The House of Min in the Temple of Horus at Edfu (Room O): A dia- and synchronic investigation of the meaning, cultic function and textual history of the chapel.

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The proposed project will investigate one room of the Edfu Temple of Horus, namely room O, the so-called pr-Mnw "House of Min", which is located on the western side of the Temple of Horus in Edfu. It is situated opposite the Wabet complex (rooms Q and P). Both are accessed from the middle hall (room N) and form a cultic unit. The "House of Min" is dedicated to one of the oldest deities of the Egyptian pantheon. On the one hand Min symbolizes fertility, on the other hand he stands for kingship and the legitimation of rule. In this role he is often assimilated to Horus - in Edfu in particular to the various local forms of the god such as Horus-Behedeti or Harsomtus. The existing publication Edfou I (1892/revised 1984) documents neither the scenes nor the texts photographically. Another shortcoming are the drawings of the scenes, which are mere sketches, partly misrepresenting the iconography: they reproduce the figurative decoration just summarily and inaccurately, while the hieroglyphic texts have been completely omitted. As a result, much information of interaction between text and image is lost that is, however, central to understanding the scenes. In addition, a philological treatment of the inscriptions has been completely lacking up to now. The project endeavours to tackle this desideratum and pursues two objectives: Firstly, an initial treatment of the texts with a transliteration and a translation by which the content of the inscriptions and the scenes will be analyzed. The second objective is the recontextualisation of the textual material because of intracultural knowledge transfer. A focus will lie on examining the texts of the room for older, contemporary, and younger parallels and to derive the common contents on the basis of the generally valid rules of decoration that the hierogrammats and decorators followed. By means of a systematic examination of the principles of decoration of the House of Min in Edfu, it will thus be shown how text and knowledge, which the priests took up for the design of the inscriptions, were handed down. The first task is to sketch a picture of the room, especially considering performative-ritual aspects, and then to deduce its exact function within the theological and functional construct of the temple. The work will thus show that the richly decorated temples of the Graeco-Roman period are to be regarded as repositories of older compositions in the form of monumental versions. The question of how longer hymns and other texts were adapted to their particular context - i.e. in the concrete case divided into smaller units on the temple wall - will be pursued on the basis of the model of macro- and micro-text, taking into account the changes in the corpus of spells.