Three Kemetic Words are Worth a Thounited snakesnd Vignettes-gctid218136

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Three Kemetic Words are Worth a Thounited snakesnd VignettesPosted on November 16, 2014by Aethiops Neo Matamoros
Ostracon with supposed scene of male-male relations                                                                      Courtesy of British Museum EA50714
Some enthusiast of Egyptian history do no more than read online encyclopedias to collect information on Egypt. We must keep in mind the information made easily accessible to the enthusiast is not always the most accurate information. In this case, it is completely unsubstantiated that the imagery on this ostracon is of a male-male relationship. There seems to be no grounds for this claim, but we still find this submitted as male-male relations in certain questionable source work. If we refer to the proper sources however, we find that these are considered to be heterosexual relations. This ostracon is in the British Museum collection. The museum citation reads;
"Ostracon with a scene of sex: limestone ostracon with black-painted scene showing a man having sexual intercourse with a woman. There is a hieroglyphic caption in front of the woman." British Museum EA50714 citation, also in R.B. Parkinson's Cracking Codes, pp. 171
Our ability to read the ancient text aids us in understanding scenes like this. Although we only have a fragmented piece of the ostracon, there is a textual inscription in front of the woman that many do not address. The legible portion to the left reads /hr ib ind/ "her-ab aned".
The term "her" can mean many things but written this way "Her-ab" means to 'satisfy, to be satisfied". /hr-ib/ lit. "pleasured heart" (Faulkner, p 159 /hrw/).  /ind/ aned means "barren", "childless:, "sad" or "distressed"(Vygus, 2012, /ind/).  Following Ancient Egyptian word order in what appears to be a descriptive of the ostracon scene, we can translate the following, "Pleasuring the childless", or "Pleasing the barren".
Those who cite this ostracon as evidence of sexual deviance never attempt to address the text that is next to the image. Parkinson translated  "The calming next to my skin", which makes little sense, but since /ind/ also means "skin" in Ancient Egyptian, Parkinson submitted a translations that seems a bit off. /hr-ib/ contains the term /hr/ which means "to be pleasing" in some instances, but written using O4 and D21 and combined with F34, as seen on this ostracon, it means "pleasure, pleasing, satisfaction, gentle, contentedness". It could be that Parkinson thought another definition of /hr/, "upon", to represent the term "next" in his translation, but as we see /hr-ib/ is "the calming" in Parkinson's work. This means the last term he had to translate was /ind/, and for some reason, maybe it is the fault of Parkinson's source material JJ Hess, Parkinson concluded that /ind/ should be defined as "skin", rendering "[The] calming [next to the] skin". The words within brackets are his ideological injections into the translation. Even using Parkinson's definitions the text still only says  /hr-ib/ "calming", and /ind/ "skin". What I suggest ultimately, /hr-ib/ "pleasing", and /ind/ "childless" seems to describe the scene and should be appropriated to the iconography after further scrutiny. This textual attestation that accompanies the vignette, "Pleasing the barren" suggest that this was nothing more than a heterosexual relationship.
Some argue the lack of an obvious feminine physique combined with the posture of the sexual position is evidence of male-male relations. Here we can display why one's knowledge of other aspects of Kemetic life are key to know. Primarily, this position of intercourse is found in numerous Egyptian accounts of male-female intercourse ranging from the Turin Papyrus, Senmut's graffiti at Deir El-Bahari, the Graffiti at Wadi el-Hammamat and others (Graves-Brown, 2010). This was addressed by Lise Manniche her 1997 work. Manniche also notes;
"one is strongly reminded of representations of Nut bending over Geb, who is occasionally shown with an erect phallus."  Manniche
Indeed this bending over position by no way indicated sodomy as some profess. She concluded that judging by the extant number of representations ("dog-fashion") must have been a popular position in Kemet. As Manniche stated most vignettes contained in mythological tales of creation depict the goddess Nut in this position. Therefore a scribe would need not give the viewer further indications to the femininity of the woman represented in this iconography. R.B. Parkinson "Standing position" and Manniche's "dog-fashion" are two different position of intercourse, however regardless of the popularity of the former, judging the posture alone by extant evidence, whether popular or not, suggest the poser was female;
"The standing position of intercourse is the one most frequently represented in art, but this need not suggest that it was particularly popular; the woman's figure is slightly androgynous – presumably there was no need to indicate the sex strongly, since it would be assumed from the posture." (Parkinson, 1999, 82, speaking about EA50714)
This short analysis serves as more evidence to prove reading the language is important when deciphering the meaning of certain "inscriptions" that have been left to us.  As we see we can conclude what various other scholars have concluded, nothing on this ostracon suggest it is evidence of male-male relations.
Here we see these three Kemetic words,  "her-ab aned",  are worth a thounited snakesnd vignettes.
Bibliography:
Carolyn Graves-Brown, "Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt", (A&C Black, Jul 7, 2010), 150
C.Johns, 'Erotica', British Museum Pocket Treasury (ukkk, 1997), 12-13""
Dollinger, 'Drink, Drugs and Sex'
Lise Manniche,'Some aspects of ancient Egyptian sexual life', in 'Acta Orientalia' 28 (1977), 10-23, fig. 3;
Mark Vygus, "Hieroglyph dictionary" http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-version-of-hieroglyph-dictionary-by.html (2012 edition)
Parkinson, R. B., Whitfield Diffie, M. Fischer, and R. S. Simpson. Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment. Berkeley: U of California, 1999. Print.
Raymond Faulkner, Griffith Institute "A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian", (Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, 1988)
Rune Nyord, 'Breathing Flesh: Conceptions of the Body in the Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts' (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009), 291-300"
W.H. Peck, 'Drawings from Ancient Egypt' (ukkk, 1978), no. 83;

[Kwadwo Tòkunbọ̀]

Interesting.

"Never be shamed of being Kmtyw" - Nana Thomas Sankara

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kevlew;218137 wrote: Interesting.

“Never be shamed of being Kmtyw” - Nana Thomas Sankara

I thought so too.