Object Worlds In Ancient Egypt

Egypt looms large in the Western imagination. Whether it is our attraction to pharaonic art, the pyramids or practices of mummification, Egypts unique understanding of materiality speaks to us across space and time. Is it because the ancient Egyptians fetishized material objects that we find their culture captivating today? And what exactly do Egyptian remains tell us about biography, embodiment, memory, materiality, and the self? Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt takes New Kingdom Egypt (1539-1070 BC) as its starting point and considers how excavated objects reveal the complex ways that ancient Egyptians experienced their material world. From life to death, the material world instantiated, reflected and influenced social life and existence for ancient Egyptians. Thus, in Meskells unique approach to the materiality and sensuousness of subjects and objects, we uncover the philosophical, spiritual and human meanings embedded in these cultural artefacts. Meskells book explores the fundamental existential questions that not only preoccupied ancient Egyptians, but continue to fascinate people today. What is the essence of persons and things? How might we understand the situated experiences of material life, the constitution of the object world and its shaping of human experience? How might objects successfully mediate between worlds? In the final analysis, Meskell moves forward through time and examines the consumption and appreciation of these Egyptian material objects in the contemporary world. Materiality is our physical engagement with the world, our medium for inserting ourselves into the fabric of that world and our way of constituting and shaping culture in an embodied and external sense. From that perspective it is very much the domain of anthropology and archaeology.Drawing on a wide range of objects, artefacts, and artwork, from Valley of the Kings through to Las Vegas, Meskell provides an elegant analysis of the aesthetics of ancient Egyptian material culture

Examines the objects and artifacts, the representations in art, and the examples of documentation that reveal the day-to-day life of ancient Egyptians.

The Material World of Ancient Egypt examines the objects and artifacts, the representations in art, and the examples of documentation that together reveal the day-to-day physical substance of life in ancient Egypt. This book investigates how people dressed, what they ate, the houses they built, the games they played, and the tools they used, among many other aspects of daily life, paying great attention to the change and development of each area within the conservative Egyptian society. More than any other ancient civilization, the ancient Egyptians have left us with a wealth of evidence about their daily lives in the form of perishable objects, from leather sandals to feather fans, detailed depictions of trades and crafts on the walls of tombs, and a wide range of documentary evidence from temple inventories to personal laundry lists. Drawing on these diverse sources and richly illustrating his account with nearly one hundred images, William H. Peck illuminates the culture of the ancient Egyptians from the standpoint of the basic materials they employed to make life possible and perhaps even enjoyable.

For thousands of years, ancient Egypt has echoed around the world. This full colour paperback is the catalogue of a current exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum. "The exhibition takes you on a journey through two thousand years of fascination with ancient Egypt, the land of the pharaohs. Visitors will discover how a culture that flourished thousands of years ago has impacted on our own world. Echoes of ancient Egypt appear in art, architecture, and literature around the world from ancient Africa to medieval Europe and the Middle East, to modern North America." 0Exhibition: Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, USA (13.4.2013-4.1.2014).0.

There is broad acceptance across the Humanities and Social Sciences that our deliberations on the social need to take place through attention to practice, to object-mediated relations, to non-human agency and to the affective dimensions of human sociality. This Companion focuses on the objects and materials found at centre stage, and asks: what matters about objects? Objects and Materials explores the field, providing succinct summary accounts of contemporary scholarship, along with a wealth of new research investigating the capacity of objects to shape, unsettle and exceed expectations. Original chapters from over forty international, interdisciplinary contributors address an array of objects and materials to ask what the terms of collaborations with objects and materials are, and to consider how these collaborations become integral to our understandings of the complex, relational dynamics that fashion social worlds. Objects and Materials will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, including in sociology, social theory, science and technology studies, history, anthropology, archaeology, gender studies, women’s studies, geography, cultural studies, politics and international relations, and philosophy.

*Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts of the Old Kingdom *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world's first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world. With world-famous leaders like King Tut and Cleopatra, it's no wonder that today's world has so many Egyptologists. What makes the accomplishments of the Ancient Egyptians all the more remarkable is that Egypt was historically a place of great political turbulence. Its position made it both valuable and vulnerable to tribes across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and Ancient Egypt had no shortage of its own internecine warfare. Its most famous conquerors would come from Europe, with Alexander the Great laying the groundwork for the Hellenic Ptolemy line and the Romans extinguishing that line after defeating Cleopatra and driving her to suicide. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of ancient Egyptian civilization was its inception from the ground up, as the ancient Egyptians had no prior civilization which they could use as a template. In fact, ancient Egypt itself became a template for the civilizations that followed. The Greeks and the Romans were so impressed with Egyptian culture that they often attributed many attributes of their own culture - usually erroneously - to the Egyptians. With that said, some minor elements of ancient Egyptian culture were, indeed, passed on to later civilizations. Egyptian statuary appears to have had an initial influence on the Greek version, and the ancient Egyptian language continued long after the pharaonic period in the form of the Coptic language. Although the Egyptians may not have passed their civilization directly on to later peoples, the key elements that comprised Egyptian civilization - their religion, early ideas of state, and art and architecture - can be seen in other pre-modern civilizations. For instance, civilizations far separated in time and space - such as China and Mesoamerica - possessed key elements that were similar to those found in ancient Egypt. Indeed, since Egyptian civilization represented some fundamental human concepts, a study of pharaonic culture can be useful when trying to understand many other pre-modern cultures. Thus, anyone who reads about ancient Egyptian civilization in this regard is best served by looking at its earliest phases: the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom. By examining the Old Kingdom and the period immediately preceding it, attributes considered quintessentially "Egyptian" in later periods will become clearer. The Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt: The History and Legacy of the Beginning of Egyptian Civilization chronicles the tumultuous history that ushered in the beginning of Ancient Egyptian civilization. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Old Kingdom like never before.

Primary source documents and detailed entries reveal what ancient Egypt was like, using the objects and artifacts of daily life from the period covering the Predynastic era through the Græco-Roman period (5000 BCE to 300 CE). Historians have found that valuable knowledge about long-ago civilizations can be derived from examining the simple routines of daily life. This fascinating study presents a collection of everyday objects and artifacts from ancient Egypt, shedding light on the social life and culture of ancient Egyptians. The work starts with a popular notion of ancient Egyptian beauty and gradually moves on to address various aspects of life, including home, work, communication, and transition and afterlife. Organized by topics, the work contains the following sections: beauty, adornment, and clothing; household items, furniture, and games; food and drink; tools and weapons; literacy and writing; death and funerary equipment; and religion, ritual, and magic. Each object holds equal importance and dates from the Predynastic era to the Græco-Roman period of ancient Egypt (5000 BCE to 300 CE). A special section provides guidance on evaluating objects and artifacts by asking questions—Who created it? Who used it? What did it do/what was its purpose? When and where was it made? Why was it made?—to help assess the historical context of the object.

First runner-up for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Eastern Studies 2015. In ancient Egypt, wrapping sacred objects, including mummified bodies, in layers of cloth was a ritual that lay at the core of Egyptian society. Yet in the modern world, attention has focused instead on unwrapping all the careful arrangements of linen textiles the Egyptians had put in place. This book breaks new ground by looking at the significance of textile wrappings in ancient Egypt, and at how their unwrapping has shaped the way we think about the Egyptian past. Wrapping mummified bodies and divine statues in linen reflected the cultural values attached to this textile, with implications for understanding gender, materiality and hierarchy in Egyptian society. Unwrapping mummies and statues similarly reflects the values attached to Egyptian antiquities in the West, where the colonial legacies of archaeology, Egyptology and racial science still influence how Egypt appears in museums and the press. From the tomb of Tutankhamun to the Arab Spring, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt raises critical questions about the deep-seated fascination with this culture – and what that fascination says about our own.