Cartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a horizontal line erected at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu. While the cartouche is usually vertical with a horizontal line, it is sometimes horizontal if it makes the name fit better, with a vertical line on the left.[1] The Ancient Egyptian word for it was shenu, and it was essentially an expanded shen ring. In Demotic, the cartouche was reduced to a pair of brackets and a vertical line.
Of the five royal titularies it was the prenomen, the throne name, also referred to as the, and the "Son of Ra" titulary,[2] the so-called nomen, the name given at birth, which were enclosed by a cartouche.[3]
At times amulets were given the form of a cartouche displaying the name of a king and placed in tombs. Such items are often important to archaeologists for dating the tomb and its contents.[4] Cartouches were formerly only worn by Pharaohs. The oval surrounding their name was meant to protect them from evil spirits in life and after death. The cartouche has become a symbol representing good luck and protection from evil .[5] Egyptians believed that if you had your name written down somewhere, then you would not disappear after you died. A cartouche attached to a coffin satisfied this requirement. [6] There were periods in Egyptian history when people refrained from inscribing these amulets with a name, for fear they might fall into somebody's hands conferring power over the bearer of the name.[7]
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Etymology [edit]
The term cartouche was first applied by soldiers who fancied that the symbol they saw so frequently repeated on the pharaonic ruins they encountered resembled a muzzle-loading firearm's paper powder cartridge (cartouche in French).[8]
Hieroglyph use of cartouche and half-cartouche [edit]
In the Rosetta Stone, the cartouche hieroglyph is used for the word "name", Egyptian rn.[9] For the cartouche cut in half, the "half-cartouche hieroglyph", Gardiner's sign listed no. V11, (the cartouche hieroglyph is V10), is used in the Egyptian language for words meaning: "to cut, to divide, to separate".
See also [edit]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cartouches |
- Cartouche (hieroglyph)
- Serekh, a predecessor to the cartouche
- Shen ring
References [edit]
- General
- Budge. The Rosetta Stone, E. A. Wallace Budge, (Dover Publications), c. 1929, Dover edition(unabridged), 1989. (softcover, ISBN 0-486-26163-8)
- Specific
- ^ http://artyfactory.org/egyptian_art/cartouche_lesson/cartouche_lesson.htm
- ^ Ancient-egypt.org
- ^ Allen, James Peter, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, Cambridge University Press 2000, p.65
- ^ cf. Thomas Eric Peet, William Leonard Stevenson Loat, The Cemeteries of Abydos. Part 3. 1912-1913, Adamant Media Corporation, ISBN 1-4021-5715-0, p.23
- ^ http://www.dcsd.org/district.cfm?subpage=541292
- ^ http://egypt.mrdonn.org/cartouche.html
- ^ Alfred Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Adamant Media Corporation 2001, ISBN 1-4021-9366-1, pp.293-295
- ^ White, Jon Manchip, Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt, Courier Dover 2002, p.175
- ^ Budge, 1929, 1989. The Rosetta Stone, p. 124-169.
External links [edit]
- "Cartouches" (PDF, 8.87 MB) (in Arabic). Egypt State Information Service. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
