The Goddess and the Queen. The role of Goddess Amesemi in Queen Amanishakheto’s Treasure
Abstract
During the first semester 2017, a new study of the iconography on the jewels of queen Amanishakheto was conducted. Discovered during the 1830s, the treasure hoard of the kandake is currently mostly preserved in the Staatliche Sammlung Ägyptischer Kunst in Munich and the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin.
Several of the queen's jewels get published quite often, sometimes as a synecdoche for the whole treasure, or as a figurehead for Nubian or Egyptian jewelry. This presentation aims at showing the results obtained by examining again a well-documented ensemble in its entirety. The figure of goddess Amesemi, the falcon-bearing consort of lion god Apedemak, will be given particular attention.
Two milestone publications of the treasure, namely Heinrich Schäfer's *Ägyptische Goldschmiedearbeiten* (1910) and Karl-Heinz Priese's *Das Gold von Meroe* (1992) predate the rediscovery of Amesemi's name in 1999, on a stela bearing her and Amanishakheto's image. Now that the goddess can be better identified, she appears to be the fourth most often depicted divinity on the queen's jewels. She is second only to Amun, Mut and Aqedis-Khonsu and is more recurring than Hathor, Bes, Isis or Apedemak. The way the goddess is depicted also helps understand a possible connection between her and goddesses Mut and Isis.