Tadas Rutkauskas

Among the collections belonging to the National Museum of Lithuania at Vilnius, resides an ancient Egyptian coffin containing a mummified human body. The coffin and its occupant are believed to have belonged to the King of Poland and to have been located in his palace at Warsaw. At the turn of the last century, Egyptologists dated the coffin to the end of the 21st dynasty (1070 BC-945 BC), and described the item as coming from Thebes, belonging to Hori, priest of Amun-Ra. However, no investigation was ever carried out on the human body associated with the coffin. Within the framework of the Lithuanian Mummy Project, the preserved human remains underwent computed tomographic investigation in order to reconstruct the biological profile of the subject and to determine the embalming method employed. This led to the identification of a young adult male. Additionally, the mummy shroud was stylistically assessed in order to determine the mummy's chronology in Egyptian history. Interest...

The lack of “negative theology” or even “demoralization” (J. Assmann) of religious beliefs can be regarded as one of the major features of Amarna religion. Indeed, in crucial texts of that period almost no references to evil or wrongdoing can be found. The word jsf.t is not used at all, although its counterpart Maat takes a very important place in the teaching of Akhenaten and is widely recorded. The negation of different general negative terms, so popular and typical for autobiographical (ideal biographical) texts in earlier and later times, is relatively rare in inscriptions of private individuals of this time. This paper discusses the use of general negative terms and negative phraseology in different texts of the Amarna Period. The comparison with their use in earlier texts allows to understand better their meanings and some ideas of the Amarna religion as well, especially the question how Atenism dealt with the notions of evil and wrongdoing in general.

This paper discusses the achievements, projects and publications of Marija Rudzinskaitė-Arcimavičienė (1885-1941), the first Lithuanian Egyptologist. Her collection of Egyptian antiquities is now curated at the M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art in Kaunas.

The aim of this paper is to present some results of my doctoral thesis “Sünde im Alten Ägypten: eine begriffssemasiologische und begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung” defended in 2016 at Heidelberg University. The problems that make approaching this controversial topic in ancient Egyptian religion difficult are discussed. However, the semasiological method used in my doctoral thesis and dealing with the meanings of abstract negative Egyptian lexemes both provide useful information that can help us to understand better how ancient Egyptians perceived the concept of sin and how it worked in the system of their religious communication. In certain contexts, some Egyptian words with the meanings “fault”, “offence” and others can be given the meaning “sin”. It is the case, for instance, when they appear in the speeches of the deceased or gods in the scenes of the judgement of the dead. A closer look at the meanings of such words and their use in different (con)texts is a new approach that can also help to trace historical changes in the ancient Egyptian concept of sin.

Among the collections belonging to the National Museum of Lithuania at Vilnius, resides an ancient Egyptian coffin containing a mummified human body. At the turn of the last century, Egyptologists dated the coffin to the end of the 21st dynasty (1070 BC-945 BC), and described the coffin as coming from Thebes, belonging to Hori, priest of Amun-Ra. However, no investigation was ever carried out on the human body associated with the coffin. Within the framework of the Lithuanian Mummy Project, the preserved human remains underwent computed tomographic investigation in order to reconstruct the biological profile of the subject and to determine the embalming method employed. This led to the identification of a young adult male. Additionally, the mummy shroud was stylistically assessed in order to determine the mummy’s chronology in Egyptian history. Interestingly, the body could be ascribed to the Roman period of Egypt (30 BC-395 AD) due to analogies with the burial shrouds of the Soter group. The coffin had previously been dated to the end of the 21st dynasty, indicating a reuse of the coffin at some point in history.

Publication, for the first time, of the small fragment of the Book of the Dead in the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas. It is the only Egyptian papyrus among Egyptian antiquities in Lithuania, which formerly belonged to the collection of M. Rudzinskaitė-Arcimavičienė. The papyrus dates from the XIXth Dynasty and although its exact provenance is not known, it must have been Western Thebes. The pKaunas is very fragmentary, but its importance lies in the similarities with the well known papyrus of Neferrenpet as well as with some fragments in the British Museum.