RE: Abydos Forver (Reply)

Author: * Neseret Sekhmet - 21 Posts on this thread out of 21 Posts sitewide.
Date: Nov 24, 2006 - 09:06

Mirjam Nebet wrote:

"is it possible to somewhat straighten out the relationships between these canine deities? They seem to have different "tasks" to some degree, i.e. Wepwawet "Opens the Way" in processions and to the Afterlife, while Anubis oversees the mummification process, but also accompanies the deceased to the Hall of Judgment where Osiris sits upon his throne. Khenti-Amentiu then, he has gone lost to us, or are there any other signs or mentionings of him apart from that earlier temple at Abydos?"

While all are jackal deities, their functions differed greatly in their original forms, and in later syncretism, these functions became fragmented and somewhat altered. Let me try to explain:

Khentiamentiu, a jackal god, was the original funereal deity attached to the Abydos necropolis, and a specific cult was attached to his worship throughout most of the Old Kingdom. Beginning with the Pharaoh Neferikare, royal provisioning and tax exemptions were applied to this his Abydene temple indicating its importance and royal favour (Spiegel 1973). Wepwawet, also a canid deity, also had a cult as well, but only in Abydos, and this cult's dogma appears to have paralleled that of Khentiamentiu, which the Wepwawet deity's function was leading the deceased toward Khentiamentiu. Wepwawet was also the local deity of the 13th nome of Upper Egypt, near modern Ayut, where his primary place of worship was called "Lycopolis" by the Greeks, as they considered him a wolf, and not a jackal deity. Wepwawet's other cult centres were in Quban, el-Hargasa, Memphis and Sais (House-Wegner 2000: 497)

However, by the end of the Old Kingdom, the cult of Khentiamentiu was in decline, having been absorbed by the new and growing cult of Osiris beginnign about the 6th Dynasty. It was during this period that a shift of functions and features among these four deities occurrred.

Originally, it was Anubis who was considered the "lord of the underworld" and judge of the dead, not Osiris: his Old Kingdom epithets of "He Who is Upon His Mountain" and "Lord of the Sacred Land" indicate his primacy as the main Egyptian chthonic god. When the Osiris cult supplanted Anubis' chthonic function in full by the Middle Kingdom (Spiegel 1959), as well as monopolized the dogma of Khentiamentiu, Anubis was then relegated to the function of divine embalmer who assisted Osiris, became further known as the "lord of the necropolis" (thus usurping Khentiamentiu's Abydene function), and, to a lesser extent, was embued with some of the psychopomp features of Wepwawet.

This is not to say that Wepwawet failed to continue on as an independent funereal deity in Abydos and elsewhere, though the Khentiamentiu cult disappeared by the Middle Kingdom. During the Middle Kingdom, the Wepwawet cult was still strong, and his image even preceded that of Osiris in cult processions toward temples and palaces, particularly at Abydos.

But on a national scale, the deity Wepwawet's psychopomp function was taken over by Anubis, who was closely attached to the Osiris cult. Anubis, originally the local god of the 17th nome of Upper Egypt, and worshipped at Cynopolis (Greek), had cult centres in Sharuna (Hut nesut), Memphis, Tura, Saqqara, and Heliopolis (Doxey 2000: 98).

Let me also point ouit that the term /wp-wAw.t/ can be found in Old Kingdom and even Middle Kingdom texts attached to other deities, not just the jackal deity of Abydos. Neith, for example, is referred to as a /wp-wAw.t/ during the Old Kingdom, due to her astronomical and funereal features (el-Sayed 1982), but other deities such as Ptah are often referred to as /wp-wAw.t/ as well. The term itself means, "Opener of the Ways, which came to have a funereal meaning in Egyptian texts, but it is by no means attached only to a single deity, except the formally named Wepwawet at Abydos only (Speigel 1973).

and Mirjan-Nebet also wrote:

"Or is it that at Abydos both fertile land, water (the canals) rocks & sand, and mountains together make up this special environment? Could this be the reason the Early dynastic kings chose this place as their burial ground?"

Yes. I too have travelled through much of Egypt since the 1980's, and it appears that mainly in Abydos does one have the distinct geographical separation of the fertile from the desert lands - the high range of mountains of limestone. If you travel to Abydos by car, for example, these mountains appear suddenly in the landscape during your journey, as you begin to approach el-Balyana (modern site of the Abydene area), and they soar almost into the clouds. In all, it's rather breath-taking - and if you consider that's how they affect you, as a modern visitor, just try and imagine how the ancient Egyptians viewed them.

Mythically, mountain ranges are seen as "walls" between one state of existence to another to the Egyptian mind. In the Book of Two Ways, one of the first afterlife 'maps,' you see high mountains and waterways portrayed in these maps which block access from one area of being to another. These mountains and other land obstructions are graphically shown in the Book of Two Ways via the dark-lined areas, below:

During the latter part of the New Kingdom, this detailing of the up/down and rising/falling movement of mountains and land obstructions probably led to the "broken axis" style of tomb design. This occurred when the New Kingdom Book of Coming Forth by Day (for nobles), and the royal funereal texts, such as the Book of the Amduat and Book of Gates, which described the afterlife landscape, were transferred into three-dimensional representations in the royal tomb itself, such as this Book of the Amduat example from the tomb of Horemheb (KV57):

So, in the Egyptian mind, mountains reflected the distinct barrier between this life and the life beyond. Mountains are also separators of time, for the two Aker lions, which represent Yesterday and Tomorrow, are actually considered mountains, separating the time periods from each other - as well as from the temporal and non-temporal worlds (Bisson de la Roque 1931).

Reference

von Bissing, F. W. 1905. Zum Wolfs- und Hunde-Gott. Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes 27: 249-250.

Bisson de la Roque, F. 1931. Notes sur Aker. BIFAO 30: 575-580. (The PDF for this article can be accessed from this link.)

Doxey, D. 2000. Anubis. In D. B. Redford, Ed.,The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 1: 97-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DuQuesne, T. 1996. Black and Gold God: Colour Symbolism of the God Anubis, with Observation on the Phenomenology of Colour in Egyptian and Comparative Religion. Oxfordshire Communications in Egyptology V. London: Da'th Scholarly Services/Darengo Publications.

____________. 1995. Openers of the Paths: canid psychopomps in ancient Egypt and India. Journal of Ancient Civilizations [Changchun] 10: 41-53.

___________. 1991. Jackal at the Shaman's Gate. A study of Anubis Lord of Ro-Setawe, with the conjuration to chthonic deities (PGM XXIII; pOxy 412). Text, translation, and commentary. And an annotated bibliography of the Anubis archetype. Thame: Darengo.

___________. 1990. Anubis and the Spirits of the West. Oxfordshire Communications in Egyptology 1. Thame: Darengo Publications.

Renouf, P. L. 1886. The Egyptian god Apuat. Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 8: 157-158.

el-Sayed, R. 1982. La Déesse Neith de Saïs: Importance et Rayonnement de son Culte. 2 Vols. Bibliothèque d'Étude 76. Cairo: IFAO.

House-Wegner, J. 2000. Wepwawet. In D. B. Redford, Ed.,The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 3: 496-497. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mahler, E. 1914. The jackal-gods on ancient Egyptian monuments. Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 36: 143-164.

Meyer, E. 1904. Die Entwickelung der Kulte von Abydos und die sogenannten Schakalsgötter. ZÄS 41: 97-107.

Spiegel, J. 1973. Die Götter von Abydos. Studien zum ägyptischen Synkretismus. Göttinger Orientforschungen IV Reihe: Ägypten. Band 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

___________. 1959. Zum Osiriskult von Abydos im Mittleren Reich. Die Welt des Orients. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Kunde des Morgenlandes [Göttingen] 2: 397-403.

I hope this assists.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg