Detailed description and hieroglyphic texts of the first discoveries of the Osireion – Small Objects and Graffiti .. Part ( 10 )

The Small Objects

A few small objects were found in the filling of the passages and halls, apparently having been thrown away as mere rubbish . The building itself had evidently been rifled, and every object removed, whether of value or not .

No. 3 : A tall pottery stand of a form characteristic of the 19^th Dynasty .

Nos. 4 and 5 : Sculptor's Trial Pieces :- There seems to have been a school of sculpture in the Temple of Ramses, for on the plain surface of the walls below the decoration in that temple are sketches of figures roughly incised . These trial pieces probably belonged to the same school . The first exercise of the youthful sculptor was invariably the neb sign, giving, as it did, a straight line, and a semi-circular curve . It is interesting to see the sign engraved by the master's hand at the top of the stone, below are the student's attempts in every degree of badness . Another piece which was found showed part of a little scene of the worship of Osiris ; it was unfinished, one figure only having been sculptured, the rest being merely sketched in black . The two pieces shown in this plate must have been done by advanced students . No. 4 is the more interesting, as it is not completely finished, the original drawing in black ink is still visible at the shoulder . The serpent seems to have been added so as to fill up the blank space and not waste the stone .

No. 6 : Plaster Casts :- These are casts of the eyes of statues and of details of decoration ; which, as the cartouche shows, were probably from the temple of Ramses . They must therefore belong to the same school of sculpture as the trial-pieces, and served the same purpose as the plaster casts in schools of art at the present day .

No. 7 : A Surveyor's Mark :- This is of the Roman period .

All these objects were found at the North end of the Great Hall, and in the North passage .

In the Great Hall and South Chamber were found the Coptic ostrakon, and a small squatting statuette of limestone . The statuette was without a head, and was inscribed both back and front . From the style and workmanship it belongs to the 26^th Dynasty .

In front is a representation of Osiris standing on a pedestal in a boat, and holding the heq sign, emblem of sovereignty in his hands . The inscriptions on each side are so corrupt as to be almost unreadable . That in front of the figure appears to be merely the name and titles of the god : " Speech of Osiris, the great god, ruler (?) of eternity " . The inscription behind the figure : " Speech of the lord (?) of Deddu . [ May he ] give funeral offerings which the gods love " .

Down the back of the statuette are five rows of hieroglyphs, the top part being slightly broken away . (1) " May the king give an offering unto Osiris-Khenti-Amentiu, the great god, Lord of [ Abydos ] ; (2) may he give funeral offerings of bread and beer, oxen and fowls, incense (?) and ointment, wine and milk ; that which heaven gives, which earth produces, and which the Nile brings (3) from his cavern, and on which the god lives, for the ka of the divine father, the hen-ka priest of the mysteries of the book of eternity in his month, (4) of the second class and of the fourth class of priests ; of the first class and the second class of priests in the place of decrees, the uab-priest of the Boat of the second class, Hor-se (5) ...... son of one of the same rank, Hor-nekht, true of voice, son of one of the same rank, Hor-se-ast, true of voice " .

The inscription round the base gives the same name and title as before : " ... of the same rank, Hor-nekht " . Another fragment shows that the mother's name was given, but nothing remains of the name .

Hieratic ostraka :- A few limestone ostraka, inscribed in hieratic, were found . Of nine of these Mr. Francis Llewellyn Griffith has kindly given the following translations and notes :-

1. " Sunre, son of Shesuaf (?), his mother being Yua, of Pa-shes (?) " " Amu-nefer, son of Rui, his mother being Huta, of Pa-shes (?) " A memorandum of the two people named .

2. " How hast thou forgotten the business that I told thee ! " The text is complete, perhaps only a trial of the pen .

3. " 220 nails (?) worth 9 kite " .

4. Possibly a bargain of some sort concerning sandals . The first word appears not to be sunt .

6. The ape of Thoth seated on a base, a lotus flower (?) before him, and an obscure inscription behind .

7. A list of names, Sun-re, Pen-dua, Sety, Amenemapt, and amounts, 14, &c .

8. A list of words or names and numbers .

9. Memoranda, with others added, after the stone had been turned upside down .

Demotic ostraka :- A very few demotic ostraka were found, chiefly on potsherds . Professor Wilhelm Spiegelberg kindly read them, and says that they are all accounts, (1) oil, (3) wine, (4) salt, (5) gives measures, but no material is mentioned .

The Graffiti

The walls of the Seti Temple have been used for many centuries to record the scribblings of visitors . The modern tourist, who scratches his name on the wall of an ancient building, rouses our ire and makes us indignant ; but when the graffito is over sixteen hundred years old it becomes hallowed by time, and we hasten to copy it . During the Greek and Roman periods, the Seti Temple was a place of pilgrimage, as the engraved footprints show . There was an oracle of Bes in one of the side chambers, and those who consulted the oracle slept one night in the temple, and the dreams that they dreamt on that night were supposed to be the answer of the God . The names of these anxious inquirers are scratched thickly on the walls of the staircase and corridor of the Bull, and the small chamber of Osiris, but more sparsely elsewhere .

In Coptic times the temple was used as a nunnery, and the walls are covered, in many places, with inscriptions in the characteristic red paint of the Copts . The greater number are in the pillared chamber ( chamber Z ), but, like the Greek graffiti, they are to be found in other parts of the building . Some had faded almost away during the time that the temple was used as a Christian Church, and fresh inscriptions had been painted over them, one inscription being in black, the other in red . The black was not so permanent as the red, and had vanished almost entirely . It could only be seen when the wall itself was in shade and the sun shining fully on the wall at right angles to it . Then by sitting as close as possible to the wall and looking along it, the letters were seen like shadows by the reflected light . Walter Ewing Crum has copied about half the Coptic inscriptions in the temple and not a third of the others . Professor Archibald Sayce copied all the Greek, Karian, and Phoenician graffiti and published some, though not in facsimile . Mr. John Garstang published in facsimile some of the graffiti in the small chambers of Osiris, Isis, and Horus . This is all that has been done for the Greek graffiti . Of the Coptic inscriptions, M. Urbain Bouriant is, I think, the only person who has published any, and those were hand copies, not facsimiles .

Hieratic graffiti :- Graffiti in hieratic are rare in the Temple of Seti . They are inscribed in red on blank spaces on the walls . The first is in the chapel of Ptah, the second in the corridor of the Bull .

Mr. Griffith's translation and notes are as follows :-

1. " King of Upper and Lower Egypt ........ chief prophet of Amonrasonther, son of the Sun, Lord of Crowns, the leader Psebkhane ( Psusennes ) beloved of Amonrasonther (?) . The chief prophet of Amonrasonther ....... Pasebkhane, beloved of Amon " .

There is no proper end to the cartouche, and it is rather extraordinary in itself . Perhaps one might cut it down to, considering the other signs as superfluous .

2. " The king of Upper and Lower Egypt ........ who hath made a monument in the house of his maker ; he hath builded ........ for his father Osiris . The scribe Pshasu, who came with the scribe ....... " .

The Phoenician graffiti are roughly scratched on the walls, even more roughly than the Greek . Professor Müller of Vienna has very kindly looked at them and has given a tentative translation .

The figures given on the plate 22 are scratched on the blank walls of the passage which contains the Tablet of Abydos . These unfinished walls offer a good field for graffiti of all kinds, and visitors to the temple appear to have availed themselves of the space afforded . I have given only a few specimens . Abraxas, the Gnostic deity, appears as a Roman soldier with a staff in his hand . The mounted soldier is remarkable for the ingenious manner in which the artist has made the bridle form part of the horse's head .

Greek graffiti :- The Greek graffiti are described by Mr. Joseph Grafton Milne as follows :

The copies made by Miss Lina Eckenstein are reproduced in facsimile on Plates 21, 23, and 24 . They form a supplement to those copied by Mr. Garstang in 1900, and the remarks there given in preface may be applied here . It may be added that only one of the present instalment is included among those published by Professor Sayce, but many appear in the plates of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum prepared from Théodule Deveria's note-books . A comparison of the latter plates with the recent copies suggests that the surface of the stones in the great staircase has suffered an appreciable amount of damage in the last 150 years .

Coptic graffiti :-

The numerous graffiti to be seen in the temple of Seti show not only that the building was at some period frequented by Christians, but that one chamber at least ( Z, in South Wing ) was employed by them for some special purpose ; for on its walls and pillars alone were collected more than half the total of our texts . Whether this chamber served as a chapel we cannot learn ; to-day no remains of Christian building are traceable in the temple precincts, to show whether a church or monastery ever occupied the spaces about the ancient walls and columns . Although it is evident that most of the texts were written by or for women — male names do not occur except in the lists of saints or clerical dignitaries — they give no clear indication as to where the writers dwelt . One ( or more ) monasteries are indeed mentioned or implied ; perhaps that " of Tboulianê " or Belyana in B. 11 ; while " the people of Pertês " ( Bardis ) occur in No. 26 . The neighbouring monastery of Moses however, as the Dair to the West of the temple appears to be now named, recalls the saint so prominently invoked in the graffiti ( v. especially 19, 36, B. 11 ) . This Moses is called by Makrizi a native of Belyana . Presumably he is identical with the monastic hero who, with his brethren, wrecked the still surviving heathen temple at Abydos ( Ebôt ) and whose career is made to fall somewhere between the death of Shenoute ( 451 ) and the accession of the patriarch Theodosius I ( 536 ) . But whether this person is the same with the archimandrite - likewise subsequent to Shenoute - who addressed epistles to a community of nuns and composed a ' canon ',  has not been demonstrated . The fact that our graffiti name various female officials of a convent, points at any rate to a nun's community in the neighbourhood . But to what period the texts should be assigned it is not easy to determine . Moses indeed is often referred to as an already recognized saint . But only one text allows of precise determination : B. 11 records Gabriel as the archbishop, thus in all probability indicating the beginning of the 10th century . B. 13 perhaps mentions a visit of Pesynthius of Coptos, which would be in about the years 600-620 ; this, however, is quite uncertain . Arguments drawn from the palaeographical features of such rough inscriptions can not at present have much value .

The sequence of the graffiti in the plates is due to considerations of size and space. According to contents they can be grouped and are here described as follows : Scriptural quotations ( protective charms ), invocations &c., proper names with accompanying prayers, names only, texts referring to the rise of the river . The last of these groups is especially interesting but not wholly intelligible .

Good bye .. See you in another place