The 'driving of the four calves' ritual with the Gods wife of Amun Amundiris is shown in her mortuary chapel in the grounds of Medinet Hau. Amundiris is shown as she walks across the wall wearing only the plumed headdress of Amun, where she is performing an ancient ceremony known as the driving of the four calves and the treading of the grave. In her left hand she holds a staff, leashed to the staff are four calves, as a farmer would till the earth to enhance the fruitful growth of his new crops, there are four calves to symbolically remind us that the four cardinal points of Egypt will be renewed by this ritual, Amundiris re-enacts the farmers yearly ritual in her burial tomb with four calves who tread the earth so that they like Osiris the god who rose again from death to be reborn would keep Egypt fertile for another year, at the end of each leash dangles the key of life enhancing the wish for new life. In her right hand she carries a stick to drive the calves across the burial ground.
The Gods Wife of Amun Chapels of Amendiris & Shepenwepet are found in the Grounds at Medinet Habu mortuary temple. These important ladies were the daughters or sisters of opposing kings of Egypt, and their position as The Gods wife of Amun was a political as well as a religious position as Ancient Waset (luxor) was the middle ground between two kingdoms so each king maintained his power through his daughter or sister therefore avoiding war and unnecessary hardship.
The women were revered within Waset as they were considered the living mortal wife of the god of Amun and these particular Gods wives had taken a vow of celibacy which promised no threat of another male claim to the throne.
The Gods Wife owned about 2,000 acres of fertile land in both the delta and Upper Egypt and received bread oxen geese and yields from the fields from the Priests of Amun, A small row of mortuary chapels are set back on the side of the courtyard as you come through the Migdol gateway.
The mortuary chapels in the grounds of Medinet Habu on the west banlk of luxor belong to Shepenwepet 1 who was the daughter of Osorken 111 a king of the Libyan invasion, Amendiris 1, a Kushite princess who was the sister of the king Piankhy the founder of the 25th dynasty. Piankhy made a religious pilgrimage to Weset and convinced Osorken and Shepenwepet to adopt his sister Amendiris as heir and successor to the title of Gods wife of Amun. I walked over to visit their chapels before I left the precincts of the temple grounds.
Above the lintels of the doorways the ‘appeal to the living’ is written, this is to encourage people passing through the door to repeat the offering formula for the Ka’s of these powerful women. An offering formula ensured that after their deaths a person would not be neglected, if offerings are not actually taken it is considered that the words spoken would be enough to sustain the Ka’s of these wives of Amun, you have to think of ‘the appeal to the living’ in the same way as a gravestone reminds you to visit an ancestor or friend to leave them flowers, telling them your worries and expressing your love for them , so as I passed through the door I asked Amendiris to accept my spoken offerings of food wine linen incense and water as gifts for the Ka of her eternal life.
Whether I live or die, I am Osiris, I enter in and reappear through you, I decay in you,
I grow in you, I fall down in you, I fall upon my side. The gods are living in me for I live and grow in the corn that sustains the Honoured Ones. I cover the earth; whether I live or die I am Barley. I am not destroyed. I have entered the Order, I rely upon the Order, I become Master of the Order, I emerge in the Order, I make my form distinct, I am the Lord -of the Chennet I have entered into the Order; I have reached its limits .
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