 Hi everyone and welcome to your daily barns takeout. I'm Karl Walsh, I'm a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Research, Interpretation and Education at the barns, and today I wanted to take us back up to the East Wall Ensemble of Room 16 to have a look at this Egyptian stone relief which is perched just above the floor near the doorway on the East Wall. And as we transition into summer here in Philadelphia, I thought it would be fun and relevant to think about the topic of celebrations. And summer for me is really much associated with festivals and pride parades, fireworks, and spending a lot of time outside with friends and family. And I think these are all things that we're really missing in the world at the moment and we're wanting to have more of. So I wanted to share this piece that I think is very much in the spirit of celebration all the way from Ancient Egypt. And if we have a look at this relief, it doesn't immediately scream out party. So I wanted to have a little bit of a closer look at what's going on here to understand the relief in a little bit more detail. So you can see that it's carved in shallow low relief. So the images are almost flushed with the surface of the stone. And it has some really nice fine detail in the carving, including kind of details of the ears on the figure and even small things like the hands on some of these signs have very nicely made fingers. And originally this relief would have been painted. So it would have been a little bit brighter. And that's probably because it's been very heavily cleaned in early conservation work that was done on this. And it would have formed part of a larger scene that was on Temple Wall and would have been much larger than just this fragment. And we'll have to think about what other aspects might be missing from this scene as well. The main part of the scene shows this big figure of a male god. And we know that he's a god because he has a number of things that he's wearing that show that he is divine. He's got this false beard on his chin that he's wearing and a cloth headdress, which is usually reserved for kings and for gods. And then on the back of his kilt that he's wearing here, he is wearing a bull's tail. And the bull is a symbol of power in ancient Egypt because bulls are big powerful creatures. And this is kind of harnessing that power, that ferocious power for bull into this figure of the god. And then he is carrying in one of his hands a group of signs up here. And this is a really nice example of when Egyptian hierarchics are both pictorial and text as well. So he is holding a basket sign and in the basket are two other signs, which are the signs for life and power, which are just sat in there. And it's nicely cupped in his hands there. And then above him, he has this smaller group of signs, which is acting as a label. So we're looking here. And this is the hieroglyphic name Noot, which is a city in Egypt. So this label being what the god is indicating to us that this is a city god, particularly associated with this area and this settlement in Egypt. And then underneath the signs that he's holding, we have parts of an inscription that also contain a cartouche, which is this motif here, which is containing a little royal name inside it. And the signs that the god is holding in his hands are actually part of this inscription. And so altogether, it reads, he gives all life and power to Jezre Carre, and he is referring to the god in the city in this scene. And you may recognize the name Jezre Carre because this is the name of a king that was also found on the relief of Kay that we looked at a few weeks ago. And this is the king Amanhotep the first, who was deified after his death. So he became a god. And it also gives us a rough date of where this relief has come from as well. So it's probably around the dates about 1504 to 1388 BC, in the early New Kingdom period. Then to the left, we have three groups of hieroglyphic signs. And these are quite interesting. You can see they're quite large. So they're also acting as images as well as words. And they are incorporating the hieroglyphic sign for festival here, this little bowl sign with a diamond in it. So this is the word head, which means festival. And then above it, we have another little sign, which is just kind of clarifying the meaning of it. And you can see that it's a little building. It actually has a floor, it has walls and columns, which are supporting a roof above it. And then it has two thrones that are covered in a little blanket or textile, which kind of falls and drapes over the back of the chair. And this is a little representation of a shrine of a god, with little thrones being placements of where the god would kind of sit inside in the shrine or the temple. And these are mirrored on the top and the bottom. So we have the same representation of a festival shrine here. And then in the middle, we have something slightly different. And this is just got an animal's tail, which is functioning also as a column for supporting the roof. And this is a very specific type of festival that's being mentioned here. This is called the Hebset Festival. And this is for the celebration of the coronation or a jubilee celebration for a king. And in this case, it's referring specifically to the coronation or jubilee festival of the King Amanhotep I, who's named right here. Then at the very far left, we've got part of another sign. And this is a big vertical band with little notches on it. And this is a measuring stick. It's an Egyptian hieroglyphic for the word renput, which means years. And basically, this is acting as a kind of calendar function in showing that these festivals are being celebrated at a very specific time of the year. So overall, this scene is basically showing the god of the city of Noot giving offerings to this god King Amanhotep I for the celebration of his jubilee festival. And originally, this scene probably had more figures of gods to the right who are also affiliated with different cities and regions in Egypt who are all coming together to give offerings to this god for his festival. And it's really kind of showing all of Egypt basically celebrating together this festival in a big kind of nationwide celebration. And I think this is really nice to think about in terms of thinking about, you know, celebrations in general, and the Egyptians really enjoyed their festivals. They were usually religious in nature, so they would be honoring a god or a king. And they would be opportunities for people to celebrate on a nationwide level, but also on a very kind of local and community levels as well. So they could be both big and small. And there would be times when people could take the day off work, where there would be feasting and kind of banqueting and drinking incense and games and dancing and things as well. So they're big, big parties basically. And there were also opportunities for the Egyptians to get a little bit closer to their gods as well. And they would be able to ordinary Egyptians be able to enter into public parts of temples where they could see all the art that was decorating the walls and where they could be a little bit closer to the images of the gods which are in the temple. And the holiest image of the gods in their temples are usually small metal statues that are placed in little box shrines. And these would actually be taken out of the temple for festivals and paraded around the city on mobile palanquins that were shaped like boats, which we call barks. And they were held by teens of priests who would carry them around the city in a big parade. And people would actually be able to see and kind of engage with their god, which they would not normally ever be able to do. It was only really for festivals that these were brought out. And because these things are probably so heavy to carry around as well, the priests would stop at certain points and put down the bark. And people then would be able to actually approach the god in its shrine and give them offerings and give them prayers and engage them in ways that they would never usually be able to do. And this would be a really special occasion for them to be really to interact with the holiest images of their gods. And it would be really an important celebration for them that would be really memorable. And I think that's something really important for us to remember now as well as to really kind of remember to take the time to celebrate what's important and what we fought for and to take those moments and celebrate them over the over the summer as well. So I hope you enjoyed this barns take out. If you haven't already, please do subscribe to our channel to get your daily dose apart and please leave a comment. We really enjoy reading and responding to them as well. So please take care and party safe.