Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 48

Many other visual expressions of royal power existed. The king wore crowns and had scepters and other regalia that were reserved for his office, and he participated in public festivals that reaffirmed his special status. The latter were ephemeral events whose format we can only vaguely reconstruct from depictions and later sources. One ceremony that seems to have been important from the Predynastic period on, and that continued to be practiced into the Greek period, was called sed in ancient Egyptian. Held occasionally in a king’s life – in later periods only after 30 years of rule – it reasserted his powers. Wrapped in a special cloak, he appeared on a podium with the two thrones of Upper and Lower Egypt, while statues of the gods were placed nearby (Figure 2.4). During this celebration of his dual kingship he made a ceremonial run around boundary stones to reconfirm his territorial claims. Some of the earliest depictions of kings show them participating in the sed‐festival, which seems to have become more important over time. The 3rd‐dynasty step pyramid of Djoser contained a special sed‐court to renew the king’s reign into eternity, and in the 14th century King Amenhotep III built a massive complex to celebrate sed‐festivals (see Chapter 8).

Figure 2.4 One of the earliest statues in the round of a king of Egypt is this small ivory one, 8.8 cm high. It shows an unidentified ruler, probably of the 1st dynasty, wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt and wrapped in a cloak that kings wore during the sed‐festival. The stoop of his shoulders suggests that he was old when the image was carved. British Museum, London EA37996.

Source: Werner Forman / Art Resource