Inscription of the False Door of Intef
By
G. Geoffrey
Conwill
This following is an attempt to interpret and rightly translate the false door of Intef, which the author found at the University of Chicago website while surfing the web. The exact history of Intef, who he was and where his tomb is, etc, has not yet been thoroughly researched, nor shall it probably be, this being purely an exercise in studying Egyptian grammar and language. Thus said, it is merely from extrapolation of the author’s poor knowledge of things Egyptological (grammatical and otherwise) that he has tried to make sense of what to him was an exciting “find”.
Outline of the study
1. “Discovery” of the stela
2.
Study of the stela
3.
Translation of the stela
1. I was surfing on the net when I came across the University of Chicago’s website by accident. I hadn’t been there in a while, but was curious to see they had compiled a library of some rather interesting material. Among this material I discovered Fig 1. in Archeology v. XXIV of their Field Museum of Natural History records, which details inscriptions of several ancient monuments.
2. Study
of the stela:
The archeological record shows that chapels above Old Kingdom “mastabas” (bench-shaped brick constructions that were used to bury nobility) had doors such as these. Later, Middle and New Kingdom funerary art and architecture developed the idea further by including the door on MK coffins (in the MK) and later on the tomb walls themselves (cf ex. 1). The belief was that a door had to be put on the (east) side of the tomb to allow the person’s spirit to enter and leave the tomb at will.
As you can see in Fig. 1, above the lintel two Eyes of Horus to protect the spirit in doing so. Above these is a representation of the deceased enjoying a feast. This is tied into the idea that even if everyone neglected to make an offering to him (which after a couple of generations had to be the case, if only because the cost grew too expensive), there would still be an impermeable offering remaining throughout all time, memorialized in stone. This being the case, it was all the more important to have such a door because it ensured the fact that the deceased would be cared for in the afterlife.
Steps in studying the stela
A. After copying and pasting the stela in MS Paint, I painted the hieroglyphs blue to better discern them (fig A).
B. Next I consulted a composite list of hieroglyphic signs (from Gardiner, Mercer and a few other sources which were discovered at other websites). Once the glyphs were accounted for ( and there were a few that weren’t; some had eroded, others were deemed unintelligible, at least for the present moment), an attempt was made to make a line drawing of the door (fig B).
C. Once this was accomplished, I attempted a reconstruction in order to get a better aesthetic feel for the stela (fig C). The color scheme is purely conjectural, taken partly from the cover of one of my Egyptology books. Colors (and aesthetics in general) being extremely conservative in Egyptian society, I dare to say that the attempt comes close.
3. Translation of the Stela
It should be noted here that the transliteration "alphabet" I used here is both the standard one using normal fonts and the one used in Egyptological textbooks.
Resources used: Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed., Sir Alan Gardner; Egyptian Mythology, Tudor Pub Co.
The versos are read from the center outward, as would be expected. Above the lintel is the inscription describing the feast:
Lintel A literally reads “invocation offerings (of ) ox to…”. The formula given is standard for the Pyramid Age. Gardiner has some interesting comments about the prt-hrw formula.
"The
difficult expression
obviously
had
pr
hrw ‘the voice goes forth’ as its starting point, these words referring
to the hotp-di-nesu formula
accompanying the presentation. The actual offerings were, however, so closely
associated with the expression that this often received the determinative
and
practically acquired the meaning ‘make an offering." (cf Egyptian grammar
p172)
By looking at the huge slab of beef on the offering table set before Intef, it is obvious that this is the k3 or oxen to which the translated expression refers to (not to be confused with the similar k3, which refers to a man’s spirit, but has a different hieroglyphic sign as well as determinative).
On top of the beef offering are
also two (see below) unidentified signs as well as two
,
or thighs of beef, which are, curiously, grammatically connected (as
determinatives or phonetically) to the word iw
‘heritage’ and iw
t ‘inheritance’.
Lintel B reads “ invocation offerings (of) oxen and fowl”, followed by a sign which by all rights looks to be the niwt sign, which is a village with crossroads. The hieroglyph that would normally precede it (above) is either missing due to damage of the stela, or hidden in the shadow cast by the light in which the stela was photographed. As such, it is nearly impossible for this author to ascertain the meaning, although a footnote in Gardiner’s entry on this sign arouses one’s curiosity.
"For the reading cf Pyr.
1
n(iw)tyw (?) ‘those belonging to the lower heaven’ … Pyr.
1467. This puzzling evidence suggests that the ‘lower heaven’ had two names,
namely Ni(wt) and Nwt, which are much confused in the writing.
Crucial passages are Pyr. 149.446.1691." ( Egyptian Grammar p
498)
Finally, to the left of the
on
the offering table are signs which may or may not be the same abbreviated sign
for fowl
as
in the hieroglyphic passage.
Verso 1 is for purposes of this study the text which reads to the immediate left of the feast scene. The inscription reads:
“Honor and praise to Re-Atum (and) to beloved Intef”
Re-Atum was the combination of two popular solar gods, Re and Atum. According to Egyptian Mythology Atum was originally a god of Heliopolis, “whose name seems to have come from a root which signified ‘not to be’ and ‘to be complete’, whose sacred animal was the bull Merwer. “From very early times” Atum was associated with Re and took the form of a man wearing the double crown of Egypt and was supposed to have been the ancestor of the human race. In later times, he was personified with the setting sun and the sun before sunrise. Re, of course, whose very name means ‘sun’, was the falcon-headed sovereign lord of the sky and a creator of the universe, whose cult was also located at Heliopolis. Both gods took preeminence during the Old Kingdom, as the solar tradition far outweighed the cult of Osiris and other gods of the underworld.
As is typical in ancient Egyptian
inscriptions, because the hieroglyph is being used elsewhere, space is conserved
by having
precede the rest of the hieroglyphs
designating Intef’s name, which incidentally means “he who has brought
(gifts)”.
Verso 2 is opposite Verso 1 and reads as follows:
“Honor to Ptah-Sokar, to the luminous god, lord of heaven, Intef.”
Like Re-Atum, Ptah-Sokar was the combination of two popular gods- Ptah, whose tradition had him creating the universe by merely speaking each object’s name; Sokar was originally a guardian of the entrance of the underworld. Both were also part of the Old Kingdom religious system and may indeed have preceded even the solar cult, as indicated by the epithet, “lord of heaven”. In any case, the very fact that the stela probably comes from the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis, the god’s center of worship is reflected in its praises of Ptah-Sokar.
Gardiner notes in his entry of
the hieroglyph for
HD ‘(to
be) white, bright’ that it is used in titles for indicating an instructor;
that it may be so used here is an indication that Intef may have been educated
in the Memphite school for his station in life. The fact remains that at present
to me little is known known about him or his relationship to the
king. It would, however, be safe to say that the mentioning of gods of both the
solar (ie royal) and the Memphite traditions would hint that there must have
been some (familial?) relationship of Intef to the king.
The Third Verso, which has been chopped off at top, transliterates as
repeating almost the same wish as the first verso, so that more than likely it can be translated as:
“Honor (and praise?) to Ptah-Sokar, to the illumined god, lord of heaven, beloved (of) Intef.”
This second affirmation of Ptah-Sokar seems to indicate that Intef was particularly fond of the god, which causes me to think even more so that the deceased was somehow connected either by school or trade with the Memphite temple cult.
Finally the Fourth Verso reads
This reading is more problematic than the rest, mostly because of my still barely rudimentary knowledge of ancient Egyptian. The first word to be recognized (after the cut-off) is the Egyptian word for Abydos, which is the Greek transliteration for the name of the city in Upper Egypt where Osiris is said to have been buried, where countless generations of Egyptians would have gone on pilgrimage.
I read the rest of the text as:
"Abydos, to it goes good (worthy) of veneration, Intef"
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