6. Identity

‘Identity’ addresses the iconography of Egypt's early ethnic identity, considering the significance of the Narmer Palette with regard to the early pharaonic Egyptians' definition of their own national identity. How did the ancient Egyptians view themselves? The chapter looks at how they portrayed themselves in painting and sculpture and analyses their depictions of ‘foreigners’. As in many other cultures, the Egyptians seem to have gained a sense of their own identity primarily by contrasting themselves with the peoples of the world outside their borders. Gender and sexuality played a massive role in Egyptian identity, as did the evidence for same-sex relations in ancient Egypt.

7. Death

‘Death’ describes ancient Egyptian attitudes to death and the cult of Osiris, looking at the tomb of King Djer at Abydos. The tomb has been regarded as the ultimate, quintessential royal funerary memorial: the mythical burial place of the god Osiris, whose entire religious cult was intimately connected with the concept of the dead king. The combination of Osiris's associations with fertility and death almost inevitably ensured that he became the ultimate god of resurrection. Thus, it became essential for the mummified body to be associated with Osiris in order to gain eternal life. Of course Egyptian mummification and Egyptian funerary beliefs are important areas of study within the broader subject of ‘death’.

4. Writing

‘Writing’ focuses on Egyptian writing. Egyptian hieroglyphs consist of ideograms and phonetic signs representing the sound of all or part of a spoken word. The connections between writing and art were therefore much stronger in pharaonic Egypt than in many other cultures. The Narmer Palette reveals some interesting facts about the origins of Egyptian writing. The general assumption was that the first examples of the Sumerian cuneiform writing system appeared significantly earlier than the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This assumption was somewhat unravelled by archaeological discoveries made at the excavations at tomb U-j during the 1990s. What can the use and abuse of texts in Egyptology tell us?

2. Reconstructing ancient Egypt

‘Reconstructing ancient Egypt’ discusses the challenge of reconstructing ancient Egypt. New paradigms have been adopted by different generations of Egyptologists, gradually transforming the accepted picture of ancient Egyptian culture. Moreover, new methods, such as innovative excavation techniques or sophisticated processes of scientific analysis, have, at various times, altered people's perceptions of the surviving evidence from ancient Egypt. An important question to ask is: what can geology and archaeology reveal about the origins of the Narmer Palette? The discoveries of the Avaris frescos and the Amarna Letters, as well as the excavations of Flinders Petrie, are all important parts of this history.

3. History

‘History’ examines Egyptian history. The Narmer Palette and various other ‘protodynastic’ artefacts have long been regarded as lying at the interface of prehistory and history in ancient Egypt. Indeed, the palette was interpreted as a record of the first truly significant historical ‘event’ in Egyptian history: the military defeat of Lower Egypt (the delta region in the north) by the ruler of an expanding Upper Egyptian Kingdom. The interpretation of Predynastic palettes and mace-heads are useful to enable us to extract myth and history. There are numerous ways in which Egyptologists have set about creating a chronological framework for ancient Egypt, using a complex mixture of archaeological data, texts, and scientific dating methods.

5. Kingship

‘Kingship’ assesses Egyptian kingship and the nature of Egyptian kings. The metaphor and symbolism involved in the Egyptian kings' names and iconography has made it difficult for modern scholars to arrive at a sense of the individual characteristics and activities of particular kings, as opposed to the general idea of kingship. Indeed, one has to consider the ancient stereotypes that the original Egyptian texts present and the unconscious contemporary stereotyping of which Egyptologists themselves are sometimes guilty. The stereotypical portrayal of Amenhotep II and Hatshepsut provides an interesting topic here. A considerably more conventional—but nevertheless still stereotyped—view of Egyptian kingship is encountered in the case of Ramesses II.

9. Egyptomania

‘Egyptomania’ highlights the phenomenon of Egyptomania. In this recycling and exploitation of the ancient Egyptian database, some aspects of the culture and history have tended to appeal more to different ages or audiences. One of the most obvious topics of fierce interpretative debate over the years has been the question of why the pyramids took the form that they did, and what this suggests about the purpose that they served. This ‘pyramidology’ is virtually a subject in its own right. It is important to reflect on the sculpting and deconstruction of the images of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra and consider the rise of the ‘alternative’ Egyptologist.

1. Introduction

‘Introduction’ provides an overview of ancient Egypt, beginning with the discovery of the Narmer Palette in 1898. The Narmer Palette is one of a few surviving artefacts from the Nile Valley which can act as microcosms of certain aspects of ancient Egyptian culture as a whole. For the next century or so, this object would be variously interpreted by Egyptologists attempting to solve numerous different problems, from the political origins of the Egyptian state to the nature of Egyptian art and writing. It is important to consider Greek and Roman view of Egypt and consider the link between ancient Egypt and the Bible. The emergence of Egyptology is a fascinating area to explore.

8. Religion

‘Religion’ studies ancient Egyptian religion, the history of which was at one stage concerned principally with the beliefs and temples of the pharaonic period. Now it has become increasingly clear that there is a significant prehistory of Egyptian religion. If the provision of offerings represents a relatively familiar aspect of Egyptian religion, there is another recurrent aspect of many of the Egyptian religious cults that Egyptologists of the late 19th and early 20th century frequently preferred to ignore. This was the tendency towards ‘phallocentrism’, involving cults dedicated to very obviously ithyphallic gods. The relationship of Egyptian religion with Egyptian kingship and Egyptian ideology is an important area to examine.

10. Cultural heritage

‘Cultural heritage’ discusses the impact of the events of the Arab Spring in 2011 on pharaonic cultural heritage. The first real indication of any threat to Egyptian heritage arrived on 28 January 2011, when protesters set fire to the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party in downtown Cairo, which was immediately next door to the Egyptian Museum. In addition to theft from museums or archaeological sites, there was also the phenomenon of ‘land-grabbing’ either for agriculture or building projects. There have been some very innovative approaches to cultural heritage management in Egypt, including the establishment of Egypt's new museums, such as regional museums and the Grand Egyptian Museum.