To destroy or to be destroyed. The reduction of Karomama’s funerary equipment in the light of the archaeology of her tomb

Lurson, Benoît
(2021) Altering Images. Iconoclasm in Egypt. International Workshop, Université de Liège, 12th-14th May 2021 — Location: Université de Liège (12.May.2021)

Files

No attached file found for this publication.

Details

Authors
  • Lurson, BenoîtUCLouvain
    Author
Abstract
(en) When confronted with broken ushabtis, we regularly must deal either with the absence of context or with very disturbed contexts, so that the precise occasion and therefore the potential motivation for such destructions often remain obscure. However, these destructions usually proceed from the same principle: breaking the feet and/or the upper part of the body, and/or the head, whereby such a systematism is most probably a strong token for intentionality. During the excavation of the tomb of the Divine Adoratrice of the 22nd Dynasty Karomama in 2014/2015, more than 200 fragments of ushabtis were found, which precisely show such destructions. Now, the excavation of her tomb gives us the opportunity to reconstruct the circumstances during which the reduction of her funerary equipment happened, especially her ushabtis, allowing us to seize the motivation behind. In that specific case, breaking Karomama’s ushabtis was admittedly one of the ways for its new owner to appropriate her funerary space, the other having consisted in removing her funerary equipment. But it also seems to have been a way to rebury them in her tomb, to let them where they belonged in the first place. In this regard, we could compare such a burial of broken ushabtis with the burial of some broken statues found in favissae.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

Lurson, B. (2021). To destroy or to be destroyed. The reduction of Karomama’s funerary equipment in the light of the archaeology of her tomb. Altering Images. Iconoclasm in Egypt. International Workshop, Université de Liège, 12th-14th May 2021, Université de Liège. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/115138