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Tom Simms on Egypt
Sorry Orionists, although I'm responding this once to a post on Egyptian
topics, I don't intend to reply to any more here.
But, Tomm Simms wrote the following:
> The right to the throne was matrilinear; The Heb Sedj Festival or
> Jubilee where simulacrum of the ritual murder of the king replaced its
> real murder shows how Matrilinear the system was from the beginning;
This is nowhere near as transparent as you make it out to be, Tom. The
Heb-Sed was a test of the pharaonic power. The trials could be seen, as you
know, in the Heb-Sed courts of the Djoser Complex. If the Heb-Sed was
failed, then the king died. There is nothing necessarily matrilineal in that.
> The "illustrations" lining the inside of the
> covered funeral ramps leading from the riverbank funerary temple testify to
> a very different view of the gods than the one that swept down from Sycthia
> with the Sea Peoples.
You are still assuming too much with the Scythian connection to the Sea
Peoples. A number of IndoEuropean groups were good with horse and chariot.
> The Egyptians had ruling Queens at several times in
> their history.
Several times is a bit of an exaggeration. Hatshepsut was the exception
ruling for twenty years -- others like Tausert and NeferuSobek disappeared
without a trace not long after the starts of their reigns, showing that they
were only stopgaps that were disposed of. Whereas there was no heir to the
throne in their cases Hatshepsut took the throne while Tuthmoses III was too
young, but he was the direct heir.
> However, the duties of providing the next royal heiress
> left little time for the onerous worship duties of the king.
This also is very unclear. Not many of the Great King's Wives provided the
heir to the throne in the 18th dynasty (which is considered the apex of the
New Kingdom).
Yours,
Ian Hutchesson