Compositional and typological analysis of the scene with the Sons of Horus and the "burial of Osiris” from the Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead in Ptolemaic Period (part two)

Abstract

This article is devoted to the scene from the number of vignettes-illustrations of the Book of the Dead in the last phase of its existence, the Ptolemaic Period. This scene is a part of illustrations to the Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead; it shows the four Sons of Horus and the "burial of Osiris”. The Ptolemaic sources were chosen for this analysis because of their quantity and a big percentage of them being unpublished. The previously compiled basis of sources had the total of 90 Books of the Dead, from which 69 are papyri and 21 are mummy bandages. The first step of compositional and typological analysis was in detecting the basic elements of the scene, which were: Duamutef, Hapi, Qebehsenuf, Amseti and the "burial of Osiris”. There was also detected a relatively stable element – the head of the deceased, which is often located on the top of the "burial of Osiris”. Variable characteristics were also examined. There were defined the two major compositional types of the scene according to the disposition of gods towards the "burial of Osiris”. One type was called "linear” because of placing gods in a row, by two on each side of the "burial”; the other was called "square” because of placing gods one under another, by two on each side of the "burial”. The allocation of each god in the composition of the scene was also considered. Our attention was also paid to the direction of the sight of the deceased and to the stylistic details of a decoration of each element of the scene. The glossary of all conceptualized terms was made and placed in the Appendix 1 of this article. Appendix 2 is a table of all of the detected features of the scene in each source. This table is organized by the type of the source (papyri or mummy bandage) and by their origin inside the first types. The text of the article is performed in the method of the descriptive analysis, where the common and diverse features are determined inside the groups. After the description of all of the groups of sources the general statistics is compiled. This statistics concerns the major variations of the features of the scene. Some intriguing, but less numerous features are also taken into account. The analysis of the whole variety of the composition of the scene and its decorative and stylistic features uncovered many striking details in the iconography of the scene. It was found that the division of the Ptolemaic Books of the Dead according to the stylistic features into Theban, Memphite and Achmim traditions is not manifested in the scene with the Sons of Horus and the "burial of Osiris”. Only some patterns were found in the Memphite papyri; the other schools introduce a great variety in the composition and in decorative elements (which are also similar for different schools). The basic compositional features are almost stable in all of the sources. With a small number of exceptions, the scene has a range of the permanent elements: the four Sons of Horus, the "burial of Osiris” and the head of the deceased on it. Allocations of these elements are fixed (with only two types of disposition of the Sons of Horus and only a few exceptions). Some more stable features of the scene were found in depiction of the Sons of Horus in the form of the canopic jars and vertically elongated form of the "burial of Osiris”. There was also found a regularity in allocations of the gods towards each other. The most constant type of disposition was found in placement of Duamutef and Amseti on one side of the "burial”, while Hapi and Qebehsenuf were placed on the other side. In this dispositional type there was also one more pattern: Duamutef and Qebehsenuf are placed vis-à-vis in the same way as do Amseti and Hapi (in the linear compositions these pairs of gods stand either on the outside positions or on the middle ones). A marked tendency in decoration of the "burial” was also distinguished: the basement of the "burial” is constantly decorated by the vertical lines and the mound on it by concentric lines. The rest of the details concern only decorative features of the elements and do not have the prevailing spread.