Petosiris (), called Ankhefenkhons, was the high priest of Thoth at Hermopolis and held various priestly degrees in the service of Sakhmet, Khnum, Amen-Re and

Hathor Hathor (, , , Meroitic language, Meroitic: ') was a major ancient Egyptian deities, goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god R ...

. Petosiris was the son of Sishu and Nefer- renpet. He lived in the second half of the 4th century BCE, during the 28th Dynasty. In his tomb, located in the necropolis at Tuna el-Gebel, Petosiris prided himself on having re-established the fortunes of the temples in which he served. There is a pseudepigraphic onomantic text,

Petosiris to Nechepso __notoc__ Petosiris to Nechepso is a letter describing an ancient divination technique using numerology and a diagram. It is likely to be a pseudepigraph. Petosiris and Nechepso are considered to be the founders of astrology in some traditions. O ...

, and it is possible that the priestly Petosiris described in this article is the inspiration for the attribution of authorship. Nechepso lived in the 7th century BCE and the text is likely 2nd century BCE.

The tomb of Petosiris

Petosiris is particularly known for the tomb he had built for himself in Tuna el-Gebel, the necropolis of Hermopolis Magna. The architecture of the tomb is modeled on a temple with a pronaos. Gustave Lefebvre: ''Le tombeau de Petosiris''. 3 Bände, Imprimerie de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, Kairo 1923–24
Volltext als PDF; 33 MB
. Band 2, S. 54–91 (Inscription 81, 43ff.). The tomb is also known for its depictions of everyday scenes in a mixed Greco-Egyptian style. Greek graffiti proves that the tomb of Petosiris, later venerated as a saint, was visited by the sick in order to be healed. Petosiris's coffin, known for its colorful glass inlays, is now in the

Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum (, Egyptian Arabic: ) (also called the Cairo Museum), located in Cairo, Egypt, houses the largest collection of Ancient Egypt, Egyptian antiquities in the world. It hou ...

in Cairo (JE 46592).

Notes

References

* Lefebvre, Gustave: ''Le Tombeau de Petosiris'', L'institut Français d'archéologie orientale, Cairo, 1924 * Lichtheim, Miriam: ''Ancient Egyptian Literature'', Vol.3, University of California Press 1980, pp. 44ff. * Caroli, Christian A.: ''Ptolemaios I. Soter - Herrscher zweier Kulturen'', Badawi Artes Afro Arabica, 2007, , , pp. 148–158.

External links

The biography of Petosiris

Ancient Egyptian priests {{AncientEgypt-bio-stub