Texts for healing and protection

Texts for healing and protection form a relatively well-delineated category of writings from pharaonic Egypt. The traditional further distinction between ‘medical’ and ‘magical’ texts has proven increasingly problematic and has now mainly been abandoned in favour of approaches more reflective of ancient Egyptian categories. In a similar way, current approaches to the texts tend to aim at understanding their role within their own conceptual, cultural and experiential context, although more traditional etic approaches shaped by modern biomedical frameworks also continue to play an important role in the exploration of the texts.

Mathematical texts

Approximately a dozen mathematical papyri have survived from ancient Egypt. Based on their script (but also their stage of the Egyptian language) they fall into two groups—hieratic and demotic texts. These papyri constitute our primary source material to learn about ancient Egyptian mathematics. Because of the procedural style that they were written in, it is assumed that they were used in teaching junior scribes the mathematical techniques they would need for their job; however, the procedural format may also have constituted the way of collecting mathematical knowledge at the time. It is only if this format is taken into account in the (modern) analysis of Egyptian mathematical texts that their sophistication becomes visible, and a deeper understanding of Egyptian mathematics beyond rudimentary similarities to modern equivalents can therefore be achieved.

Textiles

As with many crafts, textiles and their production have been a poor relation in studies of ancient Egypt, and even today a detailed academic description of a stele or relief is more likely to concentrate on artistic merit, hieroglyphs, role, and status with only the most basic description of clothing. The study of textiles has been seen as a gendered (female)—non-archaeological (museum and craft)—specialization, and only recently has this changed. This chapter seeks to place textiles and clothing at the heart of our understanding of Egyptian society as the main signifier of gender, status, and personal wealth. It also briefly addresses how wealth was measured in the ancient world and the impact of textiles on land use and the economy.

Recording rock inscriptions

This chapter presents the Egyptian perspective in the recording and documenting of epigraphic data in Egypt. Usually the domain of non-Egyptian epigraphers and philologists, the chapter brings a unique insight into the methods and challenges faced by Egyptian Egyptologists in the recording and documenting of rock inscriptions that are facing numerous threats from modern development. Two case studies are presented: the first situated in Aswan and the second in the Wadi Hammamat. Both localities present differing examples of the range of methods that can be adapted to specific locales, as well as the ways in which increasing pressure from modern destruction requires a different focus to building a database relating to protection measures. As an Egyptian perspective and archive for future generations in Arabic, these approaches allow greater access to information which has largely remained in the domain of foreign institutions and archives.

The mineral world

This chapter considers past and current research of procurement landscapes (quarries and mines) and the extent to which landscape archaeologies, together with comparative and cross-cultural methods in practice and theory have impacted on this field of study. Two case studies are presented in which these new methods of survey and characterization of procurement landscape have been deployed, along the Aswan West Bank and in the central Wadi Hammamat (Eastern Desert). The chapter goes on to address the ways in which holistic ‘bottom up’ approaches to interpreting micro-level data offers us fresh insights into understanding the social organization of procurement within broader aspects of social and cultural transformations over time.

Conservation in Egyptological museum collections

Conservators are professionals dedicated to the physical preservation of cultural heritage in varied contexts. In museums they work closely with curators and conservation scientists to maintain or improve the structural or chemical stability of works in their care. Prior to undertaking a treatment, conservators visually examine each artefact and use instrumental analytical methods to establish and document its manufacture and materials, the causes and extent of deterioration, and previous interventions, all of which can affect its physical condition and appearance. In addition to undertaking technical examinations and carrying out active treatment protocols, conservators institute preventive measures and best practice guidelines to control the museum environment and minimize damage during display, travel, and storage. Conservators of Egyptian antiquities face special challenges predicated by unique aspects of ancient Egypt’s physical and cultural landscape.

Letters

This article provides a chronological survey of ancient Egyptian letters from the Old Kingdom to the Coptic period, including discussions of writing materials, literary and model letters, the social setting of correspondence, and special cases such as letters to the gods and to the dead. Letters have often been studied for their content as sources for ancient Egyptian social history and historical events, or as a source for the Egyptian language. Socio-linguistic analysis enhances existing research by providing new insights into the correspondents’ communicative strategies, while computer technology now enables us to recover erased and faded texts.

Funerary beliefs and practices

This article provides an overview of the primary texts and images relating to funerary beliefs and practices in ancient Egypt. Following death, the individual was subject to a series of rituals performed by priests. Evidence concerning death and funerary rituals is contained in texts and images on tomb walls, coffins and papyri. The main focus here, however, is on the textual record, including the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead, including discussion of the importance of the Osiris myth in all of these, given that the latter appears to have had a significant impact on almost every aspect of Egyptian rituals surrounding death and burial.

The Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period

The Old Kingdom is usually characterized as the first great epoch of Egyptian history, when the phenomenal cultural, iconographical and political developments of the late Predynastic Period and the Early Dynastic Period coalesced to give an eminently visible culture that says ‘ancient Egypt’ to the modern audience. This development may best be symbolized by the pyramid, the most persistent image of the era. For its part, the First Intermediate Period is the first clear manifestation in Egyptian history of the periods of disunity and systemic weakness that have affected every long-lasting ancient and modern culture in one form or the other. The time-period covered in this section illustrates for the first time both the highs and lows of ancient Egypt. The Old Kingdom is usually defined as consisting of the Third to Eighth Dynasties of Manetho (c.2686–2125 bc), and the First Intermediate Period of the Ninth and Tenth and roughly two-thirds of the Eleventh Dynasty (c.2160–2016 bc).

The Early Dynastic Period

The Early Dynastic Period is seen as a formative phase influencing the character and shape of Egyptian culture for millennia to come. The sacro-political concept of ‘unification of the two lands’ had the effect of mythologizing transition from a system of city states with an already widely homogeneous material culture into a kind of territorial state under one divine king (Narmer) at the end of the fourth millennium bc. This set the stage for the developments in iconography, archaeology of media and sociology of knowledge that are discussed in this chapter. A formalization of iconographic tradition building on ‘iconems’ (specifically shaped pictorial motives) was connected to the sphere of rulership from the earliest periods. Additionally, the developing need for an invention of new iconographic conventions to construct and visualize a unified Egyptian identity (as well as the concept of the divine dual king) culminated in the creation of monumental art and ceremonial objects as ‘semiophors’ (‘carriers of meaning’). Like iconography, the new medium of pictorial-phonetic writing served power and articulated governmental knowledge of the elite. As a state-wide standardized system of notation and expression, phonetic writing also provided an indispensable prerequisite to organize and administer a unified territory of this size.