The Egyptian Museum, the funeral Labels. A

Painted by Yasser kamel

The Egyptian Museum, the funeral Labels. A


The archaic history in Egypt is featured with its sophisticated belongings. The Thini-kings of first and the second dynasties who had located their tombs mainly at Abydus are included by the Archaic Period, 3200 -3000 B.C. The most outstanding finds of those kings are the funeral labels. The funeral labels were always made out of hard materials such as ivory or stone in order to last for long, their main function according to the Egyptian creeds was to ascertain the possession of the objects that they were attached to, in addition to that, they were also incised with inscriptions that brief the status of the country or commemorate a victory or a battle. The ivory label that is shown here is a good sample to the collection we have in the Egyptian museum or the British museum or the louver museum. This label dates back to the reign of the archaic/thini king Djer, 3200-3100 B.C; the label has three registers of inscriptions. In the first register, from the right the nisu sign appears to refer to the southern origin of the king then below of it appears a sign of a land or a field which had become afterwards to represent the nomes or provinces, then further down you can see a scene of surgery is the oldest been found obviously we can see a surgeon with a blade or spatula is executing an immediate Tracheotomy. This surgery is believed to be practiced in Archaic Egypt. Also we can see a flag-bearer, then two bearers one caries a bird " a vulture" while the other man bears a cat-fish, then the sign mes or mas appears above the two bearers possibly to refer to the royal title "the child of the vulture "Nakhbet" or the cat-fish goddess or both". Then just beside them there is another man who bears a mummy which seems to be a royal one and followed by another man who caries a flag-pole while heading to a structure in the form of the Serkh with Horus the falcon god right above which emphasizes a funeral that is heading to the grave. The middle register shows from the right, two seated human figures or statues for royal ones with lotus-flower head dress, then some signs of birds also a man seems to arrange some round items in front of a duck which emphasizes the idea of domesticating it or breeding it or feeding it. Then we see two last symbol-bearers one has the Serkh then the other has a stand with a figure of a bull which signs for the victory and the Heb-Sed and one more birth sign. The third one has a lot to do with the environment and Egypt nature as it shows the Nile-river, birds, fish "probably the Nile-Perch", plant "most probably a sugar-cane" and a drowned man. We only come to one specific conclusion that the ancients of Egypt even at the archaic era were a lot more civilized than we ever thought, they also were aware of the importance of recording their history and their knowledge . Copyrig ©Musegypt. 2006.