Posted on 01/14/2004 11:07:36 AM PST by aculeus
Some had names like "Slayer of his Foes" and accompanied the pharaoh into battle. Thousands more were hunted as a ritual of bravery and strength. But only one apparently served as an eternal guardian.
A French archaeologist says his discovery of the first preserved lion skeleton in an ancient Egyptian tomb demonstrates the exalted reputation enjoyed by the King of Beasts more than 3,000 years ago.
"It confirms the status of the lion as a sacred animal," Alain Zivie reports in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Zivie's research team discovered the lion's remains in 2001 as they excavated the tomb of Maia, wet nurse to Tutankhamun, the "boy king" popular with museum visitors today for his opulent gold funeral relics. He ruled for 10 years and died around 1323 B.C.
The tombs associated with King Tut are located south of Cairo at the Saqqara cemetery site across the Nile River from Memphis, ancient Egypt's first capital. Zivie found Maia's elaborate tomb in 1996.
Inscriptions in ancient Egypt mention the breeding and burial of lions, but no lion remains previously had been found, Zivie said.
The complete and undisturbed lion skeleton was found in an area of the tomb dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet, which also contained vast quantities of bones of humans and animals, including many cats.
The lion's bones were not wrapped in linen bandages familiar to human mummies. But the bones' position along with their coloration and mineral deposits on their surface are similar to those of other mummified cats discovered at Saqqara.
Zivie said the worn condition of the bones and teeth suggest it lived to an old age and was kept in captivity. The lion is not believed to have belonged to Maia, but is thought to have been placed in the tomb much later.
The lion may have been considered an incarnation of the god Mahes, the son of Bastet, Zivie said.
An Egyptologist who did not work on the specimen said the discovery was an important addition to knowledge of ancient ritual.
Archaeologists previously have found vast cemeteries for baboons, ibis, fish, smaller cats, dogs and crocodiles. Mummifying a large animal like a lion would have been an expensive and elaborate task.
"This is not any old lion, it's an important lion," said Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago.
Other researchers said Zivie's report leaves several questions unanswered.
Robert Pickering, a forensic anthropologist with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., said the bones' discoloration is "irrelevant" because they would've been influenced by the tomb's environment over thousands of years. The lack of linen wrapping and soft tissue preservation also does not support mummification, he said.
"It seems to be treated different from other animals that were entombed as part of ritual," Pickering said. "Maybe this lion's importance is as a family pet rather than as a representative of a god. The context doesn't seem to fit."
Hunters nearly exterminated regional lion populations by 1100 B.C. Commemorative artwork has been found telling of how the pharaoh Amenhotep III killed more than 100 during a single hunt. Ramses the Great, meanwhile, had a pet lion named "Slayer of his Foes," Teeter said.
"It's hard for people to understand that they are killing, sacrificing, a symbol of the god," Teeter said. "But they didn't see it as killing the god."
AP-ES-01-14-04 1334EST
This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAT88JQFPD.html
King Tut had a wet nurse?
Buffalo Bill has a museum?
A skeleton is a mummy?
A cat goddess named Bastet had a son named Mahes?
It's dead, Emily.
If you ever find yourself in Craig, Colorado, you can visit their version of the Buffalo Bill museum. It's small, but fairyl intersting. My wife and I had the opportunity to visit while I was working an assignment up there.
Not quite as cool, however, as standing in the building that was once the Lincoln County courthouse, where Billy the Kid was held, escaped from, and shot Ollinger and Bell. Now that was an experience.
First off, I know of no one who cares what the French say.
Secondly, this is no big deal. Big cats are worshiped in California, Colorado, and other states.
Some people even sacrifice themselves to them, to insure their survival.
The Buffalo Bill museum in Cody is well worth a visit. I was particularly impressed by the VAST firearms collection.
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They (the ancients) used to move stuff around periodically in an attempt to thwart graverobbers. There was one tomb, in the Valley of Kings I think, that had a whole bunch of mummies stored in it for safe keeping.
Zivie's research team discovered the lion's remains in 2001 as they excavated the tomb of Maia, wet nurse to Tutankhamun, the "boy king" popular with museum visitors today for his opulent gold funeral relics. He ruled for 10 years and died around 1323 B.C. . . The lion may have been considered an incarnation of the god Mahes, the son of Bastet, Zivie said.
Tut-Ankh-Amun was NOT named that in the first years of his reign. In the first years of his reign he was known as Tut-Ankh-Aten.
Tut-Ankh-Aten/Amun was the last Pharoah of the short lived religious heresy of his father Akh-En-Aten who changed his own name from Amun-Ho-Tep when he banned polytheism in favor of a single god. Both Tut's original name and his father's adopted name were intended to honor that one god.
Tuts father named him after the face (the Aten) of the Sun God Re or Ra, that was the ONLY god allowed to be worshipped in Akh-en-Aten's reign. All other gods were banned! When the weak King Tut was forced to re-instate the polytheism of the other gods (and elevating himself to godhood which his father denied), he changed his name (or it was changed for him) to reflect his agreement with the change.
Therefore, the idea that the Lion may be a representation of the god Mahes is unlikely, if contemporaneous with the entombment of Maia.
It is possible the tomb was opened and the lion added to erase the heresy by including other gods.
I hear you talking...I was going to post a gratuitous pic of Petra, but I can't seem to find one with her clothes on.
One that was worth posting, anyway.
Actually, no, there was nothing taboo about it. The egyptians themselves removed almost all of the Pharoahs' sarcophagi and moved them all into one tomb after the fact... to prevent their bodies from being destroyed by looters who had already invaded their tombs.
It would be especially not a problem for them to open the tomb of someone associated with the Aten heresy of Ankenaten and his children... and their servants. There are other signs of opening of these tombs to desecrate Aten symbology, destroy the cartouches of Ankhenaten, etc.
Also, it is quite obvious to later researchers that the short reign of Tut in a time of depressed economy lead to his relative poverty as Pharoahs go... and that many of the treasures in his tomb had been TAKEN (borrowed?) from other tombs and had the "serial numbers filed off" so to speak.
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