Papyrus Turin 55001 Revisited

Papyrus Museo Egizio Turin 55001 (Cat. 2031) is a composition that consists only of illustrations. The papyrus may be dated to the Nineteenth Dynasty (reign of Ramesses II) on the basis of its layout, artistic style, and representations. It likely originated from the milieu of the Hathor Temple at Deir el-Medina, and was later kept in an archive there. It is often misleadingly designated as the Turin Satirical-Erotic Papyrus and interpreted as a sort of comic pornography for private enjoyment. However, as shown by the evidence drawn together here, the images on this papyrus form a visual narrative connected to the cosmo-geographic theme of the arrival of the annual inundation in Egypt with the Distant Goddess and the celebrations of fertility and renewal that accompanied this life-affirming event. It was probably used during the midsummer festivities when Hathor, the Eye of Ra, came in from the desert to the valley flood plain of the Nile on the west bank at Thebes, including drunken revelries leading to sexual encounters and expectations of visions of the goddess, and again about the time of the winter solstice and the beginning of the agricultural planting season when the goddess might be encountered in the papyrus marshes at the edge of the floodplain. The initial scenes evoke a festival procession and the animal stories told to entertain and encourage the goddess during her journey back to Egypt from Nubia, followed by erotic episodes featuring devotees of Hathor stimulating the sexual arousal of dissheveled men participating in nocturnal drinking parties. Later secondary hieratic annotations reveal the engagement of Deir el-Medina scribes with the scenes on the papyrus up to a century after its original composition.