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

        Varia                                                               MittSAG 23

106

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).

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2012 

 

 

                                          Varia

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.

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