Egypt Exploration Society

Two Wooden UraeiAuthor(s): Ebba Kerrn LillesoSource: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 61 (1975), pp. 137-146Published by: Egypt Exploration SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3856495Accessed: 28/03/2010 17:17

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TWO WOODEN URJEI

By EBBA KERRN LILLES0

At the loan exhibition Antik kunst i dansk privateje. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. I5. maj til 3I. august 1974. Inv. no. 58 A+B.

AMONG the many antiquities of the loan exhibition at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in

Copenhagen were two wooden uraei, one wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, the other the crown of Lower Egypt. They do not, however, constitute a pair and will be described separately.

A. The first uraeus wears the crown of Upper Egypt. Except for a small break on the right side of the crown-obviously owing to a knot in the wood-the uraeus is intact from the top of the crown to the base, where it had originally been tapped on to some unknown object. The tenon is still in position and shows sign of having been broken, whereas the end of the snake appears unbroken. The tenon goes right through the base from front to back. The head is beautifully carved, mouth and jaw being indicated by a fine line. The incision from the eye socket is continued over the cheek down over the flaring hood, melting into the back of the hood at a point approximately I"5 cm. below the shoulders.

Remains of paint are still noticeable in a few places. Red: a tiny spot under the jaw, on top of the head below the edge of the crown, and

in the furrows running from the eye sockets over the cheeks to the back and on the iris of the eyes.

The pupil is black. Dark blue: in front of the eye sockets towards the nose of the snake. Material: coniferous wood, probably cedar. The measurements are: Height, i6*5 cm., height of crown, 5 cm. Width, 4-6 cm.,

width at base of hood, 2*8 cm. The tenon is roughly square, 0o9 cm. wide and 0o8 cm. high.

B. Although this uraus has retained more of its original colour, it is decidedly coarser in the carving. The head is surmounted by the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and is fairly plumb, the nose is somewhat broader and heavier; there are no carved indi- cations of jaw and mouth. The top and left side of the crown is broken off as well as the left shoulder of the hood. Apart from this the uraus is intact down to the original base, where the back shows the old tenon, which in this case is more regularly rectangular and it does not run through the entire base to the front, as it does on the other item. The line from the eye sockets over the cheeks to the back of the hood is carved rather deeply and ends about I cm. below the shoulder.

PLATE XXII

EBBA KERRN LILLES0

A B

FIG. I

The remains of colour are-though vague-sufficient to give some indication of the original colours, which follow the normal pattern for the New Kingdom:' dark spine and frame indicating upper circle, middle and lower panel, where the traces are almost too vague to identify the original colour.

Red: the colour of the crown is preserved almost intact except at the break; the iris is red with black pupil. Remains of red are found on the middle panels.

Dark blue: vague traces near the outer border of the circle. Bright blue: remains of a vivid, almost turquoise blue are found in the cavity of the

eye sockets towards the nose and bright blue in the carved furrows from the eyes towards the back of the hood.

The spine and frame are indicated by a very dark colour, almost black: the lower panel is darkish and cannot be identified, as the traces are too vague.

Material: coniferous wood (cedar). The measurements are: Height, I4 cm., height of crown, 4 cm. Width over hood to

break, 3-5 cm., at base, 2-6 cm. The tenon is rectangular, og9 cm. wide and i cm. high. See pl. XXII, A-B, and fig. i.

The measures and the carving technique of these two wooden urei clearly indicate that they did not originally form a pair. They must, however, each have been one of a pair-or several pairs-and this: A+one ureus wearing the crown of Lower Egypt and B+one uraeus wearing the crown of Upper Egypt.

I H. G. Evers, Staat aus dem Stein, 11, ?? 154-7.

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TWO WOODEN URAEI

In order to try to establish the approximate date and the original use of such a pair of crowned uraei, we must first consider the royal sculpture, where such uraei appear. From the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty the kings habitually wear an ureus on sculpture;2 the royal emblem is worn in connection with the nemes, on a diadem or directly on the hair. Not until the Middle Kingdom did the ureus appear on the Upper and Lower Egyptian crowns and the first example of the double crown plus uraeus in sculpture is found on a statue of Sesostris I from Karnak.3 The blue crown or helmet- hprs-is first mentioned in a text from the Thirteenth Dynasty published by J. v. Beckerath.4 King Neferhotep III is described as 'being adorned with the hprs, the living image of Rec, the lord of terror'. The blue crown is known from relief work from the early New Kingdom-on the encrusted axehead with Ahmose's name from Ahho- tep's tomb and on a relief of Amenophis I from Karnak in the small sanctuary.5 In sculpture the blue crown became popular under Amenophis III, where it is worn with the uraeus-most elaborately coiled.

Normally the kings wear but one uraeus at the brow, but there are a few examples of two urei on sculptures of kings:

The canopic lids of Amenophis II. G. Daressy, Fouilles de la vallee des rois. CCG no. 5030, pl. 50. Canopic lids of Horemheb. Th. M. Davis, The tomb of Harmhabi, pls. 75 and 76. An unfinished sculpture of Akhenaten. G. Legrain, Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers.

CCG no. 42089. Ramesses II in Cairo. Ch. Desroches-Noblecourt, BSFE no. 23, pp. I6-I7. A 4 mm. high fragment of the upper part of a head. L. Borchardt, Statuen und Statuetten von

Konige und Privatleute. CCG no. 760.

In none of these cases do these uraei wear the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. During the Twenty-fifth Dynasty the Kushite kings regularly wore the double urei.

A huge head in Cairo (CCG no. 42010) represents Shabako6 wearing the double crown, two uraei with the additional Upper and Lower Egyptian crowns. The double-cobra diadem was particularly popular during the reign of Taharqa; the sculpture of this period has been thoroughly analysed by Edna R. Russmann, 'Two Royal heads of the Late Period in Brooklyn', The Brooklyn Museum Annual, 10 (I968-9). Further to this period see J. Leclant, Recherches sur les Monuments Thebains de la XXVe Dynastie dite Ethiopienne.

As all sculptures of the Late Period were destined for the temples and as life-sized statuary in wood from this time does not occur, it seems rather unlikely that the two wooden uraei can have belonged to a late sculpture of a king: in addition to this the

2 With the exception of the group of Mycerinus and Kha-merer-nebty, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts no. I, i738.

3 Cairo J.E. 38287; J. Vandier, Manuel d'Archeologie egyptienne, III, pl. 95, i. 4 For further references to other examples of the hprs' from the Thirteenth Dynasty and H. W. Miiller's

assumption of-its Lower Egyptian origin see Jiirgen von Beckerath, Untersuchungen zur politische Geschichte d. zweiten Zwischenzeit in Agypten (Agypt. Forschungen, 23, 1965), 68.

5 The axehead: W. Stevenson Smith, Art and Architecture, pl. 86. The Karnak relief: H. W. Muller, Agyptische Kunst, pl. 91.

6 S. Sauneron and J. Yoyotte, BIFAO, 50 (1952), 93, and J. Leclant, Recherches sur les Monuments Thebains de la XXve Dynastie, ? 33.

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EBBA KERRN LILLES0

colour pattern corresponds to that of the New Kingdom, as mentioned above (p. I38). Sculptures of queens from the Old Kingdom are comparatively rare, but the most com- mon head-ornament-apart from diadems-seem to have been the vulture cap, which is known from the Fourth Dynasty.7 A perfect little alabaster group of Pepi II on his mother's lap shows the queen wearing a heavy tripartite wig with a vulture cap; a hole on her forehead indicates that the cap originally had an additional ornament, probably the vulture head of Nekhebet.8 Another sculpture of a queen from the Sixth Dynasty (CCG 255) also shows the vulture cap; in this case the frontal ornament is so badly destroyed that we can only assume that it was once a vulture's head. There are-to my knowledge-no examples of queens wearing the royal cobra on Old-Kingdom statuary, whereas they habitually have one during the Middle Kingdom. The heavy tripartite wig of the Old Kingdom was generally abandoned in favour of the Hathor coiffure, where the ureus was placed at the parting of the hair above the forehead. The old- fashioned tripartite wig does, however, still exist on sculptures of queens from the Middle Kingdom, now adorned with the uroeus, as for instance the fine sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (M.M.A. 08. 202. 7)9 and the interesting little monument in copper of princess Sebek-nakht nursing a royal infant (Brooklyn Museum

43- I37)-10 The vulture cap is, however, not used by the queens of the Middle Kingdom, which

is rather strange considering the increasing importance of the goddess Mut. Even the

fragmentary sculpture of a queen wearing the Hathor coiffure with diadem and uraeus in connection with a fragmentary vulture's body, does not have the feathery cap." From the onset of the New Kingdom the vulture cap became very popular on sculptures of queens; most charming of all is probably the statuette of Tetisheri in the British Museum.12

A royal lady of the early New Kingdom, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,'3 favoured the heavy tripartite wig adorned with the vulture cap and head; the head of the vulture has been broken off, but the shape of the break is too round and broad to have belonged to the much slimmer and higher form of the cobra.

The Hathor coiffure was still in use in the first part of the New Kingdom, best illustrated by a fine statuette of princess Iahhotep in the Louvre (N 446) ;4 the sculp- ture was presumably made before she became queen, as she dos not wear the uraeus. The Hathor head-dress is mainly found during the time of Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III, as for instance on the female sphinx in Cairo J.E. 56599I5 and another sphinx formerly ascribed to Hatshepsut in Museo Barracco no. I3.16 This female sphinx probably represents a wife of Tuthmosis III, as it has the cartouche of this king; there

7 Relief fragment published by G. Reisner, Mycerinus, pl. I7d. 8 The Brooklyn Museum acc. no. 39. I20, Egyptian Art in The Brooklyn Museum Collection, pl. 19. 9 W. C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, I, fig. I22. 10 Egyptian Art in The Brooklyn Museum Collection, pl. 28. " Cairo J.E. 64770, Vandier, Manuel, III, pi. 75, I-2, and L. Keimer in ASAE 35 (I935), 182-92. 12 British Museum 22 558, Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum (I964), fig. 68. '3 W. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, II, fig. 26. 14 Vandier, Manuel, II, pl. 96, 2. Is Ibid. pl. I02, 3. I6 Ibid. 300, pl. 98, 7.

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TWO WOODEN URAEI

is thus no indication that it represents Hatshepsut.17 Both sphinxes wear the vulture cap and frontal ornament instead of the usual nemes and ureus.

Two other royal ladies, believed to have been wives of Tuthmosis III,18 are shown wearing the vulture cap on a Hathor head-dress, but now adorned with the royal uraeus (Cairo, Cat. Gen. 42009 and J.E. 45076).

After this time the Hathor coiffure is only sporadically used by the queens, as, for example, on the colossal bust of a royal lady, presumably from the court of Ramesses II (British Museum 60I), who wears it in connection with one uraeus.

A bust of a queen in Baltimore,19 who is shown wearing the Hathor head-dress with vulture cap (the vulture's head is broken off), has been attributed to the Middle Kingdom by Steindorff(ibid. p. 23) and to the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty by Vandier.20 According to H. W. Mtiller's oral communication it belongs to the Late Period-from the end of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty to the early Ptolemaic Period. Considering the style, I am inclined to favour the later date.

The two crowns of Egypt were identified with the vulture goddess Nekhbet-the White Crown of Upper Egypt (Pyr. 9io)-and the cobra goddess Wadjet, representing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, together called nbty, 'the two mistresses'.21 Nekhbet was early connected with the king, and her White Crown is greeted as his mother (Pyr. 9I0 a-b); as such the vulture cap and head became the natural ornament for the queens, whereas the kings kept to the fiery cobra, assigned to him as the double uraei (Pyr. i287b). The combination of a king's head and a cobra's body, as represented in a

single fragmentary item in the Walters Art Gallery, no. I4322 is of great interest for the connection between royalty and cobra, but the subject is outside the scope of this article.

The dualism-vulture and cobra-representing the political union of the Two Lands and the double ureus representing the religious concept of the eyes of Re< is of interest for the further development of the royal head-ornaments. With the mounting in- fluence of Amfin of Thebes and his vulture consort, Mut, the vulture cap and head became increasingly more popular on New Kingdom royal statuary. There was a close association between Mut and the crowned urai; she is shown wearing the double crown of Egypt, vulture cap and a diadem with the vulture's head in the centre flanked

by two uraei on a temple relief from Abydos.23 The single vulture or uraeus were the main royal ornaments for the queens of the

early New Kingdom till we come to the interesting statue of Isis (CCG 42072), the concubine of Tuthmosis II, who became the mother of Tuthmosis III. She is shown

wearing a heavy wig surmounted by an ornamental circlet-later to develop into the

17 I thank H. W. Miiller for calling my attention to this. I8 Vandier, Manuel, III, pi. 104, 6 and 7, p. 315. For a detailed drawing of Cairo J.E. 45076 see B. Horne-

mann, Types of Ancient Egyptian Statuary, no. 1049. '1 G. Steindorff, Catalogue of the Egyptian Sculpture in the Walters Art Gallery, fig. 31, inv. no. 22. 405. 20 Vandier, Manuel, II, 3I5, pl. 103, 5. 2x Hugo Miiller, Dieformale Entwicklung der Titulatur der dgyptischen Kdnige(Agyptologische Forschungen,

7), 38 ff. 22 G. Steindorff, Egyptian Sculpture in the Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 22. 367, p. 49. 23 Temple of Sethos I at Abydos: see W. Wolf, Die Welt der Agypter, pl. 92.

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EBBA KERRN LILLESO

cobra circlet. Isis does not wear the vulture cap at her front, but the at rofirst example in sculpture of the two uraei crowned with the Upper and Lower Egyptian crowns. Some of the Tuthmosid kings were the result of marriages between reigning kings and secondary wives: the mother of Tuthmosis II, Mutnofret, wore one uraeus; the mother of Tuthmosis III, Isis, wore two crowned uraei, but his son-Amenophis II- was the result of Tuthmosis III's marriage to the divine consort of Amuin, Meryetre Hatshepsut II, and thus had royal blood on both sides. He married the great royal wife Tiy, possibly his half-sister (CCG 42080), who again wore the vulture cap and head in the group of herself and her son Tuthmosis IV. When we examine Tiy-the non- royal queen of Amenophis III-we find her regaled almost more royally than royalty and more divinely than divinity. On the huge group in conventional style of the royal couple in Cairo (N.E. XI)24 Tiy wears three crowned urai; the handsome head in Cairo (CCG 609) is adorned with to crowned uri and a crowned vultureie's head between them. A statuette in the Louvre (N. 232) has two urei with a vulture in the centre; the magnificent head from Sinai25 (Cairo J.E. 38. 257) and the Brussels relief (E. 2I57)26 also show her wearing two crowned uraei. The exquisite head of Tiy in Berlin (21834)27 originally had but one-possibly composite-ornament at the brow, the hole for which was filled as the head was given a new wig with two frontal ornaments, now lost, but probably the two uraei like the ones found on her one free ear-ring, where the cobras have small unframed sundiscs on their heads.

Tiy's over-elaborate head-dresses were not continued by Nefertiti, who on statuary seems to have contented herself with the single uraus, whereas some reliefs from Amarna show her wearing two urai, crowned with horns and sundiscs.28 The orna- mental circlet with snake decorations, which is so typical on representations of Tiy, was occasionally worn by Nefertiti-Cairo IoI O/26/4)29 as well as by Ankhes-amun,30 who may have one or two plain or sundisc-crowned urei.

The ornament composed of horns and sundisc-commonly worn by Isis and Hathor -surmounts the urai at the brow of Mutnodjem from the Turin group3' of her and Horemheb. Ramesses II's queen, Nofretari, wears two uraei with horned sundiscs at one of her statues in Luxor32 and two uraei with crowns at another.33

A fine head of a royal lady, probably from the time of Ramesses II (CCG 600) also wears the two crowned urai, whereas two other royal ladies of the same period have but a single uraeus each (British Museum 601 and 602), and this continues to be the practice till we reach the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, when the double crowned uraTi

24 Vandier, Manuel, rii, pl. io8, i. 25 C. Aldred, New Kingdom Art, pls. 78 and 79. 26 Ibid., pi. 80. 27 L. Borchardt, Der Portrdtkopf der Konigin Teje (1911). H. Schafer, Das Simonsche Holzk6pfchen der

Konigin Teje, ZAS 68 (1932), 8I-6. This article contains a thorough analysis of the head and pl. 6, c-d show X-ray photographs of the hidden ear-ring. See also C. Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti (Brooklyn, 1973), 105.

28 C. Aldred, ibid., catalogue, figs. 18 and I20, Berlin I5000, a queen with two plain uraei. 29 Ibid., catalogue, fig. 34. 30 H. W. Muller, Agyptische Kunst, pi. I33. 31 E. Scamuzzi, Egyptian Art in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, pi. 32, no. I379. 32 Archille Carlier, Thebes, pi. 32. 33 A. Weigall, Ancient Egyptian Works of Art, pl. 274, I. G. Roeder, Statuen dgyptischer Koniginnen, No. I9.

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reappear at the brow of the divine consorts of Amun (CCG 654 and Berlin IoII4);34 the statue of Amenirdis I in Cairo (CCG 565) has two uncrowned urai supplemented with the vulture-head.

The double uncrowned uraei are fairly common during the Ptolemaic Period; two

sculptures of Arsinoe II in New York and the Vatican35 and an unnamed princess from the same collection36 all wear this ornament. The strange occurrence of three urei on Ptolemaic queens has been commented on by B. V. Bothmer, who gives additional examples in Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 146-7, where he also cites H. W. Miiller's suggestion that the centre uraeus is an assimilation of the queen's vulture head to the two urai. The combination of the double ureus with a vulture's head in the centre is quite common on Late Period bronzes of goddesses, especially Isis.37 It is typical of these late bronzes that the vulture's head is moved forward to the brow with the urei placed slightly further back on the head. The urai may even in these cases be adorned with horn-framed sundiscs.38

It does not seem likely, as mentioned above, that our two wooden urei belonged to

sculptures from the Late Period; the divine consorts of Amuin are the only group of

royal ladies to have had sculptures made of them during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty.39 Not until the early Ptolemaic Period does the statuary of queens reappear and at that time wood was not employed for life-size statues of royalty.

The two crowned urai might be presumed to have belonged to a royal coffin, but these had only one uncrowned uraus, if any, at their brow, with the exception of Tutcankhamin, to whose head ornaments we shall return below.

The coffin of the queen and divine consort of Amin, Macat-ka-re40 of the Twenty- first Dynasty has actually three holes at the front:41 the ornaments are missing, but

probably consisted of two uraei and a vulture. The coffins, miniature sarcophagi, and

canopic lids of Tutcankhamun are of special interest, as they are unique and complete. The young king has stressed the return to the traditional religion by having both the

royal cobra and vulture-representing Wadjet and Nekhbet-at his brow. These

representatives of the crowns of the Two Lands are constantly repeated thus on the

golden diadem holding the beadwork uraeus skull-cap in place consisting of the vulture

and the urMeus,42 on the diadem,43 the Nebty-collar44 and the wedjat-pendant,45 where

34 H. Schiafer, Die Kunst Agyptens, pi. 423, 2.

35 Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 38, 10, ESLP no. 98, and Vatican no. 25, G. Botti and P. Romanelli, Le

Sculture del Museo Gregoriano Egizio, pl. 23, 31. 36 Vatican no. 29, ibid., pl. 23, 33. Cf. J. Gwyn Griffiths, JEA 47 (1961), II7 f. with pl. 9. 37 Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 89. 2. 660, ESLP no. I 13, and Turin no. 1385. E. Scamuzzi, Egyptian

Art in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, pl. I Io. 38 Louvre E. 200oo58, B. Hornemann, Statuary, no. 1255/6; Hildesheim 1739, ibid. 1275. 39 G. Steindorff, Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 54. 2021, no. 393, and G. Daressy, Statues de divinitds, CCG

nos. 39. 315 and 39. 324. 40 C. E. Sander-Hansen, Das Gottesweib des Amun, 8. 4' G. Daressy, Cercueils des Cachettes Royales, CCG no. 61028. 42 Chr. Desroches-Noblecourt, Tutankhamen, figs. IOI-3. 43 P. Fox, Tutankhamun's Treasure, pl. 34. 44 Ibid., pl. 35. 45 C. F. Nims, Thebes of the Pharaohs, pl. 32.

I43

the sacred eye is flanked by the two crowned goddesses and on a number of other orna- ments with similar symbols.46 The previous-and few-other royal diadems including the crown on the Hierakonpolis falcon,47 Sit-Hathor-Yunet's crown,48 the ureus of Sesostris II,49 and the Intef crown50 have but a single uncrowned uraus.

The tomb of Tut(ankhamuin contains four items of special interest to our inquiry as to what purpose our two wooden urai could originally have been used for. Their measurements- 6*5 cm. and I4 cm.-demand that they either belonged to an approxi- mately life-size sculpture or had an independent function. The material would make it natural that they had been tapped on to some wooden object. Tut(ankhamin's tomb is particularly rich in such objects in perfect condition; two life-size statues of Tut'an- khamun5I found in the antechamber belong to a group of funerary objects, of which a very limited number has been preserved, i.e. approximately life-size wooden statues, standing with a staff and mace, short shenti skirt with the nemes headcloth, short or bag wig with an ureus at the brow. These statues are I73 m. high.

From the tomb of Amenophis II comes a cedar statue of the king, measuring 80 cm.52 Of far greater size is the sycamore-wood statue of Horemheb,53 which originally must have measured about 2-20 m.; the head alone measures 35 cm.; the entire face is lost but two large tabs may indicate the former presence of two urai, although most probably they served as tenons for the now lost face-mask. There are thre ae Ramesside statues belonging to this group in the British Museum: no. 854 (567) comes from the tomb of Ramesses I and measures 1-95 m., no. 883 (685) comes from the same tomb and measures 2 m., whereas no. 882 (575) probably comes from the tomb of Ramesses II and only measures 1-40 m.54 These statues all have one single hole at the top of the brow into which the dowel of the uraus must have fitted.55 The cult statue of Ramesses II (Louvre E. 16277) with the blue helmet and one front hole probably does not belong to this group; it measures 70 cm.56

The wooden portrait figure of Tutcankhamun57 measures II 6 m., and has an uraus pegged to the brow; as is often the case, the body of the snake is merely painted on the background on the various crowns.

As the blunt ends of our uraei indicate, they have not been mutilated through being removed from their original position and the pegs suggest a fastening closely related to the technique employed on the Tutcankhamin figures, i.e. they must have been con- nected to a horizontal plane or panel. Another possible use for the crowned uraei may be that they were decorative elements in connection with royal furniture, as for instance on Tutcankhamun's golden throne,58 where two uraei of approximately the

46 Desroches-Noblecourt, op. cit., i66 ff. 47 H. W. Miiller, Agyptische Kunst, pi. 47. 48 C. Aldred, Jewels of the Pharaohs, pi. 39. 49 Ibid., pi. 43. 50 Ibid., pls. 82-3. 5' Fox, Tutankhamun's Treasure, pi. 17. 52 G. Daressy, Fouilles de la vallee des rois, CCG 24598. 53 Th. M. Davis, The tomb of Harmhabi, IOI, pi. 79. 54 Stanley Mayes, The Great Belzoni, 330. ss I want to thank Dr. I. E. S. Edwards for his kind communications concerning these three statues. 56 B. Bruyere, Rapport sur les Fouilles de deir el Medineh I935-40, vol. 20, 2, p. 53, no. 112, pl. 32. 57 Fox, op. cit., pi. 8, Desroches-Noblecourt, Tutankhamen, pi. 13. 58 Fox, op. cit., pl. 9.

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TWO WOODEN UR/EI

same size as ours wear the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt; they are placed at either side of the rear end of the throne between the back and the back panel. Tutcan- khamiin's canopic shrine59 has rows of solar uraei, and we cannot exclude the possi- bility that crowned uraei may have been used as architectural elements on shrines or chapels in wood; plain uraei had been used as cornice ornaments from the time of Djoser.

A pair of wooden urai found in a building at Amarna were 23 cm. high and may well have been used as decorative elements.60 Apart from being used as a royal emblem the cobra is not uncommonly found in connection with votive groups or as an independent religious object. From the tomb of Amenophis II comes a 17 cm. high uraeus,6I cut in sycamore wood, head erect with the coils of the body immediately behind resting on a rectangular base.

This form is found fairly frequently, either singly or forming part of bronze votive groups of the Late Period. There is a fine example in Baltimore of such a group where two crowned uraei in front of Anubis are facing the kneeling worshipper.62 When the uraei are placed on top of a pole or ceremonial staff the coils of the body tend to be shaped differently and the body of the snake is raised in a high loop behind the hood, the tail trailing downwards. Examples in wood of crowned uraei on top of poles are found on a votive group from El-Bersheh63 (dated to the Eighteenth Dynasty); their size is, however, just above 6 cm., so had our urai been used in such a fashion the whole group would have to be on a much larger scale.

A relief from the Osiris chapel, temple of Sethos I at Abydos64 shows Thoth with two ceremonial staves topped with the heraldic plants of Upper and Lower Egypt and two crowned uraei, which are of the same shape, with the high loop behind the hood; here the tails are winding round the staves. It seems most likely that such ornaments were of metal, possibly with inlays marking the colours. Religious staves with deities on top are far from rare and there is a fine lion-headed urs from Baltimore65 in sheet gold on a papyrus capital with a hole for insertion on a stick or staff. Wooden uraei do not have the same pronounced sculptural details of hood and spine as are found on those in stone or metal; they were painted on instead. The few remaining colours on uraus B show that it had the dark outer frame-line usual for the New Kingdom66 and that there were two coloured panels under the upper dark-blue circle. The angle between the heads and hoods is sharply defined in both cases-approximately i io?-which corre- sponds to the angle of the Tutcankhamuin uraei. The majority of uraeus heads on sculptures are unfortunately lost, but it seems that the angles on sculptures from the

59 Ibid., pi. 42. 60 H. Frankfort and J. D. S. Pendlebury, The city of Akhenaten Ir, 70, no. 31/289. 61 Daressy, Fouilles . . . vallee des rois, CCG 24628. 62 Walters Art Gallery no. 588, inv. no. 54. 4000, formerly publ. by Daressy, Statues de divinitees, CCG

38518. 63 A catalogue of the Egyptian Antiquities, F. G. Hilton Price, II, no. 4356, pl. 13. 64 K. Lange and M. Hirmer, Egypt (I957), pl. 220. 65 Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 57. 1432, p. 154. Height 7-6 cm. 66 Evers, Staat aus dem Stein, ? 154. 3330C74 L

I45

146 EBBA KERRN LILLES0

earlier part of the dynasty are slightly more right-angled, as for instance on the statue of Tuthmosis III (CCG 42053).

The two uraei here published possibly belonged to wooden funerary statues from the late New Kingdom or they may have been independent decorative elements from the same period. It is tempting to assume that they came from a tomb belonging to a minor queen, but there is so far no evidence of life-sized wooden funerary statues from such tombs.

Postscript A somewhat similiar wooden urseus of approximately the same height-I5-4 cm.-as the ones

under discussion, but with a solar disc on its head, has been published in Agyptische Kunst, Auktion

49, 27. Juni I974, Miinzen und Medaillen A.G., Basel, p. 55, no. 100, pi. 21. The lids of the canopic jars of Horemheb (p. I39) may have had one uraeus and one vulture

at the brow according to Edna R. Russmann, The Representation of the King in the XXVth

Dynasty (Brussels and Brooklyn, 1974), 37.