Ancient Egypt

During the late Old Kingdom to the end of the Middle Kingdom, there were two principal forms of representation in the elite tomb: wall scenes and funerary models. The two artistic media exhibit several similarities in design, with both depicting people and animals engaged in everyday life activities. This has caused scholars to label funerary models duplicates or substitutes of wall scenes, implying that they served the same purpose in the tomb. However, there are a number of notable differences that are yet to be acknowledged. My PhD research comprised a detailed comparative analysis of the two artistic media in order to more precisely understand the role of the funerary model in the tomb and its relationship to the wall scene. In today’s paper, I will outline the similarities and differences between funerary models and wall scenes in their representation of bread-making, offering-bearers, and cattle in procession. These three themes showcase some of the distinguishing characteristics of funerary models and will consequently demonstrate why the three-dimensional medium should not be understood as duplicates or substitutes of wall scenes, but rather a distinct type of representation that was specifically conceived for its role in provisioning the deceased for eternity.

Travel was a crucial element of ancient Egyptian culture. An extensive traffic system by land and by water already existed as early as the Old Kingdom, including various means of transport that did not fundamentally change right through to the New Kingdom. Traveling activity attested for various professions demonstrates that Egyptian society exercised a high degree of mobility. In the majority of cases, a journey was undertaken within the scope of the traveler’s work and on behalf of the pharaoh. Travel had a significant impact on the Egyptian world-view as well as on the development of the
identity of Egyptian society as an entity.

ABSTRACT: This video re-enactment draws upon preserved late Dynasty 20 papyri and other data regarding robberies of royal tombs in the West Bank of Thebes and the Valley of the Kings, including official accusations of corruption within all levels of society from the pharaoh’s tomb builders (at Deir el-Medina), to other towns persons, the police, officials, priests, and even the mayor of West Thebes.  This documentary response sheet contains a series of sequential questions drawn from the video, TLC: Ancient Egyptians, episode 2: Tomb Robbers (shown in-class; also available online via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqXqsXcTds [50 minutes]).  These sequential questions aim to maximize both student attention to various pertinent points made throughout the documentary and greater retention of the materials covered by the documentary.  In addition, the documentary has been vetted for overall content accuracy (albeit updated and/or corrected in-class), and selected to provide supplementary visual aids (e.g., images of regions, sites, finds, and other materials; re-enactments), and other data to aid in student comprehension of the course lectures and readings from the textbooks. REVISED: Adding time marker for each question, plus value for reflection question (March 2017).

Spells 154‒160 of the Coffin Texts have long been known to form a unified composition since most of them promise the knowledge of sacred localities. The main purpose of these spells is, however, not to draw up a mental map of places of ritual import but to describe a more tangible yet still grandiose journey, the wanderings of the moon across time and space. After the introduction (spell 154) which explains the origins of the month, the separate texts represent the successive stages of the monthly cycle: the period of invisibility (spell 155), waxing (spell 156), events around the full moon (spell 157), waning (spell 158), the arrival of the last crescent at the eastern horizon (spell 159), and again the conjunction of the sun and the moon when a solar eclipse can occur (spell 160). The references to the moon in the texts are sometimes straightforward, while to grasp the lunar content of other passages a greater understanding of ancient Egyptian astronomical concepts is required. The spells present a hitherto unsuspected coherent account of lunar phenomena and can appropriately be dubbed the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Moon.
Full text of the paper will be available on Academia.edu in three years’ time. Until then you need to get hold of the book, http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/current-research-in-egyptology-2016.html, or send a request to the author.

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

From prehistoric figurines and graffiti to modern digital photographs, human beings repeatedly produced images, transforming the world itself into a relentless fabric of images. This volume presents the proceedings of the international conference held at the UCL Institute of Archaeology in 2014 inside the framework of the European project 'EPOCHS', with the aim to explore the fertile imaginary world of Middle Bronze Age Egypt (2000-1500 BC).

Images do not exist in their ontological isolation, as atomic unity, but they form a complex agency network with other images and with the society that produced them, hence the title "Company of Images". Eighteen papers focus on this intricate web, tackling the topic from different perspectives: material culture, archaeological finds, anthropological and social relations, iconographic representations, and analysis of the written sources, including linguistic approaches. The final goal is to highlight theoretical and methodological issues in order to explore connections between the images and their society, people who created images and who were recursively affected by the images they created.

Cet ouvrage date de 1997 et aborde les quatre questions que l’on peut se poser au sujet de la grande pyramide, soit :
- existe-t-il une chambre non encore découverte dans cette pyramide ?
- comment l’angle des pentes a-t-il été calculé ?
- comment a-t-elle été orientée ?
- comment at-elle été érigée ?

In ancient Egypt the deceased were an integral part of the world of the living. The dead kin were perceived as extended family members and a bilateral relationship was developed between the two worlds. The deceased expected to receive from the living all the due rituals and offerings in order to ensure their well-being. Fulfilled all the needs of the dead, the living might expect their assistance and protection in everyday life problems. It's in the context of this relationship that we see emerge the ancestors' cult as an integral part, and with high relevance, of household religion, attested since the Middle Kingdom. The possible knowledge about this domestic religious practice results from both textual and material sources. It is the combination of texts, objects, and structures that makes possible for us to understand the motivations underlying this practice and where and how it was accomplished.

Though Odysseus’ tales to Eumaios and Aninoos in Odyssey 14.199–359 and 17.417–44, respectively, are presented as fictional tales within Homer’s larger myth, some elements have striking analogs in Late Bronze–Early Iron Age reality.

This article examines these portions of the hero’s false ainoi within their fictive context for the purpose of identifying and evaluating those elements. Particular focus is given to Odysseus’ declaration that he led nine successful maritime raids prior to the Trojan War; to his twice–described ill–fated assault on Egypt; and to his claim not only to have been spared in the wake of that Egyptian raid, but to have spent a subsequent seven years in the land of the pharaohs, during which he gathered great wealth.

Through a comparative examination of literary and archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze–Early Iron transition in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is shown that these aspects of Odysseus’ stories are not only reflective of the historical reality surrounding the time in which the epic is set, but that Odysseus’ fictive experience is remarkably similar to that of one specific member of the ‘Sea Peoples’ groups best known from 19th and 20th dynasty Egyptian records: the ‘Sherden of the Sea.’

An increase of cross-cultural learning as a consequence of increased travel and migration between Egypt and the Levant during the Iron Age occurred after millennia of migration in earlier times. The result was an Egyptian-Levantine koine, often not recognized as relevant by historians due to an uncritical reproduction of ancient myths of separation. However, the cultural exchange triggered by migration is attested in the language, in the iconography of the region, in the history of the alphabet, in literary motifs, in the characterization of central characters of the Hebrew Bible and, last but not least, in the rise of new religions, which integrated the experience of otherness in a new ethos.

In hindsight some of the conclusions in this thesis are somewhat naive (particularly regarding Egyptian seafaring), but in my estimation the paper still makes two important contributions:

- Supporting evidence for J. Janick's (2007) conclusion that the aromatic substance referred to in ancient Egyptian sources as "anti", is not Myrrh (as is the prevailing assumption in current literature), but more likely derives from the Boswellia genus of trees.

- The first full reconstruction of the relief depicting Queen Hatshepsut's Punt Expedition, found at her funerary complex in Deir el-Bahari. The reconstruction in this paper combines extensive drawings of the relief by Howard Carter and Percy Brown made during Édouard Naville's expedition to Deir el-Bahari (1898), with hieroglyphic texts recovered by Kurt Sethe (1905), a missing fragment published by Nicholas Millet (1962) and a reconstruction of the damaged southern sidewall by William Smith (1962).

Please download the PDF in order to see the reassembled relief in full resolution (last page), or download the full image here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/32memsu6dP9uGYGs8.

The Twentieth Dynasty tomb of Ramesses VI (KV9) includes
two copies of the cosmological treatise known to modern scholarship as the Book of the Night. Both versions of the book in KV9 include a cryptographic annotation to the twelfth hour, which is unique to that tomb. This annotation accompanies a file of jackals, the “bas of the westerners,” who tow the solar barque through the Underworld, toward the moment of sunrise. The content of this “Jackal Hymn” overlaps partially with cryptographic annotations to the baboon-, ibis-, and ram-headed bas of the east, north, and south, found in the Book of the Day. The present study offers a new translation and analysis of the Jackal Hymn, discarding numerous readings proposed in earlier studies, which had been based upon the phantom “principle” of acrophony, while taking into consideration orthographic, grammatical, and thematic parallels from the broader cosmological corpus. A careful reading of the cryptographic signs, utilizing only well attested substitution mechanisms (e.g., reduction of weak consonants), demonstrates clearly that the two versions of the text agree in every major respect and that divergences presumed in earlier studies are largely illusory. In addition, analysis of the grammatical structure of the text itself and identification of its thematic divisions help to clarify the meaning of several otherwise obscure passages.

Note that this paper is to be read in conjunction with THE DECORATED NORTH WALL IN THE TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN (KV 62) (THE BURIAL OF NEFERTITI? II) (2019) (https://www.academia.edu/39903971/The_Decorated_North_Wall_in_the_Tomb_of_Tutankhamun_KV_62_The_Burial_of_Nefertiti_II_2019_) and THE TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN (KV 62): SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES (THE BURIAL OF NEFERTITI? III) (2020)(https://www.academia.edu/44309046/The_Tomb_of_Tutankhamun_KV_62_Supplementary_Notes_The_Burial_of_Nefertiti_III_2020_). THE BURIAL OF NEFERTITI? ANIMATIONS may be accessed separately at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD-SFAqqGpS603n_o7CORky6pUvB061X5

I am including in this Addendum several points in my notes to the text which were omitted from the final publication because of the semi-popular nature of the book Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. In presenting these notes, I would like once again to acknowledge Prof. Helmut Satzinger's exemplary editio princeps of the text (JARCE 12 [1975] 37-50 with Pl. XIII).

En este trabajo se abordará la figura de la diosa Isis desde diversas perspectivas. Primero, analizaremos su papel en Egipto, su lugar de procedencia, desde los tiempos Neolíticos hasta la conquista de Alejandro Magno, que da inicio al período helenístico. En esta época se producen cambios en la forma de entender a la diosa en Egipto, pero lo fundamental es que su culto se generaliza en Grecia, si bien ya había llegado allí siglos atrás. Esto da lugar a una asimilación sincrética de Isis a otras divinidades y también a la transformación de su culto en una religión mistérica. Isis acaba llegando al mundo romano, donde algunos emperadores intentarán erradicar su culto, mientras que otros, por el contrario, lo promoverán, hasta su definitiva desaparición en el siglo VI d.C. Una vez dado un repaso a su historia, analizaremos el mito más famoso de la diosa: el de Isis y Osiris, partiendo sobre todo de la versión que ofrece Plutarco. Por último trataremos de sintetizar las principales atribuciones de esta diosa: madre, trono y maga.

Palabras clave: Isis, diosa, Osiris, madre, culto

SUMMARY: Chapter 4, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers archaeological dating methods and their applicability and limitations, including stratigraphy (relative dating), typologies (e.g., seriation), linguistic dating, climatic clues (e.g., ice & deep=sea cores), absolute dating (e.g., pollen; ancient calendars; tree-ring/dendrochronology; radiocarbon dating; potassium-argon dating; uranium-series dating; thermoluminescence dating; optical dating; electron spin-resonance dating; global events; etc.).  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record; also including a case study on the instructor's work at a late Old Kingdom fort at Ras Budran, in South Sinai (Egypt).  REVISED: Feb. 2023.

SUMMARY: Chapter 2, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the variety of the evidence remaining in the archaeological record across the globe, including wet sites, cold sites, dry sites, and other sites; I have removed the case study from Tell Tebilla (now a separate lecture) and substituted a lengthy series of slides dealing with assessing artifacts from such things as materials, form, decoration, function, and context through broader questions and different types of analysis, focusing on Naqada II-type decorated pottery from Predynastic Egypt.  In my view, the course textbook is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. REVISED: Jan/ 2023 minor edits.

In Interpreting Ancient Egyptian Narratives, Martin Pehal applies structural analysis to four New Kingdom narrative compositions. The study explains the strong configurational character of ancient Egyptian (mythological) thought which has the ability to connect various ontological levels of human experience with the surrounding world into complex synchronic structures. These symbolical systems are shown to be mediating between the various cultural paradoxes which were inherent to ancient Egyptian society. Axial role in this process is attributed to the institution of positional kingship represented by the Pharaoh. Its transformative function is also put into relation to the special status of female characters who are shown to play the part of the “powerful powerless ones” further personifying the aspects of the mediating function of myth. Gradually, the study outlines a genuinely Egyptian “structural net” of basic mythemes and explains in what way it was possible for such a system to change and incorporate foreign mythological motifs especially from the Near East.

The gold jewellery in the collection of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre Museum bearing the names of Queen Ahhotep and King Ahmose I (17th–18th Dynasties, 16th c. B.C.) was analysed using PIXE, XRF, and SEM-EDS. The items were formed by casting, hammering and rolling, were decorated by chasing, and were mounted using hard-solders obtained by adding copper to the base-alloys.
The jewellery bearing the name of Ahhotep is made essentially from cast gold alloys, but the elements of an armband found on the mummy of King Kamose and bearing the name of his brother Ahmose are a skilled goldsmith’s work using whitish Ag-rich electrum alloys. The armband and one of Ahhotep’s rings with marks of intense wear-use were worn in day-life; the other items could be funerary. The gold employed is alluvial, because the alloys contain PGE inclusions. The composition of the alloys matches the composition of gold grains from the Eastern Desert mines. The analytical data published so far for the scarce Second Intermediate Period jewellery items were compared to the data obtained in this work, showing that the alloys during this period split into two groups: those that are yellowish (containing up to 99 wt% Au) and those that are whitish (containing more than 20 wt% Ag). All the items with marks of intense wear-use except one are contained in the second group. Among them, the armband bearing the name of King Ahmose that is inscribed with the hieroglyphic sign of the moon in its oldest written form.
As this change occurred under Ahmose I, it suggests that new and old objects coexisted during that difficult period of struggles in Egypt. Gold jewellery and weapons recovered during the campaigns against the Hycsos, leaded by King Kamose, Queen Ahhotep and King Ahmose, could have also been recycled in Egyptian workshops. This could justify the presence of Os-Ir-Ru-Pt inclusions in the two items with marks of intense wear-use, instead of the Ru-Os-Ir inclusions usually found in Egyptian productions.

First published in Buzzle on 16th August 2006

Republished on the same day here:
http://sudaneseonline.com/en2/publish/Articles_and_Analysies_12/Sudan_s_Beja_Blemmyes_and_their_Right_to_Freedom_a_929.shtml

Republished on 23rd August 2006 and discussed in the forum below:
http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=62793
At the moment the misinformed international community plans to spend so easily US $ 3 billion for Lebanon's reconstruction, it is essential to highlight that much less money would be enough to bring peace in the strategically crucial area of Eastern Sudan where the Blemmyes / Beja have started their struggle for self-determination and independence. Support to historically indigenous Beja would bring the Khartoum tyrants at the brink of collapse, opening the path of independence for the oppressed peoples of Sudan, and at the same time it would reshape the entire area of the Red Sea where historical nations demand international recognition.

Though I am an “Amateur Academic” (layperson) I was recently able to deduce the Actual Speed of Light (299,796,057 m/s) in order to update the current Factual Speed of Light that is regrettably in correct. I was only able to achieve such a lofty goal as a result of correctly determining the original dimensions of the Great Pyramid and in so doing discovering the true nature of the cubit, uncovering the reality that the Meter predates the cubit and must be some (at least) 5000 years old, and to definitively define the meter and provide an inverse for the speed of light; all with nothing more than a high school diploma.

ABSTRACT: This documentary response sheet contains a series of sequential questions drawn from the video, KULTUR: First Merchants (shown in-class; also available online via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjHiRCFz0Oo [46.36 minutes]).  These sequential questions aim to maximize both student attention to various pertinent points made throughout the documentary and greater retention of the materials covered by the documentary.  In addition, the documentary has been vetted for overall content accuracy (albeit updated and/or corrected in-class), and selected to provide supplementary visual aids (e.g., images of regions, sites, finds, and other materials), additional specialist views (e.g., interviews), and other data to aid in student comprehension of the course lectures and readings from the textbooks. REVISED Oct. 2023: This documentary contains much useful information for the East Mediterranean (Ulu Burun shipwreck), Ancient Egypt and Near East, and other regions (China and Central America), but does make reference to the "Cocaine mummies." I have used this opportunity to caution students about such findings, adding a side note to the question sheet (Q.26+) and a full page discussion on such assessments and indicators of long-distance trade in antiquity, including some references, web links, and other documentaries dealing with ancient trade and shipping.

Mirrors or mirror-like objects/"mirrors" made of stones, minerals, glass and metal were found in various archaeological contexts, generally in burial, offering and cache contexts. These remarkable and somehow enigmatic objects are best known from Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites of Çatal Höyük, Domuz Tepe, Güvercin Kayası and Tepecik in Turkey; several Olmec, Maya, Aztec and Inca sites in Americas, as well as from ancient Egyptian and Indian excavations. According to the realms of archaeological and historical recoveries, the mirror appears throughout the human history from prehistoric times to today and most likely still waters were the first mirror-like functioning natural element until actual mirrors made of solid material like obsidian, and later liquid "mirrors"/reflectors made of mercury were manufactured. Based on iconography informed by textual, historical and ethnographical accounts, solid and liquid mirrors were associated with the soul, supernatural spirits, afterlife, magic, scrying, sorcery, divination, astronomy, the sun, sun gods, fire, light, darkness, authority, hidden truth, cosmetics, beauty, scientific applications, luxury, prestige, self-recognition and self-delusion. However, because mirrors archaeologically have not been studied well, specifically those of Prehistory and Protohistory, both as a material object and non-material abstract remains of past cultures, they are still need to be explored. Therefore, this session aims to investigate prehistoric and protohistoric mirrors from all around the World both as a material object and other aspects beyond materiality; past peoples' perception of mirrors and reflections on shiny objects; personal and societal need for gazing into mirrors from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. In addition to technological, typological, functional and experimental aspects, astronomical, symbolic, religious, magical, ritualistic, artistic, neuroscientific, and paleopsychological aspects also will be discussed.

Ancient Egypt is commonly regarded, in a simple comparative analysis, as a civilization less violent than its counterparts in neighboring Mesopotamia, for example. Some traces of violence can, obviously, be detected in many behaviors of the ancient Egyptian society, namely the physical punishments to the less committed students and to the peasants who evaded or intended to evade the intricate system of pharaonic tax collection. We can also confirm the practice of violence (verbal, physical and sexual) on women. Violence was therefore practiced in ancient Egypt, both in the domestic and public sphere, even though the Egyptian moral ethics condemn it, including the kind that one that could play on their own servants and/ or subordinates: “I have not caused pain”; “I have not slighted a servant to his master” (Book of the Dead, Chapter 125, Negative Confession).
On the other hand, scenes of domination and repression of the defeated enemies were a common theme, often depicted at a large scale on the temples’ pylons, according to the ideology of the winner that each and every pharaoh should be and proclaim, even if just in theory. The ritual scenes of offering of the enemies by the Pharaoh to the main gods of the Egyptian pantheon are, in this sense, an eloquent trait of what we might designate as “ritual violence”, that was greatly appreciated in the country of the Pharaohs.
With this paper, we will try to present and characterize the practice of violence in ancient Egypt exactly through some of its real or deliberate expressions and ritual or ceremonial, as a phenomenon with forms and techniques culturally and socially integrated.
Finally, we will discuss a type of violence that underlies many of the Egyptian iconographic and textual productions, especially those related to life expectancy in the hereafter: we mean the threat of violence and constraints faced by the ones who do not align their existence by maetic behaviors that, in many situations, acts as a powerful deterrent and regulatory force to the living Egyptians.
Inherent to our questioning of the phenomenon of violence in ancient Egypt in its various forms is a concept and generic definition of violence that is not limited to the physical and material aspect, that is, to the level of physical integrity, but also to the level of moral or psychological coercion, that violates individual autonomy and the existential behaviors.

The mass ceramic material discovered by the Russian Archaeological Mission of the IOS RAS during 22 years of research in the eastern part of the ancient Egyptian Giza Necropolis belongs to a significant chronological interval from the reign of the Dynasty IV (26th–25th centuries B.C.) till the 19th century A.D. It is an indicator of the chronological multilayeredness of Giza, allowing to recreate a phased picture of the life of this archaeological site – from specific functional features of the ancient cemetery through periods of robberies and creation of secondary burials to the use of tombs as dwellings by Christian and Islamic population of Egypt. The full history of the formation and existence of the eastern part of Giza Necropolis is thus about 4.5 thousand years.

Domestication of the donkey from the African wild ass transformed ancient transport systems in Africa and Asia and the organization of early cities and pastoral societies. Genetic research suggests an African origin for the donkey, but pinpointing the timing and location of domestication has been challenging because donkeys are uncommon in the archaeological record and markers for early phases of animal domestication are hard to determine. We present previously undescribed evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and new paleopathological indicators for early phases of donkey domestication. Findings are based on skeletal data from 10 ≈5,000-year-old ass skeletons recently discovered entombed in an early pharaonic mortuary complex at Abydos, Middle Egypt, and a concurrent study of 53 modern donkey and African wild ass skeletons. Morphometric studies showed that Abydos metacarpals were similar in overall proportions to those of wild ass, but individual measurements varied...