146: Tutankhamun and the Opet Festival of Amun

The History of Egypt Podcast

Dominic Perry

History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2021

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amun, Mut, Khonsu, and the King. Once a year, the city of Waset (Thebes / Luxor) hosted an enormous celebration. The Beautiful Festival of Opet honoured the great gods Amun-Ra, Mut, and Khonsu. The deities would emerge from their secret shrines, and ride in procession through the city and on the river. King Tut'ankhamun would lead these events, renewing the power of the gods and his right to rule... This is a big episode, probably best consumed over several sittings. Enjoy! Episode Details: Read the full publication of Tut’ankhamun’s Opet reliefs in The Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple - Volume I: The Festival Procession of Opet in the Colonnade Hall (Chicago, 1994). ⁠PDF available free from the University of Chicago⁠. Date: c. 1336 BCE. Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Music by Keith Zizza. Music by Ancient Lyric. Music by Jeffrey Goodman. Sound interludes by Luke Chaos. Special voiceover work by vorob1003. See other shows from the Agora Podcast Network. Select Bibliography: L. Bell, ‘Aspects of the Cult of the Deified Tutankhamun’, in P. Posener-Kriéger (ed.), Mélanges Gamal Eddin Mokhtar, Bibliothèque d’étude 97 (Cairo, 1985), 31–59. L. Bell, ‘Luxor Temple and the Cult of the Royal Ka’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44 (1985), 251–94. J. C. Darnell, ‘Opet Festival’, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (2010). N. Kawai, ‘Studies in the Reign of Tutankhamun’, Unpublished PhD. Thesis, Johns Hopkins University (2005). L. Manniche, Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt (London, 1991). The Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple – Volume I: The Festival Procession of Opet in the Colonnade Hall (Chicago, 1994). M. Verner, Temple of the World: Sanctuaries, Cults, and Mysteries of Ancient Egypt (Prague, 2013). W. Waitkus, Untersuchungen zu Kult und Funktion des Luxortempels (Gladbeck, 2008). R. H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (London, 2000). R. H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (New York, 2003). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast. I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world. These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Vigelin, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark, and so many other famous and not so famous adventures from throughout
0:21.8	history. Go to Explorespodcast.com or just look us up on your podcast app. That's the
0:27.4	Explorers Podcast.
0:32.4	Before we start the show, a couple of small announcements.
0:42.8	First, this episode references a series of images carved on a temple wall.
0:48.3	That temple has been fully documented and published by the epigraphic survey.
0:51.2	And you can read the publication for free.
0:56.5	The University of Chicago has made PDFs of their Temple studies available online to all. If you like, you could read this as we go. The title of this book is
1:03.0	Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple, Volume 1, The Festival Procession of Opet in the
1:10.2	Colonnade Hall. End quote. The book Procession of Opet in the Colonnade Hall.
1:11.6	End quote.
1:12.6	The book is massive, with detailed drawings of the scenes and translations of the texts.
1:18.5	If you want to follow along, I will occasionally reference the page numbers for certain scenes.
1:24.1	So if you would like to see Opet in action, you can do so for free.
1:28.3	Follow the link in the episode description, or search Luxor Temple, Volume 1, Chicago.
1:34.3	It should be the first result.
1:36.8	Secondly, this might be one of those episodes that is easier to consume in sections.
1:42.4	To accommodate everyone, I have treated each phase of the festival as a
1:46.6	discrete chapter. There are musical interludes between to provide a rest here and there.
1:52.5	So if you ever need a break, there should be an opportunity every so often. This episode includes
1:58.1	descriptions of animal sacrifice.
2:06.7	Ancient Egyptian festivals included offerings of meat, which required the public butchering of cattle.
	...

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