Execration texts
[2] The texts were most often written upon statuettes of bound foreigners, bowls, or blocks of clay or stone, which were subsequently destroyed.
They are statuettes made from unbaked clay and fashioned into the shape of bound foreigners with name labels inscribed on their chests, sometimes in red ink.
For example, a group of both large and small figurines dating to the end of the 12th dynasty was excavated at the necropolis of Saqqara.
[7] There have been over 1,000 execration deposits found, with sites at Semna, Uronarti, Mirgissa, Elephantine, Thebes, Balat, Abydos, Helwan, Saqqara, and Giza.
One recorded rite gave instructions to "spit on him four times ... trample on him with the left foot ... smite him with a spear ... slaughter him with a knife ... place him on the fire ... spit on him in the fire many times"[8][13] The presence of foreign names of cities and tribes has long been a source for researchers to learn more about the dates and influence of these sites.
The execration texts are an important resource for researchers in the field of ancient Near Eastern history of the 20th–18th centuries BCE[18] and Bible studies.
[19][12] The first collection are inscribed on pottery sherds, and contain the names of approximately 20 places in Canaan and Phoenicia, and over 30 rulers of the period.
The execration texts are mostly inscribed on (un)baked clay materials and written in black carbon or red iron containing pigments.
[22] The interpretation of historians as to the meaning of execration texts has been well established thanks to documents that detail the ritual creation of the texts and the manner in which they were to be destroyed[23] in order to invoke a form of magic to protect Egypt and the pharaoh, in earlier cases, but especially in the Ptolemaic period they began to be utilized by more and more Egyptians for their own personal use.
[25] Execration texts deal with kings and cities who the Egyptians felt threatened by; some of whom lived in the Canaanite and Syrian lands.
Execration texts including the Berlin, Brussels, and Migrissa groups contain curses targeting over 100 Syro-Palestinian kings and villages.
[27] Biblical connections to execration texts: Egyptian sources are important when wanting to understand the history of Canaan.
[29] Dr. A. Bentzen in the 1950s advanced his thesis that the first and second chapters of the book of Amos in the Old Testament "is modelled on cultic patterns, resembling the ritual behind the Egyptian Execration Texts."
