UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 11 p. Old Egyptian is the earliest stage of the ancient Egyptian language that is preserved in extensive texts. It represents a dialect as well as a historical stage of the language, showing grammatical similarities with and distinctions from later ones. One particular issue in studying Old Egyptian lies in the uneven nature of the Old...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2017. — 19 p. Our sources for the chronology of the Old Kingdom comprise a mere handful of contemporary written documents, supplemented by radiocarbon dates, some of which have recently been recalibrated by Oxford University. The bulk of historical evidence, deriving primarily from residential cemeteries of the ruling kings and the elite, as well...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2021. — 12 p. In ancient Egypt the primary intention of creating textual self-presentations—or self-portraiture in words, similar to that in paintings, statuary, and reliefs—was to present the explicit characteristics of protagonists in a corresponding fashion, introducing their values and effectiveness to live and rejoice in immortality, both...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 15 p. Ancient quarrying and mining sites, which represent some of the most threatened archaeological sites in Egypt, often present extensive cultural landscapes comprising a range of material culture; however, their research potential is still not fully recognized. Hard and soft stone quarrying and gemstone mining in ancient Egypt are...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 12 p. The term “painted funerary portraits” used here encompasses a group of portraits painted on either wooden panels or on linen shrouds that were used to decorate portrait mummies from Roman Egypt (conventionally called “mummy portraits”). They have been found in cemeteries in almost all parts of Egypt, from the coastal city of Marina...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 15 p. Like members of all pre-modern societies, ancient Egyptians practiced various forms of recycling. The reuse of building materials by rulers is attested throughout Egyptian history and was motivated by ideological and economic concerns. Reuse of masonry from the dilapidated monuments of royal predecessors may have given legitimacy to...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 13 p. Usurpation was the practice by some Egyptian rulers of replacing the names of predecessors with their own on monuments such as temple reliefs and royal statuary. Usurpation was often carried out in connection with the damnatio memoriae of pharaohs such as Hatshepsut and Tutankhamen. Ramesses II usurped dozens of monuments of various...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 14 p. Child deities constitute a unique class of divinities in Egyptian religion. A child deity is the child member (usually male) in a divine triad, constituting a family of father, mother, and child. The theology of child deities centered on fertility, abundance, and the legitimation of royal and hereditary succession. Child deities grew...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 10 p. The almost infinite number of epithets applied to Egyptian deities attests to the complex and diverse nature of Egyptian gods. In general, epithets outline a deity’s character, describe his/her physical appearance and attributes, and give information about the cult. Epithets immediately follow the deity’s name and can be made up of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 20 p. The early to mid-4th Dynasty (c. 2600-2500 BCE) stands out as a peak of monumentality in the early historical periods of Pharaonic Egypt. Within 100 years, Sneferu, Khufu, and Radjedef built pyramids on an unprecedented scale at Maidum, Dahshur, Giza, and Abu Rawash. Pyramid construction absorbed enormous resources and reflects a new...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 8 p. Core aspects of the kinship system in ancient Egypt are discussed here. The six basic terms through which Egyptians expressed relationships of marriage, descent, and collaterality are considered, as well as the principles that regulated marriage and inheritance. The existence of different terms for kin groups is also taken into...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 15 p. In ancient Egypt, the late fourth millennium BCE corresponds to what is known as the late Predynastic Period (Naqada IIIa-b). It was a crucial time for the constitution of Egypt as a single political entity. In Upper Egypt, earlier tendencies towards social differentiation and functional specialization intensify during this period,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 13 p. Egyptian interactions and contact with Palestine began as early as the fourth millennium BCE, and continued, in varying forms and at times far more intensively than others, until the conquest of the ancient world by Alexander the Great. Numerous data—textual, material, archaeological—found in both Egyptian and southern Levantine...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 11 p. The ancient Egyptian scarab is an artistic depiction of the indigenous Egyptian dung beetle. Mythologically, the scarab represented the ability of the sun god to bring about his own rebirth. There are a number of different kinds of scarabs, including heart scarabs, commemorative scarabs, and scarab amulets, indicating their different...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 11 p. Egyptian temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods provided the setting for the dramatic performance of various cultic activities, such as festivals. This overview describes the nature, distribution (national; regional; local), and setting (within the temple; within the precinct; outside the temple domain) of these festivals, as well...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 6 p. In ancient Egypt, food crises were most often occasioned by bad harvests following low or destructive inundations. Food crises developed into famines when administrative officials—state or local—were unable to organize storage and redistribution systems. Food deprivation, aggravated by hunger-related diseases, led to increased...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 6 p. Some of the earliest evidence for written communication in Egypt derives from figural graffiti—a variation of rock art. These texts are evidenced from many sites in Egypt, especially the Western Desert.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 15 p. The annual Opet Festival, during which the bark of Amun—and ultimately those of Mut, Khons, and the king as well—journeyed from Karnak to Luxor, became a central religious celebration of ancient Thebes during the 18th Dynasty. The rituals of the Opet Festival celebrated the sacred marriage of Amun—with whom the king merged—and Mut,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 19 p. The Wadi el-Hol is an ensemble of rock inscription sites and caravansary deposits near the mid-point of the Farshut Road, roughly equidistant between ancient Thebes and Hiw. The rock inscriptions range in date between the Predynastic and Coptic Periods, with the majority belonging to the Middle Kingdom. Most inscriptions record names...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 9 p. The Roman Period temple of Isis at Shenhur was built and decorated during the reign of Augustus (30 BCE – 14 CE) through that of Trajan (98 – 117 CE). The site of Shenhur islocated between two major cult centers, Koptos and Thebes, in Upper Egypt. While both theological systems were influential at Shenhur, the temple was mainly...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2017. — 17 p. When tracing the epistemological but also thematic development of metaphor studies in Egyptology, what can be seen is a change from a typological perspective, which sought to categorize both motifs and metaphor types, to a more cognitive perspective, which was more interested in the processes behind the linguistic phenomena. In the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 8 p. Two kinds of cult animal existed in ancient Egypt: specific faunal representatives of a given deity that lived in a temple and were ceremonially interred, and creatures killed and mummified to act as votive offerings. The former are attested from the earliest times, while the latter date from the Late Period and later.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 3 p. The Egyptian term jmjwt (imiut/imyut) had two meanings: it was both an epithet of the god Anubis, relating to his role as patron of mummification, and a designation of the deity’s particular sacred object, which took the form of a pole set into a pot, with the hide of an animal attached to the pole.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 16 p. Iconographic, textual, and archaeological sources show that music played an essential role within ancient Egyptian civilization throughout all periods. Music was of utmost importance in rituals and festivals. Different forms of music with multiple functions existed for public or private representations, profane or sacred, interpreted...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 10 p. Made from a mixture of silt, clay, sand, and straw formed into regular molded units, unfired mud-bricks were the primary construction material employed in ancient Egypt—being quite literally the most basic of building blocks for all levels of domestic structures, from simple one-room buildings to lavishly decorated palace complexes,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 14 p. Mud-brick architecture, though it has received less academic attention than stone architecture, was in fact the more common of the two in ancient Egypt; unfired brick, made from mud, river, or desert clay, was used as the primary building material for houses throughout Egyptian history and was employed alongside stone in tombs and...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 9 p. From 404 BCE - 394 CE hieroglyphic texts were in general composed in the high-status language variety termed Traditional Egyptian. This was used exclusively in religious and sacerdotal contexts and is as such opposed to Demotic, which served both as a spoken and as a written language. Traditional Egyptian is a reflex of how the late...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 6 p. Theodicy, the inquiry as to the justness of the divine, is a prominent theme in mythological descriptions of the struggle between order and chaos. It is also an important feature of Middle Egyptian pessimistic poetry, which probes weaknesses in this mythological argument. Although less explicitly articulated, theodicean concerns recur...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 5 p. Ancestor busts (also known as anthropoid busts) date to the New Kingdom. The majority of extant examples are from Deir el-Medina. They are most commonly interpreted as belonging to the cult of the recently deceased—that is, the ancestor cult.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 20 p. The site of Gebelein, whose Arabic name “two mountains” seems to reflect the ancient Egyptianjnrtj, “two rocks,” was occupied from Prehistory to the Roman Period. Tombs from Naqada I tothe Middle Kingdom have been found in the area. Remains such as papyri discovered in tombs ofthe 4th Dynasty are the most ancient documents of their...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 13 p. The eastern temple of Karnak known as “Temple of Amun-Ra-Who-Hears-Prayers” was partly built and entirely redecorated between year 40 and year 46 of the reign of Ramesses II; it was located in an area devoted to the personal piety from Thutmose III until the reign of Ptolemy VIII. The masonry has revealed that the temple hides...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 6 p. Drama is to be understood as a subset of performance involving verbal and physical interaction between two or more persons. Finding evidence for this activity in ancient Egyptian sources is challenging, but not without results. Dramatic texts appear to cluster between the 26th Dynasty and the Roman Period up to the second century CE...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 14 p. Qau el-Kebir, called Tjebu in ancient Egyptian and Antaeopolis in Greek, was a village in Middle Egypt and the capital of the 10th Upper Egyptian nome. The main deity of the town was Nemtywy. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, substantial parts of a Ptolemaic temple were still preserved, but they were destroyed by a change of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 14 p. In the Egyptian late Middle Kingdom (from Senusret III in the mid 12th to the 13th Dynasty), innovations are visible at all levels of Egyptian culture and administration. At this time, the country was heavily centralized, and there are several indications of a wish for tighter control in administration, while local governors lost much...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014. — 15 p. The origins of the 20th Dynasty remain obscure, their only indications being provided by the Elephantine Stela. After several years of political and social unrest, Sethnakhte seized power as first king of the 20th Dynasty. He was succeeded by his son Ramesses III, who is considered to be the last great king of the New Kingdom. His...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 7 p. The “Myth of the Heavenly Cow” is the conventional title of an Egyptian mythological narrative that relates how humanity once rebelled against the sun god and how thereupon the sun god reorganized the cosmos. The narrative is embedded in the so-called Book of the Heavenly Cow, which is preserved in several versions dating to the New...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 15 p. Esna is located on the west bank of the Nile, 64 kilometers south of Luxor. The site was an important cultural center in the Ptolemaic Period, although archaeological evidence dates from as early as the Middle Kingdom. The Temple of Esna was the last Egyptian temple to be decorated with hieroglyphic texts. It was erected in the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 5 p. The temple at Esna North was the main temple of the local deity Khnum-Ra, Lord of the Field (3nmw-Ra nb sxt). Its ancient name was Pr-3nmw-n-sxt. Only little information about this temple is available, because the building, first seen and described by Claude Sicard in 1718, was demolished shortly after a visit by Jean François...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 16 p. The economy of ancient Egypt is a difficult area of study due to the lack of preservation of much data (especially quantitative data); it is also a controversial subject on which widely divergent views have been expressed. It is certain, however, that the principal production and revenues of Egyptian society as a whole and of its...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 23 p. The building stones of ancient Egypt are those relatively soft, plentiful rocks used to construct most temples, pyramids, and mastaba tombs. They were also employed for the interior passages, burial chambers, and outer casings of mud-brick pyramids and mastabas. Similarly, building stones were used in other mud-brick structures of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 23 p. The gemstones of ancient Egypt, broadly defined, include all rocks, minerals, and biogenic materials used for jewelry (beads, pendants, ring stones, and cloisonné inlays), amulets, seals, and other small decorative items (figurines, cosmetic vessels, and inlays in furniture and sculpture). At least 38 gemstone varieties were used by...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 31 p. The ornamental stones of ancient Egypt comprise a large and diverse group of rocks. Their attractive colors and patterns, and ability to take a good polish, made them sought after for decorative applications in art and architecture. At least 48 varieties of ornamental stone were used by the Egyptians and these come from 45 known...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 16 p. The utilitarian stones of ancient Egypt were those rocks employed for implements and other mundane articles. Most of these fall into three categories: 1) tools for harvesting, food preparation, and stone working; 2) weapons for hunting, war, and personal protection; and 3) grinding stones for cereals and other plant products, ore...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 8 p. Wood was a widely used material for sculpture in ancient Egypt from the earliest times. It was mostly native timber, but from the New Kingdom onwards, sculptors also used imported wood species. The majority of extant examples are from funerary contexts, found in both private and royal tombs, although the art of fine wood carving was...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 14 p. Upon death, the Egyptian was the object of a series of ceremonies performed by priestly officiants. The stages of the procedure largely correspond to the practical steps taken following death. These were: taking the corpse to a place of embalming, the embalming itself, taking the corpse to the tomb, and interment. The words and...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 7 p. The Predynastic remains of the Hiw region (Diospolis Parva) are mainly from cemetery sites first excavated by W. M. Flinders Petrie at the end of the nineteenth century. They cover the material culture of most of the 4th millennium BCE. Although reportedly more than 1100 Predynastic tombs were excavated, the sites have remained some of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 17 p. In ancient Egypt, flint or chert was used for knapped stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic down to the Pharaonic Period. The raw material was available in abundance on the desert surface, or it could be mined from the limestone formations along the Nile Valley. While the earliest lithic industries of Prehistoric Egypt resemble the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 13 p. Rock art, basically being non-utilitarian, non-textual anthropic markings on natural rock surfaces, was an extremely widespread graphical practice in ancient Egypt. While the apogee of the tradition was definitely the Predynastic Period (mainly fourth millennium BCE), examples date from the late Palaeolithic (c. 15,000 BCE) until the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 5 p. The ancient Egyptians carried out mummification, the artificial preservation of the body, to ensure the survival of the body after death. They believed that the dead body could be reanimated by the ka (spiritual essence) and that the destruction of the body threatened the survival of the soul and the individual’s identity for eternity....
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 21 p. In the Second Intermediate Period (late 13th to 17th Dynasty), the territories that had been ruled by the centralized Egyptian state—including Lower Nubia—were divided between the kingdom of Kerma, the Theban kingdom, the kingdom of Avaris, and possibly other little known political entities. A gap in the written documentation calls...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 9 p. The notion of akh, often translated as (effective) spirit, pointed toward many different meanings, such as the identity of the transfigured dead as well as that of living persons who acted efficaciously for (or on behalf of) their masters. The akh belonged to cardinal terms of ancient Egyptian religion and hence is often found in...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 9 p. The ba was often written with the sign of a saddle-billed stork or a human-headed falcon and translated into modern languages as the “soul.” It counts among key Egyptian religious terms and concepts, since it described one of the individual components or manifestations in the ancient Egyptian view of both human and divine beings. The...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 9 p. Three different kinds of ibis species are attested from ancient Egypt: the sacred ibis, the glossy ibis, and the northern bald ibis. Pictorial representations of the latter bird—easily recognizable by the shape of its body, the shorter legs, long curved beak, and the typical crest covering the back of the head—were used in writings of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014. — 8 p. The ba, whose notion spanned from the divine to the manifestation of the divine, and from the supernatural (or rather super-human) manifestation of the dead to the notion of the soul (psyche) or reputation, counts among the most important Egyptian religious concepts. The term and its hieroglyphic renderings are attested for all periods...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 9 p. Certain features of ancient Egyptian culture display a conscious return to bygone times. Texts, architecture, and works of art often referred to elements of the remote past. This revival of the past is known as “archaism,” provided that there was a substantial gap in time between the model and the copy, and that the elements referred...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 35 p. Land tenure describes the regime by means of which land is owned or possessed, whether by landholders, private owners, tenants, sub-lessees, or squatters. It embraces individual or group rights to occupy and/or use the land, the social relationships that may be identified among the rural population, and the converging influences of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 25 p. Although hampered by many limitations in source material, scholars have amassed many details concerning the ancient Egyptian taxation system from all periods and have begun to understand how the system may have worked. The best documentation for taxation comes from the New Kingdom, when the combined evidence of government records and...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 24 p. In the last two centuries before the arrival of Alexander the Great, Persia invaded Egypt twice and administered it as a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire. Although the Ptolemies later demonized the Persians, and most traces of their rule were systematically removed, the history of this fascinating period can be reconstructed thanks to...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 7 p. Egyptian birth houses (mammisis) are an important feature of many Late Period and Ptolemaic and Roman temple complexes. Being small temple edifices in their own right, their decoration is dominated by scenes that relate to the nativity and bringing up of the divine child of a local triad. As the young god was identified with the king,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 13 p. The island of Philae, located amid the First Cataract some 7 kilometers south of modern Aswan, housed an ancient settlement and one of the most extensive and best preserved temple complexes of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Together with the abaton on the neighboring island of Biga, Philae was the most important cultic center of Isis and...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 19 p. Travel was a crucial element of ancient Egyptian culture. An extensive traffic system by land and by water already existed as early as the Old Kingdom, including various means of transport that did not fundamentally change right through to the New Kingdom. Traveling activity attested for various professions demonstrates that...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 17 p. Gebel el-Silsila, located on both banks of the Nile between Edfu and Kom Ombo, is a place whose significance was defined by its unique topographic features, namely, the extremely narrow river bed hemmed in by sandstone hills. From the New Kingdom on, huge quantities of sandstone for temple building were quarried here, and during the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2021. — 33 p. The Meroitic Period, which lasted from the third century BCE to around the mid-fourth century CE, comprises the second of two phases of Kushite empire in the territory of what is today Sudan, the first phase comprising the Napatan era (c. 655 – 300 BCE). While Meroitic culture reflects both Napatan influence and that of periods of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 13 p. By today’s definition, a “throne” is the seat of a king or sovereign. In ancient Egypt, a plethora of terms referred to the throne, but none apparently carried this specific connotation. Explicit reference to the seat of a king or god was made by addressing the latter’s “elevated” position (wrr, aA). There were two major types of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 18 p. The art that developed in the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten, known as “Amarna art,” has largely been considered revolutionary in the history of ancient Egyptian art. As such, it has been the subject of much debate and has generated numerous theories, often contradictory or controversial, and, in fact, deeply influenced by the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 18 p. Ancient Egyptian art’s concern with individualized human representation has generated much debate among Egyptologists about the very existence of portraiture in Pharaonic society. The issue has often—if not always—been thought of in terms of opposition between portrait and ideal image, being a major topic in the broader question of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 13 p. The Late Dynastic Period is the last period of Egyptian independence under Dynasties 28 to 30 (404 - 343 BCE). As for Egypt’s position in the world, this was the time their military and diplomatic efforts focused on preventing reconquest by the Persian Empire. At home, Dynasties 28 - 29 were marked by a frequent shift of rulers, whose...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 14 p. The main purpose of education and apprenticeship in ancient Egypt was the training of scribes and of specialist craftsmen. The result of this profession-oriented educational system was restricted accessibility to schooling, most probably favoring male members of the Egyptian elite. Basic education offered in Egyptian local schools...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 8 p. Ancient Egyptian ethical thought and action revolved around the notion of maat. Although there are no traces of a standard moral code surviving from ancient Egypt, moral principles are often reflected in the literature--especially works of wisdom literature, funerary books and songs, tomb biographies, and literary narratives. In these...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 5 p. The papyrus plant that grew along the River Nile was used to manufacture writing material in ancient Egypt. It was employed throughout the Classical Period and beyond until superseded by paper in about 800 CE.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2021. — 22 p. Egyptian tower houses are a type of dwelling that developed in the Third Intermediate Period. They were extensively used from the Late Period (26th Dynasty) through Roman times and remained in use in Late Antiquity from the Medieval Period onwards. They are still constructed in some parts of the Middle East today. These houses were...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 20 p. In ancient Egypt inheritance was conveyed either through the legal order of succession, favoring sons over daughters, children over siblings, and older over younger, or through written declarations that allowed for individualized arrangements. Adoption was the common means by which a childless person could acquire an heir. The initial...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 26 p. Egyptian law courts originated as councils of officials, which, besides acting as judges, also had other administrative tasks. Accordingly, they were known by the rather unspecific terms DADAt (Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom) or qnbt (Middle Kingdom until the beginning of the Late Period), which simply means “committee.” Their members...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 12 p. When considering “law” in ancient Egypt, it is necessary to try to distinguish between our modern concepts and ancient aspects of Egyptian law. The word hp is most commonly translated as “law” and was used in the sense of “(single) law” throughout Egyptian history, but it also refers to any other type of binding rule. 0pw and, in...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 19 p. While various forms of coercion to labor and restriction of individual freedom did exist throughout Egyptian history, slavery is rather defined by economic than by legal indicators. Some literary texts present figures of slaves, called Hm (“laborer”) or bAk (“servant”). The documentary evidence is multifaceted: during the Old Kingdom,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 10 p. According to ancient Egyptian belief, the created world was populated by humans, spirits of deceased humans, deities, and a host of supernatural beings whose identities were never precisely defined. The Egyptian language refers to the first three categories as, respectively, rmT, Ax or mwt, and nTr, but lacks a proper term for the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 9 p. The Egyptian language lacked specific terms for “religion” and “piety.” Nonetheless, Egyptologists recognize the significance of personal faith and piety in studying the religious sentiments and behavior of private individuals as expressed in texts and image. “Personal piety” was a complex phenomenon in ancient Egyptian religion and,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 16 p. The 3rd nome of Upper Egypt possessed several regional power centers during Pharaonic history, including its nome capital (Nekhen/Elkab) in the south and the urban centers of Hefat and Gebelein near the northern border of the nome. Several important sites occupy the area between el-Moalla and el-Deir, including necropolises,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 15 p. The transition between the 18th and 19th Dynasties, a period beginning with the reign of Aye and concluding with the reign of Sety I, represents the conclusion to the tumultuous Amarna Period and the beginning of the stability and prosperity of the following Ramesside Period. The rule of individuals coming from non-royal families—Aye,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2021. — 20 p. Gender and violence intersected in ancient Egypt in many ways. In general, the ancient Egyptian gender system privileged men and the masculine. Exceptions to this were status dependent. Gendered patterns of violence are evident in cases of mistreatment of women through beating and rape. War-related royal texts used gendered...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 9 p. Cosmogonies of Late Period and Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt are founded upon those of the earlier “classic” ages, incorporating old texts and themes but elaborating them to form new compositions, synthesizing elements of the major Heliopolitan, Memphite, and Hermopolitan theologies with texts and rituals more specific to the deities of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2017. — 14 p. The enigmatic reserve heads of the Old Kingdom (2670-2168 BCE) in Egypt have been the topic of much discussion and debate since their discovery, primarily on the Giza Plateau, at the turn of the twentieth century. Their purpose and meaning to the ancient Egyptians confounded the first excavators who discovered them (de Morgan,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 14 p. According to the Egyptian iconographical and textual sources, dance is performed by animals, human beings (dwarfs, men, women, and children appear in the reliefs), the bas of Pe, the deceased king or individual, the living king in a divine role, and gods and goddesses. Problems concerning the classification, representation, and...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 10 p. Ancient Egyptian texts have been found with instructions on how they should be performed. Recitation, speech acts, and declamation are related to the action of speaking out loud in religious-ritual and juridical contexts, as well as for entertainment. Recitations are used in contexts that demand a correct wording or the power of words...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014. — 13 p. In Egypt at the beginning of the fourth millennium BCE two distinct cultural units developed. In the south arose the Naqada culture, named after the great cemetery discovered by Petrie at the end of the nineteenth century. In the north, spanning the Delta up to the Memphite region, arose the “Maadi-Buto,” or Lower Egyptian culture,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 5 p. Deir el-Gabrawi, the most important Old Kingdom necropolis of the Upper Egyptian 12th nome, is formed of two cliffs, the northern one near the village of Arab el-Atiyat and the southern one near the village of Deir el-Gabrawi. Its tombs date back to the late Old Kingdom, although an earlier chronology has been suggested. However, no...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 6 p. Estates (also referred to as “domains”) formed the basis of institutional agriculture in Old Kingdom Egypt. Estates were primarily administered by the temples or by state agricultural centers scattered throughout the country, but were also granted to high officials as remuneration for their services. Sources from the third millennium...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 10 p. The household was the basic unit of ancient Egyptian social organization. Its composition varied, however, depending on administrative or sociological considerations: administrative records focus on nuclear families, while private sources stress the importance of the extended family. Households included not only people linked by...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 11 p. Land donations are frequently attested in the written record of ancient Egypt. Used by the king as a means to recompense and honor high dignitaries, civil servants, and temples, they were in no way a royal prerogative. Private individuals also donated land both to temples and royal statues, which appears to have been a social and...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 10 p. Villages were the backbone of rural organization in Pharaonic Egypt. Inner solidarity and family ties are recorded in literary texts as well as by the use of certain terms, which highlight their “clanic” structure, at least from the New Kingdom on. The relations between villages, royal administration, and institutional centers like...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2018. — 20 p. Microhistory is a rather ambiguous term, usually referring to the lives, activities, and cultural values of common people, rarely evoked in official sources. In the case of ancient Egypt, both the urban and village spheres provide some clues about the existence, social relations, spiritual expectations, and life conditions of farmers,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 4 p. The execration ritual was intended to prevent rebellious actions by Egyptians, foreigners, or supernatural forces by textually and kinetically destroying enemies via inanimate, animal, or human substitutes. Execration rites are attested throughout Pharaonic history.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 18 p. Throughout time, Egyptian sources display divergent attitudes towards violence expressing the belief that some situations of violence were positive and to be encouraged, while others were to be avoided. Sanctioned violence could be employed for a variety of reasons—the severity of which ranged from inflicting blows to gruesome death....
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 8 p. Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language from Mesopotamia written in the cuneiform script, was employed as a diplomatic lingua franca between the major powers of the Late Bronze Age. Akkadian from Egypt defines the language of the Akkadian texts that originated in Egypt. These were probably written by Egyptian scribes. On various...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 11 p. Cognitive linguistics is an influential branch of linguistics, which has played an increasing role in different areas of Egyptology over the last couple of decades. Concepts from cognitive linguistics have been especially influential in the study of determinatives/classifiers in the hieroglyphic script, but they have also proven...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 15 p. The modern city of Quft is the location of the ancient town of Coptos, which was a major religious and trade center in Upper Egypt, at the crossroad between the Nile Valley and Eastern Desert routes to the Red Sea. The site was settled from Predynastic times (as witnessed by the Coptos colossi) and remained important until Late...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 12 p. Egypto-Hellenic contacts, here defined as contacts between the ancient Egyptians and the “haunebut”—the peoples of the Aegean—can be observed since the beginning of Greek civilization. Both the Minoans and the Mycenaeans had intensive trade relations with Egypt and used Egyptian prototypes to craft their own objects, adapting the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 4 p. Ostriches were hunted in Egypt from the earliest times. From their eggshells beads, pendants, and vessels were manufactured. Decorated eggshells were used from the Predynastic Period onward and seem to have a religious meaning.
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 9 p. The ancient Egyptian practice of dedicating small objects to deities as a means of establishing a lasting, personal relationship between deity and donor is well known. The dedication of votive objects in sacred areas such as temples, shrines, and cemeteries was an optional practice for which there is sporadic archaeological evidence....
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 13 p. The main events of the transition period from the Second Intermediate Period to the New Kingdom are the expulsion of the Hyksos, the reunification of the country, and the reestablishment of a Nubian province. During, and following this process of reunification, the Ahmosids reorganized the administration and started restoration...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 15 p. The human body is both the physical form inhabited by an individual “self” and the medium through which an individual engages with society. Hence the body both shapes and is shaped by an individual’s social roles. In contrast to the cognate fields of archaeology, anthropology, and classics, there has been little explicit discussion or...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 7 p. Ancient Egyptian rituals for the mummification, burial, and commemoration of the dead as performed in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods are attested by textual sources and visual arts, as well as by the evidence of mummified bodies. The underlying religious beliefs about death and the afterlife are basically the same as those of the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2012. — 16 p. As developed in the fields of anthropology and sociology, the concept of ethnicity offers one possible approach to analyzing diversity in the population of ancient Egypt. However, it is important that ethnicity not be elided with foreign-ness, as has often been the case in Egyptological literature. Ethnicity is a social construct...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 11 p. The Meroitic language is known from more than two thousand inscriptions found in northern Sudan and Egyptian Nubia. Although it was written only during the time of the Kingdom of Meroe (c. 300 BCE – 350 CE), the language is attested in Egyptian transcriptions of personal names from as early as the second millennium BCE. Meroitic was...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 12 p. Computer-assisted approaches to text and language, referred to as computational linguistics, represent a developing field in Egyptology. One of the main concerns has been and continues to be the encoding of hieroglyphic signs for computers. The historical standard in this respect is the Manuel de Codage; a Unicode encoding has also...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 10 p. The block statue is a statue type characterized by the squatting posture of the person represented. It was invented in Egypt in the early 12th Dynasty and became from the New Kingdom to the Late Period the most common statue type for non-royal persons in Egyptian temples. Over time subtypes emerged presenting the squatting person...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2021. — 12 p. The period from 1882 –1914 has been called the “Golden Age” of Egyptology, but that term is problematic in light of the fact that it was a Golden Age only for Europeans and Americans. In Britain, the founding in 1882 of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF, now Egypt Exploration Society [EES]) and the beginning of the Great War in 1914...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 6 p. For the Egyptians, the god Osiris provided a model whereby the effects of the rupture caused by death could be totally reversed, since that deity underwent a twofold process of resurrection. Mummification reconstituted his “corporeal” self and justification against Seth his “social” self, re-integrating him and restoring his status...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 16 p. Egyptian religion is characterized by a remarkable degree of continuity, but changes did nevertheless occur in the religious sphere from time to time. One often-cited instance of such a change is the so-called democratization or demotization of the afterlife in the First Intermediate Period. This study examines the evidence for the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 10 p. The cartouche is an elongated form of the Egyptian shen-hieroglyph that encloses and protects a royal name or, in specific contexts, the name of a divinity. A king’s throne name and birth name were each enclosed in a cartouche, forming a kind of heraldic motif expressing the ruler’s dual nature as both human and divine. The cartouche...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 4 p. In Egyptian funerary practices, trials composed a crucial phase through which the deceased had to pass in order to become “justified”—that is, worthy of entering the hereafter. The trials featured in Book of the Dead spells 18 and 20 are representative, the most popular pictorial representation of the judgment after death being the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 12 p. Egyptian processions were performed, and acquired meaning, in a religious context. Funeral processions, for example, symbolized the deceased’s transition into the hereafter. The most important processions, however, were the processions of deities that took place during the major feasts, especially those feasts that recurred annually....
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 16 p. The Egyptian god Thoth is best known as a god of writing and wisdom, a lunar deity, and vizier of the gods, but was also a cosmic deity, creator god, and warrior. Being one of the oldest deities of the Egyptian pantheon, he is attested in many sources from the earliest periods of Egyptian history up to the Roman Period. The etymology...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 31 p. Domestic religious practices—that is, religious conduct within a household setting—provided an outlet especially for expressing and addressing the concerns of everyday life. They can be traced throughout Egyptian dynastic history, in textual sources such as spells of healing and protection, offering and dedicatory texts, and private...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 37 p. Tell el-Amarna is situated in middle Egypt and is the location of the New Kingdom city of Akhetaten, founded by Akhenaten in c. 1347 BCE as the cult home for the Aten. Occupied only briefly, it is our most complete example of an ancient Egyptian city, at which a contemporaneous urban landscape of cult and ceremonial buildings,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 7 p. The mace, a club-like weapon attested in ancient Egypt from the Predynastic Period onward, played both functional and ceremonial roles, although more strongly the latter. By the First Dynasty it had become intimately associated with the power of the king, and the archetypal scene of the pharaoh wielding a mace endured from this time on...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 9 p. Flat stone palettes for the grinding of pigments are particularly associated with Predynastic Egypt, when they were made almost exclusively of mudstone and were formed into distinctive geometric and zoomorphic shapes. Ceremonial palettes of the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods are linked with the emerging ideology of...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 10 p. In ancient Egypt, the primary evidence for the Predynastic Period, principally the fourth millennium BCE, derives from burials. In Upper Egypt, there is a clear trend over the period towards greater investment in mortuary facilities and rituals, experimentation in body treatments, and increasing disparity in burial form and content...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 34 p. The temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak (Luxor) experienced over 1,500 years of construction, destruction, renovation, and expansion. Here we provide a detailed survey of the current understanding of the temple’s chronological development, based primarily on published excavation reports, as well as interpretive articles and recent discoveries...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 14 p. Masculinity, femininity, and possibly other (intersexual) genders in ancient Egypt were expressed in, and simultaneously shaped by, many different contexts, such as material culture, artistic representation, burial equipment, texts, and the use of space. Ideally, gender should be investigated in combination with other factors, such as...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 15 p. The site of Deir el-Medina, located in a desert valley on the west bank of Luxor, was conceived as sacred ground. Tombs were built there as early as the Middle Kingdom and a village settlement housing the royal-tomb builders was founded on the site in the early New Kingdom. The workmen’s village gradually became surrounded by chapels...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 17 p. Marriage formed a central social construct of ancient Egyptian culture. It provided the normative framework for producing children, who would act as one’s rightful heirs. The latter were responsible for performing one’s funerary cult, thereby securing one’s eternal life. The economic effects of marriage were also notable. The husband,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 11 p. The present article addresses the ancient Egyptians’ level of linguistic awareness from earliest times to the Coptic Period. The degree to which the Egyptians might have understood their language as a socio-cultural medium reflective of and adapted to different contexts of communication is discussed, along with their attitude to...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 24 p. The problem of the phenomenon referred to as égyptien de tradition (Traditional Egyptian) derives from a basic and long-made observation: a great many texts from ancient Egypt implement an obviously anachronistic and partly artificial language, reflecting elements of earlier stages of Egyptian in varying proportions and degrees while...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 13 p. Ancient Egyptian boats are defined as river-going vessels (in contrast with sea-going ships). Their use from late Prehistory through the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods included general transportation and travel, military use, religious/ceremonial use, and fishing. Depending on size and function, boats were built from papyrus or wood. The...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2009. — 10 p. Seafaring either to or from Egypt cannot be specifically documented before the Old Kingdom, but evidence points to the possibility of sea contact between Egypt and the Syro-Palestinian coast in the Early Dynastic Period, and it is not implausible to suggest that such contacts could have been established in the Predynastic Period or...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 14 p. Transportation in ancient Egypt entailed the use of boats and ships for water travel; for land transportation, attested methods include foot-traffic and the use of draft animals—especially donkeys and oxen, but also, from the first millennium BCE onward, camels. Land vehicles, including carts, chariots, sledges, and carrying chairs,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 14 p. In ancient Egypt, an individual’s name was of vital importance for defining his identity in society and assuring his survival for posterity. A person might have two or even three names, one of them sometimes being a basilophorous name (a name that incorporates a king’s name) adopted by the individual at a certain stage of life. For...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013. — 13 p. The diversity and complexity of ancient Egyptian personal names points to a range of available patterns and options for name-giving. Alongside personal names that make direct reference to the name-bearer and his or her family, there are numerous names that refer to a god, the ruling (or an earlier) king, or some venerated individual,...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010. — 6 p. In ancient Egypt, humans were occasionally the recipients of cult as saints or even deities after their death. Such deified humans could be private persons as well as royalty, men as well as women. The cults were usually of local significance, but in certain cases, they rose to national prominence. The phenomenon of human deification...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2016. — 10 p. The distribution of rations can be found in documents from different periods of Egyptian history, yet the general features of the ration system are not easy to trace. Most of our sources comprise more or less fragmentary lists of wages/payments that reflect, but do not make explicit, various conditions, such as the status of the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 6 p. Figurines of nude females are known from most periods of Pharaonic Egyptian history and occur in a variety of contexts. Female figurines were fashioned from clay, faience, ivory, stone, and wood. A generic Egyptian term for “female figurine” is rpyt; terms specifically for clay figurines include sjn (n Ast), rpyt nt sjnt, and rpyt Ast....
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 9 p. The ancient Egyptians visualized their deities in many ways, and while anthropomorphic gods and goddesses represented only one of the major forms that deities took in ancient Egyptian culture, the sub-category was broad and encompassed several different types. Although they all shared the common characteristic of exhibiting primarily...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014. — 12 p. The 2nd-3rd dynasties were crucial for the early development of Pharaonic civilization, yet they remain obscure due to a paucity of contemporary texts and securely dated material. The broad historical outline has been established with some certainty, but numerous questions remain unanswered. Royal funerary monuments dominate the...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 18 p. The reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV is controversial. Although substantial evidence for this period has been preserved, it is inconclusive on many important details. Nonetheless, the revolutionary nature of Akhenaten’s rule is salient to the modern student of ancient Egypt. The king’s devotion to and promotion of only one...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015. — 14 p. The analysis of life expectancy and longevity is one approach to analyzing diversity in the population of ancient Egypt. It is, however, important to understand the difficulties in such calculations and in the data from which such calculations are derived. Adult age is difficult to determine either from documentary or biological...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2011. — 10 p. The presence of foreign deities in the Egyptian pantheon must be studied in the light of the openness of Egyptian polytheism and as a reflection on cultural identity. Even if Egyptian self-identity was defined as intrinsically opposed to the Other, i.e. the foreigner, Egypt always maintained contact with its neighbors, particularly...
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2008. — 17 p. Late Period temples have their own specific characteristics, such as large, protective, mudbrick temenos walls, hardstone shrines with complex decorations or long mythological texts, colonnaded entrances, innovations such as the wabet and “mammisi,” and burials of royal family members, including the divine adoratrices, within the...
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