägyptens von 7. bis zum 

4. Jahrhundert vor der Zeitwende (Berlin, 1953), S. 14; 

E. Drioton, J. Vandier, l’Egypte (Paris, 1962), p. 563; J. 

Leclant,  Recherches sur les monuments thébains de la 

XXVe dynastie dite éthiopienne, Texte (le Caire, 1965), p. 

367.

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