A Private Triumph in Brooklyn, Hildesheim and Berlin

Abstract

of the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty is that in which processions of bound and fettered prisoners-of-war are paraded by Egyptian military officers into the royal presence.1 This motif does not occur, to my knowledge, in the royal art of the Eighteenth Dynasty, although it is found occasionally in the private tomb art of that period, the best known examples coming from the tombs of the nobles at Amarna,2 and from the so-called Memphite tomb of the general, and later king, Horemheb.3 In these late Eighteenth Dynasty examples of this prisoner-of-war theme, as in the later Ramesside versions of it, the treatment is already conventional: the captives, always in groups of at least two and tied in various cruel fashions, are conducted, in groups and columns, by Egyptian officers into the presence of the king. The officers, often the sons of the king himself, manhandle and urge on their captives whom they lead, holding in one hand the end of the rope-tether by which the prisoners are yoked, and saluting their victorious lord, the king, with the other.4 The fragment of relief in the Brooklyn Museum, Nr. 48.112 (PL I Fig. i)5 treats this motif in a rather unique manner, since only one * The substance of this paper was read before the Annual Meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt held at the Walter's Art Gallery, Baltimore, on November 1966. I should like to acknowledge with my deepest gratitude the kindness of the authorities of the Egyptian Departments of the Brooklyn Museum, the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum zu Hildesheim, and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for permission to publish the reliefs illustrated herewith, and for supplying me with the various photographs of them. In addition to the standard abbreviations used in this Journal, the following abbreviations will also be used : Davies, Amarna N. De Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna 6 vols. (19031906). OIC The University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Communications