Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

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.

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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.

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.

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.

A shabti is a funerary figure that is usually mummiform in shape and originally represented the deceased in his dignified status. Some New Kingdom shabtis, however, are clad in the dress of daily life. Background of the shabti-concept was the need for food that had to be produced in the realm of the dead as well as on earth. There was an ambiguity in function: a shabti represented the deceased and a shabti substituted the  deceased. On the one hand it was a means for the deceased tobenefit from the food production, on the other hand it created a possibility to escape from the burdensome labor required for the food production. Whenever the deceased was summoned to cultivate the fields in the hereafter, a shabti was supposed to present itself on his/her behalf saying, “I shall do it, here I am.” The substitution was secured by an incantation that—after the Middle Kingdom—used to be written on the shabtis themselves. The spell is also known from the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead. Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the number of shabtis per burial grew considerably. A total of c. 400 was not uncommon in the Late Period. By then shabtis had become mere slaves.

Made from a mixture of silt, clay, sand, and straw formed into regular molded units, unfired mud-bricks were the primary construction material employed in ancient Egypt—being quite literally the most basic of building blocks for all levels of domestic structures, from simple one-room buildings to lavishly decorated palace complexes, as well as administrative and storage structures, and even early phases of temples. Modern methods of mud-brick fabrication accord with ancient evidence, suggesting that the production of unfired mud-brick has remained a stable technology through the millennia. Ancient evidence concerning mud-brick not only illuminates mud-brick production organization, but also highlights the symbolic significance of bricks in religious contexts, especially relating to birth and death.

Late Period temples have their own specific characteristics, such as large, protective, mudbrick temenos walls, hardstone shrines with complex decorations or long mythological texts, colonnaded entrances, innovations such as the wabet and “mammisi,” and burials of royal family members, including the divine adoratrices, within the temple complexes. Representative examples are the Late Period temples at Tanis, Sais, Mendes, and Hibis.

Ancient quarrying and mining sites, which represent some of the most threatened archaeological sites in Egypt, often present extensive cultural landscapes comprising a range of material culture; however, their research potential is still not fully recognized. Hard and soft stone quarrying and gemstone mining in ancient Egypt are poorly understood activities, although both are well attested throughout the Pharaonic era. Current research is re-shaping ideas about, for example, the major use of stone tools and fire in extracting hard stones, transmission of stone-working technologies across often deep time depths, and the role of skilled kin-groups as a social construct rather than large unskilled labor forces.

Wood was a widely used material for sculpture in ancient Egypt from the earliest times. It was mostly native timber, but from the New Kingdom onwards, sculptors also used imported wood species. The majority of extant examples are from funerary contexts, found in both private and royal tombs, although the art of fine wood carving was also employed for furniture and other ritual objects.