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VISUAL AND WRITTEN CULTURE IN ANCIENT EGYPT This page intentionally left blank Visual and written culture in ancient Egypt JOHN BAINES 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto WithoYcesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork (cid:1)JohnBaines2007 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2007 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby BiddlesLtd.,King’sLynn,Norfolk ISBN978–0–19–815250–7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Preface This volume collects related studies that I have published over many years, together with three hitherto unpublished or partly published pieces. The newly composed introductory essay is intended to supply an overall theore- ticalandcomparativecontext,drawtogetherthreads,andpointtowardfuture questions. Although I am an Egyptologist, only two of the essays included here Wrst appeared in publications addressed to Egyptologists. As a whole they were written for interested readers and colleagues invarious related subject areas, including Egyptology, which in this perspective has the characterof a repre- sentativeofareastudiesratherthanofanautonomousdiscipline.Theessays were thus composed in order to address at least two types of non-specialist: non-Egyptologists who have a cross-cultural interest in one or other of the issues and phenomena that I study; and Egyptologists who wish to explore broader theoretical and interpretive frameworks in relation to their interests withinEgyptology. I have assembled these studies for two main reasons. First, colleagues withinandoutsideEgyptologyhaveremarkedthatitisdiYculttoWndsuch widelyscatteredbutrelatedpublicationsandhaveencouragedmetobringmy work together. Second, I have increasingly perceived connections among topics on which I have published and have concluded that an intellectual gainshouldresultfromgatheringtheminasinglepublication.Ishallnothave theopportunitytoreworkthismaterialintoafullsynthesis.Suchanexercise wouldinanycaseberatherartiWcial,becauseIaddressedthesubjectssingly, notaspartofanoveralldesignevenwhentheywerequitecloselyrelated.Itis therefore appropriate to present the articles more or less as they were Wrst published and to allow readers to make any connections they wish among them,withtheintroductoryessay(Prologue,Ch.1)andtheintroductorynote to the third part (Ch. 8) serving as linking elements. I also give quite numerous cross-references between chapters. I have not removed duplica- tionsbetweenthechapters,becausetodosowouldhavecompromisedtheir integrityasarguments. Most of the republished articles are presented with only minor changes. Detailsoftheoriginalpublicationaregiveninanoteatthestartofeach.The existing titles are retained for consistency, even though the words ‘ancient Egypt’aredispensablehere.Bykeepingclosetothepreviousversions,Ihope toremovetheneedtosearchthemout.TheorderofChapters2–7and8–14, vi Preface which mostly follows dates of Wrst publication, may also give some sense of howmywork,aswellasthatofothersonwhomIdrawandwithwhomIam in dialogue, has developed. Clear errors have been corrected and some references to recent publications inserted; the way this is done varies and is indicatedintheinitialnotetoeachchapter.Allreferencesthatwerepresentin theoriginalversionsareretained.FortheoldeststudyofliteracythatIinclude (Ch. 2, Wrst published in 1983), both the theoretical framework and the documentary basis have moved forward to some extent. I do not, however, believethatthosedevelopmentsinvalidatetheapproachoVeredthere.Rather, that article provided an initial survey of relevant materials and presented a discussionofsomecorequestions,whilelaterworkaddressesotherissues.For thatchapter,IoVeradditionalmaterialbothinthechapterswhichfollowand intheAppendixtothemostrecent,hithertounpublishedessay(Ch.6). ‘Fournotesonliteracy’(Ch.3)waswrittenwithChristopherEyre,whohas graciouslyagreedtoitsrepublicationhereandhascheckedtheslightlyrevised version for me. Because this was the most specialized article and was published in a condensed formulation in an Egyptological journal whose audi- ence would be familiar with much of the material cited, I have expanded it slightly, inserting a short prefatory discussion and adding some factual information about the topics covered. I have not changed the content and argument,butIhaveaddedafewobservationsinfootnotes. Thereferencesforthewholebookareconsolidatedintoasinglelist.Ihope that this will be a useful resource in itself, but it cannot be used as a bibliography of research on the topics covered (except in part in the appen- dicesto Chs. 6 and 11), because the updatings of individual chapters arenot comprehensive. Inpreparingthesestudies,inpresentingmanyoftheminvariousforums, and in revising them subsequently for publication and republication, I have incurredmoredebtsofgratitudethanIcanenumerateorindeedrecall.Below I bring together names from the separate publications, as well as acknow- ledging further debts. I should like to add that my research is done in the belief that intellectual disciplines cannot prosper in isolation. However im- perfectworkthatreachesacrossdiVerentWeldsmaybe,itconstitutesthebest way forward, not only for the comprehension of individual societies, their institutions, and their material products, but also more broadly for research on general social phenomena to which data from single societies contribute essential evidence. It has been my good fortune to work with colleagues, in manydisciplinesandinstitutions,whohavesharedsuchavisionwithme. I am grateful to many friends and colleagues—these are not mutually exclusive categories—as well as to various institutions for help received whilewritingthesestudies.Thosewhohavereaddraftshavebeenparticularly Preface vii kind, since they have tolerated partly considered and obscurely expressed materials and helped them toward a more passable state. Here I list, in alphabetical order, those to whom I owe thanks most directly, noting with melancholythesigniWcantnumberwhoarenowdeceased:JamesP.Allen,Jon W. Anderson, Jan Assmann, Robert Bagley, J. C. A. and J. E. Baines, Klaus Baer (y), Jonathan Benthall, Carole Biggam, Jeremy Black (y), John Board- man,JohnA.Brinkman,EdwardBrovarski,JohnCallender(y),Christopher Chippindale,JerroldCooper,MarionCox,GrahamCunningham,Ve´ronique Dasen, Vivian Davies, Thierry De Putter, Rosemarie Drenkhahn, Marianne Eaton-Krauss, Sylwia Ejmont, Roland Enmarch, Christopher Eyre, Gerhard Fecht,ErikaFeucht,MarjorieFisher,RitaFreed,NormanFreeman,Elizabeth Frood,DavidGimbel,JackGoody,ErhartGraefe,WaltraudGuglielmi,Heike Guksch, Dieter Hagedorn, Michael Harbsmeier, Yvonne Harpur, Stephen Harvey, Daniel Herwitz, Stephen Houston, Barbara HuVt, Friedrich Junge, FriederikeKampp-Seyfried,ChristinaKarlshausen,BarryKemp,RolfKrauss, Mogens Trolle Larsen, Robert Layton, Anthony Leahy, Sandra Lippert, Lisa Montagno-Leahy, Antonio Loprieno, Judith Lustig, Peter Machinist, Jaromir Malek, Peter der Manuelian, Joyce Marcus, Donald Matthews, Gerlinde Mauer, Peter McLeod, Liam McNamara, Piotr Michalowski, Alan Millard, David O’Connor, Hans-Ulrich Onasch, Richard Parkinson, Alex Potts, Pat Rabbitt, Janet Richards, Miche`le Germon Riley, Michael Roaf, Kim Ryholt, Wolfgang Schenkel, Stephan Seidlmayer, Andrew Sherratt (y), JJShirley,PeterShore(y),CharlesShute(y),KaySimpson,RobertSimpson, Bert Smith, Mark Smith, Patricia Spencer, Martin Stadler, William Stini, Timothy Taylor, Raymond Thompson, Francesco Tiradritti, Thomas Traut- mann,LanaTroy,S.P.Tulante,M.C.Tulante,PeterUcko,CherieWendelken, David Wengrow, Helen Whitehouse, Terry Wilfong, Carl Widstrand, Irene Winter, Zeno Wionzek, Norman YoVee, Christiane Zivie-Coche. I am espe- cially grateful to Gay Robins for reading the entire text and pointing out inconsistencies, as well as suggesting many further directions in which the workcouldbetaken. My institutional home for most of my career has been the Faculty of OrientalStudiesintheUniversityofOxford.Manypeopletherehavehelped me in the most various ways. I have also received Wnancial support for my research from several bodies in the University. A number of the studies gathered here were begun or completed while Iwas on sabbatical leave, and IoweanenormousamounttoOxfordforgrantingperiodsofleaveandtothe institutions at which I have been a visitor while working on these topics. Again in alphabetical order, these are the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (Bonn: periods at the universities of Heidelberg and Mu¨nster), the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris (5e`me section), Harvard University, the viii Preface UniversityofArizona,theUniversityofBasel,andtheUniversityofMichigan. I have presented versions of these studies in numerous additional places. While I cannot list these here, I am no less grateful to them for the interest theyhaveshowninmyworkandthestimuliIhavereceivedfromdiscussions. Finally, I owe much to Hilary O’Shea of Oxford University Press for encouraging me to publish this book and for being far more patient than sheshouldhavebeenover thedeliveryofitstext. J.B. Oxford,January2006 Contents ListofWgures x Conventions xv Chronologicaltable xvi Map xvii PROLOGUE 1 Visual,written,decorum 3 WRITTENCULTURE 2 LiteracyandancientEgyptiansociety 33 3 Fournotesonliteracy 63 4 Literacy,socialorganization,andthearchaeological record:thecaseofearlyEgypt 95 5 Writingandsociety inearlyEgypt 117 6 Oralityandliteracy 146 7 Appendix:UpdatestoChapters.2–5;comparativestudies 170 7 AncientEgyptianconceptsandusesofthepast:third tosecondmillenniumevidence 179 VISUALCULTURE 8 Introductorynote 205 9 Theoriesanduniversalsofrepresentation: Heinrich Scha¨ferandEgyptianart 207 10 Scha¨fer’smottoesandtheunderstandingofrepresentation 236 11 Colour terminologyandcolourclassiWcation:ancient Egyptiancolour terminologyandpolychromy 240 12 Stoneandothermaterials:usagesandvalues 263 13 Communicationanddisplay:theintegrationofearly Egyptianartandwriting 281 14 OnthestatusandpurposesofancientEgyptianart 298 References 338 Index 407