Nebty name
Nebty name in hieroglyphs | |||
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Full title
nebty He of Nekhbet and Wadjet (He of the Two Ladies) | |||
Nebty name of king Semerkhet |
The Nebty name (also called the Two-Ladies-name) was one of the "great five names" used by Egyptian pharaohs. It was also one of the oldest royal titles. The modern term "Two-Ladies-name" is a simple derivation from the translation of the Egyptian word nebty.
Etymology
The terms "Nebty name" and "Two-Ladies-name" derive from the Egyptian word nbtj (Nebty), which is a dual noun meaning "the (two) ladies". As a mere noun it is a religious euphemism designating the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet as a deified pair. As a royal crest it was thought to represent a unified Egypt.[1][2]
Heraldic appearance
The Nebty name, similarly to the later Niswt-Bity name, was constructed with two sign groups. The first one shows a
Symbolism
The Nebty name was symbolically linked to the two most important goddesses of Ancient Egyptian kingship:
Introduction and history
After the Horus name, the Nebty name is the second oldest royal name of Ancient Egyptian history and also known as the "Two-Ladies name". Egyptologists such as Toby Wilkinson and Ludwig David Morenz point to an obvious prototype of the Nebty name used before the introduction of the final form: ivory tags from the Abydos tombs of the kings Hor-Aha and Djer and the queen Neithhotep show the Two-Ladies crest with the red crown instead of the cobra over a basket. In the case of Hor-Aha the Nebty crest is of special interest, because it is depicted inside a three-framed building (shrine? tomb?) together with the hieroglyph Men (Gardiner sign Y5; meaning "to stay" or "to endure"). It is intensely disputed whether this sign group merely gives the name of a Nebty shrine (Men-Nebty; "where the Two Ladies endure"), whether it shows Aha's Nebty name inside his tomb or whether it shows, instead, Narmer's Nebty name, indicating that Aha buried Narmer. The ivory tags of kings Djer and Djet show the prototype inside a palace and a shrine, guided by the notation that the kings visited the palace of the Two Ladies or oversaw the building of wine cellars for the Nebty shrine. The first use of the final form of the Nebty crest (vulture and cobra over two baskets) appeared during the reign of king Semerkhet, who called himself Iry-Nebty ("guardian of the Two Ladies"). After him, every future king used a Nebty name, though not every king of the early dynasties and the Old Kingdom is known by his Nebty name.[1][2]
A further problem in determining Nebty names is a fashion which arose during the reign of king
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 0-415-18633-1, p. 203-205.
- ^ ISBN 3-447-04027-0, p. 199.
- ^ ISBN 0-415-18633-1, p. 201, 206–207.
- ^ Hermann Ranke: Die altägyptischen Personennamen. vol. III. Augustin, Glückstadt 1977, p. 319.
- ISBN 3-447-02677-4, p. 108 & 117.