Talk:Renpetneferet

Should the article be Renpetneferet or Ranpatnafrat?

It seems like this article depends on a reconstruction of Egyptian phonology which may or may not be accurate. Probably *nafrat is the best reconstruction of nfrt, but sometimes it is done as *nofret. Thoughts? 2600:1702:6D0:DE90:D5FC:6CC2:2CE7:7EB7 (talk) 17:03, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

The more typical transcription these days would be Renpetneferet. Most of the sources cited in this article don't actually refer to this figure. The one source I can access that does so, Hurry, is nearly a century old and gives it as "Ronpe-nofret", while this source, which refers to an unrelated woman from the Fifth Dynasty by the same name, spells it "Renpetneferet". See the section below. A. Parrot (talk) 23:52, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I've moved the page to "Renpetneferet" after reviewing Wikipedia:Article titles JackKausch (talk) 14:51, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Questionable sourcing and notability

I've checked the citations for this article, and those that I can access do not lead me to believe this figure is a viable topic for an article. Most of the sources do not actually mention Renpetneferet/Ranpatnafrat, and their use here seems to be original research. For instance, the sentence "This would make Ranpatnafrat an aspect of the Goddess of the Glyph, having a relationship to Seshat analogous to the relationship Asclepius has to Thoth-Hermes" is cited to a page in an article on classical architecture in Roman Egypt that merely mentions the equation of Thoth with Hermes; it says nothing about Imhotep/Asclepius, Seshat, or Renpetneferet. The Hurry source does demonstrate that Imhotep was reputed to have had a wife by this name (using the old-fashioned transcription of "Ronpe-nofret"), but all I can get out of it is a Google Books snippet view, so I don't know how much it says about her. The works by Ryholt apparently do discuss the Tebtunis papyrus that mentions Renpetneferet, but I can't access them, and the most I can find is this page.

From this evidence, it looks to me like Renpetneferet is a minor figure of folklore from Roman Egypt (and perhaps earlier, if she is mentioned in more places than this one papyrus). This folklore doesn't necessarily reflect anything about Imhotep's family relationships—much like Khufu and his family in the Westcar Papyrus, or like Djoser in the Famine Stela, Imhotep and Djoser in the Tebtunis Papyrus sound like they're merely famous names to whom stories have become attached. I don't see any indication that Renpetneferet was considered a goddess simply because she was the supposed wife or sister of a deified human. Therefore, I think this page should probably just redirect to Imhotep#Post-Alexander period. If there's more to say about this figure, sources need to be provided to prove it.

I'll leave a note for User:Jack Kausch, the creator of this article. A. Parrot (talk) 23:52, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I'm afraid I don't know how much of what I wrote falls under original research. I do not think there is any doubt that this name only exists in Late Period literature. Originally, when researching the relation of Khereduankh and Renpetneferet to Imhotep I reached out to Ryholt about whether the Tebtunis papyrus in question would ever be published, but he just pointed me back to a French version of the same paper cited in the article. He said it will be a long time before the papyrus is translated. I called her a minor Goddess because I understood from my research that Khereduankh had been worshipped as a goddess and the three of them made a pesedjet. There are some monographs which call Renpetneferet the wife and some which call her the sister. It is clear that this is a late period invention, and I think I did make that explicit in the article. Nowhere did I impute any antiquity to her beyond the Roman period, but given the way the triune was venerated I think it is fair to call her a very minor late-period goddess.

Another issue is that I think the name becomes more common in the Late Period. There is the Biography of Petosiris which discusses the Ogdoad, and the Hermopolitan priest's mother happened to be named (or called) Nefer-renpet. I apologize if I made any extrapolations or misattributions relating the symbolism of the name "Renpetneferet" to "Renpet" and the Ogdoad. Perhaps a new article for Imhotep's family relations in the Late Period can be created? In the Hurry source he discusses how the cult of Asclepius was influenced by Imhotep, and this is one of the best sources I have found for that. I can remove anything in the section about Hermopolis and the relation to Renpet which may be extrapolations from this, and I may have mis-cited the source about Trismegistus. I'll remove those lines now. JackKausch (talk) 15:40, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@JackKausch: Thank you for your reply. I'm confused by your remark that "given the way the triune was venerated I think it is fair to call her a very minor late-period goddess". What source demonstrates that Renpetneferet or Khereduankh were venerated? What ancient texts mention them at all aside from the one papyrus from Tebtunis? These are the kinds of basic facts the article needs to make clear before the subject's notability can be demonstrated. If they are only found in a single unpublished papyrus, I don't see why there should be a separate article about them. A. Parrot (talk) 23:28, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Hm, well there is a scholarly consensus they were divinized. There is a a modest amount of academic literature (first paper in the book by A. von Lieven) which discusses the divinization of Khereduankh and Renpetneferet. To improve the quality of the article, I can cite some of it. A. von Lieven in turn cites Leitz, a lexicon of Egyptian Gods and their names and Wildung, 1977 (link is a book review) There also are a lot of statues of the family found from the late period, and inscriptions about the divinization of Khereduankh. So I do not think it is entirely based on Ryholt's work. It's a well attested and well documented process connected to the divinization of Amenhotep son of Hapu, the Apis Bull and the link to Ptah - although, as Von Lieven says in her article, the divinization of Renpetneferet was incredibly abnormal, even in the context we are talking about. It also is why I originally talked about the connection to Hermopolis - the same reanalysis that would ultimately lead to "Hermes Trismegistus" was also responsible for the divinization of this divine family, although I absolutely accept that may veer into synthesis and I will want to publish that myself first. I thought most of this was explicit, but I guess it is not. I will add these sources. I think this is an important enough event in Egyptian history to warrant its own article. In the case of Amenhotep son of Hapu, only his mother was deified, not his wife/sister. JackKausch (talk) 14:40, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@JackKausch: Thank you for clarifying. You've allayed my doubts, though I think it would be helpful if the article specified which texts treat Renpetneferet as a goddess. A. Parrot (talk) 00:47, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I have updated this article with a reproduction of a bas-relief from the chapel of Deir el-Bahari, taken from this source from 1901 which contains inscriptions which depict Imhotep, Khereduankh and Renpetneferet as deities. JackKausch (talk) 14:21, 2 December 2021 (UTC)