‘Breaking the red pots (sD dsrwt)’ was a form of execration ceremony performed during offering rituals for the dead that involved bowls similar to those bearing letters to the dead, and was another act intended to overcome threatening influences.283 Jacobus van Dijk remarks:284
It seems likely that the destruction of figurines or pottery vases inscribed with the names of enemies and the breaking of the red jars at the end of the offering-ritual are variants of one and the same ritual aimed at the destruction of evil forces lurking beyond the borders of the cosmos. Although the ritual may be described in a technical sense as an act of sympathetic magic it is more likely to be interpreted as a rite of reassurance, enacted to reassure and thereby protect the participants of the ritual when they approach the dangerous borderline between the ordered world and the domain of the powers of chaos.
In this context, it may be relevant that most execration finds derive from cemeteries, suggesting that the rituals were mainly concerned with dead rather than living enemies, as is further intimated by the fact that the expression ih ikr occurs in Old Kingdom execration texts285 as well as in addresses to the living inscribed on tomb walls.
Breaking, like burning, was a means of transferring the essence of substances and objects from the world of the living to that of the dead.286 Just as food and incense were burned for the benefit of the deceased, so the breaking of wine vessels, as depicted for example in the tomb of Shuroy at Dra Abu el-Naga (TT 13) and the Saqqara tomb of Horemheb,287 was probably symbolic of transference. This scene seems to show that the smashing of vessels during funerary/mortuary rites followed a specific pattern, coinciding with the slaughter of a sacrificial ox,288 the burning of incense, and the presentation of burnt offerings. The wine vessels are replaced by cuts of meat, vegetables, and bowls of incense, with the pots broken in sacrifice substituted by parts of the slaughtered bovid.289 Interestingly, the pots are smashed not by priests, but by ordinary citizens; soldiers, overseers, gardeners, and mourners (Figure 15).290
The ritual of breaking ceramics in funerary or mortuary contexts is first attested in the Old Kingdom.291 According to Pinch, the rite of breaking pots during funerals ‘may sometimes have been [performed] to drive away the dead themselves, rather than to destroy evil forces’.292 The idea that ceramics could repel the dead was found in nineteenth century African-American burial customs, where broken pots were placed on graves to prevent the dead from returning, the bowl being used as a means of containing the soul.293 Pot-breaking has a range of meanings in different cultures. In China, for example, a bowl is broken by the chief mourner to signal the end of formal mourning, but bowls may also be broken to signify that offerings can no longer be made to parents, or to allow or prevent the deceased from drinking in the afterlife,294 whereas for the Abaluyia of Kenya, smashing a pot before burial symbolises the loss caused by death.295 Nigel Barley remarks:296
The irreversibility of a broken vessel offers a way of speaking of the irreversibility of human time, the change from living to dead. The ritual smashing of pottery creates a clean break between the two. So around the world, death ceremonies often involve the smashing of pots, just as the ceremonies of marriage and life involve their creation.
The act of breaking or burying objects that were deemed to have been polluted by death or the corpse itself 297 298 299 is part of the process of separating the dead from the world of living and is common in many cultures. At Tell el-Daba, offering deposits in the vicinity of tombs consisted of everyday vessels that had been intentionally destroyed prior to deposition, suggesting perhaps that the pottery utilised during a cultic meal was in some way polluted and could no longer be used by the living, or that sustenance had been offered to the dead by means of breaking the vessels. Evidence of the practice of smashing pottery following funerary meals was found in 17th Dynasty tombs at Dra Abu el-Naga, where sherds had been gathered and placed into storage jars before final deposition near the burial chamber, or ritually ‘killed’ by knocking holes into or near the base.300 Evidence of breaking pots and ‘cult ceramics’ in the vicinity of tombs in the 18th Dynasty was discovered in enclosures K 91.5 and K 91.7 at the same site.301 The early 18th Dynasty tomb of Djehuty (TT 11) at Dra Abu el-Naga has a pit in the courtyard containing deliberately broken vessels and floral bouquets,302 and pottery jars used in funerary offerings at the South Tombs cemetery at Amarna also bear ‘killing holes’ on the shoulders and bases.303
Fear of malevolent spirits of the dead was expressed in several ways. Execration texts, which are attested from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period,304 usually identify the individual(s) to be cursed in inscriptions on figurines and ceramic vessels, which were then broken, burned,305 or buried, thus symbolically annihilating the enemy, who is often termed mwt or mwt. t ‘dead man/woman’. The relative rarity of execration material may be a result of the use of wax, wood, or other perishable substances which leave little or no archaeological trace306 or were completely destroyed during the rituals.307
Coffin Texts Spell 103 seems to show the deceased summoning his ba and akh in order to haunt a living enemy, whereas CT Spell 37 contains ideas relating to the destruction of living enemies, to be accomplished by the burial of wax figures in the ‘place of Osiris’, presumably the necropolis.308 Some wax figurines have survived, including a Late Period example moulded around a rolled papyrus curse,309 and other figures of the deceased, including shabtis, could
Figure 15: Breaking of the red pots. Tomb of Amenemheb (TT 44), Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. Ramesside. © Eva Hofmann/Agyptologisches Institut Heidelberg, 48098. Reproduced with the kind permission of Eva Hofmann.
Also become the focus of execration rituals.310 The concern over the wrath of the deceased may sometimes explain the widespread deliberate damage sustained by figures of individuals on tomb walls,311 mummified remains,312 and statues.
World History
