Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)

ÉVA LIPTAY: Éva Liptay "My Face Is (That of) Ra"

The word hr referring to the face of a god not only signifies the divine personality, but also denotes all those divine capacities which qualify him or her and are expressed by his or her divine names, manifestations and features, as well as the effects produced by his or her (either benevolent or malevolent) activities.

,() The real epiphany of the divine nature, of course, does not take place before our eyes, because the "secret face" of the god is only alluded to by the hieroglyphic sign (hr) generally symbolising the human or human-headed divine face. The iconographical features of a god are not morphological characteristics: the divine nature is revealed through the necessary symbols which connote it.

31 The divine face of Ra (hr pw n R

r

) appearing as the passenger of the sunboat is referred to with the expression ssmw sti or ssmw c

i earlier'

2 in the 11 division of the Book of Gates. The same designation is frequently used in similar contexts when the nocturnal aspect of the sun god (or other netherwordly creatures) is a point of debate.

3. The word ssmw in a chthonic context is generally used for denoting temporary

7 or transitory

7 manifestations of the dwellers of the netherworld (i.e. the representations of the royal tomb) which are only visible for those who are present and whose activities and roles are limited only for the (short) period that the sun god takes to pass them. The Osirian body (i.e. the divine mummy) which is left behind by the reborn sun god at sunrise is also called ssmw in the Schlußszene of the Amduat.

34 * Returning to our starting point, the head of the mummified figure represented en face encircled by the blue sun disc (fig. 1) depicts the nocturnal aspect (ssmw sst>) of the "great god" known from various Schlußszene compositions of New Kingdom royal tombs. The solar symbolism of the motif is confirmed by its iconographical counterpart on the opposite side where the middle figure of the group is attributed by a sun disc on the place of the head. (fig. 2) Their New Kingdom precursors are similar representations of netherwordly manifestations of the solar god which fulfil a significant role as the chthonic aspect of the "great god", i.e. the divine body hidden inside his tomb (fig. 4), left behind by the divine hi soaring into the sky at sunrise. According to the above, the figures lined up in the registers of the inner decoration of the Twenty-first Dynasty coffin sides may be interpreted as netherwordly ssmw manifestations encountered by the deceased lying inside the coffin, during his or her perilous journey through the netherworld. The bead-net faces of hr pattern fitted directly onto the head of the mummy

35 prove that the deceased itself was identified with the divine entity symbolised by the hr face.

16 Therefore our divine figure depicted en face can be identified with the solar god on the one