No less than nine terms appear in the Egyptian language that find association with the idea of the arm. Included in this list are words such as (‘), (rmn), (q‘ḥ), (gwb3), (ḫpš), (ḫpš), (ḫpš), (ḫpš) and (ḫpš). The numerous configurations betray the concept’s importance to the Egyptians.
The Literal Use of the Arm
One of the twenty-five Egyptian uniliteral signs is an outstretched arm, demonstrating the preeminence of the image from predynastic times. As a matter of fact, the body part could be rendered by at least four combinations of signs ( , , , and ). Because the Egyptians associated the human arm with vigor, each abstract concept that emanated from the image reflected in some way the idea of authority or dominion.
The Arm as Deity
The Egyptians often related arm imagery to their gods. Not
surprisingly they even conceived of a deity known as “He-who-is-great-of-arm.”[1] E. A. E. Reymond understood the reference, (depicted as a foreleg, F23), as a symbol of the Egyptian creator. The idea,therefore, likely provides a “concrete shape [for] the elementary creative power”[2] that formed the universe according to the religion of Egypt.
Numerous examples of such use of this motif may be cited from the time of the Exodus. An Eighteenth Dynasty[3] hymn to Osiris acknowledges the might of the god of the underworld: “[Praise be] unto thee, O thou who extendest thine arms.”[4] A hymn to Thoth composed by Haremhab, an Egyptian general who usurped the throne at the close of the Eighteenth Dynasty, “describes the moon god as guiding the divine [boat] through the sky with ‘arms outstretched.’”[5] Amon, the state god of the New Kingdom, in a hymn ascribed to Amenophis III, encouraged the ruler by identifying himself with his human counterpart: “Utterance of Amon, king of gods: My son, of my body, my beloved, Nibmare, my living image, whom my limbs created.”[6]
The Arm as a Cultic Symbol
Early in Egyptian history the arm also became connected with cultic practices because the term could be interchanged with the word foreleg. As part of the “Opening of the Mouth” ceremony performed on a mummy in order to revitalize its senses, priests
touched the foreleg of a bull to “the jawbones of the deceased” so that “their formerpower returned to them.”[7] Symbolically the foreleg–a variation of the arm motif–was the basis of an animal’s power. Egyptians believed the foreleg could reinvigorate the one who partook of it.[8]
The bull, early in Egyptian history, became one of the chief symbols of the Pharaoh. The purpose for this connection lay in the way in which Egypt perceived the creature: “The bull was the great emblem of power, the strongest animal known in Egypt, and the most potent. It was an emblem of the king in the earliest carvings.”[9] One of theprimary purposes for the Pharaoh’s association with the bull stemmed from its mighty forelegs, which trampled its enemies with uncompromising fury.
The arm/foreleg also was evocative of stellar bodies, as the sign expresses. This relationship is due primarily to the shape of the animal’s foreleg according to Ann Macy Roth:
In the sixth dynasty . . . a second new sequence [of magical
precepts was] added to the beginning of the Pyramid Text
ritual (spells 11-15). These new spells described the
Opening of the Mouth using the foreleg of a bull and an
iron wood-working adze, both of which can be related to the
constellation Ursus Major.[10]
The Egyptians, therefore, transferred the concept of the foreleg to the heavens, which mystically mirrored the appendage.
The Arm as a Symbol of Pharaoh’s Might
Due to the association of the arm with deity, it is not surprising that predynasticEgyptians already had begun to relate the idea to the office of Pharaoh. Since the ruler of Egypt prided himself as the incarnation of Horus in the early dynastic period,[11] logic dictated that godlike traits should be attributed to him. Accordingly, the arm served as “one of the first recognizable icons of kingship,”[12] the most familiar of the concepts of “Egyptian royal typology”[13] that stretches from the predynastic period to the twentieth dynasty,[14] a period of over two thousand years.
The Arm as a Military Weapon
A new development related to the concept of the arm originated in the NewKingdom Period. During the Twelfth Dynasty the khopesh, a “curved sword, like the ‘harpeh’ of the Asiatics, made its appearance.”[15] Shaped like the foreleg of an bull, the weapon many times possessed a handle fashioned “to represent the hock and hoof of an animal.”[16] The blade received its name from the Egyptian term “foreleg,” ḫpš, the only difference between rendering the two being the determinative employed. Due to the effectiveness of the khopesh, its menacing appearance, and its association with the arm, it came to represent strength.[17]
When the Egyptians attached the determinative A24[18] to the word the resulting term signified “strong arm.” Y1, a determinative related to abstract concepts,[19] when attached to ḫpš resulted in “to be effective.” Due to the shape of the Great Bear[20] (Ursus Major), the Egyptians named the constellation ḫpš, this time implementing A40, the determinative for “god” or “king.” The combination produced the symbol.
Summary
Now that a systematic and thorough examination of the usage of arm in Egyptian has been accomplished, four things are abundantly clear. First, arm imagery is one of the oldest and most enduring images in ancient Egyptian culture. The power of the arm as it
applied to the gods and Pharaoh, second, was understood as irresistible andoverwhelming. The arm, third, served as an idiomatic way in which to represent military strength. Finally, Hoffmeier’s groundbreaking research of the terminology and his proposition that arm imagery reached its height during the eighteenth dynasty is significant since the events of the Exodus occurred during the same time period.
[1] E. A. E. Reymond, The Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple (New York:Manchester University,
1969), 140.
[2] Ibid., 172.
[3] John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 201.
[4] E. A. Wallis Budge, An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Literature (Mineola, NY: Dover Books, 1997), 221.
[5] Walton, Matthews, Chavalas, The IVP Background Commentary, 201.
[6] James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, Collected, Edited and Translated with Commentary, vol. 2 (London: Histories & Mysteries of Man, 1988), 361.
[7] E. A. Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology, 2d rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1925), 326.
[8] Ibid. Priests presented the foreleg raw to the deceased “so that as much as possible of the body and strength of the victims might be transmitted to them.”
[9] Flinders Petrie, Religious Life in Ancient Egypt (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1972), 82.
[10] Donald B. Redford, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University, 2001), s.v. “Opening of the Mouth,” by Ann Macy Roth.
[11] Alfred J. Hoerth, Gerald L. Mattingly, and Edwin M. Yamauchi, eds., Peoples of the Old Testament Wold, with a foreward by Alan Millard (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 252.
[12] Ian Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000), 316. “The earliest known instance [is] a sketchy depiction painted on the wall of the late predynastic Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis in the late fourth millennium B.C.”
[13] Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11, vol. 5 in The Anchor Bible Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 212.
[14] For an excellent treatment of this concept that demonstrates that the symbol reached its height of popularity during the eighteenth dynasty, see James K. Hoffmeier, “The Arm of God Versus the Arm of Pharaoh in the Exodus Narratives,” Biblica 67, no. 3 (1986): 378-87.
[15] Georges Posener, A Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization (London: Methuen & Co., 1962), 299.
[16] William C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 2, The Hyksos Period and the New Kingdom (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1959), 219.
[17] Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, 3d ed. (Oxford:
Griffith Institute, 1988), 584.
[18] James P. Allen, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2000), 424. Allen rightly observed that A24 served as an ideogram for the idea of “victory.” Since the strength of the arm/foreleg denoted “power” in the Egyptian language, it would have been logical to associate A24 with the concept because Pharaohs always credited their victorious campaigns to the vigor of their arms as well as the might of their deities. This understanding of the symbol is validated by the fact that the figure in the ideogram is prepared to strike with the weapon which he wields.
[19] Ibid., 447.
[20] Raymond O. Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1991), 189.
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