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II.5. THE DUTIES OF THE wb3 nswt AND wdpw nswt
AND THEIR FUNCTION IN THE SERVICE OF THE RULER
Regarding the duties of these officials, Helck devoted a complete chapter to the topic
concerning the representative of the office during the 18" dynasty in his comprehensive
work on the administration of the Middle and New Kingdom,” while individuals who
bore these titles during the Ramesside period were primarily the subjects of studies by
Schulman.’” Although both Helck and Schulman’s assertions are appropriate in general,
the picture becomes more modulated with the increasing number of known officials as
well as with the detailed analysis of all the available sources on them. The scope of the
officials’ duties have changed or expanded in the course of time, while their influence
exceeded that of a simple butler or cupbearer, which the title suggests, nevertheless, they
presumably never lost this original aspect of the title completely.
Primarily, ‘royal wb3s’ and ‘royal wdpws’ belonged to the royal household and palace
administration as personal attendants of the ruler either in the royal palace or on his
journeys within the country or abroad." Being responsible for the personal service of
the king, ‘royal wb3s’ were in charge of ensuring and inspecting the provision of food
and drink as well as other deliveries of the palace, overseeing the state and the procedures
of the magazines of the royal palace, and also supervising the conditions on the royal
estates.” These duties were mainly the characteristics of the 18" dynasty and represented
in the depictions in the tombs of the officials. In addition, the textual sources and the
functional titles of these persons reveal that in addition to the management of the living
areas of the ruler in the palace, they also took part in the state administration at the
highest level as well as in matters of religious.
From the early 19" dynasty onwards, they no longer merely administered the personal
needs of the ruler in the royal palace but their extended range of duties led to their
widespread participation in various assignments far from the palace as the personal
representatives of the ruler and as increasingly influential figures of the royal court.””
»® Helck, 1958, 269-276.
9 Schulman, 1976, 1986, 1990.
709 Schmitz, 1986, 771-772; Quirke, 1990; Grandet, 2013, 874; Shirley, 2013. For the military participation
of the officials, see chapter 1.4.1. on p. 63.
791 Bryan, 2006, 95; Raven, 2017, 589.
2 Schulman, 1986, 198-189; Grandet, 2013, 874; Davies, 2014, 87, 249. Grandet notes that as their names
often refer to a foreign origin, they supposedly had both the knowledge of foreign languages, which
qualified them for certain missions, and the advantage of being, in theory, indifferent to considera¬
tions of local politics of the places to which they were sent on missions. As for this latter case, he