Book
«Пастухи и фиванцы». Выделение и продолжительность династий гиксосского времени (XV– XVII) в труде Манефона
The author reconstructs the principles of compilation of dynastic list by Manetho (3rd century BC), the composition, sequence and nature of the dynasties representing the period of existence of the Avaris Hyksos kingdom in this list, reconstructed from extant sources, the chronology proposed by Manetho for this period, mechanisms of its formation, as well as the distortions to which all this material is exposed in the sources transmitting it. The book is intended for a circle of readers interested in the culture, literature and history of ancient Egypt, ancient Middle Eastern and ancient historiography, the culture of the Hellenistic era, as well as the Hyksos period of Egyptian history.
The Tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel and its ‘World of Doubles’: An Interpretation of the Monument in the Light of the Egyptian Elite’s Mood of the Early Hellenistic Time.
The article shows that the traditional scenes of defunct’s confronting deities in the chapel of the tomb of the priest Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel near Hermopolis (late 4th century B.C.) are connected exclusively with the posthumous destiny of Petosiris’ relatives that died before him; the decoration of the pronaos that was dedicated to himself was marked with considerable Hellenization and reproduced the archaic model of the “World of Doubles” typical for private tombs of the Third Millennium B.C. Probably Petosiris urged to achieve the posthumous existence according to this model, independently of gods, as he thought it impossible to contact gods effectively in the early Macedonian time, when, in his ideas, there was no ritual sacral ruler in Egypt.
The article deals with the transmission of the Iranian words in the Late Middle Egyptian text of the Satrap Stela (311 B.C.). The problematic fragment with such word is the story about the domain of the ‘Land-of-Wadjet’, which has once been alienated from the possessions of the Buto temples by a foreign ruler named #SryS. Historically it must be Artaxerxes III during or after his invasion in Egypt in 343 B.C. but the name-form corresponds to the Old Persian Xšayṛšān, i.e. Xerxes. This can be explained by a possibility of not only the name Xerxes being used as a generic for Persian kings, like in some Classical texts (the idea by W. Spiegelberg and P. Briant) but also by the confusion of the two names in their Greek form, due to their common component Ξέρξης/–ξέρξης. Unlike Xerxes’ authentic Egyptian cartouches, the hieroglyphic transcription of the Satrap Stela does not show -yṛ- present in the Persian name but absent in its Greek form. Besides the word “satrap” as a denotation of the Satrap Ptolemy, though transmitting the Iranian *ḫšaθrapāna, appears in the title of a document, which must have undoubtedly been Greek originally (Pdrmyz p(A) xSdrpn ~= Πτολεμαίος ὁ σατράπης). One concludes that the use of initially Iranian words was motivated for the compilers of the text by the Greek, and not Iranian, language practice; this is no surprise due to the short duration of the Persian domination in 343-332 B.C. and to the wide presence of Greek-speakers in Egypt after the Macedonian conquest. However, the hieroglyphic transcription of these words corresponds to their Iranian form known in Egypt since at least the 5th century B.C.: probably, the compilers of the text did not care to invent a brand-new transcription for their Greek forms. The only possible exception is the alleged transcription of the name ‘Arses’ (Wr-siA-z ~=Ὀάρσης < ὁ Ἄρσης): the Greek name-form might have been reproduced here, as the original Persian form remained unknown.