Vol 83, No 4 (2023)

The article contains a commentary on the titles and anthroponyms on two Old Kingdom reliefs from the excavations of Selim Hassan at Saqqara: 1) A relief in the Taiyo collection (Tokyo) from the tomb of Tfw. This monument preserves the images of two offering-bearers, a horizontal legend, as well as the title and name of one of the persons: “chief of blacksmiths-coppers anx-wDA, whose young name is msnj”. 2) A fragment of an architrave exhibited at French auctions from the tomb of Tmzw depicting a noble couple, their son and daughter. The name of the owner Tmzw, part of the title and the name of his son snDm-jb=j, as well as the legend for the figure of his daughter mrjt-jt=s sitting by the armchair, are preserved here. Both monuments were not attributed after their disappearance from the tombs in which they were originally located. In connection with the looting of the monuments from Hassan’s excavations at Saqqara, the identification of epigraphic material always seems to be an urgent matter.

The article deals with Biblical texts related to the prophecies about the future restoration of the Davidic dynasty, which existed in the Jewish tradition of the Babylonian Exile. It is assumed that this plot is reflected not only in biblical texts that directly or indirectly speak of the future restoration of the dynasty, but also in two biblical narratives that tell about other historical figures. Thus, the story of King Manasseh told in the Book of Chronicles may have followed the pattern originally applied to the last Jewish kings, Jeconiah and Zedekiah. Similarly, the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, described in the fourth chapter of the Book of Daniel, may be based on a prophetic parable about the Davidic dynasty.

The Archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (early 13th century), in his work De rebus Hispaniae used Jordanes’ Getica, but de Rada’s direct source had been probably a copy of Getica very different from those that form the basis of the modern reconstruction of the text (“de Rada’s Jordanes”). First, de Rada, the only one of all the sources, refers to Jordanes as ‘the secretary (cancellarius) of the Holy Palace’ which corresponds with the hypothesis of Jordanes being the bishop of Crotone who was with Pope Vigilius in Constantinople in the 540–550s, and of identifying Pope Vigilius as the recipient of Jordane’s first work, the Romana. The article argues in favor of this hypothesis and reconstructs the circumstances that led to writing the Romana and the Getica. Secondly, de Rada’s information, going back to Jordan, contains dates for the events described in the Getica (where there are no dates), which are shifted by about twenty years compared to the real ones. In addition, some names taken by de Rada from Jordanes are rendered as if they had been transliterated from Greek. Finally, the content of “de Rada’s Jordanes” was apparently different from Mommsen’s reconstructed text of the Getica. All these circumstances are interpreted as evidence of the existence of a special protograph of “de Rada’s Jordanes”, different from the one which formed the basis of Mommsen’s reconstruction. This possibility is confirmed by Jordanes’ own reference to the existence of two copies of the Getica sent to Castalius and to Vigilius, which were not necessarily identical. It is possible that the “de Rada’s Jordanes” may still be found in Spanish archives.

The article proposes an attribution for a model of a royal sculpture (ГМИИ I, 1a 4127). The artifact seems to find a rather close parallel in the sculpture head Cairo CG 838, which was attributed to the king Hakoris of the Dynasty XXIX (392/1–379/8 BC). Perhaps, this attribution can be reinforced by comparing the Moscow model with some reliefs of Hakoris emphasizing his youthful features.

The ‘Leningrad school of Egyptology’ was a lose group of researchers who achieved many innovative results in the 1960s–1980s. Although specialized in different fields of studies, N.S. Petrovskiy, O.D. Berlev, E.S. Bogoslovskiy and others were inspired by Yu.Ya. Perepelkin’s thorough approach. The paper traces the contribution to Ancient Egypt studies made by the Leningrad scholars, as well as the obstacles to its international recognition.