The Beautiful Festival of the Valley

The Beautiful Feast of the Valley, called heb nefer en inet in Kemetic, was celebrated every year during the second month of Shomu, the Harvest Season, which.
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Surrounded by the royal court and senior dignitaries, the pharaoh would first raise the djed pillar, representing the backbone of Osiris, god of resurrection, and symbolizing stability. The king receives a heb-sed symbol from god Amun. The symbol represents the festival.

Later in the day, the king undertook a ritual run, often in a specially prepared courtyard, between two sets of boundary markers representing the borders of his domain. Once the ceremonial rites were over, there were days of singing, dancing and feasting on beer, bread and beef, as well as the exchange of gifts and souvenirs.

Egypt: Grand Festivals in Ancient Egypt

It is one of the more interesting, as well as one of the more unusual features at Karnak. The entrance was originally flanked by two statues of the king wearing a festival costume. The roof of this hall is supported around its perimeter by thirty-two square pillars, while the central portion contains his famous tent pole style columns. There were originally twenty of these. They may recall ancient religious booths, but more likely symbolize the military tent that was so familiar to the great warrior pharaoh. Yvonne Buskens quotes the museum:. Inscriptions on some vases make reference to this festival, moreover.

The latter would then take these tokens of royal favor to the grave with them. It is also possible that the unguent or oil contained in these vases played a part in the jubilee celebrations. One of these events was the Opet Festival, celebrated each year in honor of Amun.

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In the temples of ancient Egypt only the courtyards were accessible to the public. Entry to the inner area, or particularly the inner sanctuary where the cult image was kept, was reserved for the priests and the pharaoh. The common people could approach the cult statue itself only during rare and important festivals—but even then it was hidden from view in a shrine. In the beginning, the shrines with the cult images were carried overland from Karnak to Luxor on model divine barges; the return journey was made on the Nile.

Later, the entire journey took place on the river, in a series of ceremonial boats.

Beautiful Festival of the Valley

Leading the proverbial fatted bull in the Opet procession Photo by Heidi Kontkanen. After arriving at their destination, the model barges were taken ashore, to great rejoicing of the crowds. People piled their offerings along the way to the temple. Priests and servants waving palm leaves accompanied the ceremonial barges, offering incense and water and reciting sacred texts. More bulls being led in the Opet procession. Note the ornamentation between their horns, one of the interesting details of this procession Photo by Heidi Kontkanen.

The barges of Mut and Khons were placed in the courtyard built by Amenhotep III while the image of Amun was taken to a small ajoining chapel. Heidi Kontkanen, who provided us with these neat photos of the Opet procession from Luxor Temple shares this from Richard Wilkinson:. Heidi explains that the pictures are from the first court of Luxor Temple and depict the Opet procession led by seventeen sons of Ramesses II, leading the sacrificial bulls to the temple.


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And the bulls are really well fed! The cult statues were placed in portable shrines in order to protect them from the illicit stares of the public lining the procession route. But the public were able to address them with prayers and requests, to which the cult statue responded by way of specific movements—manipulated by the priests—of the barque. They may be categorized as either processions of deities, in which royal processions would be included, or funeral processions. Processions of deities may be subdivided into those that took place within the temple and those that exited the temple.

Alongside these internal processional ways, votive statues were erected by the Egyptian elite to guarantee their permanent even posthumous presence in the audience whenever a deity was epiphanized. Carrying statues and standards Photo Yvonne Buskens, January Musicians and professional mourners such as these would have been employed as part of a funeral procession, from drawings from the French-Tuscan expedition of Champollion and Roselinni plate XCIX Yvonne Buskens, contrib.

It soon enjoyed widespread popularity even beyond Thebes. The experience of consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, thereby freeing oneself from earthly realities and thus supposedly achieving closer proximity to the deceased, played a significant part in these celebrations.

It is understandable, then, that a principal endeavor during the funerary celebrations was maximum intoxication…. From right to left, two men and a woman are seated on chairs.

The person in the middle appears to be sick: Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites on the subject of the Festival of Drunkenness, with a great quote from Betsy Bryan: Not high, not socially fun, but drunk — knee-walking, absolutely passed-out drunk. Harvesters might chant a lament, accompanied by a flute, in order to express their sorrow at the first cutting of the crops, which was thought to symbolize the wounding of Osiris, the god of vegetation.


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  • Dancing was also related to agricultural rites, both as a means of stimulating growth and as a form of thanksgiving…The dances appear to be measured and fairly sedate. The keskes-dance, associated with Hathor, involved holding mirrors and what appear to be wooden or ivory sticks, carved in the shape of a hand at one end; they were probably clappers.

    Ancient Egyptian musical instruments consisted of four basic types: The idiophones, including clappers, sistra, cymbals and bells were particularly associated with religious worship.

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    Model tambourine with rosette border, Bastet on one side, her boat with naos on the other Yvonne Buskens, contrib. The cordophones consisted of three types: From the New Kingdom onward, Egyptian arched harps co-existed with a great variety of harps in different shapes and sizes…Skin, now missing, covered the open top of the soundbox. Older forms of arched harps like this had four or five strings; during the later New Kingdom musicians experimented with newer forms that accommodated many strings.

    Harp players accompanied a singer; harps, flute players and singers formed the most common type of musical ensemble that performed during festivals and banquets, funerals and temple rituals.

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    The slim little girls dancers were professionals,a nd some were trained to do acrobatic tricks. Ring bezel from Amarna, woman musician with monkey Carolyn Graves-Brown, contrib. Carolyn Graves-Brown provides us with the above glimpse of music from Amarna. The figure is twisted showing the naval and curve of the belly which is in keeping with the art of the period.

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    Yvonne Buskens brings us the above beautiful wine bowl with a female lute player. She quotes the description:. Bes is patron god of music, dance, eroticism and sexuality.

    Beyond The Valley VISUALS NYE 2014-15 MELT STATION Milica ZZAA .:.

    Moreover, his animal companion, a little monkey, is busy divesting the girl of her girdle, the only item of clothing she is wearing. All this taken together, we are probably dealing with a courtesan here. Another fine and relevant page from the Pharaonic Egypt website, this one on music and dance. In addition, five so-called epagomenal or additional days were dedicated to the birthdays of certain deities in order to bring the year to a day total.

    Egyptologists prefer the term "memorial temples", however, the Egyptians called them "temples of millions of years". The ceremony was quite a joyous one. After the "Beautiful Feast of the Valley" ended, the Egyptians always looked forward to the following year, when the ceremony would again take place. The Mystery of Cleopatra's Death. Duties of Gods and Goddesses. Gods and Goddesses Family Tree. The Process of Mummification. Egyptians' Theory of the Creation of the Earth. From a friend Search engine result Surfing the web Other.

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