The Jewish prayer shawl, the tallit, is as mysterious as it is iconic. Worn by Jews each morning when they pray to God, it connects them to the divine realm, their history, and their culture. However, its origins are generally unknown. This article will argue that the seeds of the Jewish prayer shawl lie in a royal robe worn by Pharaohs since the beginning of Egyptian civilization, over five millennia ago.
A rabbi reading in the forecourt of the Synagogue. By Isidor Kaufmann (1853-1921). His tallit appears nearly identical to Akhenaten’s jubilee robe. (Auktionshaus Bergmann/Public Domain)
Royal Renewal and Rejuvenation
The Heb-Sed, or Jubilee Festival, was one of Pharaoh’s most important events, held to celebrate thirty successful years on the throne. Eric Uphill and other scholars have, over the years, elucidated the details of this complex festival, and determined that it re-enacted the king’s original coronation. It consisted of weeks of festivities, banqueting, and most importantly, meeting all the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt, who came to pay homage to the king in their shrines, and vice versa.
Pharaoh renewed his divinely-bestowed “ownership” of Egypt by running four times around a large course that represented the country. He assumed his obligation to rule according to Ma’at (justice), and he re-established his role as chief priest and primary intercessor to the gods. He also acted out his ritual death, burial and resurrection. As Greg Reeder states: “through a ritual of magical rebirth, the king could not only renew his life and reign, but would thereby guarantee the fertility of his land and people. Thus, dimly perceived, were the origins of the royal festival of renewal known as the Heb Sed.”
Heb meant “Festival”, but what did “Sed” mean? Bill Petty, in his Hieroglyphic Dictionary, notes that sd (or zd) meant “tail” and “to clothe/to be clothed”. Using another, different glyph, it can also mean the Festival of Sd, or Heb Sed. There are thus two possibilities for this special royal festival. Originally, it was believed to have related to the tail that Pharaoh wore, that of perhaps a wolf or jackal. Alternatively, C.J. Bleeker suggested in 1969 that the word sd might actually relate to the verb “to clothe/to be clothed”. Otherwise, the festival may have been related to both concepts.
Depiction of the Heb Sed of Senusret III (1878-1839 BCE) showing the king in his baldachin, wearing his special Sed robe as both king of Upper and Lower Egypt. (Soutekh67/CC BY-SA 4.0).
It was nonetheless a key royal ritual dating back to pre-Dynastic times (~3100 BCE), and continued to be held until the Romans conquered Egypt. We see evidence of the earliest Pharaohs celebrating them, including the 1st Dynasty’s Den, the 3rd’s Djoser, the 4th’s Sneferu, the 11th’s Mentuhotep II, the 12th’s Senusret III, the 18th’s Hatshepsut and Amenhotep III, the 22nd’s Osorkon II, and more.
There was probably no Pharaoh more obsessed with it than Akhenaten, Amenhotep III’s son. He just couldn’t wait, and celebrated his first festival after not thirty years but three! He radically changed the festival’s proceedings, eliminating its dozens of gods, and worshipping only the Aten sun disk. Much of the evidence of this Jubilee comes from reconstructed scenes from East Karnak, where Akhenaten built his first temples before relocating to Amarna. Here, the king and Queen Nefertiti can be seen offering to the Aten sun disk in his revolutionary new art style. An inscription describes the scene: “… bringing in the officials and companions, the standard bearers and chief men of the army, to cause them to stand in the presence of the king at his first Jubilee…”
“The Long and the Short of it” – The Royal Jubilee Robe
One of the key features of the Jubilee was Pharaoh donning a special ceremonial robe, which looks suspiciously like a tallit. Reeder explains the significance of this Sed robe:
“Between the four runs, the king would retire to his robing chamber, to rest and change regalia. It was in this chamber that the celebrant would don the sheath-like knee-length robe worn for the re-enactment of his coronation, the concluding ceremony of the festival. Statues of the king in this Heb Sed garment would then be unveiled throughout the country, thereby announcing the successful rejuvenation of both ruler and realm.”
The famous “Gayer Anderson Jubilee Block”, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. It depicts a jubilee ceremony of Akhenaten, who wears his jubilee, or heb-sed robe. This block dates to the early part of his reign, 1354-1351 BC. (The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge).
Amarna-expert Barry Kemp describes a scene of Akhenaten wearing this prominent robe on the famous Gayer-Anderson stone block now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge:
“Now Akhenaten himself is part of the jubilee festival. He walks forwards, dressed in a knee-length robe that covers his shoulders and enfolds his arms, though his hands grip a flail that extends in front of him … The jubilee festival was a major celebration of kingship, sometimes delayed until a king had completed thirty years of rule. Akhenaten exploited its possibilities by both holding it early in his reign, and extending its scope to the Aten itself.”
Janusz Karkowski describes:
“The typical costume specific to the Heb-Sed until the time of Amenhotep III is a short robe reaching the middle of the thighs and covering the torso and arms with the exception of the hands. In relief, the robe frequently forms a sort of raised collar at the back of the neck.”
This can be seen clearly on the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut in her temple at Deir el-Bahari. Interestingly, these are two specific features of the Jewish tallit: it covers the arms up to the hands, and it forms a raised area, called the atarah (or “crown”) at the back of the neck.
He continues:
“The front of the robe is vertical and results from a sort of formal compromise. In sculpture in the round, the robe resembles a short coat that tightly covers the torso.” This is also exactly like the tallit, whose front is vertical and resembles a short coat that covers the torso. These features can be seen on the many examples of Sed robes down through the ages, from Egypt’s earliest days to its final dynasties. Interestingly, just as there were both short and long versions of this robe, there are today short and long tallit, called katan and gadol respectively.
Amazingly, several depictions of the Jubilee robe in coloured paint show it to have been white, with an added blue collar with gold trim. One example, now in Berlin’s Neues Museum, shows Akhenaten wearing the white robe with blue/gold collar, while another fragment shows Thutmose III wearing an identical robe from his Henket-Ankh Temple at Thebes.
As Linda Chapon explains: “The Heb Sed robe embodies royal power regeneration, particularly in the course of the Heb Sed ceremony, which aims to sanction the eternal renewal of the king’s authority and cult on earth and underworld. All evidence seems to indicate that the moment when the king was outfitted with the Heb Sed robe symbolises the key episode of the ritual.”
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Top image: Montage showing Tutankhamun in the center, his royal nemes funerary mask grading into a similar Jewish tallit towards the bottom, with Akhenaten on the left and a Rabbi on the right, all infused with a divine light.
Source: Author’s creation.
Jonathon Perrin is the author of Moses Restored: The Oldest Religious Secret Never Told Second Edition The Pharaoh Behind the Festivals: The Secret Egyptian Origins of the Jewish Holidays, and Mysteries of the Past: A Lost World of Ancient Puzzles, Modern Research, and Future Warnings available in print or as e-books from Amazon. His next book, Moses in Mexico, will be published later this year. Visit www.jonathonperrin.com to learn more.
