by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Sed Festival’s earliest
documented celebrations date back to the First Dynasty, during the reign of
King Den. Evidence such as inscriptions and objects indicate that Den partook
in this festival to symbolize his continued dominion over Egypt. These early
iterations of the festival focused on the pharaoh’s physical endurance and
ability to perform ritualistic acts, reflecting his divine fitness to rule”.
Introduction
When we recognise that Den (or Udimu) - whose
beginning of reign is conventionally dated to c. 2970 BC - was the
biblical patriarch, Joseph of Egypt (closer to 1770 BC), then we have an
illuminating context in ancient Egypt (Years of Plenty, then Famine) for the
Heb (Festival) Sed that may first have taken place during his time of great
fame.
The names of Den spell out precisely who he was.
I set these out in e.g. my article:
Jacob and Joseph, Step Pyramid, Famine
(1) Jacob and Joseph, Step Pyramid, Famine
Den’s alternative names
There are various compelling reasons why I am now convinced that Joseph
in Egypt was Den, not least of these being his other name, as given by Manetho,
Usaph-ais.
This, Usaph, is purely the Semitic name for Joseph (Yosef,
Yusef) with a Greek
ending.
But that is not all.
Den also had the hypocoristic nick-name, Khasti, “foreigner”, which is
exactly how the Egyptians would have viewed the Hebrew Joseph, whose brothers
would require an interpreter (Genesis 42:23).
If all that were not enough, the name Den is interpreted as meaning
“bringer of water”, or “pourer of water”, which is precisely what Joseph did
for a parched Egypt.
Summing up the names of Den, then, we arrive at this happy combination:
Usaph (Joseph);
the foreigner;
he who brings water.
….
And bringing water to what was to become a parched Egypt during the protracted
Famine Joseph did in abundance, with those vast, temporary dams, and waterways
(Joseph’s Canal), at a time when even Egypt’s important lake dried up:
Old
Kingdom Egypt Famine, even Lake Faiyum dried up
(1) Old
Kingdom Egypt Famine, even Lake Faiyum dried up
It must be amongst the greatest wonders of history that a Pharaoh
would, on the basis of Joseph’s God-given ability to interpret dreams, allow this
most charismatic official of his to proceed with the massive (Old Kingdom)
infrastructural program that archaeology has revealed at this time in
anticipation of a purported great Famine years into the future!
My suspicion is that Joseph’s Pharaoh may have been somewhat younger than
the “Joseph [who] was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh King of
Egypt” (Genesis 41:46). That the possibly young Pharaoh may even have been
assisted in his rulership by his mother – although there is no indication of
that in the Genesis account.
I tentatively suggest that Pharaoh’s mother was the influential Merneith.
“Merneith is linked with
the kings Djer, Djet, and Den in a variety of seal
impressions and inscribed bowls”.
The possibly young Pharaoh, whose troubling Dreams (cf. Genesis
41:1, 5) Joseph had satisfactorily explained for him, may have been totally in
awe of the persuasive foreigner standing before him who had not been shy about
advertising his own dreams.
Although making Joseph his second, the Pharaoh appears, in effect,
to have handed over power almost entirely to the Hebrew sage (Genesis 41:44):
“Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will
lift hand or foot in all Egypt’.”
Joseph, an honourable and God-fearing man of faith, may have been, as a
son of Jacob, something of a wheeler-dealer, and possibly far too astute for
the Pharaoh.
Who was this early Pharaoh?
If Den was Joseph, as
already argued, then who was Djer, who was Djet?
There is an easy answer to
this – although it also necessitates a vastly wide-sweeping revolution in
Egyptian historical revision.
Put simply, to begin with,
Djer was Djet, appropriately a Famine pharaoh:
Taking a Djet to
Djoser’s Famine
(3) Taking a Djet
to Djoser's Famine
“Manetho mentions
that in [Djet’s] reign a great famine seized Egypt”.
This was the same great
Famine as occurred at the time of Joseph (Den/Udimu), and was the same as the
seven-year Famine at the time of the Third Dynasty Pharaoh, Horus
Netjerikhet, who was Djer (= Netjerikhet), my presumed Pharaoh of
Den.
And Djer may also
re-emerge in the so-called Second Dynasty’s Nynetjer (Ninetjer),
whose reign suffered a phase of “poor harvests” (Ancient Egypt Online, “Nynetjer”).
Joseph was also, as various
researchers have come to realise, the brilliant sage, Imhotep, serving under
Horus Netjerikhet.
This Pharaoh is generally identified
with Djoser (Zoser) of the Famine era.
But Djoser was actually,
again, the biblical Joseph:
Imhotep Enigma,
his pharaoh was not Djoser, and proof for Egypt’s Third Dynasty Famine
(5) Imhotep
Enigma, his pharaoh was not Djoser, and proof for Egypt’s Third Dynasty Famine
Was this the
original ‘Famine Stela’?
(6) Was this the
original 'Famine Stela'?
We find this Djoser in yet
another of the patriarch Joseph’s (many) manifestations, now as the Third
Dynasty’s, Sekhemkhet, whose nomen was Djoser-ti.
Egyptian Pharaohs : Old
Kingdom : Dynasty 3 : Sekhemkhet
Now, regarding Djer as
Djet, we must really stretch pharaonic history by further identifying the
famine Pharaoh, Horus Netjerikhet (= Djer), with the powerful, unifying ruler,
Horus Netjerihedjet (Mentuhotep II) of Egypt’s Eleventh Dynasty, again a
famine era. In the name, Netjerihedjet, we find our sought-for element,
Djet.
And, so, there we have it
(Table 1):
First Dynasty (Famine), Djer = Djet;
Third Dynasty (Famine), Horus Netjerikhet
(= Djer);
Eleventh Dynasty (Famine), Horus Netjerihedjet
(= Djet).
Correspondingly, Joseph
was (Table 2):
First Dynasty (Famine), Den (Udimu);
Third Dynasty (Famine), Imhotep =
Sekhemkhet Djoser-ti;
And Joseph was, as I have
explained in other articles, much more even than this.
E.g., Joseph may have been,
as well, the somewhat boastful Ankhtifi (hypocoristicon, inverted, of
Joseph’s given Egyptian name, Zaphenath-paneah, Genesis 41:45):
Egypt’s high
official, Ankhtifi, outboasts even great Senenmut
(8) Egypt’s high
official, Ankhtifi, outboasts even great Senenmut
Ankhtifi a Joseph
type saving Egypt in an extensive Famine
(8) Ankhtifi a
Joseph type saving Egypt in an extensive Famine
Ankhtifi of
ancient Egypt substituting for the king
(8) Ankhtifi of
ancient Egypt substituting for the king
Correlating Heb Sed (ḥb-sd)
This overall arrangement as
entabulated above (Table 1 and Table 2) now enables us to tidy up
the Festival Sed, inaugurated during the First Dynasty, but most
prominent as well in the (so-called) Third Dynasty.
First Den, and then
Djoser, performed the Heb Sed ritual.
These two names are
thought to represent two separate pharaohs, but both names belonged to, as
already explained, Joseph – a quasi-Pharaoh.
Here is Djoser again:
Sed Festival in Ancient
Egypt - World History Edu
“Pharaoh Djoser of the Third Dynasty
further institutionalized the Sed Festival. His mortuary complex at Saqqara,
including the boundary stones in the Heb Sed court, reflects how the festival
became intertwined with notions of eternal kingship. Depictions of Djoser
performing the Heb Sed in the false doorway of his pyramid highlight the belief
that the king could carry out the ceremony perpetually in the afterlife,
ensuring his eternal authority”.
And the Eleventh
Dynasty appropriately had a Heb Sed festival during the reign of Horus
Netjerihedjet (= Djet).
Heb Sed elements
Whatever the Heb Sed meant
overall for the ancient Egyptians – and I do not claim to be an expert on it –
there are, I find, key elements associated with it that appear to have been
drawn from the amazing life of Joseph’s father, the patriarch Jacob.
Visually outstanding is
the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, what I have previously called ‘a material icon of
Jacob’s dream of a stairway [sullām סֻלָּם֙] to heaven’ (Genesis
28:12) - especially considering Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley’s description of
the pyramids of Egypt as astral “stairways” (emphasis added):
“The Old Kingdom pharaohs
believed that death was the beginning
of eternal life. To help
them on their way they built pyramids;
huge ramps or stairways
… leading directly to the sky”.
Pyramids: The Real Story
Behind Egypt’s Most Ancient Monuments (2023).
Saqqara seems to have been
the geographical locus for the Third Dynasty’s Heb Sed.
Then there is the
Pharaoh’s wrestling with a young man.
“So Jacob was left alone,
and a man wrestled with him till daybreak” (Genesis 32:24).
Wrestling with a young man
was also a feature of the ancient Egyptian Heb-Sed festival, as is apparent
from the case of Djoser (Zoser), builder of the Step Pyramid, which I have held
to be a ‘material icon’ of Jacob’s dream of a Stairway to Heaven.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wLUjtPDyu-
“Celebrating the
rejuvenation of the king's powers every 30 years, the heb-sed festival
was a demonstration of a king's strength and prowess. During the festival the
king ran around a heb-sed court performing feats of strength
to demonstrate his ability to continue to rule Egypt. In doing so he
experienced rebirth, maintaining his position as a god on Earth.
The heb-sed court
of King Zoser at Saqqara is a long rectangular open court where the king
performed the heb-sed ritual, part of which was to wrestle
with a young man in order to prove he was strong enough to continue ruling
Egypt.
A limestone relief in a
chamber under the Step Pyramid shows King Zoser during his heb-sed festival
running between the markers representing Upper and Lower Egypt. On the east and
west sides of the open courtyard are several symbolic chapels—the interiors
were filled with rubble—and only the platforms in front of the chapel were
used. Statues of the king and the gods were placed in niches along the wall,
and the platforms may have been used for ceremonies during the festival. …”.
This wrestling with a
young man might add a whole new dimension, a spiritual one, to the Heb Sed.
Jacob’s encounter with the heavenly being really marked the beginning of
Israel, when the young man changed Jacob’s name to Israel, ‘because you
have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome’ (Genesis 32:28).
It may explain the rigours
of the Heb Sed, a human struggle with the Divine, to prove one’s fitness to
rule or govern:
The Heb-Sed Festival - Egypt Museum
“The Heb-Sed (also
rendered as the Sed Festival or ḥb-sd) was among the most
ancient and significant royal ceremonies of Ancient Egypt, celebrated to
rejuvenate the pharaoh’s strength, vitality, and divine mandate to rule.
Traditionally held in the
thirtieth year of a monarch’s reign and repeated at intervals (often every
three years thereafter) the festival marked not only longevity but divine
favour. More than a royal anniversary, it was a rite of renewal, binding kingship
to the eternal rhythms of sacred order”.
Whether one can also connect
the element of the 30-year festival with the fact that ‘Joseph was 30 years old
when he stood before Pharaoh’ is laid out there for further consideration.
