Sed festival

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The sed festival (or heb sed) was an ancient Egyptian ceremony which was held to celebrate the continued rule of a pharaoh.

Sed festivals were jubilees celebrated after a ruler had held the throne for thirty years and then every three (or four in one case) years after that. They were primarily held to rejuvenate the king's strength and stamina while he was still sitting on the throne. However, a few pharaohs violated the traditional 30 year rule particularly in the case of Hatshepsut who celebrated her jubilee in her 16th regnal year at Thebes and Akhenaten. However, some Egyptologists, such as Von Beckerath, in his book Chronology of the Egyptian Pharaohs, speculate that Hatshepsut may have done so to mark the passing of 30 years from the death of her father, Thutmose I, from whom she gained all of her legitimacy to rule Egypt. Other pharaohs who honoured this rule and did not reign as long as 30 years had to be content with promises of "millions of jubilees" in the afterlife.^[1]

There is clear evidence for earlier kings celebrating the Heb Sed, such as Den and Djoser. Within his pyramid complex, there are two boundary stones in his Heb Sed court, in the Pyramid of Djoser. He is also shown performing the Heb Sed in a false doorway inside his pyramid.

Sed Festivals contained elaborate temple rituals and included processions, offerings and other acts of religious devotion. One of the earliest Sed festivals for which we have evidence is that of Pepi I in the South Saqqara Stone Annal document and the most lavish, judging by surviving inscriptions, were those of Ramesses II and Amenhotep III. Sed Festivals were also celebrated by the later Libyan era kings such as Shoshenq III, Shoshenq V, Osorkon I who had his second Heb Sed in his year 33 and Osorkon II. Osorkon II himself constructed a massive temple at Bubastis complete with a red granite gateway decorated with scenes of this jubilee to commemorate his own Heb Sed. Despite the antiquity of the Sed Festival and the hundreds of references to it in all periods of Egyptian history, the most detailed records of the ceremonies--apart from the reign of Amenhotep III--come mostly from "relief cycles of the Fifth Dynasty king Neuserra...in his sun temple at Abu Ghurab, of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) at East Karnak, and of the Twenty-second Dynasty king Osorkon II...at Bubastis."^[2]

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