Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an
Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene*
ARLETTE DAVID, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Introduction
As early as 1922, Georges Bénédite wrote in a pa-
per celebrating Champollion’s century-old letter to
Mr. Dacier that hieroglyphic script and Egyptian art
are intimately bound together; that in most cases,
scriptural signs and representations function in simi-
lar ways.1 The same Egyptian word expresses the verbs
“to write” and “to draw;” script and iconography fol-
low the same canonical rules. There is nothing fortu-
itous or superfluous in the images of either graphic
system; both of them reflect ideas, concepts, and mes-
sages, but do not attempt to describe reality. Bénédite
already viewed Egyptian representations as a world of
signs that were to be decoded, rich in lexical and visual
plays, a system combining “signe graphique et image
plastique.” After him, Roland Tefnin’s semiotic studies
unerringly demonstrated how both script and art may
* This study is dedicated to my dear friend Raphael Ventura (Tel
Aviv University). I wish to thank Gal Ventura (Hebrew University
of Jerusalem) for her helpful suggestions concerning art history and
methodology and John Wyatt for his generous and erudite help in
ornithological matters.
1
Georges Bénédite, “Signa verba: Les jeux d’écriture dans
l’image,” in Recueil d’études égyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de
Jean-François Champollion, à l’occasion du centenaire de la lettre à M.
Dacier, relative à l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques, [no editor],
Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes 234 (Paris, 1922), 23–42.
[JNES 73 no. 2 (2014)] © 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 022–2968–2014/7302–003 $10.00.
be viewed as codes “tissant de l’image à la parole (. . .)
un inextricable réseau de significations.”2
In 1967, Wolfhart Westendorf published a seminal
article3 maintaining that “everyday life” pictures in
Egyptian tombs (in this case Tutankhamen’s) were
based on amphibolies4 (with polysemic words, word-
plays relying on ambiguous meanings, and double en-
tendre) in the hieroglyphic script; the function and
meaning of these so-called daily scenes was to promote
the eternal life of the tomb owner. These representa-
tions express a scriptural message by functioning as
hieroglyphs: they are not quite “innocent pictures.”5
2
Roland Tefnin, “Discours et iconicité dans l’art égyptien,”
GM 79 (1984): 55. Of course, many other authors have made
similar observations on the interplay of writing and image in Egyp-
tian art.
3
Wolfhart Westendorf, “Bemerkungen zur « Kammer der Wie-
dergeburt » in Tutanchamungrab,” ZÄS 94 (1967): 139–50.
4
See already Gerhard Fecht, Der Habgierige und die Maat in
der Lehre des Ptahhotep (5. und 19. Maxime), Abhandlungen des
Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 1 (Glück-
stadt, 1958), 46.
5
Against Westendorf ’s approach, see, e.g., Marianne Eaton-
Krauss and Erhart Graefe, The Small Golden Shrine from the Tomb
of Tutankhamun (Oxford, 1985); Erika Feucht, “Fishing and
Fowling with the Spear and the Throw-stick Reconsidered,” in The
Intellectual Heritage of Egypt: Studies Kákosy, ed. Ulrich Luft, Stu-
dia Aegyptiaca 14 (Budapest, 1992), 157–69; René Van Walsem,
235
236 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Clearly, since the script is iconic, the fusion of script
and image in emblematic representations and visual
puns is a natural consequence of the two systems’
ontology;6 the message is sent simultaneously through
scriptural and pictorial channels, in visual plays combin-
ing both semiotic systems, art, and script.7 Wordplays
(puns, rebuses) and sound-plays based on alliteration
and paronomasia are well-known in ancient Egyptian
literature,8 and this somewhat legitimizes the idea that
the same devices hide in representational contexts9
when the name of a depicted object is associated by
paronomasia with another meaningful concept in the
given environment. Such visual/scriptural plays and
associations would have been recognized by a member
of the Egyptian elite,10 familiar with a language and an
iconography whose transparency is lost to us. Obvious
too is the danger lying in our speculative reconstruc-
tions and quest for meaning:11 is any given specific
play intended by the author of the decorative scheme?
Is it plausible in the temporal and cultural context
of production? The art historian’s/Egyptologist’s eye
and mind are not culturally related to the material and
have a rather poor, decontextualized understanding of
it. The ancient Egyptian author—already a problem-
atic concept in a society that usually does not empha-
Iconography of Old Kingdom Elite Tombs, Mededelingen en verhan-
delingen van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente
Lux 35 (Leiden, 2005).
6
On the “emblematic” mode of representation, a “textual en-
coding” which combines figures and hieroglyphs, see, e.g., John
Baines, Visual & Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (Oxford, 2007),
285.
7
Of course, this does not mean that representational and tex-
tual constructs are always identical or even complementary; see An-
drey O. Bolshakov, “Representation and Text: Two Languages of
Ancient Egyptian Totenglauben,” AoF 30 (2003): 127–39, for the
evolution of the systems of a pictorial, detailed “real world” and a
textual, incomplete “fantastic world” of the gods and the dead king.
8 16
See, e.g., Hermann Grapow, Sprachliche und schriftliche
Formung aegyptischer Texte, Leipziger ägyptologische Studien 7
(Glückstadt, 1936), 17–20; Scott B. Noegel and Kasia Szpakowska,
“‘Word Play’ in the Ramesside Dream Manual,” SAK 35 (2006):
193–212.
9 17
Pascal Vernus, “Ecriture du rêve et écriture hiéroglyphique,”
Littoral 7/8 (1983): 27–32.
10
The Egyptian art message is usually that of the power holders
(the State largo sensu), with the artist serving the elite; the intended
addressee belongs to the same sphere as the power holder (or to
the divine realm), and the representation is a vehicle of its social
constructs and prototypes.
11
Kent R. Weeks, “Art, Word, and the Egyptian World View,” in
Egyptology and the Social Sciences, ed. Kent R. Weeks (Cairo, 1979),
59–81.
size authorship and authorial intent12 (which are not
the ultimate key to a work of art anyway13)—belongs
to a society whose values can only be painstakingly
retrieved by a modern observer with a wholly dif-
ferent mind-set and cultural background. The Egyp-
tians seldom explained their views on iconography or
fundamental beliefs, and favored double entendre and
richness of meaning. Such is the case, for instance,
in the famous scene of bird-trapping with a net by
H̱ nmḥtp (“Khnumhotep II”) himself in his tomb at
Beni Hasan (BH 3), 12th Dynasty (Figs. A, B, C).14
Methodology
In order to analyze this scene, Panofsky’s basic defini-
tion of the constituents of the work of art will serve
as a general framework:15 his understanding of the
art historian’s mission (a combination of “rational
archaeological analysis” with an “intuitive aesthetic
re-creation”),16 and his three levels of interaction with
the object in the work of the art historian17—with a
12
John Baines, “On the Status and Purposes of Ancient Egyp-
tian Art,” CAJ 4 (1994): 67–94.
13
An issue much discussed in the footsteps of Roland Barthes’
manifesto “La mort de l’auteur” in his Le bruissement de la langue:
Essais critiques IV (Paris, 1984), 61–67.
14
Carl R. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien nach
den Zeichnungen der von Seiner Majestät dem Könige von Preus-
sen Friedrich Wilhelm IV. nach diesen Ländern gesendeten und in
den Jahren 1842–1845. ausgeführten wissenschaftlichen Expedition,
vol. 2 (Berlin, 1849), pl. 130; Percy E. Newberry, Beni Hasan,
vol. 1, Archaeological Survey of Egypt (London, 1893), pl. 33;
Nina de Garis Davies, Facsimile Metropolitan Museum of Art
33.8.18 (New York, “probably 1931”): http://www.metmuseum.
org/Collections/search-the-collections/100000850, accessed
April 2014; Abdel G. Shedid, Die Felsgräber von Beni Hassan in
Mittelägypten, Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie 16 (Mainz,
1994), 64 fig. 108.
15
Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York,
1955), 10–17, 26–41.
Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, 14. See also Richard El-
dridge, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, 2003),
142–46, on artistic elucidation as a process involving both analytic
and synthetic motions, and the importance of insight (perception)
and imagination.
For a recent overview of the various art and trans-disciplinary
methods and theories used in Egyptology to analyze works of art, see
Alexandra Verbovsek, “‘Das Ende der Kunst?’: Kulturwissenschaft-
liche Perspektivierungen der ägyptologischen Kunstwissenschaft,”
in Methodik und Didaktik in der Ägyptologie, Herausforderungen
eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Paradigmenwechsels in den Altertums-
wissenschaften, eds. Alexandra Verbovsek, Burkhard Backes, and
Catherine Jones, Ägyptologie und Kulturwissenschaft 4 (Munich,
2011), 359–401; see also the other contributions on the subject in
that volume.
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene ) 237

Figure A—from Lepsius, Denkmäler, v. 2, pl. 130, Courtesy of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, ULB-Halle.

Figure B—from Lepsius, Denkmäler, v. 2, pl. 130, Courtesy of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, ULB-Halle.

certain measure of flexibility and interactivity between
them:18
18
See, e.g., Roelof van Straten, Iconography, Indexing, Iconclass:
A Handbook (Leiden, 1994), chapter 1, for a critique of the model
and a revised scheme.
The primary level of description: After establishing
a corpus of objects/motifs associated on a formal
level and belonging to an analogous physical
context, the scholar describes the objects in their
immediate pictorial and textual environment and
238 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Figure C—from Newberry, Beni Hasan, v.1, pl. 33, Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.
their spatial and temporal frame of reference,19
while identifying the conventions of depiction
in use, and distinguishing the corpus from
other closely related ones (i.e., a structuralist
approach).20
The secondary level of iconographical analysis:
The analysis of the values and functions at-
tached to the described objects/motifs and the
concepts involved in a larger cultural context of
production, with the help of ancient Egyptian
textual and archaeological sources (an historical
approach).
The tertiary level of iconological interpretation:
One looks for indicators of non-literal and
symbolic meaning, such as anomalies; examines
the possible convergence of pictorial and
lexical expressions associated with significant
19
See Henry G. Fischer, “Archaeological Aspects of Epigraphy
and Palaeography,” in Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeogra-
phy (New York, 1976), 30–33, on various contexts to be taken into
account for inscriptions and other visual material, such as geograph-
ical, architectural, ownership, social, technological, and immediate
contexts; nevertheless, the large notion of context and its various
frames of reference also needs interpretation, since it is a never-
complete, always observer-induced, and not a given element of the
artistic equation (see, e.g., Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, “Se-
miotics and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 73 [1991]: 174–208).
20
A structuralist approach originally based on Saussure’s lin-
guistic model is particularly well-suited to the descriptive phase of
analysis.
elements of the objects/motifs and their value/
function (and, when possible, on the basis of
the categorization processes involved in the
hieroglyphic script),21 while checking their
temporal fit;22 and investigates the symbolic
function of the various elements of the objects/
motifs and how they cohere to form the general
message. This is the level at which textual and
visual plays, metaphors, and other tropes are
identified. Various approaches from different
disciplines (humanities, and natural and social
sciences) may be used to interpret the material.23
Descriptive Level
The microscene is situated on the east wall of Khnum-
hotep’s chapel, above the door leading to the shrine,
between two major scenes featuring the tomb owner
hunting birds with the throw stick and spearing fish
in the marshes (Fig. D). The scene of the tomb owner
trapping birds in a net is unparalleled in Beni Hasan,
21
For this type of analysis, see Arlette David, “Hatshepsut and
the Image of Kingship: ink bik,” GM 224 (2010): 27–34; and “De-
vouring the Enemy: Ancient Egyptian Metaphors of Domination,”
BACE 22 (2011): 83–100.
22
See Hannes Buchberger, “Sexualität und Harfenspiel: Noti-
zen zur “sexuellen” Konnotation der altägyptischen Ikonographie,”
GM 66 (1983): 11–43, esp. 15 for criteria of productivity, adequacy,
and intersubjectivity.
23
See van Straten, Iconography, Indexing, Iconclass, 35.
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
Figure D—from de Garis Davies, Facsimile Metropolitan Museum of Art 33.8.18, Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Image source: Art Resource, NY.
as is the absolute spatial unity of the chapel’s east wall
iconography.24
In the bird-trapping scene (Fig. C), Khnumhotep,
facing the viewer’s right (i.e., south), sits on a stool; he
wears lector-priest attire25 and a long beard of the royal
type. He is sitting behind a reed screen punctured for
the cables that close the net. He holds the ropes in both
hands and the ends of the cables are lashed to a peg
behind him. One of his sons, also wearing a lector-priest
sash, brings him nymphaeas; both men are placed on a
low base or reed mat while Khnumhotep’s stool stands
on a higher step, his feet on the low base. An overseer
of the treasury stands behind them, his hand on his
shoulder in a gesture of veneration.26 On the other side
of the screen five types of bird are represented, flying
around or roosting on two acacias on either side of a
pool on which a hexagonal net has been laid. The net is
already full of waterfowl. The acacias are in full bloom,27
and their birds are not covered by the net.
24
But there are other cases of placement of a bird-trapping scene
on the east wall above the doorway leading to the chapel, close to a
scene in the marshes, e.g., Selim Hassan, Excavations at Giza (1933–
1934), vol. 5 (Cairo, 1944), fig. 123 (Old Kingdom tomb of Tsn).
25
Elisabeth Staehelin, Untersuchungen zur ägyptischen Tracht
im Alten Reich, Münchner ägyptologische Studien 8 (Berlin,
1966), 81.
26
Brigitte Dominicus, Gesten und Gebärden in Darstellungen
des Alten und Mittleren Reiches, Studien zur Archäologie und Ge-
schichte Altägyptens 10 (Heidelberg, 1994), 5–9.
27
In Lepsius’ facsimile of the scene (Denkmäler aus Ägypten
und Äthiopien, Figs. A and B), the trunk of the left acacia goes
) 239
The texts inscribed around the door concern offer-
ings, including the ḥtp dı͗ nı͗ -swt formula. Above the
scene of fowling with a throw stick, on the door’s left-
hand side, a text provides a series of titles for Khnum-
hotep and a brief and general labelling of the scene:
ḫns šꜢw pḥww, “traversing the swamps and marsh-
lands.” Above the harpooning scene on the right, the
text concerns both this scene and the trapping with
the net above the door:
ḫns šꜢw sšw pḥww ı͗ n ı͗ ry-pʿt ḥꜢty-ʿ ı͗ my-r wḥʿw šꜢw
sšw wḥʿ ḥb rdı͗ .n kꜢ[p] dı͗ .f sḫt n nmwt wrt wḥʿ
{mr} ḏʿ(?) rdı͗ .n.s snt.s rm.f 30 ḥswy hrw stt db
ḥꜢty-ʿ Nḥrı͗ sꜢ H
̱ nmḥtp ı͗ r n BꜢḳt
Traversing the swamps, marshes, and marshlands
by the noble, governor, overseer of fishers/
fowlers of swamps and marshes, fisher/fowler
and catcher. It is so that he may work the
trap28 of the great net that (I?) have placed
the screen. Releasing of the harpoon which she
down into the door’s lintel, just above the text’s first register; Lep-
sius’s reproduction is incorrect. I thank Prof. Naguib Kanawati for
checking this detail in situ and adding: “In fact the text band, which
represents the lintel of the shrine area, projects out of the wall and
therefore is not at the same surface level as the tree itself ” (personal
communication).
28
dı͗ sḫt: “to close a net, work a trap, give a signal to close the
trap”; see Hassan, Excavations at Giza (1933–1934), 267; Rainer
Hannig, Ägyptisches Wörterbuch II: Mittleres Reich und Zweite
Zwischenzeit, Hannig Lexica 5 (Mainz, 2006), 2324.
240 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
(Sḫt?) caused to spear his thirty fish; how reward-
ing is the day of spearing the hippopotamus! The
governor, Nḥrı͗ ’s son, H̱ nmḥtp, born of BꜢḳt.29
Thus the text concerns the actor’s motion, the
hunt’s environment, the role assumed by the actor,
the relation between the screen and the closing of the
net, and the spearing of fish and hippopotamus. The
syntax of the sentence that concerns our scene, a cleft
sentence, implies that the topic is the placement of the
screen (motive), while the focus is on the closing of
the net. A single horizontal register of hieroglyphs is
painted above this text and refers to Khnumhotep as
“great of catch and beloved of Sḫt, lady of the catch”
(wr ḥb mry Sḫt nbt ḥb). Above the net scene, only
titles and the name of the tomb owner appear; a short
labeling (cursory kinship relation/title and name) is
provided above the two men behind Khnumhotep.
Scenes of human actors trapping birds with nets30
had become well known by the time of the 4th Dy-
nasty (Snfrw’s reign) in royal and private funerary
contexts,31 but the tomb owner does not usually do
the trapping himself. Only two examples of kings clap-
netting are known before the New Kingdom, one by
a standing Dn (1st Dynasty) on a wooden label,32 the
other by a sitting SꜢḥwrʿ (5th Dynasty).33 The latter
29
Newberry, Beni Hasan, vol.1, pl. 34; Urk. VII, 37. The ab-
sence of an actor of rdı͗ .n suggests a locutive form, but the following
dı͗ .f (and ensuing rm.f) leaves it unclear if the same actor is referred
to under both locutive and delocutive guise.
30
An early scene of a hexagonal net enclosing two birds (with-
out human participant) was found on an inlaid greywacke disk in a
1st Dynasty tomb: Walter B. Emery, The Tomb of Hemaka (Cairo,
1938), pl. 12C (Cat. No. 310). See also Wolfgang Decker and Mi-
chael Herb, Bildatlas zum Sport im alten Ägypten: Corpus der bild-
lichen Quellen zu Leibesübungen, Spiel, Jagd, Tanz und verwandten
Themen, Handbuch der Orientalistik 1/14 (Leiden, 1994), I: 456–
532 and II: pl. 270–300.
31
Ahmed Fakhry, The Monuments of Sneferu at Dashur, vol. 2
(Cairo, 1961), pl. 29 A; Jacques Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyp-
tienne, vol. 5 (Paris, 1969), 330.
32
Ab K 2520 (T–O): Günter Dreyer et al., “Umm el-Qaab: Na-
chuntersuchungen im frühzeitlichen Königsfriedhof, 9./10. Vor-
bericht,” MDAIK 54 (1998): pl. 12f; Hartwig Altenmüller, “Der
König als Vogelfänger und Fischer (nbty wḥʿ)—zu frühen Belegen
eines traditionellen Motivs,” in Zeichen aus dem Sand: Streiflichter
aus Ägyptens Geschichte zu Ehren von Günter Dreyer, ed. Eva-Maria
Engel, Vera Müller, and Ulrich Hartung, MENES 5 (Wiesbaden,
2008), 6–7.
33
Blocks SC/north/2003/05–6: Tarek El Awady, “The royal
family of Sahura: New evidence,” in Abusir and Saqqara in the
year 2005: Proceedings of the Conference Held in Prague (June
27–July 5, 2005), ed. Miroslav Bárta, Filip Coppens, and Jaromir
Krejčí (Prague, 2006), 201, fig. 5, pl. 3, and Abusir XVI: Sahure-
The Pyramid Causeway: History and Decoration Program in the Old
probably serves as the model34 for the later scenes in
which the tomb owner, seated on a stool, traps birds
in a net. King SꜢḥwrʿ is represented on the northern
wall of his pyramid causeway in Abusir sitting on his
throne, his feet on the throne’s base, his wife looking
at him, holding his leg and pointing in front of them;35
a smr wʿty on his knees faces them and holds a nym-
phaea or a fan/flywhisk36 of lotiform or palmiform
type, and a cloth (?)37 in his other hand in a gesture of
offering. The king wears a skullcap, a beard, a collar,
and a pleated kilt, and holds a long staff under his right
armpit. Both hands hold the cable of the net which
is no longer visible; the end of the rope is held by a
peg behind him. The inscription above the scene uses
the term ı͗ Ꜣdt ( )38 to designate the ten nets bound
together, and emphasizes that they are closed simulta-
neously by the king himself. In later times, this activity
was practiced by the king, albeit not seated,39 and by
standing gods in Greco-Roman temple iconography.40
In the rare examples in which the owners of private
tombs trap birds with a net, they are usually not rep-
resented in lector-priest garb (except for ʾItı͗ ı͗ bı͗ ı͗ ḳr),
and there is no acacia tree in the scene. There are two
other examples from the First Intermediate Period/
Kingdom (Prague, 2009), 215–31; Altenmüller, “Der König als
Vogelfänger und Fischer,” 4–5; Anthony Spalinger, “Königsnovelle
and Performance,” in Times, Signs and Pyramids: Studies in Honour
of M. Verner on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Vivienne
G. Callender et al. (Prague, 2011), 364–65.
34
Lubica Zelenková, “The Royal Kilt in Non-Royal Iconogra-
phy? The tomb owner fowling and spear-fishing in the Old and
Middle Kingdom,” BACE 21 (2010): 156–58.
35
Interpreted by Altenmüller, “Der König als Vogelfänger und
Fischer,” 14–15, as pointing to a soul, the catching of a bird being
understood as an operation for the revival and ensoulment of the
dead.
36
El Awady, Abusir XVI, 219.
37
Could it be a cloth with which the signal to close the net is
given? See Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 353.
38
The hieroglyph was already recognized on the Palermo Stone
by Altenmüller, “Der König als Vogelfänger und Fischer,” 8.
39
See, e.g., Rameses II in the hypostyle hall in Karnak, south
wall, in Harold H. Nelson and William J. Murnane, The Great Hy-
postyle Hall at Karnak, I, 1: The Wall Reliefs, Oriental Institute
Publications 106 (Chicago, 1981), pl. 44.
40
 Maurice Alliot, “Les rites de la chasse au filet, aux temples
de Karnak, d’Edfou et d’Esneh,” RdE 5 (1946): 57–118; Dimi-
tri Meeks, Mythes et légendes du Delta d’après le papyrus Brooklyn
47.218.84, Mémoires de l’IFAO 125 (Cairo; 2008), 233–38; Chris-
tiane Desroches-Noblecourt, “Un «lac de turquoise»: Godets à
onguents et destinées d’outre-tombe dans l’Égypte ancienne,” Fon-
dation Eugène Piot: Monuments et Mémoires publiés par l’Académie
des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 47 (1953): 31 n. 3, pl. 2, figs. 23–24.
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
Figure E—from Newberry, El-Bersheh I, pl. 17, Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.
Middle Kingdom and one from the New Kingdom.41
From the earlier period, we have first a damaged repre-
sentation on the south wall of the chapel of the Asyut
tomb of the nomarch ʾItı͗ ı͗ bı͗ ı͗ ḳr (11th Dynasty) which
may show him sitting on a stool, apparently in lector-
priest attire, holding the ropes of the hexagonal nets
in front of him. The goddess Sḫt holds birds between
him and the nets, and men catch birds all around.
Unfortunately the cables are invisible in what is left
of the scene, and the text does not clearly suggest that
he himself is netting the birds.42 Second we find, in
Ḏḥwtyḥtp’s tomb at El-Bersheh (12th Dynasty), the
tomb owner seated on a stool on a base/mat, his feet
on the ground. He is helped by men on their knees
41
For the Old Kingdom, in the mastaba of NfrmꜢʿt and ʾItt at
Meidum (4th Dynasty), on the architrave of the west wall of the
north chapel of ʾItt, NfrmꜢʿt is represented standing in a dynamic
posture, left knee bent, holding the rope in both hands in front of
a papyrus thicket, that is, he is not sitting (Ashmolean Museum
1910.635); see Yvonne Harpur, The Tombs of Nefermaat and Raho-
tep at Maidum: Discovery, Destruction and Reconstruction, Egyptian
Tombs of the Old Kingdom 1 (Cheltenham, 2001), 81 fig. 82,
231 fig. 169, 241 fig. 177, pl. 23. As Henriette A. Groenewegen-
Frankfort, Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the
Representational Art of the Ancient Near East (New York, 1972),
32, avers, NfrmꜢʿt is not shown actively engaged in trapping in his
own chapel but only in his wife’s.
42
Mahmoud El-Khadragy, “Some Significant Features in the
Decoration of the Chapel of Iti-ibi-iqer at Asyut,” SAK 36 (2007):
112–13, figs. 6–7.
) 241
behind him (Fig. E, east wall of the inner chamber;
pl. 17)43 or by his son (pls. 20–21), both standing.44
From the New Kingdom, in ḤꜢtı͗ Ꜣı͗ ’s Theban tomb
(TT 324, Ramesside Period, Fig. F),45 the owner is
represented on the outer hall’s east wall sitting on a
stool on a base/mat behind a papyrus thicket, feet
on the ground; only he holds the cable that will close
the net. His wife sits at his feet, her arm resting on
his knees. The register above the bird-trapping shows
ḤꜢtı͗ Ꜣı͗ line-fishing, seated on a stool; his wife sits on a
cushion behind him. The wall and its scenes are in a
much damaged state.
Thus only four examples total of private tomb own-
ers sitting as they close the birds’ trap are known;
in three cases, the scene is represented on the east
wall of the room in which they appear.46 The east
wall in Ḏḥwtyḥtp’s tomb at El-Bersheh is not devoted
to marsh activities only; it also encompasses the fa-
mous scene of the transportation of a colossal statue
in its upper register. The same non-exclusive marsh
43
Percy E. Newberry, El-Bersheh I: The Tomb of Tehuti-Hetep,
Archaeological Survey of Egypt 3 (London, 1894), pl. 17.
44
Newberry, El-Bersheh I, pls. 20–21 (upper register); Vandier,
Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, fig. 168, 1.
45
Norman de Garis Davies, Seven Private Tombs at Kurnah,
Mond Excavations at Thebes 2 (London, 1948), pl. 32; Vandier,
Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 396, fig. 175.
46
Note that the tombs at Beni Hasan and El-Bersheh are located
on the east bank.
242 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Figure F—from Davies, Seven Private Tombs at Kurnah, pl. 32, Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society
thematic is observed on ʾItı͗ ı͗ bı͗ ı͗ ḳr’s net-scene wall. The
scene in ḤꜢtı͗ Ꜣı͗ ’s tomb recalls a scene on Twtʿnḫı͗ mn’s
golden shrine (Cairo JE 61481, 18th Dynasty),47 in
which the king sits on a stool and shoots birds with his
bow, the queen sitting at his feet. In another famous
scene of the shrine, the queen puts her forearm on the
king’s knee in a way that recalls ḤꜢtı͗ Ꜣı͗ ’s wife’s gesture.
Only in ʾItı͗ ı͗ bı͗ ı͗ ḳr’s scene does the tomb owner wear a
lector-priest sash, as in Khnumhotep’s case.
Iconographical Level
The tomb is not conceived as an album of ran-
domly-chosen everyday life pictures. It is a careful se-
lection of scenes, texts, and objects48 anticipating the
dead man’s rebirth,49 emphasizing his social status,50
47
Eaton-Krauss and Graefe, The Small Golden Shrine, pls. 15
and 17.
48
Weeks, “Art, Word, and the Egyptian World View,” 61:
“. . . there was a deliberate selection of the scenes included in (. . .)
Egyptian tomb reliefs. We would also suggest that there was a care-
ful selection of the attributes those scenes are shown to possess.”
49
Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, “Poissons, tabous, et
transformations du Mort,” Kêmi 13 (1954): 33–42; Philippe Der-
chain, “La perruque et le cristal,” SAK 2 (1975): 55–74, and “Sym-
bols and  Metaphors in Literature and Representations of Private
Life,” RAIN 15 (1976): 7–10; Dieter Kessler, “Zur Bedeutung der
Szenen des täglichen Lebens in den Privatgräbern (I): Die Szenen
des Schiffsbaues und der Schiffahrt,” ZÄS 114 (1987): 59–88; Lise
Manniche, “The So-called Scenes of Daily Life in the Private Tombs
of the 18th Dynasty: An Overview,” in The Theban Necropolis: Past,
Present and Future, eds. Nigel Strudwick and John H. Taylor (Lon-
don, 2003), 42–45.
50
Hartwig Altenmüller, “Zum möglichen religiösen Gehalt von
Grabdarstellungen des Alten Reiches,” in Ernten, was man sät: Fest-
schrift für K. Koch zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. Dwight R. Daniels,
and perhaps ensuring some measure of enjoyment all
at once.51 Like the tomb’s furnishings, its iconography
and texts are meant for its owner, not for the living;
the addressee/spectator, the owner of the tomb, is em-
bedded in the image52 or belongs to the divine realm.
It is generally assumed that the marsh scenes have a
primordial recreational function for the tomb owner,
relating to pleasurable upper-class activities of hunt-
ing, fishing, and fowling (also a status indicator), pre-
sented as occurring in this world or maintained after
death and justification; a magical function ensuring
the necessary food supply for the kꜢ is also presumed.53
The recreational/social purpose seems implied by a
literal reading of the scene and of the texts that may
accompany it; the interpretation of the scenes happen-
ing in the Afterlife is an assumption based on funerary
literature.54 The magical function of a food supply
is deduced from the funerary context, its cult and
practices. Evidently, the tomb’s decoration is a multi-
layered construct, both “practical” and “symbolic,”55
Uwe Gleßmer, and Martin Rösel (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1991), 22,
and “Der König als Vogelfänger und Fischer,” 11–14.
51
The ultimate goal according to Feucht, “Fishing and Fowl-
ing”; Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca,
2005), 275–77; Van Walsem, Iconography of Old Kingdom Elite
Tombs, 72–83.
52
Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, 30–31; Tef-
nin, “Eléments pour une sémiologie de l’image égyptienne,” CdE
66 (1991): 70–73; Bolshakov, “Representation and Text,” 127.
53
See, e.g., Feucht, “Fishing and Fowling,” 168; Van Walsem,
Iconography of Old Kingdom Elite Tombs, 78.
54
Erika Feucht, “Fisch- und Vogelfang im wꜢḏ-wr des Jenseits,”
in Jerusalem Studies in Egyptology, ed. Irene Shirun-Grumach,
Ägypten und Altes Testament 40 (Wiesbaden, 1998), 37–44.
55
The terms used by Ronald J. Leprohon, “Review of Kamrin,
The Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, 1999,” JEA 90
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
conditioned by the Egyptian system of depiction and
its conceptual world. A space dedicated to hosting and
providing nourishment for the dead and perpetuating
his service cannot be taken as a primary “realistic”
environment whose content has to do with literal
meanings. The tomb and its liminal essence feature
elements belonging to two worlds,56 while the After-
life is conceived in terms of this one; the marsh scenes
must have religious content, since the tomb is the
locus of preservation of identity after death and its
transformation towards rebirth, as well as a cult place.
Funerary literature implies that the tomb owner on
his way to rebirth will have to evade numerous dan-
gers, including evil beings that will use throw sticks,
spears, nets, and fish or bird traps against him and his
soul-bird, his bꜢ;57 this danger is underlined in the Cof-
fin Texts (Spells 343, 473–81) by the repeated “you
shall not catch me in your nets.”58 In a typical retribu-
tive move, he will use similar means to protect himself
against evil (CT Spell 481, a spell for escaping from
the net): ı͗ w.ı͗ st.ı͗ ḏsf.ı͗ m bw pn pr.n.ı͗ ı͗ m.f, “I spear and
trap in this place from which I have escaped.”59
Then, after his vindication and transformation into
a divine being (Ꜣḫ), he will contemplate the “places
of the one who follows the heart” (swt šms-ı͗ b),60 full
of water, papyrus, lotus, rushes, and “waterfowl in
thousands,” ready to fall under the deceased’s throw
stick (CT Spell 62).61 Thus various types of nets are
supplement (2004): 25; John Baines, “Review of Kamrin, The
Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, 1999,” Antiquity 75
(2001): 654.
56
Melinda Hartwig, “An Examination of Art Historical Method
and Theory: A Case Study,” in Methodik und Didaktik in der
Ägyptologie, Herausforderungen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Par-
adigmenwechsels in den Altertumswissenschaften, ed. Alexandra Ver-
bovsek, Burkhard Backes, and Catherine Jones, Ägyptologie und
Kulturwissenschaft 4 (Munich, 2011), 319–21.
57
On “der Mensch ist Fisch und Vogel,“ see Erik Hornung,
“Fisch und Vogel: Zur altägyptischen Sicht des Menschen,” Jahr-
buch Eranos 52 (1983): 458.
58
Dino Bidoli, Die Sprüche der Fangnetze in den altägyptischen
Sargtexten, Abhandlungen des Deutschen Archäologischen In-
stituts, Abteilung Kairo 9 (Glückstadt, 1976); Gudrun Meyer,
“Das Hirtenlied in den Privatgräbern des Alten Reiches,” SAK 17
(1990): 266–67.
59
CT VI, 46 S1C.
60
The exact meaning of this is not completely clear although
probably not hedonistic (the places in which the one who follows
his conscience dwells?); see David Lorton, “The Expression Šms-
ı͗ b,” JARCE 7 (1968): 53.
61
Although the Greco-Roman “Book of Thot” also refers to
bird catching, perhaps in the sense of netting hieroglyphs (Richard
Jasnow, “Birds and Bird Imagery in the Book of Thot,” in Between
) 243
represented in tombs, and small spring-nets have even
been found in tomb furnishings,62 implying that the
tomb owner is supposed to have or has the means to
trap birds after his death, not only to remember or
contemplate these earthly activities.
The text above the harpooning scene in Khnumho-
tep’s tomb does not mention the purpose of the fowl-
ing, but uses the lexeme ḥs about the spearing of the
hippopotamus. It is usually translated as “pleasant” in
relation to the marsh scenes, although it certainly has
a larger semantic field than only aesthetic/recreational
pleasure (divine/royal/superior’s praise or favor). In a
funerary context, the recreational aspect of fishing and
fowling does not have to be the only one intended,
even when accompanying texts use sḫmḫt-ı͗ b, wḏꜢ-ı͗ b or
hrw nfr.63 Already in Ṯy’s tomb (5th Dynasty),64 like
later on, the purpose of net fowling is to act for the de-
ceased’s kꜢ; this is not a recreational but a ritual activity
expressed in a performative construction,65 and it may
not even be limited to a sustenance purpose.66
The marsh scenes then, have possibly religious and
ritual (apotropaic/magical), “recreational” (also in a
religious, Afterlife perspective), and status-referential
Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt, ed. Rozenn Bailleul-
LeSuer [Chicago, 2012], 73–74) or wisdom (Joachim Quack, “Ein
ägyptischer Dialog über die Schreibkunst und das arkane Wissen,”
ARG 9 [2007]: 265–67), the meaning of our Middle Kingdom
scene may not be inferred from this late composition with its divine
protagonist and specific context.
62
See, e.g., model bird trap MMA 30.8.221, 18th Dynasty,
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/
100012124; Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 307–
13. Clapnets of this kind are also represented in Beni Hasan tombs
(e.g., Percy E. Newberry, Beni Hasan, vol. 2, Archaeological Survey
of Egypt [London, 1893], pl. 6).
63
Waltraud Guglielmi, Reden, Rufe und Lieder auf altägyp-
tischen Darstellungen der Landwirtschaft, Viehzucht, des Fisch- und
Vogelfangs vom Mittleren Reich bis zur Spätzeit, Tübinger ägyptolo-
gische Beiträge 1 (Bonn, 1973), esp. 144–56 concerning fowling;
Lorton, “The Expression Šms-ı͗ b,” 42, shows that hrw nfr “does not
seem to have a purely hedonistic implication”; see also David Lor-
ton, “The Expression ʾIrı͗ Hrw Nfr,” JARCE 12 (1975): 23–31.
64
Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 320, fig. 145,
the text above the catcher on the right close to Ṯy’s feet.
65
Arlette David, “How to Do Things with ḥw: The Egyptian
Performative ı͗ w- n-,” in FS NN, forthcoming.
66
Even “The Pleasures of Fishing and Fowling” (18th Dynasty,
Papyrus Moscow unnumbered) has been reinterpreted with the
discovery of the causeway reliefs of SꜢḥwrʿ (the “visual origins of
the Königsnovelle” for Spalinger, “Königsnovelle and Performance,”
363–64) and the comparison with Amenemhat II’s account of fowl-
ing at Memphis (Hartwig Altenmüller and Ahmed M. Moussa,
“Die Inschrift Amenemhets II. aus dem Ptah-Tempel von Memphis:
Ein Vorbericht,” SAK 18 [1991]: 1–48).
244 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Figure G—from Lepsius, Denkmäler, v. 2, pl.132, Courtesy of Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, ULB-Halle.
functions; they perhaps entwine the positive and nega-
tive aspects of trapping with a net and the role of the
tomb owner as actor or object of the trapping that
are present in the funerary literature of the same pe-
riod. The mention of travelling (ḫns) in the labeling of
Khnumhotep’s scenes, and in many other cases, may
allude to the metaphoric notion of death as a journey.
The careful composition of the marsh scenes does
not imply the absence of variation; motifs are some-
times expanded, or abbreviated. The general purpose
is the same, but beyond what the Egyptians consid-
ered the essential attributes of the scenes, a measure of
freedom was welcome. The same careful but not uni-
form composition is also reflected in tomb literature;
Khnumhotep weaves his autobiography’s texture by
using isotopy, assonances, and parallelisms67 in a for-
mulaic frame that also includes personal and historical
elements in an idiosyncratic measure. The decoration
on the east wall of his chapel, where his autobiography
begins (not directly related to the iconography of the
wall), is thus uniquely devoted to marsh scenes, unlike
the other tomb scenes in our corpus of tomb own-
ers trapping birds in a net, offering a thematic unity
enhanced by the details that will now be examined on
the iconological level.
Iconological Level
The scene must be distinguished from other bird-trap-
ping scenes in which the tomb owner is not actively
67
Allan B. Lloyd, “The Great Inscription of Khnumhotpe II at
Beni Hasan,” Studies in Pharaonic Religion and Society in Honour of
J. G. Griffiths, Egypt Exploration Society, Occasional Publications 8
(London, 1992), 25–26.
involved. This is the case, for instance, in another
scene from the same room on the north wall (Fig.
G):68 four anonymous trappers on their knees and a
son of Khnumhotep69 stand trapping birds with two
hexagonal nets.70
No stool or base/mat is used here, no nymphaea is
offered to the trappers; they all wear simple clothes.
Some hide behind a papyrus thicket, others are hidden
by a screen. The normalcy of this scene is in strong
contrast to Khnumhotep’s, which indicates that his in-
volvement is endowed with supplementary meaning.
Not all the anomalies in Khnumhotep’s representation
can be explained by the “hieroglyphic” character of
Egyptian art and its use of prototypes to assign the im-
age to a semantic class, or by stylistic idiosyncrasy and
pragmatic considerations.71 It goes beyond Jacques
Vandier’s72 and Janice Kamrin’s73 contentions that
Khnumhotep exhibits his power in this scene when
he alone executes an action normally requiring four or
68
Lepsius, Denkmäler, vol. 2, pl. 132.
69
The notation of his kinship relation to the owner of the tomb
is visible in Newberry, Beni Hasan, vol.1, pl. 30, not in Lepsius,
Denkmäler, vol. 2, pl. 132.
70
Not two sequences of trapping with one net, as Janice Kam-
rin, The Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan (London-New
York, 1999), 97, suggests: one group of men hide behind a screen,
the other behind a papyrus thicket.
71
Buchberger, “Sexualität und Harfenspiel,” 26–27; Kessler,
“Zur Bedeutung der Szenen,” 62; see also Valérie Angenot, “A
Method for Ancient Egyptian Hermeneutics (with Application to
the Small Golden Shrine of Tutankhamun),” in Methodik und Di-
daktik, ed. Verbovsek, Backes, and Jones, 258, on the norms and
principles of Egyptian depictions (semiotic convention) to be dis-
tinguished from the “hermeneutic levels.”
72
Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 362.
73
Kamrin, The Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, 109–10.
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
five trappers, although this point recalls single-handed
mastery of ten nets by King SꜢḥwrʿ. Of course, one
may argue that Khnumhotep’s activity is an abbrevi-
ated form of that presented in Ḏḥwtyḥtp’s tomb at El-
Bersheh, minus the trappers helping the tomb owner,
a kind of visual raccourci.
But other features of the scene are not so easily dis-
missed, despite not having enjoyed enough attention.
Visually, our scene contains four clusters of important
elements: Khnumhotep behind the screen; the offer-
ing of nymphaea; the waterfowl, net and pool; and the
two acacias with birds.
Khnumhotep Behind the Screen
Although the action occurs in a natural outdoor
environment (marshes), the impractical seating ar-
rangement hints at a ritual context around a subject
isolated by a screen and a base/mat (“sitting” is also
“dwelling,” ḥmsı͗ , a common metaphor).74 Moreover,
Khnumhotep, represented in an impossible position
to close a large net and in impractical attire, does not
just physically trap birds but acts in his tomb on an-
other level, too: his lector-priest garb, like his son’s,
implies that he is involved as a speaker of ritual texts,
imbued with ḥw, the performative word, and as such
acts as the Creator.75 In CT Spell 325 (CT IV, 156d
and g), the deceased proclaims: “ḥw belongs to me
(. . .), what I say is done accordingly.” Khnumho-
tep’s physical action, sḫt , “to trap” (as mentioned
above the spearing scene); ḥb , “to catch fish
and fowl”; grg , “to snare”; but also šnı͗ , “to
encircle, bind,”76 holding a loop of cord (šnw,77 sšnt78)
to trap fowl, doubles with a verbal action, šnı͗ , “to
recite, spellbind, enchant,” highlighted by the rep-
resentation of his lector-priest attire. The basic idea
74
A paronomasia may serve to intimate the dwelling place: the
isolating screen (kꜢ [p] in the text above the harpooning scene, lit-
erally “cover”) is made of reeds (ı͗ sw), phonetically associated with
the tomb (ı͗ s).
75
Arlette David, “The Sound of the Magic Flute in Legal and
Religious Registers of the Ramesside Period: Some Common Fea-
tures of Two ‘Ritualistic Languages’,” in Law and Religion in the
Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Reinhard G. Kratz and Anselm C.
Hagedorn (Oxford, 2013), 21–24.
76
See šnı͗ in CT VI, 33g (Spell 476, about the danger of entrap-
ment by fishers/fowlers in the Afterlife).
77
The lexeme may be already found in PT 270d (Spell 251);
it is certainly found in Middle Kingdom texts with the classifier
(Hannig, Ägyptisches Wörterbuch II, 2474).
78
CT VI, 5d.
) 245
behind both uses of šnı͗ is the same—trapping is en-
circling, and conjuring by a spell is an entrapment
in a magic circle.79 The hieroglyphic/hieratic scripts
of the Middle Kingdom use different classifiers (“de-
terminatives”) to categorize these actions. Generally,
the physical action is indicated by the classifier of
the [COERCION] category, while the verbal action is
classified by the icon of the [MOUTH-LINKED ACTIV-
ITIES] category,80 but both may use the classifier of the
loop of cord ( ) to indicate that they both belong to
the semantic field of the [ROPE + LINKED ACTIVITIES]
category. The lexeme šnı͗ is already associated with
bird-catching in the Pyramid Texts (Spell 341, §555c,
east wall of the burial chamber): “It is on King PN that
Plenty has put her hands while King PN’s hands en-
circle the bird-catch (šn.n ʿw.PN ḥꜢb). All that Sḫt has
done is for her son Birdcatch, and it is with him that
King PN shall eat today.”81 Thus the scene may allude
by paronomasia and by the inclusion of incongruous
pictorial signifiers to a double entendre implying that
more is to be understood than meets the eye; it hints at
magical connotations in the form of a protective spell
conjured by the owner of the tomb even though šnı͗ is
not mentioned in the accompanying text. Metaphor is
used to express the elusive, abstract concept of magical
spell; I shall soon return to the pervasive notion of the
magic circle in our scene.
Nymphaea Offering
The offering of nymphaea flowers 82 (s[š]šn) is an
evident solar symbol, a message of rebirth83 in the
79
Rudolf Anthes, “Das Verbum šnı͗ “umschliessen, bannen” in
den Pyramidentexten,” ZÄS 86 (1961): 86–89; Robert K. Ritner,
The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, Studies in An-
cient Oriental Civilization 54 (Chicago, 1993), 43.
80
See Arlette David, Syntactic and Lexico-Semantic Aspects of
the Legal Register in Ramesside Royal Decrees, Göttinger Orientfor-
schungen IV, Reihe Ägypten 38/5 (Wiesbaden, 2006), 24–25 and
27–28, on both categories, the classifiers that represent them, and
further references.
81
A literal representation of the spell is represented in the Asyut
tomb of the nomarch ʾItı͗ ı͗ bı͗ ı͗ ḳr (11th Dynasty); see El-Khadragy,
“Some Significant Features,” 112–13, figs. 6–7.
82
For a recent review of the origin of the nymphaea motif, see
Tanja Pommerening, Elena Marinova, and Stan Hendrickx, “The
Early Dynastic Origin of the water-lily Motif,” CdE 85 (2010):
14–40.
83
Desroches-Noblecourt, “Poissons, tabous, et transformations
du Mort,” 37; Elisabeth-Christine Strauss, Die Nunschale—Eine
Gefässgruppe des Neuen Reiches, Munchner Ägyptologische Studien
30 (München-Berlin, 1974), 72–76; Philippe Derchain, “Le lotus,
246 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Netherworld already inscribed in PT 266 (Spell
249): ḫʿ PN m Nfrtm m sššn r šrt Rʿ pr.f m Ꜣḫt hrw
nb, “It is as Nfrtm that PN appears, as a nymphaea
at Rʿ’s nostril, when he comes out of the horizon
every day.” Furthermore, the scene appears on the
east wall of the chamber, thereby linked to dawn; the
east wall may be considered the cultic focal point of
the chamber, “the tomb owner’s apotheosis,” 84 on
which the biographical inscription and Khnumho-
tep’s life-death-rebirth cycle begins and ends both
graphically and textually. Khnumhotep’s son offers
the nymphaeas while wearing the lector-priest’s garb;
this alludes to his capacity to utter potent spells re-
lated to Khnumhotep’s rebirth.85
Waterfowl, Net, and Pool
Trapping waterfowl (here mostly pintail ducks [-sꜢ
/st, ḥp-, and green-winged teals],86 hence sšntı͗ as they
are often called in the CT)87 in a net is a common tomb
scene since the Old Kingdom,88 although the repre-
sentation of bird-trapping in a hexagonal net occurs
already on an item found in a 1st Dynasty tomb.89 The
scene is said to entail two aspects: one positive, related
to the duck as a symbol of fertility linked to rebirth,90
and one negative, the birds as enemies (šntyw) of the
dead, necessitating their being trapped to re-establish
order in the cosmos.91 The birds, as a collective sign,
la mandragore et le perséa,” CdE 99–100 (1975): 71; Richard H.
Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient
Egyptian Painting and Sculpture (London, 1992), 121.
84
Leprohon, “Review of Kamrin,” 23, 25.
85
See Hartwig Altenmüller, “Family, ancestor cult and some ob-
servations on the chronology of the late Fifth Dynasty,” in Chronol-
ogy and Archaeology in Ancient Egypt (The Third Millennium B.C.):
Proceedings of the Conference Held in Prague (June 11–14, 2007),
ed. Hana Vymazalová and Miroslav Bárta (Prague, 2008), 157–58,
on the presentation of the nymphaea by the son to his father.
86
Patrick F. Houlihan, The Birds of Ancient Egypt (Warminster,
1986), 67–69, 71–73.
87
See also sšn (duck) in Beni Hasan tomb 15 (Newberry, Beni
Hasan, vol. 2, pl. 7; Hannig, Ägyptisches Wörterbuch II, 2357).
88
Pierre Montet, Les scènes de la vie privée dans les tombeaux
égyptiens de l’Ancien Empire (Paris, 1925), 42–66; Vandier, Manuel
d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 307–98, esp. with a hexagonal net,
320–98.
89
Emery, The Tomb of Hemaka, pl. 12C.
90
Alfred Hermann, “Ente,” in Reallexikon für Antike und
Christentum, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1962), 433–55; Derchain, “Symbols
and Metaphors,” 8; Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian Art, 95.
91
Siegfried Schott, “Totenbuchspruch 175 in einem Ritual zur
Vernichtung von Feinden,” MDAIK 14 (1956): 181–89; Dietrich
refer to two contrary meanings by condensation. Note
that knots (ṯs), such as the one featured between the
screen and the left end of the net, connote protection
and blocking evil.92
Here, the net used is large and hexagonal, a nmwt
wrt in the text above the harpooning scene; the
lexical choice may allude to the nnwt ḥꜢmt.ṯn nnw
ı͗ m.s, “net for catching the inert ones,” of CT Spell
477 (CT VI, 34 B1P), since nmwt may be a wordplay
for n mwt, “for death.” Other lexemes are used during
the Middle Kingdom for “net,” one of them being šnw
(CT Spell 473).93
The pool (š or sšnt) represented in the scene may
be a man-made reservoir or a schematic, nondescript
natural pool in the marshes; it represents a meeting
point of water- and airborne species, a source of life
and the mythical topos of divine birth, a place where
life’s disorder calls for a regulating hand.
Two Acacias with Birds
In the other tombs’ scenes of bird-trapping in a net,
there are no trees with birds represented on either side
of the pool, only papyrus clumps with nesting birds
in some cases.94 Here two Acacia Nilotica (šnḏt)95 in
full bloom frame the pool and its net. The Egyptian
acacia, Acacia Nilotica, is a species of thorny acacia
(“Egyptian thorn”).
We should note at this stage that the syllable šn
phonetically dominates the whole microscene and may
Wildung, “Feindsymbolik,” in LÄ 2 (1977): 147; Karl Martin, “Vo-
gelfang, -jagd, -netz, -steller,” LÄ 6 (1986): 1052.
92
George D. Hornblower, “Funerary Designs on Predynastic
Jars,” JEA 16 (1930): 17–18; Willeke Wendrich, “Entangled, Con-
nected or Protected? The Power of Knots and Knotting in Ancient
Egypt,” in Through a Glass Darkly: Magic, Dreams, and Prophecy
in Ancient Egypt, ed. Kasia Szpakowska (Swansea, 2006), 243–69.
93
Also in the Dispute of a Man with his Ba, line 9: see James
P. Allen, The Debate between a Man and his Soul: A Masterpiece of
Ancient Egyptian Literature, Culture and History of the Ancient
Near East 44 (Leiden, 2011), 29.
94
E.g., BꜢk’s tomb TT 18 in Gurna, 18th Dynasty, in W. M.
Flinders Petrie, Qurneh, British School of Archaeology and Egyp-
tian Research Account (London, 1909), pl. 36–37; Ḥrmḥb’s tomb
TT 78, 18th Dynasty in Annelies and Artur Brack, Das Grab des
Haremheb. Theben Nr. 78 (Mainz, 1980), pls. 19, 73a, 89.
95
Lise Manniche, An Ancient Egyptian Herbal (London,
1989), 65–67. For example, the tree is represented (but not flower-
ing) in tomb TT31, Ramesside Period, and on a Ramesside ostracon
(Jeanne Vandier d’Abbadie, Catalogue des ostraca figurés de Deir el-
Médineh, vol. 2, Documents de fouilles IFAO 2 [Cairo, 1936–37],
pl. 30 No. 2192).
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
represent a key to its understanding: it is part of the
lexemes nymphaea (sšn), tree (šn), acacia (šnḏt), water-
fowl (sšn, sšnti), perhaps enemies (šntyw),96 the verbal
spell of the lector-priest and the enclosing action of
the trapper (šnı͗ ), rope (šn, sšnt), and pool (sšnt). It
is also a name for a trapping net (šnw) at the time of
Khnumhotep. A containment metaphor is certainly at
play here; furthermore, the lexeme šnı͗ (to encircle) is
a key concept of solar symbolism: the šn-ring (hiero-
glyph V9) is the knotted cord that encloses all that
the sun encircles forever, a rebirth symbol.97 The solar
cycle seems to be the focus of the scene, visually in the
trapping rope and net and phonetically in the naming
of the various components of the scene; the šn-ring
protects and promotes eternal rebirth.98
The lexeme šnḏt “acacia” combines by paronomasia
two elements, the cyclic (šn) and the linear (ḏt) forms
of eternity, the acacia offering a visual parallel to the
literary binomial nḥḥ ḏt. The fact that the acacia is
evergreen reinforces its relation to eternity. The Egyp-
tians associated it with a divine birthplace as early as
the Old Kingdom in Heliopolis 99 (PT 436a, Spell 294:
Ḥr pw Wnı͗ s pr m šnḏ, “Wnı͗ s is Ḥr who came forth
from the acacia”). It is visually a “solar” tree, its yel-
low flowers looking like small suns. A pair of acacias
frames the pool; pairs of trees are usually associated
with the solar cycle,100 since two trees of turquoise
stand on the eastern horizon to frame the rising sun
(CT Spell 159). 101
96
A much later wordplay (šntyw–šnḏt) is noted in the temple
of Edfu by Nathalie Baum, Arbres et arbustes de l’Egypte ancienne:
La liste de la tombe thébaine d’Ineni (nº 81), Orientalia Lovaniensia
Analecta 31 (Leuven, 1988), 318.
97
Claudia Müller-Winkler, “Schen-Ring,” in LÄ 5 (1984): 578;
Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian Art, 193.
98
The likelihood of such visual wordplay based on the root šn
is perhaps validated by a Late Period unpublished text, pBM 10081:
“Die von ihnen, die zu jenem Seth und seinem Anhang abfallen (sšn
ı͗ b), wird meine Schwester Isis spießen (sšn) und ihre Köpfe abschla-
gen als (sšn.w-Vögel)” in Schott, “Totenbuchspruch 175,” 184.
99
Elmar Edel, Das Akazienhaus und seine Rolle in den Begräb-
nisrite des alten Ägyptens, Münchner ägyptologische Studien 24
(Berlin, 1970), esp. 14, 19–20.
100
Westendorf, “Bemerkungen zur «  Kammer der Wiederge-
burt  » in Tutanchamungrab,” n. 9; Josef Wegner, “A Decorated
Birth-Brick from South Abydos: New Evidence on Childbirth and
Birth Magic in the Middle Kingdom,” in Archaism and Innova-
tion: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt, ed. David P.
Silverman, William K. Simpson, and Josef Wegner (New Haven,
2009), 458–63.
101
Following New Kingdom sources, but possibly in a much
earlier tradition for Edel, Das Akazienhaus, 19–21, the goddess
) 247
The iconography of private tombs during the
Middle Kingdom does not obviously relate to cos-
mogonic symbolism, but hints at it rather subtly, as
Baines notes about our tomb. 102 On the east wall of
the chapel, above the door leading to the cult im-
age, the eternal solar cycle is visually and phonetically
intimated in a series of paronomasic associations in
terms of rebirth.
Finally, the birds: the nine birds related to the acacias
in the scene are a hoopoe, four masked and one red-
backed shrikes, two redstarts, and a turtledove.103 Two
shrikes are represented with wings extended, while the
other birds perch on branches (Figs. H and I).104 All the
represented species are fond of acacia trees in nature.
Significantly, the birds are spared being trapped; no net
is thrown over the two acacias, as is sometimes the case
in bird-trapping scenes (“chasse à la panthe”).105 Thus
their status somewhat contrasts with that of the trapped
birds above the pool. Furthermore, they all seem to be
male and no nest is represented, so their function is dif-
ferent from that of the birds above the papyrus clumps
usually associated with marsh scenes, as is the case here
on either side of the shrine door.
The hoopoe and the turtledove106 are resident
breeding birds in Egypt, but their numbers increase
significantly during migration periods.107 The other
birds on the acacias belong to migratory species.108
Sḫmt, a solar divinity, is sometimes named “Lady of the Two Aca-
cias” (Karnak statue BM 518, 18th Dynasty: Henri Gauthier, “Les
statues thébaines de la déesse Sakhmet,” ASAE 19 (1920): 189;
Thomas G. H. James, Hieroglyphic texts from Egyptian Stelae, etc., in
the British Museum, vol. 9 (London, 1970), pl. 1); another goddess
linked to the acacia in the Middle Kingdom (see CT VI, 283r, 284i;
possibly also in PT 1210) is ʾIwsʿꜢs (Saosis), the female sun, a femi-
nine principle of creation. The acacia tree is linked to wild mother
goddesses defending the sun and the dead against their enemies
(Baum, Arbres et arbustes de l’Egypte ancienne, 318).
102
Baines, “Review of Kamrin.”
103
See Howard Carter’s watercolors of the hoopoe in Francis
L. Griffith, Beni Hasan, vol.4, Archaeological Survey of Egypt 7
(London, 1900), pl. 6; of the masked shrikes and the red-backed
shrike in MSS. vii.1.12.1/2 and MSS. vii.1.5.2, Griffith Institute,
University of Oxford; and of the turtledove: MSS. vii.1.13, Griffith
Institute. On the identification of the birds see Houlihan, Birds of
Ancient Egypt, 103–107.
104
Nina M. Davies, Ancient Egyptian Paintings, vol. 1 (Chi-
cago, 1936), pl. 9; Griffith, Beni Hasan, vol. 4, frontispiece.
105
See Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 5, 313–18.
106
Note the position of the turtledove on the right-hand tree,
similar to the hoopoe’s position on the left-hand tree but reversed.
107
Houlihan, Birds of Ancient Egypt, 103.
108
For migratory birds in ancient Egyptian sources, see Elmar
Edel, Zu den Inschriften auf den Jahreszeitenreliefs der “Weltkammer”
248 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Figure H—from Davies, Ancient Egyptian Paintings, v. 1, pl. 9.
The Egyptians believed that migratory birds were the
reborn souls of the dead (Ꜣḫw) coming “from a north-
ern exit of the Duat” and entering this world.109 It is
also said that the divine and blessed dead, the Ꜣḫw,
dwell on the horizon/eastern sky line: the Ꜣḫt with “an
intrinsic relationship between the two terms,” while
the eastern and northern heavens merge “as sites for
immortalization” in PT 1000c–d (Spell 481).110 This
position of the migratory birds on the east wall of the
chapel is significant. The masked shrikes pass through
aus dem Sonnenheiligtum des Neuserre, Nachrichten der Akademie
der Wissenschaften in Göttingen 8 (Göttingen, 1961), 105–11;
Erik Hornung, Das Buch der Anbetung des Re im Westen (Sonnen-
litanei): Nach den Versionen des Neuen Reiches, vol. 2, Aegyptiaca
Helvetica 3 (Genève, 1976), 122, 210; Ogden Goelet, “The Migra-
tory Geese of Meidum and Some Egyptian Words for ‘Migratory
Bird’,” BES 5 (1983): 48–60.
109
James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Writings
from the Ancient World 23 (Atlanta, 2005), 12.
110
Florence M. D. Friedman, On the Meaning of Akh, (Ꜣḫ) in
Egyptian Mortuary Texts (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, Ann Ar-
bor, MI, 1981), 68–69; James P. Allen, “The Cosmology of the
Pyramid Texts,” in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, ed.
William K. Simpson, Yale Egyptological Studies 3 (New Haven,
1989), 6, 17–21.
Figure I—from Griffith, Beni Hasan, v. 4, frontispiece, Courtesy
of the Egypt Exploration Society.
Egypt in autumn and spring;111 generally the repre-
sented birds winter in Africa. They are shown in their
breeding plumage, suggesting that the season depicted
is springtime; the molt could be viewed as rebirth: the
dull plumage in the fall when the birds return to Egypt
has been replaced by a bright plumage by late winter/
early spring.112 The Acacia Nilotica’s prolific flowering
may occur more than once per season,113 thus also in
the spring, confirming the bird’s seasonal plumage.
Dominating the tree on the left is a hoopoe (Upupa
epops africana),114 the only bird on the trees that is
also a hieroglyphic sign (G22 in Gardiner’s list). It
is often seen in nature perched on the acacia tree.
It is possibly named ḏbꜢw in ancient Egyptian, “the
crowned/crested one,”115 an allusion to its fiery, so-
111
Houlihan, The Birds of Ancient Egypt, 127; Linda Evans,
“Userkaf ’s Birds Unmasked,” JEA 97 (2011): 247.
112
A suggestion of John Wyatt (personal communication).
113
Chris W. Fagg, “Acacia nilotica - pioneer for Dry Lands,”
NFTA Factsheets 92–04, http://www.winrock.org/fnrm/factnet/
factpub/FACTSH/A_nilotica.html accessed March 2012.
114
Houlihan, Birds of Ancient Egypt, 118–20.
115
Carles Wolterman, “On the Names of Birds and Hieroglyphic
Sign-List G 22, G 35 and H 3,” JEOL 32 (1991–92): 119–30.
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
lar head feathers. Hoopoes appear in tombs mainly
in three contexts: bird-trapping scenes (e.g., in the
Saqqara tomb of ḤtpḥrꜢḫt, 5th Dynasty),116 perched
on a tree, 117and in the hands of children.118 In this
last case, the child often holds his father’s staff in one
hand,119 while his other hand holds the hoopoe; in
other versions of the scene another bird is held by the
child—for example, a dove.120
The scene is encoded, but this time the key is ap-
parently not to be found in some paronomasia; the
option of a specific behavior of the bird may be at
play, besides its physical solar association, on a sym-
bolic level. The hoopoe is one of the various types
of birds known to be “cooperative breeders”: other
hoopoes belonging to the same community help a
pair of breeding birds during incubation in feeding
or defending the female. 121To the observer, it looks
116
Hans D. Schneider and Maarten J. Raven, De Egyptische Oud-
heid (Leiden, 1981), fig. 28b.
117
See Warren R. Dawson, “The Bee-eater (Merops apiaster)
from the Earliest Times and a Further Note on the Hoopoe,” Ibis
67 (1925): 590–94; Ludwig Keimer, “Quelques remarques sur la
huppe (Upupa epops) dans l’Égypte ancienne,” BIFAO 30 (1930):
305–31; Alexandre Piankoff and Helen Jacquet-Gordon, The Wan-
dering of the Soul (Princeton, 1974), 69, pls. 23, 38 (Cavern 9).
118
E.g., Norman de Garis Davies, The Mastaba of Ptahhetep and
Akhethetep at Saqqareh, vol. 1, Archaeological Survey of Egypt 8
(London, 1900), frontispiece, and vol. 2, Archaeological Survey
of Egypt 9 (London, 1901), pl. 6 (5th Dynasty). In the mastaba of
Nı͗ ʿnḫẖnm and H ̱ nmḥtp (Saqqara, 5th Dynasty), the south wall of
the first vestibule has a double scene of fishing and fowling with at
least six hoopoes above the papyrus thicket and in the hands of one
of the tomb owners, his son, and an attendant manicurist, as well
as one in the upper text (Ahmed M. Moussa and Hartwig Alten-
müller, Das Grab des Nianchchnum und Chnumhotep, Archäolo-
gische Veröffentlichungen 21 [Mainz, 1977], 58–61, pls. 4–5).
Late representations of Harpocrates, the Horus child, show him
holding a hoopoe (Keimer, “Quelques remarques sur la huppe”).
119
Sometimes he does not; he may stand with his father in the
papyrus skiff while his father spears fish, as in KꜢmʿnḫ’s Giza Old
Kingdom tomb (see Desroches-Noblecourt, “Poissons, tabous, et
transformations du Mort,” 34 fig. 1), or simply stand next to his
father in a nondescript environment, as in the tomb of Mḥı͗ , Giza,
5th Dynasty (Lepsius, Denkmäler, vol. 2, pl. 73).
120
As in the tomb of Mḥı͗ , Giza, 5th Dynasty in Lepsius, Denk-
mäler, vol. 2, pl. 73, in which the child holds both birds.
121
Other less “altruistic” motives are also advanced by scien-
tific research; see Manuel Martín-Vivaldi et al., “Extrapair paternity
in the Hoopoe Upupa epops: An exploration of the influence of
interactions between breeding pairs, non-pair males and strophe
length,” Ibis 144 (2002): 243–45; Andrew Cockburn, “Prevalence
of different modes of parental care in birds,” Proceedings of the Royal
Society B 273 (2006): 1375–83, esp. 1379; Morné A. Du Plessis,
W. Roy Siegfried, and Adrian J. Armstrong, “Ecological and life-
) 249
as if the elders are nourished by caring youngsters and
it recalls the Greco-Roman allegory of the “caring
hoopoe”122 that is also found in medieval bestiaries.123
Claudius Aelianus stated that the Egyptians honored
the hoopoe because it cared for its elders (De natura
animalium, 10.16). Could it be that the picture of
the child holding the staff and the hoopoe represents
the “staff of old age” (mdw ı͗ Ꜣw) of his father, 124 and
this is a caring child who “feeds” the elder just as the
young hoopoe feeds its parents? Will the solar hoopoe
on Khnumhotep’s tree care for and protect the tomb
owner on his journey to rebirth, and await him in the
eastern sky as an Ꜣḫw?
Shrikes and redstarts are very rarely represented in
Egyptian art.125 The redstart is today a “common mi-
grant throughout the country in autumn,”126 pausing on
its flight through Egypt, where it “can be routinely ob-
served perching in acacia trees.”127 Shrikes (red-backed
Lanius collurio and masked Lanius nubicus) are named
sꜢbw, “particolored,” in Egyptian,128 but are coined
history correlates of cooperative breeding in South African birds,”
Oecologia 102 (1995): 180–88, esp. 182.
122
Claudius Aelianus (3rd century AD), De natura animalium,
10.16; Physiologus, 10 (4th century AD?); Horapollo (5th century
AD), Hieroglyphica 1.55; John G. Kunstmann, The Hoopoe: A Study
in European Folklore (Chicago, 1938), 22–29.
123
E.g., Aberdeen Bestiary (England, c. AD 1200), Aberdeen
University Library MS 24, folio 51r; Meermanno Bestiary (France,
c. AD 1450), Museum Meermanno MMW 10 B 25, folio 32r.
124
Andrea G. McDowell, “Legal Aspects of Care of the El-
derly in Egypt to the End of the New Kingdom,” in The Care of
the Elderly in the Ancient Near East, ed. Marten Stol and Sven P.
Vleeming, Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near
East 14 (Leiden, 1998), 201–203; Elke Blumenthal, “Ptahhotep
und der (Stab des Alters),” in Form und Mass, Beitrage zur Litera-
tur, Sprache und Kunst des alten Agypten: Festschrift für Gerhard
Fecht zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. Februar 1987, ed. Jürgen Osing
and Günter Dreyer, Ägypten und Altes Testament 12 (Wiesbaden,
1987), 84–97.
125
Friedhelm Hoffmann, “Zu den “Pirolen” auf dem Relief
Kairo, Temporary Number 6/9/32/1,” GM 107 (1989): 77–80;
Houlihan, Birds of Ancient Egypt, 126–28; Evans, “Userkaf ’s Birds
Unmasked.”
126
Steven M. Goodman and Peter L. Meininger, ed., The Birds
of Egypt (Oxford, 1989), 386. I am thankful to Ogden Goelet for
the reference and his remarks about Khnumhotep’s beautiful birds
represented “in a manner that is remarkably reminiscent of modern
field guides,” favouring a presentation “in an ‘aspective’ manner,
especially in relation to their tails, which are depicted with a sharp
sideways view (. . .) that reveals the distinguishing field characteris-
tics” (personal communication).
127
Houlihan, The Birds of Ancient Egypt, 135.
128
Named and represented in the 11th Dynasty tomb 15 of
BꜢḳt III in Beni Hasan, Nina M. Davies, “Birds and Bats at Beni
250 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
“butcher birds” today, since characteristic of the shrike’s
behavior is its habit of impaling its prey (little birds,
mice, small reptiles) to keep it in reserve; the shrike
spears it on trees with thorns—such as the Acacia Ni-
lotica. Do the shrikes on Khnumhotep’s acacias function
as apotropaic devices, guardians of the new sun against
its enemies? Shrikes are represented protecting their
territory against intruders in Egyptian iconography;129
impalement was an Egyptian capital penalty, at least dur-
ing the New Kingdom.130 On the other hand, the sun’s
enemies are often doomed to be speared or knifed in
the Netherworld (e.g., the snake ʿꜢpp and its knifed
classifier in Spell 80 of CT II, 37i). The shrike’s prey
left impaled on an acacia thorn may also be a mouse;
mice were thought to have been enemies of the sun in
funerary literature, as stated in Spell 369 in CT V, 31
(ı͗ w wnm.n.k pnw(w) bwt Rʿ pw/Wsı͗ r pw, “You ate a
mouse/mice, the abomination of this Rʿ/Wsı͗r”). Fur-
thermore, cooperative breeding tendencies have been
observed for the red-backed shrike as well,131 although
nothing attests to the Egyptians’ awareness of this fact.
Of course, the birds are not explicitly presented impal-
ing the enemies of the reborn sun or engaged in other
protective or caring activities; their presence as guard-
ians of the symbolic threshold and reborn souls of the
dead suffices to suggest their function as customary in
Egyptian magic-funerary art.
Conclusions: Hoopoes, Acacias, and
the Interpretative Challenge
The hexagonal net scene of Khnumhotep is unlike any
other; specific iconographic elements and phonetic-
visual plays reinforce its solar connotations. Like the
sun, Khnumhotep has to be reborn and rise in the
eastern horizon between two flowering solar acacia
trees, under the protection and care of the birds in the
acacias, the migratory and reborn Ꜣḫw of the eastern
skyline. The microscene has to be inserted into its
Hasan,” JEA 35 (1949): 13–20, pl. 3 n. 26; Wolterman, “On the
Names of Birds,” 120f.
129
Evans, “Userkaf ’s Birds Unmasked,” 250.
130
See, e.g., A. Abd el-H. Youssef, “Merenptah’s Fourth Year Text
at Amada,” ASAE 58 (1964): 274, for the Amada text, line 5 (19th
Dynasty) ; Nauri decree, 77–78 (19th Dynasty), see David,
Syntactic and Lexico-Semantic Aspects, 87 n. 109, and references there.
131
Lorenzo Fornasari et al., “Home range overlapping and
socio-sexual relationships in the red-backed shrike Lanius collurio,”
Ethology Ecology Evolution 6 (1994): 169–77.
mural context and into the tomb’s general environ-
ment to be fully comprehended; but the chapel, with
its slightly fluted pillars, tripartite barrel-vaulted ceil-
ing with textile pattern decoration and timber beams,
its sunken floor and pseudo-granite dado, does not
render a clearly defined stage space132—not even a tent
as has been suggested.133 The chapel’s iconography
evinces the vision of rebirth associated with the so-
lar cycle: for instance, on the western wall, above the
entrance and thus exactly facing our scene, another
microscene showing the transport of Khnumhotep’s
statue is labeled above a group of men preceded by a
wʿb-priest “opening of the doors of heaven so that the
god may come forth” (wn ʿꜢwy pt pr nṯr), a reference
to his shrine and to his solar apotheosis as a god.134
The inclusion of the scene in the frame of the east wall,
as an addition to the dominating fowling with a throw
stick/fish-spearing scenes on each side of the door,
and in the same marsh context, alludes exclusively to
the solar cycle and the sun’s daily rebirth.135
Each tomb contains a specific selection of repre-
sentations and motifs, sometimes with unparalleled
additions, in order to convey a unique and meaningful
construct; conventional scenes were re-elaborated to
include variations, requiring new interpretations of
the material.136 For instance, the hunt in the desert in
Khnumhotep’s tomb, a “recreational,” “sportive status
marker” daily scene par excellence, includes the repre-
sentation of a fantastic creature, a winged composite
beast with a human head emerging from its back.137
It is of course not the sole example of such an amal-
gam of “realistic” and supernatural elements138 in the
132
Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, 77.
133
Kamrin, The Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, 33,
but the dado imitates granite panels, which would be incongruous
in a tent.
134
Kamrin, Cosmos of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, 54–58,
rightly analyses the scene assuming that the statue belongs to
Khnumhotep; she also proposes seeing solar symbolism in the hunt-
ing in the desert scene on the north wall, as well as in the journey
by boat on the west wall (pp. 80, 88–89).
135
The “landscape of Creation” for ibid., 144.
136
On these “epistemological changes,” see Angenot, “A
Method for Ancient Egyptian Hermeneutics,” 262–63.
137
Newberry, Beni Hasan, vol. 1, pl. 30; Kamrin, The Cosmos of
Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, 83–86.
138
Joachim F. Quack, “The animals of the desert and the return
of the goddess,” in Desert Animals in the Eastern Sahara, ed. Heiko
Riemer et al., Colloquium Africanum 4 (Köln, 2009), 349, sug-
gests that the griffin may not have been perceived by the Egyptians
 Hoopoes and Acacias: Decoding an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Scene
iconography of Middle Kingdom tombs, but neither
is it present in all tombs. Again, it suggests that what
you see in an ancient Egyptian tomb is not always
what you get in real life; incongruence as stark as this
indicates the multi-sphered, multi-layered meaning
of tomb decoration. A motif may change or acquire
with time supplementary/different layers of meaning;
“to borrow a motif is not a priori also to borrow a
meaning.”139 It of course does not imply that the ba-
sic message conveyed by the bird-trapping scenes is
completely different in each case. Procuring food for
the dead, establishing order in chaos, enjoying tap-
ping into nature’s resources in an outdoor activity, and
status-related implications may always be accounted
for. But sometimes a more erotic symbolism or bolder
solar connotations are added; this is certainly to be
taken into account in the endless variations in the
scenes of the tomb owner in the marshes fishing and
throwing the stick, and sometimes excluding, for in-
stance, an explicitly erotic feminine presence.
The texts accompanying the pictorials may or may
not relate to the representations, and if they do, they
usually do not provide an explanation of the scene;
the relation of text to iconography may be subtler.
We have seen that paronomasia and image/wordplays
allude to symbolic meanings reinforced by motifs vi-
sually associated with the signified. Were they all in-
telligible to their viewers? Probably not: the primary
spectator of the scenes, the tomb owner, although
belonging to the elite and having access to the tomb
during its decoration, may have had actual interest
in the intricacy of the décor, and enjoyed the per-
ceptual/intellectual skills to appreciate it, to varying
degrees; but in the end, after his death, the matter
would have been magically settled. As for the sec-
ondary viewers of the scenes in the chapel (painters,
priests, the owner’s family and other bringers of offer-
ings, including women and children, etc.) and there-
after non-intended spectators up to the present—we
cannot even begin to assess the level and nature of
as an unrealistic creature; nevertheless, I believe it may not be as
“realistic” in their minds as other desert game. The categorization
of the lexeme sfr (griffin) during the Middle Kingdom reveals that
it is not classified as most mammals and quadrupeds ( ) or birds
( ) in the script, but gets its own picture instead (two examples
in Newberry, Beni Hasan, vol. 2, pls. 4 and 13) or a nondescript
quadruped (CT VII, 222l).
139
Bal and Bryson, “Semiotics and Art History,” 207.
) 251
understanding of these heterogeneous groups.140 All
that remains certain is that it cannot be uniform, even
at the time of production.
The cultural embeddedness of the picture requires
an interpretation of its content that will never be fully
exhausted; the legitimate search for meaning cannot
be totally divorced from the conditions of our expe-
rience. It has to be acknowledged as a reconstruction
process, with its limits and its flaws. As Richard El-
dridge puts it:
Even “free” appropriative refiguring, reuse, re-
writing, or other response to a work by sub-
sequent creative artists can count as a form of
understanding the work, insofar as it exercises
the same sort of creative powers manifested in
the work in relation to some of the same themes,
motives, characters, or formal elements, though
it may drift quite far from explication or para-
phrase. In each case whether the critical under-
standing that is offered is apt will depend on
care, comprehensiveness, subtlety, and insight
in discerning and deploying relevant evidence.141
Works of art, he avers, are “normally overdetermined
by a number of reasons and motives, both conscious
and latent but articulable.”142 Art theory recognizes that
“art makes an ambiguous statement,” as Megan Iverson
argues;143 it does not have one single objective meaning.
Umberto Eco writes that ambiguity and self-reference in
art have a “rule-breaking” role whereby “the shock re-
ceived by the breaking of certain rules forces the hearer
[observer] to reconsider the entire organization of the
content.”144 In fact, according to Terence Hawkes, “we
never arrive at a ‘final’ decoding or ‘reading’ of the aes-
thetic message, because each ambiguity generates fur-
ther cognate ‘rule-breaking’ at other levels, and invites
us continuously to dismantle and reassemble what the
work of art seems at any point to be ‘saying’.”145
140
Ibid., 186: “Semiotic analysis draws attention to the plurality
and unpredictability at work in contexts of reception.”
141
Eldridge, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art, 141.
142
Ibid., 134.
143
Megan Iverson, “Intention and Interpretation,” Macalester
Journal of Philosophy 11 (2002): 9.
144
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Advances in Semiotics
(Bloomington, 1979), 262–64.
145
Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics. 2nd ed.
(London, 2003), 117. In favor of multiple approaches to a never-
exhausted object of elucidation: Eldridge, An Introduction to the
252 ) Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Although admittedly interpretation is always a sub-
jective reconstruction process, it is not prompted here
by contempt for the simplicity or obviousness of an
ancient message, by a desire to “revamp” the object
in keeping with modern intellectual demands, or to
Philosophy of Art, 146–49; for constraints on interpretation see Um-
berto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, (Bloomington, IN, 1994).
tame it; the aim is to retrieve ancient Egyptian con-
cepts veiled by ambiguous ways of expression, to get
a better understanding of an ancient culture, without
destroying our sensory experience of the object. We
can only hope that some of our assumptions about
Khnumhotep’s birds, acacias, and solar rebirth were
either meant or at least valid in the original cultural
frame of the representation.