Egyptianizing Practices and Cultural Hybridity in the Southern Levant During the Late Bronze Age (original) (raw)
Related papers
Are you an Egyptian? Are you a Stranger? Egyptians in the Levant in the Bronze Age (2019)
Mynářová, J. - Kilani, M. - Alivernini, S. (eds.), A Stranger in the House - the Crossroads III. Proceedings of an International Conference on Foreigners in Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Societies of the Bronze Age held in Prague, September 10–13, 2018. Prague: Charles University., 2019
Egypt and the Near East. Interactions between these regions are attested from the earliest days when the first political centers started to develop in both parts of the ancient world. For this period, our information on Egyptians living “abroad” is very limited. We can hardly hope to obtain a complete picture of both the daily life of an individual and the foreign policy of the Egyptian rulers based on the evidence we currently have at our disposal. The interpretation of the Egyptian policy towards the Near Eastern polities and their peoples is hence largely dependent on the interpretation of the character of the Egyptian (or Egyptianizing) objects discovered in Near Eastern sites. The same holds true for the Near Eastern perspective as well. During the third millennium BC, the picture provided by the limited number and much formalized character of the Egyptian written evidence is often supplemented by iconographic and archaeological sources. Moreover, there are practically no ancient Near Eastern records mentioning Egyptians living “abroad”. It is only in the second half of the second millennium BC, when the written evidence—both Egyptian and non-Egyptian—becomes sufficient to provide a more detailed account on the Egyptians living “outside the Egyptian borders”. In my paper I will address the question of evidence of Egyptians living in the Near East. The Egyptian sources provide us only with one part of the story—the Egyptian one. But I will rather pay attention to the evidence provided by Near Eastern written documents, mentioning Egypt and especially Egyptians, being part of local communities. This evidence will be set against the perspective provided by official sources, preserved on both sides.
One of the most striking phenomena of the material culture of the northern Levant during the second millennium BCE is the presence of Egyptian objects in elite, ritual, or funerary contexts. Clearly, most of these objects were dispatched to the Levant only after their initial and primary use and function in Egypt – judging on the basis of typology or the hieroglyphic inscriptions –, and thus apparently received a secondary and completely redefined function after their dispatch to the Bronze Age northern Levant. Apart from chronological issues pertaining to the dispatch of these objects, an examination of the reception of these imports by the local elites, their appropriation within northern Levantine material (and ritual) culture, and incorporation into different contexts of use may help to shed new light on the modalities and strategies behind their reuse. The patterns seem to reveal a dialectic approach between the embrace and rejection of certain Egyptian objects and motifs of authority by the local Levantine elites. The paper deals with the different conception of Egyptian finds in secondary find contexts from the important northern Levantine sites of Tell Mišrife/Qatna and Tell Mardikh/Ebla. Most prominent among the finds discussed are the Egyptian objects from the Bronze Age palace, as well as the Royal Tomb and Tomb VII at Tell Mišrife/Qatna, discovered in the years 2002 and 2010 respectively. (Publication forthcoming)
Recherches Archeologiques NS4: 113-125 , 2014
Early Egyptian colonization in the Early Bronze I period is one of the most widely discussed issue in modern archaeology of the Near East. The text focuses on two sites of major importance: Egyptian Tell el-Farkha and Levantine Tel Erani. Discoveries of imported pottery both in Egypt and in Israel, as well as Egyptian-style brick architecture found at Tel Erani suggest that relations between these two regions were based on long-distance trade. The article briefly discusses the most significant imported finds at both sites and the socio-economic changes which followed interregional contacts.
The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant
Cambridge World Archaeology, 2019
The Levant-modern Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine-is one of the most intensively excavated regions of the world. This richly documented and illustrated survey offers a state-of-the-art description of the formative phase of Levantine societies, as they perfected the Mediterranean village economy and began to interact with neighboring civilizations in Egypt and Syria, on the way to establishing their first towns and city-state polities. Citing numerous finds and interpretive approaches, the author offers a new narrative of social and cultural development, emulation, resistance and change, illustrating how Levantine communities translated broader movements of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean Bronze Age-the emergence of states, international trade, elite networks and imperial ambitions-into a uniquely Levantine idiom.
Claroscuro – Revista del Centro de Estudios sobre Diversidad Cultural Facultad de Humanidades y Artes 19, 2020
The article analyses the circulation of late Middle Kingdom (mid MB I–MB I/II) Egyptian artefacts in the Northern Levant and Upper Nubia in the MB II–mid MB III (c. 1710–1550 BC). Three case studies have been selected: the royal tombs of Byblos, the tomb of the Goats at Ebla, and the Egyptian Cemetery at Kerma. Although the two regions were politically disconnected, their populations appropriated, reused, and occasionally reinterpreted Egyptian artefacts in a similar manner. These artifacts, although found in Second Intermediate Period contexts, generally dated to the mid MB I-MB I/II (late Middle Kingdom). It is suggested that the collapse of Egyptian central power at the end of the Middle Kingdom could have led to the recirculation of older Egyptian objects. The recirculation suggests that the ‘globalisation’, noted in archaeology and text during the Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 BC) in fact started in the first half of the Second millennium BC.
in: M. Bietak and S. Prell (eds.), The Enigma of the Hyksos Volume IV. Changing Clusters and Migration in the Near Eastern Bronze Age (CAENL 12), Wiesbaden, p. 223-242., 2021
From the exchange of artefacts uncovered in Sidon and Tell el-Dab‘a respectively, the close ties that existed between these two ancient centres of civilization are irrefutably well established. This paper sums up the range of contacts between the two cities which encompassed commercial ties, transmission of ideas, beliefs and concepts as well as examining how the spatial organisation of each city compared to the other. In Sidon during the Middle Bronze Age, the evolution between the MB IIA and the MB IIB manifested itself in the arrangement of human internments and the architecture surrounding them. Two main units, each with a different function, were encountered at Sidon: one for cultic purposes and the other for housing the dead. This type of arrangement, with a separate special area for the dead, was also found in Tell el-Dab‘a where it was known as “Totenhäuser”. A further link between the two was the fact that this practice ended in both cities during the same time period (Sidon str. 6, Tell el-Dab‘a E/2–1.)
Feeding the Community: Objects, Scarcity, and Commensality in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant
Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 24(1): 27-54 , 2011
History and ethnicity have been the preferred frameworks for explaining how Levantine societies organized themselves during the early Iron Age. Consequently, opportunities are missed to understand how local economic and environmental factors structured social life. In this study, a collection of early Iron Age settlements from southwest central Jordan, the Dhiban and Karak Plateaus, is examined using a community perspective. Emphasis is placed on the production and consumption of food, the raw materials for household and communal wealth. The value of food in the communities was heightened due to the difficult semi-arid environmental conditions in which is was produced. The sharing of food between households and communities was one way to create social bonds, or to gain power over others. Food circulation through practices such as storage, everyday meals and feasts therefore offers an ideal window through which to observe social life. Evidence for the communities' food-systems is considered (faunal and palaeobotanical data, storage and food production). The presence and uneven distribution of this evidence within individual communities indicates that households possessed different amounts of food, signalling a degree of inequality between households. A collection of decorated ceramic food-serving vessels is also discussed along with information about its production, its semiotic qualities and the possible roles it played in commensal events. One broader implication of this study is that materials were entangled in the networks of relationships that constituted early Iron Age social life. This recognition of the material world's participation challenges normative ways that early Iron Age societies have been analyzed and represented.
During the second half of the 3rd millennium BC the whole Levant was involved in deep historical and cultural transformations. Yet, Syria and Palestine underwent different historical trajectories, and gave different responses to changes, achieving different socio-economic and political systems during this time-span. In north-western Syria, in fact, the floruit of the EB IVA period was followed by a crisis of the local political system, after the Akkadian military campaigns, then succeeded by a period of reorganisation rather than proper collapse, and by cultural continuity rather than break, despite some changes and innovations. On the other hand, during the Early Bronze IV period the Southern Levant witnessed deeper changes in the socio-political and socio-economic organisation, the settlement pattern, and the material culture. In fact, the region reverted to village life, and developed a markedly regionalised cultural horizon. A general “Syrian connection” has always been recognised in the Southern Levant within those centuries, when material culture shows both cultural autonomy and as complex as important phenomena of interaction with and emulation of the northern neighbours. The article seeks to investigate connections and interactions between the two areas at the end of the Early Bronze Age, analysing specific markers within the material culture, aiming at a possible definition of the nature of these relations in a socio-economic and cultural perspective.