Truths and lies about stones in ancient Egyptian texts
(2024) SHAPED. Materials, people and written words in ancient cultures — Location: Universidad de Alcala (10.December.2024)
Files
SHAPEDconference.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 1.79 MB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- Three categories of texts mention stones in ancient Egypt: administrative documents relating to the delivery of stones for a building site; royal and private commemorative or biographical texts describing expeditions to quarries, or the construction of monuments; and finally, ritual or magical texts of temples and papyri. In all these documents, the main difficulty is to identify the material the text refers to. Besides, it is often equally difficult to determine if the text describes a tangible reality or if it is a mere reproduction of an age-old narrative about the exploitation of mineral wealth by the king, or its provision by the god. Talking about truth and lies in this context obviously does not make any sense, as the majority of ancient texts are definitely a construction of reality. And yet, in this catalogue of ready-made formulas, the simple citation of a specific material can tell us a great deal about the value and particular connotations attributed to this specific material. Further, whatever their relation with objective truth, these ideas are often ultimately materialized in monuments, statues or jewelry. Our contribution will focus more specifically on the mention of building materials in ancient Egyptian texts.
- Affiliations
Citations
Karlshausen, C. (2024). Truths and lies about stones in ancient Egyptian texts. SHAPED. Materials, people and written words in ancient cultures, Universidad de Alcala. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/240244