Recent nelc_uee items

Sanam

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The remains at Sanam represent a royal town site of the mid-first millennium BCE, an important center of the Early and Middle Napatan Period Kushite kings (defined here as encompassing the reigns of the kings Piankhy to Aspelta, c. 750 BCE – 580 BCE). Comprising a temple, royal administrative buildings (often called the “Treasury”), and a cemetery, Sanam is a valuable source of occupational and non-royal data in Nubian archaeology, a field in which royal cemeteries have been over-represented in the record. Nevertheless, the site’s importance has not often been recognized thanks to its early, poorly-recorded, and poorly-published excavation by Francis Llewellyn Griffith in 1912. Recent excavations and new analyses of Griffith’s archival data demonstrate Sanam’s potential to reveal the importance of Kush’s position in the wider Iron Age Mediterranean world, and to intervene in debates on cultural entanglement and hybridity.

Cereals

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Emmer wheat and barley were the two staple foods of ancient Egypt. Every year the fertile regions of Egypt would have been covered with crops of these two cereals, and the lives of the vast majority of the population—the non-royal, non-scribal rural peoples—would have revolved around growing and processing cereals. Cereal production and processing were such vital parts of life that these activities were depicted on the walls of non-royal (“elite”) tombs among the repertoire of daily-life activities. Additionally, small models showing these activities, as well as baskets of cereal grains, were placed inside the tombs in order to ensure an eternal supply of cereals to the deceased in the afterlife. Due to the close association of the god Osiris with cereals, fertility, and the afterlife, Osiris beds or bricks also became popular additions to the funerary equipment in later periods.

El-Dakka (Pselchis)

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The settlement of el-Dakka, ancient Pselchis, is best known for its temple, built and decorated in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, but settlement there can be traced back to prehistoric times. At the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty an Egyptian fortress was built opposite el-Dakka, at Quban (or Contra Pselchis). Lower Nubia formed a military buffer-zone at Egypt’s southern frontier, and Quban and its fortress played a significant role in the establishment of direct Egyptian control over natural resources. Around the fortress a settlement developed during the New Kingdom, when Nubia was Egypt’s southern colony. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods el-Dakka was part of the Dodekaschoinos, a border region where a series of temples was built or extended, including the temple of el-Dakka, dedicated to Thoth of Pnubs.

Thoth of Pnubs

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Nubia, Thoth was venerated as, among other manifestations, Thoth of Pnubs. He is only attested in Lower Nubia, either in temple reliefs and inscriptions, or in graffiti. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, a rather large temple was built at el-Dakka for Thoth of Pnubs, Lord of Pselchis (el-Dakka). There he is depicted in two forms, as a seated baboon under the nbs-tree, and anthropomorphically, with the four-feathered crown of Onuris, whose characteristics he assumed. Thoth of Pnubs developed into a composite god, combining features of Thoth of Hermopolis, Onuris, and Shu, fulfilling the same role as Shu in the myth of the Return of the Distant Goddess.

Calculation

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Calculation is a form of professional numeracy that, from the first evidence of writing in Egypt to the period of the New Kingdom, comprised concepts and methods different from those of contemporary Mesopotamia. In approximately the late fourth millennium BCE, professional numeracy developed in both regions. A comparison of these two early mathematical cultures allows insights into the parallel necessities that prompted this development, as well as elucidation of the differences in the formation of the two mathematical systems, their historiographical treatment, and the consequences of the choices of writing material for the preservation of sources.

Pioneers of Egyptian Language Studies (1822 – 1880)

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

During the six decades between 1822 and 1880, Egyptology initially witnessed intense debate over Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of the hieroglyphic script and an emerging consensus over its validity. This was followed by an era of growing lexicographic understanding and outstanding achievements in philology and translation. The time was not yet ripe, however, for a truly linguistic analysis of the Egyptian language. For this, the Egyptological community had to wait until the 1880s—for the discoveries of a circle of scholars headed by Adolf Erman, known as the “Berlin School.”

Royal Inscriptions

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Royal inscriptions are historical records concerning ancient Egyptian kings. Throughout the pharaonic period, they were carved on durable media, including temple walls, stelae, obelisks, statues, and objects. Depending on genres and styles, they could serve various purposes. Royal inscriptions were initially primarily pictorial, but over time became entirely textual. Since they were created for kings, they provide a rich source of historical information about the nature of kingship and royal ideology. For modern scholars, these royal records are invaluable aids in reconstructing ancient Egyptian history and in understanding royal deeds, activities, and discourse.

Survivals of Pharaonic Religious Practices in Contemporary Coptic Christianity, version 2

Mon, 2 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The concept of “survivals” has provoked heated discussions among scholars of various disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences. In the case of Egypt the polemics have been most vehement between those who trace contemporary popular beliefs and practices back to Pharaonic times and others who reject the idea altogether. The perspectives of “analogy,” “continuity and change,” and “living traditions” have opened the way to alternative approaches to the subject. Urbanization and globalization have profoundly changed Egyptian culture and prompted the abandonment of most religious practices belonging to the Egyptian lore. However, some aspects of Pharaonic religious practices can still be observed in Coptic Christianity. These practices are tied to the Coptic calendar, funerary rituals, visits to the dead, and mulids.

Medieval Arabic Reception of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contrary to the prevailing view that the conversion of Egyptians to, first, Christianity, then Islam, put an end to any interest in their own heritage, there is ample evidence that Egyptians continued to study their own past with great pride. Many medieval Arab scholars visited Egypt to study its heritage and ancient scripts, leading to many scholarly attempts to decipher them. A brief survey of the available materials in Arabic shows a wide use of Egyptian hieroglyphs by medieval Arab scholars and artists. These materials also show a continuous process of attempting to decipher Egyptian scripts, sometimes through a medium, or third, script in the same way as later European scholars would do. Coptic, Greek, and Demotic were still available and readable in the early medieval period. Several scholars thus succeeded in deciphering at least half of the known Egyptian alphabetical signs. It is interesting to note that nearly all the authors interested in hieroglyphs were alchemists,...

Metaphor, version 2

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Metaphors are tropes driven by similarity relations that appear in texts, script, images, and even objects from ancient Egypt. When tracing the disciplinary and thematic development of metaphor studies in Egyptology, what can be seen is a change from a typological perspective, which sought to categorize both motifs and metaphor types, to a cognitive perspective, which was more interested in the processes behind the linguistic phenomena. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the development of metaphors in textual and multimodal perspective, and in the usage of metaphors across various media.

Theodicy

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Theodicy, the enquiry as to the justness of the divine, is a prominent theme in mythological descriptions of the struggle between order and chaos. It is also an important feature of Middle Egyptian pessimistic poetry, which probes weaknesses in this mythological argument. Although less explicitly articulated, theodicean concerns recur in Egyptian written culture down at least to the Graeco-Roman period.

Lunar Calendar (Time Measurement)

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Every society that practices the division of labor and levies taxes needs to keep track of time in a predictable manner, which usually implies time-keeping based on the movements of celestial bodies. Theoretically, the sun, the fixed stars, the planets, and the moon can be used for time-keeping purposes. Among these, the moon was used in the early stages of most cultures. In ancient Egypt a lunar or lunistellar calendar was in use, as evidenced by lunar festivals and names for the various stages of the moon.

Gold, Electrum, and Silver

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For millennia, gold, electrum, and silver were the most admired and coveted metals in ancient Egypt, prized for their magnificent appearance and physical properties such as malleability and ductility. Initially, they were available as native metals, requiring no advanced smelting procedures for use and manipulation. As time progressed, sophisticated techniques were developed for mining and processing, particularly for creating specific alloys. Today, advanced scientific methods aid in our understanding of the diverse techniques anciently employed in working with gold and silver, illuminating their origins, exchange, and trade, as well as locations of production. These, in turn, give us insight into the genesis of technical innovations, the various chaînes opératoires and local workshop organizations, and the ways in which expertise and technology were transferred or passed down through generations and/or exchanged geographically between Egypt and its neighbors....

Ethics

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ancient Egyptian ethical thought and action revolved around the notion of maat. Although there are no traces of a standard moral code surviving from ancient Egypt, moral principles were often reflected in the literature—especially works of wisdom literature, funerary books and songs, tomb biographies, and literary narratives. In these sources moral principles were mostly expressed in practical admonitions and general observations on everyday conduct and were voiced by authoritative sages. Through the study of these sources one can observe the occurrence of a major change in ancient Egyptian ethical thought during the New Kingdom, when piety and religiosity became significant criteria for the judgment of the individual.

Copper-based Metallurgy (up to 332 BCE)

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Copper played a central role in the material culture of ancient Egypt. Appearing in the archaeological record as early as the fourth millennium BCE, copper and copper alloys were the most widely used metals throughout pharaonic history. Significant copper ore deposits, such as those of the Eastern Desert and Sinai, were located in proximity to the Nile Valley and were usually mined through large state-organized expeditions. In addition to textual and iconographic evidence, copper alloy objects constitute a valuable source for our understanding of the procurement, use, and circulation of goods within ancient Egyptian society. With the advancement of scientific methods their analysis has become part of the wider development of archaeometallurgy, which aims to shed light on the entire production chain of metals in their historical and social contexts. Indeed, Egyptology, archaeology, and archaeometallurgy are complementary and can benefit from the same research questions.

Gebel Moya (Site 100)

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Gebel Moya, officially known as Site 100, is a large agricultural-pastoral site located below the Nile’s Sixth Cataract in Sudan. It lies between the Blue Nile and White Nile in what is now a semi-desert environment. It was first excavated by Henry Wellcome in the early twentieth century and was known as a cemetery until 2017, when fieldwork was renewed by a joint international mission. Current excavations show that, in addition to being a major cemetery, the site bears traces of Mesolithic habitation. Over a period of 5,000 years the area witnessed rapid climate change, and ongoing work is focused on reconstructing the ancient flora and fauna. It is now clear that Site 100, long considered insignificant by scholars, was home to dynamic communities across the millennia.

Old Nubian

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Old Nubian is the modern designation for a literary language attested in texts from the Nubian kingdoms of Nobadia and Makuria in the Middle Nile Valley between the late eighth and fifteenth centuries ce. It belongs to the Nilo-Saharan linguistic phylum and is written in an alphabetic script based on Coptic, with the addition of several characters from the Meroitic alphasyllabary. Old Nubian was written in a multiliterate context, alongside Greek, Coptic, and Arabic, and its materials encompass documents and inscriptions of both a religious and secular nature.

Conceptualizations of the Moon

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Our understanding of the moon as it was regarded in ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods is based mostly on texts and images from temples, but also on stelae, coffins, and papyri. Just as Conceptual Metaphor Theory provides a theoretical background for research on the moon in ancient Egypt, a basic knowledge of astronomical facts is essential for our understanding of the sources and of how the moon was conceptualized anciently. The conceptualizations can be categorized into those concerning astronomical properties of the celestial body (its shape, luminosity, motion, constellations), those in which the moon takes on anthropomorphic (man, child, eye, leg, arm) and zoomorphic (bull, ibis, baboon) forms, and those that have a socio-political background, concerning the reign of the pharaoh, the measuring and conception of time, and the maintenance of the cosmos (maat) as a whole.

Hieratic

Wed, 1 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hieratic is the name given to Egypt's oldest cursive system of hieroglyphs, which was used primarily as handwriting and served as a multifunctional script for more than three millennia, until the third century CE. As early as 1820, Champollion recognized the connection between hieroglyphs and hieratic. Hieratic was written in ink on papyrus and ostraca, as well as on wooden tablets, linen, stone surfaces, etc. The characters could also be carved or chiseled into clay, wood, rock surfaces, or stone objects. Unlike hieroglyphs, hieratic was always written from right to left, and the signs evolved from separate elements in single columns to horizontal lines of complete text, with increasing use of ligatures and abbreviations, especially in administrative contexts. In addition, most manuscripts reveal personal idiosyncrasies of the scribes. From 750 BCE on, hieratic was partially replaced by the abnormal hieratic script and later by Demotic. However, it remained in use until...

Group writing

Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Group Writing emerges during the New Kingdom, and it has often been assumed to includeinformation about the vocalization of the transcribed words and names. Scholars, however,have struggled to identify the exact rules governing it. As a result, as rich academic debate hasensued, and various interpretations have been suggested over the past century. GroupWriting, as a phenomenon, has also a socio-cultural and socio-historical dimension that has sofar attracted much less scholarly attention. The present article will explore both these sides ofthe question, first by providing a description of the system and an overview of the mainproposals put forward to interpret it, and then by delving into the question of its uses,function, and origins.

The linguistic prehistory of Nubia

Tue, 16 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Evidence from historical linguistics, philology, archaeology, and, more recently, genetics enables us to reconstruct part of the complex history of the area in southern Egypt and northern Sudan that has come to be known as Nubia. Whereas today Nubian languages and Arabic are dominant in these areas, interdisciplinary research points towards the presence of several other languages in the past, spoken by communities who interacted with each other to various extents over the past millennia, depending on such factors as climate change and technological development, but also on ever-changing sociopolitical constellations.

Figurative Language

Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Figurative Language is a traditional rhetorical style, which refers to a group of diverse tropes and uses of words describing pictorial or graphical objects in a non-literal way (Dancygier and Sweetser 2014; Colston 2015). Figurative language acts by contrast to other non-figurative language, just as a metaphorical word acts by contrast when used together with other non-metaphorical words (Ricoeur 2003: 161–162). Genette (1966: 205–221) reports that the contrast between figurative and non-figurative is that of a real language to a virtual one, and that the content depends totally on the speaker’s and listener’s own perceptions. In general, when necessary, all kinds of languages can be used in a figurative sense. Figurative expressions refer to the similarities of on object’s shape, colour, feature or function.

Linear Hieroglyphs

Tue, 2 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Linear hieroglyphs formed a script comprising signs that maintained the iconic power of hieroglyphs but were more schematically written. Although they are attested from as early as the Old Kingdom, they became visually distinct from other writing types only from the Middle Kingdom onward. This script was restricted to specific functions and contexts, mainly related to the ritual and funerary domains. Linear hieroglyphs displayed specific traits and conventions in the forms of the signs (covering a wide spectrum of formality, iconicity, and embellishment) and the layout of the texts (with an arrangement that favored columns of rightward-facing signs that were to be read in a retrograde manner). They had the added values of prestige and expense and were often indexical of temple manuscripts. There is an urgent need to compile repertoires of linear hieroglyphs to help further define aspects such as forms of signs, regional variety, historical changes, technological issues, and...

Identity Marks

Tue, 2 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Various types of non-textual notations were used in ancient Egypt in addition to, and in the absence of, writing. Systems of identity marks, such as ownership marks, masons’ marks, and pot marks, are important categories among these notations. Such marks express the identity of persons, groups, institutions, or places, and are usually attested as individual signs painted or scratched on artifacts or stone surfaces. Although different from writing, the graphic repertoires of marking systems often include characters of writing, in addition to pictorial and abstract signs. Clusters of marks, sometimes with added signs of a different nature, may even resemble written texts and share some of the latter’s characteristics.

Letters to gods

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000
The “Letters to Gods” comprise an etic analytical category of Egyptian- and Greek-language texts in which individuals petitioned deities, seeking divine intervention in their lives to bring about certain outcomes. Attested from the Late to Roman Periods, from Saqqara to Esna, and inscribed upon papyri, linen, ostraca, wooden tablets, and ceramic vessels, these textual sources are the written testament to ritual practices through which individuals were able to interact directly with the divine to effect change in their lives. Petitioning about a variety of matters (from physical abuse to theft or embezzlement, from cursing people to healing them), the Letters to Gods reveal multiple aspects of the lives of their petitioners—not only their hopes and fears but also their conceptualization of justice and of the divine.

Coptic

Tue, 7 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Coptic is the youngest written standard of the Egyptian language. Spelled with the characters of the Greek alphabet plus some extra signs, it was productively used for almost a thousand years, from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries CE, to record texts of a wide range of types and purposes, and is still being used in the liturgy of the Coptic church. Coptic texts have survived in enormous numbers and comprise literary, semi-literary, and documentary corpora in a range of dialects and genres. Analysis of salient grammatical features of the Coptic language elucidates both innovative and conservative features in comparison to those of its predecessor, Demotic.

Egyptian Writing: Extended Practices

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Among the idiosyncratic aspects of ancient Egyptian life and culture, Egyptian writing has long received particular attention—not only in recent academic discourse, but already in Antiquity. Compared to other writing systems, hieroglyphs and, to a lesser extent, their cursive derivatives, hieratic and Demotic, demonstrate extraordinary potential to express different aspects of both meaning and sound when employed beyond their conventional use. In its particular iconicity Egyptian writing, especially hieroglyphic writing, works even outside the framework of language and shares common features with Egyptian art. In the textual record non-standard creative writings highlight the potency and multidimensionality of Egyptian writing through the interplay of meaning, sound, and icon. The contours of the phenomenon are here outlined and the main characteristics of non-standard creative writings defined according to their varying forms and functions. In conclusion, a system...

UEE 2026

Fri, 6 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Editors and Staff of the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology wish you a happy, healthy and productive 2026. We also ask you to consider sustaining the UEE with a gift, to celebrate non-IA generated knowledge and wisdom, without hallucinatory references.

British Egyptology (1822-1882)

Wed, 5 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000
The growth of British Egyptology between 1822 and 1882 was a direct extension of informal colonial control. In the direct aftermath of the Anglo-French Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), British fieldwork in Egypt focused on diplomatic collecting for the British Museum and topographical surveys by Orientalist expatriates seeking to differentiate between ancient and modern Egyptian cultures. A second phase of fieldwork developed from mid-century whereby experts in Britain relied on colonial networks of collectors and informants in Egypt to communicate field observations over long distances. British Egyptology was not yet a distinct field, and like other nascent scientific specialisations, developed with porous disciplinary boundaries. It thus encapsulated a wide variety of approaches which included chronology, philology, exegesis, ethnology, anthropology, museology, astronomy, and geology. British Egyptomania and academic Egyptology also grew in tandem as popularizers brought their work...

Russian Egyptology (1914-1945)

Fri, 2 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The period from 1914 to 1945 in the history of Russia is marked with a number of major shocks: World War I, the revolution of 1917 and the following civil war, the establishment of a totalitarian ideological rule accompanied with terror, and the participation of the USSR in World War II (the Great Patriotic War). They all deeply affected the Russian (Soviet) scholarship including Egyptology. The tradition of the earlier, imperial period continued until the early 1920s in the research of Vladimir Golenischeff outside Russia and, briefly, in the work of Boris Turaev and his students. It so happened that this generation of Russian Egyptologists became actually extinct, and the Egyptological school had to be shaped anew in the time of post-revolutionary reconstruction. This process was influenced in the 1920s with what might be defined as “modernist” trends; but a new standing tradition emerged only in the 1930s, largely due to the efforts of Vassiliy Struve. This scholar of a...

Dialects in Pre-Coptic Egyptian

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In scholarship there is no consensus on how to define a dialect, especially since the concept of “dialect” is a modern one, carrying with it political implications. Indeed it can be demonstrated that, historically, local idioms have sometimes gained national status for reasons relating to politics and culture. The existence of different dialects in pre-Coptic Egypt was discerned early in Egyptology, in the late nineteenth century, and is today accepted with only occasional skepticism. The identification and analysis of dialects is problematic for the Egyptologist for several reasons, among them the constraints of the hieroglyphic script, which was phonologically unspecific; the geographically unbalanced nature of the surviving corpus of texts; and the often elusive determination of textual provenance. Dialects have left written traces, however, in all areas of Egyptian—phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon—such that the standard view of a linear succession of five...

Meroitic Writing

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000
Meroitic, the primary language of ancient Sudan, remained unwritten for at least two millennia. There were only rare transcriptions of proper names in Egyptian texts. With the rise of the 25^th “Kushite” Dynasty, Egyptian script and language became the official means of written communication in Kush. A local form of Demotic was probably used in addition to the hieroglyphs, although archaeological evidence thereof is lacking. This local Demotic was very likely the ancestor of the Meroitic cursive script, which appeared in the third century BCE. A century later, a second script, called “hieroglyphic,” was created in order to replace Egyptian in monumental inscriptions. The signs were selected from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, but this new script was merely the prestigious counterpart of the Meroitic cursive characters, with a one-to-one correspondence between signs. The Meroitic writing system is an alphasyllabary. It includes 16 basic signs for syllables, with a default...

Language Contact

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000
Although language contact and multilingualism are universal phenomena, the topic has not been given due consideration in Egyptology. Language contact in ancient Egypt comprises a spectrum, in ascending order, of small-scale phenomena (loanwords, loan translations), through non-Egyptian texts in Egyptian script and the evidence for bilingualism and multilingualism, to the large-scale phenomena of new language forms resulting from language contact and phenomena of language convergence through a sprachbund situation.

Tower Houses

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Egyptian tower houses are a type of dwelling developed in the Third Intermediate Period in Egypt. They were extensively used in the time from the Late Period (26^th Dynasty) until Roman times and were still in use through Late Antiquity, Medieval times until modern times. Many of these houses used the so called casemate foundations, a foundation type that was also used for other types of buildings. This article discusses typical elements, functions and chronological development of casemate structures and tower houses as well as known sources and possible reasons for their development.

Gender-Based Violence

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Gender and violence intersected in ancient Egypt in many ways. In general, the ancient Egyptian gender system privileged men and the masculine. Exceptions to this were status dependent. Gendered patterns of violence are evident in cases of mistreatment of women through beating and rape. War-related royal texts used gendered language to frame enemies as feminine and place them lower on the hierarchy vis-à-vis the pharaoh. Enemies were also feminized in visual representations such as temple reliefs. The symbolic violence of gendered language also served to establish indigenous gender hierarchies. Although there is evidence that some Egyptian queens and female rulers organized military operations, there is no evidence for the participation of women in war. In contrast, some goddesses had a strong affiliation with war and violence and were frequently associated with the pharaoh in this regard.

British Egyptology (1882-1914)

Tue, 6 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The period from 1882 – 1914 has been called the “Golden Age” of Egyptology, but that term is problematic in light of the fact that it was a Golden Age only for Europeans and Americans. In Britain, the founding in 1882 of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF, now Egypt Exploration Society [EES]) and the beginning of the Great War in 1914 bookend this tumultuous period of Egyptology. During this period, political, religious, economic, and institutional structures impacted the intellectual development of British Egyptology as practiced both in Britain and in Egypt. The establishment of Egyptology as a university-taught subject was crucial to the field. By 1904, the signing of the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain meant that France recognized diplomatically that Britain occupied Egypt. In turn, the French had control over the direction of the Antiquities Service; however, that service was ultimately under the control of the British.

Non-Royal Self-Presentation

Wed, 19 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In ancient Egypt the primary intention of creating textual self-presentations—or self-portraiture in words, similar to that in paintings, statuary, and reliefs—was to present the explicit characteristics of protagonists in a corresponding fashion, introducing their values and effectiveness to live and rejoice in immortality, both in the afterlife and in the consciousness and thoughts of Egypt’s subsequent generations. The practice of self-presentation was rooted in Egyptian literature from at least the Third Dynasty, and through the course of dynastic history, it differed in aspect, composition, and theme. Self-presentations show the lives of the elites, vividly portraying their beliefs, culture, and expectations for the afterlife. The relationship between royalty and nobility in self-presentations is alluring and informative and compels us to envision the times and the contingencies in which they were created. These texts also make explicit their owners’ wish to be...

Meroe and Egypt

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000
The Meroitic Period, which lasted from the third century BCE to around the mid-fourth century CE, comprises the second of two phases of Kushite empire in the territory of what is today Sudan, the first phase comprising the Napatan era (c. 655 – 300 BCE). While Meroitic culture reflects both Napatan influence and that of periods of Egyptian colonization (during Egypt’s New Kingdom, c. 1550 – 1070 BCE), it is characterized by the emergence of indigenous cultural elements. These include an indigenous script as well as ideological features such as concepts of kingship, burial customs, and the introduction of indigenous deities into the old Egypto-centric pantheon. Meroitic rulers were buried in cemeteries in the regions of (Gebel) Barkal and Meroe. The shift of burial grounds from the vicinity of Barkal to Meroe has led scholars to designate the period and culture as “Meroitic.” There was, however, no cultural break with former times, but rather a continuation and development...

Egyptian Among Neighboring African Languages

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Northeast Africa is dominated by two linguistic macrofamilies, Afroasiatic, with its constituent branches of Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, Chadic, and Omotic, and the Nilo-Saharan languages, with the most relevant phylum being the Eastern Sudanic branch spread across the Sahel and East Africa. On present research, there is evidence for contact between ancient Egyptian and ancient Berber, Cushitic, and Eastern Sudanic languages, with possibilities of contact with Ethiosemitic languages (the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea). Evidence of Egypt’s contact with neighboring peoples in Northeast Africa is well established from the archaeological record and historical texts, especially along the Middle Nile (Nubia). The use of linguistic material, including loanwords and foreign names, for reconstructing ancient phases of contact between Egyptians and neighboring peoples is a relatively “untapped” source. The lexical data demonstrates a great familiarity and...

Amarna: Private and Royal Tombs

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The monumental rock-cut tombs of Tell el-Amarna were constructed for members of the elite and for Pharaoh Akhenaten with his family. These monuments are reckoned to be a main source for studying the religion of the so-called “Amarna Period”, their walls bearing for example the widely known “hymns to the Aten”. All tombs are located on the east bank of the Nile, the private tombs in the limestone cliffs and foothills surrounding the city of Akhetaten to the east. Their outline encompasses one to three rooms furnished with columns, statues and reliefs. The burial was foreseen underneath those rooms, following a sloping passage or a shaft. The royal tombs were constructed in remote wadis behind the cliffs, their main axes being sloping passages themselves. The rooms for the burial of the royal family were decorated with relief, too, but special architectural features are limited to pillars. Due to the comparatively short period of occupation of the city, most of the tomb structures...

German Egyptology (1882-1914)

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000
The period from 1882 to 1914 has been termed the “Golden Age” of Egyptology. Under Adolf Erman, the successor of Carl Richard Lepsius, one of Egyptology’s “founding fathers,” who had died in 1884, Egyptology experienced the inauguration of the Ancient Egyptian Dictionary Project in 1897 and the founding of the German Oriental Society in 1898. Erman’s successful effort to send Ludwig Borchardt to Egypt in 1895 was the prelude to a permanent presence of German Egyptology in Egypt. The implementation in 1898 of an international project to create the Catalogue Général (CG) was followed by Borchardt’s appointment as scholarly attaché at the German Consulate General in Cairo in 1899, the construction of “German House” in Western Thebes in 1904, the establishment of the Imperial German Institute in Cairo between 1906 and 1907, and the initiation of a program of excavations and research in Egypt. In 1912 the painted bust of Queen Nefertiti was discovered. During the same...

Napatan Period

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The centuries that followed the 25th Dynasty in Nubia witnessed significant changes in the way the kingdom of Kush related to the outside world: an Assyrian invasion had expelled the Kushite kings from the Egyptian throne, and the geographical focus of Kushite royal activity then gradually shifted southward. This period has also received less scholarly attention than the 25th Dynasty that preceded it—in part because of the difficulties posed by the evidence, but also because of modern influences on the interpretation of ancient history. The surviving texts, art, architecture, and other material culture from the Napatan period are generous sources of information, but each body of evidence shows little connection to the others. In addition, most of the evidence for the period was first discovered in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century CE, when Sudan was under foreign domination, leading some of the earliest modern interpreters to depict the Nubian region...

Emotions

Sat, 2 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Emotions have been extensively studied across disciplines, but are best defined within specific cultural contexts. In ancient Egypt, they are presented both as visceral experiences that may be “contained” within or transmitted from the heart or stomach, and as socially constructed strands of personhood. Emotions manifest in gestures, postures, and, to a lesser extent, facial expressions in Egyptian art; the presence or absence of their markers in humans may be connected to decorum and status. Animals are used both in art and script to represent emotional states. Various expressive terms exist to describe emotions linguistically, many of them compounds involving the heart, and emotional states are described in diverse genres of texts throughout time, particularly in New Kingdom love poetry. This discussion presents an overview of how emotions have been identified and studied in ancient Egypt and suggests possible future avenues and domains for research.

25th Dynasty

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The era of the 25^th Dynasty during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE witnessed the annexation of Egypt by kings from the neighboring land of Kush. The phrase “Twenty-fifth Dynasty” may therefore refer to either this family of royals, the state they commanded, or the historical period of their rule, but in each case research has consistently focused on the regime’s foreign aspect and its possible effects. The sequence of discovery has also proven especially consequential: not only have sources known first to scholarship shaped the interpretation of evidence found later, but the modern political contexts of those earliest discoveries have left a lasting and often misleading impression upon subsequent understanding of the period. As a result, fundamental assumptions made by scholars during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been drawn into question during the twenty-first century through a reevaluation of that evidence, particularly in debates related...

Late Egyptian

Sun, 30 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Late Egyptian, the language of ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, is attested in written form in a large array of literary and non-literary genres, mainly in the hieratic script on papyri and ostraca, but also in hieroglyphic monumental epigraphy. Late Egyptian is the first stage of the second major phase of Egyptian, according to the widely accepted division of the history of the language into Earlier and Later Egyptian. Typologically, Late Egyptian reflects major differences with respect to earlier stages of the language. Being more analytical in character, Late Egyptian thus displays a marked tendency to separate morphological from lexical information. It also tends to be more explicit in the articulation of sentences at the macro-syntactic level (Conjunctive and Sequential) and more time-oriented in its system of grammatical tenses than the aspect-oriented system of Classical Egyptian.

Letters to the Dead

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000
Letters to the Dead is the conventional, modern name for a collection of texts that petition the recently deceased, typically for assistance with problems of inheritance, illness, or fertility. They are known from the Old Kingdom through the Late Period and have been preserved upon ceramic vessels and figurines, stone stelae, papyrus, and linen. The Letters were written by male and female petitioners and are addressed to both male and female dead. Though only a few dozen Letters to the Dead have been identified, they are important artifacts for better understanding interactions between the living and the dead in ancient Egypt. Notably, they illuminate the quotidian, social networks that existed between the living and the dead, help us to understand how the ancient Egyptians conceived of and interacted with the dead, and expand upon our knowledge of mortuary culture and popular religious practices in ancient Egypt.

Late Antiquity

Sat, 28 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000
Late antique Egypt ran from the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian (284-305 CE) to the Arab conquest of Egypt (641 CE). During this period, Egypt was part of the eastern Roman Empire and was ruled from Constantinople from the founding of that city in the 320s CE. Culturally, Egypt’s elite were part of the wider Roman world, sharing in its classical education. However, several developments marked Egypt’s distinctiveness in this period. These developments included the flourishing of literature in Coptic, the final written form of the native language, and the creation and rapid growth of several forms of monastic Christianity. These developments accompanied the expansion of Christianity throughout the countryside and a parallel decline in the public role of native religious practices. This expansion of Christianity also led to its expansion in Nubia and Ethiopia, Egypt’s closest international neighbors, as a result of travel and trade from the Roman world. Documentary and archaeological...

Microhistory

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Microhistory is a rather ambiguous term, usually referring to the lives, activities, and cultural values of common people, rarely evoked in official sources. In the case of ancient Egypt, both the urban and village spheres provide some clues about the existence, social relations, spiritual expectations, and life conditions of farmers, craftspersons, and “marginal” populations (such as herders), and also about “invisible” elites that played so important a role in the stability of the kingdom. In some instances, exceptional archives (the Ramesside tomb-robbery papyri, Papyrus Turin 1887, recording the “Elephantine scandal,” and the thousands of ostraca recovered at Deir el-Medina) cast light on the realities of social life, in which crimes and reprehensible practices appear quite common. In other cases, structural archaeological evidence reveals the harsh conditions under which many Egyptians lived and died. Finally, small private archives, often associated with temple...

Radjedef to the Eighth Dynasty

Sun, 17 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Our sources for the chronology of the Old Kingdom comprise a mere handful of contemporary written documents, supplemented by radiocarbon dates, some of which have recently been recalibrated by Oxford University. The bulk of historical evidence, deriving primarily from residential cemeteries of the ruling kings and the elite, as well as from provincial sites, shows that during large portions of the Old Kingdom Egypt represented a relatively centralized state with a well-structured administrative system. Until the end of the Fourth Dynasty Egypt’s royal family exercised a role of complete authority, exemplified in the monumental construction of pyramids, such as those on the Giza Plateau. Fourth-Dynasty king Radjedef broke with tradition, building his pyramid at Abu Rawash, nearer the major cult center of Heliopolis. Evident from the Fifth Dynasty onward is a steady decline in the royal family’s dominant role in the state administration, concomitant with the rising importance...

Metaphor

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

When tracing the epistemological but also thematic development of metaphor studies in Egyptology, what can be seen is a change from a typological perspective, which sought to categorize both motifs and metaphor types, to a more cognitive perspective, which was more interested in the processes behind the linguistic phenomena. In the last few years there has also been increased interest in the development of metaphors in pan-textual as well as multimodal perspective and in the usage and extent of metaphors in all range of phenomena, such as textual, graphemic, and even pictorial media.

Reserve Head

Thu, 2 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The enigmatic reserve heads of the Old Kingdom (2670-2168 BCE) in Egypt have been the topic of much discussion and debate since their discovery, primarily on the Giza Plateau, at the turn of the twentieth century. Their purpose and meaning to the ancient Egyptians confounded the first excavators who discovered them (de Morgan, Borchardt, Reisner, and Junker), and have puzzled the later Egyptian art historians, archaeologists, and Egyptologists who have studied them over the past century. This is mainly because the Egyptians did not leave a record for their use or function and because the heads were discovered in secondary context. All of the tombs in which they were found were either plundered or disturbed by flood, leaving them to much speculation. Their original discoverers and subsequent scholars have advanced numerous theories, which may or may not have a basis in the archaeological record. Included here is a closer examination of the form, typology, and archaeological...

History of Egypt in Palestine

Sun, 6 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Egyptian interactions and contact with Palestine began as early as the fourth millennium BCE, and continued, in varying forms and at times far more intensively than others, until the conquest of the ancient world by Alexander the Great. Numerous data—textual, material, archaeological—found in both Egyptian and southern Levantine contexts illustrate the diverse spectrum of interaction and contact between the two regions, which ranged from colonialism, to imperial expansion, to diplomatic relations, to commerce. By virtue of geographic proximity, economic interests, and occasionally political necessity, the respective histories of the two regions remained irreducibly interconnected. In all periods, situations and events in Egypt influenced growth and development in the southern Levant, while at times different societies and political considerations in Palestine also affected Egyptian culture.

Ration System

Fri, 8 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The distribution of rations can be found in documents from different period of the Egyptian history but the general features of the ration system is not easy to trace. Most of the sources are the more or less fragmentary lists of wages/payments that reflect various conditions, such as status of the recipients, period to which the payment corresponds etc, that are not always known to us. Other documents provide us with categories of allowances ascribed to the workmen and officials who participated on the same project. A few traces of a systematic approach can be recognized in the evidence, for instance value-units and day’s work units, but many details remain unclear. Bread, beer and grain represented the basic components of the rations in all periods. Bread and beer was often allocated daily while the grain was at some periods used as a monthly payment. On the other hand meat was considered an extra ration while linen and other valuable products could be distributed in longer...

Meroitic

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000
The Meroitic language is known from more than two thousands inscriptions found in the northern part of Sudan and in Egyptian Nubia. Although it was written only during the Kingdom of Meroe (300 BC – AD 350), the language is already attested in Egyptian transcriptions of personal names from the second millennium BC on. Meroitic was written in two scripts, cursive and hieroglyphic, both derived from Egyptian scripts. The system is alphasyllabic and uses twenty-three signs plus a word-divider made of two or three dots. The scripts were deciphered in 1907-1911 by F. Ll. Griffith, but knowledge of the language itself still remains incomplete. However, the linguistic affiliation of Meroitic has been recently established: it belongs to the Northern East Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. Further advances in understanding the Meroitic texts are expected from comparative linguistic research made possibly by this discovery.

Second Intermediate Period

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In the Second Intermediate Period (late 13th to 17th Dynasty), the territories that had been ruled by the centralized Egyptian state—including Lower Nubia—were divided between the kingdom of Kerma, the Theban kingdom, the kingdom of Avaris, and possibly other little known political entities. A gap in the written documentation calls for a wide use of sigillographic and archaeological evidence in the reconstruction of the history of this period. Material culture, art, and administration developed independently in different parts of Egypt due to a lack of a centralized state. In the Theban kingdom, the local administration of the Late Middle Kingdom persisted in a reduced form, as attested by private stelae, statues, and tomb inscriptions.

Traditional Egyptian I (Dynamics)

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The problem of the phenomenon referred to as égyptien de tradition (Traditional Egyptian) derives from a basic and long-made observation: a great many texts from ancient Egypt implement an obviously anachronistic and partly artificial language, reflecting elements of earlier stages of Egyptian in varying proportions and degrees while also reflecting elements of the contemporary language. Texts continued to be written in égyptien de tradition, either on easy-to-handle supports such as papyri, tablets, and ostraca, or on durable objects and monuments, until the end of Pharaonic civilization.

Ba

Sun, 8 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000
The ba was often written with the sign of a saddle-billed stork or a human-headed falcon and translated into modern languages as the “soul.” It counts among key Egyptian religious terms and concepts, since it described one of the individual components or manifestations in the ancient Egyptian view of both human and divine beings. The notion of the ba itself encompassed many different aspects, spanning from the manifestation of divine powers to the impression that one makes on the world. The complexity of this term also reveals important aspects of the nature of and changes within ancient Egyptian religion.

Tell el-Amarna

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Tell el-Amarna is situated in middle Egypt and is the location of the New Kingdom city of Akhetaten, founded by Akhenaten in c. 1347 BCE as the cult home for the Aten. Occupied only briefly, it is our most complete example of an ancient Egyptian city, at which a contemporaneous urban landscape of cult and ceremonial buildings, palaces, houses, cemeteries, and public spaces has been exposed. It is an invaluable source for the study of both Akhenaten’s reign and of ancient Egyptian urbanism. The site has an extensive excavation history, and work continues there today.

Traditional Egyptian II (Ptolemaic, Roman)

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

From 404 BCE - 394 CE hieroglyphic texts were in general composed in the high-status language variety termed Traditional Egyptian. This was used exclusively in religious and sacerdotal contexts and is as such opposed to Demotic, which served both as a spoken and as a written language. Traditional Egyptian is a reflex of how the late scribes perceived the classical language. The result is a morphologically impoverished Egyptian (in comparison with the classical language), in combination with a phonology that corresponds largely to Demotic. Traditional Egyptian served as a vehicle for many new compositions, in particular religious inscriptions in temples and on papyri, but also funerary, historical, and autobiographical texts. Meanwhile, older texts in the classical language continued to be copied: as long as there are no reliable means of dating texts according to linguistic criteria, it remains difficult to establish the exact corpus of texts written in Traditional Egyptian.<...

Violence

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout time, Egyptian sources display divergent attitudes towards violence expressing the belief that some situations of violence were positive and to be encouraged, while others were to be avoided. Sanctioned violence could be employed for a variety of reasons—the severity of which ranged from inflicting blows to gruesome death. Violence was part of the preternatural realm, notably as Egyptians attempted to thwart potential violence in the afterlife. While the average Egyptian was supposed to eschew violence, kings and their representatives were expected to engage in violent acts in many circumstances. Improper violence disturbed order while sanctioned violence restored it. While the types of sanctioned violence employed and the reasons for employing it changed over time, some attitudes about violence remained constant.

Life Expectancy

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The analysis of life expectancy and longevity is one approach to analysing diversity in the population of ancient Egypt. It is, however, important to understand the difficulties in such calculations and in the data from which such calculations are derived. Adult age is difficult to determine either from documentary or biological sources, so average age-at-death is particularly hard to determine. This discussion explores the issues surrounding demography, the potential sources for such data, and suggests ways that life expectancy in Egypt might be assessed and integrated with broader archaeological and Egyptological information.

Persian Period

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000
In the last two centuries before the arrival of Alexander the Great, Persia invaded Egypt twice and administered it as a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire. Although the Ptolemies later demonized the Persians, and most traces of their rule were systematically removed, the history of this fascinating period can be reconstructed thanks to written sources from different languages (hieroglyphic, Demotic, Aramaic, Old Persian, Greek) and the multicultural archaeological record. These periods of foreign domination helped solidify Egypt's national identity during the intervening Late Period (Dynasties 28-30) and set the stage for subsequent centuries of Greek and Roman rule.

Cognitive Linguistics

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Cognitive linguistics is an influential branch of linguistics, which has played an increasing role in different areas of Egyptology over the last couple of decades. Concepts from cognitive linguistics have been especially influential in the study of determinatives/classifiers in the hieroglyphic script, but they have also proven useful to elucidate a number of other questions, both narrowly linguistic and more broadly cultural historical.

Pyramid Age: Huni to Radjedef

Thu, 2 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The early to mid-4^th Dynasty (c. 2600-2500 BCE) stands out as a peak of monumentality in the early historical periods of Pharaonic Egypt. Within 100 years, Sneferu, Khufu, and Radjedef built pyramids on an unprecedented scale at Maidum, Dahshur, Giza, and Abu Rawash. Pyramid construction absorbed enormous resources and reflects a new quality of large-scale organization and centralization. Pyramids are the nucleus of Old Kingdom court cemeteries. The early 4^th Dynasty examples were a template for the generations following the 4^th Dynasty. Like few other sites, the workmen settlements and ancillary buildings in Giza and Dahshur allow for a “contextual approach,” embedding pyramids in the interplay of people, materials, and landscape. The areas outside the political center are less well-known, although the body of evidence is constantly growing. The imbalance of the record makes the relationship of center and periphery one of the key questions...

Amarna Period

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV is controversial. Although substantial evidence for this period has been preserved, it is inconclusive on many important details. Nonetheless, the revolutionary nature of Akhenaten’s rule is salient to the modern student of ancient Egypt. The king’s devotion to and promotion of only one deity, the sun disk Aten, is a break from traditional Egyptian religion. Many theories developed about this era are often influenced by the history of its rediscovery and by recognition that Akhenaten’s immediate successors rejected his rule.

Akkadian from Egypt

Tue, 9 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language from Mesopotamia written in the cuneiform script, wasemployed as a diplomatic lingua franca between the major powers of the Late Bronze Age.Akkadian from Egypt defines the language of the Akkadian texts that originated in Egypt. Thesewere probably written by Egyptian scribes. On various linguistic levels ranging from phonology tomorpho-syntax, Akkadian from Egypt differs from contemporary varieties of Akkadian. In severalcases, these differences can be analyzed as probably representing interferences with Egyptian, thenative language of the scribes. Rather than as an Akkadian dialect, Akkadian from Egypt canthus be characterized as an interlanguage, that is, as an attempt by non-native speakers tocommunicate in a foreign language that they have learned more or less successfully. This is also thereason behind the instability of the system, rule changes, and adjustments.

Transition 18th–19th dynasty

Tue, 2 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The transition between the 18th and 19th Dynasties, a period beginning with the reign of Aye and concluding with the reign of Sety I, represents the conclusion to the tumultuous Amarna Period and the beginning of the stability and prosperity of the following Ramesside Period. The rule of individuals coming from non-royal families—Aye, Horemheb, and Ramesses I—gives way to a strong dynastic succession with Sety I. Limited monumental construction during the short reigns of Aye and Ramesses I can be contrasted with the extensive building at Karnak during the reign of Horemheb and the impressive construction program of Sety I throughout Egypt. Foreign policy in Syria-Palestine and Nubia during the reign of Sety I reinforce Egypt’s imperial domination of those regions, and larger geo-political conflicts are dominated by the rise of the Hittite Empire. In the cultural sphere, the transition between the 18th and 19th Dynasties reversed the revolutionary changes enacted by Akhenaten,...

Computational Linguistics in Egyptology

Thu, 2 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Computer-assisted approaches to text and language, referred to as computational linguistics, represent a developing field in Egyptology. One of the main concerns has been and continues to be the encoding of hieroglyphic signs for computers. The historical standard in this respect is the Manuel de Codage; a Unicode encoding has also been recently developed. Computer-assisted approaches also provide helpful tools notably for creating, annotating, and exploiting text databases. After pioneering work in the 1960s, a number of large text databases have been developed since the 1990s, for example, the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae or the “projet Ramsès.” Ongoing projects involve automated text processing and analysis for Egyptian, especially automated transliteration, part-of-speech tagging, and optical character recognition.

Old Egyptian

Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000
Old Egyptian is the earliest stage of the ancient Egyptian language that is preserved in extensive texts. It represents a dialect as well as a historical stage of the language, showing grammatical similarities with and distinctions from later ones. One particular issue in studying Old Egyptian lies in the uneven nature of the Old Kingdom written record, which mostly consists of texts relating to the funerary domain.

Sanctuary of Heqaib

Wed, 3 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Pepinakht, called Heqaib, was an expedition leader of the late 6^th Dynasty. Recent fieldwork in Elephantine has revealed some objects that suggest it was customary to perform processions, which started at the ka-chapels in the administrative center of Elephantine, for the mortuary cult of a number of late Old Kingdom officials, among them Pepinakht/Heqaib. Heqaib’s sanctuary is an excellent example of the cult of a private person who had the characteristics of a saint, within a settlement context in the Middle Kingdom and the early 2^nd Intermediate Period. The sanctuary was a place of pilgrimage of supra-regional importance and has revealed a well-dated series of extraordinary Middle Kingdom sculpture, stelae, and shrines.

Early–mid 20th dynasty

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The origins of the 20th Dynasty remain obscure, their only indications being provided by the Elephantine Stela. After several years of political and social unrest, Sethnakhte seized power as first king of the 20th Dynasty. He was succeeded by his son Ramesses III, who is considered to be the last great king of the New Kingdom. His reign is marked by a long list of achievements, including an impressive building program, military successes, and a number of expeditions.

History-Writing in Ancient Egypt

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000
The problematic search for ancient Egyptian historiography is tied to the debated extent and form of historical consciousness. The ancient Egyptians did have a sense of “historical” events or achievements that could be described to a future audience. Though they did not produce a historiography comparable to other ancient, or later Western, models, which attempt to analyze and critically reconstruct the distant past, they left texts that display historiographic features, such as an awareness of the singularity of events, or references to “reality.” The annals and the “king’s novel” are the most discussed examples of this kind of text. The non-mythical distant past is a featured subject of king-lists, and it became the object of historiography in Manetho’s Aegyptiaca.

End of the Old Kingdom

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Egypt’s Old Kingdom ended, according to widespread scholarly opinion, with the last king of the 8th Dynasty—that is, around the middle of the twenty-second century BCE, or a few decades later. The reasons for the fall are to be seen in internal and/or climatic factors that arose much earlier, or possibly in an invasion from the northeast—explanations that do not preclude each other. As a result of these factors, the territorial entity of the Egyptian state was dissolved and a period of economic and cultural decline followed. The end of the Old Kingdom is one of the most controversial topics in Egyptian historiography. Moreover, the end recorded by the ancient Egyptians does not necessarily coincide with what modern scholars have considered the end. Until now the exact causes for the decline remain uncertain.

Egyptian History in the Classical Historiographers

Thu, 22 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000
Egyptian history was discussed by a number of classical historians. Two extensive accounts havesurvived intact (those of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus) along with the fragmentary remains ofnumerous other texts. Though classical historians are not usually reliable as independent sources forthe history of Egypt before the Saïte Period, they often provide useful information on Egyptian historyin the periods contemporary with classical Greek and Roman civilization, as well as evidence of howearlier phases of Egyptian history were remembered and represented by Greek and Roman authors,and by Egyptians themselves.

Saddle-Billed Stork (Ba-Bird)

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The ba, whose notion spanned from the divine to the manifestation of the divine, and from the supernatural (or rather super-human) manifestation of the dead to the notion of the soul (psyche) or reputation, counts among the most important Egyptian religious concepts. The term and its hieroglyphic renderings are attested for all periods of ancient Egyptian history. In the process of time the word ba was written with various signs, including that of a stork (G 29), a ram (E 10), and a human-headed falcon (G 53). Its representation with sign G 29—the saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis)—is both the earliest and the most attested depiction connected to the religious concept of the ba. Thus it serves as a crucial witness to the original meaning and main aspect of the ba.

Prehistoric Regional Cultures

Sat, 1 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In Egypt at the beginning of the fourth millennium BCE two distinct cultural units developed. In the south arose the Naqada culture, named after the great cemetery discovered by Petrie at the end of the nineteenth century. In the north, spanning the Delta up to the Memphite region, arose the “Maadi-Buto,” or Lower Egyptian culture, named after the two reference sites of Maadi and Buto. The establishment of these two entities, whose material culture and funereal traditions differed, was the result of the role played in the process of neolithization of the Nile Valley by two great regions: the East on the one hand and the Sahara on the other. During the fourth millennium, after a period of interactions between those two regions, a cultural uniformity was born comprising elements of a mixed culture dominated by southern features.

Dynasties 2 and 3

Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The 2nd-3rd dynasties were crucial for the early development of Pharaonic civilization, yet they remain obscure due to a paucity of contemporary texts and securely dated material. The broad historical outline has been established with some certainty, but numerous questions remain unanswered. Royal funerary monuments dominate the archaeological record and help to chart changes in the underlying ideology. Religion as a whole was virtually indistinguishable from the royal cult, and the disconnect between state and private worship reflects a wider division between the ruling elite and the populace. Nevertheless, the demands of pyramid building led to the opening up and professionalization of government. Long-lasting initiatives to enhance economic productivity included better record-keeping, greater exploitation of Egypt’s mineral wealth, and increased foreign trade.

Egypt and Greece Before Alexander

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000
Egypto-Hellenic contacts, here defined as contacts between the ancient Egyptians and the“haunebut”—the peoples of the Aegean—can be observed since the beginning of Greekcivilization. Both the Minoans and the Mycenaeans had intensive trade relations with Egypt andused Egyptian prototypes to craft their own objects, adapting the original Egyptian meanings intotheir own cultural contexts. In Egypt, Minoan and Mycenaean influence can be traced in thecraftsmanship of pottery and textiles. The relations between Greece and Egypt in the Archaic andClassical Periods were based mainly on trade, but Greek mercenaries gained special importance forEgypt during the Egypto-Persian struggles of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. While Egyptprofited from these contacts, Hellenic culture seems nevertheless to have had little influence onEgypt. Greece, in contrast, profited from Egyptian goods such as papyrus and grain. Moreover,Egyptian wisdom was held in high esteem in Greece.

Late Second Intermediate Period to Early New Kingdom

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The main events of the transition period from the Second Intermediate Period to the New Kingdom are the expulsion of the Hyksos, the reunification of the country, and the reestablishment of a Nubian province. During, and following this process of reunification, the Ahmosids reorganized the administration and started restoration projects. The cultural history is marked by a diverging orientation back ward and forward, a view into the past and into the future. In art, architecture, and literature, we can observe archaistic features and a collecting of old knowledge; but at the same time the Egyptians opened up for new ideas, technologies, and concepts. Altogether, this time is regarded as a turning point in history by both the a ncient Egyptians and modern Egyptologists; and it is one of the most analyzed periods of a ncient Egypt’s history. <...

Land Donations

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Land donations are frequently attested in the written record of ancient Egypt. Used by the king asa means to recompense and honor high dignitaries, civil servants, and temples, they were in no waya royal prerogative. Private individuals also donated land both to temples and royal statues, whichappears to have been a social and economic strategy to strengthen their links with the monarchyand with powerful patrons. In other cases, enough evidence reveals that such donations sought topreserve individual patrimonies from the interference of their owners’ kin. Temples figure at thecore of land donations, especially as beneficiaries of the king’s largesse and of private endowments;their position as local centers of power and authority and their role as heads of patronage networksexplain why they received so many donations of land during the Third Intermediate Period andunder the Saite rule, when political insecurity and state rebuilding made them privileged tools forthe protection...

Transportation

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Transportation in ancient Egypt entailed the use of boats and ships for water travel; for landtransportation, attested methods include foot-traffic and the use of draft animals—especiallydonkeys and oxen, but also, from the first millennium BCE onward, camels. Land vehicles,including carts, chariots, sledges, and carrying chairs, were dependent on the existence and natureof suitable routes, some of which may have been improved or paved along at least part of theirextent. The transport of large objects, especially stone blocks, obelisks, and statues, requiredspecialized techniques, infrastructure, and vehicles.

Inheritance

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In ancient Egypt inheritance was conveyed either through the legal order of succession, favoring sonsover daughters, children over siblings, and older over younger, or through written declarations thatallowed for individualized arrangements. Adoption was the common means by which a childlessperson could acquire an heir. The initial tendency towards a sole heir (preferably the eldest son) wasreplaced by the division of parental property among all children, although the eldest son continued toplay an important role as trustee for his siblings and received a larger or better share according tothe legal order of succession. Documents used for the bequeathing of inheritance varied over time andwere gradually replaced by donations and divisions after the Middle Kingdom. Effectiveness onlyafter the death of the issuer is rarely mentioned explicitly.

Edfu

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The ancient settlement of Edfu saw a long period of occupation, which encompasses almost 3000 yearsof ancient Egyptian history. It functioned as an important urban center as the capital of the 2nd UpperEgyptian nome from the Old Kingdom onwards. Excavations have focused on different periods andareas of the ancient tell providing a glimpse into the evolution of an early urban settlement in the NileValley. A cemetery with tombs dating to the Old and Middle Kingdoms lies in the immediate vicinityof this settlement.

Late Dynastic Period

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Late Dynastic Period is the last period of Egyptian independence under Dynasties 28 to 30 (404 - 343 BCE). As for Egypt’s position in the world, this was the time their military and diplomatic efforts focused on preventing reconquest by the Persian Empire. At home, Dynasties 28 - 29 were marked by a frequent shift of rulers, whose reigns often started and ended violently; in comparison, Dynasty 30 was a strong house, the rule of which was interrupted only from the outside. Culturally this period saw the continuation of certain Late Egyptian trends (archaistic tendency, popularity of animal cults, cult of Osiris and divine couples), which became the platform for the evolution of the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods.

Late Fourth Millennium BCE

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In ancient Egypt, the late fourth millennium BCE corresponds to what is known as the latePredynastic Period (Naqada IIIa-b). It was a crucial time for the constitution of Egypt as a singlepolitical entity. In Upper Egypt, earlier tendencies towards social differentiation and functionalspecialization intensify during this period, mainly in Hierakonpolis and Abydos. From this timeon, similar tendencies are also apparent in Lower Egypt, in centers such as Buto, Tell el-Farkha,and Minshat Abu Omar. The process of political unification of Egypt takes place during thisperiod. Authors differ with regard to specific events, but most agree that the process began inUpper Egypt and then continued outwards, to ultimately encompass the territory from Elephantineto the Nile Delta. The earliest known examples of writing (Abydos Tomb U-j) date back to thisperiod, as well as the earliest serekhs, both anonymous and with kings’ names. These names areusually grouped under the label “Dynasty 0,”...

Music and Musicians

Sun, 7 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Iconographic, textual, and archaeological sources show that music played an essential role withinancient Egyptian civilization throughout all periods. Music was of utmost importance in ritualsand festivals. Different forms of music with multiple functions existed for public or privaterepresentations, profane or sacred, interpreted by male or female musicians acting as professionalsor amateurs. Consequently, from religious celebrations to entertainment, the range of types of musicand musicians was very large.

Karnak: the Temple of Amun-Ra-Who-Hears-Prayers

Sat, 6 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The eastern temple of Karnak known as “Temple of Amun-Ra-Who-Hears-Prayers” was partly built and entirely redecorated between year 40 and year 46 of the reign of Ramesses II; it was located in an area devoted to the personal piety from Thutmose III until the reign of Ptolemy VIII. The masonry has revealed that the temple hides previous structures. This former edifice could be the work of Horemheb. The columns of the hypostyle hall, which have probably been in place since the Thutmosid Period and were transformed by the Ramesside intervention, suggest also that a Thutmosid structure was still there. 4Dm nHt is the principal epithet—but not the only one—which indicates that the king as the god listens to the prayers in this sector of the Karnak Temple complex. Some tenuous indications suggest that divine justice, as corollary of the listening of the prayers, could have been applied in the temple by means of a processional bark before the Ptolemaic Period; during...

Late Middle Kingdom

Sat, 6 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the Egyptian late Middle Kingdom (from Senusret III in the mid 12th to the 13th Dynasty), innovations are visible at all levels of Egyptian culture and administration. At this time, the country was heavily centralized, and there are several indications of a wish for tighter control in administration, while local governors lost much of their power. Royal activities were mainly focused on the Memphis-Fayum region, with Abydos and Thebes being two other important centers. At Avaris in the east Delta, the population grew substantially, also due to the influx of many foreigners from the Near East. Senusret III launched military campaigns against Nubia and Palestine, on a scale not attested before. In addition to his pyramid at Dahshur, he had a great funerary complex at Abydos. Amenemhat III is mainly known for his huge funerary complex at Hawara, later called the “Labyrinth” by the ancient Greeks. In sculpture, a new style of portraiture for both kings shows them at an advanced...

Wadi el-Hol

Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Wadi el-Hol is an ensemble of rock inscription sites and caravansary deposits near the mid-point of the Farshut Road, roughly equidistant between ancient Thebes and Hiw. The rock inscriptions range in date between the Predynastic and Coptic Periods, with the majority belonging to the Middle Kingdom. Most inscriptions record names and titles, but others are longer and of more unusual content, including literary texts and references to religious celebrations in the deep desert. Archaeological remains include Predynastic burials of the Tasian culture and debris mounds that represent the detritus of caravans and travelers along the Farshut Road. The largest deposit includes a continuous stratigraphic record of ceramic and organic material from the late Middle Kingdom through the Persian Period.

Linguistic consciousness

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The present article addresses the ancient Egyptians’ level of linguistic awareness from earliest times to the Coptic Period. The degree to which the Egyptians might have understood their language as a socio-cultural medium reflective of and adapted to different contexts of communication is discussed, along with their attitude to foreign languages and perception of diachronic processes. In addition, the degree to which the speakers of Egyptian may have viewed their native language as a linguistic and grammatical system is considered in detail.

Gebelein

Wed, 1 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The site of Gebelein, whose Arabic name “two mountains” seems to reflect the ancient Egyptianjnrtj, “two rocks,” was occupied from Prehistory to the Roman Period. Tombs from Naqada I tothe Middle Kingdom have been found in the area. Remains such as papyri discovered in tombs ofthe 4th Dynasty are the most ancient documents of their kind. A settlement developed close to thesacred area of the temple built on top of the southern hill at least from the 2nd Dynasty on. Asidefrom the temple blocks, the remains from there are mainly votive inscriptions offered to the goddessHathor by kings and private individuals from the Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemaic and RomanPeriods. After being a royal estate during the Old Kingdom, Gebelein appears to have become aplace for recruitment of mercenaries, a military post, and, in the Ptolemaic Period, a garrisonsettlement.

Boats (Use of)

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ancient Egyptian boats are defined as river-going vessels (in contrast with sea-going ships). Their use from late Prehistory through the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods included general transportation and travel, military use, religious/ceremonial use, and fishing. Depending on size and function, boats were built from papyrus or wood. The oldest form of propulsion was paddling, although there is some evidence for towing as well. Sailing was probably introduced towards the end of the late-Predynastic Period.

Travel

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Ornamental Stones

Thu, 7 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The ornamental stones of ancient Egypt comprise a large and diverse group of rocks. Their attractive colors and patterns, and ability to take a good polish, made them sought after for decorative applications in art and architecture. At least 48 varieties of ornamental stone were used by the Egyptians and these come from 45 known ancient quarries, two in northern Sudan and the rest in Egypt.

Marriage and Divorce

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Marriage formed a central social construct of ancient Egyptian culture. It provided the normative framework for producing children, who would act as one’s rightful heirs. The latter were responsible for performing one’s funerary cult, thereby securing one’s eternal life. The economic effects of marriage were also notable. The husband, wife, and children were all perceived as having equal rights to the conjugal joint-property consisting of a 1/3 share each. In addition to this, the spouses might own private property of their own. As marriage modified many aspects of daily life such as social status, domicile, and the intricate network of interpersonal rights and obligations, it was not a relationship entered into at random. A sequence consisting of a choice of partner followed by an exchange of gifts and assets preceded the actual marrying. Once the marital status was a fact, both parties were expected to abstain from extramarital relationships....

Northern Bald Ibis (Akh-Bird)

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Three different kinds of ibis species are attested from ancient Egypt: the sacred ibis, the glossy ibis, and the northern bald ibis. Pictorial representations of the latter bird—easily recognizable by the shape of its body, the shorter legs, long curved beak, and the typical crest covering the back of the head—were used in writings of the noun akh and related words and notions (e.g., the blessed dead). We can deduce from modern observations that in ancient times this member of the ibis species used to dwell on rocky cliffs on the eastern bank of the Nile, that is, at the very place designated as the ideal rebirth and resurrection region (the akhet). Thus, the northern bald ibises might have been viewed as visitors and messengers from the other world—earthly manifestations of the blessed dead (the akhu). The material and pictorial evidence dealing with the northern bald ibis in ancient Egypt is accurate, precise, and elaborate in the early periods of Egyptian history...

Akh

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The notion of akh, often translated as (effective) spirit, pointed toward many different meanings, such as the identity of the transfigured dead as well as that of living persons who acted efficaciously for (or on behalf of) their masters. The akh belonged to cardinal terms of ancient Egyptian religion and hence is often found in Egyptian religious texts, as well as in other textual and iconographic sources. Its basic meaning was related to effectiveness and reciprocal relationship that crossed the borderlines between different spheres.

Personal Names: Function and Significance

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In ancient Egypt, an individual’s name was of vital importance for defining his identity insociety and assuring his survival for posterity. A person might have two or even three names,one of them sometimes being a basilophorous name (a name that incorporates a king’s name)adopted by the individual at a certain stage of life. For foreigners, taking an Egyptian namewas frequently a means by which they integrated into Egyptian society. Grave crimes wouldentail damnatio memoriae, a process by which a person’s identity could essentially beerased by mutilation and obliteration of the name. Certain personal names also hadapotropaic potential, and the names of the sages of the past could even be used in magic.

Personal Names: Structures and Patterns

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The diversity and complexity of ancient Egyptian personal names points to a range of availablepatterns and options for name-giving. Alongside personal names that make direct reference tothe name-bearer and his or her family, there are numerous names that refer to a god, the ruling(or an earlier) king, or some venerated individual, with or without simultaneous reference to thename-bearer or his family. An individual could be designated, for example, as one beloved,given, or protected by a god or king, but a name could equally contain an objective statementabout god or king.

Law Courts

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Egyptian law courts originated as councils of officials, which, besides acting as judges, also had other administrative tasks. Accordingly, they were known by the rather unspecific terms DADAt (Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom) or qnbt (Middle Kingdom until the beginning of the Late Period), which simply means “committee.” Their members are usually referred to as srw, “officials,” although more specific designations also occur. From the 26th Dynasty onwards, the members of the courts seem to have been mainly, if not exclusively, priests with a specific juridical education, called wptjw, “judges.” From the New Kingdom onwards, a division into smaller local courts and great courts located in the capital(s) can be observed. Local courts dealt with minor cases of disputed property and petty crimes, which were punished with beatings, while the great courts attended to trials about land ownership, cases concerning officials, and crimes...