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Walk through a cemetery today and take note that on this grave or that, flowers,
cards, and other tokens of memory lie placed by some loving hand. In some
places, some graves might even have food or drink offerings lovingly placed
thereon.
If this is our custom, then we are truly akin to the ancient Egyptians. In
the pre-mummification days of the predynastic period, the deceased members of
the community were carefully placed in pits in the hot dry desert sand. The
bodies would desiccate but would otherwise be reasonably preserved. Somehow, in
someway, the ancient Egyptians conceived the idea that, as the body was
preserved, so too would be the style of living, and the need for sustenance,
just as in life.
Flinders Petrie discovered such funerary goods. He wrote down his
observations: "In the prehistoric graves there is a full supply for the
requirements of the dead. The food offerings were burnt to ashes at a burning
place in the mouth of the cemetery valley; a dozen or sometimes fifty large jars
of the ashes were deposited in the grave. Jars of beer and of water were also
placed, a lesser jar of ointment, cakes of bread and other food. Toilet objects
were provided—as a palette for eye paint, a stock of malachite, combs and
hairpins. There were weapons such as large knives, forked flint lances, copper
or flint daggers, stone maces and flaying knives.
 The
simplest form of offering was found in position at one site: it was a reed mat
laid before the false door of the tomb, with a conical dish on it to hold a pile
of flour. The coloring of the hetep sign in the earliest glyphs at Meidum
shows the rush mat and binding strings and pot exactly like what is found. On
the top of a large 6th Dynasty mastaba at
Dendera, the pottery
offering dishes and jars were still in place, lying undisturbed after thousands
of years."
It should be noted that what Petrie referred to by the hetep
hieroglyph is represented as a loaf of bread placed as an offering on such a
mat, and this sign was used in words such as "offering" or
"altar". Even when the simple mat was replaced by more permanent stone
altars at the beginning of the Old
Kingdom, the altar often had the offering
hieroglyph carved on the top, or was made in the form of the offering sign. The
upper surfaces of the tables were often carved with images of loaves, trussed
ducks, and libation or other vessels required. These images would then serve as
magical substitutes for the real food offerings, backed-up by the offering
formula and lists of specific offerings. Often, there were cups, grooves or
channels cut into the surface so that beer, water or wine could be poured onto
the table.
The ancient Egyptians believed early on that to obtain eternal life, the
individual must join the gods after death. Since to ancient Egyptians, death was
thus merely a continuation on a different plane of existence of the life they
had known, shelter and material goods were considered necessary for the deceased’s
well-being. A tomb equipped with clothing and everyday utensils as well as food
and drink would supply those needs. Just as offerings were also presented to the
images of gods in order to nourish and sustain them, so also were food and other
offerings made to the deceased’s ka
(soul) to nourish and sustain it. The food was
brought into the tomb-chapel, where it was offered to the deceased at the false
door, from which his ka would emerge to partake of the items spiritually.
From predynastic times as Petrie discovered, and probably earlier still,
offerings were made to the gods and to deceased person on small rats of woven
reeds. This sustenance might be supplied for a dead person by the family,
generation after generation, or an officiant might be paid to maintain the
necessary daily care. In the latter case, tomb owners and the priesthood of the
local temple contracted to ensure future sustenance be made as offerings to the
deceased individual’s ka during the generations to come.
Yet family lines could come to an end, economic and other situations change.
To safeguard against the cessation of sustenance within the tomb, the magical
power of the written and spoken word was also employed, to ensure a continual
supply of offerings. So hieroglyphs and canonical art were used to substitute
for the actual offerings by providing a ritual guarantee of eternal sustenance,
texts and images creating directly and perfectly the necessary food and drink
for the dead forever.
Despite the overabundance of offerings, the material offering was not the
essential thing. The act of devotion was more important than the material gift,
as was attested by the substitute offerings. If actual food offerings stopped
for any reason, the offering formula would guarantee an eternal supply of food
and enable the deceased to dispense with the assistance of the funerary priests
for his continued sustenance. Reciting the offering formula was an adequate
substitute for the actual offering. Tomb-owners often are depicted in text as
addressing themselves to passers-by demanding that the offering formula be read
on their behalf. As the owner’s name is read in the formula, the author, the
tomb-owner, is made to leave on in the memory of posterity.
The hetep-di-nisu, or "a gift which the king gives", is the
offering formula or prayer asking for offerings to be given to the deceased. It
first appears as the principal inscription on the False Door stelae of the Early
Dynastic period, which formed the focus of food offerings
 in
early private tombs, but it continued to be used on funerary stelae ad coffins
through to the Graeco-Roman period. From at least the
4th dynasty,
the deceased was often depicted sitting or standing before an offering table,
beside which was an inscription enumerating all that was offered. Later on, in
the 18th Dynasty, the tombs of the Theban necropolis portrayed the
offerings as a banquet scene with guests, servants and entertaining musicians.
As shown below, the offering formula was still used far into the Late
Period.
Hetep also means to be pleased, happy, gracious, to be peaceful, to
become calm, to satisfy, to pacify. Hetep had to do with gifts in a
perspective of communication between the worlds, given in gratitude, received in
happiness and grace, and leading to contentment, graciousness, mercy and peace.
Because the word hetep could signify the concept of rest, peace or
satisfaction, the sign also appears in the design of jewelry and other small
items made to convey such messages such as "The heart of the gods is
satisfied."
One early example of the "gift [or boon] which the king gives"
comes from the Old Kingdom period, specifically an Inscription in the Giza
Mastaba of Princess Ni-Sedjer-Kai, early 5th
Dynasty:
"An offering which the king gives and Anubis, lord of the necropolis,
first of the god’s hall: May she be buried in the western necropolis at great
old age. May she travel on the good ways on which a revered one travels well.
May offerings be given to her on New Year’s feast, the Thoth feast, the First
of the Year feast, the wag-feast, the Sokar feast, the Great Flame feast, the
Brazier feast, the Procession-of-Min feast, the monthly sadj-feast, the
Beginning of the Month feast, the Beginning of the Half-Month feast, every
feast, every day, to the royal daughter, the royal ornament, priestess of Hathor,
priestess of Khufu, Ni-Sedjer-Kai".
So the offering formula employed in the funerary cult and often inscribed on
offering tables usually began with the phrase "Hetep di nisu:"
an "offering which the king grants"—denoting the concept of
requisite royal license. The formulae then continue to name deities such as
Osiris and Anubis, through whom the king’s grant would be administered, and to
list choice offerings such as beer, bread, oxen, fowl, incense and clothing, a
list of the various quantities of items of food and drink that the ka of the
deceased requires, which were supplied magically by the ritual inscription even
if not actually present.
Typically the first line of the offering formula asks for the king to make
gifts to the gods Osiris or
Anubis. But why is the king named herein? After all,
aren’t the offerings being made by the family in many cases, as said above?
This has to do with the religious practice and procedure of the Egyptian people.
The text of the formula indicates that the sustenance of the ka of the deceased
was not simply the responsibility of the surviving relatives, but that it was
necessary for the king, seen as THE priest or intermediary between the Gods and
the people, to intercede on behalf of the deceased.
Since the king was the main priest, the only actual priest in Egypt, it was
only the king who was evershown making offerings to the gods in the temples.
This idea was carried over into the giving of offerings in the tombs, where the
king was also named as the giver. The formula begins: "An offering that the
king gives". The essential role of the king as intermediary between the
gods and mankind required that he should strike a bargain with the gods, whereby
he offered goods to them in exchange for prosperity and harmony in the land, and
also, he would intercede on behalf of the dead to ensure them a prosperous
afterlife. The dead were given offerings on the occasion of the burial, and
their offerings were to be renewed forever, on principle, at certain named
festivals such as the New Year festival, the Thoth festival, the Wag festival,
the Sokar festival and others.
The reason for this was that offerings went from the temple to the
necropolis. Since the Old Kingdom, the practice was that offerings presented to
the main god of the temple were carried out of the sanctuary, presented to gods
having subsidiary cults in the temple, then to statues of kings and private
persons placed in the temple courts, and finally to the necropolis. The
offerings were then distributed to the priests and all the staff involved in the
rituals as a reward, or salary, for their work.
The Pyramid Texts contain examples of the hetep di nisu as well:
Utterance 172: A boon which the king and Geb grant to this King; there is
given to you every offering and every oblation which you can desire, whereby It
will be well with you before the god for ever and ever.
Utterance 437: A boon which the King grants, a boon which Anubis grants, your
thousand of bread, your thousand of beer, your thousand of t-wr-bread which came
forth from the Broad Hall, your thousand of all sweet things, your thousand of
oxen, your thousand of everything which you eat and on which you set your heart.
Utterance 599: A boon which the King grants and Geb grants of these choice
joints, invocation offerings for all gods who shall bring into being all good
things for the King and who shall cause to endure this construction and this
pyramid of the King, in accordance with what the King wishes in the matter, for
ever and ever. O all you gods who shall cause this pyramid and this construction
of the King to be fair and endure: You shall be effective, you shall be strong,
you shall have your souls, you shall have power, you shall have given to you a
boon which the king grants of bread and beer, oxen and fowl, clothing and
alabaster; you shall receive your god’s-offerings, you shall choose for
yourselves your choice joints, you shall have your oblations made to you, you
shall take possession of the Wrrt-crown in the midst of the Two Enneads.
On stelae, the formula phrase is usually accompanied by a depiction of the
deceased sitting in front of an offering table heaped with food. Some tomb
paintings also show Horus, son and heir of Osiris, as the donor, standing with
arm upraised in the attitude of invocation before the shrine, statue or stela of
the god, or deceased, and he pronounces the offering formula. The table was
generally physically placed in the tomb chapel or other accessible place so that
physical offerings could be brought in by the funerary priests, if it was a
royal mortuary offering, or by relatives of the deceased.
The earliest examples come from the fourth dynasty at Meidum. These do not
mention the king, but only Anubis. The opening phrases in the Old Kingdom read
"An offering which the king gives and an offering that Osiris gives"
introducing the kind and the god as equal donors. The gifts are not limited to
food offerings, but include a good burial, admission to the realm of the
spirits, and even a list of festivals at which the offerings are to be made. The
recitation of the formula is illustrated in tombs by a man with his right arm
outstretched, and in fact the hieroglyph for "to offer" is the
outstretched arm with the hand holding out a loaf. Other men are often also
shown offering poured water, burning incense, kneeling at the offering table and
reading the ritual from a scroll.
By the First Intermediate Period the phrase read "An offering that the
king gives TO Osiris, that he may in turn give invocation offerings." An
example of this development comes from the Stela of Sahathor, whose career began
under Amenemhat II in the
12th Dynasty. He and his wife are shown on
the funerary stela beside a pile of offerings. Captions on either side of the
statue-niche describe how many expeditions Sahathor undertook for the king, and
how he supervised work on sixteen statues for the royal funerary complex.
The offering formula from this stela is translated thus:
An offering-which-the-king-gives to Osiris, lord of Busiris, the great god,
lord of Abydos, an invocation offering of bread and beer, flesh and fowl,
alabaster and linen, incense and unguent, at the Wag festival, at the festival
of Thoth, at the procession of Min(?), at the Burnt Offerings. O you living who
are upon earth, who shall pass by this chapel in the necropolis, going north,
going south, may you say "It is pure! A thousand of bread, a thousand of
beer, a thousand of flesh and fowl, oryx and gazelle, and everything on which a
god lives, for the spirit of the blessed one, the assistant treasurer Sahathor,
true of voice."
As time went on, other gods would also be named in the offering formula. An
example of the offering formula from the New Kingdom period comes from Tomb of
Paheri at el-Kab:
An offering given by the King to Amun, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands,
King of eternity, lord of everlastingness….and Nekhbet, the White one of
Nekhen…and Osiris Khentamentiu, Lord of Thinis, great in Abydos, and Hathor,
mistress of the desert….and Ptah-Sokar, lord of Shetyt, Anubis, lord of Rostau,
and the Enneads great and small, May they give a thousand of bread, beer, beef
and fowl, a thousand of food-offerings, a thousand of drink-offerings, all the
plants that sprout from earth, a thousand of all things good and pure, that are
offered to the eternal lord.
And from the Late Period comes an example from the Statue Inscription of
Harwa:
An offering that the King gives to Montu, lord of Thebes, that he may give
provisions of bread, beer, cakes, oxen, fowl, alabaster and clothing, incense
and unguent, all things good and pure whereon a god lives, which heaven gives,
earth produces, and Hapy brings forth, from the table of the Lord of Eternity,
on the monthly feast, the half-monthly feast, on the Thoth feast, and on every
feast, every day, to the ka of the one honored by Montu, Lord of Thebes, the
true, beloved King’s friend, Harwa.
May we today treat our honored dead with at least the same constant memorials
that the Egyptians did.
See Also:
Sources:
- Hieroglyphs and the Afterlife by Werner Foreman and Stephen Quirke
- The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt ed. By Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson
- Religious Life in Ancient Egypt by Flinders Petrie
- Ancient Egyptian Literature translated by Miriam Lichtheim
- Reading Egyptian Art by Richard Wilkinson
- Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
- Voices from Ancient Egypt: Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings by R.B.
Parkinson
- Pyramid Texts translated by Raymond O. Faulkner
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