Set Glyphs Within Cartouches, Etc.

Here is a very nice example of Seti II's cartouche, this taken by Mogg Morgan at Karnak's Open Air Museum


Seti I cartouche


Seti II cartouche

Several pharoahs had Set as part of their name, Seti I (also spelled Sety I, Sethos I), Seti II (also spelled Sety II, Sethos II), and Setnakt (also spelled Setnakht, Setnakhte). Seti means "of Set", which indicates that he was consecrated to the god Set, his patron deity, otherwise rendered "Man-of-Set". Setnakt means "Set is strong". Therefore, one of their cartouches is usually a good opportunity for a small Set find. Usually!

In _The Monuments of Seti I and their Historical Significance: Epigraphic, Art Historical and Historical Analysis_, a doctoral thesis by Peter James Brand, he says:

"It was Seti who founded the great residence of the Ramesside kings and developed the ancient cult center of the dynastic god Seth at Avaris." Not only that, Seti I gave honor to Set in many of his monuments.

I thought one way to tell the difference between a cartouche of Seti I and one of Seti II was the presence of the glyphs for Amun. But it's not that simple. Here is one of Seti I, aka Men-Ma'at-Re, which shows Amun:


Seti I's cartouche at Karnak
Photo credit Kathyrn Micheals


This one is at the Karnak Open Air Museum, on a dismantled sandstone block of Seti I
Hans Kontkanen took the photo above, "at bright daylight at noon time"
I would have thought perhaps it is of Seti II, but the KMT magazine, VOLUME 15, NO. 4, Winter 2004-05, which features a smaller crop of this cartouche, says it is Seti I's. His cartouches vary quite a bit, but the 'Men-Ma'at-Ra' is usually consistent.


Traced from a photo I took at the Met Museum
Two faience tiles inlaid with Seti II's throne names, late Dynasty 19, c.1237-1200 B.C.
Metropolitan Museum, a little over five inches tall

Yes, one of the would be Set sightings in the tiles above was scratched out in antiquity. Sadly, when a god fell into disfavor, the ancients got too busy with their destructive tools. Amun was also badly hit, and I've even seen evidence of a mutilated Ma'at.

Happily, though, the British Museum has one of Seti II's tiles, and it has an undamaged Set glyph!

It's been on display at the Cleveland Art museum, during its Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt, where a colleague got a photo of it:


EA67970, photographed by Sarytsenuwi
EA12857 also has an undamaged Set glyph, although the tile is broken


Steatite scarab inscribed with the names of Seti II, late Dynasty 19, c.1237-1200 B.C.
Metropolitan Museum, under 2 inches?
(Or it is Seti I's as the info card indicates? But the cartouche has 'Merenptah', not 'Meriptah'.)

Yet there are sometimes puzzling things done with Seti I's cartouche. The Met museum has a statue of him:


Black granite statue of Seti I, Dynasty 19, reign of Seti I (ca. 1294-1279 B.C)
Rogers Fund, 1922, MMA 22.2.21

As the info card explains, Seti I is dedicating offerings to Osirus and other gods of the Thinite nome. A look at his cartouche reveals it doesn't quite look like the ones above:

What is going on here?

There's an explanation in a footnote in TeVelde's book (page 132):

"The name of Sethos was not written with the hieroglyph of the Seth-animal, but with the sign of Osiris, sometimes together with the symbol of Isis. This is an example of enigmatic writing: the Osiris hieroglyph has the value Š and the Isis symbol the value T. Together with the flowering reeds this gives Š(w)t(y) (A. Piankoff, Le nom du roi Sethos en égyptien, BIFAO 47 (1948), p. 175-177). This does not invalidate the opinion of Kristensen: 'We can only see it as a deliberate equation of Seth with Osiris, a demonstration or a profession of their essential identity.' (W.B. Kristensen, Symbool en Werhelijkheid, p. 294)."

In such way Š(w)t(y) is pronounced the same as Seti's name, As TeVelde explains, "the Upper-Egyptian pronunciation may have been Sut, evolved to Set," (or more properly, since I can't find special html characters for these words, see TeVelde, pages 2-3:


Traced from a photo by Heidi Kontkanen

Here is the symbol of Isis, which you can see in both of these two cartouches:


Isis Knot, aka 'Tyet' or 'Tet'

Fortunately, most of his cartouches feature the usual rendering:


(Full titulary underneath, from Budge)

The one cartouche has some variance, but 'Menmaatre' is clearly the standard version, and Set is clearly identified.

The Brooklyn Museum has an interesting model of a temple gateway, featuring Seti I's cartouche:


This photo shows only the front side, but I share extensive imagery and info in a page all about the model,
including some of the photos by the webmistress of "Setsightings.com"


Capture of Seti I on the side, showing his cartouche with the Set hieroglyph...


Zeroing in on his cartouche... (this is from the other side)

As I looked at photos from Karnak at Photobucket, I saw many of the amateur photographers had snapped various cartouches, and I saved them to disk to study later with the Budge book. Many of them on the underside of lintels, thus more protected from the sun, still have remnants of color on them. Then I spied one I recognized, "One of the Seti's":


Original photo by Sharon Hardacre

Although it doesn't exactly resemble Budge's examples, I think it's Seti I's cartouche. There's another lintel in Karnak very similar to this one which features his Menmaatre cartouche. I suspect they are near each other.

Here's another cartouche that seems more likely to be Seti II's at first glance, though Wikipedia labels it as being Seti I's


Photo credit "Ochmann-HH" for Wikipedia

However Another photo of this piece reveals the 'Menmaatre' of Seti I:


'Neithsabes' took this photo at Memphis Open Air Museum

Here's another cartouche at the Memphis Open Air Museum:


Cartouche of Setnakht (Set is mighty), first ruler of 20th Dynasty, on pillar base at Memphis Open Air Museum
Photo credit Kathyrn Micheals


Cartouche via Budge