Asiatics in Middle Kingdom Egypt

Perceptions and Reality

Phyllis Saretta

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781780932156
• eBook ISBN: 9781472502131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

The ancient Egyptians had very definite views about their neighbours, some positive, some negative. As one would expect, Egyptian perceptions of 'the other' were subject to change over time, especially in response to changing political, social and economic conditions. Thus, as Asiatics became a more familiar part of everyday life in Egypt, and their skills and goods became increasingly important, depictions of them took on more favourable aspects. The investigation by necessity involves a multi-disciplined approach which seeks to combine and synthesize data from a wider variety of sources than drawn upon in earlier studies. By the same token, the book addresses the interests of, and has appeal to, a broad spectrum of scholars and general readers.

1

Introduction: The Scope, Methodology and Purpose of the Present Study

The ancient Egyptians had very definite views about their neighbors, some positive, some negative. These ideas were subject to constant change. This study intends to trace the development of Egyptian attitudes with respect to West Semites living in and out of Egypt as they appeared in art, literature and inscriptions, and as the attitudes were reflected in material culture. The study will attempt to correlate changes in Egyptian art, as well as perceptions and representations of West Semites diachronically in response to specific changes in socio-economic and political conditions. Further, the relationship of Egyptians to West Semites will be viewed against the background of the increasing familiarity and personal contact.

In order to determine the nature of Egyptian perceptions of and attitudes toward West Semites, this study will consider a number of different areas including:

1.Egyptian nomenclature for West Semites;

2.descriptive epithets applied to West Semites in Egyptian literature and inscriptions;

3.characteristic postures and gestures, costuming and physical characteristics attributed to West Semites in Egyptian art;

4.depictions in art and texts of specific professions typically associated with West Semites. For example, the famous “caravan scene” at Beni Hasan showing smiths, music, clothing manufacture, including the Asiatic weaving and dyeing industry.

In the course of this study a number of subsidiary issues will necessarily have to be developed, such as:

a.the relationship between such ethnographic and geographical terms as Egyptian ꜤꜢmw, Styw, Rṯnw;

b.such commonly used designations as Amorite, Canaanite and West Semite.

The approach here will involve both the identification of these respective terms and the establishment of correspondences which may exist between them. Particularly critical in this regard is the determination of the relationship, if any, between the ethnographic terms ꜤꜢmw and Amorite, so that the overly vague and misleading English term “Asiatic” may be replaced by a more accurate designation in subsequent discussions of the subject.

Until recently, scholars have been dependent upon rather subjective and unreliable evidence in seeking to determine the nature of Egyptian views of foreign neighbors especially West Semites. Thus investigators relied heavily on what they assume to be political ideology which conditioned Egyptian perceptions of themselves and others. This study does not rely only on Egyptian ideology, but will go into a well-detailed account of who these people are and how they were integrated into Egyptian society.

Methodology

The broad scope of this study necessitates an integration of a wide body of materials from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria/Canaan and peripheral areas. The correlation of the evidence include:

a.Textual: Egyptian royal literary and hieroglyphic inscriptions, and documents in Akkadian/Sumerian cuneiform, and Northwest Semitic languages including Amorite, Ugaritic, and Hebrew.

b.Art historical: visual sources from a variety of media, i.e. large-scale works in three-dimensional sculpture, relief and painting, and images on smaller objects including furniture inlays, figurines, cylinder seals, and jewelry.

c.Archaeological data: settlement patterns and burial customs, and other material remains such as weaponry and textiles.

The wealth of information obtained by combining diverse disciplines and applying them to a broad geographical area adds a new dimension to the panoramic picture. It has been noted, however, that “while most scholars have largely ignored a holistic approach, others have recognized its significance.”¹ In addressing this problem, Baines remarks that “scholars need to exploit as much evidence as possible in relation to any problem” and points out that “often whole categories have been omitted, the most striking among these being art.”²

Previous studies

One could say that one of the major impulses behind the field of Egyptology was Egypt’s connection with the biblical world. The study of interconnections is as old as the field itself. However, this brief discussion of previous studies will dispense with nineteenth-century literature and give a survey of the developments which took place during the twentieth century. One could say therefore, that a very large percentage of books in the formative stages of Egyptology, at least in background, were dealing with Egypt’s interconnections. The major English publication in the field was the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology (PSBA). All of the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century people working in the field wrote with biblical interconnections in hand. In recent years, however, the biblical aspect has retreated, and the ancient Near East as a discipline in itself has come to the forefront.

By way of review, the University of Chicago did pioneering work in the study of ancient Egypt. The crowning publication of their endeavors was J. H. Breasted’s multi-volumed text, Ancient Records of Egypt I–V (1906). Typical of the work of his time, Breasted’s study of Egypt was inspired in part by the desire to explore the culture and history of what were then considered to be biblical lands. In this way, Breasted made available information that was previously inaccessible to most scholars. W. M. Müller’s work, Egyptological Researches: Results of a Journey in 1904 (1906), focuses on the monuments recording the relations of ancient Egypt to foreign countries, especially Asia and Europe – monuments which are mostly contributions to biblical studies – a goal very much in vogue during the early part of the twentieth century. The photographic record made by the Eduard Meyer Fremdvolker Expedition in 1912–13 resulted in the publication of his Bericht über eine Expedition nach Ägypten zur Erforschung der Darstellungen der Fremdvolker, SPAW (1913). Photographs were taken of 17 Theban tombs containing representations of foreign peoples. While his photographic survey is thorough, it is limited in both temporal scope and textual analysis.³ This work served as a major influence for many studies until it was supplanted by Norman de Garis Davies’s facsimiles of wall decoration of primarily New Kingdom tombs, (including some Middle Kingdom monuments as well) produced by the Graphic Section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian Expedition between 1907 and 1937. Much of this material can be found in the Metropolitan Museum’s Robb de Peyster Tytus Memorial series (1917–1927) and Theban tomb series.

W. F. Petrie’s pioneering work, Researches in Sinai, London (1906), was a major survey of the Sinai, and provides a wealth of information regarding the antiquities of all the sites examined by the expedition. Petrie’s publication was also influenced by a desire to find biblical connections. His work was superseded by studies in two editions, by A. H. Gardiner and T. Eric Peet (2nd edn revised and augmented by J. Černý), The Inscriptions of Sinai Part I (1952) and Part II (1955). This work is important for the study of the Sinai, but focuses on different areas, namely inscriptions with translations and commentary. It also contains plates. The first decade of the twentieth century saw much pioneering work in the field. These early works provided source materials for future scholarship.

Similar works have been accomplished for the Aegean, but are not of concern here. J. Vercoutter’s publication, L’Égypte et le monde égéen prehellenique (1956), touches upon the discipline included in the present study, but it is overwhelmingly focused on the Mediterranean and the Aegean worlds. The discovery of the Minoan frescoes by M. Bietak at Tell el-Dab’a in the Egyptian Delta has shown that sometimes it is very hard to separate Egypt from the Aegean side of the fence.

Wolfgang Helck’s comprehensive work, Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien im 3 und 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (2nd edn, 1971) marks the first post-war cumulative study of an attempt at a synthesis of Egyptian–Asiatic connections. Nevertheless, this work does not deal with art, and is heavily focused on Egypt. The material presented here looks at these aspects from the Mesopotamian view, as well. With Helck’s important article, “Ägyptische Statuen im Ausland: Ein Chronologisches Problem,” Ugaritic Forschungen 8 (1976), 101–15, the idea of an Egyptian empire in Palestine during the Middle Bronze Age faded into the background. Ever since this article appeared, the critical issue concerning the extent of Egypt’s role in Canaan during the Middle Kingdom took on a more modest point of view. In the United States, W. F. Albright’s work The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography, American Oriental Series Vol. 5 (1934), remains a major but somewhat outdated reference. His study offers an inductive solution of the problem of the vocalization of the Egyptian writing of foreign names and words primarily of the New Kingdom. Most recently, Albright’s system of syllabic orthography was expanded upon by B. Sass in his Studia Alphabetica (1991), which also focuses on Middle Kingdom transcription.

The question of how trustworthy the Theban tomb paintings are for our knowledge of the costume of the peoples to the northeast of Egypt was addressed by James B. Pritchard in “Syrians as Pictured in the Paintings of the Theban Tombs,” BASOR 122 (April 1951). He gives a tabulation of the distribution of the various types of dress during the New Kingdom, which is a valuable resource for further study into the costume of the contemporary Near East.

The imagery and artistic motifs that are common to Egypt, the Aegean, and Western Asia were studied by W. S. Smith in his Interconnections in the Ancient Near East (1965). O. Tufnell and W. A. Ward’s, “Relations between Byblos, Egypt, and Mesopotamia at the end of the Third Millennium B.C.: a study of the Montet Jar,” Syria 43 (1966) discusses the deposit at t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: The Scope, Methodology and Purpose of the Present Study
• 2 ꜤꜢmw: Etymology, Usage and Synonyms
• 3 West Semites in Egyptian Art of the Old and Middle Kingdoms
• 4 West Semites and the Economic Life of Egypt
• 5 Conclusion and Prospects for Further Study
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Chronological Tables
• Sources of Illustrations
• Index
• Copyright