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18th Dynasty
A01=Lynn Meskell
Amenhotep III
Ancestor Busts
Ancestral Images
ancient Egyptian object agency
Ancient Objects
archaeological approaches
archaeological theory
Author_Lynn Meskell
Category=JBCC
Category=JHM
Category=NHC
Category=NHHA
Category=NK
Cult Statue
Deir El
Deir El Medina
Dense
Divine Embodiment
Divine Statues
Egyptian materiality
Egyptian Religion
Egyptian Things
embodiment archaeology
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
False Doors
funerary practices Egypt
Holy Men
Holy Mountain
Luxor Hotel
material biography
material culture studies
mummification
pharaonic art
phenomenology anthropology
Rameses II
Rameses III
Rameses VI
Real Girl
Royal Tombs
Sacred Barque
social memory artefacts
Turin Papyrus
Tuthmosis IV
Product details
- ISBN 9781859738672
- Weight: 230g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 01 Apr 2004
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Egypt looms large in the Western imagination. Whether it is our attraction to pharaonic art, the pyramids or practices of mummification, Egypts unique understanding of materiality speaks to us across space and time. Is it because the ancient Egyptians fetishized material objects that we find their culture captivating today? And what exactly do Egyptian remains tell us about biography, embodiment, memory, materiality, and the self? Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt takes New Kingdom Egypt (1539-1070 BC) as its starting point and considers how excavated objects reveal the complex ways that ancient Egyptians experienced their material world. From life to death, the material world instantiated, reflected and influenced social life and existence for ancient Egyptians. Thus, in Meskells unique approach to the materiality and sensuousness of subjects and objects, we uncover the philosophical, spiritual and human meanings embedded in these cultural artefacts. Meskells book explores the fundamental existential questions that not only preoccupied ancient Egyptians, but continue to fascinate people today. What is the essence of persons and things? How might we understand the situated experiences of material life, the constitution of the object world and its shaping of human experience? How might objects successfully mediate between worlds? In the final analysis, Meskell moves forward through time and examines the consumption and appreciation of these Egyptian material objects in the contemporary world. Materiality is our physical engagement with the world, our medium for inserting ourselves into the fabric of that world and our way of constituting and shaping culture in an embodied and external sense. From that perspective it is very much the domain of anthropology and archaeology.Drawing on a wide range of objects, artefacts, and artwork, from Valley of the Kings through to Las Vegas, Meskell provides an elegant analysis of the aesthetics of ancient Egyptian material culture
Lynn Meskell, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
