Osorkon II

Collections of scenes and texts designated variously as the “Book of the Earth,” “Creation of the Solar Disc,” and “Book of Aker” were inscribed on the walls of royal sarcophagus chambers throughout Egypt’s Ramessid Period (Dynasties 19–20). This material illustrated discrete episodes from the nocturnal voyage of the sun god, which functioned as a model for the resurrection of the deceased king. These earliest “Books of the Earth” employed mostly ad hoc arrangements of scenes, united by shared elements of iconography, an over-arching, bipartite symmetry of composition, and their frequent pairing with representations of the double sky overhead. From the Twenty-First Dynasty and later, selections of programmatic tableaux were adapted for use in private mortuary contexts, often in conjunction with innovative or previously unattested annotations. The present study collects and analyzes all currently known royal and private Book of the Earth material, including previously unpublished scenes and texts from the tombs of Pedamenopet and Padineith at Thebes.

In this article the author presents an ultra short chronology for the Libyan Period. After having established tentative dates for the kings from Takelot II to Shoshenk V, solely on the basis of historical material (e.g. Apis burials and non Egyptian sources), the resulting model is tested using astronomical evidence, which ultimately leads to the discovery of the infamous "missing eclipse" of year 15 of Takelot II, an awkward problem that has haunted Egyptology for years. Both methods, historical and astronomical, independently point towards the lunar eclipse of 15 February 756 BC. The model is then expanded to include the first half of the 22nd Dynasty as well. This generates a new series of lunar dates and historical synchronisms. The reign of Shoshenk I is established at 843 - 823 BC.

Discussion of the Tanite kneeling statue Cairo CG 1040 (body of the so-called "Cairo-Philadelphia statue of Osorkon II") which is considered a re-used work of the early Ramesside Period; publication of a contemporary small kneeling figure of Osorkon II from Bubastis; discussion of a problematic kneeling figure sometimes thought to represent king Osorkon, and of several private statues both from Karnak and from northern Egypt.

Publication (with translation of and comments of the texts) of five inscribed monuments all belonging to one man, i.e., the chief physician of Upper- and Lower Egypt, Paanmeny: Three block statues (one of them excavated at Tell el-Yahudiya), one isolated block statue head (Berlin ÄM 253), and a stone naos honouring Ptah (Berlin ÄM 21230). Paanmeny lived during the Third Intermediate Period which is not only indicated by the inscriptions. The appearance of the Berlin statue head must be compared to that of the similar statue of Ankh-renep-nefer (British Museum, EA 1007) which was excavated near Pithom and which dates to the reign of Osorkon II. The Theban ("Cachette") statues of the Third Intermediate Period differ stylistically from the few known contemporaneous statues from Lower Egypt.