Loyal to the kingship, not to a specific king: The royal ceremonies at the Saite court as a point of reference for the elite-building patronage
Abstract
When the Persian king Cambyses II conquered Egypt in the spring of 526 BC, the Saite royal court de facto ceased to exist. However, some elements seem to survive.
A hieroglyphic text on the Vatican statue of Udjahorresnet (Museo Gregoriano Egizio inv. 22690), the high military and administrative state official of Amasis and Psammetichus III in service of Cambyses II and Darius I, reports that, when the situation in Egypt got more stable, Cambyses II appointed the statue's owner as the chief physician (wr swnw) and gave him two specific honorific titles: 'sole friend' (smr watj) and 'director of palace' (xrp aH). So far, nobody ever tried to explain why did the Persian king (or more likely Udjahorresnet himself) chose precisely these titles among the many others.
Indeed, they are attested together only in titularies of the highest state officials and the major members of the royal court since the very beginning of the Saite period (25 individuals, including Udjahorresnet). Furthermore, they appear on the fragments of the gateway reliefs from the so-called Palace of Apries at Memphis representing a king in various royal rituals, namely the sedfestival and the festival of shining hippopotamus.
This paper aims to investigate the broader significance of these titles in the context of restricted access of non-royal individuals to the royal rituals and the forms of creation of the ruling elite in the Saite era. By granting such titles, the ruler accepts grantees into his inner circle and underline the close relationship between him and his officials as members of his entourage under the royal patronage.
In the case of Udjahorresnet, these titles were given specifically to him in order to get him the access to the royal ceremonies, which he as a solely military and administrative official previously did not have, thus making him suitable to create a royal titulary for a new king of Egypt