Khnumhotep ii biography samples

I kept alive the name of my fathers, which I found obliterated upon the doorways, (making them) legible in [form]; accurate in reading, not putting one in the place of another. Behold, it is an excellent son, who restores the name of the ancestors; Nehri's son, Khnumhotep, triumphant, revered.

- From the inscription on the tomb of Khnumhotep II

He was the hereditary nomarch of Menet Khufu and the Oryx nome of Upper Egypt.

A nome was a territorial division of Egypt, similar to a district or a province. Egypt was made up of 42 individual nomes, each governed by a nomarch. The nomarch was responsible for tax collection, judicial oversight, and supervision of land projects within the nome.

According to the inscription in his tomb, Khnumhotep inherited his claim of Menet-Khufu through his mother, on the death of his predecessor, his uncle, Nakht'b.

According to David Kahn, it is in the tomb of Khnumhotep II that the earliest instance of encoded writing is found. It is posited that this was intended to be highly-stylized funerary language rather than secret communications.

Initially, the nomarchs were royal officials who travelled from post to post and had no local ties.

The post of nomarch eventually became hereditary, and these officials evolved into a ruling class of landowners. From the middle of the 5th Dynasty, these nomarchs begin to accrue more power, especially in Upper Egypt.

When the central government collapsed in the late 6th Dynasty, a years of civil war ensued.

Absent a central authority, the nomarchs took control of their own nomes, and Egypt splintered into a number of feudal states. This period of decentralized rule and confusion lasted from the 7th through the 11th Dynasties.

The pharaohs of the 12th Dynasty reestablished a powerful central government. Nomarchs were allowed to retain some of their powers, and they received recognition of a place in the afterlife.

The first pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty, Amenemhat I, moved the capital north from Thebes to Amenemhet-itj-tawy near the Fayyum Oasis.

The walls of the tomb are covered with rich depictions of Egyptian feudal life in the 12th Dynasty. Some of these paintings are unusually naturalistic for the period. Running along the base of the walls (below the wall paintings) are vertical inscriptions that detail Khnumhotep's genealogy and life.

&#; A wall in Khnumhotep II's tomb.

There are also inconsistencies in the grammatical syntax.

Some egyptologists believe that particular passages in Khnumhotep II's funerary inscription were deliberately transformed in order to obscure the original meaning.

Why? Possible reasons for encoding the inscription:

• To preserve the secrecy of certain religious rituals from outsiders.

  However, this form of symbol substitution provides very weak data protection. It is not difficult to figure out the unusual symbols.

• To increase the mystery in the religious rituals and thereby excite interest.
  Khnumhotep ii biography samples pdf On the eastern end of the north wall there is a large-scale standing figure of Khnumhotep II receiving offerings primarily of several types of animals and birds. Newberry suggests , 60, n. Staubli , It contains an autobiography of the deceased; it begins to the left of the entrance to the shrine and runs counterclockwise around the walls of the main chamber, ending to the right of the doorway leading to the shrine.

• To give a highly-stylized appearance to formal inscriptions.

The unusual artistic elements in the accompanying paintings may be secondaty indicators of cultural changes.

The footnotes for Khnumhotep II's inscription show that there is some confusion about the syntax and meaning of some symbols.

Ancient Egyptian history, including information about Amenemhat.