206 Stuart Tyson Smith
Figure 13.6 King Tanutamani of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty is led through the Netherworld by
Om-Seti, one of the protective Four Sons of Horus, with the goddess Nepthys in the background.
Note the distinctive Kushite ram amulets and cap crown with double uraei. Source: Photo by
author, from the tomb at el-Kurru, Sudan.
finally assemble to submit to his authority, he sends most of them away (Breasted 1906:
Part IV, 443):
When the land brightened, very early in the morning these two rulers of the South and
two rulers of the North, with serpent crests, came to sniff the ground before the fame of
his majesty, while, as for these kings and princes of the Northland who came to behold the
beauty of his majesty, their legs were as the legs of women. They entered not into the king’s
house, because they were unclean and eaters of fish; which is an abomination for the palace.
Lo, King Namlot, he entered into the king’s house, because he was pure, and he ate not fish.
There stood three upon their feet, (but only) one entered the king’s house.In a classic example of political theater, Piankhi demonstrates his own proper sacred
knowledge and Egyptian-ness against the Libyan “otherness” of his rivals, who do not
know the proper religious protocols for approaching the king, the living incarnation of
the god Horus, in his palace. The “other” princes are also described in terms that place
them within the ethnic stereotype of the foreigner-topos, as princes from the Northlands
(i.e., Syro-Palestine and Libya) and acting cowardly when approaching the king.
In monumental art, the Nubian pharaohs adopted the old imagery of ethnic self and
other. For example, Piankhi’s nephew Taharqa had himself portrayed as a sphinx tram-
plingtopicalAsiatic enemies when he expanded the old New Kingdom colonial temple
of Amun-Re at Kawa (Temple T; Macadam 1949, Pl. IX), imitating New Kingdom
examples such as the painted box of Tutankhamen (cf., N. M. Davies and Gardiner 1962).
This ideological strategy was a successful one, leading to 100 years of rule in Egypt,
but while it is framed in primordial, essential terms, the Napatan ideology of kingship