Discussions of the early Egyptian state suffer from a weak consideration of scale. Egyptian archaeologists derive their arguments primarily from evidence of court cemeteries, elite tombs, and monuments of royal display. The material informs the analysis of kingship, early writing, and administration but it remains obscure how the core of the early Pharaonic state was embedded in the territory it claimed to administer. This paper suggests that the relationship between centre and hinterland is key for scaling the Egyptian state of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2,700-2,200 BC). Initially, central administration imagines Egypt using models at variance with provincial practice. The end of the Old Kingdom demarcates not the collapse, but the beginning of a large-scale state characterized by the coalescence of central and local models.
The article explores anthropological perspectives on pharaonic Egypt (ca. 3300–332 BCE). Central authority absorbed economic resources via local temples but had no interest in penetrating the minds of the people. The body horizon was the scale within the reach of individuals, underpinned by the organization of thought toward the ego in the center. It is typical of life in villages, where the physical and social experiences of intimacy converged in magical practices. Funerary culture epitomizes the body horizon, and its importance in Egypt reflects the village nature of early Egypt. Kingship is the center of Egypt’s Great Tradition, a term sometimes conflated with elite culture, learned tradition, or literacy. Communication of kingship changes from a funerary-based to a temple-based template reflecting the transition to a more urban society. Diachronic change in the archaeological record is seen as pivotal for exploring the nature of Egyptian society anthropologically.
Ancient Egypt has much to offer to anthropologists, as Judith Lustig's 1997 volume "Egyptology and anthropology: a developing dialogue" rightly demonstrates.1 Not all con tributors to the volume were equally optimistic about a potential "remarriage" of the two disciplines.2 However, one among other overlapping fields of interest is the role of "great and little traditions" in pre-modern societies. Popular in post-WW II anthropology, the topic entered Egyptology in the late 1980s as part of a discussion of the local temples in early Egypt. These temples functioned as community shrines in the Third millennium and later developed into grand monuments of royal display in the Second and First millennia.The transfer of the terms "great tradition" and "little tradition" into Egyptology demon strates that ancient Egypt can be aligned meaningfully with anthropological agendas. However, interpretation of the terms varies both within anthropology and Egyptology and requires some thoughts on the ways in which they can be applied to the Egyptian evidence. This paper compares the different uses of the terms to assess the potential and difficulties arising from interdisciplinary borrowing. I will begin with a comment on the research con text of Third millennium temples in Egyptology outlined in greater depth elsewhere.3 The second part reviews relevant arguments in the discussion of great and little traditions in anthropology and shows how they might translate into Egyptology. References to great and little traditions by Egyptologists are usually couched in synthetic arguments. These will be reviewed in the third section. In the conclusion, I argue that debates of agency and practice are beneficial contexts for future research of early community shrines and of great and little traditions in ancient Egypt more generally.
The paper discusses an unpublished door bolt sealing from Hierakonpolis excavated in 1978. The sealing pattern belongs to a visual tradition originating in the predynastic period. The proposed reconstruction of the locking system combines analysis of the reverse side of the sealing with archaeo logical evidence of doors and door bolts. Public performance is suggested for sealing practice and control to function socially. In 1978, a team led by W. Fairservis on behalf of the American Research Center in Egypt found a clay sealing in quadrant 8N6W located in the North Western corner of the temple enclosure wall of Hierakonpolis (fig. I).1 It has the find number 26-78-118 and was officially registered as number 114 on 27 February 1978.-' The object is not mentioned in Fairservis' preliminary reports.3 Information on archaeological context is gleaned from the entry in the register book only. The sealing is completely preserved, 5.7 cm high, 3.9 cm broad and 1.8 cm deep (figs. 2-3). It has a light brown to reddish color (Munsell 5YR 5/4), which indicates that it was exposed to the heat of a fire or a glowing at some point. The Locking System The reverse side of the sealing shows the impressions of a door bolt, a cord, and a door wing. The angular door bolt has a smooth surface and was carefully made, probably of wood. The impression of the door wing, although not as even as the impression of the bolt, has a fibred texture deriving from wood. The cord ran parallel to and on top of the bolt. Current reconstructions suggest that door bolt sealings were applied onto the area of contact be tween the bolt and the door and that the bolt was held in place by a cramp on the door and another cramp on the adjacent wall or on a second door wing.4 However, what remains unexplained for the 1 The grid reference system is not used consistendy in the two reports quoted in n. 3. The report of the 1978 season, pub lished in 1983, refers to quadrants by quoting the grid lines to their South East, i.e., the crossing of lines 8N and 6W is located in the bottom left corner of quadrant 8N6W. The report of the 1981 season, published in 1986, refers to the North East corner of a quadrant, i.e., the crossing of lines 17N and 6W, for example, is located in the top left corner of quadrant 17N6W. 2 I would like to thank Renee Friedman for alerting me to the current location of the sealing in the magazine of Elkab and offering accommodation for two weeks in February 2014. I also wish to thank Ramadan Hassan Ahmed and Amal Abdullah Ahmed Hamed for facilitating access to the material and supporting my research in the magazine in every possible way.
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