On the 14th May 2024 , Diana Hayden, one of our members, gave a fascinating talk, online, to the Society’s Members. Our thanks to Diana for sharing with us a really interesting talk with dozens of wonderful images from the whole breadth of Ancient Egyptian culture.
She traced the importance of the baboon back to the predynastic animal cemetery at Nekhen where the care taken over the burial of baboons demonstrated their importance at this early stage of Egyptian history. Were they being kept as pets, or did the care taken over burial reflect a more religious role? Certainly their importance was appreciated by royalty – a statue of a baboon inscribed with name of Narmer dates back to the age of that great unifier of Egypt around 3100BC.
By the Old Kingdom the baboon’s religious significance is clear, for in the pyramid texts the Pharaoh is identified as the baboon Babi, Lord of the Night sky, a symbol of virility and violence. However, baboons also had a more prosaic role too – acting as “police dogs” according to the wonderful carvings in the mastaba tomb of Tepemankh.
Apart from some references in coffin texts, the baboons seem to have been less significant in the Middle Kingdom but in the New Kingdom they saw a resurgence in art and religion, appearing, for instance, as tribute from Punt on the walls of the temple of Hatshepsut, or standing protectively behind the pharaoh (Amenhotep III) as the god Thoth in a beautiful statue held in the Vienna Museum.
Still in the New Kingdom, we can find a baboon demon guarding the 1st gate of the afterlife and, probably representing Thoth again, on the scales of judgement; his role in judgement perhaps reflecting the belief that the baboon god reported all human behaviour to Ra every morning as he rose in the sky. This belief may have come from the baboon behaviour of beating their chests and holding their palms to the sun as it rises in the morning, and certainly we see many examples of baboons appearing in carvings in just this pose – palms held up facing the sun.
Baboon statues are abundant at the Ramesseum, and at Karnak they are described as dancing, “singing praises for him”. In the tombs of Tutankhamun and of Ay we see the portrayal of twelve baboons representing, it is thought, the twelve periods of the night, whilst in the valley of the kings there are some mummified baboons, something also found in the Late Period, for example at Saqqara, where over 150 examples have been found in a single catacomb. The condition of the animals in life it seems was not good and it is speculated that they may have been kept specifically for use in animal mummification.
The association of the baboon with Egyptian art and religion, then is long-standing and this is perhaps not surprising: they are quite human in their facial appearance, they are virile, social and intelligent. They are aggressive and dangerous and probably not native to Egypt – so they would have been something of a rarity, a novelty.
Diana left us with the idea that the baboon may have been the royal animal of their day, perhaps equivalent to our current royal unicorn and lion!