{"title":"Elusive “Libyans”: Identities, Lifestyles and Mobile Populations in NE Africa (late 4th–early 2nd millennium BCE)","authors":"J. M. Moreno García","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340046","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The term “Libyan” encompasses, in fact, a variety of peoples and lifestyles living not only in the regions west of the Nile Valley, but also inside Egypt itself, particularly in Middle Egypt and the Western Delta. This situation is reminiscent of the use of other “ethnic” labels, such as “Nubian,” heavily connoted with notions such as ethnic homogeneity, separation of populations across borders, and opposed lifestyles. In fact, economic complementarity and collaboration explain why Nubians and Libyans crossed the borders of Egypt and settled in the land of the pharaohs, to the point that their presence was especially relevant in some periods and regions during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE. Pastoralism was just but one of their economic pillars, as trading activities, gathering, supply of desert goods (including resins, minerals, and vegetal oils) and hunting also played an important role, at least for some groups or specialized segments of a particular social group. While Egyptian sources emphasize conflict and marked identities, particularly when considering “rights of use” over a given area, collaboration was also crucial and beneficial for both parts. Finally, the increasing evidence about trade routes used by Libyans points to alternative networks of circulation of goods that help explain episodes of warfare between Egypt and Libyan populations for their control.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340046","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46167774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt’s Public Imagination: A Brief Assessment of Fifty Years of Assessments","authors":"T. Schneider","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340043","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This contribution will look at the impact that the discovery of the site of Tell el-Dabʿa (Avaris), the capital of the Hyksos, has had on the discipline of Egyptology—in other words, to assess in what ways the disciplinary and public narrative about the Hyksos Period has (or has not) changed as a consequence of the discovery of Avaris.1 It will become clear that the cultural specifics of Avaris and its historical place have had a varied reception, and that the diverging representations that can be encountered pay tribute to different strategies of acceptance or denial that perpetuate certain traditions of scholarly and public engagement with ancient Egypt.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340043","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47177396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Entangled in Orientalism: How the Hyksos Became a Race","authors":"Danielle Candelora","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340042","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper presents a historiographical critique of Hyksos scholarship and the impact of Imperialism and Orientalism on the foundations of such studies. I trace the creation and maintenance of the misconception of the Hyksos as a race through the scholarship, examining the context and influences behind the research, and discuss the appeal of new scientific techniques for the question of Hyksos origins.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41906546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Official Identity and Ethnicity: Comparing Ptolemaic and Early Roman Egypt","authors":"C. Fischer-Bovet","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340048","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The study of ancient states brings a historical perspective to the creation of official identities. By looking at legal and fiscal documents preserved on papyri from Hellenistic and Early Roman Egypt (323 BCE to c. 70 CE), this study compares how the Ptolemies and then the Romans established official identities, that is, what priorities they gave to occupation, social status, citizenship, and/or ethnicity in order to construct legal and fiscal identities. It explores how these different priorities created overlaps between the categories, for instance, by an occupation permitting some flexibility with ethnicity, in order to include those in service of the state into privileged official categories. First, it shows that the fiscal and cleruchic policies of the Ptolemies partially reshaped societies so that social status became preeminent and ethnicity did no longer matter to the state already before the Roman annexation. Second, it compares how the demographic and social configuration in Egypt at the time of each conquest stimulated slightly different priorities when constructing official identities.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48434901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethnicity: Constructions of Self and Other in Ancient Egypt","authors":"S. T. Smith","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340045","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The construction of ethnic self and other played a central role in ancient Egyptian ideology as well as at a more quotidian level. Ethnic groups are usually seen as self-defined, distinctive entities, often corresponding neatly to political or cultural units, but in reality, expressions of ethnic identity are mutable and socially contingent. Adopting a multi-scalar approach informed by practice theory, this paper examines ancient Egyptian constructions of ethnicity, taking into account ideological and elite expressions of ethnic identity from art and texts and everyday practices revealed by archaeology. A carefully contextualized analysis shows how pejorative constructions of an ethnic other by the state contrast with more positive interactions and patterns of mutual influence at a more individual level.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340045","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48294479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Discerning Ancient Identity: The Case of Aashyet’s Sarcophagus (JE 47267)","authors":"Kate Liszka","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340047","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Aashyet’s sarcophagus (JE 47267) offers a unique case for understanding how the intersection of a person’s identities, such as ethnicity, gender, age, or religion, is portrayed on a funerary object within the historic and religious circumstances of a specific context. Aashyet’s sarcophagus portrays her as a wealthy, elite priestess, and the head-of-household, while being a Nubian who celebrated her non-Egyptian origins. The sarcophagus’s archaeological context also demonstrates the importance of Priestesses of Hathor within Montuhotep II’s funerary complex at Deir el-Bahri for the legitimation of his kingship before he unified Egypt, late in his reign.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340047","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44791873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity of Egyptology: Towards a “Trans-Egyptology”","authors":"T. Schneider","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340049","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340049","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43254109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethnicity in Ancient Egypt: An Introduction to Key Issues","authors":"Juan Carlos Moreno García","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340040","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The study of ethnicity in the ancient world has known a complete renewal in recent times, at several levels, from the themes studied to the perspectives of analysis and the models elaborated by archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists and historians. Far from traditional approaches more interested in detecting and characterizing particular ethnic groups (“Libyans,” “Medjay”) and social organizations (“tribe,” “clan”, <em>etc</em>.), in identifying them in the archaeological record through specific markers (pottery, ornaments, weapons, <em>etc</em>.) and, subsequently, in studying their patterns of interaction with other social groups (domination, acculturation, assimilation, resistance, centre periphery), recent research follows different paths. To sum up, a deeper understanding of ethnicity in ancient Egypt cannot but benefit from a close dialogue with other disciplines and is to enrich current debates in archaeology, anthropology, and ancient history.</p>","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":"103 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138506816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"De-colonizing the Historiography and Archaeology of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. Part 1. Scientific Racism","authors":"Uroš Matić","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340041","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The process of epistemological de-colonization of the historiography and archaeology of ancient Egypt and Nubia has begun unfolding only in the last two decades. It is still set in the context of descriptive disciplinary history with little reflection on and criticism of background theories and methods. As a consequence, some of the old approaches and concepts live on in the discipline. Utilizing the concepts of “thought collective” and “thought style” (sensu Ludwik Fleck) this paper analyzes previous works on ancient Egypt and Nubia written in the colonial discourse. Three key ideas run like threads through these works: 1. scientific racism, 2. socio-cultural evolution, and 3. colonial and imperial discourse. In this paper the emphasis will be put on scientific racism, its development, and its remnants in the archaeology and historiography of Egypt and Nubia.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340041","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48697768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Integration of foreigners in Egypt: the relief of Amenhotep II shooting arrows at a copper ingot and related scenes","authors":"J. Giménez","doi":"10.1163/18741665-12340036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18741665-12340036","url":null,"abstract":"The relief of Amenhotep II shooting arrows at a copper ingot target has often been considered as propaganda of the king’s extraordinary strength and vigour. However, this work proposes that the scene took on additional layers of significance and had different ritual functions such as regenerating the health of the king, and ensuring the eternal victory of Egypt over foreign enemies and the victory of order over chaos. Amenhotep II was shooting arrows at an “Asiatic” ox-hide ingot because the ingot would symbolize the northern enemies of Egypt. The scene belonged to a group of representations carved during the New Kingdom on temples that showed the general image of the king defeating enemies. Moreover, it was linked to scenes painted in private tombs where goods were brought to the deceased, and to offering scenes carved on the walls of Theban temples. The full sequence of scenes would describe, and ritually promote, the process of integration of the foreign element into the Egyptian sphere.","PeriodicalId":41016,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Egyptian History","volume":"10 1","pages":"109-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2017-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18741665-12340036","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46790964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}