Saturday, March 19, 2016
Pleasantly Distracted
4:48pm

I've been pleasantly distracted today. I assembled my sketch model for an art piece I _HOPE_ to have finished by the weekend. That took some doing. Working out a proper "offering formula" was the hardest part, but thanks to two hieroglyph books I have, I think I've got a reasonable facsimile. Now only to get it all drawn. Then colored, but at this stage, coloring may be a while off.

So how did this distraction begin? I was on Facebook and followed a link to a page about the Aswan museum. I saw a sistrophorus statue there, rather small, and hard to make out its details. I got determined to find a better photo. I found one:


Statue of the viceroy Amun-Mes
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, from Elephantine
Nubia Museum at Aswan
Photographer "Kairoinfo4u"
"Horus3" has another view of this piece

Just who is the strange figure under Menkheperra's cartouche? It's been rather damaged. But looking more closely, it appears to be Heh, the personification of infinity and one of the primeval deities of the Ogdoad. He is "usually kneeling and grasping in each hand a notched palm branch which was used for ceremonial time/record keeping in the temples and was thus used as the hieroglyphic symbol for 'years'" (Wilkinson, Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, (Thames and Hudson 2003), pages 109-110) The curl of the palm branches in the statue above appears to be curling protectively around Menkheperra's (Thutmose III) cartouche.

Meanwhile, my meandering didn't stop there. In the hopes of finding out more, I did a search for "Elephantine". And that led to a nice Hathor column with a pleasingly undisturbed face. Okay, what was on her head isn't clear, but the face, she is beautiful:


An image of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor in the Satet Temple at the Abu ruins on Elephantine Island near Aswan, Egypt.
Photographer David Stanley


Is there a matching Hathor head on the other side of the column?
Photographer Heidi Kontkanen
"Horus3" has another view.


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