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Sydney AUFRÈRE. — Sydney Hervé Aufrère presents, translates and comments on an extract from a homily by the Coptic archimandrite Chenoute of Atripe (4th-5th century) written in the Sahidic language…
 
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Les génies armés, gardiens de la porte du pylône du temple d’Horus à Edfou
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On both jambs of Edfu’s temple pylon, at the northern side, the visitor can see the figures of 64 anthropoid genious carrying a weapon and affecting an offensive attitude. The legends assigned to these genious mention their names whose significations are related to a wide range of specific concepts of the war and to the psychology of terror in the Egyptian thought. The reading of the texts reveals that these figures, organized in three seasons (akhet, peret, shemu), are distributed in twelve squads (the twelve months). Each team consisting of an unequal number of genious is leaded by a god, in association with his defensive function according to the Apollinopolite mythology. The activity of these armed and terrifying protectors of the Edfu’s temple court is clearly associated to the mythological fight of the Darkness against the Light, i.e. the forces of the Evil and those of the Good. Actually, the pylon and the columns of Edfu’s temple are respectively used as a style and graduations of a solar clock. Therefore, during the solar year, the effects of this phenomenon are observable in the advance of the pylon’s shadow cast on the columns, from the southern (summer solstice)  to the northern side (winter solstice) of the court. According to the sacerdotal interpretation, the armed genious, by their magical power, were supposed to repulse the assault of Darkness against the temple, whose court was considered as a battle field, between the summer and the winter solstice.
 
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Au sujet des représentations du Cerbère de type "macrobien" et pseudo-macrobien : une recherche iconologique
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This paper is dealing once again with the iconologic analysis of the so-called Macrobian-Cerberous whose description is given by Macrobius, Saturnals I, 20 : a central standing lion with two lateral heads of a dog and a wolf shooting from its neck, with two snakes climbing up along the lion’s legs and connecting the three animal heads. Two new representations of this fabulous tricephalous animal engraved in the famous book L’Antiquité expliquée en figures of Dom Bernard de Montfaucon (1719-1724) as well as other figures missing in the iconographic corpus of this deity, provide the opportunity to give a new approach of this monster from an egyptological point of view. The basic concept of the tricephalous Cerberous, as well as the iconography of this god were the result of an intellectual exchange between two high figures belonging to the sacerdotal class : Manetho the Sebennytus and the Athenian Timothy the Eumolpid. Embodying both Egyptian and Greek beliefs in the prospect of the creation of the theology of the god Sarapis, at Memphis, under the reign of Ptolemeus Sôter, they promoted a bifocal belief in giving both the Greeks and the Egyptian the god Sarapis ruling in the Hades, and mastering the allegorical « dog » Cerberous, whose certain features are adapted from Egyptian iconography.
 
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Taches lunaires, phases de la lune et fécondité des règnes. Lagomorphes, félins divins et hybridations en Égypte ancienne. Autour de la déesse hase Ounout du XVe nome de Haute-Égypte
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This paper is dealing with the problem of the interpretation of lunar splashes and phases of the moon, and their relationship with Egyptian myths and their complexity, in particular some Hermopolite beliefs. It gives an overview of the conception of the lunations and it  attempts to follow the speculation in the Egyptian thought, by virtue of which the Egyptians – basing themselves on the habits of this mammal, its aspects, the ancient beliefs on the reproduction cycle of this species – would have formally interpretated lunar splashes as forming the shape of an hare or a doe, a belief attested in many civilisations, on which are based many Oriental and Mediterranean legends. This paper shows the gradual change of the primordial Hermopolite goddess Unut, the doe-goddess, from the stage of her first occurence during the Old Kingdom to the one of the classical texts in which her alter ego, Nehemetauy, is considered as Isis Thesmophora or Hegemonis and Dikaiosunè, deities traditionnally associating moon, legislation and justice. Finally, the paper tries to shed a new light on the relationship between hare, cats and lions in mythological Egyptian texts.
 
14,50 €