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 Dream Interpretation in the Ramesside Age K S It is a great ho

 Dream Interpretation in the Ramesside Age K S It is a great honour to be able to play a part in this tribute to Kenneth Kitchen, an Egyptologist whose work has always had such an impact on me. Te KRI has constantly been kept close at hand, as have so many of his books and articles on the Ramesside Age, but I have also been inspired by his commentaries on subjects outside the realm of historical studies. In particular, his article ‘Te Curse of Publication and the Blight of Novelty’ has encouraged me try to keep my own work more reader-friendly, and to focus on maintaining quality over quantity. It is with a great debt of gratitude, therefore, that I oﬀer this paper on one small aspect of life in Ramesside Egypt. A discussion of dream interpretation beﬁts this volume that focusses on the Ramesside Age, for it is precisely during this time that the use of dreams as a form of divination is ﬁrmly attested. Prior to this time, dreams appear only in other contexts. Te earliest currently known references to dreams are found in letters to the dead dating from the Old Kingdom to First Intermediate Period, which were left in or near the tomb of the addressee. In one of these, P . Nag ed-Deir , the writer complains of being watched by the dead in a nightmare, while in the other a husband hopes to see his deceased wife acting on his behalf in a dream. From the Middle Kingdom onwards, rather than being presented as desirable visions, dreams appeared as malignant forces to be repulsed and avoided. Tis is attested in execration texts, medical spells, and prescriptions to be used alongside artefacts such as headrests, that would oﬀer the vulnerable sleeper a modicum of protection. Literary texts such as the Tale of Sinuhe and the Teach- ings of Ptahhotep employed the metaphor of dreams to emphasise that which was ephemeral, untrust- worthy, and potentially dangerous. Te dream was perceived as a sort of liminal space whose boundaries lay somewhere between the world of the living and the world beyond that allowed contact between the dreamer and those who inhabited the afterlife: the gods, the dead, and the damned. From the time of the New Kingdom, gods began to appear in the recorded dreams of pharaohs such as Amenhotep II and Merneptah, whose divine visions occurred during respites in military campaigns.  In C. J. Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge, – September  (OLA ; Leuven, ), –.  For dreams in general, and this argument speciﬁcally, see K. Szpakowska, Behind Closed Eyes: Dreams and Nightmares in Ancient Egypt (Swansea, ).  W. K. Simpson, ‘Te Letter to the Dead from the Tomb of Meru (N ) at Naga ed-Deir’, JEA  (), –.  Letter on a stela published by E. F. Wente, ‘A Misplaced Letter to the Dead’, OLP / (/), –.  Szpakowska, Behind Closed Eyes, –.  Memphis Stela –; Urk. IV, .–..  KRI IV, , –. Szpakowska, K. (2011), 'Dream Interpretation in the Ramesside Age', in Mark Collier and Steven Snape (eds.), Ramesside Studies in Honour of K. A. Kitchen (Bolton: Rutherford Press), 509-17.  K S Te best known of the royal dreams is that of Tuthmosis IV, who recorded his dream on a stele at the foot of the sphinx. None of these dreams, however, was symbolic, nor did they require a specialist to interpret them; it is clearly stated within the texts that the dreams were instantly understood by the dreamers. Te Ramesside Period, however, ushered in numerous changes in decorum and sanctioned expres- sions of piety. Divine dreams were no longer a royal prerogative, as demonstrated by two individuals who publicly recorded that they had direct communication with the goddess Hathor in their dreams. Te practice of divination became more common, and more diversiﬁed in method. Te techniques that are attested now include at the least hemerology (the use of calendars or almanacs listing auspicious and inauspicious days), oracles (which were also known in the pre-Amarna period), lecanomancy (divining by interpreting patterns of oil on water), and oneiromancy (divination through dreams). Te evidence for oneiromancy that has both survived and been published remains sparse, and any reconstruction of this practice must be considered preliminary. Nevertheless, the practice is attested to in dramatic fashion by the survival of a Dream Manual on P . Chester Beatty III. Te beginning and the end of this Dream Manual are missing, but enough remains to indicate that this was not a small composition. Te surviving portion of the manuscript is organised into three sec- tions. Te ﬁrst consists of lists of dreams and their interpretations –  dreams that are interpreted as good omens are listed ﬁrst, followed by  negative omens. Tis is followed immediately by the second section which contains a protective spell to ward oﬀ the eﬀects of a nightmare. Te third section provides a description of a type of man called a ‘Follower of Seth’ along with a listing of the good dreams that this individual could see. Te ‘Follower of Seth’ is described as being a hot-tempered, violent, debauched, red-haired man whose sexual prowess was enjoyable to women. His proclivities towards excess included that of drink, and the text informs us that ‘he drinks beer in order to incite confusion and uproar’. Tis hot Sethian character can be contrasted with that of the ideal Ramesside man: one who was silent, humble, modest and pious. It is possible that the ﬁrst portion that has survived would have been titled ‘Te Dreams of a Follower of Horus’ to emphasise this polarity. Tese two deities often visually express the notion of opposition, and appear within the spell to keep away nightmares that forms part of the manuscript. Te division of a Dream Manual into separate categories of dreams is also attested in the  Sphinx Stela (–); Urk. IV, –.  Stela of Ipuy (Stele Wien , –) published by H. Satzinger, ‘Zwei Wiener Objekte mit bemerkenswerten Inschriften’, in P . Posener-Kriéger (ed.), Mélanges Gamal Eddin Mokhtar (BdE ; Cairo, ), II, –; Biography of Djehutiemhab (TT), KRI VII, . See also K. Szpakowska, ‘Te Open Portal: Dreams and Divine Power in Pharaonic Egypt’, in S. B. Noegel, J. Walker, and B. Wheeler (eds), Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (Pennsylvania, ), –.  Tis is attested at least from the Middle Kingdom in the form of an unﬁnished papyrus from Kahun (UC ) in M. Col- lier and S. Quirke, Te UCL Lahun Papyri: Religious, Literary, Legal, Mathematical and Medical, (BAR IS ; Oxford, ), –. For a recent publication of a New Kingdom text, see C. Leitz, Tagewählerei: Das Buch HAt nHH ph.wy Dt und verwandte Texte (ÄA ; Wiesbaden, ).  S. Demichelis, ‘La Divination par L’huile à L’époque Ramesside’, in Y. Koenig (ed.), La magie en Égypte: À la recherche d’une déﬁnition. Actes du colloque organisé par le Musée du Louvre, les  et  septembre  (Paris, ), –.  For an overview of divination see A. von Lieven, ‘Divination in Ägypten’, AoF  (), –.  P . Chester Beatty III, rt. –; A. H. Gardiner, Chester Beatty Gift (HPBM ; London, ).  Only four of these remain before the text breaks again.  Tis binary opposition of temperaments is common in contemporary texts, one example being the Instructions of Amen- emope. See also J. F. Borghouts, ‘Magical Practices among the Villagers’, in L. H. Lesko (ed.), Pharaoh’s Workers: Te Villagers of Deir el-Medina (Ithaca, ), – n. .  Tis was ﬁrst proposed by Gardiner, Chester Beatty Gift, .  Tis spell, like most Ancient Egyptian magico-medical texts, is embedded within a mythological context with the healer playing the role of Isis, the patient is referred to as Horus, and the source of the bad dream is blamed on the bad things (Dwwt) that were created by Seth.  D I   R A Demotic Dream Manual (P . Carlsberg XIII–XIV). In this Roman Period composition, the dreams are not evaluated as good or bad, and instead are divided into various groups, each with their own heading. Tese include dreams of numbers, games, drinking (beer), snakes, speaking out, animal excrement and ﬂesh, swimming with other people, accepting wreaths and other plants, and crocodiles. In addition, there are categories of dreams that the authors concieved a woman might dream of including sexual dreams, giving birth to animals, and suckling animals. If the Ramesside Dream Manual ever included more than the two extant divisions, such as a section enumerating the dreams that could be seen by a woman, or some other category of person, they are now lost. Te lists in the Ramesside text are arranged in neatly lined horizontal rows, each column preceeded by the vertical heading: ir mAA sw s m rsw.t ‘If a man sees uploads/Geographie/ dream-interpretation-in-the-ramesside-ag.pdf