Unwrapping Ancient Egypt

Description

First runner-up for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Eastern Studies 2015. In ancient Egypt, wrapping sacred objects, including mummified bodies, in layers of cloth was a ritual that lay at the core of Egyptian society. Yet in the modern world, attention has focused instead on unwrapping all the careful arrangements of linen textiles the Egyptians had put in place. This book breaks new ground by looking at the significance of textile wrappings in ancient Egypt, and at how their unwrapping has shaped the way we think about the Egyptian past. Wrapping mummified bodies and divine statues in linen reflected the cultural values attached to this textile, with implications for understanding gender, materiality and hierarchy in Egyptian society. Unwrapping mummies and statues similarly reflects the values attached to Egyptian antiquities in the West, where the colonial legacies of archaeology, Egyptology and racial science still influence how Egypt appears in museums and the press. From the tomb of Tutankhamun to the Arab Spring, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt raises critical questions about the deep-seated fascination with this culture - and what that fascination says about our own.

Christina Riggs is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Art History and World Art Studies, University of East Anglia, UK.

Each chapter of this book represents one lecture from a series delivered in 2012 at All Souls College, Oxford ...With 79 pages of notes and bibliography, the extensive research behind this book is well documented ... The issues discussed go beyond the art historical. Riggs covers the psychology of entombing, hiding, and revealing in artistic, religious, and political contexts. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers. -- N. J. Mactague, Aurora University * CHOICE * This is a work of passion, poetically written and convincingly argued, which highlights the crucial role played by textiles, wrapping and concealment in the structuring of ancient Egyptian society. -- Sarah Griffiths * Ancient Egypt * An original and powerful volume ... Riggs provides a (very) critical history of Egyptology and related curatorial practices. The result is a book that not only wears its erudition lightly, but also challenges the legitimacy and apparent exceptionality of what it is that Egyptologists do. Opening Egyptology's "black box," Riggs makes a major contribution to understanding what that box might contain, in addition to how this understanding might change our perceptions of "ancient Egypt" and scholarly practices related to it. -- William Carruthers * Museum Anthropology Review * Dr Riggs' book contains much of interest, presented in an ingenious way that raises issues that might not otherwise have easily sprung to mind and which should indeed be considered by anyone dealing with the study of the ancient world. -- Aidan Dodson * ASTENE Bulletin 63 * Riggs is, undeniably, spot-on with many of her observations. She is deliberately provocative and hopefully this book - an affordable paperback that [could] reach a wide audience - will not simply be dismissed as 'trendy' by the Establishment she critiques ... it should please the author that the book - perhaps the single most important on the subject of 'Egyptology' as a discipline of the last ten years - is already on the set reading list of archaeology students at Manchester University. -- Campbell Price * Egyptian Archaeology * Unwrapping Ancient Egypt is a riveting review and critique of Egyptological scholarship, studying a time-honored subject against a critical analysis of traditional western scientific approaches. Christina Riggs' masterful intertwining of critical theory and thorough analysis provides important new insights. -- Willeke Wendrich, Professor of Egyptian Archeology, UCLA, USA Christina Riggs takes us on a lively exploration of Egyptology's prize finds and ably offers a fresh approach to familiar mummies and their textile bindings. As a means by which the dead and objects were sanctified and transformed, textile wrappings are presented as a structuring principle in ancient Egyptian society and discourse. -- Susanna Harris, ERC Research Associate, PROCON Project, UCL, UK Through its focus on concealment and revelation, this beautifully written book raises 'mummification' from the realms of obscurity and curiosity, relocating it within a politics of the body that sheds light on both the deep past and contemporary practices of collection and display. It is an important contribution that cuts across the fields of art history, Egyptology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural heritage, material culture, and museum studies. -- David Wengrow, Professor of Comparative Archaeology, University College London, UK More poetry than prose, embroidered with details gleaned from her extensive knowledge and experience as an Egyptologist and museum curator, Riggs' interwoven tale of two Egypts skillfully employs the metaphor of wrapping, the past (wrapped/concealed) and the perceived past (unwrapped/revealed), as a common thread that binds both worlds. -- Lorelei H. Corcoran, Professor and Director of the Institute of Egyptian Art & Archeology, University of Memphis, USA This book is a distinctive and significant contribution to the fields of Egyptology, anthropology, art history, and cultural studies. It is simultaneously a study of ancient Egypt and modern Western culture. In particular, the author examines the ancient Egyptian mortuary practices of wrapping and shrouding bodies, and the modern archaeological and museological practices of unwrapping bodies. -- Robert Preucel, Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, USA