At last, we have come to the concluding section of our three part series on Nile flooding! The first blog in this series discussed when the inundation occurred together with a brief discussion of how this impacted life in Pharaonic Egypt, while the following section examined nilometers, since they were used to recording the height …
Last week, we discussed how the Nile was a structuring element of ancient Egyptian life, playing a key role in seasonal agriculture together and as a conduit facilitating trade and (to an extent) centralized control. Because of its importance, the ancient Egyptians took great pains to measure the height of the river using specialized stations …
In the past weeks, we have focused on the challenges of reconstructing the ancient landscape and patterns of past land usage. For our purposes, a crucial part of this is understanding the character of the Early Bronze Age Nile—after all, it was not without reason that classical authors like Herodotus described Egypt as a “Gift …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 9: Reconstructing Past Nile Floods”
Last week, we discussed some of the difficulties involved in reconstructing the landscape of the First Cataract region, focusing in particular on how we can use satellite imagery, historical maps, and aerial photography in tandem with archaeological finds to get a better idea of how this landscape might have looked in antiquity. In the coming …
This week, we are going to take a look at the ways that we are trying to reconstruct the landscape of the Nile’s First Cataract region, and why this is such a difficult task. Perhaps the most important feature of this reconstruction is understanding what was going on with the Nile itself! During different periods, …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 7: Challenges Reconstructing the Landscape of the First Cataract Region”
Last week, we discussed three problems of relying exclusively on Egyptian textual evidence for information about the First Cataract Borderscape, and this week we will talk about how archaeology can help to move us towards less elite-focused and Pharaonic-centric perspectives to provide a more balanced view of the Aswan region during the 4th and 3rd …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 6: Moving Beyond Textual Evidence (Part II)”
Last week we discussed Pharaonic terminology for boundaries, highlighting how the Egyptian vocabulary focused more on the capacity for human action to change political boundaries than their permeability. This helps to demonstrate how different societies may conceptualize boundaries in diverse, culturally specific ways. All that being said, how the Pharaonic Egyptians defined their boundaries is …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 5: Moving Beyond Textual Evidence (Part I)”
The ancient Egyptian language has two terms that denote boundaries: tash and djer. Tash is a term that corresponds to boundaries of all different kinds, from the rim of a plate to the edge of a field. It is also used to describe political boundaries, though these boundaries often look rather different than the ones …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 4: Pharaonic Terms for Boundaries”
To a certain extent, I put the cart before the horse last week in discussing the concept of “borderscapes” before “borders”, “boundaries”, and “frontiers”. Part of this was because only one of these terms is in the title of our project, and part of this was naked self-interest, since these concepts are complicated, and no …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 3: Two Important Archaeological Approaches to Borders”
In recent decades, a growing body of academic research has focused upon borders and landscapes.[1] The portmanteau “borderscapes” seems to have been coined in 1999 by performance artists, and after an uneven usage at the start of the new millennium, its impressive analytical potential has been explored by a variety of geographers, sociologists, and anthropologists.[2] …
