He also is shown performing the Heb Sed in a false doorway inside his pyramid. In the Pyramid of Djoser, there are two boundary stones in his Heb Sed court, which is within his pyramid complex. There is clear evidence for early pharaohs celebrating the Heb Sed, such as the First Dynasty pharaoh Den and the Third Dynasty pharaoh Djoser. at Bubastis.' Festivals throughout history ĭetail from an ebony label of the First Dynasty pharaoh Den, depicting him running around the ritual boundary markers as part of the Sed festival. in his sun temple at Abu Ghurab, of Akhenaten at East Karnak, and the relief cycles of the Twenty-second Dynasty king Osorkon II. ĭespite the antiquity of the Sed festival and the hundreds of references to it throughout the history of ancient Egypt, 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. Pharaohs who followed the typical tradition, but did not reign so long as 30 years had to be content with promises of 'millions of jubilees' in the afterlife. The festival also involved symbolic reaffirmation of the pharaoh's rulership over Upper and Lower Egypt. Sed festivals implied elaborate temple rituals and included processions, offerings, and such acts of religious devotion as the ceremonial raising of a djed, the base or sacrum of a bovine spine, a phallic symbol representing the strength, 'potency and duration of the pharaoh's rule'. The festival, primarily, served to reassert pharaonic authority and state ideology. Eventually, Sed festivals were jubilees celebrated after a ruler had held the throne for thirty years and then every three to four years after that. The ancient festival might, perhaps, have been instituted to replace a ritual of murdering a pharaoh who was unable to continue to rule effectively because of age or condition. This tail might have been the vestige of a previous ceremonial robe made out of a complete animal skin. The less-formal feast name, the Feast of the Tail, is derived from the name of the animal's tail that typically was attached to the back of the pharaoh's garment in the early periods of Egyptian history. The name is taken from the name of an Egyptian wolf god, one of whose names was Wepwawet or Sed. The Sed festival ( ḥb-sd, conventional pronunciation / s ɛ d/ also known as Heb Sed or Feast of the Tail) was an ancient Egyptian ceremony that celebrated the continued rule of a pharaoh. Alabaster sculpture of an Old Kingdom pharaoh, Pepi I Meryre, dressed to celebrate his Heb Sed, c.

The art of sed