Kathlyn M. Cooney - Böcker

This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies.The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time.Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.

This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies.The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time.Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.

This discussion will be centered on one ubiquitous and rather simple Egyptian object type - the wooden container for the human corpse. We will focus on the entire 'lifespan' of the coffin - how they were created, who bought them, how they were used in funerary rituals, where they were placed in a given tomb, and how they might have been used again for another dead person. Using evidence from Deir el Medina, we will move through time from the initial agreement between the craftsman and the seller, to the construction of the object by a carpenter, to the plastering and painting of the coffin by a draftsman, to the sale of the object, to its ritual use in funerary activities, to its deposit in a burial chamber, and, briefly, to its possible reuse.

An examination of the myriad lifetimes lived by ancient Egyptian artifactsEgypt has a particular longue durée, a continuity of preservation in deep time, not seen in other parts of the world. Over the centuries, ancient buildings have been adopted for purposes that differed from the original. Temple sites have been transformed into places of worship for new deities or turned into houses and tombs. Tombs, in turn, have been adapted to function as human dwellings already in the Late Antique Period.The Afterlives of Egyptian History expands on the traditional academic approach of studying the original function and sociopolitical circumstances of ancient Egyptian objects, texts, and sites to examine their secondary lives by exploring their reuse, modification, and reinterpretation.Written in honor of the Egyptologist, Edward Bleiberg, this volume brings together a group of luminous scholars from a wide range of fields, including Egyptian archaeology, philology, conservation, and art, to explore the historical circumstances, as well as political and economic situations, of people who have come into contact with ancient Egypt, both in antiquity and in more recent times.Contributor Affiliations:Yekaterina Barbash, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USALisa Bruno, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USASimon Connor, F.R.S.–FNRS, Brussels, Belgium and University of Liege, Liege, BelgiumKathlyn (Kara) Cooney, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USARichard Fazzini, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USAPeter Lacovara, Ancient Egyptian Archaeology and Heritage Fund, Albany, NY USARonald J. Leprohon, University of Toronto, CanadaMary McKercher, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USAEdmund Meltzer, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, California USAJoachim Friedrich Quack, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio USAPaul Edmund Stanwick, independent scholar, New York, NY USAEmily Teeter, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL USAKathy Zurek-Doule, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA