Scarabs — A Reader’s Guide

inisters, on the appointment of a high government official, was indeed usual, is proved by several inscriptions: at the time of the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenhetep III (1450 B.C.) places “the two lands” in the “hands” of the Vezîr Ptahmes, and “the signet rings of the Horus” (_i.e._, the Sovereign) upon his fingers.[30] In a scene in the tomb of Hûy at Thebes, which is here (Pl. II) published for the first time, the Chancellor of King Tutânkhamen, 1350 B.C., presents the gold signet ring of the office of Royal Son (_i.e._, Viceroy) of Ethiopia “to the Prince Hûy, in order that the office of the Royal Son of Ethiopia may be made to flourish.”

5. THE OFFICIALS CONCERNED IN ITS USE.

As the seal was put to such varied and important uses in Ancient Egypt, it is no wonder that many officials of the Government were concerned in its employment. There were [Egyptian **] _khetemtiu_,[31] “sealers” (singular [Egyptian **] _khetemu_, “a sealer”), attached to almost every department of the public service,[32] as well as to all the religious institutions of the country; and even wealthy noblemen[33] usually had one or more of these “sealers” in their household, whose duty it was to give out from the _khetemu_, “sealed rooms” or “store rooms,” the provisions and other private property required by the great man or by his household. So important was it that the process of sealing jars, boxes, and doors should be done properly, that [Egyptian **] _seḥez_,[34] “instructors,” in the art were employed.

A scene in a tomb at Sakkara[35] shows one of these officials carrying a pail of mud with a ladle in it, going to instruct his pupils. These “sealers” formed a regularly organized body, and served under a [Egyptian **] _mer_ or “superintendent.”[36]

The reader’s attention has already been drawn to the fact that the monarch was invested at his coronation with a Royal Signet, upon which his name and titles were engraved. In the earlier periods of Egyptian history this Royal Signet was, doubtless, either worn by the monarch himself or carried in some secure way about his person. We do not read in the inscriptions of the earliest dynasties of any “Keeper of the Royal Seal,” as we find so frequently alluded to in the hieroglyphic texts from the Middle Kingdom onwards, and it would consequently appear as if the king himself in those early times attended to the business connected with his Treasury Department.

Two important officials of the oldest period, however, were closely concerned with the use of the seal, and their titles were derived from its name. One of these was the “Sealer of the Honey [jars]”; the other was the “Divine Sealer,” “Sealer of the God.” The first title[37] [Egyptian **] “the Sealer of the Honey [jars],” was, perhaps, the oldest of the many hundreds of titles that we find at all periods of Egyptian history, and from the Third Dynasty onwards there was probably not a man of less than royal rank who would not have been proud to bear it. It originally meant, as we have said, “the Sealer of the Honey [jars]” honey being the greatest of all primitive luxuries, and its use reserved for the king’s table. This title must therefore be regarded as a relic of the most extreme antiquity, and it certainly goes back to the time before the use of wine in the Nile Valley. At the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (_circa_ 3000 B.C.), however, its meaning had probably become already obsolete, and from that period onwards it meant nothing more than a “Royal Sealer,”[38] or one entitled to use a seal with the monarch’s name engraven upon it. Doubtless there were several of these officers employed in the royal palaces to look after the security of the king’s private property, and it was the duty of some of them to accompany the sovereign on his various military expeditions.[39]