Egypt Exploration Society

A New Letter to the Dead Author(s): Alan H. Gardiner Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 16, No. 1/2 (May, 1930), pp. 19-22 Published by: Egypt Exploration Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3854325 . Accessed: 20/10/2013 07:15
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19

A NEW LETTER TO THE DEAD

BY ALAN H. GARDINER With Plate x, figs. 1-3. It is a true and surprising fact that new types of Egyptian antiquities, like troubles, never come singly; and an annoying variation of this fact is that never does an Egyptologist publish a book on any topic without some fresh piece of relevant material coming to his knowledge too late for inclusion. The subject of the present article is a hitherto unknown and particularly fine "letter to the dead" belonging to the Haskell Oriental Museum in Chicago, where it bears the number 13945. Permission to publish this was most kindly given to me by Professor Breasted, who also provided the excellent photographs reproduced in Plate x. Like several of the other letters of the same category published by Professor Sethe and myself in our joint work Egyptian Letters to the Dead (London, Egypt Exploration Society, 1928) the new example is inscribed in bold and typical hieratic of the First Intermediate Period (between the Sixth and Eleventh Dynasties) on a vessel of red pottery; but contrary to custom, that vessel is here a jarstand without bottom, and with a lip at the top. The dimensions are: height 23 cm., diameter at top 9 cm., diameter at bottom 12*5 cm. The eight vertical columns of hieratic, with a short additional column (8a) between cols. 6 and 7, are so clearly legible in the Plate that no hand-facsimile is needful. There are one or two palaeographic difficulties, but on the whole the decipherment is plain sailing. The hand closely resembles that of the Kaw bowl (op. cit., Pls. 2, 3). The text runs as follows:

(1)

, /www\,-<=> 1[-1
AWA M

<\m r--.-

?_

Am

/AWV~

,,

A
/www

.y oj^ ^^
2 $<^ A--s 0 Ai ()

r
?

?(2)

.z

LAJ i=> 6 s A

IANI U Jti

/W AW

==

AJ(
r-'N'%S,"-d

XA

4)fz1

yp (Ar'M(is\\i0

tL
WW6)EA 1N n;,

A6N)f

j z
A

0t>

(7)

(8)

1i^

tt3 fJV1VM

fl

'X 1
3-2

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Plate X.

3 I-3. 4.

A "Letter to the Dead" in the Haskell Museum of Chicago. Scalec. S. Statuette in the Berlin Museum (Inv. No. I4,517). Scalec. W.

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20

ALAN H. GARDINER
Supplementary line between cols. 6, 7: (8a) j
AK

c h

<

a }

has a different form everywhere else in this text, but there seems no alternative;

%- has its

b Q seems very probable,there being a faint cross-stroke characteristic form, and is certainly not '3. c The column divides into two which makes 1 impossible; 1 is certain. parts, as often at this d e is and the at left side. A abnormal period. badly made, open form, for which analogies quite are found in the Gebel6n coffin at Turin (G 1 T 61 and the ornamental text on the back) and, as Sethe f Deleted signs. points out, Steindorff, Grabfunde,ii, P1. 18.

TRANSLATION.

(1) This is an oral reminder of that which I said to thee in referenceto myself:-" Thou knowest that Idu said in reference to his son: (2) 'As to whateverthere may be yonder (?), I will not allow him to be afflicted of any affliction'. Do thou unto me the like thereof!" (3) Behold now there is brought (to thee) this vessel in respect of which thy motheris to make litigation. It were agreeable (4) that thou shouldst support her. Cause now that there be born to me a healthy male child. Thou art an excellent Spirit. (5) And behold, as for those two, the serving-maids who have caused Seny to be afflicted, (namely) Nefertjentet and Itjai, (6) confound(?) them, and destroyfor me every affliction which is (directed) against my wife; for thou knowest that I have (7) need thereof(?). Destroy it utterly! As thou livest for me, the Great one shall praise thee, (8) and the face of the Great God shall be glad over thee; he shall give thee pure bread with his two hands. Additional remark:-(8 a) Moreover I beg a second healthy male child for thy daughter.
COMMENTARY.

To those who have studied the letters to the dead published in the volume by Sethe and myself-references to which will frequently be made below without specially naming it-no great insistence on the similar form exhibited by the new Chicago specimen will be necessary. The opening recalls the Cairo text on linen and the KIawbowl; the central portion here, as everywhere else, contains the gist of the writer's petition and mention of the persons whose malevolent influence he is suspecting; the promise of reward to the deceased addressee, if the petition be granted, is paralleled by the Berlin bowl. Thus the formalism characteristic of all Egyptian art which Dr. de Buck has recently discussed so ably in his inaugural address to the students of Leyden University is once again illustrated most convincingly in this new accession to an otherwise entirely individual class of writings. The Chicago letter also displays that vague and allusive fashion of designating the personae dramatis which is typical of the class. There can be no doubt but that the unnamed writer of the letter is addressing his dead father; thus much is indicated by the precedent which he quotes from the lips of a certain Idu whose identity is entirely obscure. "Thy mother" in 1. 3 must be the writer's paternal grandmother. The writer's wife is obviously the Seny of 1. 5; this is shown by hmt.(i) "my wife" in 1. 6. In 1. 8a an additional request is made on behalf of "thy daughter," and the logic of the situation seems to show that this must be the writer's sister. Whether the two

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A LETTER

TO THE

DEAD

21

evilly-disposed serving-maids mentioned in 1. 5 were dead or still alive when the letter was written does not emerge. What is entirely new in the Chicago letter is the appeal to a dead parent for male offspring. The maxims of Ptahhotpe and Ani, among other of the ancient writings, had already taught us that the desire of the ancient Egyptian's for sons was no less strong than that felt by their modern descendants. But the adoption of this particular method of satisfying the desire is a novelty. As if for the very purpose of corroborating the thesis with which I started my article, a little figure of a woman carrying a child and bearing the inscription "May a birth be given unto thy daughter Seh" has just come to light in the Berlin collection, and is discussed in a note by Dr. Siegfried Schott appended below (see P1. , 4). It seems likely that this figure was deposited in the tomb of a deceased father in the expectation that he would use his power in the netherworld to secure fulfilment of the offerer's wish. In the philological notes which follow reference is made to some interpretations by Professor Sethe. On becoming acquainted with the Chicago text I sent a transcript thereof to my co-author in the book on the letters of the dead, and was glad to find that in most points our translations of the new specimen agreed with one another. Line 1. Tnw-r, see op. cit., p. 14; the determinative j only here. For 4*, suffix 1st pers. sing., whereas everywhere else in the text the suffix is omitted, cf. the K&aw bowl, ii, 4 (with the note), our view of which is thus happily confirmed. How the sign ~- in the proper name is to be explained I do not know. In my opinion it is quite impossible to read J "Idu the younger." 2. It seems necessary to take wnnt and wnt as respectively the imperfective and the perfective participles, fem. in reference to a neuter notion, and perhaps intended to cover all contingencies-" what is and may be yonder." 'Im, i.e. in the netherworld, as in the phrase ntyw im. I take this obscure little phrase to be a deprecatory or sceptical qualification of Idu's promise to guard his son from sorrow; he cannot be sure what powers he will possess beyond the grave. It is unusual grammatically to find a phrase introduced by ir "as to" without resumptive pronoun in the main clause. Nkm, with the det. A found at this period for mr "be painful" and ind "pain" (see on III, 3), is not rare in the magical texts for "suffer," "be afflicted," e.g. in the Metternich stela, 1. 6, where it is certainly contrasted with rsw "rejoice," but I doubt whether the rendering traurig sein of the Berlin Worterbuchquite hits the mark; in the %Xis used only of a diseased condition of the hair (521, 2055, Pyramids 7 J or Sj 2056), but is parallel to mr "be ill." I prefer to consider it almost synonymous with this last verb. 'Ir m n.(i) mitt irt is doubtless a part of the speech to his father which the writer now recalls, but not a part of the speech of Idu. Mitt irt, see my Eg. Gramm., 88, n. 1. 3. It is difficult to believe in DI as a writing of the demonstrative adjective, but there seems no alternative. Mnt;t is a rare word, of which the only example available to me at the moment is on the Turin altar bearing the cartouche of Phiops (Trans. "water" confirms the rendering Schale Soc. Bibl. Arch., II, 117) where the addition But natural of Wasser Wb. the way fir given by interpreting the first sentence of 1. 3 is to take it as referring to the vessel, together with its inscription, on which our letter [ in Sinuhe, B 181. is written; one would then compare a-~ " j ~ Q cC If this view be taken the word mnt't must have a wider significance, "pottery vessel" or the like, for as I have stated, the Chicago letter is written on a jar-stand.

77

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22

ALAN

H. GARDINER

'Irt mwt.k wdr mdw hr.s is difficult of interpretation. Sethe suggested as a rendering diesen Krug...der von deiner Mutter gemacht worden ist, damit deswegen gerichtet werde. But irt wdr mdw as a phrase occurs in iI, 9 (see the note thereon) and in other texts of this period, and if a past action had been meant, would not irt-n have been written? The form irt has every likelihood of being Gunn's prospective relative. If, therefore, we must render in some such way as "in respect of (or over) which thy mother is to (or will) make litigation" the writer must be anticipating an intervention on his behalf by his paternal grandmother. The clause, it must be confessed, is very obscure. 4. My translation assumes the standpoint adopted at the end of the last note. Sethe, translating Angenehm ware es, wenn du ihm zustimmtest,takes the suffix *sto refer to t; mnttt, not to mwt.k. Still, for a personal suffix after wf; one can quote Ptahhotpe (ed. Devaud) 72 (Ms. L), Qoe w. Wb. is certainly right in -~JL M,~ ji its remark on wfi: "z. J. sicher beistimmen." The evidence for the word is collected in my Notes on...Sinuhe, p. 31. 5. Since ipt(y) not only stands before its noun, which is apparently unknown elsewhere, but also has the determinatives x\\, it seems better to render "those two, the with in A ! q as perf. act. part. is (namely) serving-maids," b'kty apposition. unusual in writing out the y, but this may be due to the form being a dual. In writing the names of the two servants as Neferjentet and Itjai instead of Neferthentet and Ithai I formally renounce my previous practice. Steindorff has rightly introduced tj for = in the new English Bideker's Egypt. Tj is both nearer the probable ` dj is to . d. original pronunciation, and also suits the fact that . tj is to t what Sethe writes with regard to Nfr-tntt:" Der Name zeigt dass das Gefdss aus Dendera oder Achmim kommt." In favour of the former provenance one could quote the name 'Idw in 1. 1; for 'Idw see Petrie, Dendereh, 5. 6, and for Nfr-tntt see Schafer-Lange, no. 20568. Still, it was stated when the letter was acquired that it came from Girgah, and the information seemed better assured than many other indications of the kind. 6. Zh; as a transitive verb is unknown to me elsewhere; for its intransitive use, with some such meaning as "be in confusion", see the note in my Admonitions, p. 28. 'Idr, imperative, here and in 1. 7, is commonly so written in the Pyramid Texts. 6-7.~ _ J dlrw is a word for "need," see my note, Journal, ix, 18, n. 8. It is, however, very difficult to say what the entire clause ntt irr.i d;rw im here means. In the translation I have suggested "that I have need thereof." But at least equally probable would be "that I am doing the needful therein," i.e. helping as much as I can. Possibly neither of these suggestions hits the mark. 7. The identity of the "Great Goddess" is uncertain. If the vessel really came from Denderah, she would of course be Hathor. 8. T wrb is common in Eleventh Dynasty formulae of offering; see Polotsky, Zu den Inschriften der 11. Dynastie, ? 79, i. 8a. Dbh doubtless first person, not imperative. If the deleted signs are really L |, the writer will have begun to address his father by name (cf. 1), but will have thought better of it, being deterred by the lack of space.
a

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