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

2012 

 

 

                                          Varia

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begins with jw=w Dd «They said <…>» and not with 

jw Dd «(It was) said <…>». Thus, both conventional 

readings (together with renderings of both Blackman 

and Budge) should probably be rejected.

Refusing to consider the words  xr and (j)n as 

means to introduce the agent in a passive construc-

tion we get back to the fact that both could be used 

as nota dativi.

36

 This usage is implied by Pierce’s 

translation «<…> saying TO (xr) the majesty of 

Horus Pharaoh<, and> TO ({i}n) the prophets and 

god’s-fathers of this temple-compound <…>», 

which looks more acceptable than those of Budge 

and Blackman. What is very strange, however, is that 

both words turn out to be used simultaneously in 

adjacent phrases of the same sentence, whereas one 

would expect to see only one of them, and besides 

in the first instance (after «saying»). This stylistic 

mismatch raises more doubts about this rendering. 

In view of the context (lack of explicit reference to 

Aspelta’s personal presence in the temple - see above) 

and the fact that the word {j}n is by far more often 

than xr used as nota dativi it seems logical to con-

clude that dative is used only in the second part of 

this sentence («saying <…> to the prophets and god’s 

fathers»), whereas the word xr before «majesty» is to 

be understood otherwise.

As a consequence, the earliest interpretation of 

the key phrase, with rendering xr as «on behalf»,

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«for»,

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 etc., looks preferable due to its «flexibility». 

The passage could be read as: «A total (of) 11 men 

came to the temple of Amun-Re, the Bull of the 

Land of the Three-Curved Bow, and they said, on 

behalf of the majesty (9) of

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 the PHARAOH, to 

the god’s-servants and god’s-fathers of this temple, 

<…>». Thus we are brought to the conclusion that 

the group of the grandees acting on behalf of the 

king, but not the king himself, are to be considered 

as the subject of the action commemorated by the 

Dedication Stele.

2. Who or what is to be treated as the object of the 

recorded procedure is not quite clear either. The 

main part of the inscription (i.e. the text less the 

two lists of the participants - officials and priests - 

which make up more than half of it) is focused on 

«the king’s sister (and) king’s wife» Madiqen, or, 

more precisely, on the allowance assigned to her by 

36 Wb. I, 193; III, 315, 15-17.

37

 Wb. III, 315, 9-12.

38  K. Jansen-Winkeln, Spätmittelägyptische Grammatik der 

Texte der 3. Zwichenzeit (Wiesbaden, 1996), § 278, b.

39 Taking 

 in 

 as determinative to Hm (cf. Wb. III, 

91; E.A.W. Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary 

(New York, s.a.), p. 483) rather than ideogram «Horus».

king Anlamani, Aspelta’s predecessor, when she was, 

at sometime in the past, consecrated (lit., «given», 

«placed») to Amun of Sanam as a temple musician. 

This allowance, Aspelta’s ordinance states, should be 

conveyed to «the king’s daughter (and) king’s sister» 

Henuttakhebit and, eventually, to her successors. 

Strangely, the text is silent on whether the transfer 

of Madiqen’s maintenance to Henuttakhebit implied 

that the latter was to replace the former in her office 

of sistrum-player. Such a conclusion seems probable, 

yet, strictly speaking, remains but a conjecture based 

on the fact that in line 13 Henuttakhebit is called 

Madiqen’s «great/eldest daughter», which is well 

attested in Egyptian texts as indication of adoptive 

relationships between priestesses.

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3. The principal riddle of the Dedication Stele is 

the question of what the aim of the recorded action 

was. The situation presented in the text is somewhat 

strange. On the one hand, it is obvious that the 

ceremony was of major social importance because, 

as mentioned above, more than half of the text (13 

lines out of 23)

41

 is made up of a detailed enume-

ration of the participants in the «council», among 

whom were 11 of the highest officials of Kush and 

15 priests, including the highest ones, of the Sanam 

temple of Amun. Of much significance is also the fact 

that the issue of the «council» as a legal document 

was eventually commemorated by a special stele, 

which is unparalleled in Kush. On the other hand, 

the striking paradox of the situation is the «modesty» 

of the legacy of Madiqen which was to be transferred 

to Henuttakhebit – a fact already noted by Schäfer, 

who observed: «Das Gehalt selbst ist nicht übermä-

ßig hoch, es wird wenig mehr als das zum Leben 

Nothwendige gegeben haben».

42

Few scholars have paid attention to Schäfer’s 

remark. Among the earliest were Boris Turayev and 

Aylword Blackman who, by coincidence, approached 

the problem from opposite perspectives. Turayev, in 

1909, commenting on the Dedication Stele, pointed 

out that the allowance of Madiqen in the Sanam 

temple was a far cry

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 from that which at about the 

40  Blackman, ‘On the Position of Women’, p. 18; M.F.L. 

Macadam, The Temples of Kawa, Vol. I. The Inscriptions. 

Text (London, 1949), pp. 119-20; Caminos, ‘The Nitocris 

Adoption Stela’, p. 78.

41  Lines 2-8 (list of officials), 18-23 (list of priests).

42  Schäfer, ‘Die aethiopische Königsinschrift, S. 108.

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  In fact the allowances of Madiqen and that of Neitiqert 

(Nitocris, daughter of Psammetichus I), are just incom-

mensurate both literally and figuratively as can be seen 

from the comparison of their daily rations. However 

much could make Madiqen’s 10 bia-bread loaves plus 5 te-

hedj (white bread) loaves, their weight could hardly have 

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