Academic literature on the topic 'Votive offerings Egypt'

The article examines four terracotta figurines depicting the ancient Egyptian god Bes and his female counterpart Beset, acquired by Vladimir S. Golenischev in Egypt and kept in the storages of the Department of the Ancient Orient at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The analyzed objects are diverse in their topics, form and functional purposes, testifying to the great popularity of this ‘minor’ deity in Graeco-Roman Egypt; all objects are included in the context of domestic worship of the god Bes. They served as a “link” between temple festivals and domestic worship, and could also be placed in a burial place as grave goods or could be brought to a temple as votive offerings. Bes and Beset guarded and helped a person during periods when he faced the forces of chaos – in a time of sleeping, illness, in childbirth, during the war. Bes and Beset were considered the protectors of childhood and motherhood, promoting conception and successful childbirth. Bes was associated with the different borderline states of human health and the period of a person’s transition to another world. The images of Bes do not come from temple theology, but from the context of domestic, private rituals; Bes remains entirely a “popular” god, the part of a daily life cycle of the population of Graeco-Roman Egypt. These multifaced quality is one of the secrets of the incredible popularity of Bes, whose figurines spread along with the Greeks and Romans throughout the oecumene down to the Black Sea region.

Hedgehogs held a special place in ancient Egyptian life like many other desert- and marsh-dwelling animals. Their natural defensive qualities were admired by ancient Egyptians and their bodily parts, notably their hardened spines, were used as ingredients in medico-magical prescriptions. In tomb reliefs of the late 3rd Millennium BCE, hedgehogs are represented being carried alive by offering bearers or as background participants in desert hunting scenes. In later periods of Egyptian history, rattles, small unguent vessels, and scaraboid amulets were made in their shape, all of which are presumed to have had apotropaic purposes. A particular votive object of the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BCE) is a palm-sized modelled boat with a prow in the shape of a hedgehog head, which has been discovered at sites throughout Egypt. A similar representation of this motif is the so-called ‘Henet’-boat (from the word ḥnt[j]) with a hedgehog head at the prow facing inwards, which is found in late Old Kingdom art. This article reassesses the role of hedgehogs as protective or apotropaic entities and their association with boats, considering how ancient Egyptians understood their ecology and their predation of snakes, scorpions, and similar stinging creatures. An updated list is provided of known representations of hedgehog-head boats, including petroglyphs and as yet unpublished examples from tombs at Giza and Saqqara. The meaning of the ancient Egyptian word ḥnt(j) is also rexamined in relation to the representation of riverine and marsh-water boats in Old Kingdom tombs.