Alan H. Gardiner - The House of Life

Egypt Exploration Society

The House of Life Author(s): Alan H. Gardiner Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Dec., 1938), pp. 157-179 Published by: Egypt Exploration Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3854786 Accessed: 30/09/2010 03:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ees. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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THE HOUSE OF LIFE BY ALAN H. GARDINER IN preparing my edition of the papyrus generally known as the Golenischeff Glossary I have had occasion to look into the evidence for the -n -Ir 'House of Life'. That institution is vaguely familiar to Egyptologists as the place where scribes were employed or trained, but the general works barely mention it,1 and singularly little attention appears to have been paid to the subject. My own investigations have brought to light nothing startlingly new, but it will be useful to possess a collection of the evidence upon which conclusions must necessarily be based. There are doubtless some examples that I have overlooked, but whatever deficiencies might have been found have been lessened by the help of several friends.2 The Berlin dictionary (I, 515) contents itself with the ambiguous definition Haus der Schriftgelehrtenand omits the most important reference of all, that to the well-known 'chief physician Udjeharresnet' in the Vatican, naophorous statue of the 3 };;l$, re-edited with an admirable commentary by G. Posener in La premiere domination recently 1 ff. en The passage relating to the cJ ri ~ (op. cit., 21) needs so much more perse Egypte, pp. discussion than most of our other material that I begin with it, in spite of its late date. After that I shall revert to a chronological order. (1) Only the essential phrases will be given in hieroglyphic here, since the text can be studied in Posener's book, or in Schafer's article (see below). The translation runs: 'His Majesty King Darius commanded me to return to Egypt .............. ..=>pt in order to restore the department(s) of the House(s) of Life ........ ur- //^2?,,~a$ after (they had fallen into) decay. The foreigners carried me from land to land and delivered me back into Egypt according as the Lord of the Two Lands had commanded. I did as His Majesty had commanded me; i ' 'p--i ji I furnished them with all their staffs3 consisting of persons of rank, not a poor man's son among them. -J p them in the of learned order to teach man4 [in I placed charge every [?- E?. l]u? crafts. His all all their commanded them to be them ?] (manner of) good things given Majesty in order that they might exercise all their craft(s). ~ fi BA rI gi f I equipped them with all their ability5 and all their apparatus which was on record in l 'A

1 An exception is Kees, Kulturgeschichte d. alten Orients, see the Index s.v. Tempelschule ('Lebenshauws'), but he quotes only two authentic instances, and many of his assertions are based on the supposed identity of

with [I, a suppositionwhich I have refuted in my article JEA 24, 83. hwt-cnh Posener has not only helped me with collations of several stelae in the Louvre, but has brought to my notice Nos. 3, 12, 17, 36, 47, besides others already known to me. To FairmanI owe Nos. 26,42, as well as most of the Edfu examples. Pendleburyhas supplied informationwith regard to No. 8, and Davies with regardto No. 9. To the Editor, as usual, I owe much careful criticism,and by pointing out earlierliterature he has saved me from claiming the conclusionsunder No. 24 as my own. 3 On this difficult word see below, pp. 170-1 and 179. The renderings 'Schuiler'(Schafer, so too now Kees, ZAS 73, 87) and 'etudiant' (Posener) are without justification. 4 Thereis reasonfor thinking that in connexionwith the compoundrh-htthe adjective nb can sometimes separatethe elements or else be placed after the whole. See below p. 170, n. 2, for the formerpossibility. 5 Hardly 'Bediirfnisse' with Schafer or 'choses utiles' with Posener. The masculine form indicates either a pluralmeaning'efficientmen' or else an abstract 'efficiency',' ability'. Cf.jhw of the 'Zaubermacht'

i

2

ALAN H. GARDINER

158

accordancewith their formercondition. ~_._~?~.^ )

....n

'

t0p i_

_

i qq ~

. This His Majesty did because he knew the virtue of

this art to revive all that are sick and to commemoratefor ever the name(s)of all the gods, their temples,their offeringsand the conductof their festivals.' The crux of the passage lies in the plural pronounof m 'and to solve this problemit looks as though we shouldhave to know what stood in the lacuna after er- . There Schafer(ZAS 37, p. 74, n. 1) assumedthe name of a second buildingco-ordinated with pr-nh, and as the first elementin the name of that buildinghe took the second Er~ of p r- . Posener rightly rejects this view, pointing out that the spelling r-i

c:- is common.

In pre-Ptolemaictimes it is perhapsa little less commonthan e, but many examplesoccur and are logicallyquite in order,since the first c~ of e C is the wordfor'house' to be read phoneticallypr, whereas the second c~ is determinativeof the entire compoundas in rn I-c- ,

rn,

.

What is absolutely decisive in favour of Posener's view is that

LrJ-

concludesa line, and amongthe many texts on this carefullyexecutedstatue there is not a single example of a word divided between two lines. Posener, followingup the idea einer Arzteschulein Sais expressedin the title to Schafer'sarticle Die Wiedereinrichtung restores[] 'of Sais' in the lacuna. This did not agreewith the tracesthat I had seen to the right of the break'whilst makinga collationmany years ago, but as my own indications were not quite in accord with what is visible on the rather indistinct photograph publishedin Bessarione,iv (1898),Pls. 3-4, I appliedto Pater A. Pohl to help me with a collation. He, in companywith Pater Dyson and ProfessorTulli, the Directorof the Egyptian Galleryof the Vatican,has taken great pains to gratifymy wish, and I expressto the three scholarsmy most cordial thanks. The adjoiningcut (fig. 1) showswhat is still visible, and Pater Pohl adds the valuablecommentsthat (1) the missingtop sign cannot A L have beenhigherthan X), (2) the next sign is not merelya horizontal FIG.1. one, but pointsupwards,(3) the third sign is horizontal,and (4) what is seen centrallybelowthis is almostcertainlypart of a hieroglyph,not merelythe edge of the break. Studyingthese facts with care, I am convincedthat the last two signs are o, for if the readerwill examinethe publishedphotographof 'lato destro' he will there find clear ' showingthat the point of the arrowis a simplehorizontalstroke, and the examplesof it agreesperfectlywith the traces in the lacuna. For the preceding of o beneath spacing I signs very hesitatingly suggest [I ]. The phrase %__[3 ]'o may well be conof struedas a plural'the department(s) the House(s)of Life dealingwith medicine',lit. 'of as a physician',on the same principleas when the Egyptianwrites l ~o 't acting2 '=> < for 'ye shall speakwith your mouth(s)'; the alternative wouldforhim, no doubt, have implied that each personhad several mouths.3 Similarly, each House of Life will have possessedonly one medicaldepartment. I submit this solution not as by any means certain, but as the best availablein the missionwill have been to restorethe medical circumstances.If it is correct,Udjeharresnet's departments,not in Sais alone,but throughoutthe wholeof Egypt. The expression'department of the House of Life' occurs only here, and seems to requirethe furtherdefinition X ? S of a god Wb.,i, 15 (6). That the latter view is preferableis shown by , 'there is no craftsmanwho has (completely) acquiredhis mastery', Ptahhotpe56. I owe this quotation to 1 To the left there are some fictitious hieroglyphsdue to the restorer. Gunn. 2 The the infinitive for writing a4 would be no serious objection at this period. I have not before it that rathertoo low for the available space. since seems suggested [-] sign 3 I am, however,completely at a loss to explain why the wordpr-,^^ q~tn nl a ' r||-^ 'draughtsman n i I I< Io I I l , r the great wrote he who in Amin to Two Lands in all monuments belonging Ipet-esut; Thebes.' of west on the of house the in Amun name of the Good God in the Ramesseum stela a fine on since to moved Heliopolis, (10 a). The Khacemope just mentioned evidently of he 32 No. speaks his now in Stuttgart (Spiegelberg-Portner, Aeg. Grabsteine,I, [P1. 18]), 3 a was he while himself father and mother as being -T 'of Thebes', 'royal scribe', a ~ ~" Z 'scribe of the sacred book(s) of the Lord of the Two Lands', also, like his 'one who wrote the annals of all the gods in the House of Life', father, [I1 o IM in the House of Life'.2 and finally a ^C 1I:= - 'divine father of Rec-Atum Trav. Turin stela 4,142, was a certain qqi) l 177, published Rec. (11) The owner of the of the Lord of the Two of Life the House of 'scribe Yuti who bore the title =_/ determined. be to Lands'. The exact date has still (12) De Morgan, Cat. des Monuments, I, p. 95, No. 150 bis. This graffito on the island of Sehel gives the cartouche of Ramesses III and beside it the words uI Ao 'To the spirit of the lieutenant of the House of Life of the Lord of the Two Lands, Khons.' This title is unique and the reading r for that reason somewhat suspect. (13) Two of the officials condemned for taking part in the conspiracy against Ramesses III had previously borne the title % =c~ 'scribe of the House of Life', P. jud. Turin, 5, 5, in Deveria, Me'moireset Fragments, ii. That Deveria and his successors have been right in reading =c{c may be seen from ibid., 4,1, where the sign I in rjEl is quite differently made. (14) Down to Ramesses III the references to the House of Life have been few and far between. It may not, however, be pure chance that mentions of that institution are more I owe my copies of this tomb to the kindness of N. de G. Davies. Curiouslyenough, however, this same title occurs in the penultimate line of the autograph hymn to the two Truths above quoted, but whether it referredto Amenwah.suor to his son Khacemopeis rendered uncertainby the lacunae. 2

ALAN H. GARDINER

162

frequent in the official records of Ramesses IV. The two Abydos stelae are conspicuous for originality of thought and wording, and there is also other evidence to suggest that this monarch possessed a marked literary and archaeological bent. Indeed, he claims as much for himself in two different places. The longer inscription from Abydos (Mariette, Abydos, II, 54-5, see Piehl, ZAS 22, 38) represents the king as investigating (1. 3) '[the annals?] of V Thoth who is in the House of Life' (g..... , P); 'I have not left unseen', he continues,.' any of them all, in order to search out both great and small among the gods and the entire Ennead, and all thy forms are more goddesses, and I have found ........... than theirs.' is Osiris here addressed, and Ramesses accordingly proceeds to extol mysterious him as god of the moon, as the Nile and as the king of the netherworld, after which he passes on to a recital of his own good deeds. (15) The same royal love of learning is illustrated in the earlier of the two great inscriptions which Ramesses IV caused to be graven in the rocks of the Wady Hammamat. Here (Couyat-Montet, No. 240 = Leps., Dkm., II, 223, c) the king is described (11.11-12) as ts O (emend ?) S650 ?n89["'35n ni ~ 'excellent of understanding like Thoth, and he hath penetrated into the annals like the maker thereof, having examined the writings of the House of Life'.1 The writer goes on to relate that Ramesses had been inspired by some god to find the right place (where to quarry) a great monument,2 and the king 'had charged the intimate friends of His Majesty, the chiefs and great princes of Upper and Lower Egypt in their entirety and the 3 ,, , W, n 3O [e --, o Cs ?] scribes and learned men of the House J t [of Life?] to make this monument of the Place of Eternity (i.e. for the Royal Tomb) in this mountain of bekhen-stone'. The restoration pr-[(nh] in this last passage is extremely doubtful on account of the stroke after r3, which is not found elsewhere in that word until very late times, see below, Nos. 30, 42, 43, 50. (16) The long inscription which commemorates an expedition sent by Ramesses IV to Hammamat eighteen months later-it is dated in the second month of the third yeardeserves more careful consideration than it has received. As Breasted points out (Anc. Rec., Iv, ? 461), it commemorates the second largest expedition ever sent to those quarries -a fact the more striking since, if we may trust the evidence of the preserved inscriptions, they had been used only on the smallest scale since the Middle Kingdom. Indeed, it is clear that before despatching the main force under Racmessenakhte, the high-priest of Amin, the king felt it necessary to inquire into the nature of the monuments previously derived from that source. This is recounted in the following words (Couyat-Montet, No. 12, 11-12):

a

(lP LX y% ;MlS2i^ ASoVB9 ?^311cIc

4 1i

, 'His S, ,, eq, , Majesty had charged the scribe of the House of Life Ratmessecoshehab, the scribe of ,=z ', M~= eo~ --, ?'5,N~'

Thetext is somewhatuncertainandI havecombinedthe two copies. It is presumably fromthesewordsthat Lefebvre(Histoiredesgrandspretres,p. 179)has inferredthe presenceat Hammamatof Ramesseshimself. Had the kingtakenpartin the expedition,surelythat fact wouldhavebeenexpressedina lessambiguous likeBreasted(Anc.Rec.,rv, way. OrwasLefebvreinfluenced, ? 464),by a similarlyfigurativepassagein the laterstela,see belowunder(16)? Formy ownpartI consider it highlyunlikelythat Ramesseseverwentto ITammiamt. as Breastedtentativelysuggests(?465),but doubtlessa misinterpretation 3 Not 'of crownpossessions' the of in his hieraticdraft. by sculptor r. 4 Montetread ,, but my reading,whichseemsobvious,is suggestedby hisexcellentphotograph ]| in P1.4. 2

THE HOUSE OF LIFE

163

Pharaoh Hori, and the priest of the house of Min-Hor and of Isis' in Koptos Usimacre(nakhte to investigate the commissions for the Place of Truth in the mountain of bekhen-stoneafter they had been found to be exceedingly beautiful and to be great and wonderful monuments.' V ? The wording is obscure. The expression l is not to be understood with L0-J Breasted2 and Lefebvre3 as referring to a spot in the mountain of Hammamat called the Place of Truth, but signifies 'works (lit. commissions) done (or to be done) for the necropolis'. The phrase occurs twice more at Hammamat in connexion with the same expedition (Couyat-Montet, Nos. 222, 223), and also in the newly-found4 commencement of the LateEgyptian Miscellany which in my edition (p. 121) I have called Turin A; here we have the 'the commissions of the phrase , qcnJn/x 1 i^j q3=- ~St Cnn^ = Place of Truth which Pharaoh commanded to be made'. In this last passage it is highly improbable that any part of Hammamat should be in question. That 'Place of Truth' is a general name of the Theban necropolis5 seems clear from a sentence in the Gold Mines papyrus (Chabas-Lieblein, Deux papyrus, P1. 5), where mention is made of a statue of bekhen-stone [which was brought to] 'To-meri (i.e. Egypt) QPc, _1TI'l J was and set down in the Place of Truth beside the n^f,(ijcfl ?oi P11--o[$] the [great] god', i.e. beside the Ramesseum-the reference is House of Usimacr&esetpenr6c, not improbably to one of the very monuments alluded to in our Hammamat inscription. To return to the passage quoted from the latter, if the verb hhy be given its usual force, the statement is very nearly self-contradictory; how could the officials 'seek for' the works of the necropolis when these had already 'been found' to be very beautiful? What I think must be meant by this awkwardly turned sentence is that the small commission of three appointed by the Pharaoh had the double function first to seek out for examination whatever monuments of Hammamat-stone were available in Thebes or other cities, and secondly, guided by what they learnt from these, to devise the new monuments to be quarried there on behalf of Ramesses. The choice of officials for such a task could hardly have been bettered. The scribe of the House of Life would be able to identify from their inscriptions any ancient monuments that had come from Hammamat and would possess the skill to compose new inscriptions to be placed on the statues or sarcophagus still to be made; the scribe of Pharaoh would be in a position to know his master's wishes; lastly, the priest of Koptos would be familiar with the quarry and its possibilities. The preliminary investigation will thus have been a very suitable preamble to the huge undertaking that was to follow. (17) Doubtless of Ramesside date is another graffito from the island of Sehel naming a

F==^'-^

- QI e~iTtT0?ff]p.

'the scribeof the sacredbook(s)in the

House of Life,6 royal acquaintance of the Lord of the Two Lands, the overseer of constructions in the temple of Amun on the west7 of Thebes, Ramessenakhte', de Morgan, Cat. des Monuments, i, p. 93, No. 130. 1 Gauthier, Le personneldu dieu Min, 20-1, points out that Breasted's translation 'Min-Harsiese' is inexact. He himself renders'de Min-Horuset d'Isis', and it seems unlikely that Isis can have been actually 3 Lefebvre, op. cit., p. 183, n. 2. 2 Breasted, op. cit., p. 225, n. f. identified with Min-Horus. 4 On a there by Prof. Capart,and by was noticed in the Geneva been collection, has that long fragment the generosity of the authorities of the Geneva Museumhas now gone to join the main portion of the MS. at Turin. 6 Since the greater includes the smaller, this return to the old view of Masperocould not contradict _jcl, for which iJ , is the usual substitute in the tombs, erny's certainly correct view that _' in course of construction. See Bull. Inst. fr. 27, 160. The the of tomb the to refers king reigning properly word hr had sometimesitself a correspondingwider sense, see JEA 22, p. 186, n. 10. 7 6 is given in the publication for . For exactly the same form of title cf. below, No. 22.

ALTANH. GARDINER

164

(18) Vienna 51, published Rec. Trav. 9, 40, not in Wreszinski, is a Ramesside stela, probably from Abydos, belonging to an Amenmose who was a 'scribe accounting for the bore the titles trq Prenen 'scribe of the grain of all the gods'. His son x ? sacred book(s) of the Lord of the Two Lands'; 'scribe of the House of Life of _s the Lord of the Two Lands'; 1' - j ' conducting the festival(s) of Osiris'; finally, he was a P= ! IJ ,-l 'chief head of the stable of His Majesty, protecting him who is in the J|I Palace'. Evidently a very versatile fellow! (19) A stela in Bologna (no. 1942 = Kminek-Szedlo, Catalogo, pp. 210-11), which we may guess to be of Ramesside date, though the publication speaks of it as Saite, names two Amenwahland i 'scribes of the House of Life' named 1| mIny respectively. (20) (21) Two damaged or doubtful examples, Borchardt, Statuen (CCG), II, 162 and Beschr. Leiden, xnI, 13 = Leyden D 83. (22) In the heading to the Onomasticon of Amenope (Hood, 1, 4; Gloss. Gol. 1, 4) the author bears the title jC~q Ti, 'scribe of the sacred book(s) in the House of Life'; i~L

B

T

cf. above,No. 17. In the body of the workNo. 116 is

6 ,?

Q _M

T?_

'scribe of the House of Life skilled in his duties', emphasizing the special ability of those who held this rank and incidentally a sly bit of self-praise on the part of the author. The item occurs immediately before the enumeration of priests and after the 'royal scribe and lector-priest (who functions) as Horus'. (23) Next we reach two passages from Ramesside papyri showing that magical spells intended for the use of the living came within the scope of the House of Life. In P. Leyden 'Horus in nwt(?)', who is known to have had magical 347, 3, 2 the god 1S~~ 4 is as described I3? ~ 'master of words, of ",1 powers,2 x xT\f ~ exalted rank in the House of Life, a creator in the library'. The previous line calls the same ; deity L ~ ,i, 'the prince of books', and a third passage (12, 6-7) reveals him as cowith Thoth in the authorship of a magical work. operating

(24) A section of P. mag. Harris (= P. Br. Mus. 10042) has the heading (6, 10):

P_r: ?t'L The first spell of all water-enchantments-now the head ones have said with regard to it, Open the heart to no strangers concerning it-a true secret of the House of Life'. The enchantments in question were to ensure the safety of any who travelled by water, and had to be recited over an egg-shaped lump of clay which was then thrown into the Nile. Lange in his edition (p. 55) takes the word e(,*, 'head ones' to mean 'die leitenden und daher einsichtsvollen Klassen im Volke', but surely this is merely an abbreviation for fJ,X 'the chief lector-priests', whose magical powers are illustrated in I ,l|, the Westcar Papyrus. I now see that Stricker explains our passage in the same way, in a postscript to his excellent note on the Hebrew expression nim.vn 'magicians of Egypt', . . Acta Or. 15, pp. 6 and 20 of the offprint. As the facts now ascertained in this matter are not generally known to English readers, I summarize them here. The word *:b.n had been compared with J hry-tibtby Erman (Rel. d. Ag., 308) and Wb., II, 395, but even Erman's apologetic qualification 'in der entstellten Form chartum' will hardly allow the etymology The publication gives I for T. Learnedly but not very lucidly discussed by Kees, ZAS 64, 107. He places the home (or a home) of this god in the neighbourhood of the White Monastery near Sohag-the Egyptian name was Ns;w-and later on adduces evidence to connect his cult with the Oryx Nome, see the tomb of Ameni at Beni Hasan. I am not clear whether Kees really regards Snwt(?) as the name of a town; the matter seems doubtful in 1

a

spite of the determinative @.

3 The

i

is written in red.

THE HOUSE OF LIFE

165

to pass muster. Ranke (Keilschriftliches Material, 37) had quoted from an Assyrian text of the eighth or seventh century, among names of priests, doctors, and magicians, a title hartibi given to three persons with Egyptian names, but had refused to connect this with the Hebrew word. The possibility thus suggested became, however, a strong probability in the light of the Demotic term hr-tb which Griffith (Stories of the High Priests of Memphis, n. on 1 Kh. 5, 3) found applied to the sorcerer Hor, son of Pa-neshe and tentatively rendered 'librarian'. Spiegelberg (Demotica, i, 4) adduced a good deal more evidence which proved the reading hr-tband indicated the connexion with ,(j Z. To Stricker (loc. cit.) belongs the merit of asserting the identity of the Demotic hr-tbwith the Hebrew term and of citing the Harris passage. (25) In the Brussels museum is preserved the painted coffin of a scribe 'Ankhefenamun from the tombs of the priests of Amun at Der el-Bahri, Speleers, Recueil des inscr. eg., No. 290 (p. 77). Among the scenes is a dais sheltering the symbol i, beside which is the ,* 1 Po 'I am Isis the great, the god's mother, lady of the House legend ? j of Life, dwelling in the Beautiful House', i.e. the place of embalmment. The connexion of Isis here with the House of Life seems unique, but is explicable by her great magical powers. (26) The important reliefs relating to the sed-festival discovered by Naville at Bubastis may be almost exact copies of Old Kingdom scenes, though actually dating only from the reign of Osorkon II; but I hesitate to assign the inscriptions that interest us to so early a time. A procession of long-skirted priests, most of whom hold papyrus rolls, is headed P 1i 'L1U'friends and masters of magic',1 Festival Hall of OsorkonII, P1. 8. Among the separate personages are two ~ 'magician-protectors of the King of Lower Egypt'; there is at least one F% 'royal scribe'; finally there is ?j P, where the restoration of the sign in lacuna is guaranteed by aF{l op. cit., P1. 3. Though in each case this legend stands over a the head of a single person plurality was certainly meant and we must render 'the company of the House of Life', with the Old Kingdom word for 'company' (Wb., v, 402) which appears to be nearly synonymous with the later ,1,, see below under No. 38. The main interest of these examples is that here the House of Life is explicitly connected with magic, and from a very early date sorcerers belonging to it were evidently in attendance upon the king at the great moment of his Jubilee. l- n Peftucauneit (27) We pass to Saitic times. The chief physician of King Apries x A 93. The inscriptions as it is known where has left a fine statue of himself, now in the Louvre, at Abydos, of Osiris the in record the extensive restorations made by its owner temple re-establishof the account After the apparently at the behest of Apries's successor Amasis. 4 ment of the god's estate and vineyards, the text continues laconically: P) -- ~--I 0 I renewed ~ X ,1r . S [-3 Crzi-] 0a 'It is a secret book in the House of Life, which no eye shall see, the secret book of overthrowing Apopis.' (37) The Mendes stela. In the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus the temple of the ram-god of Mendes was built anew, and a stela commemorating the benefits which that king conferred upon the city is preserved in the CairoMuseum. When, some time after the 21st year, a new sacred ram was discovered in the vicinity, petition was sent to Ptolemy requesting 1 See Wb.,I, 580 (4) and Gauthier,Personneldu dieu Min, 77-9; furtherSethe in ZAS 57, 24 commenting on Bk. Dead, spell 115, where again the fkty is identifiedwith Shu. 2 See Wb., in, 122 (14). 3

In op. cit., 54 we find a pr-(nh-zrw, but this is probably different, cf. also Diimichen, Resultate, I, 47, 10. N

170

ALAN H. GARDINER

that the scribes of the House of Life should come and inspect it. 'Thereupon His Majesty to the temples sent ,???; 1],*I1 c~~~~iiI@~ ~ of ~ Upper ~ ~~~~~~~~ ~and ~ Lower Egypt to cause to come [=3[ ? '_ 1,, the House of of the Life] consisting of [staff ~--~IO?,~ e,;,lo,il 1,~,I the of Two nomes and ........ Lands the the of the weeal q \\,12 ' BtP'The s . . -priest3 who is in the chamber, hsk-priest, dancer, lector in face 2J i of Min, fkty-priest, overseer of the deserts, overseer of the priests of Sakhmet,4 prophet of Thoth-dwelling-in-the-House-of-Life, scribe of the sacred books of Min, Ahmose.' See Ahmed Bey Kamal, Steles ptolemaiques et romaines (CCG), p. 65 and P1. 22. (46) On another Akhmim stela in Cairo (Cat. Gen., No. 22017; op. cit., p. 19 and PI. 7) Haronnofre bears, among other titles, the following: the owner I: ~ ] 'over the above p. 170, see 'learned secrets of the god's words'; (rh-ht, ~ r ~ 7~\\ 11 n. 2) in every (papyrus-)chest of the House of Life belonging to the House of Min'; 'chief teacher of the children of the prophets, wcb~i(lE 0 S,~ : of the sacred book(s)'. In the title mentioning and 'scribe and