Читать книгу A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 Volume Set - Группа авторов - Страница 106

Günter Vittmann

Most of the contemporary evidence for the First Persian Domination (27th Dynasty, 526–404/1 BCE) in Egyptian language is datable to the reigns of Cambyses and above all Dareios I. A naophorous statue in the Vatican Museum had probably been set up by its owner Udjahorresnet in the temple of the goddess Neith in Sais in the Western Delta (Kuhrt 2010: pp. 117–122; Vittmann 2003: Pl. 15; here Figure 12.1). According to the inscriptions of this monument, Udjahorresnet played a fundamental role in integrating the conqueror Cambyses into traditional Egyptian royal ideology by establishing for him a pharaonic titulature and introducing him into the Temple of Sais to represent him as a pious ruler who respected Egyptian state religion. This image is also conveyed by a seal impression from Buto in the Delta which designates him as beloved by the goddess Uto (Kuhrt 2010: p. 127). The official epitaph issued in the name of Cambyses for the deceased Apis bull and the sarcophagus of the latter were discovered in the Serapeum at Saqqara (Kuhrt 2010: pp. 122–124). The classical tradition according to which Cambyses killed an Apis is neither confirmed nor contradicted by Egyptian sources, but some texts contain allusions to serious troubles at the beginning of the Persian conquest (Jansen‐Winkeln 2002). A Demotic papyrus from the Ptolemaic period depicts Cambyses as having heavily restricted the revenues of the temples (Kuhrt 2010: pp. 125–126). Cambyses is mentioned in some Demotic legal documents from Assiut concerning the conveyance of priestly offices and possessions within a family from the time of Amasis down to the reign of Cambyses (Spiegelberg 1932: pp. 39–53; Shore 1988).

Figure 12.1 Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Egizio: Naophorous statue of Udjahorresnet.

Source: Drawing by the author.

The long reign of Dareios I is represented both by monumental inscriptions and by administrative documents. Three large stelae with multilingual propagandistic texts were erected at the occasion of the building of a canal through the Red Sea near Tell el‐Maskhuta, Kabrit, and Suez (Posener 1936: pp. 48–87; Kuhrt 2010: pp. 485–486). A large, now headless statue of the king (Kuhrt 2010: pp. 477–482) had been made in Egypt and, before it was transported to Susa, placed in a temple (Heliopolis? Pithom?) “in order that he who will see it should know that the Persian man holds Egypt,” as the Old Persian text puts it. The hieroglyphic version avoids this provocation, preferring instead to stress the adaptation of the Achaemenid ruler to Egyptian royal ideology.

The large temple of Amun in Hibis (Kharga Oasis) was decorated under this ruler (Lippert 2016; here Figure 12.2), and his cartouche can also be seen in the sanctuary of the temple of Qasr el‐Ghueita in the same area (Darnell 2007). In general, however, royal involvement in building and decoration of temples and cultic activities outside Kharga and Dakhla (Amheida) is extremely scarce and modest: there is little more than two isolated blocks in Busiris and Elkab (Vittmann 2003: Pl. 19a), a fine painted wooden naos from Tuna el‐Gebel/Hermopolis (Mysliwiec 1998: Pl. 9.1–9.2), and minimal traces of work at Karnak (Traunecker 1980).

Figure 12.2 Relief of Dareios I offering milk to Amun in his temple at Kharga.

Source: Reproduced by permission of Günter Vittmann.

Egyptian officials who were active under Dareios I include Udjahorresnet, the treasurer Ptahhotep and the overseer of works Khnemibre. According to the inscriptions on his statue, Udjahorresnet spent part of his life at the court of the king in Elam (i.e. Susa), where he was appreciated for his abilities as a physician (Kuhrt 2010: p. 119). The exact date of his return to Egypt is unknown, but his tomb, which had been built at the end of the 26th Dynasty, was discovered in Abusir (Bareš 1999). Ptahhotep, whose tomb was unearthed in Giza in the nineteenth century, is well known for his Brooklyn statue that depicts him in the habit of a Persian official (Vittmann 2003: Pl. 14 b–c), and an inscription that assigns to him the non‐Egyptian term qppš, which has been linked with the tradition about the faithful eunuch Kombabos (Posener 1986; Briant 1996: p. 283). As to Khnemibre, hieroglyphic graffiti in the quarries of Wadi Hammamat in the Eastern desert attest his career as an overseer of the royal building projects for a period of nearly 35 years, from the end of the 26th Dynasty down to year 30 of Dareios I (492 BCE; Posener 1936: pp. 88–116).

Numerous stelae attest the burials of three Apis bulls during the reign of Dareios I; for the first of them the official epitaph from year 4 (518 BCE) is preserved (Posener 1936: pp. 36–41). For the Apis bulls that continued being installed and buried under the later Achaemenids any direct inscriptional evidence is lacking; there is, however, a damaged mention of Artaxerxes I in the context of events regarding the “Mothers of Apis” (Smith et al. 2011: pp. 15–25).

A small stela in Berlin shows Dareios in the form of divine falcon adored by a private individual, a unique example of presumably posthumous divinization of this ruler (Burchardt 1911: pp. 71–72; Vittmann 2003: fig. 60). Particular esteem of Dareios, though on a more mundane level, is demonstrated by a text on the verso of the so‐called Demotic Chronicle: there, Dareios I is presented as a king who had the earlier laws of the Egyptians until year 44 of Amasis (527 BCE) systematically collected (Kuhrt 2010: p. 125 [b]).

Many Demotic administrative documents are dated to the reign of Dareios I, among them an archive from Thebes that concerns the private affairs of funerary priests in the period from Amasis to Dareios (Pestman and Vleeming 1994). A famous papyrus, the copy of the lengthy draft of a petition which was to be submitted to a high official of Dareios, vividly describes the vexations suffered by an Egyptian temple scribe at the hands of the local clergy when trying to recover the prebends that had been snatched away by the priests from his ancestors in the past (Vittmann 1998; Hoffmann and Quack 2007: pp. 22–54). An important group of papyri is formed by the so‐called correspondence of the satrap Pherendates from Elephantine, which illustrates the concern of the Achaemenid authorities for the administrative and economic aspects of an Egyptian temple (Kuhrt 2010: pp. 852–854; Martin 2011: pp. 288–292). Another letter of identical provenance sheds some light on the unrests in this area which may have been connected with the rebellions that took place at the end of Dareios' rule (Martin 2011: pp. 295–296).

As for the successors of Dareios I, Egyptian sources from the Nile valley are extremely rare. Xerxes and Artaxerxes I are mentioned in some hieroglyphic graffiti in the Wadi Hammamat left by two high Persian officials of the local administration (Posener 1936: pp. 120–128; here Figure 12.3). Whereas there are some Demotic papyri that can be assigned to the rule of Artaxerxes I (Devauchelle 1995: pp. 38–40; Smith and Martin 2009: pp. 31–39, with interesting prosopographic connections with Aramaic documents), there is no papyrological evidence at all for Xerxes. An inscription from the early years of Greek rule, the so‐called “satrap stela,” depicts him as an impious ruler of the past who seized property of the Egyptian gods but was finally expelled by them from his palace, together with his son (Schäfer 2011: pp. 146–151). Dareios II is the king into whose reign two fragmentary Demotic papyri from Saqqara with official reports can be dated (Smith and Martin 2009: pp. 24–31). Over the last two decades, however, several hundreds of Demotic ostraca were discovered in Ain el‐Manawir (Kharga Oasis), many of them dating to the latter half of the First Persian Domination (Artaxerxes II, Dareios II). These documents from the area of the temple of Osiris‐Iu, a local form of Osiris, testify to the continuity of cultic and religious activities in this period, and concern various aspects of public life such as water rights and agriculture. One ostracon is particularly interesting because of its date, “year 2” of a prince Inaros. Whatever the correct reading of his title (Chauveau 2004 “great one of the rebels”; Winnicki 2006 “great one of the Bakales,” a Libyan tribe), he is most probably to be identified with one of the two(?) fifth‐century rebels named Inaros that are known from Aramaic and Greek sources.

Figure 12.3 Graffito of the Persian official Athiavahya from year 28 of Xerxes in the Wadi Hammamat.

Source: Reproduced by permission of Kurt Tausend.

A first edition of these ostraca by Chauveau and Agut‐Labordère is now available on the Achemenet site (www.achemenet.com; for a preliminary report see Chauveau 2011).

For the Second Persian Period (340/39–32 BCE; for the former date see Depuydt 2010), the only Egyptian sources that can be attributed to this period are some coins with the name of Artaxerxes (III) in Demotic (Kuhrt 2010: p. 413, Fig. 9.8) and a contract concerning a house division from the reign of Dareios III (Cenival 1966). There are, however, some hieroglyphic inscriptions that might possibly refer to events of that period: Petosiris, a high official in the administration of the temple of Thoth at Hermopolis, alludes to the troubles that befell Egypt (Kuhrt 2010: pp. 460–461). An inscription from the time of Philippus Arrhidaeus reports the rescue of the corpses of the sacred falcons that had been profanated by the “foreigners,” presumably the Persians toward the end of their rule (Sherman 1981: p. 90). Like Udjahorresnet some two centuries earlier, Somtutefnakhte, a priest of Harsaphes in Herakleopolis, spent a certain time of his life outside Egypt: the inscriptions of the so‐called “Naples stela” probably allude to the battle of Issos (333 BCE, Kuhrt 2010: pp. 458–459). It should not be forgotten, however, that all these documents that have been brought in connection with the Second Persian Period never mention the king by name, which leaves some doubt concerning the reliability of the current ascriptions.

The exact date of Chababash, an ephemerous Egyptian “anti‐king” in the last years of the Second Persian Domination, is unknown (Depuydt 2010: pp. 192–193; Vittmann 2011: p. 410; Schäfer 2011, passim).