Imaging and Imagining the Memphite Necropolis
Imaging and Imagining the Memphite Necropolis

Author: Vincent Verschoor

Publisher: Peeters

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789042935648

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Imaging and Imagining the Memphite Necropolis is a mixture of archaeological, literary and iconographic studies, all relating to the representation, visualization and reconstruction of the material culture and art of the ancient Egyptian burial grounds of the city of Memphis through time. This Liber Amicorum is offered to Rene van Walsem on the occasion of his retirement. He has been lecturer in Egyptology at Leiden University since 1979 and was joint field director of the Dutch archaeological mission at Saqqara from 1999 until 2007. The volume contains twenty-four articles written by academics from around the world, all of whom have been part of, and have been influenced by, Rene van Walsem's extensive professional career. The contributions are divided into five themes: Material Culture - Finds at the Necropolis, relating amongst others to the (Anglo-)Dutch excavations of the New Kingdom tombs of Horemheb, Maya & Merit, Meryneith, and others, at Saqqara Epigraphy - Texts and History, highlighting some surprising textual material connected to Saqqara Theoretics - Religion and Theory of Egyptology, dealing with the material culture of ancient Egypt in particular, art history in general, and the scientific methodology applicable to both fields Mastabas - Scenes of Daily Life, revolving around the interpretation of iconographic programmes in Old Kingdom elite tombs of the Memphite Area, including the necropoleis of Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, Dashur and Meidum Funerary Equipment - Coffins and Stolas, focussing on coffins and specific iconographic details. Touching upon the different subjects to which Rene has made important contributions, the authors imagine new interpretations, and offer images of the Memphite necropolis in various epochs.

The Saqqara Necropolis through the New Kingdom
The Saqqara Necropolis through the New Kingdom

Author: Nico Staring

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-11-28

Total Pages: 559

ISBN-13: 9004467149

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This book is the first comprehensive monographic treatment of the New Kingdom (1539–1078 BCE) necropolis at Saqqara, the burial ground of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, and addresses questions fundamental to understanding the site’s development through time. For example, why were certain areas of the necropolis selected for burial in certain time periods; what were the tombs’ spatial relations to contemporaneous and older monuments; and what effect did earlier structures have on the positioning of tombs and structuring of the necropolis in later times? This study adopts landscape biography as a conceptual tool to study the long-time interaction between people and landscapes.

Mural Decoration in the Theban Necropolis
Mural Decoration in the Theban Necropolis

Author: Betsy M. Bryan

Publisher: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Published: 2023-04-10

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1614910901

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The tombs and mortuary temples of Thebes have proved an enduring topic of interest thanks to a quickly expanding corpus of field materials and a series of conferences devoted to the subject. This volume, the fourth in a series of occasional proceedings from the ongoing Theban Workshop, presents new research on wall decoration in the Theban necropolis. Its thirteen essays, by an international array of leading scholars, attest to the wide and varied scope of the theme.

Urban Religion in Late Antiquity
Urban Religion in Late Antiquity

Author: Asuman Lätzer-Lasar

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3110641275

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Urban Religion is an emerging research field cutting across various social science disciplines, all of them dealing with “lived religion” in contemporary and (mainly) global cities. It describes the reciprocal formation and mutual influence of religion and urbanity in both their material and ideational dimensions. However, this approach, if duly historicized, can be also fruitfully applied to antiquity. Aim of the volume is the analysis of the entanglement of religious communication and city life during an arc of time that is characterised by dramatic and even contradicting developments. Bringing together textual analyses and archaelogical case studies in a comparative perspective, the volume zooms in on the historical context of the advanced imperial and late antique Mediterranean space (2nd–8th centuries CE).

Breaking the dšr.t Vessels
Breaking the dšr.t Vessels

Author: Elena Luise Hertel

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2023-12-28

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 180327588X

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‘Breaking the dšr.t-vessels’ was a funerary rite that involved the intentional damaging of a certain type of ceramic vessel. The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of the rite through a re-evaluation of the primary sources and previous research and to provide the first study devoted entirely to the rite.

Gleaming Coffins. Iconography and Symbolism in Theban Coffin Decoration (21st Dynasty)
Gleaming Coffins. Iconography and Symbolism in Theban Coffin Decoration (21st Dynasty)

Author: Rogério Sousa

Publisher: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra / Coimbra University Press

Published: 2018-03-15

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9892615883

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Egyptian coffin decoration is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon with its own history and evolution. ‘Yellow’ coffins were crafted in Thebes during a particular critical period in the Egyptian History, witnessing to a situation of political unrest and severe economic scarcity affecting Egypt, the Near East and the Mediterranean. And yet, there is no evidence for a decline in the production of these outstanding funerary artefacts. On the contrary, the corpus of ‘yellow’ coffins outnumbers the previous types of Egyptian anthropoid containers and stands out among the most complex and sophisticated objects ever crafted in the Ancient World. Besides this historical paradox, the ‘yellow’ corpus presents important epistemological challenges for our understanding of Egyptian material culture: what kind of space is created within the walls and forms of an anthropoid coffin? What role plays variability and change in this process? Last but not the least, can we understand the meaning behind the multiple shapes and endless variations adopted in coffin decoration during this period? This book addresses these questions presenting the results of a comparative study on coffin decoration involving an extensive sample of objects from the ‘yellow’ corpus dispersed in museums around the world. The results of this study reveal the principles of composition that ruled the work of the ancient Theban craftsmen and show how important coffin decoration was for the Theban priesthood of Amun to convey their own corporative values.

Interdisciplinary Explorations of Postmortem Interaction
Interdisciplinary Explorations of Postmortem Interaction

Author: Estella Weiss-Krejci

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-23

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 3031039564

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In the present as in the past, the dead have been deployed to promote visions of identity, as well as ostensibly wider human values. Through a series of case studies from ancient Egypt through prehistoric, historic, and present-day Europe, this book discusses what is constant and what is locally and historically specific in our ways of interacting with the remains of the dead, their objects, and monuments. Postmortem interaction encompasses not only funerary rituals and intergenerational engagement with forebears, but also concerns encounters with the dead who died centuries and millennia ago. Drawing from a variety of disciplines such as archaeology, bioarchaeology, literary studies, ancient Egyptian philology, and sociocultural anthropology, this volume provides an interdisciplinary account of the ways in which the dead are able to transcend temporal distances and engender social relationships. Until quite recently, literary sciences and archaeology were generally regarded as incommensurable in their aims, methodologies, and source material. Although archaeologists and literary critics have been increasingly willing to borrow concepts and terminology from the other discipline, this book is one examples of a genuinely collaborative endeavor. This is an open access book.

The Sarcophagus of Hunefer and other New Kingdom Private Sarcophagi
The Sarcophagus of Hunefer and other New Kingdom Private Sarcophagi

Author: Wolfram Grajetzki

Publisher: Nicanor Books

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1838118055

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This is the publication of the sarcophagus of the mayor of Thebes, Hunefer, in office under Ramses II. To date, the granite sarcophagus in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has received little research attention despite being a large scale monument. The book provides a presentation of the sarcophagus and its place in space and time.

A History of World Egyptology
A History of World Egyptology

Author: Andrew Bednarski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-05-27

Total Pages: 1135

ISBN-13: 1108916066

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A History of World Egyptology is a ground-breaking reference work that traces the study of ancient Egypt over the past 150 years. Global in purview, it enlarges our understanding of how and why people have looked, and continue to look, into humankind's distant past through the lens of the enduring allure of ancient Egypt. Written by an international team of scholars, the volume investigates how territories around the world have engaged with, and have been inspired by, ancient Egypt and its study, and how that engagement has evolved over time. Chapters present a specific territory from different perspectives, including institutional and national, while examining a range of transnational links as well. The volume thus touches on multiple strands of scholarship, embracing not only Egyptology, but also social history, the history of science and reception studies. It will appeal to amateurs and professionals with an interest in the histories of Egypt, archaeology and science.

Gilded Flesh
Gilded Flesh

Author: Rogerio Sousa

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2019-12-19

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1789252652

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Egyptian coffins stand out in museum collections for their lively and radiant appearance. As a container of the mummy, coffins played a key role by protecting the body and, at the same time, integrating the deceased in the afterlife. The paramount importance of these objects and their purpose is detected in the ways they changed through time. For more than three thousand years, coffins and tombs had been designed to assure in the most efficient way possible a successful outcome for the difficult transition to the afterlife. This book examines eight non-royal tombs found relatively intact, from the plains of Saqqara to the sacred hills of Thebes. These almost undisturbed burial sites managed to escape ancient looters and so their discoveries, from Mariette’s exploration of the Mastaba of Ti in Saqqara to Schiaparelli’s discovery of the Tomb of Kha and Merit in Deir el-Medina, were sensational events in Egyptian archaeology. Each one of these sites unveils before our eyes a time capsule, where coffins and tombs were designed together as part of a social, political and religious order. From Predynastic times to the decline of the New Kingdom, this book explores each site revealing the interconnection between mummification practices, coffin decoration, burial equipment, tomb decoration and ritual landscapes. Through this analysis, the author aims to point out how the design of coffins changed through time in order to empower the deceased with different visions of immortality. By doing so, the study of coffins reveals a silent revolution which managed to open to ordinary men and women horizons of divinity previously reserved for the royal sphere. Coffins thus show us how identity was forged to create an immortal and divine self.