Mammisi

A mammisi is a small vault built close to a major temple, it was used for the representations of the mysteries of the divine birth. The mammisi term was invented by Jean-François Champollion at the 19th century.

The most famous examples that one can still visit today date for the ptolémaïque majority of the times and Roman.

Description

In its developed and known form, the oldest mammisi goes back to Nectanébo of which built of it a first with Dendérah. The example then will be followed and repeated in each large sanctuary of the country rebuilt by the sovereigns gréco-Romans. In addition to Dendérah, one can thus quote the mammisi of Edfou and Philae, but one also finds some with Kôm Ombo, El Kab, etc Because of their relatively recent construction these monuments are rather well preserved deserving to be more described and studied.

They in general formed peripteral buildings which were placed either perpendicular to the axis of the large temple to which they were attached, as with Dendérah or Edfou, or coupled with the temple, as Philae.

The gantries which surrounded the Naos consisted of columns with composite capitals connected to each other by walls sideboards or walls of entrecolonnement thus forming illustrated panels where the reigning sovereign sacrificed and made offering with the gods.

Several rooms followed one another and were devoted at the various stages of the divine birth. One in general found there representations of the goddesses intended to accompany the celestial childbirth or guarantors by the fertility. Thouéris, Râttaouy, the Seven Hathor which governed the birth there were particularly venerated but one also found there Bès and Khnoum like Osiris as gods of the fertility and prosperity.

The mammisi thus formed an architectural translation of the myth of the divine birth and its eternal repetition. From the end of the Low time these buildings come to confirm the re-establishment of the royal capacity that each dynasty will get busy to affirm in the middle same large sanctuaries of the country including the Roman Emperors.

Origins

The origin and the function of this type of sanctuary would be to seek in the temples jubilaires and divine Nouvel Empire which for some comprise rooms devoted to the divine birth of the king.

Thus the temple of Hatchepsout to Deir el-Bahari presents the scenes of a theogamy or Amon visit the queen mother (mother says “must” as an old Egyptian) and, fertilizing it, designs the legitimate heir to the throne of Horus. These scenes will be also reproduced in the middle same of the Temple of Louxor by Aménophis {{III}}.

The Ramesséum had a coupled temple devoted to the mother of the king. There remains only the plan on the ground about it today but of the elements were found employed again with Médinet Habou and seem to suggest that this small temple was also devoted to the divine birth of Ramsès {{II}}.

In Karnak even, near the temple of Must, a small temple restored and increased by Aménophis {{III}} was devoted to the god Khonsou in his shape of child of the triad thebaine.

Little by little with the end of the New Empire, the royalty was parcelled out and calling into question the dynastic base and its pertaining to worship translation, the country will be divided between a temporal power in north with Tanis and a remained spiritual power with Thèbes.

This transformation would lead to the Low time with the creation of the mammisi.

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