The Third Jubilee

Amenhotep III's Third (and last) Jubilee, held in Year 37, paled in comparison with the first two. Only 78 jar labels were found at Malkata, mostly for wine, one-fifth as many as Year 34's total. In addition to donors’ names and dates, the vintages and estate names of the vineyards were written on the jars, testimony to the sophistication of ancient viniculture. Documented in royal records from Dynasty 1, Egyptian wine was manufactured in much the same way as it has been throughout history. Scenes of men picking grapes from arbors and stomping grapes in vats, producing purple, red, and pink juices, abound in painted tomb scenes from Amenhotep III's reign. In addition to the carefully recorded varieties of red wines at Malkata, there is also evidence of “blended wines,” but not white.

Kheruef commemorated the Third Jubilee in his tomb with vignettes of one of the closing rites, the raising of the djed pillar. This monument resembled the backbone-shaped hieroglyph meaning “stability,” a representation of the spinal column of Osiris. The ceremony may reach back to the Isis-Osiris myth, when Osiris's corpse was set adrift in a simple wooden coffin by his fratricide, Seth. Washed ashore in Byblos (Lebanon), the coffin took root and grew as a tall tree, then was summarily chopped down and used as a pillar in a local king's palace. By trickery and magic, Osiris's cunning wife, Isis, rescued and repatriated the pillar to the Nile Valley. Perhaps based on a primeval Egyptian tree cult, this myth echoes through New Kingdom prayers in which Osiris is likened to a ship's keel or a depth-sounding pole made of Lebanese cedar.