Hedjet
Hedjet | |
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Details | |
Country | Ancient Upper Egypt |
Successors | Pschent |
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Hedjet ḥḏt in hieroglyphs | ||
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Hedjet (
History
The white crown, along with the red crown, has a long history with each of their respective representations going back into the Predynastic Period, indicating that kingship had been the base of Egyptian society for some time. The earliest image of the hedjet was thought to have been in the Qustul in Nubia. According to Jane Roy, "At the time of Williams’ argument, the Qustul cemetery and the ‘royal’ iconography found there was dated to the Naqada IIIA period, thus antedating royal cemeteries in Egypt of the Naqada IIIB phase. New evidence from Abydos, however, particularly the excavation of Cemetery U and the tomb U-j, dating to Naqada IIIA has shown that this iconography appears earlier in Egypt".[2]
Stan Hendrick, John Coleman Darnell and Maria Gatto in 2012 excavated petroglyphic engravings from Nag el-Hamdulab in Aswan, the extreme southern region of Egypt that borders the Sudan, which featured representations of boat procession, solar symbolism and the earliest depiction of the white crown with an estimated dating range between 3200BC and 3100BC.[5]
As with the deshret (red crown), no example of the white crown has been found. It is unknown how it was constructed and what materials were used. Felt or leather have been suggested, but this is purely speculative. Like the deshret, the hedjet may have been woven like a basket from plant fiber such as grass, straw, flax, palm leaf, or reed. The fact that no crown has ever been found, even in relatively intact royal tombs such as that of Tutankhamun, suggests the crowns may have been passed from one monarch to the next, much as in present-day monarchies.
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Narmer palette of Pharaoh Narmer
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Small bronze statuary usage with the hedjet, white crown
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Bronze statuette of a Kushite king wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt; 25th Dynasty, 670 BCE, Neues Museum, Berlin
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Painted relief of Mentuhotep II from his mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri; 11th Dynasty, c. 2060–2009 BCE
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A couple of statuettes which represent a Middle Kingdom pharaoh as King of Upper Egypt (left, with the white crown) and King of Lower Egypt (right, with the red crown); wood, from el-Lisht, 12th dynasty, Middle Kingdom (Egyptian Museum, main floor, room 22, JE44951)
See also
- Atef – hedjet crown with feathers identified with Osiris
- Khepresh – blue or war crown also called royal crown
References
- ^ Arthur Maurice Hocart, The Life-Giving Myth, Routledge 2004, p.209
- ISBN 9789004196117. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- ISBN 0-936260-64-5.
- ISBN 978-0500252529.
- S2CID 53631029.
- ^ Cherine Badawi, Egypt, 2004, p.550
- ^ Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, Routledge 1999, p.285
- ^ Jill Kamil, The Ancient Egyptians: Life in the Old Kingdom, American Univ in Cairo Press 1996, p.61