Archaeology Odyssey

David O’Connor, The Dendereh Chapel of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep: a New Perspective, in Anthony Leahy and John Tait eds., Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of H.S. Smith (London Egypt Exploration Society, 1999) pp. 215–220.

Labib Habachi, “King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep: His Monuments, Place in History, etc.”, in Mitteilungen der Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 19 (1963), pp. 19–28.

On the (half-) divine birth of kings, see David Silverman, “The Nature of Egyptian Kingship”, in David O’Connor and David Silverman eds., Ancient Egyptian Kingship, (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 69–71. The depictions of the divine birth cycle at Luxor and Deir el Bahari are discussed and depicted in Hellmut Brunner, Die Geburt des Gottkönigs (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1964).

A typical example of the scene in question is illustrated in Manniche, Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 58 (Fig. 51).

On myths and beliefs associated with Osiris, see Troy, Patterns of Queenship, pp. 32–34; Stephan Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion (London: British Museum Press, 1992), Ch. 2.

On this sense of decorum, a major factor in Egyptian art and other aspects of culture, see John Baines, “Society, Morality and Religious Practice” in Byron Shafer, ed., Religion in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 137–146.

For the sexual aspects of creation accounts, see Lana Troy, Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History (Uppsala, 1986), 12–23; for divine families, Dimitri Meeks and Christine Farvard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 36–37; on the sexuality of deities, Meeks and Farvard-Meeks Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, pp. 66–69.

For a forcefully worded discussion, see Marianne Eaton-Krauss and Erhart Graefe, The Small Golden Shrine from the Tomb of Tutankhamun (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1985), Chapter 3.

Derchain, “Symbols and Metaphors,” pp. 9–10.

Quotations and materials in this paragraph from Philippe Derchain, “Symbols and Metaphors in Literature and Representations of Private Life”, in Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter 15 (1976) pp. 6–10.