Afterlives of Ancient Egypt with Kara Cooney

Latest Episodes:

Labor Relations in Ancient Egypt — Part II Dec 21, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 71 | With the growing number of labor disputes and strikes around the world, Kara and Jordan delve into how labor was organized and issues were settled in ancient Egypt. This is part two of a two-part episode. Listen to Part I here.

Also read Jordan’s companion post to this episode, Fashion and Hidden Labor in the Ancient World.

Sources:

* Papyrus Stories- The First Recorded Strike in History

* Turin Strike Papyrus

* Edgerton, William F. “The Strikes in Ramses III’s Twenty-Ninth Year.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, 1951, pp. 137–45. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/542285. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023.

* Wente, Edward F. “A Letter of Complaint to the Vizier To.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 1961, pp. 252–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/543915. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023.

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Labor Relations in Ancient Egypt- Part I Dec 11, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 70 | With the growing number of labor disputes and strikes around the world, Kara and Jordan delve into how labor was organized and issues settled in ancient Egypt. Part one of two.

Sources:

* Papyrus Stories- The First Recorded Strike in History

* Turin Strike Papyrus

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Bodies and Power in the Ancient World Dec 08, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 69 | Here’s an uncomfortable fact: Having a woman’s body allows one to be much more easily controlled and commodified in patriarchal systems. We are watching this play out in real time in a post-Roe America, but what role did the female body play in the ancient world, and more specifically: How did ancient Egyptians negotiate female power in ancient patriarchal systems like ancient Egypt? In this episode Kara discusses her research on this topic with Amber, and her effort to gain a better understanding of how ancient patriarchal societies used body differences to control, commodify, and exploit female bodies.

For more of Kara’s thoughts on some feminist schools of thought and their attitudes toward the female body, read her post from last June:

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November 2023 Supporter Q&A Nov 20, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 68 | This month’s Q&A episode features questions on ancient festivals, food, human sacrifice, and marriage and incest in ancient Egypt.

Episode Notes

* Food

* The Pharaoh’s Kitchen, by Madga Mehdawy

* Ikram, Salima. 1995. Choice Cuts : Meat Production in Ancient Egypt. Leuven: Peeters.

* Ancient Egyptian Festivals

* Coppens, F. 2009. Temple Festivals of the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology.

* Stadler, M. 2008. Procession. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology.

* Beverages

* Ancient Egyptian Beer

* Discovery of an Industrial Brewery in Ancient Egypt Rewrites the History of Beer

* Dr. Amr Shahat’s paleobotany work

* Listen to Dr. Rose Campbell’s episode on human sacrifice on Substack at the links below or on Apple Podcasts (Part I and Part II) or Spotify (Part I and Part II):

* Campbell, Roselyn. 2023. “Hidden Violence: Reassessing Violence and Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt,” in Danielle Candelora, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, & Kathlyn M. Cooney (eds.) Ancient Egyptian Society : Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. Purchase!

* Reception of Ancient Egypt - P. Djèlí Clark’s books

* Marriage and incest in the ancient world

* Ager, Sheila L. 2021. “Royal brother-sister marriage, Ptolemaic and otherwise,” in Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller (eds.), The Routledge companion to women and monarchy in the ancient Mediterranean world, 346-358. Abingdon; New York: Routledge.

* Robinson, Joanne-Marie. 2020. "Blood is thicker than water": non-royal consanguineous marriage in ancient Egypt. An exploration of economic and biological outcomes. Archaeopress Egyptology 29. Oxford: Archaeopress.

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Statuary Reuse with Kylie Thomsen Nov 13, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 67 | In this episode Kara and Jordan talk with PhD candidate Kylie Thomsen about her research contextualizing statuary reuse using new technologies like photogrammetry and RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging).

About Kylie Thomsen

Kylie is an Egyptology PhD candidate in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Arizona and holds a master’s degree in Egyptology from Indiana University Bloomington. Kylie is currently a researcher and graphic designer for the UCLA Coffins Project, which investigates coffin reuse in ancient Egypt during the Third Intermediate Period. Her dissertation research focuses on the documentation and contextualization of ancient Egyptian statuary reuse, including documenting statues via high-resolution photography, photogrammetry, RTI (reflectance transformation imaging), and traditional art historical methods in order to analyze the statues for signs of recarving, reinscribing, and other indicators of object reuse.

Episode Notes

* This article by Daniel Soliman discusses the reuse of two 12th Dynasty colossal statues that were reworked during the reign of Ramesses II.

* Soliman, Daniel. “At the Hands of Senwosret III? The Iconography and Style of the Reworked Colossi Cairo JE 45975 and JE 45976.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 105, no. 1 (2019): 97–105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26949435.

* Partially Reworked Statue from the Museo Egizio: https://collezioni.museoegizio.it/en-GB/material/Cat_3017

* This statue demonstrates that a statue could be completely recrafted into a new object.

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October 2023 Q&A Oct 30, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 66 | This month’s listener questions covered a variety of topics from ancient Egyptian clothing and furniture to the portrayal of mummies in popular culture.

Episode Notes

Egyptian linen

Pleated dresses from the Museo Egizio of Turin: study of the technical data of fabrics in Moor, A. de (Antoine) et al. (eds.) (2015) ‘Textiles, tools and techniques of the 1st millennium AD from Egypt and neighbouring countries : proceedings of the 8th conference of the research group “Textiles from the Nile Valley” Antwerp, 4-6 October 2013 / edited by Antoine De Moor, Cäcilia Fluck and Petra Linscheid.’, in 2015 Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo.

Tamburini, D. et al. (2021) A multi-scalar investigation of the colouring materials used in textile wrappings of Egyptian votive animal mummies. Heritage science. [Online] 9 (1), 1–26.

Stool Inscriptions

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Can history be apolitical? Oct 18, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 65 | Historians are products of their time, place, and life experiences, and yet in many ways they approach their work with the idea that it can be (at least to some degree) separated from all of those things. In this episode Kara and Amber discuss whether or not history can—or should—be apolitical and how historical narratives inevitably reflect the zeitgeist in which they are written.

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Iconoclasm with Lexi Henning Oct 02, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 64 | Kara and Jordan discuss iconoclasm in the ancient and medieval worlds with Lexie Henning, the host of the Ancient Office Hours podcast. Below is information about Lexie and some visuals! We include Aya Sofia, also called Hagia Sophia, a 6th century CE multi-domed church turned mosque turned museum turned back to mosque.

We also discuss the 13th century CE church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, which literally means St. Mary on top of (the goddess) Minerva, indicating a Christian claim over what is now defined as pagan.

Both Aya Sofia and Santa Maria Sopra Minerva were victims of iconoclasm, that is having elements of one belief system removed in favor of a different belief system. To that point, check out the removal of the god Amen’s name from a block in Luxor temple in the last image; this removal was ordered by Akhenaten, who was creating a whole new religious system that prioritized the visible sun god Aten.

About Lexie Henning

Lexie is the host of the Ancient Office Hours podcast and Founder/CEO of The Ozymandias Project. She earned her BA in Classics from the University of Missouri (Mizzou) in 2018. Her scholarly interests are in exploring Classical reception through the lens of contemporary storytelling in media, advocating for open access to the ancient world, and making ancient studies applicable in the modern world. In January 2023, she completed an MSc in Southeast European Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, writing her thesis on the effects of Islamic iconoclasm on the Hagia Sophia and its impact on cultural heritage policy in Erdoğan’s Turkey. She now serves as the programs and administration coordinator for UCLA’s Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World.

Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey)

Santa Maria sopra Minerva (Rome, Italy)

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September 2023 Q&A Sep 18, 2023

Show notes

EPISODE 63 | In this month's Q&A episode, Kara and Jordan discuss questions relating to ancient papyri, display and study of human remains in museums, female power in the ancient world, and more.

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Artifact Stories — The red-shroud mummy of Herakleides Sep 04, 2023

Show notes

CW// Human remains

The red-shroud mummy of a young man named Herakleides—don’t ask us how he died so young; we don’t know—presents some tantalizing insights into certain religious practices of the first century CE in Egypt. On view at the Getty Villa in Malibu, the mummy of Herakleides is unprovenanced, but archaeological evidence suggests it probably comes from el-Hibeh (near the Fayum). The mummified remains of Herakleides are wrapped in a linen shroud painted from head to toe in a red pigment derived from red lead imported from Spain, making it part of a group of portrait mummies known as “red-shroud mummies.”

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