Execration texts

Ancient Egyptian ritual writing

Execration texts, also referred to as proscription lists, are ancient Egyptian hieratic texts, listing enemies of the pharaoh, most often enemies of the Egyptian state or troublesome foreign neighbors. The texts were most often written upon statuettes of bound foreigners, bowls, or blocks of clay or stone, which were subsequently destroyed. The ceremonial process of breaking the names and burying them was intended to be a sort of sympathetic magic that would affect the persons or entities named in the texts. The fragments were usually placed near tombs or ritual sites. This practice was most common during times of conflict with the Asiatic neighbors of Egypt.

Execration texts are attested from the late Old Kingdom ( 2686–2160 BCE) up into the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1069). The earliest physical execration texts date to the 6th dynasty (24th–22nd century BCE) during Egypt's Old Kingdom. They are statuettes made from unbaked clay and fashioned into the shape of bound foreigners with name labels inscribed on their chests, sometimes in red ink. Over 400 of these statuettes were excavated from the cemetery at Giza, while a few others have been unearthed at the settlements of Elephantine and Balat.

It has been noted that the later execration texts created during the Middle Kingdom, at least partially repeat, with some updates, formulas from the older, Old Kingdom texts. Ben Tor therefore argues that Middle Kingdom texts don't reflect, either in part or entirely, the historical reality of their time, but that of the Old Kingdom or, archaeologically speaking, of the Early Bronze Age (EB) rather than the Middle Bronze Age (MB). Because the execration jars, figurines, vases, and statues were almost destroyed during the rituals, archaeologists have to put all the pieces they find from execration pits back together to learn about the rituals. Four deposits have been uncovered at Giza, which contained figurines packed into pottery jars. At the Middle Kingdom fortress of Mirgissa, execration remains included 200 broken inscribed red vases, over 400 broken uninscribed red vases, nearly 350 mud figurines, four limestone figures, small traces of beeswax dyed red probably the remnants of melted figurines, and one human whose head was ritually severed. Other evidence of human sacrifice and execration victims, as well as animal sacrifice was found at Avaris, probably from the 18th dynasty. Two execration pits were found: one containing skulls and fingers while the other had two full male skeletons. fr published his findings from Saqqara in 1940, which later became known as the Brussels texts. Figurines there name over 60 enemy cities, people, and tribes.

The execration ritual was the process by which one could thwart or eradicate one's enemies. Usually the ritual object(s) would be bound (usually a small figurine, but sometimes human sacrifice was practiced), then the object was smashed, stomped on, stabbed, cut, speared, spat on, locked in a box, burned, saturated in urine, and finally buried. But not every execration included all of the previous components. A full rite could use any of these actions numerous times with numerous figures. One recorded rite gave instructions to "spit on him four times trample on him with the left foot smite him with a spear slaughter him with a knife place him on the fire spit on him in the fire many times"

The execration texts are an important resource for researchers in the field of ancient Near Eastern history of the 20th–18th centuries BCE and Bible studies. The first group of execration texts were published by Kurt Sethe in 1926, known as the Berlin texts. Georges Posener published a second group of texts in 1957, known as the Brussels texts. from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, the end of the 11th Dynasty to the 12th Dynasty. The second group of texts are inscribed on figurines of bound prisoners discovered in Saqqara. This group contains the names of 64 places, usually listing one or two rulers. Seven known Asian countries are listed. This group has been dated to the end of the 12th Dynasty. An additional group of texts, the Mirgissa texts, was published by fr in 1990. The execration texts are mostly inscribed on (un)baked clay materials and written in black carbon or red iron containing pigments. An obstacle to still being able to read them after thousands of years is that these texts have faded over time. This has partly been overcome by applying multi spectral imaging techniques to enhance their readability.

The interpretation of historians as to the meaning of execration texts has been well established thanks to documents that detail the ritual creation of the texts and the manner in which they were to be destroyed in order to invoke a form of magic to protect Egypt and the pharaoh, in earlier cases, but especially in the Ptolemaic period they began to be utilized by more and more Egyptians for their own personal use. Because many of the early execration texts are found on pottery, some historians believe that the ritual smashing of execration figures originated from the smashing of clay vessels used in funerary preparations so as to prevent their use for other purposes and to relinquish any magical power that may have resided in the vessel after having been used for funerary washings.