Community and Identity in Ancient Egypt: The Old Kingdom Cemetery at Qubbet el-Hawa

Description

This book examines a group of twelve ancient Egyptian tombs (c.2300 BCE) in the elite Old Kingdom cemetery of Elephantine at Qubbet el-Hawa in modern Aswan. It develops an interdisciplinary approach to the material - drawing on methods from art history, archaeology, anthropology, and sociology, including agency theory, the role of style, the reflexive relationship between people and landscape, and the nature of locality and community identity. A careful examination of the architecture, setting, and unique text and image programs of these tombs in context provides a foundation for considering how ancient Egyptian provincial communities bonded to each other, developed shared identities within the broader Egyptian world, and expressed these identities through their personal forms of visual and material culture.

Deborah Vischak is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Queens College, City University of New York. She was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. She has traveled throughout Egypt, working on excavations and conducting field research from Giza to Aswan. Vischak has been published in the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt and in an Internet-Beitrage zur AEgyptologie und Sudanarchaologie (IBAES) volume examining methodological approaches to Old Kingdom tombs.