Место издания:Издательство Государственного Эрмитажа Санкт-Петербург
Первая страница:164
Последняя страница:180
Аннотация:The paper deals with the story which was initially posited closely at the end of the second book (tomos) of Manetho’s historical treatise and later on preserved by Josephus Flavius and, in less details, by Chaeremon. It tells that a King Amenophis conceived the desire to see gods and, at the advice of the wizard Amenophis, son of Paapis, sent to forced labour all Egyptian “impure” – lepers and diseased; in due course the wizard foretold him gods’ vengeance for this iniquity, and the king set the “impure” free and settled them near the former Hyksos domain of Avaris. Their leader made an accord with the “post-Hyksos” state at Jerusalem and invaded Egypt together with those foreigners; Amenophis with his son Sethos-Ramesses, or Rampses, escaped to Ethiopia, and in 13 years regained Egypt devastated and desecrated by the invaders. The paper suggests to approach the story as Manetho’s standard representation of a boundary between two big cycles of Egyptian history, the former of them of them being closed with a figure of a ruler-father and the latter being inaugurated with a figure of his son (e.g. the boundary between the first and the second cycles and, respectively, Manetho’s tomoi seems to be represented in the figures of Ammenemes/Amenemhat I and Sesonchosis/Senwosret I). Actually, the story of Amenophis separates the 2nd Millennium B.C., as depicted by Manetho, from the Late Period in Egypt. Scrutiny of Manetho’s kings’ lists in the tradition of Christian chronographers allows identifying Amenophis of Flavius and Chaeremon with Ammenephthes(-phthis) (frgg. 55.3, 56a.3) and Sethos-Ramesses with Ramesses (frg. 55.4) in Dynasty XIX. The position of Ammenephthes in the kings’ lists shows this name to be a derivative of “Merneptah” as an epithet of the historical Saptah (cf. “Amenophath” as the Manethonian replica of the historical Merneptah: frg. 52.16); this inclines to believe that the the lepers’-Hyksos’ invasion in the story can replicate only the advance of the Sea Peoples on Egypt in late Dynasty XIX. At the same time the form of the name in Flavius’ tradition “Amenophis” coincides with the name of Amenhetep III in the tradition of the chronographers; still more pre-Amarnan flavour is added to the story by the appearance of the wizard Amenophis, son of Paapis (a definite equivalent of Amenhetep, son of Hapu). The conclusion is that the story contaminates the reminiscences of the Amarna time and of the transition between Dynasties XIX and XX: both epochs could be understood as the time of a certain “impurity” (sacrilege affecting the normal relations between Egypt and the gods; cf. “disease” – mnt – in pHerm. 1116A. 143 and pHerm. 1116B. 38, 54 and the evidence of pHarris I. 75.8-9 on the “purification” of the Egyptian throne at the start of Dynasty XX), both of them brought a hammering on Egypt from the north-east (by the Hittites and by the Sea Peoples respectively), and both of them ended with the emergence of new legitimate kings with similar names (Ramesses I and Seti I at the start of Dynasty XIX; Sethnakhte and Ramesses III at the start of Dynasty XX). These coincidences and resemblances, together with the chronological proximity of the two epochs, must have caused the Late Egyptian historians to believe that the reminiscences of Amarna and the crisis of the Sea Peoples must come back to one and the same episode. Hence, in Manetho’s story Amenophis/Ammenephthes contaminates the historical Amenhetep III and (Merneptah-)Saptah and Sethos-Ramesses(-Rampses) the historical Ramesses I plus Seti I and Sethnakhte plus Ramesses III. Notably, the whole story became a sort of model for the notion of the ruler’s iniquity punished by the gods, much like the image of Khufu in pWestcar and the eventual tradition on Dynasty IV.
