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THE  GUIDANCE TOWARD  THE GOOD

 

 

 This scarab belongs to the group which have pious phrases mentioning the god Amon.

Drioton1 describes the sense of these compositions like this:

 

It is in a glazed steatite faded to light brown; measures 18x13x7 mm and has Tufnell classification2 C7/vIv/d5.

 

The prothorax is divided from the elytra by a Y-trace. The wing-cases are bordered and provided with U-marks. Legs mid-high, deeply carved, fully hatched and undercut through between fore and mid legs. The  loss on the left does not prevent us from recognizing the partially lost nfr sign.

The engraving is deep with rounded sections, slightly different in depth (the sacred bark more deeply hollowed).

 





Vertically arranged, the motif shows the sinistrorsal (spiraling upwards from the left)  writing:

 

 



The cryptic meaning of the present composition is translated in a different way by various people.

Drioton1 translates the same item in Newberry3: "C'est Amon-Ra qui est la guide du bien".

Petrie4 translates: "May Ra lead the excellent king". Hornung5 limits itself  to point out that it's a matter of  "the good government system" referred to Amon.

 

As often it happens, the various translations of this type of writing do not fully agree.

 

We are inclined to the Drioton's translation, who has devoted a deep study  to these maxims of piety: "It's  Amon the guidance (toward) the good

THE KING SEKHAENRE: A RARE WRITING OF HIS NAME, inserted between two  --- |   |---    motifs3, reads:

Ntr nfr  S-kha-n-(re) = the good god Sekhaenre

 ("The one whom Re has caused to appear")  (Yakbim). 

 





It is not certain that the prenomen Sekhaenre belongs to Yakbim: the two names have generally been identified as belonging to one king on the basis of the similarities between the scarabs.

  

Many items of this particular type are known4 but this one shows a variant of the writing: the absense of the sun disc sign above the S sign (a defective prenomen, but it is not the only one  known).

 

The other example, of the same size, does have the sun disc sign.  It's Tufnell classification is  B2/O/e11

 




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