High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt

This novel work uses case studies of both familiar and unfamiliar materials, expanding consideration of ancient Egyptian elite culture to encompass lived experience and exploitation of the natural environment.

The opening chapter sets out the conceptual ground for the analyses that follow, arguing that the relatively ephemeral activities under investigation were centrally important to the actors. The first and largest study treats human organization of the landscape and its use to create and transmit elite meanings, especially through pictorial and encyclopaedic forms, and to mobilize emotional values. Next, a treatment of the planning of primarily third millennium settlements on the floodplain argues that Egypt offers a partly rural perspective that provides an alternative to the urban focus of many early civilizations but has parallels in elite culture in much of the world. The third study discusses how a single year’s events were orchestrated to culminate in a celebratory hunt in which the king, his court, and high officials participated. The concluding chapter presents an initial synthesis of Egyptian treatments of elite experience, drawing in particular upon additional evidence from literary texts and attitudes to travel. Throughout the book, aesthetics and the cultivation of pleasure and delight are emphasized as essential to ancient elite life.

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High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt

This novel work uses case studies of both familiar and unfamiliar materials, expanding consideration of ancient Egyptian elite culture to encompass lived experience and exploitation of the natural environment.

The opening chapter sets out the conceptual ground for the analyses that follow, arguing that the relatively ephemeral activities under investigation were centrally important to the actors. The first and largest study treats human organization of the landscape and its use to create and transmit elite meanings, especially through pictorial and encyclopaedic forms, and to mobilize emotional values. Next, a treatment of the planning of primarily third millennium settlements on the floodplain argues that Egypt offers a partly rural perspective that provides an alternative to the urban focus of many early civilizations but has parallels in elite culture in much of the world. The third study discusses how a single year’s events were orchestrated to culminate in a celebratory hunt in which the king, his court, and high officials participated. The concluding chapter presents an initial synthesis of Egyptian treatments of elite experience, drawing in particular upon additional evidence from literary texts and attitudes to travel. Throughout the book, aesthetics and the cultivation of pleasure and delight are emphasized as essential to ancient elite life.

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High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt

High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt

by John Baines
High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt

High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt

by John Baines

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Overview

This novel work uses case studies of both familiar and unfamiliar materials, expanding consideration of ancient Egyptian elite culture to encompass lived experience and exploitation of the natural environment.

The opening chapter sets out the conceptual ground for the analyses that follow, arguing that the relatively ephemeral activities under investigation were centrally important to the actors. The first and largest study treats human organization of the landscape and its use to create and transmit elite meanings, especially through pictorial and encyclopaedic forms, and to mobilize emotional values. Next, a treatment of the planning of primarily third millennium settlements on the floodplain argues that Egypt offers a partly rural perspective that provides an alternative to the urban focus of many early civilizations but has parallels in elite culture in much of the world. The third study discusses how a single year’s events were orchestrated to culminate in a celebratory hunt in which the king, his court, and high officials participated. The concluding chapter presents an initial synthesis of Egyptian treatments of elite experience, drawing in particular upon additional evidence from literary texts and attitudes to travel. Throughout the book, aesthetics and the cultivation of pleasure and delight are emphasized as essential to ancient elite life.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781781793626
Publisher: Equinox Publishing
Publication date: 11/30/2015
Pages: 348
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.17(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Baines is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. His principal publications are on Egyptian art, literature, and religion. He has also studied the role of writing in Egyptian society and high-cultural legitimations and concerns of elites. His publications include Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (2007) and The Disappearance of Writing Systems (co-edited with John Bennet and Stephen Houston, Equinox, 2008).

Table of Contents

Preface List of Figures Conventions Chronological Table Map 1. Contexts and Representations of High Culture 2. Egypt as a Physical, Social and Represented Landscape 3. A Planned World? The Early City, Patterns and Meanings of Settlement 4. Celebration in the Landscape: A Hunting Party under Amenemhat II 5. Elite Experience
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