1.
Osiris
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Osiris was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but more appropriately as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration. He was also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning Foremost of the Westerners, as ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called king of the living, ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead the living ones. Osiris was considered the brother of Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder and he was described as the Lord of love, He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful and the Lord of Silence. The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead they would, in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. By the New Kingdom all people, not just pharaohs, were believed to be associated with Osiris at death, Osiris was widely worshipped as Lord of the Dead until the suppression of the Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Osiris is a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek Ὄσιρις IPA, in Egyptian hieroglyphs the name is appears as wsjr or jsjrt. Since hieroglyphic writing lacks vowels, Egyptologists have vocalized the name in various ways as Asar, Yasar, Aser, Asaru, Ausar, Ausir, Wesir, Usir, several proposals have been made for the etymology and meaning of the original name wsjr. John Gwyn Griffiths proposed a derivation from wsr signifying the powerful, moreover, one of the oldest attestations of the god Osiris appears in the mastaba of the deceased Netjer-wser. David Lorton proposed that Wsjr is composed by the morphemes set-jret signifying ritual activity, wolfhart Westendorf proposed an etymology from Waset-jret she who bears the eye. He also carries the crook and flail, the crook is thought to represent Osiris as a shepherd god. The symbolism of the flail is more uncertain with shepherds whip, fly-whisk and he was commonly depicted as a pharaoh with a complexion of either green or black in mummiform. The Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of travelling with the sun god amongst the stars. Amongst these mortuary texts, at the beginning of the 4th dynasty, is found, An offering the king gives, by the end of the 5th dynasty, the formula in all tombs becomes An offering the king gives and Osiris. Osiris is the father of the god Horus, whose conception is described in the Osiris myth. The myth described Osiris as having been killed by his brother Set, Isis joined the fragmented pieces of Osiris, but the only body part missing was the phallus. Isis fashioned a golden phallus, and briefly brought Osiris back to life by use of a spell that she learned from her father and this spell gave her time to become pregnant by Osiris before he again died. Isis later gave birth to Horus, as such, since Horus was born after Osiris resurrection, Horus became thought of as a representation of new beginnings and the vanquisher of the evil Set. Ptah-Seker thus gradually became identified with Osiris, the two becoming Ptah-Seker-Osiris, Osiris soul, or rather his Ba, was occasionally worshipped in its own right, almost as if it were a distinct god, especially in the Delta city of Mendes
2.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is the fourth largest museum in the United States. It contains more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas, with more than one million visitors a year, it is the 55th most-visited art museum in the world as of 2014. Founded in 1870, the moved to its current location in 1909. The museum is affiliated with the Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 and opened in 1876, with most of its initial collection taken from the Boston Athenæum Art Gallery. Francis Davis Millet, a local artist, was instrumental in starting the Art School affiliated with the museum and it was built almost entirely of red brick and terracotta with a small amount of stone in its base. The brick was produced by the Peerless Brick Company of Philadelphia, in 1907, plans were laid to build a new home for the museum on Huntington Avenue in Bostons Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood near the renowned Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Museum trustees decided to hire architect Guy Lowell to create a design for a museum so that could be built in stages as funding was obtained for each phase, two years later, the first section of Lowell’s neoclassical design was completed. It featured a 500-foot façade of granite and a grand rotunda, the museum moved to its new location later that year, the Copley Square Hotel eventually would replace the old building. The second phase of construction built a wing along the The Fens to house paintings galleries and it was funded entirely by Maria Antoinette Evans Hunt, the wife of wealthy business magnate Robert Dawson Evans, and opened in 1915. From 1916 through 1925, the noted artist John Singer Sargent painted the frescoes that adorn the rotunda, numerous additions enlarged the building throughout the years, including the Decorative Arts wing in 1928 and the Norma Jean Calderwood Garden Court and Terrace in 1997. The West Wing, designed by I. M. Pei, opened in 1981 and this wing now houses the museums cafe, restaurant, and gift shop as well as a special exhibition space. In the mid-2000s, the museum launched an effort to renovate. In 2011, Moodys Investors Service calculated that the museum had over $180 million in outstanding debt, however, the agency cited growing attendance, a large endowment, and positive cash flow as reasons to believe that the museums finances would become stable in the near future. The renovation included a new Art of the Americas Wing to feature artwork from North, South, in 2006, the groundbreaking ceremonies took place. The landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol redesigned the Huntington Avenue and Fenway entrances, gardens, access roads, the wing opened on November 20,2010 with free admission to the public. Mayor Thomas Menino declared it Museum of Fine Arts Day, the 12, 000-square-foot glass-enclosed courtyard features a 42. 5-foot high glass sculpture, titled the Lime Green Icicle Tower, by Dale Chihuly. In 2014, the Art of the Americas Wing was recognized for its architectural achievement by being awarded the Harleston Parker Medal. In 2015, the museum renovated its Japanese garden, Tenshin-en, the garden, which originally opened in 1988, was designed by Japanese professor Kinsaku Nakane
3.
Pharaoh
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The word pharaoh ultimately derive from the Egyptian compound pr-ˤ3 great house, written with the two biliteral hieroglyphs pr house and ˤ3 column, here meaning great or high. It was used only in larger phrases such as smr pr-ˤ3 Courtier of the High House, with specific reference to the buildings of the court or palace. From the twelfth dynasty onward, the word appears in a wish formula Great House, may it live, prosper, and be in health, but again only with reference to the royal palace and not the person. During the reign of Thutmose III in the New Kingdom, after the rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period. During the eighteenth dynasty the title pharaoh was employed as a designation of the ruler. From the nineteenth dynasty onward pr-ˤ3 on its own was used as regularly as hm. f, the term, therefore, evolved from a word specifically referring to a building to a respectful designation for the ruler, particularly by the twenty-second dynasty and twenty-third dynasty. For instance, the first dated appearance of the pharaoh being attached to a rulers name occurs in Year 17 of Siamun on a fragment from the Karnak Priestly Annals. Here, an induction of an individual to the Amun priesthood is dated specifically to the reign of Pharaoh Siamun and this new practice was continued under his successor Psusennes II and the twenty-second dynasty kings. Shoshenq I was the successor of Siamun. Meanwhile, the old custom of referring to the sovereign simply as pr-ˤ3 continued in traditional Egyptian narratives, by this time, the Late Egyptian word is reconstructed to have been pronounced *par-ʕoʔ whence Herodotus derived the name of one of the Egyptian kings, Φερων. In the Bible, the title also occurs as פרעה, from that, Septuagint φαραώ pharaō and then Late Latin pharaō, both -n stem nouns. The Quran likewise spells it فرعون firawn with n, interestingly, the Arabic combines the original pharyngeal ayin sound from Egyptian, along with the -n ending from Greek. English at first spelt it Pharao, but the King James Bible revived Pharaoh with h from the Hebrew, meanwhile in Egypt itself, *par-ʕoʔ evolved into Sahidic Coptic ⲡⲣ̅ⲣⲟ prro and then rro. Scepters and staves were a sign of authority in ancient Egypt. One of the earliest royal scepters was discovered in the tomb of Khasekhemwy in Abydos, kings were also known to carry a staff, and Pharaoh Anedjib is shown on stone vessels carrying a so-called mks-staff. The scepter with the longest history seems to be the heqa-scepter, the earliest examples of this piece of regalia dates to pre-dynastic times. A scepter was found in a tomb at Abydos that dates to the late Naqada period, another scepter associated with the king is the was-scepter. This is a long staff mounted with an animal head, the earliest known depictions of the was-scepter date to the first dynasty
4.
Egyptian chronology
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The majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many details of the chronology of Ancient Egypt. Scholarly consensus on the outline of the conventional chronology current in Egyptology has not fluctuated much over the last 100 years. For the Old Kingdom, consensus fluctuates by as much as a few centuries and this is illustrated by comparing the chronology as given by two Egyptologists, the first writing in 1906, the second in 2000. The disparities between the two sets of result from additional discoveries and refined understanding of the still very incomplete source evidence. For example, Breasted adds a ruler in the Twentieth dynasty that further research showed did not exist, following Manetho, Breasted also believed all the dynasties were sequential, whereas it is now known that several existed at the same time. These revisions have resulted in a lowering of the chronology by up to 400 years at the beginning of Dynasty I. The backbone of Egyptian chronology are the years as recorded in Ancient Egyptian king lists. In addition, some Egyptian dynasties may have overlapped, with different pharaohs ruling in different regions at the same time, not knowing whether monarchies were simultaneous or sequential results in widely differing chronological interpretations. However, further research has shown that these censuses were taken in consecutive years. The sed festival was celebrated on the thirtieth anniversary of the Pharaohs ascension. However, once again, this may not be the practice in all cases. In the early days of Egyptology, the compilation of regnal periods may also have been hampered due to bias on the part of the Egyptologists. This was most pervasive before the mid 19th century, when Manethos figures were recognized as conflicting with biblical chronology based on Old Testament references to Egypt, in the 20th century, such biblical bias has mostly been confined to alternative chronologies outside of scholarly mainstream. A useful way to work around these gaps in knowledge is to find chronological synchronisms, over the past decades, a number of these have been found, although they are of varying degrees of usefulness and reliability. While this does not fix a person or event to a specific year, another example are blocks from the Old Kingdom bearing the names of several kings, which were reused in the construction of Middle Kingdom pyramid-temples at Lisht in the structures of Amenemhat I. The poor documentation of these finds in the Serapeum also compounds the difficulties in using these records. The best known of these is the Sothic cycle, and careful study of this led Richard A. Parker to argue that the dates of the Twelfth dynasty could be fixed with absolute precision. More recent research has eroded this confidence, questioning many of the assumptions used with the Sothic Cycle and this is useful especially for the Early Dynastic period, where Egyptological consensus has only been possible within a range of about three or four centuries
5.
Eleventh Dynasty of Egypt
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However, his testimony that this dynasty was based at Thebes is verified by the contemporary evidence. It was during this dynasty that all of ancient Egypt was united under the Middle Kingdom and this dynasty traces its origins to a nomarch of Thebes, Intef the Great, son of Iku, who is mentioned in a number of contemporary inscriptions. However, his immediate successor Mentuhotep I is considered the first king of this dynasty, Intef undertook several campaigns northwards, and captured the important nome of Abydos. The rulers of Dynasty XI reasserted Egypts influence over her neighbors in Africa, Mentuhotep II sent renewed expeditions to Phoenicia to obtain cedar. Sankhkara Mentuhotep III sent an expedition from Coptos south to the land of Punt, the reign of its last king, and thus the end of this dynasty, is something of a mystery. Contemporary records refer to seven empty years following the death of Mentuhotep III, modern scholars identify his vizier Amenemhat with Amenemhat I, the first king of Dynasty XII, as part of a theory that Amenemhat became king as part of a palace coup. The only certain details of Mentuhoteps reign was that two remarkable omens were witnessed at the quarry of Wadi Hammamat by the vizier Amenemhat, eleventh Dynasty of Egypt family tree Media related to 11th dynasty of Egypt at Wikimedia Commons
6.
Mentuhotep II
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Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II was a Pharaoh of the 11th Dynasty who reigned for 51 years. Around his 39th year on the throne he reunited Egypt, thus ending the First Intermediate Period, consequently, he is considered the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom. Mentuhotep II was the son of Intef III and Intef IIIs wife Iah who may also have been his sister. This lineage is demonstrated by the stele of Henenu, an official who served under Intef II, Intef III and his son, as for Iah, she bore the title of mwt-nswt, Kings mother. The parentage of Mentuhotep II is also confirmed by a relief at Shatt er-Rigal. f Kings wife, his beloved. She gave Mentuhotep II two children, one of which was certainly Mentuhotep III since Tem was also called mwt-nswt, Kings mother and mwt-nswt-bitj, apparently she died after her husband and was buried by her son in Mentuhotep temple. Her tomb was discovered in 1859 by Lord Duffering and fully excavated in 1968 by D. Arnold, Neferu II was called Kings wife and hmt-nswt-mryt. f, Kings wife, his beloved. She was buried in the tomb TT319 of Deir el-Bahri, kawit was one of Mentuhotep IIs secondary wives. She bore the titles of hmt-nswt mryt. f Kings wife, his beloved and khkrt-nswt and she was a Priestess of the goddess Hathor. It has been suggested that she was Nubian and she was buried under the terrasse of Mentuhotep IIs mortuary temple where E. Naville uncovered her sarcophagus in 1907. Sadeh, Ashayet, Henhenet and Kemsit were all Mentuhotep IIs secondary wives and they bore the title of hmt-nswt mryt. f Kings wife, his beloved and khkrt-nswt-w3tit Unique embellishment of the King. They were priestesses of Hathor and each of them was buried in a pit dug under the terrasse of Mentuhotep IIs temple. Note that an alternative theory holds that Henhenet was one of Intef IIIs secondary wives, Henhenet might have died in childbirth. Mwyt, a girl buried with Mentuhotep IIs secondary wives. It is not clear if she was one of Mentuhoteps wives herself or one of his daughters, Mentuhotep II is considered to be the first ruler of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. The Turin Canon credits him with a reign of 51 years, when he ascended the Theban throne, Mentuhotep II inherited the vast land conquered by his predecessors from the first cataract in the south to Abydos and Tjebu in the north. Mentuhotep IIs first fourteen years of reign seem to have been peaceful in the Theban region as there are no surviving traces of conflict firmly datable to that period, in the 14th year of his reign, an uprising occurred in the north. This uprising is most probably connected with the conflict between Mentuhotep II based in Thebes and the rival 10th Dynasty based at Herakleopolis who threatened to invade Upper Egypt
7.
Mentuhotep IV
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Nebtawyre Mentuhotep IV was the last king of the 11th Dynasty. He seems to fit into a 7-year period in the Turin Canon for which there is no recorded king and he is known from a few inscriptions in Wadi Hammamat that record expeditions to the Red Sea coast and to quarry stone for the royal monuments. It seems that he was a son of his predecessor, also, he is attested by the inscriptions at Wadi el-Hudi. Another relevant inscription is found in Ain Sukhna and these locations were the usual staging harbours for the expeditions to the Sinai. Despite Mentuhoteps obscurity, the show the organization and makeup of a large expedition during his reign. A fragment of a slate bowl had found at Lisht North that is inscribed on the outside with the official titulary of Mentuhotep IV. It is assumed by some Egyptologists that Amenemhat either usurped the throne or assumed power after Mentuhotep IV died childless, there is currently no archaeological or textual evidence to prove that Mentuhotep was deposed by his vizier or that he chose Amenemhat to be his designated successor. Neither his mummy nor his burial place have been found, W. Grajetzki, The Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, History, Archaeology and Society, Duckworth, London 2006 ISBN 0-7156-3435-6, 25-26
8.
Ancient Egyptian royal titulary
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The royal titulary or royal protocol of an Egyptian pharaoh is the standard naming convention taken by the kings of Ancient Egypt. It symbolises worldly power and holy might and also acts as a sort of mission statement for the reign of a monarch. The full titulary, consisting of five names, did not come into standard usage until the Middle Kingdom, the Horus name is the oldest form of the pharaohs name, originating in the Predynastic Period. Many of the oldest-known Egyptian pharaohs were known only by this title, the Horus name was usually written in a serekh, a representation of a palace façade. The name of the pharaoh was written in hieroglyphs inside this representation of a palace, typically an image of the falcon God Horus was perched on top of or beside it. At least one Egyptian ruler, the 2nd dynasty Seth-Peribsen, used an image of the god Seth instead of Horus and he was succeeded by Khasekhemwy, who placed the symbols of both Seth and Horus above his name. Thereafter, the image of Horus always appeared alongside the name of the pharaoh, by the time of the New Kingdom the Horus name was often written without the enclosing serekh. The name is first definitively used by the First Dynasty pharaoh Semerkhet and this particular name was not typically framed by a cartouche or serekh, but always begins with the hieroglyphs of a vulture and cobra resting upon two baskets, the dual noun nebty. Also known as the Golden Horus Name, this form of the name typically featured the image of a Horus falcon perched above or beside the hieroglyph for gold. The meaning of this title has been disputed. One belief is that it represents the triumph of Horus over his uncle Seth, Gold also was strongly associated in the ancient Egyptian mind with eternity, so this may have been intended to convey the pharaohs eternal Horus name. Similar to the Nebty name, this particular name typically was not framed by a cartouche or serekh, the pharaohs throne name, the first of the two names written inside a cartouche, and usually accompanied the title nsw-bity. The term nsw-bity It has been suggested that the Berber term for strong man, the epithet neb tawy, Lord of the Two Lands, referring to valley and delta regions of Egypt, often occurs as well. This was the name given at birth and it was first introduced to the set of royal titles in the Fourth Dynasty and emphasizes the kings role as a representative of the solar god Ra. For women who became pharaoh, the title was interpreted as daughter also. Modern historians typically refer to the ancient kings of Egypt by this name, Middle Egyptian, An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Cairo, London, and New York, The American University in Cairo Press and Thames and Hudson. The Great Name, Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary, Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs
9.
Ra
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Ra or Re is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become a god in ancient Egyptian religion. In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra was merged with the god Horus and he was believed to rule in all parts of the created world, the sky, the earth, and the underworld. He was associated with the falcon or hawk, when in the New Kingdom the god Amun rose to prominence he was fused with Ra as Amun-Ra. During the Amarna Period, Akhenaten suppressed the cult of Ra in favor of another deity, the Aten, the deified solar disc. The cult of the Mnevis bull, an embodiment of Ra, had its center in Heliopolis, all forms of life were believed to have been created by Ra, who called each of them into existence by speaking their secret names. Alternatively man was created from Ras tears and sweat, hence the Egyptians call themselves the Cattle of Ra, in the myth of the Celestial Cow it is recounted how mankind plotted against Ra and how he sent his eye as the goddess Sekhmet to punish them. When she became bloodthirsty she was pacified by drinking beer mixed with red dye, to the Egyptians, the sun represented light, warmth, and growth. This made the sun deity very important, as the sun was seen as the ruler of all that he created, the sun disk was either seen as the body or eye of Ra. Ra was the father of Shu and Tefnut, whom he created, Shu was the god of the wind, and Tefnut was the goddess of the rain. Sekhmet was the Eye of Ra and was created by the fire in Ras eye, Ra was thought to travel on the Atet, two solar barks called the Mandjet or morning boat and the Mesektet or evening boat. These boats took him on his journey through the sky and the Duat, while Ra was on the Mesektet, he was in his ram-headed form. When Ra traveled in his sun boat, he was accompanied by other deities including Sia and Hu. Sometimes, members of the Ennead helped him on his journey, including Set, who overcame the serpent Apophis, and Mehen, when Ra was in the underworld, he would visit all of his various forms. Apophis, the god of chaos, was a serpent who attempted to stop the sun boats journey every night by consuming it or by stopping it in its tracks with a hypnotic stare. During the evening, the Egyptians believed that Ra set as Atum or in the form of a ram, the night boat would carry him through the underworld and back towards the east in preparation for his rebirth. When Ra was in the underworld, he merged with Osiris, the god of the dead, Ra was worshipped as the Creator god among some ancient Egyptians, specifically followers of his cult at Heliopolis. It was believed that Ra wept, and from his tears came man and these cult-followers believed that Ra was self-created, while followers of Ptah believed that Ra was created by Ptah
10.
Montu
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Montu was a falcon-god of war in Ancient Egyptian religion. Montus name, shown in Egyptian hieroglyphs to the right, is transcribed as mntw. Because of the difficulty in transcribing Egyptian, it is realized as Mont, Monthu, Montju. Montu was an ancient god, his name meaning nomad, originally a manifestation of the effect of the sun, Ra. The destructiveness of this led to him gaining characteristics of a warrior. Because of the association of raging bulls with strength and war, Montu was also said to manifest himself in a bull with a black face. Egypts greatest general-kings called themselves Mighty Bulls, the sons of Montu, in the famous narrative of the Battle of Kadesh, Ramesses II was said to have seen the enemy and raged at them like Montu, Lord of Thebes. He would hold various weaponry, including scimitars, bows and arrows, the Temple of Montu at Medamud was probably begun during the Old Kingdom era. Temples to Montu include one located adjacent to the Middle Kingdom fortress of Uronarti below the Second Cataract of the Nile, during the New Kingdom, large and impressive temples to Montu were constructed in Armant. In fact, the Greek name of the city of Armant was Hermonthis, Montu had several consorts, including the goddess Tenenet, the goddess Iunit, and a female form of Ra, Raettawy. Mentuhotep, a given to several pharaohs in the Middle Kingdom
