A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (original) (raw)
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This biographical dictionary provides a comprehensive reference for key figures from ancient Egypt, covering from c. 3100 BC to c. AD 600. It includes significant rulers, cultural figures, and foreign contacts with contextual information and genealogies, aimed at enhancing accessibility for students and general readers. Challenges regarding the representation of under-documented periods are acknowledged, highlighting the necessity of selective biographical inclusion.
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WKU - HIST404 History of Ancient Egypt (E.J.Kondratieff Spring 2024)
2024
In HIST 404 we will survey the broad sweep of ancient Egyptian history, from the first agricultural settlements on the Nile down to the Roman period (ca. 5,000 BCE to the 4 th c. CE). Our main textbook focuses on ancient Egypt's main phases and major themes, and so will we. We will look at how Egyptian society organized its macro-systems-governmental, legal, economic, military, and religious systems and institutions-and examine micro-systems, i.e., agrarian and urban families and households, as well as the variety of skills and ocupations that formed the building blocks of Egypt's economy (supplementing where needed with chapters and articles from other authors). We will also look at the development of Egyptian cultural ideas and practices, including language, writing, literature (another one of your assigned books), arts and entertainments and, along the way, the cultural influences of Egypt on other societies and vice-versa through colonization and conquest, and through peaceful cultural exchanges in social and commercial contexts.
The presence of foreigners in Egypt lasted throughout the entire Pharaonic era. It had different features depending on epochs and increased during the New Kingdom, because of forced installations of great amounts of prisoners of war. In the Pharaonic ideology, foreigners represented the Nine Bows against which the Egyptians fought to maintain the order of the Maat, the cosmic order – a mission that the deity attributed to the Pharaoh. But sources show a stark difference in the ways in which Egyptians described the foreigner outside of Egypt and the foreigner within Egypt. Referring to the A. Loprieno’s theory of topos and mimesis, I will use the forced installation of prisoners of war as a case study to investigate the Egyptian consideration of foreigners living and working in Egypt and the reflections of this vision in written and visual sources. Some official sources, created for propaganda purposes, underline the importance of a rapid "egyptization" of these people, obtained by forcing them to abandon their language and learn Egyptian, a necessary and irreversible process. But beyond the propagandistic proclamations, what information on the presence of foreigners in Egypt do these sources provide? In my paper I will present some examples concerning the treatment of prisoners of war, to underline possible elements of what Egyptians considers “otherness” and how it was possible to eliminate or almost reduce the distance between them and the outsiders.
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Related papers
G. Miniaci, C. Greco, P. Del Vesco, M. Mancini, C. Alù, Ancient Egypt and the Surrounding World: Contact, Trade, and Influence. Studies Presented to Marilina Betrò, Egittologia 6, Pisa, Pisa University Press 2024, 2024