For the ancient Egyptians the whole of the natural world was divine, not only because it was created by the gods, but more particularly because its individual parts - the sun, the sky, the Nile - were gods. Taking the Egypt of Ramesses II as his focal point, Steven Snape explores the holy landscapes of Egypt, both the natural world and the built landscape of temples, tombs and colossal statuary. Even major Egyptian cities were not shaped by the presence of humans who lived there but by their resident gods: at Thebes, for example, the spine of the city was the processional route which ran from Karnak Temple to Luxor Temple. A major aspect of the book is the extensive use of quotations from hieroglyphic texts, translated by the author, to allow the 'voices' of the ancient Egyptians to be heard. This is a revelatory and fresh exploration of how the ancient Egyptians reacted to the presence of the divine around them.
From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.
Most of the "wonders" of our ancient past have come down to us unencumbered by written information. In particular, this is the case of the Great Pyramid of Giza and of many other ancient Egyptian monuments. However, there is no doubt as to the interest of their builders in the celestial cycles: the "cosmic order" was indeed the true basis of the pharaoh's power. This book takes the reader on a chronological journey through ancient Egypt to explore the relationship between astronomy, landscape, and power during the most flourishing periods of ancient Egyptian civilization. Using the lens of archaeoastronomy, Giulio Magli reexamines the key monuments and turning points of Egyptian architecture and history, such as the solar deification of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, the Hatshepsut reign, and the Amarna revolution.
From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.
Ever since Herodotus, it has been observed that Egypt - that is, ancient Egyptian civilisation - was a gift of the Nile. However, only recently have Egyptologists come to appreciate that Egypt was as much a gift of the desert as a gift of the water, at least as regards its very beginnings. To understand the civilisation that originally settled along the Nile Valley and in the Delta, we must study not only the remains of ancient monuments, excavated artefacts and reconstructed texts, but take proper account of the landscape, conditions and environment that shaped Egypt's culture, religion and ideology. This volume addresses various aspects of how the world was perceived in the minds of Egyptians, and how Egyptians subsequently reshaped their surrounding landscape in harmony with their view of geography and cosmological ideas. Profane landscape and sacred space thus blend into one multi-faceted concept.
This volume provides windows onto constructing, remaking, and dismantling sacred landscapes in cities in Thonis-Heracleion and Alexandria, and also more widely in Lower Egypt.
In The Sacred Landscape of Dra Abu el-Naga during the New Kingdom, Ángeles Jiménez-Higueras offers the reconstruction of the physical, religious and cultural landscape of Dra Abu el-Naga south and its conceptual development from the 18th to the 20th Dynasties.
This text explains the cultural and historical background to the fascinating and complex world of Egyptian myth, with each chapter dealing with a particular theme.
