Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)
HANS GOEDICKE: Anthropological Problems - Gynecological Questions
In the last scene of the cycle, Amun is joined once again by another god Thoth at Deir el-Bahari, Horus at Luxor. 2 ' 1 Amun presents the baby and its ki, which the other accepts. Hatshepsut has the endearing annotation, "We caress you in your bandages (swaddling clothes) during all life and luck and all health /" As Thoth has appeared twice before as messenger, he ought to be seen once more in the same role. However, messenger to whom? The answer is quite simple, because there is no specific addressee. In other words, Thoth is to spread the word to the world and the scene is the logical conclusion of the birth cycle. Hatshepsut invented the notion of a divine birth to substitute for her lack of constitutional qualifications. In its fonnulation she used the common social practice as model: Once the pregnancy was certain, the father makes preparations for the delivery of the expected child. Altogether, there seems almost more concern for the father, than the woman in childbirth. After the delivery she stays in confinement, while her mother or another older woman contacts the father to break the good news and to get his acceptance of the child. This being done, the mother and child continue in the confinement until the time the child is presented to the world. Hatshepsut's motives were strictly personal. However, once the notion was conceived it stayed on, first in the political realm until the end of the New Kingdom, then under the Ptolemies in connection with the birth of the young god, which became a central part of the cult of promise celebrated in the mammisi. 27 These late scenes are on a whole mechanical copies, so that, e.g., Amun becomes the father of Horus in the Dendera representation. 28 To our knowledge only once was an effort made to reformulate the representation of the divine birth in the Late Period. It is shown in an addition to the Mammisi of Isis on Philae built under Ptolemy VI. 29 A copy of the cycle as invented by Hatshepsut was displayed there by Ptolemy VIII. 30 The new rendering of the theme avoids the descriptiveness of Hatshepsut's design, especially the sexy scene and its aftermath. Its concept is much more concentrated and focuses on the two ends of the cycle. There is no longer any physical 2 '' Cf. Brunncr, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 114-21; I find it difficult to follow his notion that the scene ''gehört in das große Gebiet der Gnadenwahl Gottes für den König." 27 Cf. E. Blumcnthal, Die biblische Weihnachtsgeschichte und das alte Ägypten, SBAW, München 1999/1, pp. 46ff. : * F. Daumas, Les Mammisis de Dendera, Le Caire 1958, 267ff; F. Daumas, Les mammisis des temples égyptiens, Paris 1958, pp. 267ff. : '' II. Junker - E. Winter, Das Geburtshaus des Tempels der Isis in Philo, DÖAW, Wien 1965, pp. 10-22. 30 See H. Goedicke, Die Darstellung des Horns. Ein Mysterienspiel in Philae unter Ptolemäus VIII, tíWZKM II , 1982.
