This book provides an innovative analysis of the conditions of ancient Egyptian craftsmanship in the light of the archaeology of production, linguistic analysis, visual representation and ethnographic research.
During the past decades, the imaginative figure of ancient Egyptian material producers has moved from workers to artisans and, most recently, to artists. In a search for a fuller understanding of the pragmatics of material production in past societies, and moving away from a series of modern preconceptions, this volume aims to analyse the mechanisms of material production in Egypt during the Middle Bronze Age (20001550 BC), to approach the profile of ancient Egyptian craftsmen through their own words, images and artefacts, and to trace possible modes of circulation of ideas among craftsmen in material production.
The studies in the volume address the mechanisms of ancient production in Middle Bronze Age Egypt, the circulation of ideas among craftsmen, and the profiles of the people involved, based on the material traces, including depictions and writings, the ancient craftsmen themselves left and produced.
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7 | (4) |
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Sculpture workshops: who, where and for whom? |
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11 | (20) |
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The Artistic Copying Network Around the Tomb of Pahery in Elkab (EK3): a New Kingdom case study |
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31 | (18) |
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Antiquity Bound to Modernity. The significance of Egyptian workers in modern archaeology in Egypt |
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49 | (18) |
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Epistemological Things! Mystical Things! Towards an ancient Egyptian ontology |
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67 | (14) |
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Centralized and Local Production, Adaptation, and Imitation: Twelfth Dynasty offering tables |
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81 | (20) |
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To show and to designate: attitudes towards representing craftsmanship and material culture in Middle Kingdom elite tombs |
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101 | (16) |
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Precious Things? The social construction of value in Egyptian society, from production of objects to their use (mid 3rd - mid 2nd millennium BC) |
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117 | (22) |
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Faience Craftsmanship in the Middle Kingdom. A market paradox: inexpensive materials for prestige goods |
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139 | (20) |
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Leather Processing, Castor Oil, and Desert/Nubian Trade at the Turn of the 3rd/2nd Millennium BC: some speculative thoughts on Egyptian craftsmanship |
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159 | (16) |
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Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia |
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Languages of Artists: closed and open channels |
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175 | (22) |
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Craft Production in the Bronze Age. A comparative view from South Asia |
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197 | (14) |
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The Egyptian Craftsman and the Modern Researcher: the benefits of archeometrical analyses |
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211 | (14) |
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The Representation of Materials, an Example of Circulations of Formal Models among Workmen. An insight into the New Kingdom practices |
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225 | (14) |
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Staging Restricted Knowledge: the sculptor Irtysen's self-presentation (ca. 2000 BC) |
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239 | (34) |
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The Nubian Mudbrick Vault. A Pharaonic building technique in Nubian village dwellings of the early 20th Century |
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273 | |
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Gianluca Miniaci is Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Pisa, Honorary Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL London and Chercheur associé at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is currently co-director of the archaeological mission at Zawyet Sultan (Menya, Egypt) and principal investigator for the project PROCESS (fingerprints on clay figurines). He is author of several volumes, including Rishi Coffins (2011), The Middle Kingdom Ramesseum Papyri Tomb (2021) and The Treasure of the Egyptian Queen Ahhotep (2022) and more than 100 scientific articles. Dr. Juan Carlos Moreno Garcķa (PhD in Egyptology, 1995) is a CNRS senior researcher at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, as well as lecturer on social and economic history of ancient Egypt at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He has published extensively on the administration, socio-economic history, and landscape organization of ancient Egypt, usually in a comparative perspective with other civilizations of the ancient world, and has organized several conferences on these topics.
Recent publications include Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near East, 1300-500 BC (2016), LÉgypte des pharaons. De Narmer ą Dioclétien (3150 av. J.-C.-284 apr. J.-C.) (2016) and Ancient Egyptian Administration (2013).
He is also chief editor of The Journal of Egyptian History (Brill) and area editor (economy) of the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Prof. Stephen Quirke is Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology; his research is on hieratic writing, Middle Kingdom social history, and history of archaeology and collections from Egypt. From 1999 to 2013 he was curator at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Andréas Stauder is Professor of Egyptology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études/PSL Research University in Paris. He was previously a researcher with the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Basel, and a post-doctoral fellow at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He directs the project Scripta-PSL. History and Practices of Writing (2017) and is a scientific co-editor of the section Language for the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (UEE). He has previously co-directed the module Materiality and Semantics of Writing in the National Centre of Competence in Research eikones (20132017, SNSF and University of Basel) and directed the SNSF-project The Old Egyptian Verb. Functions in text (20122016). He is the author of The Earlier Egyptian Passive. Voice and Perspective (2014) and Linguistic Dating of Middle Egyptian Literary Texts (2013).
