Concurrences and Discrepancies in Ancient Egypt

Summary

Studying ancient Egypt, with its rich textual, iconographic and archaeological records, requires an interdisciplinary approach. Any research along these lines will at some point find both concurrences and discrepancies in the information. Especially the latter require further analysis, involvement of yet other sources and lead to the realization that we need to theorize the fundamentally different types of information, audiences, purposes, and sometimes cross-purposes, of the things we study.

Examples are the discrepancy between written and iconographic sources that heavily stress the continuity of Egyptian religion and world view, and the sometimes quite radical change in meaning that particular symbols and tropes actually go through; the discrepancy between the iconographic presentation of foreigners, and the embedding of foreigners in Egyptian society; the discrepancy between the textual prescriptions and the material reality, such as the required materials to be used for particular amulets; the discrepancy between the descriptions of the trade goods of Roman-Indian trade and the items that are actually retrieved archaeologically; the discrepancy between Egyptian and Foreign textual sources about the political prowess of particular rulers.

Rather than bemoan such discrepancies, the question of why they occur provides powerful heuristic social, political, religious, methodological and theoretical avenues.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Difference in Archaeological Theory and Practise

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