The 'Horus name' identified a pharaoh as an incarnation of Horus, the god of kingship. It was written inside a serekh (9): a frame representing a palace, complete with a panelled façade and with Horus, shown as a falcon, perched on top. In al-'Irāqī’s illustration, these elements have undergone an alchemical transmutation: at some point the panels of Amenemhat's serekh were changed into curious implements, and the falcon into a raven. Despite further distortions, we can just discern the Horus name of Amenemhat II: Heken-em-maat, literally 'He who rejoices in justice'. On the original monument the preposition 'in' was undoubtedly written with an owl. To suit the alchemist's agenda, it has here become a red eagle (10).
A pharaoh's throne and birth names were traditionally written inside oval 'cartouches', to make them stand out from surrounding text. Unaware of this fact, al-'Irāqī identifies just such a cartouche as 'Maria’s bath', the bain-marie (12) or hot-water bath, which is named after the alchemist Maria the Jewess, and is still used today by the catering industry. The hieroglyphs enclosed by the present cartouche spelled out the throne name of Amenemhat II: Nub-kau-Ra, or 'The life-forces of Ra (the sun god) are of gold'. In our manuscript a sun-disc ('Ra') and a necklace ('gold') have been transformed into a human face with neck and arms. Hieroglyphs above the cartouche still recognisably give two well-known royal epithets: 'the great god, lord of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt)' (11). Al-'Irāqī interpreted the whole group as pertaining to 'roasting': apparently a hieroglyph representing a basket became a roasting dish, and two stretches of land below it became a grill. The hieroglyphs below the cartouche, in their ancient meaning, claim that the pharaoh is 'given life forever' (13).
Monuments of Amenemhat II are rare and his stela is lost, so the exploits of our medieval alchemist hold value to modern Egyptology. Comparing al-'Irāqī’s drawing with extant stelae of similar date, we can determine more precisely how the stela of Amenemhat would have looked. The stela shown below, displayed in Room 65 of the British Museum, dates from the reign of his grandson, Senwosret III (around 1874–1855 BC). That king's Horus and throne names again take up two-thirds of the top. The remaining third mentions a deity ('Horus-son-of-Isis'), of whom the king is said to be 'beloved'. The texts naming king and god were given opposed orientations, so that the actors involved 'look' at each other. The image in the Book of the Seven Climes reveals that Amenemhat, too, was described as 'beloved' of a deity (14), whose name must be sought in the hieroglyphs grouped on the left, likewise facing those naming the king. In our 18th-century copy most of these signs have been shuffled about and reshaped beyond recognition, but two of them read probably 'Wepwa(wet)', the name of a jackal god (16). Three hieroglyphs crammed in between the god's and the king’s names, assuming the former’s orientation, cite blessings bestowed on the latter: 'life, stability, dominion' (17).
Amenemhat’s ornamental inscription would have been bordered at the bottom by a stroke representing land and at the top by a band representing heaven, supported at the ends by divine sceptres symbolising the full extent of the king's god-given 'dominion'. Only the top of the left-hand sceptre (18) has made it into our 18th-century manuscript, but its identity is unmistakable.
The very fact that a hieroglyphic inscription from around 1900 BC can still, in part, be read in an 18th-century copy of a 13th-century Arabic text testifies to the care Arabic scribes took in copying and recopying earlier manuscripts through the centuries. The inclusion of an authentic hieroglyphic text in the Book of the Seven Climes also demonstrates the interest in Egyptian antiquities taken by some medieval Arabic scholars. Al-'Irāqī’s alchemical understanding of that text highlights the differences between medieval interpretative frameworks and those employed by the modern science of Egyptology.
More accurate copies of the Amenemhat inscription may still await discovery in unpublished earlier copies of al-'Irāqī’s Seven Climes in Dublin, Cairo or elsewhere. Furthermore, the identification of more works from which al-'Irāqī took his illustrations could bring us closer to the ancient monuments from which some of the illustrations were ultimately copied. We plan to study the other manuscripts of the Book of the Seven Climes and search for the sources of its illustrations. This will throw more light on how al-'Irāqī adapted his material and may enable a fuller reading of the original inscription of Amenemhat II. It might even reveal further authentic hieroglyphic texts.
© Trustees of the British Museum
The 18th-century copy of al-‘Irāqī’s Book of the Seven Climes is on display in the British Museum’s exhibition Egypt: faith after the pharaohs and is on loan from the British Library. The accompanying book is available from the British Museum shop online.
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