DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4859#0025
She appears
to have
married both
men in turn
Objections
to this
hypothesis
THE TOMB OF TWO SCULPTORS AT THEBES
in one person. Henetnofret's two husbands were fellow-craftsmen, and
the causes which in Europe have always developed among such men a
specially close camaraderie and more untrammeled views on social relations
seem not to have been altogether inoperative under the very different
conditions, the more so that in ancient Egypt such men often, or gener-
ally, inherited their profession from their fathers and transmitted it to
their sons and near relations. In such a close brotherhood of artists,
Henetnofret had an excellent opportunity of a second marriage so har-
monious as to permit the delicate undertaking of a single tomb, where
she, her two husbands, their relations, and her children by each might
immortalize their natural good sense and amiability.
One could have wished that the acceptance of this relation between
the three chief personages were beyond cavil, instead of being the pref-
erable solution of a dilemma, each horn of which involves us in difficul-
ties. The appearance of Thepu, Nebamun's mother, as his companion in
scenes where a wife would ordinarily be seen, gives a sufficient expla-
nation for Henetnofret's absence from his side, and is paralleled several
times in the necropolis, though the substitution is infrequent and as yet
unexplained.1 Many will, no doubt, find it hard to believe that Nebamun,
under the peculiar conditions, chose to depict Henetnofret seated at the
funeral meal with his dead rival, passing out of the tomb in his company,
etc., while he himself is content with the society of his mother, thus con-
senting to the reunion of his wife to her first husband on the threshold
of the life to come. It will seem especially repugnant when it is consid-
ered that, for the ancients, these vivid records had power to create the
lWe find it, e.g., in Tombs 20, 3i, 36, 45, 78, g5, 106, 112, 258, 276. In Nos. 20 and 276 the mother
is shown in the inner chamber at the solemn meal of the dead. In No. 36 a son is mentioned, implying mar-
riage. In No. 78 (see p. 9) the man must have been of such an age that the mother could not have survived
him; she could not, therefore, have originated the pictures and there shown indifference or hostility to her
daughter-in-law. Since we are in the East, we can scarcely admit the theory of real bachelordom, except
in the case of some natural bar to marriage. If it was merely that the mother was specially loved or for some
reason had not been provided with a resting place at her husband's side, why is the wife generally excluded
from mention? Are these, then, cases of divorce or of unhappy union? If the second marriage of Henetnofret
were better established, one would ask, in face of this lack of apparent motive for the substitution of the
mother, whether all these cases are not those of marriage with a widow, who perhaps, by custom or law, still
belonged to her first husband, and must find her place for eternity at his side.
10
to have
married both
men in turn
Objections
to this
hypothesis
THE TOMB OF TWO SCULPTORS AT THEBES
in one person. Henetnofret's two husbands were fellow-craftsmen, and
the causes which in Europe have always developed among such men a
specially close camaraderie and more untrammeled views on social relations
seem not to have been altogether inoperative under the very different
conditions, the more so that in ancient Egypt such men often, or gener-
ally, inherited their profession from their fathers and transmitted it to
their sons and near relations. In such a close brotherhood of artists,
Henetnofret had an excellent opportunity of a second marriage so har-
monious as to permit the delicate undertaking of a single tomb, where
she, her two husbands, their relations, and her children by each might
immortalize their natural good sense and amiability.
One could have wished that the acceptance of this relation between
the three chief personages were beyond cavil, instead of being the pref-
erable solution of a dilemma, each horn of which involves us in difficul-
ties. The appearance of Thepu, Nebamun's mother, as his companion in
scenes where a wife would ordinarily be seen, gives a sufficient expla-
nation for Henetnofret's absence from his side, and is paralleled several
times in the necropolis, though the substitution is infrequent and as yet
unexplained.1 Many will, no doubt, find it hard to believe that Nebamun,
under the peculiar conditions, chose to depict Henetnofret seated at the
funeral meal with his dead rival, passing out of the tomb in his company,
etc., while he himself is content with the society of his mother, thus con-
senting to the reunion of his wife to her first husband on the threshold
of the life to come. It will seem especially repugnant when it is consid-
ered that, for the ancients, these vivid records had power to create the
lWe find it, e.g., in Tombs 20, 3i, 36, 45, 78, g5, 106, 112, 258, 276. In Nos. 20 and 276 the mother
is shown in the inner chamber at the solemn meal of the dead. In No. 36 a son is mentioned, implying mar-
riage. In No. 78 (see p. 9) the man must have been of such an age that the mother could not have survived
him; she could not, therefore, have originated the pictures and there shown indifference or hostility to her
daughter-in-law. Since we are in the East, we can scarcely admit the theory of real bachelordom, except
in the case of some natural bar to marriage. If it was merely that the mother was specially loved or for some
reason had not been provided with a resting place at her husband's side, why is the wife generally excluded
from mention? Are these, then, cases of divorce or of unhappy union? If the second marriage of Henetnofret
were better established, one would ask, in face of this lack of apparent motive for the substitution of the
mother, whether all these cases are not those of marriage with a widow, who perhaps, by custom or law, still
belonged to her first husband, and must find her place for eternity at his side.
10