Legitimizing Nearness: Negotiating Identities in the Spatial Design of 25th Dynasty Nubian Cemeteries

Summary

Ancient Egypt is characterized as a highly centralized and dominating state. However, following the disintegration of the New Kingdom in the 11th century BC, division of state and conquests by foreign rulers ushered in a period of economic decline and political instability. The fracturing of dominion continued until the 8th century BC, when the Nubian kingdom of Kush unified Upper and Lower Egypt into the geographically largest empire since the New Kingdom. The Nubian pharaohs began construction of necropoles near the Fourth cataract of the Nile. While Kush material culture in the form of royal statuary and temple architecture indicates a reaffirmation of classical Egyptian practices, what is the relationship between Nubian and Egyptian royal identity on a landscape level? This research represents a study of the design and utilization of space in mortuary landscapes of the Nubian pharaohs. This project focuses on spatial analyses of the sites of El-Kurru, Nuri, and Gebel Barkal. The Kushite kings deliberately appropriated the Egyptian architectural symbol of the pyramid and other styles in the construction of royal mortuary landscapes. However, the formation and maintenance of royal identity manifested differently in the design and utilization of built landscapes, across the various periods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22009