Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 17

When we think about peoples of the past, we intuitively try to imagine what they would have looked like in real life, to visualize their physical features, dress, and general appearance. Preconceptions very much inspire the resulting image, as is best demonstrated by how popular culture portrays ancient Egyptians and how this has changed over time. Take Queen Cleopatra, for example, the last ruler of the country at least partly of Egyptian descent. The numerous performances of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, on stage or as a movie illustrate how the picture of this woman has evolved. The 1963 Hollywood blockbuster featured the British‐born Caucasian Elizabeth Taylor as the queen; in 2017, the Royal Shakespeare Company cast the English actress Josette Simon, of Antiguan descent, to play the part. The calendar an American beverage company issued in the late 20th century and entitled “Great Kings and Queens of Africa,” included a depiction of Cleopatra as a black African woman. These changes in the queen’s representation did not result from scholarly reconsiderations of ancient data, but from shifting perceptions in the popular mind about the context of ancient Egypt.

It was only recently that traditional scholarship started to acknowledge the African background of Egyptian culture, partly in response to world history’s aim to replace dominant western‐centered narratives with others that focused more on the contributions of other regions, including Africa. At the same time, primarily African diaspora communities wanted the continent’s ancient history to be approached outside a Eurocentric context, and insisted, for example, on the use of the ancient Egyptian term kemet instead of the European one, Egypt. Initially, most Egyptologists bluntly dismissed these proposals, but in recent years a greater willingness to engage with them has developed. Museums now regularly present their Egyptian collections within an African setting, and the study on the interconnections between Egypt and the rest of Africa has intensified. This new attitude has not made it easier to visualize the ancient Egyptians, however, as their relationship with other African peoples is not obvious. While ancient Egypt was clearly “in Africa,” it was not so clearly “of Africa.” Archaeological and textual evidence for Egyptian contacts in the continent beyond its immediate neighbors is so far minimal and limited to the import of luxury items. The contributions of Egypt to other African cultures were at best ambiguous, and in general Egypt’s interactions with Asiatic regions were closer and more evident. Was the same true for the population of the country, and did the ancient Egyptians leave any reliable data that could guide our imagination?

There exist countless pictures of humans from ancient Egypt, but it is clear that these were not intended as accurate portraits, except for some late examples from Ptolemaic and Roman times. Men and women appear in standardized depictions where physical features, hairdos, clothing, and even posture characterize them as Egyptians (Figure 1.1). The representations of foreigners are equally uniform: Nubians have dark skins and braided hair and wear earrings (Figure 1.2), while Syrians have lighter skins and pointed beards (Figure 1.3). The artists were intent upon showing the opposition between Egyptians and foreigners, not on making clear their individual appearances. The perception of who was Egyptian could change according to the intended audience. For example, a prince from Upper Nubia in the 14th century, Hekanefer, appears in two different guises. In the tomb of the Egyptian viceroy at Thebes, Hekanefer has typical Nubian features and dress, while in his own burial in Nubia he looks fully Egyptian (Figure 1.4). He wanted his own people to see him as a member of the Egyptian ruling class, whereas to the Egyptian viceroy of his country he was a Nubian subject, clearly distinct from Egyptians.

Figure 1.1 Egyptian archetypes. This pair of painted limestone statues, 120 cm high, shows a husband and wife in typical Egyptian fashion. His skin is darker than hers because he works outside, while she, as an upper‐class lady, can stay indoors. She wears a tight‐fitting long dress, while he has only a short skirt. Both of them are represented without wrinkles or other signs of aging and hold their hands in traditional postures. While they are clearly identified by name in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the images are not to be understood as naturalistic portraits.

Source: Scala/Art Resource

Figure 1.2 Nubian archetype. On this 10‐cm‐high limestone trial piece for a relief sculpture the 14th‐century artist represented a Nubian with the characteristics that were always used for a man from that region. He has specific physical features, braided hair, and an earring. Such images were produced throughout the ancient history of Egypt, although they started to show a greater variety of types when Egypt became an empire in the mid‐2nd millennium. Metropolitan Museum of Art 22.2.10.

Source: Rogers Fund, 1922

Figure 1.3 Syrian archetype. This 13‐cm‐high glazed tile, originally used as wall decoration for the palace of Rameses III at Tell el‐Yahudiyya, shows a captive from Syria with the typical characteristics always used for the representation of such a foreigner. His facial features, beard, and headdress make him immediately recognizable as someone from that area to an Egyptian viewer. The detail of his clothing shows two gazelles facing a tree, a common Near Eastern artistic motif. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Ägyptisch‐Orientalische Sammlung.

Source: Art Resource

Figure 1.4 A matter of presentation. In the 14th century, images of the Nubian prince Hekanefer appear in two tombs depicting him very differently. In his own tomb in Lower Nubia at Toshka he is represented fully as an Egyptian and the hieroglyphic text states that he gives praise to the god Osiris. In contrast, in the Theban tomb of an official of Tutankhamun he is depicted as an archetypal Nubian in a prostrate posture of submission and identified as “Hekanefer, the Prince of Miam” in the accompanying text.

Source: Marc Van De Mieroop

The homogeneity of Egyptians in ancient depictions is deceptive. Over the millennia, Egyptian society constantly integrated newcomers with various origins, physical features, and customs. But unless there was a reason to make the difference explicit, they all appeared alike in stereotypical depictions. They were all Egyptians, not people with Nubian, Libyan, Syrian, Greek, or other backgrounds. Some scholars have tried to determine what Egyptians could have looked like by comparing their skeletal remains with those of recent populations, but the samples are so limited and the interpretations so fraught with uncertainties that this is an unreliable approach.

Can we articulate any idea of what type of people we would encounter were we able to visit ancient Egypt? I think we should stress the diversity of the people. The country’s location at the edge of northeast Africa and its geography as a corridor between that continent and Asia opened it up to influences from all directions, in terms both of culture and of demography. The processes of acculturation, intermarriage, and so on probably differed according to community and over time. People must have preserved some of their ancestors’ physique and lifestyles, and the degree to which they merged with neighbors with different backgrounds must have been variable. We cannot imagine an Egyptian population that was of uniform appearance, and the inhabitants of the north probably looked different from those of the south of the country. But somehow all these people at times saw themselves as Egyptians, distinct from people from the neighboring countries, and it is their common history we will explore.