Ancient Egyptian Forum

Merytre-Hatshepsut · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:18 pm Post subject: Festival in honor of Hathor

I thought I would share this for the fun of it:

There's a print in one of the Mastaba books showing a festival in honor of the goddess Hathor.

It's a line drawing, and I did a bit of research into colors used in the tombs.
The hieroglyphs for instance were drawn in a variety of colors in the tomb of Meresankh. I colored the inked sketch with watercolor.
I'm still not happy with the colors of the men. They are more reddish brown, but here it goes Very Happy

In the first register we see a group of young men playing a game referred to as "prisoner" in the book. Next to them are two men wrestling. On the right are the two sons (Qar and Idu) of the tomb owner doing some fight possibly involving daggers?

Below that we see a group of female dancers. The one on the right is Bendjet, the daughter of the tomb owner Idu.

On the third register we see men plaing some game which may be related to senet.

The fourth register shows the musicians. The two girls on the right are Iry and Nebet, daughters of Idu.

Below that we see food preparation.

Idu himself is shown on the right. His image has been recarved at least once. I think it gives a funny sense of motion Very Happy

It looks to me like he is waving a stick and tapping his arm on the armrest Laughing

I just loved this scene showing these festivities.

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Hatshepsut76 · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:27 pm Post subject:

M-H, your idea of putting here this image has been good: I find it very beautiful! I think you're right when you say "I just loved this scene showing these festivities"... I love it too! Wink

bel · Pharaoh Joined: 25 May 2003 Posts: 501

I found this to be of interest:
THE ROUND ZODIAC CEILING
OF THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT DENDERAH
http://home.maine.rr.com/imyunnut/Den.Round.html
http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html

Merytre-Hatshepsut · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:49 am Post subject:

So the festival could have been:
January 23 Day of Het-Hert (Hathor)
or
April 1 Day of Het-Hert (Hathor)

That's interesting. Of course it's assuming that the festival days would be the same in the old kingdom.

Lostris · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:10 pm Post subject:

I got these festival days, but I don't know when they started to celebrate these, so they might not be in that pic. There are the festivals of Hathor what I found in a site.

January 1: day of Hathor
March 10: day of Hathor
April 27: Hathor sails for Punt
August 7: birth of Hathor
August 26: feast of Hathor
August 30: honors Hathor
September 12: feast of Hathor
September 29: procession of Hathor
October 7: procession of Hathor & Sekhmet
October 11: holy day of Hathor
November 6: feast of Hathor & Sekhmet
December 1: feast of Hathor

Correct me, if I wrote something wrong, but these were all in that site. Wink

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Psusennes I · Pharaoh Joined: 09 Sep 2004 Posts: 913 Location: England

The first site seemed fairly accurate, but the second website gave the Egyptian months modern Gregorian date equivalents, which even top Egyptologists struggle to do. The second site seemed dubious- it simply is far too difficult to convert Egyptian dates and months (that varied and became out of synchrony with the modern seasons) such exact Gregorian dates.
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