The abstracts and bios for the symposium are available below:
The Chaîne Opératoire between Decorum and Reality: Reconnecting idealised production phases and professions to ancient Egyptian society.
– Cristina Alù
Early studies of ancient Egyptian production techniques relied almost entirely on wall depictions of élite tombs to reconstruct the chaîne opératoire. Subsequently, the archaeological discovery of production workshops gave impetus to apply ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology to the field of Egyptology ultimately putting the relevance of iconography into perspective. Iconographical motives have thus been relegated as a mirror of figurative conventions that had little to do with material culture. Through a preliminary comparative study of production scenes (bread-making, brewing, oil and wine making, but also metallurgy, pottery, leather, textiles productions) from Middle Kingdom necropolises, it has been possible to note alongside clear signs of idealisation, a marked relevance to the phases of the different production chains and the tools used during the processes. Furthermore, certain assumptions about gender and age roles in craft and manual occupations could be reconsidered in a more flexible manner by means of such a study. This presentation will summarise the preliminary results of a still ongoing research, which aims at updating Drenkhan’s work on ‘Die Handwerker’, also by supplementing it with the available archaeological data.
Containing Aroma: analysing perfume vessels and incense burners from Middle Bronze Age contexts..
– Catherine Bishop
Olfactory senses had and have an impact on every aspect of life. The value of scent, therefore, was not unknown, with complex smellscapes dominating cities and rural areas in the Middle Bronze Age. This research focuses on the analysis of the vehicles of aromatic dissemination – ranging from censers to perfume bottles, focussing on artefacts across the Eastern Mediterranean. Over 100 museum collections will be analysed and discussed, commenting on the purpose of artefact form and design, emphasising variation and diversity across ancient cultures. This research will particularly focus on ancient Egypt and Babylon, utilising an interdisciplinary approach. It is through this analysis that I aim to connect these distinct and prominent kingdoms through further analysis and comparison of their similar smellscapes. Further information on trade and cultural contact can be extrapolated from this research, with the importance of smell transcending geographical and chronological barriers.
On the Right Side of the King: A study of early Ramesside viziers.
– Bente Bladsgaard Jensen
The demise of the Eighteenth Dynasty brought about a new era: The Ramesside Period. During the reigns of the first kings of this new Nineteenth Dynasty a vizier named Paser was in office. A well- known individual due to the extensive number of artefacts and monuments he had made, including his tomb TT106, but has never been subject to full analysis. One part of the current project is the prosopography of the vizier Paser and his impact on the early Nineteenth Dynasty through his material and textual record, including his involvement in the peace negotiations between Ramesses II and the Hittite king, Hattusili III, and his role in the funeral of an Apis bull in regnal year 16 of Ramesses II.
The study includes comparative material in the form of the records of contemporary viziers, especially Paser’s colleague to the north, (Pa)Rahotep. This paper presents some of the preliminary results of a PhD project, conducted at La Sapienza University of Rome 2021-2024.
An Egyptian-Inspired Garden in Turin: The making of ‘Open Courtyard: Flora of Ancient Egypt’.
– Divina Centore
In July 2021, a project was launched to create an Egyptian-inspired garden in the inner courtyard of the Museo Egizio in Turin. The aim was to transform the courtyard of the Collegio dei Nobili – a transitional space from the museum entrance to the ticket office – into a freely accessible space reproducing the plant-life of an ancient Egyptian garden. This led to the ‘Open Courtyard: Flora of Ancient Egypt’ project, inaugurated in June 2022. This project, which straddles archaeology and botany, was carried out by an international and interdisciplinary working group. It had to confront several obstacles and uncertainties, first and foremost the climate in Turin. The installation aims to tell the story the “making of” the garden: the underlying Egyptological, archaeobotanical and architectural choices, the changes planned between now and 2024 (the year of the museum’s bicentenary), and how we told the general public about it, from the moment of its opening until today.
Nineteen shades on display: investigating a sample board of ancient Egyptian wrappings.
– Marion Devigne
This paper presents the recent investigation of nineteen fragments of ancient Egyptian funerary wrappings mounted on cardboard for a private museum in Cairo. Currently housed at the University of Aberdeen Museums Collection in Scotland, this board highlights the attraction for ancient Egyptian funerary practices and illustrates the nineteenth-century tendency to keep cut rectangular samples of wrappings on cardboard as a technical reference after unwrapping mummified remains.
The research project involved the examination of each textile sample using non-invasive methods. Provenance research also enabled to determine the context of its creation and suggest how it was most likely brought from Egypt to Aberdeen. The presentation will also draw attention to James Grant Bey, an Aberdeen graduate for whom this board was originally prepared. Although little-known in the history of Egyptology today, Grant Bey was an important collector of ancient Egyptian antiquities in Cairo and was well acquainted with many Egyptologists at the time.
Through textile analysis and archival research, this presentation will illustrate the private collector’s interest, acquisition and subsequent preparation for display of ancient Egyptian wrappings in Egypt. It will also highlight how this sample board can be used as a unique reference to demonstrate the nineteenth-century western attitude towards the study of materials, desire for classification and practice of unwrapping human remains.
The Nursing Hathor-Cow and the Nineteenth Dynasty: Use of the cow-goddess nursing motif by Nineteenth Dynasty kings.
–Cannon Fairbairn
Within the corpus of images of the king being nursed by a goddess is a series of reliefs, statues, and paintings of the king drinking from the udders of Hathor as a cow. Likely the most famous of these images is the intact statue found in the Hathor shrine at Deir el-Bahari depicting Amenhotep II nursing from Hathor. These images depict the king, in various crowns and regalia, kneeling beneath the goddess holding her udder to their lips. The goddess wears the solar disc between her horns, sometimes with the double feathers, and strides forward. Most often, a second image of the king stands beneath the goddess’s chin wearing the nemes or double feathers striding forward with the goddess. Twenty-six depictions of this motif having survived from temples, tombs, and votive offerings. While the vast majority date to the New Kingdom, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties (c. 1539-1191 BCE), the earliest comes from the Middle Kingdom, Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1939-1760 BCE) and the latest to the time of Caesar Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE) in the Graeco-Roman period. Further, with a few exceptions, most of the images are from or associated with the region of Deir el-Bahari. Research has often classified these scenes as a subcategory of the larger divine nursing motif. However, while the text of these scenes clearly indicates that the are meant to be understood in the context of divine nursing, the scenes themselves contain unique features and functions not shared by other divine nursing scenes. Through a close examination of the scene’s appearance in the Tomb of Paser (TT 106) from the Nineteenth Dynasty (c. 1292-1191 BCE), this presentation will explore ongoing research into the purpose and function of this motif as well as preliminary conclusions regarding its use by Nineteenth Dynasty kings.
The Cycles of the MAB-UNASP Collection: theoretical considerations about the reuse of a collection.
– Jessica Silva Mendes via Zoom
The objects, when musealized, according to U.B. Menezes (1980), have their use value diminished; but we can say that they are still in use. This continuity of use is theoretically discussed by several authors as within spolium (such as A. Cutler, 1998), M. Schiffer (1976) in the behavioural chain, by A. Leroi-Gouhan (1964-1965) in the operative chain and I. Kopytoff (1981) in the life history of the object. According to them, an object can be reused several times in different ways. At the same time, post-modern and post-processualist theories broke the researcher/object of research and present/past dichotomies and allowed the structuring of plural concomitant histories (Hamilakis Y., 2011). Therefore, the objects in a collection have multiple cycles of use, multiple meanings and temporalities and all this information is contained in them, including about the present context (Oliver, L., 2001).
This study uses this theoretical approach to discuss eighty-four objects that are part of the collection of Museum of Biblical Archaeology of the Adventist University of Sao Paulo. We will carry out the proposal suggesting a new narrative for the Egyptian items, addressing reuse in the nineteenth century, during the exploration and fetishization of Egyptology; reuse during the ancient Egyptian period itself; and reuse in the current period, the object as a semiophore, in an institution whose collection fulfils a purpose within a discourse.
From “The Foremost of Nubia” to “The Great God of First Time”: Egyptians’ adaptations and interaction with Nubians during the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550 – 1425 BCE).
– Maria Carolina G. Rodrigues via Zoom
The long relationship between Egypt and Nubia was full of trades and disputes from both sides. Throughout the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550 – 1425 BCE) the Egyptians dominated Lower and Upper Nubia thanks to military campaigns in this period, Nubian leaders were introduced to the Egyptian imperial apparatus as part of an incorporation project. The intensification of contacts between Nubian and Egyptians, stimulated by the colonial project, contributed to the adoption of Egyptian cultural elements in representations by Nubian native elites. Egyptologists, influenced by these depictions, have interpreted the Nubians as Egyptianized. However, this approach limits the analysis of a more complex and nuanced relationships between Nubians and Egyptians. Approaches based on entanglement and identity negotiations offer alternatives to study the Nubian presences in Egypt, highlighting what characteristics were adapted, allowing us to understand the efforts to transit and be accepted by different cultural spheres. Some of these aspects, especially between Thutmose I and Thutmose III’s reigns, such as a decoration on the western external wall of Dedwen in Thutmose III’s Temple in Semna, a relief in Hatshepsut’s Temple in Deir el-Bahari and the traits gained by the god Amun under Thutmose III reign, present adaptations of deities. These adaptations were made based on already known meanings and cults of Nubian and Egyptian deities related to the importance of incense, pastoril cults and royal symbols. I argue that it is possible to analyse Egyptian adaptation and negotiation strategies of their identities while interacting with Nubians. Therefore, the long-term relationship and the Egyptian expansion towards the south also impacted the various Egyptian identities, in contrast to the standardised views of only Nubians being influenced.
Metaphors as a Key to Interpreting New Kingdom Scenes of Bereavement: A work in progress comparison between Deir el-Medina and Tell el-Amarna.
– Valentina Santini via Zoom
According to modern Psychology, metaphors are used “to understand and describe a personal reality” (Coreless et al. 2014: 138). They could be extremely useful in order to express something otherwise impossible to tell, such as taboo subjects, or better understand a situation that is happening around us. According to a series of recent Psychology studies dedicated to the healing process after a loss, one of the systems employed by bereaved people is, in fact, the use of metaphors – a figurative language to depict a phenomenon in terms of another -, which help them to express more effectively their mood and their feelings, which are inexplicable else ways.
What if those metaphors – which can be articulated both verbally and non-verbally – were also used as a key to interpreting and understanding specific gestures depicted on New Kingdom scenes related to death and bereavement? What if, by looking at these gestures in Deir el-Medina and Tell el-Amarna iconography from the standpoint of Psychology, we could have a different approach to study the perception of, and healing after, the loss of a loved one in New Kingdom Egypt?
Assemblage Theory and Remix Culture in the Book of the Dead: A case study of repeated spells.
– Foy D. Scalf via Zoom
The phenomenon of the spells that are repeated in the so-called Saite Recension of the Book of the Dead has recently been studied by Malcolm Mosher, who concluded that their small variations demand a more nuanced view than considering them as equivalents (e.g., spell 10 = spell 48; spell 11 = spell 49; spell 12 = spell 120; spell 13 = spell 121; spell 100 = spell 129; and spell 123 = spell 139). However, the phenomenon of repeated spells is much more widespread than has been thus far recognized, and, in fact, such repetition is at the very heart of the process of composition. This paper begins with the Book of the Dead papyrus of Pasherashakhet, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, which the speaker is preparing for publication. The manuscript shows a rare variant passage inserted at the end of spell 51 attested in a group of five other manuscript witnesses. The variant passage is otherwise known from spell 42. Its insertion into this section has been described as “inextricable.” Yet, spell 52 immediately following spell 51 is, in fact, a repetition of spell 51, but with an addendum appended to the end of the spell. By invoking ideas borrowed from assemblage theory, and its counterparts in remix culture, we can recast the “inextricable” quality of this insertion as the very method by which new spells were created. That is, what our modern designation picks out as spell 52 was nothing other than a repetition of spell 51, with additional material added at the end. The variant passage in the papyrus of Pasherashakhet and its parallels bear witness to this process by which scribes “assembled” passages to form new compositions. This paper will provide a new view on the relationship between these compositions.
To read the speaker’s bios, please click on the link below: