Der Sarkophag der Gottesgemahlin Anchnesneferibre.

• Author: Topfer, Susanne
• Position: Book review

Der Sarkophag der Gottesgemahlin Anchnesneferibre. By MAREIKE WAGNER. Studien zur spatagyptischen Religion, vol. 16. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2016. Pp. xii + 618, portfolio of 16 pls., CD-ROM. [euro]168.

This book presents the revised edition of the author's dissertation at the Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tubingen published in the series Studien zur spatagyptischen Religion, which focuses on the primarily philological publication of ancient Egyptian religious texts. The volume contains the Neubearbeitung of the inscriptions on the sarcophagus of the God's Wife Ankhnesneferibre, dating to Dynasty 26, and a discussion of their parallels, making them available through photos (CD-ROM), drawings (portfolio), and a complete philological edition in accordance with Egyptological standards. The edition is the first comprehensive study of the inscriptions since the publications of Budge (1885) and Sander-Hansen (1937), which both focused on the hieroglyphic transcription, transliteration, and translation. A philological commentary on the texts and their contextualization within the religious beliefs of Late Period Egypt remained a desideratum; this is the aim of the book under review here (p. 3).

Following a preface (pp. xi-xii), the book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, Einleitung, gathers brief information on the person Ankhnesneferibre (pp. 1-2), a description of her sarcophagus and its inscriptions (pp. 3-10), a discussion of Ankhnesneferibre's burial place (pp. 11-13), as well as preliminary remarks on the disposition and reading direction of the religious texts (pp. 14-18).

Ankhnesneferibre was the daughter of Pharaoh Psametik II and his wife Takhuit. Following priestly traditions, she was adopted by the high-ranking priestess of the Theban Amun cult, Nitocris I, and first held the position of Divine Adoratrice before she became God's Wife of Amun between 584 and 526 BCE. Ankhnesneferibre's well-preserved sarcophagus (London, British Museum EA 32) is characterized by thoroughly incised reliefs of hieroglyphic inscriptions and representations of the deceased (upper face of the lid), the goddesses Nut (lower face of the lid) and Imentet (inside the chest). The siltstone sarcophagus was usurped at the time of Augustus by a high-ranking Theban priest called Pamontu, who added a short horizontal text for the afterlife including his titles (pp. 7-10) and altered some of the feminine personal pronouns on the inside and outside...