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212068

Phyto-religious Symbolism in the Funerary Banquet Scene of the Tomb of Sennedjem (TT1) at Deir el-Medina

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Last updated: 25 Dec 2024

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Abstract

The tomb of Sennedjem (TT1) is lavishly painted with spells and vignettes of the so-called Book of the Dead except for some parts. One of these exceptions is the lower register of the south wall, which is separated by the entrance door. The two sides of the entrance are decorated with the funerary banquet scene through which the relatives of the deceased broke the fast following the burial. The purpose of the banquet scene is to commemorate the tomb owner by showing his presence together with the living and his involvement in their activities. However, the fact that the tomb owner is dead led to include elements that should help him to be born in the afterlife. This article provides a glimpse into the discovery of the tomb of Sennedjem, briefing its decoration program, and reviewing its previous studies. Whereas, it focuses on plant identification and interpretation, revealing the phyto-religious symbolism of plants depicted within the funerary banquet of Sennedjem. The identification is made based on the morphological features with a mention of the valid Latin binomial and the updated taxonomy together with English meaning. Whereas, the interpretation is derived from the textual reservoir of Egyptian religious corpus, as well as scenes and tomb texts. The article gives through plant iconography an example of studying human-plant interaction, which is among the principal objectives of Environmental Archaeology.

DOI

10.21608/jarch.2022.212068

Keywords

Archaeobotany, Deir el-Medina, Environmental Archaeology, Funerary Banquet, New Kingdom, Plant Iconography, Sennedjem

Authors

First Name

Mostafa

Last Name

Atallah

MiddleName

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Affiliation

Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University

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Orcid

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First Name

Mostafa

Last Name

Tolba

MiddleName

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Affiliation

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Email

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City

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Orcid

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First Name

Rim

Last Name

Hamdy

MiddleName

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Affiliation

Faculty of Science, Cairo University

Email

rhamdy@sci.cu.edu.eg

City

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Orcid

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First Name

Frank

Last Name

Darius

MiddleName

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Affiliation

Heinrich Barth Institute for Archaeology and Environmental History of Africa, University of Cologne, Germany

Email

frank.darius@fu-berlin.de

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Orcid

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Volume

12

Article Issue

2022

Related Issue

29838

Issue Date

2022-01-01

Receive Date

2021-09-10

Publish Date

2022-01-01

Page Start

227

Page End

245

Print ISSN

1110-5801

Online ISSN

2682-4884

Link

https://jarch.journals.ekb.eg/article_212068.html

Detail API

https://jarch.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=212068

Order

11

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

1,305

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة کلية الآثار . جامعة القاهرة

Publication Link

https://jarch.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Phyto-religious Symbolism in the Funerary Banquet Scene of the Tomb of Sennedjem (TT1) at Deir el-Medina

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Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023