Footnotes :

156  Richard H. Wilkinson “Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture”, Thames and Hudson, London, 1992, page 107.
 

157 For a detailed discussion of the scenes on this mace, see Rolf Gundlach: “Der Pharaoh und sein Staat: Die Grundlegung der ägyptischen Königsideologie im 4. und 3. Jahrtausend”,
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1998, pages 68 to 73.

For the dating of king Narmer's reign, see the Chronological Table in John Baines and Jaromir Malek's "Atlas of Ancient Egypt", Facts on File, New york, 1980, edition consulted 1984, page 8.
 

158 Joseph Campbell: “The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology”, 1962, edition consulted Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1982, pages 74 to 83, see picture and comments on page 76.
 

159 Greg Reeder: “Running the Heb Sed: Egypt’s dynastic monarchs periodically underwent ritualized death and rebirth, thus magically invigorating their reigns as well as guaranteeing the continued prosperity of the Two Lands and their people”, KMT, Winter 1993/94, pages 60 to 71, first quote on page 62 left.
 

160 Joseph Campbell: “The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology”, cited above, quotes from page 77.
 

161 W. Raymond Johnson: “The Dazzling Sun Disk: Iconographic evidence that Amenhotep III reigned as the Aten Personified”, KMT, Summer 1991, pages 14 to 23, see pages 14 and 19 for examples of this “juvenilized” style.
 

162 Dennis C. Forbes: “Nebmaatre Amenhotep III”, KMT, Summer 1992, pages 24 to 34, see pages 31 and 33.
 

163 Mark Lehner: “The Complete Pyramids”, Thames and Hudson, London, 1997, page 92.
 

164 Greg Reeder: “Running the Heb-Sed: Egypt’s dynastic monarchs periodically underwent ritualized death & rebirth, thus magically invigorating their reigns as well as guaranteeing the continued prosperity of the Two Lands and their people”, KMT, Winter 1993/4, pages 60 to 71, see page 65.

  The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk  
   by Peter Aleff        Scroll 20

5.5. Mid-life renewals in Senet  and on the Disk

The rosette in field 31, near the middle of the Phaistos track, highlights yet another parallel with Senet and some of its sibling games. The corresponding square 15 at the center or navel of the 30-square Senet board often bore signs even when the rest were blank, except for the above discussed five last ones.

The photographs and drawings published by Pusch show a dozen examples of so decorated fields, some with good news for the player whereas others emphasized the bad- news aspect of the same event :

• six boards have there a rosette with eight leaves (Plates 65; 79; 80; 81; 94; 95), just like the corresponding middle of the Phaistos track.
  

• one displays an “ankh”, the sign of “Life” (Plate 60)
  

• one shows a frog (Plate 102). According to Richard H. Wilkinson’s “Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture”¹⁵⁶, the frog was admired for the abundance of its offspring and so became

  • 
    “a symbol of creation, fertility, birth, and regeneration. As an underworld animal it was associated with the forces which initially brought life into being. The four male gods of the primeval eight who ruled before the creation of the world (...) were thus frog-headed.”

  In tune with those meanings, the frog was sacred to the goddess of childbirth, and in the later New Kingdom the frog hieroglyph was also used to write the ritual expression “repeating life”.
   

• one fragment has an X, the same sign of “difficulty” and “danger” that others displayed on square 27 which was broken off from this copy (Plate 43).
  

• two have a net (Plates 52 top and 86). This was and is a symbol for snares, pit falls, and traps, and in this context appears to be equivalent to the dangers of the “X” field or of the maze.
  

• one has a checkerboard (Plate 52 bottom) which is an embellished net and had probably the same meaning.

We find similar symbols in the centrally located field of the “Game of Twenty Squares” which appeared in Egypt together with the Hyksos and was from then on often played on the reverse side of Senet boards.

• Two examples have a rosette there (Plates 87 and 99), and one displays a “was-scepter” and a “djed-pillar” of stability together with an “ankh” sign of “Life” (Plate 60).
  

• In this game, too, this field did not bring pure joy because other examples show there the “nefer” sign which designated the embalming house (Plate 51); one copy also had there again the net (Plate 52).
  

• The most damaged of these examples is also the most revealing one because it delivers the good news together with the bad. It unites in this square the “ankh” of life with the “nefer” sign of the embalming house (Plate 65), confirming again that this square, and also the more frequent rosettes on it, had this double meaning.

We have thus both on the center of the Egyptian boards as well as on the central field of the Phaistos track a passage through death and renewal in the middle of the path through the gamepieces’ or players’ lives. This matches various ancient ceremonies of renewal for the living.

5.5.1. The Heb-Sed festival of pharaonic renewal

The Egyptian version of these ceremonies, the above mentioned Heb-Sed festival of royal rejuvenation and re-affirmation, formed an essential part of the pharaonic ideology from its beginning to its end.

An illustration of this ritual appears already on the so-called “wedding mace” of king Narmer who founded the united Egyptian state around 2920 BCE¹⁵⁷, and a seal of king Den from a century later also depicts the main scene of the same festival¹⁵⁸.

In a recent article titled “Running the Heb Sed”, the Egyptologist Greg Reeder described the surviving evidence:

“Though depictions of the Sed-festival are recorded on scattered monuments dating back to the Archaic Period, most information on the event comes from a few major sites: the Step Pyramid complex of Djoser at Sakkara; the sun temple of Niuserre at Abu Gurob; the temple of Amenhotep III at Soleb in Nubia; and the so- called Festival Hall of Osorkon II at Bubastis. Add to these depictions those on diverse blocks and other isolated scenes, and a picture emerges of the mysterious rites of the Heb Sed.” ¹⁵⁹

Reeder aptly summarized that picture in his subtitle for that article:

“Egypt’s dynastic monarchs periodically underwent ritualized death and rebirth, thus magically invigorating their reigns as well as guaranteeing the continued prosperity of the Two Lands and their people”.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell also discussed this rite, and he compared it with the almost universally found formula for the “Adventure of the Hero”.  As he described this “earliest passion play of which we have record”:

“in terms of its component folkloristic motifs, the plot might be summarized as follows: Pharaoh (the Hero), when it became known to him that the time had come for him to be slain, set forth to procure a token of his qualification for continued possession of his throne (Call to Adventure).

Led by the “Opener of the Way” (Guide to Adventure; Magical Aid), he entered the palace of the underworld (Threshold of Adventure; Labyrinth; Land of the Dead) where he touched the four sides of the land of Egypt (Difficult Task; Micro-macrocosmic correspondence), and with the goddess of the land of Egypt assisting (Magical Aid; Ariadne Motif; Supernatural Bride), was thereupon acknowledged by his dead father Osiris (Father At-one-ment).

He received the Will (Divine Designation; Token; Elixir), and in new attire (Apotheosis), reappeared before his folk (Resurrection; Return), to resume his throne (Adventure Achieved).”¹⁶⁰

At least one king, Amenhotep III (1391 to 1353 BCE), took the promised renewal so seriously that he had his sculptors portray him as a conspicuouly young and even baby- faced man after he had performed that ceremony for the first time¹⁶¹.

However, his rejuvenation festival and his portrayals in that “juvenilizing” style did not have the full effect he may have expected.  The obese king was in poor health and suffered from multiple dental abscesses.  He needed relief fast and could not wait again the customary thirty years, so he quickly held two more such festivals, in his years 34 and 37.

But although he took great pains to restore the most ancient and thus most potent forms of the ritual, something must have gone wrong again, and he died in year 38 of his reign¹⁶².

On the other hand, whatever the actual rejuvenation powers of the Heb-Sed may have been, the ritual served to re-affirm the king’s right to rule. This is why it belonged to the core of the pharaonic system and endured so long.

You can appreciate the central importance of this Heb- Sed festival when you look at the massive step pyramid complex of king Djoser (2630 to 2611 BCE) in Sakkara. Next to the pyramid itself, the major buildings in its vast court were Heb-Sed chapels and other structures required for that festival.

Apparently, the replication of these temporary rite accessories in permanent stone was meant to enable the king to continue renewing himself periodically by celebrating Heb-Seds in the afterworld.

Since the king was an incarnation of the sun, this emphasis on his continued periodic rejuvenation confirms again that the sun, too, needed periodic renewal even in the timeless realm of eternity.

Another remarkable feature in Djoser’s complex is the South Tomb which replicates on a smaller scale the actual tomb under the pyramid. It is too small to hold a human corpse, and no one knows why it was built, but according to Mark Lehner’s “Complete Pyramids”, various suggestions have been made that it was “a fictive tomb for a ritual death during the Heb-Sed ceremonies when the king renewed his vital forces”¹⁶³.

Similarly, some of the statue burials in satellite pyramids of royal tombs have been interpreted as substitutes for kings who went through their symbolic death but were unwilling to stay buried in person.

Some of the celebrants, such as the Sixth-Dynasty king Niuserre, Seti I from the 19th Dynasty, and Osorkon II from the 23rd, also had themselves depicted resting during the ceremonies on their funerary bier or in their sarcophagus, though Seti’s artists inscribed above that scene the hieroglyph for “awake”¹⁶⁴.

Much more has been and can be said about this prototype of the renewal adventure, but for our purposes here let us simply note that the king had to enter the underworld and so to symbolically die himself before he could get renewed, despite the prior sacrifice of the Apis-bull stand-in.