Cartouche (Egypt)

The last pharaoh of the 3rd Huni dynasty was the first pharaoh , whose name was regularly enclosed in a cartouche, depicting a rope tied in a knot below ^[1] . Cartouche comes into use at the beginning of the IV dynasty under Pharaoh Snofru .

The predecessor of the cartouche was gray . In ancient Egyptian language, the cartouche was called shenu and, in fact, was an enlarged . In demotic writing, the cartouche degenerated into a pair of brackets and a vertical line.

Of the five titular names of the pharaohs, a throne name (prenomen) and a proper name (nomen), which was given at birth, were framed in a cartouche ^[2] . In cases of usurpation or the “ curse of memory ” ( Latin Damnatio memoriae ), names and cartouches were erased or replaced by others. Fortunately for historians, such practices lend themselves to research and decryption through careful epigraphic analysis ^[3] .

Sometimes in the form of cartouches amulets were performed that depicted the names of the pharaohs and were put in tombs. In certain periods of Egyptian history, such amulets were not depicted in connection with the fear that a person who took possession of a cartouche with a name might gain power over the bearer of the name ^[4] .

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  An example of a usurped cartouche. Cartouche Sebekhotep III

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  Cartouche of the Ptolemaic era

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  Cartouche amulet of Amenhotep III (XIV century BC). Metropolitan Museum

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  Cartouche on the statue of Ramses IV. British museum

The cartouche of Queen Cleopatra on the Rosetta stone helped the French Egyptologist and linguist Jean-Francois Champollion decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

These artifacts are of great importance for archaeologists in connection with the fact that they can determine the time of burial and its affiliation ^[5] .

• Tamga
• Tugra