THe House of Life

By ALAN H. GARDINER

House of Life: an institution little known in culture current of those interested in ancient Egypt. Yet, as we will see, was a foundation of extreme importance for the elaboration of various facets of the religious and magical culture of Egypt. According to existing documents, the House of Life already exists in the Old Kingdom in the 6th dynasty and lasts until the end of the Pharaonic civilization. The available sources are not very talkative about what was done in this laboratory and this is also understandable given its nature. The activities of the House of Life were varied. Theurgy was about i more secret and refined rituals that had to make the processes of the macrocosm functioned smoothly and extended theirs beneficial influence in society. The communion of the sovereign with the solar entities, as an intermediary of them, was the subject of rites and appropriate ceremonies. The defense of the King from enemies follows the same technique used against Ra and del Evil Apophis: in the "Book to Bring Down Apophis" are described by thread and by sign the ways of making images of the Evil One and the related deprecatory formulas. The staff of the House of Life also practiced natural magic intended to assist people in the various vicissitudes of life. Yes presumes that the consecration of amulets and magical texts also condoms took place in this place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harmakis Edizioni
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9788831427203

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ALAN H. GARDINER

THE HOUSE OF LIFE

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ISBN: 9788831427203

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THE HOUSE OF LIFE

IN preparing my edition of the papyrus generally known as the Golenischeff Glossary I have had occasion to look into the evidence for the ‘House of Life’. That institution is vaguely familiar to Egyptologists as the place where scribes were employed or trained, but the general works barely mention it,¹ and singularly little attention appears to have been paid to the subject. My own investigations have brought to light nothing startlingly new, but it will be useful to possess a collection of the evidence upon which conclusions must necessarily be based. There are doubtless some examples that I have overlooked, but what-ever deficiencies might have been found have been lessened by the help of several friends.²

The Berlin dictionary (I, 515) contents itself with the ambiguous definition Haus der Schriftgelehrten and omits the most important reference of all, that to the well-known naophorous statue of the ‘chief physician Udjeharresnet’ in the Vatican, recently re-edited with an admirable commentary by G. Posener in La premiere domination perse en Egypte, pp. 1 ff. The passage relating to the (op. cit., 21) needs so much more discussion than most of our other material that I begin with it, in spite of its late date. After that I shall revert to a chronological order.

(1) Only the essential phrases will be given in hieroglyphic here, since the text can be studied in Posener’s book, or in Schafer’s article (see below). The translation runs: ‘His Majesty King Darius commanded me to return to Egypt ………… in order to restore the department(s) of the House(s) of Life ........ after (they had fallen into) decay. The foreigners carried me from land to land and delivered me back into Egypt according as the Lord of the Two Lands had commanded. I did as His Majesty had commanded me; I furnished them with all their staffs³ consisting of persons of rank, not a poor man’s son among them. I placed them in the charge of every learned man⁴ [in order to teach them?] all their crafts. His Majesty commanded them to be given all (manner of) good things in order that they might exercise all their craft(s).

I equipped them with all their ability⁵ and all their apparatus which was on record in accordance with their former condition.

. This His Majesty did because he knew the virtue of this art to revive all that are sick and to commemoratefo r ever the name(s)o f all the gods, their temples, their offerings and the conduct of their festivals.’

The crux of the passage lies in the plural pronoun of and to solve this problem it looks as though we should have to know what stood in the lacuna after . There Schafer (ZAS 37, p. 74, n. 1) assumed the name of a second building co-ordinated with , and as the first element in the name of that building he took the second of . Posener rightly rejects this view, pointing out that the spelling is common. In pre-Ptolemaict imes it is perhapsa little less commont han , but many exampleso ccur and are logically quite in order, since the first of is the word for ‘house’ to be read phonetically pr, whereas the second is determinative of the entire compound as in , , .

What is absolutely decisive in favour of Posener’s view is that concludes a line, and among the many texts on this carefully executed statue there is not a single example of a word divided between two lines. Posener, following up the idea expressedi n the title to Schafer’s article Die Wiedereinrichtungein er Arzteschule in Sais restores ‘of Sais’ in the lacuna. This did not agree with the traces that I had seen to the right of the