Articles

High society and lower ranks in Ramesside Egypt at home and abroad

High society and lower ranks in Ramesside Egypt at home and abroad

K.A. Kitchen

BMSAES, 6 (2006), 31-36

Abstract

In Ramesside Egypt, international cosmopolitanism extended to various ranks of society besides kings and courts, although these give much evidence on that trend. This is exemplified here from (i) a head porter including a cuneiform determinative in his traditional shabti-text; (ii) from an Egyptian working in Hittite service within that empire, using a Mesopotamian-type personal seal with Hittite art and cuneiform and hieroglyphic digraph inscriptions; and (iii) the impact of escorting Hittite princesses to Egypt [whose route can be sketched] on the careers of officers into high civil office at home, leaving traces also in Canaan.



So long time ago (almost a century!) since it first appeared in print in the venerable but invaluable early issues of ASAE, the only example that I know of, of a cuneiform sign in an Egyptian inscription, has ever since been left in oblivion until the present time. But such a curio is worth resurrecting, if only to ponder what sort of scenario its presence might reflect. The piece in question is a modest shabti figure (Cairo Cat. 47644), that belonged to a quite minor dignitary, a ¢ry ¡ry(w) TM£w Ê(w)r, ‘Head Porter, T(j)ur(o)’, which was found at Saqqara. It bears the usual shabti formula, chapter VI of the Book of the Dead, but with just one peculiarity. See Fig. 1. Instead of sm¢y, ‘to flood’ being determined in the normal way with a canal-sign and the three ripples of water (mw), here the ‘water’-group (mw) is replaced by the regular cuneiform word-sign for the Sumerian word A, ‘water’, used in turn as equivalent for Akkadian mû, ‘water’. Thus, this stray cunei- form sign fills exactly the role of the Egyptian ‘triple-ripple’ mw of the same innate significance.

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