Udjahorresnet

While many scholars have interpreted Achaemenid religious policy as one of indifference, the inscriptions on the Naoforo Vaticano statue of Udjahorresnet tell a different tale. These texts demonstrate a strategic willingness to allow—and even support—heterogeneous religious customs to the benefit of the Achaemenid Empire. On the statue of Udjahorresnet, both the religious and political importance of Neith is clear: She, as the mother of the sun god Re, was at the center of the religious cult in Sais, the political center of power for Egypt’s Twenty-sixth Dynasty. A reading of the inscriptions of Udjahorresnet’s statue reveals a deliberate policy on the part of Cambyses, and later Darius, to reestablish and maintain a critical Egyptian cult, thus imbedding Persian dominion within the religious tradition of Egypt and making a strong political statement.

Although the official career of Udjahorresnet is rather well-known in modern historiography, his family and social background has drawn little in-depth scholarly attention and is still poorly understood. This paper uses onomastics, genealogy, and prosopography as main methodological approaches in order to suggest first preliminary results. Accordingly, Udjahorresnet seems to be a member of a large and well- connected priestly family circle close to the royal house of Sais and active for generations throughout the Nile Delta, more specifically in the temples of Sais (Sa el-Hagar), Buto (Tell el-Fara‘in), Imau (Kom el-Hisn), Kom el-Firin, and perhaps Tanis (San al-Hagar). The owner of the kneeling statuette Khartum 2782 might be the best candidate for Udjahorresnet’s father, while members of his extended family left numerous monuments, including a seated group statue in the Louvre (N.663).

ABSTRACT: This lecture covers the First Persian occupation of Egypt, beginning with a brief overview of Cyrus the Great (who founded the Persian Empire), and focusing on the Dynasty 27 Persian rulers of Egypt, Cambyses, Darius I, Xerxes, Artaxerxes I, Darius II, and Artaxerxes II. The lecture ends with a selection of sources dealing with Persian period Egypt. UPDATED: April 2021, adding many new slides and some text and sources.

Herodotus presents Cambyse as an impious tyrant, murderer of the sacred bull Apis. A whole tradition has perpetuated this detestable image among later Greco-Roman authors but also in Coptic sources. This tradition is partly dependent on Herodotus but not entirely. But Cambyses' image is always detestable, in all the stories, notwithstanding the details. This study reexamines the question of the veracity of Herodotus’s claims about the murder of Apis by the Persian conqueror. Based on the tombstones of the Apis found in the Serapeum of Memphis, Egyptologists have concluded that the king was innocent. The account of the Apis assassination is a total invention of priestly circles, who were the informants of the Greek historian. However, these steles can be interpreted in a completely opposite sense. Maybe the Apis murder did happen. And the royal name composed for Cambyses by an Egyptian dignitary (Oudjahorresnet, considered as a vile collaborator of the Persians) can, in fact, be understood as a condemnation of the criminal impiety of the Achaemenid sovereign.